How 9/11 changed the world

0:00This is a global player, original podcast. Three minutes after, ten is the time you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I don't know, I don't know, I have a great deal to say to you at the top of the show this morning. Which is fine because it is of course a phone in. I'm just sort of wondering two things. I spoke to a man yesterday, you'll hear this conversation later, who was on his way to work that morning and was due. In fact, in the windows on the world restaurant, he was the executive chef up there right up in the upper floors of the building. And for reasons that were entirely banal, he decided to pop into the optometrists in the plaza, in the sort of shopping area at the bottom of the twin towers. The building, the structure that linked the two. And he had an appointment for later that day,

1:02but he was running quite early. So he thought he'd just pop in and see if they could deal with his needs, deal with his spectacles at that time. And that's why he wasn't at the top of the building when the first plane hit. That was it. I mean, it almost sounds inadequate, doesn't it, to describe it as a sliding doors moment or a twist of fate. But it was that simple. I'll play that conversation a little later in the program, but I kind of couldn't get past the beginning of it. We were supposed to be talking about the broader ramifications and the memories of that day. But as I swatted up on his story before I met him, I just got stuck on that incredible, happenstance, that incredible coincidence. And that idea,

2:04there's a famous piece of film footage when I think was it that the Hindenburg Zeplin caught fire. And I should have checked this before I came on there. I'm sorry. I think it was Walter Cronkite, the kind of iconic US newscaster, who just said this phrase, oh, the humanity. As he watched this airship burn. And obviously has the job in live broadcast context in real time. He obviously has the job of not only describing what he's seeing, but processing it as a human being. And I'm not sure there'll ever be a more perfect encapsulation of that process than simply saying, oh, the humanity. Because many people, of course, watched the second plane. My guest here, you'll meet later, watched the second plane hit the building. I had the point at which any,

3:04I was going to say, my guest here, you'll meet later, watched the second plane hit the building. I had the point at which any suspicion, hope, I don't even know what the word is, that it was a coincidence or an accident of some sort. That disappeared completely. And of course, also, the prospect of some of the people still in the building's getting out, began to disappear. Nobody expected the buildings to collapse. And yet, of course, they did something that many people watched both in New York, in the proximity, in the vicinity of the buildings, and also by then, on the television cameras. As people, as you just heard in the news, there, it was Herb Morrison, was the guy's name, over humanity. Forgive me. I told you I should have checked before I came on air. I didn't know that was going to pop into my mind. I'd be honest with you, just did.

4:04Because it was one of those examples, it was because I heard that newscaster in the news bulletin responding to the moment that was utterly unprecedented, utterly incomprehensible when another plane flew into the buildings. And in that moment, you don't know what's going to come out of your mouth. And for Herb Morrison, for Herb Morrison, it was, oh, the humanity, reporting on the fiery crash of the German airship in Hamburg in 1937. And it just sort of struck me that you have moments in your memories. And then you don't. You kind of got caught up. I don't know what you were doing. I have no personal connection with New York City, really, let alone with the events of that day. I was on television, which you believe the next morning, reporting on it with footage and with things like that.

5:05And I don't actually have crystal clear memories of it. Because I think there was a sense of shock wasn't there. And also, I mean, I've been doing this now for 20 odd years. And sometimes I hope we never hit autopilot. But sometimes there are well-trotden paths that you go down. And you know that when X happens, Y follows. And I think we all just sat there. I was working with Matthew, actually. Matthew, right? Who is with you now? Weekends on LBC. And I think we just went into a form of autopilot. It was a discussion show. But I mean, what do you say? I think you just kept describing what had happened and sort of reeling from it. And then this morning, and I don't know who makes these calculations. And I don't know whether they're scientifically accurate. But about 40% of the people alive now, certainly about 40% of Americans will have no memory of that day. Because they were either not born, or they were not old enough to have framed

6:10what I called, I learnt this morning, what I called living memories. I have no memory of it whatsoever. I'm going to ask you a question, but not as a phone in. I just as a sort of, as a marker, as a punctuation mark for our conversations this morning. When is before this moment, before this anniversary appeared on your radar, before you noticed or someone told you, or you read that it was coming up on the calendar, that it was coming up on the horizon? When was the last time you thought about it? When was the last time it entered your mind? Because if like me, you had no personal connection with it. What so ever, I suspect it probably doesn't pop up in your mind that often. And yet it was an event of such epic significance and importance

7:13that I truly believe it changed the world for everybody. Whether they know it or not for everybody, it changed the United States relationship with both itself and the rest of the world. There's probably some sort of timeline from the Patriot Act that came in as a consequence right through to many of the depravities that Donald Trump has inflicted on the world. And remember, he continues to tell actual lies about what happened that day, what he was doing that day, and where he was that day. The President of the United States, and we thought George W. Bush was perhaps a little bit suboptimal. And now you've got the President of the United States of America approaching this anniversary by lying through his teeth. I don't know whether or not without 9-11, you would never have had Donald Trump. But certainly the vulnerability that it exposed at the heart of the American dream was something that we have subsequently discovered left much of the population vulnerable to

8:16the populist snake oil salesman. And if the right populist snake oil salesman came along promising to wait for it, make America great again. That really knowing what it means. But I suspect September the 11th was a day upon which America did not feel great. It felt vulnerable, it felt threatened, and it felt attacked, because it was all of those things. And you don't get to wipe that slate clean and start to fresh the next morning. It changed the world. That's in one way. And then of course it changed a million worlds. It changed countless worlds on a very individual and personal level. But oh, the humanity. Oh, the humanity. What I think we'll do today. And I can do nothing without you. Never forget that. What I think that we'll do today is both of those things. So what I want you to imagine is having a conversation with somebody

9:19who has no idea what the world was like before. Before Osama bin Laden and his murderous accomplices launched this deadly terror attack. What was the world like before? If you're a Muslim, I suspect that the changes were pretty violent and pretty swift. I don't think any of us. We had racism, of course, in this country and in the West. But we didn't have a specific animus for people of the Muslim faith, which we were very quickly encouraged to develop. Most of us happily didn't, but some people are just as today. You can have a murder committed by a Sikh and somebody like Nigel Farage will try and somehow blame it on everybody who's brown. Everybody in the country who wasn't born here. And very quickly in the aftermath of September the 11th, people who... Because the terrorists don't distinguish. I remember a later Islamist terror attack in Nice on the prominent in Nice.

10:21And I think the first woman who was hit by the... Good Lord, I nearly used a word that would have got me immediately taken off her. The first woman to be hit by the scumbag in the truck was a Muslim woman in full veil. So the idea that you are both victim and also perpetrator if you're Muslim, that started that day. You're just as likely to be a victim of these scumbags. But in the minds of some very bad people who have great influence, you're also being encouraged to think that every Muslim is somehow a threat. So that's just another way. If you're American, if you're traditional American, wasp American, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American, that was the day that America ceased to feel like the king of the hill, right? It ceased to feel like the fortress America. It ceased to feel like the biggest boy on the block. And if you're a Muslim, wherever you are in the world, that's the day that you ceased to be able to live.

11:23I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you know, the number that ceased to be... Your life ceased to be something that you were more or less free to live privately and personally, with no one taking any more interest in your faith than they do in my Catholicism. That's how the world changed that day. 03456060973 is the number that you need. So what is your personal recollection or connection with this? 03456060973. But I also want you to tell me how you think the world has changed, because you know, I don't know. I a couple of the politicians that I've mentioned in this introduction, who make entire careers out of spreading hatred. Under whether people would have been as susceptible to that hatred, if we hadn't been so terrorized by the terrorists, it's not just, of course, on September the 11th,

12:24but subsequently in this town, on July the 7th in other towns, on the day when that truck made its way down the beach front in Nice. I don't know, actually, whether or not the rise in far-right sensibilities is a consequence, because that's, of course, and this is the ultimate hideous irony. That's what the terrorists want. The terrorists want us to turn on each other. The people who hate the liberties, the freedoms that the West represents, love the idea of people turning up outside hotels full of people who look a bit different from them and trying to set fire to them. But I don't know whether that would have all happened anyway. Whether or not the things that the terrorists want, in very much the same way that what Vladimir put in once in the modern world, is for safe, stable, liberal democracies to start fighting among themselves. And it can't really get them to do that on the grounds of things that are true, so you need to sell them things that are not true. Like, all immigrants are a threat, all refugees are dangerous,

13:25all Muslims are terrorists, all asylum seekers are rapists. It's never true, but the worst thing that can happen from the point of view of the victims of that hatred and the people who are capable of comprehending it, is that somebody comes along and gives the hate mongers and the hate preachers ammunition. And September the 11th was the mother of all missiles in the context of that ammunition. You want to make everybody terrified of Muslims? Well, here are some Muslims you should be terrified of, and just don't pause to wonder whether or not you're actually delivering what the terrorists wanted by encouraging people to be terrorised. I think it's huge that day. I really do, and I think it's extraordinary to think of the people who don't know. You know it was massive, you know the numbers, you know the statistics, some of the stories. And you've seen the footage quite possibly, but you've got absolutely no idea of what changed.

14:28And ultimately, nor of those of us who were conscious and cognizant at the time. I've given you two little things there, they might be wrong. They might not be true. The tidal waves of hatred that have washed up on our shores in the last 10 years, especially. They may not have their source in what happened 25 years ago. It may not have set in motion processes that we're still witnessing today. I may be wrong about being a Muslim, you may have noticed no change whatsoever in your life as a consequence of both the terrorism and the terrorised. I don't know who knows. I don't know what it's like to be American. And to have grown up thinking that you were fortress America, this was that the country that uniquely almost in human history was safe. You know barring perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, this was the country where you were never vulnerable. You know there's been no blitz in the United States of America. Pearl Harbor was, you know, I'm not a blip, but it didn't actually threaten.

15:30It's people living in middle America, just a precursor to the Americans getting involved in a European war. And then you know in the aftermath of September 11th, the European has got involved in an American war. Probably an ill-advised war, which the ramifications of which we're still seeing today. What changed? 03456060973, put it into your own words. And you can do what I am doing, which is take a step back, because I have no personal connection with any of this. It's weird. I don't even have what a lot of journalists have, which is a real soft spot for New York City, or a real connection with US media. I hadn't been around long enough. I wasn't old enough. I'd never been there. I don't think. I'd never been there. What changed that day? 03456060973, you can take any angle you please.

16:32Okay? Any angle you please. And I also want to hear about what it means to you and why, the connection that you have with it. I'll introduce you a little later today to Michael Lomenaco, who, as I say, was the sort of boss, the executive chef at the top of the... at the top of the Twin Towers, and would have been at work, had he not decided to take a brief detour into an optometrist at the bottom of the building, instead of making his usual route directly to the elevator. And so that story is just extraordinary. But there'll be millions of stories. There were thousands of stories. Some arresting, some lessso, but all part of the extraordinary sort of tapestry of experience that starts being assembled in moments like that. And I want to know what yours is. 03456060973 is the number that you need. Okay? It's 21 minutes after 10.

17:33And it's never true, or is it, that no mornings like this, that without you, I've got no show. We've got no conversation. And your answers to the questions that I've asked in the first instance are just as valid, probably more valid than mine. And in the second instance, I don't have any answers really to how it changed. 21 minutes after 10 is the time. It is 10.23, and I haven't touched on the imagery. You know, I'm almost reluctant to do so, because it is for those people that I'm thinking about who have no memories of it, or who certainly have no living memories of it, and quite possibly weren't alive when it happened. It still feels alien, the idea of the people who jumped out of the windows, because the alternative was the flames. The colleagues of Michael who I'll introduce you to later, waving tablecloths. Do you remember that footage, waving tablecloths out of the window of the restaurant in some sort of fallon hope that they would draw attention to themselves?

18:37I'm not even fallon, because at this point still nobody thought the buildings would collapse. So maybe that's your memory, the collapse, the humanity. It's 24 after 10. So I preach in Birmingham. Supri, what made you pick up the phone? Morning, James. I love your show. I know today's a bit of a heavy topic, but I called in because you were speaking about the impact, or questioning the impact that 9-11 had on people's lives. I'm born in the UK. I'm very obviously an Indian person, or a South Asian person, with my name with the way that I look. Born in the 80s, we experienced very minor subtle versions of racism growing up, but it's not something our parents drill. They didn't drill any fear into us regarding this, because that's how it's worth saying. They have gone through all the initial racism of people moving into the country, and they built themselves up. But I remember being probably in the 80s or 90s, when 9-11 actually happened. Coming home from school, my parents would glue to the TV screen.

