The Journal of Bob Owen, of New York City

Tuesday, 9/11. 11:19 am

I am fine, since as you may know my firm's offices are in midtown. I can seen the billowing smoke from my south-facing windows.

Our comptroller's husband worked on the 80th floor of the WTC. She hadn't heard from him for about 90 minutes, so ten of us formed a prayer circle and prayed fervently for his safety. About 20 minutes later he called; he got out alive before the building collapsed and is headed this way. All other relatives are accounted for. Many are here, as are some friends, since we are running a de facto shelter for those who can't get home.

All bridges and tunnels closed, all subways and train service suspended. Streets packed with northbound vehicle and pedestrian traffic. No southbound traffic permitted. Long lines at cash machines. NYC is closed or closing. National Guard called out. Two aircraft carriers headed this way. Fighter planes in the skies with orders to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft.

It appears to me -- from having watched the video clip on the one TV channel we can receive (our office doesn't have cable and all the networks broadcast from antennae on top of the WTC) -- that the towers were hit by bombs planted inside about 90 minutes after the planes crashed into it. The collapse I saw on tape was just too sudden and too low down in the building to have been caused by the aircraft.

There is a two hour wait at the emergency blood donation center set up in the Citicorp center a few blocks to the north. When Matt Lauer was announcing this news on the air, he appeared to break down.

No panic, just fury and resolution.

Tuesday, 9/11. 2:33pm

My comptroller's husband has reached our offices. He is safe.

He was on the 81st floor of One World Trade Center, felt the initial impact (at the 84th floor) and looked out to see the plane's fuselage falling past his window. Jet fuel was streaming down the building. He said a witness on the ground he talked to saw the plane flying down Broadway at the 800 foot level just before it slammed into the building.

He evacuated his company's two floors and started down the stairs. When he reached the 20th floor, roughly, he heard a second explosion and the firefighters who had been going up the stairs started going down, saying, "This building is in trouble."

He was about 4 blocks away when his building collapsed totally (I believe because of a second explosion from inside the building). The cloud of smoke from that collapse chased him down the block.

This changes everything.

Wednesday, 9/12, 10 a.m.

Wednesday morning brought another perfect late summer day in New York -- deep blue sky, crisp air.

The first sign was a small American flag planted at curbside on the winding exurban road I follow to the train station. The second was the smattering of cars parked at my station far from the platform, having never been claimed the night before. The train was about 15% of normal capacity, since all of Manhattan south of 14th Street is closed off and many big businesses in midtown and elsewhere are closed. The conductor's announcements of coming stops, usually slightly exuberant, were subdued but purposeful. As the train skirted the Hudson River on its way to Grand Central, I saw the flag of a small business, now at half-staff, then another atop the riverside pavilion in downtown Yonkers. As the train rounded the curve, the George Washington Bridge came into view and a haze remained visible where the twin towers had stood yesterday morning.

In Midtown at street level, traffic is almost nonexistent since all bridges and tunnels in and out of Manhattan are still closed. (Openings are being announced as I write this at 9:30 a.m.) People on the street are quiet, and the subtle pushiness that sometimes marks our interactions here is gone -- it just seems too petty to worry about whether that person goes in front or behind you. (By contrast, Hillary Clinton, with her political tin ear, is on the radio as I write this diffusely venting blame here and there, already starting to spin the politics and failing to say anything to New Yorkers directly.)

Air Force fighters patrol the air above New York City. AWACs are flying above us, and an aircraft carrier is anchored just off the coast. I have never felt as grateful to have a strong military as I do today.

My office is open today, although many businesses are closed. I asked colleagues whose family circumstances permitted it to come in and about half of us are here. It seemed important to take a small stand.

My comptroller's husband's escape is truly miraculous. 35 people from his floor (the 81st of One World Trade Center) are missing. He told his wife of seeing people jumping from upper floors, holding hands . . . . of how he started down one stairwell but switched to another when the first became clogged with smoke. He stopped on the way down to warn people on lower floors. He told his wife, "I just didn't feel it was my time." He was 3 blocks away when the building he had just exited collapsed.

My speculation yesterday that the buildings appeared to collapse following secondary bombings was, I now see, incorrect. The heat from the burning jet fuel softened the buildings' beams, causing them to collapse in on themselves, taking the entire structure down to the ground.

