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CNN Sunday Morning

9-11 Remembered

Aired August 18, 2002 - 07:43   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: For more on the events of September 11 from the journalists' perspective, we're joined now from New York by CNN field producer, Phil Hirschkorn, one of the staffers, who rushed to the World Trade Center. He was probably among the first there, among the journalists who respond. He's also co-editor of a new book called, "Covering Catastrophe." We've told you about that in previous "CNN Weekend" program. There's the book cover, "Covering Catastrophe." A lot of what you hear in this documentary is covered in that book. Of course, the book offers some greater detail.
Phil, good to see you.

PHIL HIRSCHKORN, CNN FIELD PRODUCER: Good morning, Miles.

O'BRIEN: You worked on the documentary. You've worked on the book. What, as you step away from it a little bit, kind of watch it, read the book, reflect on it, is there any one moment that stands out, any one comment that stands out? I know that's kind of a tough question.

HIRSCHKORN: Especially for both the documentary and the book, there are dozens of CNN staffers in "America Remembers" and there's more than 130 in "Covering Catastrophe." What they have in common is you get that oral history of the day or riveting eye witness account from start to finish of what we all saw and also what we all overcame to do our jobs.

For me, it's sort of hard to single out one moment. I will mention once, since you asked, like Carol Lin was describing there, when we rushed down to the scene, we didn't really know what was happening. A sketchy report that the World Trade Center was on fire, possibly a plane. We didn't really know for sure. And it wasn't until our crew, and you saw my cameraman, Brian Keeterling briefly in the clip, it wasn't until we saw that huge hole in the north face of the North Tower than we had a sense of the proportion of the disaster that was unfolding before us.

CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Phil, I asked Miles this, and I'll ask you the same, at what point did you realize this was more than just an accident?

HIRSCHKORN: I think it was at that moment. And then as we got closer to the scene, we tried to get closer to the towers. And the camera is like a magnet. People would come up to us and start describing what they saw, which included seeing the airliners go into the building, and then of course, some of the more disturbing observations of the day, which included, quite frankly, seeing people jump from the Twin Towers.

It was only about half an hour or 40 minutes after that, where the second tower fell, which was of course the -- one of the defining moments of the day, and a total shock to those of us on the ground. We were trying to get closer and closer to the towers to do our job, get pictures, talk to people, see what was happening. And then of course, all of a sudden, Tower 2 just collapsed. And we had to run for our lives.

O'BRIEN: The thought of seeing people jumping, videotape that we haven't necessarily shared with the world, were you -- at that point, your faced with a bit of a journalist's dilemma, I suppose, all kinds of dilemmas. Do you flee, first of all? Do you stay and offer help and assistance? Or do you keep the cameras rolling?

CALLAWAY: Right.

O'BRIEN: Do you remember consciously going through all that?

HIRSCHKORN: Absolutely. You know, in "Covering Catastrophe," there's a moment where someone who works for Fox News channel, Doug, deals with the dilemma of being a trained EMT, and also being a producer. And he actually decided to go and participate in the rescue and recovery effort, which he did. There were other journalistic dilemmas of the day. You know, as the day went on, we all expected to see people being pulled to safety from the rubble, like in Oklahoma City and in other disasters. And it never happened. Eventually, we made our way to Chelsea Piers, which is a sports complex that was turned into a trauma center. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting for people to come, just like the doctors and the nurses and the trauma specialists who were prepared to go. And frankly, those people never came.

And that was information that wasn't necessarily shared the first day.

CALLAWAY: Something to ask you, Phil, was that -- you know, was there information that you saw in some of the reports that you were giving CNN, that you were holding back information?

HIRSCHKORN: Well, if you could communicate with CNN. I mean, one of the most difficult parts of the day wasn't just getting information, which was difficult, but actually communicating with your home base, especially in the streets of lower Manhattan, where cell phone service was knocked out by the disaster, pagers and radios weren't necessarily working. And of course, trying to get someone to answer the phone here at our home base was almost impossible...

CALLAWAY: Right.

HIRSCHKORN: ...because it was so frenzied, as you could see from those clips. In the Atlanta newsroom, it was 10 times busier here in New York.

CALLAWAY: Right. O'BRIEN: Phil, let's talk about, you know, this documentary looks back. And it's hard to look back. And it almost cries out for what's next. Tell us about the other documentary, which takes a look ahead.

HIRSCHKORN: Yes, thanks for bringing that up. In two weeks, "CNN PRESENTS" will have another documentary called "16 Acres," which I'm producing with Aaron Brown. And we're looking forward at the debate that's been going on here in New York, really all year, beginning of the year in New York City started to shift from mourning to rebuilding. And it's a very heated debate, including the victims' families, including politicians, including real estate interests, including residents of lower Manhattan. Everyone has a stake in this debate about how to rebuild on the 16 acres where the Towers stood.

Office space, residential space, commercial space, retail space. Some talk of cultural institutions moving to lower Manhattan. And there have already been plans that are introduced. They've been somewhat criticized by the public.

O'BRIEN: Well, that's putting it mildly, Phil. They've been absolutely pilloried. And one of the big issues has been this criteria of 10 or 11 million square feet of office space. I assume there's a lot of talk that that's going to change. And something more scalable, if you will, will be put in there.

HIRSCHKORN: That's right. The World Trade Center had 11 million square feet of office space. And the Port Authority, which is the transportation agency that owns the land, that owns that empty PT that our viewers see there, that is the 16 acres, had an obligation to try to rebuild it, an obligation with the lease holder to rebuild that office space. So they tried to do that in the first round, but the public said, you know what? It's too cluttered. It's not imaginative enough. We can do better. We can be more creative. We can have a more mixed use of the site. And we want more space for a memorial and more open space.

Those -- that was some of the feedback for the initial plans. And in fact, just this week, the lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced new -- a new process. They're going to hire new firms to chime in. And they also announced this week they're going to have an international competition for a memorial that's going to run concurrently to the plans for the overall site.

CALLAWAY: All right, Phil. Phil Hirschkorn. We'll be watching tonight.

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