As we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11, the members of the Council on National Security and Immigration provide a unique perspective of that day as it would go on to change our nation’s history forever.

As we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11, the members of the Council on National Security and Immigration, a group of national security professionals, provide a unique perspective of that day as it would go on to change our nation’s history forever. Many of them joined the Department of Homeland Security and related offices in the early days of the agency. They shaped policies and programs to ensure what happened 25 years ago never happens again.

Please read below for a series of reflections --- about the day, on what came after, and what work must still be done.

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“C. Stewart Verdery, Jr, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“25 years is an eternity. Among other things that didn’t exist 25 years ago include YouTube, the iPhone, Brexit, and Carlos Alcaraz. But in thinking about the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago and in some ways feels like yesterday.  However, it is worth remembering if for no other reason than trying to recapture the brief period of national unity that has evaporated steadily in the decades since.

My professional life has been shaped heavily by the events of 9/11 and the national responses to the attacks. In 2001, I was the General Counsel to Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles after a previous stint handling terrorism and crime policy for the Senate Judiciary Committee and its chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The next 90 days were a whirlwind of activity - passing emergency funding for New York City, setting up a victims fund, creating a new airline insurance program, passing the Patriot Act, and enacting a visa and immigration security bill.  There were certainly partisan tussles around some of these laws and programs, but Members of Congress aimed for consensus, not for confrontation.

Several years later, after the creation of the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I was honored to be nominated by President Bush to serve as the first Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security. The next two years were a roller-coaster for the early plank-holders of the Department – setting up new agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), negotiating international agreements with steady partners like Canada and the UK, and explaining our progress and priorities to Congress. But what I remember most about those two years was the dedication to the mission throughout the new department and the broader executive branch.

So, as we commemorate 25 years since the horrors and heroism of 9/11, I urge all Americans and particularly those involved in the political debates in DC to remember how the country responded to that terrible day. Tell your children and their children to read about the Man in the Red Bandana, remember the firefighters charging up stairwells and listen to the President’s bullhorn speech amid the rubble. Have them experience the movie Flight 93, watch President Bush throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, and relive Paul Simon performing “The Sound of Silence” on the 10th anniversary in 2011. “

Read more from Stewart here

Scott Boylan, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“That morning, I was working at DOJ. I had an early meeting in a windowless, tv-less, phone-less room. 

When I exited the room, we were being evacuated.  I called my wife and all the lines were busy.  I walked to her office and eventually joined her and colleagues at lunch.  The streets were completely gridlocked - so we thought we would wait it out before trying to go home.

The lunch was very somber.  The daughter of one of my wife’s colleagues worked on the 84th Floor of the first tower.  He had not heard from her and suspected the worse. Then his phone rang and it was his daughter.  She had stopped for a bagel and saw the first plane hit when she was coming out.  She went straight back home.  Many Americans were murdered that day, but I like to remember that one cherished child survived.

9/11 changed my career significantly. Previously, I focused on Russian organized crime at DOJ. but the next day we were working on national security legislation.  I left DOJ for national security roles at Treasury and then Homeland.  My work in the private sector today is still focused on national security.

While the attacks inflicted profound tragedy and lasting pain, they ultimately had the opposite effect of the terrorists’ intent by bringing us together, both here in the U.S. and abroad. In our current state of partisanship and international conflict—even with long term allies—it seems like a time far, far removed, yet remains an inspiring example of growth and unity in the face of adversity.”

Theresa Cardinal Brown, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“On 9/11/2001 I was working across from the White House at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the Director of Immigration Policy when we saw the smoke rising over the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from the Pentagon and saw the footage from the Twin Towers on the news. Three days earlier, we had watched our president testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee alongside the presidents of the AFL-CIO and the National Council of La Raza in support of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, But that morning, we knew that the dreams of immigration reform were gone for now.

My career took an immediate turn after that day, shifting from working on employment-based immigration issues to considering how to protect our borders while keeping trade and travel moving. By 2005, I decided to join the government to offer my immigration expertise to the still Department of Homeland Security as they were standing up a newly unified border agency at US Customs and Border Protection. Over the next six and a half years, under the second and third Secretaries of Homeland Security, I worked for two presidents on a multitude of national security issues, but I never lost sight of the immigration space.

In the twenty-five years since 9/11, what we've done best is build a security system that lets us know far more about who is coming before they arrive -- layered vetting, information sharing across agencies, and biometric screening that, at its best, keeps the country safe without shutting the door on the travelers, students, workers, and families who make it stronger. That we can do both at once, rather than trading one for the other, is the hard-won lesson of the last quarter century.

