It was about this time, fourteen years ago, that I was having the usual morning meeting on the 6th Floor of the Original Headquarters Building on the Langley campus. It was a glorious morning, weather wise, just like today. Funny how that is a big part of what I remember.

Back then many people kept CNN on in the corner of their offices- all of us having a streak of crisis junky in us, and the professional desire to be first to become aware of things.

There was no television in the office across the hall where I was talking to Rock and Marty, plotting our strategy on getting a DCI Directive on cyber-sharing through the mind-numbing thicket of procedures required by the inter-agency process.

First it was the one airplane, and the discussion about when such a thing had happened before, and then of course there was the second, and we knew without question that we were under attack, and in fact we might be sitting in the middle of a great big bullseye ourselves.

It was a galvanizing feeling. I had been to the Pentagon that morning- in a delightful pre-dawn under a star-studded sky that made me put the top down on the convertible, and exult in the joy of being alive.

I told the guys to get out of the building and go home- they were contractors, and I was not. I was still in uniform, though I did not have to wear mine to the Agency every day. That would change, of course, along with everything else.

There was an air of unreality to the rest of the morning. We had mobilized to support the Director, and were in an undisclosed location when the towers came down, and the Pentagon was hit.

The cell phones didn’t work, there was a missing airplane, we heard, and general confusion. By afternoon all the commercial airplanes had been grounded and accounted for. The Great Plan was implemented, and people started disappearing for points east and west, to the places designed for these sorts of monstrous times, and the wild ride began in earnest.

They did a nice job on repairing the Pentagon, where my pals Dan and Vince and our other martyrs perished. The grass has grown green on their graves in that corner of Arlington Cemetery where the corner of the great five-sided building looms.

I can’t shake the feeling. I am not sure I want to. But I never would have believed the string of events that has come along since, and the things we have done to respond to them. What amazes me the most is that we do not seem to be winning.

It is important. Given everything that ahs happened, you would think that would be a priority, wouldn’t you?

Instead, it feels that we have lost our way, and are wandering aimlessly. I do not like the feeling. Fourteen years ago I thought I had an idea about what to do.

Now, I don’t. But I will not stop remembering the events of that morning, and who exactly is responsible for it all.

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.visocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303