19:43They didn't even want us to speak, because what they were seeing was so devastating. But the next morning, I remember the conversation around the table, how frightened they were to send my sister to her high school. We used to walk to school at that point, but they had decided that the relief for the next four or five days that were going to drop us off in the car to make sure that we got there okay. It was the first time. Straight away. And your seek, I presume, from your name rather than Muslim, and straight away your family were thinking, even this week, I saw something on social media. And I only see the stuff now from Twitter that gets picked up under reported elsewhere, but it was someone explaining why he has no, he makes no apology for feeling very, very uncomfortable when you see someone on a plane in a turban. I think on that day, I would have said, you've got nothing to worry about, but I'd have been so stupid to think that, because 25 years later, people are still saying, I don't want to be on a plane with someone in a turban, because they have neither the wit nor the interest in understanding,

20:46you shouldn't even be frightened of Muslims, you should just be frightened of terrorists. Well, exactly, but that's the thing, when you try and consider the impact that these events have on us as a people, and I don't just mean about Asian people or people, I just mean on us as humanity as a whole. It's completely understandable that the images that you see on screen are going to terrify people. That's the word terrorism. It terrifies people. There's terror. But the way that certain things can be reported, as you mentioned, Donald Trump, or even George W. Bush at the time, yes, there is that real fear, and we have to protect our countries, and we have to protect our people, but it becomes so easy after an event like that to create and us and them dynamic. So much so much so to the point where even within South Asian communities, I remember seeks in Hindus trying to make it very clear that they were not Muslim, because they were so afraid of what impact they could have on them. Only recently when we had the stabbing of the Seek Man, I remember now that I'm 40 and I'm not in year-at-school anymore.

21:49But the stabbing by the Seek Man. Yes, yes, sorry. I remember at that point being again being scared that, oh, people in my community are in a business. People always talk about how friendly and lovely and integrated seek people are. But every now and then we get people that come into the shop that may not know what background we're from, or even may. But suddenly, does this change the relationship that the British seeks have with the rest of the British communities? And again, not just Seek. So that actually cuts back the other way, doesn't it? Because Nigel Farage tried to turn that against the express wishes, of course, of Henry Novak's family into a critique of all immigration. Everybody who's pert, well, I presume everybody brown, whose parents weren't. Well, that's not true, because during Brexit people with Polish names like Novak would have been on his hit list as well. Everybody whose parents weren't born here. We're brought into his quotes, critique and quotes of that hideous crime. We don't know, though, do we? Whether or not September the 11th is a crucial part of that process.

22:49We can never know for sure. I think I think that somebody's from one of those communities to me. There was a life living in the UK before 9-11 and a life after. Yeah. For me, as someone who, yes, I feel very welcome to the open arms. I feel British. I feel proud to be British. But the us and them, this became so strong around that time that even as somebody who was, what, 12 or 13 years old, at that time I felt the impact of it so strongly, so strongly. Whenever I speak to people now from various backgrounds, if they are not a Caucasian living in this country, even if the third generation living here, they can feel proud to be British their entire lives. But the minute something like this happens, or the memory of something like this becomes refreshed, that familiar, horrible feeling of dread always comes back. That right now are people going to suddenly remember that people who look to little bit like me,

23:49I'm not going to say Muslims, but terrorists use the name of Islam. I'm going to get the blame for this. So you could be a victim of a terrorist act. Exactly. And if you're not, you could get the blame for it as well. 100%. I remember soon after 9.11, I was traveling on the tube in London. And I remember even then, whispers like people looking at my family and I, and sort of edging away. And these are things that, again, if you're born and raised in this country in your Caucasian, you probably won't notice it. But if you're a brown kid growing up in this country and you spot people keeping a few feet distance from you as a child, that has a really lasting impact. That does stay with you. Of course it does. Of course it does. The first person killed the course in a hate crime that was widely regarded as a misguided attempt of revenge. In the aftermath of the September 11 attack, about beer sing Sodie in Arizona was a Sikh. Yeah.

24:49So you don't really need to say any more than that. The first person that some headbanger killed was a Sikh. And the unfortunate truth is, is that I feel like this event that took place in our lifetime and in our living memory. In the same way that there was a world before COVID and a world after. I feel for many of us that have the living memory, there will always be a world before 9.11 and a world after. And you've articulated that really well. And you've also reminded me and most I suppose statistically speak people listening that we can't know. Unless we are brown skinned. We can't know the way that the world treated you changed that day, which is of course what the terrorists wanted. And an awful lot of the people who are doing the terrorists bidding do so through fear or innocence or ignorance. They're not not through evilness or hatred but just through the fit that through terror. That's what terrorism does.

25:50Terror arises. 1031 is the time. I mean, there's so much on the list. There's the big stuff that the Supreme has just touched upon. But there's also a couple of people in my inbox still banging the old conspiracy theory drum. I know people thought the moon landings were fake. But would we have had, for example, Supreme just mentioned COVID? Would we have had the absolute nonsense about everything from vaccines and phone masks right through to ULAS cameras? Would that mad misinformation and disinformation have taken hold? If the aftermath of September the 11th hadn't coincided with the explosion of the internet and this idea that you could do your own research and come up with conclusions that were entirely odds with reality, but which you felt were proof that you were somehow being lied to by the authorities. I don't know, is it just popped into my head? Is one of the other things that perhaps has changed. 0356060973 is the number you need to tell me how you think the world changed, either your world or the whole world,

26:57which Supreme managed to do a little bit of both. And then the personal connections, that the personal memories, the reason why this date has a particular resonance for you, beyond the resonance it has for everybody human in a way. 1032 is the time. Matt, here it has your head lights. 1035 is the time, this from Ellie. And, well, I'll just read it. I flew to Cairo the week after 911. It was a jumbo jet and it was half filled. The cabin crew said that many had decided not to travel. I was one of only a handful of white Europeans on board, the majority being Middle Eastern looking. And it was the first time I felt uncomfortable being around so many people who were wearing Middle Eastern clothing. I honestly hadn't been previously. I went to Lester University. I was used to vibrant multi culture and I felt guilty for feeling that way at that time. And I still do. The world has definitely changed from that point on. And bring it right up to the present day. And would people apparently be unconcerned by masks,

28:01thugs turning up in Dover and Portsmouth last week if something so that day wasn't still in existence today? I don't know. I'm just sort of wondering. I mean, are there any benign changes? Are there any things that actually got better as a consequence? The responses to terror attacks can be extraordinarily inspiring. The aftermath of July, the seventh in this city was memorable for the refusal of London in particular to be terrorized. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the people who want their own citizens to be terrorized. The people who peddle great replacement theories and sundry, other racist clap trap, the far right on the rise. Maybe that's why they all hate London. Because we responded to a terror attack with, I don't even want to say courage. That sounds too high for Loon. We just refused. I'm generalizing enormously, but I was actually on air that day. And we refused to be terrorized. After that initial shock and that initial discomfort that Ellie describes so perfectly,

29:05you realize you didn't want to live your life like that. 1037 is the time speaking of being on air that day. I speak of course of July, the seventh terror attacks. On London, Mark in Brighton, Mark Riley, was on air that day in New York. Why don't you, Mark? Yes, I was. How you doing, James? I'm good. It's always nice to hear your voice, but especially today. Yeah. It was a singular time. I started that morning thinking that there was going to be a mayoral primary that day, which was what everybody was focused on. And as I was coming into work, I saw the first plane hit the first tower. And I thought it was like a private plane. I didn't think it was a commercial airliner. By the time I got into the office, I started to learn more information. And I spent probably, I would say three or four hours, dispelling rumors. And I was calling what was called DCPI, which is a deputy commissioner for public information at the police department.

30:11And because there were rumors that there was a bomb in Grand Central, or the authority, bus terminal was going to blow up monuments all over the city. There were rumors that these explosions were going to take place. And the one thing, James, I have to tell you, the one thing that stayed with me well after September 11th was the smell. The smell of what it seemed like. I guess you'd say an electrical outlet blowing up. And it stayed for months, literally months, because I used to go down to the area around city hall, which wasn't far from ground zero. And you could smell it literally till Christmas. And it was a profound, profound event. And I don't say that in a positive way. I had a friend who died on the 98th floor. So I know a little bit about how people reacted.

31:12And I mean, the most terrifying thing, James, that I've ever seen, ever, was seeing people jump out of their top floors at those buildings to their desk. That was something that stays with me to this day. And I think it's not about politics. It's not about any of that. It's about human life and the loss of human life. And how people reacted in the wake of that. And I have to say New Yorkers by and large pulled together. I didn't get home till 1030 that night. And it was really just talking to people, dispelling rumors. I went down to an armory where they do drill and national garden. And Bill Clinton was there. And he came without any security. He came without cameras, none of that.

32:12And he was consoling the victims because that's where people went to identify remains. And it was one of the most heart-wrenching experiences of my life watching that take place. Of course it was. Did you broadcast? I broadcast it all day. When you say you were dispelling rumors, you were using WLIB and WLIB radio. And you were using that platform to try to get the truth out there. Absolutely, because it was so rampant. People were calling me. And I had to go on the air and say, look, I just spoke to the police department. I just spoke to DCPI. And there is no bomb in Grand Central. There is no bomb at Port Authority. There is no bomb at the Pan Am building. And just dispelling those rumors took a lot of time. A lot of time. And you know, you have to realize transit was completely paralyzed at that point. People couldn't travel.

33:12They had shut the subways down. Everything was closed. And people were out in the street. In the middle of the road, you know, there were only a few people in the past. That's why the media was looking at the radio station. And you know, there were all kinds of things floating around at that point. And to be honest, it wasn't until a couple of days later that people started focusing on Muslims, on Arabs, whatever. People didn't know what happened. on Arabs, whatever. People didn't know what Al-Qaeda was. The day this took place. But in a couple of days, people focused their anger. And in many cases, I heard one of your callers talk about, you know, the attack on a seat. Yeah. That happened in New York, too. Same thing. Because people misinterpreted and mistook seat guard for Arab guard. And it was like, you know, again, you have to say to people,

34:12at least I had to say to people, A, this is wrong. And B, we need to get justice, not vigilantism. And I suppose that's that. The war in motion, or the ball in motion for the Iraq war, actually. That kind of incoherent need for some sort of justice. That street level, it's vigilantism. That international level, it's attacking Iraq. For events that had their roots largely in Saudi Arabia. Yeah. And they couldn't do it in Saudi Arabia. Because Saudi Arabia was an ally. And the customer. And the customer, exactly. A customer. They're all that oil kind of negated any retaliatory response from the United States against the Saudis. So they took it out on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, saying. Can you remember the moment that you, that any vestige of doubt or heart, that it was a deliberate targeted attack upon your town disappeared?

35:16Because you mentioned that originally you thought it was a private plane and it could have been an accident. And when I was speaking to Michael Lomonako yesterday, you know, there is a sort of a burgeoning realization. But can you remember the moment at which you just went? Wow. Well, see, you got to put this in context, James. Several months earlier, a private plane that was actually, I think, piloted by a member of the New York Yankees, the baseball team, crashed into an apartment house on the east side of Manhattan. Right. And I think the guy was killed, as a matter of fact. But either way, when you, when I first heard about this, I thought, oh man, another private plane. Because it had happened before. And it wasn't until I actually got into the office and people said, no, that was no private plane. That was a commercial jetliner, which took a minute to process. And I was like, how in the hell does a jetliner go into the side of a building? And then I was on the 41st floor.

36:17Our offices were on the 41st floor of a building on Park Avenue. And I could look down southbound and see the towers. And I saw the 2nd tower go down and I was just absolutely speechless. Could you hear it? Could you hear it as well? No, because we had double glazed windows. So you're watching, I mean, that makes it even more eerie in a way, doesn't it? That you're watching silently the world. It's almost like sci-fi. Yeah. It's almost like a horror movie watching a building collapse. Like, because I had never seen anything like that before in my life. And I think most of New Yorkers never had either. Nobody had really. Not on that scale. I mean, buildings had been blown up and buildings had collapsed. But, but, but, but not iconic buildings in that way. And not as a consequence of what by then was undeniably. A deliberate targeting of view of your people, of your town, of the west, of liberty, of freedom, of everything that we kind of particularly Americans had thought was pretty close to impregnable before that day. Well, yeah, nobody ever thought.

