Latest / Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel / Rudy Giuliani, America's Mayor, tells his very personal story of 9/11, as we all pledge to "never forget".

Transcript

Rudy Giuliani, America's Mayor, tells his very personal story of 9/11, as we all pledge to "never forget". · Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel

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  Speaker 1: journey to real conversations in a new language today. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: back to Misunderstood. I'm your host, Rachel Yucatel. So today
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is September 11th, and I really was trying to think
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: about the best way to commemorate this day. And so
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: our guest today is going to be Rudy Giuliani, who
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: talks about what happened to him on the day of 9-11,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: his personal story from that day. And before I bring
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you that interview, Some people might be saying, well, why
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: would you even be talking to Rudy right now? He's
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: not the person we remember him to be. Well, I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: lost my fiance that day, as many of you know already.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And he has been someone who I've had a soft
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: spot for. I, you know, I'm someone who has always
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: believed that I was connected to him, even though I
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: didn't know him. Um, and it took me months to
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: try and locate him. I'm not kidding. Like this was
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the hardest guest I've ever had to book. And I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: finally got to him. We did our interview and we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: have been friends ever since. Um, my daughter was recently
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in a really awful accident. Rudy took the time to
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: send a video message to my daughter, um, to tell
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: her to get well and to just have this personal
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: conversation with her about how he could relate to getting hurt. And, um,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: He is just someone who, you know, clearly has gotten
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: himself in some trouble for things that he has said
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and people don't agree with him. But I will say
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that on September 11th, he became a hero to New Yorkers,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: to our nation. Um, and you know, I think that
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: you should give this episode a listen, regardless of your
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: feelings of Rudy, because it was important to me and
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the way he talks about that day, um, you know,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: is something you don't want to miss. And for me,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I just want to, you know, when I originally interviewed him,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I figured that we would go back and forth and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: talk about our experiences that day. The interview kind of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: didn't happen that way. I wanted to let him talk.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I speak a little bit on the show about my experience,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: but I really wanted to get out of him, right,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: his story. So I just want to fill you in
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: on my loss from September 11th. I was a 26-year-old girl.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I was working at Bloomberg News at the time, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I had just gotten engaged to my fiance. His name
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: was James Andrew O'Grady.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I was kind of like this young version of me.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I was like a kid. He was 32. He was
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: very mature. He was very funny, very gregarious, gorgeous guy,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: former swimmer at UCLA, super smart.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I had met Andy three years before. We met on
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: a blind date.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: My best friend at the time, Allison, was dating somebody
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in his firm and they set us up on a
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: blind date. And it was very funny because Allison didn't
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: know Andy and Andy didn't know Allison. And the guy
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: that she was dating didn't know me. But the guy,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: his name was Kevin. Kevin convinced Andy to call me
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and that I was the greatest thing ever. And Allison
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: convinced me that Andy was amazing and I would really
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like him. So he calls me and I gotta be honest,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: he gave great phone. He had this amazing voice, this
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: like belly laugh. And I really, we spoke for like
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: an hour and a half the first night we spoke.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And I really wanted to meet him. And I remember
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: at the end of the phone call, he said, well, listen,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: the next step is we should meet in person. And
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: if I don't find you attractive, then we don't have
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: to speak again. And I thought that was just so honest.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So- We decided to meet and I just, it wasn't
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: one of those things where I like fell head over
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: heels and it was amazing. He didn't tell me he
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: loved me for seven months. I mean, this was, he
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: was like a very, I was intimidated of him. And
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I wanted someone like him to love me, but I
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: didn't think that I would ever, you know, have someone
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: like him in my life. I was just so honored
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to be around him. I learned so much from him.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: And when I met him, I was working at an
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: internet company. And I wanted to be like him. So
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: every day I called Bloomberg News and I called the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: head of television there and I would say, or I
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: would email her and I would talk to her and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I would say, listen, if a job ever opens, let
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: me work there. And after maybe four months of bothering
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: this poor woman, she called me one day. She said,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: we have an opening on the assignment desk. If you
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: want to come work here, I'll give you the job. And,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: but it starts at 5.00 AM and I'm like, I'll
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: take it. And I was so proud of myself. And
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Andy spent hours a day after his work, um, teaching
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: me about business, teaching me about business news. And my
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: job at Bloomberg became, you know, my most favorite job ever,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: but it was at Bloomberg that, uh, I was, I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: was working there when, um, when September 11th, 2001 happened. And, um,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: three weeks before we were, um, getting ready to go,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: we were, we were living together at this point and, um,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we were getting ready to go on a trip to
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Greece and, um, two things happened. Andy had for, he
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: forbid me to get a dog, forbid me. So of course,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: one day I would have to walk between Bloomberg and our,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and our house on 66th street. And there was a,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: dog store, basically a very high end dog store called
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: American Kettle on Lexington in Manhattan. And there was all
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: these gorgeous puppies in the window. And for whatever reason,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: this one dog caught my eye and I could not
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: leave without buying this dog.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So I get home and I say to Andy, listen,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: if you don't like the dog, we'll return it after
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: a week. I have all these gorgeous pictures of Andy
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and the dog. We named him Mickey. He was the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: smallest little chihuahua with blue eyes, short haired chihuahua. you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: hanging out, sleeping together, like, you know, taking naps together.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I loved this dog so much. We had the dog
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: for about, I don't know, three weeks. And one day,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Mickey started getting seizures. Long story short, we had to
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: put Mickey to sleep. I promise the story is going somewhere.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So Andy, I was devastated. So Andy was with me
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: when we had to put the dog down.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I was so upset. I loved this dog more than anything.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm an animal lover in general, but I
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: loved that Andy and I had this dog together that
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: we both cared for.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: So....
