Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Brian Knappenberger - 25 Years After 9/11: How The Attack Reshaped America

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Interview Only w/ Brian Knappenberger - 25 Years After 9/11: How The Attack Reshaped America · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: then call chapter. today at 980-734-3985. Well, we have embarked.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: This is going to be or is the 25th anniversary
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of the 9-11 attacks. And, you know, 25 years is
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: an interesting period.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Because that's basically, you know, it's an entire generation.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I've you've heard me talk about this before,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, when is the perfect period to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: feel like you can get both an honest assessment of
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: an historical event and at the same time, you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: still have firsthand accounts and at the same time be
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: far enough away where people feel like they can say
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: things that they couldn't say in the moment. And so
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  Speaker 1: we're at one of those periods with 9-11 and it's
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: in that vein.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: That my next guest is here. It's Brian Knappenberger. He
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: is the executive producer and director of a 9-11 documentary
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: that is landing on Netflix in the month of September,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Turning Point, Generation 9-11. This is part of the Turning
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Point franchise of historical events there. And Brian joins me now.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So Brian, I believe there's something somewhere in that 20
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to 30 year range is when I feel like Living
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: sources finally tell the truth. And you're far enough away
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: where you don't have to worry about personal feelings sometimes
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  Speaker 1: as much. Look, before we get into the specifics of
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: this documentary, you do a lot of history. What's your sense?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: What's your experience when you're trying to recreate a moment
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: or trying to understand what was happening in and around
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a life experience? during when one of these turning point
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: events happen. What's your sense of when you feel like
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  Speaker 1: you're getting close to the truth?
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  Speaker 3: It's interesting. I thought a lot. That's a great question.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: I thought a lot about it when we were creating this,
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  Speaker 3: creating this film. When we first released, you mentioned the
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: first series. So the turning point 9-11 and the war
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: on terror was on the 20th year anniversary of 9-11.
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  Speaker 2: And, you know, a lot of people watched it on Netflix.
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  Speaker 3: And there was a lot of uh, chatter online, you know,
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: I was kind of looking at how people were talking
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: about it and thinking about the film. And one of
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: the things that really struck me and that I think
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: goes to your, uh, sort of speaks to your question is, is, um,
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: how many people didn't know what.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Nine 11 was, um, really didn't know either.
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  Speaker 3: They hadn't been born yet, or, um, they were just
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: too young to remember the events of that day. So, um,
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  Speaker 3: you know, here we are, And so for me, that
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  Speaker 3: was just really eye-opening. 9-11, like so many people, changed
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  Speaker 3: my life. I mean, I can't imagine. It changed the
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: course of how I saw the world. It changed my career.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Ryan, my wife and I moved in with each other
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: that day, that night. Did you really?
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, we had just started dating. And she had
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a little dog, lived on Capitol Hill. And I lived
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: in the suburbs of Arlington, suburbs of D.C. in Arlington.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And we worked at the Watergate together. Um, and so,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I always have visions of my staff looking
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: at the, looking like craning their neck to see if
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: they could see the smoke from the Pentagon. And I
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: remember I'm like, you're not staying near the Capitol. That's insanity.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And her mom was a little bit conservative and probably
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: would have frowned upon it except for the circumstances that
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: we were in. We never left. And we get married
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a year later. I mean, but I was 28, 29
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: when this happened. So, yeah, I think you and I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: are about the same age. It's like it was a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: life changer, particularly if you lived in New York or D.C.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, uh, exactly.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: And I'm not, you know, it's not that you and
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: I are old, um, but, uh, but we're.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Just not young. That's how I, I'm just not young anymore. Right.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: There you go.
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  Speaker 3: But, you know, on the first anniversary of 9-11, I
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: was I was actually in Condor. I was making one
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: of my first films. It was picked up by PBS Frontline.
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  Speaker 3: And it was so profound and for me. And, you know,
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  Speaker 3: here we are 25 years later and we're about to
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: reach the point in the next couple of years where
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  Speaker 3: nearly half of all Americans were either born after 9-11
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: or were too young to remember the events of that day.
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  Speaker 2: So, you know, when we're making this, I'm really thinking
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  Speaker 2: about how how.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: This event is moving from a lived memory to to history.
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  Speaker 3: And and so this this this film is really about
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: the experience of that of that younger generation. I don't
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: assume people that know what 9-11 meant or what it
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  Speaker 3: felt like to go through it. I wanted to bring
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  Speaker 3: them into that day to understand that. Not just the
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: terror and the uncertainty, but what happens next? Because some
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: of the decisions we made after 9-11 and those uncertain
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: days and weeks that followed really define our current modern
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: world more than the event itself.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Before I get into the film, I'm just curious, because
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I know I suddenly was curious after I was watching
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: your film, is.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Did you find any scholarship in 1966 about how we
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: marked the 25th anniversary of Pearl Harbor? And did you
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: look back at 1988 and how we marked the 25th
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: anniversary of Kennedy being shot? I'm trying to look, I
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: was 16 and 88. So I, I, I remember all
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the specials because man, I was an obsessive conspiracy theorist
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: back then. I read it all right with Kennedy. So
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I have some memory of 88, but that is what,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I was just curious. Did you go back to see
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  Speaker 1: how other sort of scarring events like that that was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: sort of captured the imagination of the country and how
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  Speaker 1: it was handled 25 years later?
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  Speaker 3: I did a little bit. And I like you, I
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  Speaker 3: remember I remember that because I was in high school. But,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: you know, one thing I did clock for sure is
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: to do the math back 25 years from my own birth.
