It was also a Congress whose members would have to evacuate the Capitol, take shelter and, later the same day, vow to return to work.
What type of effect the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol will have on lawmakers in the long term is yet to be seen. But what is clear 20 years later is how much the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed the careers and personal lives of many members of Congress.
Some lawmakers who were on Capitol Hill on Sept. 11, 2001, remember it as a turning point that has served as a basis of their work today, from which committees they sit on to how they draft legislation. Others said it was an event that changed the course of their careers and ultimately led to them running for Congress.
After evacuating the Capitol grounds, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gathered with other lawmakers at a nearby Capitol Police post to hear updates. The group decided to walk over to the Capitol steps that evening, in an effort to show the nation that government was still functioning. All of sudden, Collins said, a colleague began singing “God Bless America” and everyone joined in. “This wave of patriotism just swept over all of us,” she recalled. “It was incredibly emotional and reassuring at the same time.”
Collins said her current focus on power-grid vulnerabilities and cybersecurity is something she traces back to 9/11 and to her experience rotating between chair and ranking Republican on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee as it took on oversight of the newly created Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Collins added that 9/11 was also behind her decision years later to join the Senate Intelligence Committee, a panel she still sits on.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said she told her staff to leave Washington when she saw the smoke above the Pentagon from her office window. She then took a car to her district in New York City, and when she saw the skyline come into focus without the two towers, “it was like two arrows in my heart that they were down and gone,” Maloney said. “It was horrible.”
She spent years advocating for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act, even wearing a New York City Fire Department bunker jacket at events to start conversations about the health-care needs of 9/11 victims and first responders. A bill to permanently authorize that fund was signed into law in 2019. Last year, she used that measure’s framework to author legislation to compensate essential workers who contracted the coronavirus while on the job. Maloney said 9/11 also drives her choices on what to take up as chair of the House Oversight Committee. “I spend a lot of time on sort of defense issues because, what was 9/11? We didn’t have our proper defenses in place.”
Sept. 11 also began shaping future members of Congress. Three shared their stories with The Washington Post.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was a graduate student at Columbia University, nearly eight miles from the World Trade Center, and called living in New York on 9/11 and during the aftermath a “full sensory experience.”
There was the acrid smell of the smoldering buildings that she recalled filling the air for weeks. Then, as police and firehouses memorialized colleagues, the sound of bagpipes became routine while she sat in class.
Reminders of the extensive loss of life were all around. “I had a classmate who had to postpone her wedding because so many of her bridesmaids were killed at Cantor Fitzgerald,” Slotkin said, referring to the financial services firm with offices in the North Tower.
All of this culminated into a turning point for her. She decided to change her coursework and study international security.
When a CIA recruiter came to campus, Slotkin was hired as a Middle East analyst for the agency, later doing three tours in Iraq. She was also among the first hires at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an agency created as a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission.
Days before he would be appointed as one of only two Republicans on the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) walked into the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building discussing the commute from his Illinois district.
“Just take off, throw on the autopilot and chill,” Kinzinger said as he described how he occasionally flies himself to D.C.
He is an Air Force pilot and still serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard. He said his decision to join the military was a direct reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Kinzinger was driving to his job at an IT services company in Bloomington, Ill., when he heard the news that the World Trade Center had been hit.
“9/11 was so impactful for me that I think it really comes into how I act today,” Kinzinger said. “I have to be willing to put everything on the line to defend this country, and if I lose an election because I’m telling people the truth, well, that needed to be done.”
Like many veterans of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said the news and images in the days leading up to the Aug. 31 withdrawal from Afghanistan were difficult to absorb. “I knew that it wasn’t going to be a great ending. I was pretty confident of that,” Crow said. “But I’m not sure I really allowed my brain to kind of wrap around that.”
As a student at the University of Wisconsin, he was in the ROTC and an enlisted National Guard member. Crow had planned to stick with the Guard after graduation, but he said the events of 9/11 pushed him to enter active duty. That choice led to two tours in Afghanistan as an Army ranger.
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Slotkin, Kinzinger and Crow discuss how 9/11 changed their course and how it continues to influence them as lawmakers. - The Washington Post
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