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The Situation Room

Observing 24 Years Since the Worst Terror Attack on U.S. Soil; President Trump Speaks at 9/11 Memorial; Urgent Manhunt Underway for Suspect in Charlie Kirk Killing. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 11, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:20]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In my opinion, the victims will have died in vain if those responsible or not held accountable.

As always, may God bless our first responders first, September 11th --

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Let's listen back in to President Trump speaking at the Pentagon.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: And we defy the fear, endure the flames, and emerge from the crucible of every hardship, stronger, prouder, and greater than ever before. Last year, we were a dead country. Now, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.

In New York, there were heroes like Chuck Costello, a 46-year-old elevator mechanic, and a member of the Knights of Columbus. He selflessly ran into the World Trade Center to free people trapped in the elevators. His body was not found until the following January deep under the debris.

While going through his belongings, Chuck's widow, Mary, a phenomenal woman, discovered a personal prayer written in his own words, help me to light the way for those in the dark. And when I enter the darkness, let me not panic, but patiently wait to remember the light, beautiful words.

When the time came, Chuck ran boldly into the darkness of hell on Earth, and now he shines in the light of heaven above. We remember him this morning, that day we learned that the American heroic spirit was all around us. We saw it in the police officers, the great firefighters, the service members here at the Pentagon and in the hearts of every American who answered history's call.

One such hero was Army Sergeant First Class Steve Workman, who was on the edge of the impact zone when the (INAUDIBLE) --

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're going to interrupt, the coverage of the president. Go to Shanksville, Pennsylvania right now, for a moment of silence when Flight 93, 24 years ago, crashed in a Pennsylvania field. We're observing this moment as well. Watch this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My cousin, Captain Jason M. Dahl.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joseph DeLuca.

BROWN: All right. We've just been listening there to the bell's toll in a moment of silence, observing the time in hijacked Flight 93 crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. After learning of other attacks, the people on board attempted to regain control of that plane. And in the struggle, the plane crashed into a field. All 40 passengers and crew on board died.

The U.S. Capitol is believed to have been the hijackers' target.

Let's go listen back in to President Trump at the Pentagon. Good.

TRUMP: Thank you very much, Steve. That was something. That was something.

In the years that followed America's warriors avenged the fallen and sent an unmistakable message to every enemy around the world. If you attack the United States of America, we will hunt you down and we will find you. Go all over this sometimes magnificent Earth, we will crush you without mercy and we will triumph without question.

[10:05:00]

That's why we named the former Department of Defense the Department of War.

It will be different. We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to change the name. Well, now we have it back to where we all want it. Everybody wanted it. Everybody is so happy to have it back. You will fail and America will win, win, win. The enemy will always fail.

24 years have passed since that Tuesday morning in September, and an entire generation of Americans have come of age in a totally different world. While they cannot remember the agony of that day, they are carrying on the legacy of those who lost.

Around 8:30 A.M. on the morning of the attacks, Army Lieutenant Colonel Kip Taylor sent an email to his friends and family describing the joys of fatherhood and his excitement for the upcoming birth of his unborn son. He wrote, after you have kids, there are days that you just get going and you say, hi, honey, I'm home. What we do until that moment pales in comparison, but just that little statement, hi, honey, so American, so beautiful.

But that's really the point of it all, isn't it? An hour after he sent that email, flight 77, flew into Colonel Taylor's Pentagon office and claimed the life of a very proud father and true patriot.

Six weeks later, on October 25th, 2001, Colonel Taylor's son, Luke, was born. Luke then tragically lost his mom to cancer when he was just two years old, leaving him to be raised by his father's brother. As a young boy, Luke asked his uncle about the folded flag on the bookshelf. And when he learned about his dad's decades of devotion to the Army and the horrors of September 11th, that's when he learned. Luke carried that memory with him and joined the ROTC as a college freshman. He graduated just last year. And I'm pleased to say he is with us today as a second lieutenant and doing very well. He's rising quickly in the infantry, preparing for Army Ranger School, a splitting image of his dad. They say, Luke says that every time he puts on a uniform, he feels connected to his father and to our country. But it was a father. He never knew.

