1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.BZ 2 00:00:07,007 --> 00:00:09,009 [night bird calling] 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ 4 00:00:24,649 --> 00:00:26,484 [man] I'm from South Carolina. 5 00:00:26,568 --> 00:00:28,653 Lexington, South Carolina, to be exact. 6 00:00:29,154 --> 00:00:30,363 Born and raised. 7 00:00:30,447 --> 00:00:32,782 [blowing bird call whistle] 8 00:00:32,866 --> 00:00:34,451 My name is Michael Smoak. 9 00:00:34,534 --> 00:00:36,286 Everybody just calls me Smoak. 10 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:40,540 [imitating bird call] 11 00:00:41,124 --> 00:00:43,501 I've been called by my last name my entire life. 12 00:00:43,585 --> 00:00:46,755 Everybody from when I was a child has called me Smoak. 13 00:00:47,464 --> 00:00:50,175 If you call me Michael, I'm in big trouble. So… 14 00:00:53,511 --> 00:00:55,930 [soft, somber music playing] 15 00:00:56,014 --> 00:00:58,975 I was five years old when 9/11 happened. 16 00:01:00,477 --> 00:01:02,270 I didn't really know what was going on, 17 00:01:02,353 --> 00:01:04,397 but I could tell by the emotion in the room 18 00:01:04,481 --> 00:01:06,775 that something serious had happened. 19 00:01:08,318 --> 00:01:11,613 I was actually home sick from school that day. 20 00:01:11,696 --> 00:01:13,698 I was at my grandmother's house, 21 00:01:13,782 --> 00:01:18,828 and I remember me, her, and my granddad watching it on the TV. 22 00:01:18,912 --> 00:01:22,373 I just remember both of them standing up out of their chairs 23 00:01:22,457 --> 00:01:26,127 and kind of walked towards the TV, getting closer to it. 24 00:01:27,420 --> 00:01:29,964 [Tom Brokaw] It looks like a big chunk of it has just peeled away. 25 00:01:30,048 --> 00:01:33,259 [reporter] One can only hope that the area has been evacuated, but of course… 26 00:01:33,343 --> 00:01:36,888 [Smoak] I started to understand 9/11 more and more as I got older. 27 00:01:37,972 --> 00:01:41,142 I understood what happened, but not really why it happened. 28 00:01:41,643 --> 00:01:42,519 [indistinct dialog] 29 00:01:42,602 --> 00:01:46,272 Later, on YouTube, I saw videos of the war… 30 00:01:46,356 --> 00:01:47,732 [soldier] Target! 31 00:01:47,816 --> 00:01:49,025 [firing] 32 00:01:50,652 --> 00:01:52,237 [Smoak] …and I wanted to serve my country. 33 00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:55,865 I don't even remember where I heard the term "Marine Corps," 34 00:01:55,949 --> 00:01:59,119 but I just remember looking at all the videos 35 00:01:59,202 --> 00:02:01,996 and the uniforms and all that stuff on the internet. 36 00:02:03,414 --> 00:02:05,166 I was like, "That's gonna be me one day." 37 00:02:06,543 --> 00:02:08,253 "I'm going to be a Marine when I get older." 38 00:02:08,336 --> 00:02:09,504 [helicopter whirring] 39 00:02:12,966 --> 00:02:16,803 We got told that we were going in for a non-combative evacuation. 40 00:02:16,886 --> 00:02:19,556 [reporter] The war in Afghanistan is over. 41 00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:23,852 This puts an end to America's longest war. Twenty years, 2,400 lives lost. 42 00:02:25,145 --> 00:02:27,647 [Smoak] And then it got pretty crazy. 43 00:02:27,730 --> 00:02:31,317 [people clamoring and shouting] 44 00:02:32,026 --> 00:02:34,821 This was nearly 20 years after 9/11. 45 00:02:34,904 --> 00:02:38,491 [clamoring continues] 46 00:02:39,325 --> 00:02:41,870 -[distant siren wailing] -And what started on 9/11 47 00:02:41,953 --> 00:02:44,247 ended right here at Abbey Gate. 48 00:02:45,540 --> 00:02:46,666 [woman screams] 49 00:02:48,042 --> 00:02:52,505 My thoughts were, "What the hell have we been doing for 20 years?" 50 00:02:53,756 --> 00:02:56,009 If they didn't have the right paperwork, 51 00:02:56,092 --> 00:02:58,720 most of the time, you're sending them to their death, 52 00:02:58,803 --> 00:03:04,726 which is a pretty crazy responsibility for a 23-year-old. 53 00:03:04,809 --> 00:03:05,810 [dramatic music playing] 54 00:03:05,894 --> 00:03:07,395 [soldier] Move! 55 00:03:08,855 --> 00:03:09,856 [explosion] 56 00:03:09,939 --> 00:03:13,234 [people clamoring and screaming] 57 00:03:16,237 --> 00:03:22,702 [solemn music playing] 58 00:03:31,169 --> 00:03:33,546 [Garrett M. Graff] We're at a moment in American life 59 00:03:33,630 --> 00:03:36,090 when the events of 9/11 are beginning 60 00:03:36,174 --> 00:03:41,095 to slip meaningfully from living memory into history. 61 00:03:41,179 --> 00:03:44,057 [rumbling and whooshing] 62 00:03:45,016 --> 00:03:46,976 At some point in the next couple of years, 63 00:03:47,060 --> 00:03:51,606 we will cross the point where 50% of Americans 64 00:03:51,689 --> 00:03:56,819 were born after 9/11 or were too young to remember the events of that day. 65 00:03:58,196 --> 00:03:59,948 Now they're learning about the attacks 66 00:04:00,031 --> 00:04:02,700 and seeing those images from the day in school. 67 00:04:03,618 --> 00:04:06,287 [student] It's just, like, taught as, 68 00:04:06,371 --> 00:04:09,874 it happened, and we should just know that it happened. 69 00:04:09,958 --> 00:04:14,045 I haven't really heard of it much outside of, like, the anniversary of 9/11. 70 00:04:14,128 --> 00:04:17,507 It just feels like another part of the wars that we've learned about 71 00:04:17,590 --> 00:04:19,884 because I wasn't alive for it or there for it. 72 00:04:23,096 --> 00:04:26,557 [Azmat Khan] On 9/11, I was in English class. 73 00:04:28,059 --> 00:04:29,727 I was in 11th grade. 74 00:04:30,687 --> 00:04:32,730 I think we were the only Muslims at school. 75 00:04:34,107 --> 00:04:37,068 [Laurel Homer] I was ten months old on September 11th. 76 00:04:37,902 --> 00:04:39,946 A lot of times I feel kind of like collateral. 77 00:04:41,489 --> 00:04:43,408 [Wyatt Wilson] I had just turned three years old. 78 00:04:43,908 --> 00:04:45,743 I was probably getting my diaper changed. 79 00:04:45,827 --> 00:04:47,537 I was three years old. 80 00:04:48,746 --> 00:04:50,373 [An Nguyen] I just turned four. 81 00:04:51,666 --> 00:04:53,835 That's 25 years past. 82 00:04:53,918 --> 00:04:57,463 It's basically a generation since the attacks. 83 00:04:58,923 --> 00:05:03,011 It's critical to know the pain and the grief. 84 00:05:05,388 --> 00:05:09,434 The ramifications of 9/11 are evolving. 85 00:05:10,518 --> 00:05:12,729 And even some consequences from that event 86 00:05:12,812 --> 00:05:15,398 are still unfolding to this day. 87 00:05:15,481 --> 00:05:17,108 [whooshing, then exploding] 88 00:05:19,819 --> 00:05:24,449 [Graff] 25 years later, the current generation lives in 89 00:05:24,532 --> 00:05:28,036 a world that was created by 9/11. 90 00:05:28,119 --> 00:05:30,121 [somber music playing] 91 00:05:41,674 --> 00:05:45,970 [Anand Gopal] We had a sense back then that we were at a transformative moment. 92 00:05:46,054 --> 00:05:47,263 And we were. 93 00:05:51,517 --> 00:05:52,518 I was asleep. 94 00:05:53,644 --> 00:05:55,646 I was an undergrad at NYU at that time. 95 00:05:57,440 --> 00:05:59,233 I was living in Lower Manhattan, 96 00:05:59,317 --> 00:06:01,944 and I felt a loud sound. 97 00:06:02,028 --> 00:06:06,574 [airplane approaching] 98 00:06:06,657 --> 00:06:11,954 [airplane gets louder] 99 00:06:13,039 --> 00:06:14,916 [loud explosion] 100 00:06:14,999 --> 00:06:18,503 [Stephen McArdle] That was an explosion. That was an explosion. 101 00:06:18,586 --> 00:06:25,593 [indistinct clamoring] 102 00:06:26,719 --> 00:06:28,429 [man] Holy shit! 103 00:06:29,555 --> 00:06:30,765 [Gopal] I turned the TV on. 104 00:06:30,848 --> 00:06:33,101 [reporter] We have a breaking news story to tell you about. 105 00:06:33,184 --> 00:06:37,855 Apparently, a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here in… 106 00:06:37,939 --> 00:06:40,483 [Gopal] That's all we had, is the main television stations. 107 00:06:40,566 --> 00:06:44,237 I don't mean to interrupt the fun, but this is a breaking news story. 108 00:06:44,320 --> 00:06:46,697 A plane has crashed… 109 00:06:47,198 --> 00:06:49,992 -Hold it… Into the World Trade Center. -[Robin Quivers] You're kidding! 110 00:06:50,076 --> 00:06:51,786 [reporter 2] We have no further details. 111 00:06:51,869 --> 00:06:56,290 We don't know anything about what they have concluded happened there. 112 00:06:56,374 --> 00:06:59,877 So anyway, we go on now. How are you? 113 00:06:59,961 --> 00:07:02,088 -I know you're in shock. -I'm really in shock. 114 00:07:02,171 --> 00:07:05,174 I've never… I don't know what to say. 115 00:07:05,258 --> 00:07:08,261 [reporter 3] CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, 116 00:07:08,344 --> 00:07:12,223 obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened. 117 00:07:12,306 --> 00:07:14,809 [reporter 4] …fire is nowhere near under control… 118 00:07:14,892 --> 00:07:17,061 [Jenny Pachucki] For 10 years, I was an oral historian 119 00:07:17,145 --> 00:07:20,106 and curator at the 9/11 Museum, 120 00:07:20,189 --> 00:07:24,777 recording oral histories with survivors, first responders, family members. 121 00:07:26,362 --> 00:07:29,157 If you're trying to have hope for a generation, 122 00:07:29,866 --> 00:07:32,660 I think that helping them understand what happened 123 00:07:32,743 --> 00:07:36,122 is an important part of creating good for the future. 124 00:07:37,498 --> 00:07:41,252 When these people become real and this event becomes personal, 125 00:07:42,712 --> 00:07:45,673 that's the most powerful way to understand, ultimately, 126 00:07:45,756 --> 00:07:47,967 what this was and why it mattered. 127 00:07:49,010 --> 00:07:53,097 [sirens wailing] 128 00:07:54,724 --> 00:07:57,268 [police operator] Police operator 133, what's the emergency? 129 00:07:57,351 --> 00:08:00,938 [Battaglia] I'm on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center with 30 people. 130 00:08:01,022 --> 00:08:02,940 [Pachucki] People are calling 911. 131 00:08:03,691 --> 00:08:05,651 They're reporting being trapped. 132 00:08:05,735 --> 00:08:07,153 They're reporting being stuck. 133 00:08:07,236 --> 00:08:09,363 [operator] How are you doing? This is the fire department. 134 00:08:09,447 --> 00:08:11,574 [Battaglia] Hi. It's hard to talk. 135 00:08:11,657 --> 00:08:13,117 -[operator] Yeah. -A lot of smoke. 136 00:08:13,201 --> 00:08:14,410 -[operator] Right. -The heat… 137 00:08:14,494 --> 00:08:17,121 We're all overreacting. Please come right now. 138 00:08:17,205 --> 00:08:19,999 -[operator] What floor are you on? -[Battaglia] 100 Northeast. 139 00:08:20,082 --> 00:08:21,125 [operator] All right. 140 00:08:21,209 --> 00:08:23,085 [people clamoring and coughing] 141 00:08:23,169 --> 00:08:25,254 [woman] It's too hot! 142 00:08:25,338 --> 00:08:27,048 [operator] What's your phone number there? 143 00:08:27,131 --> 00:08:28,633 [Battaglia] I'm on a cell phone. 144 00:08:28,716 --> 00:08:31,177 [operator] All right, no problem. We'll get to you. 145 00:08:31,260 --> 00:08:34,096 -[Battaglia] Please, immediately. -[operator] They're on the way. 146 00:08:34,180 --> 00:08:36,724 [Pachucki] Really, the only thing that people can say is, 147 00:08:36,807 --> 00:08:39,810 "Hang on, we're coming for you. We'll be there as soon as we can." 148 00:08:44,732 --> 00:08:48,861 Our son, Brad, had just graduated from Bucknell University. 149 00:08:50,029 --> 00:08:55,618 On September 11th, he was working on the 89th floor of the South Tower. 150 00:08:56,953 --> 00:08:58,663 Hey, Mom, it's Brad. 151 00:08:58,746 --> 00:09:01,582 I just wanted to call and let you know, I'm sure that you heard 152 00:09:01,666 --> 00:09:04,460 that a plane crashed into World Trade Center One. 153 00:09:04,544 --> 00:09:06,921 We're fine, we're in World Trade Center Two. 154 00:09:07,004 --> 00:09:10,466 I'm not… I'm obviously alive and well over here. 155 00:09:10,550 --> 00:09:13,261 But obviously a pretty scary experience. 156 00:09:15,429 --> 00:09:20,142 [Pachucki] For most people, it was just a confusing, atrocious accident. 157 00:09:23,437 --> 00:09:25,439 [woman] They believe it was an airplane. 158 00:09:25,523 --> 00:09:27,567 I'm going to go watch the news now. 159 00:09:28,276 --> 00:09:32,029 We thought we were invincible, but we also thought we were invulnerable. 160 00:09:32,113 --> 00:09:34,365 In other words, that no one could attack us. 161 00:09:36,075 --> 00:09:39,245 9/11 shatters that complacency. 162 00:09:39,328 --> 00:09:41,706 [news playing in background] 163 00:09:41,789 --> 00:09:44,083 [woman on phone] …get through, and I'm far away right now, 164 00:09:44,166 --> 00:09:46,627 I thought it might be a little dangerous to get too close. 165 00:09:46,711 --> 00:09:48,129 I saw lots of debris coming… 166 00:09:48,212 --> 00:09:53,384 [Graff] You see in that moment between 8:46 and 9:03 167 00:09:53,884 --> 00:09:56,846 how innocent America actually is. 168 00:10:04,562 --> 00:10:09,567 In those 17 minutes, America still felt innocent. 169 00:10:10,651 --> 00:10:14,238 [reporter] And as fire crews are descending on this area, 170 00:10:15,489 --> 00:10:19,452 it does not appear that there's any kind of an effort up there yet. 171 00:10:19,535 --> 00:10:21,078 Now remember-- Oh my God! 172 00:10:21,746 --> 00:10:23,456 [newsreader] My God. My… 173 00:10:23,539 --> 00:10:25,416 [newsreader 2] That looks like a second plane. 174 00:10:25,958 --> 00:10:27,543 [plane approaching] 175 00:10:35,843 --> 00:10:38,846 [woman on phone] It was a jet. It was a very large plane. It was going fast. 176 00:10:38,929 --> 00:10:42,224 It went past the Ritz-Carlton Hotel that's being built in Battery Park. 177 00:10:42,308 --> 00:10:44,060 It went through right past, almost hit it… 178 00:10:44,143 --> 00:10:45,811 -[people screaming] -…and then went in. 179 00:10:46,771 --> 00:10:50,399 [newsreader 2] So this looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort 180 00:10:50,483 --> 00:10:55,029 to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York. 181 00:10:55,112 --> 00:10:57,865 [sirens wailing] 182 00:10:57,948 --> 00:10:59,617 [man] My name is Andrew Ansbro. 183 00:10:59,700 --> 00:11:02,244 I joined the FDNY in February of 2001. 184 00:11:02,995 --> 00:11:04,914 I was assigned to Engine 58 in Harlem. 185 00:11:06,749 --> 00:11:08,876 On September 11th, I was 29 years old. 186 00:11:09,877 --> 00:11:11,420 I was the new guy. 187 00:11:11,504 --> 00:11:14,173 You know, I was actually getting off a 24-hour shift 188 00:11:14,256 --> 00:11:16,342 when, uh, you know, the first plane hit. 189 00:11:16,425 --> 00:11:19,845 We got assigned to the second fifth alarm, which was the South Tower. 190 00:11:19,929 --> 00:11:23,182 -[fire alarm bell ringing] -You get the alarm, get the adrenaline. 191 00:11:23,724 --> 00:11:26,310 I thought, "Here we are, we're going down there to put it out." 192 00:11:26,394 --> 00:11:27,395 [siren wailing] 193 00:11:27,478 --> 00:11:29,230 The street was very different. 194 00:11:29,313 --> 00:11:33,359 Everyone got out of the way of the rig, and, uh, people were cheering for us. 195 00:11:33,442 --> 00:11:36,737 It was like being a gladiator heading down to battle. 