On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, serving as communications director for U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. My office was on the sixth floor of the Hart Building on Capitol Hill. It was a beautiful, sunny early fall morning and I had walked to work from my apartment, three blocks away. I got in early because my boss was going to be interviewed by Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” and I needed to finish a memo outlining the questions Wallace would ask. I was sitting at my computer when a fellow staffer walked in and said he needed to show me something on the television. I told him I was too busy, but he insisted. We walked into a common area where a big old tube-type television was balanced on top of a filing cabinet. The picture showed smoke billowing from one of the towers of the World Trade Center. As we watched, a plane hit the second tower. We went down a floor and walked into Senator Stevens’s office. He was there, along with a number of staff members. His TV was also on and we ...