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CNN Live Event/Special

America Under Attack: Explaining to the Children

Aired September 13, 2001 - 06:01   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: It's hard to believe that it has been near -- nearly 46 hours since the nation first learned that it was under a terrorist attack and that realization of just what exactly that means is still growing and certainly what the -- what the military response, if any, might be.

VINCE CELLINI, CNN ANCHOR: You know it's difficult enough for us as journalists, it's difficult for adults to grasp everything that has happened, our great loss, but victims of families who face the wrenching task of trying to explain to their children just what has happened to their loved ones.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They asked if he was in heaven, and I said, yes. And we're saying -- we're crying and after the tears cleared, they asked if they could call him on his cell phone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CELLINI: Well, Tom Burrnett (ph) was among a group of passengers that apparently tried to foil the terrorist's plot on United Flight 93, a very heroic act. The plane crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field.

LIN: Yes, we are just beginning to learn that from cell phone calls made from these flights. That call saying that some of the male passengers had decided to get together and try to overtake the terrorists and that is the last that some of their family members heard from them. So we will hear more about those heroic acts.

In the meantime, we've got some other pictures to show you, these from outer space. Orbiting satellites and the International Space Station's three-man crew caught a frightening view of the destruction. There you see it from space from 240 miles up. The crew got this view of lower Manhattan before the horrific attacks and then suddenly compare this now, the smoldering ruins and the New York skyline without its 28-year-old landmark towers.

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