A heads up to listeners. This podcast features harsh language and some descriptions of torture.

We feel it's important history to hear, but it can also be disturbing.

Looking back, the US government panicked after 9-11. There's almost no other way to describe

the sheer top-to-bottom alarm and fear that drove its decision-making.

Matt Waxman worked in the White House. He served on the staff of the National Security Council.

The sense within the White House, within the government after 9-11,

that another big attack was probably coming and that it might involve weapons of mass destruction,

especially a biological or radiological weapon. This fear was very real. Some people accuse

the Bush administration of over-hyping the threat. I think at sometimes, though it probably

understated the fears and threats that were being discussed internally and felt in a very real way.

The night of September 11th was a surreal one in New York City.

Emergency responders were now joined by hundreds of volunteers at Ground Zero. They sifted through

what remained of the Twin Towers. There are survivors trapped in that rubble made

or Giuliani confirmed it less than an hour ago. How many we do not know.

But only now hours later onto the harsh lights of rescue vehicles is the true, horrifying

breath of the terror becoming clear. But what they're doing is they're crawling through the

craters and crevices of what's left. FBI Special Agent Mary Galligan was in Oklahoma City,

where she had watched the tower's fall on television. It was the day that evil came to most people's

lives. They didn't think it existed and it came and it existed and it was in our backyard.

She had helped lead the New York Field Office's investigation of Al Qaeda and its bombing of

the USS Cole. And now she was worried about her colleagues in New York, blocks away from the

World Trade Center. She was worried too about friends like John O'Neal who had just left the

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