And emt paramedic to please stand up. [applause] thank you very much for what you do in keeping us safe and keeping us safe every single day. And thank you for the mission that you do every single day for us. And now onto the knights program. It is absolute pleasure to have Garrett Graff back with us here. The last time he was here he spoke about the governments doomsday plan from his last book raven rock of the straight u. S. Government secret plan to say that some of the rest of us die. [laughing] tonight we are welcoming him back to the museum to discuss another very somber topic, the terror attacks of 9 11. He has collected and organized 360 degrees account of the day told through the voice of people who experienced it in his new book, the only plane in the sky. He is a distinguished magazine journalist, regular tv commentator was spent more than a dozen years covering politics, technology and National Security. Garrett is the author of a number of books including the First Campaign globalization, the web in the race for the whitest which examine the role of technology in the 2008 president ial race, and the threat matrix, inside Robert Muellers fbi which faces a history of fbi counterterrorism efforts. His other recent book as i mentioned coauthored with john called examines the rise of Cyber Threats across america. Today he served as director of the Aspen Institute cybersecurity and Technology Program and is contributed, contribute to wired, long reads and cnn. Hes written for publications from esquire to the New York Times and the served as the editor of two of washingtons most prestigious magazines, the washingtonian and political magazine which he helped lead to its First National magazine award, the industries highest honor. On this book author and historian Michael Beschloss has said Garrett Graff has definitely used oral history to take us into one of the most horrific inconsequential moments in American History. In the book that will be particularly important for those readers too young to remember 9 11. Its true challenges, it is a true child of the storms to report history so the next generation can understand these momentous events. I will also add that the only thing in the sky is, sitting on the number four on the New York Times for combine printed ebook and the number five and the hardcover fiction list. And it is an absolute great pleasure to once again welcome mr. Garrett graff back to the ford museum. [applause] good evening, everyone. Thanks for coming out and its a pleasure to be back in grand rapids. For those who came to my talk last year on nuclear war, thanks for coming out for another uplifting night of discussion of American History. So this book as a jewel laid out is an oral history of 9 11. It is 9 11 told through the voices of those who lived it, 480 american morning tonight coast to coast. To give a little bit of grounding in the work before i Start Talking about it, i wanted to just start by reading one of the short chapters. The book is 64 sort of finely sliced chapters in Chronological Order across the country. And this is a chapter that takes place inside airTraffic Control in the u. S. Military from about 8 25 Tuesday Morning september 11 until about 8 50 morning. Peter zaleski, airTraffic Controller, boston center, nashua new hampshire. When American Airlines flight 11 came to me, the pilot said boston center, this is american 11. Climbing the flight level 230. I called him many, many Times American 11, how do you hear . American 11, this is boston center, do you hear me . Im calling and calling and unlike my god, they must be of the drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee. Honestly, thats what i was thinking. Then theres these transmissions. Transmissions. The first transmission from aircraft is garbled. I dont understand it. Then the was the second one, a voice, remember him saying, nobody move, please. Were going back to the airport. I will never forget the feeling at the back of my neck feels like this adrenaline or something. I felt fear like oh, my god, the plane has been hijacked. Collins schoolgirls, airspace specialist in military specialist faa boston center. I came in about a 25 a. M. And a soon as i walked in the front door someone came to me and said it was a hijacked going on. We worked hijacked in the past and they were usually uneventful. Peter zaleski, i yelled at the supervisor john, get over here. The plane has been hijacked, absolutely. I go, its middle eastern voices, positive. I could tell that second time. I was used to working egypt air, saudi, turkish, all of them. It is definitely made her middle eastern voices. Scoggins, the pilot on american 11 mohammad atta, the lead terrorist stated something about more planes, that they had more planes it was definitely plural here thats when things really started to ramp up. Faa command center, virginia. I was a National Operations manager on 9 11. That is a position located at the Washington Area that is overarching authority over the nations airspace. That was my charge, the safe and efficient operation of the nations air space. Colonel bob mark, commander northeast air defense, rome new york. There was a huddle of people run one of the radar scopes. I saw that huddle and thought theres got to be something wrong. Major general larry arnold come first air force, kindle air force base georgia. We had a major north american air defense exercise that morning, a command post exercise. There was a team of people who introduced scenarios you had to react to and respond to. As we wind up the exercise, my executive officer had a slip of