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The Amanpour Hour

Interview with Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns; Interview with Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; CNN on Scene Just Before Houthis Seize Key Yemeni Island; Interview with Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson; the Paper Trail al Qaeda Left Behind after 9/11. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired September 12, 2026 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:27]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: 25 years since 9/11, has the world really ever recovered from that day? I asked Nicholas Burns, who was the U.S. NATO ambassador in 2001 when allies rallied to America's side

And --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The British government agreed that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists.

AMANPOUR: International pressure grows on Israel as a bombshell report claims that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned of a Hamas earthquake before the October 7th attacks. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joins me.

Then, oil prices soar. Across the world, citizens pay the price as there's no end in sight to the U.S.-Iran war. Nic Robertson reports on the vital last link to getting gulf oil to the world markets.

Also on the program, the resistance against A.I. amid dire existential worries and the rise of power-hungry data servers, we discuss the growing pushback with Tennessee politician and activist Justin Pearson.

STATE REP. JUSTIN PEARSON (D-TN): The billionaire class is willing to sacrifice our air, sacrifice our water, destroy our communities for their profits.

AMANPOUR: And as the world takes stock 25 years after September 11th, from my archives discovering al Qaeda's documents that were left behind in Kabul on how to hijack a plane and other horrors. (END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

And this week, a grim anniversary has hung over us all. 25 years since the September 11th attacks, a day that changed America and the world.

In New York, families again gathered at Ground Zero to read the names of those who were killed. And for the first time, a moment of silence honored those who have since died from 9/11-related illnesses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani also became New York's first Muslim mayor to attend the anniversary ceremony.

And this anniversary comes with new revelations about the damage still being done. Mayor Mamdani released more than 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed records, showing that officials knew the air around Ground Zero was unsafe, even as the public was being reassured.

But the consequences of 9/11 reached far beyond America. It ushered in the global war on terror and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose painful consequences are still being felt today. And now, another forever war. The one on Iran.

I spoke to Nicholas Burns, the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, about how 9/11 reshaped the world. We started with the sense of global solidarity that enveloped America at first.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Nicholas Burns -- Ambassador, welcome to the program.

I guess I'm just going to ask you, what do you think now? You're kind of forced to contend with that day 25 years ago. What's flashing across your view and through your mind?

NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: Well, Christiane, I think the fundamental lesson that I learned on 9/11, in terms of America's role in the world, is we need friends and allies in the world.

I was a very new ambassador. I'd only been there 12 days on September 11, 2001. And you'll remember this. We were hit very hard, nearly 3,000 people dead in the United States, people from 90 countries, by the way.

And my phone -- I couldn't reach the White House State Department, the Pentagon, but my phone started to ring. The Canadian ambassador David Wright, the Danish ambassador, the Norwegian ambassador, the Iceland ambassador.

And they all said, we're with you and we'll go into Afghanistan with you if necessary. And we'll invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. An attack on one is an attack on all.

And by the next day, every ally had agreed. It was a shot in the arm to our country that had been shattered by this catastrophic attack.

And in a conversation with Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Advisor, she said to me, she said, it's good to have friends in the world. And that was our conversation on the 12th of September, the next day.

[11:04:46]

BURNS: So, Christiane, as I reflect on that day, thank goodness that America had allies that day that would help us, that would step in. And some of them, of course, in very dangerous missions in Afghanistan with lots of casualties.

And I thought about that a lot, especially in the last couple of months and weeks and days. The United States is powerful, but we need to be respectful of our allies and treat them with respect and work with them and listen to them because we need them.

AMANPOUR: I know, and it's just so incredible to hear your memories. You were right there when Article 5 was invoked. And if you remember, and I'm going to read this, the French newspaper Le Monde declared, "Nous sommes tous Americains", we're all Americans at this time.

And you fast forward to today, and nothing could be further from the truth, not because the allies don't want to be, but because this administration seems to be pushing them back.

Did you ever think that this would be a possibility somewhere in the history of transatlantic relations?

BURNS: No, I did not, Christiane. I always assumed that through thick and thin, the United States, every president would realize that the fact that we have 31 allies in NATO, the fact that we have in East Asia allies in Japan and South Korea and the Philippines, in Thailand and in Australia, this is the great difference between the United States and China, the United States and Russia. They have neighbors that fear both countries.

We have had neighbors, all democracies, who believe essentially what we believe about the world.

