SPECIAL REPORT — It’s been a very long ride since terrorists sent by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden set out on a fateful mission to deliver terror to America on September 11, 2001. For most of the new generation of military and intelligence recruits, it’s something they only read about in history books or hear about from the previous generation, but for others who were working for the government, that day is one that will never be forgotten.
Some 23 years later, they still remember where they were, and the series of events that were set off that day that would change their lives.
The path to justice was a long one, and some of the most dedicated warriors from the intelligence and military communities wouldn’t live to see the end of it. While there are far too many to name, among them was CIA Officer Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2001. In 2009, seven CIA officers were killed in a suicide attack in Khost, Afghanistan as they worked to close in on the location of bin Laden’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
But there were victories along the way as well, none more satisfying, perhaps, than the work that culminated in the Navy SEAL mission of May 2, 2011 that led to the death of bin Laden.
Many of the experts that The Cipher Brief works with still vividly remember September 11 and the new course that was plotted that day for the U.S. military and intelligence community. The mission included a protracted war in Afghanistan that lasted much longer than anyone wanted, and a global war against terrorists. Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christy Abizaid told The Cipher Brief that threat remains very real all these years later, as terrorists are still plotting to kill Americans.
We asked Cipher Brief experts today where they were on September 11, and to reflect on what has happened since. Many of them were right in the middle of it all; others were just setting off on a very unexpected path.
View from the bridge
Admiral Sandy Winnefeld (Ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, writes exclusively in today’s Cipher Brief about how he watched events unfold from the bridge of the USS Enterprise in the Hormuz Strait. “We were on our way home at high speed from a six-month deployment with a scheduled port visit in South Africa, but it seemed clear at that moment that we weren't going anywhere. It also seemed clear that any terror attack would have been initiated from somewhere in the Middle East. So, we slowed the ship and, after a few hours of speculation regarding whether we would be sent back into the Arabian Gulf or toward Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was likely located, we began moving toward Pakistan.” And where does he think we are today? Read Adm. Winnefeld’s piece, only in The Cipher Brief.
"The plane struck just to my right"
Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, NATO, was a newly selected one-star Admiral working in his office in the Pentagon when the plane struck. “My office was located on the fourth deck of the Pentagon on the side that was hit by the commercial aircraft at 9:30 a.m. or so. The plane struck just to my right and I was lucky to escape the burning building. What I remember above all that day was the heroism of the first responders who fearlessly charged into the building to try and rescue as many of my ship mates as they could. When I got home that night after walking most of the way because my car keys were still in my office drawer, my uniform smelled of smoke so badly that I had to take it in the backyard where I cut off the thick gold bands of a rear admiral on the sleeves to save them and remember that day. The next morning, we all went back to work in the Navy annex, a building on the hill above the Pentagon, and watched the smoke still rising to the sky. And so, we went to war. Shortly thereafter, I was put in command of ’deep blue,’ a navy think tank focused on fighting what would come to be called the war on terror. A year later, I was at sea, commanding a powerful carrier strike group deployed into the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had those gold bands sewn back onto my uniform and wore them until I retired 13 years later.”
How had we let this happen?
Michael Vickers, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, was in his office in Washington D.C. when “the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, having made, only a few days prior, the final edits to the Department of Defense’s quadrennial review of its strategy, major weapons programs, and force structure. Neither Afghanistan nor al Qaeda were mentioned in the document, a shortcoming that was quickly rectified before the QDR was released on 30 September. By then, the first CIA teams had infiltrated into Afghanistan.
At first, I thought the attack on the North Tower was a horrible accident. After the second plane crashed into the South Tower seventeen minutes later, I knew we were under attack and al Qaeda was responsible. I was filled with a quiet but burning anger as I saw my fellow Americans leap to their deaths to escape the flames and the towers collapse, killing many more. How had we let this happen? I had spent the most important years of my career on Afghanistan, helping the Afghan resistance drive the Soviets out, and on counterterrorism operations in the Special Forces and at CIA. But I hadn’t seen this attack coming and had underestimated the threat posed by al Qaeda. Fortunately, as a senior DoD official under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, I was given the opportunity to help plan the operations that brought justice to Osama Bin Laden and dismantled and defeated al Qaeda. Two-plus decades on, al Qaeda and its global jihadist fellow travelers are down but not out. We forget at our peril.”
