When 9/11 happened, I spent eight hours in a Washington bunker thinking about my baby son on the other side of the world

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ABC cameraman David McMeekin was travelling with former prime minister John Howard in Washington on September 11, 2001. 20 years on, he recalls a harrowing experience documenting the aftermath of the terror attacks.

On the evening of September 10, 2001, it was stormy with lightning, and I remember standing on the steps of the Pentagon with other Australian and US media watching the planes land at Washington National Airport.

We were due to have a press conference with the PM in about 30 minutes, so I immediately ran upstairs to the press room and found journalists and crews, political advisers, and Secret Service agents gathered around a TV. McMeekin captured this footage of the Pentagon on fire from a hotel room a few kilometres away where John Howard was addressing the media on the terror attacks.

About an hour later, the travelling media got a call from the Secret Service and were all picked up in black vans and driven to the Australian embassy where we were led to an underground bunker and stayed there for roughly the next eight hours.His demeanour was very serious and we could tell he was deeply saddened and shocked by what had happened.

We weren't sure when we would be able to call our families to let them know we were safe as there was no mobile reception at all in the bunker. The next morning, we were told the airspace had been shut down and we wouldn't be allowed to fly back to Australia.

 

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Who knew you had such a tough time bringing us the latest news from America during that tumultuous year of Donald Trump and rampant covid! Thankyou! I hope you’re in a much more relaxed place now and your little boy, you and your wife are non the worse for your crazy American yr!

Did you record the EXPLOSIONS, the five mossad agents FILMING the false flag or you were there to HELP howard drag our country into a 20 year long illegal war? How many INNOCENT children died since that day in those illegal wars, based on war criminal howard lies?

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