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Andy, after we put Mickey down, we went to dinner
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: together and he said, Rachel, everything happens for a reason.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: And I kept saying, no, that's not true. Why would
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: there be a reason for this poor, innocent dog to die?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: And he reminded me of something that was very true.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: He said, Rachel, you know, Mickey didn't know that he
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: was supposed to live 13 years, 18 years, however long
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: of a life he could have had. He knew that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: he was loved by you more than anyone that he's
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: ever been around. for the term of his life. And
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that was the end of his life. And he didn't
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: know any better. There's no loss for him. He was
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: loved and that was his time to go. And I said, yeah, okay.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, it made me feel a little bit better,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: but you know, that was kind of the end of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the conversation. We were going to Greece the next week.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: He said, listen, when we come back from Greece, we
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: will go look for a dog together. We will buy
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: a dog that is a purebred that is, you know,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: or a rescue, something that we really are paying attention to.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: We're not getting it from a store. The dog ended
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: up having distemper. That's why it died, by the way.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: And he promised me we'd get a dog. So we
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: go to Greece. We have an amazing two weeks together.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And we come back on Sunday. We go to work
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Monday morning.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And we, at the time, I don't know if you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: guys remember this because it seems so long ago, but,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you know, you had actual cameras and we had a
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: disposable camera, which had you know, you had to go
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to like a one hour photo or a photo developing
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: place to get the photos. And it actually had negatives
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in the photos, right? So we got six packs of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: photos back Monday night, September 10th. And we were looking
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: through all the photos of our trip and we were having,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: you know, we were so happy to get these photos back.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So the morning of September 11th rolls around and we
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: had two bathrooms and we, I went and shower. So
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I had to get up for work at 5am. I
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: was still working the 5am shift at Bloomberg. And I
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: went in the bathroom.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I took a shower.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I put one towel on the floor, one towel around
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: my body and one towel around my head. And I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: go into the second bathroom to get ready. When I
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: came out of the bathroom around probably 4.40 in the morning,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Andy was sitting on the couch in our living room
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: and he was watching the Weather Channel. And I was
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: going to be late for work, so I'm kind of
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: rushing around. And he says to me, hey, babe, I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: want to take those photos to work with me today.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Where are they?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: So I give him all the photos and I sort
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: of head to the door to leave and And I say,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you know what, Andy, give me the, take the negatives
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: out of the photos in case you lose them. I
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: want to have them here, which he did. And I
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: walked back to the door and he said, come give
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: me a kiss before you leave. And I said, I'll
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: kiss you when I get home. I was running late
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: at the time. And he, the last thing he said was,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, or I said, what's the weather today? And
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: he said, it's going to be a gorgeous day. So
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I go to work and he calls me a few hours, maybe,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you know, at 7 a.m. when he's at work finally.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And he says, Rachel, I just want you to know
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I'm so proud of you. You're acting like wife material already.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: You put the towels back in the bathroom so that
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I had towels when I got out of the shower.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And it was a constant fight between us because I
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: would take all the towels out of the bathroom and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: he would get out of the shower and never have
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a towel. So he told me he loved me, all
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: this stuff. And anyways, we hung up and I went
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: back to work and he went back to work. And
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: within an hour, the first tower got hit by a plane.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: And then soon after, a second tower, a second plane
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: hit his tower. His was the second tower to get hit,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: but the first tower to fall. I, of course, have
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a whole detailed story about what happened that morning and thereafter,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: which is obviously horrible. And I actually don't want to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: get into it now because I do want to get
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to Rudy's episode later. But I will fast forward to
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a year later, I had to take a leave of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: absence from work. The anniversary of September 11th came about
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and everyone had kind of moved on and was just
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: kind of covering it, you know, like regurgitating all the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: news that had happened, but I couldn't.
• 12:01
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• 12:02
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• 12:06
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• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I handle listening to that news. So I took some
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: time off and I went to Brazil and I kind
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of did one of those trips to find myself. And
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I woke up in the middle of the night. I
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: had this dream and I had been living obviously in
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: such a depressed state and feeling just so miserable. Like
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I had every moment was a loss. Like I didn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: know where I belonged. I had lost my future with
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: this guy and I didn't know how to move forward.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I would be in a taxi and I would be
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: sitting in, you know, by myself. I would see the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: empty seat and feel like, well, Andy should.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Have been here.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: You know, May rolled around. That was the date we
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: were getting married. I thought Andy should have been here
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and should have, should have, right? So I wake up
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and I had this
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: epiphany and I said, oh my God, Mickey died. The
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: reason that Mickey died was so Andy could be the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: one to teach me the lesson that Andy lived his
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: life for the duration of what he was supposed to live.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: He wasn't supposed to live.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Till he might be 80 or 90 or even 50.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: He was supposed to die when he was supposed to die.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And I should, you know, appreciate the fact that I
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: got to love him and he got to love me
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: for the time that he was here. And he lived
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a full life and to not be upset by it
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and to just know that he was okay. And the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: reason that Mickey died was so Andy could, teach me
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that lesson and say that to me so that I
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: could move on when.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Andy died.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: So to me, that's my story of my long story
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: about Mickey dying. And I just wanted to, you know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: let you guys know that obviously there's not a day
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: that goes by that I don't think of Andy, but
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: it's on September 11th that I want to remind you
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: of this wonderful person, James Andrew O'Grady, who lived a
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: full life, who was the most wonderful person I knew.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And I was lucky to have been loved by him.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And I'm sorry if you have a loss from September 11th.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry if you have a story of grief from
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: someone you loved throughout your life. It obviously doesn't have
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to be related to September 11th, but the pain never
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: does go away. but time kind of heals. But on
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: September 11th, that wound does reopen. And, you know, I
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: just really appreciate you guys listening to my podcast, to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: listening to my personal stories, which I try not to
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: get into that much, but my guests all mean so
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: much to me. And, you know, I have a method
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to my madness and a reason to be interviewing the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: people that I do. And I was honored to have
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: met Rudy Giuliani. and to hear his story from 9-11.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And I hope you give this a listen, um, and, um,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and listen to the end.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It's a great story.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: It's a powerful story. And, um, I'd love to hear
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: from you guys. If this was a episode that, um,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: that you can relate with, please, you know, um, drop
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: me a message and, um, And listen to the Patreon and,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: you know, support what we're doing here because we want
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to be a community for you that we can all
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: kind of communicate about stuff like this. So without further ado,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: here is the mayor, the one and only mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Misunderstood. This is Rachel. You could tell
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: I have a really exciting episode today.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I'm here with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a man who took down the mafia, cleaned up New
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: York City and comforted not just me, but the entire
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: nation with his presence and leadership following the attacks of
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: September the 11th.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: It's an honor and a pleasure to welcome.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: You to the show. Well, thank you, Rachel. It's a
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: pleasure to be with you.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I've wanted to meet you for 22 years now, but
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: probably longer than that. But I have always admired you,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: and you've been a huge part of my life, not
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: only because of September 11th, but I don't know if
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: your team told you, but two days after September 11th,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I went and got a dog to comfort.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Me through my loss.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And I, Andy was my fiance who I lost in
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: September 11th and he forbid me to get a dog.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I got a dog anyway, but about a week before
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Andy died, the dog who we had only had for
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: a month, he died of distemper.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I bought him in a pet store. I was devastated.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And he said, okay, after we were going to Greece,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: he said, after our trip to Greece, we'll get a dog.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: We come home from Greece. The next day is September 11th.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So I had lost my dog. I lost my fiance.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Where does he work?
