The Megyn Kelly Show - Remembering September 11 25 Years Later： The Heroes and Bravery, and the Moments That Shaped America ｜ Ep. 1396

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00:00:27.240 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:38.940 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show on this somber anniversary,

00:00:45.960 the 25-year mark since 9-11, 2001, the date America changed forever,

00:00:52.660 and a date that many of us who were around at the time remember all too well.

00:00:58.420 It is seared in our memories and will be forevermore.

00:01:03.300 The closest thing that's happened akin to it would have been Pearl Harbor

00:01:08.020 and our parents or grandparents' generation had a clear memory of that one

00:01:15.420 and made sure that the rest of us understood what happened on that day that lived in infamy.

00:01:20.920 And those of us who remember 9-11-2001 have an obligation to make sure that everyone remembers that date, too.

00:01:29.580 Already with the information age upon us, it's too easy to forget.

00:01:34.060 It's too easy to be consumed by other things.

00:01:36.540 It's too easy to be over on TikTok and hearing vignettes about how bin Laden had a point.

00:01:42.880 And so those of us who believe, no, bin Laden did not have a point, need to remind people, especially the younger generation, many of whom consume shows like this one and podcasts and so on, that there was good and evil that day.

00:01:59.080 And we were the good.

00:02:01.320 We were not the evil.

00:02:03.340 This is not to say America has never done wrong on the international front or in its foreign policy.

00:02:08.220 But there is no question that there were terrorists and there were heroes on the day of 9-11.

00:02:16.860 And the Americans who were attacked and fought valiantly for their lives and for others' lives were the heroes.

00:02:25.020 We were attacked by radical Islamic jihadists who had all sorts of beefs with America.

00:02:32.480 Yes, they were upset about certain foreign policy decisions we had made, of course, and we need to be cognizant of that.

00:02:40.240 But they did loathe the freedoms of the United States and the way we choose to live.

00:02:47.660 Some people will mock that idea now.

00:02:49.300 It's not mockable.

00:02:50.860 It was one of the things they hated about us.

00:02:53.880 And we've learned that.

00:02:54.640 As we've learned more about the terrorist motives, we've learned that.

00:03:00.260 Foreign interventionism is not a great idea.

00:03:02.480 And a lot of people oppose it for this very reason.

00:03:04.520 But that's not what today is about, at least not for me.

00:03:08.840 It's about the Americans who were innocent and who were living the kind of lives you and I are living right now.

00:03:15.540 Getting up in the morning, getting their kids off to school, kissing them goodbye, going into the workplace to try to lead a productive life where you feel like you've added something to this world.

00:03:27.200 And then go back home to your family at the end if you're lucky.

00:03:30.540 That's all they were doing.

00:03:32.480 They were regular men and women working in those towers and at the Pentagon and on board

00:03:37.840 Flight 93 who didn't consider themselves extraordinary and certainly didn't consider

00:03:43.000 themselves to be soldiers in some sort of a war.

00:03:46.760 And the horror that was unleashed upon them was almost too much to repeat out loud, to

00:03:56.500 actually articulate.

00:03:58.360 but I don't, there's something cathartic about doing it because in the back of your memory,

00:04:06.680 if you were alive that day, you know, you were a witness to a seminal event in American history

00:04:14.120 and you have it there under layer upon layer upon layer. And being reminded of what we all

00:04:23.060 went through is somewhat cathartic because it's an affirmation that, yes, we do have this shared

00:04:28.440 history. Yes, we did learn a few lessons, more than a few, from that horrific event. And we owe

00:04:37.040 it to the men and women who suffered, died, and were heroic on that day to be cognizant of what

00:04:44.420 they went through and how it did change us individually and as a country. So we're going

00:04:51.600 to go through some of that today, beginning with the actual attacks and how they went down.

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00:05:51.600 On September 11th, 2001, I had just moved from New York City, not long before that,

00:05:58.920 to Chicago.

00:06:00.360 And when I had been in New York as a young practicing lawyer, I had been living at 71

00:06:04.740 Broadway, which was right by the World Trade Center.

00:06:09.720 It's right next to Trinity Church, if you know Southern Manhattan.

00:06:13.300 And the World Trade Center was my view.

00:06:17.460 I used to joke with people who would come to visit me that you never had to leave the

00:06:20.660 house in order to say you'd seen Manhattan from my apartment, because while it was a small 800

00:06:26.300 square foot apartment, it had a great view. And you could see Wall Street, and you could see the

00:06:32.080 World Trade Center, and you could see Trinity Church, and you could see the grave of Alexander

00:06:36.660 Hamilton in Trinity Church Cemetery, all without leaving your house. And you could see the American

00:06:44.460 Stock Exchange, too. New York and American, both. And I used to go over to the Twin Towers all the

00:06:51.840 time. I mean, it was my neighborhood Starbucks was in there. So I'd go over, I'd set up shop,

00:06:57.580 and I'd have a cup of coffee, and I'd read the paper on the weekends and settle in, maybe read

00:07:01.800 a book. Barnes & Noble, not Starbucks. There was a Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble, but it was

00:07:07.420 Barnes & Noble that I was going over to the bookstore. And I'll never forget reading the

00:07:12.660 Ken Starr report there under the Clinton presidency. I mean, that's how long ago this was

00:07:17.500 when I was living there. And cover to cover, it was such a riveting drop of information.

00:07:24.180 Long before I was in news, I was, you know, as I said, a young lawyer, young litigator

00:07:28.040 practicing law. And I would go downstairs at 71 Broadway and my train was right there,

00:07:34.280 the 4-5. I would catch it to Midtown and work as a litigator for Jones Day.

00:07:38.060 that was my life up until just a few months before 9-11. And by the grace of God, I had moved to the

00:07:45.180 Chicago office just prior. And I say that because while I understood, my license read 71 Broadway

00:07:53.940 on the day of 9-11. And I remember I used it because you were allowed to go back into the

00:08:00.400 area. You weren't allowed to go into Southern Manhattan unless you could prove that you lived

00:08:04.060 there. And, uh, it was a disaster zone, of course, but my building had been used to stage,

00:08:12.200 um, not rescues, but it was used to welcome in fleeing citizens, fleeing New Yorkers trying to

00:08:20.720 get away from the debris. And people went into this building, which was all concrete and iron

00:08:25.860 and part of one of the planes that had been used as a bomb landed on the roof of the building.

00:08:35.860 So that's how close we were. And it was very personal. And I do thank God that I wasn't

00:08:40.940 there when this happened for many reasons, not the least of which is the poison air,

00:08:46.300 the poison water, the poisonous substances everywhere that plagued lower Manhattan for

00:08:53.220 years after the fact, the full extent of which we're just now learning more about. But there

00:08:58.360 have been thousands, thousands of New Yorkers who have died in the aftermath of the poisoning of

00:09:05.780 Ground Zero and the related areas down in lower Manhattan. So I feel like I was one of the lucky

00:09:13.160 ones to have moved out just before this happened. It's awful what people had to go through. We count

00:09:21.880 the souls that died in the towers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon that day,

00:09:28.160 but we too often forget to count all the people who died as a result of the cleanup at Ground Zero

00:09:34.140 and the pollution that happened after Ground Zero that infected so many, not to mention the blood

00:09:39.020 and treasure spent on the fields of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what happened. At 6.45 a.m. that

00:09:48.340 morning at Boston's Logan International Airport, Mohammed Atta and four Saudi nationals checked in

00:09:57.400 for flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles. That was no accident. The two planes that were

00:10:05.260 flown into the World Trade Center were both from Boston, bound for Los Angeles. That was because

00:10:11.780 they wanted the most fuel, the planes that would be full of the most fuel. They wanted to use

00:10:18.320 them as bombs, and they knew that they needed fuel to make them ignite and burn as much as

00:10:23.480 possible. The third flight, United Flight, or sorry, American Airlines Flight 77 was out of

00:10:29.080 Dulles, headed cross-country to Los Angeles. And Flight 93 started at Newark Airport in New Jersey,

00:10:37.360 taking off for San Francisco. So they were all transcontinental cross-country flights,

00:10:42.000 full of fuel and innocent Americans. 1.00

00:10:46.700 Muhammad Atta, as I mentioned, 0.97

00:10:50.560 boarded Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles.

00:10:54.040 He was personally selected by bin Laden for the mission. 0.90

00:10:57.740 He was the commander.

00:10:59.200 He was said to be nervous in the airport, sweating.

00:11:02.400 And profusely, the clerk who checked him in

00:11:05.440 later said his forehead was drenched.

00:11:09.020 Three of the men were identified by the computer

00:11:11.680 as potentially suspicious, their nationality, plus their travel movements, plus if they were

00:11:18.780 also sweating, I'm sure it was a tell, their bags were x-rayed, nothing suspicious was found.

00:11:24.960 It's amazing. Think about it. Flight 11 had 11 crew members and 81 passengers,

00:11:30.140 including the five hijackers. At 6.50 a.m., five minutes later, United Airlines representative

00:11:38.380 Gail Jawahir was repeating the standard security questions about luggage to two nervous UAE

00:11:48.020 nationals as they struggled to understand her. 0.63

00:11:52.240 They were part of a five-man Al-Qaeda unit, all with tickets for the LA-bound flight 175,

00:11:58.520 United Airlines flight 175.

00:12:01.200 On that flight, there were nine crew, 56 passengers, including the five hijackers.

00:12:05.740 Again, both flights going from Boston to LA.

00:12:09.240 At 7.30 a.m., this is all happening within 45 minutes, 400 miles away at Washington Dulles,

00:12:18.520 Saudi brothers Nawaf and Salern al-Hazmi ran into the terminal late to catch American Airlines Flight 77.

00:12:26.820 They had only one small bag.

00:12:29.260 One set off two metal detectors, so a security guard checked him with a hand wand.

00:12:34.340 Again, it picked up nothing suspicious.

00:12:35.960 On board American Airlines Flight 77 were six crew, 58 passengers, including five hijackers.

00:12:44.600 At 8.14 a.m., 15 minutes into Flight 11, its journey, the hijack began.

00:12:53.480 They were intentionally beginning these hijackings about 15 minutes into the flight.

00:12:58.300 We'll get to this later, but they had done, we believe, test runs, and they understood

00:13:02.900 that about 15 minutes into the flight was when the cockpit would be unlocked. They knew what

00:13:09.260 they were doing. The hijack began on board Flight 11. Atta and the other terrorists sprayed mace

00:13:18.240 into the first class cabin, claimed they had a bomb, trying to force the passengers to the rear

00:13:24.160 of the plane where they would not bother the hijackers. Passenger Daniel Lewin, a former

00:13:29.360 Israeli commando bravely tried to intervene but had his throat slit by one of the terrorists

00:13:36.280 who then forced their way into the cockpit, killed or disabled the two pilots, and Mohammed

00:13:42.360 Atta was at the controls. At 8.19 a.m. at the rear of Flight 11, the flight attendant,

00:13:51.140 Betty Ong, used a seatback air phone to call the American Airlines office in her calm, cool,

00:13:58.100 professional demeanor and the way she handled the worst of circumstances has made her one of the

00:14:05.060 heroes of that day it would be the first eyewitness account of the terror of 9-11

00:14:11.520 she called and reported the hijacking and we have part of that on tape the cockpit's not answering

00:14:19.620 somebody stabbed in business class and um i think there's mates that we can't breathe i don't know

00:14:25.840 I think we're getting hijacked.

