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As some of you know, I was a police officer with an Oklahoma City metropolitan agency during the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. I served in law enforcement until 1998, moved to Virginia, and took a judicial appointment.

The day of the attacks, I was at work, mostly approving legal processes in our office. We had a television on, and a jury selection was being made across a hall from me. At this time we thought it was just an accident.

Because of the live coverage, I couldnt concentrate on the process, so I just stopped to watch television. I remembered thinking how long it took us in OKC to remove 168 persons from a 9 story partially collapsed building, and I said I hoped the building wouldnt fully or partially collapse so as many people as possible would have time to escape from the building. I saw the film of people jumping and literally got sick.

When the second plane hit, one of the police officers in the office muttered a loud stream of obscenities that carried across the hall to the jury selection room. I knew then it was a terrorism attack, so I called my wife and told her to leave work and get the kids, who were in school. I told them to gather at home, and wait this out. I wanted us all in one place just in case anything catastrophic happened.

The cops asked me questions about what was happening. I told them the answers in plain, matter of fact facts. They couldnt comprehend the scope of the tragedy. I couldnt either.

I felt anger so hot inside me boiling up no one wanted to come near me, because they could see it. I literally had steam coming from my ears

Jurors and other people poured out of the jury room into our office and began to learn what had happened. An old lady stood near me crying, and a very nice Israeli man who had come to the courthouse to file some kind of document stood by my desk.

I let the old lady have my chair and stood by the Israeli man, and told him at that point it looked like we had just entered the war they had been fighting since before 1948.

He stated "you always were, and you always will be".

Then the buildings crumbled one by one. As I saw them crumble I knew there wasnt going to be many people come out alive, because of the crush dynamics of the collapse and the shredded materials spewing out from the towers in a cascade. I knew the firefighters, police officers, medics, and thousands of others died, because I had seen this type of tragedy before, firsthand. I also knew about flight 93 and the Pentagon ( about 2 hours down the road, in Arlington).

We were evacuated then. The police came in and escorted us to our cars, and I left. Some stayed, but moved to a different location.

I will never forget. I may never forgive either.