What were you doing that morning,nine years ago?

My brother phoned me and told me to turn on the tv,it was just before the second plane. What a day unfolded.

:patriot:

check the weather channel. Our TV was on NBC and before I could switch the first plane had hit and another aircraft was on the horizon. There I was transfixed for a moment and then I was calling all my siblings and hubby's family as well.

some spare parts. When I got back in the main section. My co-workers told me about it and we turned on the TV and watched it in horror :o

It was surreal.

I thought it would be a war, for those few hours.

I thought the world has finally done it. Full Out Crazy, here we come.

You took the words right outta my mouth...full out crazy

A newsflash came on the radio but I could not understand what was going on because the boss was running his mouth. I told him to "Shut up and listen, something is happening" for some reason he forgot to get mad at me for telling him to shut up in front of clients.

I was driving onto the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (fletc) when Howard Stern reported the first words of a plane hitting the first tower. We were gathered around several small tv's in the DoJ(USMS) office when #2 hit. In the weirdest and most vibrant memory of that day, there was a ten second pause between the second plane hitting, while it sunk in what was happening, and everyone's phones going crazy. Cell phones, pagers, desk lines.... rang like crazy as panic set in. I squeaked out of the Center ahead of lockdown. I drove the hour to my home in nearly half the time, pushing my truck to it's limit. Once home, I checked in with my supervisors and was told to stand down, where I remained for the next month.

Driving in the car, the radio said a small plane had hit the WTC. When I got to work, people were talking about it. A few minutes later, we learned about the second plane. Then the third plane crashed into the Pentagon.

Not a whole lot of work got done that day; mostly we were gathered around the TV in the meeting room.

We turned the radio to NPR and listened to the coverage until my boss could get back with a small TV. Didn't get much work done that day from trying in vain to get in touch with relatives in New York City and Washington, DC.

I just don't see the point. I think that 9/11 as an event has already been misused enough.

If you don't like it, don't read it, but don't try and tell me where I can or cannot post because you don't have that right or power.

if you don't like a thread, then why come piss in it? and you are doing the very same thing you are telling me not to do. i will comment on your bullshit, pissing statement...and i will gladly indicate my displeasure with it.

sP

hotel there...preparing to teach a class...remember the phones ringing and pagers going off in the classroom...then losing connectivity to the servers I needed for class...knowing something was up...but not quite sure what...until the second impact...

sP

and my radio alarm had gone off. The announcers were talking about the first plane that had just struck the tower. The day went down from there. Plus it was my son's 16th birthday. Being a teacher in an elementary school, we kept the day calm and did not discuss what had happened.

flying over to SF for a whole weekend swingdance event with Rob and Diane.

I figured at the time the pilot told us what had happened and why we were turning back to the UK that it was blowback from Chile for 9/11/73.

...near the front door. None of the TVs that around the rest of the gym were tuned to news. I walked over to see the image of the burning building. A couple of minutes later, we saw the second plane hit the second tower.

This was in my office building. I dressed and ran to the hotel nearby where about 250 of people I work with (including my wife) were in a ballroom attending a pep talk from our lead executive.

I walked up to the stage and the executive looked at me like I was nuts, because I was out of breath and sweaty. All of their pagers were off and they had no idea what was happening.

I was in Phoenix, visiting my parents. My brother called, too. It was 6:30 AM there. The second plane hadn't hit yet. The whole day was surreal.

My boss called me at the hotel as I was packing and said "What are you doing? I told him I was packing to leave to go to the airport. He said "well, I don't think you are going anywhere. Turn on the TV." This was right after the 2nd plane hit.

After watching for a while I decided to try and find a rental car to drive back to Florida. It took about 3 hours but finally found one being returned to another hotel.

I drove back to SW FL (I took two days to do it) listening to the news all the way.

I commented on the fact that there was no traffic. No matter what time of day, there is always lots of traffic in Bangkok. It was eerily quiet. We went to the hotel and I was preparing to take a shower and turned on the TV. There were all these images of burning skyscrapers that looked like New York but none of the channels was in English. Chris Mathews was on CNBC but it was all being translated into Thai. We got dressed and went down the street to an open air cafe that had their TV tuned to CNN.

