Garrett M. Graff Profile picture
Sep 12, 2020 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
9/12 THREAD: For the past few days, I've been sharing quotes, stories, and memories about the 9/11 attacks—in real time—all pulled from my book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: An Oral History of 9/11, following Americans as they experience that time.... amazon.com/Only-Plane-Sky…
As September 12th began, the nation tried to make sense of the attacks and the tragic losses. At the Pentagon, the fires were burning stronger than before. All told, thousands of workers had been displaced and more than two million square feet of office space damaged....
Lt. Col. Ted Anderson, U.S. Army: "I slept for a couple of hours, woke up, and thought it was all a bad dream.... I decided to get up and go to work.... Ten thousand people showed up to work at the Pentagon that morning. It made me extremely proud."
Lt. Comm. David Tarantino, physician, U.S. Navy: "We all went back to work the next day in a building that was still burning to start planning our nation’s response."
Mike Walter, senior correspondent, USA Today Live: "Washington, D.C., is such a beautiful, magnificent city, and here were all these people with weapons—the National Guard’s out there in their vehicles. It seemed like you were in a Banana Republic."
Robert Hunor, contractor, Pentagon: "They were towing cars away from South Parking. There wasn’t a lot—maybe 60 of them. None had moved since the previous day. It dawned on me that this guy was parking next to me yesterday, and he was never going to get in that car again."
Lyzbeth Glick, wife of Jeremy Glick, passenger, United Airlines Flight 93: "The morning after Jeremy had died, I remember looking down at our daughter Emerson—she was sleeping—and just crying because she would never know her father. I thought she would only know a sad Mom....
... We had dreams for our family. Then something just kind of clicked in my head, and I said, 'You know, I have a choice. I’m not going to ruin her life. I’m not going to ruin my own life.'"
... We had dreams for our family. Then something just kind of clicked in my head, and I said, 'You know, I have a choice. I’m not going to ruin her life. I’m not going to ruin my own life.'"
Constance LaBetti, Aon Corporation, South Tower: "I had assumed that my boss Ron Fazio had gone down ahead of me. By 8 o’clock in the morning, the phone started ringing. It was my boss Ron’s son, and I immediately started to tell him how much of a hero I thought his dad was...
... and he was amazing, and he got us all to the staircase. And he said, 'Connie, Connie. Where did you see my dad last?' I said, 'He didn’t come home?' His son said, 'No, Dad hasn’t come home.' I felt doom at that moment."
Sen. @TomDaschle: "I look back on September 12th as, in some ways, the best and the worst of our country. The best was how resilient our country can be in the tragedies of this magnitude. The worse had to do with the vulnerability and loss of so many lives."
Capitol Hill staffer Brian Gunderson: "As we came back to work to the Capitol on the 12th, there were a lot of changes—new security barriers, military Humvees with .50-caliber machine guns on top, with soldiers manning them. At a glance, it looked like there’d been a coup."

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More from @vermontgmg

Sep 11, 2023
THREAD: Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Throughout the day, I’ll be chronologically tweeting quotes from my book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: An Oral History of 9/11, following Americans as they experience that day.... amazon.com/Only-Plane-Sky…
Sunny Mindel, Communications Director for the Mayor of the City of New York, Rudy Giuliani: "On September 11th, I was facing what I thought would be an easy day."
.@katiecouric, anchor, @TODAYshow: It was the perfect fall day, a little touch of autumn in the air. It was one of those back-to-school September days, full of possibilities, and, in its own way, a new beginning.
Read 62 tweets
Nov 4, 2022
THREAD: The GOP knows it no longer can win free & fair national elections, and it’s doing everything it can to lock in its ability to rule as a minority.

It's a coordinated effort with 12 unique strategies I outline here in my new newsletter: .... doomsdayscenario.co/p/minority-rul…
The American system has been based on majority rule with protection for the rights of the minority—today, we’re seeing something more like the opposite. Here's how I think about the key parts of the GOP’s big-picture strategy to undermine American democracy...:
1) Open embrace of white nationalist, anti-immigrant, and antisemitism politics. The GOP understands its base is shrinking and it needs to militarize them in order to continue to hold power.... doomsdayscenario.co/p/minority-rul…
Read 16 tweets
Nov 2, 2022
THREAD: I just published the first half of my inaugural newsletter essay, looking at America's failure of imagination and the GOP plot to enshrine minority rule in America. You can read the essay and sign up for the newsletter here: doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-coordina…
1) I've been playing around with this piece for nearly a year now and it captures my big-picture thoughts about how we're underestimating the risks to American democracy over the years ahead....
2) I’ve argued for the last year that we misunderstand what a “new” civil war might look like—imagining it has to look like the “old” Civil War, beginning with earnest men meeting in major cities and state capitals to draft formal articles of succession....
Read 7 tweets
Oct 14, 2022
THREAD: In @SenatorLeahy's new memoir, there's a wild story in it that I haven't ever seen before—a rare glimpse into the shadowy way that the intel agencies interact with Members of Congress. It feels ripped from a political thriller movie...: phoenixbooks.biz/book/978198215…
1) In the midst of the Iraq War debate, Leahy was one of the few Senators pushing back against the Bush admin race to war and the threats of WMDs. He'd been reading the classified intel that the Bush admin was providing to Congress and had real doubts that it justified war....
2) The Sunday after he read the intel, he was out walking with his wife in his McLean neighborhood when "two fit joggers trailed behind us. They stopped and asked what I thought of the intelligence briefings I'd been getting."...
Read 11 tweets
Sep 9, 2022
THREAD: As we near Sunday's 21st anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to share the podcast I did last year about the lingering questions of that tragic day.

What happened on Sept 11 and how it changed our world remains the most important story of the modern age....
The history we've come to tell of that day is incomplete—and sometimes wrong. "Long Shadow" examines the enduring mysteries that still surround 9/11 and it's a different history than you likely remember—but one that will help you make sense of the world the attacks left behind.…
Episode #1: Why weren’t more people rescued from the Twin Towers? Why did these iconic structures and architectural marvels fall so fast?
Google: podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6L…

Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lon…
Read 10 tweets
Aug 31, 2022
SHORT THREAD here on something I haven't seen someone else comment on: The strangest document in this photo, the orange bordered "Secret//SCI" one in the foreground. "Secret//SCI" is an incredibly rare marking....
1) I checked today with three officials who have worked at the absolute highest levels of the US intelligence community and two of them had *NEVER* seen such a marked document in their careers.

"SCI" material is usually so sensitive that it is almost always "Top Secret"....
2) It's impossible to know what type of document might be "Secret//SCI" but that highly unique combination of markings implies it's a piece of intelligence where someone was paying extremely special and precise attention to the information inside.
Read 11 tweets

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