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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: One Week After the Tragedy at the Pentagon

Aired September 18, 2001 - 09:42   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.
PAULA ZAUN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's head back to Washington, D.C. right now, where Bob Franken is standing by outside Pentagon headquarters.

Good morning, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

And, of course, this is the moment that the entire existence of this Pentagon changed. This has always been the place where the war went from, and this "war," as the administration has called it, has come to this building now.

But it was interesting, they did not have moment of silence at the exact moment a week later that the building was changed forever. What they did, as a matter of fact, is continue with their business. Of course, everybody was thinking about that, but this building is very, very busy now. Still, people were remembering what it was like a week ago exactly when the American Airlines plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon; there was fire, there was chaos, there was death. They're still trying to account for the number of people who died. They think it was 188.

You can see some video that was shot moments after the plane went in. You can see a fire that burned for days, a fire that, in fact, was just part of what was going on inside the building, where there was massive damage they're still trying to reinforce.

So as they continued, the police were dispatching units very, very hurriedly to the scene when they got their first ominous report.

The police dispatcher got a call from someone saying, I think a plane hit the building. And, of course, that turned out to be true, although the dispatcher probably was disbelief. The building itself had quite a bit of damage, as we know, damage that took days to stop being a threat to cave in. The workers have gone in, they are now looking at damage that's going to cost a couple of hundreds million dollars to repair and years to repair, but they will probably never repair the feeling that this building was somehow removed from the wars that it would fight.

Bob Franken, CNN live, the Pentagon.

ZAUN: Bob, I got a couple of questions for you. Is it realistic to think that that part of the Pentagon could be rebuilt in a couple of years?

FRANKEN: Well, that's what they're say. They, first of all, had already getting involved in some sort of remodeling and reinforcement. The same people who were involved in that are the ones who will probably be involved in this. But they believe that it can be repaired. They have a lot of experts here who are very familiar with the building. They're talking about in very specific terms. And they say it will be couple of years and the cost will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But, of course, there's much more cost, as we've discussed for many, many times.

ZAUN: Another question for you. Bob.

Brian Cabell was reporting earlier on from the 101 Airborne Division in Fort Campbell Kentucky that if those troops get the call they could be ready to be deployed in some 36 hours. Can you give us a sense this morning on the act -- activity of getting ready for a potential war around the country?

FRANKEN: Well, in the Pentagon, what they do, of course, is to plan the operations to come up with exactly which unit will be fit into which slot; that has been going pretty much nonstop, nonstop since certainly when the president agreed to activate 50 thousand reservists, 35 thousand now. That planning is going on. It is in some advance stages in some points. Once that happens, of course, though, the National Guard units, the reserve units, have very, very specific plans. They call the people in, it's done very quickly. Many of them, of course, have a pretty good idea whether they're going to be called or not.

So it can happen fairly quickly. The question, of course, is: How quickly do they need it? The reserve units, for the most part, are going to be used for homeland defense. We don't know what's going to be going on in the more aggressive side of dealing with the people who were the perpetrators of this calamity.

ZAUN: Are you getting any sense this morning from anyone you talk to when that point may be? I know many of the United States allies, of course, telling the president don't do anything rash here, you know, take your time. Any sort of timetable?

FRANKEN: Well, they're probably -- they have 23 thousand people who work in the Pentagon and they are probably 23 thousand different theories. Of course the two main ones are that something is will going to happen quickly, that it really probably has to. The other one is, is that it certainly does not have to, to be effective it has to be more methodical than that.

Everybody has opinion. Those who really know are not people we can get anywhere near.

ZAUN: All right. Bob Franken, thanks so much for that update. See you a little bit later on in the morning.

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