How 9/11 Changed The CIA

John McLaughlin, OZY: The Day It All began

The author, deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004, teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

It was about 10 p.m. when I finally turned to my computer to write. I was on the seventh floor at CIA headquarters, where I had been serving as deputy director for 14 months. I typed a single sentence, a memo to myself: “Nothing will ever be the same.”

Sept. 11, 2001, was by any measure the most eventful day of my brief tenure. In my memory, that day is a blur of emergency work, and the rest of that week could easily comprise a book. But some memories, personal and professional, remain vivid.

The hijacked planes hit the twin towers at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m. and the Pentagon at 9:37. Around 10 a.m., we moved out of our headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, to an adjacent structure; we assumed that our building was also a target. The only officers left behind, until we returned early that afternoon, were those of our Counterterrorism Center; they continued to monitor incoming reporting on the situation.

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WNU Editor: This post by John McLaughlin is too short .... I hope he follows up with a more detailed analysis at some future date.

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