I got up this morning, a little before sunrise. It was like that, I recalled. A little cloudier this morning, that other morning it was clear as a bell, “ceiling and visibility unlimited.” CAVU was the aviation term, and the stars were bright in the still-dark heavens.

I needed something from my locker at the Pentagon, so I navigated from the Fort Myer complex in the SE District across the river to North Parking. It was supposed to be simple, park the car someplace I wasn’t entitled to, brisk walk to the entrance, then down into the POAC to get the hooded sweatshirt I thought would be welcome in the changing season.

Back to the convertible, the trusty Sebring, and back on road north to the CIA complex where I worked. We had an early meeting planned, and actually got started on some items that were about to mean nothing at all.

Our team was mostly retired military, and I was getting close. The news echoed down the hall after the first jet went into the Trade Center. I tried to keep things calm, reminding the guys that this had happened to the Empire State Building long ago. Then the second jet went in, and I closed my notebook and told them to get out and get home while there was still time before the town went nuts and the roads closed.

I wasn’t wearing my uniform that day- it was out of place at CIA- but I figured it was my duty to cut people loose and stick around. Assured that my team was relieved, I stuck my head in the Boss’s office and said she had me as long as necessary for whatever. The Pentagon got hit somewhere in there, and I froze. The video coverage looked like it hit the newly refurbished area over by the heliport, the place I had just moved my old staff just weeks before.

It wasn’t a big staff, a couple dozen good folks with whom I served for a couple of interesting years. I thought I had lost them all.

But duty calls, and while everyone else was clawing to get out, we were trying to do whatever the right thing was as it all changed. There were still airplanes out there, aloft and possibly headed to get us too.

The towers came down while I was attempting to support George Tenent, who had relocated to a bunker on his property. He was asking for telephone connections to NSA, among other places, and all I had was a bare desk and a phone with a rotary dial. He was talking to someone when the first tower came down, and his face hardened.

Things began to pull together as that long morning went on. The real people appeared to manage the Director and his agency, and at some point in the late afternoon, I drove back toward Fort Myer. The Pentagon was burning vigorously, and there were people out jogging on the trail next to the road. It was very strange. The last jet- we didn’t know Flight 93 was the last one then- was in the ground in Pennsylvania.

Safe in my BOQ room in the old, formal Army building, I poured a very tall drink and stepped out on the balcony and looked across the Potomac at the brightly burning Pentagon. The flames were on the other side of the vast structure. When cell coverage permitted, I heard my old staff had lived, and yet some pals- Dan and others- had perished. The helicopters danced in the night. We were going to have a lot of work to do.

This morning, nineteen years later, I had coffee and watched the coverage of the anniversary. Tears were all I could manage. Not many, of course, but I could feel them trickle slowly down my cheeks. I don’t recall that happening back then, but we were about to get very busy in a way that changed all our lives.

Forever.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
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