“Matt Lauer will interview a counterterrorism expert first,” the producer explained now through my earpiece. “Can you count to ten for the audio check?”
“Lauer will toss it back to Katie Couric,” he added, “in the studio in New York.”
An American flag, flapping in the breeze outside, was just visible over my left shoulder. I was wearing the red, white, and blue ribbon pin. I could hear Couric in my earpiece but I couldn’t see her. As the red light went on, I looked straight into the camera.
Couric got right to the point. “FAA data analyzed by the Globe shows not only did Logan Airport rank near the bottom when it comes to security violations, but it also had the highest number of serious violations, those where federal agents were able to smuggle hidden weapons through security checkpoints. What is your reaction to these findings?”
Most of the violations reported in the recent Globe story were the responsibility of the airlines, which oversaw the checkpoints under the scrutiny of the FAA. But I didn’t point that out to Couric. I wasn’t going to be drawn into blaming the airlines. I blamed no one but the terrorists.
“We’re not happy with the state of security at our airport or the nation’s other airports. So far evidence has pointed to the fact that these hijackers used the current system of security. They didn’t breach it. And if that’s the case, it’s a huge wake-up call to Logan Airport and every airport. We need a dramatic overhaul in airport security, particularly at those screening checkpoints.”
Couric then asked whether President Bush’s recent proposals on more background checks and training for security personnel go far enough.
“Well, I think his proposals go a long way to fortifying the aircraft themselves.” I shifted in the seat, uncomfortable. I didn’t like criticizing the president’s proposals. But he was only supporting funding for the installation of hijack-proof cockpit doors in commercial aircraft, not turning the checkpoints over to a new federal security force. “They don’t go far enough to fortify the airports,” I said.
Couric’s questions grew more intense. “Meanwhile, you claim it’s not within your purview in terms of the airlines themselves hiring or contracting out people to do the security. Should you not have been more aware of all the violations and infractions that were occurring at Logan, in your position?”
“Well, we certainly were aware of it,” I answered, “and, in fact we had just begun a program of testing those screening checkpoints ourselves. We had brought in a security consultant to do a top-to-bottom review of all the security problems. But this is going to require action by Congress.”
Couric was wrapping up. “I understand within Boston there has been some pressure for you and your chief of airport security to resign. Is that something you’re considering?”
I paused for a fraction of a second. “I’ve said if evidence points to some specific flaw in Logan security that led to these incidents, then I’m willing to step up and accept responsibility for that and whatever consequences that may bring,” I answered.
“Thank you for joining us.”
“Thank you.” The red light went out.
It was 7:14 a.m.
***
Logan Brass Should Atone by Resigning
—Boston Herald, September 27, 2001
I walked down the hall to my office to finish reading the morning papers.
Later that morning, I hesitated outside a holding room in Terminal A. Inside, former president George H. W. Bush was waiting for a flight out of Logan, a planned public show of confidence in the nation’s aviation system. I pushed open the door and he strode over, hand outstretched. “Thank you for coming here, Mr. President,” I said. I shook his hand, holding on to it for a few seconds too long. A bit too tightly.
I explained that we’d first met when I worked for Governor Cellucci but that I worked here now. “Oh, oh, you run the place,” he said. When I last saw him in 1998, he had come to visit his newly elected friend Cellucci, who had been one of his first supporters in 1979 when he challenged then governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. “Where’s the chief?” he’d said then, as he strode into the Corner Office reception area, reaching out to shake my hand. Now at Logan, he gave me a warm smile but didn’t say anything else. An aide pulled him away to get ready for an interview with Tom Brokaw that would be taped in the lounge behind us.
Brokaw probed former president Bush’s deep knowledge of world affairs for context on the 9/11 attacks. As I watched, I felt silly and small when I considered my need for him to acknowledge what was happening in the Boston media. Why would he think to say, “Hang in there” or “This is a bunch of baloney,” I berated myself. He has more important things to think about. But oh God, I thought, tears biting the corners of my eyes as I watched the former president. That is all I want. Please just say, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Of course, he didn’t. And the deeply rooted desire I had for someone in a position of authority like him—or his son—to exonerate me would persist for many years.
Chapter Six
Tide
August 1975—Dunes Park Beach, Weekapaug, Rhode Island
“Here comes one!” my youngest brother, RJ, shouted. He was seven, I was ten, and I was certain I was going to win this time. The wave came toward us. We bent our knees slightly, leaning forward to take the wave head-on. The made-up game we played—Hold-Your-Ground—required a delicate balance. We couldn’t lean too much. We had to figure just how to position our shoulders. The goal was to be rocked back into position without falling forward, readying ourselves immediately for the next wave. Whoever withstood the push and pull of the tide, keeping their feet firmly planted on the ocean floor—whoever held their ground longest—won.
I looked over. We were both still standing in the same place. “Here comes one!” I shouted the warning this time.
