Latest / The Infographics Show Podcast / 9/11: A Nation Remembers Twenty-Five Years Later

Transcript

9/11: A Nation Remembers Twenty-Five Years Later · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It is September 10th, 1998. So, you know, three full
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: years almost to the exact day before the Twin Towers
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: actually fall.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Right. Just a normal Thursday for most people.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But on this specific day, a highly classified piece
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of paper slides across a desk in Washington, D.C. Oh, yeah.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: The PDB.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Part of the president's daily brief. I mean, literally
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the most closely guarded intelligence document on the planet. And
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: on this piece of paper in black and white is
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a very specific warning.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: A warning that just hits so differently now.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It explicitly states that Osama bin Laden intends to strike
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the United States. And it doesn't just offer some like
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: vague threat. It actually specifies the message. An explosive laden plane.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Wow. And three years later. You know, that exact nightmare
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: unfolded in the skies over New York, Arlington, and Pennsylvania.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: It's the kind of historical detail that genuinely makes your
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: stomach drop when you find out about it. You look
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: at it and you realize that the architecture of the
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: tragedy was actually known. Like, the pieces were right there.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Right. Like, how does the most heavily funded, technologically advanced
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: intelligence apparatus in the history of human civilization have the
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: exact puzzle pieces in their hands, yet entirely fail to
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: put them together in time?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: That is the big question.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And that failure and the massive world-altering reaction to it
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: is exactly what we are unpacking today. So, welcome to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Beyond Infographics. This is the space where we cut through
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the daily noise and get to the absolute core of
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: what is shaping our world.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I am so thrilled you are joining our journey today,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: listening in. And before we really get going, just a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: quick reminder for you, if you enjoy our exploration today,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: taking a single second to rate the show five stars really,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: really helps us out. So, Let's establish where we are
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Good idea. Set the stage.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Today is September 11th, 2026. Exactly a quarter of a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: century has passed since the morning of the 9-11 attacks.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: 25 years.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: It's hard to believe it's been that long.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It really is. And our mission for this discussion is
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to explore the staggering, evolving legacy of that Tuesday morning.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: We are going to look at how it is physically
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: being memorialized today, and we'll delve into that astonishing new
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: intelligence that that has literally just been declassified today.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is a huge development.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Plus, we need to examine the tragic, ongoing health crisis
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: for first responders and ultimately figure out how that one
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: day fundamentally rewired American security and, you know, constructed the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: exact political landscape we are all living in right this
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: very moment.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: It is a massive undertaking for us today. But a
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: completely necessary one. I mean, when we look back at
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: monumental historical turning points, there is this natural human tendency
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to focus intensely on the day itself, right?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the timeline, the shock.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We fixate on the immediate horror, the visuals. But
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: the true lasting impact of an event of this magnitude
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: is really measured by how it alters the trajectory of
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: a society decades later. The shockwaves of 9-11 didn't just
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: dissipate into the atmosphere. They crystallized.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: They became permanent.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they change the very foundation of our culture, our laws,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: and basically our entire psychological baseline.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's start right there with the physical observance of
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: this milestone. Because from what I've learned, the way a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: society chooses to physically remember a tragedy tells you a
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: lot about where they are in the grieving process.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt. The memorials are very revealing.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So earlier this week, I was looking into the commemorations
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: happening in New York City today, and the visual at
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Ground Zero was just arresting For years, you know, we've
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: had the traditional tribute in light.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Those two massive beams of light.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Right, those haunting beams shining up into the night sky.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And they are still there, which is great. But for
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: this 25th anniversary, they incorporated a drone show. And not
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: just like a standard light display.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I saw some footage of this. It was unbelievable.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It was. They used exactly 2,977 drones. One for every
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: single person who was killed in the initial attacks. These
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: drones lifted into the New York Harbor skyline, swirling in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: this massive illuminated helix, spiraling upward into the dark. And
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: then they locked into position to recreate the exact silhouette,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the architectural footprint of the Twin Towers at their full
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: original height.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It's just the evolution of how we mourn publicly is
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: so fascinating. You have this blend of... Modern, cutting-edge technology
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: like a drone swarm layered over this incredibly solemn, quiet remembrance.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it felt very different from just the lights.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Because the tribute in light has always been beautiful in
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: its abstraction, you know? It's ethereal. But the drones add
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: this granular, almost unsettling humanity to it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Unsettling is a good word for it.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Right, because the fact that each light represents a specific,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: documented life lost... Physically taking up the exact coordinates in
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: the sky where those people lived their final moments, it
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: bridges the gap between a macro tragedy and micro loss.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: It's a very visceral way for a city to say,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: you know, we don't just feel an abstract loss. We
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: physically feel the specific empty space you left behind.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: That granularity really translates to how the morning is structured
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: at Ground Zero today, too. I mean, for years, if
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you've watched the coverage, you know the reading of the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: names is anchored by six chronological moments of silence.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Mapping to the events of the morning.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They mark the exact minutes the planes hit the towers,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: when the Pentagon was struck, the crash of Flight 93
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, and when each of the towers fell. At
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a rigid historical timeline. But in my research for today's discussion,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I found out that for this 25th anniversary... They have
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: permanently added a seventh moment of silence to the program.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. I actually hadn't heard about that addition. When
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: does it happen?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It happens at 12.52 p.m.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, that addition is profoundly significant. And frankly, long overdue
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: in the eyes of many families. Because that seventh moment
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: of silence isn't for the people who died on the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: morning of September 11, 2001. No, it's not. It is
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: dedicated strictly to the thousands of people who have lost
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: their lives in the 25 years since... due to toxic
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: exposure from the rescue, recovery, and cleanup efforts.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: It really reframes the whole day.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: It does. It is a formal acknowledgment by the institutions
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: of memory that the tragedy of 9-11 did not actually
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: end at 10.28 a.m. when the North Tower collapsed. The
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: dying continued. Adding that 12.52 p.m. pause to the permanent
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: historical ceremony, it's a major sheet in the narrative. It
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: officially expands the definition of who a 9-11 victim actually is.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: You can truly feel the weight of that expanded narrative
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: in the crowd today, too. The gathering in Manhattan is
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: just an incredible cross-section of living history. It's almost surreal
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to look at the footage.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Who all is there this year?
