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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 25 Years After 9/11 | Stories of Resilience from the TIME Archive [Watch (HLS stream): 25 Years After 9/11 | Stories of Resilience from the TIME Archive](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/GJbd6KB9.m3u8) (4:53:12)  _Published 2026-09-10. TIME looks back 25 years after 9/11 with stories from the archive honoring the victims and the resilience of the survivors._ TIME looks back 25 years after 9/11 with stories from the archive honoring the victims and the resilience of the survivors. 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Follow the Stories You Care About Love a specific columnist? Tracking a niche topic? Build a personalized feed by following tags and authors to get updates as soon as they publish — no subscription required. [Get Started](/account/preferences/)Sign In ## Transcript The phone rang and I picked it up. He said, turn on the TV. I was looking in the eyes of people who had rushed into danger. It was like walking in a field of swords. New York really is as resilient as it always claimed to be. I've spent most of my life down here. This is was a great opportunity to try to give back. There was a kind of joining of hearts and minds and will in America to get through this together. My name is Marco Grob. I'm a contract photographer for time magazine and I live in New York City. The nine over 11 Portraits of Resilience is a documentation of the stories of 44 people in different ways affected by nine over 11, either that day in September to the ripple effect. What happened after it? I just happened to be looking towards the south, towards the Statue of Liberty. What I saw there is a plane coming. Eye level eye contact towards me. Marco. Yeah. All right. Marco. Hi. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Call it a field. Yeah. Good. When you're the leader of an organization, you've got to be resolute, compassionate, and. And you got to know what you need to do. If Kurt is indeed writing something. It's my first multimedia project with oral history and photography combined. And so what we're trying to do is get folks such as yourself to reflect on what you recall about those events and what's happened since then. That we preserve the idea of a full photo portfolio and just try to keep it straight. I definitely agree with that. They both have great eyes there. I think that's maybe the one photography. As much as I love it. It's very silent. It is very powerful, but it will never be able to to connect the dots between stories. And I only can capture those dots with oral history. In 2003, an American attack on my house. I lost my arms and my body is burned. There were many sad moments, but there was a resilience always in the room. I was most moved by the richest family. They moved me beyond anything I've ever done. Actually, in my 25 years of portraying people. I was trying to call home. I couldn't get through right away. And when I finally did, I remember, uh, my mom right away said, uh, we might have lost Jimmy. And, uh, I just broke down. It was the worst thing I could hear. It was just blindsided. This one. This one. Was. The son. He was the son of Jim Richards. Jimmy Richards. And he found they found him. And that was great for me. Portraiture is very delicate. You have just a little, little time to capture this. I always say it's like a little flame. And you have a lot of wind this first couple seconds where I. I try to generate a intimate moment where they become kind of fragile. There you go. There are there are other things, I suppose, that, uh, I think my time might have been somewhat different if it hadn't been for nine over 11. I just wanted to let the viewer make decisions. Let just the faces be on itself, and even more so that we do normally to put them on the same level to to make firefighter as large as as a president. This project is the quintessential story a portrait photographer could work on. When somebody opens that portfolio and goes through these pages or through the website, ideally makes them think, how did we all deal with it? How did families deal with it? How did the country deal with it? How did the world deal with it? If it helps people to understand each other a little bit better, we achieve more than I could ever wished for. My name is Richard Fern. My name is Stanley Premnath. I'm Ron DeFrancesco. My name is Brian Clark. I worked as an assistant vice president on the 81st floor for Fuji Bank limited. Nine over 11 I was an executive vice president at Euro Brokers. Working for Euro Brokers. We were on the 84th floor. I was on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center in Tower two. On nine over 11. Wonderful, wonderful, warm, nice day. I stopped on the same bagel store, pick up my raisin bagel, a cup of coffee, the same thing I ate for 13 years. Every day, the same thing. I walked around the floor. Everybody was doing what they're supposed to do, I suppose, and I went back to my office and at 845 I was typing away at my keyboard, opening emails or looking at spreadsheets. While in the computer room, the lights dimmed. And for somebody who's an I.T. guy, that's a not a good thing for us. We heard this loud boom and ran over and saw the damage. That was what happened to tower one. And I just happened to raise my head. And I'm looking at angle towards the north building. And what I saw was chunks of fireballs coming down from the sky. Just 2 or 3 yards from me. 84 floors in the air, right against the glass swaying, swirling flames. We were able to see all the papers flying out of the window, and flames shooting from the upper floors. Floating in the air were singed. Paper, computer papers, newspapers just all singed and floating like semi flaming smoking confetti. I went back to my office at about three minutes to nine and I called home, told my wife something has happened next door. Turn on the television. There's a developing story, is what I said to her. And there sure was. You can hear the intercom system. The whoop whoop sounds you're building is secure. Stay in your office. If you're in the midst of evacuation, you may use the re-entry doors and the elevators to return to your offices. I just happened to be looking towards the south, towards the Statue of Liberty. What I saw there is a plane coming. Eye level eye contact towards me being. We were on the 84th floor. I figured, let me check the elevators. If they're working, I'll go down because it seemed like a perfectly good building at the time. In every split second is getting larger and larger, and it's explaining coming towards me. I can see you on the tail. A friend of mine had from Toronto was watching it on the news. He called me and he said, Ronnie, get the hell out of there. The last minute the plane tilted like this and just crashed into the building. As soon as I stepped into the elevator, the second plane came into the building. In a split second. Our room just fell apart. Our floor, if you like, fell apart. We got knocked flying in. All the ceiling tiles fell in on us. Speakers, the air conditioning ducts, everything just rained down on us. A piece of the plane wing or whatever part broke out and it stuck in a doorway 20ft from where I am. The building swayed slowly one way. At that point, we thought the building was going over. It felt like the whole building was going to topple over. It stopped after five seconds and then slowly came back to vertical and sort of with a hop, everything lined up again. And by the time it came back, I just jumped up and just had to get out of the elevator. I reached in my pocket, grabbed the flashlight, shone it around this dusty room, and gathered up six associates who were on the floor in that area, and I led them into the center core. Met a few other colleagues, and we went to the stairwell. So I ran into the into the emergency exit, and I started going down the stairs. On the 81st floor landing. A woman said, stop, stop. You can't go down. There's there's flames, there's smoke. We've got to go higher. I'm holding on to mangled furniture and I'm scared to get sucked out because of the air pressure. And I started to scream. Somebody! Anybody, please help me! And suddenly I heard this banging noise and this voice yelling from inside the 81st floor. As soon as I start screaming, somebody at the other end of the floor had a flashlight, and they were shining it. Feeling around the walls in the dark. I was able to reach out and touch a doorknob, which luckily when I turned it, it wasn't locked and it opened. Somebody was yelling, line up over here! Come, go down this staircase. Everybody was queuing up and they look like they were waiting for their coworkers. I just sped right past them and started heading down the staircase. As we were going down, we saw, um, a heavyset lady and she said, you can't go down there. There's fire down below. So we started climbing back up and trying every door to get out onto a floor. And I guess we got to about the 91st floor and, um, realized there was no way out, that the stairwells were all locked. Looking at the piece of the plane that was broken in the doorway, other part of the floor is in flames. I can hardly breathe. And I'm scared of getting sucked out. And I start to crawl. I crawl the entire length of the loans department through the lounge, into the computer room, into the communication room. And as I got closer to where the light was, I'm confronted by that one sheetrock wall that stood firm. I got found this man with this sort of eyes bright eyed, poking through a hole in the wall with his hand and waving his hand. Can you see my hand? Can you see my hand? And I finally got to him. Yes. Hallelujah. I've been saved, he said. And we discovered, rather strangely, that we were separated by a wall. And there's a person behind this wall. And this person is telling me, if you want to live, climb over. So he scrambled up. Once I missed him the second time he came up, I said, you must do this up he came and I somehow hooked under his armpit or something lifted him up over the wall. He was knocked off his feet. We rolled down a couple of steps and the next thing I remember, I grabbed this man, hugged him and gave him a kiss. I don't know how to thank a man who just saved my life. And he gave me this big kiss. And I said, well, I said, I'm Brian. And he said, I'm Stanley. As he stood up. Just straighten up his self and getting all composed and says, Brian Clark. I said, Stanley Praimnath. I had a puncture wound in my left palm and Stanley's, I think, in his right palm, but they were opposite. And I said, not only would be brothers will be blood brothers for life. The smoke was getting heavier and thicker, and so I told some people to lie down and I was lying down to just to get below the smoke. Somebody called me. I don't know if you're a God believing person, but somebody called me and said, come this way. I came upon a woman and a man and they couldn't pass anymore. They said, you can't go by. I just went to the wall that was down. I was able to lift the wall up enough to scurry under on the next floor down. It was a similar condition this time. I jumped on top of the wall, rolled off to my left, and where I just kept going down the stairs. Then I met three firefighters and I was saying, you know, I'm having trouble breathing. And they said, just go down. You'll get some help downstairs. And it was when you got down to the lower floors, you started to see the firemen coming up, and we would stay to the right and they were all coming up, single file on the left. You know, you had to think how many of those guys, you know, didn't make it out. The only people we saw downstairs when we got there were the firefighters and the cops and the EMS workers. When we got to the doors on the south side of the Trade Center, a fireman said, hey guys, if you're going to cross Vesey Street, he said, you got to run for it. Do not look up. Do not look around, just go for it. They asked us not to look up. Just run across the street to get away from the building. It looked like a scene from Forrest Gump. The people are cheering and we're running, and Brian and I are running, jumping over falling debris, and we're just running. I ended up on the ground level, and I went to walk out, and there was a lot of debris and people jumping, and it looked like a war zone. I heard this loud noise and I looked and this fireball was coming at us. And so I ran and I woke up three days later in Saint Vincent's Hospital. I had burns, they say, on 80% of my body, and I have a broken bone in my back. And, you know, I had my contacts in. So they were melted to my eyes. My wife said she came into the hospital two days later and walked right past me. Um, I guess my years were turned inside out just with the burns. My head was very swollen. I still deal with it daily, right? And, um, I'm Fortunate, but I still. I have a lot of baggage. I guess you'll say. I struggled with that survivor's guilt for a long while. Lord, why me? Of all these good men and women, why me? And I stop wondering and ask myself, Stan, why not you? Had it not been for his grace and this one good man who stopped to investigate, I would not have been here. So I moved on and yours truly became a certified pastor with the Assemblies of God. I no longer dwell on the nine over 11 events. People ask me to tell the story and I can tell it because it rolls like a movie for me. But on a daily basis, I don't think about it. And I also know from my 9/11 experience that I don't worry about the future because you can make plans, but you can't predict with any certainty what is really going to happen. So I just let it happen. So I don't dwell on the past. I don't worry about the future. It sort of leaves you with the present in the middle. And so I live in the present. Every day is a great day. Just some are just greater than others. Just consider myself fortunate that I'm here. That I can even tell the story. As long as there's not an airplane crashing into this building. You're having a good day. You can always take care of whatever problem you have here today. My son, Jimmy, was a police officer for eight years before he switched over to the fire department, and it made me happy. You know, there was, uh, you know, he was following in my footsteps and, uh, made me very proud. My brother Jimmy, my older brother, we grew up together 18 months apart. Like I said, two years apart in school. We basically did everything together. Jimmy was 12 years older than me. I grew up, you know, being dragged along to his basketball games and following him around and him playing around with us. It was a great times growing up. Jimmy was 13 years older than me. I was the baby brother. He loved his Mets, his jets, and most of all, he loved to have a good time. He, uh, he was the life of the party, uh, every night of the week. He was my godfather. And then, uh, he was also my confirmation sponsor. He looked after me like a father. He was older than me like that, you know? So he really took care of his younger