Ted Olson Quotes

September the 11th was a huge shock in the United States. It was the first time you had been hit at home in your own territory by terrorist on this scale.

On the morning of September 11th, I was literally about 18 blocks from the World Trade Center. I witnessed in person what a lot of people witnessed in person, but what the world really saw on the television screen, I saw it with my own eyes that morning.

How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have... plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook our nation to the core. Americans were deeply frightened, sad, and angry, and they rallied around a President who, at the time, showed impressive certitude and calm.

We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed - something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States.

Osama bin Laden organized an attack that was carried out against the United States, New York, Pentagon, and the other aircraft, with 19 attackers, 19 guys with box cutters. An attack that probably cost almost nothing.

Like all Americans, I will never forget where I was the morning of the 9/11 attacks.

I was stricken by news and television pictures coming from the United States this morning. It is impossible to fully comprehend the evil that would have conjured up such a cowardly and depraved assault upon thousands of innocent people. There can be no cause or grievance that could ever justify such unspeakable violence. Indeed, such an attack is an assault not only on the targets but an offense against the freedom and rights of all civilized nations.

September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.

I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.

September 11 stands on its own as a terrible tragedy.

I was involved as deputy mayor in New York City on 9/11.

After 9/11, whatever the evidence of intelligence failures, many people still saw that attack as almost unimaginable, so brutal and brazen an assault.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was not alleged to be a leader of the Sept. 11 plot. He was not trained as a pilot. If he was involved, he was one of the 'muscle' hijackers.

The real question was, here we had this information, Bin Laden intends to strike in the United States. We knew they had struck before in 1993 at the World Trade Center in the first bombing of the trade center.

9/11 was basically caused by box cutters, and that changed the world.

And so we were asleep there in San Diego. And our pilot called us. And his brother was on one of the other planes. And when he was leaving the airport, he saw in his rear view mirror that there was an explosion.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

Only the last two planes, I think, had any shot of being intercepted and taken down on 9/11.

The mainstream media showed, for example, no blood and guts resulting from the 9/11 attacks.

As best I can tell there was no advance warning of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was the first significant foreign terrorist activity in the U.S. No tip-offs that it was coming.

Like every American, I will never forget where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001. As a member of Congress from Indiana, that day my duties took me to Capitol Hill and to sights and sounds I will never forget.

I was in Jersey when the whole World Trade Center thing happened and I felt powerless. So, I went to Hawaii and did a surf movie. It's kind of fluffy.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.