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tv   9 11 Anniversary Coverage  MSNBC  September 11, 2011 4:00am-5:00am PDT

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another one just hit. >> very large plane -- >> the instant that second plane
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hit that second tower the looks that were exchanged in that studio were chilling, and i'll never forget them. >> they were eyewitnesss to history. >> there's been a declaration of war by terrorists on the united states. >> i think the role of a journalist is to tell everyone that there is a new reality here. >> "america under attack," live on the air. >> what we're see sergeant most shocking video i've ever seen. >> and behind the scenes -- >> if i were you i would stay off the beat the rest of the day, because we are next. and it sent a chill down me. >> looking back at that momentous day. >> to get through that morning took everything that i knew as a journalist, as a husband as a father, as human being. >> and in the days and weeks
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that followed. >> it was my first look at that. the charred lattice work of the and the president's as well. >> stored in their memories. >> the world trade center. wasn't it? >> this little boy's world had gone away. >> who are you looking for? >> my son soms. >> and i remember thinking that's the emblematic mother. that's the mother of all of us. >> that moment heard on our watch, on our air live television. >> it's been ten years and i am so affected by it. it's the 11th day of september, 2001. you're looking at people gathered outside our stud yee here on a sunny morning. >> september 11th 2001 strikes me as being a normal, typical late summer day in new york, except for one thing. >> al, it is such a pretty
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morning. isn't it? >> a perfect fall morning. >> i remember thinking if you were going to take a picture of the skyline of new york to lure people tourists to come to this city to experience it, that would be the day you'd want to pick. it was nothing that could have foreshad ode that this was going to be an extraordinary day much less a day that would change the world and change all of our lives. so we just went about our business that day. >> nbc's david gregory is traveling with the president. he's in florida this morning. david, good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, matt. the president's in the middle of a two-day swing here in florida to promote his education plan stuck in congress. >> morning starts fairly early. the president talking about education. sit down and read to the students in that elementary school, read them a story. that was going to be the signature, the picture of the day we were going to get.
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>> howard hughes lived the american dream. he was wealthy beyond belief and beautiful movie stars who made record-breaking flights. >> just before 8:50 i am interviewing a guy that had written a book about howard hughes. >> you say this is a different perspective on howard hughes -- >> a typical book segment. you know? i'd done 1,000 of them and there was nothing that stood out until at some point i guess about half way through the interview we had these earpieces. the misconception, they're always talking to us in those earpieces. the truth is, in the middle of an interview they're rarely saying anything to you. so when a voice does pop up through your earpiece into your ear, it catches your attention. in my ear somebody simply said, we think a plane has crashed into the world trade center. let's go there. >> i have got to interrupt you right now richard hatch thank you very much. we appreciate it.
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we're going live right now and show you a picture of the world trade center. >> and looking at these two monitors and the next thing you know, it dips to black and up from black comes this image of the world trade center. >> we've been told that this is a plane. we don't have confirmation on that but there is an enormous hole. >> i remember looking at the building when i finally did get a glimpse of the scar on the building, thinking, it had to be a pretty substantial plane. >> on the phone we do have jennifer oversteen who apparently witnessed this i vent. it you hear me? >> jennifer had just exited a subway station when she heard and explosion and looked up and she saw this fire coming out of the building and smoke coming out of the building, and debris, and paper, and everything. and she began to recount for us what she had seen. >> i've never seen any fire like this in the air, and -- the pieces of the building were flying down.