brothers. On September 11th. I was a police officer at the time. On September 11th. Uh, I woke up that morning. I knew my son Jimmy was working. He was working right around the corner from the World Trade Center at the time. I said, oh, boy, he's going to be right in the heart of the biggest fire at New York City has ever seen. I knew my brother had been on a rotation period in Lower Manhattan, so I thought about it, but I figured it was good that he was there because he'd be able to help people. I was in college and somebody told me, turn on the news. I turned it on, and at first I didn't realize, you know, how many people had been lost. Myself and a couple guys that I worked with, we got our gear together and we headed down to the Trade Center. I said, I'm going to go down there. As I came over to the Brooklyn Bridge, the second tower collapsed. I guess it was about right after lunch when my mother answered the phone and she was crying and I just wanted to get home to her. I was trying to call home. I couldn't get through right away. And when I finally did, I remember, uh, my mom right away said, uh, we might have lost Jimmy. And, uh, I just broke down. It was the worst thing I could hear. It was just blindsided. I couldn't believe what I heard on the phone. It was like a nightmare. From 91101 till May 30th. I spent my entire time down there leading the search and recovery and picking up the bodies. That was my, uh, mission was to stay down there and help others, you know, to find him and to bring the bodies home of all the people that died. It was March 25th, which was my 29th birthday. On March 25th, 2002, we recovered my son's body. We had found the helmet. My son's helmet was crushed, and he had the 114 on it and he had his, um. His name on it, so he knew he'd probably be nearby. With that, a whole whole crew of us got down there on our hands and knees and we dug, you know, with our hands. And we found my brother. We were actually all there when we found my brother. My dad brought us down there, and we were all actually able to carry him out. Everybody at the site, they lined up along the ramp and we went down and everybody was very respectful. And you could feel the love there. Like from a lot of the guys, the firemen, the cops, the Port Authority, cops, everyone. They used great care and they put him in a Stokes basket and they covered the body with the American flag. And we helped carry Jimmy's body, you know, out of the pit down there, which was like, if you had to say it was anything, it was like Dante's Inferno down there. I was like, hell. And we brought him up the ramp and, uh, got him out of that horrible place. The people to bring my brother out from down there. He would, uh, want it no other way. His brothers would carry him out. So it was, uh, it was very hard to do, but I'm glad, that we got to do it. It was very emotional for all of us. It was, I guess, the day that we'd hope would come, but never wanted it to come. It was nice to find them and feel like he was back with us, and we knew where he was. I always wanted to be a fireman as a kid because my you know, I saw my dad. My dad was always happy going to work. Then my brother died and I always thought about it. Do I really want to do this? You know, and then, you know, you becoming a man and you not sure anymore. But I followed him through life and everything else. And I knew this was a. I wouldn't be happy doing anything else. So I knew I had to follow in his footsteps. After nine over 11, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be on the fire department then and, you know, honor Jimmy. I knew he would want me to be. Seeing how all the firemen are. And I think after September 11th solidified it for me, just the way they cared for each other and took care of each other. I decided to follow my brother and my father's footsteps and join a fire department. And nine years later, I still haven't had a bad day at work. So it's I guess I made the right decision. He died on nine over 11, running into a building and helping other people and his three other brothers. They all follow in my footsteps, but his footsteps, I mean, he was their hero. Before nine over 11, they're now working in New York City Fire Department, all in Brooklyn. He led the way. They followed him. And every day they know he's looking over them. I'm a deputy chief, retired New York City Fire Department Jim Richards, uh, my son Jimmy, was a firefighter on nine over 11, and he was assigned to engine four, and he died on nine over 11 in the North Tower. I became a firefighter in 1977. Um, I just graduated from college and, uh, I was born, bred and raised in Brooklyn. My mother's still here. My whole family's here, and my boys are here. I love the fire department. It was it was such a great job. The camaraderie in the firehouse, everybody looking out for each other and the families became so close together to fight all the fire families, picnics, parties and everything else. It became, uh, a way of life, actually. And I was very proud to say that I was part of it. And my sons grew up that way too. And they knew all the other fire families. And I did 32 years in the fire department before I retired. And I could say that I was glad to go to work every day on September 11th. Uh, woke up that morning. I knew my son Jimmy was working. His 30th birthday was the next day on September 12th, I went for my run along the shore down by Brooklyn and Brooklyn under the Verrazano Bridge and the planes that hit the towers. I went home, turned on my TV set, and I knew Jimmy was going to be down there. He was working right around the corner from the World Trade Center at the time. And, um, I said, oh boy, he's going to be right in the heart of the biggest fire New York City has ever seen. I said, I'm going to go down there. I called my son, who was a police officer. I had a police car come and they started to take me into Manhattan. As I came over to the Brooklyn Bridge in the police car, the second tower collapsed and, uh, I knew he was probably dead because, you know, those buildings, uh, he was going to be up there way up high because he was one of the first companies there. We drove around by Jimmy's firehouse. I saw his little car there. He had a little Mercedes, uh, convertible. The top was down, there was dust everywhere in the, uh. And I said, he's there. And then I saw another friend of mine carrying a body, two of them carrying a body of one of the firefighters and one of the other guys carrying their head. And I thought I said, this is you know, that was the start of my horrible day. Um, we stayed down there digging through through all the rubble down there, going through holes, looking for people to survive. And we had a lot of caverns, a lot of holes, and we could get down and we thought we were going to find people, but everybody was dead. Everything was just crushed. And we saw fire trucks that were 12ft high were a foot high. Now you could put them in your pocket from 91101 till May 30th. I spent my entire time down there leading the search and recovery and picking up the bodies. You'd have people digging all over, going through different little tunnels and little, little pathways like, and you'd get below and somebody would yell silence! And they'd want quiet throughout the whole area because they thought they heard someone yelling for help. And every time the whole place would go silent like a church. And, you know, you could hear your heartbeat and it became eerily quiet. And then no one would answer my, my thing was, I told my wife, I said, he's he's passed. And now we just have to find his body. And I know that if he want me to come and find and help bring him out of there. So that was my, uh, mission was to stay down there and help others, you know, to find him and to bring the bodies home of all the people that died on March 25th, 2002. We recovered my son's body. We had found the helmet. My son's helmet was crushed, and he had the 114 on it, and he had his, um, his name on it, so he knew he'd probably be nearby. With that, a whole whole crew of us got down there on our hands and knees and we dug, you know, with our hands. And, uh, we wrapped his body in an American flag, put him in a body bag, wrapped him in an American flag, just like we did all the people that died down there. We wrapped him in American flags, and we put them on the stretchers. And we had a procession out And we lined up all the men. Everybody stopped. There were no digging. There was complete silence. And we marched them up the ramp. My three sons came and we helped carry Jimmy's body, you know, out of the pit down there, which was like, if you had to say it was anything. It was like Dante's Inferno down there. I was like, hell. And we brought him up the ramp and got him out of that horrible place. And, uh, at least brought him home and we got to bury him. It was very, uh, you know, gave me a good feeling to find his body. I mean, it sounds pretty strange. I'm one of the lucky ones. I found my son's body because there were a thousand families that never recovered anything. Some families got pieces. Some people got little pieces. Some people got half the body. Um, people don't understand that. We keep getting phone calls, you know, any at any time. And they'll say they found another part. I mean, so it lingers on. It doesn't it never ends. The pain is always there. There'll be no closure because my son's not going to walk back in that door. And we miss him on every holiday. We miss him on every party. We miss him. My grandchildren were born. He wasn't there, and he's not there. I was very healthy. I was always running five miles a day. I'm a health nut and I don't smoke, I don't drink, so I was in great shape. And after nine over 11, I heard some guys were getting sick. You know, they weren't feeling good. They had runny noses, the cough. And I was like, you know, I don't have anything. I was down there for so long. But I got sick in 2005. My pulmonary function dropped drastically. I went into a coma. They told my family I had five hours to live. The air wasn't going into my lungs. I had acute respiratory distress syndrome, bilateral pneumonia, double pneumonia. Um, the air was going in and they said, get your whole family together because he's going to die. And they all got together. Um, they prayed, they hoped, and I think my son sent me back. He probably figured I'd ruin his fun up there. And, uh, I'm sure he was looking over me. And, uh, I have, like, a 25% loss of lung capacity. I came out of it. I had to learn how to walk, talk, and do everything all over again. When someone dies, you know, people shy away from you. And my bit of advice to everybody is go up to him, tell him you're sorry, and tell him a little story about something he did with you or for you. And it really makes you feel warm inside. You learn so many things that you didn't know about him, and it'll make both parties feel so much better. Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, just about before arriving at the scene, I was walking toward the fire department command post, seeing all the devastation of the fire, the debris falling, and I saw Father Judge, and I asked him if he would pray for us and he said yes. And when I heard about an hour later that he had died and they had carried his body to Saint Peter's Church, it helped me a lot during the day to think that he was praying for us. The picture of the firefighters putting up the flag lifted my spirits that day because I had no time to think. And then when I saw that, it just reminded me of Iwo Jima and the Second World War. And the whole question of, is this generation tough enough to handle something like this? And then the construction workers volunteering late in the day because all of a sudden they just came out of nowhere. And there were hundreds of them. And they're big, big, strong men. And I asked him, I asked one of them why he was here, and he just said to me very, very simply, we can lift things. And I guess it really lifted my spirits when he said that. I think coming together after September 11th lasted longer than people think. I mean, it lasted three, 4 or 5 months before maybe natural life, normal life politics set in. Um, but I think for New York, it's lasted permanently. I think New York has a different impression, a different feeling now. I think New Yorkers have a different feeling about themselves. I think people don't think of New York as quite as harsh and difficult as they did in the past. So I think the reputation of New York has been permanently changed and improved as a result of it. And I think our ability to come together as a country, although it is sporadic, you know, I think we realize when something terrible happens, we can. I believe that the general thrust of that day was positive for us. The loss is terrible. The personal losses are terrible, including for me. But as a society, I think we became more realistic and stronger. We were living with this threat for 30 years and for the last ten. It was very potent threat. and we weren't recognizing it. So all it did was really wake us up to the reality of the world that we live in. And that's always good to be more real about what surrounds you and what's at stake. And I think in that sense, we've become stronger than we were before. I think we're more realistic country than we were before September 11th. I'm George Pataki, I was governor of New York on September 11th, 2001. September 11th unquestionably brought us closer together as a people than has ever been the case in my lifetime. I remember walking the streets of Lower Manhattan that morning after the towers came down, and just shaking hands and talking to people to try to buck them up. And it was obvious that people didn't care if you were young or old, rich or poor, black or white, Christian or Jew. It just didn't matter. I think the attitude of Americans towards New York City and New York State changed dramatically on September 11th and thereafter. You know, we had always been kind of a breed apart. There's the rest of the country and oh, then there's New York. But on September 11th, people understood that it wasn't just New York City that was being attacked. It was America. And we were being attacked here because we were a symbol of the diversity, the tolerance, the openness, the greatness, the great heights that New York and Americans had achieved. I mean, I lost many close friends and colleagues on September 11th. And during the course of the day or the next day, someone would mention someone's name who died, and it couldn't help but affect you. And you just had a tremendous sense of personal loss. And yet still you had to just do your job and move forward and deal with the more important, bigger issues and set aside the personal for the moment. But there's no question in my mind that it gave me and every one of us who was there a tremendous sense of what life means, how valuable and precious it is, and also what our freedoms mean. There were two personal moments. One was during the day I went to the church where Mychal Judge body had