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Basically everyone. All the living former presidents are there. Clinton, Bush,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Obama and Biden, all standing together in lower Manhattan. But
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to be honest, amidst all these global historical figures, it
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: urged the microscopic human dynamics on the ground that really
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: caught my eye.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, like what?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Well, for instance, New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: former Mayor Rudy Giuliani are both in attendance. Now, if
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: you follow local New York politics, you know Giuliani has
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: been an incredibly vocal, often harsh critic of the new mayor.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Very harsh, yes.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But today, they exchanged pleasantries, they shook hands. Mamdani even
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: explicitly went on record saying, stating that they were putting
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: all political grievances aside to focus entirely on the families
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and the first responders.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Which is really the primary sociological function of these physical ceremonies.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: They force a pause in the societal machinery.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a forced pause.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. In an incredibly polarized environment, which I know we
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: will certainly get into later, these physical spaces of memorial
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: act as a temporary sacred equalizer.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: The shared undeniable reality of the grief demands a suspension
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: of the usual partisan combat. It tees a case temporary,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of course, but for a few hours, the shared identity
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: of being a survivor or a witness supersedes the identity
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: of being a political combatant.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: And speaking of that shared identity, there was one detail
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: from the New York crowd that just stopped me in
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: my tracks.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: What was it?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So, Vice President J.D. Vance is attending the ceremony, and
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: standing right next to him is a young active-duty Coast
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Guardsman named Matthew Palazzo. I looked into his story. Matthew's father,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Palasso, was a Coast Guardsman and an FDNY firefighter
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: in Rescue Company 5. Jeffrey died responding to the World
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Trade Center 25 years ago today. Oh, my goodness. And
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. Matthew never met his dad. He was
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: born after 9-11. And here he is today, having joined
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the Coast Guard himself in 2020, standing at ground zero
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: in full uniform, honoring a man he only knows through
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: stories and photographs.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Wow. It is the ultimate generational echo. It perfectly illustrates
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: how 9-11 is right now, shifting from a lived traumatic
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: memory for the older generation into an inherited legacy for
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the younger one.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He's inheriting it. Yeah.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Matthew Palazzo is embodying his father's service, wearing the exact
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: same uniform without ever having known him in life. It's
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: a poignant reminder of the unseen lifelong ripples that a
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: single morning of violence can create within a family's lineage.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: You know, the trauma isn't just what happened. It says
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: the lifelong absence of what was supposed to happen.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: That absence is palpable. It really is. But I want
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: to contrast that civilian intimate grief in New York with
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: what is happening about 200 miles away in Virginia today.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Right. At the Pentagon.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Because the atmosphere of the Pentagon ceremony carries a totally
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: different resonance. President Trump is in attendance. And in his remarks,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: he heavily framed the war on terror in the present tense.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: That's a very intentional rhetorical choice.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Definitely. He didn't just look backward. He was directly connecting
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the memory of the 9-11 attacks and the sacrifices made
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: in that building to the current military actions and tensions
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: with Iran.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: He stated very explicitly that we fight today because we
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: don't have a choice and that there can only be victory.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: From an impartial standpoint, it's just fascinating to see how
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the day is utilized.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It's a crucial distinction to make. The Pentagon is fundamentally
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: a military installation, right? It is the command center of
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: American hard power.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not a civilian plaza.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Right. So the memorials there inherently carry a different rhetorical
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: weight than the civilian site at Ground Zero. It's rarely
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: just about civilian mourning there. It's almost always intertwined with
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: military posture.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Historically, over the last 25 years, presidents from both parties
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: have used the solemn backdrop of the Pentagon on September
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: 11th to articulate their current defense doctrines. By invoking the
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: visceral memory of the 2001 attacks to discuss 2026 military engagements,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: it demonstrates how the emotional and political mandate generated by
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: 9-11 is still being actively utilized to explain and justify
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: contemporary foreign policy.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It's taking the emotional capital of 9-11 and spending it
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: on current geopolitical objectives. But what really struck me at
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon today wasn't just the present-day policy. It was
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: a deeply raw reflection on the past.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Who is speaking?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Condoleezza Rice. She was President Bush's national security advisor during
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the attacks, as you know. She delivered remarks today, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: they were incredibly heavy.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I can imagine. What did she focus on?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: She detailed her vivid memories of that exact morning. Sitting
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: at her desk, initially thinking the first plane hitting the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center was just a horrific navigational accident.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: A lot of people thought that at first.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Right. And she talked about the sudden, terrifying realization of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: an attack. President Bush being rushed onto Air Force One.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: to keep him airborne and safe. And then she shared
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this wild, almost cinematic detail about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, about him being outside.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. Apparently, he couldn't be reached in the immediate aftermath
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of the Pentagon strike because he was literally out in
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the parking lot, stubbornly pulling people from the burning rubble
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of the building, completely ignoring his security detail, who were
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: begging him to evacuate.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: That image of Rumsfeld is striking because it captures the
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: sheer unadulterated chaos of those first few hours. We tend
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: to view government as this omnipotent, perfectly structured machine, you know.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that they always have a plan.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But in a crisis of that unprecedented, unimaginable scale,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: the meticulously planned chain of command temporarily fractures. It shatters.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: And you are left with primal human reactions even from
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the United States Secretary of Defense. His instinct wasn't to
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: go to a bunker. It was to pull bodies from
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: burning concrete.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It's just wild to think about. It is.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: But what is even more compelling from a historical perspective
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: is Condoleezza Rice's profound expression of personal remorse in her
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: speech today.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. Oh, my gosh. Let me quote her exactly because
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I want to get this right for anyone listening. She
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: stood there and said, those of us in authority on
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: that day did not see the nature of the danger