So, I think it's a very sad commentary. And I hope very much that the next president, Republican or Democrat, can reverse this strategy.

AMANPOUR: And do you think, as many have sort of -- sort of come to the conclusion over the years since 9/11, that perhaps the United States overreacted, that the Afghan war was a just war, that the U.S. was trying to defeat the enemy that had attacked the homeland, and it was doing so with all its allies.

But then came Iraq. And now fast forward to this apparently new forever war of choice against Iran, which is not going anywhere good for the United States, as far as we can see right now.

Do you think, when you look back, that policy, this so-called nebulous war on terror and all that it entailed, was an overreaction? BURNS: Christiane, I'd say this, and obviously I've thought about this a lot. I talked to my class about this this morning here at Harvard Kennedy School.

We had to go into Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001. We'd been hit strategically very hard, and too many people had died in our country. We had to go after Osama bin Laden.

And it's interesting to look back. Russia and China supported the United States going into Afghanistan. The whole world supported us.

So, I think that was a just intervention by the United States. I think the mistake we made was no one ever felt in 2001 or 2002 in our government that we'd be there for 20 years. We stayed a long time, kind of lost a sense of the clear mission.

But the big mistake, and I say this in retrospect, was going into Iraq in 2003. I have to tell you, I was ambassador to NATO at that time. I supported the war. I supported the intervention.

I regret that now. I think it was the wrong decision to go in, and certainly the wrong decision to get caught in the quicksand, if you will, of Iraq and to stay for 11 years and so many people killed.

So, one of the hardest things in global politics, and you know this well from your career as a reporter, when do we intervene and when do we not?

AMANPOUR: And now, 20 years later, people are saying, well, actually, it's the current administration that is kind of giving away America's superpower and giving it perhaps to China.

And you have been ambassador to China, as you mentioned in the early part of the interview. And I just wondered whether you think this is a moment where the relative strength of the superpower and the wannabe superpower are at a sort of a tipping point.

BURNS: Well, I've thought about this a lot, as you can imagine, and I'm worried. I'm worried that the United States is giving the impression that we -- well, we've broken the bonds of trust with our allies, that in the tariff regime -- we've placed tariffs on nearly every country in the world, some of our best allies and partners in the world.

We're out of the global climate change conference. We're going in a very unilateral direction. It allows Xi Jinping to stand up and say, I'm the stable leader. I believe in the rule of law. This is all cynical, by the way, on the part of the Chinese, but this is what they say.

And we're not going to start trade wars with other countries, et cetera. And so, I do think we're giving not just a pass to the Chinese, we're giving them a pedestal to stand on.

You know, you need to show some strength in the relationship with China, and of course we want to live peacefully with China. [11:09:48]

BURNS: We want to go back to working -- we should -- on climate change with China. But I think the president has been too soft on both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And this is hurting the United States.

And our allies are watching, and I think they're very worried about the direction we're heading in.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Nicholas Burns, thank you for this perspective 25 years after 9/11. Thank you.

BURNS: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Up next, the 9/11 effect in Israel after October 7th, the support of the world back then, now drained by the war on Gaza.

I speak to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

[11:10:25]

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

In a coordinated move this week, France, Canada and the United Kingdom announced they are sanctioning illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.

The British foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, accused the settlers of committing, quote, "ethnic cleansing" by violently driving out Palestinian families.

It is a remarkable break by allies of Israel, which finds itself increasingly isolated on the international stage. And it comes at a bad time for the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces intense backlash after a report stated that he was warned about a major Hamas operation days before the October 7th attack, something his office has dismissed as, quote, "an absolute lie".

So there was a lot to get into when I spoke with Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister and former member of the Likud Party.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to our program, Prime Minister.

So, can I start, please, with asking your reaction to the sanctions? Of course, your government has responded very angrily, saying that, you know, everything these countries are saying is a lie.

Do you feel that your country is facing an unprecedented level of pressure over some of its actions? EHUD OLMERT, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Well, first of all, I have to say how much I don't like to, but I have to admit that what Secretary Miliband said is precisely what I said, and many of my colleagues and friends and concerned Israeli citizens said, over the last few months, blaming the group of -- a large group of Israeli settlers in what we called an effort of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians living in the West Bank, with almost daily atrocities carried out against innocent people; burning and shooting people in their homes, in their fields, everywhere they can find them.