What a shock. The city was dead. The entire country was glued to their TV's, just like in the USA.

When the news came that Kennedy had been assassinated. People were crying in the streets.

(It was already the next day in Bangkok.)

Americans, not since George Bush and his war for oil.

When 9/11 happened the Thais were very sympathetic. Many were just as shocked and saddened as we all were. Not any more. Now many of the young people believe it was all a plot by Bush and Cheney to invade the middle east and take over the world's oil. I personally don't believe that, I'm not a conspiracy person,(of course I do believe that the invasion of Iraq was to take over the worlds oil supply, just not that they planned 9/11) but they do believe it and no amount of talking will change their minds.

Bush hurt this country so much more that most Americans will ever realized. He destroyed the respect people felt for us throughout the world.

...I knew the neocons would use it as an excuse to blow up the 4th amendment.

and one of my agents came in an told me about it. We got a call from D.C. to evacuate the building, and take our service weapons with us. It was very strange.

Never felt so helpless and hopeless in my life.

eom

My girlfriend called and said turn on the tv. I turned it on and couldn't move. Then I saw the second plane hit live on TV. I was just in shock. Couldn't move from the TV the rest of the day. Went to class, and instead of going, just sat on a floor in a student commons watching. Quietest I have ever heard campus. Still remember almost every detail of that day.

See, the night before we were in the stands at the new Mile High stadium watching the Denver Broncos beat the New York football Giants on Monday night football.
After the game ended, we spent three or four hours partying in the parking lot with a bunch of New York City cops and firemen who were in Denver for the game.

I was MONUMENTALLY hungover when the phone in the hotel room started ringing.

My buddy who was also passed out was in the next room on the sofa bed.
His parents lived in Denver, and he had flown in from Phoenix so we could go to the big game.
It was his 80 year old Mom that was calling us.
When I picked up the phone she was screaming "Turn on the TV!" and I said Caroline, what the hell are you talking about"?
Then she said "They shut down all of the airports!"
THAT got my attention because we both had 1:30 flights taking me home to Kansas City and him back to Phoenix.
I reached over and grabbed the remote and turned on the TV and that was pretty much it.

An hour later the rental car company called us demanding we bring back the van we had rented, and I told them there was NO way that was happening.

On Wednesday the 12th we drove from Denver to Kansas City to get me home.
My buddy spent the night and the next day he took off and drove from KC to his home in Phoenix.
I swear he spent that entire drive back home listening to Rush and Hannity on the radio because ever since then he's been a right wing tool.

I heard on the radio that missiles or something hit the WTC. Then I came home and watched it on TV with my wife, his mom, at the time.

He lost his favorite Aunt Maria that day, she was on the top floor of one of the towers.

arguing with someone on an MSNBC message board. Someone said that a plane had hit the WTC. I admonished them that it was a very bad joke in incredibly poor taste. Then I decided to check further, ran downstairs to put on the TV to see the second plane hit. I thought it was a replay of the first plane.

It was a very bad day as that was the day we decided we were going to take mom off her feeding tube and we had to transfer to a facility that had hospice. Very surreal. I was in shock all the way around. My brother called as he was on his way from DC to sit at mom's bedside with us. He mentioned about a plane crashing into a building. I said "I know, the WTC, but you should be able to get here." But he said "No, the Pentagon was hit as he was driving by. My son had just got off the bus in NYC (thank God!) and managed to call to let us know that he was OK and would make it to my sister's apt to stay. My daughter's flight from CA was cancelled and she was beside herself.

We didn't hear from my very dear friend who worked at the WTC.....and we waited........

It turns out that my office window overlooked the runway where the 'pilots' took flying lessons.

flipped the set on for the weather, and oh my.

Went to the grocery later for one of the essentials of life and was struck by the silence, something I hadn't heard since the Cuban Missile Crisis, people wandering around, too shocked to speak.

Watching NBC, not believing my eyes. But the thing I'll never forget is driving down the highway afterward and the horrified looks we all exchanged with one another, from car to car. There was nothing else on our minds, and we were all in shock and grief.