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it looks like -- it's like the top -- i can't even tell you. maybe 20 floors. intense smoke. it's horrible. it's -- i can't even describe it. >> one thing that struck me about jennifer on the phone is how shaken she sounded. >> i'm shocked. i've never seen anything like it. it's just horrible. >> i could almost visualize her holding the phone in her handshaking. that's how she sounded to me. >> on tuesday morning i get a call shortly before 9:00. some plane has run into the world trade center. maybe you better come in. i have this odd memory of going in to get dressed in a hurry and putting on a more sober tie thinking, this could be a long day. not having any idea what i was in for. >> it started pretty much as a typical day for me at pentagon. i arrived pretty early and was sitting at my desk in the nbc pentagon office and suddenly i
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hear this announcement. >> we have a breaking news story to tell you about. apparently a plane has just crashed into the world trade center here in new york city. >> and my head just whipped around. at one point i got about this close to the tv and as i looked and i saw the smoke pouring out of that i said, that's not a plane. that's a much larger hole. i got up, shot into the pentagon holloway, 17 1/2 miles of quarters and started working every inch of it. >> one of our very best producers was a woman named elliot walker. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> hi. tell me where you are and what you saw? >> elliot lived in the area too, and she was a real pro. elliot had been there, done that, seen everything. and when she started to describe what she was witnessing from a real journalistic point of view, the story started to take shape for me. >> from where i was on the street a moment ago you can, in
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fact, see smoke leaving the building building on three sides. it seems to be coming out on at least four or five stores. >> then all of a sudden elliot walker said something to the effect of, my god there's another one. >> oh, another one just hit. something else just hit. a very large plane just through directly over my building and there's been another collision. can you see it? >> yes. oh my -- >> you know what? we just saw a plane circling the building. >> i don't remember ever having seen an explosion like that. i knew how big those buildings were. i mean, they were massive. the idea that something could hit the southern side of that tower and create that kind of fireball on the northern side -- blew my mind. it just -- it took -- it took a while to even register to me. >> jennifer, did you see this happen? >> i've never seen -- i saw a large plane, like a jet go
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immediately heading directly into the world straight center. just flew into it coming from south to north. i watched the plane fly into the world trade center. >> the instant that second plane hit that second tower, the looks that were exchanged in that studio were chilling, and i'll never forget them. >> you will see what appears to be a large plane. it could be a 727 right there, maybe even bigger, flying right into the side of the world trade center. >> the first thing i did was look at katie and i remember mouthing the words to her and she looked at me and that was it. this was not an accident. this was a deliberate act of terrorism. >> we're going to immediately check with air traffic control and find out if they had contact with either of these planes. what we just seen is about the most shocking videotape i've ever seen. >> you have to understand what's happening in the studio at this point. there were people crying.
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there were pretty seasoned professionals crying. i remember one person in particular operating the camera with tearing streaming down his face. i'm sure if you would have seen me and katie, we were probably white as ghosts. but i've never seen that kind of emotion, spontaneous emotion, in one place like that before. there was a -- an instant realization of the horror of what we were seeing, and that i think even instant realization
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i've never seen anything like it. it literally flew itself into the world trade center. >> shortly before the second plane hit the south tower, something that happened in the studio that never was spoken
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about on the air but was an important part of i know my experience, and i think everyone's experience who was in that studio that day, and that was that as we were watching these events unfold and we watched that second plane hit on our air not only broadcasters and journalists at that time, but i'm a new yorker. and, you know, i was born in this city. my family also lives here. i had a 2-month-old baby, and the city we lived in was under attack. >> we want to mention when the impact hit the first tower you would hope that people who were in the second tower were beginning to evacuate. >> so i remember scribbling on a piece of paper you know, please, call my wife at her cell phone number and handing it to a great guy in the studio who's kind of, one of the studio managers and just find out that everybody was okay.
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>> jim miklaszewski is at the pentagon now. mik, are you hearing more information from there? >> pentagon officials are already calling this a terrorist attack. >> the first time i heard the word terrorism out of any u.s. official came shortly after the second plane had hit. and i bumped into a u.s. military intelligence official, and i said, look, what have you got? and he said, obviously, this is clearly an act of terrorism. and then he got very close to me and almost sighed for a few seconds, and he leaned in and he said, this attack was so well coordinatesed, that if i were you, i would stay off the nbc offices, the outer ring of the pentagon the rest of the day, because we are next. and it sent a chill down my
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back. >> all right. david gregory is now on the phone from florida. >> following the president. >> david. >> reporter: the president is about to begin an education event which is obviously being cancelled -- >> after the second plane hit it goes from just being a mundane picture of the day to becoming a seminole event for our country, and i'm there with the president on that very occasion. >> today we've had a national tragedy. two airplanes have crashed into the world trade center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. >> after the president's remarks, he speaks to the country, the atmosphere in the press corps was frenzy confused. >> as soon as the president leaves that location, we are in
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the worst place in the world. his top advisers, and we're stuck. >> this clearly is a terror attack according to the u.s. government, as you heard the president say. of course, the best known is osama bin laden with no alert coming from his organization. >> because of my deep counterterrorism intelligence, having covered al qaeda for years before that the first thing i thought of that day was this had the hallmark of al qaeda and had the hallmark of osama bin laden. as far as they know, as of this morning, as of this minute, he is in afghanistan. calling intelligence sources and particularly at the cia saying, who, other than bin laden and i was being told, only bin laden could have pulled this off. >> they are assuming and they've obviously informed the president that this is a terror attack. >> ever since i started as a reporter, in the late '60s, early '70s i have known that you
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have to separate the personal from the professional, but i'm married to alan greenspan who at the time was chairman of the board of the federal reserve. so my concern immediately was, they're attacking wall street. this is symbolic. will they also attack individuals? then i realized that my husband was in an airplane for hours i didn't know where he was, and i was calling this office and they were trying to reach him and so i was really terrified about how broad this conspiracy was and how many other planes were in danger. >> to jim miklaszewski at the pentagon now. what can you tell us? >> i remember we did a phone interview with jim miklaszewski at pentagon because we obviously wanted to know what the military's response to these planes hitting would be? did they add vns noticevance notice?
