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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Remembering September 11: The World Trade Center

Aired December 31, 2001 - 22:00   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, NEWSNIGHT: Good evening again, I'm Aaron Brown. Thanks for being with us on this New Year's Eve. It's the night, of course, for making resolutions and here is ours.

We resolve not to forget what happened on September 11th, and that may seem like an easy resolution to keep at this point, but time as we know has a way of healing but it also has a way of making us forget.

Forgetting might not be quite the right word. We don't want time to erase the vividness, the detail of what happened that day, who we lost, what we lost and what it's meant to our world.

We made the resolution. Tonight we begin acting on it, but tonight we'll look at something we actually gained on the 11th of September, and that's an appreciation for New York City, almost a reinvention. Its heroes, its skyline and its history.

We'll get underway after we take a quick break to update you on the latest news.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm at the CNN Center, and I'm here to do just that. The U.S. military is intensifying its efforts to find Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. U.S. Special Forces have joined the search, shifting it toward the Baghran region about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar. That's where Pentagon sources say they believe Omar is hiding, along with hundreds of Taliban fighters.

More than a week after the first peacekeepers arrived in Afghanistan, the country's new interim government and the United Nations have reached an agreement on their role. The deal still to be reviewed by the 17 nations involved, calls for at least 4,500 troops and allows for the use of force if necessary.

The Pentagon is defending a U.S. air strike in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend. U.S. military officials say the strike was against legitimate al Qaeda targets, not a village. The Pakistani- based Afghan-Islamic press says 92 people were killed in the raid near the city of Gardez.

One military official says, tells CNN the U.S. could not rule out that some civilians might have been in suspected Taliban and al Qaeda leadership complex, and were killed during that attack.

India's Foreign Minister says Pakistan's arrest of Islamic militant leaders is a step in the right direction. Tensions between the countries had been on the rise since the December 13th suicide attack on the Indian Parliament.

Yesterday, Pakistan arrested 30 militants, along with the leader of one of the groups India blamed for the attack. Pakistani officials say the arrests are part of the government's ongoing efforts to fight terrorism.

President Bush says the arrests are a good sign that Pakistan's President is cracking down on militants.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I urged President Musharraf to do everything he could to crack down on the terrorist network that had bombed the Indian Parliament and raided the Indian Parliament. In my conversation with the Prime Minister, I said I can understand how he feels. If someone attacked the U.S. Capitol, I'd feel angry too. I urged - however, I urged - I explained to the Indian Prime Minister that, while I understood his anger, I was hoping that they were not headed for war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Also today, a senior Indian minister told CNN India will give Pakistan a list of "terrorists" it wants extradited from Pakistan.

Almost 300 million Europeans are ringing in the New Year with a new jingle, if you will. Fifty billion Euro coins and more than 14 billion bank notes became legal tender at midnight, from Finland to Greece. The switch marks the end of national currencies across the 12 nations in the Euro Zone; however, old currencies can still be spent for the next few weeks.

Here in the U.S., partiers counting down the hours now to 2002, and nowhere will the New Year's Eve bash be bigger than in New York City. You are looking at live pictures right now of Times Square, hundreds of thousands of people gathering to ring in the New Year 2000 and for the annual dropping of the ball at midnight. Because of September 11th, this year's event is draped in tight security with a very heavy police presence in the crowd.

When New York says goodbye to 2001, it will also be adieu to it's popular Mayor Rudy Giuliani. His reign ends at midnight. Giuliani spent his waning hours in office saying goodbye during an emotional news conference. His last order of business, pulling the midnight switch at the city's New Year's celebration at Times Square. Earlier, Giuliani's successor, Michael Bloomberg, was sworn in as the city's new mayor.

I'll be back in 20 minutes with another look at the latest developments. "NEWSNIGHT" with Aaron Brown continues after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We begin now with New York's Mayor Rudy "the Rock" Mayor hero, just plain Rudy. If you're chanting, take your pick of the nicknames for the man who transformed along with the whole city in those 90 minutes on September 11th.

Like New York, Rudy Giuliani once had a bit of an image problem, abrasive, confrontational, at times arrogant. Like New York, the Mayor proved that in a crisis, he could become a profile in courage.

Here's CNN's Deborah Feyerick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Rudy Giuliani was so close to the World Trade Center that when the first tower came crashing down, the mayor was trapped inside a nearby building.

After a frantic search for an exit, a door opened. Giuliani and his team were on the move.

