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Part 7: The complex history of Islamic extremism and Russia’s contribution to the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS

This is part seven of a ten-part series that explains the rise of modern Islamic extremism. From 1951 to 2021, a series of key geopolitical events, many independent of each other, caused the Islamic Revolution, the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS, the creation and collapse of the caliphate, and the reconstitution of ISIS as ISKP. While Western influence and diplomatic blunders are well documented through this period, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are equally culpable. The editors would like to note that a vast majority of the 1.8 billion people who are adherents to some form of Islam are peaceful and reject all forms of religious violence.

Read Part Six: The complex history of Islamic extremism and Russia’s contribution to the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS

Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush become partners in the ‘War Against Terror’

The Rise of Al Qaeda

The first al Qaeda plot to attack the United States was uncovered in November 1990 when the FBI arrested operatives who were planning to blow up skyscrapers and government buildings. It would be an aspiration that Osama bin Laden would maintain for 11 more years.

In 1992, two bombs tore through Aden, Yemen, intending to target United States troops staying at the Gold Mohur and Aden Movenpick Hotels. In the first bombing, the small group of troops had already left for Somalia, and in the second, the bomb went off prematurely.

Then, on February 26, 1993, a truck bomb exploded in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in an attempt to topple the towers. The blast caused extensive damage, killing six and wounding over 1,000. Officially, Al Qaeda didn’t order the attack, but the chief architect, Ramzi Yousef, was trained by the terrorist organization.

Heavy equipment excavating the site of the World Trade Center parking garage bombing – February 1993
Credit – Photographer unknown – public domain

The group involved in the planning and execution was exposed when Mohammad Salameh, who rented the truck used to deliver the bomb, returned to the rental agency in New Jersey trying to get his $400 cash security deposit back.

The Saudi government accused bin Laden of being behind a November 1995 bombing in Riyadh that killed five American and two Indian soldiers and wounded 60. Three years later, two bombings targeting the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 and wounded more than 5,000 people.

The Millennium Plots and 9/11

Each successful attack drew more money and members to Al Qaeda’s ranks. A wave of terror that was planned for the year 2000 New Year celebrations, dubbed the Millennium Attack Plots, was mostly thwarted, partially by luck.

Jordanian officials uncovered a plot to attack four locations during New Year, including the Radisson Hotel in Amman, the Christian church on Mount Nebo, the border crossing between Israel and Jordan, and a holy site on the Jordan River where it is believed profit John the Baptist baptized Jesus of Nazareth. One of the plotters was Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who would go on to be the founder of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

On December 12, 1999, Jordanian security forces arrested 16 people involved with the plot, eventually putting 28 people on trial. However, Al Zarqawi fled to Pakistan before he could be arrested. Twenty-two defendants were found guilty of the plot, including six with Al Qaeda, who were all sentenced to death. Another architect of the plot, Saudi national Abu Zubaydah, was the mastermind behind attacks planned in the United States.

Algerian national Ahmed Ressam traveled from Montreal, Canada, and attempted to enter the United States on a ferry through Port Angeles, Washington. Ressam raised suspicion among customs officials who searched his car and found enough explosives to produce four small bombs, timers, and detonators. He was arrested on December 14, 1999, and told investigators that Zubaydah was orchestrating the bombing of LAX Airport in Los Angeles under the order of bin Laden. Further investigation found that the Space Needle in Seattle, the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, and Ontario Airport in the Los Angeles area were also planned targets.

On the other side of the world, Al Qaeda operatives hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 on December 24, 1999, and crisscrossed the Greater Middle East for a week, stabbing one passenger to death, a German, and wounding 17 others. The Indian government gave in to their demands, releasing convicted Al Qaeda-aligned terrorists Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Sheikh would go on to be one of the chief planners of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Over the next 20 years, Azhar would lead three terror attacks in India, killing hundreds.