What remains undone is the other half of that bargain. We stood up an enormous security and enforcement apparatus but never modernized the legal immigration system underneath it -- the visa categories, the numerical limits, the adjudication capacity. Until we finish that work, we will keep asking the security system to compensate for a legal system that no longer matches the country's needs. Twenty-five years on, that is the task still in front of us."

Paul Rosenzweig, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“The world changed on 9/11. I just didn’t realize it right away.

Some of the impacts immediately made an impression. When the planes hit, I was at a court hearing on the George Washington University campus. The entire city shut down – traffic was at a standstill and the Metros were closed.

I had to walk the two miles home from GWU to my house on Capitol Hill. Along the way I dodged exclusion zones – police lines were up around the White House and the Capitol and also around Union Station and the Federal courts on Pennsylvania Avenue. Getting home was like threading a needle.

But still, I didn’t quite process what had happened. 

My wife was at a conference in Brazil and I had plans to join her for vacation that Thursday. When we finally spoke on the phone that Tuesday afternoon, I reassured her that I would be coming to Brazil as planned.

Ha! The flights didn’t resume. That Saturday, she finally got a Delta rescue flight back to Atlanta and then an onward flight to BWI on Sunday (Reagan was still closed) where I picked her up.

The world changed – but it took a while to sink in.”

Thomas Warrick, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“The 9/11 attack on the United States drove one of the most significant overhauls of the Executive Branch since the 1950s. The 9/11 Commission’s recommendations were among the most thoroughly developed and well-thought-out of any major investigative effort in the past century. 

However, one major recommendation still needs to be implemented: streamlining Congressional oversight of the homeland security enterprise. Our nation’s military defense is stronger because authorization authority over our military is consolidated into a single committee in each house of Congress. Our nation’s defense against non-military threats is weakened because responsibility for DHS and its components are divided among more than 120 committees and subcommittees.

Divided Congressional oversight makes immigration reform harder than it already is. It also prompts executive branch leaders of both parties to make changes unilaterally, without Congressional or sometimes even popular support.

Everyone understands powerful committee chairs are reluctant to give up jurisdiction. The best hope is at the start of a new Congress, and it will take a strong president to impress on Congressional leaders that consolidating authorization authority over DHS and the homeland security enterprise is essential for the country’s security.”

Ed Fluhr, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“One of the positive outcomes of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was a sense of unity of purpose among the career federal workforce.  While petty bureaucratic squabbles were not completely eliminated, they were muted for the first ten years after the attacks.  There was a very real sense of teamwork and collaboration, not only within the newly formed U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but across the entire federal government.  How do we get that back?

From my position as a policy analyst at DHS, as time went on, I could see the organizational pride and petty bureaucracy begin to creep back into initiatives that required departmental or interagency collaboration.  Collaboration is still better than before 9/11, but not as good as it used to be; not as good as it needs to be.  Interagency collaboration still exists in policy papers.  Renewed commitment by leadership and staff is needed fully realize frictionless interagency collaboration.  Improved interagency collaboration is a critical, yet underappreciated, legacy of 9/11.”

Margaret Stock, retired U.S. Army

"On September 11, 2001, I was teaching Constitutional and Military Law and National Security Law in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York.  I was in the classroom teaching when the planes hit the World Trade Center.  We had televisions in the classrooms and word quickly spread to turn them on.  At first we assumed like many people that it was a horrible accident, but when the second plane hit the South tower, we knew the planes had been deliberately aimed.  Then the Pentagon was hit and we started seeing scenes on TV of the damage to the Army G1 side of the Pentagon, where people we knew were trapped (some of them West Point graduates).

West Point sits on high hills overlooking the Hudson River so we could see the towers burning from the heights when we looked down the river.  A lot of us wanted to head to lower Manhattan to help out (at first people thought there would be a need to donate blood, etc.) but we were ordered not to leave the post unless we were specifically authorized and given orders not to try to travel to Manhattan on our own.  West Point was put on the highest level of Force Protection, Delta.

One of my colleagues, Patrick J. Murphy, wrote a book called "Taking the Hill." It has a chapter about that day. Here's a quote from the chapter:

"As the hours passed, I began to accept that I couldn't assist on the ground right away, and decided to be as productive as I could at West Point. Stopping by the office of a colleague, Major Margaret Stock, whose expertise was terrorism, I borrowed a book on al Qaeda, which I stayed up all night reading."

