Xenophon Strategies

September 11 Remembrances: Stranded in Seattle

David A. Fuscus

Editors Note: As our nation commemorates the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on The World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA, our staff will share their memories of that fateful day.  Whether they were in New York, near the Pentagon, at an aviation conference in Seattle, conducting business in London or sitting in high school classes around the country, each of us took time to reflect on the moments of that day which changed the way we live in the United States.

“An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” said the voice on the phone.  “You’d better get up.”

“It’s got to be a general aviation plane,” I told my colleague at Xenophon Strategies back in Washington.  “There just aren’t any flight paths that would take an airliner near the Trade Center. Call me back when you’ve got some details.”  I’d been working in aviation public relations for years, as a staffer in Congress, as the head of communications for the airline’s trade association and as the president of Xenophon Strategies.  So, I knew something about aviation and plane crashes in particular.

A couple of minutes later, the phone rang again.

“You’d better turn on the TV.”

I was in Seattle to give a speech to the American Institute of Aeronautics on plane crashes and the media along with Lisa Stark, the aviation reporter for ABC’s World News Tonight.  It was to be a duel speech, with Lisa representing the media and me giving the corporate side of news coverage following a major airplane accident.  It was scheduled for 1 pm, September 11, 2001.

I turned on the TV and watched reporters talk through the fall of the first tower because it took time to understand what had happened and for the collapse to register in theirs and millions of other disbelieving brains.  And then, the reports started flowing in from the office.  Because Xenophon is a PR firm which handles large crises, we are set up to identify, locate, process and transmit information and breaking news. 

And the reports kept getting worse and worse:

“A plane has hit the second tower.”

“There is a military column moving down the center of K Street.” 

“The Pentagon has been hit by another plane.”

“There are reports of fires burning on the national mall in front of the State Department.”

As the news degenerated, phone calls became more difficult.  I kept calling my wife, trying to get a line through to see if she was OK.  When we finally talked, I learned that she was in cab next to the Pentagon when the third plane hit and she saw the billowing smoke rise after the crash.  As she crossed into Washington, people were running in the streets, some pounding on the windows, wanting to be let into the cab.  But she was OK and on her way to retrieve our baby son from daycare; our three-year old boy had already been collected from pre-school by his Aunt.

I walked downstairs to extend my stay in the hotel and ran into Lisa Stark. She was heading out to the local Seattle ABC affiliate, commenting over her shoulder, “It’s the biggest damn story of my life and I’m stuck in Seattle!”  For the next several days, she did a great job as a key journalist in ABC’s team coverage and her reporting was seen worldwide.

As I settled back into my room to watch developments, the office got through via a satellite phone --- I couldn’t get a line into Washington, but they had no trouble calling me.  Xenophon had sent a team over to the Air Transport Association to help staff our client through the crisis.  The airlines made a decision to respond to the attack as an industry, so ATA became the center of media attention on the airlines and ATA’s work load quickly became crushing.  Our team arrived three hours after the first plane hit and didn’t leave until mid-October.

As the crisis developed and Xenophon began working at the eye of the media storm, being in Seattle became a benefit --- unlike my colleagues and clients dealing directly with the crisis, I had time to focus and write. Over the next several days, I was privileged to develop the airline industry’s media strategy and wrote all of the industry’s statements, op-ed columns, message points and other public communications. 

But the most important thing I wrote was the initial public statement from the airline industry, which began like this:

“Today, September 11, 2001, our nation has been changed forever.  While we don’t yet know the extent of those killed or injured, clearly the losses are massive and those of us who work in the nation’s airlines grieve with the rest of the country for the family members, friends and colleagues lost and injured.

Although the mass murderers behind this attack are yet unknown, they struck to instill fear, to try and change America from a place where one can feel personally secure to a nation where 300 million citizens constantly ask “what if?”. These terrorists chose to use our aircraft as a weapon of war and to murder our employees and passengers along with thousands of other innocents…”

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