been brought, just sat and said a silent prayer. And then my older daughter, Emily was with me for much of the day, and she and I went to Saint Patrick's and were greeted by Cardinal Egan. And the three of us went to a little chapel in Saint Patrick's and said a silent prayer. And it was something that, uh, really helped us. And I think, uh, in many ways helped other people to be able to reflect and say a few prayers for those we lost and for the strength to go forward. And, and we did. And that's what Americans always will do. It was the weekend when I heard about bin laden, and I was upstate with Libby on our farm, and I didn't feel a sense of joy. And in fact, when I saw the young people chanting USA and cheering, I understood their pleasure that this evil mass murderer had finally been killed. But I didn't feel that sense of joy. I had a sense of sadness because we couldn't undo what this barbarian had done, but certainly a sense of justice that our great seals, our great military, had the ability to track down and kill this mass murderer. We always have to be vigilant and protect ourselves from those overseas who have attacked us in the past and want to do it again. And we need to be proactive to deny them training camps or safe havens or bases or recruitment centers. But ultimately, the strength of this country comes from within us. I'm George W Bush, 43rd president of the United States. I had choppered into New York City with Rudy Giuliani and Pataki, George Pataki and the chopper, and we took a quick motorcade to the Ground Zero area. It was kind of a dismal environment. It was gray sloshing through water. The stench was profound. It was quickly briefed on what to expect and started heading down into the into what I called the pit. And the place was lined with rescue workers who were there to see the president. I tried to shake every hand. I wanted to encourage people as best I could. At first there was kind of a politeness, and then it seemed like to me, people were wondering who I was, whether or not I had the leadership capabilities necessary to, you know, seek justice. There was blood lust, a lot of emotion. I got up on a pile of rubble and I wanted a firefighter to be with me. It was a statement of solidarity. And so I get up on this fire, what turns out to be a fire truck that had been destroyed and was handed a bullhorn and started speaking. A guy yelled, I can't hear you! And then I ad libbed, you know, I can hear you, and they'll hear from us. It was a very emotional moment. I mean, the whole event was emotional because I was looking in the eyes of people who had rushed into danger to find loved ones and, and coworkers and people that they cared about. And it was evident that, uh, that it was going to be virtually impossible for people to have survived At in the in the in the collapse in the buildings and the rubble that was there. That was the new president. And I was learning that that the nature of the job is such that you can inspire people. I wasn't I was there to comfort and heal and to encourage the rescue workers, men and women, both were wanted their president to make it clear that whoever had done the damage to nine over 11 would face American justice. I had made up my mind that was going to be the case anyway, but this is just one of those moments where I was able to confirm my feelings and their desires. It was an exhausting day because from there, you know, I remember driving down the West Side Avenue lined with people that were hoping that, you know, that the country could recover. And they viewed the president as a as a symbol of that potential recovery. And Giuliani said, you know, it's great. They're all out here to see you. And none of them voted for you. And and then I went down and thanked rescue workers from all around the country. It's an amazing country we have where hundreds of people, uh, you know, got in their own automobiles and drove to New York City to help the city deal with an unbelievably dramatic event. And I then went and met with families, uh, of people who were, uh, whose loved one was missing. It was a hard assignment because, uh, having come from ground zero, I was pretty confident it would be rare if anybody could survive. And so I was dealing with young kids and mothers and grandmothers and husbands and people just really worried. I think I stayed for about two hours to make sure I hugged and comforted every soul. And at the very end, I met Arlene Howard, who gave me her son's badge, and I vowed to Arlene that I would carry the badge throughout my presidency as a reminder of my job. And my job as president was to protect the American people from harm, and I did. I carried the badge for a long time. When you're the leader of an organization, you've got to be resolute, compassionate, and and you got to know what you need to do. And I knew what we needed to do. I knew we needed to use all resources of our government to defend the American people. It turns out many of the decisions I made were controversial decisions. I'm often asked the biggest accomplishment of my presidency, and I think the biggest accomplishment was there was no further attack. On September 11th, 2001. I began the day in my West Wing office in the white House. Went to the Pentagon early in the morning, and Admiral Giambastiani, the senior military assistant, came into the office and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center tower. We started seeing the news about the World Trade Center in New York. And at first it looked like an accident. It was obviously an accident. And then as we watched, we saw the second plane strike. And then we knew it was was a terrorist attack. It was a few minutes later that the Pentagon was hit. The whole building shook. And I rather stupidly thought that it felt like an earthquake. The building shook. You could feel that a bomb or something had hit the building. I had no idea what. My Secret Service agent. Lead agent came bursting through the door of my office and said, sir, we have to leave now. I walked around the side of the building and could see pieces of metal laying all over the grass out there, and people that were wounded, people that were being brought out of the building who were dead and injured. This was the first time it really hit me that the United States was vulnerable to mass casualty attack through terrorism. The audacity of it was such that it it suggested that there would be additional attacks. We began a very intense round of discussions, debate. What do we do next? What is the problem? How do you define the problem? How do you define a strategy to deal with the problem? We'd always treated terrorist attacks before, primarily as a law enforcement problem. Every occasion when the United States had suffered a terrorist attack previously, the reaction had been basically to treat it as a law enforcement problem, like a bank robbery or a murder or a car theft. Going out and finding the guilty party, bring them to trial and put them in the slammer. And then go on with your business. Occasionally lob a couple of cruise missiles. And the magnitude of the nine over 11 attack was sufficiently different, greater and more lethal than previously. And it suggested the prospect of even greater lethality in the period ahead. It was such a massive attack, killed so many of our people. It clearly was an act of war. We had been attacked in an act of war. There was no mistaking that. When you're the leader of an organisation, you've got to be resolute, compassionate and. And you got to know what you need to do. And I knew what we needed to do. I knew we needed to use all resources of our government to defend the American people. The past practice in dealing with terrorist acts simply wasn't good enough. This isn't just about retaliating for this specific attack. It's really about what do you do to prevent similar attacks or even larger attacks in the future. And so the Bush administration approach was notably different than in the past, as in my view, it had to be. We significantly enhanced our ability to intercept communications coming from suspected site or individual overseas. Put pressure on the terrorists all over the world, wherever they are, Make everything they do harder, make it more difficult to talk on the phone, to move around, to recruit, to raise money, to transfer money. Once we captured somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was very important we find out what they knew. The indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, military commissions. Not everybody agreed that that was the right way to go. President. I felt very strongly it was and took the necessary steps to make it happen. The goal is, and it's an ambitious goal, that the goal is to eliminate global terrorism as a threat. It was already the policy of the United States government. Congress had passed legislation establishing as U.S. policy changing the regime in Iraq. Certainly, there was no indication that Iraq had been involved in in with al Qaeda in the nine over 11 attack. Uh, Iraq was one of the few countries that was negative about the United States. after the attack, I think there were only 1 or 2 countries in the world that said things that were anything other than condolences to the United States, and Iraq was one of those to. The Iraqi regime was engaged with terrorists, making payments to the families of suicide bombers, providing safe harbor and sanctuary to some of the folks in al Qaeda. Iraq was paying $25,000 to the families of terrorists, suicide attackers. We were focused especially on this problem of weapons of mass destruction. It was the only country in the world that was firing at US military aircraft on a regular basis. So the decision was made to go in and take down the regime. We did. I think there was an expectation that once we got to Baghdad, once Saddam was gone, that things would sort of fall into place in some ways in the way they had in Eastern Europe. Obviously, there's always things when you look back, uh, things that might have been done differently and better, and things that one wish they might have anticipated better. And the growing insurgency that occurred after the military success in Iraq was one of those things that had not been anticipated to the extent it might have been. I think the biggest problem we encountered in Iraq is, as in Afghanistan, the Taliban didn't stop fighting. The Saddam regime didn't stop fighting. It's been expensive in terms of lives. It's been expensive in terms of finances. War is a costly and terrible thing. But I think we did basically the right thing. As I review it now and think back on it, I think it was exactly the right thing to do. The massive fact that can't be ignored is that on September 12th, 2001, I don't think anyone would have taken a bet that the United States would not be attacked again in ten years. We were convinced. I think most people were in the immediate aftermath of nine over 11 that there was likely to be another attack. We did everything we could to prevent it. We were successful for seven and a half years. There has not been another successful attack on the American people in our country. I'm often asked the biggest accomplishment of my presidency, and I think the biggest accomplishment was there was no further attack. Compared to where we were on September 12th. I'd say we're much safer against the threat of terrorism. But it hasn't gone away. And the worst thing that we have now is complacency, because that's the way things come back. I'm still very concerned about the possibility that there will be more attacks, and that the next attacks will use deadlier substances than anything we've seen to date. Interestingly, even though the later administration campaigned against the structures that were put in place to put pressure on and protect the American people, they've kept those structures in place, basically, because I think, on reflection, They've concluded that that they are necessary to protect the American people during this period. I'm **** Cheney, former vice president. On September 11th, 2001, I began the day in my West Wing office in the white House. My secretary called in on the intercom to tell me that a plane had struck the World Trade Center in New York and turned on the TV and were surprised. Like everyone, fantastic, clear, clear day that there'd been this apparent accident. And then as we watched, we saw the second plane strike. And then we knew it was was a terrorist attack. Then my Secret Service agent, lead agent, came bursting through the door in my office and said, sir, we have to leave now. Move me as fast as he could out through the the west wing and down into the tunnel that leads to the Emergency Operations Center. And the agent informed me then that the reason he'd moved me was because he'd received word over his radio that there was an airplane headed for Crown, which was the code name for the white House at a very high rate of speed coming in from the West. Then we got reports that there were bombings across Washington, that there'd been a car bomb at the State Department and another explosion at the Lincoln Memorial and so forth. A lot of that turned out to be false. Reporting wasn't true. But initially there was a, you know, the fog of war, I guess, would be the best way to describe it. We'd watched all of it on television on the day of the event. I'd seen the the airplanes hit. Had seen the the World Trade Center collapse. Both buildings. But, um, there was something, More striking when you were actually on the site seeing it. And it's not electronically or not over television, but but actually seeing it in person. They had heavy security, uh, obviously heavier than I'd seen before in New York, but a lot of, uh, of streets blocked off and so forth. When they were taking me from the hotel at the Waldorf, back out to the airport to fly back to Washington. And I was concerned that there'd be a lot of angry New Yorkers at the traffic being shut down. And they aren't bashful about expressing their their views and their sentiments. Remarkable thing that night was that even though the traffic had been blocked as we drove through the streets of New York, people were out of their cars, applauding. We'd always treated terrorist attacks before when there was the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen and 2000, or the attack on our embassies in East Africa. First attack on the World Trade Center in 93. We'd always looked on those, uh, primarily as a law enforcement problem. The approach had been more one of, of going out and finding the guilty party, bring them to trial and put them in the slammer. Um, after nine over 11, you couldn't look on those as just law enforcement problems anymore. Uh, it was such a massive attack killed so many of our people. It clearly was an act of war. And that's a significant shift. It's more than just rhetoric. It means that you're going to use all of the means available. And it led directly to such things as the terrorist surveillance program, where we significantly enhanced our ability to intercept