The author, deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004, teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
It was about 10 p.m. when I finally turned to my computer to write. I was on the seventh floor at CIA headquarters, where I had been serving as deputy director for 14 months. I typed a single sentence, a memo to myself: “Nothing will ever be the same.”
Sept. 11, 2001, was by any measure the most eventful day of my brief tenure. In my memory, that day is a blur of emergency work, and the rest of that week could easily comprise a book. But some memories, personal and professional, remain vivid.
The hijacked planes hit the twin towers at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m. and the Pentagon at 9:37. Around 10 a.m., we moved out of our headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, to an adjacent structure; we assumed that our building was also a target. The only officers left behind, until we returned early that afternoon, were those of our Counterterrorism Center; they continued to monitor incoming reporting on the situation.
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WNU Editor: This post by John McLaughlin is too short .... I hope he follows up with a more detailed analysis at some future date.
