MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
I'm Steve Inskeep, and this is how MORNING EDITION sounded on this day 25 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
BOB EDWARDS: Breaking news from New York City, where planes, two planes have hit both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
INSKEEP: That's the late Bob Edwards, the longtime host of this show. On September 11, 2001, Bob stayed on the air as one detail after another, each harder to believe than the last, came to light. You can hear the moment he reacted to the first tower falling.
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EDWARDS: The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded air traffic in the United States because of reports that these planes that crashed into the World Trade Center today reports that these planes were hijacked. So the FAA has grounded these - air traffic. One of the towers of the World Trade Center appears to have completely collapsed. I am obviously watching television pictures, at least a good part of one tower has fallen to the ground.
MARTIN: That is sound from this program 25 years ago today. I was working for ABC News then, and although I was based here in D.C., I happened to be in New York heading to an assignment in Lower Manhattan when we all realized something terrible was happening. So we turned around and we ran to the office to figure out how we could help. And now I want to play a clip from ABC's "Nightline." I was on the streets of Manhattan in the days after the attacks to ask people how they were coping.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I felt that I had to be here, and I had to walk around, and I had to really feel it to know that I could be OK with going to work again.
MARTIN: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
MARTIN: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: If I didn't do it, I don't think I could just walk in one day and just start working. I had to walk around and feel it. It was OK.
MARTIN: But the sense of tension was never far away.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: On the way here, the train stopped in mid - between, you know, sections. And everybody on the train was nervous. And rightfully so.
MARTIN: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
MARTIN: How could you tell they were nervous?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Because everybody was just sort of, like, clammed up and looked around like, what's going on?
MARTIN: Again, that's courtesy of my former work home, ABC News. And those are some of the voices of people near ground zero in New York City 25 years ago. And, you know, Steve, I had not listened to or watched any of the stories I worked on...
INSKEEP: Wow.
MARTIN: ...Until yesterday when we were getting ready for today. I know I was at ground zero at some point because I remember my cousin, who's a medical professional, calling me after every live shot, telling me - yelling at me, actually, to put on your mask.
INSKEEP: Wow.
MARTIN: Put on your mask, put on your mask.
INSKEEP: Good advice we find out later. But go on.
MARTIN: But I don't remember how I got there. I don't remember how I left. I don't remember how long I was down there, because I got to be honest with you, it's like waking up from a nightmare. You know you were having a bad dream, but you can't remember the details because you really don't want to.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Impossible to even absorb what was happening in the moment. I want to mention that that thing that we heard Bob witness, the first tower going down, is not a thing that I saw at all on 9/11. After the planes struck, I got a call. I was in Washington. I was told, go to the Pentagon. Something is happening at the Pentagon.
So I ran downstairs, I got into a taxi, the radio said one tower was down. But this is before smartphones. I had no video. I had no way to see it. I spent 15 hours watching the Pentagon burn and did not actually see that video of the towers going down until the next day. What I saw was the smoke and flames at the Pentagon. And we have a recording here of some of what I told Bob Edwards that morning.
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INSKEEP: I'm looking at one of the west sides of this. I believe it is what's known as the mall entrance of the Pentagon and looking at this enormous notch, as I think someone else described it, that has been cut in the building here. It is from the top of the building, all the way down to the bottom. Pardon me while that emergency vehicle passes. All the way down to the bottom, an enormous gap has been cut in this building. Much of the rest of the wall is blackened, and a fire truck is now spraying water on that.
I spoke just a little while ago to a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who was inside the building and not very far. He said that he was in the building. They'd actually turned on the television in the office. They were watching coverage of the explosions at the World Trade Center in New York City, and all of a sudden, an enormous explosion rocked their building. They got a bunch of people together and tried to move toward the site of the explosion to rescue people and were unable to get anywhere near because of what he described as the intense heat.
That's some of our coverage from MORNING EDITION. 25 years ago, I was just outside the Pentagon. Within a few weeks, Michel, I was in Afghanistan covering the war there, later the war in Iraq. And I think often about how there was a generation of American troops, of contractors, of medical personnel, of journalists of diplomats, of other kinds of people - not to mention tens of millions of Afghans and Iraqis and people in other countries - who were affected by the events of that time in the 25 years since.
MARTIN: And, of course, it's changed our politics. But it has shaped personal decisions.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MARTIN: I mean, there are people, I know this, who have decided - who decided to have a child or not have a child...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Because of 9/11. There are people who decided to stay in New York or not stay in New York because of 9/11, not to mention the way we think about security, the way we think about civil liberties. The way we are still fighting over these questions as part of our politics, what we are willing to accept in terms of access to public spaces or not. You know, all of these things are shaping us on a day-to-day basis, whether we recognize it or not.
INSKEEP: Absolutely. It seems it can feel that we're in this different era, which I guess you would call the Trump era. But it has been shaped by the politics of 9/11 and the wars that followed. One of President Trump's themes was, we're not getting into any more foreign wars.
And that had resonance because so many Americans were frustrated by the time that they had spent overseas and the treasure that we had spent overseas, and the lives that had been lost overseas. And, of course, the United States remains in foreign wars in that region that are in some ways tangentially connected to that time. And you also think about security. This country did so much and spent so much for security. But there were some people who felt, in the end, less secure.
MARTIN: Among them are people who are Muslim and who wear, you know, clothing or who choose to attire themselves in clothing that's identified with their religion, their sense of safety in the world. It absolutely has to have been compromised by this. But also, people who are of other religions, people who are Jewish. I mean, the antisemitic conspiracy theories, all of these things, the rise of the White nationalist movement, all of these things are things that we are experiencing as part of the legacy of 9/11.
INSKEEP: Millions of Americans, even adults, were not alive on that day. But it continues to affect us. And we will continue to cover the aftermath throughout this day on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