communications coming from suspected site or individual overseas into the United States. Our enhanced interrogation program. Once we captured somebody like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was very important that we find out what they knew. Not everybody agreed that that was the right way to go. President. I felt very strongly it was and took the necessary steps to make it happen. We were convinced, I think most people were in the immediate aftermath of nine over 11, that there was likely to be another attack, and we did everything we could to prevent it. We were successful for seven and a half years. As I review it now and think back on it, I think it was exactly the right thing to do. The first priority, obviously, was Afghanistan, because that's where Osama bin laden was. That's where al Qaeda had been headquartered. And so first, we moved on to Afghanistan. Iraq was of concern because you had a situation in which we were focused, especially on this problem of weapons of mass destruction, uh, combined with, uh, terrorists and the possibility of terrorists acquiring that kind of capability. We also had extensive reporting, uh, that showed that, um, the Iraqi regime was engaged with terrorists. It was already the policy of the United States government, uh, going back to 98 and the Clinton administration, uh, that Congress had passed legislation establishing as U.S. policy changing the regime in Iraq. That wasn't something we came up with. That was something the Clinton administration came up with. So the decision was made to go in and take down the regime. We did. It's been expensive in terms of Lives. It's been expensive in terms of finances. We're not out of the woods by any means yet, but we I think we're much better off today than we would have been before. There are there are other things, I suppose, that, uh, I think my time might have been somewhat different if it hadn't been for nine over 11. I was delighted to have the opportunity to serve. I'll always be grateful to George Bush for having selected me and given me that opportunity. He told me when he picked me that, uh, it was because he wanted me to have a significant substantive role in his administration. And he kept his word. And I say, I'll always be grateful. As I look back on those years, the various things I got to do, I consider myself very fortunate. But in terms of how I did or giving myself a grade, I'll let others worry about that. I'm not obviously a big supporter of President Obama, but I gave him credit where I thought credit was due. He made the decision to send in the Navy Seal Seal team six, and they did a superb job. They were able to, in effect, take down the compound and kill bin laden. I think it's, uh, not wise for us to assume at this point that, uh, all is, is safe and secure out there. I'm still very concerned about the possibility that there will be more attacks, and that the next attacks will use deadlier substances than anything we've seen to date. Only vigilance and a lot of good hard work will, uh, guarantee that we can defeat any such attack in the future. And we have to stay very much on top of this, it's easy for us to say, well, it's been ten years, you know, to sort of relax and not worry about it anymore. But that would be a big mistake. I'm Don Rumsfeld, and I was serving as the 21st secretary of defense on September 11th, 2001. I went to the Pentagon early in the morning, and Admiral Giambastiani, the senior military assistant, came into the office and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center tower. It was obviously an accident. I went into my office and was getting briefed by my CIA daily briefer, and the admiral came back in and turned the television on and said a second plane had hit the World Trade Center tower. At that point, it obviously was not an accident. And, uh, it was a few minutes later that the Pentagon was hit, the building shook. You could feel that a bomb or something had hit the building. I had no idea what. Uh, we, needless to say, ended our meeting and I moved down the hall to try to figure out what had happened to the building. And at a certain point on the floor I was on. The smoke was so bad you couldn't go any farther and you had to go downstairs and get outside. I walked around the side of the building and could see pieces of metal laying all over the grass out there, and people that were wounded, people that were being brought out of the building who were dead and injured, and the first responders had not yet arrived. And it was a it was a terrible, terrible sight. I returned to my office trying to figure out what next, and talking on the phone with the vice president who was in the white House, the president called from down south, where he had been speaking to a school group, Secretary of State. Powell was out of the country. And at some point I talked to George Tenet, and he called. And by then he was convinced that al Qaeda had had been involved. He apparently had the intelligence community apparently had gathered some intelligence that can confirm that that was the case. The attack on nine over 11, of course, hit at the seat of economic power in New York and the seat of military power at the Pentagon. And. And the third plane that ended up in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was unquestionably headed for the seat of political power in the capital or the white House. The audacity of it was such that it. It suggested that there would be additional attacks. The effect of it, of course, was to jar our country and and and to reflect and to consider what we'd been doing. We'd been attacked on the USS Cole, our embassies in Africa, the marine barracks in Lebanon. And in every occasion when the United States had suffered a terrorist attack previously, the reaction had been basically to treat it as a law enforcement problem, like a bank robbery or a murder or a car theft. And to indict somebody in absentia, to the extent you knew who it was in a court in New York City, and then go on with your business, occasionally lob a couple of cruise missiles. And the magnitude of the nine over 11 attack was sufficiently different, greater and more lethal than previously. And it suggested the prospect of even greater lethality in the period ahead. And this caused the members of the Bush administration to conclude that the past practice in dealing with terrorist acts simply wasn't good enough, and that we would have to recognize that a terrorist can attack at any time, any place, using any technique, and it's physically impossible to defend at every place, against every technique, against every moment of the day or night. You can't do it. The advantage is with the attacker. That means that the only thing that you could do to protect the American people would to change the behavior of the United States government. And instead of indicting people in absentia, go after them and go after them and put pressure on the terrorists all over the world, wherever they are. Make everything they do harder. Make it more difficult to talk on the phone, to move around, to recruit, to raise money, to transfer money. And so the Bush administration approach was notably different than in the past, as in my view, it had to be. And interestingly, even though the later administration campaigned against the structures that were put in place to put pressure on and protect the American people, they've kept those structures in place, basically, because I think, on reflection, they've concluded that that they are necessary to protect the American people during this period. Certainly, there was no indication that Iraq had been involved in in with al Qaeda in the nine over 11 attack. I think there were only 1 or 2 countries in the world that said things that were anything other than condolences to the United States. And Iraq was one of those two. Second, Iraq was paying $25,000 to the families of terrorists, suicide attackers, and encouraging terrorism. Third, it was the only country in the world that was firing at US military aircraft on a regular basis. And it was those things that led President Bush to make a decision that we needed to address Iraq. There are obviously there's always things when you look back at things that might have been done differently and better, and things that one wished they might have anticipated better. And the growing insurgency that occurred after the military success in Iraq was one of those things that had not been anticipated to the extent it might have been. The purpose of terrorism, of course, is not to kill people. It's to terrorize people. It's to alter their behavior. We, of course, are the most vulnerable to something like that. Free people, those people with free political systems and free economic systems, we we get up every morning and feel blessed that we can say what we want and go where we want and do what we wish and, and and when when there's a terror attack, it alters that behavior. So people had to be more careful. And some of these structures that were put in place, the indefinite detention, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act, military commissions and those things that people some people criticized, but which have persisted and still exist, obviously, because they are needed and there has not been another successful attack on the American people in our country. And that is an enormous accomplishment, something that I don't think anyone would have anticipated could have been the case. My name is Howard Lutnick and I was a nine over 11, and I am still the chairman and chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor Fitzgerald had what we considered the best offices in New York. We were on the very top floors of One World Trade Center. That's the one with the the antenna on the top. And we had the 101st to the 105th floors. It didn't matter which way you pointed north, south, east or west. It didn't matter if you were in my office or just walking down the hall. You had the most incredible views of Manhattan, of the Hudson River, of Queens, of new Jersey, of everywhere. On September 11th, 2001, at 848 in the morning, Everybody you know the show is on. The talent is there. Everybody was there that morning. And the reason I was not there is I was taking my son, Kyle to his first day of kindergarten. I took off that morning. My wife and I had to go take him to school so we could take that famous first day picture. You know, the one where his hair's a little wet behind the ears? He's, uh, he's got his backpack on, and he's just there to go for his first day of big boy school. And that's where I was standing when the planes hit the World Trade Center. I was standing with my son, Kyle, taking a photograph in front of his school for his very first day of school. I was thinking it would be some sort of Piper cub. You know, some wacko had taken a little plane. And, you know, it was odd and strange. So I went running downstairs and jumped in my car, and we started going downtown. And I wanted to go on Fifth Avenue, which is not the way you go downtown, because I wanted to be able to see the building. As soon as I could, and I knew that if I went downtown on Fifth Avenue, I would have the soonest view of the building. And as we got closer, my, uh, my driver, Jimmy started crying. And you could see this huge gaping hole and just flames and smoke pouring out. And he started crying while he's driving. And I said, look, let's just get there. We just have to get there. We have to get there. And you know, I, I had to be at the building. I, I could not possibly not be at the building. Maybe it was a moth to a flame. I just had, I just had to go. Um, and I had to be there. I ended up on the Church Street side, which is sort of on the side where you think of the Trinity Church would be on that side of the building, not the side where the river is. And, uh, I started grabbing people as they were coming out of the building and, uh, and asking him what floor they were on. And the reason I wanted to know what floor they were on is because I knew if, if one of my people got out, if one of my floors got out, then of course other people could get out as well. And so as I were grabbing people, we were having them scream out the name of the floor they were on, you know, 42, 59. The highest floor I got to was was 92, 92nd floor when we heard this rumble. And, uh, to me, I thought another plane was coming into the building and what it was, was number two collapsing. But I had no idea. And I started running and, you know, so I'm the guy in the movie wearing a suit and a tie with the shoes on, running from the tornado. And it really was a tornado, you know, the big black billowing smoke that you've kind of seen pictures of chasing me. And so I dove under a car and I was literally right in front of where the preview site is right now for the memorial, right in that exact spot where I was hiding under a car. And then the world just went black, absolutely perfectly black. Once I realized that I wasn't either blind because the world was black. I thought I was blind for a while. Deaf? I thought it was deaf for a while. Dead. I, I stood maybe five minutes later and, uh. And I realized the world was turning dark gray instead of black. Then I started walking uptown, and as I started walking, I saw a blown out, uh, coffee republic. And I went inside and it was like Beirut. I mean, it was exploded and destroyed. I went in the bathroom, uh, found some toilet paper, a roll of toilet paper turned on the water. It came out clear as I went to put my hands under it. It came out black. So I sort of went like this. A moment later, I met my, uh, uh, Jimmy, who was my driver and, uh, and, and he jumped on me and he was so excited to see me. And we walked, we started walking uptown together and we, uh, I would describe it as we walked until people were clean. I called my wife from the payphone that we came to where everybody was clean, and I walked up to the front, hung up the phone, and the person was talking on the phone and picked up the phone and called my wife to let her know I was alive. I knew right away, right away that they were gone. I knew everyone who was in my office that day was dead. From the moment that I ran from that, uh, from that wall of smoke and black, some people would say, isn't it? Uh, weren't you lucky? You know, that you weren't there? But if if luck is defined by I get to live. But all my all my friends, my brother, and everyone gets killed. That's a that's a very strange sort of luck. Of the 658 people who were at work that morning, each and every one of them was was killed because there was no way for them to get out. My brother Gary was there, my best friend Doug Gardner, all of my great friends, all of the people I worked with. We had an interesting policy at the firm, at Cantor Fitzgerald that we wanted to hire our friends and family. So I hired my brother and my best friend. But. But that was true for everybody, including the security guard was working with his brother in law. Each and every one of us lost someone who they would consider in their