Luke, your parents are together in heaven and they could not be prouder of the man that they have produced. They produced you. Those two great people produced you. Luke, please stand.

Thank you. You look good, Luke. You look good. They're looking down on you. They're very proud.

This morning, we recall the light of America's best and bravest, and the love that they showed in their final moments. In their memory, we make a solemn pledge and a noble promise we will honor always our great heroes, and you are our heroes.

There's a group of people that don't want to talk about our heroes, but we will always talk about our heroes, and that's the way our country is, and that's the way the people feel. We will defend the nation they serve, the values they upheld, and the freedom for which they died. We will support our troops, we will protect our families, and we will preserve the American way of life for every future generation.

We will build taller, grow stronger, fight harder, and soar higher. And together, we will go forward as one people with one heart, one faith, one flag, and one glorious destiny under Almighty God. May God bless the memories of those who died and the heroes who fought and the soldiers who still stand, watch may God bless the United States of America.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

BLITZER: All right. So, we've just been listening to the president of the United States. He's been speaking on this very important day at the Pentagon, very strong words from the President of the United States.

I want to bring in our National Correspondent Jason Carroll right now. He's joining us live, from the September 11th memorial service that's underway in New York City right now.

[10:10:00]

Jason, what, 24 years later, this tragedy obviously still resonates so deeply with Americans. Tell our viewers what you're seeing, what you're hearing, where you are right now.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It still resonates, Wolf. And what's especially impactful is when you're standing here and you're listening to the reading of the names, and you hear the young voices, the voices of a generation of people who are either very young or who may not have even been born yet when 9/11 happened, I think of Frank Joseph Doyle's family.

He was in the south tower. He worked in on the 88th floor. He worked for KBW. They had offices on the 88th and 89th floor, and he called his wife, Kimmy (ph), when he saw the plane strike the north tower. I spoke to Kimmy just a short while ago, and she talked about how they were on the phone, how she told him to get out of the building, how he told her how much he loved their children, just one and two years old, there's a picture you see from a Christmas photo at the time, how much he loved his children, just one in two years old and, and now his daughter a grown adult reading his name just a short, short while ago. That's how impactful it is to be on the ground here listening to the ceremony that's still going on, so many stories, so many lives that were lost.

This is the message coming from some of those families never to forget. Never forget those who lost their lives here, lost their lives in Pennsylvania, lost their lives in Washington, D.C. Never forget those people. Never forget the heroes who ran into the buildings here trying to save lives and then ended up losing their lives as well.

We have one more moment of silence that will come at 10:28 A.M. That is the moment that the north tower fell, as we stand here and continue to listen to the names of all of those who lost their lives that day. Wolf?

BLITZER: And we'll, of course, Jason, have live coverage of this additional memorial service moment. That's coming up very, very soon.

Jason, thank you very, very much. Pamela?

BROWN: All right, Wolf. We have some breaking news also we're covering today. Investigators believe that they have recovered the weapon that was used in the killing of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus. Officials say they have video of the suspect who blended in with the college crowd, but the manhunt where the shooter is still underway.

Witnesses are revealing more about the moments leading up to the killing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY KING, WITNESSED CHARLIE KIRK KILLING: And I was scanning the area when I got there and I just thought, this is weird. I mean, I had a ticket. Nobody checked my ticket. I walked right in. I walked all the way down to the front. It just -- and I just scanned and I literally looked in him and I'm like, where is all the security? That was just my thought.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: There's been an outpouring of condemnation from politicians on both sides of the aisle, following the killing of Charlie Kirk, a close ally, and a close friend of President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): If anyone in the sound of my voice celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere.

I don't care what his politics are. I care that he was an American.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And President Trump just announced at the Pentagon that he's awarding Charlie Kirk posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Also, CNN is learning that Vice President Vance and the second lady will travel to Salt Lake City to pay respects to Kirk's family.

