This is it, I thought. Now I’ll know the answer. Andrea had tried to warn me in a recent session not to place so much emphasis on the Commission’s findings.
“They could come out either way,” she had said. Her caution did no good. The report’s possible conclusions hung over me like a dagger, as their official word about the methods and strategy of the 9/11 hijackers would publicly define my guilt or innocence, whatever the reality. I had nodded as if I agreed with her, although I didn’t.
In a few minutes I will know whether I’m to blame, I thought as the two Commission chairmen took their places behind the press lectern.
“Will you run over to Barnes and Noble and get us a couple copies of the actual report when this is over?” Shelly asked, as casually as if she were asking me to pick up a copy of the latest State House report on transportation funding. Thousands of copies of the report had been shipped to bookstores across the country with strict orders to keep them sealed in boxes until the official release this morning.
“Sure,” I answered, endeavoring to mimic her professional demeanor.
As the press conference concluded, there was still no mention of Logan Airport’s role. I still don’t know, I thought, fearful and frustrated as I hurried to the bookstore and back to the Herald clutching two copies of the softcover book.
I handed Shelly her copy and sat at my desk, opening mine to chapter 1, entitled “We Have Some Planes.” While factual, the report had been purposely written like a chilling nonfiction account of a horrible crime to make it more readable. I swallowed the same feeling of nausea I’d had hearing some of those same details in my Logan office three years before. Still, as I read through to the end of the chapter and the details of the hijackings, I saw no mention of security flaws at Logan.
I suddenly remembered one of the Commission’s chairmen commenting on the thoroughness of the Commission’s investigation during the press conference. “There are more than seventeen hundred footnotes,” he’d said.
I quickly flipped through the report. The footnotes were organized by chapter.
“Oh my God,” I said under my breath, my heart pounding.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading: “Notes to Chapter One. Though Logan was selected for two of the hijackings (as were both American and United Airlines) we found no evidence that the terrorists targeted particular airports or airlines. Nothing stands out about any of them with respect to the only security layer that was relevant to the actual hijackings: checkpoint screening.”
Oh my God, they did it. Tears ran down my cheeks.
The 9/11 Commission didn’t have to make a special point about its conclusion on Logan security to detail the movements of the terrorists, but it did. I thought back to my interview. “Your job is to get to the truth and be objective,” I’d said. “I am hopeful that your work will lift the burden off those of us who were at Massport.” That they did so in the very first one of seventeen hundred footnotes was likely simply the result of following the chapter-by-chapter format, but its placement seemed like an exclamation point on the initial flood of relief that coursed through me.
I read and reread the conclusion of the footnote: “They simply booked heavily fueled east to west transcontinental flights of the large Boeing aircraft they trained to fly that were scheduled to take off at nearly the same time.”
“So, you’ve finally been exonerated, eh?” assistant Herald city editor Jose Martinez quipped as I made my way to the copy machine at the front of the newsroom.
“Exonerated.” The word, the act I’d longed for and never thought I’d hear had finally been uttered. I had a preplanned lunch that afternoon scheduled with former governor Paul Cellucci, and I could see the relief on his face when I told him the news. I knew he worried about me, and I wanted to answer his relief with my own. But I couldn’t. I didn’t feel anything. I was numb. The exoneration offered in the footnote triggered an immediate dissociative response. I didn’t understand why until later that evening when I called David on the way home. He, too, had been relieved, almost elated, when I called him earlier in the day and read the footnote. Now, he repeated how happy he was, and it was like he pulled a pin out of the grenade of my explosive rage.
“Why?” I screamed into the phone. “Why did I have to go through this? Why did I have to get blamed?
“It’s not fair,” I screamed louder, sobbing. “It’s not fair.” I don’t remember what David said in response; I think he just let me scream and cry until I was depleted. Empty. And yes, relieved the Commission came out the way it did. Relieved, yet broken, utterly, still.
August 6, 2004—Boston Herald, the publisher’s dining room
I slowly pushed open the door. The editorial-board meeting wasn’t set to start for another fifteen minutes, but I knew the two people we would interview were already there.
“Ken, I don’t have to attend the meeting, I understand,” I’d said a few days earlier to the Herald’s editor, Ken Chandler, when I’d learned two members of the 9/11 Commission were scheduled to brief reporters and editors on their findings.
“Why wouldn’t you attend?” he asked, his British accent conveying a mix of the skepticism, humor, and thoughtfulness that I’d come to know during his tenure at the helm of the paper.
“It might not be appropriate, given my role at Logan,” I answered.
“Well, you probably know more about it than anyone else, so I think you should be there.”
Fred Fielding and Jamie Gorelick were seated at the table and looked expectantly at me, perhaps assuming I was there to simply welcome them or offer water or coffee.
“Hi, I’m Ginny Buckingham.” I could tell my name didn’t trigger any recognition. “I wanted to come in and introduce myself before the meeting,” I began.
Now they looked a little puzzled.
“I used to run Logan Airport,” I said. “I just want to thank you for your painstaking investigation. It means a lot to me and to the people I worked with at the airport.” I didn’t reference the first footnote, but I thought from her softening expression that Gorelick understood.