SUNNY MINDEL, GIULIANI COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: He made the moment. For the Mayor of the City of New York, going up Broadway just like everyone else, collecting people following him, evacuating.

FEYERICK: That image, a mayor leading New Yorkers to safety summed up everything he had worked for over eight years. A powerful police force, a strong emergency management unit ready for action, all of it seemingly geared for this single moment.

GIULIANI: Come with us. Come with us.

JOE LHOTA, DEPUTY MAYOR, NEW YORK: Rudy Giuliani loves to deal with the "what if." Let's create scenarios and let's plan accordingly. So when September 11th came, there never was a huddling around of the senior executives within the government to say, "what do we do now?" We all knew what we needed to do.

FEYERICK: That afternoon, Rudy Giuliani stepped into the spotlight, not as a Senate candidate dropping out of last year's high profile race because of prostate cancer, not as a man whose marriage to a TV broadcaster was publicly melting down while he stepped out with a new friend.

On September 11th, Rudy Giuliani showed himself as a true leader, comforting not only a frightened city, but a frightened nation.

GIULIANI: The City of New York and the United States of America is much stronger than any group of barbaric terrorists, that our democracy, that our rule of law, that our strength and our willingness to defend ourselves will ultimately prevail.

FEYERICK: Giuliani's two terms have been filled with extreme highs, crime cut in half, an economy revived, tourists pouring in, a city far better off than before.

But his run has also had profound lows. Two racially divisive police shootings, a bitter assault on a museum whose taste in art he disagreed with. Critics accused the mayor of traveling on basic rights by seeing things his way and his way only.

ANDREW KIRTZMAN, AUTHOR: The driving force behind Giuliani's approach to government is a feeling of righteousness, and a feeling that he has the key to knowledge, and the key to keeping the city under control. And it's been his best quality and it's been his worst quality, because it means that he's been immune to pressure.

FEYERICK: Which may explain why Rudy Giuliani has taken on everyone from jaywalkers to hotdog vendors. One political insider calling him a classic wartime leader who's done such a great job that ultimately he ran out of enemies to fight. Critics call him a bully.

ED KOCH, FORMER NEW YORK MAYOR: He showed great insensitivity to people, particularly minorities, and a certain cruelty in his relationships with people. You couldn't be a critic of Giuliani's and remain a friend, social or otherwise.

FEYERICK: That same "I know better" character trait that alienates people, also inspires extreme loyalty. Love it or hate it, it seems to be the key to his success.

KIRTZMAN: It's allowed him to drive home things that other mayors could never dream of accomplishing here.

LHOTA: Some people may say that he sets his goals, you know, sets high goals. The fact of the matter is, he does and we all follow through because he motivates us to follow through.

FEYERICK: Sunny Mindel is the Mayor's Communications Director.

MINDEL: It is refreshing to work for a person who is so committed to the job and to the city, and has the courage of those convictions and is not swayed by polling or an occasional blip in the media landscape.

FEYERICK: The public doesn't often see the gentler Giuliani, a man of great humor, compassion and loyalty, who will dress up in drag, or put off writing his year-end speech to attend a firefighter's funeral.

TOM VON ESSEN, COMMISSIONER: He rescheduled that speech that had so many people involved and people are all shaking their heads at "oh my God, we have to reschedule this thing." But that was the kind of commitment that he's had since September 11th.

FEYERICK: So why not show this side more often?

PETE POWERS, FORMER DEPUTY MAYOR, NEW YORK: People confuse niceness and compassion with weakness very often. So if you go out there trying to act that way, you're not going to be able to accomplish your goals. In order to change New York from what it was to what it became, you had to be tough.

FEYERICK: Tough enough to triumph over profound tragedy.

KIRTZMAN: I think that in this crisis, people wanted a father figure. They wanted someone who could tell them that it's OK to cry. It's OK to be scared, but that everything was going to be OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (on camera): The mayor likes to say "be sure you're doing the right thing and the rest will follow." Maybe that's why so many people followed him September 11th. Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

BROWN: Coming up next on NEWSNIGHT, a massive documentary about New York that needed a new ending after September 11th. The man who made it and gave us the epilogue, Rick Burns.

ANNOUNCER: You're watching NEWSNIGHT with Aaron Brown. Next, inside opinion and analysis on "GREENFIELD AT LARGE." You can depend on CNN tonight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Shortly after September 11th, documentary filmmaker, Rick Burns, was scheduled to premiere the final portion of his film on the city of New York. The problem was the city of New York had become a different place.