top five or top four, even top three people in their lives. Everybody. I don't know that we healed as much as we relentlessly moved forward together as a large group together, thrown together, bound together. I think that bond, financial and non-financial kept us very much together, kept us very motivated as a business at a time where we didn't care about business. Keeping the firm alive was important for one fundamental reason that we had to help the families of our friends who we lost. I am a part of Cantor Fitzgerald. It rages through my body and I'm so very proud of the men and women, both who survived, who helped us build it, as well as all those new people who came and joined us because they knew they were coming to a to a tough place, to a place that was fractured, that a place that didn't have it all together, but they were going to do good. They were going to help these families out. And together we built the company and we took care of our friends families. And that was and is the most important thing to me. I'm Tom Brokaw, NBC news, and on nine over 11, I spent from very early in the morning until early the next morning on the air, trying to keep track of all that was going on, and also to try to make some sense out of it. I can't say I was successful in the latter part. I was at home and I was having my first yoga lesson at my wife's insistence, and he was really putting me through, uh, lots of, uh, difficult poses. So at about 850, the phone rang and I was relieved to take a break. And they said, some kind of a plane has hit the World Trade Center. Can you come in right away? So I broke away from my apartment and raced across the street. It was a sparkling day. I do remember that. Went directly to the Today Show studios, where I joined Katie and Matt, who were already on the air. And then we just tried to keep track of what was happening and what may happen next. At one point early that morning, I looked into the camera and I said, we're at war. And as soon as I said, we're at war, I thought, that's pretty bold. But in fact, I kind of reviewed what I was thinking. And I thought, in fact, this is an act of war. A number of people that worked for us had been in the Wall Street area. They came in covered in deep dust with the look of shock in their eyes. Cameraman came back, one who later suffered a pretty severe case of PTSD. Describing people throwing themselves out of the building. I think in all the years that I've been a broadcast journalist covering big events all over the world, I've never had the feeling as acutely as I did that day of being out there without a net. Generally, you get some fair warning about a war starting or an election going on. But this was all wholly unexpected to us. At one point during the day, I thought, why am I being so clinical about all of this? I'm I'm operating on a different set of nerves. I got home at about 1:00 in the morning, and I could see from my apartment that orange glow from the tip of Manhattan had a very large drink, and it had no effect on me whatsoever. I thought if I have another one that won't have an effect, I better call it in. So I went to bed, and I was awakened the next morning by one of my assistants, telling me that a very dear friend had died overnight of heart failure. And I just cried cathartically for about 45 minutes. The death of that dear friend was a release for me. And then I was able to go into the office and start all over again. We were so busy at the office, and I happened to have at that time a great personal assistant, Erin O'Connor. She had gathered a stack of threatening letters and had them off to the side of her desk. And I asked her about them, and then she showed me one that said, take penicillin now. Death to America, death to Israel. Very crudely written. And penicillin was misspelled. I remember that. And I said, well, at least they could do is spell correctly, and it was on a stack of letters at the top, I picked it up and read it a couple of days later. Aaron said to me, I've got some kind of a skin inflammation going on. She's very fair haired Irish American, and she had gone to see a couple of doctors, and they weren't sure what it was, but they had started her on Cipro, thank God, which is the antibiotic that you use by the following Monday. She was in pretty tough shape. She had a large mass, and she came into the office and said, I'm feeling better because of the Cipro, but I still have this mass. And her girlfriends took her into the restroom and looked at it and came out to me wide eyed and said, this is really serious. So I have a friend who is a well-known infectious diseases expert from around the world. We sent her to him the next day, and he was the first one to say to us, I can't rule out anthrax. He had seen it in Africa. so we got biopsies and we sent them to Fort Detrick through back channels, which is the Army installation, and also to the CDC in Atlanta. On Friday morning early, I had gone out for a run with my dog, and I came back in and the phone was ringing and I picked it up and they said, Commissioner Keurig wants to talk to you. He was the police commissioner at the time, and my heart sank because I knew what he was going to say. He said, do you have an assistant that might have had an anthrax lesion of some kind? And I said, he said, it's positive you've had an anthrax attack. It's just hard for me to describe, even now how disorienting that was. And we didn't know what to do. We'd never had anything like that in New York. So we're gathering around a conference call with the head of the CDC in Atlanta, trying to figure out what the precautions we could take now? And then we began to work our way back through what might have happened. And we learned that one of our interns, um, Casey Chamberlin, had opened the original letter and dumped out granular brown powder into a wastebasket that had a plastic bag that was sealed off by our maintenance people and disposed of, thank God the letter that said, take penicillin now. Death to Israel, death to America. Uh, we still had. And when the, uh, has the hazmat crowd came in to test that from the NYPD? It was very hot, and we knew that we were in uncharted territory. We had to move everybody out of that office space, physical space, clean out my office, and send it off to a high tech cleansing laboratory in Arizona, as I remember, Aaron continued to struggle with good reason. She got well physically, but it was emotionally very difficult for her. If she could just sitting in my office be the subject of that kind of attack, what else might happen? At the same time, we were hearing stories about ABC, obviously. CBS, the New York Post. What was so stunning to me is we knew so little about biological warfare and how it could be dumped into our midst in this city or anywhere in America. And we had no real protocol for dealing with it. The FBI says that they've got the guy and that he's the one who committed suicide, who'd worked at at Fort Detrick. There are colleagues of his who insisted this day that he was not guilty. So we may we may never know the right answer. I certainly think from a personal point of view, the hardest single thing I've ever gone through as a friend, as an employer, even as a journalist. Whatever innocence you had about living in New York and whatever comfort that you may have had about, oh, they couldn't possibly get us here. That went away. Two months before, I had been shooting a part of a documentary out in the New York Harbor around the Statue of Liberty. And it was a beautiful summer night, and we finished early and I said, let's just drift down to the southern end of Manhattan. And and I think we had a bottle of wine with us, the crew and I did, and we sat and looked at the World Trade Center. It was so beautiful sticking up in the sky. I had difficulties with it from an architectural design, but it had become so, so much a fixed part of our lives. And I always have that memory of it, that there it was, well lit up a summer sky over Manhattan at night, and we were just drifting along in the water. And two months later, it was the scene of so much horror. And it changed our lives so profoundly. There was at the moment of the attacks, and in the days afterward a kind of joining of hearts and minds and will in America to get through this together. And somehow that's begun to fray. And I think that's sad. I don't think it's a worthy tribute to the people who died. And it ought not to be our legacy. We we have to find a way to rekindle that flame in some respect. About two weeks after September 11th, I went to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets play because they were just returning home and they were wearing the fire department and police department hats. And I went there. Usually when I go to Shea Stadium, I get booed because I'm a Yankee fan and a very, very annoying Yankee fan, particularly to Mets fans, because I'm very outspoken. You always get booed. Well, I showed up that night. It was after September 11th. It was the first game back in New York after September 11th, and I got a standing ovation at Shea Stadium. Afterwards, the press asked me, how did it feel to get a standing ovation at Shea Stadium, because all the press corps knew I got booted Shea Stadium and applauded at Yankee Stadium. And I said to them, it felt very, very good. It showed how everybody can come together, even Yankee and Mets fans, after September 11th. But I'm going to feel better when they boo me again. I had thrown out other first pitches, and I knew what it was like to throw a pitch with a bulletproof vest on and felt pretty confident that I'd be able to make the pitch. At the time, Jeter comes in and says, you're going to throw from the mound. And I said, what do you think? He said, well, if you don't throw from the mound, they'll boo you. And I said, okay, I'll throw from the mound. And as he left, he said, don't bounce it. They'll boo you. So I've got his words echoing in my in my mind, I got I was on the dugout steps introduced in front of the crowd and the noise was deafening. I made it to the mound and it was the most nervous I had ever been. Uh. It's the most nervous moment of my entire presidency. It turns out, uh, the adrenaline was just coursing through my veins, and the ball felt like a shot put. And Todd Greene, the catcher, looked really small. 60ft, six inches, seemed like a half mile. And anyway, I took a deep breath and threw it, and thankfully it went over the plate and the response was overwhelming. It was really one of the most dramatic moments of my presidency. I was at home up in Westchester. My four year old was home sick, and it was that beautiful day. And the phone rang and I picked it up and I recognized Michael Duffy's voice. Our bureau chief in Washington, and he said, turn on the TV. So we were where everyone was. We were watching and we were horrified. And the phone rang probably next at about maybe 1030, and it was Jim Kelly, the managing editor of the magazine. And Jim had this marvelous calm, almost, you know, sort of solicitous. So how are you doing? Um, with the understanding that, of course we both knew we were both native New Yorkers. He had grown up in Queens, had grown up in Manhattan. This was very much an attack on our home. And, uh, and yet he managed to have this, this extremely kind of calm, controlled tone. And he said, let me tell you what we're thinking about doing. And he explained how he had investigated whether it would be possible for us to publish a special issue of the magazine. And so he was looking into whether all the logistics of that can we get the printing capacity in, you know, to print 4 million issues of a magazine when we're not normally scheduled to? Could we get the paper? Could we even transmit? So there were there were a lot of logistical things to work out. But while that was being sorted out, he said, I wanted to know if you if you were game to write for it. And I said, of course. Which story do you want me to do? He said, well, I only want one story. And that was sort of startling. He said. He said, look, there is so much we don't know and we won't know in the next 24 hours. He says, I don't want you to worry about who might have done this, what our response might be. All of the things that we can't possibly know today, he said. I just want you to tell the story of what happens today, what happens in the next 24 hours. And he says everyone else at the magazine will go out and report that and file to you. But that's think of it as a time capsule. You are just going to take a snapshot of today. He knew that where I was, it was a beautiful fall day and I couldn't smell the smoke from where I was. I couldn't hear the sirens from where I was and having just that amount of distance from it notwithstanding, you know, wading through the afternoon to hear about my neighbors, we ended up losing three neighbors that day. It wasn't that it wasn't touching us, but it was nothing like what it was like for the people who were here in this building, you know, 50 blocks north of the of the towers. And so, um, everyone in this building in midtown Manhattan, even as buildings all around the city are being evacuated, even as the sound of sirens was everywhere, even as the smell of smoke was drifting uptown. Even as people worried for their family, their safety, their friends who worked downtown, even as all of these pressures and uncertainties were, were rising. Um, everyone just went to work from like every researcher, every reporter, every writer, every correspondent, every editor fanned out across the city to the hospitals downtown, to the police department, the people in Washington, the same thing. The emails started coming in within a few hours and continued coming in all through the day, all through the night, overnight, probably, you know, 1000 1200 messages, um, by the time we were done. And it was clear to me early on that there was this was not a story that you. There would be time to outline or to write a beginning and a middle and an end that it would just. The story never got written. It sort of just got put together. It wasn't just our reporters based in New York and Washington. Our reporters all across the country were were sending in dispatches as well. And and that really told you something about the event that was not clear to us when we were right in the middle of it, that that parents in Birmingham, Alabama, went and got their kids out of school, that Mount Rushmore was shut down and monuments all across the country and the Sears Tower getting evacuated, that that nobody knew what this was. Nobody knew how widespread the threat might be. And so it was being experienced all over the country. People asked me about when did the when did the sort of the shock of the whole thing hit me and. It's. While it's nothing like what a surgeon does, in one sense, the. I felt very emotionally removed from it at the time. I felt. I have a job to do. I know what I need in order to do it, which is mainly going to be a great deal of coffee. And and I was not. I kept myself at a at an emotional