Two Texas lawmakers look back at where they were on 9/11

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nexstar) — We all remember where we were on September 11, 2001 — and two Texas congressmen are no different.

Texas Republican Congressman Jodey Arrington was a young 29-year-old staffer to President George W. Bush when he heard news of the first plane strike. 

“I was in my office in the White House complex,” says Arrington. “We thought it was an accident like most people, and then the second plane hit.”

Immediately, Arrington says they were told to get out — a third plane had just hit the Pentagon. He says it was at that moment he knew America was under attack.

But while most people were trying to get out of the city, Texas Republican Congressman Will Hurd was trying to get in.

Hurd remembers sitting in a Virginia classroom in his first year of training at the CIA. He would later receive a phone call that he says changed his entire career.

“…told me to report to the basement of the old headquarters building in the CIA office in Langley, and I became one of the early employees of the counter terrorism center special operations division,” says Hurd.

Hurd was part of the unit that focused on Afghanistan, and ultimately, on hunting down Osama Bin Laden.

And as the world watched President Bush respond to the deadliest attack on American soil, Arrington says he witnessed a different side of the president, saying:

“I saw a man who was very prayerful through that time//and vigilant to make sure that never happened again on his watch.”