Giuliani has been superb. The police and fire personnel have been superb. The scope and pace of the recovery effort is amazing. By dawn this morning, 60 trips by huge trash trucks had already carried away debris from lower Manhattan. Giuliani is on the radio right now continuing to calm down the city and buck up its spirits.

Thursday, 9/13, 12:01 pm

New York City is open for business today, but only north of Canal Street. The financial district is still closed off. The weather here is still incongruously beautiful. The lines to get some of the large office buildings here in midtown stretch around some blocks. Little alleyways between buildings -- previously used by pedestrians as a little shortcut -- are cordoned off by yellow police tape. Vehicle sirens sound almost continuously. Traffic is light, but building. A white cloud still hangs over downtown, drifting to the east towards Brooklyn.

For many people this is their first day back, and all are grim, subdued, polite.

All of New York's local TV stations broadcast their signals from the World Trade Center. Unless you have cable, they are off the air, except CBS which had a backup in place.

New York authorities are now mentioning casualty figures possibly exceeding 5,000. 5,000 deaths. 5,000 families shattered.

The connections to me and my family are starting to become apparent. o

I became instant friends a year ago with a wonderful Scotsman who then worked at a client firm. I loved his lovely brogue, sharp intelligence, soft laugh and gentle manner. He called me on Monday to ask a question and refer a new client. We chatted about his 2-year-old, about how she had broken her leg last spring and had to learn to walk all over again, and then we innocently said our good-byes. His new firm officed on the 92nd floor of One World Trade Center (11 floors above my comptroller's husband) and I haven't heard from him since. o o

My 16-year-old son's best friend had an older second cousin aboard the flight that went down in Pennsylvania, the one where the men, knowing from cell phone calls what the hijackers were up to and calculating that they were about to die anyway, decided to storm the cockpit and resist. My son's friend's cousin was a former wrestler and we all consider it probable that he was among the heroes on that plane. o o

Several lawyers on a mass tort case in which I am involved are unaccounted for. One of the firms officed on the 85th floor of one of the towers. o

I finally cried last night. I was watching a replay of Band of Brothers, the HBO mini-series about WWII. In a flash, the risks and sacrifices and courage of the Americans of those times -- juxtaposed against this barbaric, abominable violation of our wonderful country and this just-recently-getting-to-be-fabulous-again city -- broke open the stoic, boss-husband-father facade I had been maintaining. And it crumbled completely an hour later, when CBS aired a lengthy interview with survivors of Cantor Fitzgerald employees (a securities firm that officed in the very top 5 floors of one of the towers), featuring utterly bereft wives and children holding pathetic little hand-made signs containing pictures of their husbands and fathers, which they beseechingly showed to the camera, as if it could help.

After that, sleep did not come easily. I wrote most of this between 3 and 5 a.m.

Lost in the national coverage is the fact that the recently convicted Bin Laden terrorist bomber was scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday morning in Manhattan's federal court, a few blocks from the World Trade Center. The chaos has closed the courts -- all of which are in lower Manhattan -- probably for the rest of the week, so his sentencing was delayed. A twofer for Bin Laden.

Apropos of that, Bill Bennett was interviewed on TV last night, along with a terrorism expert. He said, basically, that we probably never should have and certainly cannot now continue to address these terrorist attacks with judicial remedies. I know and love our judicial system; it's how I have made my living for 27 years. But I agree with Bill Bennett.

Arresting and prosecuting individuals for this organized barbarism is unspeakably inadequate. Beyond question the hijackers were sustained and supported by at least one of several rogue nations -- Libya, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria, to name a few candidates -- the same nations who are hard at work developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which the Bin Ladens would deploy on Manhattan if they could. Next time there won't be a Manhattan left to read e-mails about. Must we stand civilly by while these regimes continue these projects?

Our response now can only be military, and lobbing a few cruise missiles a la Clinton looks even more impotent now than it did then. We must declare war on terrorist organizations around the world, invite but not require our allies to join us, articulate clear goals, and unleash our military power to achieve those goals under wartime conditions. This will mean, and we must be prepare to accept, a sustained American campaign, sustained American sacrifices, and American casualties. I do think the national resolve is there. Friends all over the country have been straining to find a way to do SOMETHING to help. That's why the blood lines are so long that donors are being turned away. I believe our countrymen and -women will support strong action and willingly suffer the sacrifices.

