9/11 - Where were you?

London Bombings I was at the police still. My DS came in and said there’s been an electrical fire on the tube ( I was a civvie but still reported to a copper), that was the first bomb. Like 9/11 a lot of initial confusion. Not long after I went to work at an office in Aldgate, directly over the bombing spot. One of the guys in the office was on the train and used to take the anniversary off.

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Some articles in the print media recently saying terrorists won with 9/11. How that was planned and executed without it being on the spooks radar I don’t know.

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London Bombings: We were on holiday in the UK from Oz but at that point were in Paris for a few days. We were on a cruise when the Olympic decision was announced, so we spent the rest of the day ripping into the French about how their ‘Paris 2012’ signs were out of date. :laughing:

Spent the next day out of Paris on a trip, then went to the early evening show at the Lido, and it was there that people were talking about it. I tried to phone my sister, she worked in Gerrads X but I couldn’t get through.
Next day we attempted to come back on the Eurostar and were lucky that we had 1st Class tickets and got bumped up but still dealt with a 6hr delay. The closest my sister could get was Victoria, so we managed to get a cab from St Pancras and it was a really weird scene.

Eerily quiet but very busy with people in suits wandering around with suitcases looking completely lost. It was very sad.

It’s interesting. Part of the problem with intelligence agencies pre 9/11 is they were effectively competing with each other, and so wouldn’t share information. This applied internally so CIA, DIA, NSA. But also between friendly countries. Britain wasn’t any better with MI5/6 keeping each other at arms length.

So the clues were there. They knew about Bin Laden and Al Quieda. They knew they had bombed the USS Cole and the embassies. But because they weren’t talking they couldn’t join all the dots.

It is certainly a series of events that has most fundamentally changed the course of history.

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In Oz, two things really shaped the future and the ‘loss of innocence’.

The Bali Bombings and the Port Arthur massacre.

re: Diana’s death. we hadn’t switched any news on all day after the night she died (OR KILLED BY PRINCE PHILIP BOLLOCKS CONSPIRANCY ARSEHOLES) and went to our local pub that aftrenoon not knowing the news to find out from others. we couldn’t work out what people were talking about initially as it just was so leftfield

The recent Looming Tower drama on Prime I think gives you some idea of what was going on between and in the heads of the CIA and FBI at the time, dramatised obviously.

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My cousin lived with us way back, she had just gone through Kings Cross and missed the horrific fire in 1987

I think it was my sister went through Paddington just before the IRA bombing in 91

Back then you just had to hope until you heard from people, with no mobiles.

I was recording an EP through the night with my band when the Diana story broke, which was strange and distracting. I had no interest in royalty then though, so no impact just curiosity at the causes.

Is it worth a watch?

I liked it actually, definitely worth a watch if you like that sort of thing.

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As put on politix post,

We had a power failure in the office that morning and sent to WFH. We still used dial up so that was a waste of time really, but I digress. Had just sat down with lunch watching the news when it was reported. Coukdnt believe a pilot could accidentally hit a tower and watched live as the second hit. I sat there for the rest of the afternoon in utter shock. It is unbelievable that it was not even on the services radar.

In the Perth Playhouse Cinema, no idea what the film was. I came out to 15 missed calls on my Nokia 7110, people were concerned, I had flown back from NY 2 days previously.

I had given up work at this point to do my masters so I had about a week before I was due at uni, I watched news solidly for about 3 days.

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G friends saying there’s a great serialised doc on history of Afghanistan conflict from 70s onwards over on the beeb

I was at school during the day, came home and saw brief stuff on the news that evening but only a few images of the towers burning, and my parents ushered me out the room when they realised I’d come in. Next morning was spent discussing with the kids who’d been allowed to watch it, but of course a complete lack of true understanding to the seriousness of it.

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I was in my final year of training at a GP surgery in Measham, Leicestershire. Had a half day. Think someone mentioned there had been an incident, but the scale didn’t become clear to me until getting home after lunch and watching TV news with my wife who was on maternity leave.

Now if something terrible like this happened I guess we’d all know instantly on our phones.

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