37:18I mean, I had been in the World Trade Center dozens of times. And, you know, the idea that these buildings could, which is, by the way, part of the fuel for the conspiracy that it wasn't the planes that made the buildings fall. All right. Because that's still out there 25 years later. People are still saying, oh, no, it couldn't have been because of structure it is. And the structure, no. The bottom line was it was a terror attack. And by the way, a lot of people don't focus all that much. My sister-in-law was working at the Pentagon at the time. And that, you know, that last plane landed fairly close to the Pentagon, fairly close to where she was. So, you know, a lot of the calls I was making was just making sure my family was okay. You know, and then I got home, I had to been 10, 30, 11 o'clock because I couldn't get out of Midtown Manhattan because there were no trains. And when I got to the train station, my wife was waiting for me and she just collapsed and I don't know.

38:18She thought I was in mortal danger myself. It was a singular time. I hope, I mean, I'm an old man. So I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen again in my lifetime. But, you know, nobody deserved that. And certainly the aftermath, good and bad, was something that could not have been predicted when those planes first went into the tower. No. No. And as you remind us for the first 24 or 48 hours at least, people were far too busy dealing with the immediate impacts. Then wondering in good ways all bad about the ramifications and the consequences. What did you do when you got home? Went to bed. I had been up for like 16, 20 hours. And I just collapsed. I went into the house, collapsed, slept for a while, and then got back up very early this September 12th to figure out what, you know, what was going on.

39:19James, you got to understand for somebody like me who was covering politics in New York at the time. I woke up the morning of September 11th and I think, oh, okay, well, we got a democratic primary and it's Fernando for rare against more green. I'm, you know, processing all that information in my head before I saw the plane, before I saw what turned out to be that catastrophe. And obviously the primary was canceled then, which by the way, an unintended consequence of which was to give Mike Bloomberg the breathing room that got him elected mayor. I didn't know. That's the little ripples, isn't it? Yep. Coming out from massive rocks and you woke up on September 12th in a completely different world. Completely different world. But I, let me just tell you a very quick anecdote about that. You don't need to hurry. You don't need to hurry. Well, I mean, this was something that happened sometime afterward, but I had one of the mayoral candidates on my show.

40:20Right. And he made the mistake of saying, if I were mayor at the time, I would have done a better job than Rudy Giuliani. Now, Giuliani was mayor at the time and he was sainted after 9-11. Okay. Bloomberg's people called me as soon as my show ended and said, we want that tape. That's sure enough. God became a part of the campaign. Yeah, they kept running that quote and then saying really. And it was part of what destroyed that particular candidate's dream. And now I have to say this because the contrast in 25 years is so extraordinarily stark. But now you've got an actual president who lies about it all with impunity. Oh, yeah. He lies about all of it, including the idea that he was rescued. Yeah. But the other irony is we got a Muslim mayor. Yes, that's true. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

41:20Full circle as it turns out. I forgot. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, Maldami Republicans in New York were trying to tell him don't come to the 9-11 commemoration at Ground Zero. Yeah. Which is the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my life. Nobody has the right to tell of sitting mayor. He can't come because he's Muslim. What are you nuts? And there it is. What are you doing today? You're just just reflecting. Yeah, I'm kind of reflecting. I'm thinking about going to the gym, work off a little excess energy. I had to go to the doctor early this morning, get some blood drawn. But, you know, life goes on. Life goes on. Life goes on. It really does, doesn't it? Mark, thank you. Yeah. No worries. I'm so glad you were able to call in today. I'm so glad you were listening. No, I appreciate it, James. Well, I appreciate you. It's 10 to 11, Mark Riley, though, who was, as you heard, on air in New York that day, on WLIB. And I mean, I don't even know what you'd call it.

42:22I do know what you'd call it. The duty of getting the trees out there as the world descended into something that it had never seen before. 10 to 11 is the time. Your story doesn't obviously have to be as personal as Mark's or as arresting. It could be something relatively small. Look at that little thing there that he told us about the Meryl primaries. That's what Michael Lomonaco, who was running the Windows on the World Restaurant, that's what he was doing. That's why he was early to work that day. It was because he'd gone to vote in that Meryl primary. And because he was early to work, he thought, I'll pop into the optometrist. I won't go straight up to the... There's the 86th floor. There's one of the high floors where the restaurant used to be. And that's why he's alive today. That's why we could speak to him yesterday. You'll hear that conversation shortly. It is 10.54. Listen to this. I'm getting some extraordinary messages today, as you'd expect. But there's no guarantee I will see them all when they come in this quickly. I'm so glad that I spotted this one from Fabio.

43:22I think about it, he writes. At the most random points, quite often. But then I have family in New York. It just strikes you numb. I don't know if I'll listen today, James, as it's very emotional to think about. All I'd say is, as important as it is to remember the people in the attack on the towers, personally, as my arm was there the day before, and by pure luck was at home at the time, I also remember the Pentagon attack flight 9-3. The 150 boats that helped evacuate half a million people in 9 hours, the 212 fire units that responded, the official NYFD, the fire department response time being five seconds. I remember ordinary people like Rick Rescola from Cornwall, who made JP Morgan employees practice evacuation routes. His actions and their training saved almost 3,000 lives. He went back into the building and died trying to save more.

44:22James, you could spend all day reading and remembering the extraordinary actions of the most ordinary people who did more in a few moments than most do in a lifetime. And that's before you mention all the efforts in the days and years afterwards from the come-from-aways in Newfoundland to New York to here. It's strange to think such a dark time could lead to that led to many more dark days, could somehow be so inspiring. And I hope people remember that more. So than any idiotic comments today that we get from the vain idiot in Washington. And that is a reminder to me that my phone lines should be open for that as well. Stories of courage. I think, and I've wondered about this a bit in the last 20 years. But I think that's where my, and I don't know if you're aware of this actually, but I think that must be partly where my extraordinary regard for firefighters comes from. I'm also perhaps an unfairly because they're all equally brave.

45:23But for me, I think firefighters and coast guards have a place in my heart. And I'll use that word very happily, very deliberately, have a place in my heart that is pretty close to unique. Because as Fabio says, you never know what you'll do when you find yourself in these circumstances. And you hope, like Rick Raskola from J.P. Morgan, a Cornish man, you hope that you would, sorry, a man from Cornwall, you hope that you would rise to the occasion and do the things that you would make either person that you hope that you are. But for firefighters and all emergency responders, it's not fair this position, this opinion that I have. But for me, firefighters and coast guards, oddly, firefighters very much at the heart of this story. Coast guards very much in the news at the moment. They are the very, very, very best of us. And yet maybe the weird tidal waves of vitriol and bile

46:23that are engulfing the RNLI at the moment have some of their routes and beginnings in the events that we're discussing today. I think that's where my, I think that's where my firefighter admiration, the depth of my admiration for firefighters was established. I could be wrong. It just struck me as I was reading Fabio's message. I am obviously minded to continue with this conversation. Please don't think that there is no point sharing your story just because Marks was so extraordinary and so personal. And indeed, Michael, too, you'll hear in the next hour. Because it's about all the other stuff as well. It's about why this gob on a stick on the radio has such an extraordinary admiration for firefighters. It's about how Michael Bloomberg became mayor of New York. It's about why a seat lad in Birmingham woke up the next morning feeling a sense of dread that has never left him since and that he'd never felt before.

47:23It's why politics feels different, everything feels different. And it's why I want you to try to explain to someone who wasn't there before how the world changed, so that the personal end of the political, how the world changed, because that's the world, that's the only world they know. And you know, some of us know two worlds. And I guess if you're a white middle class bloat like me, the shift wasn't really that profound in the moment. It's only now you can really see how successful the terrorists were in sowing hatred. The hatred that's directed at Sadeegan today, that wouldn't be the same. Would it were it not for what happened 25 years ago? It is three minutes after 11 you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC but we continue to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11th, the 11th terrorist attacks leaving 2,977 people dead.

48:28I don't have a number for how many died subsequently as a consequence of what happened that day, so I'm accursed by their own hand. And again, it's a reminder of the long term ramifications of tragedy, of atrocity, and also of responding paramedics, emergency responders of every kind. In a way, I'm not going to say they're the least surprised of all, but they're the most programmed of all. Even more than journalists is that that is what you do. You know where to go. You go in while we run out. I think for me, it's on a very small, tiny, tiny level. I think that changed for me that day. I really do. I'm any clock that literally in the last 10 minutes. How did the world change? Why does what resonates with you today resonate with you?

49:29What happened to explain your perspective, your position on this, and its personal nature, or its peculiarity, bends in Huddersfield? Ben, what would you like to say? Hey, James. I don't call the welcome list now. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Don't be nervous. Correct. So, yeah, I was teaching English as a foreign language in South Korea at the time of the attack. Twenty-two years old in a foreign country. I lived with American, and we were watching TV at the time. So, it was just shock. We didn't really understand what was happening. And he had relatives who were nothing kind of friends who lived in the towers. So, it was just a kind of... We just didn't know what was happening. We couldn't understand it as most people were confused as to what was happening. And I left him, he found home, and I left the building we lived in and walked through a local pool hall,

50:34which is why I did most evenings. And as you walked along the street, you could see people looking at you. There were only a handful of foreigners in the country that I am teaching English. But the majority of foreigners were American GIs, so they were... There'd been air base there, wasn't there? Huge, huge presence. So, the assumption from the locals was always that you were a soldier and an American soldier. So, the people looking at you and thinking that you were a soldier, and as it all unfolded, it just became increasingly unstable, and people weren't sure whether it would trigger. So, the air base could have been under attack. The South Korean government, what did they do? The Americans locked down on every soldier, on every air base. Because we just didn't know it. I think that's huge. Because you're an American soldier, and no, you're not.

51:36But you think you're the world's police force, and you think you're always on the front foot. You're always ahead, and the enemy is always behind. You're always in pursuit. You're always ready. And then there was so much confusion and horror in the aftermath of this that they did a thing that I'm not sure the United States has ever done before, and they closed up like a shell. Yeah, because we didn't know. We thought there was a potential for geopolitical sort of unrest, and the North Koreans were... They were still at war. Effectively, I lived 15 miles from the DMZ. The potential for an opportunity to attack from the North, which was seen crazy, but... It doesn't, right? It was a real, and present fear. Yeah, absolutely. So, I had my family to sort of not really understand

52:37in what was happening and fearing that something else could happen. Because as things progressed, it just became more and more unbelievable, and anything kind of seemed possible. Yes. So, we really didn't know... Yes, especially when the other planes came down. And that idea that this could go on for God knows how long. It could be more and more and more things happening, and then the London attacks, and then... The idea that the mastermind for want of a better word, Al Qaeda attacks, took a while to accept that they were going to prove to be quite self-contained. They could have been planned things in other countries, like you say, and that's what the people on the base in South Korea would have been thinking about. We don't know. You can fly a plane into the world trade center, you can fly a plane into anything. Yes. And the Americans, I think, felt that...

53:37For the first time, I think felt genuinely vulnerable across the world. I think... I mean, I should have maybe asked Mark about that, but I think he'd done enough heavy lifting already. But that... It's a shift in psyche, I think, that we're describing, isn't it? And I don't know, one's ever... It's not science, there's... Never going to be able to trace what happens today, right back, in arguably and irrefutably, to what happened 25 years ago. But there's a shift in psyche there that makes America susceptible to somebody coming along, promising to make them impregnable again, or make them great again, even if he's one of the biggest charlatans ever to draw breath. Yes. Five. Isn't it? I hadn't thought of it that way around. Thank you, Ben. Have you been back? I mean, do you have fond memories of the country? Yeah, it was one of the greatest parts of my life. I haven't been back, but have plans to, yeah. Good, man. It's nine minutes after 11. You're listening to Joseph Riner on LBC.