And yes, that was me. But my greater expertise was immigration and citizenship law, and after 9/11, the need for immigration lawyers who were also knowledgeable about national security law was great.

Ironically, Patrick Murphy's book goes on to tell the stories of deployed military naturalization applicants in Iraq in 2003 who were unable to get their US citizenship timely because of slow processing and inefficiencies at USCIS.  "Talent was being kept from rising through the ranks as a result of bureaucratic foot-dragging."  He mentions that US Senator Hillary Clinton was one of only two US Senators (the other being USMA grad Jack Reed) to leave the Green Zone to visit forward-deployed green card holders, one of whom, Solomon Bangayan, she tried to assist by contacting USCIS on his behalf to try to get them to process his N400. Tragically, Bangayan was killed by an IED before he could take the oath of naturalization. "Solomon died a hero. But he didn't want to be a hero—he wanted to be a U.S. citizen.  Yet, despite our best efforts, his case was still being processed at the time of his death."

Tim Quinn, former U.S. Customs and Border Protection

“From the windows of our offices on Vermont Avenue, my DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) colleagues and I watched people running from the area near the White House. Smoke from the Pentagon was visible in the distance. Jets screamed overhead as a TV journalist, reporting from the White House lawn, confirmed that the aircraft was “friendly.”

Within hours of the tragedy, COPS provided millions of dollars in emergency assistance to New York City. It was perhaps our office’s finest hour. Over the next several months we transformed our grant programs to support state and local law enforcement’s homeland security needs while maintaining our commitment to community policing.

We fervently believed that public trust in law enforcement at all levels was a bulwark against terrorism. Anything we do that weakens that trust makes the terrorist’s job easier and dishonors those killed on 9/11.

I was humbled to represent the COPS Office at the memorial service for NYPD Officer John William Perry who died trying to save others. On this 25th anniversary of that awful day, I will be thinking about Officer Perry and all of the heroes lost on that September morning.”

Brian Roehrkasse, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Commerce

“I remember that morning vividly. As a young Bush Administration appointee, I walked into the Department of Transportation on a bright September morning in Washington. No one imagined what was coming. I didn't know I wouldn't be home for three days. I watched breaking news of a plane hitting the first tower and, like many, thought it was a tragic accident. Minutes later, I watched with staffers as the second plane hit live. Horror set in as we realized this was intentional. Everything turned frantic. 

Someone piped the X-Files theme into the FAA bridge call with reporters. Reporters called about other hijacked flights. We were under attack, and the fear of what we didn't know weighed heavily.

September 11, 2001 changed everything and it defined my career journey. It led to the White House Office of Homeland Security, then to serving as the spokesman and founding member of the Department of Homeland Security. Later at Justice, we were consumed with fighting the global war on terror, reforming intelligence sharing, and preventing another attack.

 It's why I later joined an aerospace and defense company that built systems to keep our military safe on the front lines. I'm most thankful to have served alongside dedicated professionals across government and the private sector who responded and mobilized to prevent another attack. Americans have been spared terrorism in our homeland since thanks to them.”

Joe Whitley, former Department of Homeland Security

"In September 2001, I was a partner with Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia. On September 10, I flew to Raleigh, rented a car, and drove to Jacksonville, North Carolina, home of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. I was there to represent a former Marine in a court-martial proceeding where my client was scheduled to testify the following morning.

Before dawn on September 11, however, I received devastating personal news: my father, who had served as President and founder of Columbus State University, had passed away after a long battle with health complications.

A few hours later, my client and I arrived at the gates of Camp Lejeune. The atmosphere was calm and routine. Security was relaxed, and we were waved onto the base without incident.Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves waiting outside the courtroom. Televisions had been placed in the witness area to help pass the time. Instead of morning programming, however, the screens carried images that would be carved forever into our national memory.

Like millions of Americans, we watched in disbelief as the attacks unfolded in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The court-martial continued, but everyone understood that nothing was normal. In real time, the nation was changing before our eyes.By the time we left Camp Lejeune later that afternoon, the contrast was striking.

The relaxed security of the morning had vanished. Vehicles entering and leaving the base were being stopped and searched. Military personnel were on heightened alert. The sense of vulnerability was palpable. Commercial air travel had come to a standstill, so I began the long drive back to Atlanta, covering more than 400 miles before finally retrieving my car at the airport.

Alone on the highway, I had ample time to reflect. Earlier that morning, I had been grieving the loss of my father. By afternoon, an entire nation was grieving.