And this is something that can't be ignored and can't be forgiven, and therefore I'm not surprised by the statement made by Secretary Miliband and the actions that were taken by Great Britain.

Now, how effective it will be, I don't know what to say. Definitely until the coming elections, this government will do everything possible in order to defend itself and accuse, of course, Great Britain, France, Canada and any other who will join in with anti- Semitism and the hatred of Jews and the hatred of Israel and so on and so forth. This is, of course, nonsense.

We, in Israel, the former chief of staff of the Israeli army, former ministers in the cabinet, the chairman of the National Academy of Science, myself and the ambassadors and others all join in with the same observation, the same conclusion that this is an effort of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by many Israelis in the territories and it has to stop. And it has to stop as soon as possible.

And this is what actually the Israeli government should have done. The Israeli government should have taken measures against these settlers in order to remove the stain of shame from the face of our country.

They didn't do it, and therefore it became inevitable that some others who are friends of Israel, but they care about human rights and basic values that we seem to have neglected altogether.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you about a very explosive report in Haaretz, which comes from a book written by the journalist Shlomi Eldar and also Ruti Yuval.

You've obviously read it, but I'm going to read it again for our audience, saying that the UAE president called Netanyahu 10 days before October 7th, warning that Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, was planning a major move against Israel that could cause bloodshed and destabilize the region. It goes on to say that Netanyahu reacted calmly, assuring that Israel was ready for any scenario.

Now, Netanyahu's office is saying this, you know, is a complete lie. What do you know, if anything, about any warnings?

[11:19:48]

AMANPOUR: After October 7th, we heard rumors that maybe Egypt had warned Israel, in other words, your allies in the Arab world. What do you -- do you think this is possible? OLMERT: I have no doubt that what the Haaretz published is absolutely accurate. I have a good reason to believe that this is absolutely accurate. Netanyahu was warned.

But I remember an interview I gave you maybe a day or two days after the 7th of October and I said at that time already what happened was, of course, the brutality and the murderous nature of Hamas, there is no question about it. This is the cause for the events on the 7th of October.

But at the same time, I said that the lack of Israeli response on the first few hours and even later was a result of arrogance and overconfidence that we don't need to deal with the Palestinians. They can't do anything. We don't care what they say and so on because we can manage anyway.

The arrogance has characterized the government attitude, the lack of any serious attempt to deal with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu really thought that he can buy Hamas with money and that's what he tried to do. And therefore, I think that when he was warned that there is something, he didn't believe because who are these Palestinians that they can threaten the state of Israel and can take over 22 Israeli settlements within few hours without tanks, without airplanes and so on and so forth.

The arrogance has caused the collapse of the security measures which we should have taken and be well-prepared to handle when the time comes. Unfortunately, we were not there.

AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, always interesting to talk to you and get your perspective. Thank you so much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Still to come, another front in the war with Iran. With Houthi drones overhead, Nic Robertson gets rare access to a Yemeni island at the heart of the battle that could further threaten global oil supplies.

[11:22:08]

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Now to Yemen where Houthi rebels have captured a strategic island. According to Yemeni government sources, a vital waterway for global trade and increasingly for Saudi oil exports.

And just before the island fell to the Houthis, CNN's Nic Robertson got exclusive access, reporting from a front line of an increasingly hot war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yemen's navy is taking us to Perim Island, the heart of a little-known local war that's getting pulled into America's war with Iran.

So what happens here next could affect us more than the Iran war already has. These islands, this vital waterway, the price of oil -- it is all vulnerable right now. And what happens here could impact President Trump's political fortunes.

In recent weeks, Iran-backed Houthis have hit several Saudi oil tankers on these waters. They're a bypass to the Strait of Hormuz. As we find out, Houthis are a constant threat here.

Suddenly, we just had to turn around. We're told it's because drones have been reported. In the end, this is a hot war, and this is one of the epicenters of that war.

Our second attempt getting closer.

This here that you're looking at out across the Red Sea, the Bab al- Mandab Strait -- the narrowest point on that Red Sea.

Those ships out there. That's what this is all about -- commercial shipping critical for the global economy.

Eventually, we make it and greeted by Yemeni government forces keeping the vital waterway open.

Not many outsiders make it here. We're the first international journalists they've seen in years. But we're not going to have long. The Houthi drone is still a threat.

And it looks for all the world like the place that time forgot. It is really stuck out here in the middle of the ocean, looking out across the ocean this way.

