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Good points by everyone. Perception is a big part of how people react to each other. There are some situations where I would rather have people think I am being jumpy or paranoid, rather than unsafe or uncaring. However, it is always good to hear from a broader viewpoint. I think this makes it easier for people to feel more comfortable talking about a difficult topic, and to develop a better sense of support and community. I am originally from Pennsylvania and was in the area when everything happened. It still bothers me when I remember the impact that had on everyone. The skys and the roads were eerily quiet. I remember looking up at airplanes wondering what they were going to do as their flight path descended past a major nuclear power plant. I felt sick for months. The problem for me was that before these things happened, I was helping a person from Malaysia visit the country. This person was from a country which is highly prone to infiltration, from a city (Malacca) known for its high incidence of clandestine terrorist meetings, who had deep Muslim connections which I didn't know about until later. This person repeatedly had conflicting stories, was in areas "coincidental" to 9/11, such as New Haven-Boston, New York, and DC. Additionally, they had stolen money from my home and bragged about it in a very cleverly-worded way. They supposedly had a Masters degree in mathematical modelling and did a thesis on fluid movement, spoke 5 languages and had friends who were supposedly within the government at various levels. Some of this I do not doubt. The more I was in contact with this person, the more I realized that their behavior was not only duplicitous but extraordinarily suspicious. I started having problems with my PC as if my operating system was running a shell program. The desktop would always have to be shut down several times, which it never did before. E-mail messages would get rerouted or arrive in my box totally out of order. I started noticing other odd little things too, like a possibly-faked VISA, and other things I don't want to talk about. I remember all sorts of behavior that seemed like a subtext for other things. I ignored all of this. Even though my instincts were screaming, I remember joking around with this person about how they could be a spy or something. We used to actually talk about stuff like that, like the ease of getting into the US unnoticed. I dismissed all of it as so much nonsense. I even thought about reporting some behavior to the police, but I didn't. I would have sounded like a paranoid idiot, right? I practiced sending e-mails to myself with information about this person, but I could never find the right way to say it to anyone else. I secretly wished that the government would intercept my messages with a web filter and use them. I felt like I was going to go crazy. I tried to warn people who had this person as a houseguest. My efforts sounded overblown and awkward. Then 9/11 happened. I was one of many people who reported suspicious behavior to the FBI. I still do not know if my information helped or hurt. I do not know if I had said something sooner, if anything would have changed. But I also overlooked the possibility that I was innocently involved in something bigger, because I would be the one targeted as crazy for thinking that way. Before 9/11, this person and I had visited one of the railroads where I used to work. It hauled chlorine gas to a chemical plant in a densely-populated area. After 9/11, I remember the visit by a pair of middle-eastern looking people wanting a train ride. They were a very well-spoken, middle-class couple, but one of the odd things the man said was "We won't be back to New York for a long time." The FBI never interviewed me. Perhaps they didn't need to, or perhaps I was wrong. I'll never know. But I had to face the cold hard fact that my behavior may have cost 3,000 people their lives, even if what I had to offer was only a tiny piece of the puzzle. How many of you could live with that? This is the first time I've told anybody about it in public. Thanks for allowing me to get that off of my chest. Even if this thread was considered a waste of time by other peopple, it helped me to feel better. [V]
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