This is an essay on my experience 20 years ago from Lehman Brothers equity trading floor at 3 World Financial Center (largest building, just left of the Towers) when the planes struck. This note is not about macroeconomic investment strategy, rather it is intended to describe my experiences to help with the goal, to never forget.
I have never written about my experiences that day, however on the 20th anniversary I want to share what it was like to be so close to that horrific event that remains so indelibly etched in my memory. I did not experience extreme loss, most of my stories are of near misses. I was a managing director in equity derivatives responsible for a number of Lehman Brothers’ largest hedge fund and program trading clients. I worked on the 7th floor at 3 World Financial Center on Lehman’s one-week-old, $38 million equity trading floor across the street from the North Tower. My commute in those days was a drive from Westfield to Jersey City, NJ to a ferry across the Hudson to the World Financial Center complex. When the first plane struck, I was on the phone with a large macro hedge fund purchasing S&P 500 futures and did not hear the impact though many of my colleagues had, as evidenced by them rushing to the window, laying on the radiator and staring up at the gaping hole. I told the client to wait, ran to the window, and looked up at an incredible sight. There was no doubt in mind it was a large plane, and perhaps because I was at the same location during the ‘93 car bomb explosion, it was the clearest day of the year and I had never observed planes anywhere near the Towers, I was absolutely convinced the terrorists had returned. I hit the direct line to the client and told him forget the news reports, it was a terrorist attack and asked for permission to sell the futures he had just purchased, he quickly agreed. I then called my wife and mother and told them that it was a terrorist attack, ignore any reports to the contrary, I was fine and would call them later — having no idea that cellular service would be interrupted, and they wouldn’t hear from me until hours later.
Following the first attack, the Lehman equity trading desk consensus was to remain at our desks and stay on the phone with clients, never imagining that the Towers would fall. Immediately after the second plane struck plans changed and we headed down the stairs, exiting on the north side of the building to Vesey Street. As I made my way out of the building, after retracing half of the stairs having forgotten my coat with my wallet and car keys, I spotted the flotilla of ferries headed to the World Financial Center dock. I pushed my way through a crowd staring up at the Towers, got on the second ferry and went with a couple of colleagues to the NY Waterways Ferry roof seating to get a better look at the Towers. Immediately we observed an intensification of the fire we later learned was the result of jet fuel. It is unclear to me if I actually observed jumpers; I recall seeing people in the top floors of the North Tower but am uncertain if my subconscious blocked out what I later saw in videos.
After we arrived in Jersey City we heard about the Pentagon and erroneous reports of additional planes still in the air. I agreed to give a ride home to one of my soccer buddies who also worked at Lehman, he had taken a train in that day. Shortly after beginning the short walk to my car, we heard a shocking rumble and turned to watch the South Tower fall. After beginning the drive home, we were on the bridge over the Newark Bayway when we noticed the North Tower beginning to fall and pulled over, got out of the car, and watched in disbelief. We repeatedly tried to call our wives to let them know we were safe to no avail, as there was no cellular service. About an hour later after dropping my friend in an adjacent town I pulled into my driveway to observe my neighbor crying for joy, having just heard from her twin sister who escaped from the South Tower with 6 minutes to spare. She had escaped from above where the second plane hit as one stairwell remained open thanks to the elevator engine blocking the impact. A recording of her description of her flight down 100 flights of stairs urged on by the voice of her deceased father can be heard in the Memorial. Our friend is a volunteer at the Memorial. This was to become a theme in the aftermath: unlike so many that lost colleagues and friends, I mostly experienced fortunate near misses. I then went to pick-up my children from school, where the administration had made a decision not to tell the children what occurred in fear that some of their parents would not be coming home that day. My children stared at me quizzically, with looks that said, “what are you doing here dad, do we have early soccer practice or something?”
Our town reportedly had two trains delayed into NYC and lost 13 souls, a very similar town over the hill lost 63. Another friend who helped me run the Westfield Soccer Club (I was President in all of my spare time) managed a technology company office on a very high floor in one of the Towers. He had quit his job three weeks earlier and was nowhere near the Twin Towers that day. Meanwhile, the 13 people who worked for him had all grown used to starting their day at 10am, rather than try to beat their former boss to the office, whose pattern was to begin his day by 8am. They all survived.
When I returned to the office days later, I heard from one of my close colleagues who had made the last flight from Newark to San Francisco on Monday evening to visit clients by 5 minutes, our assistant had booked him a seat on Flight 93 the following morning as a backup. It took him the better part of a week to get back to New Jersey on a chartered flight. Years later I learned that the man that ran my adult soccer team was one of the two men that carried a woman paralyzed by fright down 80 flights of stairs. He never returned to work in New York City. Years after that I learned over beers on a 9/11 anniversary that one of my closest Lehman/Barclays friends had remained at the site administering aide to those with injuries.
