- Former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice said she still carries “deep personal remorse” for failing to recognize the danger in time to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.
- Rice, who served as White House national security adviser on 9/11, admitted that officials in authority did not recognize the nature of the danger in time. “Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough.”
- Rice recalled the first few moments after learning a plane had hit the first tower.
- ”The attack came quite literally out of the blue, an assault on our cities that we have not experienced since the War of 1812. I was at my desk at the white house when my executive assistant, a young Army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. ‘What a strange accident,’ I thought. I called President Bush who was reading to children at an education event in Florida; he too thought it must have just been an accident. But within 17 minutes, a second plane hit the World Trade Center.”
- Rice shared her sympathy for the families of the fallen, stating she will always carry the weight of the country's trauma and their ongoing pain. She praised the military and intelligence community for preventing subsequent attacks, describing the lack of a follow-up assault as a miracle.
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