As the interview was set to begin, several reporters, the publisher Pat Purcell, Ken, Shelly, and other senior editors took their places around the table. A photographer clicked away as one reporter posed this question: “So why was Logan chosen?” I looked quickly from the reporter to the two commissioners, and then down at my notebook. It was the right question to ask, no matter my presence in the room.
“We found no evidence that Logan was chosen for anything but logistical convenience.”
I kept my head bowed so no one saw the tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
Someone else asked about early reports that additional planes had been targeted.
“Part of our job was to dispel myths,” Fielding said. Gorelick caught my eye and smiled.
Myths. Surely, I had held on, as tightly as my most vocal critics, to the myth that had I been smarter, older, more experienced, somehow I could have prevented the hijackings. Would I be able to let the myth go now? Was this official recognition going to be enough to help me move on at last?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The Little Chapel That Stood”
August 2004—Lower Manhattan
Seated in the back of the cab, I pressed the button to lower the window for some fresh air. With my right hand, I felt around in my purse. I was reassured when my hand closed around the statue of Ganesh, the glass cool to the touch, my finger stroking the outline of the elephant-god.
The cab pulled to a stop.
“Is this where you want to get out?” the driver asked.
“Yes,” I answered, handing him the fare.
A massive metal fence at least ten feet high surrounded the site on the opposite side of the street.
I waved off a hawker trying to sell World Trade Center memorabilia. I crossed the stree
t and moved toward the fence but had to pause while a group of tourists posed for a picture in front of bouquets of flowers that had been laid on the sidewalk and stuffed into the holes of the fence’s metal grid.
What are they doing? This isn’t some tourist attraction, I thought, with a flash of anger. But I quickly reconsidered. People should come here. Take pictures. Remember.
I finally stepped forward. I approached the fence, which was covered in most places with some kind of matting, impeding a clear view. I found an opening and pressed my face against the cold metal.
A void the size of a small canyon spread out beneath me. It was crawling with construction machinery. Far across the void, I could see a battered staircase, the “survivor’s staircase” that had been used by some who had escaped the towers to reach the street level from the World Trade Center plaza.
The void was mirrored in my body. In my head. I pictured the terrified people streaming down the stairs. I saw the clouds of dust, the darkness, the fire. My eyes widened. The void. A mirror image of what I had become.
It was so noisy from the work of the backhoes and cranes that I put my hands over my ears. There had been no resolution among New York leaders and the owners of the site about what would go here, so the activity still involved just cleaning, clearing.
After a while, I walked to the left, along the fence. I wanted to find Ten House, the first station that responded on 9/11. Six of its men had been killed. That must be it, I thought as I neared the end of the fence line, passing what appeared to be a spontaneous memorial to the first responders, police and fire badges from all over the country posted on a wall.
By a small side door was a brass rendering of the six who died that day. I considered knocking but couldn’t bring myself to lift my hand. Seeing the faces of the men who died and reading their names jarred me out of the shock of finally seeing Ground Zero. Weeping openly, I walked around the corner. There was a large glass window facing the street. I could see a couple of firefighters standing there.
“Thank you,” I mouthed when they noticed me. “Thank you.”
One of them gestured toward the side door. When he opened it, I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. He seemed to understand.
“Is this the first time you’ve been here?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Where are you from?”
“Boston,” I choked out in answer, nearly sobbing now.
“Well, thank you for coming,” he said, reaching for my hand.
“Thank you, thank you so much for what you did,” I said and squeezed his hand as he turned to go.
I paused by the outdoor chessboards that dotted a nearby park. Old and young, men and women, and a handful of children were at the tables, intent on their games, seemingly paying no mind to the enormity of what happened across the street. Similarly, a steady crowd of shoppers streamed in and out of the busy clothing store nearby, their arms laden with bags.
I was puzzled by the nonchalance of the people going about their daily routines around Ground Zero. What is their secret? I wanted to know. How can they live their lives beside such horror and not have it consume them?
I walked another block to Fulton Street. I saw the wrought iron fence before I saw the building I sought—“The Little Chapel That Stood.” I knew St. Paul’s was a historic church, once attended by George Washington, but I was there to try to feel another part of the 9/11 story.
I was there to try to feel.
Despite its proximity to the Twin Towers, the chapel had survived completely intact, even while gray ash blanketed its graveyard that day like a freakish fall snow.
The black wrought iron fence was empty now. But I walked alongside it and tried to envision it as it was right after the attacks. Covered with pictures, paper, homemade posters of the missing. And on the spikes, the shoes and boots of the firefighters who had rushed to the scene, hurriedly exchanging their footwear for protective gear, thinking they’d claim their civilian shoes later.
A man was selling cold waters at the edge of the stone steps that led to the door. I took one gratefully and drank nearly all of it down at once.
St. Paul’s had become a refuge in the days and weeks after the attacks for rescue workers and volunteers, who gathered there for hot food or coffee. At one point, the historic pews held podiatrists instead of penitents to treat the aching feet of first responders.