By the next day it was clear that something of a miracle had occurred: with 6000 employees in 3 World Financial Center and 800 in the World Trade Center, Lehman only lost 1 employee. We had all of our employees except that unfortunate individual, however we had no place to go on Wednesday, and indeed we never returned to that building, which remained inhospitable for 18 months. We quickly became one of the largest acquirers of commercial property and leases in NYC as we scrambled to resume operations. On Thursday, I was summoned to 101 Hudson Street, the highest tower in Jersey City, to help tear apart a cubicle farm previously occupied by technologists to create a makeshift trading floor. We quickly learned the building had minimal telephone capacity, which led to clients placing large ETF, options and stock orders using AOL’s instant messaging function. Our clients were incredibly supportive, there was a sense of purpose in that we were trying to keep the core of our economic system functioning. Options expiration was the following week, and it was chaotic to say the least. We got through it, it was perhaps the most intense trading day in a career that includes quite a number of crashes.
A month or so later we had a bomb scare at 101 Hudson and it took us 45 minutes to make it down the stairwell from the 40 somethingth floor, which was a terrifying experience. I was determined to never work on a high floor again. Later that fall, someone decided to close the shades that looked at the smoldering ruins of the Towers. We had a direct view of the site that was on every television station every day for months, it became too painful to look at. In February we moved to Times Square into the building Morgan Stanley sold us for $750 million after deciding they could not have two buildings in such close proximity. Our brief technology boom-inspired period of casual dress was over, as Lehman went back to suits. It was years before I returned to the site of the attack. The next time I rode the ferry was on the 15th anniversary when my wife and I visited the Memorial for the first time. I nearly left after 5 minutes, but ultimately lasted an hour before walking to a bar near our former offices for a couple of beers to calm my emotions.
The dominant emotion for me, and those I discussed it with, was anger. I suspect those in Washington felt similarly, and that emotion may have contributed to the decisions to enter into two wars. I recall this distinctly from 2003 as we analyzed the probability of the invasion of Iraq. It strikes me that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was made similarly. The best book I read on the events that led to that tragic day was a recommendation from my eldest son during his studies at Tufts University’s international relations department; “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”. One of the themes of the book was a decision by the Clinton Administration to rely on technology-based surveillance rather than operatives that failed spectacularly. I can only speculate on the emotions of others who lost colleagues, friends and family, how they feel about our hasty exodus and the ever-present risk from those who would do us harm.
Somehow, despite my proximity, 17 years of living in NYC, and working on Wall Street, I knew only a handful of individuals who perished that day. That was not the end of this theme of near misses though: in April of 2013 one of my colleagues at Barclays shouted bombs had exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I was tracking the progress of someone very close to me and he had just finished when the explosions occurred. It took me nine minutes frantically texting and emailing to make contact and discover he and the members of his family who had met him at the finish line were safe. I then called the rest of his family to tell them he was safe, but as it turned out I was the only one who knew about the bombing. For them there was no terror; for me there were nine frantic minutes that triggered vivid memories of 9/11.
Two final addendums to my experience. First, the ‘93 bombing was the day before my wife and then two children boarded a flight for our first Colorado ski trip. One ski trip a year quickly escalated into 3, followed by a decision to sell my 2000 Lehman stock award, the year I was promoted to managing director, when it vested in 2005 and purchase a home in Colorado. During the early stages of the pandemic my wife and I sold the Westfield home we purchased the summer before 9/11 and moved to our second home in the Rockies. The second occurred near the 18th anniversary. I had an appearance on CNBC’s Closing Bell at the NYSE, my custom was to walk across to the ferry by the Memorial and take a few minutes to reflect by the waterfall. I took a picture and posted it on Facebook that day. When I arrived home, I took our dog for a walk, he is a big lab who decides the direction of travel on our walks. For the first time in his 9 years, he took me through the Memorial constructed in the center of Westfield for the residents who perished that day.
Many others experienced loss that is incomprehensible to me despite how close I was to this horrific act of terror. I wrote this to explain what it was like for most of us who were there that day, to provide a first-hand account of how we rallied to reopen the markets at the center of our economic system, and to do my part so that we will never forget. I never will.
Barry C. Knapp
Managing Partner
Director of Research
Ironsides Macroeconomics LLC
908-821-7584
bcknapp@ironsidesmacro.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-c-knapp/
@barryknapp
Thankyou for this article. As you know, I was your colleague working in Lehman's London office. 9-11 is still incredibly raw in my psyche. I do not like to talk about it. I won't listen to anyone talking about it. I won't watch any documentary about it. I won't read a book about it. It is a deep wound buried inside of me that perhaps someday I will begin to process. Even after 20-years nothing has changed. Yet, I did read your well-thought out experience, so perhaps that is a start for me. The memory of being in Lehman's Broadgate office, with the TV's showing the planes flying into the buildings, and my English colleague immediately proclaiming "that is a terrorist attack" whilst I remained in catatonic disbelief will haunt me forever.
Thanks for sharing Barry. A very moving article. God Bless to all you survivors and to the families who directly and indirectly (cancer) lost their lives.