00:14:27.480 Is that American 11 trying to call?

00:14:29.880 Buddy, we have some planes.

00:14:34.240 Just stay quiet and you'll be okay.

00:14:36.180 We're returning to the airport.

00:14:38.260 And who's trying to call me here?

00:14:41.240 American 11, are you trying to call?

00:14:43.480 Nobody move.

00:14:44.740 Everything will be okay.

00:14:46.920 If you try to make any move, you'll danger yourself and the airplane.

00:14:51.360 Just stay quiet. 0.92

00:14:52.200 So you heard Betty there, and then you heard the voice of Muhammad Atta as well.

00:14:58.780 He tried to pacify the passengers over the cockpit intercom, but he didn't know how to operate it,

00:15:06.400 so only Boston Air Traffic Control actually heard him.

00:15:10.100 The first part of the message was a bit unclear, but then he says,

00:15:12.960 Nobody move. Everything will be okay.

00:15:15.100 If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself in the airplane.

00:15:18.300 Just stay quiet.

00:15:19.080 trying to get compliance so he could do what he had in mind.

00:15:24.940 By the way, I'm reading these details in part from a Daily Mail account

00:15:29.200 of the TikTok of 9-11, which is excellent.

00:15:31.800 The Daily Mail is a great publication.

00:15:35.240 At 8.42 that morning, at Newark Airport in New Jersey,

00:15:40.640 United Airlines Flight 93 would take off, bound for San Francisco.

00:15:43.700 On board, five attendants, 32 passengers, and three Saudi terrorists.

00:15:49.080 and their Lebanese leader, Zaid Jara. He's in seat 1B, closest to the cockpit. The terrorists

00:15:57.480 were actually a man short on that plane, as one was refused entry in August by a suspicious

00:16:03.440 immigration inspector doing his job. So they were manned down, which would become relevant,

00:16:10.000 of course, as we know, because Flight 93 is famous for what its passengers did by the time

00:16:16.300 that flight was hijacked and in the air, the others had already been used as weapons and the

00:16:24.620 passengers were aware of that. And the courage of the passengers on board that flight is second

00:16:31.360 to no story in U.S. history. At 8.45 a.m. on United Airlines flight 175, the seatbelt light went off

00:16:41.700 and the hijackers leapt up, stabbed a flight attendant, and stormed the cockpit, killing the

00:16:47.560 pilots. Meanwhile, Flight 11, the first flight, the one with Mohammed Atta, was approaching New

00:16:56.600 York at high speed. Again, it had started in Boston. There is one passenger on board the plane 0.51

00:17:06.240 who speaks to, actually I think it's a flight attendant, Amy Sweeney, who says to her manager

00:17:14.980 on the ground, something's wrong. We're in a rapid descent. We are all over the place.

00:17:19.860 The manager asks her, look out the window to find out where they are. She said, I see water. I see

00:17:24.160 buildings. We're flying very, very low. After a pause, she says quietly, oh my God, we're way too

00:17:30.940 low. They were traveling at over 460 miles per hour. And at that speed, Flight 11 crashed into

00:17:39.720 the North Tower of the World Trade Center, spilling 10,000 gallons of fuel, which exploded in a

00:17:47.720 fireball, causing the building to lean, then right itself and force the people inside of it,

00:17:53.700 many of them, to think they were going into the river. Eyewitnesses would say it felt like

00:18:00.540 like an earthquake, like the building was swaying and was likely to go down to topple.

00:18:08.260 That's not exactly what happened, as you know. And that moment of flight 11 crashing into the

00:18:16.140 North Tower of World Trade was caught on tape in an extraordinary moment where, I mean,

00:18:25.080 now we have a couple of videos of it, but the one is actually really incredibly clear because

00:18:32.220 there was a film crew from the fire department shooting the, um, the, they were addressing a gas

00:18:39.560 leak and the fire fighter turned the camera upward and showed us, just happened to show us

00:18:46.520 that moment of flight 11. This was, there was a rule at Fox news after nine 11 that we never

00:18:52.620 showed this. Roger didn't want to show the terrorists' work, their proudest moment.

00:19:03.520 And so we were very, very cautious in the early years at Fox. I mean, I joined in 2004

00:19:07.980 about ever showing the moment of the planes impacting 9-11, impacting the buildings on 9-11.

00:19:14.860 Now, 25 years later, we will show it.

00:19:19.680 Enough time has passed that it doesn't feel as jarring and wrong as it did then, but only once.

00:19:27.920 Here it is.

00:19:29.400 And I think there's mates that we can't breathe.

00:19:34.120 I don't know.

00:19:34.820 I think we'll get in high gear.

00:19:35.860 something somebody hit uh the world trade center or the it's a trade center world trade center

00:19:55.940 there's a fire on the upper floors this just in you were looking at obviously a very disturbing

00:20:01.940 live shot there. That is the World Trade Center. And we have unconfirmed reports this morning

00:20:06.400 that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don't know anything more than that.

00:20:11.260 We don't know if it was a commercial aircraft. We have no idea.

00:20:16.040 Those of us watching television that morning didn't know what had happened. Most of us were

00:20:22.180 hearing news anchors speculate about it possibly being a prop plane. No one could quite digest the

00:20:29.200 information that this could be a commercial airliner. And of course that video was not yet

00:20:33.620 public and no one had it. So we didn't have the advantage of being able to see video of the actual

00:20:39.580 plane hitting, but there was much speculation about this being a prop plane that, you know,

00:20:45.000 like somebody's private plane that just wasn't in, was errant in flight and caused an accident.

00:20:51.820 And there was speculation.

00:20:55.800 You know, I have to say, John Scott of Fox News was one of the ones who got it right from the start.

00:21:01.660 He mentioned that it looked like terrorism.

00:21:05.260 And then as soon as that second plane hit the South Tower, he said, this has to be terrorism.

00:21:12.360 And he said, the name that comes to mind is Osama bin Laden.

00:21:18.280 He had a place in Roger Ailes' heart forevermore.

00:21:21.820 after that. It was just an extraordinary thing to be able to call in the moment while you're on the

00:21:29.720 air, and he was the only one who did it that I recall. Maybe somebody else did, and I'm not

00:21:34.640 giving them credit someplace else, but John Scott, to his credit, had it right from the start.

00:21:42.220 Inside the North Tower, of course, absolute hell had been unleashed. The burning plane fuel

00:21:51.860 The fires set inside the instant death, of course, to those on the floors affected.

00:21:57.880 But the heat and the smoke would affect and kill so many more.

00:22:03.820 And some of their stories are just absolutely harrowing.

00:22:08.980 We do have some of them.

00:22:11.320 Some people called.

00:22:12.800 Some people talked as they were suffering from the North Tower and the South Tower.

00:22:18.180 there's an image that is iconic in its own way from 9-11 called the falling man. And

00:22:30.540 the falling man was taken by photographer Richard Drew. He published it of a man who looks almost

00:22:39.820 to be gracefully falling from the tower, the North tower, we believe. And we do believe

00:22:46.820 per the Associated Press, that while they haven't completely established who appears in Richard

00:22:53.340 Drew's photograph, they believe it is possibly a man named Jonathan Briley, who was 43 and an

00:23:00.020 audio technician at Windows on the World, which was the restaurant near the top of the North Tower.

00:23:04.240 I went there many times. He was ordained as a deacon at First Baptist Church of Elmsford

00:23:10.520 just a few months prior to 9-11.

00:23:14.060 And he had left his home early on September 11th,

00:23:17.340 kissed his sleeping wife goodbye.

00:23:20.540 And one of the reasons they believe it might have been him

00:23:22.660 is because his family members,

00:23:23.820 if you see there are many pictures of him,

00:23:25.760 of the falling man,

00:23:27.260 and you can make out some of his features,

00:23:30.360 skin color, some facial hair potentially,

00:23:33.420 his build.

00:23:34.820 And his family said they believe,

00:23:37.360 his sister said, it does look like him.

00:23:40.320 Truth be told, it did look like him, she said.

00:23:43.080 She no longer looks at the photograph, however.

00:23:45.800 You can understand why.

00:23:47.600 But they also gleaned it might have been him because the falling man appears to be wearing

00:23:53.460 an orange undershirt underneath his work shirt, and Riley frequently wore one beneath a white

00:24:00.400 shirt.

00:24:01.880 The sister said of not just possibly her brother, but of all the so-called jumpers,

00:24:08.540 because they were facing such an awful fate inside that tower as it burned

00:24:13.380 that it was truly a question of either dying by fire, heat, smoke inhalation,

00:24:19.140 in a manner of torture, or jumping.

00:24:23.120 And some untold number of them chose jumping.

00:24:27.640 Some fell.

00:24:29.480 The numbers are not known, but the estimates are possibly as many as 200.

00:24:34.020 and those who were on the base of the tower walking around trying to save their lives,

00:24:40.760 trying to save others, have horrific stories of when the bodies came down

00:24:45.580 and the sounds that that would make and the fright to those who were on the ground.

00:24:51.780 At least one person was killed by one of the bodies that came out of the window.

00:24:57.600 So that picture has become so well-known and representative of the horror that people face

00:25:08.600 that day, innocent people who were just trying to do their jobs and go to work.

00:25:15.060 But this man, Briley's sister, said her belief about those who fell or jumped, whichever

00:25:22.820 their fate was, was as follows, quote,

00:25:24.840 I believe that all of those individuals that jumped were caught.

00:25:29.620 Their spirits were caught.

00:25:32.540 I believe that too.

00:25:35.060 And that's a very healthy way of looking at what happened that day.

00:25:42.180 What kind of a loving God wouldn't catch them?

00:25:48.780 I love the way she put it, and I agree.

00:25:52.500 Richard Drew said that the picture drew complaints when newspapers published it.

00:25:57.460 In his retrospective, which he published, he described readers' anger and editors' reluctance to show it.

00:26:02.820 His own explanation was, quote, I made a photographic record of someone living the last moments of his life, and every time I look at it, I see him alive.

00:26:13.340 Some of those who jumped held hands.

00:26:18.720 One man had a briefcase.

00:26:21.680 and one woman jumped and held her skirt down to maintain her modesty.

00:26:33.000 And that simple act of dignity would be played in the heads of the Navy SEALs

00:26:43.520 and special forces who years later, 10 years later, would be on their way to Abbottabad,

00:26:51.840 Pakistan, about to kill the man who unleashed that hell on America, Osama bin Laden.

