One Nation Under Siege: Congress, Terrorism, and the Fate of American Democracy

Preface

preface Rare are those moments when political scientists find themselves in the midst of political crisis as both observer and participant. As a political scientist specializing in the study of Congress, I was working on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., as a 2001 American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. While on the Hill, I sought to gain a better understanding of the basics of congressional life, including how Congress works, how bills become law, and how members of Congress make decisions. That year involved a steep learning curve as I juggled the responsibilities of both a full-time Hill staffer and an advanced graduate student conducting interviews and gathering data for my dissertation on women and politics. I had the privilege of working in a leadership office and consequently had great access to members, personal staff, committee staff, party staff, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and a host of other political elite. This made elite interviews much easier to secure and research much easier to conduct. It was within this milieu that I experienced both the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks in October 2001. On 9/11, I remember being interrupted from my dissertation work to go with some friends in the office down to the cafeteria in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building for our ritualistic morning dose of caffeine. They asked me if I had seen the breaking news of a plane flying into one of the World Trade Towers. I had not even had enough time to turn on the television in my cubicle, so I just listened as they bounced ideas back and forth about possible culprits. There was no question in their minds about whether it was an intentional attack. Given the number of easily identifiable foreign threats to American security, they Preface ix did not need to ask why it had happened. Rather, the question was who was responsible. When we returned with our coffee and sodas, we entered an office scene I will never forget. In most offices of members of Congress, televisions are mounted in the corners almost to the ceiling. This makes them viewable to anyone in the office or in the waiting area. They are also sprinkled throughout staff cubicles and members’ chambers. Every room has a television, and every station is tuned to either C-SPAN or the news. One of the key points made by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in his account of this event concerns the centrality of the media as a source of government information. The events on 9/11 made this reality painfully clear. It’s hard to fathom—or maybe we simply don’t want to believe—that our leaders in the upper levels of government in Washington, the people we turn to for confidence and security in times of crises, might, at just such a time, be as utterly clueless as everyone else. But the fact is that while we often are privy to sources of communication and information that the average citizen does not have, we just as often get the only information we have from the same place everyone else gets it—in many instances, from television. Walk through the Capitol on any given day, and you’ll see a TV in every House and Senate office tuned in to CNN or C-SPAN. Those sets are turned on from the moment the office is unlocked in the morning until the last person leaves late at night. In the chaos and confusion of September 11, I was as dependent on the network television reports—at least early on—as everybody else.1 When we entered the office, we were looking at a sea of throats. All eyes were on the televisions mounted high in the corners, and all mouths were dropped wide open at the sight of a second tower on fire. My friend (who is now my husband) took his soda to his corner cubicle and began to surf television stations to find additional information. He then went around the corner to the chief of staff’s office to be the first to notify her of the attack on the Pentagon. Our world, Washington, D.C., was under attack. Everyone in the office scrambled for a phone to call loved ones. I called my mother. She begged me to leave the building. Office personnel frantically began calling the “authorities” around the Hill to identify the plan of action. Capitol Police were at a loss...