There’s no way I’ll get knocked over, I thought, my feet buried deep in the sand. Without warning, a powerful wave lifted me up. Forced unwillingly into a somersault, I turned and twisted under the water. I opened my eyes. The salt water burned like acid. I couldn’t breathe or find my footing. My head struck bottom and I scraped against some rocks. My father, standing on the shore’s edge keeping watch, ran into the water. He reached down, firmly grasping my forearms in his large hands. He lifted me back up onto my feet.
At least that’s how I remember the story. But I’m not sure it’s true. Not the wave knocking me over part. I remember that vividly. But did my dad really reach in and rescue me? Like most young American girls, I grew up with fairy tales of knights rescuing their princesses. My white-knight stories were mostly of the black ink on white paper variety, with occasional glorious colored illustrations, in the years before Pixar ensured every little girl went to bed with visions of being rescued in her head. I’m not sure whether my dad was actually there that day, or if that’s just how I prefer to remember it. That I was rescued. It would be years, fourteen exactly, before I finally understood the truth in something I was told soon after I left Logan: no one was going to rescue me from the pain of being blamed for 9/11. I had to be my own hero.
Patronage Still Rules the Roost at Logan
It has been two-and-a-half weeks since the greatest attack on the American mainland was launched from Logan Airport, and Virginia Buckingham is still running Logan. . . .
We may never know the extent that unqualified executives played in terrorists assuming that Logan was a cinch. . . . it cannot be an accident that terrorists thought they could board not one, but two airplanes at Logan.
—Boston Globe, September 28, 2001
September 28 to November 9, 2001
The media spotlight grew even more intense after my Today appearance. It became harder and harder to ignore, to believe the misplaced blame and fury would blow over as the facts became known.
But it was a lead editorial in the Patriot Ledger, th
e state’s third-largest newspaper, that hit me as powerfully as that wave did when I was a child.
New Leadership for Logan
Swift must act immediately to remove Virginia Buckingham. . . . The long chapter of political patronage at Logan must come to an end, now that we’ve seen the devastating consequences of putting unqualified political appointees in strategic positions involving public safety.
—Patriot Ledger, September 29–30, 2001
“Now that we’ve seen the devastating consequences of unqualified appointees.” My lack of aviation experience led to the attacks? Is that what she’s saying? I asked myself. I knew the editorial page editor of the Ledger from my days in the State House. I always thought her coverage was smart and fair.
The second plane.
The explosion.
The ball of fire.
The black smoke.
Thousands dead.
“Devastating consequences.”
She’s saying it’s my fault.
Oh my God.
I had to start my daily staff meeting and welcomed the return of emotional numbness. I walked into the small meeting room. I went through the agenda item by item.
“Security update?”
“Federalization push next steps?”
“Upcoming legislative committee briefing?”
“Presentation to Boston business leaders on Logan operations?”
“Anything else?” I asked after we discussed all the items. I went around the table so each colleague could raise any issues they had. It was a management tactic I learned from Governor Weld, who had done the same at his daily staff meeting.
As I walked back to my office, I noticed copies of the local weekly paper piled on a low-standing table near the door. The East Boston Sun Transcript closely covered goings-on at the airport. I picked one up out of curiosity. As I opened the paper to the editorial page, I was not conscious of breathing as I was picked up and tossed by another powerful wave.
Time to Decide
Buckingham is now carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. It is a heavy weight that will never go away.
The enormity of what began in Boston is impossible for Buckingham to mitigate. She is being swept away, literally by events almost entirely out of her control. Yet she is struggling to keep her self-respect, struggling mainly, like the salmon trying to swim upstream, fighting against a tide of rushing river water. The salmon struggle and fight and give everything they have until they run out of energy and are swept away. . . . What began at Logan on Buckingham’s watch is a disaster whose outcome will follow her the rest of her life. . . . Call it bad luck, bad timing, call it a mixture of chance and fate, call it what you will, Buckingham cannot come back from this.
I stood dead still in the office foyer. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I held the paper. I stared at the words.
They seemed to swirl around me. Encircling my throat. Choking me.
“Rest of her life . . . swept away . . . cannot come back from this.”
They were right.
“Rushing water . . .”
The ocean wave. It picked me up off my feet. I struggled to hold my ground. I couldn’t.
“Swept away.”
“Devastating consequences.”
A glass bottle. Tossed in the pounding surf.
Broken.
Stop.
Hold on.
I couldn’t.
Letter to the Editor:
Certain places where atrocious events were allowed to occur are forever branded with the dark stain of shame. To this black roster we now add Boston’s Logan International Airport, where terrorists waltzed aboard two airliners and killed 6,000 innocents in New York. . . . It’s time for Massport Executive Director Virginia Buckingham and company to pack up their bags and go.
—Boston Herald, September 30, 2001
Voters Poll: Dump Massport Director
More than half the voters polled by the Herald said Massachusetts Port Authority Chief Virginia Buckingham should resign or be fired in the wake of unprecedented airport security lapses.
