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CNN Live At Daybreak
9/11 on Capitol Hill
Aired September 10, 2002 - 05:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Time to take another look back to September 11, 2001, the day America changed. What started out as just another day of meetings and legislation on Capitol Hill quickly turned into chaos, fear and uncertainty when those planes slammed into the World Trade Center and later the Pentagon.
CNN's Candy Crowley takes this look at what was really happening in the Halls of Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two planes flew into the two towers. A small plane...
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The second plane hit the Twin Towers and Deputy Chief James Rohan's BlackBerry went off again. The message said you probably ought to think about coming back.
DEPUTY CHIEF JAMES ROHAN, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE: My thought process at the time was this was an isolated terrorist incident in New York.
CROWLEY: Watching on his office TV, Senator Ted Kennedy thought his special guest, already en route to speak to the Education Committee, would turn around and go home. He thought wrong. There was Laura Bush.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Morning, Congressman Forbes' office, how may I help you?
CROWLEY: The phones still worked then. Congress Randy Forbes and staff wanted information. They did not, could not then imagine the tragedy that waited on the other end of the line.
REP. RANDY FORBES (R), VIRGINIA: One of the members of our staff had worked at the Pentagon in an intelligence section over there, actually picked up the phone and called them and said what do you know, what's going on, you know, at the time. They basically said we know what you know. We're watching it right now as it develops on TV. The individual that was talking to him was later killed when that plane crashed at the Pentagon.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on folks, step back please. Thank you very much.
CROWLEY: At Capitol Hill Police headquarters, reports piled up that planes were headed for Washington and then that a plane had hit the Capitol.
ROHAN: I went to the window and looked out the window to the southwest and saw the dome but a huge billowing smoke going up above the dome. And my heart dropped down to my stomach and I said they got us, they got the Capitol.
CROWLEY: Smoke from the Pentagon was so thick, so high, Rohan thought it was the Capitol. Guards ran through Capitol hallways, get out, get out now. Anything seemed possible; everything seemed ominous.
The chairman of the Rules Committee, who thought evacuation was voluntary, looked out the window of his office in the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I saw -- it was like a "Godzilla" or "King Kong" movie, and it was like a massive load of ants rushing from here and there were just all these people.
CROWLEY (on camera): People running?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People just running.
CROWLEY (voice-over): It was hard to know where was safe. Nobody knew what would come next.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just go out in the mediary (ph)of the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Front (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of the Supreme Court. OK, right now.
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: And so Senators, staff (ph) wandering around the field. And of course at this time, people out with their little hand phones trying to call someone and of course nothing working. I mean no communication whatsoever going on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there was great concern coming in over the radio from our officers about we've got -- you know we've got quite a few members out here, what do you want us to do with them?
CROWLEY: Chairman Dreier wandered empty Capitol halls into the member's dining room.
REP. DAVID DREIER (R), CALIFORNIA: But it was the weirdest thing seeing this room where there had obviously been a breakfast that day. And as I walked in, the chairs were all pulled out and half eaten plates of bacon and eggs.
CROWLEY: Congressional members, several hundred, made their way to police headquarters, jamming roll call rooms.
ROHAN: There was somebody had brought out a little four inch black and white TV with just an antenna stick on it, plugged it in and they were getting all their information from the networks from this tiny little TV.
CROWLEY: In a place where power means knowing things, nobody knew very much.
The congressional leadership was to be taken out of town, so House Minority leader Richard Gephardt kissed his wife goodbye and struggled with questions of family and duty.
REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D), MINORITY LEADER: What's going to happen to my family? How can I protect them? What should I be doing for them, with them?
CROWLEY: Under the outlines of a Cold War plan designed to make sure a government survives even if the Capitol is nuked, 11 members of the congressional leadership were choppered off. Early evening, they return.
REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: We as a Congress and as a government stand united and we stand together.
(CONGRESS SINGING "GOD BLESS AMERICA")
CROWLEY: They swear the singing was spontaneous. They meant only to stand on the steps of the still locked Capitol to say we're here.
Candy Crowley, CNN Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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