Twenty years ago today, I was sitting at my cramped little desk in the Capitol complex, wedged in a hallway between a printer and a coffee machine. The live TV feed in the corner of my computer window showed one of the World Trade Center towers with a hole and plume of smoke billowing out of it. I instant messaged a friend through my AOL chat window, asking what was going on.

Before he could respond, the second plane hit the other tower — and then the police came in shouting for us to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

I ran out of the Longworth House Office Building onto the street, and in the throng of terrified faces, I managed to find my old boss Bernie Sanders by searching for the disheveled shock of white hair (a trick I had learned during years of being his press secretary). Bernie had been mad at me for recently leaving his office for another gig, but that all went away in the trauma of that day.