Tribute: Before and After 9/11



TRANSCRIPT AZUZ: It all started at 8:45 on a clear Tuesday morning. We had a live camera up on what looked like a smoking slash across one of the World Trade Center towers. A passenger plane had flown into it, and I remember some of us here at CNN thinking this was some sort of freak event. Then a second plane flew into the other tower. That was at 9:03 am, and at that point, there was this deepening dread in everyone. Something was wrong in a way we`d never seen before. Airports, bridges, tunnels in New York and New Jersey shut down. Within 30 minutes, President George W. Bush said we were under an apparent terrorist attack. And minutes after that, every airport in the country was closed. That had never happened before. It wasn`t over, though. At 9:43 am, a third passenger jet crashed into the Pentagon. Dark smoke rolled up from that part of that huge building. All eyes and many cameras were on that and the two burning towers in New York. And as all of us watched at 10:05, one of those towers gave way where it was smoking, the top part crushing down on the rest of it, and sending up debris and boiling gray clouds. Five minutes later, part of the Pentagon collapsed, and a fourth hijacked jet crashed in a rural part of Pennsylvania. The White House, the United Nations, the State and Justice Departments, the World Bank​, all evacuated. America-bound Atlantic flights were rerouted to Canada. And the second Trade Center tower came down at 10:28. So many closings, evacuations, shutdowns. Except for emergency response teams -- the heroes of 9/11 -- the country virtually stopped what it was doing and gathered around TV screens. The president appeared just after 1:00 p.m., and asked Americans to pray. And there wasn`t much else we could do. The destruction was more or less done around 10:30. It was less than two hours from the first crash. But the change it inflicted was immeasurable. More Americans were killed on September 11, 2001​, than on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. And when President Bush addressed the nation that night at 8:30, his tone was one of sympathy, resolve and warning to anyone who`d planned or supported the attacks.
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
AZUZ: In the difficult days that followed, we learned that the Al Qaida​ terrorist group, led by Osama bin Laden, was responsible for all of this. And America`s attention and anger turned to Afghanistan, whose Taliban leaders were giving Al Qaida a safe place to live and operate.