Yes. Bab al-Mandab. Bab al-Mandab -- and looking across out there, you can see Africa across there. Djibouti, literally just across the sea there.

Perim is at the strait's narrowest point, just 12 miles from Africa. Since Iran blocked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi diverted its oil exports through the Red Sea, helping keep global oil prices down. 10 percent of global oil used to flow through here.

It's down to about less than half of that, or about half of that now.

[11:29:47]

ROBERTSON: And if the Houthis get control of the Red Sea, if the Iranian proxies, the Houthis, get control of the Red Sea, they could shut the oil flows here down -- down to almost nothing.

What we don't see on our short visit is a military force that measures up to the scale of what's at stake for the rest of the world. For the commander in charge of this region, that's a worry. Because the Houthis would try to kill you, right? The Iranians would love to have you dead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So many times.

ROBERTSON: So many times. I know.

Vice President Tarik Saleh is a rarity at the moment. A political leader still in Yemen and still fighting the Houthis.

TARIK SALEH, VICE PRESIDENT, YEMENI PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL (through translator): We told the world that this is an Iranian plan, but no one listened to Yemenis back then. That this is a battle that would not only affect Yemenis, but the region and international community.

ROBERTSON: This is Iran trying to put pressure on President Trump.

SALEH: Exactly.

ROBERTSON: Are you getting any support from the United States?

SALEH: Just talk.

ROBERTSON: Just talk. How do you feel about that?

"Disappointed," he says.

Nic Robertson, CNN -- in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And after a break, as both former and current Anthropic employees warn A.I. poses an extinction level threat against humanity, the uprising against the tech and data centers gathers pace.

I speak to the Tennessee politician Justin Pearson, who's leading the charge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEARSON: Our people's lives matter way more than the profits of these billionaires.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:31:25]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

A 10 percent chance of human extinction within a decade. That's the gob-smacking analysis by a senior staffer from the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic. And it comes after a fellow staffer quit the company, warning that A.I. companies are, quote, "gambling with our lives". (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACOB COXON, QUIT ANTHROPIC OVER A.I. FEARS: They could cause extreme havoc, for example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction level bioweapons. There's a lot of ways that the A.I. could actuate itself in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So perhaps it's no wonder that we're seeing an uprising in the United States, not just against A.I., but also the data centers required to power them.

With thousands being built across the country, concerns that these new structures will suck up water and energy, pollute local environments, and eventually take jobs are being met with a surprisingly bipartisan community resistance, especially ahead of the midterms.

And I spoke with this with one of the key activists who's also running for Congress, Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, Representative Pearson. And it has to be said, you're also really in the midst of this fight. You're an activist also for your people and for your district against these data centers.

You're calling it the fight of our lives. Tell me why.

PEARSON: Absolutely. What these fights are showing all across our country in Republican-led areas and Democratic-led areas is that the billionaire class is willing to sacrifice our air, sacrifice our water, destroy our communities for their profits.

I have a data center three miles away from my house built by Elon Musk. He operated 35 illegal gas turbines for over a year and now has 59 illegal turbines in North Mississippi.

These companies do not care about our lives. And it's the responsibility of people who are in elected office to fight for us. And that's what I'm seeking to do in the Statehouse and in this run for Congress.

AMANPOUR: Some people thought that the American people would just sort of, you know, get down with all of this and sort of shrug and say, well, it's the way of the future.

But it is really a popular movement against these data centers. Does that surprise you? And also, the bipartisan nature of it when it comes to politics?

PEARSON: Yes. It really doesn't surprise me that we're starting to see Republicans, Independents and Democrats organizing together around an issue that affects our air, our water. And honestly, it's affecting people's ability to have jobs well into the future. As we know, 15 to 30 percent of the workforce is going to be taken

away by artificial intelligence, robotics and automation.

I've been doing environmental justice organizing for six years, and we've always been able to build these coalitions of black folks, white folks, Latino folks, Native Americans, Asian folks, richer folks and poorer folks when it comes to issues that impact us.

And I think what we have in this moment in time is one of those political issues that people are willing to cross political boundaries for because the consequences are so severe.

AMANPOUR: Of course, as you know better than I do, that A.I. and everything around it is powering the American economy right now. And President Trump and many, many others say that just the building of these data centers, the amount of -- you know, the thousands of them, the amount of job capacity that they will entail for the future, the idea of being competitive America while you have this, you know, onslaught of competition coming from China. All of these are massively important and will do good for the people in general in terms of jobs and the economy.

