Template:(Before 8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Rumsfeld

(Before 8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Rumsfeld Reportedly Predicts Terror Attacks
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Representatives Christopher Cox and John Mica, and numerous others are meeting in Rumsfeld’s private Pentagon dining room, discussing missile defense

Rumsfeld later recalls, "“I had said at an eight o’clock breakfast that sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong healthy Defense Department that contributes to—that underpins peace and stability in our world.”" [LARRY KING LIVE, 12/5/2001]

Wolfowitz recalls, “And we commented to them that based on what Rumsfeld and I had both seen and worked on the, that we were probably in for some nasty surprises over the next ten years.” [VANITY FAIR, 5/9/2003]

According to Mica,"“the subject of the conversation Donald Rumsfeld was interested in was, the military had been downsized during the ‘90s since the fall of the . And what we were going to do about [the] situation if we had another—the word [Rumsfeld] used was ‘incident.‘… And he was trying to make certain that we were prepared for something that we might not expect.”"

There are confused accounts that Rumsfeld says, “I’ve been around the block a few times. There will be another event,” just before the Pentagon is hit by Flight 77, but such comments may have been made around this time instead.

Shortly afterwards, someone walks in with a note informing Rumsfeld that a plane has just hit the WTC. [LARRY KING LIVE, 12/5/2001; 9/11 COMMISSION, 3/23/2004]

John Mica later comments, “little did we know that within a few minutes of the end of our conversation and actually at the end of our breakfast, that our world would change and that incident that we talked about would be happening.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 9/10/2004]