We talked with Burns in early October about the new ending that he had created. We'll show you that interview in a moment, but first take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK BURNS, FILMMAKER: There's so much talk now about globalization, about global economy, about one world with all the peoples of the world coming together as one world, one world at last.

Well it's in New York that we're going to find out if that's really going to happen or not. Because if it's going to happen, New York is going to be the center of it, because New York has always been the place where all the peoples of the world gather together.

It's the melting pot. It's the great cauldron of humanity. It's the place where all the many different religions and creeds and races and ethnic groups of the world come together in one place.

They're so opposite, of course, some of them that it's as if they're oppositeness and the conflict between them makes this cauldron a very turbulent cauldron. It makes it bubble and seep, and out of it somehow over and over again during New York's 400 years, we see that when the parts come together, something comes out of them that's greater than the sum of the parts.

I don't think a country has to have one soul and like we have to find the geographic central canvass and say here's the national soul. There are different parts of the national soul, and New York has a part of the national soul.

New York represents something good for all of America, and that is a good thing for America. It's not a foreign thing. It's what we're about.

And in a way, what William Caulus Williams said about the United States in the '40s that the world's spirit is here, that nations, people learning to live together, not surrendering their identity, but accepting their identity, and then accepting other people's identity and learning to live together.

Well that's what's going on in New York. That's what's going on in the United States, and that's what has to go on if the world's going to survive.

In that way, New York possesses part of the world's soul too. We're either going to blow the planet up or destroy it in a different way or learn to live together. And that doesn't mean getting a washed out identity where we're all one people. It means learning to live with one another with our differences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Rick Burns is with us tonight. Welcome.

BURNS: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: There is a - you've probably heard everyone react to it actually as it went by. I wish we could freeze it and bring it back, but there is a shock there where you see that sort of lattice-like piece that we have all come to know. We know exactly what it means now going up those years ago. It means something else.

BURNS: It does indeed.

BROWN: Yes. What did you want, when you sat down to redo the end, which must have been difficult in any case, what was your thought? What were you thinking there?

BURNS: The original ending, which is about as long, had about seven or eight on-camera moments interwoven with the credits as they rolled. New Yorkers like Fran Liebowitz or Donald Trump or Spaulding Gray, it was a very brash and ebullient and irreverent and sort of in a moment on Tuesday, the 11th, New Yorkers didn't feel very brash or ebullient or irreverent anymore. We couldn't afford the luxury of feeling irreverent anymore.

And really the entire four and a half hours that was broadcast earlier this week, the only part that seemed to all of my colleagues and me not to fit anymore, was that kind of lighthearted insouciant ending and so we threw it to one side, and settled on those two moments that you just saw.

BROWN: Did you think of not using the towers in the shots? BURNS: You know we rushed over to get footage actually of the building coming down initially. We were rushing to recraft the ending, and discovered that was almost the one thing we couldn't show.

We happened to have in our offices, because we had shown some scenes of the World Trade Center going up in earlier parts of the film, we happened to have the only, I think now the only extent 18- minute version of a film made about the construction of the World Trade Center.

BROWN: Yes.

BURNS: The Port Authority's archives were on the 65th floor of one of the towers.

BROWN: That's the shot. I mean you see that now. Whatever it would have meant three and a half weeks ago, I don't know. But I know what it means now. Stay around for a bit. We'll talk about the city, why it is, what it is. We'll be right back.

O'BRIEN: I'm Miles O'Brien in Atlanta. Here's what's happening right now. All around the U.S. people are saying goodbye to 2001. In New York's Times Square, the annual New Year's Eve bash includes tightened security in the aftermath of the September 11th terror attacks.

Half a million people are expected to watch the illuminated ball drop at midnight. When the clock strikes midnight, New York's mayor turns in to citizen Giuliani. The popular mayor who ruled for eight years today reflected on the city's continued recovery after September 11th.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GIULIANI: I think I'm very happy about the condition of the city, given what the city of New York went through. I know so many people are mourning and have tremendous sorrow still, as I do, and we always will but at the same time, the recovery of the people of this city is nothing short of heroic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Earlier, Giuliani's replacement, Michael Bloomberg was sworn in. He won't officially take office until the stroke of midnight.

President Bush now has a special envoy to Afghanistan. Zamai Khalil Zahd will work with the U.N. representative to help rebuilt the nation. A Muslim born in Afghanistan, he was serving on the National Security Council.

