Brett Kavanaugh was at the White House on 9/11. It changed his life

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a 36-year-old White House attorney when his world, the George W. Bush presidency, and the nation changed on Sept. 11, 2001.

After planes hijacked by terrorists struck the World Trade Center, Secret Service officers learned of another plane headed for Washington. Kavanaugh and other aides outside the White House were ordered to evacuate.

Burned in his memory are agents yelling at female staffers to throw off their high heels and sprint.

“The agents were screaming at us to run out the gate,” he recounted in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY.

Regrouping later with others from the White House counsel’s office at a nearby office building as fighter jets patrolled the sky, the future Supreme Court justice was directed to research the emergency powers Bush could tap.

In the weeks ahead, Kavanaugh would work long hours on legislation to help the airline industry survive and create a federal terrorism insurance program later credited with reviving commercial development in New York City and throughout the nation.

Years later, as a judge, Kavanaugh would rule on cases involving the war on terror – a legal saga that continues.

And every September, Kavanaugh rewatches key moments from that time, especially Bush’s address at Washington National Cathedral three days after the attack and his remarks at Ground Zero that followed.

“It’s the day of my life that I consider the most memorable, searing, important day in my life for the country and for me,” Kavanaugh said.

Praying

He keeps a copy of the 9/11 Commission’s report on a nearby bookshelf.

Hanging in his chambers is a signed photo of Bush throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium a few weeks after the attacks, one of the ways the president demonstrated he would not let the terrorists “alter our way of life," Kavanaugh said.

Kavanaugh remembers thinking, as he watched Bush’s windup: “Please God, let him throw a strike this time. He can throw in the dirt some other time.”

Bush threw a strike.

Becoming more religious

Kavanaugh will be speaking about his experience for a panel discussion at the University of Notre Dame on Sept. 11 in honor of the 25^th anniversary.

He spoke in advance with USA TODAY about how that day changed him.

Among other things, he said, it strengthened his religious conviction.

“The only way to make sense of all this tragedy and death was to go back to your faith,” Kavanaugh said.

And while national security had always been a top concern, the terrorist attacks made him more realistic about threats America faces from other nations and groups.

When Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018, some opponents complained he had an expansive vision of executive power and a tendency to overestimate national security claims.

Mixed judicial record on 9/11 cases

His record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit had offered mixed evidence when it came to 9/11-related cases.

Kavanaugh wrote an opinion in 2012 overturning the terrorism conviction of a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. He wrote that Salim Hamdan could not be prosecuted for providing material support to terrorists because his actions were not recognized as a war crime under international law at the time and the military commission that tried him could not rely on a law passed by Congress in 2006.

In other cases involving suspected terrorists held at the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Kavanaugh sided with prosecutors.

On the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh was part of the 7-2 majority that in 2022 ruled against a Guantanamo Bay detainee who had been tortured by the CIA abroad and sought information about his treatment.

The justices will be deciding soon whether to weigh in on the long-running death penalty case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the attacks, and one of his coconspirators.

Kavanaugh said he brought to the cases about terrorism suspects an understanding about how al-Qaida operated but still held the executive branch accountable to the Constitution and the law.

He also said he knows how hard it is to be president.

“There are a lot of no-win decisions that presidents make,” he said. “And I think with (Barack) Obama, and (Donald) Trump and (Joe) Biden, I’ve tried to, as a judge, understand the difficulty of being president, but at the same time the importance of abiding by the law.”

The message Bush communicated to his staff Sept. 12 was: “This will not happen again. This will never happen again in the United States,” Kavanaugh remembers.

“For him … every day was Sept. 12 for the next seven-plus years. Even when he was doing other things and doing all the things of government − economic negotiations, dealing with all the other issues in the world − he felt very responsible for making sure it never happened again,” Kavanaugh said. “And if something did happen, they’d say, 'Bush, why didn’t you prevent this?’ It was a huge responsibility for him to carry.”

'THAT was a crisis'

Having seen 9/11 up close, the weight it placed on the president, and the ability of the country to recover gave Kavanaugh perspective when times get tough.

“People talk about: 'This is a crisis and that’s a crisis. That was a crisis,’” he said. “America has lots of legal and policy debates, which are important. That’s a different level than what I think we felt on the night of Sept. 11 and the morning of Sept. 12.”

Rewatching Bush’s remarks this week, alongside his wife, Ashley, who also was working in the White House that day, Kavanaugh said he paused the recording several times to see the emotion in the faces of the bleary-eyed first responders when the president yelled into a bullhorn: "I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

“I think that moment is the moment of the Bush presidency,” he said. “It was such an important moment for the country.”