Two years ago today, at this hour, the world was progressing in it's natural order, as it had become over the past decade or so .. In North America people read, and watched the problems worldwide develop as indeed they had since the advent of saturation news coverage..
Suicide bombings in Israel.. Israeli reprisals on the West Bank.. threats of global terrorism from some radical Islamic group or another.. nothing new..
Problems, issues, that while certainly concerns, were not something that touched one's personal life. Or your neighbours.
People, at this hour, were still rising, making their coffees, standing in showers, sitting on commuter trains or subways as they made their way towards the same desk they'd sat at yesterday, and the day before..
Here, we had just begun discussions, oddly enough, which would have direct bearing on what would happen in the immediate months ahead, and which indeed are still ongoing today.. It was just about the time someone mentioned a lunch break might be in order, at 1:25 in fact.. that we began recieving frenzied reports.. we thought it a joke to begin with.. that someone had flown a highjacked plane into the North Tower of the WTC in New York..
We all knew people in that building..
Then, as more and more information flooded us.. at 2:03 we began hearing of a second aircraft, this time flying into the South Tower.. then 37 minutes later a third, crashing into the Pentagon..
Bedlam.
The Intelligence community reacted as though an Al Hussein missile had been the driving force behind an enema.. Think-tanks were convened.. scenario's presented on the run.. the usual suspects dragged in for whatever information might be scraped..
As this quiet panic directed most, as though by instinct, through the machinations, we watched, an hour after the first 767 slammed into the South Tower, the entire structure collapse. A moment later, while we still stood shocked by the first spectacle, the North Tower followed.
It is vivid in memory, the sight of the building, the people leaping from windows, the utter amazement that such a thing could be contemplated, let alone planned and carried out..
The shocks of that collapse reverberate even unto today..
The British ISC released it's report on the government's handling of intelligence today..
One of the ripples of 911, still damaging two years after the fact..