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CNN Live Event/Special
America's New War: Coping With an American Tragedy
Aired September 15, 2001 - 23:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's update you on where we are right at this hour. Here are the latest developments in this American tragedy.
In the past hour the FBI has arrested a second material witness. He was arrested here in New York. The FBI says that man was one of 25 people detained by the INS on immigration holds.
And from the Pentagon tonight a call to arms. The Pentagon formally ordered 35,000 reservists to active duty to help with homeland defense. That's what it's called. In an operation called Noble Eagle.
President Bush also warned the American public that the United States is in his words, "at war." In that address he called on the fighting men and women to be prepared for battle and warned that the country faces a hidden enemy on a battlefield without borders.
In New York, the search for survivors goes on as fire and rescue personnel work through a smoldering mound of debris and rubble. 152 bodies have now been found and the number of missing climbs to more than 4,900 people, suggesting the death toll will exceed 5,000. It's certainly possible.
It was a mournful day, as we have been saying here in New York City, as the city began burying its dead. Among them Fire Chief -- rather Fire Chaplain Michael Judge buried today in a very moving service. He was one of three fire officials laid to rest. Hundreds of firefighters presumably dead, many still missing in the rubble behind us.
On to what is next. Yossef Bodansky is an expert -- he's an author and an expert on Osama bin Laden. Who is this guy? Why is this guy? And perhaps above all, why is he so hard to get? He joins us tonight.
Good evening.
YOSSEF BODANSKY, AUTHOR AND BIN LADEN EXPERT: Good evening.
BROWN: Let me -- let me start with the last of those questions. This is a name, bin Laden, that's been tossed around this country as not quite public enemy number one but that sort of thing, for any number of years. Why is -- how has he remained at large? Why is he so difficult to get?
BODANSKY: He is sitting in Afghanistan. He is moving between five or six bunkers that, by the way, we paid for during the great Jihad of the 1980s. He's moving constantly between them. He is running a lot of security operations around him. He's rounding the local decoys. He's shielded and protected by the Taliban because he's family. And unless somebody just walks all the way to him it's impossible to reach to him. And his bodyguard, including his son, have a standing order to shoot him to make sure that nobody captures him alive.
BROWN: Why does he hate the United States so?
BODANSKY: For two reason in principle. The first is a more ideological one which is he believes that the Muslim world could have surge and become a leading super power in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism; that Islam could have become the leading political ideology of the world; and that westernization, the penetration of the West -- overwhelming influence of the West of globalization, et cetera, prevent it from happening.
And then there's a more personal, if you want, reason and it is he's personally hurt by what he called the defiling of the sacred land of Arabia that is the presence of our forces there starting with the Gulf War until this very day.
BROWN: Is some -- I don't know if this is true so I'll just ask you. Some one told me today that during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the United States, in fact, gave financial support to bin Laden or bin Laden's people. Is that true?
BODANSKY: No. We provided support of Pakistani intelligence that disseminated it as they see -- as they saw fit with whatever guidance from here. "Bin Laden people" -- quote/unquote -- were part of the group that the central group the Pakistani intelligence controlled and supported. Their objective was to ensure the Islamist, with an st, the character of the resistance rather than permit the various tribal and localized commanders to rise up. That was the strategy for self-defeating for the West and we're still paying the price for it because from that leadership there emerged the Islamic terrorist movement that we're now confronting.
BROWN: You started following this guy 20 years ago, if I remember this correctly.
BODANSKY: Yes.
BROWN: What was it 20 years ago that go you interested in him?
BODANSKY: In bin Laden?
BROWN: Yeah.
BODANSKY: I mean, Osama bin Laden? Well, I had a meeting in London with a friend who was one of the Arab volunteers in Afghanistan, a gentleman that was not much older than the usual and very articulate individual. And we were talking about all sorts of things. And he brought up bin Laden's name and he said this is a guy to follow. That if he's not martyred anytime soon he'll make history. So I was really captivated and he hasn't disappointed me.
He is a formidable individual, a very lucid, a very articulate individual. It's fascinating to study his writing, his ideas, his ideology, even though he's vehemently, virulently anti-American. Nonetheless, his intellect is immense.
BROWN: Is he a smart guy, charismatic guy? Is he someone who uses his charisma to attract followers? Or does he use his wallet to attract followers?
BODANSKY: No. First of all, bin Laden does not have a penny to his soul, let's make it clear, despite all of the myths.
Now, as far as him -- he uses his charisma, his eyes, to reach to the people, to attract their attention, to build trust. But then he convinces them. His argumentation exceptionally lucid. His pronunciation of the Koran is the citation from luminaries of Islamic past, et cetera, are excellent. He makes excellent cases, very, very articulate. His language is flowery. His poetry is great. He just wins you over and convinces you.
BROWN: And just a quick final question if I can. Do you think the United States ultimately will get him or will he get away again?
BODANSKY: Oh, he considers himself dead. He considers himself a martyr, having martyred the fact already in the early 1980s and every day that he lives it's kind of a blessing. And I think that he will rather be martyred than be caught alive. And as I said, the people around him will make sure that he is martyred rather than we captured by us.
BROWN: Mr. Bodansky, nice to talk to you, appreciate it. Hope we'll talk to you again. Thank you very much for...
BODANSKY: Thank you.
BROWN: My pleasure, thank you for joining us.
If we can go to the -- to the rescue site for a second, I think there's a picture worth showing you at this point. I'm going to look at the monitor. Down there -- and you guys are going to have to try and zoom in a little bit if you can, it's a little shaky. We believe they are pulling out a fire truck that had been buried in the rubble or under the rubble.
Do we see it?
It's just -- I think we may have zoomed past it there. Maybe we'll -- we can steady the shot and try it again.
