Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) for work that is long overdue, and the Senators in the other body, as…”

“I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) for work that is long overdue, and the Senators in the other body, as well. I lived through 9/11, as many of us who have served in this Congress did. I lived through the terror, the horror, the horrific scenes that were unspeakable and unbelievable. I lived through them with the same sense of this could not be America. I was in this building as the planes hit the Pentagon. We did not get the direct information about the World Trade Center, but as we were screamed at to get out and flee, as we ran without knowledge, I could see the billowing smoke, as the plane had already hit the Pentagon. Never in our lives since World War II and Pearl Harbor had I seen or heard about, if you will, such atrocities and violence. Imagine those families, never being able to bury their loved ones. I went to Ground Zero by train because at that time planes were not in the air. I was insistent, as a member of the beginning of the Homeland Security Committee, to go there with a former Senator. We went to the very site. No, there was no rescuing at that time; it was recovering. We saw those fire department personnel, firemen, and law enforcement guarding this sacred place.…”