09/11/2026
On this day in 2001, I was having coffee with several fellow FBI Agents at a cafe near our office in Sioux Falls.
The first plane had already hit, and we were watching the news, trying to understand how it could have happened.
Then the second plane hit.
We knew immediately it wasn’t an accident.
We still carried pagers back then, and within moments they all started chirping as we got up and headed out.
Soon the tips started pouring in. If someone looked Middle Eastern—or sometimes even Mexican—there was a good chance somebody would call the FBI to report something “suspicious.” Most went nowhere, but every tip had to be evaluated when nobody knew what might happen next.
That day changed the FBI. Our priorities, our investigations, and the way we shared intelligence all changed dramatically in the months and years that followed.
Twenty-five years later, what stays with me isn’t a briefing, a case, or an investigation.
It’s a table full of agents drinking coffee, staring at a television in disbelief—and then, almost all at once, the sound of our pagers going off.
We left our coffee on the table and got to work.
