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Harper said that when the attack on the Hill occurred, he and his colleagues didn’t know what was happening on the other side of the door.

“All you hear is a whole lot of shooting coming towards you. And you don’t know whether there’s a firefight or whether that’s just a bunch of guys with automatic weapons wiping everybody out in their path.”

Harper said that everybody in the room was “pretty concerned” but that his reaction would have been different because he had been “trained in incidents like that.”

“The RCMP has run me through some drills to simulate these kinds of situations. So, you know, as a prime minister you’re in a little bit different position of other people.”

“As prime minister I have access obviously to all the government’s intelligence, all the security risks that are faced by the country and by me personally. So, you’re in a different head space than most people who are suddenly facing this kind of situation for the first time.”

The prime minister said he would not comment on whether he was placed in a closet before being taken out of the Conservatives’ caucus room.

“One of the things you try and do in a situation like that is conceal yourself if you can. But obviously the best situation is to exit … so that you can, so the prime minister can continue to run the government and that’s what we were able to do within a few minutes fortunately.”

Harper said the first person he called once he was out of the room was his mother, to assure her that he was safe.