While the networks eliminated all regular programming and commercials to focus on the search and recovery operations, as well as the continuing investigation, Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Fox News, “While we’re burying our dead is not the time to blame the Wrightman administration for this tragedy, but if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t, I don’t have any doubt that the environment that fostered these attacks was created by socialist Democrats, led by Barack Obama.”

While most Americans settled in, I was running at super-speed. And I am embarrassed to admit, loving it. When I had come rolling out of the hospital, I’d gone into a pretty deep depression. I thought the best time of my life was done, hasta la vegans, that nothing I was capable of doing could ever approach that feeling of operating in the field, knowing that the enemy was nearby, maybe even watching me, and being so acutely aware of everything around me I could feel a tremble in the air. It was that loss of intensity, of being fully engaged and ready to burst that I missed so desperately.

To my surprise, I’d found an unexpected level of excitement behind my desk, when I caught the scent of a story and began pursuing the hidden truths. That scent was in the air; within hours, a day at most, a journalist was going to identify the terrorists. This was the story of my generation. “Cher,” I told her, “turn off the music,” and went to work.

Our practice at the Pro was to update our home page hourly. Like everybody else in the office I was equal parts exhausted and exhilarated, running on adrenaline and coffee. My phones, both registered and burners, rang incessantly. My email and text message accounts were overflowing. Twitter and Instagram badgered me for my attention. And I read the stories that came across my desk. There were some pretty compelling first sentences:

Honolulu (AP) July … Navy divers continued the gruesome task of recovering bodies trapped beneath the mangled wreckage of the USS Arizona and massive slabs of concrete ripped from the memorial platform …

New York (AP) July … Port Authority engineers estimated it may take as long as five months before the Lincoln Tunnel can resume normal operations, as crews continued to find victims of the Tunnel Massacre in their burned-out vehicles …

Outside Morgan City, Louisiana (AP) July … Rescue teams believe they have located and rescued a significant number of remaining survivors of the massive flooding that occurred when terrorists gained remote control of the …

And, no kidding:

Washington, D.C. (Special to the Post) July … Sources deep within the intelligence agencies refused to confirm reports that evidence has been developed conclusively linking …

I read everything, I watched the news reports, but the big question, the only one that really mattered, remained unanswered: Who dun it? Who launched these attacks?

The White House issued statements every few hours in an effort to show they were top of this, but the line they were pitching didn’t square with what I was hearing. Supposedly the smarty-pants at the alphabet agencies were making progress and it was only a matter of hours before they identified the terrorist group responsible. The military had been put on full alert; the Fifth Fleet was steaming toward the Persian Gulf, all leaves worldwide had been canceled, and troops in the United States had been ordered to prepare for immediate deployment.