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>> senior officials at the pentagon are getting information that the american airlines flight 11 after it left boston, apparently, was hijacked and was diverted apparently -- >> when we finished jim's report and it was a short time after that that he started signaling to our producers he had something important he needed to add. >> it was clear nobody was listening to me, because i was saying it's mik. something's happened here at pentagon. mik at the pentagon. and i'm going come to me come to me, and they stopped what they were talking about and katie said there's apparently some development, something like that. let's go to mik at the pentagon. >> i'm sorry to interrupt you, but jim miklaszewski has new information at the pentagon. hope you'll stand by and continue to talk with us. mik? >> i don't want to alarm anybody right now but apparently it felt just a few moments ago,
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shortly after 9:30 i was actually in my office and new york was in my earpiece saying, hey, get ready. we want you to talk to katie on the air. obviously, nobody knows exactly who was at the controls in the plane, but it broke off its route from, to los angeles. >> i was finished, and just as i threw it back, almost instantaneously, boom. >> we're looking at live pictures of the pentagon where there is billowing smoke. mik, can you talk to us? >> reporter: officially, nobody knows exactly what happened. i think the picture is pretty clear. >> several hundred yards away from where the plane struck the building. but i could feel the room shake and the windows rattle.
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>> reporter: as i was in the hol hall way -- >> with minutes they sent out to evacuate the building but i felt i had to stay at the camp for even a short period of time to report what critical information we knew about what was happening. >> reporter: i don't know if you can hear the sirens outside right now, but it appears that i think people here in the building are already describing as a highly sophisticated, coordinated attack not only against the world trade center, but against the pentagon and u.s. military right here in washington. >> and i tried to relay of much of that as possible before essentially we were forced to evacuate the building. >> i'm joined by tom brokaw and we're trying to recap what's been going on -- >> i was on the air with katie and matt, and it's odd. as it plays back in my memory
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bank, everything seemed to be both surreal and in slow motion, because i was having a hard time coming to grips with what we were seeing. >> we have this as a major development. the federal aviation administration has shut down all aircraft nationwide. this country has been immobilized by these terrorist attacks in terms of air travel, and we don't know where it goes from here. >> i later said that to get through that morning and that day and all of the days that followed took everything that i knew as a journalist as a husband, as a father, as human being. >> some of the reports we hearing were so devastating that we really had to stop and be careful about what we did and didn't say on the air. >> i remember one -- one person telling me who was down on the scene and who i actually had a chance to speak to on the phone not on the air, telling me that
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from where he was standing, he could hear and feel the impact of people jumping out of the building, and, you know, that's when as a human being you have to think how awful could it be in that building at that moment for these people to decide that their best option their best option was to jump out to certain death. >> we moved what we thought was a safe distance, at least what police thought was a safe distance from the building and it was about that time, too, that suddenly an f-16 -- i mean, it seemed like it was at treetop level just roared overhead. >> katie, there was a telling, dramatic moment just a second ago. a u.s. air force f-16 flew very
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low level in a wide sweeping turn around the pentagon and back over washington. >> and there was an air force colonel standing next to me and he looked up and i'll never forget his words. he said, oh my god. we're flying cap. combat air patrols over the nation's capital. so he was profoundly struck by the idea that america was under attack. 9:59 i was watching the monitors, that now familiar shot of the twin towers with the smoke billowing out and then all of a sudden it was clear something monumental was happening to the south tower. >> you just saw a live picture of what seemed to be a portion of the building falling away from the world trade center. if we can rerack that to about
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20 seconds ago you'll see something dramatic happening. >> so i remember just asking the control room to rerack the tape, and i still didn't want to definitively say the whole building had collapsed, because you know, by this time after an hour or so of covering this, we were very aware of the fact that there were people watching at home who had loved ones in those buildings. and to be the person who would say on the air that building has collapsed would be final. would be -- that would have been the end. >> let's go back to a few seconds ago. this is now about an hour after the first impact. we saw some dramatic footage of one of the twin towers actually appearing to fall away from the rest of the building. can we go to the tape now? here we go right here. i mean when you look at it the
