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My Father Fought the Cold War for the CIA. Then Came 9/11
Twenty-five years after September 11, I’m still reckoning with my childhood inside the Cold War — and what America’s secret wars left behind.
6:15 am September 11, 2001
Santa Monica, California
My BlackBerry buzzes on the nightstand. I pick it up. It’s Claudine, a friend. She’s a journalist. She writes for Le Monde. She says her friends in Paris called a few minutes ago. Then Claudine says two more sentences.
“Turn on your television. Planes have hit the World Trade Center in New York.”
She hangs up. I get up. I turn on the television.
I can’t remember when I first heard the word terrorism.
It must have been 1972. I was 8 years old. The terror happened 8 miles from my house in Munich, Germany. PLO terrorists, Israeli athletes killed, and the Munich Olympics. I remember masked men, machine guns, and hostages. My father disappeared. He goes to Fuerstenfeldbruck Air Base to figure out what is happening. Terrorism happens. It was September 1972.
Terrorism was a word that popped up out of nowhere and stayed part of my childhood like hot dogs and hamburgers and peanut…