paper. It said bob mark called and was hijacking in the boston center. My experience with hijacking and our protocol was that we cooperate. Lieutenant don tuscans, Mission CommanderNorth Eastern air defense. At this point are mites it was a 1970s vintage hijacked. We didnt have a huge concern this aircraft was going to crash. Major general larry arnold, i said bob, go ahead and scramble the fighters. Major joe mcquade, f15 pilot, Otis Air Force base, cape cod massachusetts. A scramble order was issued. I ran to the jets. I started up the car realized we didnt have any weapons. They feel are jets with gas and even though we were winchester, that means would you have any weapons, we took off. Lieutenant colonel tim duffy, f15 pilot, Otis Air Force base. When we took off i left it in full after born of the whole time. We work supersonic going down to long island and my wing man nasty, he called and said you are super. And i said yeah, i know. Dont worry about it. I just wanted to get there. Colonel bob marr, mach one it would take them 60 minutes to get to new york. Thats ten miles a minute. Lieutenant colonel kevin, Mission Commander northeast air defense. Almost simultaneously brought in more surveillance technicians to look at scopes. Staff Sergeant Larry thorton, northeast air defense, the area was so congested hijacked flight was incredibly difficult to find. We were looking for little dash marks and a pile of clutter on a twodimensional scope. Master sergeant joe mccain, northeast air defense. We picked up a search track going down the Hudson Valley street in from the north towards new york. The plane was fast and headed in an unusual direction with no transponder. We watch that track until it faded over new york city. Lieutenant general tom cech, commander, shreveport, louisiana. We were in the midst of this big annual exercise called global guardian. The vote of all bombs, but the submarines out to sea, put the icbms at nearly 100 . It was routine. We did it every year. The captain came in and said we havent aircraft that hit the World Trade Center. I started to correct it saying, when you have an exercise input you have to start by saying i have an exercise input. That we doesnt get confused with the real world. Then he pointed me to the tv screens in the command center. You could see smoke pouring out of the building. Like everyone else in aviation that day, i said how in clear and nineday coda plane hit the World Trade Center . This book group out of an article that i wrote for political magazine in 201616 for the 15th anniversary of 9 11 that was an oral history of being aboard air force one with president bush. I went out and the interviewed 28 of the people were with the present that day from the pilot of air force one to the Fighter Pilots who accompanied him to white house chief of staff andy card and karl rove, ari fleischer, the other senior aides aboard the plane, the press, security and stenographer aboard the plane that day. Published in 2016, and i was astounded by the reader feedback i got the date published, dozens, then scores and finally hundreds of letters from readers of people sharing their own stories of 9 11 and their own reactions. Twtwo of those reaction stood ot to me, and two of them i just sort couldnt get out of my mind. The first was from a mother, a veteran, who had two children, 79, she said she printed out the article and set it aside seven and nine so one day when her children old enough to read she would sit them down and explain to them why mommy had left him to go off to war. The second was another letter from another veteran, a younger guy, an army veteran. He was in middle school on 9 11 and he had done three doors, two in afghanistan, one in iraq. And he said he had never really understood the nations trauma on 9 11 until he had seen that article and seeing the days through president bushs eyes. And i just couldnt get past this idea that we were passing a world shaped by 9 11 on now to a generation who has no emotional connection or memory to it. Its always hard to know when and a particle event shifts from memory to history. But i think you could make an argument that it is probably for 9 11 this year. This is the first year when you of College Students arriving on campuses across the country born after 9 11. 9 11. That this year for the first time we have american servicemen and women being deployed to fight in a war older than they are. And this year in march marked the beginning of the time when the first recruits to the new York City FireDepartment Born after the attacks could apply to join the fire service. And so my goal with turning that article into this book, which shares the same title, the only plane in the sky referring to the end of 9 11 when president bush left Offutt Air Force base outside omaha, nebraska, and flew back to washington at about 4 15 p. M. , after all of the commercial planes in the country had been grounded, and during that final leg of the flight he was effectively the only plane left in the sky in north america. This book, the goal was not to capture the history of 9 11, but the goal was to capture what america experienced on 9 11. Because when you begin to go back to that day and you look at the memories that america has of that day, for those of us who are old enough to remember the experience they had, the story of 9 11 is actually pretty different than the story that we kill in our history books. That when you go back and we tell of 9 11 we tried to explain 9 11 to someone, we tell this very neat and clean history of that day. We say the attack started at 8 46 with the crash of