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: He worked at Sandler O'Neill.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: So two days after September 11th, I went back to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the pet store, and I bought a dog who I.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Named Rudy Giuliani.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And this dog, I'm telling you, to be honest with you,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: was the only stable love of my life that I've had.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: He lasted almost 20 years. Wow.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, and so I'm going to show you a picture
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: because I think he's very handsome.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: He's a lot better looking than me. Look at him.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: oh my goodness now what kind of dog is.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: That he's a brussels griffin.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah what a look like you're very smart too oh
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: he was you can see that you can see after
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: you right yeah yeah well thank you i'm very.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Honored yes yes so anyways i wanted to get into
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: love dogs yeah i know you do you have one right.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: I had one i don't have one right now okay.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Okay So I wanted to talk to you about your
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: experience on September 11th, because I feel like we obviously
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: have that in common.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: We shared that day.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you when we went through it together,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: but not knowing each other. So I want to paint
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a picture for people that are listening right now or
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: watching of what was going on in the state of
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: New York and, you know, in New York in general,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: in the world, Homeland Security. Like, give us a little
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: bit of a painting of what life was like.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it was the beginning of a new administration, right?
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Clinton had had his eight years, and then Bush won.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: So we were, what, sort of like about eight months,
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: nine months into the Bush administration. Things were relatively— certainly internationally,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: things were peaceful. They seemed to be. Although bin Laden
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: had been causing a great deal of trouble. I don't
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: know if we were paying a sufficient amount of attention
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: to it. No. And he had declared war against us,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: which I guess we didn't take that as seriously as
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: we should. In the city, we were going through a renaissance.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, we were on the cover of one magazine
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: after another as uh, the city that had reclaimed itself,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: the city, uh, the city that had come back. Um,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: the crime was down to the lowest levels in decades. Right.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: We had gone from 1.2 million people on welfare to 500,000,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: most of them working. Um, and it was a city
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: with a tremendous amount of optimism. Um, so I think
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: that was a good thing because I think if we
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: had been where we were when I first became mayor,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: depressed and 75% of the people wanted to leave the
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: city like they do now, uh, we'd had a harder
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: time like dealing with it. Yeah. Um, and, uh, from
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: my point of view, I was near the end of
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: my term. I was, uh, uh, going to figure out
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: what I did next after Labor Day. Right. Um, because, um,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to spend time thinking too much or
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: looking for a job while I was mayor, because it
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: creates enormous conflicts of one kind or another. I had
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: a few ideas of what I wanted to do. I
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: had a contract to write a book, which was very substantial.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: I think it was a million and a half or
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: two million dollars.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So I wasn't worried about supporting myself after I got out.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: But I also was interested in being— I wasn't going to retire.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: In fact, I thought I'd work even harder when I left.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: And so it was about as peaceful as you can imagine.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: The night before it rained really hard in New York.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I remember it because it was a rain out of
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: a Yankee game where Roger Clemens was going to try
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: to win 20 games. And I also went to a
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: movie about Pee Wee Reese that night with him. Pee
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Wee Reese's widow and Jackie Robinson's widow.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Because the next day we were going to raise money
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: to build a statue of them. And went home, went
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: to sleep, woke up the next morning. It was a
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: beautiful day. Mm-hmm. And it was also primary day.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: So we were having our primary elections, Democratic Party, Republican Party,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: to nominate the candidates to run for mayor to succeed me. Mm-hmm.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: And the Democrat primary was kind of crowded. It was
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: like four or five people. Republican primary were really two people,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Mike Bloomberg, and I can't remember who was running against him.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: But in any event, I thought, okay, today is going
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: to be a little bit of a lighter day in
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: the morning. So I canceled my morning meeting that I
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: usually had at eight in the morning, made it for
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: the afternoon. And I went and had breakfast with a friend,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Bill Simon, and with my counsel, Denny Young, because Bill
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: wanted to run for governor of California. And he wanted
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: my advice. And we went to the Peninsula Hotel. We
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: had a terrific breakfast.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: What time was that?
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: I probably got there around a quarter to eight. And
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, as it approached nine o'clock,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: one of my security people walked in and whispered to
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Denny Young. And Denny had a very Strange expression on
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: his face. And he said, Mayor, I think we're going
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: to have to leave right away. There's been a there's
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: a terrible fire down at the World Trade Center. They
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: think a twin engine plane hit the North Tower. Right.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: And it's a disaster. Right. So I got up right
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: away and said goodbye to Bill. He, for some reason, said,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: God bless you, which seemed outspoken. Kind of ominous.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Although, because at that point, we didn't know how bad
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: it was. Right, right. And the minute I got out.
• 23:35
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• 23:39
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• 23:45
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• 23:50
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• 23:52
  Speaker 3: I looked up and I saw a beautiful sky. And
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: I said, well, this was no accident. Huh. So now
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: we have a crazy person or we have a terrorist,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: one or the other. Right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So I just want to say I was in Midtown also.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I worked for Bloomberg News at the time. I was
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: working on the assignment desk. Mike Bloomberg was my boss.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And I went into work at 5 a.m. And the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: thing you remember is how beautiful.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: That day was. Yes. Nope, not a cloud in the sky.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Not a cloud in the sky, yeah. and how warm
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: it was and gorgeous.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: And also for regular people, it was the first day
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people bringing their kids to school,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: which was why a lot of people were.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Not in the building that day. Not as many as
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: would have been. So they were.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Running late that morning. But I went in at 5 a.m.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I remember the weather like you are talking about. And
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I was sitting on the newsroom floor listening to what
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: was going on. We're, you know, doing the news of
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the day, doing our show.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: We had a live show.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And next thing you know, I hear somebody say, the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center's on fire. And I remember, like you're
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: talking about, everybody assumed and thought, and the news was reporting,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that it was a smaller plane, a guy who probably
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was out there, didn't know what he was doing, and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: flew into the North Tower.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: So, sorry to interrupt you.
