Category Archives: 9-11

24 Years

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It is hard to believe it is 24 years since the 9-11 attack. In many ways, it seems to be ancient history. Many of my students were not yet born on that day. But in other ways, it seems like just yesterday.

I have written about my experience on that day before, and I will not repeat that lengthy reflection now.

But I will share, I think for the first time, the video of my interview that day which appeared on public television. I apologize. The video is a little choppy and grainy.

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RIP WCBS Newsradio

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WCBS Newsradio Studio

A great radio station is dead, a victim of the ever-changing world of major media. WCBS Newsradio 880, a fixture in New York City for nearly six decades, has said farewell to its loyal listeners, me included. The shutdown on August 26, 2024, of the iconic all-news station marks the end of an era in local news broadcasting.

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“Déjà Vu”

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I’ve been trying to make sense of it because I’ve been here before. On the left, Saigon, April 29, 1975. On the right Kabul, August 16, 2021. In 1975 I was at my first post school job in the CBS newsroom in Chicago. The helicopters were evacuating Americans and Vietnamese who had worked with Americans as they fought the communists. In 2021, I’m at the other end of my career. The helicopters are taking out Americans and Afghans who worked with Americans as they fought the Taliban. Forty-six years between these similar scenes. It is eerie.

Yes of course there are many differences between the two events. But from my perspective, there are far too many similarities. We do not seem to learn from history. We just repeat it.

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9-11 Plus 20

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I doubt I will go to witness the ceremony of remembrance at the 9-11 Memorial this year, the twentieth anniversary of the terrorist attack. I am never comfortable when I am at the 16-acre site of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. It’s not the memories. Those come and go depending on what is going on in the world. It’s the images which lingered before me for months after that day. Now they almost never return. Unless I am at the site.

On September 11, 2001, my wife Amy and I lived in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. We had moved there from midtown just a few months earlier. Our apartment building was at the south end of the neighborhood, south and west of WTC Tower . I was the New York Bureau Chief and Senior Correspondent for public television’s Nightly Business Report and the newsroom/production facility/broadcast studio was just across West Street, even closer to the tower, due south of the site. Tower filled the window of my bedroom, and of my office.

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Republicans Are Afraid of YOU!

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You. Yes. You. Republicans are petrified you might discover the truth. Scared you might hold them accountable for the January 6, 2021 insurrection when a mob inspired by Donald Trump stormed Capitol Hill.

Thirty-five Senate Republicans ran from Washington, D.C. this week like rats deserting a sinking ship after driving another nail into the coffin of democracy. They were headed for another vacation. This one, ironically, to commemorate the sacrifices made by those brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the democracy the senators had just turned their backs on. They had just refused to cast votes to create a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the January rebellion.

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