american 11 into the north tower. And it ended at 10 29 with the collapse of the second tower, 102 minutes later. That if you remember 9 11, thats not the day that you remember and thats not the story that in of us lived that day. We didnt know when the attacks began. We didnt know when the attacks were over. And we didnt know what came next. And the fear and the trauma in the chaos and the confusion of that day is the true story of 9 11. Because when we tried to hand this set of memories off to a new generation, to the recorder of the American Population that no longer has any memory of 9 11, a quarter of the country now does not have a memory of 9 11, the facts of the day dont account for what the country did after 9 11. And that when you look at the world that we created, if you look at the way that 9 11 shape our geopolitics internationally at our domestic politics here at home, you cant explain the world that we are handed off to a future generation simply by explaining the facts of 9 11. Because the decisions that our country may, the decisions that our leaders made were not driven by the history of 9 11. They were driven by the emotions of 9 11. They were driven by that fear, by that trauma, by that chaos and that confusion. And so this book is an attempt to capture that sweep of the day, not as we understood 9 11 later, but as understood 9 11 while it unfolded. And so to compile the book, its a mix of original interviews that i did, and then archived oral histories done by institutions like the 9 11 museum in new york, the 9 11 tribute center, the pentagon historian, the capitol hill historian, the Arlington County public library, the flight 93 national memorial, that park service compiled in shanksville. And i found with the researcher who worked with me on this book, we found about 5000 of those original oral histories archived around the country, and ultimately boiled it down to about 2000. I spent a year working with, to end up telling the story that i tell in this book. And theres certain things and some big observations that sort of girl out of looking at 9 11 on a National Level like that. But i want to spend some time talking about tonight. The first is just how different our country was on the morning of september 11, that we sort of now say flippantly and in passing, 9 11 changed everything. But we forget just how much actually 9 11 changed. And to capture that you actually have to look at what to me is the most fascinating moment of 9 11, which is the 17 minutes between the first crash and the second crash. 8 46 a. M. To 9 03. And what unfolds during the 17 minutes is that the country writ large and new york specifically watches at first crash and shrugs. And you probably if you watched tv that morning, you probably remember going through this resize thought process. That tv was live at 8 49 that morning from the twin towers, three minutes after the first crash. And for 14 minutes america watched that first crash, and ill bet i do it in this room who watched said the same thing that i did, which is some combo of must be a small plane, must be a weird aviation accident, i had a heart attack, airTraffic Control is having a bad day, plane is having some sort of mechanical problem. And that was the reaction to the whole, from the whole country. One of the mos breathtaking quos in the book, watching the first crash from new york harbor as hes coming into the wall street turmoil in Lower Manhattan. He sees the crash. They continue on into Lower Manhattan. Sadock, and every single commuter they dock everything commuter walks into work in Lower Manhattan. They walk off the boat through papers in envelopes fluttering down from the attack. Theres not a Single Person on the ferry who says, you know what, this seems like its going to be a weird day. Im going to go work from home for the rest of the day. Brian gunderson, the chief of staff to House Majority leader dick armey that morning, you know, every Congressional Office has the tv in the reception as you walk into the office. He walks passe past it on the wn to the morning staff meeting at nine. He looks at it and he says, i thought it was like, i thought it was going to be like a bad school shooting. A type of thing that dominates National News but doesnt fundamentally affect anyones day. President bush and condi rice, the National Security adviser that morning. Condi rice calls the president. They talk about the crash. They talk about how strange the crash is. Condi rice goes on into her 9 00 meeting, and president bush walks into the classroom in sarasota, florida, to read to the schoolchildren. Robert mueller, the fbi director, was in his second week on the job. He was, the way that the fbi was bring him up to speed, he started tuesday, september 4, 20011, and every morning at 8 a. M. He was being briefed on the biggest cases that the fbi was working. 8 a. M. Tuesday september 11, he sits down for his first briefing on the investigation of alqaeda and the bombing of the uss cole. 49 minutes later someone enters and tells him a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Bob mueller, director of the fbi, sitting in a briefing on alqaeda, has the same reaction as Lieutenant Colonel as a ritchie. He looked out the winner on the seventh floor of the hoover building at the blue sky that covered the east coast that day and said, how on earth did a plane managed to hit the World Trade Center today . Then they go back to the meeting. Of course at 9 03 we realized something very different is unfolding. We realized that we are under attack, and the day begins to unfold dramatically differently.