54:38I just sort of... The weird bits that come into it that you weren't expecting, and then the bits that when you acknowledge them feel absolutely huge. If you are an American listening to this, what do you think about the idea that the national psyche shifted? And I believe that that's true. I also believe that things like national psychies exist. You know, they are framed often by adversity. The blitz spirit is not a figure of speech, it's a real thing. Even the stiff upper lip actually is a real thing, albeit in retrospect, not quite as healthy for the population as the blitz spirit. You have that. And I'm not as plugged in as I should be to the United States. I don't know why. I should be. I got offered a job there once, and I've really fancied it. But in the final analysis, I thought, no, I love it here. I'm a Brit. I mean, by then, I was very much a Londoner. I don't want to live anywhere else, even if it's a bigger stage or a bigger... I just love Londoner, love Britain, I love flipping kidaminster.

55:40I don't want to go anywhere else. And I never had that. Like, a lot of people in my world have this real deep relationship with them. So I don't know if it's fair to suggest that the national psyche shifted. That you go from being the country of what, top gun and rocky, to being the victim, not the winner. No wonder George W. Bush felt the need to attack somebody. And as we were discussing, we mark a moment ago, they couldn't attack Saudi Arabia where most of the terrorists came from and where a son had been loading came from. So they had to attack Iraq. Or Afghanistan. They had to attack somewhere. We are America. We have been breached. We have been hurt. We have been bloodied and bruised. And we have to do something. And so if you want to look at the consequences of how the world changed and you're thinking about September the 11th, then think about the Iraq war, or how that changed the world.

56:40How it continues to have changed the world. From Syria to Moscow. The events of that day will reverberate through international relations, diplomacy and humanity for arguably forever or as long as we're around. 11, 12 is the time. James is in Heywood's Heath. James, what would you like to say? Good morning, James. Big gentle, this first time caller. Welcome. I can't imagine that I'm going to monster anybody today unless they start trying to tell me that it was all organized by the lizard people and that I'm a mug for believing it was terrorism. Definitely not. No, it probably triggers me this day every time. I'm an airline pilot for a British airline. And I've been flying about three, four years at that point. And my entire career changed on that day. I haven't been in the course of it in every way. Well, I mean prior to that, you know, hijacking, we'd always assume that that we'd be flying the airplane. You know, they want us to do something in the fact that they took over the aircraft and killed the pilots at that point.

57:42Changed everything in an instant. And subject to that, we've got armoured doors. The old days, you know, we've got people looking for toilets. It's coming to the flight. They can meet and fight me. And it's down on a chat to them. I think I'd down on a flight to New Yorker once. My family I was staying with friend was a work for Britannia Airways as an Airhostess. I got to go sit with the pilot in the front of the cockpit for a bit. And that was, that was common. It was just what we did. And certainly if you were nervous, passenger would have the front. And that stopped in an instant. And ever since for the last 25 years, we've had, as I said, armoured flight deck doors and it's probably a completely different take on. And a much less, and a much smaller connection with the passengers as well for you on a kind of emotional level almost. Yeah, very much so. And I think just watching because I actually brought my youngest daughter back from hospital that morning. Oh, we literally just, we just wanted sat down to the television. While we were attending the press field and that was what came on the news.

58:43And we just sat there and shot the next sort of five hours watching what was going on, which was. But subsequent to that, I was probably one of the first people flying just after it started again. And I flew back over the wreckage with a smoke coming out of it in New York. And then about a week after that, I actually did a New York trip and I actually walked down to ground zero and stood and looked at what was left of the star and staff at the time. So the whole thing was very personal. Yes. And subsequently the details that we found out about how the flight from the hijackings went down made the whole thing very real for us as flight crew, I think. I mean, we've heard from people who felt fearful of flying and they were passengers. I mean, you presume every the first couple of times you got back in the cockpit, every every creek. And you know, every trolley banging against the door or something like that. I don't want to say that. Yeah, no, no, I mean, the sort of media effect was that we had to have somebody else in the flight.

59:48One of the sources we go for to the loop, we had to have somebody in to lock and unlock the door. But at that point, you know, we didn't we didn't even have cameras. So subject to that, we know we obviously now got access cameras and stuff to it and the flight there. But it was just a sort of a knee jet reaction. How do we try and keep everybody safe in the immediate aftermath? Which is a big part of the pilot's responsibility as well. Of course, that's a famous policy. Yeah, of course everything we do is aimed towards that. And it immediately after the event, it was a sort of a real knee jet. Well, how do we do that? And given what's changed, how do we change our procedures so that people aren't allowed into the flight deck? And you know, the flight wasn't really designed for that at that point. So it was quite, quite sobering after. Something struck me and it's never struck me before while you were speaking. And I want to choose my words carefully because this is incredibly delicate. But it's, I mean, it's extraordinary that nobody had identified that threat.

1:00:52I mean, like you just said, nobody had ever really thought that the hijackers would know how to fly a plane. No, I agree. I don't know, absolutely. I mean, it's just one of those pivot points in life, isn't it, where everything changes in a split second. And prior to that, our thought process didn't actually even take into account the fact that the hijackers won't jump in and fly the airplane because prior to that, they'd always been. Well, not well organized in that respect, but this is anything but I mean, they took months of planning and. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and because somebody somewhere just spotted this opportunity that obviously should have been spotted by the people on your side of the aviation industry at some point previously, which isn't to play anybody or to criticize anybody because it was as if. It just never occurred to anybody. No, I mean, the whole day really with the benefit hindsight, there's lots of things that various people should have done and greets and with the benefit hindsight would all be multi-do it, that doesn't mean that.

1:01:55I can't make these, I'll be like that, all playing for playing for Kilomys the Harries tonight against Hartley Paul mate, you know, we've all got different dreams. You're taking care, when are you next in the air? It's more. Well, God bless you and stay safe. Thank you, man. It's 1117. It is 1118. The American National Psychie, I think that's the phrase that works best. I don't know how that changed because I'm not American, but if you are, perhaps you can tell me. The first of the madness that has followed the events of September the 11th, 2001 would perhaps have not followed had that never happened or had it as a last call of the pilot. Just suggested or had it actually been somehow nipped in the bottle curtailed. You think about the Pentagon plane, don't you, in the way that the passengers, sorry, you think about the fourth plane rather, the one that was presumably heading for the White House or the Capitol building. Passengers refusing to, what would the word be, cooperate. And of course the passengers on the planes that did crash into buildings wouldn't have known what was intended, but that was a different response.

1:03:06It crashed into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing everybody on board because I guess, you know, some people on board that plane decided that they were going to go down fighting literally. Good Lord, literally. 90 minutes after 11 and then of course how many years later was it that the presidents, if you like personal, Racktag militia decided to attack the Capitol themselves. Think about that. Terrorists targeting the Capitol in 2001, Donald Trump fans targeting it a couple of decades later. And spotted that next in middles, but Nick, what would you like to say? Well, morning, James, first time quality, but I've been listening. Thank you. Welcome. So the World Trade Center brings three things together for me. I was there just a couple of weeks before it happened in a past life. And I remember being stood in a restaurant at the restaurant in the world at the top. I'm actually just using to myself. Could you imagine for any reason that you fell out of this building or this building? I don't remember thinking like me.

1:04:12I have thoughts like that. I don't know the everybody does. Would you imagine looking at the little ant like behavior in the city, you think you saw high up? And you see planes go by because Michael, who was the chef there, who I spoke to yesterday, was telling me that you'd effectively see planes go by almost. Yes, and you think this is so high, you'd be in almost half a company. And then on the day it happened, I was an unjewelty sergeant in the police up in Cleveland. And when the first one struck everyone thought I was an accident and everyone was gathered around the tele. When the second one struck, the mood, and everybody immediately assumed that World War III was imminent. Really? And we all got the boss at the time, everybody in and said, right, everyone's there here. There was real potential, a nuclear action. We're doing things in the background, but everybody stayed at work. And we stayed at work for a huge period of time. And the next two or three days, ultra suspicion, ultra everything. The world changed so much. And then today I have two children, we're nine and eleven, so I've become an older father.

1:05:14And I've educated them about this today because it's anniversary. I've told them about it today for the first time. So I've got to bring them into the real world. And then unfortunately tell them, and they're saying, sort of, well, why did they crash into the tumours? What did they do that for? And I, what did you say? What did you say? What did you say? I said, well, they were terrorists. There were people who want to be with where the Western world is, and they're trying to change that with horrifically spectacular things that turn us against each other. And so, and then I saw them about flight 93 and that that was moving. Even 25 years later, they said, and these people on the plane knew that they were going to die. And they didn't want that plane crashing somewhere else. And they, they took them on. And I, I've got those pimples even recounted. And now, and then I was told, and they, I mean, pure selfless. Or just sort of looking at me with the mouths, or going to say, but why, like, why do I want to do that? And like, it's really hard to put into words to young children.

1:06:15They're not thinking it's a good job. I think it did a good job by the sound of it. Thank you. And I've gone to school, you know, I don't know, I'll be speaking about it at school. I expect them. Are they making art? I don't actually know all of these. I expect them. And that is really, I mean, the, I mean, two elements of who you are. Three, really. The person who was there a couple of weeks before the parent and then the police officer. Because we touched on this with the lad who was in South Korea at the time. And the idea that the people who were in charge had no clue. They had no clue. It was going to happen. And of course, I mean, the intelligence failure when you think about it is all, is it? Absolutely. It was unbelievable. And then they had no clue what was going to happen next. As in, there could be 10,000 alcohol, it's sponsored, Jihad. He's about to launch attacks everywhere from Cleveland to Copenhagen. Exactly. About five years ago, we went to the, we went back my life and I went to the World Trade Center. It was three o'clock in the morning. It was raining. But there was nobody else there. And we had, we had five minutes of just her and I at the memorial in the Drizling Rain.

1:07:19In the middle of the night and we were the enormity of that moment, the fact that we were just her and I there. A place that was the most talked about more historically significant place in the world probably. But it was massive. We were just over all of just a pinky car. So the World Trade Center has got a lot of significance for me for a lot of reasons. So today is quite a poignant day. And I'll be interested in what the kids think about. That would become home if they've got laying around and see what questions about. Well, what about it? Because that's probably coming. But the world has changed. Well, it has. And I mean, there is an underlying acceptance in today's program in the conversations that we're having and the conversations that I've heard with everybody today, including a course mark. Riley was covering it on the ground in New York. The sense that the, in a way they got what they wanted. They got, they got the terrorists. Absolutely did. It's spectacularly so the polarization of people with suspicion, the finger point in the anyone who looks like the people in the play and everything turns back there.