Then sat glued to CNN for the rest of the day.

As others mentioned, the best word for that morning is surreal.

I awoke to the alarm at 6:30 and turned on the tv.

Holy shit!

I ran and woke up my Dad. He was a retired AA employee at that time....we both watched in horror as the events unfolded.

My Dad was heartbroken and devastated. He knew many of the flight attendants and a pilot.....but just watching the AA insignia tore him apart. I have many "uncles" from AA....I was devastated as well.....and for the innocent people that lost their lives in the twin towers...wanted to stay home from work, but I carried on.

I will never forget.

upstate NY - she worked at home & had the tv on in the background.

that included nerve damage, a skull fracture, and a severe concussion. My son called me and demanded that I turn the tv on. I hadn't watched tv news in years, but I did because he insisted. I watched for 10 minutes, thought, "How terrible for the victims and their families," and turned it off.

I never felt a shred of fear. My anger was reserved for Bush. I saw immediately that he would use this to create legitimacy for his illegitmate presidency and to push his agenda.

I was impatient with, and then disgusted by, the national drama, the willingness to be fearful, to give Bush the room to stretch his powers.

When I got to DU this morning, It took a few minutes to make sense of the thread titles on the front page. While I knew yesterday was September 10th, I had yet to think about "9/11," and probably would never have thought about the anniversary if it weren't there on the front page to force me to.

I haven't really forgiven the nation for allowing 9/11 to change our collective identity and way of doing business.

At Chambers and Broadway for first strike.
Coming out of subway at 4,5,6 stop, Wall Street/Trinity Church for second strike.
Old Slip and South Street for first collapse. Ran, ended up near gates of the South Street heliport. The smoke and debris from WTC2 raced up from Broad Street, across and down Water Street, rushed 30 feet high at the crowd I was in as it rolled over the Vietnam War memorial between 125 Broad and the DTC/S&P Building.
Ramp from FDR Drive to Brooklyn Bridge for second collapse. Watched WTC1 collapse from about 900 yards to the east.

when the news guy on the radio said that there were reports of a plane flying into the WTC and that he was going down the hall to check it out. There were some comments made about how it was probably a small plane (I think maybe there had been an incident with a small plane some time before that?), but that was it. By the time I got up to my desk on the 16th floor, someone was saying that a plane had hit the WTC and that it wasn't a little plane. There was a radio on, and I tried to get on the internet but it was totally jammed up. A few minutes later the second plane hit.

What was additionally worrying to us in those first minutes was that our acting Cs (CEO, COO, and CFO) were flying back to OKC from NYC that morning. Our company was being shuttered, and they were East Coast consultants, hired to shut us down. They were nice people and we had become very fond of them, even though they were contributing to us losing our jobs. As it turns out, they had just taken off a few minutes before the first plane hit, and one of them had taken a photo of the WTC and the sunrise as they circled out of airport. It was a beautiful photo, one of the very last ever taken--moments before the world changed forever.

It took our consultants until that afternoon to even be able to reach us by phone, and it was Thursday night before they got to OKC, their plane was grounded in Dallas or Houston, I can't remember which, and they couldn't get a rental car.

We only had one TV on two floors, so I sent someone home to get another set so we could watch what was going on. After lunch there were more TVs; I don't think anyone did any work for two days. We couldn't get any internet news, so TVs and radios were all we had. It was good, though, that we were together, I think it helped us cope a bit better. The plane crashes in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon made us wonder who would be next.

After going through the Murrah Building bombing years before, we were all pretty frazzled. It was a harrowing couple of days for everyone here, brought back a lot of bad memories. By lunchtime that first day, everyone in town was freaking out. I remember going to an ATM and pulling out cash and then filling the car up, because who knew what would happen next. I think we all expected the worst.

That day was the start of a very dark few months for me personally, so this anniversary brings back a lot more bad memories than I care to think about. But we're still here, and I think that's something good to remember, today especially.

I didn't know a thing about it until my 3rd period English class where the teacher had the television on. What a way to quiet a room of students... We were all glued to the television, silent. Pure shock.

