Jeffrey Goldberg: Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

The Pentagon is only a short distance from where we broadcast, and as I drive by it on my way home, I almost always think about, apart from how evil the attacks were, just how improbable they were.

I'm sure most of you remember that feeling of disbelief watching the planes hit the Twin Towers, that, that first question, how did they force the pilots to do that?

That was followed by the terrible realization, good God, the terrorists flew the planes themselves.

It's hard to believe that it's been a quarter century since that day.

There are adults among us today who weren't yet born, and some of these now adults, as we'll soon discuss, are members of the New York City Fire Department and the U.S.

military.

Very few events in the history of the modern world have had the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

I have invited a fascinating group of journalists to discuss all of this with me.

Ann Compton is a former White House correspondent for ABC News.

She was on Air Force One that day with President George W. Bush.

John Lemire, staff writer at The Atlantic and co-host of Morning Joe on MS NOW, was a 21-year-old reporter for the New York Daily News at Ground Zero.

Graeme Wood is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of "The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State".

And Sally Jenkins is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of a new feature story about the tragedy that struck the New York City Fire Department.

Thank you all for being with me today.

Ann, I want to start with you.

You were a witness to history.

You were on pool duty that day on a pretty banal presidential trip.

You were with the president.

I want you to try to remember what it felt like in those first hours, the not knowing of it all that we, you had no idea what was happening, what was coming at us.

Give us a sense of that day from the moment the president found out in the classroom that a second plane had hit.

Ann Compton, Former White House Correspondent, ABC News: It was the look on President Bush's face that gave it away to those of us, the pool in the back of the room with the children listening.

The look on his face because he had been asking through the whole seven, almost eight months that he had been president, what could Al-Qaeda do on American soil?

And I think the minute that he heard White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card say, a second plane has hit the second tower, America is under attack, everything changed for George Bush.

And he got out of the classroom, made a very quick statement, but at that moment, the Secret Service also swoops in.

And if there is a disaster anywhere in the world, they think that's a diversion, the real target's the president.

So, they needed to get him out of Florida to an undisclosed location at 44,000 feet over there.

The president had had a national security briefing that morning, never came up, no Al-Qaeda, no mention of it.

But one week earlier, his presidential daily brief, the PDB, had a footnote to it that was later made public.

It said, European sources believe Al-Qaeda wants to use aircraft to hit Americans.

For the president, the frustration that day, on an aircraft, even one as fancy as that, the communications didn't work, he couldn't reach anybody in Washington, he didn't know, other than a hazy picture on the T.V.

screens we could see, he didn't know what was happening.

We made two pit stops, one to refuel.

Jeffrey Goldberg: They would not bring him to Washington because the Pentagon had just been -- Ann Compton: He insisted.

He said, I'm going back to Washington, and for six hours the White House Chief of Staff said, You don't want to make that decision right now.

And the commander of the plane, Colonel Tillman, who's piloting this, as we left Florida, as we took off, the Pentagon was hit.

He wasn't going to take that jet through the airspace of Washington.

When we finally got to the last stop was the first time of all the -- six, seven hours, that the president of the United States got what he wanted.

He went into a bunker underneath the U.S.

strategic command.

He could finally see the PEOC, the President's Emergency Operations Center that's under what used to be the East Wing.

He could see the Pentagon.

He could see the CIA.

And he found out they had the manifests from the plane that hit the Pentagon, three Al-Qaeda names, known Al-Qaeda.

The president finally was ready to go back to Washington.

But even then, because there was such chaos and planes were landing and people were scared, he looked into the camera in the bunker and he said, okay, I'm coming home.

And Condi Rice said, we advise you not to do that.

He said, fine.

I'm coming.

And that's when he finally got home.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And for you, it must have been -- you had even less information than the president.

America's under attack.

You have no idea what's going on.

You're at the very center of the storm, but you have no idea what's happening.

Ann Compton: When Andy Card whispered to him in the classroom, we had heard that there was a plane, and Andy stepped back and I made -- he looked over at the press, and I made a sign of a plane going down, and he put up two fingers.

That's the only information we had in that room.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Wow, that's amazing.

Ann Compton: And the frustration of covering that and -- but, again, the frustration of the president who over and over and over again on the plane asked Mike Morell, his CIA guy, who did this?

And Mike finally said, when we get to the end of the trail, it will be at bin Laden's footstep and he'd bet his children's future on that.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Jon, you were on the 11th, you were down in the hospitals and the morgue.

And then starting the 12th, you were just at Ground Zero.

The hospitals are interesting that day because they didn't receive many wounded.

Jonathan Lemire, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

The most harrowing image from that day for me was at the -- you could look in.

Our position just outside the hospital at the beds lined up ready to go, and they stayed empty.

There weren't the survivors that people thought would be, that could be rushed and saved.

They were all -- you know, those killed instantly when the tower collapsed.

Yes, I was a 21-year-old intern at the New York Daily News.