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: in time to prevent the attack. That is.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Just extraordinary to hear from an official of that level.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I know. I had to pause when I read that.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Because it's wild to think about the sheer panic of
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: those first hours. But how does the passage of 25
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: years change how our leaders view their own failures? You
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: rarely hear a politician, let alone a national security advisor,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: stand at the site of a tragedy and say, I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: am personally remorseful that I failed to stop this.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It requires an enormous amount of psychological distance, and 25
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: years provides exactly that. In the immediate years following 9-11,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the posture of the U.S. government was overwhelmingly defensive.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Because they were heading into wars, right.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It was about projecting strength, projecting absolute unity and
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: absolute certainty. Admitting fault or expressing deep personal remorse for
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: intelligence failures was viewed as politically dangerous while the country
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: was mobilizing for two new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You couldn't show weakness.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: So they just kind of buried the self-doubt. Yes.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But a quarter of a century allows historical figures to
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: step back and view their own legacy with a much
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: more critical, sober eye. For Condoleezza Rice to stand there
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: today and publicly articulate that remorse, to essentially say, we
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: did what we knew to do, but our imagination and
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: our systems were inadequate, that shows how the burden of
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: leadership doesn't end when you leave office. It's a ghost
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: you carry for the rest of your life.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: I feel that heavy burden when I look at the
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: third major site today, too, Shanksville, Pennsylvania. At the Flight
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: 93 Memorial, the ceremony is deeply intimate. They're reading the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: names of the 33 passengers and seven crew members.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: It always feels so different there out in that field.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It really does. And I came across this powerful quote
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: from Gordy Felt. His brother Ed died on that plane.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: He described the passengers of Flight 93 as, The citizen
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: soldiers of the new century.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: That is a very apt description.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: He said they realized the plane wasn't a hostage situation.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: It was a weapon. And they took the battle into
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: their own hands before the U.S. military even had time
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: to fully comprehend the airspace violation, let alone respond to it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: That phrase, citizen soldiers, is incredibly precise because Flight 93
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: represents a very specific, totally unique chapter of the 9-11 narrative.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Well, the people on that plane were the very first
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Americans to fully comprehend the new reality of the post-9-11 world.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Everyone else on the ground was watching it unfold in confusion.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: But the passengers on Flight 93, talking to their loved
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: ones on air phones, synthesized the terrifying information they were
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: getting about New York and the Pentagon.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Right. They put it together in real time?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yes. They realized the old rules of a hijacking, where
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: you sit quietly and wait for demands, no longer applied.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the luxury of time or military strategy.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: They had to hold a hasty Democratic vote in the
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: back of a doomed airplane and make a collective decision
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: to sacrifice themselves to save others, which, you know, intelligence
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: later confirmed was likely the U.S. Capitol building.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: It is a profound story of spontaneous collective courage in
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a vacuum of institutional protection.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: A vacuum of institutional protection. That is a perfect way
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to phrase it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And it leads us directly to the next part of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: our discussion. We've talked about how the nation is physically
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: reflecting on the past, but I want to pivot to
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the secrets of that past that have literally just been
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: uncovered today.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, the new declassification.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly, because as you and I discussed before we started recording,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the CIA just released a massive trove of declassified intelligence today.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: We are talking about 71 previously classified intelligence reports.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Which is huge.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It is. Most of these are President's Daily Briefs, the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: PDBs spanning from the Clinton era until right through the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Bush era leading up to the attacks.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: This is a monumental release. For historians, for national security analysts,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: and especially for the families, this is the holy grail
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: of documentation.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Because it's the raw data.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The president's daily brief is arguably the most highly
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: guarded document in the federal government. It's the concentrated distillation
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: of the intelligence community's most urgent warnings, presented directly to
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the commander-in-chief. Releasing 71 of them related to al-Qaeda, gives
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: us an unprecedented, unvarnished look under the hood of the
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: intelligence apparatus of that era.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: We get to see exactly what they knew.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly what they knew and when they knew it.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And what they knew is going to make a lot
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of people furious. There is one detail in this release
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: that I just cannot get past. It is a glaring,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: massive red flag.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: The 1998 memo.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. There is a specific memo dated September 10th, 1998. Again,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that is three years almost to the day before the attacks.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It was prepared for senior administration officials. And this memo
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: explicitly warned that Osama bin Laden intended to strike the U.S.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: with an explosive-laden plane.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: It's hard to read that and not feel frustrated.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I want to push you on this because I am
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: genuinely struggling to understand it. I'm looking at the timeline.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: 1998 is right after the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and Tanzania. The intelligence community is on absolute high alert
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: regarding bin Laden. How on earth does someone read the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: exact phrase explosive-laden plane No bin Laden is actively attacking U.S.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: targets and then failed to stop it three years later.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Was this just institutional arrogance?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate tragedy of the pre-911 security state.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: What you are identifying isn't just arrogance. It is the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: lethal danger of bureaucratic silos.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Bureaucratic silos? Yes.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: When we talk about intelligence failures, people often assume it
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: was a failure of collection. You know, that the spies
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: just didn't get the information.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Right, that they didn't know.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: But that's not true here. They were gathering the data.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: The 1998 memo proves they had the specific method. The
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: failure was a failure of imagination and crucially, a failure
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: of sharing.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Explain that to me. What do you mean a failure
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: of sharing? Was there a rule against it?
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yes. Before 9-11, there was a massive legal and
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: cultural wall between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. You
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: had the FBI operating domestically, investigating crimes. You had the
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: CIA operating internationally, gathering intelligence. And there is very little
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: systemic legal communication between the two.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Really? They just didn't talk?
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Think of it like a hospital where the radiologist sees
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: a massive tumor on an x-ray. But due to a
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: bizarre hospital policy, they are legally forbidden from talking to
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: the surgeon who is about to operate on that patient.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That is a terrible policy.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Information was hoarded as institutional currency rather than shared
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: as a collective defense strategy. So a CIA analyst writes
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: a warning about an explosive-laden plane in 1998. It gets
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: read by a policymaker. But without a coordinated interagency mechanism
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: to track that specific threat matrix domestically over the next
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: three years, say, tracking foreign nationals, taking flight lessons in
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Florida or Arizona, the puzzle piece just gets buried in
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: the sheer daily avalanche of global threats.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: That hospital analogy is chilling. You have the x-ray, but
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: you can't tell the surgeons. And that failure to connect
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: those dots leads directly to another jarring reality that I
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: think is going to absolutely shock you if you haven't
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: followed the legal proceedings closely.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: The Guantanamo trials.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yes. 25 years later, the alleged plotters of the 9-11
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: attacks the guys who were actually captured, including the accused
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: principal architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, still haven't stood trial.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: It's hard to fathom.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They are sitting down in Guantanamo Bay. And the selection
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of the jury is currently slated for June 2028. It's
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: been a quarter of a century, and the wheels of
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: justice are just entirely stalled.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering timeline that defies almost every standard
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of American jurisprudence. When we think about the justice system,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: we operate on the fundamental assumption of a right to
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a speedy trial and the eventual resolution of conflict.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: But the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay have been mired
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: in unprecedented, some would say insurmountable, legal complexities.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Break that down for me. Why is it insurmountable? We
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: caught them. We have the evidence. Why does it take
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: over 20 years to hold a trial?
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Because the government created a legal black hole that they
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: couldn't escape from. First, you are dealing with a military
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: tribunal rather than a federal court, which has its own
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: opaque procedures.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, sure.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Second, you are dealing with highly classified evidence. But the
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: profoundly complicating factor, the fatal flaw in the prosecution, is
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: how these defendants were interrogated. Specifically, the use of enhanced
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: interrogation techniques, which is the government's euphemism for torture at
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: CIA black sites before they were brought to Guantanamo.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Ah, right. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So you bring these men to trial. The prosecution
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: wants to use their confessions. But defense attorneys rightly argue
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: that any confession obtained through torture, or even confessions obtained
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: later that are tainted by the initial torture, are inadmissible.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Because it violates their rights?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's known as the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: To argue that point, the defense needs the classified details
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: of what happened at those black sites.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And the government won't give it up. Bingo.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: The government. protecting state secrets and CIA personnel refuses to
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: declassify that information. So you end up in this perpetual
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: agonizing legal stalemate. The trial cannot move forward without exposing
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: state secrets about the torture program, and the defense cannot
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: mount a fair trial without them. So they just sit
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: there year after year filing endless pretrial motions.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: And the human toll of that perpetual delay is just devastating.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I was listening to an interview with Gordon Felt, who
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier from Flight 93. And he talked about
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the profound frustration of the family.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: It has to be maddening for them.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: They have the ceremonial closure of the memorials, the reading
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of the names, the moments of silence. Yeah. But they
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: don't have the legal accountability. The analogy that kept coming
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: to my mind as I researched this is like a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: severe physical wound.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Well, you get injured. You put a bandage over it.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: You go to therapy to talk about the trauma. You
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: hold ceremonies every year to honor the fact that you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: survived the injury. But the splinter is still deep inside
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the wound. It was never actually removed. So the infection
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of unresolved justice is still there, festering under the surface.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: That is a very precise and visceral analogy. For the families,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: justice delayed on this scale is a form of ongoing
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: secondary trauma. It prevents a certain type of psychological healing. Absolutely.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: A functioning society relies on its legal institutions to provide
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: a definitive, objective accounting of a crime. We need the
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: court to say, this is what happened, these are the
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: guilty parties, and here is the punishment.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: We need that period at the end of the sentence.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Yes. When that accounting is delayed for over 25 years,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: it creates a lingering sense of systemic failure that compounds
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the original grief. It tells the families that the system
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: that failed to protect their loved ones is now failing
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: to deliver justice for them.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And you can see that desperation for accountability boil over
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: today in New York. The memorials are usually completely devoid
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: of politics. But during the reading of the names at
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Ground Zero today, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the North Tower, went completely off script.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: I heard about this. It was quite a moment.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It was. She used her time at the podium for
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a very fierce pointed call to action. She directly called
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: out Saudi Arabia's alleged role in supporting the hijackers. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: she didn't stop there. She directly demanded that the Trump
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: administration stop protecting Saudi interests and finally stand with the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: 9-11 families.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: On national television.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Right there at the memorial. On national television. It was
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a stark reminder that this isn't just ancient history for
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: these families. It is an active, ongoing, diplomatic and legal
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: street fight.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: This raises a fascinating point about the intersection of grief
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and geopolitics. The 9-11 families have not just been passive
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: victims over the last 25 years. They have morphed into
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: an incredibly potent political force.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: They really have. They are organized.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Very organized. They have repeatedly pushed the U.S. government on
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: issues of transparency. They fought for the 9-11 Commission to
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: even exist. They fought for the release of classified documents.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: And they often put immense pressure on administrations of both
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: parties regarding the highly complex U.S.-Saudi relationship.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Yet Terry Strada's remarks really underline that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: They do. It demonstrates that the memorial site isn't just
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: a place for passive mourning. It can be weaponized as
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: a platform for demanding justice. It shows that the geopolitical
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: alliances forged or maintained in the wake of 9-11 are
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: still highly contested by the very citizens who paid the
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: highest price that day.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And that price, that lack of closure we're talking about,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: isn't just legal or diplomatic. It's physical.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, the health impacts.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: For thousands of people, it is a horrifying medical reality
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: that they wake up with every single day. The numbers
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I found in my research regarding the expanding toll of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: this tragedy are just heartbreaking.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: The secondary death toll.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We all know the tragic number of 2,977 people
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: killed on the day of the attack. That number is
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: etched in stone. There is a secondary death toll that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: is quietly eclipsing it. Roughly 6,000 first responders, survivors, and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: volunteers have now died from 911-related illnesses in the years since.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Double the original number?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Double. 6,000 people. Just this week, the FDNY had to
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: add 36 more names to its memorial wall for firefighters
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: who died this past year from Ground Zero illnesses.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: The scale of the secondary casualty event is monumental. And
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: for a long time, it was sort of overshadowed by
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: the shock of the initial hack.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Why do you think it took so long to recognize?
