10 years ago I was the police chief in Arlington Virginia it's a community of about 190,000 people and it contains within its boundaries obviously Arlington National Cemetery but it also contains the Pentagon and uh on September 11th I was uh in Atlantic City giving a lecture on the issue of racial profiling which is a very big issue and there's a big conference going on and it uh you know about 9:00 in the morning the uh superintendent of State Police tells us the World Trade Center has been attacked so uh obviously my car was already packed up my first thought is okay you know it's Washington DC next and no longer that I have that terrible thought then he makes an announcement it's about 9:30 in the morning that the Pentagon had just been struck by an airliner so without any uh further um ceremony I jumped in my cruiser and uh left Atlantic City now the miracle for me was I've been offered an airf flight and had just decided on a whim to take my cruiser because I thought you know something happens in the middle of the night one of my guys gets hurt and I want to get home there's no airplanes at Atlantic City in the middle of the night well there wasn't any any American air traffic as you know and a number of chiefs got stranded there trying to get home but nobody needed to get home more than I did so uh I uh got on the expressway and I I literally pulled over a New Jersey state trooper identified myself I said get a look at my plate number I'm not stopping until I get to Washington DC so just you know radio ahead I'm just going and uh I covered 200 miles in about 2 and a/4 hours it was the most stressful time of my life because obviously I wanted to be in Arlington the difficulty was no cell phones worked immediately all the cell phones were tied up and you could not make a cell phone call in Metropolitan Washington DC probably most of the East Coast so I really didn't know up to the moment anything except what I was hearing on the news radio station as I as I barrel down the uh Route 95 um I was able to console myself with the following um we had the week before you know big part of being a good chief executive is saying yes when somebody has a good idea the week before ID said yes to someone who had the idea to do an update on our Command training on incident command and uh we had done it you know we trained on it periodically what's unique about the Washington DC area is that local government down there is fairly large and sophisticated I don't know if any of you have lived down there for any period of time but you've got the district and down there the engines of local government in Maryland and in Virginia are the counties all right so it you know it'd be like the only government in Milwaukee was Milwaukee County government that's how Arlington was that's how Fairfax county is that's how Montgomery County is so over the course of all the time I had been there and certainly you know since Washington DC had been Ground Zero all through the Cold War all of these agencies had developed a habit of working together and training together and training with their Federal colleagues our fire department was very closely connected to the regional fire departments and our Police Department did constant interagency training on SWAT on emergency response on incident command and it it verifies it in in the commission report there was probably no other area in the country better prepared for a critical incident than Metro DC was just because of its history so at any rate I knew the organization was ready to step up to the emergency but the anxiety was that's my Police Department a terrible thing has happening I need to be there I got there about two and a half hours later the smoke was still pouring out of of the Pentagon um we'd already done one evacuation we were going to do two more because of false alarms but the remarkable thing and this is something I'll never forget is how much responsibility was delegated to local government that day I mean this was the Pentagon this was the heart of the nation's defense on any other day in American history it would have been the most massive thing that ever happened in our borders and the point was that people inside the Pentagon from moments after The Airliner hit the the The West Wing of the Pentagon basically said Arlington County is in charge of outside the building and that was a remarkable understanding and even though I got there you know two hours late for the attack the point was EV so many things still needed to be done I mean there was no perimeter fence there was no fortifications around the Pentagon people have in their mind that you know of course the Pentagon has hundreds of MPS armed with M16s the answer to that is no they didn't they had my guys and GS armed with 40 caliber pistols that was security outside the Pentagon for the better part of the first 24 hours um so our challenge was to do a number of things very rapidly in concert with the fire department the ARL County Fire Department was The Incident Commander at the Pentagon and something to keep in mind because I got involved in a lot of post 911 planning particularly after I became Secretary of Public Safety no matter what kind of international terror attack ever takes place in the United States it's going to be a local government responsibility all right no other Nation on Earth delegates as much responsibility to local government as the United States does okay and so the Incident Commander was the fire department and the State security and the crime scene prot ction and the traffic control and the crowd control and the evidence recovery was being led by the Arlington County Police Department so a key issue obviously is what is the capacity of local government to do this in any given area all right in DC we are at a relatively higher level of capacity just because of the way government is organized around there and we were a higher level of mutual Aid and coordination um in a lot of other parts of the country and that capacity wasn't there or would not be there in