September 12th 2001: As reported in the papers

0:00The Pat Kenny show on News Talk. On the phone we do have Jennifer Oversnee who apparently witnessed this event. Jennifer can you hear me? Hello. Hi Jennifer. Hi Katie. Hi can you please tell me what you saw and give me any information about what's going on there? Yes. It's quite terrifying. I'm in shock right now. I came out of the subway at Bowling Green. I was heading to work in Battery Park at the Rich Park in Hotel and I heard a boom worked up and there was a big ball of fire. I'm now looking north at the World Trade Center and it is the rest 20 hours I'm looking north. I'm in Battery Park right now and you can hear the fire engines and the emergency cruise behind me. The emergency cruise behind me and it indicates how little people knew at this early stage of the reportage of what happened on the 12th of September 2001. Now it's interesting because I haven't fronted me thanks to my next guest, a copy of the

1:03Irish Times of September 11th. So this was what was on the news stands even as the drama was unfolding and to give you an idea of how life was pretty normal the main headline, Cowan and Perez meet to discuss the Middle East situation. What changes? Foot and mouth risks sink plowing event. That's a big story really for Ireland. Bush hopes to revive sagging US economy with tax rebates. RUC questions man about boys missing for 27 years. More project work proposed for the leaving sir. That's a story that ran and ran and interesting that the price of the Irish Times on September 11th 2001 was one pound that's one punt, 127 in Euro because we had made the conversion and 75 p in the sterling area. Now Barbara Holmes is news talk reporter and she's also the daughter of a man that I worked with in RT Meal Holmes. So it's great to have you here Barbara.

2:04Thank you. Now you discovered this trove. I did a couple of months ago I was helping my parents clear out some of their belongings and organized them their belongings and I came across this box and opened it. And on the very top there was it was a clearly a second newspapers but on the very top there was the copy of the Times from Wednesday September 12th 2001 and it's a really striking from page because it's a full length of the broadsheet paper. There's a bright blue New York sky and the twin terrors as the second plane hit the south terror and there's a great big orange fireball behind it. There is the north terror with the smoke streaming out before they collapse and it's a really visceral dramatic image and that's repeated across. I've got a number of papers, both UK papers and Irish papers. Okay, the Irish examiner Armageddon, thousands of feared dead in terror attack on America and it's a full page. This broadsheet form in the examiner, the chief suspect already shown there, you've got

3:10Osama Bin Laden's picture there, you've got Bush's reaction because he was I think attending a school children's reading event at the time and then a headline and nation terrorized and any of the papers that we go into, I mean it's not just one page, two page, three page, it's multiple pages right through the paper. Several pages and some of the British papers as well have pull out special segments. There is one in the Times where they go through minute by minute screen grabs of what happened and it's actually it's quite interesting because it's I believe Michael Gove writing the article and that later became on become a cabinet minister in the UK. But there's the photos, the pictures are quite dramatic and I'm worked in broadcast news for a long time and worked in television broadcast news in the UK and there's quite strict controls on showing these images now. They're quite traumatic images when you think about it because there are the exact moment thousands of people died and on the inside pages there's pictures of people falling from

4:10the buildings, there's pictures. There's a famous picture falling man which has very limited use these days because. Absolutely. They know who the man was and there he is going to his death. And his pictures of bodies being taken from the rubble there's that famous iconic photo of Father Michael judge being that's on the front page of the Irish independent and then a couple days later I've got some of the weekend papers as well. His funeral is on the front page of the papers over the weekend. It's interesting looking I still have the examiner in front of me. Famous Skyland altered forever as twin towers are obliterated. Airport chaos as flights are forced to land. The passengers in front and calls to relatives, New Yorkers weep with fear. That's just one paper you have the independent. I've got the independent the Irish independent on front of me as well. War of the world and that's quite a common theme across some of the headlines. The thought that war has started and we know it would go on to become a 20 year war on terror that would claim about four and a half million lives.

