25 years after 9/11, spy agencies face old lessons and new threats

As Air Force One returned to Washington, D. C. on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, Michael Morell looked out a window and saw an F-16 off the aircraft’s wingtip. Beyond it, the Pentagon was still smoldering.

Morell, then-President George W. Bush’s intelligence briefer, had spent the day answering the president’s questions and relaying intelligence as the country tried to understand the attacks that had hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City. A quarter-century later, that view from the window remains one of his most vivid memories.

At the National Security Agency, Rick Ledgett recalled colleagues weeping in the hallways as the agency shifted into crisis mode. Within a month, it had transferred 3,000 analysts to counterterrorism work, he said.