September 11, leading the White House advance team on a site survey trip for the president’s appearance at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly. After the second plane hit the second tower, the Secret Service took Hagin and the team from their meeting at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations to a police station in Midtown Manhattan, where it was thought they would be safer. Then the Pentagon was hit, and the New York City police and Secret Service put together a route to get them out of the city. By then both towers had collapsed. “We ended up taking the tunnel that empties out right across from the [Hudson] River from the World Trade Center, so we had a long, painful look at that scene,” said Hagin. The group arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where they split up. Hagin and seven others took a military plane back to Washington. “On final approach, we flew right past the Pentagon,” Hagin recalled. “So my guess is, the eight of us were probably the only people in the world to see both those buildings burning on September 11.”54
THE COUNSEL’S OFFICE
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her the Counsel’s Office staff was gathering at the downtown law firm, adding, “We have to research the laws of war.” “It was just so mind-blowing,” she says. Riepenhoff had evacuated the White House from the Mess with Britt Grant, assistant to Deputy Domestic Policy Director John Bridgeland. The two young women were hometown friends, and they ran together to Grant’s apartment in Dupont Circle. Riepenhoff had started her day feeling that “today is my lucky day.” It was a “perfectly blue, clear and beautiful day,” and she got a rare prime parking spot on the Ellipse. Then, when sitting at her desk that morning, “President George Bush 41 walked in to say hello to [White House Counsel] Al Gonzales.” She and office mate Libby Camp (now Elliott), executive assistant to Gonzales, asked to take a picture with the former president. Riepenhoff “sat down at my computer and wrote my parents an e-mail saying how much I love my job and how President Bush 41 came by; I was the luckiest person in the world.” Hours later, as Riepenhoff walked to the law firm, she “was terrified the entire
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“A ghost town.”
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Associate Counsel to the President Noel Francisco had returned to his OEOB office after the regularly scheduled Counsel’s Office staff meeting in the West Wing, and he evacuated with his colleague, Associate Counsel Rachel Brand. They ended up on the Ellipse after exiting the Southwest Gate. There they ran into David Kuo from the Office of FaithBased and Community Initiatives, who was the only one whose cell phone was working, and they took turns calling family members. Francisco and Brand walked to their former law firm at Fifteenth and K Streets NW, then known as Cooper, Carvin, and Rosenthal. According to Francisco, law firm partner Chuck Cooper turned over the keys and told them to stay as long as was needed. Francisco contacted other Counsel’s Office staff, and about half of them arrived at the law firm to work and do legal research. Francisco went back to the White House around 11:00 p.m. that night after receiving a call from Deputy White House Counsel Tim Flanigan, asking him to return. He remembers the heavy military presence on the streets and around the complex and working through the night. For a while after 9/11, the Counsel’s Office was always staffed overnight. Allison Riepenhoff, Tim Flanigan’s assistant, was one of the staff members who received a call telling