I paused inside the door. The chapel was slightly darkened and hushed like I would expect a church to be. Immediately to my left was a folding table holding the first of a series of displays from the disaster’s aftermath. Among the memorial cards and snapshots, I spied a piece of lined loose-leaf paper like I had used in grade school. The image on it looked familiar. I leaned forward for a closer look.
It’s Marianne, I thought, and breathed in, stunned. Someone had written on the paper “United 175. Always Remember.” It was underlined in thick black marker.
Like seeing a friend in a room full of strangers, the picture of Anne’s daughter at first surprised me but then put me at ease. I looked over at the center of the chapel. Large banners hung from the upper balconies. They had been sent from all over the country in a show of support, made by a church, a Boy Scout troop, one, seemingly, from a whole town. “Our prayers are with you” was written on one. “Thank you” on another.
I slowly walked from one display to the next. They ringed the entire chapel, each bearing the small remembrances left by the loved ones of the lost. It was unbearably sad, but I couldn’t stop feeling a strange but persistent feeling of companionship.
I reached the last display. Next to it was a small gift area. I purchased a video made about the volunteer effort and, impulsively, reached for an illustrated children’s book about the chapel’s role in the 9/11 response.
Maybe I’ll read it to Jack and Maddy someday, I thought.
“Did you see the place to leave a note?” the volunteer manning the register asked. I followed her pointing finger and walked to a small room at the back of the chapel. There, set on an easel, was a thick pad of paper, like that used in a corporate meeting room to record participants’ ideas. It reminded me of the blank white wall of paper set up on the Boston College library plaza on the first anniversary of 9/11. Like I did that day, I pressed the marker against the white paper. I wrote the same thing I did then. “Make meaning. Find Joy. For Jack, Maddy, and Marianne.”
I hesitated for a few seconds.
Do I deserve it?
At first tentatively, and then more firmly, I pressed the marker to the paper.
Make meaning. Find joy. For Jack, Maddy, and Marianne.
“And me,” I added.
And me.
I pushed open the heavy door to the outside and breathed in the sharp New York air. I was wrong, all this time, I thought. I was never alone at all.
Later that same evening—Upper East Side, Manhattan
The party on the rooftop deck with a view of the East River was well underway when I came to the top of the spiral staircase. I surveyed the scene, knowing almost every person I saw from past campaigns. It was a beautiful evening, and I accepted a glass of chardonnay.
The official reason I was in New York was to cover the Republican National Convention for the Herald. My old boss, former governor Bill Weld, had moved to Manhattan and was throwing this party, ostensibly in my honor, but really just as a good excuse to gather his former staff and operatives together.
I moved from group to group, chatting about the convention, and the latest political news of the day.
I didn’t tell anyone where I’d been that day. The alcohol was doing its job of clothing the sharp emotions in a gauzy haze. It was making me the Ginny Buckingham they had always known. Smart. Politically insightful. Successful. And this: the Ginny Buckingham who had moved on from 9/11.
The next day—A Manhattan video produ
ction studio
“Hey darlin’, how ya doin’?”
Stuart Stevens greeted me with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. A Mississippi native, Stuart had produced the ads for all the Massachusetts campaigns I’d worked on and now was on President George W. Bush’s reelection team. At the party the night before he’d invited me to come to the studio where they were editing the convention video that would introduce Bush before he addressed the delegates.
I settled on a stool behind Stuart and other members of the video team.
“Recognize that voice?” Stuart asked.
I listened closely.
“It’s Fred Thompson,” Stuart said, relating how easy it was to work with the actor turned US senator who was narrating the video.
“Watch this. Have you heard Ashley’s story?”
I shook my head no as a picture of a young girl, maybe twelve years old, appeared on the screen. Her face was burrowed into the crook of President Bush’s arm, his chin resting on her hair. Compassion and concern were etched in the lines of his face as he held her tight.
Ashley Faulkner’s mother, Wendy, was killed on 9/11. The president was making a campaign stop in 2004 in Ohio where the Faulkners lived. Ashley went to see him, as she and her mom had done four years before. As Bush greeted the gathered crowd, a friend of the Faulkners told him, “This young lady lost her mother in the World Trade Center.” The president turned to Ashley. “I know that’s hard. Are you all right?” And he took her in his arms.
“He’s the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe, that I’m okay,” Ashley later said.
Stuart was busy telling the technician where to cut the video and mix in sound. He didn’t notice how quiet I’d become.
It reached me. That’s the only way I could describe what happened when I saw the picture of President Bush holding Ashley Faulkner. It reached the self who was pushed behind the wall of dissociation the moment I heard the words “Two planes are off the radar.” It reached the person shattered by being sued for wrongful death, the person who hadn’t “moved on” from 9/11 and never would. It reached the person desperately seeking exoneration, forgiveness, and someone to “keep me safe” from the trauma of being blamed. It reached me and left me aching at the realization I might never find those things. It would be many more years after I first watched that video before I understood its ultimate lesson was finding this: the closing scenes show the president on the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium, readying to throw the first pitch in a World Series game, but more, delivering a message of strength to the wounded city. Fred Thompson’s melodic voice intoned, “No matter what, you keep pitching. No matter what, you go to the game. You go to the mound. You find the plate. And you throw. And you become who you are.”
On My Watch Page 19