Adam B. Schiff
A secondary blast at the Pentagon rocked my building as I prepared to
leave for the Capitol. I walked down East Capitol while people streamed
out of the House Office Buildings and passed me on the street. The
Capitol Hill police were cordoning off the area, sirens wailing in the
background; no one was permitted further entry, and members of Congress
were barred from their own offices. Another hijacked plane was in the air
and one presumed destination was another target in the capital.
The members of Congress, gathering at police headquarters to be
briefed and set up makeshift offices, recalled Pearl Harbor. I thought of
the Battle of Britain and Hitler's indiscriminate bombings of London.
Churchill's words still so powerfully resonant. "He hopes by killing
large numbers of civilians and women and children that he will terrorize
and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know
the spirit of the British nation or the tough fiber of the Londoners ...
who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives."
So true of America. Little do these petty tyrants and murderers know
the spirit of the American people or the tough fiber of the New Yorkers,
our defense workers or the civilians who may have spared further
casualties by taking down the hijackers and their own plane above
Pennsylvania.
Firefighters and police officers by the hundreds rushing into the
collapsing wreckage of the World Trade Center to rescue the victims,
many, God bless them, so many, losing their lives in the process. One
firefighter, injured and lying in the hospital, telling the governor of
New York: "What d'ya expect? We're New Yorkers." God, they make me proud.
American doctors, nurses, search and rescue teams from all over the
country, by car, bus and train, using any means to come to the wounded
and offer their help. Citizens all over the country lining up to donate
blood, so much blood, in lines up to four hours long. Children outside
the federal building in Oklahoma, site of another terrorist attack,
putting their teddy bears in a box to be sent to the children in New York
-- now orphaned. "We just want them to know they will be all right," an
Oklahoma boy says as he drops his bear in the box.
The face of this tyrant is new, and yet not so new. Like Hitler, he
abhors a free society and democratic institutions. He is willing to kill
innocent men, women and children to further his perverse aims; there are
no means too inhuman, no tactic too appalling to further his ends. He