196 00:11:36,821 --> 00:11:40,032 Everyone was, you know, cheering and clapping as we're going. 197 00:11:40,116 --> 00:11:42,535 And I just remember passing a block in the 70s 198 00:11:42,618 --> 00:11:47,748 and focusing on this one person who was standing there looking at us, crying. 199 00:11:47,832 --> 00:11:48,916 And then it hit me. 200 00:11:49,625 --> 00:11:52,670 [indistinct dialog over dispatch radio] 201 00:11:52,753 --> 00:11:53,754 Shit. 202 00:11:56,090 --> 00:11:58,050 [Ansbro] And then the lieutenant said, 203 00:11:58,134 --> 00:11:59,719 "Listen, make no mistake, 204 00:11:59,802 --> 00:12:02,096 everyone above that fire is dead or gonna die." 205 00:12:02,179 --> 00:12:03,931 [sirens wailing] 206 00:12:04,014 --> 00:12:06,058 [newsreader] Thousands, tens of thousands of people 207 00:12:06,142 --> 00:12:08,352 actually work inside those two buildings 208 00:12:08,436 --> 00:12:10,688 in the heart of New York's financial district. 209 00:12:15,401 --> 00:12:18,237 You could see the fire, the flames, and all the smoke. 210 00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,656 And I said, "Oh my God, my wife is there." 211 00:12:21,282 --> 00:12:23,576 She worked on the 96th floor, 212 00:12:24,118 --> 00:12:26,245 but I was hoping for the best. 213 00:12:29,707 --> 00:12:32,543 My daughter was two years old. 214 00:12:33,878 --> 00:12:37,673 A few days later, she just started screaming and crying, calling her mother. 215 00:12:37,757 --> 00:12:39,759 That's when it hit me. 216 00:12:39,842 --> 00:12:44,180 [sirens wailing] 217 00:12:44,263 --> 00:12:46,140 [Pachucki] People are coming down the stairwells. 218 00:12:48,768 --> 00:12:52,438 It is smoky, depending on where you were. 219 00:12:53,147 --> 00:12:55,191 It is crowded. 220 00:12:56,317 --> 00:12:59,779 There's women wearing full stiletto heels walking down 221 00:13:01,030 --> 00:13:02,907 many, many stairs. 222 00:13:03,616 --> 00:13:07,328 People describe people helping each other in the stairwells. 223 00:13:11,665 --> 00:13:16,629 There were stations set up by responders to provide people with oxygen. 224 00:13:16,712 --> 00:13:18,714 People were being handed water. 225 00:13:20,299 --> 00:13:22,676 There's this moment when the first responders 226 00:13:22,760 --> 00:13:25,679 are gathering at the incident command post, 227 00:13:25,763 --> 00:13:29,141 and they're preparing to go up and developing their strategy. 228 00:13:29,809 --> 00:13:33,521 And somebody looked at the little group that was about to go up the stairs 229 00:13:33,604 --> 00:13:36,524 and said, "We may not live through today." 230 00:13:36,607 --> 00:13:38,275 [sniffles, stifles sob] 231 00:13:39,401 --> 00:13:42,613 [crying] And they took a moment to shake each other's hands. 232 00:13:52,665 --> 00:13:54,333 [sirens wailing] 233 00:13:54,416 --> 00:13:56,877 [Rudy Giuliani] All that we know… All that we know right now 234 00:13:56,961 --> 00:14:00,923 is that two airplanes struck the two large towers of the World Trade Center. 235 00:14:01,006 --> 00:14:03,676 [man on radio] Stand by. Just stand by. We'll get 'em. 236 00:14:03,759 --> 00:14:06,679 [Pachucki] There was no question that the city was being attacked. 237 00:14:07,555 --> 00:14:09,890 Later, we realized it was the country. 238 00:14:17,439 --> 00:14:20,609 Another plane is headed towards Washington, D.C. 239 00:14:23,904 --> 00:14:25,114 [man] I'm An Nguyen. 240 00:14:25,614 --> 00:14:27,783 I am the son of Khang Nguyen, 241 00:14:27,867 --> 00:14:31,996 who was working at the Pentagon on September 11th. 242 00:14:33,122 --> 00:14:37,293 My father, he was born in South Vietnam. 243 00:14:38,002 --> 00:14:42,590 And then he came to America after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. 244 00:14:44,216 --> 00:14:47,636 But he is a testament of basically the American dream. 245 00:14:48,762 --> 00:14:50,931 There were opportunities here in the US 246 00:14:51,015 --> 00:14:54,685 that was not given to him when he was younger back in Vietnam. 247 00:14:55,436 --> 00:14:57,730 My father was an electrical engineer 248 00:14:57,813 --> 00:15:00,316 with the Navy Command Center at the Pentagon. 249 00:15:01,317 --> 00:15:03,068 I'd just turned four. 250 00:15:03,694 --> 00:15:05,863 I was in preschool, 251 00:15:05,946 --> 00:15:07,489 and on that Tuesday morning, 252 00:15:07,573 --> 00:15:10,659 when my mom was taking me out to the bus to go to preschool, 253 00:15:10,743 --> 00:15:12,494 my father ran towards the bus 254 00:15:12,578 --> 00:15:16,582 to just say goodbye to me one more, just one last… one last time. 255 00:15:18,500 --> 00:15:22,671 [melancholy music playing] 256 00:15:25,257 --> 00:15:28,093 [plane approaching] 257 00:15:33,849 --> 00:15:39,396 [Pachucki] At 9:37, Flight 77 crashed into the E ring of the Pentagon. 258 00:15:40,648 --> 00:15:42,816 [dispatcher] Engine 101, [indistinct]… 259 00:15:44,276 --> 00:15:48,155 [firefighter] 105 is on the scene. I have a [indistinct]… 260 00:15:49,365 --> 00:15:51,283 …transport, the Pentagon. 261 00:15:52,284 --> 00:15:54,912 [siren wailing] 262 00:15:54,995 --> 00:15:58,958 [newsreader] It would appear that there has been another major explosion, 263 00:15:59,041 --> 00:16:00,834 this one in the nation's capital. 264 00:16:00,918 --> 00:16:05,506 You are looking at a scene of apparent blast aftermath. 265 00:16:05,589 --> 00:16:08,175 There is smoke in the air over the Pentagon. 266 00:16:11,178 --> 00:16:13,389 [Nguyen] I just went home when preschool ended. 267 00:16:14,473 --> 00:16:19,353 And I was just waiting for my father to show up on the driveway with his car. 268 00:16:19,436 --> 00:16:21,105 And I just kept waiting and waiting… 269 00:16:24,066 --> 00:16:26,068 just hoping that he would come home. 270 00:16:29,697 --> 00:16:32,825 With the days that followed, especially the funeral, 271 00:16:32,908 --> 00:16:36,161 that's when I realized that he's not coming back home. 272 00:16:38,247 --> 00:16:41,583 An outpour of tears started to show. 273 00:16:43,877 --> 00:16:47,131 Terrorism is a word that you will never understand 274 00:16:47,214 --> 00:16:50,718 in any visceral way until you experience it. 275 00:16:52,261 --> 00:16:55,222 I did not know how to come to terms 276 00:16:55,305 --> 00:16:57,474 with a loss of that magnitude, 277 00:16:58,726 --> 00:17:01,270 but I knew that my life would change forever. 278 00:17:05,441 --> 00:17:09,153 And now I'm trying to make an identity within a world 279 00:17:09,236 --> 00:17:11,530 without having my father by my side. 280 00:17:13,657 --> 00:17:19,288 [sirens wailing] 281 00:17:19,371 --> 00:17:21,874 [Pachucki] The Pentagon is a private area. 282 00:17:21,957 --> 00:17:23,417 It's a lower building. 283 00:17:24,501 --> 00:17:26,587 And the force of the plane, 284 00:17:26,670 --> 00:17:28,464 the amount of jet fuel, 285 00:17:29,214 --> 00:17:32,217 and the size and structure of the building 286 00:17:32,718 --> 00:17:34,970 creates like an inferno. 287 00:17:35,054 --> 00:17:38,724 [fire roaring and crackling] 288 00:17:41,852 --> 00:17:43,353 And at the same time, 289 00:17:43,437 --> 00:17:46,398 the South Tower was burning for 56 minutes. 290 00:17:49,818 --> 00:17:52,362 The impact zone was a little bit lower. 291 00:17:57,159 --> 00:18:02,956 So an hour burning at extremely hot temperatures, 292 00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:06,960 ultimately the building began to pull into itself. 293 00:18:07,961 --> 00:18:11,256 [tragic music playing] 294 00:18:13,467 --> 00:18:17,387 At some point there was a deep rumble in the earth. 295 00:18:17,471 --> 00:18:18,764 It felt like an earthquake. 296 00:18:18,847 --> 00:18:20,849 -[people clamoring] -[sirens wailing] 297 00:18:20,933 --> 00:18:23,227 [car horns honking] 298 00:18:25,896 --> 00:18:28,816 [Ansbro] We saw a whole bunch of cops lined up like a roll call. 299 00:18:28,899 --> 00:18:30,442 Then they just started running. 300 00:18:30,943 --> 00:18:33,112 We thought something was falling out of the sky. 301 00:18:33,195 --> 00:18:36,365 Or there was a disturbance because they all ran north. 302 00:18:37,241 --> 00:18:40,285 What we didn't know was that the police officers in the helicopter 303 00:18:40,369 --> 00:18:41,829 had radioed down to them. 304 00:18:41,912 --> 00:18:44,414 The top of the South Tower had started to twist. 305 00:18:44,498 --> 00:18:45,791 And they could see it. 306 00:18:49,044 --> 00:18:50,462 They told them to evacuate. 307 00:18:52,172 --> 00:18:53,757 None of us got that message. 308 00:18:56,760 --> 00:18:58,595 [Pachucki] There was a man named Sean Rooney 309 00:18:58,679 --> 00:19:01,598 who called his wife, Beverly Eckert. 310 00:19:03,725 --> 00:19:07,104 They connect over the phone, and he's trapped. 311 00:19:07,980 --> 00:19:10,065 [Beverly Eckert] It was about 9:30 a.m. when he called. 312 00:19:11,024 --> 00:19:13,819 And he told me he was on the 105th floor. 313 00:19:16,989 --> 00:19:19,116 And he'd been trying to find a way out. 314 00:19:20,367 --> 00:19:25,372 He told me that he hadn't had any success and now the stairwell was full of smoke. 315 00:19:28,083 --> 00:19:30,377 We stopped talking about escape routes. 316 00:19:32,796 --> 00:19:34,464 And then we just began talking about 317 00:19:34,548 --> 00:19:37,843 all the happiness we shared during our lives together. 318 00:19:40,846 --> 00:19:43,849 He just kept whispering "I love you" over and over. 319 00:19:45,309 --> 00:19:47,394 Then I heard a sharp crack, 320 00:19:47,477 --> 00:19:50,314 followed by the sound of an avalanche. 321 00:19:50,981 --> 00:19:51,982 Take two. 322 00:19:52,065 --> 00:19:53,775 Take two and two, one. 323 00:19:53,859 --> 00:19:56,570 This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. 324 00:19:56,653 --> 00:19:58,405 -You see the firemen assembled here… -[bang] 325 00:19:58,488 --> 00:20:00,407 -…the police officers, FBI agents. -[another bang] 326 00:20:00,490 --> 00:20:02,993 -And you can see the two towers. -[louder bang] 327 00:20:03,076 --> 00:20:06,205 A huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us. 328 00:20:06,288 --> 00:20:07,915 We better get out of the way! 329 00:20:10,125 --> 00:20:12,753 Come on, Glenn. Come on, Glenn, you can do it, man. 330 00:20:14,254 --> 00:20:16,215 [Ansbro] There was this loud crack and a boom. 331 00:20:16,298 --> 00:20:18,884 And you know… Bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop. 332 00:20:18,967 --> 00:20:21,303 And that was the floors pancaking and coming down. 333 00:20:21,386 --> 00:20:24,014 [people screaming] 334 00:20:24,097 --> 00:20:27,476 The street got dark and went from day to night in seconds. 335 00:20:28,101 --> 00:20:32,773 So, instinctively, myself and whoever came from the south, we ran south. 336 00:20:33,815 --> 00:20:34,942 [whooshing] 337 00:20:35,025 --> 00:20:37,569 [reporter in Japanese] Just now with a loud crash 338 00:20:37,653 --> 00:20:41,198 a building has collapsed! 339 00:20:41,907 --> 00:20:44,701 [Ansbro] When the building hit the ground, it kind of came over us 340 00:20:44,785 --> 00:20:46,995 and the air pressure from the compressed air 341 00:20:47,079 --> 00:20:48,372 -blew the windows in. -[whooshing] 342 00:20:48,455 --> 00:20:50,415 [man] Oh shit. Oh shit. 343 00:20:50,499 --> 00:20:51,708 [Ansbro] We were airborne. 344 00:20:51,792 --> 00:20:54,586 I don't know how far I flew, but I landed in a pile of people. 345 00:20:54,670 --> 00:21:00,550 And, uh, immediately your next breath was like sucking in a cup full of sand. 346 00:21:00,634 --> 00:21:01,551 It was just… [choking] 347 00:21:02,344 --> 00:21:04,972 And you're getting hit with, you know, little pieces of debris. 348 00:21:05,055 --> 00:21:07,599 And you just say to yourself, "This is how it ends." 349 00:21:07,683 --> 00:21:08,892 [man] I hope I live. 350 00:21:08,976 --> 00:21:11,186 I hope I live. It's coming down on me. 351 00:21:11,812 --> 00:21:16,233 [Gopal] I ran just ahead of the front of the smoke and I got under a car. 352 00:21:16,316 --> 00:21:18,860 There was a subway grate under the car, 353 00:21:18,944 --> 00:21:23,573 and I used the subway grate to breathe for the next three or four hours. 354 00:21:23,657 --> 00:21:26,285 It was too thick to see outside. 355 00:21:26,368 --> 00:21:28,036 [people clamoring] 356 00:21:28,662 --> 00:21:31,290 [Pachucki] At 10:28 a.m., 357 00:21:31,373 --> 00:21:33,000 the North Tower collapsed, 358 00:21:33,500 --> 00:21:35,752 killing about 1,500 people 359 00:21:35,836 --> 00:21:38,505 who were unable to make it out of the building. 360 00:21:39,214 --> 00:21:43,719 -[loud bang and rumbling] -[people screaming and exclaiming] 361 00:21:46,972 --> 00:21:51,310 [sirens wailing] 362 00:21:52,144 --> 00:21:54,688 [woman] Miss, get in here! Get away from the glass. 363 00:21:55,314 --> 00:21:56,815 [woman 2] All my shit is out there! 364 00:21:56,898 --> 00:21:58,191 My shit is out there! 365 00:21:58,275 --> 00:21:59,860 [woman] You want your life or your stuff? 366 00:21:59,943 --> 00:22:01,653 [man] Wanna die? Don't worry about your shit. 367 00:22:01,737 --> 00:22:04,031 [woman] The building, watch the debris come down the street. 368 00:22:04,114 --> 00:22:07,242 -Don't open the door. -[man] Get away from the windows. 369 00:22:07,784 --> 00:22:10,746 -[woman] Don't open the door! -[man] Here it comes! Get behind! 370 00:22:10,829 --> 00:22:12,956 [woman 2] Oh my God. Oh my God! 371 00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:15,959 -[man] Look at the shadow of death. -[woman 2 screams] Oh my God! 372 00:22:16,043 --> 00:22:17,669 [rumbling and whooshing] 373 00:22:17,753 --> 00:22:20,088 You're right! Oh, my God, you saved my life! 374 00:22:20,172 --> 00:22:22,466 -[man] I told you-- -[woman 2] You saved my life, thank you! 375 00:22:22,549 --> 00:22:27,179 -[sirens blaring] -[fire truck honking] 376 00:22:27,262 --> 00:22:30,432 [reporter] Words cannot describe it, except to say that the towers are gone. 377 00:22:30,515 --> 00:22:34,603 Church Street is littered with people still lingering, uh, looking, watching. 378 00:22:34,686 --> 00:22:36,271 They don't know what to do. 379 00:22:36,355 --> 00:22:39,066 Some people are down on their knees praying. 380 00:22:39,149 --> 00:22:42,027 [anchor] You're looking at the collapse of one of those towers right now. 381 00:22:42,110 --> 00:22:45,447 We now have an AP news alert out of Pittsburgh. 382 00:22:45,530 --> 00:22:48,450 Officials at Somerset County Airport are confirming 383 00:22:48,533 --> 00:22:51,370 the crash of a large plane just north of the airport. 384 00:22:51,453 --> 00:22:56,833 [somber music playing] 385 00:23:01,922 --> 00:23:03,256 I'm Laurel Homer. 386 00:23:03,340 --> 00:23:06,009 I was 10 months old on September 11th. 387 00:23:07,302 --> 00:23:09,304 [woman] Is that on his wedding day? 388 00:23:09,388 --> 00:23:10,305 [Homer] Yeah. 389 00:23:11,473 --> 00:23:14,434 I'm the daughter of Leroy Homer. 390 00:23:21,358 --> 00:23:24,778 My dad was the copilot on Flight 93. 391 00:23:28,949 --> 00:23:32,244 [Pachucki] There were 44 people on Flight 93. 