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  Speaker 2: And that would have been Hiroshima.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: So 25 years before I was born was Hiroshima. So
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  Speaker 3: that really puts it in perspective. This, this event that
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: was so transformative to us that in which we will
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: remember it was the day you moved in with your wife.
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  Speaker 3: It was, I spent every minute of that day watching
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  Speaker 3: television as my view of the world shifted.
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  Speaker 2: I could feel it.
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  Speaker 3: Politics was different. My, the way I saw our country
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: was different. Uh, and, uh, And that is such an
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  Speaker 3: indelible moment for us. But you can't be upset with
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  Speaker 3: people who just weren't around and don't see it that way.
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  Speaker 1: Look, I remember I filled out an application to join
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: the Navy Reserves. Never heard back from the Navy, by
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the way, on that. But I remember in that aftermath,
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  Speaker 1: that first week, it was sort of like, especially here
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: in D.C., it was inevitable more was going to happen.
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  Speaker 1: And so then you started to think, okay, what am
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I going to do? You know, both in I need
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to contribute and at the same time, how am I
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: going to escape when the next terrorist attack comes? And
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: how am I going to live my life? And here's
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the thing. A lot of people were thinking this way
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: back then. And I think the most, the biggest, you
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the biggest prediction did not come true.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: It was that, right? This idea that we were going
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to become Tel Aviv. I mean, I think that was
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the that is what I thought. You know, we lost
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: our terrorist virginity. Right. Our terrorism virginity and what the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: what life has been like for the average person in
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Tel Aviv for for our for the last 40 years,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I thought was going to be life in Washington and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: New York. And I guess thankfully it's not been that way.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: And that's part of what I was hoping to capture
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: in this film, just that that fear, the fear of
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: that day, but just also that uncertainty in the days
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: and the weeks and the months that followed. You know,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: all of those events were done in a few hours
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: in the morning. But we didn't know what was coming next.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: We didn't know if there were more coming that next day,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: in the next week, in the next month. We were
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: so sort of traumatized by this that we just didn't
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: know what was coming next.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And in hindsight, nothing came next, really.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: There was the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, both absurdly,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: sort of absurd attempts.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like bad copycats, right?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: But but since then, there's been virtually virtually nothing, certainly
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: not connected to Al Qaeda.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the concept. Generation 9-11 was the goal.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Who's your audience?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: My audience is, well, everybody, I think, will get something
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: out of this.
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  Speaker 3: But I really do want to focus on people that
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: weren't around that day, who were too young to remember
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  Speaker 3: those events, who may know a little bit about it,
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  Speaker 3: but may not quite understand how much, how different it is,
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: you know, how our country is. I mean, America after
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: 9-11 is just a different country than the America that
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: came before it. Um, you know, and I would, I
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: would love to, to not, to go through, not just
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: what it felt like that day for people, uh, not to,
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: to communicate the fear and the uncertainty that came after. Um,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: and not to excuse the decisions that came later. I'm
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: pretty critical of a lot. No, but you have to
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: explain it.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, you had this, you know, I'm glad
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you kept it in. You clipped a news clip, but
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I think it was Wolf Blitzer saying, you know, 63%
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of Americans are willing to give up some freedom in
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: exchange for, you know, for security, right? And, you know, that,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't see that. I don't know if
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the number would be that high today. And that, of course,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: you know, with security that, you know, comes that comfort perhaps.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: But I thought that was important to include. Like you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: have to, you could sit here and say, I can't
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: believe You guys went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and it just makes no sense. Yeah, it absolutely makes
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: little sense now. But in the moment, we'd never experienced
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: anything like this. This wasn't a nation state that came
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: after us. And more importantly, as much as we also
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: just didn't believe a stateless actor could do this without
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: the help of the state. And we were just our folks.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And I understand that instinct that we weren't going to
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: believe they didn't have help until we were, you know,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and it was going to take years to convince us
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that that wasn't the case, right? So I think it's,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and I probably to this day, I mean, I think
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: you did your best to convey that. It's still very
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: hard to convey the fear we were all living in, particularly,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and again, this was a big divide. And I know
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: this was harder to capture in, I think, 90 minutes. Well,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: you need, I was talking about this with my producer.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: To really do 9-11, you might need to do the O.J.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Simpson Made in America five-part 15-hour expose because one of
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the things that I think we've never fully appreciated is
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: how the rest of America, while certainly touched by this,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: not like D.C. and New York, and yet we drove
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: so much of the feelings about it to the point
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of you weren't allowed to comment if you hadn't experienced it.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is it drove us to make decisions.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, back to who this is for. I do
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: think it would be I'd love the next generation to
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: kind of understand the people that are, you know, sort
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: of will begin to start to take the reins of power.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: and start to make some of these decisions and start
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: to define who we are as a country. I mean,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: not to fall into the same fear and suspicion that
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: ended up leading us down a pretty.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Dark path as well.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: You know, we gave up personal liberties as a country,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: and it launched us into these endless, shifting, kind of
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: forever wars. Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And, you know, a.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Lot of that fear and suspicion was directed at, you know,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Muslim communities. And we built this enormous security and enforcement
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: infrastructure in response. Mass dragnets, suspicionless surveillance expanded dramatically. Not
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of the conversation about whether that was, you know,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: whether that flew in the face of the Fourth Amendment
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: and whether we were willing to do that or not.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: But that whole kind of infrastructure that we built, it
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: didn't disappear when that immediate threat receded.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: It remained and it found new targets. And when you
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: look at this, you know, I.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Think when you talk to the people nowadays, they don't
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: realize like, you know, you and I lived in a