1:08:20And I probably inevitably probably I don't see how that's ever going to be. The genius out the bottle I think and I can't. I struggle with a word one of them with years and decades of peacefulness. But I can't. I feel very pessimistic about that, which is a shame because I'm not a pessimist. I can't see. Well, I don't, obviously. I'm in that until you said it. I'm somehow. I am still of the view that we can get the journey back in the bottle it probably makes. Well, I'm glad you say that. I'm glad you say that. Partly because I'm Irish. And a few messages today pointing out, only one person very sweetly suggesting that when the IRA were blowing up people on the main, in the United in Britain, and in Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and all Irish people didn't get the blame for what the IRA was doing on the mainland, and I'm like, yep, we did meet, I got the terrorist when I called the terrorist when I was 12, and we put that back in the bottle, but it doesn't have the ethnic dimension, so it is a slightly different beast, isn't it? It doesn't have the skin colour

1:09:22dimension, but you'd be the pessimist, I'll be the optimist. I'm happy with that, thank you. Take care, and great parenting, if you'd allow me to say that as well, because these are interesting, they're ages as well, because these are... they're grim lessons, aren't they? I call it the loss of innocence, or whatever you want to call it, but you need to know the nature of the world, and that's a family in Middlesbrough. Lots of families up and down this country getting in touch with me to tell me about what changed that day. This from Oliver right at the top of the show, I was 12, I was in year 8, that day after September 12th, I still remember two lads in my science class, same age as me, saying that they can't wait for all the P word bashing to start. They're just repeating stuff they've heard at home of course, but it doesn't make it any less arresting. They were also planning to go to the local corner shop at break time and Shount World Trade Centre. The man who ran the corner shop was a Hindu, 26 after 11 is the time. After the news at 11.30, I'll play

1:10:22you my conversation yesterday with the executive chef at the restaurant that Nick and Middlesbrough was visiting two weeks before the plane was flown into it. It's a rough, I mean, every conversation today has been worth listening to and that one will be no different. Etna is in Kavisham, Etna, what would you like to say? Jane, I was Kavankru up till 2000 and then I gave up and I had two little babies on the day it happened, one just under two and one two months. But my husband was still Kavankru and we were here just the babies asleep playing with the toddler, the phone rang and it was one of his friends and he said, you know, after where he was, I said, oh he's here, he's on this day's door and he said, well, thank God for that, we put on the TV. So we put it on and we see the second plane going in to the tower and we both looked at each other and the

1:11:24first thing we said was the waiters and waitresses because two years previously we had got married in City Hall in New York and we went for our wedding lunch in the windows on the world and we just wanted a quiet affair. We had a party back at home but this is what we wanted to do. We could flown regularly to New York. I particularly loved it. It's just one of my favorite places I've ever been and I said to him, shall we just go and do it in City Hall and go and you go to the windows on the world, a very good friend of ours was on a night stop and she popped along to be our witness and then all we went for lunch and I have to say it was a wedding day so it was actually really quiet. So the attention we got with second to none and the staff couldn't have been lovely or and they took photos first and I'm not just talking a quick photo between courses. They were like

1:12:27one guy was like we'd obviously got married either, not in a wedding dress but like a very nicely dressed and I had a kind of cream matching coat and dress and I had beautiful yellow roses and this particular way she was no you must arrange the roses this way make them really artistic course your hands show your wings it was just beautiful we got chatting to them a lot of them were Eastern European and we just said are they alive? Oh my god. Did they jump? 56 nationalities in that on that staff would you believe that? I only found that out in the list of 56 different nationalities. Oh gosh yeah unbelievable, just the lovely, the lovely people and you know I think every year I always think every year whether they're do they grow old, do they have children, do they have grandchildren, it really does move me every single every single anniversary. Of course it

1:13:29does and actually I think you're going to find that the conversation that I'll play out after the news very interesting because we talk about those children and those grandchildren and the money that was raised to look after them the ones whose parents didn't survive that day in the restaurant where you had your wedding meal the staff who died in the work that has been done subsequently to culminating and it's a bit of a spoiler alertness culminating in two of the children the last two set to graduate from college this year paid for by the charity that was set up by the staff and owner of that restaurant in the immediate aftermath of the it's an incredible story but I mean I thought it was incredible you're going to find it absolutely riveting aren't you? I will I will indeed know it it was it was such a special day James we just say quickly we've been back since we took our children years later and we showed them what we got married and we walked

1:14:30across until you know two of the grand zero and told them look up there that's where we had our celebration and yeah so I just wanted to show that with you and thank you for listening my pleasure I'll always listen I'd like to interrupt a bit more next time you're in but I'll always listen and thank you thank you it's 1131 Maccure it has your headlines it is 1134 you are listening to James O'Brien on lbc where the 25th anniversary of the September the 11th terror risk attacks continues to dominate our coverage today and I mean you know I say this every day but some days it's even true with another isn't it the people ringing in frankly extraordinary and we've also gone to the rare trouble on this program of pre-recording a conversation with somebody intimately evolved with events of that day that that that you will also hear although not immediately because as a couple more calls I want to get on air before we listen to that

1:15:31conversation with Michael Lemanarco Stuart for example is in Westminster Stuart what made you pick up the phone I'm a journalist but I was a journalist back then I'm a cameraman for Channel 4 news now but back then I was away for three months and it was the most intense story I've ever covered I ended up traveling into Kabul with the Northern Alliance today it was liberated so the journey took me all the way there but almost as importantly is what happened the week before for me because you asked how the world changed and the week before exactly a week before September 11th I was one of these London journalists slowing into parachute into Northern Ireland to cover the troubles there was the Holy School protests and primary school girls from the Catholic area, Nationalist area being taken across the dividing line into a loyalist area because their their Catholic primary school just happened to be there at Holy Cross and the violent scenes that ensued and the morning I arrived I arrived to see smoldering cars in the streets and it was just a terrible

1:16:37scene and then all the troops and police filled the streets and then the the the expectation as these primary school girls these little school girls their parents lined up across this separation line into the loyalist area was quite something to see and as they crossed through all the bottles rained down stones and I was standing next to a group of policemen and a blast bomb went off right in amongst them and almost took the first off one of those policemen but that was exactly a week before and then the rest that week was just intense it just it never stopped the protests in the morning the riots in the night it just went on and on on the Sunday I flew back I run the Clyde Sunday that General Mesude was assassinated in Afghanistan and on the morning of September 11th I then went out to a job at Sangat with the G camp and I were ironically was talking to Afghanistan and the violent seekers and asking them what life was like under the Taliban and within an hour I was on my way to Afghanistan but I remember as I was driving to Charles the Goul something

1:17:41hit me really strongly and that was I just believed I just witnessed the end of the troubles why because the what would follow with them be called the war on terrorism but I knew the response from America would be huge so it would define the decade and if it happened two decades and more ahead and and the bandwidth for covering the troubles for the attention to the troubles that had been consistent up to that point would just melt away that in a way the troubles were over though because people just weren't going to pay attention to any more norm was going to put up with those hellish names nor the number week before with you know schoolgirls being attacked and they wait to school the band which was gone and all of the engines went over to what would then be called days later the war on terror and it did and they were right they were right forgotten and they did they just melted away they really did they just melted away up until about you know just recently where it resurfaced a little bit but that that really intense period because when I was covering

1:18:45that protest the good Friday agreement with stillness impency it was still unstable and it felt like if if one of those girls got you know got a big kill on that way to school or seriously injured could that tip it could that then explode the whole piece of agreement and we'd be back to full blown troubles because it was so serious it reminded me of those old black and white pictures from the American South during the 50s where Marshall said to the school children to school well it was exactly the same it was it was just horrendous attempted segregation although one religious rather than ethnic grounds and and you know yeah I want to try and find the words to you it's as if it began to look a little bit piddling compared to what had happened in you or you know that that well or pathetic pathetic almost 3000 people in one day exactly that that was approached in the total for the whole troubles not to play numbers but it just puts it into context and it was in one day and I remember driving down the Orser Rooks I was then on my way to

1:19:47Charles to go because obviously we would end this journey trying to get to New York because we never did we ended up going to the Middle East but on my way there I remember being a wave of dread coming over me as I was driving because we heard it all on the radio you know I was on my way to blowing for a nice lunch right the second plane hit realizing then immediately that was an attack span around in the road and started heading towards Charles to go and when the third plane hit as I joined the Orser route I just thought what the hell is going on as we all did what the hell is going on when is this ever going to end you know that's three attacks now and I really worried what the new president Bush might do I wasn't entirely sure perhaps he was up to it and I was I was starting to worry what America's response would would you have a knee jerk response potentially would you would you break that convention of not using you know say nukes from the second moral war you know because this was so I knew America would be so wounded by this you know that those were the shining pillars of the American dream everyone knew them I'd stood there as a tourist

1:20:51and just open mouth that was incredible monoliths they were amazing they were I think use of them. And that was the point wasn't it if they can be breached then absolutely anything can be breached. And all on live TV yeah humbling down you know it's like an echo the screen around the world as they started falling I mean I didn't see the pictures and tell my hotel room at that turn the morning that night and I remember I just wanted to cry but I didn't because I had to conserve my energy I had to get I had to then find out what was happening next and the next day I found myself in Bay route um passed by my new best to go and find some terrorists and ask them what they thought about President Bush prescribing more of their organisations coming after them. Which we actually did because we ended up with Islamic Jihad in a refugee camp and they were all very nice and very welcoming and we chatted to them and they didn't agree with it at all. You know you leave the journey for me. You've galloped over an awful lot of ground there Stuart but I mean some of the things that you've

1:21:52mentioned have extraordinary resonances today because the people outside the school attacking the school girls will almost certainly be the same people that launched the pogroms against foreigners or refugees in northern Ireland earlier this year and most people listening probably won't know about the man he referenced at the beginning who was assassinated I think on the 9th of September. Yeah with the 9th. And who was you know a but an Afghan general a minister of defence even who was opposed to the Taliban and had warned another one of those little crossroads in history who'd warned I think in the European Parliament or somewhere like that. He just just told me. Yeah just see he he he went to the European Parliament and made an address and he didn't warn he didn't know the nature of the attack but he did know that there was an attack planned and he warned the Americans through back channels as well so he did give a warning

1:22:53but couldn't give the nature of it but he wasn't back you know he wasn't he wasn't back he was the only bit left in Afghanistan that hadn't been overrun and you know the irony is I ended up at his grave side. I had to evacuate the report I was with because he got malaria and I traveled to I traveled past his village where he was buried and I remember one of the North and the Lions soldiers saying we want you to find the book and I of condolence and I must have been one of the very first people there and I thought well I'm going to have to say something so I just said I hope you and your people find peace. Oh mate. But after after what I then spent what the next almost two decades you know covering Afghanistan and Iraq directly there. Here's a way thing here's a way back to where 120 years of involvement well you know almost to the day yeah and the Taliban are back I mean it's just extraordinary you know it really is. And as we've been saying all morning I the you know the links that you can never be established

1:23:55beyond all reasonable doubt but they're pretty flipping obvious the more you look at it and the more you think about it here's something give you some food for thought because you've given us plenty this is from Brenda says your current caller is spot on at she's in Belfast. The worlds press were there to cover those awful days for the Holy Cross girls and they all literally left overnight and that made the whole protest melt away but don't forget that the trauma of those five-year-olds will will will linger to this day so I mean there's a real chicken and egg scenario there if we if we're not there to cover it do they continue doing? Yeah I think it affected everyone on that on those days you know I mean the worst things you ever see doing what I do is children in distress or you know being killed or whatever and of course I think that those few days they're just stayed with everyone that was there it was just a terrible thing but I just I just thought that it was over for people for people listening I I ask this question on their behalf because you're clearly a human being possessed of compassion and

1:25:01and and great emotional literacy you can tell that just from what you've heard what we've heard in the last five minutes when you point when you have to point the camera at the suffering what's that like because I mean you weren't filming the plane going into the world treasure but you know if the dice had rolled differently you could have been what's that like? um it is difficult obviously it's difficult sometimes you know you look down the lens and you want to cry but you don't and I won't allow myself to because there's two things I think and that have kept me sort of sane all these years one is it's not happening to me it's happening to them yeah and if I want to do the best for them these people in die straits wherever they be in Afghanistan or Iraq more than Ireland the best thing I can do is get the story out get the pictures out and make them as powerful as possible to break down that distance between the streets of Northern Ireland and your living room in in sorry or wherever it happens to be or you know in Kandahar or or London it's it's it's it's it's it can be a very difficult job as a reporter and

1:26:10a cameraman because to do a very good job you have to surf that line you can't you can't be kind of you've got to allow yourself to be affected a bit and look for those pictures that tell that story but yeah that's what's protected me it's kind of like if I want to help these people I haven't got the luxury to cry I haven't got the luxury to go to bits I've got to do my job I've got to get these pictures out you know I filmed a little boy who was killed by a sniper in Miss Rata during the fall of Gaddafi and the medical staff there worked on him for a half an hour and you know he didn't make it and he was just a little boy you know and I remember we were shell that night where I was and all the all the all the windows were flexing with the shock waves and I was feeding this material this package we've done per channel four news that night on on a vegan and it was just pinging over but I felt I had to sit by the windows I had to make sure that boy made it to London because I knew his image would be louder than those bombs thank you sure

1:27:16incredible call 1146 is the time stay safe please it is 10 to 12 this is extraordinary from I'll read it I'll just in case it says at the end don't read out my name I haven't read it to the bottom I was head of year in a London comprehensive which was very multicultural and had one an award for being the four its multiculturalism in comprehensive schools in London on Monday mornings before school I would try to have I used to have hot chocolate ready for students who wanted to come in and tell me how their weekend had been because quite often I would have black or mixed race boys who'd been stopped and searched a couple of times and they would be really angry and we would have a bit of a rant about it together and once they got it off their chest they were ready for school after September the 11th within maybe two weeks I started to have a huge number of Asian boys coming in who were really angry some of them were Muslim some of them Hindu because the police couldn't tell the difference but they were suddenly being quite regularly stopped and