Again, if you recall the sequence of events, the first plane hit at 8:48 and fire crews, of course, immediately raced to the scene. And then the second tower was hit and more trucks came. And all of this went on before the collapse. And then when the collapse came, the trucks, you know, tragically, too many of the firefighters were buried. And they're starting to find at least the trucks tonight.
All around the city we have noticed in our day-to-day American flags everywhere. I think this is true around the country. It's certainly true here. And it's not just middle-aged people, it's not just older veterans of World War II. Kids even have been struck with a sense of patriotism, perhaps different, maybe even in some ways for the first time in their lives.
CNN's Jason Bellini tonight on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For a generation the customs of fleeting fashion statements. For the moment it's hip to be wearing the flag.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we drove in and we were saying we've never even done this on the Fourth of July, like get dressed up.
BELLINI: Young people are flocking to nightly vigils around New York City expressing a mix of emotions including one that many from the X and Y generations have never felt before, patriotism, pride in being American, pride in their government.
VIRGO, 28 YEARS OLD: I know in my particular case, I've had a lot of issues with the U.S. government in the past. I mean, I'm gay and they don't go a very good job, I think, of, you know, supporting and including their gay citizens. And this is the first time I've really been able to look at the government in an, you know, important situation and say they're doing a great job and I'm, you know, I'm glad to have them.
BELLINI: Older Americans have long wondered, do these kids have it in them the love of country, the willingness to sacrifice? Having grown up in safe and privileged times, the under 30 crowd admits they've never been tested.
BETANY PATTON, 23 YEARS OLD: As a generation we don't really have anything that brings us together because there hasn't been one world event that would do it for us.
BELLINI: Older Americans also have wondered whether their MTV generation compatriots know how to be serious, to not be cynical. Do young people care about anything other than that which directly effects them?
MTV apparently things so. It switched to network news coverage the day of the disaster.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is really unprecedented in television.
BELLINI: TRL, the popular video countdown program with host Carson Daily, for the first time in its history played not a single video. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... celebrate the gift of life.
HILLARY ROSE, MTV HOST: You hear a lot of kids, you know, all like, "Oh, the government sucks and blah, blah." But right now I -- I'm very proud to be, you know, a voting member of our United States government.
BELLINI: Will the ADD generation lose interest quickly? MTV news reporter John Norris thinks not.
JOHN NORRIS, MTV NEWS REPORTER: The idea of sacrifice, the idea of a threatening world, is -- it's foreign to them. And I'm afraid that this -- we may be on the brink of a real fundamental change in the kind of world we live in.
MIESZKO PANKOWSKI, 21 YEARS OLD: I never pretty much like the way of America and like people around here and just America itself today, you know, there was no reason not to be proud of the whole thing because of how people reacted to is, you know.
BELLINI: For the younger generation patriotism stoked not necessarily by tragedy itself but by the way Americans react when the time comes.
Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Patriotism, old-fashioned patriotism, was on our colleague Jeff Greenfield's mind tonight when he sat down with his guests. Here's the conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: It's become commonplace to say that the America we woke up to Wednesday morning was fundamentally different from the American we work up to Tuesday morning. One of the clearest ways it has changed is that there are going to be burdens imposed on us and demands asked of us that we never could have imagined when this week started. And you're already beginning to hear the question, are we, as a people and particularly the younger generation -- are we up to it.
Joining me to look at this question and others are Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. He joins us from Phoenix.
Senator McCain's father was a Commander of the Fleet during the Vietnam war. His grandfather was a legendary carrier commander during World War II. These are stories told by Senator McCain in a remarkable book, "Faith of My Fathers."
Also with us from Washington, Richard Reeves. He's a journalist, a historian, prize-winning author of, among other things, a book about the Kennedy administration. His latest book, "Richard Nixon, Alone in the White House," will be published this fall. And we expect to be joined in a few moments by Andrei Cherney, at 26, a veteran of the White House. He served as a speech -- chief speechwriter and adviser to ex-Vice President Al Gore. As soon as Mr. Cherney is ready we will bring him into the conversation.
But, Senator McCain, let me begin with you. The men that your grandfather lead and your father served with have been immortalized as the greatest generation in film, "Saving Private Ryan," on television, "Band of Brothers." And there's an implication here, I think, that this generation had something that later generations, particularly baby boomers and so-called generation Y, may lack. Do you buy into that idea?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I think they may have lacked it because I don't think there was the threat. Now I am of the conviction that with this tragedy and act of war that's been committed against us, when in some respects is significantly more damaging than Pearl Harbor was, that I believe Americans will respond.
In the -- my failed presidential campaign, I saw that young Americans were prepared not only to serve their neighborhood, their communities and their country, but they were eager to and they are eager to. And I think you're going to see young Americans galvanized with a sense of duty and purpose that will equal that of the greatest generation.
GREENFIELD: One of the challenges, though, I think -- and I want to pick up on that -- on that comment in a few minutes -- is that the people who fought in World War II had known hard times even before the war. They had gone through a depression already that lasted more than 10 years. Asking them to give up something, in some ironic way, may have been less of a challenge than to a generation that has known nothing but peace and prosperity.
Does that not make it a little harder, through no fault of later generations?
MCCAIN: Well, I think you could turn and -- turn that coin on the other side and that is that we have so much, that there's so much at risk now that perhaps was not at risk for the greatest generation. So, therefore, the urgency of this mission may be even more than it was. I mean, we were worried deeply about the threat of Nazi Germany and Japan. But I think that deep down, at least amongst our leaders, we knew that we were going to prevail because we had the military and industrial might to do so. I think that there is this threat now that could really change the way we live in a permanent fashion unless we do something about it.