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: world where.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: There wasn't a Department of Homeland Security. security, where there wasn't.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: ICE, you know, this, you know, 9-11 created that and
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: created the departments that would eventually become ICE.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: We very much live in a world now that was
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: created out of the decisions after 9-11.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: And those decisions were largely based on fear and suspicion.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, one of the things I think
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: it's one of the worst decisions government made was the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And I understand
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: how it happened. And there had been certainly there was
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a plan on the shelf. There would have been people
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: talking about should we have should should should really Treasury
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: and Commerce, you know, back then Treasury and Commerce for
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: some reason housed a few of these kind of semi
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: security agencies. And we thought, you know, maybe there ought
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to be another cabinet agency. So there was, you know,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: like anything that there was a play. I always tell
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: people you want to put a plan on the shelf
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: because you never know. When a crisis emerges, people are
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: desperate for a plan, hand them one, you know, sometimes.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And Joe Lieberman handed them one, right? This was sort
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of him and a few others were sort of into this. But,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you know, you can go back in history and any
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: decision government makes quickly is usually a bad decision. It's
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: hard to find one that when you made it quickly,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: that it goes well.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: In the initial series, we talked about that vote for
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: the AUMF, the authorization to use military force, which was
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: really made in the days, maybe within a week of 9-11.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: There was this kind of bill that basically said that
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: The president had the ability to go after terrorist groups
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: in a very open-ended way, terrorist groups all over the world. Countryless, right?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: It was countryless, yeah.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: And that passed unanimously, except for one person, Barbara Lee.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: She's the only one who said, look, I'm as upset
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: as everybody. I had to flee the Capitol. I was
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: scared for my life. I think she had an assistant
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: or somebody, a staffer that was killed. But she said, look,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: we can't let this fear just overtake us and make
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: these decisions that we may regret later. Even in this
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: moment where everybody is on board with some kind of vengeance,
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: some kind of military action, we need to keep our
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: heads about us. It's striking that there was one vote
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: that said no to the AUMF. And yet that is
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: the effort that has continued really to list down Including
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: going after groups that were never even around on 9-11.
• 18:17
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  Speaker 1: of 2026. Well, and the other thing, it's hard to,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we were shaming people for not
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: wearing flagpens.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: The culture, which was still more monoculture than it is today.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: We hadn't, this is pre-iPhone, which means pre, you know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: 2.0 fragmentation, right? Basically, pre-social media. Yes, there was internet. Yes,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: there was blogs. Yes, there was certainly conspiracy. There was
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: plenty of places for conspiracy theory to foment, don't get
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: me wrong. But it really was more on the outskirts,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: even the extreme edges of the internet. But the mainstream
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: conversation was, you're either pro-America or you're with the terrorists.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah. People forget that stuff. I was trying to get
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: a little more of that in there too. The freedom
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: fries or, uh, you know, you can't call them French
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: fries cause the.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: French shouldn't resist.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Um, but, um, You know, that was a weird moment.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: And it did seize the culture in a positive way.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: It was a moment of unity, too.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: People really... It was kind of an amazing thing.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's one of the most watched events in
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: all of world history up until that point. It was,
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: you know, people... You know, those first... You know, there's
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: this feeling that we've experienced something together, something, you know, traumatic,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: but that we would respond to it together. Right. We
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: all kind of felt like we were there for each other.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: People kind of forget that that was that was true
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: in America is true worldwide.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I mean, I mean, this is going
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to sound a little a little snarky, but, you know,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: people love New York City. And that was a that
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: was remarkable.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: New York City was a city that you loved if
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: you were there, but you hated if you weren't. Right.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Mindset a little bit. Right. There was always, you know, and,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: you know, the the the coming together, rallying around New
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: York City, which is, again, you're not going to find
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that every day in some of the reddest parts of America.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: But in that moment, right, everybody was I mean, to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this day. We treat firefighters better. as a collective, if
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: you will, right. We local communities vote to give them
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: raises and all this stuff. Those first responders in particular,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: we didn't, we never treated those folks as anything other
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: than bureaucrats before nine 11 and our firefighters that are,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we now know we, we, we treat that. We,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: we treat it all differently because we realize, you know,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: they don't know what moment they're putting their life on
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the line. They just, They signed up to do this.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: They just jumped in. You're right. It's like we shouldn't
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: just focus on the negative. We brought pride into being
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a firefighter. I think to this day, you have people
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: wanting to be a firefighter. A little bit, it goes
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: back to 9-11.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: I think that's totally true. It really gets you when
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: you're going through footage. you know, of this day.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: This was a little triggering to watch this. I'll be honest, Brian.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: It is a little.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have, you know, I'll make the, you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much 9-11, I struggle sometimes doing
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: 9-11 retrospectives. You know, you feel like, well, I went
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: through it. So I know. I had to cover it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I had to do all, I had to live it.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: But I'm glad I saw this because it's a, I realize, boy,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: we have a lot more work to do.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: That unity is right.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, it gets you that, you know, the, the, uh,
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: you know, the bloodlines, the way that people kind of
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: came to New York city, the, that, that sort of
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: collective coming together. Um, that's, that's important part of the story. I'm,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty critical probably of the, uh, in this and
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: other stuff I've done of the war of the wars
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: and the decisions that were made and the way it
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: changed our government, the way we, started changing what it
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: kind of meant to be an american uh that sort
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: of thing and some of that and the divisiveness that
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: came later but there was a real moment of unity world.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Of, you know, Trump talking about NATO.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Why should we put the bill for NATO if they
