PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCEThe Toxic Legacy of 9/11…and How to End It
Restoring the Bill of Rights to its proper shape and place in our civic life would be one way to honor those killed on 9/11 and in the wars that followed.
A case of strep throat kept me home on September 11, 2001, causing me to miss a scheduled meeting at the Pentagon. Just how close I came to death that day was driven home when I watched from my apartment window as an American Airlines jet—wheels up, descending fast towards downtown DC, not the airport—descended below a line of trees, passing out of my line of sight. First came the boom, then the windowpane shaking, and seconds later, smoke rising from the fireball after impact.
Prior to that, and like millions of Americans, I’d been watching the horror in New York City after the first two airliners had struck the World Trade Center towers. After the first tower had been hit, I wondered if mechanical failure or something else might explain the tragedy. That thought vanished as soon as I saw the second airliner crash into the other tower. In that instant, and with at least one and perhaps other aircraft commandeered by hijackers and still in the air, I realized America was under attack and that the most likely culprit was Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
I also realized something else: the country was about to plunge headlong into not only military operations in Afghanistan but also domestic surveillance and possibly worse here at home. What happened that day and in the months and years that followed is one of the topics I’m covering in the follow-up book to The Triumph of Fear, published in April 2025 by Georgetown University Press.
The new book, Liberty’s Ghost: The American Security State and the Eclipse of the Bill of Rights, 1961–2025, is very much a work in progress. Even so, I feel it is appropriate—especially on this day—to share a sneak peek of the chapter that deals with the immediate aftermath of the attacks. So without further ado, here it is.
The fires burning amidst the debris that once was the World Trade Center were still going strong on September 12, 2001 as the United States Senate began a hurried debate over an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that President George W. Bush could use to go after the attackers, at first presumed and later confirmed to be terrorists belonging to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization.
