Remembering 9/11, 25 Years Later

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

Carol Massar (0:16)

Everybody of a certain age has their own 9-11 story.

Tim Stenovec (0:19)

Absolutely.

Carol Massar (0:19)

Yeah, where they were when they heard, we were under attack. Mark Jacobson's 9-11 story is a bit different than many others. He was in the Pentagon that morning, just about 100 feet from where hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the building.

Tim Stenovec (0:33)

Yes, like so many, that day changed the course of Mark's life forever. He spent close to four years deployed to Afghanistan, both in a military and civilian capacity. He was at the command table in Kabul on May 2nd, 2011 That's when US forces captured and killed Osama Bin Laden. He has seen a lot, certainly since 9-11.

Carol Massar (0:54)

Dr. Mark Jacobson is a retired US Naval Intelligence Officer. He served in Afghanistan with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He's also a Senior Fellow at Salve Regina University's Pell Center. He's a historian of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, and he joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. I should note too, full disclosure, he was my wife's professor at the Ohio State University. So that's how I first connected with you.

That was a long time ago too.

Mark Jacobson (1:17)

That was a lifetime ago as well. It really was. Teaching a class on terrorism after 9-11.

Carol Massar (1:21)

Yeah, hey, we are really grateful to have you here. Take us back to that day, that Tuesday morning in 2001

Mark Jacobson (1:28)

You know, it's interesting, I was telling a colleague earlier, I can't remember if I was in the Pentagon on the 10th of September, on that Monday, you know, it was Tuesday, September 11th. I had just returned from the West Coast where I was at a conference with my European colleagues, and one of the issues on the table was terrorism. What's the threat to each side?

Should we worry about it as much as missile defense issues or resurgent Russia, China, all that?

One of my colleagues later reminded me, I had forgotten about this, that I told our European colleagues rather sternly that for us, it wasn't a matter of if, but when, when it came to terrorism. And, you know, there were people whose job it was every single day to think about the what ifs and what should we worry about in terms of terrorism back then. I was not one of them. But to me, it struck me that this is something that had been boiling up. We had watched it with the USS Cole a couple of years earlier. We had watched it even before that when it came to the strikes on the Al Qaeda training camps in Jalalabad, the strike in Sudan during the Clinton administration, Mogadishu, 1993

So, but again, no one was thinking, yes, there's going to be an attack in two days in New York City and Washington DC. Now, I remember some strange things about that day. I remember I was listening to the Howard Stern show back when it was on regular FM radio.

SPEAKER_1 (2:57)

Right.

Mark Jacobson (2:57)

And there was a report that a two-engine, small propeller plane had crashed into the Trade Center. And actually, I've been hearing, I didn't realize that that was broadcast all over the place, that lots of people had made that mistake. But I remember thinking, is this a rerun? I don't remember. Did a plane crash into the Trade Center?

I think before I got into the Pentagon, and my little drive from Arlington, and then a long walk in from the parking lot, I think the second plane had hit by that point. Because I remember coming into the building and thinking, I need to go tell my colleagues at the Joint Staff in the Special Operations Division, the division that handled counter-terrorism, I'm going to ask to come down and work with you. This is going to be a busy day, week, whatever.

My thought was that this is absolutely Bin Laden. Anyone who was working the issues knew of the attempts to blow up airliners over the Pacific, knew of Bin Laden's involvement in a lot of other operations. What many of us didn't know at the time was that the presidential daily brief back in August had had the headline Bin Laden determined to attack US. But we can talk about that later. I actually remember giving my sister, who was a reporter on the West Coast at the time, a heads up saying, you need to get into your station now. We're at war. And she was like, what are you talking about?