First responder who is a Police Officer and a fireman in an emt to please stand up and in everyday that you do for us. It is an absolute presser and pleasure, the last time he was here he spoke about the doomsday plans end of the story of a continues. Tonight we are welcoming him back to discuss a very somber topic. Collected and organized with the 260degree account, the voices of the people who experienced the new experience. That includes the regular tv commentator and historian who spent more than a dozen years in National Security. Also the author of a number of books including the First Campaign globalization in the race to the white house to examine the role of Technology Including inside which traces the history of fbi counterterrorism efforts. Also examining the rise across america. And today he serves as the director of the cybersecurity and Technology Program and has contributed to cnn. He has written from the New York Times and has served as the editor with two of washingtons most prestigious magazines and political magazines. Which should help lead to the First National magazine award in the industrys highest honor. And on this book he has said that he has used oral history to take it into one of the most horrific and consequential moments in American History in a book that it is particularly important for those that dont remember 9 11. It is the true challenge of the story to record history so that the next generation can understand these momentous event area and the number five number five on the fiction list. And it absolute pleasure to welcome garrett back museum. [cheers] [applause] good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming out. It is a pleasure to be back here in grand rapids. And for those of you that i spoke with last year, thank you for coming out for another night of American History and so is dole laid out, this is an oral history of 9 11. And it is told through the voices of 480 americans from coast to coast. September 11 until about 8 50 that morning. Peter zelensky, air Traffic Controller, bostons International New hampshire. When American Airlines flight 11 came to me, the pilot said Boston Center this is american 11 climbing to flight level to 30. I called him many times. American 11 how do you hear, this is Boston Center do you hear me . Im calling and calling and they must be up there drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee. Honestly, thats what i was thinking. Then theres transmissions. The first transition from the aircraft is garbled. I dont understand it. Then there was a second one, a voice. I remember him saying nobody move, please. We are going back to the airport. I will never forget that feeling at the back of my neck. It was like this adrenaline or something. I felt fear. Im like zero my god, the planes been hijacked. Airspace specialist and military specialist faa Boston Center. It came in about 8 25 in the morning, and as soon as i walked in the front door, someone came to me and said there was a hijacked going on. We worked hijacks in the past and they were usually uneventful. Peter zelensky. I yelled at the supervisor john, get over here, the planes been hijacked absolutely. I go its middle eastern voices, positive. I could tell that a second time. I was used to working egypt air, saudi, turkish, all of them. Its definitely middle eastern voices. Calling the slogans, the pilot on american 11, mohammed, the lead a terrorist stated something about more planes, that they had more planes. It was definitely plural. Thats when things really started to ramp up. Faa command center in virginia. I was the National Operations manager on 9 11. The position located in the Washington Area that is overarching authority over the nations airspace. That was my charge, the safe and efficient operations of the nations airspace. Colonel bob lahr commander northeast air defense new york. There was a huddle of people around one of the scopes. I thought theres got to be something wrong. Major general arnold First Air Force in georgia. We had a major north american air defense exercise that morning. A command post exercise. There was a team of people who introduced scenarios you had to react to and respond to. As we were winding up the exercise, my executive officer handed me a slip of paper. It said bob tomorrow called and there was a hijacking in the Boston Center. My experience with hijacking ind our protocol is that we cooperate. Lieutenant Mission Commander northeast air defense at this point it was the 1970s vintage hijacked. We didnt have a huge concern the aircraft was going to crash. Major general larry arnold i said bob, go ahead and scramble the fighters. Major joe f15 pilot Otis Air Force base cape cod massachusetts a scramble order was issued. I ran to the jets and i started up and realized we didnt have any weapons. They filled the jets with gas, and even though we were winchester that didnt mean we had weapons we took off. Lieutenant colonel duffy f15 pilot Otis Air Force base when we took off i left it in full afterburner the entire time. We were supersonic going down to long island, and my wing man, dan nash, called and said you are super and i said yeah i know, dont worry about it. I just wanted to get there. Colonel bob mar at mach one it would take 16 minutes to get to new york, thats 10 miles a minute. Lieutenant colonel Mission Commander northeast air defense almost simultaneously, we brought