And finally, one additional comment. Franklin Delano Roosevelt led this nation. He led this nation and he inspired this nation. We have to have inspired leadership. That is always been a key element in moments of crisis. And I believe that this president is rallying the American people and getting their full and whole-hearted support.
GREENFIELD: Let me turn to Andrei Cherney who has -- who does join us. He's with us from Los Angeles, the former speechwriter to Vice President Gore.
You with us now, Mr. Cherney?
There you are.
ANDREI CHERNEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPEECHWRITER: Yeah, good to see you, Jeff.
GREENFIELD: OK. You heard what Senator McCain had said. And let me put the concern to you in its most impolite terms. OK? Your generation goes ballistic when it can't download music into its PalmPilot. It expects everything at its fingertips instantly if not sooner. And it has not had any reason to have had anything expected of it. And so I'll put to you the question I put to Senator McCain. Are you confident...
CHERNEY: Right.
GREENFIELD: ... that this generation X would -- again, through no necessarily fault of your own -- has had it as easy as anyone up until now, that this is going to be a tough call?
CHERNEY: You know, I am very confident, not actually in spite of what you say, but in many ways because of it. You're right. We're a generation that's -- can't watch TV without a remote control. We can't imagine not having a pizza at our front door 30 minutes after we order it. We get impatient when it takes more than a few seconds for a Web page to download. We expect a package sent from one side of the country to arrive at another at 10 a.m. the next morning.
And yet, at the same time we're a generation that is already setting records in terms of community service, in terms of reading tutoring, that's much more likely -- 50 percent more likely to help an elderly neighbor than even young people 15-20 years ago. We're a generation with a huge amount of civic responsibility. We have stayed away from the political sphere because we see a politics that's fundamentally broken, but at the same time we've been involved in our communities, we have a huge reservoir of idealism and energy and action. And as Senator McCain pointed out so eloquently before, we have in some ways been waiting for the chance to channel that.
Now, whether we like it or not -- and we certainly don't like it, now is our not only chance but our responsibility to step up to the plate in the same way that previous generations in the course of American history have.
GREENFIELD: Andrei, many of the people you describe who I've talked to and others have talked to, who volunteer their time in local projects, as you make the point, they don't connect with national politics because either they think it has nothing to do with them, as you say, it's broken, or it doesn't have any -- it doesn't have an resonance, could this dreadful act wipe that disconnection out or re- connect your generation to a national cause because of its enormity?
CHERNEY: I believe it will by pure necessity. You can no longer think what many people said maybe a year ago that what happens in the Middle East or what happens in other parts of the world doesn't have any connection to us. We know now that what we should have known all along, the world's a very small place. And what happens in one nation affects another. What happens in one community affect another. What happens in one neighborhood affects another.
The very challenges that are being put to my generation and to young people are the same challenges as, you know, Jeff, that were put to the generation that did become the greatest generation. Yes, they lived through the Great Depression but at the same time they were the generation that was born and raised in the 1920s, during the Roaring '20s, the age of flappers and a go-go stock market.
And yet, when the time came those same young people were the ones who stormed the beaches at Normandy. And they're -- what once was the lost generation became the greatest generation. And I think that that's really been the lesson of American history...
GREENFIELD: Well, let...
CHERNEY: ... that in every moment of crisis a generation that has had the responsibility to step up to the plate has done that and has really made this country what it is today.
GREENFIELD: Richard Reeves, let me put one more possible concern on the table and it's one you know quite well. You've covered politics and public policy for more than 30 years. We've watched each other grow older together in these respective fields.
You had seen and chronicled a steady rise not simply of skepticism but of cynicism about public life. We've been taught by everyone from the press to late-night comedians to stop at anything that our leaders say. Can that be turned around now that we are in something approaching wartime, if not wartime itself?
RICHARD REEVES, HISTORIAN: I think it can be turned around but it's up to the leaders. I agree that the problem is not in the character of the American people. This all began for me out in Sag Harbor, which is a town of 2,000 people, and within an the first strike there were flags on every house in the village. And those flags weren't at half-mast, they were high. People want to fight and I suspect that young people want to have some role to play that's more important in terms of the world and of history than they have so far. And we don't need the kind of numbers that we needed in World War II...
GREENFIELD: No, but you...
REEVES: ... you need smaller numbers of higher educated people. And the problem then -- I think the will is there right at the moment, it depends on where the leadership of the country takes them, particularly the president. And the decisions are made we're going to attack somebody, we're going to bomb someplace. There's no question about that. The question is where are we going to do it and why. And there'll be plenty of people to do it willing, happy to do it.
GREENFIELD: The question I'm raising, Richard -- and then I want to hear what Senator McCain has to say because he's already mentioned this point that it's not simply that Americans want to support their people, their fallen, their country; it's that -- don't they have to believe that leaders are to be followed, leaders are to be trusted? And you've had 30 years or more of a message, partly the political systems fault, that says to quote Mr. Bob Dylan, you know, "don't follow leaders."
Can people raised with that kind of cynicism say, OK, now I believe what you're telling me?
REEVES: I don't -- well, President Giuliani did fine for the first couple of days while we tried to find the other one. Yes, they -- I don't think their cynicism is that deep because it was more ennui than cynicism. They had not reason to care about things. I think the cynicism may come further down the road and Bush's great opportunity and obligation is to educate the American people as to what's happening and to truly, I mean -- not just to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan, but what is the role of people like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, of Egypt in this.
I mean, if we go and attack the old enemies, it's then there would be great cynicism in the country because sooner or later it will become apparent that it wasn't these people who attacked the United States. It was a much bigger operation, well-financed, probably from places like Saudi Arabia which has been exporting its fundamentalism to protect the royal family for all this time, exporting at first to Afghanistan with Pakistan's help and with our help. And now they've exported their fundamentalist problem to the United States.
