The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

by Garrett M. Graff

Victoria “Torie” Clarke, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs: I thought there must have been a car bomb. What’s extraordinary to me is that we knew that two commercial airliners had hit the Trade Center, a terrorist attack, and smart people were guessing it was al-Qaeda. Yet when something bad happened here, it didn’t occur to us that it was another airliner. That’s how unfathomable it was. It never occurred to us that it was another plane.

James Luongo, inspector, NYPD: As I hit Vesey between Church and Broadway, the first thing that struck me was the amount of women’s shoes. I couldn’t understand it. Then I realized women had run out of their shoes—the high heels and what have you. There were women’s shoes all over.

What if they come after the president? We all turn into “and 12 others.” No one knows your name if you go down with the president.

Michael Sheehan, spoke angrily to military officials in 2000, frustrated at the Clinton administration’s lack of focus in combating the rise of bin Laden’s terrorist group, presciently exclaiming, “Does al-Qaeda have to hit the Pentagon to get your attention?”

By the end of the day, they had collectively evacuated somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people from Manhattan—a maritime rescue larger than the World War II evacuation from Dunkirk.