They let us go home immediately and I saw the towers come down on TV.

international, wondered if we should just head back to th airport to return home, but decided not to, thank God.

God knows where we would have benn stranded for all the days the world airports were closed. My wife was with me, eight weeks pregnant.

Every time I get anywhere near Kennebunkport, they're on me like flies on shit. The fact that My Mother lived there and I go to visit her hasn't sunk into their thick skulls yet. Now she lives in Kennebunk, and I still go to visit, and they still follow me. Your tax dollars at work.

Meanwhile, the hijackers were boarding a flight in Portland, just a short distance away.

The Secret Service needs to re-arrange their priorities, and Poppy needs to stop cowering in his Bunker.

and allegedly bought tickets in their own names -- one way -- !!

Using credit cards!!

How did you become the enemy?

When the project to mine the harbors in Nicaragua came up in a divisional meeting in Jan, 1982. I told them "You people are out of your fucking minds, and when Congress finds out about this, they are going to cut our balls off!!."
It was Poppy's pet project at the time and he took umbrage to that statement. The rest is a long and complicated story of harassment and dirty tricks against me. When I found out that Poppy was behind it (I identified members of his personal security team) He freaked out and became concerned that I might try and get back at him. Just shows what a petty two-bit player he is.

formercia have tried to tell the truth --

C-span a long time back aired video by a guy whose name I can't recall at the moment --

he's been around a long time. You might remember him -- ? John something, I think?

Number of books by former CIA -- try to keep up with it.

Obviously, much that happens in government doesn't happen at the table you're sitting at --

or even in the room you're in! More and more Congressional stuff being taken behind closed

doors -- as well.

Private bank - FED -- makes decisions over our economy rather than president/Congress! Etal...



And, just as a conversational aside on 9/11 -- I'm chilled as I go by the channels to see the

"solemn" get togethers. I think this date was carefully picked -- helps overshadow Labor Day --

and I think would like to overshadow JFK tributes/memories re that coup on our people's government.

I'm also sad to see so little challenge to the whole myth of 9/11!!

Fortunately, many continue to work on exposing it --

:wow:

and didn't know anything about it. Hell I didn't have a cell phone and the people I was working for weren't home. At lunch time my helper mentioned how quiet it was then we called our foreman and found out about the entire episode.

My first thought "well this is gonna change the United States forever" just expecting a military crackdown on civilians. Kinda like the entire * junta turned out to be.

Peace

and what I subsequently think happened are two different things --

When the buildings began to fall, I turned the TV off because of the pain and

suffering - unimaginable.

But also unimaginable was the idea that a plane goes thru steel like butter --

and that for an hour NORAD was AWOL --

There are also now indications that the WTC towers were closed at 7:30 am and no

one permitted in -- and it had been quite a previous weekend of "activity" at the

WTC with mysterious people coming and going and much of the security down!

It was not too long after before I saw the foreign websites beginning their challenges

to the Pentagon "plane." Immediately, I could see that that 9/11 was something other

than as presented.

said, "The most bizarre thing has just happened. An airliner has just crashed into the World Trade Center..."

I turned the tv on and watched CNN. I listened while I was getting ready for work and every few minutes another unbelievable thing was announced. Planes missing, the Pentagon being hit, the second plane crashing into the other tower, Bush making a statement, Giuliani holding press conference to update the world, hospitals preparing to take hundreds of survivors. And finally the towers coming down. I have cried and cried over the years, and am crying now. I couldn't even talk about it without crying.

I don't like Giuliani and I hate how he's used that day for personal benefit. But that day he was the only one telling the world what was happening minute by minute and what the city was doing about it. He was a hero to the world that day.

I went to work but everyone was sent home. There was just no way anyone was going to be able to put what was happening aside. Every person I looked at on the street and in their cars looked heartbroken and painfully grim. I could feel my own face set in the downward pull of the deep shock and dawning reality of what was happening. Later that day I kept wondering why no fighter jets were deploying. The most shocking event of that day was that the Pentagon, that building built as a fortress and guarded as much as the White House was hit. If that could happen then we had been lied to about how great our power was. If your enemy can hit you in the heart so easily then we'd been believing the image we see in movies about satellites, fighter jets, and the highest level of preparedness and the electronic gadgetry that could detect everything and anything. It's all lies.