As a young lawyer in June 1976, I took the beautiful young woman who would become my wife to the observation deck on top of the World Trade Center, after a flirtatious late Friday afternoon ride on the Staten Island Ferry. That 110-story building and its twin collapsed in flames two days ago slaughtering innocent American fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, and over 300, we now believe, of their would-be rescuers. It is far too late, and the scale of this offense is far too great, for diplomacy and judicial remedies.

Bin Laden is said to be under house arrest in Afghanistan. Big deal. He's grounded. He'll be dead within ten months anyway, but that won't solve the problem.

There was a sign in lower Manhattan yesterday, where citizens were lining the streets to cheer and applaud the flag-bedecked rescue workers on their way to and from ground zero: "President Bush, Declare War on Afghanistan Today." Colin Powell pointedly singled out Pakistan today as a country from which the USA expected full cooperation. This morning on CNN, Pakistan's Secretary of Information and its President's Press Officer, squirmed under intense questioning by reporters. It's about time.

I should add that Afghanis operate most of the curbside coffee carts in midtown and, I learned this morning, the one at my train stop 30 miles up the Hudson River. They are invariably friendly, lovely, extremely hardworking men. They help to make Manhattan's streets friendlier. Nuking Kabul is not the answer. But insisting that Kabul close down the terrorist training camps and turn over the leaders is one solution, as is taking direct military action to bring that about if it refuses.

[I apologize if any of this is read as excessively melodramatic or discordantly political. I will happily delete you from this distribution list, no questions asked, if you wish.]

Friday, 9/14, 5:48 p.m.

President Bush is in town this Friday afternoon, we are hearing more fighter jets overhead since he arrived, the cold rain that started last night has stopped and the sun is coming out.

Things were a little jumpy in midtown on Thursday, which was the first day that most businesses reopened. For a brief time in the middle of the day, Grand Central Terminal, the Seagram's Building (housing the Four Seasons Restaurant), the Chrysler Building, the Conde Nast Buildings and many others were being evacuated. All trains in and out of Grand Central were cancelled, and all trains on all three lines were stopped at the stations up the line they were closest to. Thousands of people were standing on sidewalks in midtown for a time. Bomb threats were made against these buildings, which suggests either that some people are really sick or Bin Laden has sympathizers within telephone reach of these buildings who want to sow confusion and fear.

I am happy to report that my fellow New Yorkers shrugged it off, went back to work, and returned to work today.

Five firefighters were pulled alive out of the rubble downtown yesterday. One of them simply got up and walked out, once he was freed from the rubble. He was so blas� about it that one of the rescuers who saw him walking away thought he was just another rescuer, not a victim. Amazing.

As I write this I am listening to live radio reports of the President's visit to the site downtown. Huge crowds of people have turned out to greet him. There is whistling, cheering, chants of "USA" coming from the rescuers. The newsradio reports that many firefighters had tears in their eyes from his visit and his words.

This reminds me of a thought I had last night as I watched the rescuers toil.

Right now, and ever since Tuesday morning, New Yorkers have watched as thousands of men have picked through the debris search through the rubble. These men are firefighters and police, construction workers and tradesmen, and ordinary volunteers who arrived from everywhere to lend a hand. A few days ago these men were invisible to most of the elite here. Today, the "elite" is invisible and these men -- working with their equipment, their sniffing dogs, their buckets and their hands -- are at the center of everything that matters to New York today.

Flags are sold out all over Manhattan. My mail room clerk found a supplier who was just receiving a shipment and we told him to buy 10. He brought them back and they were the cheesiest flags you could imagine, and he had been charged $8 apiece. So not everyone is above profiteering. And the newsradio carries reports that someone is calling retirement homes fraudulently seeking credit card donations for victims of the debacle. So not everyone is above criminal fraud either.

New York lost as many firemen in an instant on Tuesday as it had lost in the 200 years since the NYC Fire Department was founded. Many survivors tell of young firemen lugging hoses and firefighting equipment UP the steps of the World Trade Center as the building's inhabitants escaped down. One report today stated, thankfully, that they were applauded as they did so. Over on the West Side of Manhattan, in Riverside Park, there is a memorial dedicated to the horses of an earlier NY Fire Department. For many New Yorkers, that is close enough, and today, the monument ringed by floral bouquets and notes to those heroes.

It's now 5:40 pm here and the sky is once again a bright blue.