Remembering Sept. 11 - Reporting from the White House

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Every day, Jon Decker reports for the Gray Media television stations from the basement at the White House. Twenty-five years ago, on September the 11th, he was working for Reuters Television here at the White House. And he thought that that day nothing was unusual. The president was actually not in Washington, D.C. he was in Florida preparing for an event down there.

And as a result, he thought that that day would be a very calm, uneventful day. Little did he know that September the 11th would be a day that he’d never forget. At 8:46 a.m. E.T on September 11, we received word that a plane, a passenger plane, had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. And upon hearing this news, we all gathered right here in the White House briefing room, watching the monitors as each of the networks showed the entire world what was happening in real time.

We were shocked just as anybody was down as we watched in real time as the north tower burned, we saw something that our eyes couldn’t believe. And that was another plane, another passenger plane crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center. It was at that moment that all of us realized that America was under attack. This was a terrorism attack that we had never seen before.

As we watched both towers burn in disbelief, about a half hour later, we received word in real time that another plane had struck, this time at the Pentagon. Less than ten minutes later, after that passenger plane crashed into the Pentagon, we received word at the White House that all of us here at the White House, covering the White House every day, needed to evacuate, and we needed to evacuate immediately.

It wasn’t just the White House press corps that was ordered to evacuate on that day. It was the entire White House complex. The Secret Service ordered all 1800 people who work in the West Wing and the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building to evacuate, to run from this complex as quickly as possible. Jon returned to the Reuters Washington bureau and reported on the events of nine over 11 until early in the morning.

Jon Decker says he’ll never forget September 11, 2001.