I was, you know, in between apartments, sleeping on a friend's couch.

You know, it was primary day, so I was starting late.

It was elections in New York that day.

And when word happened, we saw, you know, the second plane had hit.

Just start walking because subways were out.

I remember you could, you know, just going south as fast as I could, and eventually getting through to the assignment editor who sent me to the hospital.

And then the morgue where people were gathering for information, you know, it took a few days for those sort of famous and very sad missing posters to go up everywhere.

Have you seen this person?

Have you seen my loved one?

But people even then didn't know what to think.

This was a -- it was a tragedy.

It was such -- beyond anyone could compare.

You know, Rudy Giuliani was just saying, the mayor of New York at the time, while the president was largely MIA publicly because he was being rushed around to safety, the mayor stepped up and said that, you know, and it was very visible, the face of grief, and said that this is going to be -- the loss even more than we can bear but we must do so.

And then to move that day, next day down to Ground Zero, and you'd still see people covered in soot.

You'd see people -- the smell was something I'll never forget.

And the fire burned for a very long time.

And you'd went down there and you just tried your best to chronicle what was happening you know, while navigating various security checkpoints when they didn't really want any reporters there.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

One of the most shocking aspects of this, even 25 years later for me, is the sheer number of deaths in the New York City Fire Department.

No fire department in history has ever suffered, not in -- except in wartime, I suppose, in wartime London perhaps, suffered the way the fire department suffered.

Sally, I want to read something you wrote in The Atlantic for a September 11th commemoration just to capture -- it captures this feeling.

Rescue 4, this is the unit you wrote about, arrived at a scene that was too much for the senses.

A torrent of debris fell from the building, shredded metal and insulation, chunks of concrete, shivering glass shards, amid an ear-splitting clamor of sirens and screaming.

Torsos, luggage, and aluminum scraps of 767s were strewn on the sidewalks.

What looked like splashes of red paint on the plaza was where the remains of jumpers who had pinwheeled from the upper floors of the North Tower.

Kevin Dowdell, the firefighter you write about, ran into a stunned fellow lieutenant named Robert LaRocco from Ladder 9, who had seen a severed forearm with a perfectly manicured hand.

LaRocco managed to get a call through to his wife.

He told her, it's raining people.

Talk about the fire department and talk what you've discovered in revisiting the New York Fire Department 25 years after this.

Sally Jenkins, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: You know, the first casualty firefighter casualty that day was actually killed by a falling body from the towers.

It was dangerous just trying to cross the street and get from the temporary command post into the towers themselves.

Kevin Dowdell, who was the lieutenant of Rescue 4 -- the rescue units are the really elite units.

There's one for every borough, 25 men in them, and they actually specialize -- when the fire department is overwhelmed, they call rescue, right?

And they open elevator doors.

They pry open, you know, burning trains.

They can open anything and they can get anywhere and extract people.

Their job was to get up into those towers, try to get elevator doors open, try to pry open doors that had been jammed by the impact.

And so Kevin Dowdell led his men into that tower, but literally just getting across the street into that tower was incredibly dangerous.

You know, he did -- the last people who saw him and his men saw them taking a line across the street where he was trying to protect his men as much as possible from just this hellfire that was coming down.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

And he died in the tower.

His body was never recovered.

There are no remains.

Sally Jenkins: There are no remains of Kevin Dowdell or about 1,400 other people, not just firefighters.

I mean, people don't realize that of the 3,000-some souls who died on that day, almost half of them are still unidentified.

The families that had burials are in some ways fortunate.

The Dowdells had to have a memorial service rather than a funeral because they still don't have Kevin's body.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Tell us about his family, which is part of the aftereffect of this.

Sally Jenkins: So, the genesis of the story, which was your idea, was let's find a legacy firefighter.

Of the 300 63 firefighters who died that day, there's probably 100 and - - I think it's about 145 now families who have children that have gone into the fire department who are now firefighters themselves.

It's an extraordinary culture.

I compare them to like NASCAR families.

These are families that live within a certain ethic and treat danger in a certain way.

And so the idea was to find a firefighter's kid who is now a firefighter himself.

And so the Dowdell family is one of those families.

There are many, many others in the fire department.

Some families have multiple children who've become New York City firefighters.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

The fire department leadership was almost wiped out that day.

Sally Jenkins: It was decapitated.

Jeffrey Goldberg: It's one of the most -- Sally Jenkins: Yes.

I mean, the people killed were the most -- the firefighters weren't just rank and file ladder company, engine company men.

They were captains, lieutenants the highest, you know, from literally the, the fire chief on down.

The literal command structure of the fire department died that day.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Sally Jenkins: And James Dowdell, Kevin Dowdell's son, is now a captain in the fire department, and there's been a whole -- the command structure now of the fire department is made up of some deeply experienced people who really trace their ethic and experience back to 9/11.

Jeffrey Goldberg: It's an amazing story.