00:26:59.580 When the show launched, the first year we were audio only, and I did what was easily

00:27:07.720 one of my favorite interviews of my life, which was with Rob O'Neill, Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 6,

00:27:14.740 and the man who shot Bin Laden. If you haven't heard this entire interview, I urge you to go

00:27:20.820 back and listen to it. If you just Google Rob O'Neill, Megyn Kelly, 2020 or 2021, it'll come up.

00:27:28.360 If you have a two-hour drive and you just want to listen to the story of Rob O'Neill,

00:27:32.920 It's just well worth your time.

00:27:35.000 But he spoke of that woman.

00:27:37.400 Listen.

00:27:38.340 Before we left, I had one of my guys say, because we accept the death.

00:27:42.180 That's it.

00:27:42.600 We're going to die.

00:27:44.360 He said, don't take this the wrong way because I'm 100% going.

00:27:48.940 Don't worry about that.

00:27:49.700 I'm going.

00:27:50.280 I just need to say it out loud.

00:27:52.160 If we know we're going to die, why are we going?

00:27:56.700 And so we had a conversation.

00:27:58.560 And we had a conversation.

00:27:59.380 And we said, OK, well, we're not going after bin Laden for the fame or the reward or the bravado.

00:28:06.500 We are going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday.

00:28:12.640 And 45 minutes later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that was a better alternative than whatever the hell was going on inside at 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. 0.86

00:28:22.080 And her last gesture of human decency was holding her skirt as she jumped out of a building and murdered herself.

00:28:27.840 She was never supposed to be in the fight.

00:28:29.920 We're supposed to be in the fight.

00:28:31.600 That's why we're going.

00:28:34.400 Amazing.

00:28:36.720 That's the American spirit right there.

00:28:40.100 That guy and the guys with him and the women at the CAA who worked to find bin Laden for

00:28:47.300 that matter.

00:28:48.340 That's what makes me proud to be an American.

00:28:52.660 Those are the ones I remember on an anniversary like this.

00:28:57.840 A 25-year mark, if you will.

00:29:02.700 Back to the timeline.

00:29:04.980 At 8.42 a.m. at Newark Airport, United Airlines Flight 93 took off for San Francisco.

00:29:11.220 On board, five attendants, 32 passengers, three Saudi terrorists, as I said.

00:29:15.840 This would be the flight that would be brought down by the passengers in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 0.93

00:29:25.540 And would change history.

00:29:27.840 by doing so. To this day, we don't have full confirmation where that flight was bound for.

00:29:34.880 Many believe it was the U.S. Capitol. We would have been changed forever had they hit the U.S.

00:29:40.880 Capitol building, and that enormous dome that absolutely defines the D.C. skyline was gone,

00:29:47.840 not to mention the loss of life that that would have entailed.

00:29:50.120 So the North Tower was hit at 8.46 a.m. that morning.

00:30:02.060 At 8.50 that morning on Flight 77, the terrorists used box cutters to get into the cockpit and knives to kill and stab the crew.

00:30:12.180 Their target was the Pentagon.

00:30:14.720 Their target was the Pentagon.

00:30:16.900 At 8.52 a.m., Flight 175 was heading for New York City from Boston.

00:30:23.160 Peter Hansen, who was traveling with his wife and two-year-old daughter,

00:30:27.080 called his father, Lee, and told him that the plane was flying erratically.

00:30:31.360 People have been stabbed, he says, and to call United Airlines.

00:30:35.540 Little Christine Lee Hansen, just two years old, and on board that plane.

00:30:42.420 just not for nothing but you do have these young americans with as i mentioned over on tiktok

00:30:48.860 talking about how bin laden had a point as i said or hassan park piker this leftist podcaster said

00:30:56.420 america deserved 9-11 you look at christy christine lee hansen and you tell me that

00:31:01.820 he's since tried to walk it back who would utter such a thing to begin with who would utter such 0.99

00:31:08.140 a thing, ever. You look at Christine Lee Hansen, and you tell me that. She deserved it. Fuck off.

00:31:15.840 At 8.57 a.m., more than 230 firefighters were on their way to the scene, many off-duty, 1.00

00:31:21.820 going straight from their homes. It is the largest rescue in the city's history.

00:31:27.080 The fire chief, Peter Hayden, later recalled, we had a very strong sense that we would lose

00:31:32.120 firefighters and that we were in deep trouble. And indeed, that would be the case. New York City

00:31:39.940 lost 441 first responders that day. 441. The toll was absolutely stunning. More than 12,000

00:31:50.300 FDNY members later diagnosed with a 9-11 related illness. 12,000. The police and firefighters,

00:31:58.840 The reports of the firefighters running up the stairs while people ran down as they evacuated the building, trying to save their own lives, and the faces of these firefighters, old and young amongst them, running up toward the danger.

00:32:17.100 That's what defines America and that day.

00:32:20.360 Good and evil.

00:32:22.400 Heroes and terrorists.

00:32:23.700 as the police chief in New York said this week

00:32:29.000 let's be really clear who was who

00:32:30.660 they knew

00:32:33.620 they knew that they were driving down

00:32:37.100 racing down

00:32:38.260 walking up to their likely deaths

00:32:41.540 and they did it anyway

00:32:42.660 that's true courage

00:32:45.420 I was going to say inhuman courage

00:32:49.060 but it's not

00:32:49.600 that's the beauty of it

00:32:50.920 it is human courage

00:32:52.240 they knew the dangers

00:32:53.100 better than anybody, better than we did, better than we ever could. And they did it anyway.

00:32:59.960 At 9 a.m., Boston Air Traffic Control listens back to the first transmission from ATA,

00:33:06.440 which had been hard to understand. And they are stunned to hear him say, we have some planes,

00:33:14.540 some planes. So it's plural. It's plural now. Lee Hansen at 903 gets another call from his son

00:33:26.460 Peter on flight 175. He says, quote, I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to

00:33:32.340 Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don't worry, dad, if it happens, it'll be very

00:33:38.360 fast. Lee hears a woman scream on his son's end of the phone, and then he hears his son, Peter,

00:33:46.600 say, my God, my God. Peter's mother said later, we heard his first cries and his last ones.

00:33:56.480 Lee Hansen looks at the television and sees his son's plane disintegrate. The right engine

00:34:03.000 pierces the entire tower and lands five blocks away. Here is that moment when at 9.03 that

00:34:11.180 morning, September 11th, 2001, Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

00:34:33.000 The South Tower was so badly torn up that it was hit second but would go down first.

00:34:53.080 And the stories are legion of people who were in the South Tower watching what was going on in the North Tower and calling their loved ones saying, don't worry, I'm fine.

00:35:03.000 don't worry. I'm okay. They were evacuating the South Tower, but people were, and they were

00:35:09.520 alarmed, but they were relieved that it wasn't their tower, and they were proceeding to exit

00:35:16.060 the building when this happened, many of them. It was just a devastating injury, and of course,

00:35:22.620 bin Laden later famously said it worked even better, his plan, than he had expected it would. 0.69

00:35:29.040 He was very proud of that fact, until Rob O'Neill put a bullet between his eyes.

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00:37:03.340 At 9.08 a.m. at the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, President Bush

00:37:08.120 was reading to a class of children, being watched by reporters as he did it.

00:37:14.240 The White House Chief of Staff at the time, Andy Card, famously whispers in his ear,

00:37:18.660 America is under attack. The president decided not to rush out. He didn't want, he said later,

00:37:27.040 to scare the children and send ripples of panic throughout the country. Press secretary at the

00:37:33.700 time, Ari Fleischer, was standing in front of the media holding up a sign that read,

00:37:37.540 don't say anything yet. They didn't want to cause a panic there. They didn't want to upset the

00:37:42.940 children. The president sat for seven minutes as the children read out loud. The president would

00:37:50.320 have plenty to say just a short time after. At 9.20, so 12 minutes after he'd been told,

00:38:00.340 President Bush delivered a hastily written statement as follows. Well, we have it. Let's watch.

00:38:05.980 Today, we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. Terrorism against our nation will not stand. And now, if you join me in a moment of silence, may God bless the victims, their families in America. Thank you very much.

00:38:35.980 everything changed for george bush personally and professionally from that point he did not run

00:38:46.500 on foreign policy no one wanted to deal with foreign policy much in the same way we're feeling

00:38:52.120 these days but it was foisted upon him and he became a wartime president in that moment

00:38:57.620 he was heavily criticized for the seven minutes but i understand the instinct you want to be cool

00:39:05.020 You want to be in command. You want to project calm, which he was very good at, by the way.

00:39:11.140 And then when George Bush found his footing, after those moments, he was pitch perfect on his messaging around that event.

00:39:21.060 I mean, George Bush standing in the rubble of the fallen towers in the days after with the firefighters still looking for the remains of their friends and comrades and innocent civilians, changed the entire country's opinion of him with that moment behind the megaphone.

00:39:43.620 Here it is.

00:39:44.700 Thank you all.

00:39:46.800 Don't get him, George.

00:39:48.220 I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn.

00:40:15.660 This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut

00:40:21.940 as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.

00:40:29.360 I can hear you.

00:40:36.980 I can hear you.

00:40:38.780 The rest of the world hears you.

00:40:40.680 And the people...

00:40:42.680 And the people who knocked these buildings down

00:40:48.540 will hear all of us soon.

00:40:57.660 USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

00:41:08.560 Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

00:41:11.320 not pre-written for him, complete instinct. And what a moment. You had to hold onto it.

00:41:19.440 There were moments after this happened that mattered, that really mattered, that sort of

00:41:23.900 became the defining images in addition to what we'd seen that morning of the tragedy. That was

00:41:30.860 one of them. Congress singing outside. I'll get to that in a moment. I'm getting ahead of myself.

00:41:42.120 Back to the morning in question.

00:41:43.680 9.28 a.m., Flight 93.

00:41:46.140 All four hijackers storm the cockpit,

00:41:48.440 and air traffic control can hear the sound of a struggle over the radio.

00:41:53.100 Leroy Homer shouts desperately, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

00:41:57.180 Then the radio goes quiet for 35 seconds.

00:41:59.400 Then another frantic transmission.

00:42:01.140 Hey, get out of here.

00:42:02.300 Get out of here.

00:42:03.380 Get out of here.

00:42:04.160 This is the cockpit.

00:42:04.900 At 9.37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, again, this is the one going out of Dulles, carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles, crashed into the west side of the Pentagon.

00:42:20.920 Watch.

00:42:22.460 We're looking at a live picture from Washington, and there is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.