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: know we're not doing their fair shit and all this stuff?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: But the only time, you know, this kind of.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Key Article 5, you know, was ever triggered with NATO
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: ever in all of history, in the history of NATO,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: was in defense of the United States after 9-11. That's it.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: And the world came together and said, we're going to
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: we're going to help you. We're going to protect you.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: We're going to be that was the show of unity
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: that we've never, never seen any at any other point
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: in history.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. I'm sure, you know, there's a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: lot of complicated feelings for a lot of people when
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: it comes to the Bush, Bush's and the Cheney's in 9-11.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people who have rethought their belief,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: what they think of these two people and these families
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: after the Trump era. right? Which is what made people.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: But I don't think people fully appreciate how... In hindsight,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: we were lucky to have an empathetic president at that moment.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Whatever one thinks of the decisions Bush makes down the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: line on the war, that's one thing. And we're going
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to have a lot of policy disagreements there. But going
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to a mosque very quickly after 9-11... To say the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: things that he said after 9-11, the rhetoric that was
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: used and was denounced if somebody else chose to do
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: something different. I mean, we had some responsible leaders rhetorically
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: in this country at a time when, can you imagine
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: today's leadership with a similar situation? Yeah. I don't, you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: with the infusion of Christian nationalism in our Pentagon. With
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the way Islamophobia is sort of woven through so much
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of MAGA? You know, I mean, I think, you know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: at the time, it was just he was behaving as
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: we would assume any president would behave. Now you look
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: back and realize, hey, not every president might have behaved
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the way Bush behaved.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: He made an effort.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: That's true for sure to say that Muslims are not terrorists,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: to reach out to the Muslim community. One of the
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: things Trump did, I think, is he found that there
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: was still.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: Political power somehow there was something to exploit yeah in
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: in firing people up and and in regenerating some regenerating
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: some of that fear and suspicion and and using it
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: for his own political purposes i mean there's you know
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: these speeches they're equally uh upsetting when you go back
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: to 2016-17 where he's saying i think there should be
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: more surveillance of certain mosques and Really calling for no
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Muslim ban.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Stop until we understand what's happening. Think about that.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: That's 15 years after 9-11 and no terrorist attacks happened
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: in that 15 years at all.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: So why are we.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Banning Muslims until we understand what the problem is? There
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: isn't a problem.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: This is the legacy of 9-11 that is a scourge.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Which is Islamophobia. Obviously, the seeds were already there a
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: little bit. Frankly, how Hollywood portrayed every Muslim, right, you know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: back in the 90s and the early aughts was a
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: certain way. You and I in the 80s grew up
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: with hijackers, always happened to be from the Middle East.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: They would be- Or communists, I guess.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Russians.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Russian communists. Remember the terrorism, the hijackings of the 80s
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: that was always one of the attempts to try to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: garner attention for various issues in the Middle East. Boy,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I can't tell- Is it better or worse? On one hand,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: there are more Muslims in American political life today than
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: there were 25 years ago. And I frankly think a
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: lot of Muslim Americans decided, hey, you know, we need
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: to get more involved in American politics and more involved
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: in the American fabric. So we are not like seen
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: as outcasts and isolated and all this stuff. And so
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: on one hand, there's been a tremendous amount of progress.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And yet it feels like Islamophobia only gets worse.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you felt like, yeah, I felt like pre-Trump, there
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: was significant, you know, the country had sort of made
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: some real progress to some degree. I think he discovered
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: there was this hatred there, I guess.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like we Jews have discovered with anti-Semitism, none
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of it ever goes away. It just goes dormant for
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: a little while.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: The... weird way in which it's kind of shown up
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: to is, you know, when we did, um, the, uh,
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: you know, the, we've talked to a lot of kids
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: who were, uh, who's.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Lost parents on nine 11. And one of them was
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: this woman, uh, Laura Homer.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: And, um, she was, her father was the pilot on
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: And she had, she, you know, she really rocked me
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: with one of her comments, but go ahead. I don't
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: want to give it away.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: No, it's just really powerful. And one of the things,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: first of all, it's just her story was powerful. But
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: one of the things that really struck me was, you know,
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: that she was trolled online, that she had, that she was,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: you know, while she was, you did these comments, these direct.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Messages that were sort of, I don't know how you.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Describe it, I guess, mocking her or trolling her. And
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: it really made it clear to me that that a
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: lot of a kind of younger generation is getting what
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: they know about 9-11 from social media. And, you know,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: social media, the explosion of social media happens right after 9-11.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about, I think Facebook is around 2004,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: maybe Twitter's.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe Reddit is something like 2005, Twitter is around 2006.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: So suddenly this is the wave of social media that
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: kind of rushes into our system, just as we're still
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: kind of trying to figure out the trauma of this event.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: And that goes in this very bizarre, dark way. You know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: this very dark movement that people call the truth or movement.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: You know, I think it's pretty clear that that's a
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: sort of– uh, past that you can kind of trace
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: and you can kind of follow Alex Jones really starts
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: to become famous in that truth or movement. Um, but this, uh,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: you know, this conspiracies that swirl around it, that 9-11
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: was the inside job. I mean, that anticipates this dark,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: that anticipates Trump and some of the, some of the, um,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: divisiveness online that we started to see that started to
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: get sharper and sharper. Um, And it really gets into
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: stark relief when you're hearing that from somebody who lost
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: their father on 9-11. What does that person think of
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: the truther movement or this divisiveness? And just sort of
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: put in context that how far then where that movement
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: has gone and where it's taken us.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I think about sort of the broader
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: strokes of now looking back 25 years. Our post 9-11 response,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: was it a total failure in hindsight? And if it's not,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: what parts of it weren't a failure?
