“I want to call Crandall and Barclay,” I turned to Tom and Ed.
Bob Crandall, the former chief executive of American Airlines, was one of the most respected aviation leaders in the country. He was known as a maverick, willing to buck conventional wisdom. I’d seen him on TV over the past few days supporting a growing call in Congress to turn the airport checkpoints over to a new federal security force. Chip Barclay, the head of an influential airport trade association, was serving on one of Mineta’s task forces. Ed got me their numbers. I called Crandall first from the Logan fire chief’s private office. After I expressed my frustration to him about the Mineta announcement, he gave me this advice: “Keep pressing them in the media. That’s what I am doing every chance I get.”
I knew he was right. The intense media scrutiny of me and Logan had one upside. I might be able to influence the debate over federalization of security.
The following days were sixteen-hour tsunamis of decision-making and crisis management. Despite the new security procedures, media reports around the country indicated passengers continued to successfully, if accidentally, bring pocketknives and other banned materials through checkpoints at several airports. Some checkpoint doors were left unlocked or unguarded. Terminals were repeatedly emptied of passengers and searched with K-9 teams. At Logan, a false report that a terrorist had taken a tour of the control tower days before 9/11 got wide coverage in the press. Other media reports falsely claimed that several Logan ramp passes were found in the terrorists’ rental car. The passes would have allowed full access to the airfield.
Those false reports escalated the media frenzy. Talk radio. The top of the six o’clock newscast. Influential columnists. All raising questions that had no good answer if what you wanted was an easy one. I stopped for coffee at a Revere Dunkin’ Donuts early one morning on the way into the airport. A man in line whispered to his friend, “That’s her.”
In my daily staff meetings, I tried to be matter-of-fact about the media coverage. “We have a lot of work to do,” I said. “Dealing with the press goes with the territory. As the facts become known, the focus on Massport will decrease.” I hoped that because I was unfazed by the criticism, staff morale would stay high. I was also largely dismissive because I still found it hard to believe anyone could seriously blame one airport operator for the attacks. “If they want to fire me because terrorists attacked America, let them,” I said on a brief call with my sister.
I told Jose to answer all inquiries about my future at Logan by saying, “She and everyone here are staying focused on doing their jobs.”
***
Massport Needs Leadership, Not Patronage
Confiscating bagel knives or prohibiting curbside parking is not enhanced security. It’s a joke. Acting Governor Swift should declare the death of a culture of patronage at Massport and the dawn of a new culture of professionalism.
—Boston Globe, September 18, 2001
September 18, 2001—St. Rose of Lima Church, Chelsea, Massachusetts
I stood in a line of mourners stretching three blocks long. As I waited to pay my respects to the family of Marianne MacFarlane, who had died on United 175, I became conscious of the stares of others nearby. What if I’m not welcome here? I suddenly realized.
Maybe Anne, Marianne’s mom and a Logan employee, would be offended, given the questions that had been raised in the media. I looked around. There were a few whispers. Discreet glances in my direction. There was no way to make a quiet escape. My heart started beating faster. I was trying to decide whether to walk away when Kathi-Anne Reinstein, the state legislator from the area, approached and asked if I wanted to go inside with her. I walked up the stone stairs with a group of other officials. My heart pounded in my chest as I followed Reinstein into the rear of the church where the family was gathered.
The vestibule was dark and cool. Familiar. The smell of incense in the air evoked an instant sense of connection. I had attended parochial school from first through eighth grade. The nuns made us attend funerals regularly, sometimes weekly, a group of uniform-wearing children filing by the caskets of total strangers during Holy Communion. A gesture to comfort the grieving.
What if my being here brings them more pain, not comfort? I worried. It was too late to turn back. I tried to breathe slowly. To slow my heart rate. There was no casket in the church. No trace of Marianne had been found. I shook hands and murmured condolences. Anne was the last person in the line. Redheaded and shorter than the people standing next to her—her sons I later found out—she exuded a presence that made her seem taller. I approached slowly. As I reached to take her hand, I was momentarily startled by the pin sparkling on her jacket. It was in the shape of an airplane.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said softly, not meeting her eyes. Anne gripped both of my hands in hers. The strength of her grasp caused me to look straight at her.
“Don’t let them tear our airport apart,” she said. “Promise me.”
I didn’t know how to answer this surprising request. Anne held my hands tighter. Her gaze was steady. I finally said, “I won’t. I promise I won’t.” I had no idea how or if I could fulfill my pledge.
At the end of the service, Anne led the congregation down the stairs of the church singing “God Bless America.”
Anne’s strength would save me many times in the years ahead, like a life ring thrown to someone drowning. Then one day, after we’d been getting together for lunch or coffee a few times a year, Anne called me. Her request was as simple and surprising as the one made at Marianne’s service. “Can I lean on you for a while?” she asked. For a few seconds I didn’t know what to say. Can the drowning in turn save the rescuer?
It’s been over a week now, and Ginny Buckingham still isn’t a stay-at-home mom. Thousands of Americans have been murdered . . . in jetliners hijacked out of this hackerama of an airport.
—Boston Herald, September 19, 2001
September 19, 2001—Emergency Operations Center
The future of Massport director Virginia Buckingham is also open to question.
—Boston Globe, September 19, 2001
Pressure is building for a high level shake-up at Massport—from director Virginia Buckingham on down.
—Boston Herald, September 19, 2001
“What’s that?” I asked Tom and John, who were surrounded by a few other Logan operational staff. They were peering at a list of names. As I got closer, I could see it was a passenger manifest for a flight.
“They’re members of the Bin Laden family,” Tom answered, his tone serious. “Some of them live in the Boston area and a plane is landing here to pick them up.”
I took the list from John and read it, incredulous at the almost twenty names, several with the surname Bin Laden.
The entries were complete with addresses, passport numbers, even telephone numbers.
Tom said he was told the Bin Laden family members feared for their safety. “They’re being airlifted from all over the country on a Saudi-chartered jet.”
“Have they been questioned?” I asked. He didn’t know.
It was not yet well known, and certainly not known by us, that there had been a public break between the family and the terrorist leader. All we knew was that there was still a ban on international flights from certain countries and we didn’t know whether this flight violated it and whether intelligence agencies and the FBI had cleared the Bin Ladens’ mass departure. I asked Tom to call Washington, DC, authorities, including the State Department. “Maybe there’s a way to stop them,” I said. “How can they let them go barely a week after the attacks? There must be some mistake.”
After several hours, Tom reported back that for each call he made, he got the same answer. “Let them leave.”
Craig Unger, a former editor of Boston magazine, wrote a book in 2004 that discussed the Bin Laden family airlift. He tried to interview me but I de
clined. I didn’t feel I could provide additional information. Instead, he quoted from an article I’d later written about the frustration I’d felt that day. It would be years, after reading his book and other accounts, before I understood that the decision to let the Bin Ladens leave was made at the highest levels of the federal government. I was in no position to second-guess it. It’s just one illustration of a dichotomy that took me years to accept. While the local media and political leaders placed me at the center of 9/11, the reality was this: I was nowhere near it.
Swift Special Panel to Review Massport
Administration sources said the commission’s findings . . . will greatly influence whether Massport executive director Virginia Buckingham and her director of security, Joseph Lawless, remain in their jobs.
—Boston Globe, September 20, 2001
To the Editor:
When I was governor, Logan was the responsibility of two executive directors of Massport who were competent, able, experienced public managers. . . . The same cannot be said for their successors. —Michael S. Dukakis, Boston
—Boston Globe, September 20, 2001
Change Ahead for Troubled Boston Airport Agency
—New York Times, September 21, 2001
As the critical media coverage began extending beyond Boston, from my sister-in-law Leah’s bedroom I watched the news coverage of Jane’s announcement that she was appointing a commission to review Massport. It was Rosh Hashanah and David and Jack were downstairs with his family celebrating the Jewish New Year.
“Airport operations will never be the same anywhere in America, and certainly we have a moral responsibility at Logan to take that very seriously,” Swift said.
Tears flowed down my face. The direction she was heading was obvious. The acting governor was following a familiar political playbook. It was a playbook I had recommended to governors before her when a scandal in state government raged in the press.
In reports about the formation of the commission, an administration source made her intent clear: Jane had no “desire to scapegoat. . . . She cares that Ginny go out with dignity, if she has to go,” the source said.
For the first time since the attacks, my belief that I couldn’t rationally be blamed for the hijackings slipped, my assertion in the conversation with my sister, “if they want to fire me, let them,” looking more like the hubris it was. Yet, this wasn’t a scandal in state government. This was an attack on America.
Wasn’t it?
September 20, 2001—Marblehead
I shifted under the sheets. Uncomfortable. Sweating.
I was in a courtroom surrounded by angry people. Every seat was filled. The aisles were packed with more people standing.
I groaned and turned again, tightly gripping the blanket covering me and David.
Why were they all glaring at me? Leaning forward. Shaking their fists. Menacing. I wanted to shout, “I didn’t do it.” Instead, my face reddened with shame. A tiny voice inside whispered, “But what if I did?” I said nothing. My eyes were cast downward. Tears dripped down my face.
I woke up with a start. I looked over at David. He was soundly sleeping. I didn’t wake him.
My first recounting of this dream was in a Boston Globe Sunday magazine essay I wrote in 2002. I knew Massport was preparing for eventual litigation against the airport so I’d let the lawyers read a draft before I submitted it. I didn’t want to catch them off guard. They were adamant that I take out the dream sequence with its obvious overtones of my deepening sense of responsibility. So I removed it in the final submission. The magazine’s editor emailed me and asked, “What happened to the dream? I loved it!” He asked if I would reconsider its use and I eventually agreed.
“It’s just a dream, Joe,” I said to my lawyer when I told him the dream was back in the piece.
It was just a dream.
***
Will Heads Roll at Massport?
Are the calls for a housecleaning at Massport legitimate, or are they fueled by politics and the need to offer up a scapegoat to an anxious public?
—MetroWest Daily News, September 20, 2001
Too Early to Whack Massport Chief
Stop the scapegoating. . . . Will you feel a whit safer if Ginny Buckingham is fired or forced to resign tomorrow?
—Boston Herald, September 20, 2001
September 21, 2001—Governor’s office, State House, Boston
“Ginny, can you wait a minute? I’d like to talk to you privately.” Jane stood up from the head of the conference table in her office. As the others at the table—mostly cabinet and subcabinet officials from her administration with responsibility for public-safety issues—filed out of the ornate room, I looked around. The heavy, worn blue drapes, the chipped yet still regal white-painted woodwork, the massive fireplace behind the governor’s desk, the large varnished wood table where we’d been sitting. Every inch of this office was deeply familiar, like I’d stepped back into my favorite room in a house I’d lived in years before.
I thought back to the first time I entered the Corner Office at the State House when I was a nineteen-year-old intern helping Governor Michael Dukakis’s press secretary with a routine photo opportunity. The governor was harsh and impatient when it was only us in the room, and blandly pleasant as citizens filed in to receive a proclamation and pose for a photo. I was confused by the contrast, my first experience of commonplace political posturing. As Jane Swift sorted some papers at her desk, I jumped ahead a few years in my mind’s eye and saw myself in the same room, perched on the side of a nearby leather chair as Governor Weld and his senior advisers debated firing a young commissioner who had made an innocent error in judgment, my heart sinking as the decision was made to let him go, my first lesson on the harshness of the field I had chosen. And there I was at twenty-eight, sitting in the middle seat at the same table—the governor’s chief spokesperson, forcefully arguing, whether the issue was taxes, crime, or welfare reform, for a strong, clear message to support the governor’s position. Now as Swift came back to the head of the conference table, I remained standing behind the chief of staff’s chair that had become mine at thirty-two.
“I know Massport had nothing to do with the hijackings,” she said, shifting uncomfortably on her feet when she saw I had no plans to sit down. “There’s nothing you could have done to stop them.”
When I didn’t respond, Swift continued. “I can’t promise you how this is going to turn out, but the only reason I can sleep at night is I know you understand how the media and politics work.”
In a room where I had witnessed and participated in all manner of coarse political discussions, I was still taken aback by the raw cynicism of her comments. All I could bring myself to say was the same mantra Jose and I had used with the media for the past two weeks. “I’m staying focused on doing my job,” I told her. I walked out of the office I had essentially grown up in without looking back, feeling less certain than I had ever been of what was ahead.
Hard Times Call for Gov, Mayor to Step Forward
The question is how to ease Buckingham out without subjecting her to national embarrassment.
—Boston Herald, September 24, 2001
Misguided Blame
The planes-turned-missiles in the attack on America were hijacked from airports in three cities but only in this one has the attack been followed by continuous calls to find someone to blame.
—Boston Globe, September 24, 2001
Questions About Massport Won’t Stop
—Boston Globe, September 25, 2001
Breakdown: Buck Knife and Bullets Slip by Logan Checkpoints
—Boston Herald, September 26, 2001
September 26, 2001—Logan Office Center, Boston
The press conference was jam-packed. On easels behind me were poster boards containing the list of recommendations we were making to US Transporta
tion Secretary Mineta on improving security nationwide. In my opening statement, I described some of the items contained in a letter to Chip Barclay, the member of the task force I’d called the day of Mineta’s announcement.
When I finished making an opening statement, a reporter called out, “Are you going to resign?”
“I’m willing to resign or do whatever the governor wants me to do if a specific flaw at Massport related to the hijackings is found,” I answered.
“Is the airport safe?” another reporter asked.
“Certainly the airport is safer than it’s ever been,” I answered, “but it doesn’t mean it is safe enough.” I pointed out the story in that morning’s Herald about the knife and bullets getting through Logan’s checkpoints as further evidence in support of federalization. “These kinds of items are going to continue to get through until we have a law-enforcement professional with the right training at all the checkpoints.”
A story the next day in the Herald termed it an “extraordinary admission” that I would say Logan was still vulnerable. Others had a similar tone.
Massport Says It Can’t Offer Fix; Buckingham Seeks Federal Monitoring of Checkpoints
—Boston Globe, September 27, 2001
Passing the Buck Won’t Fly at Logan
—Boston Herald, September 27, 2001
September 27, 2001, 6:30 a.m.—Logan Office Center
The Today crew had set up in the second-floor lobby before dawn. I moved around in the chair, trying to get comfortable. I was conscious of keeping my back straight, the bottom of my blazer tucked under me, following the advice I used to pass on to governors over the years so they wouldn’t look rumpled on TV.
Jose had advised me to pass up the interview request. He was worried the issue of my personal future would come up on national television.
“I can’t miss this chance to talk about the need for federalization,” I told him. I was still taking Bob Crandall’s advice—“press them in the media”—every chance I had.
On My Watch Page 8