00:42:27.880 it would appear that there has been another major explosion this one in the nation's capital

00:42:34.440 there is smoke in the air over the pentagon at this point when you were watching at home

00:42:40.700 on television you didn't know what was happening the plane hitting the pentagon never had a

00:42:47.060 picture perfect video the way the world trade center had and so it was a question about whether

00:42:53.160 a bomb had gone off there. Um, there was like a car bomb or there was something else. And there

00:42:58.560 was a false report of a car bomb, um, as memory serves outside of the Pentagon. So we were

00:43:06.960 confused. And then you didn't know, is this a copycat? Is it related? Because you weren't sure

00:43:11.600 if it was a plane in the initial reporting of what happened at the Pentagon. And indeed it was

00:43:16.680 a plane. And it had the wife of the solicitor, the U.S. Solicitor General, Ted Olson. His

00:43:25.300 wife, Barbara Olson, was on board the plane. He would speak so eloquently about her in

00:43:30.280 all the years thereafter. But it was carrying 64 people, and it was bound for Los Angeles

00:43:35.780 too, crashing into the west side of the Pentagon. And there is a stunning memorial at the Pentagon

00:43:42.280 to this day there, 13 minutes later at 9.50 a.m., one of the most horrific moments in U.S. history

00:43:52.440 happened. One World Trade Center at the South Tower would collapse. Here's that moment.

00:44:00.420 This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the firemen

00:44:04.460 assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers, a huge explosion

00:44:10.980 and now raining debris on all of us.

00:44:13.180 We better get out of the way.

00:44:14.100 The amount of carnage was unspeakable.

00:44:42.760 And everyone watching at home, the news anchors covering it,

00:44:47.660 everyone knew the loss of life would be immense.

00:44:52.680 One of the saving graces on that day was that it could have been worse.

00:44:58.180 It was relatively early in the day.

00:45:02.520 New York sometimes gets a later start, and it could have been worse.

00:45:06.180 um you know the first planes hit early before the entire crowd had arrived at one and two world

00:45:14.100 trade center but of course the loss of life would be enormous it was 2977 killed more than 6 000

00:45:21.900 injured and and that north tower sorry the south tower falling first was a surprise was a stunner

00:45:35.180 No, no one had anticipated that, by the way. I mean, when you heard the coverage, when you when you talk to the firefighters, people were not anticipating the buildings falling. That's why the firefighters were running up. They knew they might get burned to death. But when the towers fell, it was such a foreign idea that they would that they would implode that they would fall.

00:45:53.420 that if you watch, for example, NBC,

00:45:55.800 which I watched in part,

00:45:57.000 I was surfing like many people,

00:45:58.900 they didn't know,

00:45:59.740 they didn't say the building collapsed.

00:46:01.760 There was quite a while there

00:46:03.020 before the dust cleared

00:46:04.080 and you could see that it was no longer there,

00:46:06.380 that we didn't know what happened.

00:46:07.640 And you could hear even the news reporter said,

00:46:09.220 oh, there's a very loud noise,

00:46:10.300 like an explosion,

00:46:11.660 sounded like an explosion.

00:46:14.800 I remember it fell

00:46:17.040 and then of course the North Tower would fall.

00:46:19.960 and I was married to my first husband at the time

00:46:24.000 or was about to be actually.

00:46:25.320 We got married that month, September 2001.

00:46:28.900 Our wedding was later that month

00:46:30.640 and he was a doctor in training.

00:46:34.020 He was doing a residency out at Northwestern

00:46:36.100 and he was in surgery as an anesthesiologist

00:46:38.720 and I did something I never do

00:46:41.060 which is I called him in the OR

00:46:42.300 which you don't do

00:46:43.360 but this was so extraordinary

00:46:45.120 and I remember he was repeating what I was telling him

00:46:48.460 to the surgeons and to the OR.

00:46:50.560 And I said that the towers have fallen.

00:46:53.140 And he said, what do you mean?

00:46:55.340 I said, the twin towers are, they're gone.

00:46:58.960 They were attacked.

00:47:00.900 Planes have been flown into them

00:47:02.280 and the towers are no longer standing.

00:47:04.760 And he was repeating this to a room full of surgeons

00:47:06.720 in the middle of a surgery.

00:47:08.000 And no one could believe it.

00:47:09.980 People thought I had lost my mind

00:47:11.620 because we couldn't believe our eyes.

00:47:14.120 It just, you couldn't believe your eyes.

00:47:20.120 And, you know, you've seen it in the old movies, you know, from Home Alone to so many others.

00:47:24.520 The Twin Towers were the crown jewel of the Manhattan skyline.

00:47:30.300 This seems like a weird analogy, but in the way that Titanic was the unsinkable ship, the towers just seemed indestructible.

00:47:36.860 They seemed larger than life.

00:47:38.320 They were huge.

00:47:39.240 They were celebratory.

00:47:40.520 They were absolutely a sign of American capitalism and its might and accomplishment, one of the reasons why they were targeted, and it was just an impossible thing to imagine.

00:47:53.040 And yet there it was before our very eyes, before the second tower would fall at 10.03 that morning, Flight 93 would crash into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

00:48:07.680 And the heroes on board that flight would become household names.

00:48:15.000 Todd Beamer, among others, decided to fight.

00:48:21.080 They were making phone calls back to their loved ones, and in Todd's case, to a 911 operator, a supervisor named Lisa, and talking about their fears, what was happening, their plans.

00:48:34.240 And it's because of those phone calls that we know what the passengers on board Flight 93 did.

00:48:42.320 Todd Beamer spoke to Lisa Jefferson, and she would tell that story, among other times, in an interview with CBS in 2011.

00:48:53.260 Listen here, slide 18.

00:48:55.440 When I took the call over, there was a soft-spoken, calm gentleman on the other end.

00:49:00.580 He told me that there's three people that have taken over the flight.

00:49:05.020 At that point, I asked him his name.

00:49:06.860 He told me Todd Beamer.

00:49:09.060 He was from Cranberry, New Jersey.

00:49:11.240 Did you make a conscious decision not to tell Todd about the World Trade Center?

00:49:16.600 Why?

00:49:16.920 Yes, because I wanted him to have hope.

00:49:19.880 I wanted him to think that he still had a chance.

00:49:22.600 I didn't want him to feel like it was just totally hopeless,

00:49:25.540 and he definitely didn't have a choice, and he knew he was going to die.

00:49:28.580 I didn't want him to have that feeling.

00:49:30.580 when he wanted to pray was your sense then that that he knew that yes I did I

00:49:37.500 felt that he knew at that time because he had said oh Jesus help us and then he

00:49:42.940 said Lisa would you recite the Lord's Prayer with me and I knew that he knew

00:49:48.660 at that time that it wasn't much left for him to do what do you think that

00:49:55.460 this country needs to know about the men and women who were on board flight 93

00:50:00.300 They're all heroes in my eyes. They really are. They all pitched together and they did what they thought was the best thing to do at that time. And I feel that Todd played a great role in that because when he told the guys, are you ready? I assumed that they were waiting on his cue. Then they responded to him and he said, okay, let's roll.

00:50:28.500 And would you please help me welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight.

00:50:32.660 She called me in this Saturday morning.

00:50:35.560 I told her, I said, you have two boys, David and Andrew.

00:50:39.280 She said, yes, yes, I do.

00:50:41.600 I said, you're expecting a third child?

00:50:43.840 She said, yes, he told you all of that.

00:50:46.480 I said, yes, he did.

00:50:47.920 And he wanted me to let you know that he loved you and his family very much.

00:50:52.460 And I gave her a message and kept my promise.

00:50:55.420 hmm wow Todd Beamer was 32 years old he was leaving for a one-day business trip to San

00:51:07.080 Francisco he was deeply committed to his family and to his Christian faith he and his wife Lisa

00:51:13.140 as you heard had two sons their daughter Morgan was born January 2002 he did try unsuccessfully

00:51:20.860 to reach Lisa, but couldn't, but then connected with an operator. And she passed along his

00:51:26.800 messages. He had asked her to pray the Lord's Prayer with him. And then she heard him turn

00:51:33.100 to the others and say that famous phrase, are you guys ready? Okay, let's roll. It was

00:51:39.960 Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham. They became four of the best known

00:51:45.760 names associated with the resistance aboard United Flight 93, brought down in a field in

00:51:52.380 Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of, we believe, in the US Capitol. Incredible. Incredible. They

00:52:00.400 stormed that cockpit, and while they weren't able to save the plane and those on board, who knows

00:52:06.120 how many lives they did save, because that flight was not going to come down peacefully in a field

00:52:11.440 or anywhere. It was going to be used as a weapon, just as the others were. And they stopped it.

00:52:21.540 Back to the timeline. It would be another 26 minutes before the second tower came down to

00:52:31.860 World Trade Center, which was the North Tower. Again, this is the one that was hit first,

00:52:36.000 but came down second. And people were trying inside still to get out. People saw the firefighters

00:52:45.060 going up in the North Tower. Phone calls were made from the North and the South Tower before

00:52:51.880 the collapses, some of which I'll get to in a minute. But here is the moment that the North

00:52:55.700 Tower went down at 10.29 a.m.

00:53:06.000 Oh

00:53:36.000 Just awful. And absolutely unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

00:53:47.400 The young people who want to revisit bin Laden's thoughts about 9-11, try to skirt past all these pieces of tape and these stories,

00:54:01.020 because it's too enjoyable to demonize America and blame it for all of this.

00:54:07.860 And we have many times on this show, in response to that nonsense,

00:54:13.280 played the 911 call of Kevin Cosgrove.

00:54:17.520 He was 46 years old. He was from West Islip.

00:54:21.060 He was a husband and father of three. His eldest son was 12 that day.

00:54:25.360 He was a VP at Aon Corp., which was on the 105th floor of the South Tower,

00:54:29.960 about one of the worst places you could be.

00:54:33.520 He called 911 to try to get help for himself and his trapped colleagues.

00:54:38.460 He told the operator that my wife, quote, thinks I'm all right.

00:54:42.740 I called and I said I was leaving the building and that I was fine.

00:54:45.860 And then bang, that's what happened.

00:54:48.780 He told the operator that they were too young to die.

00:54:52.760 And that call is on tape.

00:54:56.600 It is disturbing, and you can hear at the end when the tower goes down.

00:55:03.740 Here it is, Kevin Cosgrove.

00:55:26.600 That's all we can do.

00:55:29.600 Where are you? What's where you guys up to?

00:55:31.600 We're getting there. We're getting there.

00:55:33.600 Doesn't feel like it, man. I've got young kids.

00:55:35.600 I understand that, sir. We're on the way.

00:55:39.600 I know you do, but doesn't seem like you've got lots of people up here.

00:55:43.600 I understand.

00:55:44.600 I know you go out in the building, but we're on the floor. We're in a window.

00:55:51.600 I don't know, you have to be in green here, I can't see, I'll tell God to blow you in from the left.

00:56:05.600 Does anybody else want to chime in here?

00:56:09.600 There's young men who know what is about.

00:56:11.600 I think I'm all right, I called and said I was leaving the building outside and bang.

00:56:15.600 We're looking at all, we're looking at the financial center.