Meantime, U.S. Special Forces are joining Afghan forces in the search for Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. They are moving toward the Baghran area, where intelligence reports suggest Omar and Osama bin Laden may in fact be hiding out. More peacekeeping troops are now in the Afghan capitol. About 50 British soldiers are there, the vanguard of a force of 4,500 peacekeepers. Negotiators reached an agreement on their numbers and the scope of their mission yesterday. The 17 nations involved must review the plan before it will be signed.

Almost 300 million Europeans are ushering in a new currency, along with the new year. Euro celebrations are popping up in Germany, and the 11 other European nations adopting the new coins and bank notes. Old currencies can still be spent in the coming weeks.

NEWSNIGHT with Aaron Brown continues after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We're back with filmmaker Rick Burns. I want to talk about New York and the documentary in a minute. Be we're talking here. The city feels to me smaller now. Am I nuts, which is possible?

BURNS: Well, I agree absolutely and I was coming in on a plane last night and noticed that the skyline looks smaller. It looks shorter. It doesn't stick up quite so high, and I don't mean just looking downtown at that end of Lower Manhattan. The whole skyline seems to have been wounded and shrunk a little bit.

BROWN: What do you think it is that people don't get about New York?

BURNS: I think they don't get that New York is really the center of America. It's really the place that's the ark of the principal American impulses, of democracy and capitalism.

I think they don't get it because so much change takes place here so continuously and all of us want a little bit of respite from change. We want to sort of settle down a little bit. But New York doesn't let you settle down.

But I think that when we stand back and look at it, we realize it's really this place is the capitol of our becoming. It's the place that has made us what we have been over the decades and generations and centuries.

I think what happened really instantaneously on Tuesday, the 11th, was Americans really as one understood absolutely that New York was a place that they held dear to their hearts, even if they'd never wanted to go there before.

BROWN: In one of the early days, a correspondent of ours, and I understood what he was trying to say. I just didn't like the way he said it. He was out in Nebraska. He said "out here in the real America" and I thought "no. No. This is America too. This is a real America here, this town."

BURNS: Oh, no question. I think, you know, we're all New Yorkers now right across the country. I mean I've spoken to people in western Michigan, people everywhere in American they feel kind of a solidarity with what happened here, because what was struck here, what was attacked here was something that is quintessentially American. And we feel wounded, all of us, equally. I don't think you have to be a New Yorker to feel how powerfully this has affected all of us.

BROWN: I don't know maybe you have done this. If you went and took a look at the whole project now again, would it be a different documentary now because of what's happened?

BURNS: I think it would be in certain ways. I think one thing I realize now, particularly after the 11th of September, is that it's not really a history. It's a kind of a meditation on urban values and on why we should care about these dense, crowded, noisy, dirty, expensive places we call cities, and New York is the biggest and the dirtiest and the most crowded and the most expensive.

But you know this is the place where we come together. This is a place where an experiment in capitalism and democracy has been going on since long before the formation of the nation, since the time the Dutch got here. And I think that what I understand now is that my colleagues and I, inadvertently, had stumbled across really I think one of the greatest of all American stories, like where did we come from as a people?

If you want to look at one of the greatest case studies in what American has been, where we've come from, and I think absolutely even now where we're going, come to New York. Come to New York since the 11th and see what happens when disaster and trauma takes place. Boy do we come together in an extraordinary way.

BROWN: It's, for a lot of us it's the place where our grandparents or great-grandparents found America. I take my daughter from time to time to Ellis Island and we sit in the great hall and say "this is where your great-grandparents found their lives, found freedom here.

The city in that sense is so rich and that is unchanged 200 years later. It remains exactly the same. People still come through and find their lives.

BURNS: No question. I mean the 2000 census showed that there were 186 languages spoken in New York. I mean the immigration the last 30 years alone makes the immigration at the turn of the 20th Century look like an Episcopalian picnic. I mean it's so complex now, and so much more, so many more kinds of people from around the world. I mean that's really - the future is out there in Queens with all those people coming from every, literally every continent. That's the Lower East Side of the 21st Century.

BROWN: Well, and that's in fact the path they take in a way. They come through the Lower East Side and they get on the 7 train at some point in their lives when they've got a little money in their pocket and they make their way out to one of the Boroughs, generally Queens and start yet again. And again, it's something that has gone on for well over a century certainly here.

BURNS: It has.

BROWN: Do you think the city will be different in the long term for what has happened? Clearly we're all different now.