And after Bush made a statement he was reading from a piece of paper we didn't hear one fucking thing from him again. Where was Bush? Why wasn't the White House talking to us? Why was Rudy the only person giving updates?

And there was the growing fear that Bush was going to be the fucking cowboy and retaliate militarily. Fuck. He didn't disappoint with his fucking, "They've woken a sleeping giant" crap.

I was asleep which is unusual after 8am.My husband called and said a plane hit the towers , He didn't know any details yet. He sounded really strange. He was four blocks away from Ground Zero. He is not handling today well. It seems to get worse instead of better. I hope everyone finds some peace today.

telling me planes crashed into the WTC and Pentagon. I told her she had to be mistaken, but. . .

of the planes coming down from Boston.

It was an exquisite morning, a perfect morning. I was watching the Today Show and it was cut into with a newsflash from local NBC news. They were reporting that a plane hit the WTC. They were interviewing on the phone a witness who described the plane as a small jet. I was watching in shock and then saw the second plane hit. I knew then it was a deliberate attack. Not too long afterward I lost tv reception. I then surfed the cable networks and CNN was covering it. When the first tower went down I got on the phone and called my ex-husband. He works in midtown Manhattan and I was told he was out of the office for a meeting. Paranoia set in and my older son (he was home from school sick) and I were on tenterhooks for 3 hours until my ex called and said he was in a meeting near Grand Central which is in midtown..and he was fine.

I recall reports of planes being missing and also that all planes were being called down to land. About an hour after that, my son and I heard a jet and we ran onto my deck. We saw a plane heading due south and we both had the same thought and my son verbalized it...Mom, where's Indian Point (the nuclear power plant)? I told him it was southwest of here. We both held our breaths until we saw the plane move southeast.

To this day I believe that if "terrorists" really wanted to harm us, they would have targeted Indian Point........ and to this day, there is hardly any protection of that facility.

Interesting HBO documentary, Indian Point, Imagining the Unimaginable by Rory Kennedy
http://tv.nytimes.com/show/172605/Indian-Point-Imagining-the-Unimaginable/overview

Will always remember exact section of road.

Sub radio host was in that day & was crappy. CNN radio also was crap - stupid talkers were speculating some ATC computer glitch causing a plane to fly into WTC.

I know it was clear in Pittsburgh and was wondering if there was fog in NYC. But when I heard them say it was clear I was screaming terrorism at radio.

When I got to work day was spent listening to another talk station that no longer sxists & walking to lunch room to TV.

I remember internet was for crap that day - news sites were overwhelmed and wouldn't load.

Principal came running down the hall and told us to turn on the TV. All my classmates and I were calling for the nuking of Mecca.

The next day I was in NYC. Until 9/11, my freight company routed us through the Holland Tunnel and across lower Manhattan via Canal Street to the Manhattan Bridge on our way to our terminal in Queens.

As my wife and I were watching, I said to her this is going to be tied to a guy named Ossama bin Laden. That name had stuck with me from the Clinton years.

(my appointment was at 8 a.m.) and I was sitting in my car calling my aunt to wish her a happy birthday (it's today). I remember when I spoke to her, I told her I wanted to get the call done before I went into the office and the "day got all crazy".

After the call, I turned on the radio, and Howard Stern was reporting that a plane had hit the WTC. They were the only ones talking about it, even NPR had no info yet, so I thought it was a joke, or a small plane at the most. Ten minutes later, NPR finally picked up the story and by the time I got in, everyone was standing in the sales office watching the horror unfold on the TV.

on one of the biggest shows I've ever done. We'd been there almost a week setting up and had just completed the second of a 7 day show. I was working night shift and didn't get off till 1AM. I got a call at about 5AM to get back to the show ASAP. I started to protest but was told "Turn on CNN and get your butt down here".