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: It's a good question, and we struggle with that, and
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: we try to figure that out in the film. Like
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: so many people, I was in favor of initial military action.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: So many people felt they attacked us.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Got to hold somebody accountable, damn it.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: We got to do it.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to punch a wall through drywall. I'm going
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: to punch my fist through drywall and feel really good.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Proud of myself. And then I'm going to go to
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Home Depot and go figure out how to patch that.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Right. And, you know, we drove the Taliban out pretty
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: quickly and we drove almost completely out of Afghanistan and
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Al Qaeda as well. All that leadership fled into Balochistan
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: and into Pakistan and they were gone. And as I mentioned,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: my one of my first films I ever made was
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: I was in Kandahar on the one year anniversary of.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: And at that point, this was optimistic. I mean, there's
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: no other way for me to describe it. This was
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: a positive, interesting.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: They did want to say, I mean, you point this out.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: We were we were treated as liberators. And and, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: there is a you want to talk about a what
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: if what if we never go to Iraq and Afghanistan
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: is our sole focus. I don't think Afghanistan ends the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: way it ends. I agree. At Abbey Gate.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we took we took our eye off the ball,
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: no question, and created this war of choice in Iraq. So, yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: it's it's a really stark for me, you know, to
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: sort of be there and experience this kind of optimism
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: that there's this new chapter. And then to talk to
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: these Marines that, you know, nobody thought when I was
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: there for sure that 20 years after 9-11, we would
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: actually be engaging Marines, sending Marines in there. to assist
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: the taliban in the takeover of of of kabul i
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: mean and nothing quite says it like that we we
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: are they we're sending our troops in to assist with
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: this and so what was this whole effort of failure
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: it kind of kind of seems like it at this
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: point uh all that money that we put in uh
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: to those what's the win.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Like what is better today than it was on september
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: 12th 2001.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: For security? For national security?
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: Or.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go with national security.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: What is better today?
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: You know, we probably smartened up about communications between intelligence agencies.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: You know, we probably did.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: You know, there was a real lack of communication.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It wasn't even a lack of communication.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: It was territorialism between FBI and the CIA. And we
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: were naive in that regard. I think we've smartened up
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: about that. That's probably true. I think some of the,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: even though they're kind of annoying, but some of the
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: stuff at the airports is, is probably smart. But the
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: ways in which we have gone overboard and the ways
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: in fear has really led us into a country that
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: has changed us, and I don't think it's for the better.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: I think when you look at ICE, the violence on.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: The streets today that's perpetuated by ICE, I think that's
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: a reverberation of 9-11. There's no question about it. That
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: is a result of the choices that we made. Our
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: immigration debate has been separable from all of this. And
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: I think we rushed into a new technological world that
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: expanded technology. surveillance and security and surveillance of american citizens
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: in a way that is uh that was dangerous and
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: could continue to be dangerous and more importantly flies in
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: the face of basic kind of fourth amendment protections i
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: mean you know there's a reason why founders said you
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: can't be searched without a warrant there's a reason for
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: that so this idea that we'd have this mass suspicionless
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: dragnet surveillance of americans who aren't suspected of a crime,
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: it just flies in the face of something that's pretty
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: important and valuable and special about this country.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: How do you answer the question of why did he
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: attack us?
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Why did he attack us? That's a good question.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: He is bin Laden. Yeah. Sorry, but I've got a
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: few more of bin Laden, but I want to start
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: with that. Do you think that's a question we've sufficiently
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: answered for this generation that maybe was alive but wasn't aware?
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, officially, of course, the way he talks
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: about it.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: After he died there, you know, after.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, really close to
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: this military base in Pakistan, they found six thousand documents
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: of his. And so they're trying to piece together some.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: little bit more about him from that you know what
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: do we know about him really actually he did a
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: surprising number of television interviews in the 90s uh for
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: somebody who was wanted back then um talk to cnn
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: and talk to uh.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Yet another uh kid of privilege who becomes a political
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: extremist Yes. Yeah. Interesting pattern.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: But anyway, you know, he talked about.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: The military, American military next to holy sites and Saudi Arabia.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: He talked about just I think I think it's, you know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: a lot has been made, I think, of and it's
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: true that that. we, you know, we backed some, some
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: dictators and, and people that, that were oppressive and, uh,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: that it was convenient for us. And, um, and so
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: I think, I think he, uh, a lot of his
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: point was around that. Um, and so that, that is,
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: that is the, that's the reason.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's a story to tell like, cause look,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: we had a cold war mindset, right? Real polity where we,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: where our values, we, we, we look the other way.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: You know, if you were on, if you were on
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Team capitalism, we looked the other way as long as
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you weren't going to be on team communism. And it
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: was like you were forgiven of anything else, no matter
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: how you treated your people, whatever it was. And we were,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we embraced transactional politics. Basically, we bought allies
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: when necessary. And when you're dealing in a binary world,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: which is the world that the Cold War was, I
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: can explain it. but there were always going to be consequences. And,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and the, and this is among the consequences. Look, we
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: have an entire multiple generations of Latin America. I grew
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: up in Miami. So I, I live with this multiple
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: generations of Latin Americans who don't trust the Americans, which
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: is why I like, I can't believe we're taking the
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: oil of the Venezuelans. It's like, dude, we learned nothing
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: from history. This is only going to end badly. I
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: just don't know how it's bad, how badly. And here
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: we go again. Um, But that's a tough thing to–
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: we won the Cold War because of these decisions. But
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: it did lead– there are unintended consequences and it's possible
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the rise of bin Laden was one of them.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah and no question about it to add a little
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: irony to it you know osama bin laden was one
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: of our solutions at one point to winning the cold
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: war and so we were we.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Were with the taliban before we were against them which
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: which we were back with them remember.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah exactly yeah um but it's it's an interesting question
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: i i take it that that's those are the those
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: are the reasons for that and i think i think
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: we learn a lot about that another question a very
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: a of that that I kind of think about is
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: what did he want to do after 9-11? And, you know, there's,
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: you know, I think that they were, they seemed... As
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: far as I know, the next video interview of his
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: is something like 2004 or something. He comes forward. That's
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: the next time we actually see him on camera. And
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: they were a small group on 9-11. They weren't a
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: large group. And he was focused mostly on killing more Americans,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: which led to the underwear bomber.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: He was more focused on tactics than he was... something
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: larger right.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yes but i think he came to understand that that
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: the real damage was was the divisiveness that it caused
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: within us and i think it was the the way
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: that it triggered us uh you know going to war
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: all over the world and on this incredible um sort
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: of you know this enormous enormous amount of money that
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: it took us to go to war and the way
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: that that would deteriorate our society i think he came
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: to see that um uh later that that was actually
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: the the success the divisive what we would do to
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: ourselves in divisiveness and what and the kind of attrition
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: and the the um uh the cost that it would
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: take for to be engaged in all these wars over
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: so many years.