BURNS: You know this is literally unprecedented things. Terrible things have happened in New York before, but nothing on this scale. And I think that one thing, however, that we can take from it is that New York has a long history of the unprecedented.

It has been in the vanguard of creating a new kind of culture, really for 400 years. And being in the vanguard means you're where the possibilities happen. You're where the perils are most likely to hit too.

And so I think that though nothing like this has ever happened before, we can take some solace from the fact that New Yorkers have been hit by curve balls again and again and again, and they have always prevailed. They have always found a way, first to unify in the aftermath of a disaster, and then find new solutions to problems that seem particularly vexing.

BROWN: Do you have any interest in doing another hour on it? A sequel to it in some way?

BURNS: Absolutely.

BROWN: Yes.

BURNS: I mean we assumed when we finished the 7th episode, broadcast on Sunday that we were done. But really almost as soon as the towers had fallen, I realized that we had another episode to do. I mean it wasn't an accident that New York was targeted. It was targeted for reasons that have everything to do with what New York is.

It's the heart of the heart of a global commercial culture. And if you want to strike a global commercial culture and everything it stands for, what better place than the World Trade Center, the heart of the heart of that culture?

BROWN: Thanks for coming in.

BURNS: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: Nice to meet you. Very nice to talk to you.

BURNS: Thank you.

BROWN: Rick Burns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien at CNN Center in Atlanta. Happy New Year to you. We'll return to "NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN" in just a moment. But first an update in the top stories for you. A U.S. special forces soldier in Afghanistan is recovering from a gunshot wound to the leg. Injury is not life threatening. It happened near Jalalabad. A vehicle carrying the soldiers came under enemy fire. U.S. troops returned fire, the attackers fled.

U.S. special forces are joining the search for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. That search is focusing on Baghran, about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar. At the Pentagon, they say the U.S. troops are offering intelligence and assistance identifying targets for possible airstrikes.

In new york, this tumultuous, bitter year is ending with some bitter cold. About a half million people are rubbing elbows in and around Times Square, waiting for the ball to drop. Live pictures of said ball, seen there. The thermometer has already dropped. It's 27 degrees, without factoring in the wind chill, but the crowd is ro bust, as is the security.

In London, where the clock struck midnight about three and a half hours ago, thousands gathered at Trafalgar Square as Big Ben struck 12 bells.

And in Paris, party goers sang in the new year. They also joined 11 other European countries celebrating the euro as their new legal currency.

I'm Miles O'Brien. Be sure to stay with CNN throughout the night for complete New Year's Eve coverage. "NEWSNIGHT" continues after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In our talk with Rick Burns, he mentioned that his researchers had been working with the only existing copy of an almost 30-year-old documentary on the making of the World Trade Center that was produced by the Port Authority. Well, he has since helped us obtain a copy of the film. We believe it's never been shown in its entirety on television. Because of September 11th, what once was just an ordinary industrial film, has become a rivetting, almost haunting, window into the past.

So here is the building of the World Trade Center, as the story was told in the early 1970s, when the towers opened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NARRATOR (voice-over): One of the most dramatic events in New York City in the 1960s was the construction of the World Trade Center. Design and construction would take years, and efforts of thousands of people.

A project of this size created enormous challenges, challenges that demanded the use of dramatic new engineering concepts.

A wide variety of designs was considered. Final plans call for a complex of low-level buildings surrounding two 1,350-foot towers, the tallest ever built. Their great height was made possible by the use of load-bearing walls. Extremely tall buildings were traditionally inefficient, since huge amounts of interior space were taken up by structural supports and elevators. The Trade Center towers would overcome this problem. The exterior walls were designed to bear much of the weight of the towers as well as all of the wind loads. The only internal supports would be in a central core of columns. Elevators would be placed in the shafts formed by the core columns.

To further conserve space, the towers would be organized into three zones served by express elevators. Local elevators would run within each zone.

These engineering considerations determined the towers' basic design -- sheer, symmetrical walls rising without setbacks.

The site selected for the Trade Center was an old section of Manhattan's lower West Side. The area housed a great number of small businesses, but the predominance of electronics stores caused it to be known as Radio Row.

In 1966, demolition began. In all, 164 buildings had to be torn down, and generations of power, telephone, gas, steam, and water lines had to be rerouted.

The site actually consisted of waterlogged landfill, which had accumulated over two centuries out of old wharves and debris. To support the great weight of the towers, foundations would have to be dug down 70 feet to bedrock. But the removal of water from this huge area would have caused a dangerous lowering of the surrounding water level, undermining nearby buildings.