On New Year’s Eve in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, 300 members of the terror group Takfir wal-Hijra secured dozens of villages in northern Lebanon, attempting to establish the first Sharia law-based caliphate in the mountainous region. Over 13,000 troops were deployed to quell the uprising with fighting continuing until January 6, 2000. Twenty-five terrorists were killed, and another 55 were captured. Bin Laden was credited with financing Takfir wal-Hijra through shell companies and a bank in Beirut. The surviving fighters who escaped disappeared into the Palestinian refugee camp in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon. The 55 who were captured were sentenced to ten years to life in prison, with all receiving pardons in 2005.

The rift between al Qaeda and those who sought an even stricter interpretation of Shari law may go back as far as the mid-1990s. It is alleged that an offshoot of Takfir wal-Hijra in Sudan plotted to assassinate bin Laden in 1995 due to his liberal views on Sharia law and the formation of a caliphate. Despite the rift, the group led over a dozen terror attacks in Africa in coordination with Al Qaeda, mostly in Sudan.

The last part of the plot was an attack on the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000, while it was refueling at the Yemeni port of Aden. The attack failed because the small boat, loaded with over 400 kilograms of plastic explosives, sank due to the amount of weight in the bow.

Damage to the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole after the October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Aden, Yemen
Credit – Photographer unknown – public domain

Al Qaeda learned from its mistake and, on October 12, attacked the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole while it refueled at Aden. Two small fiberglass boats were used, distributing more than 450 kilograms of C4 plastic explosives, and each only had a single suicide bomber onboard. Both boats struck the Cole, tearing a 40-foot-long gash into the port side and sparking a large fire. Seventeen crew members were killed and 39 wounded, and it took three days for damage control to stabilize the ship. U.S. officials would later find the Sudanese government to be complicit in working with Al Qaeda and seized over $13 billion in assets.

Eleven years after the first al Qaeda plot to destroy American skyscrapers was uncovered, bin Laden would achieve his goal. On September 11, 2001, two hijacked commercial airliners struck both towers of the World Trade Center in New York, collapsing the buildings. A third hijacked aircraft struck the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers tried to regain control. The attacks killed 2,996 and wounded over 6,000. Two decades later, hundreds more would die from illnesses attributed to the 9/11 attacks.

Initially, bin Laden denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but in 2004, as part of a brief manifesto, he wrote, “God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.”

A thirst for revenge fuels Vladimir Putin’s ascendency

When the Red Terror and Soviet Famine ended in 1922, the Soviet Union entered a brief period of reform which ended some of the oppressive Tzarist policies. Vladimir Lenin, who was already in declining health, eased restrictions on the Soviet republics, allowing them to reembrace their original culture, including language, religion, and art. Individuals were permitted to have small businesses within the guidelines of the Soviet government, blending Communism and Socialism.

The economy started to improve, and after decades of repression, deportations, war, famine, revolution, and civil war, the new Soviet society appeared to be finding its feet. All of this came to an end in late 1924 when Joseph Stalin became the Secretary-General, despite Lenin’s warnings. Seventy-five years later, history wouldn’t repeat, but it would rhyme.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly created Russian Federation entered a tumultuous period. Moscow struggled to contain inflation and wild swings of the rouble. The new country would face the 1993 Constitutional Crisis, and the economy would collapse in 1994 and 1998. For the connected and the bold, the underlying chaos was an opportunity for those seeking wealth and the growth of organized crime. However, unlike the turmoil of the Depression and Prohibition Era in the United States, where organized crime bosses fought over the control of bootleg alcohol, gambling, and illegal weapons, the new oligarch class fought for control of the now privatized industrial sectors of Russia—coal, steel, oil and gas, grain, construction, heavy equipment, and technology. Fueled by endemic government corruption, the Yeltsin administration and the now weakened state security services not only ignored the Game of Thrones happening in open view but, for the right price, participated in it. One of the men who grew allies during this period was the now-former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

In 1991, an embittered Putin resigned from the KGB, refusing to work for the newly created Federal Security Agency (AFB). President Yeltsin dissolved the KGB in November 1991 in response to a failed coup d’etat that was led by Soviet hardliners earlier in the year, including the head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov. Yeltsin would go on to sign two more decrees, one creating the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation in January 1992 and the second in December 1993, forming the Federal Counterintelligence Service of the Russian Federation (FSK). Each decree further eroded the legacy power structure created by the KGB.

