Stacey Plaskett

So Rep. Plaskett, you had this very impassioned reference to being a congressional staffer during 9/11, and that really stuck with many of us as we've thought about this film, which takes on the post-9/11 period—how the country changed, how we changed, how American values shifted, and how that was sort of a slow progression. I know you don't come into office until a bit later, but I know you're witnessing a lot of these moments, and so I'm wondering if you can help us narrate.

Well, I was working in the Capitol on Sept. 11 and recall the president to a joint session of Congress, right, to give a speech, and how both Democrats and Republicans, and indeed all Americans think that this is the most wonderful speech, and we are all rallied behind a president that we didn't all agree with, right? His election had so much conflict and Supreme Court battle over, and yet after Sept. 11, we all are behind George W. Bush and willing to go to war as one against this yet-to-be-seen enemy that is so far away from us. Yeah, very different than Jan. 6.

You referenced President Bush's address to Congress, but I also wonder if I can ask you about his references to our enemies in moral terms, so in good and evil, we declared that the enemy was evil. As you look back now, do you think he understood what the stakes were at that point, what he didn't know yet about our enemy?

Oh, I think there's so much he didn't know. Interestingly, I left the Hill after Sept. 11 and went to work at the Justice Department, and worked on the terrorism litigation task force and worked on the 9/11 [Victim] Compensation Fund for the Justice Department. And there was so much more that we learned that we did not know at that initial time, or maybe more of us learned what few already knew in some respects. But I don't think George W. Bush had any clue as to how deep the rift was, or, you know, how many, never mind decades, almost century that that fight had already been going on and still had to go.

Can you help us understand the images of the towers in newspapers and media around the world and the moment of universal solidarity? “We are all Americans." Did that solidarity give support, and did it also give America an opportunity to shape the world in some ways?

Oh, I think, you know, it gave an image to the rest of the world. I think part of the world shuddered when they thought of what America could do and would do after such an attack on itself. I'm not sure about us shaping the world.

I think that the world is much larger than we as Americans give the world credit for and that although the world—much of the world may rely on us economically and militarily, but us shaping the world, I think that's a grandiose notion that Americans have of themself, or that—you know, in some respects, let me say this, I think it's a grandiose notion that we put on ourselves and that the world tries to thrust on us when they want to find someone to blame; that we are just a party in a larger complexity of wrongs, right? We as Americans are willing to say what we have done wrong and take the blame for and try and right so much of what is going on in the world, and there are many countries that also have a real part in that as well, that would like to, for the most part, put the onus and the responsibility on us.

I wonder, though, if I can ask you in terms of President Bush if he—what he did with that support and with that fervor. Did it empower him?

Yes. I would hope so. You know, I think a president who would not utilize that is probably not a very good president; that that is his role. And in the same way that did not FDR utilize it, right, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or Eisenhower, or Teddy Roosevelt utilized just the notion of a romanticized version of himself in a war to thrust himself into the presidency long after the incident occurred. So yeah, sure, presidents utilize that all the time.

I want to ask you [to] stay within this universal support for a moment, because the invasion into Afghanistan is called Operation Enduring Freedom. We're going to not only get rid of Al Qaeda, but we're also going to bring democratic values to the region, and President Bush says this is a war for democracy.

Right, I mean, I think Operation Enduring Freedom is to continue our freedom in our democracy for ourselves, our position. I don't necessarily suppose it was an operation to spread democracy or to spread freedom. I see it, when I hear the term "enduring freedom" is to keep our freedom and to keep our position as Americans throughout the world, not necessarily to superimpose that on other individuals through a military operation. And yes, mistakes were made.

Let me ask you a little bit about some of the things that were done in secret. We talked about President Bush's moral difference between good and evil, but Vice President Cheney had a different approach to this, which was working the "dark side," which sounded a lot different than certainly President Bush in this moment. He believed in expansive executive power, and many in America and in Washington agreed with that, given the moment we were in. Looking back, though, what do you think we didn't understand?

I don't know if we didn't understand. I think we were willing to set those things that we understood aside for what we believed was necessary at the time. And when I say we, I mean America and American government. I don't think that people didn't understand. As I said, I was at the Justice Department during that time, in a political position, and I think that there were tensions that were felt. And I think those tensions occur throughout American history. And it's hopeful that through information and through the four corners of our laws that we don't color so outside of those four corners that we put ourselves in a position that we can't contain ourselves anymore, that we can't get back inside of that box.

