Say What? With Jason Pack | Episode 2: Inside the FBI Press Office on 9/11 with Paul Bresson

A clear Tuesday morning. Lunch plans with a colleague. A boxy television sitting on top of a filing cabinet.

Then the second plane hit.

In this episode of Say What?, Jason Pack talks with retired FBI National Press Office Unit Chief Paul Bresson about what he saw, heard and experienced inside FBI Headquarters on September 11, 2001.

Bresson remembers watching the second aircraft strike the World Trade Center, the FBI press-office phone bank lighting up almost immediately, reporters calling with fragments of information, reports of an attack at the Pentagon and the uncertainty gripping Washington as no one knew what might happen next.

He also takes listeners inside an era of crisis communications before social media, when the FBI relied on telephones, fact sheets, press conferences and relationships with reporters while one of the largest investigations in American history unfolded in real time.

One of the most powerful moments comes the following morning. Exhausted after working through the night, Bresson walked through a nearly empty Union Station and saw the enormous newspaper headlines documenting what had happened. Only then, he says, did the historic weight of the previous 24 hours begin to feel real.

Twenty-five years later, the conversation offers lessons that still matter to PIOs and crisis communicators: how to communicate when information is incomplete, what to protect during an active investigation, how the public can become an essential partner and why trust matters when everyone wants answers.

Hosted by Jason Pack
A Media Rep Global Strategies production.