BLITZER: I want to bring in CNN National Corresponding Nick Watt. He's joining us right now from Orem, in Utah, and CNN Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Perez, who's monitoring this investigation for us.

Nick, let me start with you. What's the latest out there in Utah that we have learned about this killing?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we have just heard from officials that they had what they describe as breakthroughs during the night. This is coming from the special agent in charge from the FBI Salt Lake Field Office, and from local officials here in Utah.

So, here is what we know. They are calling the suspect. He, him, they're saying that this is a male, college age, who blended in well on campus. They say that they do now have, which they didn't yesterday, they do now have a good image of that suspect. And they are right now using technology to try and identify the person from that or those images. If they fail with that technology, they say they will release these images through the media to the public.

[10:15:01]

The FBI says they've had about 130 tips, Wolf, and they are asking for more, any eyewitness accounts, any images, still or video, they want them.

Now, we also got a little bit of a timeline. They say that they have now tracked the suspect's movements on campus. He arrived on campus 11:52, as I said, blended in with the college crowd is what they say this person looks like, went up a stairwell, onto the roof, after the incident, jumped off the building, unclear how that happened, but jumped off the building and then fled off campus through a residential neighborhood.

So, during the night, investigators were speaking to people in that neighborhood looking for eyewitness accounts, looking for video from doorbell, cameras, et cetera. They also, in a wooded area, have recovered what they believe is the weapon that was used to kill Charlie Kirk. They describe it as a high-powered bolt action rifle. And right now, they say they are working on trying to trace the ownership of that weapon. Now, they say that the suspect is not still in that wooded area. They have swept and secured that area, but they say they do not know how far he has gone. And, of course, with every hour, that is more time for this suspect to get further possibly away from the scene of the crime.

Now, they do stress though that they do not believe that the public here is in danger. They say that this was a targeted incident, so they are not concerned right now for the safety of the public. They say that they also have a foot imprint and the imprint left by a palm and a forearm. That is what they're working with. The FBI say they are determined to find this suspect and also find out why he did it.

Now, there are still some unanswered questions. Was there a vehicle involved? Was the rifle on campus already or was the suspect blending in with a long gun? Unclear how that would happen. We also heard that Charlie Kirk's body will be taken home to Arizona today. Back to you.

BROWN: All right. Thank you so much.

I want to go to Evan Perez now who has some new reporting.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes. So, Nick was just describing some of the scene there and what was recovered by investigators. And we have a couple of bits of more information about what they found.

Now, Nick described that they found the bolt action rifle near that building, not far from that building. It appears, investigators believe, that the suspect ran away from the scene, threw the rifle down. There was a towel there. And they also found a screwdriver, which they believe indicates that perhaps the suspect used it to disassemble, take the stock off the rifle to try to conceal it, right? That is a very common thing. We've seen this done in other instances.

For instance, the shooter in Butler, the one who shot at President Trump, tried to assassinate President Trump. It's very common and so it is possible that this person used that to try to disassemble and then put it together when he was on the roof. Again, this is a working theory of the investigators.

They also found the ammunition. They found the firearm, they found some ammunition inside the rifle and also near nearby, which had some writings and made virtual various references to cultural issues, right? And we don't know what they mean. The investigators don't know what they mean. They found some initials written on some of the ammunition, some of the parts of the rifle. And, again, they don't know whether this is a motive, whether this refers to the reason why this was done.

But, again, they spent the night looking at those initials, trying to match it to other pieces of evidence, social media accounts online, to try to see if they can try to decipher whether this is the person who did this, or whether this was a reference to something else.

Again, there's a lot of evidence that they're still going through at this point, but certainly the biggest piece is the rifle. They have the images, the very rough images that they found, obviously, from some of the video they are begging, obviously for the public to send images because that is one of the ways they're going to be able to refine and figure out who might have done this, right?