PEARSON: I mean, that's what they say, but it has not been proven true. People like Elon Musk have become near trillionaires and making hundreds of billions of dollars. But we haven't felt those benefits in our economy. In fact, the most significant use case for a lot of these companies has been taking away people's jobs.

[11:39:48]

PEARSON: The effect of more A.I. data centers and these hyper-scale data centers in particular haven't been more innovation that has somehow benefited the global economy or benefited us all across this country, particularly working-class people.

And so, I think, again -- he's a billionaire. The president of the United States is a billionaire. He is only trying to do things that are going to benefit people who are in his social class.

But for other hard-working-class blue-collar folks, white-collar folks, this is going to have a detrimental impact on our reality.

And then when it comes to literally the siting of these facilities, they're always in the same places. They're never at Mar-a-Lago, which is where I want to see one built. They're never in the CEOs' neighborhoods. They're always in working-class black communities, working-class white communities, where people think we don't have political power to fight back and to resist.

And what we are seeing across this country is that the people that live in these neighborhoods are going to fight back for themselves because people like Donald Trump don't care about us.

AMANPOUR: What are the results that you see in your own district, in your own neighborhood where you live? PEARSON: Yes. So, again, I live three miles away from where Elon Musk built the first hyperscale data center in our community. He's now built four and had 35 gas turbines.

And very sadly, we've seen an increase in the number of children going to the emergency room for respiratory illnesses.

We know that some folks have died prematurely because of the increases in thousands of tons of nitrogen oxides and tons of formaldehyde that's in our communities.

We also know that because of the increase in gas turbines that they're using illegally in violation of the Clean Air Act and research from Harvard professors has shown us that we are likely to see dozens of people prematurely die from the exposure and the pollution that's being pumped into our air. So, the consequences are real.

In addition to the millions of gallons of fresh drinking water that's being used to cool these plants and the workforce implications of people, hundreds of thousands of people already having lost their jobs and millions likely to lose their jobs over the next five to seven years.

We need to stop this. We need a national moratorium. I'm fighting for one right here in Memphis and Shelby County because our people's lives matter way more than the profits of these billionaires.

AMANPOUR: Let me, though, ask you this, because clearly, as I said, and it's all over the place, but most especially in America, it is the future, it is the economic, you know, thing that everybody's sort of rallying around. Do you have an alternative? Are you basically saying that A.I. shouldn't be something that the U.S. pursues? Or do you have some kind of mitigating way to continue A.I. if it's considered such a good thing for the future, obviously, many people disagree, but just not in this extractive way?

PEARSON: I think if A.I. is going to be here, we need to ensure that it is not extractive and exploitative of the most vulnerable people and communities in our country.

I've done work with a few organizations, including the NAACP, Memphis Community Against Pollution, Young, Gifted, and Green, to come up with a framework for communities that are going to face data centers.

And the corporations could read that framework as public information about how to engage deliberately in community with community benefits agreements, build renewable energy, and make sure we are included in the process so that our utility rates aren't skyrocketing, so that our communities aren't being illegally polluted in violation of the Clean Air Act, and so that people who oftentimes are not ever included when decisions like this are being made are actually brought to the table and brought into the conversation.

There's always a way to do things better. There's a way to do things well. We just have not seen that thus far.

AMANPOUR: Representative Pearson, thank you so much for joining me from Memphis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And the people power pushback is happening even as the A.I. companies themselves seek proper safety regulations from the government. But those pleas are so far falling on deaf ears.

Still ahead, 25 years after 9/11, we go back to the beginning of America's longest war. What my team and I found inside an abandoned Taliban house in Kabul. That extraordinary report from 2001 is ahead.

[11:43:45]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

As we've been reflecting this hour, the September 11th attacks didn't just change America. They reshaped the entire world. Within weeks, the United States was at war in Afghanistan. And as forces advanced, they began uncovering evidence of Osama bin Laden's terror network, which was behind the attacks.

One of the most extraordinary discoveries was a videotape found in a private home in Jalalabad in November of 2001. On it, bin Laden is seen welcoming visitors and describing the September 11th attacks. His hands mimed a plane striking a tower and it collapsing.

