He didn’t realize it at that moment, but the woman who held his job before him — lawyer and conservative commentator Barbara Olson — was on that plane. She had phoned her husband, then-Solicitor General Ted Olson at the Justice Department, telling him of the hijackers. Word of Olson’s information spread to Nickles’ staff.
“Nickles comes out and tells us to get the hell out,” Verdery said. They feared, with good reason, that the Capitol could be a target, too.
Verdery drove to his home in the Clarendon section of Arlington, Va. But he soon went back downtown, as Nickles took meetings with Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
That evening, lawmakers gathered on the Capitol steps to sing “God Bless America” in a show of bipartisanship. “I remember being there,” he said. “It was very moving. It’s hard to imagine that even happening now.”
In the months after that, Verdery recalls a crush of legislative wrangling — federal funding measures, an airline industry rescue, the Patriot Act — all focused on the aftermath of 9/11. “It was just frantic the next several months,” he said.
The Link LonkSeptember 10, 2021 at 05:34PM
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/09/10/post-9-11-bipartisanship-hard-to-imagine/
Post-9/11 bipartisanship 'hard to imagine' - Roll Call
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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