in a similar situation just because there are so many local government jurisdictions at any rate um we would be there for uh for 11 days and it was probably the hardest work um we ever did in terms of straightforwardly continuing to develop security plans for the Pentagon I mean keep in mind when we first got there there was no credentialing system I.E who belonged inside the perimeter of what's this massive crime scene you know our first uh our first uh credentialing system was basically the little wristbands you get if you leave a nightclub and you want to get back in because you've paid the cover charge I mean that's what we had all right now mercifully within about eight hours Secret Service was there with laminates and photographs and all kinds of fancy credentialing but initially we had to set up what the credentialing would look like um on the grounds of this place with the ter attack took place um the second thing and again the 911 Commission uh makes it clear is that uh um not only did we have strong Regional Partnerships um the County government itself had a very strong comprehensive emergency management plan and that enabled us to get a lot of resources through the county without our Incident Commander really having to think about where it would all come from and that coupled with the defense Department's ability to bring in asset from elsewhere really got the recovery efforts jump started now couple things I'm doing stream of conscious here because it's all coming back couple things to keep in mind is uh is uh this was a really dangerous fire okay people don't realize hey a lot of people don't realize the Pentagon the um the groundbreaking for the Pentagon was September 11th 1940 um weird little factoid we would find later but at any rate the U the inside of the Pentagon up when the Red Roof goes all the way there on the outside of the Pentagon was lined with plaster and horsehair and the fire got up into the roof and so the challenge ultimately for the fire department why they needed so much sight security for so long is they couldn't get it under control immediately because the fire was moving along the roof line away from the crash scene but towards all these really important places that needed to be maintained open now one thing secretary rold make clear is he wanted that thing open for business on September 12th and other than that um the only interest of the Pentagon was finding out who did it and killing them and it was up to us and our mutual Aid Partners to create an environment in which they could keep the building open we could keep the under control and we could keep the external environment safe because there was a lot of crazy people wandering around at that point in time trying to penetrate the uh trying to try penetrate the uh security Zone the other thing to keep in mind is when the plane hit the Pentagon even though it uh killed 125 people um that part of the Pentagon was capable of holding 800 and the only reason it wasn't holding 800 is it had just been renovated and was at that point the physically strongest point in the Pentagon if indeed if you look at the initial pictures of the impact you can see that even though the building has started to collapse none of the windows are broken they were all blast resistance and you can see the red eye beams poking out where it had just been reinforced and the fact is if it had not just been renovated it's very likely that plane would have gone right through the west wing and into the east side of the Pentagon and what you have to understand is exactly opposite where the plane hit on the rivers side is the offices of the Secretary of Defense and all the chairmans of The Joint Chiefs of Staff so theoretically if that plane hit just on the precise opposite side of the building it would have decapitated our our our defense leadership so it was a it was a nearr run thing that day after the initial fire was tamped down around the plane the hardest work for us was recovering evidence um this was a very gruesome business and uh very painful and probably for the officers the most stressful after the initial 24 hours of security when we didn't know if there were going to be secondary or follow-up attacks and that was all of the rubble had to be extracted from the wound in the building had to be transported to a parking lot nearby put into piles and then the piles were spread across the the parking lot and it was the responsibility of my officers to go through the rubble looking for body parts um pieces of aircraft um classified material and any other evidentiary material that they might find they did it under the supervision of the FBI but was our officers that were doing the physical labor and it was in that context that they recovered personal effects from the terrorists one of whom was named h hanour and the reason that name sticks By Me is from the rubble we recovered the um the uh receipt that indicated that uh he had recently paid a ticket in Arlington for speeding um which again kind of doubles back to a lot of the tension post 911 which was from local government's point of view we realize we'd be likely the people most um most likely to come in contact with the potential terrorist and therefore the ability to exchange information from the federal government to the local governments was something we felt was critical it took us a long time to uh to get a handle on um yeah I guess I'm kind of stream of Consciousness right now but those are some of the big picture stuff we were involved in having said all that stuff maybe that triggers some questions or items of curiosity you might have about U about what that was like how long were you on scene reporting to the Pentagon through the evidence and all that uh we were there for 11 days um and I to say the interesting thing was and and I say this and it's critical you understand this this is not you know a bad thing but what was stunning to me was once the event occurred the senior leadership of the Pentagon pretty much turfed the external environment off