The scale of the tragedy was almost impossible to comprehend. Like so many Americans, I wanted to do something to help. I just did not know what that would be.A little more than a year later, the answer found me.

In late 2002, Secretary Tom Ridge asked me to serve as the first General Counsel of the newly created Department of Homeland Security. The Department brought together twenty-six agencies under a single mission: protecting the homeland and helping prevent another attack on American soil. It was, and remains, one of the greatest honors of my professional life. Working alongside Secretary Ridge and a remarkable team of public servants, I had the privilege of helping build the legal foundation of a department created in response to the lessons of September 11.

I was especially honored to lead more than 2,000 attorneys whose dedication, professionalism, and commitment to public service helped shape the Department during its formative years. Any contribution I made was small compared to the sacrifices of those who responded on that terrible day and those who continued to serve in the years that followed. Yet I remain deeply grateful for the opportunity to help our nation respond to one of the greatest challenges in its history.

As we mark this twenty-fifth anniversary, I am filled with gratitude for the first responders who rushed toward danger when others were fleeing from it, for the military personnel who stood watch in uncertain times, and for the countless public servants who devoted themselves to protecting our country in the years that followed.

Most importantly, I remember the nearly 3,000 innocent lives lost on that clear September morning, along with the families whose lives were forever changed."

Janice Kephart, former 9/11 Commission

“Twenty-five years after 9/11, some questions the 9/11 Commission identified remain unresolved.

I wrote this commentary, published today in The Washington Times, about one of them: what we learned about Iran’s facilitation of al Qaeda travel, including travel by future 9/11 hijackers, why the Commission called for further investigation—and why that unfinished work still matters today.

As the Commission counsel responsible for investigating terrorist travel, I believe understanding these connections is not simply about completing the historical record. It is about understanding threats that remain relevant to U.S. national security.”

Read more from Janice here

Douglas Baker, Former Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Council

“I was home in Houston that morning. The day before, I had flown out of Washington Dulles International Airport, only hours before American Airlines Flight 77 departed for Los Angeles. That flight was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon.

I had gone to Washington to complete interviews for a position in the new Bush administration. I went on to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Services at the U.S. Department of Commerce. My portfolio covered companies in the service economy, accounting for 66.5 percent of U.S. GDP in 2000. Travel and tourism were among the sectors hardest hit after the attacks, and it would take years for the industry to recover.

In early 2005, I moved from Commerce to the White House to serve as Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Senior Director for Border and Transportation Security on the Homeland Security Council.

Our task was to coordinate policy across the federal government and strengthen security while keeping legitimate travel, trade, and economic activity moving. Our work covered aviation, maritime and surface transportation security, as well as border security.

We pursued comprehensive immigration reform, pairing stronger border security with a temporary-worker program, employer accountability, assimilation, and a legal resolution for an undocumented population then estimated at about 12 million. That effort failed in 2006 and again in 2007, and the country is still dealing with the consequences.

Our work took place within a new homeland-security structure. President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began operating in 2003, bringing 22 agencies and offices into one Cabinet department.

We made the easy decision to push our borders out, so that we could identify and engage travelers and cargo well before they reached our shores.

We changed how people traveled to, from, and within the United States. We worked with allies and commercial airlines to improve advance passenger information, allowing the government to vet travelers before their flights departed for the United States. We worked with the State Department to move foreign-visa applications into a digital process; with CBP to establish more secure, standardized travel documents; and with DHS to develop risk-based solutions such as Global Entry and US-VISIT.

Twenty-five years later, there is much to be proud of and still more work to do. The threats continue to evolve, but the responsibility has not: protect the country, keep legitimate people and commerce flowing, and continue to improve the systems built in the aftermath of September 11.

I am grateful for my opportunity to serve, and I salute those who are still in service to our great nation.”

Read more from Douglas here

Hillary Batjer Johnson, former U.S. Department of State

“Reflecting today on the 25 years since 9/11 has stirred more emotion than I expected, because I still remember that day so vividly.

I was a U.S. civil servant in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department and immediately evacuated after watching on the office TV the second plane hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower.  Once outside, we heard reports of a car bomb outside State, later understood as confusion with explosions at the Pentagon. On the subway home, I saw smoke rising from the Pentagon as armed guards searched our Metro train car at Arlington Cemetery. It was all surreal.

My professional life changed the next day. I immediately pivoted to focus on strengthening our homeland security – increasing border security with Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean; promoting aviation and cargo security across the hemisphere; and helping the newly created Department of Homeland Security encourage international partners to push our borders outward to better protect the homeland and counter terrorism. I am proud that strong diplomacy worked and mattered in those dark times.