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  Speaker 3: I got into my van. Man, I sat in the
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: back with Denny. And we started down quickly toward the
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: World Trade Center. I tried to reach and I was
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: able to reach a few of police commissioner, my deputy mayor,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Joe Loda. But before I did, I could see the
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: tower and I could see a terrible fire. And it
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: seemed to me it was worse than a twin engine plane. Yeah. Immediately,
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Jenny and I both thought, I think this is worse.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: And I got a call. I can't remember the order
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: in which I got them, but I got a call
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: from my deputy mayor, Joe Loda, who told me it's
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: a disaster down here. People are jumping out of buildings.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: And I actually thought he maybe was exaggerating a little.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: Maybe he was caught up in the emotion of it.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: The idea of people jumping out of the building was
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: very hard to take.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And very hard to imagine of how awful things must
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: have been for their choice to be to jump rather
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: than stay where they were.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: Then the police commissioner, I talked to the police commissioner,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: and we didn't know what it was, but we said
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: we're going to assume it. Let's assume it's a terrorist attack.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: You always assume the worst. We also had a trial
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: going on three blocks away from City Hall, about eight
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: blocks away from the World Trade Center, of... Al-Qaeda terrorists.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: And that had resulted in my having to close down
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: a number of blocks in the city. So we were
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: being warned about attacks, not that kind of an attack,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: but attacks. And we did know that if it was
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: a terrorist attack, it was probably bin Laden because of
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: the focus on that trial. But at that point, we
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: still didn't know for sure it was a terrorist attack.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: And as we got about a mile away, very close,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: I saw a big, big explosion. I didn't know what
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: it was. I thought maybe it was a secondary explosion
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: from the first one. And Bernie, the police commissioner, called
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: me immediately and said, a second plane hit. It is
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: definitely a terrorist attack. I said, geez, we're at war.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: And he said, yep. And I tried getting through to
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: the White House, and I couldn't. So I said, Bernie,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: when I get there, let's set up a command post.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: right nearby, and let's put in hard lines because we
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: need regular telephone lines. These cell phones aren't working efficiently,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: and we've got to talk to the president. He said,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: we've been able to get through, and.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: I think we're going to have air cover pretty soon,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: but we've got to make sure. So I said, okay, well,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: you set up a command post, and I'll meet you
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: when we set the place we were going to meet,
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: and then we'll have to go over to the fire
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: department command post and make sure everything is coordinated. So
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: I got there 10 minutes later, maybe less, and they
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: came up to me, they meaning my deputy mayor, Joe
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: and Bernie, the police commissioner, the deputy police commissioner, and
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: a group of my staff. And Joe was the first
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: to tell me again how terrible it was and that
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: we were doing everything we can to clear the area.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Now, at this point, people didn't have the.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Creativity is an awful word, but the creativity to even
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: think that the towers could fall at this point. Or
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: did you think that there was a chance that they might?
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: You mean quickly?
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, quickly or at all.
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, I thought they could fall. You did? Well,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: not at that point. I hadn't seen quite how bad
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: it was.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: But by the time I left the command post, I
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: knew they were going to come down at some point
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: that day or later, but in stages. Okay.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Not.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: implode. So I went to the fire department. I took
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: the police commissioner with me. I could see that they
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: were setting up a headquarters in a Merrill Lynch field office.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: They threw the people out. People seemed very happy to
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: get out. And they were putting in these big trunks,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: these big hard lines. So I felt pretty secure that
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: we were going to get through. And I said, well,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: to go see the fire chief because he's running this.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: And let's make sure he's got everything he needs. So
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: we walked about three blocks and we got right below
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: the North tower and chief Gansey was there with his,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: the fire department fights a fire, uh, with the commander
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: as close as he can get to getting a full
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: view of the fire. He has like a board, uh,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: like a podium. And on that podium is a recreation
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: of the fire. It's where he can move his men around.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: And that's what he was doing. And he already had
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: a lot of people in the building. So I said,
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: when I got there, I looked up and I saw
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a guy jump. And I tell you, it was really
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: a traumatic experience watching this person jump, watching him come
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: all the way down. And I grabbed Bernie's arm and
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I said, Bernie, this is different than anything we've faced before. Mm-hmm.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: we don't have a plan for this. We're just going
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: to have to make the best decisions we can and
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: then ask God to make them right. And he said, well,
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: at least we got a lot of experience. And I said, oh, well, okay.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: And I've got a lot of experienced people. And I
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: went up to the chief and I said to the chief,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: can we get helicopters up there? Because there were a
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: lot of people up there. And the chief looked at
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: me and he said it to me in a very
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: interesting way. He said, I can't get my guys Above
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: the fire. Interesting. So I looked and I could see
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: that there was a firewall. Yeah. And what he was
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: saying is I can get my people. And then he said,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: I can save everybody. I can save everybody below the fire. Okay.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: He was telling me in a euphemistic way, those people
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: up there are dead.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Wow. I don't, I don't, I didn't feel the impact
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: of that until that night when I thought about it.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: But what he was saying was those people are dead. Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Now I'm emotionally realized because I looked at them and
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: I said, Oh my God, there's people going to die. Yeah.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: And he said, I can't put a helicopter up there
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: to blow up. The flames are too inconsistent.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: And he said a helicopter rescue for civilians is very,
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: very hard anyway.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Right. At that height. But it's really not in the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: cards given the flames that are coming out of there. Um, Now,
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: it turns out they did save everybody below the fire.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: The 9-11 Commission said it was the most effective rescue
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: so far in American history, that they saved every person
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: that was conceivably able to be saved. Interesting. So they
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: saved everybody below the fire.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Luckily, they were able to get above the fire. The
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: chief didn't know that, but a few areas they got
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: above the fire, and they were able to get some
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: people down.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: You mean climbing up through the staircase?
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, through the back. Through the back stairs, they weren't affected. Yeah.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: But the reality is that 90% of the people above
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: the fire died. Right. And probably even before the building,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: many of them even before the building collapsed.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: From smoke and inhalation?