392 00:23:34,621 --> 00:23:38,625 And because the flight is already underway, 393 00:23:38,708 --> 00:23:41,211 a lot of the passengers on the flight 394 00:23:41,294 --> 00:23:44,464 are getting information from the outside 395 00:23:44,548 --> 00:23:47,092 about the attacks unfolding in New York, 396 00:23:47,175 --> 00:23:48,760 and then later the Pentagon. 397 00:23:50,470 --> 00:23:55,016 There were 37 calls that were exchanged on that flight, 398 00:23:55,100 --> 00:23:56,893 messages that were left. 399 00:23:58,437 --> 00:24:00,021 [Linda Gronlund] Elsa, it's Lin. 400 00:24:00,105 --> 00:24:04,693 Um, I only have a minute. I'm on United 93 and it's been hijacked 401 00:24:04,776 --> 00:24:07,446 by terrorists who say they have a bomb. 402 00:24:07,529 --> 00:24:11,199 Apparently they've flown a couple of planes into the World Trade Center, 403 00:24:11,283 --> 00:24:13,952 and it looks like they're going to take this one down as well. 404 00:24:14,035 --> 00:24:16,621 Mostly I just wanted to say I love you… [crying] 405 00:24:16,705 --> 00:24:18,832 …and I'm going to miss you. 406 00:24:20,041 --> 00:24:21,710 And, and… 407 00:24:21,793 --> 00:24:24,713 please give my love to Mom and Dad, and… 408 00:24:25,755 --> 00:24:27,174 [shuddering breath] 409 00:24:28,550 --> 00:24:31,344 Mostly I just love you, and I just wanted to tell you that. 410 00:24:31,428 --> 00:24:35,599 I don't know if I'm going to get a chance to tell you that again or not. 411 00:24:36,725 --> 00:24:40,729 [Pachucki] The assumed target we now know was the United States Capitol. 412 00:24:44,733 --> 00:24:48,653 They understood that they were on a suicide mission 413 00:24:48,737 --> 00:24:53,950 and they understood pretty quickly that it was up to them to do something. 414 00:24:54,784 --> 00:25:01,625 [man] The, uh, remains of an airplane crash over on, uh, Lambertsville Road. 415 00:25:04,169 --> 00:25:07,923 [Pachucki] And the passengers decide with the crew to charge the cockpit. 416 00:25:09,674 --> 00:25:14,763 Ultimately, the hijackers made the decision to down the plane. 417 00:25:19,643 --> 00:25:24,648 [Homer] They diverted the plane from where the terrorists wanted it to crash into, 418 00:25:24,731 --> 00:25:28,485 and they saved a lot of people in doing that. 419 00:25:33,073 --> 00:25:37,744 It's hard. Like, obviously I'm grateful that more devastation wasn't caused, 420 00:25:37,827 --> 00:25:39,454 but at the same time, like, 421 00:25:39,538 --> 00:25:41,456 I still lost him, so… 422 00:25:42,541 --> 00:25:45,377 it's kind of a… struggle, 423 00:25:45,460 --> 00:25:48,588 because it's like, I know he was a hero, but I wish he didn't have to be. 424 00:25:50,340 --> 00:25:52,759 My mom, she told me at one point 425 00:25:52,842 --> 00:25:55,387 she thought she was going to die of heartbreak. 426 00:25:57,264 --> 00:25:59,516 She was, like, devastated… 427 00:26:01,476 --> 00:26:05,397 and she has this young kid that she needs to take care of. 428 00:26:06,273 --> 00:26:10,193 My entire life was kind of built around this. 429 00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:13,905 I'm still struggling so much, 430 00:26:13,989 --> 00:26:17,033 [voice breaking] and it has taken over my whole… 431 00:26:17,951 --> 00:26:18,868 my whole life. 432 00:26:18,952 --> 00:26:24,624 [siren wailing in distance] 433 00:26:25,792 --> 00:26:27,002 [George W. Bush] Good evening. 434 00:26:27,627 --> 00:26:30,088 Today our fellow citizens, 435 00:26:30,171 --> 00:26:31,506 our way of life, 436 00:26:31,590 --> 00:26:34,426 our very freedom came under attack 437 00:26:34,509 --> 00:26:38,096 in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. 438 00:26:38,179 --> 00:26:43,143 -[indistinct dialog] -[sirens wailing] 439 00:26:44,227 --> 00:26:48,773 [Graff] There are four attacks, and almost 3,000 people die. 440 00:26:53,194 --> 00:26:58,491 But what that misses is what it was like to live and experience 9/11. 441 00:26:58,575 --> 00:27:00,785 [woman sobbing] 442 00:27:03,997 --> 00:27:09,753 That we miss the fear, the chaos, the confusion and the trauma of that day. 443 00:27:09,836 --> 00:27:11,421 [person sobbing] 444 00:27:11,504 --> 00:27:13,298 [man] They say someone needs help. 445 00:27:14,341 --> 00:27:16,843 [Graff] We didn't know when the attacks began. 446 00:27:16,926 --> 00:27:18,094 [woman] …needs some water. 447 00:27:18,178 --> 00:27:20,847 [Graff] We didn't know when the attacks were over. 448 00:27:20,930 --> 00:27:23,058 We didn't know for much of the day 449 00:27:23,141 --> 00:27:25,435 how many attacks there had been. 450 00:27:28,188 --> 00:27:32,692 We also didn't know whether there was another wave of attacks coming 451 00:27:32,776 --> 00:27:34,527 in the afternoon of September 11th, 452 00:27:34,611 --> 00:27:36,363 didn't know what was coming on September 12th. 453 00:27:36,446 --> 00:27:40,742 We didn't know what was coming in October or in 2002. 454 00:27:45,830 --> 00:27:50,585 If you miss the fear, the chaos, the confusion and the trauma, 455 00:27:50,669 --> 00:27:57,425 you miss the entire reason that the US ends up responding in the way that we did. 456 00:27:58,677 --> 00:28:01,805 [protesters shouting] 457 00:28:06,226 --> 00:28:11,064 This was an epochal change in American life. 458 00:28:13,692 --> 00:28:16,695 The feeling of violation 459 00:28:17,529 --> 00:28:20,865 made it feel like anything could happen. 460 00:28:22,534 --> 00:28:24,619 Like the pit had opened up. 461 00:28:25,453 --> 00:28:29,332 The skies had rained fire, and who knows what could come next. 462 00:28:31,710 --> 00:28:34,337 [Christian Sanchez] It felt justified to go. 463 00:28:34,421 --> 00:28:37,716 Like, if we got attacked and they killed a bunch of our people, 464 00:28:37,799 --> 00:28:40,885 obviously we should bring some justice to those that did it. 465 00:28:44,597 --> 00:28:46,433 [man] It's like a war right now in the world. 466 00:28:46,516 --> 00:28:48,101 -[man 2] This is gonna start a war. -Yeah. 467 00:28:48,184 --> 00:28:49,769 -[man 2] This is gonna start a war. -Yeah. 468 00:28:49,853 --> 00:28:51,896 It's gonna start a war. Sure, man. Hey. 469 00:28:53,022 --> 00:28:55,316 [Smoak] I heard grownups talk about it, 470 00:28:55,400 --> 00:29:00,280 so I started to understand more and more as I got older that what happened, 471 00:29:00,363 --> 00:29:01,614 not really why it happened, 472 00:29:01,698 --> 00:29:04,242 but other than they didn't like Americans. 473 00:29:07,746 --> 00:29:10,707 [Homer] The way that my mom described what happened 474 00:29:10,790 --> 00:29:14,002 was that there were bad men on his plane. 475 00:29:17,338 --> 00:29:20,008 [Nguyen] I knew that the terrorists were involved. 476 00:29:20,592 --> 00:29:22,302 I know they were coming from the Middle East, 477 00:29:22,385 --> 00:29:26,347 but I didn't really fully understand, what was the intention? 478 00:29:27,932 --> 00:29:29,601 Like, what was their goals? 479 00:29:34,564 --> 00:29:38,234 [Bush] Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve… 480 00:29:40,361 --> 00:29:42,989 for the children whose worlds have been shattered, 481 00:29:43,740 --> 00:29:47,410 for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened… 482 00:29:49,537 --> 00:29:53,291 and I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us. 483 00:29:53,374 --> 00:29:56,002 Spoken through the ages in Psalm 23, 484 00:29:56,753 --> 00:30:00,173 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 485 00:30:00,256 --> 00:30:01,674 I fear no evil, 486 00:30:02,175 --> 00:30:03,593 for you are with me." 487 00:30:13,770 --> 00:30:17,398 [Dr. Joseph Geraci] It just kind of broke my heart, seeing the posters and the signs 488 00:30:17,482 --> 00:30:20,068 for people looking for their family members. 489 00:30:21,277 --> 00:30:23,071 The towers were still smoldering, 490 00:30:23,154 --> 00:30:25,573 the rubble was still smoldering at that time. 491 00:30:26,533 --> 00:30:29,702 You know, I don't think that I had ever felt such a calling. 492 00:30:29,786 --> 00:30:31,454 Like what my life was for 493 00:30:31,538 --> 00:30:34,374 is like, you know, we needed to help be part of the solution 494 00:30:34,457 --> 00:30:38,002 and we needed to help to find the individuals who had done this. 495 00:30:45,051 --> 00:30:48,638 [Jack Goldsmith] Within days, I think three days after 9/11, 496 00:30:48,721 --> 00:30:53,268 there was just a lot of panic and uncertainty and ignorance and fear. 497 00:30:54,644 --> 00:30:58,398 Immediately, the people in the White House and in the Justice Department realized 498 00:30:58,481 --> 00:31:02,193 that they needed robust authorities to respond to it. 499 00:31:02,694 --> 00:31:04,612 The one big sticking point tonight 500 00:31:04,696 --> 00:31:08,199 is how much power to give the president to conduct this war 501 00:31:08,283 --> 00:31:11,494 and to respond to any future acts of terrorism. 502 00:31:11,578 --> 00:31:15,081 And they sought a super broad authorization to use military force, 503 00:31:15,164 --> 00:31:16,624 as it's called, an AUMF, 504 00:31:16,708 --> 00:31:22,463 from Congress for a very open-ended authorization to go after all terrorists, 505 00:31:22,547 --> 00:31:26,467 essentially, all terrorist threats and to deter all terrorist threats. 506 00:31:26,551 --> 00:31:28,720 [reporter] This draft resolution from the White House 507 00:31:28,803 --> 00:31:30,805 authorizes use of armed forces 508 00:31:30,889 --> 00:31:32,432 against all those who planned, 509 00:31:32,515 --> 00:31:35,935 authorized, harbored, committed, or aided in the attacks 510 00:31:36,019 --> 00:31:39,689 and to deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism. 511 00:31:39,772 --> 00:31:42,483 [Dennis Hastert] Yeas are 420, the nays are one. 512 00:31:42,567 --> 00:31:45,278 This resolution, joint resolution, is passed. 513 00:31:45,361 --> 00:31:46,362 -[applause] -[gavel bangs] 514 00:31:49,365 --> 00:31:52,285 [Oona Hathaway] The Constitution was written to really constrain 515 00:31:52,368 --> 00:31:55,121 the president's authority to use military force. 516 00:31:55,997 --> 00:31:57,707 The idea was we didn't want to have a king. 517 00:31:57,790 --> 00:32:00,168 We didn't want to have one person who could 518 00:32:00,251 --> 00:32:01,878 just launch the country into war. 519 00:32:01,961 --> 00:32:05,798 And so the Constitution very carefully separates out the powers. 520 00:32:05,882 --> 00:32:08,509 It's Congress that gets to declare war. 521 00:32:09,010 --> 00:32:11,804 The 2001 authorization for use of military force 522 00:32:11,888 --> 00:32:16,935 was enacted not with a lot of time for deliberation and careful reflection. 523 00:32:18,353 --> 00:32:21,064 [Wolf Blitzer] Would you be willing to give up some of your liberties 524 00:32:21,147 --> 00:32:23,149 in this country in order for the government 525 00:32:23,232 --> 00:32:24,734 to crack down on terrorism? 526 00:32:24,817 --> 00:32:27,236 66% said yes. 527 00:32:32,033 --> 00:32:34,202 [General Stanley McChrystal] The AUMF, this 2001 statute 528 00:32:34,285 --> 00:32:36,371 passed a few days after 9/11, 529 00:32:36,454 --> 00:32:41,417 turned out to be the foundation stone on the next 25 years of war. 530 00:32:43,044 --> 00:32:46,297 The basis for using force abroad all over the world, 531 00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:49,342 the basis for the Guantanamo detentions, 532 00:32:49,425 --> 00:32:52,804 and the basis in some sense for the black sites abroad. 533 00:32:52,887 --> 00:32:57,475 It was really the legal foundation for everything that would come. 534 00:33:03,648 --> 00:33:06,359 [Osama bin Laden in Arabic] We hold the American government responsible 535 00:33:06,442 --> 00:33:09,612 for its transgressions on Muslims as a whole, 536 00:33:09,696 --> 00:33:13,157 and for its support of the regimes in our countries 537 00:33:13,241 --> 00:33:16,619 against the interests and well-being of the people. 538 00:33:18,579 --> 00:33:22,458 [McChrystal] The 9/11 attacks had been orchestrated by Al-Qaeda 539 00:33:22,542 --> 00:33:26,254 and led by Osama bin Laden, and he was in Afghanistan. 540 00:33:26,337 --> 00:33:27,547 [speaking indistinctly] 541 00:33:32,468 --> 00:33:37,223 [McChrystal] He was there as a guest of the Taliban-controlled government. 542 00:33:42,395 --> 00:33:46,065 The US went to the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban, 543 00:33:46,149 --> 00:33:49,610 and said, "Give him up, or push him out." 544 00:33:50,153 --> 00:33:53,865 [British reporter] Under mounting pressure, Afghanistan's Taliban regime 545 00:33:53,948 --> 00:33:57,493 today replied to charges that the attacks on New York and Washington 546 00:33:57,577 --> 00:33:59,787 were coordinated from its territory. 547 00:34:00,288 --> 00:34:01,414 And they refused. 548 00:34:01,998 --> 00:34:04,667 And that meant that the United States said, 549 00:34:04,751 --> 00:34:06,794 "All right, well, we're gonna come in after him." 550 00:34:18,473 --> 00:34:22,101 [Geraci] We got the call to go forward and deploy in Afghanistan with my unit. 551 00:34:22,185 --> 00:34:25,354 And being in a unit that was at the tip of the spear, 552 00:34:25,438 --> 00:34:29,192 that was our job, to go forth and to accomplish that task. 553 00:34:32,570 --> 00:34:33,905 [firing] 554 00:34:38,951 --> 00:34:42,455 We felt overwhelming support for our mission during that time. 555 00:34:46,709 --> 00:34:49,170 There was a sense of excitement about it, 556 00:34:50,004 --> 00:34:53,549 a sense of like, fulfilling, like, what your profession is. 557 00:34:54,842 --> 00:34:57,553 "This is what I'm here for. This is what we were trained for." 558 00:34:57,637 --> 00:34:59,680 And kind of an aspect of pride 559 00:34:59,764 --> 00:35:02,809 to be in a unit that, you know, was trained for moments like that. 560 00:35:03,434 --> 00:35:05,478 [people cheering] 561 00:35:05,561 --> 00:35:07,730 [reporter] One by one, the Afghan cities 562 00:35:07,814 --> 00:35:10,691 started to fall to the US-led opposition forces. 563 00:35:12,443 --> 00:35:15,363 [cheering continues] 564 00:35:25,581 --> 00:35:28,251 [Obaidullah Durani] I was living in Afghanistan, in Kunar Province. 565 00:35:31,879 --> 00:35:34,632 In Afghanistan, it was a complete dictatorship. 566 00:35:35,299 --> 00:35:38,928 There was just set-up rules by the Taliban for the people. 567 00:35:39,929 --> 00:35:43,641 I was like, uh, 10 or 11 years old. 568 00:35:43,724 --> 00:35:46,644 My father was listening to the radio and the news. 569 00:35:47,311 --> 00:35:49,939 That's how we found out about the 9/11. 570 00:35:50,022 --> 00:35:51,858 -[man on radio] …explosion… -[reporter] Oh my God, 571 00:35:51,941 --> 00:35:54,360 another plane just hit the World Trade Center. 572 00:35:54,443 --> 00:35:57,071 Another plane. It was a medium-sized plane. 573 00:35:57,155 --> 00:36:00,199 Unbelievable. It looked like… Oh my… 574 00:36:00,283 --> 00:36:01,367 [indistinct singing] 575 00:36:01,450 --> 00:36:04,287 [Durani] In the time of Taliban, we were not aware of the war, 576 00:36:04,370 --> 00:36:05,663 what's going on outside. 577 00:36:05,746 --> 00:36:08,249 Like, it was just somewhere something happened. 