| 11 September 2006 Nine Eleven It is raining this morning, which is a fitting book-end to a lovely weekend. It is also That Anniversary, the one that is so problematic. It is good that this day is somber and gray. It fits the mood. The day itself was something else altogether. It might have started as one of the nicest days I had ever seen. I had stayed in the District the evening of the 10th, just another day, and had to get up early to travel to my job at the Agency campus at Langley, Virginia. I came against traffic, top down on the car to enjoy the crispness of the air. I headed south across the 14th Street Bridge, and took the Boundary Channel exit to motor past the sleeping bulk of the Pentagon. It was a back way to connect to the GW Parkway that I learned in years of jogging around the river. I turned right, marveling at the clarity of the moon and stars above me. The River entrance to the big sandstone building was quiet. I remembered in the summer I would stop and pick up the bulbs from the crimson tulips the Defense Department turned up, making a bag of my running shirt. I would take them home to plant in the rich red soil in Fairfax. Beyond the entrance began the vast sprawl of North Parking, segregated into the closer-in rows reserved for car pools, and then the distant lanes reserved for General Parking, which put you a mile away from the Eighth Corridor entrance. I had walked that long lonely distance in the dark and in the rain for years. I thought that the newly reconstructed wedge of the building was working out pretty well, complete now that I no longer worked there. People were moving offices from the area about to be demolished and into the reconstructed space. My old office had just completed the change, and the Navy watch was now in place over by the helicopter pad. Then I was past it, and onto the merge that took me across the traffic circle that guards the Arlington Cemetery, and onto the Parkway north toward Mclean, and the beginning of the working day. The leaves on some of the trees on the bluff above the placid river were just starting to turn gold. It was a beautiful day. It did not work out that way, of course, though the sky stayed blue, and the leaves did not change any faster. The President intends to visit all the places that were touched that day, and then talk to us tonight. I think the latter will unquestionably happen, because it is scheduled to happen that way. But as to going to all the places that were touched by evil that day, well, I just don't think that is possible. Do you? When I contemplate the vivid nature of my recollection of that day, I realize I am guilty. I have a vivid recollection of something that did not happen. I'm not sure how that occurs, though I know that it does. I was married for a long time, after all. I will always smile ruefully when I see the phrase “If a man is all alone in the deep woods, and he says something, is he still wrong?” Not that it would apply to anyone I know at the present or past time, according to advise from my Pillsbury Attorney at the prestigious firm of $houn & Bach, of Fairfax County. Which is precisely why I am publishing an important correction to the story entitled “End is Near.” On advise of counsel, I must correct an error of material fact. It is not that protesters have been cleared off their traditional First Amendment-protected squatting places in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. That is true. I checked after alert readers in Afghanistan and elsewhere questioned the reference to Lt. Col. Ollie North's testimony to Congress about the construction of his security fence. I described a vivid recollection of his reference to Osama bin Laden as “The most dangerous man you have never heard of.” That was flat wrong. Osama was off fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan at that time, and would not declare war on the United States for nearly a decade. The man Ollie North was concerned about was Abu Nidal, a proxy of the Libyan security services at the time. I was wrong, and I cannot even say I was deep in the woods. It was sloppy research on my part, and I apologize. The recollection was so vivid. That is what you are supposed to do when you make a mistake. Not that there is much of that sort of behavior here in Washington. It does not change a thing about where things were going, or what happened when we got there. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |