A Different World Trade Center, A Different World

By Erin Grace
NCITE Director of Strategic Communications and External Relations

NEW YORK — Atop the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center, I could see America’s largest city stretching out on all sides. The bright afternoon sun cast familiar landmarks in sharp relief. Here, the Empire State Building. There, the Brooklyn Bridge. Over here, the Statue of Liberty, her arm raised with the torch, sun reflecting off the ripples of Upper New York Bay. And it wasn’t hard to spot my Marriott either, where for two nights I had a room on a much lower perch.

Around me were clusters of visitors of all ages, origins known only to the touch-screen ticket console at the entry far below which took your credit card (around $50 for the elevator ride) and your home state or country. Inside the below-ground exhibit, a giant screen proudly showed that this gleaming tower, which opened in 2015, years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that felled its predecessors, attracts people like me from Nebraska. And the rest of the world.

I had left my colleague, Seamus Hughes, behind to prep for our upcoming talk to New York City Police Department intelligence analysts. We had come to New York expressly for this purpose — to make the city’s counterterrorism frontline familiar with the counterterrorism backroom of academic research. Our message: We’re here. We can help.

But first, a Willy Wonka-esque elevator ride up, up, up, to see what I’d last viewed in July 2001 when on a different work trip. I was then a young Omaha newspaper reporter in New York for a reporting conference. I had brought my then-boyfriend for some extra sightseeing that included a Yankees game, “Les Mis” on Broadway, and a different elevator ride in a different World Trade Center.

I wish I remembered more. I found pictures from that trip but none from the South Tower Observation Deck. Before we had ascended, I had run out of film. Disposable cameras in the World Trade Center gift shop went for a whopping Big Apple price of $25. I remember passing on that thinking, as we all naively did in those days, that experiences can be repeated. That we’d be back.

I do remember the marvel of being in the sky, the vastness of the city. The viewing platform was then outdoors, not encased in glass. The streets far below were both closer – we shared the same air – and farther away given the safety rail and distance from the edge.

Back on the sidewalk below, we sat at a patio table enjoying an impromptu jazz performance and people watching and sense of being part of a much bigger community. I do remember this: It had been a great day.

This latest visit marked the first time since that July day in 2001 that I had been to New York. In the intervening years, I married that boyfriend. We had kids, for whom 9/11 is a history lesson. I changed fields, leaving journalism to work for the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE), the largest counterterrorism research organization in the U.S.

I had also, more recently, become fluent in the language of the federal government, which funds our consortium, and academia, which hosts it, and in the different-speak within of sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and technologists. I learned about groups you see in the news and those you don’t and about the unsettling idea that today’s terror threat in the U.S. is kaleidoscopic. Actors domestic and foreign, motivations for violence both predictable and not.

An 18-year-old rural New York college student rabbit holes on the internet during the COVID lockdown and shoots up a grocery store hundreds of miles from home because Black people use it and he, as a white man, sees himself as a race war champion. Eleven people were killed. This is terrorism. A 19-year-old white man in rural Maine converts to a violent form of Islam and travels to Times Square where he stabs a New York City police officer and intends to do more harm. This, too, is terrorism. Americans, motivated by a range of grievances including election results, political decisions, and public health measures, begin threatening public officials en masse. This has become an all-too-recognizable part of daily life.

The news internationally, where the 9/11 attacks had begun, is no less concerning. Houthis targeting Red Sea ships have drawn the U.S. military into direct conflict. Hamas terrorists invading Israel and committing unspeakable acts of violence, drawing support from Houthis and Hezbollah terrorists as Israel’s violent response continues. Somali terrorists hijacking a helicopter delivering aid. Worry exists that violence there will spur violence here.

With our NYPD hosts, there would be plenty to discuss.

But first, a trip to the top. I entered the elevator with a cluster of young people speaking German. We climbed, climbed, climbed, the elevator walls becoming multimedia screens telling a story about New York, architecture, and resilience.

Once atop the building, sunlight streamed in from every window of the large circular room. It bounced off the white "I ♥ New York" T-shirts for sale nearby. Outside was America’s biggest city.

I imagined where our stops earlier in the day had been: The New York Public Library, which our tour guide had called “a palace of knowledge, a palace for the people.” The New York Times headquarters, where its contributions to history were showcased in a museum that included what would become the Page 1 picture after 9/11 — orange flames and black smoke pouring out of the still-standing Twin Towers. Executive Editor Howell Raines had then described how the global crisis spurred by 9/11 was different.

“It happened in our city,” he said in a Times publication. “It was our story. We lived in the middle of it.”

I descended 102 floors, found Seamus, and together we entered a police precinct where a room of analysts awaited, ready to hear how we could help them face a tense and uncertain post-9/11 world.

I thought of the view from the observatory at One World Trade Center. How the city pulsed below. How landmarks shimmered in the winter sun. How defiant it was to rebuild. How defiant it all had seemed to the ideas of terror and chaos.