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building has collapsed. that tower just came down. >> that was the worst moment of the day for me. by far. it was worse than the explosion, the fireball. when the second plane hit. that image of that building collapsing. to think that it literally fell down. i couldn't -- i could not -- i couldn't grasp that. i just couldn't. >> to think about the possible loss of life that just occurred by the collapse of that southeastern tower is just amazing. >> i was thinking, how many people are trapped. we thought the numbers were huge. we didn't know how many had gotten out, and it was terrifying. >> when the building collapsed it was a different emotion that swept through the studio, i think. there was this incredible sadness for what we knew was some monumental loss of life, but there was also i think, an
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anger. it made me sick to mey stomach and it made me angry and i think as i looked around the studio, those looks of horror and the tears changed in that instant. there was this look of -- anger. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] unlike some car companies nissan is running at 100% which means the most innovative cars are also the most available cars. nissan. innovation for today. innovation for all. ♪ ♪
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msnbc i'm veronica della cruz. here's what's happening. a ceremony is about to begin marking the tenth anniversary of the attacks that toppled the world trade center towers. this opens the september 11th national memorial. president obama is headed to the memorial right now also making stops at shanksville and the pentagon. and now back to "9/11: in our own words."
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it is difficult to comprehend, but this country the strongest country in the world, has been the target of a major coordinated terrorist attack, and the end is not over yet. >> of all the events i've covered live on television there was nothing ever that was quite like that. it was live. kennedy was not shot live on television for example. so you had a moment to the think about what were you going to say once you digested the news. in this case, it was improvisation. >> there had never been an event to match the magnitude of this in terms of everything shut down air traffic, immobilized, the financial markets shut down. an untold loss of live in the nerve center of america to say
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nothing about what's going on at the pentagon. >> throughout the course of that morning, people were handing us wire copy, stories, eyewitness accounts from people that we couldn't actually find out if they knew what they were talking about. >> can you tell me about the injuries you're seeing and the numbers of people you've been treating? >> we've seen a steady stream of patients for approximately an hour and a half. >> that day we were skiing in an avalanche. that's the only way to describe it. we were just trying to keep our heads above the cascade of information, keeping stable trying to keep the information in a coherent form. >> we'd gotten a report that now a car boem has exploded outside the state department. can we go with anyone for more information on that? >> where is andrea mitchell? at the state department? >> at one point that morning matt asked me about a report there had been a car bomb outside the state department and people evacuated. i was calling people over there and they said it just wasn't
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true. i do not have confirmation of has. >> all right. >> they did evacuate the state department, but we do not have confirmation at this moment about a car bomb. >> we had to sort through fact from fiction and rumor. it's extraordinary there wasn't more inaccurate information on the air on everyone's air, because when you think of what was happening at the pentagon, for instance, it's pretty -- astounding. >> andrea, thanks. sorry to interrupt. we're going to go back to jim miklaszewski at the pentagon. mik? >> it was one very dramatic moment when jim said people were told not only to get out of the building but to take cover. >> security forces in the area just blared out over their loud speakers to any pedestrians near the pentagon to take cover immediately. >> you get out of a burning building. do you that at your house if it were burning. you take cover when you're under attack.
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>> we see a security helicopter circling the pentagon. again, the skies are crystal clear blue, and i can't see the speck of an airplane. >> mik, thank very much. we're going to move a couple miles away from you at the white house to where bob kuhr is standr is standing by. that building is now evacuated? >> that is true. the mood is surreal. as soon as word came we were rather forcefully removed 23r9 white house. the scene was one of administrators, cooks, whatever running at fairly high speed all the way out of the building through the top gates. >> it was still very much believed that there was more about to happen. this attack was still very much in progress. there were other planes, we didn't know where they so the only thing we could sit there and guess was, what could be next? >> oh, no! oh!
