National News

Crayon drawings by children. Quilts memorializing the loss. Photographs of the dead. Plaques marking the event. On one rebuilt wall, a chart of the offices of the U.S. Army's chief of personnel shows, desk by desk, who sat where on that tragic day. Who was on vacation. Who lived; who died.

Sept. 11, 2001, is a living memory at the Pentagon.

Outwardly, the work goes on. Privately, there is survivor guilt and, among some, a painful recognition that the Defense Department did not, on that day, defend.

Many fret that an attack could happen again, a worry fed by beefed-up security around the building. Some fear to seek counseling because it might jeopardize the security clearances on which their employment depends. Many will take no part in the remembrance ceremonies planned here on Monday.

Inside the Pentagon, where people in camouflage fatigues throng the hallways, is a sense of being at war.

“Every day I remember, simply because I work here near the point of penetration,” said Army Col. Henry Huntley.

Huntley was in the Army Operation Center when Amer-ican Flight 77, a Boeing 757, appeared out of the sky, clipped a highway light post, bounced off the Pentagon's lawn, slammed at 530 mph through the building's thin limestone veneer and plowed on amid geysers of exploding fuel and shards of red-hot metal and glass.

The attack killed 64 people on the airliner and 125 people in the building and seriously injured 106.

The damage has been repaired and the staff of the Army's personnel chief, whose office spaces and colleagues were obliterated that day, has moved back into its renovated space.

That proud defiance speaks to the ability of the Pentagon's 24,000 military and civilian workers to regroup — not just from terror and death, but from the recognition of catastrophic failure in their responsibility, defending the United States.

The defiance speaks as well to the ongoing trauma of Sept. 11 at the Pentagon, where even today the provision of mental-health services is surreptitious because of the culture of stoic “soldiering on” and the problem of security clearances.

Pentagon mental-health officials, recognizing the need for counseling as well as the stigma of seeking it, quickly developed what they call “walking-around” therapy. Teams fan out down the hallways, casually drifting through offices, handing out cards, promising anonymity.

“People just don't want to appear weak; people think it will hurt their careers to seek help,” said Dr. Kenneth Block, commander of the Pentagon's health clinic.

Asked if people fear losing their clearance, he replied, “Oh, sure. Clearances are a big deal.”