—Boston Herald, October 2, 2001
Letter to the Editor:
Now we have a former gubernatorial aide running Massport. After an extensive national search, this is the best our governor can do? As a Republican, my advice to Gov. Swift is to clean house immediately, before more people die.
—Boston Globe, September 30, 2001
October 2, 2001—Logan Office Center
“Peter, she shouldn’t do this.” My tone was heated. Jane Swift was giving a live televised address from her office that evening. Her aides had leaked that Logan’s security director, Joe Lawless, was being fired. This was the second heated conversation I’d had with her chief of staff in the past week. Several days earlier he had called me to say I could no longer speak with Jane directly. “If you need to tell her anything, call me,” he’d said. I knew then that the protection of Jane’s political future was now paramount in her and her staff’s view. I was a problem to be managed, controlled, disposed of. Like Joe.
“Joe shouldn’t be fired,” I told him now. “This isn’t right, Peter. Joe didn’t do anything wrong.” After several minutes of debate, Forman agreed to talk to Jane again. Less than an hour later, he called back to report she had agreed instead to transfer Joe to Massport’s maritime division.
I watched Jane’s live address on my office TV. “We’ve all been searching our souls these past few weeks,” she said. “That two of those planes took off from Logan Airport is particularly painful for us, and has raised serious questions about the airport’s security procedures.”
Fired Up: Swift Tightens Security at Logan
Apparently joking with aides who were gushing over her performance, [Jane Swift] proclaimed on the live microphone, “Yeah, they work for me . . . and they know I’m in a firing mood.”
—Boston Herald, October 3, 2001
Early October 2001—Logan Office Center
“Where do they do this best?” I asked at my daily staff meeting, referring to airport security.
“Israel,” was the unanimous answer.
I learned Rafi Ron, the former security director at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, was currently in the United States. As soon as we tracked him down, I invited him to come to Logan. At our initial meeting, we talked about the American system’s focus on technology to protect aviation from terrorism.
“You will never be able to stop all weapons,” he said, referring to the security of checkpoints. “You have to stop the people.” Ron told me a true story about a pregnant Irish-born girlfriend of a Palestinian traveling through Heathrow to visit her boyfriend’s parents in the West Bank. I was riveted as he described how careful questioning by the El Al airline employee revealed the presents she’d packed for the prospective grandparents of her unborn child were not wrapped by her, but by her boyfriend. A search of her luggage found explosives, not gifts, in the packaging.
Ron then described a training program he’d designed that would teach airport and airline employees to identify certain behaviors that should raise a red flag.
We hired him on the spot.
Some ten years after 9/11, the federal government formally adopted the behavioral awareness program we started at Logan as a pilot program. I was both proud and frustrated. It was the right thing to do and it shouldn’t have taken a decade to do it.
October 2001—Marblehead
“Jack, honey, someone is at the door. I’ll be right back,” I said, trying to put Jack down on the floor with his toys.
“No, Mama, hold me.” He had a slight fever and hadn’t let me put him down all evening. I shifted him to my hip and opened the door.
The camera light went on. Jack, who was wearing his favorite plastic fireman’s hat, stared into it.
“Can we talk to you for a minute about your future at Massport?” the TV reporter asked. I shook my head. “I don’t have any comment.”
“Who’s that, Mama?” Jack asked. I gently shut the door. The camera was still rolling. “It’s just some people from work, sweetie.”
October 2001—South Londonderry, Vermont
I didn’t want to go when friends offered us their home in Vermont for a night over the weekend. I didn’t want to be that far away from the airport.
“What if something happens?” I said to David.
“C’mon, honey, there’s a phone there. And we can get back here in a few hours if we need to,” David urged.
Reluctantly, I agreed. As we passed over the border into Vermont on Interstate 91, I could actually feel my shoulders relax, like a burden was being lifted. I reached over and squeezed David’s hand in gratitude.
The leaves in the backyard of our friends’ house were brilliant orange, golden yellow, and rust red. I raked a huge pile for Jack to jump in. He giggled and attacked each pile with glee. “Again, Mama, again!” he yelled. I felt a rush of joy so intense, tears rolled down my cheeks. How is it possible to still experience happiness? I wondered. I got on my knees and hugged Jack tightly. Then I gathered the scattered leaves back into a pile.
A community of Benedictine monks lived in nearby Weston. My mother had taken me there when I was a little girl. I remembered buying a handmade Jacob’s Ladder toy at a country store on the way. Its flat wood blocks were held together by ribbons and tumbled into a different order depending on how you held the highest block. Jacob’s ladder was “how you climb to heaven,” my mother said, an explanation I accepted without question, as I accepted all matters of faith.
The monks wrote their own music and welcomed visitors to join their services and song. “Can we go?” I asked David. I wanted to pray. I wanted to talk to God as I always had. Maybe there, in a place preserved so perfectly in my childhood memories, I’d be able to.
On My Watch Page 9