“We’re at war today” is John Kiriakou’s account of a short speech Cofer Black, director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, gave to his officers on the morning of 11 September 2001.
The front office
Kiriakou has described everybody in the Counterterrorism Center running to the front office, where televisions were mounted along the ceiling tuned to different American and foreign networks. Reports were still arriving and were confused — among them that a car bomb had gone off at the State Department and that somebody had fired a rocket at the White House. [1]
Everyone, in his telling, was standing there in silence, until somebody behind him shouted “will somebody please lead.” Kiriakou describes the effect on Black as being like a slap. Black began issuing instructions — sending one officer to the director’s office, another to security, and so on. [1]
The speech
Two officers of the CIA’s own police force, which Kiriakou names as the Special Protective Officers, then came to the office and ordered an evacuation. Nobody moved. Black got up on his desk and said that they all knew who had done this; that they were at war that day and would all have to do their part; that not all of them were going to make it home; and that if this was not for them, no one would think less of them if they walked out now. [2]
Again, by Kiriakou’s account, nobody budged. The officers came back and said that if the room did not evacuate its occupants would be arrested. Only then did they evacuate. [2]
Attribution
Asked afterwards whom Black held responsible, Kiriakou answered that nobody believed Iraq had anything to do with it except Dick Cheney and, in his phrase, the minions around him. [3] He has connected Black’s certainty to the warning Black had delivered to a visiting liaison delegation two months earlier. [4]