Were we outside of the box?

I think there were some lines outside of the box, yes. Definitely.

Let me ask you about Guantanamo specifically: the images of combatants in orange jumpsuits and handcuffed on their knees, open air cages. As you think about that now, looking back, what signal did the images send to the world?

I don't know what they sent to the world. I know what they sent to Americans. On the one hand, it shows that we're going to punish our enemies. On the other hand, it signals that we've got to contain our desire for justice with justice; that we have got to remain humane and be what is the best of America while continuing to thwart what we believe our enemies are. As I said, I can't say what the rest of the world thinks. You know, I'm very jaded about the rest of the world, because I think that they point the finger at us in a manner that they don't point the finger at themselves. So I'm happy to be self-critical of my own country, but I don't impose on myself what European powers and others believe about us until they do that to themself.

Looking back for a moment at how much of the country's credibility was tied to weapons of mass destruction and Secretary of State Colin Powell selling that threat to the public and to Congress, in the short term, the intelligence seemed to work to launch the second invasion, but in the long term, what happened to the trust that we had placed in government and in our officials?

Yeah, and what a waste of an illustrious career, right? When people think about Colin Powell, that's what they think about, as opposed to the 30 years before. Being a good soldier and going to the U.N. and saying what he was told to say destroyed his reputation, as well as destroyed our credibility as an American government, although I would think that quite a number of countries don't always believe everything that we say when we say it, right? So it just gave a very definable data point, where people can point to what they've already suspected about us, that we don't always tell the truth.

I wonder if I can now jump from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib for a moment, because again, when those images are released, what are the big effects?

They make it more difficult, right, back home as definitely abroad. But when I say back home, in the same ways the U.N., that—what's the word I want to use for what happened at the U.N.? That farce kind of gives people another way of saying, "This is exactly the country that we knew it to be." I think for many of us, we have harbored grave concerns about what our country is capable of. Talk to most African Americans; they don't necessarily think this is the safest country, never mind for foreigners but for its own citizens. So having an Abu Ghraib, of course, is one that just gives evidence to that.

And I wonder if I can ask you about the rise of Barack Obama at this point, who juxtaposes himself from the Bush presidency and promises to return to those democratic values, away from the dark side. Can you now see what Americans hoped he would do about the war on terror?

Well, I think that there was the American values of transparency were somewhat what he was talking about as well. Although you can't remove yourself—I think they realized they could not remove themselves or move out as many troops as they had hoped to do, that in terms of process it's a very different presidency from, as you talked about, CIA dark ops, industrial militarization, to attempting to be much more open with the American people about where we are, troop strength, troop needs, the true need, and what we are and are not willing to do with combatants in that war.

He does employ drone warfare in a way that was new from early in the administration and sort of initiates kill and capture as a method. So he's in some ways waging his own dark side—it's different, of course—while sending his own message that rhetoric has changed, but America's actions in these wars just had not. What do you think had been clear to him and the public about the forever wars that he was now inheriting?

I think what was clear to him—and I'm putting my own thoughts onto a president, which is a pretty scary thing to attempt to do. But it would appear that Americans were much more unwilling to send their sons and daughters to be killed in a war such as this, and that we wanted that to be at a minimum if we believed we had to continue. And the rise of the type of technology that we have allows the president to now utilize nonhuman forms of combat that allay some of those concerns of Americans that their sons and daughters will not necessarily be in the numbers that they were engaged in this untenable but unextractable war that we had put ourselves in.

I wonder, though, if there was an immense amount of distrust that folks felt towards government around that time and that has slowly been building since the problem that we discussed. And I wonder if you can help me understand how that would, and the anger over the wars, but how that would affect the 2016 campaign, which I know you had a close eye on.

That's very—that's very interesting.

Because what I wonder is how Trump sort of understands some reactions, some Americans' reactions to the forever wars, to the lies about weapons of mass destruction, to torture, just sort of all of that.