GREENFIELD: Senator McCain, this raises, I think, a point that we sometimes overlook, I guess, historically, that there are times that when a war is prosecuted -- and there's always early support -- and it drags on, it stalemates. We get bogged down. We're waist deep in the big muddy. Support begins to ebb. It happened in Korea. It certainly happened in Vietnam. So is Richard Reeves right in pointing out that if this -- whatever we do is not executed with precision and intelligence, and real consistency, that that risks returning the country to a more cynical or divided state?
MCCAIN: I think there's that risk and that's why I believe the President of the United States has and is and must say to the American people that this is a long twilight struggle. This is going to take time and patience. I guess tomorrow we could launch a bunch of cruise missiles and everybody might feel good for a few days. But we all know that that's not a very effective, in fact, singularly ineffective method of responding to these kinds of situations. So it's got to -- we've got to have patience.
I think the other -- the other thing I think here domestically we really have to be concerned about it, and that is some kind of rise of anti-Middle Eastern sentiment. Here in Arizona today in Phoenix there was a couple of drive-by shootings of people who appear to be Middle Eastern. The president and all of us have to tell people, "Look. We're different and the reason why we're different is because we embrace and we love all of our citizens." And for us to somehow engage in this activity is really a terrible thing and we've got to guard against that right now.
GREENFIELD: One thing that Richard Reeves alluded to -- one of the rare moments of humor we've had is the reference to President Giuliani. You referred to leadership. It's striking isn't it how -- what Mayor Giuliani has done in the last four days. Can you put -- can you put your finger on it? Is it possible to describe it in a sentence? Because it certainly isn't...
MCCAIN: It's visibility, relate to the people of New York City. The people of New York City know Rudy Giuliani and they know he may have some warts, but they know that he's a very efficient and capable guy. I happen to think he's a wonderful leader. I'm wondering if they're going to repeal the term limits that keeps him from running again.
GREENFIELD: Oh, you anticipated the question about whether Congress would have a sense of the Congress resolution to do just that. You guys can...
MCCAIN: Governor Pataki -- Governor Pataki has done well. Both New York senators, Senator Schumer and Senator Clinton have done well. I think New Yorkers can be very proud. You know, we look at New Yorkers as the most cynical people in the world and yet we've seen displays of heroism that are writing chapters in American history.
GREENFIELD: Mr. Cherney, I have a son who's not that much younger than you, which attests to the early start of your career. And I must say as a father, one of the things that hit me in the first hours of this is that my son's life, for at least the foreseeable future, may well be radically different from the life that he or I or anyone would have imagined of his generation. Personally, you're just starting out your own career. Are you feeling that you woke up or by Tuesday at noon you saw your life taking a route that you and your generational friends could never in your wildest nightmare have imagined? Has it hit you?
CHERNEY: It certainly has. You know, I wrote a book earlier this year about -- called, "The Next Deal," about really where America needs to go, my generation needs to go. And a lot of what I said there is still true but it's a very different America, I think, than the America I was foreseeing that my generation would live in.
We really never have asked, as no generation has asked for really a life of comfort and ease, but what -- the world that's been handed to us and the world as it's changed after the September 11th is a world really where we're going to be called forth to do what previous generations in times of challenge and crisis have had to do.
You know, the heroes that John McCain just described, the people who -- firefighters and emergency medical professionals and police officers who rushed into the building as everybody else was rushing out, those were people in their 20s and 30s. They were from this young generation. They're the ones who risked their lives, who lost their lives by the hundreds, perhaps the thousands. They're the ones who are really representing what I think this generation is made of. I think we -- nobody looks for this type of -- type of responsibility placed on their shoulders, but I think it's the responsibility of my generation as it is the responsibility of those older than us, to lead and to do their part to really make sure that our mark on history is as great as that that other generations have left in previous years.
GREENFIELD: You know, I think Mr. Cherney makes an excellent point about the firefighters and the police officers. They are indeed part of this younger generation.
But, Richard Reeves, let me in the moments we have left have you and Senator McCain...
REEVES: I just want to say one thing, though.
GREENFIELD: Yeah, please.
REEVES: Your generation was misled. This has been building for a long time and not just days or years, it's been building for practically since the crusades. There was going to be a clash between the modernizers -- secular modernizers like us, and old-line fundamentalist religions. So that kids should have been told -- I think it was a failure of the generation ahead of them -- that this was coming. You didn't have to be Machiavelli or Nostradamus to know that sooner or later the East and the West were going to confront each other again about this.
GREENFIELD: In fact, Richard, in your book on Richard Nixon I think you suggest that President Nixon was fearful of this 30 some years ago and a lot of his diplomacy was aimed at staving off what he regarded as an inevitable conflict of this sort?
Nixon thought, not that he talked about it in public, that inevitably there was going to be a conflict between the East and the West and that the East would win led not -- led by China, by Japan and by India. That they would eventually defeat the West and the job of Western leaders was to hold off that confrontation for as long as possible.
GREENFIELD: Let me...
REEVES: Now we're seeing a bit of it.
GREENFIELD: Let me turn to Senator McCain with what I guess is the kind of question that's difficult to ask but I think has to be. If, in fact, Richard Reeves is right that there is now a kind of conflict looming of the most, no pun intended, fundamental sort between the modern world and fundamental radical fringe of Islam, is there a policy, is there a military strategy that can possibly deal with that? I mean, I can imagine the cleverest military strategy in the world and yet the next generation will still dream of being suicide bombers because that's how they're raised. What do you do about that?
MCCAIN: First of all, I agree with you on the historic perspective. I believe the word assassin came from a group of individuals back in the 11th century that started this kind of willingness to sacrifice one's own lives. Look, I think there's a fundamental problem in the East and that is where you have a terrible economy, terrible economic conditions and social conditions, and a total lack of any of the institutions of democracy, any kind of freedoms.
