We Owe Them More Than Remembrance

By Jenifer A.L. Smith

September 11 began for me with a four-year-old, a favorite book, and an ordinary morning. Twenty-five years later, the question is whether we have forgotten lessons we learned that day—then, it was barriers between institutions. Now it is hollowing out the institutions themselves.

It was a sunny September day. I had a mid-morning meeting scheduled with The Maryland State Police Laboratory in Baltimore. This was a welcome change from my normal duties, managing the FBI Laboratory’s DNA Unit. I normally left the house at 6:00 AM to commute into Washington DC, but that day I spent the morning with my four-year-old son. Knowing I was home a little longer, he brought me his favorite book. So, instead of CNN, I listened to another reading of If You Give a Moose a Muffin. An ordinary family moment; the last normal one I would know for a while.

At 9:05, after the babysitter arrived, I headed toward Baltimore listening to NPR. Within minutes, I heard reports about planes hitting buildings in New York. Then came the unmistakable urgency in reporter Tom Gjelten’s voice from the Pentagon; an explosion was heard in the background. I immediately turned my car around. Two planes in New York, another at the Pentagon. We were under attack, and I needed to get to FBI Headquarters.

My normal route into the city was blocked. Still several blocks from the office I spotted an MPD detective in an unmarked car with lights and siren activated. I showed my badge, and told him I needed to get to the FBI. I walked into my office to find my agents and technicians gathered around a television.

Together, we watched the South Tower collapse.

Civilian employees were sent home; agents remained. For the next several days, I worked as part of the FBI Laboratory’s response, helping organize crime-scene teams and the enormous forensic effort that followed. Eventually, my DNA Unit would help identify victims who had perished at the Pentagon. That meant working with families experiencing unimaginable loss and asking them for biological samples that could help identify their loved ones.

The weeks that followed blur together. What remains vivid is the feeling: failure, guilt, blame. I believed deeply in the FBI and in the people who served there. Yet somehow, we—the royal “we”—had failed our country.

That day changed the course of my career. In its aftermath, I was detailed to the CIA for five years. I had a front-row seat to the enormous effort to tear down institutional barriers and improve the sharing of information across the national-security community. There was a sense of purpose in that effort that is difficult to describe today. We had seen what could happen when information failed to move, when institutions failed to communicate, and when warning sign “dots” were not connected. We believed we could learn from those failures. That faith was rooted in what I had witnessed firsthand: extraordinary men and women putting aside institutional interests to serve something larger than themselves.

Twenty-five years later, I remain profoundly proud of the women and men who serve this country—agents, analysts, scientists, soldiers, diplomats, intelligence officers, law-enforcement professionals, and countless others. But I am also deeply worried.

Patriotism does not require silence. I believe the opposite is true. To love this country is to care enough to ask difficult questions about whether we are protecting it as well as we should. Twenty-five years later, are we truly better prepared? Are our national security agencies being led in a direction that puts the safety and security of the American people first? Perhaps most importantly: Do the people entrusted with directing and leading our national security institutions understand the consequences of their actions? I am afraid I cannot answer those questions with the same certainty I once could.

That frightens me—not because I have lost faith in America, but because I have seen firsthand what happens when the machinery of national security fails.

September 11th taught us that threats do not respect bureaucratic boundaries, political parties, or institutional rivalries. Our adversaries look for weaknesses, divisions, complacency, and confusion. We cannot afford to create those vulnerabilities ourselves.

The detective who picked me up that morning did not ask about my politics. The agents and technicians gathered around that television did not ask one another what party they supported. The scientists identifying the dead did not care about ideology. Families providing DNA samples wanted only answers about the people they loved.

I remain proud to have served. I remain grateful for those who served beside me. And I remain hopeful about the country I love.

But twenty-five years after that beautiful September morning, I know this: We owe those who died more than remembrance. We owe them competent leadership, strong and trusted institutions, trusted alliances, honest intelligence, and a democracy worthy of their sacrifice. We owe the next generation our determination to learn from September 11—and the courage to ask whether we are doing enough to make sure such a failure never happens again.

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