Retired Marine officer recounts experience he can't forget
As a White House airlift operations officer, retired Marine Lt. Col. Robert Darling used to fly President Bill Clinton to various locations.
Having also flown in missions with the Marine Corps, Darling was familiar with matters of national security and how different departments in Washington, D.C., operated.
But on Sept. 11, 2001, he watched as high ranking staffers and residents alike evacuated the White House, and dumped their belongings to get to safety in what he described as uncertain chaos.
“I got to the top of the Eisenhower steps and had to stop for just a moment,” Darling said. “The White House is arguably the most secure piece of real estate in the world. But on 9/11, they had the gates to the south wide open, they had the gates to the north open.”
Unlike many people who were directed into sanctuaries outside the district, Darling would spend the next 24 hours inside a secure bunker, where staffers debriefed and discussed options with president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney.
Darling shared his memories of that day in a keynote speech at Slippery Rock University on Tuesday, with an audience that included many students from the homeland/corporate security program.Darling said in his speech that his initial duty was to handle “logistics” from the bunker, but he was quickly reassigned to phone duty to field the constantly incoming calls. He said he even had a brief verbal encounter with Russian president Vladimir Putin while fielding phone calls.The room he and the staffers worked from had video screens, communication devices and televisions, and could only be accessed by a select few.“I'm standing before a door you and I don't pull on: It's a bank vault on steroids,” Darling said. “I can't tell you how deep it is, how thick the walls are, how to get there, (but) I am allowed to tell you it exists: a safe place we could take the first family in times of national emergency.”Darling relayed the day's events almost minute by minute, and interjected regularly with his own thoughts which were unfolding alongside the events.Included in his talk were stories of near-misses that almost weren't in the “fog of war,” and a mistake or two made on his part that are forever burned into his mind.
Mark Freeman, a senior homeland/corporate security major, said the talk was impactful in that it demonstrated how people in his field were involved in such a major event.“Getting this perspective and sense of direction really provided a good look at what you can do in this job,” Freeman said.Britney Merola, a sophomore homeland/corporate security major, said she had not yet been born on Sept. 11, 2001, but the day's events have still managed to impact her life.Darling's talk was one of the most impactful retellings of 9/11, she said.“It was an eye-opening experience of the hectic-ness of that day,” Merola said. “Homeland security was created because of 9/11, so it's kind of the reason I am in school.”Darling's talk was preceded by a performance by members of the Slippery Rock University dance department accompanied by vocalists of the music department.Dan Bauer, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, hosted the event, and talked about how 9/11 was significant even to people who hadn't been born yet.“This event of 20 years ago hit us on so many levels,” Bauer said. “What happened that day and what happened 20 years since were really high watermarks.”
Throughout his talk, Darling emphasized the importance of the coordination and action performed by everyone in the bunker that day, in an effort to continue providing security to the American people.He ended his speech with a call to action.“Go out into the world; do your part to defend your freedoms,” Darling said. “Support your communities, volunteer for public service, military service, first responder service: Do something that adds value to the overall good of your society, because you have been given it all.”