distance. The response that I cared about most came at about 6 a.m. Thursday morning when the phone rang and. And it was Jim and he said, I'm. I'm holding the issue in my hand, and I don't think you'll ever be prouder of anything we've done. But what I then heard again and again and again after that was people saying, um, I've put this in our family album. I've put this in the family Bible, I've saved this. Everyone talked about saving it. I'm saving this for my children and that that this was something they needed and that they knew that they wanted to keep. So I wrote the introduction to the special issue that we're doing and what I love about it, and I love the approach that we ended up taking, is that when I was writing ten years ago, by definition, I'm looking at this from the outside. We now went back to all the people who were on the inside, and there is a certain closure in that. I feel like now this issue, in their words, can tell all of the things that we couldn't know then about what really happened and what it really felt like and what they were thinking as they made decisions that were literally life and death decisions. And so hearing them talk about what happened and what that was like ten years later is just extraordinary. When we went into the site to rephotograph some of the places that I had photographed nine years ago, one of the first responses I had was to the smell of construction and wet concrete and diesel fuel, and some of the elements that were there. Originally, it was a kind of recapture of that same physical sense I had when I was there every day at the beginning. And interestingly, I think it it underscored some of the pictures I made as I was reaching for a similar location. I was also trying to find a feeling that would connect me to the past in the present. We were there sort of midday, and sunlight struck the Millennium Tower's hotel, and it kind of exploded off the edge of the building. And I saw it and had that knee jerk connection to a time in 2001. The smoke rose high enough so that sunlight glinting off the Millennium Hotel shattered the cloud of smoke, and it made these rays and sort of sunbeams and everything. And I made a photograph, and I thought it would be an interesting pairing. Walking around in Ground Zero back in 2001. It was so unbelievably dangerous. All the rebar and the steel and the rubble was sticking up out of the ground. It was like walking in a field of swords. So being back there to see that it was now this void. I mean, suddenly to recognize that once there was this total chaos and now is there a kind of quiet, meditative order? And it's it struck all of us that this place was going to be a very emotional and moving experience for everyone. Sometimes when I was working down there, a single frame of a camera couldn't contain the vastness of the complexity of work that was going on all over the site 24 hours a day, all the time. Making a panorama seemed to me to be a way of showing it all in one gigantic assembled frame. So when we went down to photograph it recently, I went to Leica, who was a company that whose cameras I've been using since I began photography, and I asked them for this new development that they designed from the ground up. It's called the S2, and it is a profoundly accurate camera. So I made another matched panorama and and assembled it. And I have to say it holds up incredibly well. You know, the workers at the end, they were sweeping bedrock, looking for bits and pieces of human remains that they might have missed as they sifted through the pile. And so I saw this guy sweeping carefully looking, and I made a picture of him just because I was sort of honoring their devotion. And when we were down there photographing recently to be inside the boundaries of the quiet space of the memorial, and to see a man just kind of standing there looking over the edge, down into the void. It felt to me like it was the same thing, just carried on. Nine years later, the singularity of a little figure up against the monumentality of the wall. Over the next 6 or 8 months, I'll be able to continue this re photographic survey inside Ground Zero to watch as we get closer to the 10th anniversary. And it's very exciting to kind of revisit it, because now I have the opportunity to go back and I'm really looking forward to that. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin laden, the leader of al Qaeda. I was sitting in my living room. We were all home, ready to go to bed. We were sitting in our dorm room prepping for finals. This is my birthday. I had all my closest friends over. Actually, his girlfriend turned around and said something about bin Laden's dead. Facebook first and I was on Twitter. She read it on her phone. And then, um, we turned on the news and heard Obama's big speech and sang The National. We stood up on our chairs and sang the national anthem the whole way through. Bursting in air. Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. And these two right here, we're all roommates. We're all veterans. So the second we heard it, we started like cheering. I mean, like in our own living room. My brother called me. He said, listen. We're going out of ground Zero. And unfortunately, we lost a lot of buddies. I thought it was fitting. You know, for us to be down here. Well, I think all of us can remember exactly where we were the day that this happened. And everybody had, whether it was a direct relative or a friend of a friend, somehow we were all affected by this. So it's it's bittersweet to be back here again tonight, remembering those heroes that have sacrificed their lives, but celebrating a victorious moment for the U.S.. I don't think we know what we feel right now. It's a little bit of pride and a little bit of shame. It's almost as strange as it was on nine over 11, except that instead of being terrified, I'm just really confused. We both had each other. That was very surreal. We had chills. It wasn't like happiness, like a lot of it was kind of like just very strange. Obviously it's a good day, but, uh, you know, a little choked up, too. It just feels awesome, you know? It's something. It's a moment in time. If nothing else, it's a piece of history. Tonight's a great night and nothing can bring it down. Everyone's feeling the pride today. And like even me, I'm having trouble speaking because of the pride. Like nothing more you can say. It's a great day to be American. I'm proud to be an American. But this is the first time that I've ever bought a flag. So pretty momentous. When the nine over 11 happened, it was all these people coming together in such sadness. But seeing everybody coming together in such happiness is such a wonderful change. In a way. It's there's some kind of sort of I'm looking for. It's a little bit of closure. I think a lot of it is closure, especially for the families. Closure of the victims. Closure, especially for those families that lost someone. It really means something. Well, you know, all of our fallen brothers, all of our fallen soldiers and brothers and sisters overseas. It's because, you know, somebody died that they loved. And at this point, the person who did it is now gone also. It's a long time coming. Yeah. And we're here to celebrate it. And yeah, we're. USA. Now or never. Let's get them all. Come on. We don't be afraid. We work together. Okay. Actually, one of the stories in the in the film is the fantastic story that President Bush tells when you're riding down the West Side Highway. I think he calls it the West Side Avenue. But, um. Yeah, he probably calls it Houston Street too. And, uh. And so you said to him, of course, that, you know, people are going to cheer you, but they didn't vote for you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you that story. What was it like in in that car? Well, the president had just spent about an hour or an hour and 15 minutes down there. He gave that talk about. They'll hear from us now. He hugged the firefighter. The Beckwith. Beckwith was here and, uh, I don't know. I think they kissed several times. It looked like they were going steady, but it was really quite a moving experience. President was now leaving there very emotional. Being there was very emotional for him. And now he was going to go to the Javits Center to meet with many of the family members, which were going to be even more draining and more emotional. So he got in the car and he invited Governor Pataki and I to get in the car with him and my police commissioner, fire commissioner, and head of emergency services just pushed their way in the car. They just they thought they were invited. They thought they would go anywhere I went because the president's limousine. So now these three big guys and they're all big, are sitting in the limo with the president and everybody's like, jammed in one of them. I was sitting on his lap and everyone is sitting there very, very solemn and very sad. And we're all traveling up West End Avenue, and there were 4 or 5, 6000 people on the streets. They were all cheering him. And the first one to really break the ice wasn't me. The first one to really break the ice was the fire commissioner, Tom von von Essen, who all of a sudden out of the blue just says, oh no. The president said to him, Tom, lean over to him, how are you doing? And Tom says, I'm doing better now. My wife finally came home last night and I got lucky. I looked at him like, what, are you crazy? And President Bush said, well, you're probably the only guy who did. The funny thing about President Bush is about two weeks later, president came to a firehouse and Little Italy and the president walked in and Tom was there. And the first thing he said to him, remembering it, he put his arm around Tom. He said, are you still getting lucky? When I was walking around in the site amidst the rubble, there were these tridents that would be sticking up out of the rubble, and you realized they were 3 or 4 stories tall. You know, when I was working in Ground Zero, you would see beams like that, bigger than that, thicker than that. Crumpled like tin foil. Wow. Hi, I'm Joel Meyerowitz. I'm a photographer who lives in New York, and I spent nine months inside Ground Zero photographing the World Trade Center archive. Well, one of the first places I, I went to to make a photographic survey of the work was looking north in the spring of 2002. The site had been excavated almost completely and you could see the bathtub slurry walls. And so I went back and I found that location. It's changed. You could feel from that vantage point the wheel of time, the ten year cycle having really been something because all of us have been wondering what's taking so long? Why isn't there something there? And there's a lot there already. The other one that I, I thought was important to cover each time was to look down into the footprint of either of the towers and watch how that has transformed itself from a rude hole in the ground. To see them finally. Perfect. With the names inscribed and the solemnity of the grey granite. And to see it finished. At this point, even without the water, it's almost. It's almost more profound right now to see it without the water. Seeing the Freedom Tower, which has been renamed One World Trade Center. To see it rise from this concrete block house. At first, it's 75 stories now. Get some interesting perspective here. And then to be up in it with those dizzying views of New York City. It's awesome. You know, we were all worried that it was hubris to put another tower there. I mean, I think a lot of people were feeling why ask for trouble again? But now that it's happening, it feels absolutely right. The place that called to me most was those panels of grass that had been laid out with granite blocks for benches and the trees planted in there. This was one of the original trees that was in the site. Most of the trees were destroyed. This was blasted terribly. Wow. But the Parks Department, Adrian Benepe and the group, took it back to the Bronx Botanical Gardens, and they nurtured it for ten years. It's like a children's book story of the survivor who's come back to be rooted again in nearly the same place. That moved me the most to see this tree in its place again. My grandfather worked in the original transportation hub in 68 before the towers went up. My father's first job was here, North Tower. I'm a fourth generation ironworker from my father's side and third from my mother's. This is like four years on the job. The longest job I've ever been on. I can't compare this job to no job. Never. This is like a one time deal. If you see something, say something. Call 1888 NYC. Safe to report suspicious activity. Wake up in the dark. You get home in the dark. Every day. Every day. It's two hours door to door, almost seven days a week, ten hours a day. You miss your family. You hardly see them. You don't see them. You give up five years of your life for this. I mean, I've been here from start to end. He's coming all together. This place. This hole in a hole no more. And the whole building is pretty much dictated. By our. Speed. There'll be a special day to say you finally finished this job. I mean, look at us. You know, there ain't no building like this ever going up. My father worked on the original Twin Towers. My father also worked on seven World Trade Center, the original 1985. He had an accident on that job. He fell and he was paralyzed. It is a strange story that your father built. The buildings, they come down and you're putting them back up again. I don't know that that's happened ever before, but I'm glad I'm part of it. I started working when I was 17. I said I was 18, but. You know, 14 years doing it now and 32, I don't know what year this could have been in the 20s. This is my great grandfather, the best shot right here, my grandfather sitting on a column. A lot of Iranian workers are guys that were adventurous kids. These are the guys that are skiing 100 miles an hour. These are the guys that are jumping out of airplanes. And we take a lot of pride in what we do. Uh, I guess I had no choice. I sucked at school. So, you know, I was put out here, but my father wanted me to be out here. Keep the name going. Yeah, I liked fighting. So I thought about being a boxer. I thought I was going to be the next Mike Tyson. You know, and I still like, I got I got the basement set up for the kids. Well, I was messing up in school and getting in trouble in the streets. And so my father stopped paying for the gym. But I'm glad that I got into the business because I love it. And these might be the future here. I ain't working. I've been doing it for a long time, though. I've been doing it for about 17 years. Hello. How's school guys? How are. You? Yeah. Yeah. I'm working. Gets in your blood. You know, we all grew up around it. We listen to our fathers and our grandfathers and our cousins discussing it around the table. As a little kid, they like to walk around on a piece of wood in the backyard. I have two sons. I know my wife wouldn't be happy if they became my workers. Kind of like my mother wasn't happy with my father when I decided to become an ironworker. Because, you know, nobody wants to see their family get hurt. Everyone needs everything. That's the twin towers. When they fell. Twin. They. They were two twin towers. They were identical. Now they're gone, right? Jeez, look at this. That was great. It was terrible. This was September 12th. The smoke to smell. Just everything about that thing. Get the chills when you look at that picture. 