• 40:55
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• 42:28
  Speaker 1: help with any gambling concerns. Finally, you can also call
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: 1-877-770-7867 if you're in Louisiana. The operation itself, in hindsight,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: it really was ragtag, wasn't it? They got more lucky. Yeah,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: there was a lot more luck involved.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: I think that's true.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, when you look at 9-11, Al-Qaeda,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: the group Al-Qaeda, I think we're talking about a few
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: hundred people Maximum. That's it.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, there and and I mean, in
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: And so we're talking about this very small group of
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: people that were able to exploit this kind of vulnerability
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: in our system and our, you know, the openness of our.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, doesn't this get to why the Bush administration
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: for so long just refused to believe they did this
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: on their own? Right.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it does.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: I think it does.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: But really, it's pretty striking that there's so few members
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: of al-Qaeda. And of course, there is no al-Qaeda in
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Iraq at all before we go to war in Iraq.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: That's it. And so there's this whole debathification process where
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: we kick people out of, and then we put people
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: in prisons. There's this kind of fomenting of extremism. They
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: suddenly create this, they create AQI al-Qaeda in Iraq. It
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: is born out of after this as a reaction to
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: our going to war in Iraq. AQI becomes the Islamic
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: State of Iraq and grows, has broader territorial ambitions, moves
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: into Syria, adds the S, and suddenly we have ISIS,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: which is the biggest terrorist organization probably in the history
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: of the world. I mean, it's just a huge um
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: uh it was international um uh well funded because they're
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: they're stealing art and and uh oil reserves and stuff
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: so it's um it's this phenomenal kind of um domino
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: effect that that increases as our military engagement increases.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: So in uh 2051 uh at the 50th um Do
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: you think we'll be more comfortable describing basically that– I
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: have this theory that essentially about 25 years from now,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: we're going to put all the Middle Eastern wars into
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: one bucket and just say basically the West got the
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: post-9-11 reaction wrong and it screwed up and it cost
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: America its standing in the world and it really set
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: back the United States– as far as their global legitimacy,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: it set them back a generation, if not two. It
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: feels like that's, frankly, the general direction we're headed by
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: 2051 without some sort of course correction.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Well, when I do that series, you have me on
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: your show, by the way, at that point.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: We'll both be. Won't it be like, you know, I mean,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm curious about is what will all this
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: look like When the only people making these will be
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: people that really didn't experience it. So it's just going
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: to be seen as outcome focused.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And boy, like to me, the Iran war and
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the Iraq war will probably get conflated the farther away
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: we get. Every time we have done these war of choices,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: they don't work out. Vietnam, Iraq. It'll start being done
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: that way because what's interesting about the first nine months
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of Afghanistan that your documentary captured so well is that
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: wasn't a choice. We felt like, well, that's where we
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: had to go. We had to go find them. We
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: went into Iraq the first time because– We were kicking
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: them out of Kuwait. We weren't really going into Iraq.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: We were justified. It's a reminder. When you truly are justified,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: you usually make good decisions. When you're trying to be preemptive,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: that's usually when you make bad decisions.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no question. You know, I.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: you mentioned Vietnam because we're at the, we were at
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: the 50 year anniversary of the fall of Saigon last year.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: And we did a little, uh, we did a piece
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: on that.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Um, and, uh, you know, another, another person that we
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: interviewed here is, uh, on the wind, uh, whose father
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: was in Vietnam and fled Vietnam in 1975 with the
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: fall with that fall. So, um, and when you look
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: at those, um, images of South Vietnamese who'd worked with
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: the Americans desperately trying to escape as Saigon fell, running
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: towards planes, trying to board helicopters. I mean, these are
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: some of the most famous images in all of photojournalism.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And what do we do? We recreate it in 2021.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: Compare them with those images in the final days in
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: Kabul airport. The echoes are just impossible to ignore. You
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: get another sense of this with the responsibility on to
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: help end this war, right? To take these final steps
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: to get everybody out. And yeah, some of them weren't
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: born yet. Some of them were three or four years old,
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: way too young to remember the events of 9-11. And
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: they're fighting and working with and at odds with occasionally
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Taliban soldiers who are the same, too.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Young to remember the events.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: This is a new generation finishing off this war. war
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: that started right after, in the days after 9-11. And
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: so in 50 years, where will we be at the
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: 50-year anniversary?