00:56:25.880 Two three, there's two broken windows.

00:56:29.400 Oh God!

00:56:45.600 Oh, absolutely awful.

00:56:54.820 He told the operator they were too young to die, and they were.

00:56:59.420 His remains were found.

00:57:01.440 He was buried on September 22, 2001.

00:57:04.660 His obituary stated that he could often be seen

00:57:07.580 shoveling the walks of elderly widows in winter

00:57:10.260 and helping elderly couples carry bulky packages throughout the year.

00:57:13.660 That was Kevin Cosgrove, who died an innocent, and not because Osama bin Laden had a point.

00:57:24.860 There was Melissa Doy, 32 years old, from the Bronx.

00:57:29.480 She was an only child.

00:57:30.460 She lived with her mother and loved to dance.

00:57:33.960 She had no children.

00:57:35.820 She was a senior manager at IQ Financial Systems.

00:57:38.400 She was in the South Tower.

00:57:39.400 The right wing of Flight 175 had ripped into the 83rd floor where Doi's office was located.

00:57:48.120 She called 911 at 9.17 a.m.

00:57:52.420 This 911 call would wind up being used during the prosecution of Zacharias Moussaoui,

00:57:59.260 the only criminal trial to result from the attacks, would prove very important.

00:58:04.720 Here it is.

00:58:05.800 is it is it are they going to be able to get somebody up here

00:58:09.640 well of course ma'am we're coming up to you

00:58:11.320 well there's no one here yet and the floor is completely engulfed

00:58:14.640 we're on the floor and we can't breathe

00:58:16.360 and it's very very very hot

00:58:19.440 everybody's having trouble breathing some people are worse

00:58:21.520 some people unconscious

00:58:23.240 everybody's awake

00:58:24.560 so far yes

00:58:25.560 listen listen everybody's awake

00:58:27.520 yes so far

00:58:28.340 and it's very hot there but no fire right

00:58:31.240 I can't see

00:58:32.640 Very hot, very hot, no fire for now, and no smoke, right? No smoke, right?

00:58:38.780 Of course there's smoke.

00:58:39.860 Ma'am, ma'am, you have to stay calm.

00:58:41.540 There is smoke. I can't breathe.

00:58:43.180 Okay, you stay calm with me, okay? I understand you.

00:58:45.540 I think there is fire because it's very hot.

00:58:47.680 Okay.

00:58:48.500 It's very hot everywhere on the floor.

00:58:50.500 Okay, I know you don't see it, but I'm going to document what you say, okay?

00:58:56.300 It's very hot. We see no fire, but you see smoke, right?

00:58:59.680 it's very hot I see I don't see any air anymore okay all I see is smoke okay dear I'm so sorry

00:59:06.640 hold on one stay calm with me stay calm please listen listen the call is in I'm documented I'm

00:59:12.300 gonna let those hold on one second please I'm gonna die aren't I no no no no no no I'm gonna

00:59:17.400 die man man say your prayers and we're not gonna be positive because you gotta help each other get

00:59:23.220 off the floor. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. You're doing a good job, ma'am.

00:59:30.220 You're doing a good job. It's so hot. Wait, wait, we hear voices. Hello? Help! That's what I'm doing. I'm just letting you know. Hello, ma'am? Help! Stay calm, ma'am, ma'am. Help! Stay calm, stay calm. Can you, can you? I already did that.

00:59:52.660 I'm lying with you, please.

00:59:53.600 Yes, ma'am.

00:59:54.120 I feel like I'm dying.

00:59:55.440 Listen, Mrs. Picky.

00:59:56.700 They're here?

00:59:57.820 Are they inside with you yet, dear?

00:59:59.300 No.

00:59:59.720 Okay, stay calm till they get inside.

01:00:01.140 I know where they are.

01:00:02.100 Ma'am, stay calm till they get inside.

01:00:05.420 My name is Evelyn What, ma'am.

01:00:06.500 Hello.

01:00:07.980 I think it's about time.

01:00:10.340 I've got to get on.

01:00:11.880 I'm going to have my help.

01:00:13.620 I'm going to have my help.

01:00:15.700 I'm going to have a few.

01:00:17.120 I'm going to have a walk.

01:00:19.280 Okay?

01:00:21.560 Hello?

01:00:23.240 Yes, ma'am.

01:00:38.420 She had backed away from the phone for that second portion of the call, which is why she

01:00:43.080 was a little tougher to hear, but she was saying, tell her she's the best mom in the

01:00:46.540 world.

01:00:46.980 I love her with all of my heart and soul.

01:00:48.980 I will see her in the next world.

01:00:50.460 Tell her I love her so much.

01:00:52.060 I love her.

01:00:52.660 she was the best mother a person could ever have.

01:00:56.640 Melissa's remains were found three years after 9-11,

01:01:00.940 but they were found, so in a way her family was fortunate.

01:01:06.340 Really stretching the use of that word.

01:01:09.000 But so many families got nothing.

01:01:11.000 They got nothing back of their loved ones.

01:01:14.420 And again, that 911 call would prove very important.

01:01:17.260 And I have to say, what a shout-out to the 911 operator there.

01:01:22.060 and, of course, on with Todd Beamer and others

01:01:25.400 because they didn't know what to do or what to say.

01:01:28.260 This is an unprecedented situation.

01:01:30.800 And sometimes giving a person directives

01:01:34.080 on what to do in the literal moment, like stay calm,

01:01:37.940 like this is what you have to do.

01:01:39.420 You have to stay calm because you're going to have to get out

01:01:41.360 and you're going to have to help people, is a soothing balm.

01:01:45.220 Like give their mind a purpose.

01:01:46.300 Give them an active thing to focus on

01:01:49.660 other than the horror around them.

01:01:53.060 I don't know if they trained the 911 operators to do that,

01:01:56.160 you know, as opposed to like,

01:01:57.480 she knew this person couldn't necessarily stay calm.

01:02:00.940 But I think the way she handled, like she stayed calm.

01:02:04.720 And she, you know, no, you're not going to die.

01:02:07.000 You know, she talked to her, she said things,

01:02:08.280 of course she couldn't possibly know,

01:02:09.620 but she was trying to keep a peace of mind for poor Melissa.

01:02:15.200 And she wouldn't have known that these were her last moments,

01:02:18.000 but she would have known it was a possibility.

01:02:21.060 And she just showed a lot of character and calm under pressure.

01:02:25.560 And the 911 operators are also unsung heroes of the day,

01:02:29.220 not to mention the electricians, the workers,

01:02:32.220 all of the laborers who had to be there to clean up the mess at Ground Zero.

01:02:40.220 More than almost 10,000 people have died from related illnesses after the attacks.

01:02:47.140 As I said, 12,000 FDNY members diagnosed with a 9-11 related illness.

01:02:52.600 In total, they're putting it around beyond that.

01:02:55.600 9,500 people dying from related illnesses since the attacks,

01:02:59.620 but those firefighters, the numbers are so high

01:03:01.240 because they were there in Ground Zero digging out day after day after day.

01:03:07.600 I mean, 10% of adults today were born after 2001,

01:03:10.840 and they have no memory of this.

01:03:13.460 This is only a story they know from books.

01:03:15.800 And in fact, there was a poll that showed a majority of them, 18 to 24 today, say they

01:03:21.340 first learned about the attacks in class through schoolwork.

01:03:24.400 They didn't learn about it from a family member.

01:03:26.120 They don't know about it other than as part of U.S. history, something we're seeking to

01:03:32.720 change with programs like this and by keeping the record, keeping the record.

01:03:39.160 There were harrowing tales of those who did manage to escape.

01:03:42.880 I'm going to tell you two of them.

01:03:45.140 One, Jojo Capastro. Jojo Capastro, she spoke to the Daily Mail, and she survived 9-11 by

01:03:55.760 descending 87 flights in 21 minutes from the North Tower, escaping the collapse. Thank God.

01:04:04.520 She's now 64. A photographer captured this image as she fled for her life. She is covered in soot.

01:04:11.380 it is one of the most famous images from 9-11 with another person next to her. She's barely

01:04:18.800 recognizable, but she's the tall one on the left who you can kind of tell has blonde hair.

01:04:23.940 It looks like something out of World War II. It just, it looks impossible to have happened on

01:04:32.980 the streets of the United States of America. And yet, JoJo didn't feel well on the morning of

01:04:39.100 September 11th, reports the mail. But she told herself, just get up, get coffee, get to work.

01:04:44.000 By 8.30 a.m., she was in her office at a boutique investment banking and brokerage firm,

01:04:49.680 the May Davis Group, on the 87th floor of the North Tower. At 8.46 a.m., the first plane hit,

01:04:55.460 and again, it hit the North Tower. But JoJo and her colleagues didn't know that. All they knew

01:04:59.960 was that something catastrophic had occurred, some sort of seismic impact. We rocked, she said,

01:05:05.700 the whole building went back and forth one, two, three, four, five, six times. And then

01:05:09.500 we went forward and I thought we were going into the river. I looked out the window, she said. I

01:05:14.280 saw someone in a chair. I saw a briefcase. I saw a fireball and smoke started to come into the

01:05:19.820 office. The race was on to get out for Jojo and her colleagues. They quickly established that two

01:05:27.140 of the three stairwells on their floor were blocked or melted shut. Can you imagine? While

01:05:33.480 While a colleague hacked some sort of a passageway through the rubble, Jojo and others doused

01:05:38.300 clothing and water to make masks before crawling on all fours out into the dimly lit stairwell.

01:05:43.840 Quote, we were on our hands and knees when Tower 2 hit, Jojo said.

01:05:47.360 The second impact came at 9.03 a.m.

01:05:50.140 I have to be very honest with you, she said.

01:05:52.220 I thought I was going to die.

01:05:53.860 I felt something jump inside me and push me to go.

01:05:58.740 Push me to go.

01:05:59.600 The stairs that they had taken only went as far as the 78th floor, a transition floor, which they had to cross to transfer to another staircase.

01:06:08.240 This was a very, very common tale of those trying to evacuate.

01:06:12.240 I remember the distinct smell of burnt hair and burnt skin.

01:06:15.460 There's fire.

01:06:16.500 There's chaos.

01:06:17.500 There's people screaming.

01:06:18.600 There's injured people.

01:06:19.560 There's dead people.

01:06:21.120 Each floor had a different story, she said, as they went down the now more crowded stairwell.

01:06:25.720 One would have music.

01:06:27.300 One would have a couple of people in wheelchairs. 0.98

01:06:29.600 all around the smell of gasoline. Jet fuel had doused the building on impact.