Putin returned to his native home of St. Petersburg and, using information the KGB had gathered during the Soviet era, blackmailed Mayor Anatoly Sobchak to gain a job in the city government. He started as a reformer in name only, investigating corruption, but in reality, he was Sobchak’s political strongman.

Putin’s career was unremarkable until 1994 when he was named deputy mayor. He and Deputy Vladimir Yakovlev went on to run the city, with Putin building a circle of influence and earning future favors among the influential, wealthy, and the criminal underground. Sobchak’s initial popularity faded from 1995 to 1996 as public services deteriorated, crime increased, and allegations of corruption within the city government grew.

Putin became the local leader of the politically liberal and fiscally conservative Our Home–Russia Political Party in 1995 and ran the reelection campaign for Sobchak. Sobchak lost to his deputy Yakovlev in a close election, putting Putin out of a job. Sobchak would become the focus of a corruption investigation in 1997 and would flee to France.

Using his contacts and network, Putin moved to Moscow in early 1997 and was named the deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department. Less than a year later, he joined President Yeltsin’s staff and quickly maneuvered himself through a number of roles before becoming the leader of the FSK replacement, the 1995 Yeltsin-created Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB), on July 25, 1998.

Putin only led the FSB for 13 months, but he implemented a complete restructuring and dismissed almost all of the leadership, installing former Soviet-era KGB agents loyal to the ideals of Kryuchkov and his vision of restoring Russia to its former glory.

Like Lenin in 1922, Yeltsin was in declining health in 1998. Presidential elections were coming in less than two years, and potential candidates were starting to position themselves and build alliances. Within the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s inner circle started to warn him about Putin’s restructuring of the FSB, his growing influence and connections, and his desire to return to restore Soviet-style state controls. His aspirations were supported by a growing list of oligarchs, who viewed Putin as someone they could control while leveraging his vision of state security to grow and protect their wealth.

On August 9, 1999, Putin was appointed as one of three deputy prime ministers of the Russian Federation and endorsed by Yeltsin as his future successor in the upcoming 2000 elections. Eight days later, the State Duma confirmed Putin as the acting Prime Minister.

In the span of 2 1/2 years, Putin had gone from a failed St. Petersburg deputy mayor to the unelected prime minister of the second most powerful country on the planet. Even before Yeltsin’s endorsement, alarm bells were going off within the corners of the FSB and in the pages of the newly created free press about Putin and his plans.

To help his rise to power, Putin makes a series of deals with Islamic terrorist leaders

In the Sixth Part of this series, Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev and his connections to Pakistan and Afghanistan and his encounters with organizations adjacent to Al Qaeda were lightly touched.

A young Basayev arrived in Azerbaijan in 1992 with an estimated 1,000 Chechen militants to fight in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, leading a call for jihad with Chechen leader Salman Raduyev. Basayev left for the Abkhazia region of Georgia in late 1992, while Raduyev continued to command the Chechen contingent. Reportedly, Basayev ordered the withdrawal from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan in 1993 due to a series of military defeats and a lack of support for the call to jihad.

Chechen leader and terrorist Shamil Basayev – 1995
Credit – Photographer Natalia Medvedeva – public domain

Basayev would fight on the side of the Moscow-backed Abkhazia separatists, and he would go on to lead up to 1,500 volunteer fighters of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (CMPC). Basayev is accused of overseeing the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in the breakaway Abkhazia Republic, the September 27 to October 11, 1993, Sukhumi Massacre, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for the mass executions of captured Georgian soldiers.