That's the fertile breeding ground for this kind of activity and these kinds of organizations. I believe we must do everything in our power to bring these nations economically, culturally, and every other way, up into the 21st -- well, into the 19th and then the 20th and then the 21st century. Because without the kind of economic growth and in furthering and fostering of democratic institutions, you're going to have a fertile breeding ground for these kinds of organizations. And I'm not sure you're ever going to eradicate them.
GREENFIELD: All right, thank you.
REEVES: And I think you're going to have...
GREENFIELD: Go ahead, Richard, very quickly.
REEVES: ... have more of that in terms of we've got to understand that we are running the world, we're making it our world. We are the conquerors and like earlier conquerors, the Romes or the -- the Romans or the Turks or whatnot, we can't expect the people who we're changing, and they feel oppressing -- we can't have them love us at the same time. We feel that we're so generous, they're so lucky to have -- to have our technology. We're pushing them around and you can't expect them to love us. We have to work out a hard deal where they get benefits from what we're doing and we get benefits from what they're doing.
GREENFIELD: All right. That's going to have...
REEVES: They're hardworking, decent people, most of them.
GREENFIELD: That's going to have to be the last word, Richard. Thank you very much for joining us. Richard Reeves, historian...
REEVES: Thank you, Jeff.
GREENFIELD: ... in Washington.
Senator John McCain from Phoenix, Arizona, I appreciate you staying with us...
MCCAIN: Thank you.
GREENFIELD: ... this hour.
And Andrei Cherney in Los Angeles, who is...
CHERNEY: Thank you, Jeff.
GREENFIELD: ... member of a younger generation that's facing a world that I don't think any of us could possibly have imagined.
Thank you all for being with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: And through the magic of television, Jeff is here. You taped that earlier.
First of all, let's talk about some of this. Don't you hate it when the 26-year-olds are that smart?
GREENFIELD: You know, I -- using lines that people used to use, I have ties older than him. But actually I think it's -- Andrei made one -- made a really good point. When we talk about this generation of instant gratification, the firefighters, the police officers, the rescue workers, many of them are in their 20s.
BROWN: I mean, driving in today and you see them, they're -- I mean, they're kids. That's not the right word. It's not fair to them. They're men...
GREENFIELD: They're young men and young...
BROWN: ... and women. But...
GREENFIELD: ... women and we often, you know -- we often forget, we often sort of associate a younger generation with -- and it is, frankly, elitist. We assume it's yuppies, I mean, it's higher income and it's white collar work. You've got all of these people all over the country before this who were doing heroic work, dangerous work, life-threatening work. And what we saw these last four days on the part of that element of the younger generation was as heroic as anything the greatest generation did. I mean, it's -- how many people made the same point as they were running out of those buildings, the firefighters and the cops were...
BROWN: Yeah, running in.
GREENFIELD: ... running in.
BROWN: Often, it seems to me, when we tape programs, we finish and we walk away and we think, I wish I'd have said, I wish I had thought. As you listen to it again or as you walked away from it, was there something you wish you had thought or wish someone had said?
GREENFIELD: I think actually what Richard Reeves and Senator McCain were talking about at the end raises -- I'm not sure I wish I had said that but now I know what I want to -- where we need to go in the days ahead.
BROWN: Yeah.
GREENFIELD: What they were -- what Richard Reeves was saying is basically, look, you know, you can launch the most powerful and intelligent military operation, but in the long run if there's a whole part of the world that feels that they are -- that they have gotten nothing from modernity, from the enlightenment, from all the things we think are good, what are you going to do about the generations to come?
If it's true that they're -- that some reports are that the radical groups are being besieged by young men who themselves want to be martyrs. That raises a question so profound and so disturbing that it has to be explored. Somebody has to start asking what do you do about that.
So it did -- it did at -- we thought we were having a conversation about the, you know, the next generation...
BROWN: Yeah.
GREENFIELD: And it sometimes happens, as you know, that sort of toward the end something gets put on the table and you go, oh, boy, we've got to think about that one very hard.
BROWN: That's how we get to tomorrow's program, and tomorrow's program, and tomorrow's program.
Do you feel today more patriotic?
GREENFIELD: I think...
BROWN: ... kind of loves -- I mean, you love your country, you love politics, you love -- do you feel it more -- your soul?
GREENFIELD: I feel that everything is more serious. I cannot stop thinking of the other inconsequentiality of so much of what was obsessing in the news media six days ago and was obsessing the country at large. I mean, so many things -- I don't just mean it for the stupid stories that we -- that we flog to death, you know, a publicist gets in an auto accident...
BROWN: Right.
GREENFIELD: ... in a trendy watering hole and that's news. And lord knows, you know, we haven't heard much about a certain California congressman these last five days. But to realize that, you know, that all the assumptions of a week ago, the kind of lives we were living, I've got a 19-year-old son that I -- did that ever occur to me that whatever he was going to face in this world, the prospect of somehow being either threatened with terror or maybe being ask to...
BROWN: What's your son's name...
GREENFIELD: Dave.
BROWN: ... about all this. No...
GREENFIELD: Oh, I'm sorry.
BROWN: ... what's he saying?
GREENFIELD: He's watching this, as is my older daughter, with I think a sense of almost being stunned. I mean, this is -- all of us are, but for the -- for our younger generation -- you know, never mind doesn't remember World War II, doesn't remember Vietnam, didn't -- hasn't lived through anything.
The crisis that he's lived through was impeachment and Monica, which was at least as much farce as well as it was drama. And now I think -- who wouldn't, if you were 19 and looking at the rest of your life and thinking, it is going to be so profoundly different, perhaps, than I have -- than I would have thought.
