Randall Blake

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employees at the Pentagon take action in response to the terrorist attacks in New York, but they stay in their offices rather than evacuating and so a number of them will be killed when the Pentagon is hit. Sometime after the first hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center, at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), DIA analysts who are “[t]rained for this kind of emergency,” according to journalists Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, promptly respond to the incident. One group of them starts assessing what has happened; another group starts looking through classified intelligence reports in search of clues about how the attack was planned and conducted; and another group contacts colleagues at the CIA and other intelligence agencies to share information. [Schmitt and Shanker, 2011, pp. 18-19; Defense Intelligence Agency, 9/11/2015] After the second hijacked plane hits the WTC, at 9:03 a.m. (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001), DIA personnel at the Pentagon “swung into crisis management,” Randall Blake, the DIA’s current intelligence terrorism chief, will later recall. Blake is called by his office chief at DIA headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC. The two men discuss the situation and Blake’s office chief dispatches five or six people to the Pentagon. After reports start coming in stating that the first plane to hit the WTC was hijacked, Blake is summoned to a meeting with Rear Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the director of intelligence for the Joint Staff. At the meeting, Jacoby issues a set of concise instructions on how the unfolding crisis will be dealt with. [Blake, 2012, pp. 2 ] Apparently, no attempt is made to evacuate DIA employees from the Pentagon before the building is attacked. When Flight 77 hits it at 9:37 a.m., the plane will crash through the DIA’s Office of the Comptroller on the first floor of the building’s C Ring, killing seven employees there (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/11/2002; Defense Intelligence Agency, 9/11/2015]