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Well, but it's interesting. But think about it, Brian. You know,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: 50 years after the fall of Saigon, we're comfortable saying
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: we lost the Vietnam War.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: We were not comfortable saying that at the 25-year anniversary.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: We were still, there were too many Vietnam vets in
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: our politics, too many Vietnam vets, you know, in leadership positions,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: who I think were never going to accept the premise
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: that yeah that they were involved in a failure.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: Right yeah i want yeah that's a really good point
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: i wonder about the because you talk to some of
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: these marines that were there at abbey gate and i
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: i get a sense of that they're they're conflicted right
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: i mean they really wanted to serve i mean i
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: have so much respect for them first of all um
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: but you know they they wanted to um, to help.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: They wanted, they thought they were doing something, you know, important. Um, they,
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: you know, um, one of them got involved, not because of, um,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Al Qaeda at 9-11 necessarily, but because of ISIS, some
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: of the things that he saw online with ISIS.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: And so he was motivated to go kind of solve that.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I really kind of respect the instinct, um,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: in general, but what are we, you know, but you,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: but when you talk to them now, you wonder if
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: they have, you know, they're, they're questioning some of not
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: just why they were there, but what about Iraq? What happened? Um,
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: I sense a real kind of deep thinking about, about
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: what this was all about in them. And by the way,
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: that gives me some hope. I mean, I think, you know,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: as we talk to young people, so often when people
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: get older, not that you and I are old, but
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: once you get older, so many people say, oh, you know,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: people don't get it nowadays.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they ask the simpler question that we're like ducking
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: too often.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But I, man, I, I, I, and do understand
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: it and do are starting to I'm going to ask.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: You a question that you don't have the answer for
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: because neither do I but you know I've been thinking
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: a lot about the fact that we're at the 25th
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: anniversary of 9-11 and every year we've passed a defense
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: budget that pretty much gave the Pentagon whatever they asked
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: for and it hasn't mattered Democratic Congress Republican Congress sometimes
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: it's always waving the bloody shirt right don't forget 9-11
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: right a little bit of that right and you're like
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: And yet we're running out of munitions. We can barely
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: fight a war against Iran and then also be prepared
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: for a second. The United States of America is suddenly
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: being humbled by Iran. And what have we done with
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: 25 years of military, of Pentagon budgets? How is it
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that 25 years of some of the most sophisticated war
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: planning supposedly, that had been done has left us in
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: a position like this. I mean, it's a question, that's
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: why I said, I'm asking you a question you can't answer,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: but it's a, I kind of think that this is
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a time to lift up and ask ourselves, we're at
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the 25th anniversary of 9-11, we're still mired in the
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Middle East, and we seem less prepared for another 9-11
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: than we were on 9-11.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: It's and I think that, you know, just to sort
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of take that back to.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: The AUMF and to some to some degree, I mean,
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: you know this was a huge this idea that the
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: authorization to use military force this is a this is
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: a shift in how it's supposed to work in the
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: united states right the constitution is pretty clear congress has
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: the power to declare.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: War right i keep wondering if the members of congress
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: do any of them read the constitution before they come
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: to the office i don't know i mean i kind
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: of think that they have to read the they won't
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: i understand that most people don't read the owner's manuals
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: um to things but i i think my members of
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: congress ought to.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if they did, it's unambiguous.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: There was a real reason why after the American Revolution,
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: these founders made it clear, we don't want a king
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: deciding that we're just going to go to war. The
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: ability to go to war is in the hands of Congress. Also,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: the ability to fund the war is in the hands
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: of Congress. Congress has a huge amount of power here.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: But put Post 9-11, and I think you can also
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: probably argue Cold War stuff here, too. But in the
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: modern era, especially post 9-11, Congress has relinquished that power.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Been a blank check both in money to the Pentagon
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and in power to the presidency on this stuff. And
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: are we better off for it?
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Definitely not.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: I think you see this in attacks on Venezuelan boats,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: in international waters.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: You see this in the Iran war.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that you included that. Why
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: did you include it?
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Just emphasizing this shift of power to the executive that
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: we don't question. And you clearly see that in Iran.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Trump doesn't feel like he even needs to explain why
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: we're going. It's deteriorating so far. It's not just that
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: there seems to be no congressional oversight of any kind or,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: you know, congressional, you know, no discussion with Congress.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: But but no, no discussion with the American people.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: We're just they're just doing it.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: And so that that's we've slipped pretty far since 9-11
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: and certainly since the beginning of this country and the
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: founding of this country, that basic idea that people themselves
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: have to have some say who they go to war with.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's land this plane, the series Turning Point.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: What's what are some you hinted to me that this
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: is kind of a season two. So what's a few
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: other projects coming?
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. This is kind of the end
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: of this one, I think, unless we return to it later. But, yeah,
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: we're continuing to be just really fascinated with how things
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: are shifting right now technologically, you know, what technology is
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: doing to us.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Taylor shared in one of his shows, I think it's Lioness,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: had a line that I thought was terrific about Ukraine.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: He said, it's as if World War I and Star
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Wars merged, that that's the Ukraine war, right? Because we're
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: having this, you know, we're radically changing warfare, right? In
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: real time watching this, it feels like we're only a
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: few years from some drone swarm showing up on the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: coasts of one of our major cities. And we're going
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: to be like, what the hell is that, right? Like
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it feels inevitable. Yeah, it is. Is the superpower mindset
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: going to get punctured even more so in the next
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: 10 years?