to us all right they got themselves busy about arranging um logistical support for repairing and Shoring up the building and they focused on their mission all right when I say the instant Commander was the fire chief I mean I'm not that's not hyperbole all right if you look at pictures of the press conferences right after the attack it's our fire officials that are there saying when they think the building can reopen and when General Jackson from Joint Forces command came to our the police department's uh incident command uh uh uh bus um his point was what can I do to help all right and it was a totally liaison situation we never received the directive do this don't do this don't go here their expectation was that we would organize the defense of the Pentagon with our mutual Aid partners and they would take care of their business and that's really the way it worked out and that's as I say that's the powerful lesson that was under articulated post 911 which was this is really about local government now I know we we created a Federal Department of Homeland Security and we talked a lot about the federal all the federal the federal role but at point of contact the people who show up first are us and you know if that can be true a location such as the Pentagon well it's even more so than any other likely Target in the United States so that was the remarkable feeling was how much responsibility I had uh implicitly been delegated you know by the defense department and that was essentially it the fire chief and I were delegated respons you go do that we're not asking about it we're not following up we're not you go take care of us you protect us you get the fire out we've got business to take care of and that would that sense of empowerment I think in many ways was an inspiration to the police officers and firefighters that were at that location and going through all of that Dee was there a physical and emotional toll on absolutely um one of the things we did it may have been the decision I felt best about uh and I made a lot of decisions over the course of 11 days but the decision I felt best about was on the uh 12th day after we had broken down our incident command and turned the site over we organized a family day and what that was is we found a location where you know there were balloons and cakes and sodas for the kids but for the officers and their spouses we set up a series of uh pts post-traumatic stress debriefings all right we set up a series of employee assistant programs debriefings we basically told everybody you have been non-stop feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders for the last 11 days there are consequences for this kind of behavior and this kind of um non-stop stress that will be played out at home look for these um uh look for these uh signs look for these symptoms be aware in yourself when you're short-tempered be aware in yourself when you overreact to small stimuli be aware of sleep deprivation and its effect on you and U what was very important is as as my wife attended and uh about uh about a week later I was doing some odd job around the house and uh it went Ary which what usually happens when I do odd jobs around the house and I had a major temper tantrum I totally lost it and I had been under complete control for the last two weeks I had I had no doubts we were going to succeed everything's under control be calm I was Mr send people home when they're stressed I was Mr everything is under control and I had this meltdown and she literally grabbed me by this shirt she looked at me she said I went to the class that you sent me to I know what you're going through stop it and it helped it was like cold water but I mean okay I'm not immune either all right I've been Mr Perfect for the last 11 days you know know I'm feeling the same stuff my boys and girls are feeling it just feels differently I'm able to you know um conceal it a little bit better that's my job but I think it it weighed on all of us because we intellectually knew that our country had been attacked in our town okay I mean there were jet fighter planes flying air cover for our recovery efforts we knew we were at War we were knew we were in the nation's capital in our backyard at War could be attacked again but we couldn't allow ourselves to dwell on that we had to dwell on the blocking and tackling of our job the fire department had to put out a fire deal with a plane crash and respond to a building collapse my coppers had to provide site security traffic control crowd control crime scene protection and and crime scene search uh uh uh uh Services we had to do our basic job didn't matter that it was war it mattered that we got the blocking and tackling right so there was this kind of push me pull you every once a while you'd look up at the sky and there'd be an F-16 and you'd say crap this is what's going on right now and then you had to look down and get back to okay who's got this post covered who's got this entryway covered who's doing this at the search have we inventory the crimee scene properly are we doing the reports right how's our liaison with FBI going how's our liazon with DOD going and so on and so I think the the stress was cumulative but it's more the cumulation of just hard work knowing the world was watching and and I think that just creates its own set of stresses over time separate and apart from the job those 11 days well you know it's affected my thinking in a number of ways um certainly when I had a chance to put together a state Homeland Security strategy in Massachusetts I absolutely emphasized the necessity of regional approaches and that we had to also emphasize this notion that when you distribute Homeland Security funding it can't be everybody gets a dollar you know there's a military dictum that who defends everything defends nothing that anything we did had to be threat-based vulnerability based and risk-based and we did that in Massachusetts and we were the first state to do it that way in other words what are our vulnerabil what are the things