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>> let's look at these live pictures at the world trade center. the other tower of the world trade center has just collapsed. you are looking at live pictures of the second twin tower at the world trade center collapsing as a result of the crash of an airplane into its side. >> manhattan has been changed. there's been a declaration of war by terrorists against the united states. >> when the second tower went down and tom brokaw said, this is a declaration of war against our country i don't know that i had viewed it in that way up until that instant. i thought, we have an act of terrorism, but, know, when you hear tom brokaw you know, the voice of a generation of news watchers, say the words this is
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a declaration of war, it sinks in. >> i think the role of a journalist is to tell everyone that there is a new reality here. i knew that we were changed. that at that moment, we were a different country. s lara. her morning begins with arthritis pain. that's a coffee and two pills. the afternoon tour begins with more pain and more pills. the evening guests arrive. back to sore knees. back to more pills. the day is done but hang on... her doctor recommended aleve. just 2 pills can keep arthritis pain away all day with fewer pills than tylenol. this is lara who chose 2 aleve and fewer pills for a day free of pain. and get the all day pain relief of aleve in liquid gels.
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we now have an ap news alert out of pittsburgh. officials at somerset county airport are confirming the crash of a large plane just north of the airport. >> when we first heard that another plane had crashed, there clearly was no way to definitively connect what happened to that plane to what had already happened in new york
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city and washington. at that moment. >> we do not know whether that crash of that plane is related to what has become an obvious terrorist attack. >> but i think it would be fair to say that none of us believed in ridiculous coincidences. so we all assumed at that point that it would be too great a coincidence for a fourth commercial airliner to be involved in a catastrophic event on that same morning and have it not connected, but we didn't know the story. we didn't know what turned out to be maybe one of the most dramatic stories of that entire day. >> at the time we didn't know clearly about the heroism of the passengers, and how they had prevented that attack from taking place. we later learned that the plane the hijackers, were heading to the nation's capital. >> think how catastrophic that
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would have been if they'd been able to pull off the white house or the capitol. thank god for all of those brave people on united 93, that they were able to rush the cockpit and the way that they got together, and a lot of them were kind of jockey guys, you know weekend athletes. the back of the plane and decided this is what they had to do and got the beverage cart to rush the cockpit, give their lives willingly heroically, and my guess is, in utter rage. my guess is that when they hit that cockpit, they thought, i'm going to die, but so are you, and you're going to die on my terms, not on your terms. >> it's a short time after the buildings collapsed that we first started seeing some of our colleagues joining us in studio 1a in rockefeller center and the first thing i remember is ron insana walking in our studio covered in dust.
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all you had to do was see that image of ron and you knew what he had been through and what he had just witnessed. >> as we were cutting across in a quarantined zone, actually the building began to disintegrate. we ladder it and began to see elements of the building come down and ran and it was like a scene out of "independence day." >> ron was so shaken. >> everything began to rain down. it was pitch black around us as though the rooms were looking in the corridors of lower manhattan. >> there was the smell. just a combination of odors i had not smelled on any human being. >> we're happy to see you. >> thank you. you have no idea how happy i am to be here. >> a relief. you think of the experiences of thousands of other people down there in the epicenter of all that, there when it occurred our hearts go out to them. >> he was down there doing his job. that had not occurred to me,
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about how much collateral damage there may be on the ground, the people who could have gotten caught in all that. >> we have a report here that osama bin laden, who is often identified as the world's leading terrorist more than three weeks ago, that he and his followers would carry out an unprecedented attack on u.s. interests for its support of journalists, had access to him tuesday. >> the way the attack was carried out, no other terrorist organization in the world so hell hellbent on attacking the utes with the kind of organization skill, experience and wherewith all to carry out that attack. so from the very get-go, al qaeda was a suspect. >> he is obviously a zealot of great, dark passion and most of it directed at the united states. >> the anxiety of not knowing where my husband was, was a
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recurring theme, tension stress. shortly before 3:00, our producer said, go to the bulletin camera and recap all the day's events at the top of the hour with tom brokaw. so as i was hooking myself up my cell phone rang and my husband had just landed back in switzerland, and he was saying to me, what is going on? what has happened to the united states? and so i, in my ear i heard the producer saying, andrea, are you ready? are you ready? we're coming to you. so i put -- i took the phone i said, just listen. just listen, i'm going to recap it all and i put my cell phone in my lap and started just recounting all of the day's events. >> that's correct, tom. the vice president is at a secure location. mrs. bush at a secure location. condoleezza rice, the national security adviser was kicting national security council meetings in the situation room
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at the white house even though the white house was evacuated. >> and that's how my husband was then, the chairman of the federal reserve, fond out what had happened to the u.s. >> this country has suffered a devastating attack that will cost us loss of life and cost us in terms of our psychological security that we have in this country. >> as a student of history i've always been interested in what i call the bold trip. you know the chapter headings. 9/11 is the chapter heading this is when america was changed. this is when the world began a new kind of warfare because i was i thinking great thoughts at that moment? no. what i was thinking was, we're into something new here and hue it's going to play out i don't know yet. >> what i think in retrospect it really was the loss of innocence. it was the last free time that we could ever think that
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terrorists were really going to attack us on our own ground. >> do something about fighting terrorists and securing the country and, of course, we went to war. . >> this has been perhaps the most devastating day in american history in terms of terrorism. it certainly has been four separate attacks obviously coordinated and coordinated fairly thoroughly. unclear how many lives have been lost but the numbers are bound to be staggering. >> it was the most dramatic day of my career. it was the most dramatic day of my life. that i have witnessed firsthand. and it's a day that changed the way i live my life and do my job. how much more dramatic could it be? >> it was surreal.
