Russ Feingold - While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era

Copyright 2012 by Russ Feingold

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feingold, Russ, 1953
While America sleeps/Russ Feingold.
p. cm.
1. United StatesForeign relations20012009. 2. United StatesForeign relations2009 3. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001Influence. 4. TerrorismGovernment policyUnited StatesHistory21st century. 5. United StatesPolitics and government20012009. 6. United StatesPolitics and government2009 7. Progressivism (United States politics)History21st century. 8. Political cultureUnited StatesHistory21st century. I. Title.
E903.F45 2011
327.7300905dc23 2011051735

eISBN: 978-0-307-95254-7

Map illustration by Laura Hartman Maestro

Illustration on : copyright 2010 the Record. Reprinted by permission of Jimmy Margulies.
Jacket design by Daniel Rembert
Jacket photography by Marc Yankus

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For CYF, JFL, and ERF

It may be hard for our island people, with their long immunity, to realize this ugly, unpleasant alteration in our position. All our outlook for several generations has been influenced by a sense of invincible, inexpugnable security at home. That security is no longer absolute or certain, and we must address our minds courageously, seriously, to the new conditions under which we have now to dwell

In the weeks before September 11, 2001, I was in the throes of trying to nail down the final votes in the House of Representatives that John McCain and I needed to pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. The Senate had finally passed it in April, six years after we had started working together on the bill. Senator McCain loved telling audiences that we had worked on it for so long that people in Wisconsin now thought my first name was McCain. We had run into a snag in the House, though, in part because certain members of the key Congressional Black Caucus felt that some of the provisions in the bill could have a negative impact on their activities during local elections.

In this delicate situation, the great civil rights hero Congressman John Lewis of Georgia and Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford stepped up to the plate to help us. They arranged to have the four main legislative leaders on campaign finance reformCongressman Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut, John McCain, and myselfjoin them and several civil rights leaders at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, to highlight the importance of the legislation. John could not attend because of a brief medical problem, but on Friday, September 7, the three of us made a pilgrimage to this historic spot where Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. John Lewis gave a moving tour of the museum, where some of the photographs actually show Lewis bleeding after being beaten during a civil rights march. Later we were treated to what Harold Ford dubiously described as a kosher barbecue lunch catered by the famous Rendezvous restaurant of Memphis. After lunch, we met with one of the ministers who had been with Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel in April 1968. We then all joined hands in prayer on the very spot on the balcony where Martin Luther King had been killed. It was powerful, helped us resolve the issues with the Congressional Black Caucus, and could not have been more unrelated to what we would all experience only four days later.

In fact, on that next Tuesday morning around nine, I was doing a telephone interview from my Washington apartment, a few hundred yards from the US Capitol. The interview was with a reporter from Newsweek magazine who was writing a big story on the rising prominence of the same Harold Ford who had hosted us in Memphis. In the middle of the interview, my deputy press secretary, Trevor Miller, who was listening in from our office in the Hart Senate Office Building, directly across the street, interrupted us to say, Senator, Im sorry, but the second tower has been hit. I couldnt help blurting out, Holy sh**!

After the Friday visit in Memphis, I spent just a few hours in Wisconsin before returning to Washington. I was accompanied by my longest-serving staff member, Nancy Mitchell. She had been my legal secretary at the Madison office of the Foley & Lardner firm since the day in 1979 when, fresh out of law school, I began practicing. I had always wanted to take Nancy to the annual White House congressional picnic as my guest. She had waited patiently as various family members had staked their legitimate claims to these rare White House events over the years. I was so pleased that the person who almost literally had been at my side for every day of my professional career could finally attend. The event had been scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, September 11. If you look at the photographs and video of the White House on the day of the attacks, you can see the big white tent that had been erected for the picnic, a picnic that didnt happen.

On this trip, Nancy Mitchell stayed at the home of my chief of staff, Mary Irvine, in Alexandria, Virginia. I had taken that Monday afternoon off to golf with some friends of mine, including one from my hometown of Janesville who has sadly since passed away. Dan Roach was one of the most gregarious guys I had ever known and for years I had urged him to come out to DC for some golf and a personal tour of the Capitol. The weather was perfect as we passed Dulles Airport on the way to the golf course. That night Mary and her husband, John Irvine, hosted an evening of outdoor grilling and political gossip. I remember how hard and long we all laughed as John and Roach, both of them pretty big-headed, argued about whose head could hold more nickels. Roach won. In retrospect it seems almost as though we didnt have a care in the world. When John Irvine gave some of us a ride back to Capitol Hill, I remember seeing an odd sight a few yards away from the Capitol. The Capitol Police had obviously asked a woman, who was wearing a burka, to open her car trunk, presumably so it could be searched. This type of security was still unusual near the Capitol on the evening of September 10, 2001. Within hours such a scene would take on a whole new meaning and would no longer seem unusual.

As anyone who was in the eastern part of the nation that day remembers, September 11 was an exceptionally beautiful, almost shimmering morning. At 6 a.m. I began my morning routine, starting (as always) with making coffee. After looking at the New York Times and the Washington Post and then reviewing the daily packet of memos that staff left at my door each night, I was getting dressed while casually watching the Today show. Like so many other Americans, I saw the initial story about a plane apparently flying into one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. Like just about everyone Ive ever discussed this with, I navely assumed it was a little plane in a bizarre accident. Meanwhile, Nancy Mitchell and Mary Irvine were leaving Alexandria by car on their way to the Capitol. They were aware of the plane at the first tower but not of the attack on the second tower. En route, they passed the sun-drenched Pentagon.