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Mostly from smoke.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Because the smoke up there was incredible.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: Don't miss a minute of United Soccer League action. The
• 34:59
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• 35:03
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• 35:28
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• 35:31
  Speaker 3: People on the roof may be survived until the building
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: came down. As soon as I finished with the fire commissioner,
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I went back to the police department headquarters they had
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: set up, and I asked to get the president. And
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: I got on the phone one of his assistants, who
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: was a good friend of mine. And the first thing
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: I asked him is, do we have air cover? And
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: he said, affirmative. And the minute he said that, he
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: was not a military guy. And the minute he said affirmative,
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: I said, oh, my goodness, we're already into military language affirmative.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: And it was a funny feeling. And he said, yeah,
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: the vice president ordered fighters out to protect New York.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: They should be there by now. I said, okay, well,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: thank God, because we don't want to... I said, how many...
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: I said, how many... Do we know how many more
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: attacks there may be or how many planes are out
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: there or something like that? And he said, we've got
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: about seven or eight that are still unaccounted for that
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: we're tracking and worried about.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: I said, at this point, have they shut down there?
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Well, I asked him, I heard rumors. I said, I
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: heard rumors that they attacked the Sears Tower in Chicago.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: He said, no, the Pentagon. He said, yes. OK. Yes,
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: they had already attacked the Pentagon by the time this
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: conversation took place. I don't think the plane had come
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: down yet in Pennsylvania. But in any event, he said
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: there were seven more planes unaccounted for, and therefore we should...
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: at least be ready for possible other attacks.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: What was your feeling when they told you another plane
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: had hit elsewhere in Washington, D.C.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: My point that we're under attack and who knows what
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: was going to happen. I mean, remember, until later in
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: the day when it stabilized, we were not just working
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: on trying to save people and mitigate. And we were
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: working on this could be five more attacks. It could be.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: So the first thing we did originally is we closed
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: down the bridges and tunnels so nobody else would come in.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: So that whatever number of people we had in the
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: city were frozen. Yeah. And then we tried to get
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: them out. Sure. Yeah. At the same time, we closed
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: the bridges and tunnels because in the first World Trade
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: Center attack, it had been planned in New Jersey.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: And we particularly wanted nobody coming in from New Jersey. Now,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Since that time, we had infiltrated those mosques, which became
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: very controversial later, but I think it was a brilliant
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: thing to do. And we knew that they probably were
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: not the cause of it, because we knew everything going
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: on in those mosques. And they had gotten no intelligence
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: about this. And they were not connected to al-Qaeda. And
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: we were pretty certain it was bin Laden, because of
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: the trials there and because of the warnings we had.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: We had been warned during the Millennium Celebration in the
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: end of 99 that there was going to be an
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: attack at the New Year's Celebration. And that was going
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: to be from Bin Laden. And as we got closer,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: the intelligence turned out to be less and less reliable.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: And I did really consider canceling it, but I didn't.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: And instead, we We, for about two weeks, we did
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: everything we could to make that area safe. We went
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: below ground. I mean, there's a whole city in New
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: York right below ground. We secured that on New Year's Eve.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: There were police officers below ground, believe it or not,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: to make sure that nobody could get in there. And
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: that night, when I walked up to press down the
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: button that brings down the the ball yeah which by
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: the way is not really true It comes down automatically
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: and you press a button and you better get it
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: right otherwise you look stupid. But they try to make
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: it look like that. I probably don't trust a mayor
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: to do it on time. When I walked up those steps,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: it was the only time in my life where I
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: thought I might get shot. Because they had told us
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: so much about attacks. I thought, boy, they just really
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: can't protect you. Yeah. Now, I have had a lot
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: of experience with protection. I was the associate attorney general
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: when Ronald Reagan was shot. And I helped arrest Hinckley.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: And I helped to rearrange his security afterwards. So I
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: was kind of an expert even on my own security. Yeah.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: Because I had done it for many, many other people. Right.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: And I've been threatened numerous times. And it never bothered me. Yeah.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: That was the one time I looked at the buildings.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: And I thought about, boy, all they had to do
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: was put one person in there. It's a good shot,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: and I'm gone.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: And I said— Sorry, security is such an interesting thing.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security has a huge job that they have to
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: get it right every time and be prepared every time.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And terrorists only have to get it right once.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: And they don't. Most of the time, they get it wrong.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Think of all the terrorists we catch.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: But when they get it right, it's— Devastating. It's devastating.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: It's like looking for a— It's like looking for a
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: little thimble in a big, giant bale of hay. I mean, it's...
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: You know the other thing strange about it, Rachel? After
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: it happens, you can go back and find the things
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: you should have looked at, but they were buried. And
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: I've never been a second-guesser about this, except a few
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: times where it was obvious. Some of the latest attacks
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: that have taken place, it seems to me, something's wrong
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: in our warning system because you've had these people that
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: are mentally ill and they've threatened and they've been online.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: I think particularly the Boston Marathon, that guy had gone
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: to Russia, the FBI decided not to continue, but didn't
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: turn it over to the local police.
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I'd have gone crazy when I was the mayor. They
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: did that to me. Right. If they, if they had
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: found this guy who was all involved with the Cheshire rebels, uh,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: had just gone to Russia, but decided, Oh, we don't
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: have enough resources. And they didn't let the New York
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: city police department know that had been a revolution. I've
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: been gone crazy. Yeah. Um, uh, sometimes you have to
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: do that. You have to stage that in government to
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: get attention. Um, So I think we've gotten sloppy. But
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: the reality is that one, when you found the things
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: that warned about it, they were buried so far in
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: the ground, it'd be hard to say that anybody did
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: anything wrong in not finding it out. Right, right.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: After the fact.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: And then the theories, the conspiracy theories about it disgust me. Yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: They really disgust me. It almost seems sacrilegious, you know.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: I know what happened. Everybody knows what happened.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: So you don't believe it was an inside job like
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: some people?
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Like the CIA did it or some crazy thing like that? No,
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Bush did it. Bush did it. Give me a break.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: Give me a break. The poor man, you know, I
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: was with the man a lot during that four-week period.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: The man was ripped apart over it like I was.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: And he did everything. There's not a damn thing we
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: asked him for he didn't do for us. I mean,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: he was up. I once said that no matter what,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: what happens with George Bush, just for the way he
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: reacted after September 11, he'll be a great president. And
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: particularly by hitting them back so fast. We'd have gotten
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: attacked again if he didn't. I mean, I know this
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: is very controversial, but particularly the Afghan war was totally
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: necessary to sock him in the head because Clinton had
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: been too easy on him. Bin Laden took out a
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: naval ship, other attacks, and we'd go bomb a field.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: We'd go bomb an empty field. You might as well
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: tell them attack again. And I remember as I was
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: walking along, and this gets a little political, I told Bernie,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: thank God Gore didn't get elected. Because I figured if
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Gore got elected, he might, you know, he might give
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: him the Nobel Peace Prize. Who knows? But he sure
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: wouldn't hit him hard. And I knew Bush I knew
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Bush was a tough guy. There would be a hell
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: of a reaction. Now, you can start debating the Iraq
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: war and all that, but that immediate reaction, I think,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: was critical to our not being attacked again. And it
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: also took out their resources. Those soldiers who were on
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: horses and those people are incredible. None of them knew
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: how to ride horses. I met them. They came and
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: brought me. Too bad we're not at home. Because I
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: have at home a knife and a headdress of the
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: first guy they killed. Wow. And they brought it to
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: me with a plaque. And they said, I want you
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: to take this for the people of the city. I
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: really should give that to the museum. I think I will.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's amazing.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: So let's get back to the day of September 11th.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: What were your feelings when the first tower came down?
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And where were you exactly?
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: I was in. After I finished with the fire department chief,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: I went back to the headquarters, the temporary headquarters we
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: had set up.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: And what street was this on?
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: So it was on Park Place and Barrow. So we
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: walked in. The police department remarkably had already transformed it.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: They were all on the phone. And It seemed to
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: me as I walked in, so the White House is
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: on the phone for you. So I went into one
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: office and it was this gentleman that I that I
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: mentioned to work for the president. And and I said,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I'd like to talk to the president. And he said.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: He said, we're evacuating the White House. And the vice
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: president will call you back. So I had an image
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: in my head that they were evacuating the president from
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: the White House. I did not realize the president was
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: in Florida. and speaking to children and what eventually was
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: the case. So that was somewhat ominous when he said that.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: I thought, my God, the White House is being evacuated.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: He said the vice president.
• 46:32
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• 46:36
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• 46:39
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• 46:43
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• 46:47
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• 47:01
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• 47:03
  Speaker 3: We'll call you back very, very shortly, but you have
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: air protection. Be alert to the fact that there could
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: be other attacks. I said we're anticipating ground attacks. that
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: they might follow this up. They might have people in
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: the city and other cities. My police department is right
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: now securing 130 locations. So we kept a list of
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: terrorist targets. This started, oh, even before the 93 attack. Remember,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: I had been U.S. attorney before, which was very helpful
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: because I was very familiar with the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: I prosecuted their cases. So the Joint Terrorism Task Force,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: which is a great idea and started in New York, FBI,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: police department together, sharing intelligence. We used to use arrests
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: of terrorists. And then we would go through, or the
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: FBI would go through their targets. And from that, we
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: would create a list of their priority targets from one
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: to about 130. And we kept changing it depending on
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: who we arrested. So let's say we had, for example,
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: killed several terrorists in Brooklyn about a year earlier. So
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: we took out of that building all kinds of plans.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: And based on those plans, And then whatever happened all
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: around the country, which we would get, we would give
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: that to the FBI. They would give us, we would
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: come up with this list. And the number one target
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: on the list was not the World Trade Center. It
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: was the stock exchange. Particularly, almost every terrorist that I
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: ever was involved in arresting or got intelligence about, they
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: had a great interest in our bridges and tunnels. They
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: had all kinds of plans for our bridges and tunnels.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: In fact, about a year earlier, We had killed a
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: guy who had all of the plans for a subway
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: connection in Brooklyn. And we shot him in the back.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: building he was in as he was going for the
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: toggle switch to blow up the building. Oh, wow. So
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: we had a lot of experience with terrorism, but not
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: this particular kind of attack. As soon as I got
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: off the phone, 40 people. But it's a very significant
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: group because it's the police commissioner, the deputy police commissioner,
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: and the chief of the police department. Those are the
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: three most experienced people in the police department. There's three
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: of my four deputy mayors. If we had lost that group,
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: the city would have lost two-thirds of its senior management.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: So we go downstairs and we try the different exits
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: and none of them open we go back upstairs thinking
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: maybe things have gotten better and things look much worse
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: now you can see debris going through the streets you
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: can see like part of a desk or I don't
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: know what the heck it was you can just see
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: this debris going through the streets and all of a
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: sudden two guys come up to us that I think
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: worked in the building and they said there's one chance
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: that there's a door they're all locked but there's one
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: that I think we can get open do you want
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: to try again And we said, sure. So we go
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: downstairs and they open the door and you can just
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: a sigh of relief. You can hear everybody say, we
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: walk out into the lobby of Park Place. And when
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: we look outside, you sort of say to yourself, I
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: just went from bad to worse because outside was a disaster.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: And people were walking in the building cut. And one
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: of my police, one of my deputy police commissioners who
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: had been on my police detail and was a was
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: a martial arts champion he comes in looking frightened and
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: cut all right across his face and he said it's
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: terrible out there yeah so we got to decide do
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: we stay in the building or we go outside and
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: i talked it over with bernie and with denny And
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: we decided, it's the strangest decision. I mean, strange when
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: you think of it in retrospect. We decided that if
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: we went outside, we'd lose less people. Because if we
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: stayed in the building and that building came down, we'd
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: lose the entire top management of the city. And at
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: this point, other people had joined us. But if we
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: go outside, we'll lose some people because they'll get hit.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: But we're not going to lose everybody.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Were you guys worried at this point that the second
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: tower was going to come down?
