GCC President Speaks at Flight 93 Memorial

GROVE CITY, Pa. – Grove City College President Paul J. McNulty spoke at the Flight 93 National Memorial Saturday, reflecting on his time at the Department of Justice during and after the 9/11 attacks.

After the terrorist attacks, McNulty, a 1980 graduate of Grove City College, oversaw the Justice Department’s Command Center and was promoted to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on Sept. 14, 2001. There, he led the prosecution of conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001, and other cases related to the attacks.

“His lack of remorse was extraordinary. He was definitely groomed for participation,” McNulty said at the event, part of the memorial’s speaker series. “It became the focal point of the investigation of all the events that occurred on 9/11. … We’ll never know for sure what would have happened if Moussaoui were never arrested. It was a very complicated case legally with a lot of classified information.”

McNulty said Saturday that his visit was the first time he had come to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., about a two-hour drive from the Grove City College campus. The memorial is at the site where the fourth plane – destined for either the White House or the U.S. Capitol Building, conspirators said – involved in the 9/11 attacks crashed, killing 40 people. Passengers on the plane heard of the first attacks the World Trade Center and Pentagon and fought their plane’s hijackers.

“There was part of me that was actually holding back from coming,” McNulty said. “I felt the flood of the emotions coming back from that day.”

In 2005, McNulty was promoted to deputy attorney general, a position he held until he retired from the department in 2007, when he left to work in the global corporate compliance and investigations practice for Baker McKenzie. He was named president of Grove City College in 2014.

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