We had an audience of 2200 people from all over the US and parts of the world and we're all stuck in a luxury resort as far away from NYC as you can get and still be in the US. At least 2 people in the audience had friends/family who were in the towers. We ran cable and put CNN on the big screens and the show went on, just in a different way. It was a motivational seminar and the speaker did a good job bringing the diverse crowd together.

Once the cable was strung and the show was going my friends on the night crew went to someone's room and watched the towers fall about a dozen times before we said the heck with it and went snorkeling. I figured if the world was going to end I wanted to be looking at beautiful fish when it did.

... with members of my organization. Range owner came out and told us what had happened. We continued shooting, but after the match we were all glued to the TV for the rest of the afternoon.

It was the first day of school.

I had to hold it together for the sake of the kids, even with the sound of fighter jets racetracking over the city.

Bought a bottle of brown liquor on the way home and drained it in front of the TV.

. . . the country became the decade-long, corporate-controlled & monitored, wealth-transferred, warmongering, Repuke-loving, indebted and fear-ridden fuckmess that it is today?

Yeah, I was unemployed, so I saw most of it. And I was already asking questions at like, 12 noon.

"How did 4 planes get hijacked at the same time?"

"Where's our fucking military? Especially in D.C.?"

"Why did this . . . "President" do nothing? And why was nothing done with him? Isn't he supposed to be protected?"

"NO Camera saw what hit that building?"

The whole thing just downright smelled from the words "BREAKING NEWS".

I don't know about anyone else, but I felt as if I just witnessed America fail, and that this tragedy would never be truly investigated or avenged. And 3,000 people died in the initialization of that failure. More deaths, more needless deaths would follow.

responding to a request for jury duty. All of us waiting for the jury selection process got updates from TV and phone calls whenever we were allowed breaks, so really didn't know what was going on until the dismissed us late morning.

When my friend called and told me to turn on the TV.

I was like :wtf: and immediately turned on the TV and saw it happening. Then I was just like "fuck".

which stopped in front of the Century 21 across the street from the WTC at 8:40AM.

Had no idea what was going on really as those adults working with kids didn't want to talk about it in front of them. Found out when I got home.

Trying to clear the cob-webs the phone rings, it's my mom calling me from the mid-west. As we are attempting to figure out what is going on the second plane hits. We sat on the phone with each other, mostly repeating, "what the hell is going on" until the first tower fell. She hung up not long after that, I think it was too overwhelming for her.

and pissed off at *ush!

and sat down on the couch. Took a sip of the coffee, then switched on the news. I sat there with the coffee cup held in my hand long enough that the next sip was cold, and there were tears streaming down my cheeks. To this day I'm startled to see clear videos of that day as my memories are made of the slightly blurry pictures seen through tears.

-

My friend and coworker Jocelyn was already there. She had no idea that the Pentagon was going to be hit too, none of us knew. Then it happened, and she told us that her older sister was in that building, she worked for the government. It was hard especially in the days afterward. We found out that her sister was in the building at that exact time and she was now in a coma. She was hit by a piece of the falling ceiling when the plane crashed into the Pentagon. Jocie's sister did eventually wake up but it was a few months later. Jocie ended up going to my wedding a few weeks later. She encouraged me to get on a plane to go on my honeymoon to Florida. I will never forget what a kind and sweet person she was after all she had gone through.

At the call center that day and the weeks following it, things were crazy. We worked for a company that did customer service for long distance and cable companies and some of the clients were in NYC. Maybe someone on DU from NYC remembers OnTera. We took calls for them. We got lots of calls that day. I think some people just wanted to talk. The huge antenna on top of the WTC knocked out the digital cable and we were bombarded with calls but I think most people did not care about the cable. They just wanted to talk.

I remember when I came home after a long and emotionally grueling day. My Mom called and said her cousins that lived in NYC were okay, they were in NYC but no where near the WTC. I watched the local news and there were people missing from the Westport, Greenwich areas of CT. They were commuters. It was just one, long sad day.

dragged a plum across my head

with several of my co-workers. I went downstairs at the end of the first session to find caffeine, and found a horror instead.

...when one of the doctors came in and told me someone flew a plane into one of the WTC towers. I saw that first tower collapse live on television. Everyone's heart just dropped to the bottom in that room.