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The morning hour began at 9:00 a.m. I had, I had
arranged for John Sullivan, my deputy, to be there for
that opening, and Speaker Hastert actually opened the
House for a series of five-minute speeches. There were
only two, I think, DeFazio and can’t remember who the
other one was. Maybe Cliff Stearns or Walter Jones,
they were the usual suspects. But then, as John went
to convene the House, I learned today, he told the
Speaker, who was—he, he presided for about a minute, at
9:00 a.m.—that the first plane had hit, and that he
had no other information, whether it was a single
pilot or anything else. And the Speaker didn’t really
take it in at that point other than as a curiosity,
and then he had left the chair immediately, and after
the two morning hour speeches, the House recessed
until 10:00, as per authority. But 10:00 was the
fixed reconvening time. And during that 9:00, 9:15
period, I was driving in, and I heard on the radio
that the first plane had hit, and it seemed like a
total anomaly. I don’t think any of us patched
anything together, certainly on the first hit, and
assumed it was going to be business as usual, the
House reconvening at 10:00. Well, then in the 9:15 or
so timeframe, the second building was hit, and, and
that started a series of events, the House having
recessed until 10:00 a.m., and the House having
invited a guest chaplain to do the opening prayer at
9:52, the Speaker was in the chamber eight minutes
before the scheduled reconvening, with no explicit
authority to reconvene any earlier than that, and
Porter Goss happened to be in the chamber, and the
Speaker asked him to preside just long enough to
declare the House in an indefinite emergency recess.
And so we put some words together to the effect that
the recess was being called on an emergency basis prior
to the reconvening time. He recognized the guest
chaplain. He just said the guest chaplain, didn’t even
recite his name, who gave a one-sentence prayer,
knowing of the, of the danger the country was in.
He knew of the second attack, the chaplain did,
and it was, it was a very perfunctory prayer,
and then Goss immediately declared the recess,
which lasted for 24 hours and 10 minutes
until the next morning, the 12th.