1:28:16searched I was also a French teacher and we always used to do a display for the start of the year for open evening with new students in year seven would write their name and their age and their nationality in French with a little photograph prior to September the 11th nobody ever asked me for anything other than English or British but I remember the following year because we always used to do it in September children were asking me how to say Pakistani or Syrian or Somali in French it was apparent that in the intervening year their identification as being British had become confused and they didn't feel as British as they had in previous years when exactly the same kinds of children had done it was very sad we didn't have any problems of this kind at my school because we were so multi-ethnic but a lot of the boys would get abused on the way home and get called terrorists which is about a perfect description as you will find of how the terrorists in the context of the United Kingdom and multiculturalism got exactly what they wanted

1:29:20and I think there is no more appropriate day upon which to mark that than this one actually but we need to also remember what prompted these reactions and these responses and some of the stuff that has stuck in many many minds is probably worth revisiting that shock that visceral moment when the unthinkable became the observable Theresa Reno was speaking just in the context of an eyewitness to CBS news on the phone about what she had seen with regard to the first plane hitting the tower when this happened i understand to reisa reno is with us right now miss reno good morning good morning how are you this is this is brine gumball i'm down on uh... fifty ninth and fifth where are you i am n celsie and we are at eight and sixteen we are the tallest building in the area and we my window faces south uh... so it looks directly on to the world trade center and i would say

1:30:23you know approximately ten minutes ago there was a major explosion from probably it looks like about the eightyth floor it looks like it's affected probably four to eight floors uh... major flames are coming out of the let's see the north side and also the east side of the building this and it was very loud explosion followed by flames it looks like the building is still on fire on the inside which building we talk about the one that's western most uh... let's see yes there did you hear the explosion your position yes we did as a matter of fact we we heard it and and because i was just like standing there pretty much looking at the window i didn't see what calls it or if there was an impact so you have no idea right now i don't know what another plane just hit right oh my god another plane has just hit another building right into the middle of it explosion right i did right in the middle of the building this one into the east side yes yes right in the middle of the building

1:31:31and right now that yes that was definitely look like it was on purpose you saw a plane just saw a plane go in to the building why do you say that was definitely on purpose because it just if just flew straight into it it looks like it's about uh... i would say 15 floors lower than the first building and there's now flames coming out of that building as well they're both completely on fire well an extraordinary young woman that was she wasn't her job was just just just there but still censorship was down your spine doesn't it 25 years later and you probably whether you can remember it or not heard that before absolute shock and that that immediate vanishing of i don't if it's hope that it was an accident or that it was a tragedy or that it was a disaster and not an act of human horror not not an act of terrorism not an act of mass murder and that that's why

1:32:33i think she went immediately for that for that observation because they'd all be thinking and as mark Riley told us earlier they'd been a plane accident earlier that month that the previous week will be on a much smaller scale so that you're thinking kai kia i think you know these planes aren't safe or these things can happen and then that's two no no way is that it's that an accident or a coincidence this is that this is an attack upon New York City and attack upon the United States of America and attack upon the free world and then i'm back to Nick and Middell's call about talking with his nine year old and his 11 year old today about what happened and the difficulty of of answering why he's he's not the first to do that by the way this this also happened shortly after the events that you've just heard described um uh uh on in that previous clip this happened on on abc7 this is a horrific situation you're watching ladies and gentlemen if you're a child watching and

1:33:38you do not have a parent there um i don't know what to advise you if you can understand this it's hard for an adult to understand uh we're just going to describe this the north tower of the world trade center the second 110 foot structure that marks the landmark that is a landmark of New York and Manhattan and indeed the United States has just collapsed and if you look at the timeline in which all this is taken place in such a short period of time 845 until now at 10 29 Nina Panena can you hear us are you on the line at all Nina Nina is just a few blocks from there and and we do not have her amidst the chaos we have not we have not heard from Joe Torres this is just so tragic that uh it it sort of it it almost ridiculous to say just talk through this it is so horrific yeah i hadn't heard that before that bit but um it was prompted by the comments

1:34:42that nick made a few moments about half an hour ago on this program about having a conversation today with his children about what happened and what he thought they were likely to be talking about at school and yet even in the moment you hear adults failing completely to know how to articulate two children what is going on there's a real poignancy there actually a kind of sense of of the whole broadcast becoming unanchored by by the profundity of the events that's why i started with her but Morrison or be it that i managed to misname him um that those moments from a broad caster's point of view are um extraordinary and i'm mentioning that because Stuart did such an incredible job of describing to us his experiences as a journalist in a variety of scenarios but all within the context of what happened that day and and what it changed but oh the humanity is pretty much what those ABC seven journalists were struggling to say just looking at the screen like

1:35:44her but Morrison did when the Hindenburg court fire and simply saying oh the humanity oh the humanity um i don't know how even now you'd explain it to children but but i do know that there's a little bit more there for you to um cogitate upon as you turn your attention to the questions that we've been asking all day chiefly what what has changed oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three either for you or for the world i haven't and i don't want this to sound uh uh miserable but i haven't had as many causes i would have liked on the question of the American national psyche what what it did to that sense of being the most powerful and important people on the planet and to a degree invulnerable in a country impregnable i i don't know maybe you've ever thought about it before but if you have or if you've thought about it today i i i is that fair is that really significant does that explain a lot of what has happened in the intervening

1:36:46years and also the the reason why you remember it in the way that you do on your radio it is three minutes after twelve i'm listen to this i used to live in the USA i witnessed nine eleven first hand i was stuck in traffic in new jersey and just across the bay in front of me i saw the whole thing happen in front of my eyes several of my ex-wife's friends died that day everything changed that day it was one of the most harrowing and tragic experiences of my life i don't make a habit of talking i still cannot watch any documentaries or tv programs on the matter i still find it to roar and to upsetting every year i liked a candle i still can't talk about it without being overwhelmed by sadness and emotion for those who did not survive and those who live with life changing injuries even listening to your program today has me in tears i cannot express in me at words the horror that i witnessed and the tragedy that unfolded afterwards but thank you

1:37:50for trying Chris you have expressed at least part of what you're feeling in words and i'm very grateful to you for doing so but that image in my mind now of of your car windscreen almost being like like a tv screen like watching it in in that box that we're all so familiar with that that that glass rectangle watching it all unfold in that in that moment that is absolutely i can see why that has hit you so hard and still still hit so deeply because something about that image i've now got in my mind of it all happening in front of you just makes it feel even even more unprocessable five minutes after 12 is the time steves in islington Steve what made you pick up the phone oh hi James yeah and i went back to New York the April after it happened at the friend of mine she got she got murdered which

1:38:53you believe it and i'd got back to funeral but i used to be a carriage driver in central park well the horse is the horse and car how did it look from islington end up doing that well just it's the Irish connection okay okay all good yeah well speaking of the Irish connection i accidentally used the word mainland a minute ago so i'd like to completely retract that for the record before anyone confiscates my passport carry on Steve yeah so when so when i went back i went back to the stables where we have the carriages and block away with a fire station where i used to know all the firemen in there we used to drink together in the local pub or the local bar and they were all gone they were all gone every one of them there was a plaque up there for them but i was watching it at the time i mean gone gone gone you know all gone all all good go i mean you died i just don't want to gloss over that too quickly in case people yeah i'm paying full attention so the the lack the the men and women all of them that would once have populated the bar were entirely wiped out he was a small fire station there every one of them was gone

1:39:57and i used to know them and drink them only months prepredist to that yeah but at the time i was watching it with my brother who's in marital square garden he was on the roof he's a d'amboni driver for new york rangers okay and i told him to get the hell out because pen stations right next to it and he said he can't because there's a contingency plan which he didn't know about that they were going to use the it as a mortuary so he was sent down to make the it's for anybody that would appear the car could go to sleep there were no bodies no yeah but there you go that's how it was and the innocence in new york i noticed it was gone it was gone what do you mean by that it had this because it had been a carousel i've used to meet people there especially at night were from new york and they had this thing that were untouchable and it was like it was like Rome probably in its day yeah everybody was enjoying themselves and suddenly when i went back it was the darkness there was a real wellness around and where you would see the twin towers down in the garden that down in the village in the skyline it was gone it was so

1:41:01strange to see it missing yeah i mean you're the opposite of me aren't you is that it's in your bones this city and so that in that that connection is is beyond personal it's it's it's part of you who you are our experiences makers and drinking in that bar having that view sort of in your retina in your in your internal memory and then it's all gone the people are gone the buildings are gone the view is gone if that's an that's an act of violence beyond even the violence of the terrorists yeah indeed indeed yeah absolutely shock i'd never thought that 343 firefighters in total and that's just on the day god knows how many died subsequently from what they'd breathed in or what they'd experienced in the attempts to rescue people a really good friend or or your partner he was the fire chiefs and he gets mentioned in books he he was very brave but he was a man we used to drink with and a great crack with and and he died did he that day he died

1:42:03yeah not with with all his mate because they all acted with such extraordinary courage didn't they and and they're unbelievable the battalion chief of the New York city fired up yeah trying to rescue civilians trapped inside when he died got to the 78th floor yeah of the tower whether the floor I mean jeez what a man Steve I know that's the floor the plane hit and you'll make got there he got to that floor everyone's getting out and they're going the opposite way walking up with all that equipment unbelievable fitness as well you can say that again yeah and then at the garden they had a big memorial day and my brother reckons that all the celebrities were there were so humble everyone was for the firefighters and all the first time for everything a they're of course they were humble of course they were humble well there you go Steve that's an incredible thing that you've shared I will have to wait for another day for me to find out more about how your brother ended up driving the San Boni at Madison Square Gardens and you ended up driving

1:43:07a horse and carriage around central part yeah stay safe Steve thank you too 1209 is the time oh flipping out I just the stuff that gets you and you never know it's going to happen but I thought I'd just look up that guy that Steve mentioned Oreo Palmer and I got a vague memory of elements of this story but to know him to have sat alongside him at a New York bar and he got to the 76th floor I can't quite get my head around that even now Delara is in Austin Texas Delara what would you like to say James I'm a long time listener a first time caller well welcome thank you I'm still sort of shuddering at listening to all the the stories and the callers my husband and I actually met in New York we lived in very close

1:44:09to the World Trade Center and on 9-11 we were living in Phoenix Arizona and just living in ordinary life as Americans who happened to be of brown skin Pakistani descent but our lives changed irrevocably on that day because our country was attacked on 9-11 but ever since then I feel we've been under attack as as Muslims because it's so quickly the conversation went from you know who attacked us it was not really why did they attack us it just suddenly instead of al-Qaeda or Saudis it became all Muslims were suspect and if it very close to home for us because my son a few weeks after 9-11 he was 10 he said mom they wouldn't my friends in in school today at lunch they wouldn't let me

1:45:10play soccer with them and he said normally they don't let me play because I'm not very good but he said today they said you might be in the Taliban and he said I'm not in the Taliban and they kept saying but you might be you know how do you know you're not and he said to me mom September 10th I went to sleep in American September 11th I woke up a Muslim and um that's how that's how they they both my son and daughter experienced incidents of of Islamophobia and to the point that five years later we were motivated to write a book just to explain what the average moderate Muslim thinks and we wrote the American Muslim teenagers handbook and we didn't you know I grew up in America this country we didn't talk about religion you know we talked about our national

1:46:11pride but ever since 9-11 I do feel that religion has come to the forefront in this country and it is otherwise it's polarized it we're seeing it you know playing out the ripples of it are all over the world I think I read a study by Brown University um their center of war it said four million lives have been lost due to this war on terror you know Afghanistan Syria Lebanon Libya I mean it's where do we end um it's just so sad I don't recognize this country that I live in that I'm proud of but um I think you're you're almost told by some people in public life never mind in your personal life that you have no business being proud of this country it's an extraordinary thing to move from having your religion be one of the least important things about you in the eyes of your neighbors to it being the most important thing about you yes yes it's it's been very

