KERRY: I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting -- we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

+ + Kerry: "Nobody Could Think"

For the record, it was about 40 minutes between the when the second tower was hit and when the Pentagon was hit. For 40 minutes, Sen. John Kerry, a sitting member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sat in a room with Senate Leader Tom Daschle.

In Kerry's own words, "nobody could think."

Sen. Kerry sat in a very vulnerable place on Capitol Hill for 40 minutes after the second tower was hit. What did he mean when he said, "nobody could think"? Perhaps the chaos and confusion of the moment meant that a group of top leaders in the Senate really did not know what to do! So they sat in a vulnerable Senate office, exposed to attack. Apparently, Kerry and others did not yet realize that America was at war.

When did Kerry know America was at war?

Again, in Sen. Kerry's own words:

And as we went out of the building, my immediate feeling was, we're at war. I mean, that was the sense, that we are under attack. People are attacking the United States of America and we needed to respond.

So, more than 45 minutes after the second tower was hit, as Sen. Kerry was evacuating the Capitol, his "immediate feeling" was that America was "at war." In his own words, it took Sen. Kerry 45 minutes to come to this conclusion.