So that's why, yes, I'm thinking, you know, much more about the danger the country's in but I'm also thinking of how much more consequential this is than anything I've ever lived through.
BROWN: Yes. With all of the -- I've managed for the better part of week to make few personal observations. Of all of the things in this last week that have been unsettling beyond the obvious, the event itself, I've said to my daughter, who's watched me go to terrible places at various times -- to Bosnia and to South Africa to do difficult stories -- are you OK, are you scared. And he's always answered no. And I asked her the other day are you OK, are you scared and she said, "I think so. I think so." And I worry about how kids -- I worry about how adults, frankly -- but how kinds are handling all of this.
Anyway, I'm not sure how we got off on that. But I like when we sit around and talk anyway. So...
GREENFIELD: OK, Aaron.
BROWN: And you're going to sit around and talk for a while longer today, right -- tonight?
GREENFIELD: So I'm told.
BROWN: So you're told.
GREENFIELD: Because at midnight we're going to field some calls from folks and see how -- see what they have to say and see how that goes while we're...
BROWN: Jerry (UNINTELLIGIBLE). That's what it says right here. That feels like a segue to me.
If you have -- thank you, I'll talk to you later.
If you have some things you'd like to talk about, goodness knows, we've been talking here for a long, long time. It's your turn. CNN hotline -- that's the number, 1-800-310-4-CNN. And for those of you who, like me, hate when they do things like 4-CNN because you don't really know what the numbers are, it's 4-266. We'll make it a little easier. Jack Hafferty (ph) and a host of others, including Jeff, at midnight Eastern time, coming up.
We go back to -- go back to the, excuse me, the ground zero team. We're going to try and see this fire truck coming out one more time. As we said, a number of fire vehicles were buried and it just gives you a sense of how the work is coming. Look at the condition of that. I don't mean the dirt on it. Just look at it. But, you know, I suspect that those firemen and women, that was a big moment. A kind of victory. It's not like finding one of your guys, goodness knows, but look at that how mangled that looks being towed away.
And I'm not sure that's a live picture or tape. I gather that's tape. But just behind it I saw a flag, or at least I thought I did, somebody walking with a flag or perhaps driving with a flag as they carry that out.
GREENFIELD: There is something at once so futile and so ennobling about these gestures...
BROWN: Yeah.
GREENFIELD: ... you know, trying to put a flag amidst the rubble, trying to put a flag on a mangled truck. The story that was told at the -- at the funeral for the fire department chaplain when the firefighters took his body...
BROWN: Yeah.
GREENFIELD: ... and brought it into the church...
BROWN: ... into a church.
GREENFIELD: ... to pay its respects. These gestures seem at one so small compared to what happened and yet, they're so human that...
BROWN: Nice powerful picture that.
Back to the business. In this case the business of business. Come Monday morning, for the first time in a week, the stock markets will open. The MX, the Nasdaq, and the New York Stock Exchange will open. It spent the day testing out all of the telecommunications, the computers, all of that that really does makes these stock exchanges work.
Greg Clarkin has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GREG CLARKIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The opening bell is expected to sound on Wall Street Monday morning, breaking the silence that has blanketed the New York Stock Exchange since Tuesday's terrorist attacks. Sitting just a few blocks East of what was the World Trade Center, the NYSE has been covered in ash but the grime is now washed away, replaced by an American flag.
After hours of testing its internal systems Saturday, Chairman Richard Grasso declared all systems go and vowed Monday's opening bell would be rich in symbolism.
RICHARD GRASSO, CHAIRMAN, NYSE: To send a very important message to the criminals who so heinously attacked this country that they've lost. The American way of life goes on, business recommences.
CLARKIN: The NYSE sustained no major structural damage and inside the more than 100-year-old building technicians tested the systems linking brokerages to the exchange and the results have been encouraging.
CATHERINE KINNEY, GROUP EXEC. V.P., NYSE: We are very pleased with the progress that all of the firms have made particularly our major firms who account for the lion's share of the order flow here.
CLARKIN: Uptown, the Nasdaq has run tests of its own and terms those results terrific. It too vows to begin trading Monday morning. As for the American stock exchange, it suffered damage to its building and will trade out of the NYSE. The exchange and the city of New York have worked to restored access to the financial district. Once there, employees will find even tighter security around the NYSE and everything from counselors to deal with trauma to surgical masks to deal with dust will be readily available.
Greg Clarkin, CNN Financial News, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: And on the subject of business, it's going to be a very long time indeed before the airlines are back in business or at least back in good business. A couple of airlines announced today that they'll cut back -- once they even get back to full service will cut 20 percent of their flights. Continental's going to layoff a lot of people.
A couple of airports did open today that had been closed, that didn't get open yesterday. Logan Airport in Boston opened up finally. There was an incident there -- that's perhaps a little strong, but someone was arrested, taken off a plane, because they thought he was acting suspiciously. It turned out to be nothing.
Also, Newark Airport, one of the three metropolitan New York airports and a very busy airport, opened up today as well. Flights, not many of them, I suppose, or not nearly as many as normal, flying out, but it was open. Kennedy and LaGuardia, about half capacity today -- the other two major New York airports 550 arrivals and departures.
So business is edging back to normal but it's going to be a long time, as we've said. Continental Airlines announced today that it will layoff 12,000 employees. And its chairman said that the industry itself is loosing $300 million a day. Bruce Francis has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE FRANCIS, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Continental Airlines says it is furloughing 12,000 employees, more than a fifth of its workforce, as it cuts 20 percent of its schedule.
GORDON BETHUNE, CONTINENTAL AIRLINES: Continental just getting ready. We're not going to be bankrupt first, I'll tell you that. But we're going to be first to move to prevent it and I think that's a prudent thing to do.