in more surveillance technicians to look at the scopes. Staff Sergeant Larry thorton northeast air defense the area was so congested the hijacked flight was incredibly difficult to find. We were looking for little marks in a pile of clutter on a two dimensional scope. Master sergeant joe mccain, northeast air defense we picked up a search track going down the Hudson Valley straight in from the north to new york. The plane was fast and headed in an unusual direction with no transponder. We watched the track until it faded over new york city. Lieutenant general tom, Commander Air force base shreveport, louisiana we were in the midst of this annual exercise called global guardian. They loaded all the bombers, but the submarines out to sea, but the icbms at nearly 100 . It was routine. We did it every year. A captain came in and said sir, we have in aircraft that hit the World Trade Center. I started to correct him, saying when you have in exercising but you have to start by saying i have an exercise in put that way it doesnt get confused with the real world. Then he pointed me to the tv screens in the command center. You could see smoke pouring out of the building. Like everyone else in aviation that day, i said how in a clear in a million day could the plane had the World Trade Center. This grew out of an article that i wrote for political magazine in 2016 for the 15th anniversary of 9 11. There was an oral history of being aboard air force one with president bush, and i went out and interviewed 28 of the people who were with the president that day from the pilot of air force one to the Fighter Pilots who accompanied him to white house chief of staff andy carr and karl rove, the other senior aides aboard the plane, the press, security and the stenographer aboard the plane that day. He published, as i said in 2016, and i was astounded by the feedback i got the day that it published and ultimately scores and finally hundreds of letters from readers of people sharing their own stories of 9 11, and their own reactions. Probably for 9 11 this year this is the first year when you have College Students arriving on campuses across the country born after 9 11 that this year for the first time, we have american servicemen and women being deployed to fight in a war older than they are. And this year in march marked the beginning of the time when the first recruits to the new York City FireDepartment Born after the attacks could apply to join the fire service. And so my goal with turning thit shares the same title the only plane in the sky referring to the end of 9 11 when president bush left the air force base outside of omaha nebraska and flew back to washington at about 4 15 that afternoon after all of the commercial planes in the country had who are old enough to remember these experiences this story of 9 11 is actually pretty different than the story that we tell in our history books we tell this neat and clean history of that day. The attacks started at 846 with the crash of american 11 into the north tower and ended at 10 29 with a collapse of the second tower, 102 minutes later. But if you remember 9 11, that is in the day that you remember, and thats not the story that any of us lived that day. We didnt know when the attacks began. We didnt know when the attacks were over. It is the true story of 9 11. Because when we try to hand this set of memories off to a new generation, to the quarter of the American Population that no longer has any memory of 9 11, a quarter of the country now does not have a memory of 9 11. The facts of the day dont account for what the country did after 9 11. And when you look at the world that we created the way that it shaped our geopolitics internationally and our domestic politics. You cant explain the world that we are handing off to a future generation. Because the decisions the country made. They were not driven by the history of 9 11. They were driven by the emotions of 9 11. They were driven by that fear and trauma and chaos and confusion so this book is an attempt to capture that sweep of the day not as we understood 9 11 later but as we understood while it unfolded. So to compile the book is a mix of original interviews that i did, and then archived oral histories done by institutions like the 9 11 museum in new york, 9 11 tribute center, the e pentagon historian, capitol hill historian, the Arlington County public libraries, the flight 93 National Memorial park service compiled in shanksville. And i found with a researcher who worked with me on this book, we found about 5,000 of those original oral histories archived around the country and ultimately boiled it down to about 2,000 that i spent a year working with you end up telling the story that i tell in this book. There are some big observations that sort of grow out of looking at 9 11 on a National Level like that that i want to spend some time talking about tonight. The first is just how different our country was on the morning of september 11. That we sort of now say flippantly and in passing, 9 11 changed everything. But we forget just how much actually 9 11 changed. And to capture that, we have to actually look at what to me is the most fascinating moment of 9 11, which is the 17 minutes between the first crash and the second crash. Eighth 46 in the morning to 9 03. And what unfolds during those 17 minutes is the country read large and new york specifically watches that first