5:12So this day won the sense of it being the first day of a sort of changed world and a new conflict is really palpable across the pages of these papers. The Irish son the day the change the world again a picture of the twin towers in flames as the aircraft hit the second tower and then inside carnage and that picture I mentioned to falling man which you don't see. There's quite a few different photos of people falling from terrors and again you think about the decisions that would have to be made to put this in the paper because it's such an unusual unprecedented event and they are wall to wall pages upon pages of these pictures. And then there's a kind of a slow more series of pictures of the plane going into the second tower one two three four and then the explosions right up to eight when the fuel on board the plane obviously explodes and does the damage Irish hard square to President Bush and the American people and it goes on and on and on war zone it's Armageddon chaos as workers

6:14ran for their lives and pictures of people covered in that terrible ash. And of course we now know thanks to the efforts of the New York mayor that the response of people to the toxic air and so on was hidden from them. They might get cancers and so on. Again the son on that day page 27 a full page picture of Osama bin Laden. There is and there's some interesting analysis in the British independent. There's an article in that by the late great Robert Fisk where he who interviewed Obama no, not Obama, the summer bin Laden several times and he talks about what is going to happen now and I'll just read you some of what he wrote in it. America is at war and unless I'm grossly mistaken many thousands more are scheduled to die in the Middle East and perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of the explosion to come but we never dreamed of this nightmare.

7:15No it's interesting I've been listening to the rest is classified at the podcast and they were doing a series on 9 11 and how much was known and there were warnings. Osama bin Laden had not been behind the door in saying that there was something going to happen and it was going to be something very big. So they did know we're often talking nowadays about how much Netanyahu knew about October 7th. This on a different scale entirely but there were intimations that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were planning something really big for the United States and yet it was missed. You had people training as pilots who had barely any English and who didn't practice take off on landings they only practice flying the plane so they never intended to land those planes. Even in that early first articles to come out after September 11th there's still there's questions being raised in some of the articles about what's known, security risks, what needs to be done now. So those questions were quite surprising early on.

8:16I'm surprised at the depth of the report that is fantastic. It is. It's absolutely fantastic and you can tell there's quite an interesting thing I noticed. You can tell some reporters were sent down to the scene immediately after the first plane hit. But there's a difference in the writing style between those who witnessed the collapse of the towers and those who were maybe writing an opposite of it. Their sentence are short, they're quite immediate. I can find a piece here from the daily express where one of their journalists was sent down. If I just grab it. It's on page 12. There's a writer called Laurel Eyes and she writes suddenly there was a terrifying loud boom. I saw one of the terrors lean and the people are angry, started shouting, then screaming, run, run and we all tore down the street. This is real immediacy, visceral sense. I was looking at this at the daily express yesterday, 88 page special edition.

9:18It is pretty much all about what happened on 9-11 in the centerfold which is a double spread world on the brink. People really did believe that war was at hand. As you say, a lot of things were known, but it's quite interesting what wasn't known. If you look, there's very little mention of United Airlines flight, the one that crashed Flight 93. There's just one article that I came across, sort of mentioning it in detail. The speculation that it crashed because perhaps the air sprays cross-clickey was trying to crash into an airfield, quite a landed an airfield. We now know that that was taken down by the passengers who were... The passengers, yeah. And again, the final words heard on that. The guy was on the phone to the authority saying what was happening and describing someone had their throat slit and the heavies were on board keeping that bay. But they knew what was happening in New York because they were behind schedule as it were. They were allegedly heading either for the capital building or for the White House.

10:19Yes, it was, but believed to be heading towards Washington, D.C. And that the guy, his last words, let's roll and himself on a group of like-minded passengers had to go. They brought the plane down, killing themselves and also the hijackers, but perhaps saving countless lives. And that is outlined in the weekend papers, but on the following day and the Wednesday, that story hadn't yet been told. Extraordinary. I think you should... This is a treasure trove. It is. You mind them well, don't you? I will. I'm sure my dad will make sure I mind them well. I don't know what else Mihola says to Wester Dweller to do. Oh, there's plenty of treasure. It's an awesome treasure. Anyway, Barbara, thank you very much for joining us and sharing those stories and those images with us from the day after 9-11. The Pat Kenney Show Saturday and Sunday from 10am on News Talk. Conversation.com.