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Well, when those towers collapsed, they didn't just fall, they pulverized.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: They pulverized millions of tons of concrete, glass, asbestos, lead,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: burning jet fuel and plastics.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Just a toxic cloud.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: A highly toxic alkaline dust cloud that blanketed lower Manhattan
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: and seeped into the buildings and the subway system. The
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: first responders who rushed in to dig through the pile
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: and the residents and office workers who returned to the
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: area breathe that toxic stew in for months.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And the numbers from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: are staggering. They have seen 112,000 claims.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Unbelievably.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: 112,000 individuals seeking help for illnesses directly related to that exposure.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: The fund has paid out over $ 18 billion. Let that
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: sink in.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: It's hard to wrap your head around those figures.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: It is. To understand the human cost behind those bureaucratic numbers,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I was reading about a man named Peter Raho. He
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was an accountant. He worked near Ground Zero. In the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: days and weeks after the attacks, the federal government, specifically
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the EPA, explicitly told the public that the air was
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: safe to breathe.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I remember that announcement.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: The quote was that the air was safe. So Peter,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: trusting his government, went back to work. Years later, he
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which doctors directly linked to
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: that toxic exposure.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: That is just tragic.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I look at a story like that and the betrayal
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: of being told by your leaders that it was safe,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: only to have that very air slowly kill you years later.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: It's a whole different layer of tragedy. It's a breach
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: of trust.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: It is a profound breach of public trust, and it
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: forces us to look at the motivations of the time.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: The initial declarations about the air quality were heavily driven
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: by a desire to project national resilience.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Like, we won't let them shut us down.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The government wanted to get Wall Street open. They
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to get the economic heart of the country beating
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: again to show the terrorists that they hadn't crippled us.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: But the long-term consequence of that desperate rush back to
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: normalcy was a localized public health catastrophe.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: The story of Peter Aho really humanizes it.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: It does. It forces us to grapple with the long
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: tale of environmental hazards and warfare and terrorism. The weapon
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: on 9-11 wasn't just the planes. The weapon eventually became
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the very air of the city itself.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: With this physical generation of 9-11 survivors and first responders aging,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and tragically so many passing away prematurely due to these
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: specific illnesses, the question becomes, how do we preserve the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: human history of this event?
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: We are losing the primary witnesses.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: We are losing the people who can actually say, I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: was there. I started looking into the oral history projects
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: that are out there, and the scale of the preservation
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: effort is incredible. You have the 9-11 Museum. the StoryCorps
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: project founded by Dave Isay, and the massive Stony Brook
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: University collection housed at the Library of Congress.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: They've done incredible work gathering those accounts.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Combined, they have preserved over 2,500 firsthand recorded accounts.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: These oral histories are invaluable precisely because they democratize the
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: historical record. If you look at traditional history textbooks, they
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: tend to focus on the macro level, the presidents, the generals,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the massive geopolitical shifts, the troop movements.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Right, the big picture.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: But oral history captures the micro level. It captures the
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: sensory details, the smell of the dust, the sound of
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the alarms. It captures the confusion and the split-second decisions
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: of ordinary people who woke up expecting a normal Tuesday
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: and were suddenly thrust into an extraordinary nightmare.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: As Amy Weinstein from the 9-11 Museum has pointed out,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: these stories act as a vital civs lesson.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: A civics lesson is a great way to describe it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they teach us about human resiliency, extreme camaraderie, and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the raw capacity for altruism in a way that dry
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: policy documents or timeline summaries never could.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Any specific stories stand out to you in your research?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, the anecdotes in these archives are just unforgettable. They
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: stick with you. For example, I listened to an account
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: from David Martin. He was a longtime CBS News national
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: security correspondent.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, at the Pentagon.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. On the morning of 9-11, he was driving to
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: work at the Pentagon. He's sitting in traffic. Suddenly, he
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: hears a massive boom and sees a massive pillar of
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: black smoke rising from the building where he works. And
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: what does he do?