This is where Basayev’s history becomes murky. He is believed to have defended Russian President Yeltsin during the failed August 1991 coup d’etat, occupying the barricades of the Russian White House with other Yeltsin supporters. There are many allegations that during the War in Abkhazia, Basayev and up to 200 Chechens within the CMPC received training and arms from the Main Defense Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (GRU). The CMPC would fall apart at the end of the War in Abkhazia, with different factions supporting the Moscow-backed breakaway republic and others aligning with Chechnya and other radical Islamic factions. And despite having a death warrant on his head, Basayev was able to freely travel between Chechnya, Georgia, and the Russian Federation.

Basayev would go on to run for president of Chechnya, coming in second place. He was then appointed deputy prime minister by newly elected president Aslam Maskhadov and actively worked to undermine his government. During a six-month period in which he was symbolically named the acting president of Chechnya, he gutted government oversight, shut down numerous ministries, and turned a blind eye to the theft of natural resources. By the end of 1998, Basayev was a warlord leading a rival faction against Maskhadov and had aligned himself with Afghanistan mujahideen veteran and Al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Khattab, a Saudi national. Al-Khattab had also broken away from President Maskhadov despite being named the Chief of Military Training for the Chechen Armed Forces in 1996.

Basayev met with Putin in March 1999 and agreed to help the Kremlin topple Maskhadov’s Chechen government and support a Russian invasion. Putin would reverse the failure of the First Chechen War with a quick success by taking just the northern third of the republic to the Terek River. Transcripts of phone records would show that Putin and his associates had numerous phone calls with almost a dozen radical Muslims and were using the FSB to orchestrate both kinetic and information warfare plans.

Al-Khattab and Basayev, along with Raduyev, openly called for the occupation of the Russian Federation Republic of Dagestan and the formation of a single state under Islamic Sharia law, declaring the final goal of expelling all Russians from the Caucasus. Putin had reached 20 years into the KGB past to tap the fears of long-dead Soviet leaders that Iranian-style radical Islam would spread to the Caucasus.

Independent of Putin’s plan, in April 1999, the Emir of the Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan (IDD), Bagauddin Magomedov, called for jihad to liberate “Dagestan and the Caucasus from the Russian colonial yoke” and created an unusual and doomed alliance. Magomedov and the IDD were aligned with Wahhabism, while Al-Khattab formed the Islamic Legion, comprised of foreign fighters, with a significant number aligned with the doctrine of Al Qaeda.

In July, Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, the Deputy Prime Minister of National Security for Chechnya, and Deputy Prosecutor-General Adam Torkhashev traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin and warn him of the imminent invasion of Dagestan, which Putin was well aware of and counting on. Shortly after the Moscow meeting, an article in the Russian newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda warned that the Kremlin was preparing a series of false flag attacks in Moscow to undermine President Yeltsin and cited leaked documents.

The War in Dagestan and false flag attacks in Russia bring Putin to power

On August 4, the IDD launched its first attacks, and three days later, the Muslim Legion invaded the Republic of Dagestan. In an ironic twist, Basayev and al-Khattab were not greeted as liberators and instead were met with fierce resistance. Shortly after, President Yeltsin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. On August 19, newly minted acting prime minister Putin set a deadline for Russian forces to crush the rebellion by the end of the month. In the same speech, Putin threatened to start bombing Dagestani rebels “hiding in Chechnya.” In reality, airstrikes on Chechnya started on August 8, but the Kremlin didn’t acknowledge the bombings until August 26. By September 11, major fighting in Dagestan was over, and the Second Chechen War had started. What Basayev didn’t know is he had been double-crossed by Putin, who had cut another deal. He didn’t want a third of Chechnya; he was going to take it all.

