9:45 a.m. September 11, 2001: Meeting Originally Scheduled to Discuss Response to a ‘Disaster’ Hitting the Pentagon

A meeting was originally scheduled to take place at this time in an area of the Pentagon that was destroyed when the building was hit and that was, ironically, intended to discuss what to do if a disaster should hit the Pentagon. The meeting was apparently going to take place in the office of Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel, on the second floor of the Pentagon. Its participants were going “to discuss contingency plans in the event of a disaster at the headquarters of the US military,” according to the Birmingham Post. “Planners had envisaged a major flood or a hurricane strike on the Pentagon,” the Post will report, but “[n]o one had considered a suicide bombing involving a passenger aircraft.” Those who would have been at the meeting were “supposed to discuss deployment of their small team in times of national emergency, natural or otherwise.” They were also going “to consider the emergency relocation of staff.” The meeting would have been attended by Maude and Major Mike Grojean, leadership policy officer at the Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. Whether any other individuals were scheduled to attend is unstated. The meeting, though, was canceled at around 9:30 a.m. due to the attacks on the World Trade Center. At that time, Grojean had been walking down a corridor on his way to the meeting. A colleague of his received a call, informing him that the meeting had been called off, and then shouted down the corridor to Grojean, “Your meeting is canceled.” Grojean therefore turned around and headed back toward his office. [Birmingham Post, 9/11/2003; Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, 9/9/2011] The time the meeting was scheduled to start at—9:45 a.m.—is just eight minutes after the Pentagon attack took place (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 10] Maude’s office was destroyed in the attack. [CNN, 9/6/2002] Maude was meeting there with eight members of his staff when the building was hit and all nine men died in the attack. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 36-37] He was the highest-ranking military officer killed in the Pentagon attack. [USA Today, 9/25/2001] Grojean headed to the Army Operations Center in the basement of the Pentagon after the attack and will spend the rest of the day there. [Birmingham Post, 9/11/2003; Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, 9/9/2011]