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Allen, a bit surprised, said, “Well, hopefully that'll never happen. I hope we'll be able to head that off before it does.”

John then took me around the building to talk to some of his co-workers and look at more work relating to the attack on USS
Cole
. I decided my work at the Joint Staff could wait. John first took me to see satellite images of some of the al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere that were under observation for any sign of preparation for more attacks.

It was about 0850, as we were walking through another office, that a news bulletin flashing across one of the television monitors caught our attention. The north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan had a gaping hole near the top, with dense black smoke and flames pouring out of it. The anchor reporting the story said there were now doubts about earlier reports that a private plane, a sightseeing plane perhaps, had gone off course and hit the building. I just shook my head. It was clear that only a large plane could cause so much damage.

The date was September 11, 2001.

 

JOHN AND I CONTINUED making our way along, he introducing me as the former commanding officer of USS
Cole
and I thanking everyone for what they were doing to keep our nation safe and accepting condolences on behalf of my crew and their families. We came to the office of Cofer Black, head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the CTC. Waiting while he finished a telephone call, we continued to watch the unfolding scene in New York. Then, at 0903, with gut-wrenching horror, we watched as the second plane came into view on the television screen, banked to the left, and drove straight into the south tower.

In that instant, it was clear to everyone present that the United States was under attack. The office became a ferocious beehive of activity, with people running in and out of Black's office. We slipped in, were quickly introduced, and just as quickly slipped back out.

As we turned to leave, Black's office assistant took a phone down from her ear and yelled out, “John, is that Lippold with you? Mr. Allen wants to see both of you up in his office, now!”

When we arrived at Allen's sixth-floor office, I was in a state of shock as he motioned us in and came around from behind his cluttered desk. He walked straight up to me, put his arm around my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and said, “Kirk, I can't believe you said what you did this morning.” As calmly as I could, I looked back at him and replied, “Well sir, I guess this is something I have suspected for eleven months—and the country is finding out about it the hard way this morning.” Adding that I knew all of us were going to have a busy day and that I needed to get on the road back to the Pentagon, I left. Passing once more by the walls of remembrance in the lobby, I realized that our nation was now at war. And Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the enemy.

As I got back onto the George Washington Parkway, I called Nicole Segura, the person closest to me, on my cell phone. Hearing her answer, my emotions cracked. My voice tightened; I felt tears of anger and frustration roll down my face. I felt that I had failed my nation again. People were dying because of my inaction. I had chosen a path in life that should have enabled me to defend my country to the utmost of my ability. But as commanding officer of USS
Cole
, I had not been able to prevent those fifty-four crew members from being killed or injured on my watch, and I had remained publicly silent about the entire event. Now, as the Twin Towers burned in New York, I called myself to task for my silence. “I can't believe this is happening. It's my fault,” I told Nicole on the phone. “I have kept my mouth shut for eleven months and tried to get my career back on track, and now look at what it has cost my country. I should have done something, anything to forewarn the Navy and the nation about this son of a bitch. Oh, God, why is this happening to me again?” It was my sworn duty to protect my country, and I had failed yet again.

As I got closer to the Pentagon, Nicole suddenly broke off the conversation. “Oh my God, Jim Miklaszewski is on NBC News at the Pentagon saying that it was just hit.”

A calmness suddenly settled over me. It was a feeling I had not experienced since the attack in Ade. Nicole told me later that it was as if a curtain had come down on my emotions. I became very calm and measured, intensely focused on what had just happened and what I could do to help.

Through the front window of my car I could see the billowing column of black smoke rising into the clear blue sky. I told Nicole, “Yes, the Pentagon has taken a hit. You can see the smoke and flames. I don't know what happened. Call my folks and let them know I'm okay. I don't know when I'll be home. It's going to be a long day. Pack things up in case the city takes another hit and you have to get out of town.”

No one knew how big or complex this attack might become. As I neared the Pentagon, I pulled onto the main highway, 395 South, and parked on the shoulder by Boundary Channel Drive. People evacuating the building on the Potomac side were just starting to reach the grass area. Flames shot into the air 100 to 120 feet above the building, and clouds of greasy, black smoke filled the air. Even from where I was, on the opposite side of the building from where the terrorists had crashed American Airlines Flight 77, I could smell burning jet fuel. A Virginia State trooper and two Arlington County police cars quickly joined me at the ramp. I introduced myself and offered to help them manage traffic flow.

Over the next few hours, the officers and I directed traffic to get emergency vehicles and ambulances to where they were needed. We also made the decision to stop buses and load them with Pentagon evacuees. The police told the bus operators to drive down 395 and stop as people needed, to get them closer to home. The Washington Metro rail system and its station at the Pentagon had shut down altogether.

Amid the horror, I ran into one of my co-workers, Commander Cathy Knowles, a brilliant, hardworking lawyer, walking up the road. Luckily, our office was exactly on the opposite side of where the aircraft had impacted. Relieved at having found me alive and well, she reported that everyone in the office had evacuated the building. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I'm out here directing traffic,” I answered.

“I can't believe you,” she said, with an astounded look. “With everything that has gone on in your life, here you are again out here doing things. We've all been told to go home and call tomorrow to see whether we go back to work or not.”

“I'll be out here for the rest of the day, but I'll eventually get home,” I replied. “Let me know what we decide to do tomorrow.” I found some compensation for my feeling of inadequacy in just doing what was needed out there on the road, helping people.

Minutes later, a large black Ford Expedition with blue flashing lights roared by. Abruptly screeching to a halt as smoke curled up from the tires, the SUV backed up to where I was standing with police officers. The side window rolled down and there I found myself talking to one of the FBI agents who had been working the USS
Cole
criminal case: Special Agent Mark Whitworth, an explosives technician I had met in Pascagoula, Mississippi, after the ship returned to the United States. He asked the same question as Cathy: “What are you doing out here? Haven't you had enough of this stuff?”

