My Story From the Pentagon on 9/11

September 11th, 2011 7:27 AM

On September 11, 2001, I was a White House correspondent for World magazine and was on my way to cover a hearing on Capitol Hill. The second tower of the World Trade Center had been hit on my commute, and then as I approached Alexandria, Virginia on the Capital Beltway, I saw a large column of black smoke rising from Arlington. I was in the middle of a phone call with an editor who said I needed to get to the White House. I told the editor what I strongly suspected had happened and said the White House would have to wait. I made it to the scene about 15 minutes after the plane hit.

Driving north on Highway 1, the white hotels of the Crystal City neighborhood were a stark contrast to the skies filled with black smoke, and I pounded my steering wheel in anger. Here is my story that was published in World:

At the Pentagon, evacuated employees – officials in full military dress, mixed with civilians and janitors and chefs – stood around by the hundreds around the edges of the parking lot, watching the blazes engulf the western side of their massive office building.  Several people assisted an elderly female employee who had to leave the building without her walker. Hudreds discovered they could not contact their friends or loved ones on their wireless phones.

Fire trucks from every local jurisdiction in northern Virginia were parked in a long row. Police and military personnel ushed employees out of the parking lot and onto the grassy hills surrounding the Pentagon as they placed yellow tape around the parking lot that read, “THIS IS  A CRIME SCENE.”

Drivers of emergency vehicles quickly lost patience with the people milling around. “Get out of the way, you idiots,” roared one voice out of a loudspeaker. Military personnel and men in FBI jackets pressed evacuees into the nearby shopping areas in Pentagon City and Crystal City. Yelled one FBI agent: “There is another hijacked airplane. This is not a safe area!” The announcement prompted some panicked individuals to climb fences lining the nearby exit of Interstate 395. Evacuators pressed others south across and under the interstate exit.

Outside the Macy’s department store at the Pentagon City mall, Defense Department employees wondered what they would do next. One women complained: “I left my purse back there, my ID, my keys, my car. How am I going to get home? At least we’re alive.”

Major highways and minor streets leading away from the Pentagon were so jammed that clusters of evacuees walked away. Yelling out of the window of a van, one woman noticed friends on the street: “Nice to see you.” One friend asked, “You’re amused we’re walking? “ The woman replied, “No, it’s nice to see you made it out here.”

Tourists were also among the refugees pounding the pavement. Paul Lamb, who worked in Crystal City for the Navy for 20 years ending in 1993 before retiring to Bisbee, Ariz., was about to fly home when “they told us to get off the plane and get out of the airport.” Mr. Lamb took a five-mile hike south to Alexandria’s Old Town section to meet his son late in the afternoon.

“My son said, ‘Can you get to Alexandria by 4:30,’ and I said, ‘I can get anywhere in the next five hours.’” He joked, “I haven’t seen a car pass me yet.”

Mr. Lamb (who came back to the DC area for a parliamentarians convention) and I were in similar straits. The evacuators made me leave my van behind at the Pentagon, and I followed the stream hiking south to Alexandria, where I filed this story from the MRC that afternoon.

While she was very happy to pick me up from a bus stop near our home, my wife was upset that I'd left the van unlocked in my rush to get to the story. When I returned the next day, there was a heavily armed soldier standing ten feet from my van. I joked to her, "I don't think the car was in danger of being stolen."