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, I think it absolutely will. I mean, in all
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: those sorts of ways, right? Technology is shifting, changing what
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: it means to be vulnerable. You can't help, but if
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: you're thinking about 9-11 and the decisions that we made
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: after 9-11, you can't help but kind of fast forward.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: What would they do now? They wouldn't use airplanes. They'd
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: use some drone swarm or something, right? Like, I don't
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: know if they'd even bother with commercial aircraft.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Totally. I mean, the world is weird.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: We're getting strange with things like AI and other sorts
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: of things.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: It's just a different battlefield. And yet some of these,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: What is also the war Ukraine is refighting the boundaries
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: of World War II in some ways, right?
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: This is Putin reclaiming what he thinks is an initial.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: kind of soviet era right this is where there are
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: these these undercurrents uh these historical undercurrents are meeting this
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: bizarre you know futuristic moment with ai and with all
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: sorts of new tools and you know it's going to
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: create all sorts of challenges it's going to create all
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: sorts of new vulnerabilities for terrorists and i just hope
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: that like I guess part of this effort really is,
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: can we remind ourselves of this trauma.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: That we went through?
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: These days in which we were just seized with this
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: fear and this suspicion and the decisions that we made
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: after that were driven in a lot of ways by
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: that fear and suspicion that led to these kind of
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: adverse outcomes so many years, decades later. Can this next
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: generation understand um, not fall into that same fear and
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: suspicion that led us such down such a dark place
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: in the first place. Can we use our tools as
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: media and as historians?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: This is the most important thing you're doing, Brian. This
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: is the most important thing you're doing. Cause I, you know,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: I weirdly do believe that, you know, look, we've got
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: a bunch of scar tissue from this 25 years, nine
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: 11 going forward. And yes, um, we pretty much, you know,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: we rehab the wrong part of our knee and we,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: we got everything we've gotten wrong, but, but my God,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: when it hit, when something similar happens again, I I'd
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: like to think now we have, Hey, here's one way
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: not to handle it.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: In fairness to us, we hadn't experienced an attack on
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: our homeland like that. That's true. Never experienced. And frankly,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: no offense to Pearl Harbor, but, But that was not on,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: that was like on an island, literally. That was different.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: It was the closest thing we had experienced as a country,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: but we still had to tell every, the president had
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: to tell everybody this happened back then, right? Like this was,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: you know, we, none of us had ever, you know, Oklahoma,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: people in Oklahoma City had experienced something like this, but
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: nothing like this, right? So that's the hope is that
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: what you're doing constantly reminding people, frankly, what we got wrong,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: how much of this we got wrong, how really bad
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: it looks now, 25 years later, I hope provides at
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: least a blueprint of what not to do, right? I'm
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: not saying it means we'll do it right the next time,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: but hopefully we make different mistakes.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, this was brand new.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: This shocked us in all sorts of ways.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: It reoriented everybody's, just changed everybody's vision of who we
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: are as a country and our place in the world
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: and what was possible in this country. We didn't think
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: we were vulnerable to this, and we are. And it
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: was brand new. But there will be, as you mentioned,
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: with technology and all the kind of stuff that's coming
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: and the shifting ground beneath us and all that, there's
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: going to be new brand brand new things, too. And
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: you wonder, you know, what is that percentage of us
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: that's able to to sort of step back and say,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: can we call more emotions and make smart decisions? On 9-11,
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: it was one person in the entire Congress, Barbara Lee.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Next time, see if we can get those numbers up
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: a little bit.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: So how do you balance? Let me get you out
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of here on this. How do you balance trying to
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: step back and look at things from 60,000 feet with
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: our nonstop amount of information getting shoved at you all
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: the time?
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's I think there's a real benefit.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: And I think honestly, I think there's some hunger for
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: that with with people. I think, you know, we we
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: are we are we are we've been hit with a
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: tsunami of information and a social media environment that we
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: just still don't understand.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: And we still don't know what's happening.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, I basically said we're social media has been a
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: great experiment on the human brain and it's been a failure.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Right. But we just stuck with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: And that's just a failure.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: We don't, you know, we haven't even begun to solve
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: it yet. And we're getting hit with this other thing,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: AI now, which is further shifting our perception of what
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: is real and what isn't. So I actually think there's
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: a real hunger for basic, longer form solutions. A deeper
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: dive in which sources are clear and the perspective is clear.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: The process is more transparent. I think there's a kind
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: of hunger for that.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Well, Brian, I don't know how numb you become when
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: you work on something like this. At what point did
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you compartmentalize it, where you stopped reacting emotionally?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: You can't look at 9-11 and not be still affected
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: by it. You just can't. The more you look at it,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: the more it's still there. And those days after are
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: still there, and then some of the anger and stuff
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: that happened, some of the decisions later. not one of
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: those people who says how young people today don't get
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: it i don't.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Oh no i don't agree i think they're asking better
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: questions exactly.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: Exactly which is hopeful so you you dig into this
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: this dark day and this dark and these dark this
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: decades of engagement and all these wars and all all
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: the pain that's caused and what it's cost us but
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: but um i i think i mean I emerged somewhat
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: hopeful from all this that, uh, you know, the right
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: questions are being asked and that there's a, there's an
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: instinct and a willingness to, to think about it.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: This debut on nine 11 itself or the, or the Monday.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Before the second. So it's, um, this is Wednesday.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Coming up this week. All right.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Brian, this was great. Appreciate the time. Congratulations.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: Great. Great to chat again.