in our state that if something went bad it would be a really terrible consequence second issue then is what's the risk that something like that would happen has it ever happened again does it fit with terrorist means and motives and finally what's what what is the current threat environment right are there any credible threats to us and so in the immediate frenzy of post 911 what was happening was everybody was rushing to protect their water power and their sewage plant and their water tower and my thought was okay what do terrorists like to do well in the context of this group of terrorists who were attacking America they wanted to do Grand monstrous things that would develop you know demonstrate America's impotence and play well on TV well blowing up the Manasquan Township Water Tower wasn't going to do that for him all right and so the discussions really had to start centering more realistically around what were the threats to America based on what intelligence and what would be the consequence of that particular thing got injured because my God you may remember within days of 9/11 we were being inundated with terrorism experts each one of them had a new scenario about how you could wipe out a 100,000 people simply by doing abnc all right I mean we just instantly had an industry of Terror experts you know out there telling us we were all going to die and that wasn't helping us focus our efforts very well second thing I learned is you know and I knew this going in but seeing it as something else you can really rely on your cops and firefighters to do the right thing under pressure particularly if you've given them any kind of appropriate training all right our people went there with a plan I mean we had the advantage the Pentagon is an isolated location we had an advantage every year the um the Marine Corps marathon and the Army 10K races start and end at the Pentagon okay every every year we have to provide some level of presence there because of the Fourth of July fireworks so we knew that spot it was a home game and we didn't have a whole bunch of continuous buildings a th000 feet in the air that were collapsing around us okay so in some ways the response uh was uh was certainly less complex than New York cities but the point was we had well-trained people who went there with a game plan they knew where to go to start with and if you can eliminate some level of confusion initially you can begin to guarantee a successful response okay because the signals aren't cross you we didn't have interoperable communications then nobody did you so what did we do we gave a radio to every you know agency that was doing Mutual Aid with us and they held on to it at their command level and we told their commanders what we needed all right we didn't need to spend $5 million getting interoperability we were able to compensate for that the key thing was that the people went there with a plan and people had worked there together and everywhere I've been since that's obviously an issue that we looked to and America is getting better at it and that is interjurisdictional arrangements and interjurisdictional Partnerships well initially we thought it was going to be worse all right I mean I didn't know how many people were on the plane right away I did know that they had just opened that Wing So my worry was that I knew somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand people could work in each Wing I mean hell of pentagon's got 20,000 people in it every day so I had no idea how many people were in that Wing yet how many of the offices have been occupied and our initial potential casualty effort estimates turned out to be very high because we you we were operating on the supposition that more of it was occupied than was so there were no pleasant surprises that day but it certainly was you know we were you know it was better that you know a thousand people hadn't been killed and that certainly would have been a potential if that Wing had been fully occupied and and it wasn't so the only vague Comfort was it could have been worse well certainly you know we have U absolutely ramped up our ability to both develop and share intelligence U with other agencies and our federal colleagues that capacity just did not exist in September of 2001 um again when I was secretary in Massachusetts we developed one of the nation's first fusion centers which was creating a capacity to start trying to glean from criminal intelligence potential terrorism intelligence um one of the things we found out shortly after 911 as we talked to our colleagues in Great Britain and Israel is many of their inroads into breaking up terrorism cells was through the investigation of criminal Enterprises involving things like drug dealing uh cigarette smuggling um uh identity theft and and product counterfeiting all of those uh are means that terrorist organizations around the world World used to fund their Terror efforts it's been true in Palestine it was true in in Northern Ireland that major inroads were made disrupting terrorism by the cops investigating crimes and so acting on that we developed a fusion center with the capacity to analyze criminal intelligence with the idea of looking for possible terrorist leads or at least leads overseas that we could share with our federal colleagues they became uh more comfortable sharing intelligence with that intelligence uh that in elligence Fusion Center here in U in Milwaukee we have developed I would say one of the most sophisticated intelligence fusion centers in the country and by that I just mean it's sophisticated in terms of its strategic approach as well as in terms of the information that that it has it's a very tightly dialed into its Federal colleagues we've got a federal presence in our Fusion Center our Fusion Center people are obviously members of terrorism task forces but the level of sophistication in terms of information U analysis uh that's available to us here in Milwaukee is far greater than that was available to any Police Department 10 years ago [Music]