REMEMBERING 9/11:

Five years ago today, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher planned to meet with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

He wanted to tell her why he thought terrorists were planning an imminent attack on the U.S. They never got to meet that day — because planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

“I remember that I had gone over to Sen. [Mike] DeWine’s office and was talking to him about an aeronautics project that he would hopefully sponsor in the Senate,” Rohrabacher remembered.

When he got there, he heard talk that something was happening in New York, and then he found out a plane had crashed.

Rohrabacher thought initially, as many people did, that the crash was a tragic mistake. But he’d been studying terrorist activity in Afghanistan.

He put the puzzle together on Sept. 9 when he learned of the murder of Commander Ahmad Shah Masud, who had led an anti-Taliban force known as the Northern Alliance. The point was to get Masud out of the way, Rohrabacher thought. So he tried to warn Rice.

When he called on Sept. 10, the people at the National Security Council told him Rice couldn’t see him that day, so they set an appointment for 3 p.m., Sept. 11.

When the attacks came that morning, he knew he had been right.

“I remember it was like a lightbulb going off,” Rohrabacher said. “Immediately I knew exactly who had done it, where it was planned — a complete comprehension of the magnitude of what was going on.”

The city was thrown into confusion. People were leaving, and some federal officials wanted to close down the Capitol.

But Rohrabacher and some of his colleagues revolted. They thought shutting down the government, “would give the terrorists something to brag about,” he said. “They could say they had won.”

So about 300 officials met on the Capitol steps. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Senate Minority Leader Dick Gephardt each gave some brief remarks and were about to head back to the safety of their cars, so the crowd began to break up.

Rohrabacher said he realized the image of top federal officials fleeing Washington wouldn’t inspire much confidence in the public.

“I personally grabbed the congressman in front of me and I said, ‘Look, the two of us are going to sing “God Bless America” right now,’ and he said, ‘I’m with you,’ ” Rohrabacher said.

“It was almost like a movie — everybody starts turning around and coming back and joining hands…. We sang ‘God Bless America’ right there on the Capitol steps.”

QUESTION

How do you remember Sept. 11, 2001? Send your thoughts to dailypilot@latimes.com. Please include your name and tell us your hometown and phone numbers, for verification purposes only.