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‘We’re under attack’: Chattanoogan, Navy news head at Pentagon on 9/11

Staff photo by Troy Stolt / Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Cate Mueller holds a photograph she made at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, while working as the head of the U.S. Navy News Staff at Public House on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Mueller snapped the photo of four of her navy colleagues as they stood on an overpass on the northbound lanes of Highway 395 where they'd walked minutes after American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Left to right are Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, Capt. Tom Van Leunen, Cmdr. Beci Brenton and Lt. Steve Curry, and in the background smoke can be seen billowing from the crash site.
Staff photo by Troy Stolt / Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Cate Mueller holds a photograph she made at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, while working as the head of the U.S. Navy News Staff at Public House on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Mueller snapped the photo of four of her navy colleagues as they stood on an overpass on the northbound lanes of Highway 395 where they'd walked minutes after American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Left to right are Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli, Capt. Tom Van Leunen, Cmdr. Beci Brenton and Lt. Steve Curry, and in the background smoke can be seen billowing from the crash site.

By Ben Benton 7 min read

Almost every morning in 2001, the head of the U.S. Navy’s news staff met at the Pentagon with her counterparts in the other military branches and the U.S. Department of Defense to discuss the expected media topics of the day.

It had been a harrowing couple of years for military news that included the 2000 Al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole, the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk and the 2001 collision between the USS Greeneville and the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru.

The meeting on Sept. 11 was set for 9 a.m.

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Cate Mueller, who now lives in Chattanooga and is involved in the federal response to COVID-19, remembers the day vividly.

She was then a lieutenant commander. August 2001 had seemed to be the first reprieve for the military news desk in modern memory, she said. Just before she left for the 9 a.m. meeting, she saw something on the television in her office that would change her course forever, along with the world’s.