1:47:15sad to see and and and of course you and your son and your family didn't actually change at all you were the same you woke up on September the 12th exactly the same people that had gone to bed on September the 10s but in the eyes of the world you'd changed beyond all wreck or the eyes of many people you'd changed beyond all recognition yes we became part of the Arizona interfaith movement we proudly took part in all sorts of you know 9-11 interfaith you know memorial services but then after about five years of that my husband and I turned and looked at each other and we said you know what we were not responsible for 9-11 why do we feel this this perpetual need to apologize for 9-11 when we have nothing to do with it and you could have been caught up in it you know if if your lives had unfolded differently you could have been in on the part of the death toll or the injury list there's no way that they flew those planes into those buildings with any intention of saving anybody or sparing anybody from there murderous hatred yes and we don't we don't sort of

1:48:22position world war two as a war of christian versus castle like you know we we don't often speak about conflicts we don't we don't conflict in religious terms no well I mean even beyond that beyond the religious side of it we don't actually we did for a while but we reached a point and there may be some optimism here for for you and other people that we don't conflate Nazism with German anymore in the way that we would have done in the immediate aftermath of the war any more than we should conflate is Islam or islamic with Islamist jihadist but unfortunately I mean also perhaps in in in the states then here at the moment they are are there there are political movements of foot that are desperate to portray every Muslim as as a threat every Muslim as a potential member of the Taliban just as those boys in that playground were 25 years ago every every Muslim as as as alien and that's like would there be ice today without september the 11th you know what the TSA

1:49:26the taking our shoes off I mean we have been questions every time we we travel you know I've been asked when I was traveling from Phoenix to you know Vancouver the airline agent said to me you might need a visa and I said no I don't need a visa to go to Canada I'm an American citizen and she said no you might need a visa to when you return to America and I said I have an American passport I'm a hundred percent sure I do not need a visa to return to America and she said well man you know you might I'm warning you and my husband was next to me and he wasn't traveling but he said would you be asking this question if my wife were blonde and blue eyed and you know that the day day Jim got very upset and said I've taken cultural awareness training oh my goodness yeah wow happen to this country well how's happened to this country and and and continues to happen I think that was probably the thing that surprised me most today is is is how much of what we're looking

1:50:28at and the stuff that that breaks our hearts the hearts of people like you and me is is in some sense linked linking back and it leaves you with that horrible revelation or conclusion that that you know these these these these scumbags in many ways got what they wanted I don't know who bears all the responsibility for that but it isn't just them is it thank you Delora it's 1217 it is 18 minutes after 12 I'm going to read this I don't read out all the messages like this that I get for reasons that are very obvious I spend more than enough time to team my own trumpet but this this speaks more to the people who've called in than it does to me I think it's from Mimi who says I think today's show is one of the most moving you've ever done or rather quite rightly your listeners have ever done it's been difficult to listen to at times but it has given me hope James these contributors give me hope oh the humanity 90 minutes after 12 is the time

1:51:30Michael Lomenaco a New York chef and at the time that we are discussing today the executive chef of windows on the world the restaurant at the very top of the north tower he was there as I've told you a few times today on that morning he was also there in 1993 when there was a bombing at the world trade centre that you will it was a van attack a bomb attack using a van that killed six people and injured about a thousand more I just mentioned that because he references it in the course of this conversation I've told you bits of his story and I only know them because I spoke to him yesterday so there's no point me telling you again you're about to hear it for yourself you'll you'll hear it beginning with me thanking him for finding the time to speak to us yesterday September the 10th Michael thank you so much for joining us today on what I mean it's obviously for you a unique moment there are two elements to my first question really because the the fact that you were essentially on your way upstairs to the restaurant when you

1:52:31decided to stop at an optician on the ground floor to get your glasses adjusted puts you in that extraordinary position of having missed it by by by I mean a wafer of fate as it were and then of course what happened subsequently so I thought I'd start with a nice easy question how has it changed you well that is a good question well of course you know I changed my life from the minute all of this happened but I think it gave me the resolve to continue in in in the restaurant industry to be you know as a chef to continue really with a mission to honor the memory of my friends and colleagues who who perished on that day and to do that in New York City where I was born and where I've always worked but you know the compassion that we feel for others shouldn't just come at the loss of their lives the compassion the kindness that we show others particularly in in the workplace

1:53:39you know you know a very high pressure workplace like like a restaurant I think that we need to show people compassion throughout our relationship with them and I think that it just really focused me on the individuals lost and the lives that we cherish can you take us back to to that morning and that I mean the realization that something utterly extraordinary was happening something I mean unfathomable really because I presume the brain goes into a sort of denial mode or something when when the evidence starts reaching your eyes and ears well you know the majority of people were seeing this life on television all over the world and those of us in the street had no idea what was happening now I was I was in the building I was in the concourse level which is just below both towers there was a shopping center so I was in that concourse level and I felt the building shake

1:54:46but I had no I didn't have any idea what that could have been and I you know the the subway our subway our metro ran really adjacent to the that whole lower level concourse level and I thought that can't be the subway and even when I got outside the visual before me was of the fire engines right on the street we had a firehouse that was directly across the street from the world trade center and I saw the fire engine out so I thought okay there's a fire and then the sky was littered with paper there was just like confetti floating down so this is all very you know disconcerting very confusing that was my those were my first images and it was it was really it took because of where I was physically geographically I was south of building two which was the second building to be hit so I was south of building one and building two so I had no idea of the impact

1:55:52where there were other people in the street who were north and could see what had happened so I you know really had no idea and it was minutes that had gone by before someone said a plane struck the building I couldn't believe it because you know I spent my my office was on the hundred and sixth floor and I saw planes aircraft going by all the time and it just didn't make sense to me because you know this was a there were flight paths around there because of an airport that was not too far away in New Jersey so it just it didn't make sense none of it made sense James until I heard I heard the second plane coming in and as I heard that as I heard the sound I looked up and saw the impact of the second plane and then I knew exactly what was happening I knew I knew exactly that there was no accident there was nothing there was nothing accidental that had

1:56:53happened but there was something quite deliberate and and evil and at that point that the scale of the imminent death toll became clear as well I mean you know that many many people are not going to get out of that building alive I don't think anyone ever imagined the buildings would collapse right so when you see when you see the impact and you know when you see the damage to the building and you see the the the the the fire you know there will be people who will be lost but the idea that the buildings would collapse I I don't think it occurred to anyone until still to this day people say things like that but where I was in the concourse lever they were very swift in evacuating us very swift really within 90 seconds I was out of the building so there were people coming out of the buildings from the lower floors for that period of time before they collapse and do you remember

1:57:57the collapse or is it blurred with footage that you will have seen subsequently and and replays or do you remember the the physical real actual my life after the first impact I actually went to look for a phone to call my wife and to call the owner of the restaurant and I did I found a phone street street phones pay phones they don't even exist anymore but at that time there was still a few around and I made those phone calls so you know minutes are going by and then I headed back to the buildings I headed back to the the world trade center campus you know in 1993 at the bombing I had very clear images memories of people coming out of the buildings and they were covered with soot and I I don't know why but I was going back to the building you know I had people who were working that morning I knew there were people in the kitchens in the restaurants and I thought if I could help at the plaza level if I could be of any help but it was then that the second plane struck and I stayed away from the immediate area of the world trade center in other

1:59:06words within I was within a block and I walked north so that I could see what happened to tower one you've seen the images of so many people in the streets so I was there and had a clear view of of the first collapse and at that point the police and you know really told every you know people started running north from that collapse covered with with with the dust of the collapse and that was just like a cloud of that's that it looked like smoke but it was the dust of the collapse was billowing out at street level so everyone started to run I ran north but there is that unbearable image of some people waving a white tablecloth from the window of your restaurant from windows of the world did you see that yourself the reason I walked north was I wanted to see what had happened to tower one my tower the north tower and I could look up and see that you know that

2:00:11impact zone and above it I could see the building the smoke the fire and it was there that I saw people waving napkins you know it's it's you know this was a quarter this was quite a high altitude but the tablecloths were the image that really stayed with me it was very clear in my in my memory and and that they were your colleagues that were holding those tablecloths and and and and your guests as well 79 employees lost that day and 91 guests up windows of the world 28 minutes after 12 is the time I'm back in the studio now but that conversation as you've probably worked out for yourself with Michael Domenico is only about halfway through I'll play you the second half of it after the very latest news headlines I also have a little clip of a conversation I had earlier this week with Frances Fukuyama to play to you for Fukuyama of course one of the greatest thinkers of of the last 50 years best known and we discussed this quite a

2:01:14lot unfairly in many ways for his theory about the end of history which is miss miss represented and misunderstood including by me on this program on various points in the past so so that's a great listen as well in the classic tradition of me being a not very good news based journalist I didn't think to ask him about September the 11th which I absolutely should have done and on a much much lighter note it has been revealed in the last few days that Amelia Dimoldenberg of Chicken Shop Date is ending her chicken shop date show which I also managed to completely miss when I sat down with her for an episode of full disclosure about three weeks ago so I just thought I'd mentioned that to you to bring a little bit of I don't know lefety into a conversation that at times today has been almost unbearably poignant here's Amelia Cox with the headlines 1232 back shortly to my conversation from yesterday with Michael Domenaco the New York chef who was running the windows

2:02:19on the world restaurant at the very top of the north tower on the at the time of the September the 11th Aritax and would indeed have been in the kitchen on on that floor if he hadn't decided to pop into the optometrists on the ground level the the the mezzanine level of the building on a whim that morning and bizarrely because Mark Riley mentioned the mayoral primaries that were running or supposed to be scheduled for that day and that was the reason why uh Michael Domenaco got to work early because he had been going to cast his vote and he had expected the cues to be longer and they weren't which many got to work early which many popped into the optometrist it means you didn't get into the elevator which means he wasn't on that floor when that plane hit but of course many many of his colleagues and guests at the restaurant were and Etna who rang in earlier because she'd had a wedding meal there the week previously and had taken away extraordinarily warm feelings about the staff who worked in the restaurant the serving staff and who looked

2:03:21after her and her party and came to the table and um I didn't know that was going to happen today I didn't know when I spoke to Michael yesterday as you're about to hear about the people who worked in that restaurant and what has been done subsequently to help the families who lost their loved ones that day I didn't know Etna was going to ring in and reflect upon questions that I can now well it Michael has now answered I almost apologise in advance for this question but I don't think the English language has a vocabulary to phrase it more sensitively or more intelligently how do you process something like that it took a long time I mean when you when you think about this it you know we we went into you know you have to keep you have to keep moving I don't mean physically

2:04:22but you know the next day we were trying to identify who was missing we had no I'd you know really we gathered together uh through networking through the telephone you know calling people on that very night the next day there would be a meeting and there were 150 people who gathered in another restaurant in Midtown Manhattan to try to sort it out to see who was missing you know and um who was working that day and but personally because you're asking me a personal question in my living room I had two towers of CDs you know compact discs at that time music my music collection I could not look at those two towers I could not look I did not and I'm a music lover could not listen to music for a month I was in mourning but I was I was trying to keep myself together because

2:05:22I know that other people needed me needed me to be there for them and did you reflect much either then or subsequently on on the near miss element of your own experience on that that faithful decision to pop into the opticians instead of hopping straight in the elevator and getting up to the to the to the restaurant you know I was always uh I've always been a very early to the kitchen and work through the day and late at night leave it that was my schedule was I was there at 8 8 15 every day and and and leave it 10 or 11 at night and and what I I had an appointment on that very day I had a 12 noon appointment they gave me an appointment the week prior come at 12 noon and we'll we'll we'll take a look and see how we can fix your glass you know what we can do and I got there a little bit earlier on that morning because we we had an election day in New York

2:06:24on that day was primary day wasn't a final it was a primary elections and so I was early because people don't vote as much as they should I voted and went to work and you know it just felt like I can take the care of this right now and I walked in and that happens dance that's that last that just instead of going straight to the elevator making a right turn and going into this optometry shop saved my life changed my life and the lives of my family and everybody that I was friends it's it's it's um it was lucky it was just a lucky decision a lot of people have different kind of point of view but it was lucky and I think that's what helped me get up the next day and say I need to stand up for somebody else I need to be able to be there for them which brings us to the windows of hope fund that you're so heavily involved in tell tell my