01:06:35.300 I remember on the 65th floor, she said there was a man praying, and then we went down another

01:06:40.180 floor, and this breaks my heart. You saw the firemen coming up. We were going down on the

01:06:46.460 right, and they were coming up on the left, and you saw the fear on their faces. And I'm like,

01:06:52.380 oh my God, they're walking right into this. It's just absolutely incredible what the first

01:06:58.360 responders did, what these guys did, knowing the stakes, knowing they had families of their own at

01:07:04.660 home. And not only once, many tales of these firefighters and others like Wells Crowther

01:07:10.480 going up over and over and staying, trying to get people down to the elevator bank,

01:07:17.320 down to a safer floor, and then going back up the smoky stairway to get more people at great risk

01:07:22.760 to themselves. By the third floor, Jojo recalled she began to see light, and her instinct as she

01:07:29.980 neared it was to rush out onto the concourse. It looked like a war zone. I was in total shock.

01:07:36.460 Then a jumper fell right in front of me, through the glass, and I fainted. When she came to a

01:07:43.000 police officer, when she came to, a police officer picked her up and carried her. Again, a first

01:07:49.220 responder. When I got outside, I heard a roar. It was the South Tower coming down, and I started

01:07:56.100 running. A priest grabbed me. A priest came out of nowhere, did he though, and pulled me under a car

01:08:05.660 and started to pray, and all I heard was bang, bang, bang on top of the car, and I was knocked

01:08:10.920 unconscious. When she came around, everything was white. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

01:08:16.760 When she finally reached home that day, she took off her clothes and packed them away, along with her shoes in a box in the basement.

01:08:25.420 She suffered tremendous survivor's guilt, and still does to this day.

01:08:30.080 I was single. I was 39 years old, and my friend Harry had a two-year-old son and a one-month-old newborn.

01:08:36.880 Why didn't they take me? Why was I the chosen one?

01:08:40.220 in 2018 when jojo got married she asked phil the photographer who took that photo

01:08:49.520 to be her wedding photographer their friendship close and easy is clear

01:08:55.100 jojo put it simply if you didn't go through it i find people just don't understand

01:09:00.680 and phil understands me because phil was there that day phil saw me at the worst day of my life

01:09:06.800 JoJo still works in the markets, reports the Daily Mail

01:09:10.760 she's a wife, a stepmother to four sons

01:09:13.260 and a grandmother to 11

01:09:15.100 she'll be at the memorial on Friday this week

01:09:19.280 now today, a place where she finds

01:09:22.140 peace and serenity

01:09:24.580 she said, I'll go alone

01:09:27.400 I have my 9-11 family down there waiting for me

01:09:31.740 wow 1.00

01:09:33.980 what a woman

01:09:35.960 And that is, I'm sure, how they feel, that the other survivors and those who survived someone who was deceased are part of the same family, the same special club.

01:09:54.260 And while they no longer have their work colleagues, their friends, their family, they have each other.

01:09:59.240 They do.

01:10:00.500 And they insist that we remember this day and what happened.

01:10:03.520 And we honor that today intentionally.

01:10:08.900 Lauren Manning is another survivor of 9-11.

01:10:15.920 She was an executive working in World Trade, and she was burned when the elevators opened,

01:10:26.680 the doors opened, and a fireball completely encompassed her.

01:10:31.340 she would come on my show at fox news and tell her story it was absolutely unforgettable she

01:10:38.440 was burned over her entire body but she's become a motivational speaker and in the following clip

01:10:45.360 in which she tells what happened to her you will see why lauren manning watch the pain was

01:10:51.940 unimaginable the burns grip was crushing my hands were so badly burned they were two mitts at the

01:10:59.480 end of my arms. I realized that this was my moment and my choice. I could keep fighting.

01:11:07.860 I could surrender. And I decided to live. And I knew that my only shot was across six lanes of

01:11:16.920 highway where they had recently laid a narrow strip of grass. Everything else was cement and

01:11:22.300 McAdam. All I could think of as I began to run across that highway, which seemed to last forever,

01:11:31.600 was my son. Absolutely unbelievably inspirational. She goes on to make the point when she speaks

01:11:42.480 publicly that you can stay down when adversity hits. You can stay down or you can rise up.

01:11:52.300 And you can find the will to live for your family, for those who love you, for those you love, for those you're connected to.

01:11:58.920 Her son saved her life that day.

01:12:01.380 She pulled herself across the highway, burned over 90% of her body, and insisted that she would live.

01:12:10.180 That this would be the beginning, not the end.

01:12:13.060 And she's had untold numbers of surgeries.

01:12:16.360 The pain associated with those kinds of burns and that kind of surgery is well documented.

01:12:23.720 And yet she finds a way to speak optimistically about life and our reason for being here.

01:12:32.240 If she can find that, so can we.

01:12:36.120 If she can find optimism in the wake of what's happened to her, so can we.

01:12:40.740 It's a challenge.

01:12:42.380 It's a decision.

01:12:43.780 It's a choice.

01:12:45.500 We can all make it as she did.

01:12:50.460 As Lauren Manning got out of the building, I mentioned Wells Crowther.

01:12:55.280 He and others were still up above saving others' lives.

01:13:00.680 Told this story on AM Update this week, and we mentioned it on the program.

01:13:05.960 President Trump just posthumously awarded Wells Crowther the Presidential Medal of Freedom just this week.

01:13:12.520 He was a 24-year-old equities trader and volunteer firefighter.

01:13:18.240 Survivors described a man in a red bandana, guiding people to safety, and then returning time and time and time again to help people, help people to safety.

01:13:31.240 His parents didn't know exactly what had happened to Wells.

01:13:34.560 They knew he died on 9-11.

01:13:36.780 They didn't know how.

01:13:38.580 But they knew when he was a little boy that his dad had given him a red bandana,

01:13:43.320 gave him a white one.

01:13:45.180 He said, Wells, with the white one, the white one is for blow, blowing your nose,

01:13:50.280 and the red one, sorry, reverse that.

01:13:53.360 The red one is to blow, and the white one is to show.

01:13:58.520 And he loved his red bandana.

01:14:00.360 Here he is wearing it.

01:14:03.000 And Wells would wear that red bandana for the rest of his life.

01:14:05.620 Apparently, he wore it all the time.

01:14:06.900 He wore it when he played lacrosse in college.

01:14:08.780 He wore it when he was out with his buddies.

01:14:10.760 He had it when he was working in the World Trade Center.

01:14:14.020 And he used it that day to cover his mouth and nose as a screen for the smoke.

01:14:20.220 And multiple people would describe who did make it out being rescued by the man with

01:14:25.320 the red bandana or the red handkerchief.

01:14:27.540 And his mother, Alison Crowther, read their accounts in the newspaper.

01:14:33.860 And here she is speaking to Fox 5.

01:14:36.900 this year, just a couple of days ago.

01:14:39.440 I would say to him, Wells, I love you so much.

01:14:44.600 Such a beautiful soul and his loss is still painful today.

01:14:50.920 Allison might never have known about her son's heroism

01:14:54.420 had it not been for a red bandana he wore around his face.

01:14:59.020 Wells got his first bandana from his dad when he was a kid

01:15:02.100 with the fatherly advice to always carry one in case things get messy.

01:15:07.500 He kept a red bandana at his desk at Sanlar O'Neill.

01:15:11.160 And one day one of his co-workers came up and says,

01:15:13.640 Wells, what is it with that red bandana?

01:15:15.480 Why do you always have that red bandana?

01:15:17.640 And Wells picked it up and he held it up and he said,

01:15:20.040 with this red bandana, I'm going to change the world.

01:15:23.760 And I think he's doing that now.

01:15:26.640 On 9-11, Wells covered his face with a red bandana

01:15:30.020 as he put his own safety aside walking up into the south tower to help bring others to safety

01:15:36.820 allison learned of her son's bravery after she read newspaper accounts from survivors

01:15:42.900 who talked about being helped by a man who had his face covered with a red bandana he was just

01:15:51.780 fearless really fearless i never saw him afraid of anything thank you so very much mr president

01:15:58.180 for this enormous honor

01:16:00.060 that you've bestowed upon my son, Wells.

01:16:03.000 25 years after September 11th,

01:16:05.400 his life continues to remind us

01:16:07.340 of something very simple.

01:16:09.300 In moments when others need us,

01:16:11.680 each of us has the power

01:16:12.940 to choose courage,

01:16:14.680 compassion, and service.

01:16:17.100 That's the real meaning

01:16:18.100 of the red bandana.

01:16:19.680 To be courageous.

01:16:21.480 To find the good.

01:16:23.260 To be the good.

01:16:28.180 Hmm. Incredible and good for President Trump for honoring him in that way. I'm sure that was a

01:16:34.120 healing bomb to the family, and he didn't have to do it. Trump doesn't get enough credit for his

01:16:39.560 heart and his empathy for people who are suffering and who do heroic things. I mean,

01:16:44.600 it's really pretty extraordinary. It makes you wonder why it hadn't happened prior to now.

01:16:50.040 But God bless him, and God bless that family.

01:16:52.560 the the everyday heroes are the ones who really make you sit up and notice don't they i mean it's

01:16:59.620 like there was a story of um two guys it was hold on a second their names are brian clark and stanley

01:17:07.100 preemnath and there was um there was a story about how clark brian clark was a volunteer

01:17:15.820 fire warden on the South Tower's 84th floor. He was descending the tower and he heard

01:17:22.580 Premnath calling from the devastated 81st floor. So he went to help him. I mean, again,

01:17:27.940 he didn't have to do that. He could have just kept going and saved himself. That might be

01:17:32.160 one's instinct, but not for Brian Clark. They wound up escaping together using Clark's flashlight

01:17:39.140 to navigate the stairs. A year later, Brian Clark gave Stanley the flashlight, and it became a

01:17:46.300 physical reminder of their escape and their bond. Here's a little bit more about these two from

01:17:53.380 Spectrum from just the other day, September 9th. The plane was a couple thousand yards away.

01:18:01.240 Within split seconds, it was getting larger and larger. All I remember doing was screaming,

01:18:06.700 Lord I can't do this you take over and I dove under the desk and with the most

01:18:11.800 thunderous sound the plane just smashed into the building when I got off from

01:18:16.540 under the desk the plane was there in flames a huge chunk was stuck in my

01:18:20.860 office doorway 20 feet from where I was the air pressure was so great it was

01:18:25.240 sucking everything out I'm gonna die so I'm screaming Lord please send somebody

01:18:31.180 anybody to help me. Somebody heard on the other end of the floor. As I got closer to the wall I 0.99

01:18:38.500 can hear faint and the person saying bang on the wall and know where you are. So I'm hitting the

01:18:43.200 wall. I can hear you now climb over. Hollow ceiling. Couldn't do it. The person says try again.

01:18:49.940 Think about your children. Think about your family. And I made a fist as tightly as I could.