A rare moment of unity
“I was in St. Louis, getting oriented to be Director of the NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency), which I became two days later,” James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, told us today. “Like everyone else old enough, I remember very vividly the visual images on TV, and the feelings and emotions that we all felt. It was frightening (would there be more such attacks?) and soon, when everyone had absorbed what had happened—very unifying. The most vivid image for me was the clip of the American Airlines flight crashing into the Pentagon, where I had spent ten years of my life.
We were united then as we’ve not been since. The world is more complex, less democratic, and I think, more fearful.”
Asleep and unaware - and then stranded
Jon Darby, Former Director of Operations, National Security Agency, told The Cipher Brief today that he “slept through the entire thing. I was on a business trip to Australia and fell asleep about the same time the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. I spent the next week stranded in Australia (all federal employees were grounded), liaising between NSA and the Australian SIGINT Agency to determine how Australia could help the U.S. Everything changed in the Intelligence Community (IC) in the wake of 9/11, shifting to an environment of ‘Need to Share,’ and more IC integration, to include an attitude that each of us are not just from a specific agency, but are part of ‘Team USA.’"
"Nothing was ever the same"
Teresa Smetzer, former Director of Digital Futures, CIA, told us today that she was “in a glass conference room in Chantilly (Virginia), facing the airport in our staff meeting. Someone’s wife called and said turn on the TV, a few minutes after 9:00 a.m. It was stunned silence until the second tower collapsed and then everyone set into motion. Find their families. Begin devising a technical approach to discern culprits. Cry for fear of lost loved ones. Within one and a half hours we all left to find our way, and nothing was ever the same again.”
Never forget
Teresa Shea, former Director of Signals Intelligence, National Security Agency, was at a funeral with several of her NSA colleagues when the news broke. “Our pagers started going off and we all headed back to work. Our immediate concern was to determine if more attacks were coming. 9/11 had a dramatic impact on all of us. We were determined to find the culprits and to prevent anything like this from happening ever again. Today, most have forgotten or are just not aware of the impact of this attack on our nation. We should never forget the lessons this day has taught us and be very grateful to all those who serve to keep us safe.”
The mistakes that followed
It was late at night in Japan, where Rear Admiral Mike Studeman (Ret.), former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, was serving as the assistant intelligence officer for the Seventh Fleet Commander on the flagship USS Blue Ridge. He was horrified when he saw the images, and today he thinks that attack set the country off on a tragic path.
“As much as we needed to rapidly prioritize a collection of diverse terrorism threats to protect ourselves, in retrospect, our nation over-tilted in the Middle East, strategically blundered by going into Iraq, and expended our blood and treasure in ways that left us too exhausted and overextended to successfully deal with the revisionist and opportunistic nation-states of China and Russia.”
A long ride home
Beth Sanner, former Deputy Director for National Intelligence, ODNI, was at CIA headquarters, where she was serving as deputy of an analytic group, when the towers fell. She was pregnant with her first child, but she hadn’t told her colleagues at work yet.
“Our group experienced the event on our televisions and just like many Americans, with the same disbelief after the first crash into the World Trade Center, turned to shock and a sinking realization as events unfolded. We understood, although not as much as we did later, the threat to CIA HQs and were told to shelter in place. I sent a very pregnant woman in the group home immediately. Over the following hours, I coordinated our group's departure, and I was the last person to leave our vault, locking up behind me. It was a very long and lonely ride home that evening, time to contemplate bringing a child into such a world while my husband was stranded overseas with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Everything changed at CIA from that moment on, as we surged and restructured to deal with the terrorist threat. At the time, I was in what felt like a very small minority of people worried about overcorrecting and losing capacity on our main adversaries and our global coverage, but that was dangerous thinking and like spitting into the wind in any case. Now, it seems so clear that this was so. While I do not think that all our endeavors were pointless or in vain, the U.S. wasted a lot of time and resources as truly existential threats were building. We all are paying a price for that now.”
Strategic mistakes
Paul Kolbe, a longtime CIA operations officer, was on assignment in Vienna, Austria, on that day.
