Exonian Profiles
|
Serena Wille ’89: Investigating 9/11
Attorney Serena Wille was in New York City on September 11, 2001, working in her office near Grand Central Station when news of the World Trade Center attacks first reached her. “We were far enough away from ground zero that we could remain in our offices,” she recalls, “but we could see smoke.” Today, Wille finds herself working near a different sort of ground zero. As a staff member for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States—better known as the 9/11 Commission—Wille is part of the government’s effort to provide “a full and complete accounting” of the attacks and to make recommendations on how future attacks can be prevented. What’s been called “the largest investigation of government actions and policy in American history” has become, if possible, even more challenging with the start of this election year. With it has come a sharp increase in the political pressures surrounding the commission’s work, including its public hearings with such senior-ranking officials as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft and CIA Director George Tenet. The commission is due to deliver its findings on July 26, just prior to the start of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Wille remains philosophical about the various pressures swirling around the commission. “You just do the best work you can regardless,” she says firmly. She also expresses confidence in the independent, bipartisan commission’s ability to render not only a full and complete accounting, but a fair and balanced one as well. Created by Congress in late 2002, the 9/11 Commission is chaired by Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey and a Republican, with Lee Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman and a Democrat, serving as vice chair. Wille joined the commission in May 2003, one of nearly 80 staff members hired to assist the commissioners in their investigations into such areas as Al Qaeda and the organization of the 9/11 attacks; intelligence collection; and commercial aviation and transportation security. In all, the commission has interviewed more than 1,000 individuals, and held close to a dozen public hearings with more to come. Wille is one of three staff members assigned to study the issue of terrorist financing, work which allows her to combine her long-standing interest in foreign affairs with her expertise in international finance. A Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina, where she majored in political science, Wille went on to Harvard Law School. After graduating in 1997, she joined Davis Polk & Wardwell, where she became interested in project financing in developing countries. In 2001, she became an associate attorney in Allen & Overy’s New York office, working with the firm’s global banking group on projects in the former Soviet Union and in the energy sector. Wille credits Exeter with instilling in her a love of challenges
and the persistence to see them through, skills that are proving
essential in her current job. But the root of her work with the 9/11
Commission remains 9/11 itself. “It’s important for me
to remember what that day was like,” she says. “It’s
part of why I’m doing this.” — Beth Brosnan |