01:18:55.780 my fist passed right through that drywall

01:18:59.580 and I pushed my head through

01:19:01.480 and the man yanked my head

01:19:03.540 and I don't know how to thank this man

01:19:06.240 who just saved my life

01:19:07.300 and he got up and he fixed his jacket and his tie

01:19:10.180 and he says, Brian Clark

01:19:12.460 like a robot

01:19:13.640 and he said something that I'll go to the grave remembering

01:19:17.920 all my life I live as an only child

01:19:20.780 I always wanted a brother

01:19:22.680 and i find that man today and this man put his hand around my shoulder

01:19:28.380 come on buddy let's go home wow incredible good for them imagine having your friendship

01:19:39.440 begin under those circumstances and imagine as you evacuate the world trade center fearing for

01:19:45.380 your life legitimately validly stopping because you heard somebody and saying i'll i'll risk it

01:19:52.560 I'll risk my own life, my future with my family to help this other.

01:19:56.680 And imagine being someone like Wells Crowther who did it over and over and over again when

01:20:00.460 you had your entire life ahead of you.

01:20:03.060 And he was made an honorary firefighter by the fire department in Nyack, New York, where

01:20:07.900 he was from later.

01:20:11.500 There are lots of ways to become a firefighter, as Wells proved.

01:20:16.500 Stephen Siller, I've got to mention him.

01:20:18.580 We did tons of work with Tunnel to Towers Foundation, and I love Frank Siller.

01:20:25.120 He's part of Stephen's family, but his story was remarkable.

01:20:30.180 Stephen was the father of five.

01:20:32.160 He was 34 years old.

01:20:34.220 He was part of Brooklyn Squad One, his firehouse.

01:20:38.140 He had just finished his shift.

01:20:40.760 He was on the way to play golf with his brothers when he got word over the scanner of a plane hitting the North Tower.

01:20:45.860 He drove his truck to the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, but it had already been closed for security purposes.

01:20:52.900 He strapped 60 pounds of gear to his back, and he raced on foot through the tunnel.

01:21:03.740 They believe he was in the South Tower when it collapsed.

01:21:08.580 They don't know. His remains have never been recovered.

01:21:11.220 But the remains of other Squad 1 firefighters were found there.

01:21:15.860 And now in his memory, Frank and his other family members have put together the Tunnel

01:21:20.960 to Towers Foundation, and they do a 5K run every year on September 29th.

01:21:30.960 And we've been to it.

01:21:32.600 My entire team on the Kelly File ran the race together.

01:21:36.760 But what you see when you run the Tunnel to Towers race is, it has nothing to do with

01:21:42.000 yourself other than your eyes.

01:21:43.260 you see this, firefighters in full gear running. You see military vets from Iraq and Afghanistan

01:21:50.800 with no legs running on their prosthetics, the entire 5K without complaint.

01:22:00.500 It's absolutely humbling as a human being. I encourage everybody to do it at one point in

01:22:06.160 your life if you can get to New York for it. You run the exact route and you see what he did. Only

01:22:11.860 Most of us do it without the 60 pounds of gear on our back, and most of us are not running to our certain death, like Stephen was.

01:22:22.240 It's always the last Sunday in September, not necessarily the 29th.

01:22:25.640 It's still ongoing.

01:22:26.340 The foundation now, they help firefighters, first responder families who lose their loved one, law enforcement, firefighters, or military.

01:22:39.020 They offer smart homes to injured service members who returned from the wars, missing limbs, sometimes all four of them.

01:22:48.360 And Tunnelsey Towers Foundation will build them a smart home so that they can live independently and reclaim their dignity.

01:22:58.000 It's a wonderful cause.

01:22:59.660 I love Frank Siller.

01:23:01.420 I only wish that I had known Stephen.

01:23:03.760 Here is an interview we did back in 2012 on my afternoon show there, America Live,

01:23:10.180 where we interviewed retired Marine Corporal Todd Nicely, who was injured in Afghanistan.

01:23:15.700 Your wife told you when you were recovering at the beginning,

01:23:19.380 honey, do you know what happened?

01:23:21.120 And you said, what happened to me?

01:23:22.640 And she said, do you know you lost your legs?

01:23:24.380 You said, yes.

01:23:24.960 She said, do you know you lost both of your hands, too?

01:23:27.520 You said, no.

01:23:28.520 And your first response was, did anyone else get hurt?

01:23:32.180 She said no.

01:23:33.400 You said good.

01:23:34.760 And that was the end of it.

01:23:36.580 Pretty much.

01:23:37.340 I think for most of us looking at you guys and trying to understand that your first instinct was to ask whether anybody else was hurt

01:23:44.360 when you had just been told that you had lost your legs and your hands,

01:23:48.720 we try to understand how somebody could be that strong.

01:23:52.360 Do you have an answer?

01:23:53.720 Well, when you're over there, you know, you're looking out for the guys that are next to you

01:23:57.660 because they're the ones who are taking care of you.

01:23:59.580 So when something like that happens, you just hope that, you know, nobody else got injured while you were doing what you were put over there to do.

01:24:07.320 So it's just it's one of those things where you're you're always looking out for the guy to the left.

01:24:16.240 The absolute best of us, the absolute best.

01:24:20.820 God bless him and all the men and women who paid the ultimate price or close to it as they served

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01:27:27.660 Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, RealClearPolitics, and many more.

01:27:32.380 It's bold, no BS news.

01:27:34.460 Only on the Megyn Kelly channel, SiriusXM 111, and on the SiriusXM app.

01:27:43.520 Todd Nicely, incredible.

01:27:46.200 Stephen Siller, Jr., who was just nine months old on 9-11,

01:27:53.020 is now joining Tunnel to Towers Foundation in what they're calling Steel Across America,

01:27:58.380 Connecting a Nation. It's a nationwide tour that will transport an authentic steel beam from the

01:28:04.600 World Trade Center to communities across the United States. Here's Stephen speaking with

01:28:09.240 my old pal Major Garrett on CBS. This steel is so important. So traveling with it means the world.

01:28:15.580 This steel is a visual representation of the sacrifice and bravery made by so many men and

01:28:21.480 women who were facing despair darkness and evil that day they stood up and said we're going to do

01:28:27.020 better they risked their lives to save others so to be representing the foundation and traveling

01:28:32.940 with this steel it means the world and for those americans who have no living memory of this

01:28:38.760 what do you want them to know well i'm one of them so i was nine months old on september 11th so i

01:28:44.040 completely understand growing up without the depth of knowledge of what occurred that day

01:28:50.100 But you can learn, and what happened should not be forgotten.

01:28:54.400 You've grown up with this.

01:28:58.480 What have you taken away from that?

01:29:02.220 It's been a really unique experience growing up with that loss.

01:29:06.120 But just his story of bravery and heroism and what it's inspired in the wake of September 11th,

01:29:12.840 a terrible thing happened that day.

01:29:14.660 But so much good has happened since through the Tunnels and Towers Foundation and the work we get to do.

01:29:19.040 i've gotten to be a part of helping so many families now i get to travel the country teaching

01:29:23.900 kids who didn't get to experience 9-11 what occurred that day and relating this steel to

01:29:29.300 them it means the world look at that him todd nicely no victim mentality whatsoever just forge

01:29:37.580 forward lauren manning find a way live keep living keep living not complaining

01:29:44.500 they're an example to us all wow the investigation into who committed 9-11 and how these terrorists

01:29:58.820 were able to board these planes would result in the 9-11 commission the 9-11 commission report

01:30:04.500 and so on for now i'm more interested in showing you this extraordinary clip of james woods our

01:30:11.140 friend, storied actor, so accomplished, talented, telling an incredible story. And by the way,

01:30:19.640 shout out to him for doing something about what happened here. I mean, it's another very

01:30:26.960 courageous move. He told this story February 15th, 2002. So this is just months later on

01:30:36.580 the o'reilly factor listen to this saw 22 when 9-11 happened we were all stunned and we all

01:30:43.000 happened to be at my house that evening and my friend scott said to me you know remember that

01:30:47.340 flight you took in august i said yeah i've been thinking about it all day he said well maybe you

01:30:50.380 should call the fbi and i said i'm sure they're being inundated but i thought it overnight call

01:30:54.980 the local office and within two minutes got a hold of a very intelligent young man a special

01:30:59.600 agent there um who uh took the report and i said i hope i'm not wasting your time he said well we

01:31:04.020 have so many uh reports coming in and he said and by the way even if this leads to something we

01:31:08.280 don't like to backwash information to people because in case they have to go to a trial and

01:31:11.980 be witnesses or whatever so you won't hear from us i said well great he said but we appreciate

01:31:15.940 your calling quarter to seven the next morning i get a phone call that actually wakes me up and

01:31:20.660 he said we want to talk to you about the flight that you took in august i said oh did the to the

01:31:24.440 manifest match of any of the flights yesterday and my flight he said well we can't tell you that i

01:31:29.240 said well look i'll get ready and i'll you know i'll come down to the uh to the federal building

01:31:32.440 He said, we're outside your house.

01:31:33.580 We'll just wait for you.

01:31:34.480 Wow, 7.15.

01:31:35.560 So this is serious.

01:31:36.180 I said, and I, and this is the only funny part of any of this, I said, how did you know where I lived?

01:31:41.680 And there was a pause.

01:31:42.340 He said, we're the FBI.

01:31:44.080 We're the FBI.

01:31:44.700 Thank you.

01:31:45.320 So they came in, and I said, look, I'm dying to know, were these the guys?

01:31:48.900 And he said, well, we've had 36,000 tips in one day, and there's two of us, and we're going to be at your house all this morning, so you can do the math, but we can't tell you.

01:31:56.640 You know, so since then, I have identified for sure two of them as two of the terrorists who actually were not on flight 11.

01:32:05.620 But one was on flight 175 and one was on flight 77.

01:32:08.600 And I've been told unofficially, not by the FBI, but by someone else and actually a higher level of government, believe it or not, just through a coincidence, through a mutual friend, that all four of them were terrorists involved.

01:32:18.580 So it was just you and these four guys in first class.

01:32:20.860 Nobody else.

01:32:21.300 No, no, there was a couple of the guys.

01:32:22.880 Were they nervous, too?

01:32:24.000 Or was it just you taking these guys out?

01:32:26.020 As I explained to the FBI, they said, what was your first instinct, and aside from certain things like four guys getting on a transcontinental flight without any hand luggage, who, it's funny, I notice behavior because I guess I'm an actor, and it's kind of what I do for living.

01:32:39.320 You always watch people, right?

01:32:40.400 I just kind of observe people.

01:32:41.480 It's something I've always been fascinated by, sort of like that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton sit and watch people and sort of talk about who they might be.

01:32:47.660 And there were four guys when the flight attendant, who was a woman, came up to them.

01:32:52.440 They literally ignored her like she didn't exist, which is sort of a kind of Taliban, kind of a Taliban, you know, idea of womanhood as a, you know, not even a human being.

01:33:01.020 I mean, it seems their disrespect for women is so extraordinary.

01:33:03.660 And they didn't order alcohol.

01:33:06.060 And they just said to me, you know, what did you think these guys were?

01:33:09.300 I said, I thought they were the four law enforcement officers or four terrorists in that they had that thing that guys who are undercover or on a mission have between each other.