578 00:36:10,084 --> 00:36:14,297 But after American arrival in Afghanistan, then we realized, like, 579 00:36:14,380 --> 00:36:15,965 that something bad happened. 580 00:36:16,048 --> 00:36:19,093 [speaking Afghan language] 581 00:36:21,262 --> 00:36:24,473 [Gopal] When the US invaded in 2001, 582 00:36:24,557 --> 00:36:29,604 the Taliban were viewed by most Afghans as an extraordinarily repressive regime. 583 00:36:29,687 --> 00:36:33,232 [joyful music playing in background] 584 00:36:33,316 --> 00:36:36,485 And people viewed the Americans as liberators. 585 00:36:36,569 --> 00:36:39,405 And there was a lot of hope, there was a groundswell of hope 586 00:36:39,488 --> 00:36:42,783 that the US would come and bring development and peace. 587 00:36:46,204 --> 00:36:48,748 By December 2001, the Taliban had collapsed. 588 00:36:50,208 --> 00:36:51,876 [Durani] One day is Taliban rule. 589 00:36:51,959 --> 00:36:56,088 Another day, there is no rules of Taliban. Like, everything is brightened up. 590 00:36:56,672 --> 00:36:59,675 Everybody is, like, "We are liberated right now 591 00:36:59,759 --> 00:37:02,053 and we can live our life as we want." 592 00:37:02,136 --> 00:37:03,471 [instructor speaking indistinctly] 593 00:37:03,554 --> 00:37:08,434 [reporter] Sources tell ABC News there is evidence Osama bin Laden is still alive, 594 00:37:08,517 --> 00:37:11,938 still on the run, and still in control. 595 00:37:12,021 --> 00:37:15,274 That is why we are there. That is why we are chasing them. 596 00:37:15,358 --> 00:37:16,943 That is why we are bombing. 597 00:37:18,110 --> 00:37:21,072 That is why we are working with Afghan forces. 598 00:37:21,155 --> 00:37:23,574 [pilot speaking indistinctly] 599 00:37:24,700 --> 00:37:28,037 It was my dream from childhood to become a pilot. 600 00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,874 And I follow up with my dream and I became a pilot. 601 00:37:33,876 --> 00:37:37,004 I came to the United States to become a fighter pilot. 602 00:37:39,090 --> 00:37:41,342 And I moved back to my country 603 00:37:41,926 --> 00:37:44,136 and served in the military against the Taliban. 604 00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:56,023 Our main goal is to keep our people safe from the Taliban and the Taliban rules. 605 00:37:56,107 --> 00:37:58,526 [glass breaking] 606 00:37:59,443 --> 00:38:00,403 [liquid hissing] 607 00:38:02,613 --> 00:38:04,740 Because I have seen them before… 608 00:38:04,824 --> 00:38:06,492 [indistinct dialog over radio] 609 00:38:06,575 --> 00:38:09,870 …and I didn't want them to come back in the power. 610 00:38:09,954 --> 00:38:11,330 [explosion] 611 00:38:16,294 --> 00:38:19,171 Americans… Like, we were counterparts. 612 00:38:19,255 --> 00:38:21,549 We were, like, allies. 613 00:38:27,096 --> 00:38:29,098 [indistinct speaker on computer] 614 00:38:31,017 --> 00:38:36,063 [Mohammad Razvi] In 1978, I was about seven years old. 615 00:38:36,605 --> 00:38:39,984 I came here, and the first thing I ate was pizza. [laughs] 616 00:38:40,067 --> 00:38:41,694 I was like, "Oh my God." 617 00:38:42,737 --> 00:38:45,823 The place I grew up is known as Little Pakistan. 618 00:38:46,324 --> 00:38:48,242 It's right in Brooklyn, New York. 619 00:38:48,826 --> 00:38:51,120 My dad opened up the first store, 620 00:38:51,620 --> 00:38:55,207 and then there was a mosque, and then things started to grow. 621 00:38:56,792 --> 00:39:00,129 You know, immigrants, what do they do? They work, they work, they work. 622 00:39:03,716 --> 00:39:06,469 And I had a grocery store across the street, a 99-cent store. 623 00:39:06,552 --> 00:39:08,137 I also had a restaurant. 624 00:39:09,388 --> 00:39:12,308 [laughing] I was living the American dream. 625 00:39:13,434 --> 00:39:16,812 [indistinct chatter] 626 00:39:16,896 --> 00:39:20,691 Everybody, we all were immigrants but we are, like, Americans. 627 00:39:22,693 --> 00:39:25,738 I never felt my identity 628 00:39:26,405 --> 00:39:28,574 was negative. 629 00:39:33,954 --> 00:39:36,582 [woman] The whole second tower collapsed. 630 00:39:36,665 --> 00:39:38,250 The whole building is gone. 631 00:39:38,334 --> 00:39:39,502 The whole building. 632 00:39:39,585 --> 00:39:40,544 [sirens blaring] 633 00:39:40,628 --> 00:39:42,296 [Razvi] And the attacks happened. 634 00:39:43,714 --> 00:39:47,176 No, I was just in tears. I just couldn't believe it at that time. 635 00:39:48,344 --> 00:39:49,553 [exhales] 636 00:39:52,264 --> 00:39:55,893 And these people, what they've just did, it's just unbelievable. 637 00:39:56,477 --> 00:39:58,729 [woman] Oh, those poor people. Oh God. 638 00:39:59,438 --> 00:40:02,483 [Razvi] After the buildings fell, the ashes floated 639 00:40:02,566 --> 00:40:04,819 towards right in front of my doorstep. 640 00:40:06,112 --> 00:40:09,240 [crying] When the ashes came, that was the devastating part… 641 00:40:11,575 --> 00:40:14,120 because that was a moment like, "Oh my God." 642 00:40:14,203 --> 00:40:16,664 [indistinct dialog] 643 00:40:16,747 --> 00:40:19,458 I was working actually in this fabric store, 644 00:40:19,542 --> 00:40:21,627 and my Italian paisans who were next to me, 645 00:40:21,710 --> 00:40:23,379 they're like, "How could you people do this?" 646 00:40:23,462 --> 00:40:25,423 And I'm like, "These are not my people." 647 00:40:26,465 --> 00:40:28,968 We have three daughters and two boys. 648 00:40:29,051 --> 00:40:31,011 At that time it was just two and two. 649 00:40:31,512 --> 00:40:33,139 I went home and just sat. 650 00:40:33,222 --> 00:40:35,683 I just told them, we have nothing to do with this. 651 00:40:36,434 --> 00:40:39,478 And when the country's going to war with this particular group, 652 00:40:39,562 --> 00:40:41,856 what do you think the local people are going to do? 653 00:40:41,939 --> 00:40:43,190 They're going to go to war on us. 654 00:40:43,274 --> 00:40:45,192 [woman] I hope they send all of you back. 655 00:40:45,276 --> 00:40:48,070 I hope they kill your people, innocent people also. 656 00:40:48,154 --> 00:40:50,406 Go back to your country. We don't want you here. 657 00:40:51,449 --> 00:40:53,534 -There's another one. -[machine] To delete, press one. 658 00:40:53,617 --> 00:40:54,702 [beeps] 659 00:40:54,785 --> 00:40:55,911 [man] Hello, Muslims. 660 00:40:56,704 --> 00:41:00,040 Why'd you kill at least 5,000 people at the World Trade Center today? 661 00:41:00,708 --> 00:41:02,585 You just woke up a sleeping giant with the Americans. 662 00:41:02,668 --> 00:41:04,336 We're gonna kick your ****ing ass now. 663 00:41:05,921 --> 00:41:07,006 [indistinct dialog] 664 00:41:07,089 --> 00:41:09,008 We are also Americans 665 00:41:09,091 --> 00:41:12,511 and we are just as much involved in this tragedy as everybody else. 666 00:41:12,595 --> 00:41:15,347 I'm saying the man that was the leader of your people 667 00:41:15,431 --> 00:41:17,558 is the man that makes all the threats against America. 668 00:41:17,641 --> 00:41:22,021 It's very important for us to not point fingers at a religion. 669 00:41:22,104 --> 00:41:25,357 There are 1.6 billion Muslims on the face of the earth. 670 00:41:25,441 --> 00:41:29,695 We are being blamed for something that we have no control or nothing to do with. 671 00:41:29,778 --> 00:41:32,698 Muslims are not terrorists. 672 00:41:32,781 --> 00:41:35,117 Muslims are not terrorists. 673 00:41:35,201 --> 00:41:37,620 All of a sudden, I'm a foreigner. 674 00:41:39,246 --> 00:41:40,331 I'd never felt that. 675 00:41:41,916 --> 00:41:44,210 [reporter] He's felt under constant surveillance 676 00:41:44,293 --> 00:41:46,670 and is convinced he's been closely monitored. 677 00:41:46,754 --> 00:41:49,089 [Razvi] Maybe a week after 9/11, 678 00:41:49,173 --> 00:41:51,425 I get a knock on the door, FBI. 679 00:41:51,509 --> 00:41:53,844 "Do you have gatherings in your basement?" I said yes. 680 00:41:53,928 --> 00:41:56,639 "I have a large family. We go downstairs and we pray." 681 00:41:56,722 --> 00:41:59,642 Asked further questions. He goes, "Where do you work?" 682 00:41:59,725 --> 00:42:03,103 I said, "I run the grocery store and the 99-cent store." 683 00:42:03,187 --> 00:42:06,232 "All right, so maybe we'll stop by and just see you later then." 684 00:42:06,941 --> 00:42:08,651 If it can happen to me, 685 00:42:09,443 --> 00:42:13,364 could you just imagine if it's happening to a person who barely speaks English 686 00:42:13,447 --> 00:42:16,534 or who is here and does not understand the system? 687 00:42:17,117 --> 00:42:18,369 He's going to be terrified. 688 00:42:20,329 --> 00:42:22,748 My oldest daughter, she was pushed down the steps, 689 00:42:22,831 --> 00:42:26,210 her scarf was pulled off, and she was cursed at. 690 00:42:26,877 --> 00:42:28,128 I was like, "My God, why'd you…" 691 00:42:28,212 --> 00:42:30,589 She goes, "Dad, that's exactly why I didn't tell you." 692 00:42:31,215 --> 00:42:33,676 "Because I know you would have done a huge thing." 693 00:42:33,759 --> 00:42:36,428 It just broke my heart that she didn't tell me. 694 00:42:36,512 --> 00:42:38,222 But I understood why she didn't tell me 695 00:42:38,305 --> 00:42:41,100 because then she would become center of attention. 696 00:42:42,768 --> 00:42:47,022 [applause] 697 00:42:50,317 --> 00:42:54,280 [Bush] The Homeland Security Act of 2002 takes the next critical steps 698 00:42:54,363 --> 00:42:56,240 in defending our country. 699 00:42:57,866 --> 00:43:00,202 [Ackerman] There was never something called Homeland Security 700 00:43:00,286 --> 00:43:02,413 in the United States before 9/11. 701 00:43:02,496 --> 00:43:04,623 [woman] …most dynamic federal government organization. 702 00:43:04,707 --> 00:43:06,041 [Ackerman] It sounds off. 703 00:43:06,625 --> 00:43:11,797 It sounds like something that's a relic of European nationalisms, 704 00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:16,677 as opposed to what had been a conception of the American way of life, 705 00:43:17,803 --> 00:43:20,097 which is that you can come from anywhere, 706 00:43:20,180 --> 00:43:23,309 and provided that you believe in these sorts of things 707 00:43:23,392 --> 00:43:27,146 and are willing to work to live in harmony with one another, 708 00:43:27,229 --> 00:43:29,440 great, we've got another American here. 709 00:43:29,523 --> 00:43:30,774 [applause] 710 00:43:30,858 --> 00:43:32,818 The Department of Homeland Security 711 00:43:32,901 --> 00:43:35,863 was a harbinger of how all of that was about to change. 712 00:43:37,990 --> 00:43:42,369 Very quickly, it seemed the focus of the War on Terror 713 00:43:42,453 --> 00:43:45,039 was something much larger, 714 00:43:45,122 --> 00:43:47,833 much more difficult to define. 715 00:43:49,251 --> 00:43:52,880 Now, all of a sudden, the elements of 716 00:43:52,963 --> 00:43:55,883 American immigration policy 717 00:43:55,966 --> 00:43:59,053 had a counterterrorism mandate behind them. 718 00:43:59,637 --> 00:44:03,724 That was the beginnings of the agencies that would become ICE. 719 00:44:04,350 --> 00:44:05,643 [protesters chanting] Fuck ICE! 720 00:44:05,726 --> 00:44:10,731 [Ackerman] The Department of Homeland Security established conceptually, firmly, 721 00:44:10,814 --> 00:44:13,984 that the War on Terror was not just happening overseas, 722 00:44:14,068 --> 00:44:15,277 it was happening at home. 723 00:44:15,361 --> 00:44:17,363 [train horn blowing] 724 00:44:23,452 --> 00:44:24,578 [woman] You look so happy. 725 00:44:24,662 --> 00:44:26,705 -[Homer] I like that one. -[woman] That's a great one. 726 00:44:26,789 --> 00:44:28,415 [Homer] I have a copy of that in my wallet. 727 00:44:31,669 --> 00:44:36,465 My dad became a pilot at 16 years old. 728 00:44:38,342 --> 00:44:44,098 He got his license and then he went on to the Air Force Academy. 729 00:44:45,474 --> 00:44:49,144 I've kind of stopped myself from learning a lot of things about him. 730 00:44:50,396 --> 00:44:54,149 It's still really difficult for me to know anything 731 00:44:54,233 --> 00:44:55,984 because the more that I do know, 732 00:44:56,068 --> 00:44:59,905 the more that I think about what I didn't have 733 00:44:59,988 --> 00:45:02,199 and the life I missed out on. 734 00:45:04,201 --> 00:45:05,661 You do look like him. 735 00:45:06,370 --> 00:45:07,788 I know. [laughs sadly] 736 00:45:08,831 --> 00:45:09,832 [sniffles] 737 00:45:10,416 --> 00:45:12,251 I'm not good at looking through photos. 738 00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:14,837 [woman] I know, it's very emotional. 739 00:45:15,421 --> 00:45:16,964 -[Homer] Yeah. -It's okay. 740 00:45:19,717 --> 00:45:24,304 [Homer] My generation learned about 9/11 through social media, 741 00:45:24,388 --> 00:45:27,975 so Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. 742 00:45:29,101 --> 00:45:32,855 I'm, in a way, like, some sort of slightly public figure 743 00:45:32,938 --> 00:45:35,149 because you can look me up. 744 00:45:36,567 --> 00:45:40,320 There have been multiple times where I've been messaged, DM'd about him. 745 00:45:41,238 --> 00:45:44,241 If they're just trying to get a rise out of me, I don't know. 746 00:45:44,324 --> 00:45:49,913 People will make jokes about Bush doing 9/11, 747 00:45:49,997 --> 00:45:52,624 jokes about Osama bin Laden, 748 00:45:52,708 --> 00:45:56,378 and it's just become such a meme. 749 00:45:57,296 --> 00:46:00,174 And there's so many conspiracies. 750 00:46:00,257 --> 00:46:03,093 I've seen so many YouTube channels 751 00:46:03,177 --> 00:46:06,138 posting whole videos about conspiracies. 752 00:46:06,221 --> 00:46:09,224 Do you think it was possible that 9/11 was an inside job? 753 00:46:09,308 --> 00:46:13,812 Well, I think it's not only possible, but confirmed that they lied to us about it. 754 00:46:13,896 --> 00:46:16,398 [Homer] Comments that this is all a hoax 755 00:46:16,482 --> 00:46:18,484 or an inside job. 756 00:46:18,567 --> 00:46:20,986 Comments are very insensitive. 757 00:46:24,364 --> 00:46:28,368 And I've had people comment just, like, disgusting things. 758 00:46:30,454 --> 00:46:32,915 [crying] It just made me realize how vulnerable I felt 759 00:46:32,998 --> 00:46:36,877 because there's so much information about this event, 760 00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,130 which is something that somebody could attack me about, basically. 761 00:46:43,509 --> 00:46:45,969 It is kind of just a historical moment now. 762 00:46:47,137 --> 00:46:51,725 We have a whole new generation of people who weren't even, like, alive, 763 00:46:51,809 --> 00:46:53,852 or they were young when this happened. 764 00:46:54,561 --> 00:46:56,104 But it's inescapable. 765 00:47:03,111 --> 00:47:06,949 In recent years, I've really been reflecting on my childhood 766 00:47:07,032 --> 00:47:10,619 and what should have been, kind of. 767 00:47:10,702 --> 00:47:11,829 [cat meows] 768 00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,499 I've been trying to find a word for it, 769 00:47:15,582 --> 00:47:19,962 feeling like you were supposed to have this life 770 00:47:20,629 --> 00:47:25,092 and then, like, something destroys that entire future. 