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Most people would turn around.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But he ditches his car in the middle of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the road and he starts running toward the smoke. He
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: is literally fighting against the tide of thousands of terrified
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: people evacuating the building and he is running into it. Wow.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: That journalistic instinct, that human instinct to bear witness and report,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: completely overriding the primal biological instinct to flee.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: It highlights the different roles people assume in a crisis,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: almost instinctively. While the natural logical reaction for 99% of
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: people is self-preservation and escape, You have journalists, first responders,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: and sometimes just ordinary citizens who are able to completely
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: compartmentalize their fear.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Just totally suppress it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Yes. They suppress their biology to fulfill a duty, whether
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: that duty is to save lives or to record the
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: truth of what is happening.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And speaking of fulfilling a duty in the face of
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: unimaginable terror, my research led me to the story of
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the phone call between Vanessa Minter and Betty Young.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, that is a harrowing story.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: If you haven't heard this story, it will break your heart.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Vanessa was an American Airlines reservations agent on the ground
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: in North Carolina. Betty Ahn was a flight attendant on
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: American Airlines Flight 11, which was the very first plane
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: that was hijacked out of Boston.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: The one that hit the North Tower.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Amidst the chaos of the hijacking, Betty managed to
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: get to a seat in the back of the plane,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: pick up an air phone, and call the reservation center.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Vanessa answered, For several agonizing minutes, Betty remained incredibly calm.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: It's remarkable how composed she was.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: She relayed crucial, highly specific information. She told them that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the cockpit wasn't answering, that someone had been stabbed in
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: business class, and that they were being hijacked. Vanessa later
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: said Betty was a pillar, completely professional, all business. And
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the last thing Betty said before the line went dead,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: right before the plane hit the North Tower, was pray
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: for us.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Just heartbreaking.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: And I read that 25 years later, Vanessa finally met
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Betty's family in person. I can't imagine the weight of
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: carrying those last words, that trauma, for a quarter of
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a century.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: That interaction is a masterclass in professional grace under absolute pressure.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Betty Ong provided the very first piece of concrete intelligence
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the United States government received that morning about the nature
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: of the attack.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Before anyone even knew what was going on.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Her ability to suppress her own panic, to transmit
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: actionable information, saved crucial time in understanding the threat. And
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: for Vanessa Minter, being the anchor on the other end
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: of that line, receiving that trauma in real time, it
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: speaks to the invisible emotional shrapnel that so many people
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: absorbed that day.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Emotional shrapnel.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: You didn't have to be in the towers to be scarred.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: People absorbed trauma just by picking up a phone or honestly,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: just by turning on a television and watching it happen live.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: That invisible shrapnel is everywhere in these oral histories. I
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: read another account from Carol Pockner, who was a transit
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: police officer in New York. She perfectly articulated the impossible
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: position of the first responders that day.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: What did she say?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: She said that as a police officer, you are trained
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and used to walking into the worst 10 minutes of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: someone's life. And your job is to fix it. You
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: take control. But on 9-11, she said there was no playbook.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: There really wasn't.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: There was no procedure for what to do when 110-story
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: skyscrapers are collapsing into the streets. It was pure, unadulterated chaos.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: And they just had to abandon training and do whatever
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: they could to save as many people as possible.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: What Carol Pauchner is describing there is the sudden, catastrophic
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: collapse of institutional procedure. First responders are highly trained, but
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: they are trained for emergencies that fit within a known,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: predictable paradigm.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Right, like standard emergencies.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They trained for high-rise fires. They trained for active shooters.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: They trained for natural disasters. 9-11 shattered the paradigm entirely.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: It was an event outside the scope of human imagination
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: at the time.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: You literally couldn't prepare for it.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Right. Her testimony underscores the fact that the rescue response
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: wasn't a coordinated, algorithmic success orchestrated by a command center.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: It was a desperate, improvisational triumph of the human spirit
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: on the ground level. The manuals burned up and they
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: operated on pure instinct and empathy.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And that leads us to such a fascinating pivot in
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: our discussion. Because we look at that day and it
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: was entirely defined by individual acts of improvisation and desperate heroism.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: But how did that morning translate into the massive, rigid,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: highly structured bureaucratic and military machine that we all live
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: with today?
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: The post 9-11 state.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Because the 25-year policy legacy of 9-11 is literally baked
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: into our daily routines. I was thinking about how much
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: a regular person's daily life is a product of what
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: happened that morning.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: It is a profound, total rewiring of the American state.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: We have to remember that before 9-11, the concept of
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: homeland security as a unified, cohesive governmental function didn't really exist.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Right. There was no DHS.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The attacks revealed a terrifying truth. The United States
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: was vulnerable not just to state actors with standing armies
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: and nuclear weapons, but to non-state actors who could exploit
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: the open, trusting nature of a free society. The oceans
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: no longer protected us. Right.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So the government's response to realizing we were vulnerable was
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: just an unprecedented massive expansion of bureaucracy. Overnight, we got
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the creation of the TSA, which permanently changed how we travel,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: making us take our shoes off and go through scanners.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: The new normal.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: We got ICE, Customs and Border Protection, the massive umbrella
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: of the Department of Homeland Security, which swallowed up 22
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: different agencies. And we got the Office of the Director
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: of National Intelligence, which was specifically created to try and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: fix those communication silos we talked about earlier with the
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: FBI and CIA.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Right. Trying to force them to share the x-rays, to
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: use your analogy.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It was a complete overhaul of Of the homeland.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: But here is the wild part, and I need you
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: to explain this to me. I was reviewing some recent
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: analysis by security expert Samantha Vinograd.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: She has some great insight.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: She does. She points out that we built this massive
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: trillion dollar apparatus to fight the 2001 version of terrorism,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: which meant foreign hierarchical organizations like Al Qaeda with training
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: camps in Afghanistan and a clear chain of command. Right.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: But she says the threat landscape today is completely shapeshifted.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: She is entirely correct. And this is the great paradox
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: of our current security state. We spent 25 years and
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: trillions of dollars building an impenetrable fortress to keep foreign
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: operatives out.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Like a giant wall.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We made it incredibly difficult for an al-Qaeda operative
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: to board a plane or cross a border. But while
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: we were building the walls, the nature of radicalization democratized
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: and digitized.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: What does that mean, democratized and digitized?
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: It means the threat has morphed from highly orchestrated international
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: plots directed by a mastermind in a cave into technology-enabled
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: individualized domestic terrorism. People are no longer flying to training
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: camps in the mountains of Afghanistan to learn how to
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: build bombs.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: They're just doing it online. Right.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Right. They are being radicalized right here at home, sitting
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: on their couches via social media algorithms. The hierarchical command
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: and control structure of al-Qaeda has been replaced by what
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: experts call stochastic terrorism.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Stochastic terrorism? Break that down for me. How does that
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: actually work in practice?