01:33:17.340 and it's impossible to explain.

01:33:18.580 Well, you're lucky.

01:33:19.240 You're absolutely lucky that they didn't decide to do it a month before.

01:33:24.340 Incredible.

01:33:26.100 Incredible.

01:33:27.260 He was a witness to it, and he said something.

01:33:30.680 He did something about it.

01:33:33.280 Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stop what happened on 9-11,

01:33:37.780 but think about it.

01:33:38.520 That took guts.

01:33:40.060 James Woods is such a treasure.

01:33:42.000 He is a national treasure.

01:33:43.860 God bless him and his beautiful wife, Sarah.

01:33:46.940 It's, you know, that's a lot.

01:33:48.640 That's a lot to go through,

01:33:49.800 to know that you were there with the terrorists

01:33:52.580 and you were on the plane that was a dry run for 9-11.

01:33:56.660 And he can look himself in the mirror and say,

01:33:59.680 I did something about it.

01:34:00.540 I tried to stop it.

01:34:02.980 Crazy.

01:34:04.860 The bin Laden raid, 0.93

01:34:06.800 one of the greatest moments in US military history. 0.82

01:34:10.780 It happened 10 years later.

01:34:14.740 It happened in May of 2011.

01:34:18.400 I remember because I was on maternity leave

01:34:20.480 with my daughter Yardley, who was born April 14th.

01:34:24.120 And it was May, what was the date?

01:34:27.260 I don't remember, May 9th, I wanna say, 2011,

01:34:32.420 that thanks to the tireless work

01:34:35.240 of our intelligence community,

01:34:37.120 we found Bin Laden hiding in a compound

01:34:41.440 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

01:34:43.980 and we sent SEAL Team 6 and others to go get him.

01:34:49.500 Here is some footage of Americans cheering,

01:34:54.760 because when the news broke late that night that we had killed bin Laden,

01:34:59.300 Obama came out, people gathered spontaneously at the White House

01:35:03.300 and at Ground Zero and started cheering.

01:35:06.740 Here's a bit of that.

01:35:08.280 USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

01:35:13.980 We feel really, really vindicated that we finally got them. 0.69

01:35:23.580 This is our generation's VEVJ Day.

01:35:26.600 This is our generation's Victory and Enduring Freedom Day.

01:35:29.500 That's what today is.

01:35:30.160 I'm proud of our military and proud of our presidents, Bush and Obama.

01:35:34.840 You kill innocent American people, you're going to pay the price. 0.75

01:35:37.920 It's time to celebrate. It's the epitome of gratification. 0.99

01:35:43.980 At least I know I'm free, and I won't forget the men who died.

01:35:50.000 We get the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

01:36:03.620 USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

01:36:10.820 remarkable isn't it young old democrat republican together joining on the streets of america

01:36:22.200 to say the pledge to sing to pledge their loyalty to the united states

01:36:28.220 to celebrate the death the murder the killing not a murder but the death of a hideous terrorist 0.98

01:36:35.520 who's burning in hell right now. 0.98

01:36:39.000 I mean, it's just what a moment.

01:36:41.780 And that's really the other part

01:36:44.580 of the September 11th story

01:36:46.920 is how it brought us together as a people.

01:36:52.600 And boy, did it ever, did it ever.

01:36:55.140 The day after the stock exchange was closed

01:36:59.440 and it had to reopen, it's the U.S. Stock Exchange.

01:37:04.520 and there was an urging for everyone to go

01:37:07.920 and buy $1 of stock just to send a message.

01:37:12.280 Did they ever?

01:37:14.300 There was a question about whether

01:37:15.900 the New York City Marathon should be run,

01:37:18.900 which always happens in late September,

01:37:20.620 or whether it would be too hard on the city

01:37:23.860 or too hard on the first responders.

01:37:26.480 They ran.

01:37:28.200 And people were dangling flags over the bridges,

01:37:31.940 running with flags around them, holding up flags.

01:37:34.520 for the runners. Actually, my husband, Doug, was one of the runners that year. He wasn't even a

01:37:39.280 runner. He had registered. He had forgotten that he had registered for it. And then he got a notice

01:37:42.680 after 9-11 that he made it. And he said, gosh, can I run a marathon? And he said, I'm going to run

01:37:48.920 the loop in Central Park. And if I can do that, I've got to do this. And he could run it. His

01:37:53.180 feet were bloody by the end, but he was so glad he did it. It was the most patriotic he said he's

01:37:58.020 ever felt. And he lost a dear friend on 9-11. Baseball. They just dropped an incredible

01:38:05.260 documentary on the role of baseball in helping us heal from 9-11. And even for a non-sports fan

01:38:11.020 like me, you couldn't stop but appreciate baseball. You couldn't help but appreciate

01:38:17.900 what the baseball world was doing to help us heal. No one could forget. No one. Game three

01:38:25.000 of the World Series, Yankees versus Arizona Diamondbacks.

01:38:30.440 The game three was the first one played back at Yankee Stadium

01:38:34.420 and George W. Bush threw out the first pitch.

01:38:39.460 It was October 30th, 2001.

01:38:44.620 Watch.

01:38:45.840 For tonight's ceremonial first pitch,

01:38:49.340 and please welcome the President of the United States.

01:39:19.340 Nailed it.

01:39:49.340 What a feeling.

01:40:02.060 Obviously, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would architect a responsive strategy that would prove disastrous in many ways.

01:40:10.160 We should not have gone into Iraq.

01:40:12.420 We stayed too long in Afghanistan.

01:40:14.120 but look we needed that guy in the wake of that attack and it's the reason many of us

01:40:23.480 even if we have problems with the foreign policy as it was played out we'll always have a soft

01:40:28.560 spot in our heart for that man for george w bush who was just a civilian who volunteered to run

01:40:34.180 for office and before he knew it was a wartime president commander-in-chief in military response

01:40:40.360 that had to happen, though perhaps not in the way it did.

01:40:48.840 Giuliani, who now, he's another one, you know,

01:40:53.700 whose image has changed very much publicly,

01:40:56.180 but if you live through 9-11, you still,

01:40:58.880 you got a soft spot in there for Giuliani.

01:41:02.120 You know, it's, you can't not, if you remember,

01:41:07.940 However, he became America's mayor that day and the way he handled himself on 9-11, kept cool in the storm, was a leader, was able to bring a calm to others, directed the city in a way that they desperately needed.

01:41:22.180 Same thing with the messaging.

01:41:24.140 He actually retraced his steps on that day with Newsmax recently, and we have a bit of it cut.

01:41:30.280 Watch this.

01:41:31.260 And then I could see the two towers head on.

01:41:35.040 And I would say I stopped.

01:41:37.940 and i said oh my god because when you see it straight on all the way up there the flames coming

01:41:46.980 out i don't know it's the worst side i've ever seen my whole life the police said be careful

01:41:53.860 things are coming off the building and they're going as far away as up there

01:41:58.660 by things it was like pieces of steel pieces of debris as he got closer to the towers

01:42:05.220 giuliani ran into an old friend new york city fire department chaplain michael judge when i

01:42:10.660 got to about right here right over here i saw father judge and i always had a thing with him

01:42:19.460 i always would say to him father will you please pray for us so he would say no uh better if you

01:42:27.380 pray it's more it'd be more unusual god will pay attention i said that to him i didn't get the

01:42:32.020 usual humorous response instead i got mayor this is really bad you went like this i'm glad you have

01:42:40.020 big shoulders keep praying and i never said that to me before later that morning when the south

01:42:46.540 tower collapsed debris crashed through the north tower lobby killing many inside including father

01:42:53.180 michael judge who stayed until the end praying for firefighters and administering last rights to the

01:42:59.740 dead. Father Michael Judge was another name that became a household name after 9-11.

01:43:09.400 We were together in our grief and our horror and our deep sadness for our country and in our

01:43:18.080 resilience and our will to go forward together, to not stay down. That's all that's required to

01:43:24.660 be strong, to be courageous. Just don't stay down. You get knocked down, you get back up. That's it.

01:43:30.440 You keep going like Lauren Manning. You make the choice. This will not be my last day. I will keep

01:43:37.280 living. I have things to do. I have people to be with, people who love me, people I love here now

01:43:45.000 around me who I can see and I know, or maybe just the promise of them in the future and you can see

01:43:50.620 it. The unity, I mean, there's no better example of it than what happened on the steps of the U.S.

01:44:02.740 Congress right after the towers went down. I mean, right after the events of 9-11 that morning,

01:44:11.240 this was spontaneous, and it was healing, and it was something I don't think we'll ever see again.

01:44:19.900 when members of the U.S. Congress came out in front of the Congress

01:44:24.600 and started singing God Bless America spontaneously.

01:44:31.200 Watch this.

01:44:31.840 Thank you, Cyber, and Giver, through the night with the light from above.

01:44:41.820 From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam.

01:44:51.420 God bless America, my home sweet home.

01:45:00.120 God bless America, my home, sweet home.

01:45:15.920 When have we seen that kind of unity amongst members of Congress since?

01:45:24.260 When have we felt it as a country since?

01:45:28.240 A couple of moments here or there,

01:45:29.640 like I showed the night Bin Laden was killed,

01:45:32.100 but it's been rare.

01:45:38.840 I'm going to leave it at this.

01:45:41.600 Speaking of Giuliani,

01:45:44.400 he was such a leader, as I said,

01:45:47.100 and had a lot of sage commentary around 9-11

01:45:52.160 for years and years and years and whatever.

01:45:55.040 I know he's gotten very political

01:45:56.280 and people have problems with him,

01:45:58.480 but I will always remember him

01:46:01.460 for the way he behaved around this event.

01:46:04.600 And he said the following,

01:46:05.760 the attacks of September 11th

01:46:07.560 were intended to break our spirit.

01:46:10.320 Instead, we have emerged stronger and more unified.

01:46:13.720 We feel renewed devotion to the principles

01:46:16.200 of political, economic, and religious freedom,

01:46:19.260 the rule of law, and respect for human life.

01:46:23.480 We are more determined than ever.

01:46:25.400 to live our lives in freedom.

01:46:30.320 Right on.

01:46:32.940 In memory of the thousands who died that day

01:46:36.620 and in the years thereafter from the toxic pit

01:46:40.800 that became ground zero,

01:46:43.560 from the sacrifice that was made

01:46:46.060 on the fields of Iraq and Afghanistan and otherwise,

01:46:50.660 we remember you.

01:46:53.040 We remember why you died.

01:46:54.360 and we will try to remember the unity

01:46:56.880 that enveloped much of the country

01:46:58.840 in the wake of your deaths.

01:47:01.740 We'll see you Monday.

01:47:04.840 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:47:07.160 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:47:15.260 Today's episode was brought to you by SuperSure.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 11, 2026

Remembering September 11 25 Years Later： The Heroes and Bravery, and the Moments That Shaped America ｜ Ep. 1396

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