Watch this video closely. It's just 19 crucial seconds of evidence that he did it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (INAUDIBLE) due to my experience in this field. I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: It is still chilling to watch a quarter century later. I was also in Afghanistan then, reporting from Kabul as that first chapter of the war on terror unfolded. And in an abandoned house, my team and I made an extraordinary discovery of our own.

[11:49:49]

AMANPOUR: Documents and materials, offering a glimpse into the terror network America was now trying to defeat militarily.

So here's my report from back then as the Taliban and their al Qaeda guests fled.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: In this house, deserted in the Taliban's hasty retreat from Kabul, we found a letter that appears to refer to the events of September 11th. The writer says he has changed his name and can no longer leave Afghanistan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You must be aware that I cannot travel anywhere by now due to what happened in the last operation in America. I am present now in Kandahar with the rest of the fighters.

Our Arabic speaking colleague, Eddie Maloof (ph), helped translate the piles of papers we discovered. Some were written in English. This letter was sent to Abu Shabab (ph), which happens to be the name of one of Osama bin Ladens top lieutenants.

Indicating the presence of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the letter says, quote, "I am sending some companions who are eager to be trained in explosives or whatever they want". It was signed and dated January 12th, 2001.

We found this house empty except for these papers in a bag tossed away as garbage. It appears to be detailed nuclear weapons research, some of which could have been taken from material that is already in the public domain.

The Arabic handwriting says the biggest bombs. And when we flip through the photocopied handwritten pages, we found references to uranium 235. And next, in English, the words nuclear atomic bomb and then TNT and finally --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This specifically mentions how to make a nuclear bomb.

AMANPOUR: While we were scouring this now-abandoned house, we came across this picture on the wall. These are the falls of Iguacu in Brazil. And this is where U.S. intelligence officials say they've identified terrorist cells that they say are linked to Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network.

We also found an 82-page training manual that says its published by the al Qaeda World Committee for Recruitment. Here's another carefully handwritten track that instructs how to hijack and blow-up airplanes and other facilities, including bridges, towers, railways and ships.

And in the shed of this house, we found all sorts of chemicals like sodium oxide and nitrates that experts say are used in explosives.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Quite the discovery, not scientific research papers, but basic drawings and terrorist intentions scrawled into an exercise book.

That was Kabul in the extraordinary weeks after 9/11 and the beginning of a war that would last two decades.

When we come back, "Come from Away", the unlikely musical born from 9/11. What its creators told me about finding compassion in Canada on America's darkest day.

[11:53:01]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, when we think about September 11th, all those years ago, we probably don't think about musicals. And yet, one of the most human, most unlikely legacies of that terrible day is a Broadway musical about compassion and kindness.

It's called "Come from Away" with songs, laughter, tears, hot drinks and sleeping bags. It tells the true story of a small Canadian community in Gander, Newfoundland that took in thousands of passengers flying from around the world because when U.S. airspace suddenly closed after the attacks, dozens of planes en route to America were forced to land there.

It was heartwarming then. And now, 25 years later, more than 100 versions of the musical are being performed around the world, including in Gander.

When the show first opened here in London in 2019, its creators, the married couple Irene Sankoff and David Hein, told me why they made it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IRENE SANKOFF, CREATOR, "COME FROM AWAY": What was amazing is that not only did they accept the planes not knowing who was on them, not knowing what to expect, but they let people off of the planes into their community buildings, stopped school for the entire time that the people were there and said, you know what? That's not good enough. You don't look comfortable. Why don't you come home with me? And stay for dinner?

And then you know what? Don't go back and lie on that cot. Just stay overnight here and we'll sleep in the guest room and wash your clothes for you while you freshen up in our shower.

Extraordinary. Something you would not even think of doing on a regular basis.

AMANPOUR: And it went on for a while. It wasn't just an overnight trip.

DAVID HEIN, CREATOR, "COME FROM AWAY": Yes, it was five days. And what's incredible is what happened in response to that kindness is, you know, the mayor of the town said that on the first day, they had 7,000 strangers on the tarmac. By the middle of the week, they had 7,000 friends. And by the end of the week, they said goodbye to 7,000 family members.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Whoever can should absolutely go and see it. We need to still feel more of that soul-warming community and human connection. This was about the kindness and generosity of a tight-knit community that opened its doors to strangers in desperate need.

[11:59:50]

AMANPOUR: It would be a good reminder, given the exact opposite instinct is official government policy in so many places now.

That is all that we have time for this week. Don't forget you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week.