FRANCIS: Northwest is also cutting its schedule by 20 percent, although it hasn't announced any job reductions. Most airlines are flying reduced schedules right now but at a heavy loss. The airline industry has been losing as much as $275 million a day since Tuesday's terrorist attacks. And even with most airports now open, the outlook is bleak with passengers reluctant to fly. Airlines face further constraints as pilots are called up for military reserve at the same time the carriers are paying for increased security measures. That's why Bethune and others are calling for a government bail-out.
BETHUNE: I now and we all of us call on the President of the United States and members of our Congress to take immediate action to restore the stability of this vital industry.
FRANCIS: A first attempt in Congress to provide $15 billion in assistance has failed. If the money is eventually approved, it may come too late for some airlines. Midway has already folded and seven of the top 10 U.S. airlines lost money in the second quarter. Prior to the attacks, the industry was on a course to lose $2 billion this year. Analysts now say that could soar to $10 billion.
MICHAEL MILLER, AVIATION DAILY: The financial situation is such that I really expect three to four small carriers to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks and for the major airlines, actually, to lay off people. So it's a downward spiral.
FRANCIS: Airline chiefs will get their chance to voice their concerns directly to the Bush Administration. Next week they're going to sit down with Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, potentially on the agenda, beefing up the security without scaring away an already nervous public.
Bruce Francis, CNN Financial News, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: At about 8:47 on Tuesday morning this network reported something, but no one remembers what it was. It was the last news story before the planes hit. Since then we and virtually every other news organization have reported only on one story, a multi-faceted story, a huge story, an important story, but just one. So what else has happened in the world?
Here's CNN's Beth Nissen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Any other week this would have been national news, tropical storm Gabrielle hit Florida's gulf coast Friday. Heavy rains, up to four inches in 10 hours, flooded several cities including Orlando, Tampa and downtown Sarasota. This photo was taken in Saint Petersburg. More than 300,000 homes and businesses are without power.
In an opposite corner of the country, the Seattle area is mourning the loss of 16 area residents in a plane crash in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday. The victims had been on a cruise ship full of more than 1,000 University of Washington football fans. Their sightseeing flight was a side trip. Mexican aviation authorities suspect one of the turboprop's engines failed.
In Utah on Thursday an Amtrak passenger train collided with a Union Pacific cargo train and derailed near the Utah/Nevada border. The Amtrak train was full. Many of its passengers were traveling by rail from Denver to Oakland because airports were closed after the World Trade Center attack. Eleven people were taken to Salt Lake area hospitals for observation, but incredibly, no one was seriously injured.
And in Louisville, Kentucky this week, surgeons who in July had accomplished the world's first successful implant of an artificial heart implanted an artificial heart in a second man, a 70-year-old former tire dealer whose name has not been released. He is in intensive care and is said to be recovering well.
There were other stories that went almost unnoticed this week in the crush of news from the World Trade Center and Washington. This story had dominated local New York City news casts and headlines all summer. A high-powered, young public relations executive backed her SUV into a crowd outside a nightclub in the celebrity haven of the Hamptons on July 7th. Sixteen people were injured, several seriously. This week the Long Island grand jury indicted the woman, Lizzie Grubman, on 26 counts including charges of assault, drinking and driving, and fleeing a crash scene.
There were also developments in the story that dominated the national air waves this summer. California legislators this week approved the redrawing of Representative Gary Condit's district, removing part of the Congressman's traditional base of support and making it less likely that he will win re-election after reports of his personal connection of Chandra Levy, a missing Washington intern.
It seems hard to believe now how much attention was fixed for so long on this one missing person. Light poles, bus stops, and store windows in New York City are now papered over with photos and posters of the missing who officially number almost 5,000. For families and friends who are desperate for word on the fates of this legion of the missing no other news matters.
Beth Nissen, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: As most of you know, a very provocative way to end that wasn't it?
As most of you know, virtually all of the sports activities have been canceled at least through the weekend. Major League baseball canceled its games Tuesday. It will not start up again until Monday in some cities, Tuesday in others. The National Football League canceled the games, too. And those of you old enough to remember will recall that in 1963 the NFL, on the weekend -- the Sunday after President Kennedy was assassinated did go ahead and play its games.
The then commissioner Pete Rozelle said many, many years later, excuse me, that that was the worst decision he ever made. In any case, there was no question that athletes and people that own these teams thought better of gathering a lot of fans in stadiums across the country. It will start up again soon but not this weekend.
More on sport and the tragedy from CNN/Sports Illustrated correspondent Mark Viviano.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARK VIVIANO, CNN/SI CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Saturday was a crisp, fall-like day around the United States. A day when college football would normally dominate the sports world. But once again, Tuesday's tragic events cast a long shadow. 116 Division 1A college football teams had their games postponed. But not all stadiums were deserted.
At Ohio State University 15,000 fans, about 85,000 less than would have watched the Buckeye football team play San Diego State, paid tribute to the dead and missing. While at Clemson University about 7,000 fans silently watched flag-carrying ROTC cadets instead of the Tiger football players making the traditional run down the hill at Clemson Stadium. 15 NFL games will be missed on Sunday and Monday night. But players like these New Orleans Saints continue to aid in the rescue and relief effort in any way they can.
The defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens worked out Saturday but their minds were far from the gridiron.
TONY SIRAGUSA, RAVENS DEFENSE LINEMAN: I don't know how, you know, hard or easy it's going to be to get to work next week, but, you know, you've got to try and focus as much as possible on the task at hand and try to, you know, not forget, but try to put this aside for a little bit and focus on what you're doing.