I spent the next eight hours working with the police officers. Around 1700, the situation had quieted down considerably. Although the Pentagon continued to burn through the night, there was nothing more to do. It was time to go home, where, sunburned, tired, and emotionally exhausted, I found Nicole and gave her a big hug. We watched the news on television. I was dumbfounded at seeing the footage of the Twin Towers collapsing, even though I had heard over the car radio when it had happened.

As a professional military officer, my job was to protect my country. It had been a long eleven months since the attack on USS
Cole
. During that time, my crew, their families, and I had all silently watched as our political and military leadership did nothing in response. Could I have pressed harder for actions that might have prevented the appalling disaster of the day we had just lived through? I did not know. But I did know that now, our country would finally be ready to respond. We would take action at last to avenge these terrorist attacks and prevent a recurrence.

My nation was at war and, at that moment, my resolve to help defend it was stronger than ever.

G
ROWING UP IN CARSON CITY, NEVADA, in the 1970s, I never dreamed of becoming an officer in the Navy. My dream was to fly. As a teenager I would go the local airport about a mile from home just to sit on the edge of the runway and watch the planes. My father had earned a private pilot's license years earlier, but eventually let it lapse. Even so, I can still vividly remember the few flights I took with him.

A small parachute drop zone stood just off the airport, out in the middle of the sagebrush. I loved to watch the skydivers jump from small airplanes, then slowly drift to a solid landing in the gravel. When I turned sixteen, I asked my parents for permission to make a skydive:
No!!
I would have to bide my time until the opportunity came. When eventually I began skydiving myself, I found that looking down with eyes wide open as the ground rushed up at hundreds of feet per second gradually sharpened my ability to integrate and analyze inputs from all my senses—that or miscalculate the time for the parachute to open and break my fall. The capability would serve me well in the career I finally chose.

My father had moved the family to Nevada when he was offered the opportunity to become the first psychologist for the Nevada State Prison system. My mother, a schoolteacher, started work in 1970 for the Carson
City School District and continued teaching at the high school until her retirement a few years ago. My sister, Kelly, who is two years younger than me, also graduated from Carson High School, attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and is a schoolteacher today in California.

During my junior year, the opportunity to attend one of our country's military academies loomed larger and larger in my mind as an option to consider for college. Just prior to my senior year, I made a decision to become politically active and, in a giant leap, ran for Student Body President and won. In 1977, I received two appointments: one to West Point for the U.S. Military Academy and the other to Annapolis, to the U.S. Naval Academy. I had no real idea of what lay ahead for me, but the Navy seemed to offer the greatest flexibility in a choice of career and profession: at graduation, I could become an officer in the Marines or Navy. I could even become a pilot.

I earned my U.S. Navy gold military parachute jump wings while in Annapolis. However, when I obtained my commission as an ensign on graduation day in 1981, I chose to serve in surface combatant ships such as destroyers and cruisers—a career path that also required the acquisition and application of skills in air and submarine warfare—and went immediately to Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport, Rhode Island. At the end of the course that December, I was so anxious to report to my first ship that I drove straight from my graduation ceremony in Newport to a shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania. I reported for duty in my service dress-blue uniform the next morning aboard the tank landing ship USS
Fairfax County
.

At the time, the ship was in dry dock. Walking up the “brow,” as the Navy calls a gangplank, I had my records tucked under my arm and was ready to go to work. I was to serve as main propulsion assistant, in charge of about forty men who ran the six main diesel engines, three diesel generators, and the boilers and evaporators for making steam and fresh water, and managing the fuel and lubricants for all this equipment. I smartly saluted the ship's ensign, the U.S. flag flying over the stern, turned to the officer of the deck, and said, “Request permission to come aboard.” When
he responded, “Permission granted,” my real career in the U.S. Navy had finally started!

Just before Christmas, we sailed down the Delaware River into the Atlantic and up the Chesapeake Bay to our home port of Little Creek, Virginia—a short at-sea period, but long enough for me to learn that a flat-bottomed tank landing ship can rock side to side with surprising power. Thankfully, motion sickness never bothered me and I was in seventh heaven on this great ship.

My first exposure to war came during a 1983 deployment to the Mediterranean. Our job was to support Marines in the multinational peacekeeping force that was sent into Lebanon to oversee the withdrawal of the forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Syria from Beirut after the truce that followed the Israeli bombardment and partial occupation of the city in 1982. Undaunted by our presence, Christian and Muslim factions in Lebanon continued the civil war they had been fighting for years, and, anchored off the coast, we could see tracer rounds and rockets arcing back and forth in bloody street-to-street and building-by-building fighting.

Ship's officers routinely went ashore to get mail and provide the Marines with other supplies. On rare occasions, however, the Marines would take a small and select group for a tour of downtown Beirut and surrounding small towns. Finally, my turn came up. Going ashore by small boat, I was met by one of the officers from the artillery battery that we had transported here, and we went to the U.S. embassy compound. There I exchanged money and then toured the cities of Beirut and Juniyah. For me, Lebanon was a grand adventure. Dressed in a working khaki uniform, complete with flak vest and metal helmet, and issued a .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol, I found the drive around the city and countryside thrilling. I had no idea of the real complexity and dangers that surrounded me.

The day after we left for a port visit to Athens, on April 18, 1983, the Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah used a relatively new terror tactic, the car bomb, in a deadly attack on the embassy in Beirut. A van carrying about 2,000 pounds of explosives crashed through the front gates and detonated.
The force of the blast collapsed the front section of the building, including the office where I had changed money, and killed sixty-three people, seventeen of them Americans, and wounded over one hundred.