The solution was to construct an underground concrete retaining wall to surround the site. This was built with a slurry trench method, used for the first time in this country. A trench was dug down to bedrock, and a thick bentonite slurry was pumped in. The slurry was denser than the surrounding mud and dirt and thus kept the trench walls from collapsing.

As each section was completed, 25-ton cages of metal reinforcement rods were lowered into the slurry-filled trench.

With the cage in place, concrete was poured in. Since the concrete had a greater density than the slurry, the slurry was forced up out of the trench and could be used for the next section. In this way, an underground wall was built completely sealing the site.

Excavation began.

As each section of the slurry wall was revealed, workers drilled holes through the wall and casing to push through down to bedrock on the far side. Steel pendants were then inserted through these holes and socketed into bedrock, bracing the wall against external pressure.

More than a million cubic yards of dirt had to be removed to make way for the Trade Center's foundations. The excavated earth was placed in the Hudson River adjacent to the site to create more than 23 acres of new land, land which was donated to the city of New York. The site presented another major challenge. The tubes containing the PATH commuter rail lines lay underground within the excavation area. The fragile tubes had to be supported in protective cradles while excavation continued around them. Throughout construction, the PATH trains carried 130,000 commuters daily. At no point was service interrupted.

Seven stories down, bedrock was finally reached. Foundations for the towers could now be prepared. Concrete footings were formed and poured into bedrock. Massive assemblies of steel beams called grillages (ph) were laid on these footings. Each grillage would anchor one of the load-bearing tower columns.

Meanwhile, orders were placed for the 200,000 tons of steel which would be needed for construction. Individual pieces were prefabricated and rarely interchangeable. Moreover, there would be no room to stockpile materials at the construction site. This created a tremendous logistical problem. Steel sections would have to arrive at the site in the exact order and at the exact time needed.

To meet this challenge, Port Authority engineers used the computerized system known as critical path method, or CPM. CPM would coordinate every aspect of construction, track the flow of materials, and minimize any delays.

In August 1968, actual steel construction began. Kangaroo cranes imported from Australia were used for the first time in the United States. The cranes were assembled on top of the core columns. Each could lift 60 tons at a time. They would be the driving force behind the towers' construction. The cranes had the ability to jack themselves up 36 feet at a jump. As the walls grew to the height of a crane, the crane would hoist itself up, a neighboring crane would swing core columns into place beneath it, and construction would continue.

Seventy feet up at street level, steel trees were put into place around the perimeter of the towers. These trees would transfer the load of the exterior wall to the more widely spaced columns now anchored to bedrock.

Construction of the towers could now proceed with great speed. Three basic elements were used -- two- or three-story-high sections for the load-bearing wall, massive steel beams for the core columns, and floor sections to span the 60 feet between core and wall. Through the complex orchestration of these structural elements, three floors could be constructed in 10 days.

For its many engineering innovations, the Trade Center was cited as the outstanding engineering achievement of the 1971.

Shortly after the structural completion of the towers, the surrounding low-level buildings were finished.

A final addition to the North Tower was a 360-foot television antenna erected in 1978.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Good evening again from CNN Center in Atlanta. I'm Miles O'Brien. We'll go back to "NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN" in just a moment, but first a look at the evening's top stories for you. Around the United States, revelers counting down to 2002. In New York City's Time Square. hundreds of thousands of people are gathering to watch the Waterford crystal ball drop at midnight. Because of September 11th, security is extra tight with a heavy police presence in the crowd.

(BELLS RINGING)

Earlier in New York, hundreds of bells rang all throughout the city. A ceremony to remember the victims of attacks. A 7-year-old, whose uncle died in World Trade Center rescue effort range the bell in Time's Square. The last time bells rang on New Year's Eve in Time Square was during World War II.

As the clock runs out on 2001, so too does the term for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. After eight years at the helm, Giuliani calls it quits at midnight. At his final news conference today, Giuliani said his proudest accomplishment was restoring the spirit of the city in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The man who will replace Giuliani was sworn in this morning. Michael Bloomberg will not take office until mignight, however. The billionaire businessman seems ready for the monumental task at hand. He told reporters, "I'll have to work harder than I ever have before in my life."

I'm Miles O'Brien, be sure to stay with CNN throughout the night for complete New Year's Eve coverage. Now back to "NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN."

BROWN: And that wraps up this special edition of "NEWSNIGHT." We're delighted you were with us. I'm Aaron Brown in New York. Good night.

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