771 00:47:27,678 --> 00:47:30,305 [disturbing music playing] 772 00:47:31,849 --> 00:47:34,768 [Graff] The shifting technological landscape 773 00:47:34,852 --> 00:47:38,063 of, you know, the web and social media 774 00:47:38,146 --> 00:47:44,278 supercharges the pre-existing conspiratorial nature 775 00:47:44,361 --> 00:47:48,907 that has long existed in corners of the United States. 776 00:47:50,576 --> 00:47:56,081 You see 9/11 really collide with 777 00:47:56,164 --> 00:48:00,961 the turbocharging of conspiracies in America 778 00:48:01,044 --> 00:48:05,966 to launch this entire, you know, incredibly dark movement 779 00:48:06,049 --> 00:48:08,510 that we now call 9/11 Truthers. 780 00:48:09,177 --> 00:48:10,679 Hello, I'm Alex Jones. 781 00:48:10,762 --> 00:48:15,934 [Graff] And this poison spreads out across 782 00:48:16,018 --> 00:48:19,855 all of the sort of far right and far left 783 00:48:19,938 --> 00:48:23,358 conspiratorial circles in America 784 00:48:23,442 --> 00:48:26,653 and infects our politics. 785 00:48:26,737 --> 00:48:30,949 It affects our national culture and debate. 786 00:48:32,075 --> 00:48:35,829 And what companies realize very quickly is 787 00:48:36,413 --> 00:48:43,003 that the thing that drives engagement is content that enrages. 788 00:48:43,086 --> 00:48:48,050 [woman] We know that open air fires cannot burn hot enough to melt steel, 789 00:48:48,133 --> 00:48:51,011 but metal had melted at the base of the towers. 790 00:48:51,094 --> 00:48:54,431 [Graff] And so you see these conspiracies spread, 791 00:48:54,514 --> 00:48:57,267 you see political polarization spread. 792 00:48:57,351 --> 00:49:02,022 We are facing the rise of Islamo-Nazism rising all around the world. 793 00:49:03,815 --> 00:49:06,026 [Graff] Other countries figure this out, like Russia, 794 00:49:06,109 --> 00:49:08,779 begin to sort of use some of these tools against us 795 00:49:08,862 --> 00:49:13,450 to spread disinformation and polarizing content online. 796 00:49:14,993 --> 00:49:20,248 There is a very clear through line 797 00:49:20,749 --> 00:49:24,836 that takes us from the darkest corners of 9/11 798 00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:27,881 to the darkest corners of our politics today. 799 00:49:28,799 --> 00:49:30,801 [Wendell Clyne] I guess that went off automatically. 800 00:49:30,884 --> 00:49:33,095 They've evacuated everyone in the hotel. 801 00:49:33,178 --> 00:49:34,680 They've evacuated all employees. 802 00:49:34,763 --> 00:49:36,765 -[Bryant Gumbel] They evacuated the hotel? -Yes. 803 00:49:36,848 --> 00:49:37,933 -[Gumbel] Immediately? -Yes. 804 00:49:38,016 --> 00:49:39,559 [Gumbel] Are you hearing anything, Wendell, 805 00:49:39,643 --> 00:49:41,937 -about what kind of a plane it was? -No. 806 00:49:42,020 --> 00:49:44,106 -[Gumbel] Or how many were on board? -No. 807 00:49:44,189 --> 00:49:46,441 [Gumbel] All right. Mr. Clyne, thank you very much, sir. 808 00:49:46,525 --> 00:49:47,567 I understand Teresa… 809 00:49:47,651 --> 00:49:49,486 [Gopal] Immediately during the attack, 810 00:49:49,569 --> 00:49:52,239 I remember the types of rumors that we were hearing, 811 00:49:52,322 --> 00:49:54,950 there was just extraordinary levels of confusion. 812 00:49:56,576 --> 00:49:57,828 We ended up, 813 00:49:57,911 --> 00:50:00,539 meaning undergrads at NYU who were living near the towers, 814 00:50:00,622 --> 00:50:02,833 ended up being put into a hotel. 815 00:50:02,916 --> 00:50:05,002 And I lived in a hotel for a couple of months. 816 00:50:05,794 --> 00:50:08,088 At that time, I was studying physics, 817 00:50:09,089 --> 00:50:13,510 but I began to pay attention to the rest of the world for the first time. 818 00:50:13,593 --> 00:50:15,470 I was young. I was 20. 819 00:50:15,971 --> 00:50:19,391 And I began to follow the War on Terror. 820 00:50:21,852 --> 00:50:24,271 The reason I went to Afghanistan is because 821 00:50:24,354 --> 00:50:25,772 I'd been following all the news 822 00:50:25,856 --> 00:50:29,026 and felt really dissatisfied with the way the news was being portrayed, 823 00:50:29,109 --> 00:50:31,737 because I didn't really understand what was happening. 824 00:50:31,820 --> 00:50:34,823 When I got there, pretty quickly I began to report, 825 00:50:34,906 --> 00:50:37,617 and I began to see a different side of the conflict… 826 00:50:40,328 --> 00:50:41,329 in Afghanistan. 827 00:50:41,413 --> 00:50:42,914 You had this weird situation 828 00:50:42,998 --> 00:50:46,168 where you had thousands of American troops on Afghan soil, 829 00:50:46,251 --> 00:50:47,878 and there was no enemy to fight. 830 00:50:47,961 --> 00:50:52,507 So the way this contradiction was resolved is that the US began to ally 831 00:50:52,591 --> 00:50:54,384 with warlords around the country. 832 00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,096 And they said, "We're here to fight a War on Terror." 833 00:50:58,180 --> 00:51:01,683 "We're here to fight bad guys, and you need to produce us bad guys." 834 00:51:01,767 --> 00:51:03,852 "Give us intelligence. Where are the bad guys?" 835 00:51:03,935 --> 00:51:06,104 -[man] Talib! Talib! -[man 2 shouting] 836 00:51:07,147 --> 00:51:08,857 [Gopal] They paid these warlords to do so. 837 00:51:08,940 --> 00:51:11,902 So these warlords are now incentivized to produce intelligence. 838 00:51:11,985 --> 00:51:14,863 So, for example, you have a plot of land, 839 00:51:14,946 --> 00:51:16,406 and I want that land, 840 00:51:16,490 --> 00:51:19,326 I'm going to go tell the Americans you're a member of Al-Qaeda. 841 00:51:21,244 --> 00:51:23,080 The US troops would take this intelligence, 842 00:51:23,163 --> 00:51:25,373 they would raid the household, take the people away. 843 00:51:25,457 --> 00:51:28,627 [in Afghan language] No, I'm not a member of Al-Qaeda. I'm a student. 844 00:51:28,710 --> 00:51:30,670 [Gopal] This happened again and again and again. 845 00:51:31,797 --> 00:51:33,590 And the consequence of this was that 846 00:51:33,673 --> 00:51:38,053 whereas there had been only a groundswell of support for the US, 847 00:51:38,136 --> 00:51:41,723 gradually villagers started to turn against the Americans, 848 00:51:42,516 --> 00:51:46,436 and no longer saw them as liberators, but began to see them as occupiers. 849 00:51:47,229 --> 00:51:48,480 [man] Woohoo! 850 00:51:48,563 --> 00:51:51,691 [Gopal] This laid the seeds for the reconstitution of the Taliban. 851 00:51:54,820 --> 00:51:59,199 9/11 and the War on Terror set in motion a process 852 00:51:59,282 --> 00:52:02,119 where trust and faith in government leaders 853 00:52:02,202 --> 00:52:04,955 was systematically undermined. 854 00:52:05,038 --> 00:52:08,375 We were told that we had to invade Iraq, for example, 855 00:52:08,458 --> 00:52:12,462 because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. 856 00:52:12,963 --> 00:52:15,465 [Bush] We owe it to our children, our children's children, 857 00:52:15,549 --> 00:52:19,511 to free the world from weapons of mass destruction. 858 00:52:19,594 --> 00:52:20,887 Weapons of mass destruction. 859 00:52:20,971 --> 00:52:22,514 Weapons of mass destruction? 860 00:52:23,098 --> 00:52:24,766 It turned out not to be true. 861 00:52:26,226 --> 00:52:29,437 And that set in motion a crisis of confidence 862 00:52:29,521 --> 00:52:35,235 and a divisiveness that has never really been healed, much less repaired. 863 00:52:35,318 --> 00:52:36,611 [protesters shouting] 864 00:52:36,695 --> 00:52:40,115 We stand for liberation and democracy, gentlemen! 865 00:52:41,116 --> 00:52:44,995 The killing of Osama bin Laden really, to many people, 866 00:52:45,078 --> 00:52:47,998 signified an end to the War on Terror. 867 00:52:48,081 --> 00:52:50,083 It was over. It was just mopping up. 868 00:52:50,876 --> 00:52:52,794 [all singing] 869 00:52:52,878 --> 00:52:54,129 [chanting] USA! 870 00:52:54,212 --> 00:52:57,883 [Hoffman] But meanwhile, in Iraq, a new terrorist group is arising. 871 00:52:57,966 --> 00:52:59,593 [rapid gunfire] 872 00:52:59,676 --> 00:53:02,512 [Gopal] In the chaos of the US occupation of Iraq, 873 00:53:02,596 --> 00:53:06,766 all sorts of groups start to pop up to resist the occupiers. 874 00:53:09,561 --> 00:53:12,314 One of those groups is Al-Qaeda. 875 00:53:12,397 --> 00:53:14,649 Eventually, through the course of that war, 876 00:53:14,733 --> 00:53:17,986 Al-Qaeda radicalizes, and a section splits off 877 00:53:18,069 --> 00:53:20,113 and becomes what we know as ISIS. 878 00:53:21,948 --> 00:53:26,411 ISIS becomes one of the most formidable terrorist organizations in history. 879 00:53:39,883 --> 00:53:43,345 [Khan] On 9/11, I was in English class, 880 00:53:43,428 --> 00:53:49,184 and somebody came into our classroom and said, "Turn on the TV." 881 00:53:49,267 --> 00:53:50,435 And we did. 882 00:53:51,478 --> 00:53:56,149 And not long after that, the principal called me and my sister and said, 883 00:53:56,233 --> 00:53:57,651 "You guys can go home." 884 00:53:58,443 --> 00:54:00,612 I think we were the only Muslims at school, 885 00:54:00,695 --> 00:54:06,826 and they, out of a desire to be proactive about taking care of us, 886 00:54:07,410 --> 00:54:09,287 let our parents come pick us up. 887 00:54:10,163 --> 00:54:12,207 And as I came of age, 888 00:54:12,290 --> 00:54:16,753 the United States started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 889 00:54:17,462 --> 00:54:21,132 And you saw the real spread of the cycle of violence. 890 00:54:25,762 --> 00:54:27,597 [Barack Obama] Happy you're here. Thank you. 891 00:54:28,265 --> 00:54:32,644 [Hoffman] Obama began to rely much more heavily on targeted assassinations, 892 00:54:32,727 --> 00:54:35,814 using unmanned aircraft, drones, 893 00:54:35,897 --> 00:54:39,651 Predator and Reaper drones that fired a Hellfire missile. 894 00:54:41,236 --> 00:54:45,198 And would target not just identified terrorist leaders, 895 00:54:45,282 --> 00:54:49,369 but also undertake what were called signature strikes. 896 00:54:51,246 --> 00:54:52,956 In other words, even if there wasn't 897 00:54:53,039 --> 00:54:56,293 actual intelligence identifying the specific individuals, 898 00:54:56,376 --> 00:54:58,336 we would still launch the attack. 899 00:54:58,420 --> 00:55:02,090 And of course, inevitably, tragedy ensued in the sense that 900 00:55:02,173 --> 00:55:05,427 in some attacks, innocent civilians were mistakenly killed. 901 00:55:08,054 --> 00:55:09,973 [McChrystal] When you watch these from afar, 902 00:55:10,056 --> 00:55:12,475 it's almost like drone strikes on anything. 903 00:55:12,559 --> 00:55:14,436 They look like a computer game, 904 00:55:15,061 --> 00:55:16,229 and it's an explosion. 905 00:55:16,313 --> 00:55:17,772 On the ground, it's very different. 906 00:55:20,900 --> 00:55:24,321 It's a gruesome activity. People are blown up. 907 00:55:25,030 --> 00:55:26,614 People are burned badly. 908 00:55:29,826 --> 00:55:32,662 [Hathaway] The Obama administration decided that 909 00:55:32,746 --> 00:55:35,665 they could use military force against ISIS, 910 00:55:36,249 --> 00:55:38,168 even though it didn't exist on 9/11, 911 00:55:38,251 --> 00:55:43,048 using authority granted in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. 912 00:55:45,675 --> 00:55:49,637 It set the stage for the continued use of military force 913 00:55:49,721 --> 00:55:52,766 under that authority for another decade. 914 00:55:57,020 --> 00:55:59,189 [pilot] I took my first flight when I was 14 years old. 915 00:56:00,357 --> 00:56:04,027 And I had my private pilot's license when I was 16. 916 00:56:04,652 --> 00:56:06,905 And I always wanted to be a fighter pilot. 917 00:56:07,947 --> 00:56:12,702 When I was a kid, I burned through two VHS copies of Top Gun. 918 00:56:13,328 --> 00:56:15,789 After 9/11, I went to the Marine Corps recruiter, 919 00:56:15,872 --> 00:56:17,665 and he said, "How many pull-ups can you do?" 920 00:56:21,044 --> 00:56:24,297 The mission we were supporting was Operation Inherent Resolve. 921 00:56:25,006 --> 00:56:27,717 It encompassed Iraq and Syria. 922 00:56:31,137 --> 00:56:34,474 Our job was to provide air support 923 00:56:34,557 --> 00:56:37,936 either through reconnaissance or direct action, 924 00:56:38,019 --> 00:56:39,938 dropping bombs, strikes, things like that, 925 00:56:40,688 --> 00:56:41,856 against ISIS. 926 00:56:44,234 --> 00:56:48,613 I would like my identity to remain anonymous just because 927 00:56:49,197 --> 00:56:52,784 I'm sure that there's people out there that would want to seek retribution. 928 00:56:53,660 --> 00:56:55,328 I wish we didn't have to do it. 929 00:56:56,413 --> 00:56:57,622 I loved my job. 930 00:56:58,415 --> 00:56:59,958 I loved killing ISIS. 931 00:57:01,334 --> 00:57:05,296 But it's not lost on me of the gravity of what we were doing. 932 00:57:06,339 --> 00:57:09,259 I'd rather be back in San Diego 933 00:57:09,342 --> 00:57:11,344 eating fish tacos on the beach. 934 00:57:11,428 --> 00:57:14,055 But this is what I signed up for. This is what they're paying me to do. 935 00:57:14,139 --> 00:57:16,015 This is what they're trusting me to do. 936 00:57:16,099 --> 00:57:17,934 So I'm going to do it. 937 00:57:28,653 --> 00:57:33,741 [Khan] I remember so well these really impossible statistics coming out. 938 00:57:33,825 --> 00:57:38,621 The United States saying that they'd killed as many as 25,000 ISIS fighters. 939 00:57:38,705 --> 00:57:44,002 And at the same time, only admitting 21 or 24 civilian deaths. 940 00:57:44,502 --> 00:57:45,879 That's just not possible. 941 00:57:49,132 --> 00:57:54,637 I began trying to get on the ground and investigate civilian casualties myself. 942 00:57:56,973 --> 00:57:58,892 You know, if you take the government's data 943 00:57:58,975 --> 00:58:02,937 about what percentage that they admitted civilian deaths were occurring, 944 00:58:03,021 --> 00:58:05,106 it would be less than 1% of all these strikes 945 00:58:05,190 --> 00:58:06,983 were resulting in a civilian death. 946 00:58:08,401 --> 00:58:12,864 But I spent a lot of time going on the ground, 947 00:58:12,947 --> 00:58:14,866 going to a sample of these airstrikes, 948 00:58:14,949 --> 00:58:17,243 and what I found was that 949 00:58:17,327 --> 00:58:21,289 one in five strikes was resulting in a civilian death. 950 00:58:21,372 --> 00:58:25,502 That's not two times higher, three times higher than what the government thought. 951 00:58:25,585 --> 00:58:27,712 That was 31 times higher. 952 00:58:31,591 --> 00:58:33,843 And people were so inviting. 953 00:58:34,636 --> 00:58:35,887 They were so welcoming. 954 00:58:35,970 --> 00:58:39,307 I can't remember anyone who said no to talking to me. 955 00:58:40,391 --> 00:58:43,228 For so many of these civilians, there had been a belief 956 00:58:43,311 --> 00:58:46,940 that the Americans can be precise. They can be surgical. 957 00:58:47,023 --> 00:58:49,442 I remember one man pointing at a teacup, 958 00:58:49,526 --> 00:58:51,236 holding his teacup, and saying, 959 00:58:51,319 --> 00:58:53,905 "The Americans could just hit this teacup if they wanted." 960 00:58:53,988 --> 00:58:55,156 That was his belief. 961 00:58:56,199 --> 00:58:57,951 "And look at what they did to my family." 