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: Didn't even think of it right away. Right. And didn't
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: know the tower came down. Oh, right.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: You're still thinking it was the top.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but in the back of my mind and everybody's
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: mind is, this seems like an awful lot of damage
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: for just the top of the building coming down. So
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: we thought that maybe other parts were continuing to come down.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: And I think then at some point, before we went outside,
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: we were told that the... That the tower had come down. Entirely. Yeah,
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: but we know what that meant. I mean, I expected
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: to see a stump, you know, with a lot of
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: the building down, but I didn't. I never envisioned an implosion. Yeah.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: I envisioned it came down like that. Mm-hmm. So then
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: we did go outside and I held a press conference
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: and I told everyone to go north and get out
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: of there and to remain calm as the police department,
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: the fire department were all coordinated, which they were. And
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: that the rest of the city is being protected against
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: any possible other attack because Bernie and I had dispatched
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: about 150 units of the police department to those targets
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: that I told you about. So we sent some to St. Patrick's,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: we sent some up to the Bronx, we sent some
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: out to Brooklyn. the Kennedy Airport, LaGuardia Airport, the ones
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: that are on that list. And we had run this
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: plan maybe 10 times either as exercises or where we
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: had terrorist threats that nobody knew about. So this felt comfortable.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: We knew how to do this. And then all of
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: a sudden we get on the street, we walk about
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: two blocks, and I feel... John grabbed me again and
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: he starts running me up the block and I said
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: John what are you doing and he said look and
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: now we hear this noise I look down and he
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: said I think the second building is coming down and
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden you see it you see this
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: thing appear in the in the canyon you know between
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: the buildings it looks like it you know it looks
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: like it has eyes or something and then it starts
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: coming up like this So we grabbed a lot of people.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: There was one man who had a hard time walking,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: and I said, Bernie, let him use your car. So
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Bernie stuffed a bunch of people in his car and said,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: get them the hell out of here, civilians. And we
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: continued to walk. And the idea now was, where are
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: we going to set up our command post? So we
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: thought of the first precinct, but they would probably have
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: no power. We thought of the police department and called.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: They had no power. We walked into a big hotel
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: along the way and walked right out because when we
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: walked in, the police commissioner, the fire commissioner and I,
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: we saw that the entire first two floors were all glass.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: It's going to be a hell of a place. We're
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: all glass. And finally, we decided on the police academy. Okay.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: Because the police academy is up around 22nd Street. It's
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: out of the area, but it's close enough so you
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: can get there quickly. It had power and its gigantic facility.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: It's a big facility and it had all the emergency
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: communication equipment that we needed already there. But on the way,
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: we passed a firehouse in the village and we decided, well,
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: let's make some phone calls from here to make sure
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: and we'll call the governor and So we broke in
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: to the firehouse because it had been locked. They were
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: out at the fire. That firehouse lost 12 people. And
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: it was one that I had been to a lot
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: because when I was first mayor, I lost three firefighters
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: from that firehouse. And we broke in and I called
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: the governor. And when I got the governor on the phone,
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: he said, thank God we thought you were gone. I said,
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: what do you mean? We thought you were dead. I said, oh,
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: that seemed kind of weird. Um, They actually had drawn
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: up papers for the emergency governance of the city, if
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: I was dead. Wow. My deputy mayor, Rudy Washington, was
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: with the governor, and he was helping do it, which
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: I'm not... That's what they should do. Yeah. But I
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: actually didn't know that until much later. Right. That it
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: was that bad. And when he said it, it was
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: a little startling. I knew we were in danger. But...
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't think people thought we were dead. Right. Um,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: and I probably probably didn't realize how long we were
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: trapped because I was so busy trying to figure a
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: way out. It seemed like it went by very fast. Um,
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: and then the governor and I decided to meet at the,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: I told them I was setting up a command post
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: at the police Academy and we decided to meet there
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: and we made a decision that I think was very,
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: very critical. And it's a decision that I lecture people
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: about all the time in an emergency. Mm-hmm. We decided
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: that until this emergency was over, we were going to
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: be together constantly. We're going to put our two staffs together.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: We're going to hold our meetings together. We're going to
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: make our decisions together. And he said, I will join
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: you at the police academy, and from now on, your
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: staff and my staff will be joined at the hip. Mm-hmm.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if he recommended that or I
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: recommended that, but we both immediately agreed to it. And
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: the reason we did that is because there's no time
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: in an emergency for the staffs to fight with each other.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: And they inevitably will. In an emergency, things go wrong.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: And they're all political. So then they blame someone else.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: So let's say something went wrong. The governor will be
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: fine with it. I'll be fine with it. The president
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: will be fine with it. But my staff will blame
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: him or his staff will blame me or plus you
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: want things to get done like that. So we can't
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: call Albany, get approval, then go to Washington. So they
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: all came together for the next month and a half.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: We ran our staff meetings together. He ran the state
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: and I ran the city from our emergency management center,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: which then moved up to Pier 90 something or other.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of stories that are somewhat well-known
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: in the last 22 years or so that are repeated
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: every anniversary.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: So we know about some of these people that have died.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Is there a story that.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Stands out to you that people don't know or someone
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that affected you that still kind of haunts you?
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you one that isn't mentioned enough because you
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: don't know who he is. When I took the first
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: group Damn. first group of family members down to the
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: World Trade Center, which we didn't allow for about 10 days,
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: and I did it by boat, because at that point
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: our headquarters was up on the west side, right at
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: the pier. because we needed unlimited space. And we got
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: a boat and we went down and I took as
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: many family members as I could. And one person was
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: there who had actually been in the building. She worked
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: in the building and her father was a firefighter. And
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: she worked for I think Morgan Stanley. And she said that,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: I said, what happened in the building? Because Morgan Stanley
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: got a lot of people out because of the head
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: of security, Rick Rescor, who actually went around to every
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: floor and told them to get out and actually pushed
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: them out. He never got out. He was the last
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: one out, like the captain of the ship. So I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: knew that story. She said, but you don't know. I
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: wish I could find out who this man is because
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: he was standing by the elevator and he was helping
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: people get on and pushing them in and pushing them in.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: And I was one of the last people pushed in.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: And I said, well, you come in now. And he said, no, no, no.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Let's get the young people. And I've already had my life. Wow.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: And she said, when I got there, as I was
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: coming down, the building came down. She said, that's going
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: to be with me for the rest of my life.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: I think about it every night.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: I could see his face saying, I've had my life.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: You people are young. You go first. I'll get out.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: Don't worry.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Right. So do you do something on every anniversary that
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: is special to you?