Yeltsin and Putin intentionally delayed the response of Russian ground troops, preferring to let Dagestani forces exhaust themselves while prolonging the raids coming from Chechnya. By the end of August, a wave of terror attacks would spread across Russia, with history revealing the FSB executed most of them under the order of Putin.

The first attack was on August 31 at an arcade in the Manezh Square Shopping Mall in Moscow, adjacent to the Kremlin. Three phone calls allegedly from the Liberation Army of Dagestan took credit for the attack. Future investigations would blame the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, an Islamist mujahideen organization co-created by al-Khattab and Basayev.

The next bombing was on September 4 in Buynaksk in Dagestan. The apartment building served as housing for Russian border guards and their families and was destroyed by a car bomb. Sixty-four people were killed, and another 133 were wounded. A second car bomb containing 2,700 kilograms of explosives was found by the Russian Army Hospital and defused.

On September 9, a bomb estimated to weigh 400 kilograms exploded in a Moscow apartment building. The nine-story brezhnevka was destroyed, killing 106 and wounding 249. The next day, Putin called United States President Bill Clinton and told him he was confident the bombing was executed by Chechen terrorists, adding that he believed the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa were not executed by Al Qaeda but by Chechnya.

At 5 a.m. on September 13, the next bomb exploded, destroying an eight-story apartment building, killing 119 and wounding 200. Due to poor planning, the false flag plot started to fall apart.

After the second bombing, Moscow businessman and landlord Achemez Gochiyaev had a horrifying realization. An acquaintance of his who was a former FSB agent had requested to rent the basement areas of four apartment buildings. The two blasts were in his buildings. Believing he was being set up, he contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs, explaining what had happened and warning that bombs were likely in two more buildings. Moscow police searched the basements, finding massive bombs made of RDX.

As the smoke was still rising over the apartment block on Kashira Road, State Duma Deputy Gennadiy Seleznyov announced that there had been a third bombing in Volgodonsk in the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia. There had been no such explosion, but on September 16, a third bomb destroyed a nine-story brezhnevka in Volgodonsk, killing 17 and wounding 69.

On September 22, a man in the Russian city of Ryazan reported seeing two suspicious men carrying sacks into the basement of an apartment building from a car with partially obscured Moscow license plates. Police found 150 kilograms of white powder in three sacks with detonators and timers. Onsite testing identified the contents of the bags as the explosive RDX. The next day, Putin ordered the bombing of the Chechen capital of Grozny in response to the allegedly most recent attempted terrorist attack, declaring “no sympathy for the bandits.”

A quick investigation and telephone records traced the car and two men to a telephone number linked to the FSB office in Ryazan. The Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested three people who identified themselves as FSB agents from Moscow. Putin’s operation was in crisis, as Moscow had declared that the explosives were real to justify the bombing of Grozny. On September 24, the Kremlin declared the bags were filled with sugar, and the entire event was an FSB training exercise that ended in success due to the quick reaction of local authorities.

President Boris Yeltsin naming Vladimir Putin acting President of the Russian Federation – December 31, 1999
Credit – Press office of the Russian Federation – photographer unknown

Despite the obvious mistakes pointing to a government plot, Putin’s popularity soared. On December 31, Yeltsin resigned and named Putin acting President. Riding a wave of popularity due to the response to the so-called terror attacks and the initial success in Dagestan, Putin cruised to victory when Russians went to the polls on March 26, 2000.

Looking into Putin’s soul

The United States held elections in November 2000, and George W. Bush was elected the 43rd President in a contested election. On June 16, 2001, President Bush and President Putin met for the first time in Brdo Pri Kranju, Slovenia. Almost the entire world believed the Cold War was over, and despite the U.S. intelligence reports about Moscow’s ties to Islamic terror and the false flag attacks on Moscow, President Bush took his own path.

“This was a very good meeting. And I look forward to my next meeting with President Putin in July. I very much enjoyed our time together. He’s an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well. Russia and America have the opportunity to accomplish much together; we should seize it. And today, we have begun.”