VIVIANO: One event that did go on as scheduled was the German 500 auto race in Berlin, renamed the American Memorial. But the race was also overshadowed by tragedy as driver Alex Zanardi was critically injured in this horrific crash just 12 laps from the finish. Both of Zanardi's legs had to be amputated as a result of the accident. He is in critical but stable condition.
Major League baseball is gearing up to resume its regular season on Monday with news of stringent new security measures including no backpacks or large bags and no coolers allowed to be brought into stadiums. On Saturday, the New York Yankees had their first official workout since Tuesday. The defending world champions struggled to just put the bat on the ball and play a simple game of catch.
JOE TORRE, MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: We may be able to offer some kind of distraction to the sadness that's going on.
SCOTT BROSIUS, NEW YORK YANKEES INFIELDER: It's going to be difficult. It's going to be difficult for everybody involved, you know. When you go through something like this baseball just seems so trivial that it's really hard to think about getting excited about getting a base hit or scoring a run or doing something like that in the wake of, you know, of what's going on. So it's going to be difficult for everybody.
VIVIANO: Meanwhile, across town at Shea Stadium the Mets also returned to the field but not before helping New York firefighters collect donated supplies. The team is scheduled to fly to Pittsburgh Sunday for a Monday game against the Pirates.
I'm Mark Viviano.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: I'll show you one more thing that went on at Yankee Stadium today. I mean, modern athletes, and often deservedly so, they get rapped for their self-centeredness and the like. So the Yankees were out there working and then all of a sudden they dropped to their knees as a group, in prayer.
Their country, the people who lost their lives, all of it -- sometimes it doesn't matter how much you're paid, it hurts just the same -- or what you do for a living. And the flags at Yankee stadium and around the country at half-staff. Fans will come back to the ballpark next week here and around the country. It won't be the same, very little will be.
Out there in the streets of New York today there are 5,000 families who wonder if they will ever see a loved one again. Each one of them, we suspect, has their own unique story. They certainly have their own affection for their husband, wife, daughter, son, whatever. All of the stories matter. Here is one of them from correspondent Candy Crowley.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID VINCENT: Yes. Dan, this is David Vincent.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's an Eastman Kodak executive from western New York, a man with a problem to solve, a man on a mission.
VINCENT: How's it being set up so that I can make the best use of my time because you're working a timeline here. You have -- you have to get to your daughter as fast as you can.
CROWLEY: Melissa is missing. She's a technology recruiter at Alliance Consulting.
VINCENT: And what we know that they're -- that's a 102nd floor of Tower One.
CROWLEY: The enormity of what's happened in David Vincent's life shows on his face but does not slow his step.
VINCENT: Please take a picture. Please focus on the picture. To get her face out there so that anybody...
CROWLEY: Working on three hours sleep and a couple of crackers, he protects his fondest hopes, battles his worst fears and sometimes looses.
VINCENT: I don't have any video of her. To be honest with you, Melissa didn't like to be videoed. She used to holler at me every time we did. I -- you think that ...
CROWLEY: I'd give anything, he says, to have her holler at me right now. It's the rare lapse, mostly there is a desperate monotony to his mission.
VINCENT: I know she made a 911 call at 9:02:07.
CROWLEY: It's all that David Vincent knows about what happened to his eldest daughter. It's enough to hang hope on.
VINCENT: When we went back to the cell phone provider, the only thing that we had that they could tell us is that there was a 911 call made from that cell phone at 9:02 which was some 17 minutes after the jet had plowed into the thing.
CROWLEY: 9:02:07, he tells it to everyone he talks to. He clings to it for dear life because, of course, it is.
VINCENT: I need to know where she was when she made that call because that will tell me whether she was downstairs just getting off the path and maybe in a void someplace downstairs, or whether I have to understand that she was upstairs on 102 and have to wonder whether she was able -- was able to get out or not able to get out.
CROWLEY: By evening David Vincent has pretty much worn out the corner of 26th and Lexington and his cell battery is fading, so he moves on.
Craig Spitzer is CEO of Alliance. Seven employees, everyone thought to be in the building that morning, are missing. He cannot, will not, bring himself to believe they're gone.
CRAIG SPITZER, CEO, ALLIANCE: I'm not going to say that to you right now.
CROWLEY: You can't.
SPITZER: No, and I won't. And I won't for myself and I won't for the people in there.
CROWLEY: In there is a room full of people who have loved someone too long to give up so soon, and what's left after hope is unthinkable. It is why they agree to expose this rawest of human times to the glare of the camera lens because maybe somebody out there has information about Roland, something that will keep his brother moving.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I go to sleep with hope. I wake up with none.
CROWLEY: And perhaps somebody saw Eric in a stairwell racing to safety.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't know. Maybe he's out there someplace, got hit on the head, and he doesn't know who he is, you know. Maybe he's unconscious and he didn't have any identification on him. And as it turns out nobody can say for sure that Melissa was in the office for that 8:30 meeting.
VINCENT: I have to tell you -- I have to tell you, Craig, that's the best news that I could possibly hear because...
SPITZER: OK.
VINCENT: ... because what you're telling me is you can't confirm Melissa...
SPITZER: Correct.
VINCENT: ... in that office space.
SPITZER: Correct.
VINCENT: And that's what I had to know.
SPITZER: Yeah.
VINCENT: That's what keeps me going.
CROWLEY: So if you know anything about Melissa call her father. He'd give anything to hear her holler at him again.
Candy Crowley, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: We have seen, all of us together, you and I, so much sorrow and sadness this week. Up next, CNN Hotline, Jack Hafferty (ph) hosts a cast of several. A chance for you to call in, speak out, talk about the things that are on your mind in this awful and difficult week.
At first light tomorrow I'm going to take a tour of ground zero and we'll report on that here tomorrow night at 10. We hope you'll join us. Until then, good night.
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