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, a couple of things. I go to the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: ceremony all the time. I go to church. I go
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: to the ceremony. And I get together with my wife.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: with my people at night. And then many other things,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: depending on who needs me. I do something with the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: Tunnel of the Towers every year. But I get together
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: at night with the people that I survive with. And
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: it's very... I think it's very important to talk about it.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: And I tried afterwards very, very hard to get the
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: right treatment and the right help for a lot of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: my people. Some of whom still resist it. Yeah. Because
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: of macho. But the ones who have gotten it have
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: really come through it really well.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: Did you get treatment for yourself?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: No, but I think I did by talking about it
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: so much. Yeah. I mean, and by getting it for them,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: I learned an awful lot about what the therapy is
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: and how it works. Yeah. And an awful lot of
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: it is really talking about it. Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: So it's interesting because I... had to go to therapy
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: to deal with it way after.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: I couldn't at the beginning, but it was very hard
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: to speak to somebody who hadn't gone through it. And
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: even when I watch, you know, horrible things that happen,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: buildings coming down, children being shot, whatever it is, unless
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: you're part of it, you're just watching. You're from the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: outside looking in, and it's hard to really feel the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: pain that.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: People go through. Those groups are so important.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: And so for me, talking about it is good. But
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: it's interesting. I still feel the emotions like it's yesterday.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: Yep. If I get into it, it's like that. I
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: have a very hard time to this day going past
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: that part of town. Yeah. And my son lives down
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: there now. Lives a few blocks south. Yeah. In fact,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: in the days afterwards, I was told nobody's ever going
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: to go back there. Mm-hmm. Now there are three times
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: more people living there. Yeah. But it's very hard. Um,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: and sometimes I'll take a circuitous route so I don't
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: have to pass it. And I've only been to the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: museum twice and both times, uh, because I had to
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: go the opening and then I took president Obama through it.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: And otherwise when people want to go to the museum,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: I make arrangements for them and send somebody else. Yeah.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: That's a hard museum to walk.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: I can't, I can't, I can't, um, And I've never
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: watched a movie about it straight through the documentaries I've
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: been in. Wow. Uh, I watched part of them and
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: I put it off. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Um, So I just want to tell you a little bit,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: because my, if you, I don't know if you remember,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: two days later, an Associated Press gentleman took a photo
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: of me. I was at Bellevue looking for my fiancé,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and just to sort of give you a picture.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: I do remember.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: I was 26 years old.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I had just gotten engaged to who I thought was
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: the love of my life.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: He was 32.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: His name's Andy O'Grady. And just saying.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: His name makes me cry. Sorry. I didn't mean to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: do this.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: But I lost everything.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: And going to Bellevue that day, I remember looking on
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 6: the computer and seeing that he might have been taken there.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: And so with hundreds of other people, I'm standing in line.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: And it was interesting because, you know, everybody made flyers.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: And I don't know why we did that. It was
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: like what everybody did, right?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 6: So I got the most recent photo that I had.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 6: And I was laughing because I was like, oh God,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: he would hate this photo, right? But I picked the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: photo because I loved his smile. And I just went
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: where I heard that he was. And you're talking to
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: the people in front of you and behind you, listening
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: to their story.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: And each one was worse than the other.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: And it's mothers crying and children crying, looking for their parents.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: And it was just awful. And when I got to
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: the front of the line, they checked his name and
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: said he wasn't there. And there was a bunch of.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: Sorry, my God. No, that's all right. There was a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: bunch of....
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: Reporters and they said, just tell us about Andy. I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 6: thought it was such a great way to let people
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 6: know who he was. But looking back, that's what I thought.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: But as a 26-year-old girl, I was like, you have
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: to help me.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know what else to do. I've lost my
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: whole future, my whole life.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: And it was, as a young girl, the worst thing
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: that I've ever been through that I can imagine being through.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: And people don't understand how that affected people's lives.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: And it changes the trajectory of who you are.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: At that age, and probably anyone who went through it,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 6: but it was an awful thing.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: It changed the trajectory of the country and the world.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: It was an unreal event in terms of being able
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: to describe the magnitude of it. Yeah. It's one of
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: the events. So, I mean, one of the ways to
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: measure the magnitude of it, it's one of those events
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: where everybody remembers where they were when it happened. Of course.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: I'm sure this happens to you when you tell them
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: you were involved. But people almost feel compelled to tell you.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: People have come up to me in airports and train
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: stations and stopped me because they want me to know
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: where they were.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know them. Right. They'll tell me, you know,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: I was in grammar school at the time and the
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: teacher took us all out of class. Or someone will
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: say I was at my desk. and not even somebody
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: involved in it. I was at my desk and we
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: all had to leave.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: And it's the way they connect to that day.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: Or then people will come up to you who are
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: connected to it. The ones who were talking to somebody
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: in the building. And then I also lost... That afternoon
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: when I had the second press conference, I was asked,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: did I hear the tape of the Solicitor General and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: his wife talking on the phone. That was the plane
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: that went into the Pentagon. And I said, no, I
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: haven't had time to hear anything. And I said, oh,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: the Solicitor General? Oh, yeah, Barbara, his wife died. One
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: of my best friends. Wow. They'd been in my office
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: five days earlier. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I had
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: to stop and go behind the governor so I didn't
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: cry because the deaths that I had heard about up
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: until then, I expected.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: I expected, I knew, I knew what happened. And by
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: the time it was an hour later, I was already
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: in a zone of playing mayor. Right. Right. But when
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: they hit me with somebody I would never thought of
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: dying in that plane, it was like, Oh my God. Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: And then I would say to myself, you can't feel
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: this now. You got to feel it later.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: You got to feel it. You got to, you got
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: to stop it and you got to just concentrate. You
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: got to, You've got to get this out of your
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: mind because you're not going to make the right decisions
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: if you get all emotional. So get it out and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: think about it later. That's right.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: And that day I was working at Bloomberg News. That
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: day I worked until 5 o'clock. I didn't want to
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: go home.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: And I didn't really shed a tear until a month
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: later when I was in the shower and I was
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: by myself and people had stopped coming around. Like you're
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: so surrounded by people at the beginning, right? But then
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: they go back to their lives.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: And you don't. Your life is the same, you know?
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: So I think that's when it really hit me and
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: it changed my life. Thank you so much for listening
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: to misunderstood.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Rachel.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: You could tell, please be sure to subscribe to the
• 1:08:44
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• 1:08:47
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• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: slash misunderstood with Rachel. You could tell, do you have
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: ideas for the show or want to reach out? Email
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: us at info misunderstood podcast at gmail.com. us at Thank
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: you so much and I'll see you next time.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: They think you're done for the day, but they don't
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: know about the drawer. The drawer. Just the one square
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: before bed. Or two, you know. Nobody's watching. You deserve
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: a treat. With eight flavours to choose from, you can
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: choose the flavour you favour with Cadbury Dairy Milk.