I think he was good at utilizing distrust of the establishment and distrust of Washington. Interestingly, I think the same people that he spoke to and who followed him would believe that the wars were appropriate. So I don't think it's a dislike of the forever wars so much as it is a dislike of those who put us in war, and those who continue to use us for their own purposes in Washington—i.e., the Hillary Clintons, the Clintons' machine, the Bushes, you know, Jeb Bush running at the beginning, and others like them—and that he is outside of that establishment group. Yeah, that's an interesting—that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that.

We had been fighting in the Middle East for 15 years by the time that campaign is ramping up.

I mean, I see him so much more speaking to people's economic fears and potentially the xenophobia that exists from Sept. 11 and already well before that, right? His initial executive orders on the Muslim ban really kind of are such to really rally his base and allay the phobias that they already have about those who have other religious vents, others who look differently, and from the Middle East primarily.

He uses some of the same language that we've seen before: radical Islamic terrorism. He applies that towards his own political enemies, so the radical left. He calls antifa a terrorist group. This is later in the administration, he'll call for the military to go after political opponents. How did he take the war on terror and apply it to his own opponents?

Right. I mean, you know, his war on terror was not a terror of the Middle East; it was a terror against him. Anyone who's against him is a terrorist because they are trying to stop values that make America great again, right; that make America—that underlying dog-whistling messaging that he's doing throughout his campaign and his presidency.

Why do you think it worked? Why do you think Americans were more receptive to that message in a post-9/11 atmosphere?

I don't know if it worked because it was post-9/11. I think it worked because people are—already had those fears in America, for one. There are people who would like to have a justification other than themselves for their economic state. There are those who are already racist. There are those who are already filled with hate. And there are people who are ignorant and will clutch at a rationale for the world that is being spoken—that puts them on top and others on the bottom. And I don't know if that necessarily has to do with 9/11. It may have supported it, but I think, as I've said, that this is an America that's always existed.

And Donald Trump was able to galvanize that discontent that he triggered and that ignorance that's already there, aside from those individuals who recognized that there was economic gain as well, right? Let's not just put Trump's rise on those who are just about putting other people down; there was many who want to support Trump because they see economic gain in tax law and others for themselves.

Let me bring you back to—we go from the scene on the Capitol steps on the night of 9/11 and a day in which there was a plane headed to the Capitol. And I wonder if we can jump to Jan. 6 and a similar threat to the Capitol by a totally different force. Your thoughts on how we got to that place? What's the biggest takeaway in your mind?

My takeaway is how far we've come from a group of individuals on flight—United Flight 93 that are willing to give their life to stop a plane from reaching the Capitol to tens of thousands of people, of Americans, willing to attack the Capitol. What a tremendous leap and change that has come over our country that that could happen.

… I think what we saw on Sept. 11 and the unity in Americans is, yes, how we react to a foreign instigation against us as opposed to what is always there under the surface within America, that schism that we've seen every century or so that rears itself, right: the Civil War, Jan. 6, I think the same, very much the same.

And it goes back to issues that this country has that has never been righted. How do people feel like they can have a living wage? How do people feel that they have a piece of the American dream? How do Americans have even not just in law but in the psyche a sense that all people are created equal; that there is a place in America for many different types of people; that you will not be left behind; that others joining America will only increase America's greatness? Not being regional and isolationist even within our own communities, I think, is something that Americans battle.

It's less a matter of where did we go astray and more of a question of what we weren't paying attention to.

Right. I mean, don't you think Sept. 11, that national fervor was kind of an anomaly? I wasn't around during World War II, so I would suspect that someone from World War II would say that that same feeling was there then, in the country, at that same time. But it was totally kind of mind-blowing for the rest of us to see how unified Americans were with each other, the amount of flags you—right? Remember the flags on the cars and on baseball caps and—it was kind of like, whoa, crazy! But it was for a period of time, right?

On Jan. 6, did you think about that day? Did you think about Sept. 11?

Not that day. Not that day. Later on. Jan. 6, it was more anger, just being very angry, making sure that the process continues, talking with members about the process continuing, just seeing the place destroyed and just the utter disgust and despair.

But then, maybe an inkling thought of it that night.

But the following day, when you're watching the videos and seeing the American flag being used to attempt to bludgeon people, police officers, then definitely thinking of Sept. 11 then.