Senior U.S. leaders, both former and current, gathered to address families, survivors and first-responders on Friday during solemn events marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed 2,977 Americans in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania. Speaking at the Pentagon, former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then serving under President George W. Bush, publicly today officially announced she intended to offer something “deeply personal.”
“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough. … I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured,” she said.
War rhetoric and toxic air
Trump Links 9/11 to Ongoing War With Iran
President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at the memorial service for the 184 people who died when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, highlighted the anniversary as a justification for their stagnant war with Iran. That nearly seven-month-old conflict has killed 18 U.S. service members, injured over 700 more and taken the lives of thousands of civilians across the Middle East.
“We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice,” Trump said. “There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win. We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11, 2001, very famous date, unfortunately.”
Hegseth told the crowd, which was only open to victims’ families, survivors and their families, that Americans were “ignorant of the Islamist threat” 25 years ago. “Every day, enemies plot to curb our power and kill our citizens, including from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home, but we are ever vigilant,” he said, adding that the U.S. has killed Iran’s leaders and put their Navy “at the bottom of the sea.”
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The deeply unpopular war has continued, despite early promises from Hegseth and Trump that it would not morph into the prolonged Middle East conflicts that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. At the site in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood, families read names of the 2,753 victims who died inside the towers, on the ground and on the two hijacked airliners, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.
Families Demand Justice From Saudi Arabia
Terry Strada, widow of the late Tom Strada, who died in the north tower, slammed recent presidential administrations of both parties for not holding Saudi Arabia accountable for allegations that the kingdom’s officials knew about the attacks. “My husband Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes. But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” she said to loud cheers from the crowd.
“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said. “President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through. Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back,” she said, again receiving loud cheers.
Vice President JD Vance sat in a front row at the ceremony alongside former presidents Bush, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Former first ladies Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, also a former secretary of state, were seated in the row, as was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Neither the Embassy of Saudi Arabia nor the White House immediately responded to States Newsroom’s requests for a response.
First Responders Recall Toxic Dust and Debris
Bob Lee, 67, was a firefighter in the Bronx that day. He remembers how many first responders had to gather together to clean up the dust and debris that had settled around the city. “When you see the people that were down here, everybody’s eyes was … full of soot and dust, and their eyes were glowing like bright red because all the stuff that was in their eyes,” Lee said. “It was just a crazy scene.”
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Lee moved to Kansas City, Missouri, shortly after 9/11. He was 42 at the time and realized he had been exposed to a lot of toxic air. “I told them I was retiring,” Lee said recalling that he knew a lot of his colleagues would get sick. He was a union representative for his unit in the Bronx. “I lost hundreds of those guys. You know, it’s crazy … Quite a few friends have died of cancer.”
Christopher Santora, then 23, was a firefighter who responded to the attacks and was enveloped in debris as the towers fell. He lost his life trying to save people that day. His cousin Jason Roettger, 56, was chosen to read the names of people who had died during 9/11 at Friday’s ceremony.
Wanda Hernandez, 72, lost her daughter Monique de Jesus, who was 28 at the time. She was working at the World Trade Center. Hernandez said Friday she was focusing on all the beautiful moments she had with her daughter before that day.
Inside the White House
Rice Details Shock Officials Faced at White House
Over a 13-minute speech Friday morning at the Pentagon, Rice, who also served as secretary of state later in the Bush administration, painted a picture of administration officials caught completely off guard by the attacks, orchestrated by the well-known anti-American extremist terror network al-Qaeda. “I was at my desk at the White House that day when my executive assistant, a young Army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. ‘What a strange accident,’ I thought,” Rice said.
“I called President Bush, who was reading to children at an education event in Florida. He too thought that it must have just been an accident. But within 17 minutes, a second plane hit the World Trade Center,” she continued. What followed, according to Rice, was a whirlwind as officials rushed to secure locations — Bush to Air Force One, Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney to a White House bunker and CIA Director George Tenet to an undisclosed location.