962 00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:02,247 Over and over, 963 00:59:02,747 --> 00:59:05,458 I heard from parents who would tell me about 964 00:59:05,542 --> 00:59:07,126 the way their daughter laughed, 965 00:59:07,919 --> 00:59:12,298 or would show me a photo of her holding, like, a firework, 966 00:59:12,382 --> 00:59:13,883 the night before she was killed. 967 00:59:13,967 --> 00:59:16,010 Like her vibrancy, her youth, 968 00:59:16,511 --> 00:59:19,305 that particular loss of outliving your child. 969 00:59:20,515 --> 00:59:22,141 That always stays with me. 970 00:59:23,476 --> 00:59:25,103 Like I don't know how… 971 00:59:27,355 --> 00:59:29,107 people move on after that. 972 00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:36,364 [Stephen Wertheim] By the time Obama left office, 973 00:59:36,447 --> 00:59:40,451 the United States was fighting terrorism in some form 974 00:59:40,535 --> 00:59:42,870 in approximately 13 countries. 975 00:59:44,205 --> 00:59:48,209 The phrase "endless war" and "forever war," 976 00:59:48,293 --> 00:59:50,920 become more widely used. 977 00:59:53,631 --> 00:59:54,549 [siren wailing] 978 00:59:54,632 --> 00:59:57,635 Obama, even as he is the drone president, 979 00:59:57,719 --> 01:00:00,388 conducting these drone strikes on a routine basis 980 01:00:00,471 --> 01:00:02,348 over more and more of the Earth, 981 01:00:02,890 --> 01:00:04,350 is saying out loud, you know, 982 01:00:04,434 --> 01:00:09,314 how do we know if we're not creating more terrorists than we're killing? 983 01:00:12,734 --> 01:00:14,819 [man] We have a problem in this country. 984 01:00:14,902 --> 01:00:15,903 It's called Muslims. 985 01:00:16,487 --> 01:00:18,906 We know our current president is one. 986 01:00:18,990 --> 01:00:21,117 -Right. -You know he's not even an American. 987 01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:23,494 -We need this question. -[man] Birth certificate, man. 988 01:00:23,578 --> 01:00:29,542 But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. 989 01:00:30,376 --> 01:00:32,420 That's my question. When can we get rid of 'em? 990 01:00:32,503 --> 01:00:34,422 We're gonna be looking at a lot of things. 991 01:00:34,505 --> 01:00:36,507 And you know, a lot of people are saying that 992 01:00:36,591 --> 01:00:39,344 and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. 993 01:00:39,427 --> 01:00:41,471 [Ackerman] Donald Trump is not a subtle man 994 01:00:41,554 --> 01:00:44,015 but understands subtext extremely well. 995 01:00:44,098 --> 01:00:45,767 [crowd chanting] Trump! Trump! 996 01:00:45,850 --> 01:00:50,480 [Ackerman] What he saw very early on was that the War on Terror 997 01:00:50,563 --> 01:00:52,982 was a pathway to power 998 01:00:53,066 --> 01:00:56,152 for inflamed nativist elements 999 01:00:56,235 --> 01:00:59,989 that felt the country was further and further slipping away from them. 1000 01:01:00,573 --> 01:01:04,661 Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown 1001 01:01:04,744 --> 01:01:08,164 of Muslims entering the United States. Until… 1002 01:01:08,247 --> 01:01:13,169 [Ackerman] Trump's movement recognized that there was 1003 01:01:13,252 --> 01:01:16,964 still a tremendous amount of political potency to be had 1004 01:01:17,048 --> 01:01:18,841 from the War on Terror. 1005 01:01:18,925 --> 01:01:21,969 I think Islam… hates us. 1006 01:01:22,053 --> 01:01:24,972 Build the wall! Build the wall! 1007 01:01:25,056 --> 01:01:27,392 I want surveillance of certain mosques. 1008 01:01:27,475 --> 01:01:28,518 [siren blips] 1009 01:01:29,060 --> 01:01:33,690 [Graff] The border becomes this dominant topic of conversation 1010 01:01:33,773 --> 01:01:37,276 all out of proportion to the actual problems at the border 1011 01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:39,404 in the 2016 campaign. 1012 01:01:39,487 --> 01:01:41,781 Folks, brick by brick, 1013 01:01:41,864 --> 01:01:44,283 that wall is going to get built. 1014 01:01:44,826 --> 01:01:49,831 We're gonna have a situation on our border that isn't mired in violence and chaos. 1015 01:01:49,914 --> 01:01:52,750 -…The left. Who is on your list? -Will you shut up, man? 1016 01:01:52,834 --> 01:01:56,587 [Hoffman] Four years later, in the 2020 presidential campaign, 1017 01:01:57,213 --> 01:01:59,716 I think arguably there was only one issue 1018 01:01:59,799 --> 01:02:03,761 that President Trump and presidential candidate Biden agreed on, 1019 01:02:04,679 --> 01:02:07,140 and that was ending the endless wars. 1020 01:02:07,974 --> 01:02:09,851 [Trump] Afghanistan, how about that? 1021 01:02:10,643 --> 01:02:13,813 Where, by the way, I started the process, all the troops are coming back home, 1022 01:02:13,896 --> 01:02:15,314 they couldn't stop the process. 1023 01:02:15,398 --> 01:02:16,399 [cheering] 1024 01:02:17,066 --> 01:02:19,402 [reporter] Militants captured the pilot in December 1025 01:02:19,485 --> 01:02:22,029 when his F-16 crashed in Syria. 1026 01:02:22,113 --> 01:02:23,197 This video may be… 1027 01:02:23,281 --> 01:02:26,743 [Wilson] I had just turned three years old on 9/11. 1028 01:02:26,826 --> 01:02:30,621 My birthday was nine days before everything went down. 1029 01:02:31,956 --> 01:02:34,667 At least for me personally, joining the Marine Corps 1030 01:02:34,751 --> 01:02:38,254 was to fight ISIS because that is kind of what I saw. 1031 01:02:38,337 --> 01:02:41,174 [reporter] …by the Islamic State extremist group. 1032 01:02:41,257 --> 01:02:45,595 A video posted online today shows the captors burning the man alive, while… 1033 01:02:45,678 --> 01:02:49,182 [Wilson] It was like, I'm pissed and I want to go do something about it. 1034 01:02:49,265 --> 01:02:51,142 It wasn't 9/11. 1035 01:02:51,726 --> 01:02:55,271 I think that's a big shift between the early GWOT war 1036 01:02:55,855 --> 01:02:58,775 compared to mostly my generation. 1037 01:02:59,817 --> 01:03:02,862 And I remember being like, I want to be a part of that, 1038 01:03:02,945 --> 01:03:04,155 of trying to stop that. 1039 01:03:07,033 --> 01:03:13,539 [indistinct shouting in background] 1040 01:03:13,623 --> 01:03:19,003 [Sanchez] I shipped to boot camp August 26 of 2017. 1041 01:03:20,129 --> 01:03:22,381 And then graduated boot camp 1042 01:03:22,465 --> 01:03:26,385 in October or early November. 1043 01:03:26,469 --> 01:03:29,138 I had always heard that Marines were the killers. 1044 01:03:29,889 --> 01:03:33,893 I wanted to go to Afghanistan or Iraq and kill terrorists. 1045 01:03:33,976 --> 01:03:35,937 That was my dream as a kid. 1046 01:03:40,608 --> 01:03:43,945 So that was the same unit as Smoak and Wyatt. 1047 01:03:47,990 --> 01:03:51,744 Wyatt, he was a very serious guy. [laughs] 1048 01:03:52,745 --> 01:03:54,372 He would always look annoyed. 1049 01:03:55,498 --> 01:03:57,124 [exhales] 1050 01:03:57,708 --> 01:03:59,126 I remember always seeing him 1051 01:03:59,210 --> 01:04:01,921 and he would always look annoyed or pissed or something. 1052 01:04:02,004 --> 01:04:04,340 But he was a good guy. I mean, I liked him a lot. 1053 01:04:10,555 --> 01:04:12,265 [Hoffman] In April 2021, 1054 01:04:12,348 --> 01:04:15,852 President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing 1055 01:04:15,935 --> 01:04:19,689 from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. 1056 01:04:19,772 --> 01:04:20,773 We went to Afghanistan 1057 01:04:20,857 --> 01:04:24,819 because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. 1058 01:04:25,486 --> 01:04:28,906 [reporter] President essentially defending a position he has held for a while now, 1059 01:04:28,990 --> 01:04:32,410 which is that there was no military option left in Afghanistan. 1060 01:04:32,493 --> 01:04:36,831 And he said he didn't want to send another generation, essentially, 1061 01:04:36,914 --> 01:04:41,419 of young men and women to go fight an unwinnable war, in his view. 1062 01:04:43,212 --> 01:04:46,132 [reporter 2] From the moment US troops started pulling back, 1063 01:04:46,215 --> 01:04:48,593 the Taliban went on the offensive. 1064 01:04:50,052 --> 01:04:51,345 [reporter 3] In a matter of days, 1065 01:04:51,429 --> 01:04:54,348 the Taliban has blitzed across Afghanistan, 1066 01:04:54,432 --> 01:04:56,767 taken over city after city. 1067 01:04:59,353 --> 01:05:04,025 [Smoak] We were sitting in the chow hall eating probably lunch or dinner, 1068 01:05:04,108 --> 01:05:05,985 and I was watching it on TV, 1069 01:05:06,068 --> 01:05:08,779 and all the provinces were falling. 1070 01:05:10,156 --> 01:05:14,368 They were changing them red on the TV when the Taliban would take them. 1071 01:05:14,452 --> 01:05:17,413 And it was all just surrounding, headed towards Kabul. 1072 01:05:17,496 --> 01:05:19,248 My thoughts were, 1073 01:05:19,332 --> 01:05:22,376 what the hell have we been doing for 20 years? 1074 01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:26,589 Why were all the lives wasted, pretty much, 1075 01:05:26,672 --> 01:05:28,382 if we're just going to turn around 1076 01:05:28,466 --> 01:05:30,676 and they're just going to take it right back over? 1077 01:05:30,760 --> 01:05:33,638 [siren blaring] 1078 01:05:33,721 --> 01:05:37,683 [man speaking Afghan language] 1079 01:05:37,767 --> 01:05:40,353 You see all the Talibans on the road. 1080 01:05:40,436 --> 01:05:41,729 This is scary. 1081 01:05:42,688 --> 01:05:43,856 Think about it. 1082 01:05:43,940 --> 01:05:45,566 They're in the control. 1083 01:05:46,108 --> 01:05:47,902 Someone with my history, 1084 01:05:47,985 --> 01:05:49,320 through all the records, 1085 01:05:49,403 --> 01:05:51,614 like, the place where we have bombed, 1086 01:05:51,697 --> 01:05:54,033 it's still in the computers with them. 1087 01:05:54,116 --> 01:05:56,202 My biometric data is with them. 1088 01:05:56,285 --> 01:05:58,287 Everybody's biometric data is with them. 1089 01:05:59,246 --> 01:06:01,290 There is no government, nothing. 1090 01:06:01,374 --> 01:06:04,126 It's like if you are living in a bright place 1091 01:06:04,210 --> 01:06:06,087 and suddenly the light goes out… 1092 01:06:06,170 --> 01:06:07,129 [man] Allahu Akbar! 1093 01:06:07,213 --> 01:06:09,632 …you're just in the middle of chaos. 1094 01:06:10,841 --> 01:06:14,053 [Hoffman] Hamid Karzai International Airport was just thronged 1095 01:06:14,136 --> 01:06:16,430 with Afghans desperate to flee. 1096 01:06:16,514 --> 01:06:19,433 [people clamoring] 1097 01:06:19,517 --> 01:06:22,770 People who had worked with the United States military, 1098 01:06:22,853 --> 01:06:24,772 with the United States government, 1099 01:06:25,898 --> 01:06:31,737 office clerks, translators, mechanics, cleaning personnel, 1100 01:06:31,821 --> 01:06:36,826 or who worked for any United States organization, even for US NGOs. 1101 01:06:36,909 --> 01:06:39,495 [person screaming] 1102 01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:44,709 They feared that they'd be singled out for vengeance. 1103 01:06:50,256 --> 01:06:54,218 [reporter] Evacuations are proceeding slowly with thousands of Americans still 1104 01:06:54,301 --> 01:06:56,429 wanting and waiting to get out. 1105 01:06:56,512 --> 01:06:58,639 [reporter 2] It could be the largest evacuation 1106 01:06:58,723 --> 01:07:01,851 since the fall of Saigon 46 years ago. 1107 01:07:02,643 --> 01:07:04,353 [Nguyen] Seeing the fall of Kabul, 1108 01:07:05,187 --> 01:07:06,689 it was striking but also painful 1109 01:07:06,772 --> 01:07:07,982 from a family perspective. 1110 01:07:09,984 --> 01:07:13,696 My mom told me about when the South Vietnamese government fell 1111 01:07:13,779 --> 01:07:15,448 to the communist north. 1112 01:07:16,365 --> 01:07:20,786 You know, the similarity is just like the Taliban taking over the capital city. 1113 01:07:22,872 --> 01:07:25,708 And just people trying to escape 1114 01:07:25,791 --> 01:07:30,212 from what they know that would be a catastrophic situation. 1115 01:07:30,296 --> 01:07:34,383 It has very similar emotion, but also just the imagery itself. 1116 01:07:36,802 --> 01:07:38,763 [people clamoring] 1117 01:07:38,846 --> 01:07:41,098 History somehow repeats itself. 1118 01:07:44,310 --> 01:07:45,853 Sometimes there's no words. 1119 01:07:45,936 --> 01:07:48,647 [people shouting and clamoring] 1120 01:07:48,731 --> 01:07:50,983 [reporter] Many of them, of course, have legitimate claims 1121 01:07:51,067 --> 01:07:53,319 they are eligible for flights, 1122 01:07:53,402 --> 01:07:55,112 but the Taliban aren't letting them through, 1123 01:07:55,196 --> 01:07:58,115 and their response on the ground is brutal. 1124 01:07:58,199 --> 01:07:59,950 [rapid gunfire] 1125 01:08:00,034 --> 01:08:04,080 They're firing automatic weapons over the heads of the crowd repeatedly. 1126 01:08:04,163 --> 01:08:05,289 [gunfire] 1127 01:08:05,372 --> 01:08:07,458 [people shouting and clamoring] 1128 01:08:07,541 --> 01:08:09,251 They're using sticks to beat people. 1129 01:08:09,335 --> 01:08:11,712 They're pointing guns in people's faces. 1130 01:08:14,757 --> 01:08:17,009 [Wilson] That's when we started to hear rumors. 1131 01:08:18,427 --> 01:08:21,305 It's like, "Oh shit, what's happening? What's gonna happen?" 1132 01:08:21,388 --> 01:08:24,850 And then it comes down that, "Hey, you're going." 1133 01:08:25,518 --> 01:08:29,063 And we're like, "Oh shit, here we go. This is what we want." 1134 01:08:29,688 --> 01:08:32,983 Just feeling like, finally a real world mission. 1135 01:08:33,526 --> 01:08:34,902 [reporter] US President Joe Biden 1136 01:08:34,985 --> 01:08:37,863 authorized the deployment of roughly 5,000 troops 1137 01:08:37,947 --> 01:08:39,907 to support the drawdown. 1138 01:08:41,867 --> 01:08:44,120 [Wilson] And it's like, all right, gear check. 1139 01:08:44,203 --> 01:08:46,997 Are the guys ready to go? Who's going? Who's not going? 1140 01:08:48,040 --> 01:08:51,252 [Sanchez] You start loading ammo. Everybody's loading ammo, getting ready. 1141 01:08:51,335 --> 01:08:52,795 [soldier] Everyone up! Target gun! 1142 01:08:52,878 --> 01:08:54,713 -[Sanchez] Everybody's excited. -[rapid fire] 1143 01:08:54,797 --> 01:08:56,674 This was, like, the dream. 1144 01:08:57,550 --> 01:09:02,096 The dream place to go for a Marine Corps infantryman is Afghanistan, Iraq. 1145 01:09:02,179 --> 01:09:03,264 [rapid fire continues] 1146 01:09:03,347 --> 01:09:06,475 [Smoak] I was kind of talking to my guys about before we go, you know, 1147 01:09:06,559 --> 01:09:07,935 whatever God you believe in, 1148 01:09:08,018 --> 01:09:10,354 you need to get right with him because anything can happen. 1149 01:09:11,522 --> 01:09:15,067 We got told that we were going in for a noncombative evacuation. 1150 01:09:16,360 --> 01:09:20,072 We were going to go get US citizens, Afghans with the proper credentials. 1151 01:09:20,156 --> 01:09:21,949 We were gonna get them out of the country. 1152 01:09:24,326 --> 01:09:26,203 Operation Allies Refuge. 1153 01:09:28,831 --> 01:09:30,416 We flew out of Jordan, 1154 01:09:30,499 --> 01:09:31,375 landed in Kuwait. 1155 01:09:31,458 --> 01:09:33,836 We were in Kuwait 36 hours maybe. 