Lawmakers recall Sept. 11 attacks that launched their military service

Nick Eskow, Jackie Wang, CQ-Roll Call on Sep 11, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Rep. Troy Downing remembers being on a moose hunt in rural Alaska when planes hijacked by terrorists attacked the Pentagon and felled the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, in the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

“I was probably the last person on the planet to find out about it,” the Montana Republican said.

Over three days hiking through the wilderness, Downing began to wonder why none of the usual planes were flying overhead. It wasn’t until a Grumman Goose airplane came to pick them up from Lake Chikuminuk that he heard the news.

“I remember vividly the pilot just stuck his head out the window, he’s still on the plane, and just yells at us, goes, ‘Guess what?,’” he recalled. The news, Downing said, “just hit me in the chest.”

The day after he got home, he walked into an Air Force recruiter’s office. At age 34, he was just shy of the cutoff age. That led to two tours of duty in Afghanistan with a combat search and rescue squadron.

Jared Golden was at the University of Maine when the attacks happened. He dropped out to enlist in the Marine Corps. Across the country, Eli Crane had a similar experience. He left the University of Arizona in his senior year to join the Navy and eventually its elite SEAL unit. Golden, a Democrat, was elected to Congress 17 years later. Crane, a Republican, joined the House in 2023.

All three of these lawmakers point to the Sept. 11 attacks as a turning point in their lives. Each is a U.S. military veteran whose service was closely linked to the terror attacks and the decades of war that followed.

There are 79 veterans currently serving in the House, 21 of whom began their service in 2001 or later. For many, that experience changed the direction of their lives.

Democrat Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, ranking member of the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, had already decided to enlist in the Marines when the attacks happened. He went on to serve four tours of duty in Iraq and was a special assistant to Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007 troop surge. The experience also showed him the global impacts of U.S. policy.

“Not only would I not be here without Marine experience, but being in the Marines opened my eyes in so many ways to the rest of the world,” said Moulton.

Downing said the attacks led to a military career he never thought he’d have, spending eight years in the Air Force and Air National Guard flying search and rescue missions at home and abroad. He eventually sought political office and served as Montana’s state auditor before his election to Congress in 2024.

“I never in my life thought I’d be in the military,” said Downing. “And I’m almost embarrassed to say it took something so tragic to kind of rattle my cage, but it did, and it started me on this path that I’m still on right now.”

The experience of military service has also shaped their worldviews and continues to inform their approaches to policymaking.

“There’s not a day goes by that I don’t in some way think about being in the Marines,” said Golden, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “I think my perspective is shaped towards understanding that we are all Americans, that it is a dangerous world out there, that we need each other, and that the world, I believe, is increasingly more dangerous now than it was then.”

Crane served with the SEALs in Iraq. A member of the Homeland Security Committee — a panel formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks — Crane said that having experienced war, he now wants to play a role in keeping the U.S. out of future conflicts.

“Just seeing how many families have been completely devastated by war or by the lies that are told to get us to go to war,” Crane said, “completely affected my worldview and what I try to do up here now.”

Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow also said his experiences made him think about the human costs of national security policy.

After the 2001 attacks, Crow requested a transfer from the National Guard to the Army, where he served with the elite Army Rangers in Iraq. He left the service in 2006 with the rank of captain. Elected to Congress in 2018, Crow is now a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees.

“I started my career on the very end, the very receiving end of national security policy, and now I’m on the other end, helping craft and shape it. So it’s not abstract to me in any way,” said Crow. “I often think about Pvt. Crow and Lt. Crow and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of all the decisions made in Washington.”

Moulton became an outspoken critic of the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war and found his way to Congress in 2014 through New Politics, a nonprofit encouraging veterans to run for public office.

Years later, he recalled the prescient comments from a member of his platoon, which Moulton admits he didn’t take seriously at the time: “There was a day in 2004 when an [officer] in my platoon said ‘You know, sir, you really ought to run for Congress so this shit doesn’t happen again.’”