“When the terror attacks of Sept 11, 2001 occurred, we all saw the world as fundamentally changed,” he told us. “For a generation, this seemed true as the U.S. prosecuted a Global War on Terror with all its powers – military, intelligence, diplomatic, and statecraft. The U.S. forged remarkable tactical successes, but at the same time made fundamental strategic miscalculations.
While focused on destroying Al Qaeda and ISIS, we lost sight of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. We perseverated on a dangerous and near threat, while paying scant attention to more distant but existential ones. America emerged from twenty years of counterterrorism warfare relatively weaker militarily, economically, and politically because amidst our distraction, other enemies used the time to build their own power, undermine ours, and obfuscate their ambition.
23 years after the horrific events of 9/11, the world has changed far less than we imagined. New challenges and old stand before a new generation. The stakes are higher than preventing the next terror attack. Current and potential conflicts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia mean that we must be vigilant, prepared, and relentlessly realistic about the nature of our enemies, the threats they pose, and what we must do to deter them.”
First day on the job
On September 11, 2001, Karen Schaefer, Former Chief of Operations, Directorate of Science and Technology, CIA, was starting her first day of work at her third overseas post in Europe. “I was in the Regional Security Office (RSO) being issued my badge and watched as the second plane hit the second World Trade Center tower. I knew instantaneously it was not an accident.” Her Chief of Station gathered the group for an all-hands meeting, “telling us that we were effectively at war and needed to prepare ourselves to ramp up our operations and security posture. I remember feeling disbelief, sadness and rage. As a single woman, at a new post alone, I also felt very isolated and far from home. I wanted to talk to, see, hug my family. It would be days before I spoke with them. That said, I was energized, along with the rest of the people in our Station, to bring those responsible to account. Although I realized the significance in the moment, I had no appreciation for how the attacks of 9/11 would transform the trajectory of my career.”
"Horror cloaked in glory"
Nor did Mark Kelton, former Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, CIA, who today says he still “cannot get through a 9/11 commemoration without weeping over the lives cut cruelly short by evil. While I acknowledge that sadness, I try also to recall the many acts of incomprehensible valor that day from first responders who lost all running towards danger, to the heroes on Flight 93 and the courageous Vietnam veteran and then security chief at Morgan Stanley, Rick Rescorla, singing ‘Men of Harlech’ to hearten those in his charge while encouraging him to leave the South Tower, even though he clearly knew the moment of his death might be nigh. I also think of all those intelligence and military personnel in the years after 9/11, whose courage and sacrifice ultimately culminated in the delivery of justice to the monster who took the lives of so many innocents on that terrible day. 9/11 should be remembered as a day of horror cloaked in glory.”
Solidarity from an ally
Former Senior CIA Executive Service Officer Glenn Corn was serving in Turkey at the time. “It was obviously a huge shock for all of us, but the Turkish people were amazing in their support and their solidarity with us on multiple levels. And this was at a time where there was a lot of concern and frustration about what might be coming next, and that the U.S. had missed 9/11. A great American I worked with at the time - I’ll just call him ‘Chris’ - made it clear that the United States can do anything and can achieve anything and said we are going to hunt down and bring to justice those people that did this to the American people. And I was very proud of the fact that I was part of an organization that did that. And it showed that we can do whatever we need to do when we put our minds to it. So hopefully, whatever happens in November, we will come together again and stand behind each other and then stand behind our allies.”
A level of support "I'd never seen"
Former CIA Senior Executive Service Officer Ralph Goff was serving as a chief of station in an Eastern European country on 9/11. After their country team meeting that day, the first plane hit the tower. “When the second plane hit, we all knew that we were at war. In the first few days, the people in the country we were serving in were amazing. They put out all sorts of flowers and notes and stuffed animals and expressed support to the United States and it was at a level of support that I'd never seen before, and I've never seen since. It shows though that when the chips are down, people can pull together.”
A 9/11 lesson
David Marlowe, former Deputy Director of CIA for Operations, summed it up nicely when he described what he said was the most important thing he learned on 9/11. “We have it within ourselves to be unified, and we have it within ourselves to be great.”
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