1156 01:09:34,336 --> 01:09:37,173 [Smoak] And then we flew from Kuwait into Afghanistan 1157 01:09:37,256 --> 01:09:39,800 and landed at night at Kabul Airport. 1158 01:09:40,342 --> 01:09:43,971 You could hear gunshots in the distance and then you'd see tracers fly. 1159 01:09:44,054 --> 01:09:44,889 [gunfire] 1160 01:09:44,972 --> 01:09:47,766 Made sure all my guys had all their stuff on, everything was good. 1161 01:09:48,934 --> 01:09:51,020 We get told we're going to Abbey Gate. 1162 01:09:54,148 --> 01:09:56,358 I'm like, "Hell yeah, okay, so we're going to Abbey Gate." 1163 01:09:56,442 --> 01:09:58,444 Nobody knew what Abbey Gate was. 1164 01:09:58,527 --> 01:10:00,571 I'm like, "Here we fucking go, dudes." 1165 01:10:00,654 --> 01:10:02,156 [indistinct chatter] 1166 01:10:02,239 --> 01:10:03,073 [dog barks] 1167 01:10:06,535 --> 01:10:08,537 [speaking indistinctly] 1168 01:10:17,755 --> 01:10:19,340 [Wilson] And we get there. 1169 01:10:19,423 --> 01:10:22,301 I remember looking around like, "What the fuck is this?" 1170 01:10:24,970 --> 01:10:27,306 [all clamoring] 1171 01:10:33,437 --> 01:10:37,066 [shouting] 1172 01:10:37,900 --> 01:10:40,986 [Sanchez] I remember seeing, like, so many people in front of this gate. 1173 01:10:41,070 --> 01:10:42,112 [shouting] 1174 01:10:42,196 --> 01:10:44,490 [Wilson] It's just a wall of humans. 1175 01:10:55,000 --> 01:10:58,963 [Hoffman] We deployed these young Marines who were trained, of course, in combat, 1176 01:10:59,046 --> 01:11:00,297 every Marine is a rifleman, 1177 01:11:00,381 --> 01:11:03,467 but they're doing things they've never been prepared or trained for. 1178 01:11:03,550 --> 01:11:05,636 Crowd control, for example. 1179 01:11:15,604 --> 01:11:17,982 Interpreting official pieces of paper 1180 01:11:18,065 --> 01:11:20,734 that may be written in one of the Afghan dialects, 1181 01:11:20,818 --> 01:11:22,236 not necessarily in English. 1182 01:11:24,029 --> 01:11:25,281 [soldier] Hey, hey! 1183 01:11:25,364 --> 01:11:27,741 [Hoffman] This is a highly unstable, 1184 01:11:27,825 --> 01:11:29,827 highly volatile situation. 1185 01:11:35,457 --> 01:11:38,168 [Smoak] This was nearly 20 years after 9/11. 1186 01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:42,047 And what started on 9/11 1187 01:11:42,131 --> 01:11:44,383 ended right here at Abbey Gate. 1188 01:11:46,135 --> 01:11:49,888 We were told we were to treat the Taliban like they were our allies. 1189 01:11:50,389 --> 01:11:54,893 We're there to work together to get these people out of Afghanistan. 1190 01:11:56,729 --> 01:11:57,688 That is 1191 01:11:59,064 --> 01:12:01,483 crazy to hear. 1192 01:12:01,567 --> 01:12:02,693 [men yelling] 1193 01:12:02,776 --> 01:12:05,863 Especially for, like, our platoon sergeants 1194 01:12:05,946 --> 01:12:11,410 who had been in for almost 20 years and had been at the height of the war 1195 01:12:11,493 --> 01:12:13,203 and been there, done that. 1196 01:12:13,871 --> 01:12:18,125 The people who killed my friends 10 years ago, they're my ally now. 1197 01:12:18,792 --> 01:12:22,004 It was very, very surreal to hear that. 1198 01:12:24,340 --> 01:12:27,634 [pilot] Abbey Gate was a microcosm of 1199 01:12:28,927 --> 01:12:31,096 the 20-plus year war in the Middle East. 1200 01:12:32,264 --> 01:12:34,350 Watching Afghanistan crumble, 1201 01:12:34,433 --> 01:12:38,228 I don't know how any person can see Afghanistan, Iraq, 1202 01:12:38,312 --> 01:12:40,189 anything other than a failure. 1203 01:12:41,190 --> 01:12:46,278 A lot of these people did not have a US passport, a green card, a visa. 1204 01:12:46,362 --> 01:12:48,572 They didn't have anything. They just wanted to leave. 1205 01:12:48,655 --> 01:12:50,574 They were just scared. 1206 01:12:51,992 --> 01:12:55,454 [horns honking] 1207 01:12:55,537 --> 01:12:59,083 There was chaos inside and outside of the city. 1208 01:13:00,584 --> 01:13:04,254 And going into the airport, the gates are closed, 1209 01:13:04,338 --> 01:13:08,092 and they're not letting people go inside because there were, 1210 01:13:08,175 --> 01:13:10,094 like, thousands of people. 1211 01:13:11,303 --> 01:13:12,930 I was holding the kids. 1212 01:13:13,722 --> 01:13:18,018 My daughter was three months old, and my son was two and a half. 1213 01:13:18,102 --> 01:13:20,062 [people clamoring] 1214 01:13:20,145 --> 01:13:23,273 [Wilson] We didn't have anywhere to send them back out if they were rejected. 1215 01:13:24,316 --> 01:13:28,195 So we made a hole in a chain-link fence, and we called it the Freedom Gate. 1216 01:13:28,278 --> 01:13:32,866 And if you couldn't make it, I'm sorry, but through there you go. 1217 01:13:34,034 --> 01:13:35,661 -[shot firing] -[people screaming] 1218 01:13:38,205 --> 01:13:40,958 [Smoak] The Taliban would be on the other side of this, 1219 01:13:41,041 --> 01:13:44,253 and if they did not get through, they would beat 'em, 1220 01:13:45,003 --> 01:13:48,465 shoot 'em, and then it just kind of sucked because, 1221 01:13:49,341 --> 01:13:53,262 you know, I'm the one sitting there, and I know what's going to happen to 'em, 1222 01:13:53,345 --> 01:13:55,764 but I-I… can't do nothing 1223 01:13:56,348 --> 01:13:58,559 if they didn't have the right paperwork, 1224 01:13:59,309 --> 01:14:05,149 which is a pretty crazy responsibility for a 23-year-old. 1225 01:14:06,942 --> 01:14:10,821 I would like to think that I didn't lose compassion for people, 1226 01:14:11,947 --> 01:14:13,699 but you definitely become numb. 1227 01:14:15,117 --> 01:14:18,662 [somber music playing] 1228 01:14:18,745 --> 01:14:21,999 Word was getting out that we were going to close all the gates. 1229 01:14:22,082 --> 01:14:24,460 There was a lot of desperation, 1230 01:14:24,543 --> 01:14:26,462 people giving their kids up. 1231 01:14:33,719 --> 01:14:35,637 [Sanchez] Some of those people had babies on them, 1232 01:14:35,721 --> 01:14:39,725 so they thought the best option was probably, like, throw the babies over. 1233 01:14:43,687 --> 01:14:45,189 [soldier speaking indistinctly] 1234 01:14:46,231 --> 01:14:50,027 It was very surreal to see, like, because I have kids, 1235 01:14:51,278 --> 01:14:55,032 and it was hard to think about giving one of them up like that. 1236 01:14:55,115 --> 01:14:56,575 [laughs sadly] Yeah. 1237 01:15:00,913 --> 01:15:02,915 [children crying] 1238 01:15:03,874 --> 01:15:06,126 [Wilson] I had a picture of my daughter in my Kevlar. 1239 01:15:07,252 --> 01:15:09,463 Four days after I deployed on my first deployment 1240 01:15:09,546 --> 01:15:11,215 is when my oldest was born. 1241 01:15:13,425 --> 01:15:15,385 My platoon sergeant also has kids, 1242 01:15:15,469 --> 01:15:16,970 and I don't know what it was, 1243 01:15:17,054 --> 01:15:19,640 but we kind of just bumped into each other in passing, 1244 01:15:21,350 --> 01:15:22,976 and I ended up just breaking down. 1245 01:15:23,060 --> 01:15:25,103 I lost it right then and there. 1246 01:15:29,233 --> 01:15:30,567 The new generation. 1247 01:15:34,988 --> 01:15:37,574 My wife was sick at the time. 1248 01:15:37,658 --> 01:15:38,575 She was weak. 1249 01:15:38,659 --> 01:15:40,744 She was not able to walk properly. 1250 01:15:41,453 --> 01:15:45,123 My daughter was so small, and the American Marine, he said, 1251 01:15:45,207 --> 01:15:47,042 "Give me your daughter, I will get her inside, 1252 01:15:47,125 --> 01:15:48,835 and you guys can come through the gate." 1253 01:15:50,087 --> 01:15:52,172 My wife was left behind… 1254 01:15:52,256 --> 01:15:53,715 [shouting in Afghan language] 1255 01:15:54,716 --> 01:15:56,677 …and they shut the gate after her. 1256 01:15:57,427 --> 01:15:59,596 And she's still back in Afghanistan. 1257 01:16:02,474 --> 01:16:03,892 That's terrible. 1258 01:16:06,395 --> 01:16:09,147 I was told that we will evacuate her. 1259 01:16:09,815 --> 01:16:11,858 I have not seen anything. 1260 01:16:15,612 --> 01:16:16,947 I was happy. 1261 01:16:18,824 --> 01:16:20,617 Suddenly you lose everything. 1262 01:16:23,912 --> 01:16:25,664 You have a happy life, 1263 01:16:27,374 --> 01:16:29,585 and you lose it in one day. 1264 01:16:34,298 --> 01:16:36,300 [Hoffman] To compound matters, 1265 01:16:36,383 --> 01:16:39,720 intelligence was received that ISIS-K… 1266 01:16:40,387 --> 01:16:44,474 So in other words, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, 1267 01:16:44,558 --> 01:16:48,395 had a branch in Afghanistan called ISIS-Khorasan. 1268 01:16:50,606 --> 01:16:54,067 Khorasan is the ancient name for that part of the region. 1269 01:16:54,151 --> 01:16:56,069 ISIS-K was planning an attack. 1270 01:17:01,366 --> 01:17:05,454 [Sanchez] We got told that it was going to be a suicide bomber 1271 01:17:05,537 --> 01:17:09,833 that would be probably clean shaved with a black bag with an arrow on it. 1272 01:17:09,916 --> 01:17:12,127 We were searching for this guy. 1273 01:17:12,210 --> 01:17:14,296 We didn't know when he was going to come. 1274 01:17:14,379 --> 01:17:16,632 [Smoak] And everybody was just kind of like, 1275 01:17:17,215 --> 01:17:20,302 "All right, how do you want me to pick that out of here?" 1276 01:17:20,385 --> 01:17:23,347 You know, there's thousands of people in front of me. 1277 01:17:23,430 --> 01:17:26,141 We were kind of at a standstill just holding everybody back, 1278 01:17:26,224 --> 01:17:30,103 waiting to get the final word if we're pulling out or not. 1279 01:17:32,397 --> 01:17:35,525 And somebody screamed, "IED." 1280 01:17:35,609 --> 01:17:36,693 [explosion] 1281 01:17:44,201 --> 01:17:45,369 The bomb went off. 1282 01:17:48,288 --> 01:17:52,834 I saw a big cloud of smoke, and an arm flying through the air. 1283 01:17:52,918 --> 01:17:54,544 [people clamoring] 1284 01:17:54,628 --> 01:17:57,297 [Sanchez] My ears are ringing. I can't hear anything. 1285 01:17:57,381 --> 01:18:00,133 And I start seeing a face in front of me. 1286 01:18:01,134 --> 01:18:02,427 Like, it didn't look alive. 1287 01:18:02,928 --> 01:18:06,598 And I was just like, I couldn't process who that face was. 1288 01:18:07,391 --> 01:18:12,562 [Smoak] I jumped up and started to run towards the hole in the fence 1289 01:18:12,646 --> 01:18:14,898 that we had cut through the Abbey Gate. 1290 01:18:14,981 --> 01:18:17,901 An officer grabbed me and tried to stop me. 1291 01:18:18,402 --> 01:18:20,612 I told him to get his fucking hands off of me, 1292 01:18:20,696 --> 01:18:22,531 that those were all of my friends in there. 1293 01:18:23,115 --> 01:18:25,492 And I turned around and started running towards… 1294 01:18:25,575 --> 01:18:28,495 Now I could see pretty much just a pile of bodies. 1295 01:18:29,538 --> 01:18:32,124 And the first person that I came to, 1296 01:18:32,207 --> 01:18:36,420 um, was one of my best friends, uh, Corporal Daegan Page. 1297 01:18:37,462 --> 01:18:40,424 I just knew as soon as I saw him that he was dead. 1298 01:18:42,175 --> 01:18:45,637 Somebody grabbed one side of his chest rig, and I grabbed the other 1299 01:18:46,430 --> 01:18:48,473 and started dragging him back to the hole 1300 01:18:48,557 --> 01:18:50,016 that we had in the fence. 1301 01:18:50,559 --> 01:18:53,395 My captain told me that he had Page 1302 01:18:53,478 --> 01:18:55,647 and told me to go back and get more people. 1303 01:18:56,481 --> 01:18:58,525 So I left him… 1304 01:19:02,612 --> 01:19:04,197 and, uh… 1305 01:19:04,281 --> 01:19:05,157 [sniffles] 1306 01:19:06,032 --> 01:19:07,075 Sorry. 1307 01:19:09,786 --> 01:19:10,662 [sniffles] 1308 01:19:11,580 --> 01:19:12,539 [clears throat] 1309 01:19:18,462 --> 01:19:25,469 [indistinct clamoring and dialog in Afghan language] 1310 01:19:26,511 --> 01:19:28,263 -[yelling] -[sharp snapping sounds] 1311 01:19:28,346 --> 01:19:30,766 And I start hearing screaming and, like, snaps coming. 1312 01:19:30,849 --> 01:19:31,683 [snapping sounds] 1313 01:19:31,767 --> 01:19:35,645 I thought I was seeing stars or something, but they looked like flashes. 1314 01:19:35,729 --> 01:19:38,273 My mind immediately went to, "I'm getting fucking shot at." 1315 01:19:39,441 --> 01:19:41,943 I had gotten shot in my left shoulder. 1316 01:19:44,738 --> 01:19:46,281 I was about 10 yards from the blast. 1317 01:19:47,449 --> 01:19:49,826 The canal wall was right here, 1318 01:19:49,910 --> 01:19:52,537 and then he was just on the other side of it. 1319 01:19:55,081 --> 01:19:56,875 My right lung had collapsed. 1320 01:19:57,751 --> 01:20:01,505 A bearing hit me in the jaw, in my lat, and then stitched up on my right side, 1321 01:20:01,588 --> 01:20:05,300 and I was shot down in the bottom of my right leg. 1322 01:20:06,551 --> 01:20:09,471 And I'm walking out, stumbling out. 1323 01:20:09,554 --> 01:20:11,681 It feels like I'm breathing through a straw. 1324 01:20:13,767 --> 01:20:16,269 Daegan Page and Max Soviak, 1325 01:20:17,312 --> 01:20:19,356 those two were inseparable. 1326 01:20:20,357 --> 01:20:21,566 They were just good dudes. 1327 01:20:21,650 --> 01:20:24,820 Everywhere Max went, Page went. Everywhere Page went, Max went. 1328 01:20:25,904 --> 01:20:30,158 [people clamoring] 1329 01:20:32,244 --> 01:20:36,790 Max and Page were behind me by a little bit, and then we got hit, 1330 01:20:36,873 --> 01:20:40,293 and when I turned around, I crawled over somebody. 1331 01:20:40,377 --> 01:20:42,754 And to this day, I'm still convinced 1332 01:20:42,838 --> 01:20:45,590 that who I crawled over was Page. 1333 01:20:47,425 --> 01:20:49,177 But yeah, they didn't make it. 1334 01:20:51,555 --> 01:20:53,265 [people clamoring in Afghan language] 1335 01:20:56,226 --> 01:20:58,270 That's when I tried to grab Kelsee. 1336 01:20:59,980 --> 01:21:04,025 Kelsee Lainhart was part of the female engagement team. 1337 01:21:04,943 --> 01:21:08,071 I grabbed her, I drug her as far as I could. 1338 01:21:09,239 --> 01:21:11,783 I've kind of come to the realization, "This is where I die." 1339 01:21:12,284 --> 01:21:13,201 "Fuck it." 1340 01:21:14,911 --> 01:21:16,037 I just rolled over. 1341 01:21:16,538 --> 01:21:18,331 "This is where it's going to happen." 1342 01:21:18,832 --> 01:21:21,001 Got as comfortable as I could and laid back. 1343 01:21:21,084 --> 01:21:22,961 [people clamoring] 1344 01:21:23,044 --> 01:21:27,132 [Sanchez] And then I looked to my right, and there's all this screaming going on, 1345 01:21:27,215 --> 01:21:28,383 and there's, uh… 1346 01:21:28,884 --> 01:21:31,428 I see Wyatt coming in on a stretcher. 1347 01:21:32,429 --> 01:21:35,974 [Wilson] They sent me down in a dimly lit hallway, while this JSOC doc 1348 01:21:36,057 --> 01:21:37,851 finds me pulseless. 1349 01:21:40,729 --> 01:21:44,983 He takes a shot in the dark and performs a emergency thoracotomy… 1350 01:21:47,277 --> 01:21:48,653 last-ditch effort. 1351 01:21:50,864 --> 01:21:54,492 They cut through your sternum and then they hand-pump your heart. 1352 01:21:56,620 --> 01:21:58,580 He got me going again and then, 1353 01:21:59,205 --> 01:22:01,750 I'm not sure how many units of blood your body holds, 1354 01:22:01,833 --> 01:22:05,503 but whatever they gave me is the equivalent of an entire body's worth. 