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Stochastic terrorism is when leaders, influencers, or algorithms propagate extreme
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: rhetoric and conspiracy theories to a mass audience, knowing that someone, somewhere,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: will eventually be triggered to commit an act of violence,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: even though they don't know exactly who or when.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's random but inevitable.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's statistically predictable, but individually random. A teenager with
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: a smartphone in 2026 can consume extremist propaganda on a
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: fringe message board, get sucked down an algorithmic rabbit hole,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: decide to build a weapon using instructions found online, and
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: attack a local supermarket or power grid.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: And they don't even need to be part of a group.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They have no ties to a foreign terror group.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: They have no co-conspirators to intercept.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: So all the wiretaps and the border security we built
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: after 9-11 are functionally useless against them.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: In many ways, yes. The massive DHS bureaucracy was built
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: to find needles and haystacks crossing our borders. It is
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: utterly unequipped to deal with the haystack itself suddenly catching
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: fire from within.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: That reality makes the current assessment from the Department of
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Homeland Security absolutely chilling. DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen gave
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: a speech today, and he flat out said that another
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: terrorist attack on U.S. soil is a matter of when,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: not if.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: A very sobering assessment.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: But his reasoning wasn't that the massive DHS bureaucracy is
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: failing or that Al Qaeda is slipping through. He said
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it's because it only... takes one little person slipping through
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the cracks. It only takes one person getting radicalized online
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: and acting alone to create a mass casualty event.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: That is the inherent terrifying dilemma of the post 9-11
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: security state. You can build the most sophisticated, well-funded, panoptic
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: intelligence apparatus in human history, but it is practically impossible
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: to predict the actions of every single radicalized individual acting
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: in total isolation.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: You just can't track everyone.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: No. Secretary Mullen's stark warning is a rare public admission
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: of the limits of institutional power. It is an acknowledgment
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: that absolute security in an open, technologically hyper-connected society is
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: a myth.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: And in the pursuit of that impossible, mythical, absolute security,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: we have profoundly changed the culture of citizenship. This is
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: an area I spent a lot of time researching for
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: our exploration today, deeply inspired by Richard Becker's book, Homeland.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: That's an excellent book on this topic.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Because the legacy of 9-11 isn't just taking your laptop
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: out of your bag at the airport. It's the creation
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of a ubiquitous, normalized surveillance state. I mean, look around
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: your neighborhood today. There are flock license plate cameras on
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: nearly every corner in thousands of towns tracking where you drive.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Right, just recording everywhere you go.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: We have facial recognition at stadiums. We have accepted a
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: level of daily normalized surveillance that would have been completely unthinkable,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: even dystopian, to an American living in the year 2000.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: The psychological tradeoff that the American public made in the
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: immediate aftermath of the attacks is a subject of endless
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: academic study. There was a collective, bipartisan willingness to trade
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: civil liberties and privacy for the promise of physical security.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: People just wanted to feel safe.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The trauma of 9-11 was so acute, so universally terrifying,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: that the rapid expansion of government surveillance powers, most notably
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: the Patriot Act, was met with very little mainstream resistance
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: at the time. People wanted to feel safe, and they
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: were willing to let the government listen in to achieve that.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: But it never went away. No.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Over 25 years, that emergency posture hasn't receded. It has
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: become the permanent, unquestioned status quo. The surveillance architecture built
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: specifically to hunt foreign terrorists is now routinely used for
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: low-level domestic policing and data collection.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: And Beck argues in his work that this hasn't just
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: changed our privacy, it has fundamentally changed our politics. He
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: points out that the post-9-11 era created a culture where
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: questioning government policy, especially regarding the war on terror... the invasions,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: or the Patriot Act, was seen as deeply taboo, unpatriotic,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: or even actively dangerous.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, that with us or against us mentality.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly. If you dissented, you were marginalized. I really wanted
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: to unpack this with you. How did this degradation of dissent,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: this idea championed by the Bush administration that you are
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: with us or against us, pave the way for our
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: current highly polarized political climate in 2026.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: That is a big leap to make, but a very
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: important one.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Right. A climate where political opponents aren't just viewed as
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: people with wrong ideas, but are actively labeled as evil.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most insidious long-term cultural legacy of
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: the 9-11 era. The rhetoric of the war on terror
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: relied heavily on absolute moral binaries. It was framed by
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: leadership as a cosmic struggle between absolute good, the homeland,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: and absolute evil, the terrorists.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Black and white.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Right. When you import that exact linguistic framework from foreign
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: policy into domestic politics, it destroys the capacity for democratic debate.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: If your political opponent across the aisle is not merely
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: mistaken on tax policy or healthcare, but is framed as
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: fundamentally evil or a threat to the survival of the homeland,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: then compromise becomes a moral failing.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Wow, because you don't compromise with evil.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The intense, hyper-nationalistic unity of September 12, 2001 temporarily
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: required the suppression of critical dissent. And as that enforced
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: unity inevitably fractured over the subsequent years, the habit of
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: demonizing the opposition remained. It trained an entire generation of
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: political actors and voters to view basic political disagreement as
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: an existential threat.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Wow. That is a heavy insight. If you view your
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: neighbor as an existential threat, democracy grinds to a halt.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: It makes you realize that the connective tissue between the
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: post-9-11 war footing and the exact political moment we are
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: living in right now in 2026 is incredibly strong.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: It really is a direct line.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the current geopolitical echoes playing out right now.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: For instance, former President George W. Bush recently gave a
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: speech warning against the rising tide of American isolationism. And
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the context for that is just staggering when you step
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: back and look at the timeline.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: The timeline is wild to look at.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: We were attacked on 9-11. We went into Afghanistan to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: dismantle al-Qaeda and the Taliban. We fought a war there
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: for 20 years. We spent trillions of dollars. We lost
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: thousands of American lives. We eventually withdrew in chaos. And now,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: in 2026, the Taliban is back in power in Kabul,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: ruling the country again, and they are literally parading around
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: using abandoned American military weapons.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: It is a stark, almost cyclical historical irony. Bush's warning
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: against isolationism reflects the traditional post-WWII and post-911 consensus. That
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: American security requires forward projection and active, muscular intervention abroad.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Right, that we have to be everywhere.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: But the ultimate outcome in Afghanistan has severely, perhaps permanently,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: eroded the American public's appetite for that doctrine. The visual
