Grassley to mark 9/11 anniversary on Friday at U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON — This Friday will mark the 19th anniversary of the September 11th attacks and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he and his colleagues will be taking the time to look back at that terrible day when many thousands of lives were lost.

“The whole Congress observes some short periods of time of remembrance and we will do that,” Grassley says. “I presume next year, on the 20th year, there will probably be something more formal.”

Many communities in Iowa will be holding events to mark the date on Friday, and Grassley says they should.  “Iowans ought to reflect on the sacrifice that so many make on behalf of our country,” Grassley says. “That’s all of those emergency service people and then you’ve got the firemen and the policemen that lost their lives that day, besides the 3,000 people that were actually killed.”

Grassley recalls the confusion of that day as it wasn’t immediately clear whether the first jetliner crash was an accident. Not long after, Grassley was evacuated from his office in the U-S Capitol as it was feared one of the hijacked planes was targeting that iconic building.  “Nobody knew what was happening and you couldn’t use your cell phones,” he says. “People did have little radios and they were listening so you’d pick up this bit of information, that bit of information. I bet we wandered around on the lawn on the east side of the capitol for a couple of hours, wondering what was going on.”

Had that jet not been forced down in Pennsylvania and hit the capitol instead, Grassley says he likely would have been “just as dead” being on the lawn, had he been inside.