911 I was working 2 or 3 blocks away at Whitehall Terminal. Got the call over the radio that I better come outside. Everybody came down off the iron. We're out in the street like everybody else looking. And very shortly thereafter, we actually felt like the plane was coming right at us. It went right over our heads kind of banked right over the building we were working, and we watched the crash right into the into the Trade Center. And I was working in the Empire State Building on the 65th floor. We could see that there was a hole in the building. And then when we saw the second plane, I ran to my desk, grabbed my bag, and ran down 65 flights of stairs. And I was on Vesey and Broadway. The second tower came down, got hit with all that dust, everything. I thought I was dead. Dead. We all got together and, um, the ironworkers. And we headed down here to help clean up. We just came down here to help people. Just trying to, you know, that's that's what ironworkers do. We just want to go help. And then I worked for two days down here straight. But I was only a kid. I was 20 years old. Couldn't handle it. I didn't want to be part of it. I seen a lot of stuff I didn't want to see, you know, things that, you know, no one should see. And, um, I don't want to talk about those days. And, uh. Geez, that was terrible. Terrible. I didn't see the future. You know, I never knew that I'll be putting up a building. I was blessed with this job. A lot of us were fortunate. My story is that I should have been on the 82nd floor of tower one. And my oldest son said, dad, can you give me a ride to school? I succumbed to his pleas and made me late that day and put me in a position by fate to be around to to build this. So I have a personal need, a personal commitment to make this happen. The circles come full around for me. Obviously when we were down here cleaning up and trying to rescue people, it was certainly not anything we ever thought about rebuilding. But as time went on and they started talking about rebuilding it as an ironworker, every ironworker wanted to be part of it. It's like hitting the lotto. I guess when you get something like this, put in your lap, then you start thinking about the task ahead of you and it's pretty daunting. One of the first days I got a call saying they believed they had human remains that had not been uncovered initially by the cleanup. Yeah, well, look, it started as a pile, right? It started as smoking smoldering ruins from nine over 11. And it was originally a rescue mission and then a recovery mission. We have 3500 people at this site. Each and every day, working side by side, we're building essentially five Empire State buildings or greater than Empire State Buildings. At the same time, 250 000 people will be at the site each and every day. So essentially, we're building a city within a city. There is no book to look at. There's no book to refer to. You take your basic knowledge and you write the book as you go forward. There was a lot of planning into setting that last piece of the spire. Where it was definitely one of the most exciting days here and satisfaction days here. It was also the most stressful day. So the stress was doing so many things here that were firsts. Putting the crane up on top of the doghouse, jumping this crane to heights that the crane never jumped to. We were able to set this fire. We had about this much left between the top of the crane and the top of the spire. I mean, you know, on paper, that's okay. When you're up there at 1700ft, waiting for that last piece of the spire to come at you, and then the wind kicks in a little bit and. I help you out, Jimmy. I'm always, uh, you know, telling my kids about it and let them know, tell it, you know, friends at school or their teachers that, uh, that that set the spire on tower one. It's great, great feeling, great feeling. When you get to say that not many people get to say that. That's awesome. We finished setting the last piece of spire. You know, it's finally up all put together. Every piece you know, you look around at the workers at the very front line, working hard to make sure it's perfect, and you could see the pain on their face to make sure it's perfect. It's all about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And you see it each and every day. We're wrapping things up now and getting ready to move on. I came here and it was a hole in the ground, and I'm going to leave here and people are going to be working here, and people may not notice and may not know all we went through. Um, but I know. I can see this from a neighborhood where I live in Brooklyn and I live in Brooklyn now, and I can see it from one block. And get on with the job. You step back, you look at it and you're like, wow, man, I was, I was part of that makes it all worth it. This is where a lot of people died in this location. And this building right here is like a landmark for them. They had to put a building back up. They have to, you know, and they put a great one up. And I'm blessed to be here to do it. I took an express subway train from Times Square to Chambers Street, which is the stop just before the World Trade Center. The first thing I saw was the two World Trade Centers. Both of them had smoke and fire coming from them. I just started taking my pictures. I was photographing the burning building when EMT says, oh my gosh, look at that. And we started seeing people coming down out of the building. Maybe people trapped for ten four. I instinctively picked up my camera and started photographing them, following them as they came down until I photographed what has become known as the Falling Man. It's a very quiet photograph. It's not like a lot of other violent photographs from other disasters. There's no blood, there's no guts. There's no one getting shot. But people react to it in a way that they feel that they can relate to this photograph, that they might have been in the same situation, and they might have had to make whatever choice the man in the photograph made. You have to be very aware of your surroundings when you're in a situation like this. You have to be careful that you don't become a victim. Journalists don't run away from a falling building. We don't run away from the fire. We run to it because it's our job to record history. I didn't know I had that photograph of that man in that position until I actually saw it on my computer when I got back to the office. I called one of our photo editors, and I showed him the picture and I said, this is it. This has got to be the picture. This man was like an arrow bisecting the two World Trade Centers. I woke up the next morning and I opened up the paper and there was my photograph of falling man. It was a very brave thing for them to use that picture. It was the only picture that was like that of anybody falling from the building. The only picture that showed any kind of human interaction like that. A paper in Allentown, Pennsylvania, used the picture and they put it on their whole back page in the newspaper. And the editor said that it was that important to photograph. And he got a lot of mail letters to the editor saying, you shouldn't have run this. This is not something I want my children to see. Tom Junod, the author of the Esquire article. He's the one who came up with the name The Falling Man. That was the name of the article. And it sort of stuck. I've never regretted taking that photograph at all. It's probably one of the only photographs that actually shows someone dying that day. We have a terrorist attack on our own soil, and we still don't see pictures of our people dying. And this is a photograph of someone dying. Being there and being with my old company and just witnessing that rescue effort and cleanup effort. Um, and the humanity of everyone who was down there, all the volunteers, firefighters, first responders, steelworkers, sanitation, and feeling the love that was on that site was just something that will stay with me forever. I mean, I took the civil service test for the fire department when I was 18. My dad was a sanitation worker for the city, so he thought it would be good for me and my brothers to take whatever test, you know, was available. Um, it's not like I, you know, had dreams of being a firefighter my whole life, but I did take it seriously. And once I went to the fire academy, you know, for the training I saw, you know, I really saw what, um, a serious job it was. Uh, and I also saw that it was a brotherhood. And, um, eventually I was assigned to engine 55. I grew, you know, close to the guys that I worked with. They eventually found out that I had done stand up and had been, you know, and wanted to be an actor. I mean, they were very supportive, but they were also, you know, firefighters are, you know, great at busting chops. When I told them I was leaving the job, you know, to to pursue acting. They thought I was crazy, which I probably was. When nine over 11 happened, that connection just came flooding back. And I was really concerned about my company and other firefighters that I knew. The morning of the 12th, I went to my old firehouse just to see what happened. And if I could just offer any help to the firehouse. But they weren't there. And then I ended up down at the site. I still have my turnout coat and helmet and gloves, and I brought that with me. And once I found my company, ended up working with them the rest of the day and they invited me back the next the next day. And so I did that for the next few days. Basically, it was, um, clearing rubble. There were those, those, those bucket lines where you pass a bucket up, it gets, you know, to the top, it gets filled with rubble and then it gets passed back down. Um, but every once in a while they would ask for a body bag. The body bag would get passed up and then it would come back while I was there. Strangely enough, I felt like I was in the safest place on earth. People mentioned it. People even joked about it. You know, this is probably going to kill us in 20 years. Well, it didn't take 20 years. We are approaching, you know, the same number of deaths of firefighters, you know, from cancer related nine over 11 cancer related issues than what happened on the on the day itself. We were told by the government, you know, that the air quality was safe when it really wasn't. But I don't think that would have stopped anybody, you know, from being there. But I think what hurt the most was that they were not being Properly taken care of. Once the cancer's started to happen, they had to, you know, fight to get that funding extended. I'm really so amazed. And at the work that they did, the John Peel with his foundation and John Stewart, you know, going to D.C. and all the first responders that they would bring, bring with them some of them who were very, very sick and dying and, and have died. Um, that felt incredibly unfair that they had to fight that hard for, you know, for something that they deserve so much. Everybody at the time, around nine over 11 was that we wouldn't forget, you know, and they felt forgotten. For the past 10 or 15 years, I've been working with a group called Friends of Firefighters, and they provide free mental health and support to firefighters. Retired, uh, on the job now. And it's also available for their families. It's available for the whole firefighting community. Firefighters are always doing things for each other, you know, for their community, their families. Um, but it's often hard for them to ask for help, you know, not help if they need, you know, something done around the house or construction or something like that. But I mean, if they're feeling, um. If they're feeling down, if they're feeling depressed, if they, if they're feeling survivor's guilt, which so many of them did, if they have post-traumatic stress because they're feeling is somebody has it worse than them. Throw on top of that, you know, it's just not in their, in their mindset or the culture. You know, that if they need counseling or therapy that they would, that they would seek it out. You know, after nine over 11, we said never, never forget in this film helps us to remember why it's so important to, to never forget because people are still struggling. People are still dying. The first time I went in the pool, I would think it's about 8 or 9 years ago when I got in there, I was like, wow, this is just amazing to see from ground level, uh, how, how vast it really is. Uh, my name is Jim Maroon and I work at the nine over 11 Memorial and I'm a pool cleaner. Me and two other workers every night. Clean the pools, put a vacuum and brush, and try to keep them as spectacular as we can. We cleaned the pools five nights a week. We work at night from midnight to eight in the morning. It's a long eight hours, but it's worth it. My father's work down here, uh, pretty much his whole adult life. He was the boat towers and a couple of the other buildings, too. So I've spent most of my life down here. So this is was a great opportunity to try to give back. To take care of this place is very, very important. I was here on nine over 11. I worked at the New York Mercantile Exchange. And, uh, on the morning of nine over 11, I was walking through the the building to get to my building when the first plane went right over head. And I honestly didn't think much of it. When I got to work, the next plane hit and the rest is history. Bad history. But we're trying to make it better every day here. When I'm cleaning the pool, I think most of the time I'm thinking, did I do this well? Because I don't want to come out of that pool eight hours later and somebody saying, wow, that pool looks bad. You know, and I feel then I would feel bad. But luckily we do it well pretty much every night. It gets dark in there sometimes. And you, you lose yourself in there, but, uh, it's pretty beautiful to see that sun come over the over the wall. It's something, uh, most people don't get a chance to see. Actually never changes. It's remained the same 21 years ago. I lost my dad here. Never get easy. It's the same thing all over again. It hurts. I need it to be here. It's been a long time since I was here. I haven't stepped foot on the on his grounds since October of 2001. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but, uh. Uh. It still feels some a little bit haunting from that day, but, uh, I'm. I'm trying to pass by, you know, trying to get through it and move on, but it's ceremony just, uh. This day just keeps bringing it back. Nine over 11 was a Tuesday morning. My wife has a name for it. She calls it September 11th Sky because it was so blue that day. Fairly comfortable day already behind our front stretching into New York City. So 74. It's a morning that I will always remember. My wife was pregnant with our second child, due to be born two weeks later. Good morning. I'm meteorologist Bill Evans. In our neighborhood has bright sunshine outside. There is a major incident in lower Manhattan. Twin engine, not quite an airliner. It could, in fact be a commuter plane. Let's listen in the office. And I heard that a plane had hit the towers. People rushed by my desk saying a plane hit the World Trade Center. Several floors were taken out and there's more explosions right now. Hold on, hold on, hold on just a moment. We've got an explosion inside. And I come out of the subway, and a whole crowd of people are looking south with their heads raised to the sky. I stop, I look up and I see the north tower. A woman standing next to me says, do you think it's coming down? I go, no. The Lords have already redistributed its achieved equilibrium, which to me is a lifelong lesson not to draw conclusions instantaneously. A huge explosion now raining debris on all of us. We better get out of the way. After the first tower collapsed, the amount of chaos got worse. At that point in time, the amount of smoke was tremendous. The number of firefighters and cops was just off the charts. That's when I started making phone calls to people I knew in the industry, both contractors, engineers, to help mobilize the resources. I understood that engineers had a role when something like this occurs, that we could provide expertise that will help to keep people safe. I think there was an immediate call to action. As a as a person, I felt a great obligation to do something. And as you can see now, the dust is beginning to pick up here. The tragedy that was involved with that, the loss of life that was involved. with. That was something that we in New York and even we in the United States were not used to this. We walked downtown. You had perimeters of police and military. And, you know, it was kind of like, well, we're engineers. We're here to help. The emergency workers searched for people for a long time. And I don't remember when, you know, they pulled the last survivor out. Um. Once you were in the site because of all the smoke, you couldn't see the rest of Manhattan. You couldn't see that you were by the water. It was in a haze. And if you have ever seen like war movies, it was just very eerie because it was even though you were in Manhattan, you felt like you were in another world. Having every structural engineer that was part of Sony willing to give their time. And initially the give was they volunteered their time. They didn't ask to be paid. Everybody just showed up. Welcome to the nine over 11 Memorial and Museum. My name is Dahlia. Um, right now we're standing on the nine over 11 Memorial Plaza. Um, and we're standing where the towers once stood. The attacks will begin at 8:46 a.m.. When hijacked flight 11 strikes the north face of the north Tower here. Uh, 17 minutes later, 9:03 a.m. hijack flight 175 strikes the south face of the South Tower. Know that the attacks happen quickly. Response happens immediately. Um. First responders and other personnel will rush to the scene. Uh, but the attack only happens in 102 minutes. That's less than a typical feature of film. The south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., and the north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m.. And now, at the end of those 102 minutes, 2977 people are killed. Um, and those individuals are remembered on this memorial plaza. Uh, they represent, uh, the people who are in the buildings, on the planes, those who responded, as well as the other attack sites. Structural engineers make things stand up. Ever since I can remember as a little kid, I wanted to be a structural engineer. We take math and science. We put them together and use them to solve problems. So that that structure or building or bridge can perform and perform in a way that keeps the public safe. People often confuse structural engineers with architects, but we're in the background making their beautiful designs. Stand up and perform for. For loads. For wind. For snow. For people. The first rule of the the American Society of Civil Engineers Code of Ethics is that you do everything for the health, safety and welfare of the public. We hold it to be utmost in our dealings throughout our entire careers. Shown is the Structural Engineers Association of New York. We support each other. We learn from each other. We do presentations for each other. It's a member organization, so it's not about the firms. It's an offshoot of NCC, which is the National Council on Structural Engineering Associations. It started in the late 90s. I was a founding member of Sony, and it was a group of local New York City structural engineers where we can share knowledge, information, and, in my opinion, more importantly, camaraderie. For most of human existence, people live close to the ground. Until the late 19th century, people were no higher than they could go up the stairs. And then in the 19th century, things came along. New, new structural engineering technology elevators that enabled to go, go taller. And so it did. Starting in like the 1880s. And then you fast forward to early 1930s with the Empire State Building. You know, a huge increase in height and a skys****er is more than just a building. It's a marker. It's a cultural reference. They're placemaking. They tell you where Midtown is. They tell you where downtown is. They tell you where the loop is in Chicago. The original World Trade Towers and historic. My first job out of college was in 1987. I worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. I worked on the 73rd floor of the World Trade Center. I worked in tunnels, bridges, and terminals, so I'd ride down and get to the World Trade Center and walk across this big plaza to this towering building, and walk in with the rest of the cattle and get into the this large elevator that that brought us very quickly to a to an intermediate floor. It was really an interesting and crazy place to work. It was something when you showed a picture of the skyline of New York, the Twin Towers were front and center. It's an example of how the structural engineering shaped the building. Um, because it was one of the first really successful Uses. Uses of the tube construction method. Twin towers were really an amazing engineering feat. They had a relatively small footprint for their height. The system that was envisioned by both the architect and the structural engineer Les Robertson, was a central core with another tube of columns and beams around it. They were huge. You know, a two towers of virtually the same height each, each with about an acre of floor plate on each level. Uh, remarkable. There were a lot of innovative technologies used, like pre assembling portions of the floors so that enormous sections could be lifted and placed in the proper locations. There was an amazing photograph of the sun rising behind the two towers, before all the interior partitions, and even probably before the glass in the windows had been installed, and you could just see right through them. Then the other very interesting thing about it was how deep they had to go. The conditions that were there. I know very little of the superstructure. My, my, my career at the World Trade Center has been essentially looking down rather than up. The chief engineer of the Port Authority asked me to go look at two slurry wall jobs in Italy while I was at Rome. Office of Navy. I don't think that they could have practically made the excavation for the basement of the World Trade Center using any technology, even current technology other than slurry walls. When I started the project, the wharf, the edge of the the edge of the bulkhead was along West Street, and it moved progressively to the west from from that starting point, there was a massive landfill, which is Battery Park City. Now. The morning of nine over 11, I was on the phone with my wife. I heard what sounded like a a road plate. We were on the. 48th floor and then pieces of paper started to drift by my window. Had a meeting on Hudson Street, so I got to Grand Central and I got in a taxi and I told him where I wanted to go, and he turned around and looked at me, and he said, do you know what's going on? I said, no, what's going on? He said, let me show you. He drove me to Fifth Avenue and turned the corner. And that's when I first saw the Twin Towers, the explosion, the smoke, and no concept of what it was. You know, everybody was running out of buildings in the street. It was kind of a surreal experience. You you couldn't understand what was happening. Why planes were impacting the building. I. I went to the street and I remember seeing the tower. Come down. And. So you could see. This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers, a huge explosion now raining debris on all of us. We better get out of the way. All of a sudden somebody yelled, there it goes! And buildings started collapsing. And I started taking picture after picture as it came down. And then I broke down. Everybody broke down in tears on the roof. It was quite an emotional experience, and that's when it really hit me that the world had changed because on every street corner was a National Guardsman with a rifle. Police were activated. The fire department was activated and Air Force was activated. The people you see here are pretty much all emergency workers. The New York City Department of Design and Construction was organized to centralize all the design and construction operations for all the city agencies. So I routinely got involved with the Office of Emergency Management and City Hall on any emergency type project. The Structural Engineers Association of New York was organizing, and they wanted to volunteer their services. It was determined that seven volunteers were going to be needed to do building assessments, but also to to assist the contractors who had been hired by the DDC. We discussed that I should start emailing the members, because we thought that there would be a lot of work for structural engineers, and there must be something we could do to help. We got a call from Mike Burton at the Department of Design and Construction, and he called me and my partner, Dan Cuoco, may he may he rest in peace. He's passed on. We needed the volunteers to help, but then we ended up going to more of an organized approach where we had the four large contractors controlling the labor that would be helping out the fire department and the police department. People needed to be affiliated with a company. You needed to fill out a time sheet and you would be paid for your work. We all worked together. We just marched all the way down to the to the site. Some people, in the end, you know, donated that pay back to, you know, charity of their choice. What was remarkable, the city had broken into four quadrants, assigned each of them to a general contractor, and they ran it like a job site. We assigned teams to each of those quadrants, you know, whether they could move a particular piece of equipment into this specific location, whether the rubble seemed stable, whether, you know, there was a better way to tie something off. There were people from Boston from with HGH, from people from Philadelphia, people from Chicago that were driving to help in the effort. Throughout that effort. Every day was just moving closer to trying to get to a point where you hope that somebody wouldn't die that next day. The next morning I went with a contractor down to look at 140 West Street, and he said, look, I'm just going to warn you, this is really it's going to be tougher to look at than you think. And I'm like, you know, okay, I know they made me get in the Tyvek suits with the boots and the, the, the hat and the full face mask. And we come around the side of the Verizon building and I see the World Trade Center in a pile. And I, I just like total, total disbelief. There was remains of steel, right. But the energy of the collapse have pulverized the concrete. September 12th and 13. You had the intent of looking for people. I think everything that was not still had been pulverized. The main focus for the first, really three weeks was search and rescue, right? Was trying to find individuals alive somewhere in and around the site, whether it's, you know, beneath the pile, because there were some pockets beneath there that the structure hadn't collapsed yet, given what happened. Right. You have 110 story building that collapses. And the pile you see at street level is only a hundred or so feet tall, that the likelihood of anybody who was in the towers of being able to survive that was zero. They brought the cranes and. And what you do is you do. What they were doing is going with the crane in a box and lifting, going to the center of the pile that was still hot and burning to try to find the stair shaft to find survivors. But there was. There was nothing. In those beginning days. The fire department was in charge. Right. If somebody else wanted to do something, but they had another priority, it was their priority, and their priority was saving people and also trying to save, including those people with their own colleagues in the fire department. So we were trying to help find places where people could have gone, where there would be, you know, sort of protection from the collapsing of the tower. So hardened areas like the, the, you know, over where the Scotia bank was, the tunnels that were under the old H&M tunnels that continued from the sort of the east bath tub over to the west under buildings five and four. I remember leaving the site. It took me a while, hailed a taxi and a taxi pulls up. I told him where I was going, University place. I had my hard hat on and um, he saw the hard hat and he turned around and he said, you're working at Ground Zero. I said, yep. And he said something to me that was sticks with me. He said, do you think there's any chance of survival in my brain? There was no way we were finding any survivors. Uh, and just as I was about to say that, the corner of my eye caught a photo of a police officer on his ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Organization","@id":"https://time.com/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/"},"name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/img/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://time.com/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Video","item":"https://time.com/video/"}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"25 Years After 9/11 | Stories of Resilience from the TIME Archive","description":"TIME looks back 25 years after 9/11 with stories from the archive honoring the victims and the resilience of the survivors.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/GJbd6KB9/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-10T22:41:52.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/GJbd6KB9.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video","duration":"PT4H53M12S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```