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: of the Taliban reclaiming the presidential palace, equipped with American
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: tactical gear and Black Hawk helicopters, is a devastating critique
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: of the efficacy of a 20-year nation-building project.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: It's hard to argue with those visuals.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: It forces a very uncomfortable reckoning for the foreign policy
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: establishment about the absolute limits of American military power to
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: engineer lasting political outcomes in complex foreign societies.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And yet, even with the exhaustion of the Afghanistan withdrawal,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the war on terror framework is still being actively utilized
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: by leadership today. I noted earlier that President Trump at
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon connected the memory of 9-11 to current tensions
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: with Iran.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, that was notable.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made incredibly aggressive comments today
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: as well. He stated that the U.S. is currently fighting
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: an Islamic theocracy that cheered on 9-11. He was explicit,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: saying they are ensuring Iran will never have a nuclear
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: weapon and boasting about sending terrorists to hell and tankers
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: If you objectively examine that rhetoric without taking a side,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: you can clearly see the direct application of the post-9-11
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: playbook to a completely different geopolitical adversary.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Because Iran isn't al-Qaeda.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Iran is a distinct nation-state with its own complex history,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: its own military, and its own strategic objectives. It is
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: completely separate from the Sunni extremist network of al-Qaeda that
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: perpetrated the 9-11 attacks.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: But they are framing it the same way.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: However, by rhetorically linking the current conflict with Iran to
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the emotional, visceral memory of September 11th, By emphasizing the
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: term Islamic theocracy, and specifically referencing the cheering on 9-11,
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: the administration is attempting to mobilize the same level of
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: domestic support and moral clarity that existed in 2001.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: It's pulling on that same emotional thread.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: It is a deliberate strategy to legitimize a current, complex
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: military posture by anchoring it to the defining, universally understood
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: national trauma of this century.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It's all connected. The past is never actually the past.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: It's just prologue. And this brings us right to the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: doorstep of our domestic politics today. Because amidst all these
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: solemn 25th anniversary commemorations, the political machine of 2026 just
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: keeps churning on without missing a beat.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: It never stops.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: The State of the Union address is fast approaching. The
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: nation is heavily, heavily divided. We are in the middle
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: of a massive debate over the economy, inflation, and the
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: upcoming midterm elections. In fact, the Trump administration has been
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: making this highly unusual, highly publicized promise to send $ 5, 000
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: checks directly to Americans if the Republicans win the midterms.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: The contrast between the civic atmosphere of 2001 and 2026
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: is jarring. The defining characteristic of September 12, 2001 was
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: an absolute, profound, almost physical sense of national unity. Right.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Everyone was together.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats literally stowed shoulder to
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: shoulder on the Capitol steps singing God Bless America. Today,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: the reality is a deeply fractured, hyper-partisan landscape.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: To say the least.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: The promise of direct cash payments contingent on an election
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: outcome is a populist tactic that reflects a highly transactional,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: economically stressed, and divided electorate. It prioritizes immediate economic relief
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: over the abstract notions of unified national purpose that defined
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: the early 2000s.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: The division is so deep that even attending the State
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of Union, which used to be a basic civic duty,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: is now a point of intense partisan conflict. Speaker of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the House Mike Johnson recently gave an interview where he
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: criticized Democrats for planning to boycott the upcoming speech entirely,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: calling it detestable and a break from tradition.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: It's a completely different world now.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: So I have to ask you, looking at all of this,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: we have unending legal battles at Guantanamo, shifting terrorist threats
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: from al-Qaeda to domestic algorithms, a massive surveillance state, and
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: intense partisan hostility. Are we permanently stuck in the cultural
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and political shockwaves of 9-11? Or are we finally, 25
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: years later, transitioning into a genuinely new era?
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It is the defining question of this 25th anniversary. I
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: would argue that we are not permanently stuck, but the
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: transition is painfully, agonizingly slow.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Why is it so slow?
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Because the structures built after 9-11, the massive security bureaucracies
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: like DHS, the surveillance laws, the polarized political rhetoric, those
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: structures are highly resistant to dismantling. Bureaucracies rarely vote themselves
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: out of existence. They have become self-perpetuating.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: They just keep growing.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We are undoubtedly transitioning into a new era, one
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: defined much more by a great power competition with nations
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: like China, and intense internal domestic friction rather than the
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: global war on terror. However, we are entering this new
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: era carrying all the baggage, the fears, and the institutional
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: reflexes that were forged in the fires of September 11th.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So we're dragging it with us.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: The era may be changing, the threats may be changing,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: but the American operating system is still running on post-911 software.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: The American operating system is still running on post-911 software.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: That is a brilliant way to frame it. As we
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: wrap up our exploration today, I am just struck by
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the sheer overwhelming density of this legacy.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: It's a lot to process.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: It's not just a historical event in a textbook. It
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: is a living, breathing, constantly evolving reality. You see it
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: physically in the failing lungs of the first responders. You
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: see it structurally in the alphabet soup of government agencies
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: tracking our data. You see it legally in the stalled
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: courtrooms at Guantanamo. And you hear it in the way
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: our politicians speak to us today. using the trauma of
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the past to shape the policies of the future.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: And as we move forward, the very nature of how
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: we understand this legacy is going to undergo a profound
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: fundamental shift. Consider this final thought as we close. None
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: of the students currently sitting in a New York City
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: public school classroom today were alive on September 11, 2001.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Wow, none of them.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Not a single one. For them, it is not a memory.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: It is history. It is something taught by parents and
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: teachers alongside the Civil War or Pearl Harbor. As we
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: inevitably move toward the 50th anniversary, 9-11 will transition entirely
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: from a lived visceral memory that dictates our emotional reflexes
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: into the realm of pure historical narrative.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: That's a huge shift.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: It is. How will our national understanding of freedom, privacy,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: and security change when there is no one left in
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: power who actually remembers what the world felt like before
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: that Tuesday morning?
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Wow. What happens when the post-9-11 software is the only
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: operating system anyone has ever known? It's a haunting... vital
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: question to leave on thank you so much for joining
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: us on beyond infographics today if this discussion resonated with
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you and helped you understand the world a little bit
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: better please take a moment to rate us five stars
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: it really helps us keep bringing you these deep explorations
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: into the events that shape our lives see you next
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: time