Executive Branch Terrorism & Extremism

Lawfare Daily: Sept. 11, 2001, 25 Years Later

Katherine Pompilio, Julia Curlee, Michael Feinberg, Natalie K. Orpett, Loren Voss, Benjamin Wittes
Friday, September 11, 2026, 7:00 AM
The Lawfare team talks about how Sept. 11 shaped the U.S. national security apparatus and the guests’ careers. 

On today’s episode, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sits down with five members of the Lawfare team—Public Service Fellow Julia Curlee, Senior Editor Michael Feinberg, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett, Senior Editor Loren Voss, and Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes—to talk about how Sept. 11 shaped the U.S. national security apparatus and the guests’ careers. 

Together they examine what the country's national security institutions looked like before 9/11, which of the legal and institutional structures built in response have outlived their original purpose, and what a younger generation—one that has never known anything else—should understand about the world those structures were built to answer.

Read Lawfare's collection "9/11 at 25: The Legal Architecture of the War on Terror, Twenty-Five Years On," examining how 9/11 remains—or doesn't—embedded in current legal and policy frameworks, a quarter century after the attacks.

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Katherine Pompilio is an associate editor of Lawfare. She holds a B.A. with honors in political science from Skidmore College.
Julia Curlee is a Public Service Fellow at Lawfare and a former CIA analyst with twenty-five years of experience in national security. She served as an NSC director in the Biden and second Trump White Houses and as a PDB briefer to the Vice President. She completed multiple tours in the Middle East and South Asia and served in CIA's China Mission Center. She holds master's degrees from the National War College and American University. The opinions presented here are her own and not those of the U.S. government.
Michael Feinberg is a former Assistant Special Agent in Charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he spent the overwhelming majority of his career combatting the PRC’s intelligence services. He is a recipient and multiple times nominee of the FBI’s highest recognition, the Director’s Award for Excellence, as well as numerous other Bureau honors and ODNI commendations. Prior to his service with the FBI, he was an attorney in both private and public practice. The opinions presented here are entirely his own and not those of the U.S. government.
Natalie Orpett is the executive editor of Lawfare and deputy general counsel of the Lawfare Institute. She was previously an attorney at the law firm Jenner & Block, where she focused on investigations and government controversies, and also maintained an active pro bono practice. She served as civilian counsel to a defendant in the Guantanamo Military Commissions for more than eight years.
Loren Voss ia a senior editor at Lawfare. She most recently served as Director for Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council. She chairs the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict at the American Society of International Law and previously served as a Senior Advisor for the Department of Defense and taught classes on domestic deployment of the military and disinformation at GW Law. Loren previously served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
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