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that night we were starting to get the families coming into lower manhattan looking for loved ones whom they have not heard from. and i was particularly taken with a gray-haired mother from new jersey, i litter discovered saying has anybody seen tommy swift. >> who are you looking for? >> my son, thomas swift. >> she looked like a mother of all my friends. and i remember thinking that's the emblematic mother that's the mother of all of us. it's been ten years and i'm still affected by it.
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tommy swift was the only member of the family to go to college. he had a job at morgan stanley and he had called home to say i'm getting out of here and didn't get out. and i really thought that that family, that loss synthesized in so many ways the experiences of so many people. why would tommy swift be the target of islamic rage? how outrageous is this? >> it took a day or two i think, for the vastness of this event to really sink in with me. and i think it became more dramatic the further removed from it we all became as we started to hear the stories of heroism. and of loss. we started to learn what people had gone through that morning and what they had sacrificed. we started to understand how
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many children had lost parents. we interviewed a young boy named kevin hickey. and his father was a new york city fireman. who had gone into the building. after the planes had struck. your dad was a firefighter? >> yep. >> what company was he with? in queens right. >> yep. >> as i asked him about his father this 10-year-old boy broke down. >> he was one of the heroes who went to the world trade center that day, went he? it's a lot for a 10-year-old to have to handle. and, you know, i didn't know what to do to honest with you. i put my hand on his back but there were no words i could
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offer. there was nothing i could do to ease his pain. meeting him drove it home to me. because this little boy's world had gone away and it disappeared. >> we wanted to figure out what we could do to maybe make you smile a little bit and give you a fun afternoon and we know you like the yankees, right? >> yeah. >> how do you feel about their manager, joe torre? >> i think he's grumpy. >> grumpy. >> yes. >> hi this is joe torre. hi, kevin how are you? nice meeting you. i understand you're a yankee fan. >> stayed in touch with kevin quite a while. he made it. he didn't make it easily. there were a lot of tough times. his family was really torn apart by this and this is the human side of this. that's the part that gets me so
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much. it was so senseless. it was so unnecessary. it was so evil and it devastated so many people. >> it was the morning the president was going to go to new york and visit ground zero. this was friday, september 14th. i remember how emotional the morning was. the president meeting with family members throughout the day and then ultimately going back to ground zero, what we now call his bull horn moment. when he was with the firefighters. put his arm around bob and people started shouting i can't hear you. >> i can hear you. the rest of the world hears you. [ cheers and applause ] and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. [ cheers and applause ]
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>> what keeps coming back to me is that what he was able to do so successfully that day was reflect the emotions that the american people felt. there was intense sorrow. there was shock. there was confusion. but there was anger. there was resolve. people wanted to get going. people wanted to retaliate. i think he captured all of those things at once. >> for ten years 9/11 in one way or another has been my life. just about everything we do out of the pentagon is somehow related to 9/11. when the smoke cleared and the fires were out and all the ceremonies were over 9/11 still lives. and i'm not exaggerating when i say that there are still nights when i close my eyes and i see
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that plane fly into the building. >> the upside of all this is the ingenious of the human mind to respond to something like this. there were no historians in the streets of new york city. no people yelling up and down the treats the world is coming to an end. i think there's something instructive about that. that we respond with intelligence and compassion and with resolve to get on with our lives and to do what we need to do. >> 9/11 is and i think will always be the most important story i've ever covered and i've covered wars as a result of 9/11 the

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