The Western press asked hard questions after Bush and Putin made their separate remarks. It was a question directed at Putin, which led to a pivotal moment in U.S.-Russian relations.

“A question to both of you, if I may. President Putin, President Bush has said that he’s going to go forward with his missile defense plans basically with or without your blessing. Are you unyielding in your opposition to his missile defense plan? Is there anything you can do to stop it? And to President Bush. Did President Putin ease your concern at all about the spread of nuclear technologies by Russia, and is this a man that Americans can trust?”

Bush directed the question to Putin first, and when the question of trust was addressed, the Russian President said, “Can we trust Russia? I’m not going to answer that. I could ask the very same question.”

There was a brief but awkward pause caused by Putin’s response, with Bush breaking the sudden tension.“I will answer the question. I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue. There was no kind of diplomatic chit-chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue. And that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.”

Russian troops stand over a mass grave in Chechnya – February 2000
Credit – Natalia Medvedeva – Creative Commons 3.0

During their private meeting, Bush and Putin discussed Chechnya, Dagestan, and Russia’s response to Islamic terrorism, among many other topics. Putin was right to refuse to answer the trust question because he wasn’t negotiating honestly. Over a year ago, Putin cut another deal with the Chief Mufti of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation had completed the first phase of its occupation of Chechnya in June 2000, and Putin named Kadyrov the head of the administration of the Chechen Republic.

For Al Qaeda, which was at its apex of power, this was the ultimate betrayal.

Next installment: A second wave of Islamic terror spreads across Russia, and this time, the attacks are real. The Second Chechen War continues for another eight years. Osama bin Laden’s influence fades, and Al Qaeda fractures. The ISIS caliphate rises and falls as Syria becomes the next Russian battleground.

Non-Fiction

I went to Ground Zero

This was written in September of 2005. I have made a point to republish this every 9/11.

I arrived in New York City on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The arrival into Newark was anti-climatic after the relatively brief 4-1/2 hour flight from Seattle. I had departed pouring rain and 44 degrees and arrived in pouring rain and 47 degrees. Had I not a sense of space and time I could have easily been convinced I just flew in a big circle and had returned to where I had started. Everything moved quickly for me and in moments I was off the plane, at the taxi stand and on my way to midtown Manhattan. Traffic was light, and a run through the Holland Tunnel got me to my hotel in little more than thirty minutes.

New York City, if you have never been, is overwhelming even for a repeat visitor. You leave the relative quiet of your taxi to be assaulted by sight and sound and a crush of humanity. Even in the pouring rain on a late Saturday afternoon, 42nd Street was awash with people.

That night the temperature plunged, the wind picked up, and the rain turned to stinging sleet and then blinding slow. Reeling from the time zone difference, I found myself wide away at 4:00 AM staring out from the 27th floor into a sea of purple-yellow haze, the lights of the city reflecting off of the swirling curtain of white falling past my window.

On Sunday, I awoke to the blue sky; the first blue sky I had seen in thirty-seven days, with my Seattle home gripped in a miserably wet winter. After completing work at the Jacob Javitz Convention Center, I braved the icy air once again back to my hotel and to make my way to Ground Zero.

I went to the 42nd Street Station and got onto the E Train, which ends at the World Trade Center Station. The subway station was a welcome relief from the chilling wind above with the sounds of soulful Motown blues being sung on the platform by an old man with an alto voice as smooth as warmed brandy worthy of a jazz club.

It is amazing how events like 9/11 crystallize things in your memory. Most Americans can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard of those awful events. I can remember what I was doing in the days that led up to 9/11.

It was Sunday that I remember vividly. Not an icy Sunday on a New York subway but a warm Sunday in the Cascades along Highway 20 by Lake Ross. I had taken the family out for a weekend camping trip at Diablo Lake. The night before my son and I walked down in the darkness to look up into the night sky and stare at the Milky Way while some owls decided to get into a noisy discussion right over our tent, keeping us up for most of the evening.

