One of Ours

...A few feet away, Debra Burlingame saw it differently. Her brother Charles F. Burlingame III was the pilot of the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. On her lapel was pinned his picture and the same heart pin worn by the widow of passenger Dillard.

"The fact is, it wasn't our government who killed my brother and 3,000 people," she said. It was 19 hijackers and their sponsors. . . . We have new enemies we face. Those are the guys I want to get in the name of my brother." Her eyes began to tear up.

Burlingame changed her attitude about the responsibility of the government for Sept. 11 -- but well before Rice's testimony. Burlingame was one of those who protested Bush's reluctance to appoint the Sept. 11 commission in the first place. She joined a vigil outside the White House, carrying a big sign that said, "My Brother's Murderers Were Listed in the San Diego Phone Book" -- as one of the hijackers was.

Then she read the thick report of the congressional inquiry into the attacks, and she began to believe that preventing them was a complicated business. The government did the best it could, given pre-Sept. 11 assumptions, she now believes.

Burlingame thought Rice performed well. "She explained . . . it was a structural problem that it took September 11 to [shock people to] solve."

She wasn't looking for an apology either: "I felt that Dick Clarke's apology was theatrical and false. Nevertheless, it brought tears to my eyes. The fact that it brought tears to my eyes made me even more contemptuous of him."...