There obviously -- the ring videos and doorbell cameras are ubiquitous. So, whoever -- whatever movements he made, they are canvassing that entire neighborhood to try to track where he might've gone from there, and also how he got there, right? So, all of these things, investigators are still working on it

The big part of this, I think that's important for us to understand is that, you know, we don't know yet what the rifle -- I'm sorry, what the gunman -- what their motivation was, right? This was a political event. We can surmise that it was related to that, but we don't know yet because the person's not been arrested.

[10:20:03]

We don't know what any of these markings, what these writings mean at this stage. Investigators simply grasping at all of this to try to understand what happened and to try to bring this person to justice.

BROWN: All right. Evan Perez, still a lot to learn, that manhunt continues at this hour. And, Nick Watt, thank you as well.

BLITZER: And still ahead, bipartisan calls to end political violence here in the United States after the killing of Charlie Kirk. So, how does it stop? We're going to discuss that next.

And then later, Colorado school shooting investigation. What officials are learning after a gunman opened fire inside a high school, injuring two students.

You're in The Situation Room.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

BROWN: We are closely following that ongoing manhunt for the shooter behind the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Yesterday's tragedy in Utah is the latest in a disturbing string of attacks in the U.S., raising fears of surging political violence.

BLITZER: I want to bring in Brian Levin right now. He's the founding director of the California State San Bernardino Center for the study of hate and extremism. Brian, thanks very much for helping us appreciate what's going on.

What motivates, in all your research, someone to carry out something so awful like this?

BRIAN LEVIN, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN BERNARDINO: Thank you for that excellent question, Wolf. And also just let me say that we abhor this type of political violence, there is no place in a civilized society where a marketplace of ideas is what we should encourage, even among ones that we might find to be personally odious.

Anyway, in answering your question, some really interesting stuff. Not all political violence is assassination. So, you have various types of things. And not all personal threats end up in physical violence. But bottom line, what are we seeing? What we call the more broad, targeted violence of which political violence is part of. We are seeing increases both generally and specifically.

We're also seeing a diversification and we're seeing many loners who are caught up in a milieu of aggression. One thing is very interesting. We look at ideology. And I was asked a question -- I'm asked this question all the time. Where are we as far as ideology? Ideology is not the be all, end all analytic, but very interesting. From 2018 to 2024, far right white supremacists and aligned were responsible for the most homicides. This year, different, the January 1st New Orleans attack made violent (INAUDIBLE) jihadists the most frequent.

But this is happening in a widely diversifying pool that includes both multi-polar, that is kind of more defined and rigid, where there's big groups of folks, but also idiosyncratic. So when we look at the types of people that do this, we have three common impactors. Ideology, number one, could be religious or it could be political. Number two, trauma or psychological distress. Number three, I'm going to call the angry stuff, revenge and personal aggrandizement. And you can have all three, but one of them predominates.

So, what I'm saying to you is we're having diversification across ideology, but also splintering where some of this is idiosyncratic. Some of it, though, looks like it might be hooking to various polars, like traditional right wing or hard left.

Next, last thing, while we've seen a far right white supremacist be the most common for that six years that I spoke about, 2025 is diversifying. And we frequently see people who have either a history of psychological distress or some kind of trauma or recent stressors, familial, job-wise, et cetera. So, it's not just an ideological thing, it's also access to weaponry and, overall, aggression goes across --

BLITZER: Brian, I'm going to just interrupt for a moment. Hold on for a moment, Brian, because there's another moment of silence that's being observed in New York now in memory of those who fell in the north tower of the World Trade Center.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Griselda. E James.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mark, Steven Jardim.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amy Nicole Jarrett.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Muhammadou Jawara.

BLITZER: All right. They're reading the names of those who died in the north tower at the World Trade Center. And, Pamela, you know, for me, the north tower especially is very personal because my cousin, Jeffrey Schreier, was working in the north tower at the World Trade Center. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and he was killed among those killed, and it was just so painful, eventually, when we learned about his death. And our deepest condolences to his family, his loved ones, he was a very, very special young man.

[10:30:01]

BROWN: It still feels so raw for so many of us, even 24 years later. I remember watching it in high school.