911 anniversary

Herndon, VA-based GeoEye captures the damage, the reconstruction, and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon in a series of images from its IKONOS and GeoEye 1 satellites traveling 423 miles above the earth’s surface at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour.

This photo gallery can be better viewed by clicking the gray square in the lower right corner of the picture framed below, which opens the gallery in a larger viewing window. Keep reading →

About This Program:
In this mini-documentary exclusive for Breaking Gov, award-winning journalist Dan Verton brings us back to the day that changed the world and traces the evolution of the homeland security mission through the eyes of three men who were present at its creation.

This is the story of the birth and evolution of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as told by the nation’s first secretary of Homeland Security, the deputy for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, and the CIA’s deputy director of intelligence, who would go on to become the first Staff Director for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. Keep reading →

It’s hard to believe that the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is almost here. It was one of those events, like Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination, which remains in the memory with startling clarity.

From where I was working in the Government Printing Office (GPO), we could see the column of smoke from the strike on the Pentagon. Later, after Federal Government facilities in the DC area closed down, I walked from GPO to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (I still remember a woman telling a Smithsonian guard that she had seen someone on the building’s roof – and who could tell what that meant in a world spinning out of control?) to meet my wife, who by some miracle got into the District and picked me up. Keep reading →

The nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security said Congress has “failed” America’s first responders by not acting on legislation that would dedicate wireless communications spectrum to a nationwide, interoperable, public safety network and said it is unlikely anything will pass before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

“It’s wrong. It’s really wrong for them to have failed these first responders,” said Tom Ridge, appointed by President George W. Bush shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to lead the homeland security effort, and who subsequently became America’s first Secretary of Homeland Security in 2003. Keep reading →