Failures by airport officials were never linked to the assaults, as evidenced by the following: Terrorists employed box cutters, which were authorised to carry on planes at the time, as well as airline security checks rather than airport checkpoints. That didn’t matter in the heat of the moment.
Two and a half weeks after the bombings, the airport’s director of security, Joseph Lawless, who had previously worked as a driver for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, was reassigned. After a month, Ms. Buckingham was forced to quit.
Journalists eventually moved on. Ms. Buckingham, on the other hand, was unable to. In her latest memoir, “On My Watch,” she recounts how her treatment during those six weeks still causes her agony, even after twenty years.
Her political career was over at the age of 36. She had lost her job, but her position as the agency’s head kept her involved in wrongful death litigation for more than a decade after she left her post. She sought help for her depression and PTSD.
For years, she received anonymous threats accusing her of being responsible for the attacks. Asked a man who called her desk years later, “So, when are you going to apologise for 9/11?” What timetable do you have for apologising so that our city can move forward? As her thoughts got increasingly disjointed, she began to wonder if she was to blame.
For this piece, Mr. Lawless stated that he would refrain from commenting on the matter out of respect for those who were killed.
‘This isn’t a Bean Bag,’ He Said.
Massachusetts politics are notoriously tumultuous, therefore it is impossible to comprehend this event apart from that background.
Jane Swift, 36, was serving as acting governor of Massachusetts on the morning of September 11, 2001, when two Boston aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center. If you’ve ever been hurt by negative campaigns, “This ain’t bean bag” is a normal response, according to Ms. Swift. “Stop whining,” in other words.
For this and other reasons, Republican Congresswoman Swift relied on aides to watch her children and the state chopper to fly home to western Massachusetts, Ms. Swift was a media punching bag.
As a result, she was constantly on high alert for the possibility of receiving another roundhouse strike. For example, the fastest land route to Boston involved a brief detour via New York roadways, which was a “dirty little secret.”
In her words, “If you crash and I die, take my dead carcass over the line, since we’re all in so much trouble,” she used to tell her state troopers.