Colin Powell

July 15, 2002

he State Department family knows terrorism firsthand. It comes with the territory. Today, in many of our embassies around the world, the embassy employees and their families, to include their children, are at risk just by being there and just by being members of the American community. We have two plaques downstairs in the lobby of this department that are filled with the names of those who died in the line of duty, many of them victims of terrorism.

On Sept. 11, the threat was brought home to this building and to our colleagues across the river at the Pentagon, where we lost so many of our friends and colleagues. In the first hours after the attacks, the men and women of the State Department did not know what would happen next. . . .

Nevertheless, just as thousands of people went to their place of duty in New York City [and] at the Pentagon, to do what was necessary, hundreds of people stayed or returned to this building after it had been evacuated and began working on our response to this terrible tragedy. In many cases, people worked all that night, even while they could look out their windows and see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.

-Feb. 27, 2002
Remarks at the launch of State's
educational and cultural affairs exhibit.