We hiked down to Ross Lake and used the phone at the dock to call for a water taxi. Taken across the lake in a spectacular vintage boat we rented a motorboat and headed east and then north up the lake to marvel at the Cascades thrusting up around us. We were the only people we saw that day while on the water, and it was a fantastic weekend trip.

The Subway in New York is an experience in itself. Although much has been made about New York being cleaned up, the smells of humanity hit you from all directions in the dirty cars covered in graffiti. The gentle rocking motion of the subway lulls the passengers to sleep while the homeless curl up in the corners. They pull their jackets over their heads, looking for a shred of privacy from the sea of people around them.

The E Train runs south passing under Tribeca as it makes its way to the Washington Square and ultimately the end of the line at the World Trade Center. As the subway makes successive stops, the number of passengers continues to dwindle until it comes to the Canal Street station. Now there are maybe twenty people on my car and the conversations and laughter suddenly become muted, and as we get closer, the car goes silent. Just the train and dispassionate faces staring out the windows.

I remember the morning of September 11th. I had been working late, and to my wife’s chagrin had ended up sleeping on the downstairs couch. I was up surprisingly early and got online to check my work e-mail. The weather was spectacular in Seattle that day. A warm, cloudless day that felt more like summer than the pending fall that was around the corner. I was finishing reading e-mail and getting ready to wake up my son when the phone rang.

The arrival at the World Trade Center Station is hard to describe. The sign says World Trade Center, but the World Trade Center that was thrust up into the sky has been gone for more than four years now. No one speaks, and everyone shuffles off the train in silence. You immediately notice as you go up the stairs that this area of the subway has been repaired, restored, and then ultimately built anew. A lump forms in your throat, your body gets heavy, and then you are there. It is no longer a clear winter day in New York City; you are suddenly taken back to that moment when you first hear the news, and it is September again.

While the west coast was waking up, the east coast was already reeling from the events unfolding before them. I answer the phone, troubled on who would be calling me at 7:00 AM. There is a madwoman on the phone. She is yelling and crying, telling me the country is under attack. They’ve bombed the World Trade Center, and they’ve attacked New York City. They’ve struck the Pentagon. She is frantic, barely understandable, and it is surreal. “Who are you,” I ask?

“It’s Ruth,” she wails, “turn on your TV.”

“OK, OK, give me a moment,” I tell my mother-in-law still sleepy and in an indifferent tone, my mind not comprehending what she is telling me.

I go into our den and turn on the various components so I can get the TV on. I change the channel to MSNBC just in time to see the first tower come down. I’m stunned. I flip to CNN, and the same surreal scene is playing out there too. I change to Fox News to find the same horror unfolding before my eyes. ABC, NBC, CBS, the local Fox affiliate, and then back to MSNBC, this is on every channel.

“David? David? Are you still there?”

I have no idea how long I’ve stood there in stunned silence with Ruth still on the phone.

“Yes, I’m still here. Who, who is doing this,” I asked her.

“They think its terrorists; they’re saying there may be more planes or other attacks, they just don’t know.”

I just want to get off the phone and tell my wife what is going on. I cannot think of many times in my life where I have ever felt so vulnerable and exposed. I get off of the phone, and I race up the stairs.

As you walk to the fence that stands at the edge of Ground Zero, you look down into an antiseptic hole in the ground. You are filled with profound emotions that before there were two spires of almost a quarter-mile of steel, glass, and concrete reaching up to the sky. You can’t help but notice as you survey the scene in front of you the gaping jagged hole on the opposite side where the old subway station or parking garages use to be. It hits me that people died where I am standing now. Desperate people who woke up to their ordinary day and their bright morning now finding themselves in an extraordinary situation faced with the impossible decision of whether to burn or leap to their death.

