Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered an apology to the families of those killed on September 11, saying she still carries “deep personal remorse” over the government failures that came before the deadliest terror attack on US soil.
Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser when hijacked passenger planes hit New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, made the unusually personal remarks on Friday as the United States marked the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Speaking at the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed, Rice said senior figures in the US government did not grasp the scale and urgency of the threat in time to stop the plot.
“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11,” Rice said. “We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough.”
She then turned her message directly to the relatives gathered at the Pentagon memorial ceremony, many of whom have spent a quarter-century mourning loved ones lost in the attack.
“I want to say something deeply personal,” Rice said. “I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured.”
Her remarks came as memorial events were held across the country for the nearly 3,000 victims killed when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners on September 11.
American Airlines Flight 77, which had departed from Washington Dulles International Airport, was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon, killing all 64 people on board and 125 others inside the building.
Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks during a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on Friday
Rice said officials at the time failed to identify the threat soon enough to prevent the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people died in the coordinated al-Qaeda attacks on September 11
Two other hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. A fourth aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew members fought the hijackers.
At the time of the attacks, Rice was among the most influential national security officials in Washington.
Bush had been president for less than eight months when the attacks unfolded, thrusting his young administration into a crisis that would transform American foreign policy and national security for decades.
Rice’s remarks saw her recall the terrifying speed with which an apparently inexplicable accident on a September morning became clear as a terrorist attack.
She was working inside the White House when an aide informed her that an aircraft had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.
‘The attack came quite literally out of the blue, an assault on our cities that we have not experienced since the War of 1812,’ Rice recalled. ‘”What a strange accident,”‘ I thought.’
‘I called President Bush, who was reading to children at an education event in Florida; he too thought it must have just been an accident. But within 17 minutes, a second plane hit the World Trade Center,’ Rice said.
‘I remember turning to a television screen, and the horror and the shock that I felt.’
Rice was one of President George W. Bush’s closest national security advisers when the 9/11 attacks plunged his young administration into crisis
US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, on 19 September, 2001 about the terror attacks one week earlier
The second impact made unmistakably clear that America was under attack.
Rice was taken into the White House’s secure underground complex, joining Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials as the government scrambled to determine what was happening and whether further attacks were imminent.
The aftermath ushered in a sweeping overhaul of American security and intelligence operations and launched a global war against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
Rice, who remained national security adviser throughout Bush’s first term before becoming Secretary of State in 2005, told Friday’s audience she remains thankful that the United States did not immediately suffer another attack on the scale officials feared in those chaotic days.
‘I am grateful that there was not a follow-on attack,’ she said.
‘For that miracle, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our armed forces and to the intelligence community. Their service and their sacrifice in the war on terror kept us safe.’
Rice ended her remarks by turning from regret toward the country’s response to the catastrophe and the resilience Americans displayed afterward.
‘September 11 tested us, but it did not break us,’ she said.
During Friday’s remarks Rice told victims’ families she would always carry ‘deep personal remorse’ over their pain
President Donald Trump is seen greeting Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during Friday’s ceremony in the courtyard of the Pentagon
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stand for the National Anthem during the ceremony
‘As we meet the many challenges ahead, may the memory of our response to that searing experience bring hope for our future as a country and as a people.’
In the years that followed, Rice and other senior officials faced intense scrutiny over what the government knew about al-Qaeda before September 11 and whether warning signs had been missed.
Rice was eventually called to testify publicly and under oath before the 9/11 Commission in April 2004 as it investigated the circumstances surrounding the attacks and the government’s preparations beforehand.
During that hearing, she was pressed particularly hard over an August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief carrying the now-famous title ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.’
Rice argued before the commission that the document did not provide specific intelligence identifying when, where or how an attack would take place.
