After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the nation rallied under the cry \u201cNever forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
But 25 years later, several lessons that emerged from that day of death and destruction have been forgotten, according to a panel of experts at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Three panelists \u2014 the first New York Fire Department chief to respond to the attack, a Navy admiral who was in the Pentagon that day, and a journalist who covered it for Time magazine \u2014 were all personally impacted by the attack.<\/p>\n
Chief of Counterterrorism and Emergency Preparedness for the Fire Department of New York, Joseph Pfeifer<\/a>, now a Kennedy School senior fellow and author of \u201cOrdinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9\/11,\u201d was inspecting a suspected gas leak nearby in lower Manhattan at 8:46 that morning when the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery first responder looked at the burning building and knew they were going to the most dangerous fire of their lives,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n Recognizing immediately that the crash was deliberate, he also explained how, nearly an hour later, when the South Tower was collapsing, he had to make a fateful decision. Trusting his \u201cgut feeling\u201d and years of training, he called for all firefighters to evacuate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was probably the first time in history a fire chief pulled firefighters out when there were thousands of people in the building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Adm. Michael Glenn \u201cMike\u201d Mullen<\/a>, who would go on to serve as President George W. Bush\u2019s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2007\u20132011), was in the Pentagon when it was hit by a third plane that day.<\/p>\n At the Tuesday discussion, which was co-sponsored by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs<\/a> and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy<\/a>, he recalled how at first he associated the resulting explosion with earthquakes he\u2019d experienced growing up in California.<\/p>\n On realizing what had happened, the Pentagon immediately went \u201cinto crisis mode\u201d and called on everyone in the complex to evacuate. But, he told the audience, many of whom had not been born in 2001, confusion ruled the day.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat sometimes gets lost is how little we knew,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know how many planes it would be or where they were coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone understood we were living in an illusion that had been shattered, but no one knew what that was going to mean in a day, a week, a month, or 25 years.\u201d <\/p>\n Nancy Gibbs<\/p>\n