As you turn to your right again, you go up a sweeping stairwell and then you are out on the street. Standing at the tip of Manhattan Island, the air suddenly feels ten degrees cooler. A massive American flag waves in the breeze in front of you and ground zero is before you. Saint Paul’s Chapel is across the street, and you are immediately amazed when you realize just how close this chapel is to Ground Zero. The chapel sustained no damage, and only one statue had a single finger broken off. A quarter-mile of manmade pinnacle came down across the street, and no photo and no map does this miracle justice.

I fly across my kitchen and down the hall to our bedroom. My wife is still asleep as I throw the door open, telling her she needs to wake up. I tell her the country is under attack, the World Trade Center has collapsed, and the Pentagon has been hit. Suddenly I’m the madman trying to explain the unexplainable. I turn on the TV in the living room, and now she stands in stunned silence.

I hear a giggle from across the hall. It is my daughter, and she is up, standing at the edge of her crib, waiting for someone to come get her. I open up her door, and she dances with delight and flashes a bright smile. It is too much, and I envy her innocence. I break down and cry, “my God, how bad could this get,” I think to myself and hold my daughter and soak her in.

The overwhelming sights and sounds of New York City are numbed at Ground Zero. You hear only low voices, couples might lightly laugh, but you soon realize the significance is not what you hear, but what you don’t hear. You don’t hear a single car horn, and as you approach the fence that surrounds this hallowed ground, you barely hear a breath, only the sound of the wind, the flag slapping the pole in the breeze and the occasional bus that passes by.

The walls of handmade signs seeking out lost loved ones are long gone. Yet scattered along the walls emblazoned with the words, “Post No Bills,” you find the occasional photo or poem dedicated to a lost loved one or to New York City itself, and your heart aches. As you look from the south side you can see the old E Train tunnel, jutting out of the concrete bulkhead and going nowhere, icy tentacles hang from the end of it reaching down seeking out what is no longer there. The city still feeling the pain of this open wound, like an amputee writhing from the phantom pain of a limb no longer there.

It’s Tuesday again, September 11th in Seattle. My wife and I wrestle with what to do with our son. Should we send him to school? Will he be safe? Will they have school? Should we tell him? We decide that life has to go on, and for me, my personal war on terror begins. I will not live in fear, and I will send my son to school, my daughter to daycare, and I will go to work. It is all moot. At school, the TV is set to the events happening in New York and Washington D.C. as it is at work in our cafeteria. Management closes the office at two in the afternoon, and I go home on the empty highway.

On the south side of Ground Zero on Liberty Street, you will find New York City Fire Department Ten House. It was from here the first men rushed across the plaza and up the North Tower to what at the time they thought was a horrible aircraft accident. As the men of Ten House moved through the lobby, they found horribly burned victims trying to make their way out. The jet fuel from American Airlines flight 11 raining down the elevator shafts and igniting in the lobby. In less than two hours, the men of Ten House would be gone, along with over 300 of their fellow firefighters, and more than 2,200 people trapped in the two towers. The Bankers Trust Tower is still covered in scaffolding and loosely wrapped, fatally damaged from flying debris. I stand on my toes to look into the window and there on the west wall is a small memorial to the heroes of Ten House. New fire trucks fill the bays waiting for another call for help.

My heart is heavy, and I’m drained. I would have thought after four years that I would not have had this profound feeling weighing me down. The shadows have grown long as the sun is setting, blocked by the New York City skyline and it has become colder. Or maybe the temperature hasn’t changed, and the chill I feel is the pain of the city, of a nation, of this author.

I went to Ground Zero, not knowing what I would find. What I left with was a realization that 9/11 is the defining event of my generation and that this hole on the New York skyline may be filled, but the pain will always be there. Like the memories will always be there for the rest of my days. The memory of blue skies, checking e-mail, a frantic phone call, stunned silence before absolute horror and melting in my daughter’s arms.