2:07:25listeners what that is and what you do so you know the restaurant business is a tough business for so many people and it's it's an entry level industry you know there are so many people in the lower economic tier who are working in different levels of the restaurant businesses portals or dishwashers or waiters and cooks are not highly paid and a small group of us uh two other chefs the owner of the restaurant a manager with three days later we sat and talked about we needed to do something for those families the food service workers the hospitality workers those families who were left behind without the person who was earning the living in the family or or at least contributing it was it was just terribly distressing the restaurant world so often comes together to have fundraisers and charitable organizations oftentimes lean on us because the restaurant is at the heart of the community so we created within a week a charitable organization

2:08:29it was you know registered with the government as a charitable organization a 501c3 that's what we call it here and windows of hope family relief fund was meant to what could we do for the families what were the three most important things well emergency aid emergency funds health insurance which is a very American problem and education for the children what are they there for so many of them had children that they've left behind they were there to send their kids to school and we gathered people from the industry the restaurant industry in New York and within a week we had 75 people at a meeting and this is where it comes to you because you know they were once we started talking about this the world of food got behind us restaurants in Great Britain in Switzerland and in Italy in Japan in Latin America around the world began to raise money

2:09:30for our food service worker family and we raised nearly 25 million dollars over the next two years and we had a 250 two family members 150 families there were 102 food service workers who were lost on that day and we were able to help them in the immediate need and then over the last 20 years it's been a scholarship fund and it's it's helped the families who wanted to send to go back to spouses went back to school to kind of reeducate themselves and so it was family members and children and until today the last two are in graduate school today who are finishing up in the next 12 months their graduate education that was the most fulfilling aspect was being able to help the families and stay stay part of their lives that their windows family was still connected to them there's a marvelous book that was written about five years ago by a writer by the name of Tom

2:10:35Rosten and he wrote a book about windows about the history it's called the most spectacular restaurant in the world and now CNN has produced a film called Top of the World and Top of the World is short documentary about the history of the restaurant from the very opening in 1976 and that year 25 years ago would have been our 25th anniversary and that restaurant would be 50 years old today and you know the people who work there 50 years ago still are attached to each other in a way because it was such a special experience and we in my time there in 1997 until the end of 2001 until the end until that tragic day we we were had 450 people working there and they came from all over the world we had 65 different languages that were spoken there it was an amazing experience and I

2:11:39think there was such a connective fiber that has stayed strong because it was a unique restaurant at a unique time that ended in such a tragic way that bonded us finally Michael I'm speaking to you on on Thursday my listeners will hear this conversation on Friday so I'll ask you if I may what you will be doing tomorrow so for me 9-11 is a sacred day so I spend time in prayer and meditation not to sound too you know but I really spend time alone and it's quiet time there are you know I know I know colleagues who are having a reunion or having a chance to meet together and I know that they will weep together but for me it's time to be alone and I take it as a very solemn day the only the families of the victims can go to the memorial ceremony and I always spend time watching viewing this on television

2:12:48but actually tomorrow unlike any other year I have a I have an interview a television interview here but the interviews are important the opportunity to talk to you because now you know people that I've known now you think of my windows colleagues you think of the the people who worked in the restaurant and they were you know they were nearly a hundred civilians who were there for a private event that day and quite a few of them were from Great Britain so I think of them as well because Great Britain was very very important to the to New York City in the aftermath of this you sent firefighters you sent you sent police and they spent a period of time here supporting our fire and police departments so we have a great kinship between New York and London Michael you want to you want to the memory of your colleagues and and of your guests and the

2:13:51course of of everybody who died on that day and I'm very grateful to you for finding some time to talk to us Michael Luminaco thank you thank you for having me James 1247 back to the phones I think Milton has been waiting for a while in Long Island in New York Milton what made you pick up the phone good morning James so I have a very kind of deeply personal story about 911 with a somewhat of an interesting twist to the end of it so I moved to the state six weeks before 911 into my then fiancee's apartment that was about 400 yards from seven world trade on Greenwich Street so we were the closest department building to New York I'd gone back to London a week beforehand just to wrap up my flat in the UK and bring some stuff back and we were getting married actually in the UK about six weeks in the end of October 2001 anyway so I was on a plane on 911 flying back from London and about now into the flight the airplane did a 180 and headed back to the UK and the pilot

2:14:58came on the intercom and said ladies and gentlemen they should kept in speaking I don't know why and I promise you I don't know why but the whole of US airspace is just being closed and we're heading back to the UK so we headed back to the UK and I finally got back to New York on the first commercial flight on the Friday obviously we were evacuated from the apartment but we had no clothes and my empty old face wedding dress was in the apartment passport everything was there we virtually moved into her mom's house in Long Island anyway so the Saturday we decided to see if we can go and get into the apartment so we got the train to Penn station and started walking down town and they started putting up checkpoints at 14th Street so luckily I just got my New York driving license so I had the address on it and we had to go through various checkpoints and we were going we got to about two or three blocks from ground zero and they had chain incense they had troops police you name it they're all there and they were like forget it buddy you're not going in

2:16:02no way ha ha forget it so I finally went up to a National Guard sergeant and I'd actually been an officer in the Royal Air Force reserved in the cadets and I still have my military ID so I pulled that out went up to a National Guard sergeant and they said you know sergeant I'm an officer in the Royal Air Force don't do anything other than get into the apartment get some clothes and leave he looks at me he goes oh he cursed and then said my dad was a bomber pilot in the second world war I'll take him because she can't she can't go okay so you know she told me what she wanted he grabbed an NYPD cop and we went down Murray Street we turned left onto Brenett Street where the apartment was and I literally stopped in my tracks just for a second or two there was the pile obviously but the thing I'll never forget was the smell and it was the pile of rubble the pile of rubble is 400 feet in front of me and it was a sick it was a sickly sweet smell I you know

2:17:05it's lunchtime in the UK it's practiced here but it was a smell of death and we climbed nine flights of stairs they gave me 10 minutes in the apartment to fill up a couple of suitcases me left and got back to the checkpoint and you know got a I sort of say got on with our life I understand we moved into my mother-in-law's house for a few months we got married and we moved back into the apartment at the end of November we lived with the noise the dust and the rubble until October 2002 when we moved to Port Washington on on island anyway so cut forward now 10 years later this is the little twist to the story 10 years later I'm sitting in the diner one Sunday morning in Port Washington by myself just reading the paper all of my my eggs a bunch over easy over easy yeah and the guy was a guy next to me who I recognized as a cop from Port Washington you'll always use

2:18:07off duty yeah and I ordered and said oh where are you from and I said oh originally I'm from UK but I've lived in Port since 2002 he looked at me and he said huh last guy met from the UK told me it was in the Air Force and I got him into his apartment after 9-11 and I looked at him and he and I said and your dad was a bomber pilot in the second world war and he said yes and you know in the movies when two people look at each other in the world's going around it was a little bit like that for about 30 seconds and I said to him but you're a cop in town he said yep I've been in the National Garden so I was 17 and I was activated on 9-11. Jeff is very unhappy with you for impersonating an RAF obviously when you were merely a civilian cadet instructor I however given the quality of that story and the goose bump at the end of it I am prepared to forgive you as long as you promise never to do it again I will never do it again and I did have to help the Queen's Commission in the VRT well there you go Jeff I can't down Milton what a wonderful world I

2:19:09mean I want what a story what a what a story just the meaning way it's a bit like the spinning wheel that meant that Michael was in the opticians when he should have been upstairs on the on the who knows where where the world is going to take us thank you Milton I need to do something because I wondered is it appropriate to do this and then I thought it couldn't actually be more appropriate because Donald Trump is now the president of the United States of America and those of us who care about truth and decency have failed utterly to to make other people aware of how dismal his depravity is and how awful for the world not just the United States of America we failed utterly and so I will try again because this is president Trump on on Tuesday lying. You just think might be boy took a lot of my my my I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened and they were they had no hesitation everybody went down with me we went down as a big group of people wasn't too much we could do I'll

2:20:11be honest it was it was raw nobody seen anything like it ever we had other buildings the United States steel building was creaking really creaking now we thought it was going to fall down the truth is it creaked a lot it creaked it still creaks but it never came down and I will never forget too fireman we thought it was coming down on top of us and too fireman big strong guys and I'm not the smallest guy in the world they grabbed me under the arms they got to get out of here and they literally lifted me up this is not easy to do I'm big they lifted me up and they started running with me I said fellas I can run myself but they were amazing but they thought it was coming down it didn't come down US steel and here he is lying in April and I predict all of it I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the world trade center I made that prediction a year before he did I said you better get him he's a bad guy I watched him be interviewed one time and I said

2:21:15that's a bad guy you better get him one year before exactly I wrote it in a book you can even check about a year before the world trade center then who came down president Clinton actually had a shot at him and he didn't take it unfortunately I'm not blaming him for that but he didn't take it and he ended up knocking down the world trade center but I predicted that I predicted a lot of things he didn't predict any of those things he is lying about the tragedy that we have spent three hours in London in Brits and thousands of miles away from New York reflecting on and feeling profoundly moved by and this man lies about it he lied about it on Tuesday he lied about it in April and he lied about it in 2001 as you walked around and as you saw the piles of rubble there are thousands of families out there who are hoping that someone might be in a pocket somewhere still alive still breathing waiting to be dug up as you assessed that damage from your perspective do you believe that's possible well I would certainly not want to be the one to say it's not

2:22:16possible certainly it's a tough situation but you can't give up hope because there's always hope I mean the five men I'm sure their families thought that they probably were gone and now they walk in the door a couple of them walked away after they were dug out so there probably are some more people in there and therefore you can't give up hope and then finally a lie so egregious and so hideous because the arrogance and the conceit and the self-interest that lies behind the actual lie is still 25 years later beyond my comprehension Donald you have one of the landmark buildings down in the financial district 40 Wall Street did you have any damage or did you know what what's happened down there well it was an amazing phone call I made 40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan and it was actually before the World Trade Center was the tallest and then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second tallest and now it's the tallest not only the lie is abhorrent but also of course the fact that

2:23:21even if it was true it would in his head be an appropriate thing to mention in that moment and I for one can't shake the realization today that when flight 93 plowed into an empty field in Changsville Pennsylvania at 10 minutes after two two minutes after 10 on that day it is highly likely that it was making its way towards the US capital so Donald Trump supporters 21 years later succeeded where the terrorists failed and launched an effective attack upon upon the US capital I spoke to Francis Feaky Yommer earlier this week for today's episode of Full disclosure and I am one of the greatest thinkers of the last 50 years here he is on on a theme that I think is very relevant to what we've been talking about all day the idea that a society's health is dependent upon the amount of trust in a society America has become a case study low trust yeah subsequently

2:24:24no that's a really it's it's kind of a sad story because at the time I wrote trust most people thought that America was a relatively high trust society there's a long history to that Alexis Toteville's you know description of America is full of associations because Americans could work together very readily you know I think that was a dominant view of American society yeah but the mid 1990s was also the moment when polarization really began to set in and this poisonous idea you know that you've got a deep state that's working against your interest that the other side you know are basically enemies that need to be countered rather than you know conciliated in some way and there's not much sign of it coming out of that anytime soon unfortunately no and in the meantime the midterms are just around the corner and a lot of people are very very fearful about what could be coming next to you I'm not actually think we're

2:25:25going to do okay in the midterms but you know we'll see and it won't prompt any of the sort of apocalyptic scenarios that some trump critics suggest yeah I think he's going to do everything he can to manipulate the election but I in the end I don't think he's going to be able to however it's going to free him afterwards if he does have a democratic congress to try to change the subject by doing a lot of crazy things so as I said it's never dull human history but some periods at less dull than others yeah um he is one of the cleverest people I've ever met and I've met a lot of people including Sheila Fogarty I've met Sheila I've met Keith there's a I've met some really really clever people he's right out there probably in the top two so do check out this week's episode full disclosure if you missed any of today's show you can listen back on the global player app or the LBC app stay up to date with all the latest news you can listen to a range of podcasts including this week's full disclosure with one of the cleverest people I've ever met I've got a funny feeling he didn't say the same thing when he walked out of that studio but you never know he did when I met

2:26:30download the official LBC app for free from your app store now coming up on LBC app for Tom Sworbrick but now it's time for Sheila Fogart this has been a global player original production