1355 01:22:19,142 --> 01:22:23,730 [Smoak] Wilson, he's got a tattoo on his, I think his shoulder or his arm, 1356 01:22:23,813 --> 01:22:25,732 and it sums up his entire life. 1357 01:22:25,815 --> 01:22:28,109 It says, "I'm too stubborn to die." 1358 01:22:28,193 --> 01:22:31,571 And it's the truth, because he is a stubborn son of a bitch. 1359 01:22:34,074 --> 01:22:36,284 [Wilson] I did not know he was ISIS, 1360 01:22:36,368 --> 01:22:38,536 but through the investigation and everything, 1361 01:22:38,620 --> 01:22:40,372 like, when I got back to California, 1362 01:22:40,455 --> 01:22:42,582 I kind of found out it was ISIS. 1363 01:22:42,666 --> 01:22:45,001 And the guy had actually been in jail, 1364 01:22:45,627 --> 01:22:48,922 but he was freed when the Taliban came through. 1365 01:22:51,549 --> 01:22:52,592 Yeah. 1366 01:22:53,969 --> 01:22:57,430 [Sanchez] We had, uh, 13 service members KIA. 1367 01:23:00,558 --> 01:23:04,646 Seeing Wyatt is like a gift. [laughs] 1368 01:23:04,729 --> 01:23:06,356 Uh, it really is. 1369 01:23:06,439 --> 01:23:09,275 Like, when I saw him on that stretcher… 1370 01:23:12,862 --> 01:23:13,863 [sniffles] 1371 01:23:16,866 --> 01:23:18,660 …and, like, when I see him now, 1372 01:23:19,411 --> 01:23:21,579 like, I don't know, I just get filled with joy. [laughs] 1373 01:23:21,663 --> 01:23:24,082 Like, I don't know how to explain that. Like… [sniffles] 1374 01:23:24,165 --> 01:23:26,543 Like, I'm just so happy he's here. [laughs] 1375 01:23:30,588 --> 01:23:34,050 [Wilson] Two or three days after I woke up, they wheeled me over there, 1376 01:23:34,134 --> 01:23:35,844 and I got to meet Kelsee. 1377 01:23:37,095 --> 01:23:38,680 Your brain's scrambled, 1378 01:23:38,763 --> 01:23:42,475 so you don't really realize the significance of everything. 1379 01:23:44,269 --> 01:23:47,022 Thankfully, those guys actually pulled her out. 1380 01:23:48,064 --> 01:23:49,607 She came to my retirement. 1381 01:23:51,317 --> 01:23:52,610 She was paralyzed. 1382 01:24:01,077 --> 01:24:02,954 [Sanchez] Like, every night or every other night, 1383 01:24:03,038 --> 01:24:04,581 we would get, like, an intel brief 1384 01:24:04,664 --> 01:24:08,126 of how many people we saved, like, throughout that week. 1385 01:24:13,089 --> 01:24:14,299 [indistinct chatter over radio] 1386 01:24:14,382 --> 01:24:17,260 Towards the end, it was like 120,000 people. Like, damn. 1387 01:24:24,267 --> 01:24:26,853 [Smoak] It feels good 1388 01:24:27,812 --> 01:24:29,522 to have done something, 1389 01:24:29,606 --> 01:24:33,735 to have been a part of it, and to help people's lives. 1390 01:24:33,818 --> 01:24:34,986 It feels good. 1391 01:24:36,029 --> 01:24:38,364 But at the same time, 1392 01:24:39,783 --> 01:24:41,242 what was it worth? 1393 01:24:43,453 --> 01:24:46,956 This might not be the politically correct answer, but in my opinion, 1394 01:24:48,917 --> 01:24:53,546 I would not have traded a single Afghan life for any of my friends. 1395 01:24:55,048 --> 01:24:57,592 [somber music playing] 1396 01:25:03,765 --> 01:25:07,560 I noticed it pretty quick that I was like, I should not have come home. 1397 01:25:08,269 --> 01:25:10,563 I should've been in the hospital for two more months. 1398 01:25:13,274 --> 01:25:17,737 Thankfully, they forced me in to go see a psychiatrist, 1399 01:25:17,821 --> 01:25:20,240 because I never would have done it by myself. 1400 01:25:20,740 --> 01:25:23,368 And still to this day, I see that same psychiatrist. 1401 01:25:25,036 --> 01:25:28,540 I didn't want to talk about it. I refused to talk about it. I hated it. 1402 01:25:32,293 --> 01:25:35,421 Then once I realized, like, talking about it, it's okay to talk about it, 1403 01:25:35,505 --> 01:25:39,092 It's okay to be vulnerable for five seconds… 1404 01:25:39,175 --> 01:25:41,761 And trust me, I have a huge fucking ego. 1405 01:25:43,012 --> 01:25:45,640 And when I finally do drop it 1406 01:25:46,224 --> 01:25:48,143 and realize it's okay, 1407 01:25:48,810 --> 01:25:51,437 things start getting better really fast. 1408 01:25:58,111 --> 01:25:59,779 -[child] Dada? -[Wilson] What's up? 1409 01:25:59,863 --> 01:26:01,656 [child] How do you get on this rock? 1410 01:26:01,739 --> 01:26:03,992 -Huh? -I want to get on that big rock. 1411 01:26:04,075 --> 01:26:06,119 -You're scared on the big rock? -Hey! 1412 01:26:07,537 --> 01:26:09,831 -Let me down. -Let you down? 1413 01:26:09,914 --> 01:26:11,249 Dad, stop! 1414 01:26:11,332 --> 01:26:13,334 Stop holding my butt! 1415 01:26:15,295 --> 01:26:17,130 [Wilson] So I had Pops on my first deployment. 1416 01:26:17,213 --> 01:26:19,716 [indistinct toddler chatter in background] 1417 01:26:20,466 --> 01:26:23,595 And then Pagie… Pagie was born in 2022. 1418 01:26:23,678 --> 01:26:25,221 She's about to be four. 1419 01:26:26,264 --> 01:26:30,935 And then she's named after Daegan Page and Max Soviak. 1420 01:26:32,228 --> 01:26:36,482 But I shortened Soviak to Sovi, so it kind of fits her a little bit better. 1421 01:26:38,693 --> 01:26:40,653 [indistinct family chatter] 1422 01:26:40,737 --> 01:26:43,740 Pops lived it. Yeah, she saw me in the hospital. 1423 01:26:45,450 --> 01:26:47,493 She was two and a half at that point. 1424 01:26:47,577 --> 01:26:49,162 Yeah, she's my little trauma baby. 1425 01:26:49,245 --> 01:26:52,373 We're going through this thing. We're going through it together. 1426 01:26:52,457 --> 01:26:55,293 She's raising me as much as I'm raising her. 1427 01:26:55,376 --> 01:26:58,046 [reporter] Scenes of desperation and chaos in Afghanistan 1428 01:26:58,129 --> 01:27:00,256 are being seen around the world. 1429 01:27:01,633 --> 01:27:03,801 [Wilson] I don't even know how to explain it. 1430 01:27:04,594 --> 01:27:07,513 I can barely explain it to you guys in a way that makes sense, 1431 01:27:07,597 --> 01:27:11,184 let alone to an 8- and 9-year-old when they get to that age. 1432 01:27:11,267 --> 01:27:12,435 -[Poppy] Oh! -Huh? 1433 01:27:13,186 --> 01:27:16,022 [Page] Daddy, I have these lemons! 1434 01:27:17,440 --> 01:27:18,399 Look! 1435 01:27:22,654 --> 01:27:26,157 [Sanchez] My kids, they've seen me shirtless with my bullet scar, 1436 01:27:26,241 --> 01:27:28,076 and they've asked me what it is. 1437 01:27:28,159 --> 01:27:31,204 I don't like to sugarcoat it, because I got shot. 1438 01:27:31,955 --> 01:27:35,541 There are bad people in this world, and some of them try to hurt you. 1439 01:27:38,878 --> 01:27:41,673 My wife hates it because they're already saying they want to be Marines 1440 01:27:41,756 --> 01:27:43,967 and put her through that trauma. 1441 01:27:44,592 --> 01:27:47,804 And now we got to see our kids go through it? That would probably suck. 1442 01:27:51,766 --> 01:27:56,229 [reporter] Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, 1443 01:27:56,312 --> 01:28:01,150 some 200,000 Afghans, many who supported the US war effort, 1444 01:28:01,234 --> 01:28:03,778 have found refuge in the United States. 1445 01:28:06,155 --> 01:28:08,533 I got on the plane like it was a charter flight 1446 01:28:09,117 --> 01:28:13,788 from Kabul to Bahrain and from Bahrain to New Jersey. 1447 01:28:14,998 --> 01:28:19,627 In New Jersey, I've been in a camp for like a month. 1448 01:28:21,754 --> 01:28:24,507 Then I left the camp to come to Arizona. 1449 01:28:26,134 --> 01:28:28,594 Right now, I'm doing Amazon Flex, 1450 01:28:28,678 --> 01:28:32,682 like just an hour and two hours, three hours a day, 1451 01:28:32,765 --> 01:28:37,228 because I can't work properly because I have my kids all the time on me. 1452 01:28:37,312 --> 01:28:40,064 I'm waiting on my wife until she joins me. 1453 01:28:42,483 --> 01:28:45,528 She is the wife of a former pilot. 1454 01:28:47,196 --> 01:28:51,617 Since 2021, she's living under the hijab all the time. 1455 01:28:53,453 --> 01:28:56,039 It's the Taliban rules. 1456 01:28:58,291 --> 01:29:01,544 She do not feel good at all. 1457 01:29:03,546 --> 01:29:06,966 You lose your husband, you lose your son, you lose your daughter. 1458 01:29:07,759 --> 01:29:09,135 What's going to happen to you? 1459 01:29:17,685 --> 01:29:24,067 [Graff] The irony is the existential threat to American freedom and liberty 1460 01:29:24,150 --> 01:29:28,071 came not from these terrorists in Afghanistan, 1461 01:29:28,654 --> 01:29:31,407 and not from the threat of terrorism, 1462 01:29:31,491 --> 01:29:35,036 but from our nation's response to terrorism. 1463 01:29:36,704 --> 01:29:43,461 Bin Laden really believed that he could never destroy the United States, 1464 01:29:44,128 --> 01:29:46,964 but by attacking the United States, 1465 01:29:47,048 --> 01:29:51,302 by sort of pricking the edges of the US empire, 1466 01:29:51,386 --> 01:29:55,223 he could cause the United States to destroy itself. 1467 01:29:56,724 --> 01:30:02,063 If you start to scratch at almost any aspect of our daily lives 1468 01:30:02,146 --> 01:30:04,816 in the United States today, 1469 01:30:04,899 --> 01:30:08,820 I can show you how 9/11 changed that part of our country. 1470 01:30:08,903 --> 01:30:12,615 -[CBP agents yelling] -[protesters yelling] 1471 01:30:13,157 --> 01:30:14,325 [people screaming] 1472 01:30:14,409 --> 01:30:17,453 [Hathaway] We see the harm that this does 1473 01:30:17,537 --> 01:30:22,625 to our own sense of legal constraints on the president's authority. 1474 01:30:22,708 --> 01:30:25,920 We see these military tactics coming back home. 1475 01:30:26,003 --> 01:30:27,171 [man screaming] What the hell? 1476 01:30:27,922 --> 01:30:30,967 [Hathaway] We see some of the treatment of Americans 1477 01:30:31,050 --> 01:30:36,889 that looks awfully familiar for people who've seen the War on Terror abroad. 1478 01:30:36,973 --> 01:30:39,517 -Bro-- -[woman] Get the fuck off him! 1479 01:30:39,600 --> 01:30:43,020 [people yelling] 1480 01:30:43,104 --> 01:30:45,273 And now realize, "Oh, it's a terrible thing 1481 01:30:45,356 --> 01:30:48,901 when a single person can order a use of military force 1482 01:30:48,985 --> 01:30:52,989 or order a use of force that's lethal, and there's nothing I can do about it." 1483 01:30:53,823 --> 01:30:55,658 [reporter] The Trump administration now confirms 1484 01:30:55,741 --> 01:30:58,828 it hit an alleged drug boat not once, but twice, 1485 01:30:58,911 --> 01:31:02,957 the second strike ordered after the first failed to kill everyone on board. 1486 01:31:05,793 --> 01:31:08,880 [Trump] This military operation, I won't use the word "war," 1487 01:31:08,963 --> 01:31:13,259 they don't like the word "war," because you're supposed to get approval, 1488 01:31:13,342 --> 01:31:15,720 so I'll use the word "military operation." 1489 01:31:16,679 --> 01:31:18,222 [Pete Hegseth] We will finish this 1490 01:31:18,306 --> 01:31:23,186 on America-first conditions of President Trump's choosing. 1491 01:31:23,895 --> 01:31:26,439 Death and destruction from the sky. 1492 01:31:26,522 --> 01:31:28,733 [explosion] 1493 01:31:30,401 --> 01:31:32,695 [Ackerman] People generally think the War on Terror is over. 1494 01:31:32,778 --> 01:31:35,656 Their political leadership has told them of that. 1495 01:31:35,740 --> 01:31:40,203 Well, the authorities, the institutions, and many of the operations persist. 1496 01:31:40,286 --> 01:31:41,621 They just find new targets. 1497 01:31:45,208 --> 01:31:50,046 We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we have seen its final form. 1498 01:31:50,129 --> 01:31:52,465 It will come for more and more of us. 1499 01:32:01,766 --> 01:32:05,436 [Goldsmith] We really are at an inflection point in terms of 1500 01:32:05,520 --> 01:32:08,940 there has to be soon a large turnover 1501 01:32:09,023 --> 01:32:13,152 among the very aged politicians who've been in power for a long time. 1502 01:32:14,987 --> 01:32:16,864 And it is true, just read the polls, 1503 01:32:16,948 --> 01:32:19,700 the younger generation thinks differently about these things. 1504 01:32:22,078 --> 01:32:24,914 My students literally weren't born then. 1505 01:32:25,456 --> 01:32:30,002 9/11 to them is like, uh, World War II to me. 1506 01:32:30,503 --> 01:32:33,506 Or even less so, it's an even dimmer memory. 1507 01:32:34,173 --> 01:32:38,010 They've kind of inherited the current situation. 1508 01:32:38,594 --> 01:32:41,055 [young woman] We don't know what it's like to not have 1509 01:32:41,138 --> 01:32:45,226 police officers in the subways or on every corner. 1510 01:32:45,309 --> 01:32:48,104 It's a lot more scary for us to think that 1511 01:32:48,187 --> 01:32:50,273 if we're in the wrong place at the wrong time, 1512 01:32:50,356 --> 01:32:52,316 our lives could be affected immensely 1513 01:32:52,400 --> 01:32:54,652 or even just our lives taken away from us. 1514 01:32:55,319 --> 01:32:58,489 [young man] Events like that happen, things that are so catastrophic, 1515 01:32:58,573 --> 01:33:02,868 they change the world, but there's nothing we can do about that. 1516 01:33:02,952 --> 01:33:06,539 So we just kind of live in the different world. 1517 01:33:15,798 --> 01:33:18,467 What did we get from the war in Afghanistan? 1518 01:33:20,219 --> 01:33:22,430 [Gopal] This is the longest war in American history, 1519 01:33:22,513 --> 01:33:25,099 and it's also the longest war in Afghan history. 1520 01:33:26,517 --> 01:33:28,352 So it's this intergenerational trauma. 1521 01:33:30,229 --> 01:33:32,773 I've spoken to a lot of American soldiers over the years, 1522 01:33:32,857 --> 01:33:37,445 and it's unclear if you talk to somebody who landed in 2021, 1523 01:33:37,528 --> 01:33:41,907 what they're doing at that moment has to do with the 9/11 attacks. 1524 01:33:46,162 --> 01:33:48,331 [Wilson] I mean, we got the guy in charge of it. 1525 01:33:48,414 --> 01:33:50,583 You can say that's a plus, 1526 01:33:51,292 --> 01:33:54,378 but it wasn't until 10 years fucking later. 1527 01:33:55,087 --> 01:33:59,425 [man] At 25 years since 9/11, how do you make sense of the global War on Terror? 1528 01:34:01,135 --> 01:34:04,388 That's the million-dollar question, right? Was it worth it? 1529 01:34:11,228 --> 01:34:14,899 [Homer] I feel like I went through so much, 1530 01:34:14,982 --> 01:34:18,027 and my family went through so much, when I was so young. 1531 01:34:20,237 --> 01:34:25,826 The fact that I've made it out of it, like, shocks me a lot. 1532 01:34:29,497 --> 01:34:31,999 I wish I knew what I would have been like 1533 01:34:32,083 --> 01:34:35,211 or what my life would have been like before, 1534 01:34:35,294 --> 01:34:37,088 but I didn't really get a "before." 1535 01:34:38,422 --> 01:34:43,177 I'm kind of just trying to catch up with, like, a life that I lost. 1536 01:34:46,555 --> 01:34:49,433 I'm just going to keep trying to do my best. [laughs] 1537 01:35:00,319 --> 01:35:03,989 Since the 25 years, our American society has become divisive 1538 01:35:04,073 --> 01:35:06,617 and just not willing to listen to each other. 1539 01:35:09,370 --> 01:35:12,415 So it is critically important to have dialogue 1540 01:35:12,498 --> 01:35:15,543 and a constructive way of resolving differences. 1541 01:35:17,753 --> 01:35:20,506 History will judge based on what we do right now. 1542 01:35:30,725 --> 01:35:35,479 [solemn music playing] 1543 01:37:46,193 --> 01:37:47,695 [music ends]