crash and shrugs. You probably, if you watch tv that morning, you probably remember going through this precise thought process. The tv was live at 8 49 that morning from the twin towers, three minutes after the first crash. And for 14 minutes, and americaa watched that first crash. And i bet everyone in this room who watched said the same thing that i did, which is some combo of must be a small plane, must be a weird aviation accident, pilate had a heart attack, air Traffic Control is having a bad day, plane is having some sort of mechanical problem. And that was the reaction from the whole country. One of the most breathtaking quotes in the book to me is from peter johansson, the captain of one of the new york commuter fairies who talks about watching the first crash from new yorks harbor as hes coming into the wall street terminal in Lower Manhattan. They see the crash and continue on into Lower Manhattan. They dock, and every single commuter on the boat gets off and walks into work in Lower Manhattan. They walk off the boat through papers and envelopes fluttering down from the impact. There is not a Single Person on the ferry who says this seems like its going to be a weird day. Brian gunderson the chief of staff he walks past it on the way to the morning staff meeting at nine and says i thought it was like i thought it was going to be like a bad School Shooting the type of thing that dominates National News and it doesnt dot fundamentally affect anyones day. President bush and Condoleezza Rice the National Security advisor that morning, Condoleezza Rice calls the president , they talk about the crash and how strange the crash is. Condoleezza rice goes into her meeting and president bush walks into the classroom at Booker Elementary School to read to the schoolchildren. Robert mueller, the fbi director was in his second week on the job and the way the fbi was bringing him up to speed he started to tuesday, september 4, 2001 and every morning at 8 a. M. , he was being briefed on the biggest cases that the fbi was working. 8 a. M. , tuesday september 11. He sits down for his first briefing on the investigation of al qaeda and the bombing of the u. S. S. Cole. Fortynine minutes later, someone enters and tells him the plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Bob mueller, director of the fbi, sitting in a briefing on al qaeda has the same reaction as the lieutenant general. He looks at the Conference Room at the seventh floor of the hoover building at the blue sky that covered the east coast that day and said how on earth did the plane manage to hit the World Trade Center that day and then they go back to their meeting. Of course at 9 03, we realized something very different is unfolding. We realized that we are under attack, and the day begins to unfold dramatically differently. One of the things that sort of comes through from their is just how much the nation improvised its response to 9 11. Just how much the country was unprepared for that day and we saw people at all levels making incredible decisions under incredibly difficult circumstances. And so, i spent a lot of time in the book following some of the stories that you probably dont remember or may have ever known in the first place from that day, because one of the things that turns out that happened on 9 11 is that there were all these things that had they happened on any other day of the year would have been among the most dramatic things individually that had ever happened in modern American History. But on 9 11 they were not even the most ten or 12 interesting things to happen that day. And there were two of them that i spend a good chunk of time in the book talking about. The first being the maritime evacuation of Lower Manhattan, which was as it turns out that the largest maritime evacuation in world history. Larger than that of the british from dunkirk. And it was put together that morning by this incredible makeshift armada of pleasure yachts some of them literally stolen from the marinas of Lower Manhattan ferry boats, tugboats, fishing vessels, and all sorts of sort of civilian watercraft piloted by civilians pulling out and doing everything that they could to get people off of Lower Manhattan, 500,000 people evacuated from Lower Manhattan by boat that morning. Led by, organized by a single young lieutenant in the u. S. Coast guard named michael day, who winds up with the pilots from the sandy hook benevolent pilots association, sort of coordinating this rescue effort on Lower Manhattan. And simply puts out a radio call saying all available boats, anyone who can come to Lower Manhattan. And they fill the day with just this incredible armada. Lieutenant day says in his oral history i broke more laws that day than i have enforced in the totality of the rest of the 30 year coast guard career. [laughter] the second sort of incredible herculean effort that day was led by one of the men in the excerpt that i read to you. The effort by the faa and air Traffic Control to put 4500 planes on the ground that were in the air at 9 42 that morning after the crash the pentagon. Ben swiney, the National Operations manager for the faa was in his first day on the job was the National Operations manager at the faa and in his first 90 minutes gives to orders that no american has ever given before or since. Shortly after the second crash at 9 03, he institutes a nationwide gross stop. No plane that is not in the