9/11 was a horrendous terrorist attack against the United States. Many lives were lost but bravery and compassion prevailed. It is amazing to think that many Americans – including my college-aged son – were born long after the attacks happened and see this as distant history.

I never would have guessed that, from that day forward, my foreign policy career would shift so dramatically.  Now retired from my career at State, I remain deeply grateful for the chance to learn and work alongside so many dedicated people in the U.S. and around the world who helped make us safer and more secure.

As a former public servant and an American, I thank you all.”

Read more from Hillary here

Robert Mocny, Former U.S. Department of Homeland Security

A small group of us from the Immigration and Naturalization Service were just closing out a meeting with airline officials at the British Airways headquarters when one of our team members burst into the room. 

"They just bombed the World Trade Center!"

Everyone looked at each other. Some with half smiles. Others with wrinkled brows. "What? Come on, stop kidding around. Are you joking?"

He stood there. "No. A plane just flew into one of the towers."

We all got up immediately, and someone took us to a television showing the footage. We speculated, just as we would later learn millions of others were doing at that same moment. The pilot must have had a heart attack, someone said. Lost control, said another. But just as we watched the smoke billowing out of the windows, a second plane hit the other tower.

We gasped. Hands went up to our mouths. Cries of "Oh my God." "This is a terrorist attack." Later we learned about the Pentagon. And the field in Pennsylvania. I am not sure when. Twenty-five years blends the minutes together.

That night, at the hotel where we were staying, our team kept receiving condolences. Everyone from the Brits to the other international guests was angry, sad, scared, or all of the above. With all flights canceled, it took us five days before we could return home.

The first meeting I attended when I returned was led by then-Commissioner Jim Ziglar. He said in no uncertain terms that the United States would find out who did this and, just as important, that we must do everything we could to prevent it from happening again.

I had spent five days on the other side of an ocean and it seemed that the world had come to a standstill. It started up again for us with a clear focus. We had a mandate, and we would spend the next two decades fulfilling it.

The Office of Inspections had already begun building out the entry-exit system called for in Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. We would continue to do so until we received further legislation requiring biometric technology at all ports of entry.

That requirement, along with a host of others, would be carried out by the women and men of the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, known as US-VISIT. That team, chartered and emboldened by the first Secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and led by longtime senior executive Jim Williams, went on to change the course of history over the next several years. No longer would visitors to the United States simply show up with a passport and a good story about why they were coming. Now they would have to provide fingerprints to gain entry. Those prints would be run against an ever-increasing number of criminal and terrorist fingerprints collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the intelligence community, and the armed forces, all shared with DHS.

We started with two fingerprints, because that was all the technology we had at the time. We later moved to all ten as the private sector rapidly developed new devices and Secretary Chertoff told us to make it happen. Later still, facial recognition would supplement fingerprints in most cases.

This new way of screening international travelers made a monumental contribution to the security of the United States. It radically altered an age-old process in which a passport and a visa were enough. And it proved so successful that many of our allies adopted the same approach. The European Union's own Entry/Exit System began its phased rollout in October 2025 and took full effect across the Schengen Area this past April. Adoption of biometrics in the private sector has only accelerated over these last twenty-five years.

There is unfinished business. Section 110 called for a system that recorded both entry and exit. We built the entry half, and we built it well. The exit half took far longer. Facial recognition has largely closed the gap in the air environment. At the land borders, where the volume is greatest and the infrastructure was never designed for it, a complete biometric exit record still does not exist. Efforts are underway to find a solution, but it should not take another twenty-five years to complete.

I do not know whether any of what we implemented would have stopped the men who boarded those planes. Security work rarely answers that question. What I know is that we were asked to make it harder, and we did.

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Twenty-five years later, we can say with gratitude and humility that our nation endured, our values endured, and evil did not prevail but the memories linger.

As the bells toll and the names are read once again at Ground Zero, may we pause to reflect on their memory, honor their sacrifice, and renew our appreciation for those who continue to safeguard our nation.

Today, we ask that we observe a moment of silence for the fallen heroes of September 11, 2001; for the first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice; for the members of our Armed Forces, intelligence community, and law enforcement agencies who carried the fight to those responsible; and for all those whose lives were forever changed by that tragic day.

May their courage inspire us, may their sacrifice humble us, and may their memory endure for generations to come.

Let us never forget.