Rhode Islander Witnesses Pentagon Attack
By Sarah Sparks
While a hijacked airliner was heading toward its attack on the Pentagon, intern Briana Angelone of North Scituite, R.I., was attempting to deal with the response to the two earlier terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
In the office of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Angelone, 20, tried to calm panicked constituents calling the office. “As we were watching it, we saw another plane crash into the World Trade Center and people were calling up. … One lady called up and was like, ‘What are you going to do about them bombing the World Trade Center?’ ”
I said, “Listen, ma’am, I’m sitting in the Capital here; I’m a little nervous myself.”
Hastert was in his office getting briefed on the Trade Center attacks, Angelone said, when she and the rest of the staff met in the main conference room, which overlooks the Washington Monument and the Pentagon.
“We’re sitting there and through the window we see this plane,” she said. “Somebody says, ‘Look, look!’ We all looked out the window and there was all this billowing smoke pouring off the Pentagon. It was crazy; I couldn’t believe it.”
“One guy (from Hastert’s office) called the police and said, ‘Something just hit the Pentagon,’ and they said they already knew.”
Angelone, of Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, and another intern were told to leave. They started for her co-worker’s car, parked some distance from the Capitol, but were warned not to take the Metro subway train, she said, because of the possibility of “bombs or anthrax.” “The police were yelling, ‘Get away from the Capitol,’ ”
The Capitol and all federal buildings in the district were evacuated, and routes out of the city were choked with traffic. Angelone, who lives in northwest Washington, said that the trip home that usually takes 20 minutes dragged on for two and a half hours. Suit-clad men and women swarmed north, some walking, some – like Angelone – stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
At home, she found seven messages on her voice mail from friends and family hoping she was safe.
“I had messages from people I haven’t talked to in a long time. My mom called me up, crying. It’s been really bad,” Angelone said.
