Thank you Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner and Members of the Subcommittee for inviting me to testify before you on preserving the continuity of Congress after a terrorist attack. I am the executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, a joint effort of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institute, now co-chaired by former senators Alan Simpson and David Pryor.

It has been nearly eight years since the horrific day of September 11, 2001. Even after the passage of time, the country cannot forget the magnitude of the attack that killed many innocent people and changed the way we think about our security.

But members of this chamber more than anyone know that the damage done on September 11th could have been even worse. There were three planes that struck their intended targets at the two towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon leaving nearly 3,000 innocent people dead. But there was also a fourth plane, United 93, which took off from Newark 42 minutes late. Because of the delay, the passengers on that flight, who were herded to the back of the plane, learned about the fate of the other three planes from cell phone conversations with their loved ones. They made the fateful decision to storm the cockpit. All of them lost their lives, but their heroic actions spared America the loss of many more lives and prevented the disruption of our constitutional institutions of government, and our ability to respond effectively to that terrorist attack.

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John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI.