WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.340 align:start GWEN IFILL: (From video.) Joining me tonight to take stock of today's terrible events are 00:09.340 --> 00:12.220 align:start four reporters who - 00:12.220 --> 00:16.590 align:start YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks rocked 00:16.590 --> 00:21.000 align:start America. On that day the nation watched the horror unfold. 00:21.000 --> 00:25.970 align:start The loss of life was profound. The U.S. would never be the same. 00:25.970 --> 00:30.060 align:start MARTHA RADDATZ: (From video.) There is a new security problem in this country. 00:30.060 --> 00:35.680 align:start ALCINDOR: Soon after the carnage, U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan to hunt down those responsible. 00:35.680 --> 00:44.050 align:start They stayed there for 20 years. Thousands were killed at war and in the war that followed in Iraq. 00:44.050 --> 00:51.020 align:start In the years since others, including many first responders, died from 9/11-related 00:51.020 --> 00:56.490 align:start illnesses, military and political leaders scrambled to prevent America from being 00:56.490 --> 01:01.740 align:start vulnerable to terror again, a generation came of age with leaders focused on surveillance 01:01.740 --> 01:06.870 align:start and secrecy. Some also unfairly targeted Muslims and people of color. 01:06.870 --> 01:10.800 align:start DONALD TRUMP: (From video.) Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete 01:10.800 --> 01:14.690 align:start shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. 01:14.690 --> 01:18.830 align:start ALCINDOR: Two decades later, we explore how the nation is still reeling from the impact 01:18.830 --> 01:23.390 align:start of 9/11 on a special edition of Washington Week. 01:23.390 --> 01:28.090 align:start ANNOUNCER: Once again, from Washington, moderator Yamiche Alcindor. 01:28.090 --> 01:32.290 align:start ALCINDOR: Good evening and welcome to a special edition of Washington Week. 01:32.290 --> 01:38.000 align:start I'm Yamiche Alcindor. Twenty years ago, the 9/11 attacks dramatically changed America. 01:38.000 --> 01:40.980 align:start It was a tragic and emotional day. 01:40.980 --> 01:46.350 align:start This evening we look at how the attacks impacted American life, politics, and national security. 01:46.350 --> 01:50.980 align:start Joining me tonight to take stock of the horrific events are five top reporters who 01:50.980 --> 01:55.460 align:start covered 9/11 and its aftermath: Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New 01:55.460 --> 02:00.790 align:start York Times; Pierre Thomas, chief justice correspondent for ABC News; and joining us here 02:00.790 --> 02:06.260 align:start in studio, Asma Khalid, White House correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics 02:06.260 --> 02:12.380 align:start podcast; Martha Raddatz, chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of 02:12.380 --> 02:17.550 align:start This Week; and Vivian Salama, a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal. 02:17.550 --> 02:21.040 align:start Thank you so much, all of you, for being here. Martha, I want to start with you. 02:21.040 --> 02:28.110 align:start You were here in D.C. when this attack happened. You had a husband who was working in the 02:28.110 --> 02:32.220 align:start Pentagon, you yourself working at the State Department. I wonder what sticks in your mind both 02:32.220 --> 02:36.170 align:start personally but also professionally because, of course, you were reporting that day. 02:36.170 --> 02:42.930 align:start RADDATZ: Well, I think first of all it can't help but be immediately personal when you 02:42.930 --> 02:48.680 align:start have an attack on your homeland. And you can go through the day, you can be a journalist, 02:48.680 --> 02:54.820 align:start you can do your job that we all did, and when you go home at night you're a scared American. 02:54.820 --> 03:02.570 align:start I had - my husband, Tom Gjelten, was in the Pentagon that day, a correspondent for NPR, I 03:02.570 --> 03:09.360 align:start was at the State Department for ABC that day, and Tom and I had driven in that morning 03:09.360 --> 03:14.440 align:start together right after the first plane hit and started heading in immediately. 03:14.440 --> 03:19.910 align:start And you know, just today looking at the timeline again and when the planes hit, and I 03:19.910 --> 03:24.320 align:start remember being on Memorial Bridge, and I called my daughter who was a freshman in college 03:24.320 --> 03:29.150 align:start - rather, sophomore in college, and my son was in the fourth grade. 03:29.150 --> 03:34.180 align:start So I immediately called my daughter, obviously didn't call my son, told her to turn on 03:34.180 --> 03:41.020 align:start the news, went to the State Department, Tom went to the Pentagon, and the second plane hit. 03:41.020 --> 03:44.980 align:start And then the State Department was evacuated and there were fears that there was a bomb in 03:44.980 --> 03:48.750 align:start the parking lot. There were so many rumors going around that day. 03:48.750 --> 03:54.420 align:start I spent the entire day on Memorial Bridge, and when the Pentagon was hit I think I 03:54.420 --> 03:58.000 align:start really put on my journalist hat then because I really couldn't think about Tom. 03:58.000 --> 04:01.820 align:start And I'm not a huge worrier, so I'm just, he's fine, it's a huge building, I know it's a 04:01.820 --> 04:04.690 align:start huge building; obviously, he was fine. 04:04.690 --> 04:08.460 align:start But to see the smoke rise from that building all day and see the fighter jets going down 04:08.460 --> 04:12.630 align:start the Potomac River, and hearing all day - because we had walkie-talkies because the 04:12.630 --> 04:17.430 align:start cellphones were pretty much down that day - and hearing that there was another plane 04:17.430 --> 04:24.000 align:start headed for D.C. And I remember saying to my cameraman, oh my gosh, they're going to, 04:24.000 --> 04:27.950 align:start like, hit the Washington Monument. He's like, no, no, no, they're going to hit the 04:27.950 --> 04:31.260 align:start Capitol, they're going to want mass destruction. 04:31.260 --> 04:35.560 align:start And then in between, you know, you're trying to manage your personal life, and I'm 04:35.560 --> 04:41.560 align:start worried about my son and is he OK at school, and is my daughter OK, and is Tom OK - and I 04:41.560 --> 04:45.510 align:start finally - Tom finally got through to me - is my mother OK. 04:45.510 --> 04:50.500 align:start You go through that, but you do have to just keep doing what you're doing, and you also 04:50.500 --> 04:55.430 align:start think of all the people who have lost their lives and then you just know you can keep 04:55.430 --> 04:58.730 align:start doing what you're doing to report on that story. 04:58.730 --> 05:06.710 align:start ALCINDOR: Harrowing, really, to listen to. Pierre, you happened to be in New York on 05:06.710 --> 05:12.280 align:start the - on the day of 9/11. You happened to find yourself then on set with Peter Jennings. 05:12.280 --> 05:17.720 align:start Talk to us about what it was like to report, to see Peter Jennings lean into his instincts 05:17.720 --> 05:22.550 align:start as he was anchoring the news, but also what were you hearing from your sources at the FBI? 05:22.550 --> 05:27.550 align:start PIERRE THOMAS: Well, you know, just thinking about that day, it just brings up a wealth 05:27.550 --> 05:34.280 align:start of emotions. You know, I had been in New York to meet some of the ABC News brass. I had been 05:34.280 --> 05:38.600 align:start at ABC News at that point nine months and there were some people in New York I had not met. 05:38.600 --> 05:45.590 align:start And that morning, after a thunderstorm kept us in New York overnight, my wife called me a 05:45.590 --> 05:50.980 align:start little bit after nine and said, did you see that plane hit the World Trade Center. 05:50.980 --> 05:56.790 align:start And immediately I thought it was a small propeller plane, and then I turned on the 05:56.790 --> 06:00.360 align:start television and saw that it was much worse than that. 06:00.360 --> 06:04.850 align:start And as you said, the next thing I know I'm on the set with Peter Jennings, John Miller 06:04.850 --> 06:10.810 align:start who was then an ABC News correspondent and a former public affairs director for the NYPD. 06:10.810 --> 06:19.690 align:start And there's this moment when the first tower comes down, and Peter immediately knew that 06:19.690 --> 06:25.720 align:start there were no words so he raised his hand on the set just like that, which was a signal 06:25.720 --> 06:34.020 align:start to all of us to say nothing. And in that moment, you're horrified for the people that 06:34.020 --> 06:40.800 align:start are in the building and you just cannot believe what is unfolding. 06:40.800 --> 06:45.520 align:start And when that first tower came down, it was if something biblical was happening the way 06:45.520 --> 06:52.790 align:start that smoke and debris sort of moved through the city, and my sources were shellshocked. 06:52.790 --> 07:02.960 align:start They knew that this was an epic failure, they knew that this was something that they 07:02.960 --> 07:06.790 align:start would have to answer for in terms of the law enforcement community, but their immediate 07:06.790 --> 07:14.650 align:start response was just stunned and anger. And among the first tips that I got was that the 07:14.650 --> 07:23.090 align:start FBI was going to descend on those airports because, my sources said, the flight 07:23.090 --> 07:28.690 align:start manifests will be the key to understanding who did this and who directed them. 07:28.690 --> 07:33.600 align:start They immediately were telling me about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden being their primary 07:33.600 --> 07:40.190 align:start suspect because, as you recall, the CIA director, Tenet - George Tenet - hair was on fire 07:40.190 --> 07:47.350 align:start worrying about that al-Qaida was planning something. So they were suspicious that it was 07:47.350 --> 07:53.490 align:start al-Qaida, but my sources said we have to get to the airports, we have to find out who was 07:53.490 --> 08:01.500 align:start on those planes. And it just was a searing, grotesque day is the best way to describe it. 08:01.500 --> 08:06.650 align:start ALCINDOR: A searing, grotesque day. Asma, you - like me, you weren't a reporter yet. 08:06.650 --> 08:11.110 align:start We're around the same age. But you experienced something that became distinct and a 08:11.110 --> 08:16.490 align:start distinct consequence of this attack, and that was targeting of Muslims. I want to 08:16.490 --> 08:20.680 align:start know from you, what was your experience and how did it inform your reporting later on? 08:20.680 --> 08:25.140 align:start Because you ended up in Pakistan after the capture and kill of Osama bin Laden. 08:25.140 --> 08:29.450 align:start ASMA KHALID: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there's been a lot of talk as we approach 08:29.450 --> 08:35.630 align:start the 20th anniversary about the legacy and the enduring legacy that it's had on Muslims in 08:35.630 --> 08:39.960 align:start the United States. You know, I don't know that just in conversations I've had with 08:39.960 --> 08:44.390 align:start Muslims - I grew up in Indiana, a fairly small town in a fairly red state of the country. 08:44.390 --> 08:49.590 align:start It was not very diverse, and you talk to people, there is really not a Muslim I've come 08:49.590 --> 08:55.180 align:start across who will say that they don't see a clear demarcation of a before time and an after 08:55.180 --> 09:02.090 align:start time, after 9/11. I think we were all very aware of that the moment that the towers were hit. 09:02.090 --> 09:06.750 align:start I would argue that, you know, instinctually many of us also were aware of that even 09:06.750 --> 09:10.830 align:start before we knew who was responsible for the attacks because there had been a number of 09:10.830 --> 09:14.090 align:start terror threats throughout kind of the late '90s. 09:14.090 --> 09:22.410 align:start You know, I think, though, the challenge is to figure out how to use some of that fear, 09:22.410 --> 09:28.330 align:start and I would argue anxiety, and turn it into something that is actually, like, powerful 09:28.330 --> 09:32.510 align:start and useful, right, because I do think fear can be very debilitating. 09:32.510 --> 09:36.920 align:start You know, I talk about the fact that every Muslim knows there was a before and after 09:36.920 --> 09:41.050 align:start time, and the reason I say that is, like, there's - I was thinking back to what life was 09:41.050 --> 09:44.450 align:start like. I grew up in this fairly small town, I mentioned, in Indiana. 09:44.450 --> 09:49.600 align:start This is not a unique, isolated experience, but I remember that the neighbor of our local 09:49.600 --> 09:55.470 align:start mosque came and put, like, mounds of dirt up so that he could build a physical barrier so 09:55.470 --> 09:57.890 align:start that he would not need to look at the mosque. 09:57.890 --> 10:03.320 align:start And then on top of the mound of dirt, he put an American flag and, you know, would tell 10:03.320 --> 10:06.950 align:start folks who came onto his property that he would shoot anyone who came onto his property, 10:06.950 --> 10:10.200 align:start and this was kind of a more rural area of the town. 10:10.200 --> 10:14.010 align:start And these were not, again, isolated experiences - (laughs) - or isolated incidents. 10:14.010 --> 10:18.170 align:start I think I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, so fast forward, and as you 10:18.170 --> 10:22.660 align:start mentioned, I was with my colleague Steve Inskeep; we went to Pakistan after bin Laden had 10:22.660 --> 10:29.440 align:start been killed and I think understanding and having some level of cultural fluency is important. 10:29.440 --> 10:34.410 align:start You know, we'll talk, I'm sure, more about this later in the show, but overall, 9/11 has 10:34.410 --> 10:39.220 align:start a long legacy in terms of the war on terror, and you look at civilian casualties, U.S. 10:39.220 --> 10:44.120 align:start troops lost. Brown University's Costs of War Project estimates that, I believe, about a 10:44.120 --> 10:48.780 align:start million people have died in the subsequent 20 years. That's a lot of death. 10:48.780 --> 10:53.090 align:start ALCINDOR: And following the attacks, former President George W. Bush in stark terms urged 10:53.090 --> 10:56.710 align:start world leaders to join the U.S. in fighting terrorism. 10:56.710 --> 11:01.830 align:start PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: (From video.) Every nation in every region now has a decision 11:01.830 --> 11:08.860 align:start to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) 11:08.860 --> 11:16.730 align:start ALCINDOR: That call to action led to the longest war in American history, the war in Afghanistan. 11:16.730 --> 11:21.470 align:start Peter, I want to come to you because you were one of the first reporters in Afghanistan. 11:21.470 --> 11:25.990 align:start Talk a bit about what those early days of reporting was like, and also, how did this mission change? 11:25.990 --> 11:31.600 align:start Of course, the war just ended a few weeks ago, but what was the mission and how did it evolve? 11:31.600 --> 11:35.550 align:start PETER BAKER: Yeah, Yamiche, it was an extraordinary time. 11:35.550 --> 11:40.230 align:start I was based in Moscow at the time for The Washington Post and decided after 9/11 that I 11:40.230 --> 11:45.460 align:start would go down to Central Asia, which was part of our territory, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, 11:45.460 --> 11:52.060 align:start to write about Islamic, you know, extremism there and their fight to control it there, and 11:52.060 --> 11:56.090 align:start it turned out that Tajikistan was the only way to get into Afghanistan at that point. 11:56.090 --> 12:00.820 align:start Pakistan was closed off, but the Northern Alliance, which was this rebel group that the 12:00.820 --> 12:04.960 align:start Americans were planning to ally with, had an embassy in Dushanbe and so I got on a 12:04.960 --> 12:09.900 align:start helicopter there that they flew over the Hindu Kush, an old, rickety Soviet helicopter 12:09.900 --> 12:16.360 align:start that was flying well above its height ceiling to get to the Panjshir Valley north of 12:16.360 --> 12:20.500 align:start Kabul, and that's where the Northern Alliance had their base. And I got there basically 12:20.500 --> 12:25.300 align:start a few days after 9/11. The CIA wasn't there yet. Special Forces weren't there yet. 12:25.300 --> 12:30.680 align:start It was just me and eventually a group of reporters who were trying to figure out what was 12:30.680 --> 12:34.110 align:start going to happen and learn a lot about Afghanistan overnight. I didn't know anything about 12:34.110 --> 12:38.920 align:start Afghanistan. A lot of us were new to the territory. We were learning a lot on the fly. 12:38.920 --> 12:44.990 align:start And what we saw there, Yamiche, was a country of enormous, enormous suffering. It was a 12:44.990 --> 12:52.380 align:start biblical scene. You know, it was almost like transporting yourself back to the 1500s or something. 12:52.380 --> 12:57.580 align:start It was dusty and no electricity and no running water and people had been brutalized by 12:57.580 --> 13:05.110 align:start the Taliban for years, women only allowed to emerge in public in full burkas from head to 13:05.110 --> 13:11.050 align:start foot with a male escort, young girls not allowed to go to school, and to then see, you 13:11.050 --> 13:16.200 align:start know, the American war begin there was this idea that there would be something better - 13:16.200 --> 13:20.750 align:start right? - that the Americans would take out the Taliban and then eventually something better 13:20.750 --> 13:25.320 align:start would emerge. And that's of course where we began 20 years of rather frustrated efforts 13:25.320 --> 13:28.360 align:start to remake a country that didn't want to be remade. 13:28.360 --> 13:33.830 align:start And all the people who have benefited from these last 20 years in terms of more freedom, 13:33.830 --> 13:40.690 align:start more opportunity, more economic possibilities are now 20 years later, of course, thrust 13:40.690 --> 13:47.010 align:start back into the same kind of repressive regime that we saw there on the ground 20 years 13:47.010 --> 13:50.350 align:start ago. And that's a little hard to imagine. It's really something we would not have 13:50.350 --> 13:54.800 align:start pictured when we went in there in this - 20 years ago this month. 13:54.800 --> 13:58.350 align:start ALCINDOR: Twenty years ago this month. Vivian, you were working in New York City, 13:58.350 --> 14:03.110 align:start that - you later became Baghdad chief of the AP, the Associated Press. 14:03.110 --> 14:07.640 align:start How did what you see that - how did it lead you to covering the Middle East, and what 14:07.640 --> 14:10.880 align:start understanding did you come away with when you think about what you covered? 14:10.880 --> 14:13.280 align:start VIVIAN SALAMA: So I was living and working in Manhattan. 14:13.280 --> 14:17.860 align:start I'm also a New Yorker, so my whole family was there and here we were; it was a primary 14:17.860 --> 14:20.680 align:start day in New York, and so we were all going to be working late. 14:20.680 --> 14:26.510 align:start I was a producer for NBC News, the local NBS News, WNBC, and we had planned a late day 14:26.510 --> 14:30.440 align:start that day and so I was sleeping in and I had to rush to work, and I got there before the 14:30.440 --> 14:32.750 align:start first tower fell. 14:32.750 --> 14:36.390 align:start But of course, we were, you know, in Midtown Manhattan seeing plumes of smoke all the way 14:36.390 --> 14:40.920 align:start from downtown and just knowing that this was such an extraordinary event, but I was two 14:40.920 --> 14:43.630 align:start years out of college at that point and had really my whole future ahead of me and 14:43.630 --> 14:47.440 align:start suddenly, like, in one shot, it was just changed forever. 14:47.440 --> 14:51.730 align:start A, my career just sort of took a different direction than I never would have anticipated 14:51.730 --> 14:57.030 align:start because all of a sudden this horrible event opened my eyes to this reality of there are 14:57.030 --> 15:01.700 align:start people out there who want to do bad things to us. And so all I could think of was why? 15:01.700 --> 15:05.360 align:start Why would anyone want to do this? I had to understand because I felt like just "they 15:05.360 --> 15:09.210 align:start hate us" wasn't a sufficient answer. I needed to know. 15:09.210 --> 15:14.370 align:start But what was also really striking - and Asma just really kind of touched upon it - it 15:14.370 --> 15:19.420 align:start was also, I'm an Arab American and I never really knew that until 9/11. I'm a New Yorker, born 15:19.420 --> 15:23.700 align:start and raised, and I never thought of myself as anything else. And suddenly I was a hyphen. 15:23.700 --> 15:28.490 align:start My family members, relatives were all of the sudden getting criticized in public for no 15:28.490 --> 15:32.040 align:start reason, you know, just because of their names or the way they look, and suddenly 15:32.040 --> 15:36.130 align:start everything that I knew to be true about who I was seemed different. 15:36.130 --> 15:40.830 align:start And so everything about it, from my experience as a journalist having to rush down as a 15:40.830 --> 15:46.380 align:start kid, you know, in my early 20s down to Ground Zero with people still covered in dust, the 15:46.380 --> 15:53.100 align:start smell in the air that will never leave me, and having to do that and work around the 15:53.100 --> 15:57.840 align:start clock. We were sleeping on couches at 30 Rock; 30 Rock was a target. We were told to 15:57.840 --> 16:02.380 align:start evacuate it. We chose to stay, even though the NYPD told us to evacuate because it's a 16:02.380 --> 16:05.920 align:start landmark, and we decided that we were going to go, and it changed my life. 16:05.920 --> 16:08.390 align:start ALCINDOR: And you decided that you were going to go into that building. 16:08.390 --> 16:13.200 align:start Martha, you also covered the war extensively and decided to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. 16:13.200 --> 16:16.650 align:start I wonder, for you, when you think about - of course, we've had a lot of conversation 16:16.650 --> 16:21.020 align:start about the war in Afghanistan, but the war in Iraq - what lessons do you think we should 16:21.020 --> 16:24.560 align:start take away from that, given what the administration said but also how reporters reported 16:24.560 --> 16:26.760 align:start on that information? 16:26.760 --> 16:31.760 align:start RADDATZ: Well, I think there are so many lessons learned from Iraq and we have gone over 16:31.760 --> 16:36.520 align:start them and we have looked at them and there's so much to talk about this week because of 16:36.520 --> 16:42.480 align:start what we've learned. Iraq was a huge mistake. I mean, I remember at the time being at the 16:42.480 --> 16:50.050 align:start U.N., and thinking, if Colin Powell comes out and supports this, it's done. And Colin Powell 16:50.050 --> 16:54.690 align:start came out and supported it. It was shocking. I actually - I'm a little bit proud of myself 16:54.690 --> 17:00.780 align:start because I remember saying this sounds like circumstantial evidence and not much beyond that. 17:00.780 --> 17:06.850 align:start But once they got into Iraq and, you know, there was such joy and we've done it and we've 17:06.850 --> 17:10.370 align:start overtaken this place, there was simply no planning. 17:10.370 --> 17:15.390 align:start I, you know, watched Donald Rumsfeld for years and years and years kind of perform at 17:15.390 --> 17:20.220 align:start these press briefings, and I think I was probably one of the few really grumpy people in 17:20.220 --> 17:24.790 align:start the briefing room because it seemed a performance to me, and there was no way getting at 17:24.790 --> 17:30.120 align:start it. Now, the lessons reporters can learn? We don't have access to super-secret classified 17:30.120 --> 17:35.850 align:start reports all the time. Hopefully, if we'd seen them, we would have said this is a huge mistake. 17:35.850 --> 17:39.840 align:start But I do think - I mean, it is our job every day. 17:39.840 --> 17:45.690 align:start It's not just the lessons from the Iraq War, it is our job every day to try to find out 17:45.690 --> 17:49.460 align:start the truth and try to find out who's telling us the truth. 17:49.460 --> 17:54.110 align:start ALCINDOR: And after 9/11, thinking about learning the truth, billions of dollars were 17:54.110 --> 17:58.580 align:start poured into Homeland Security and new departments focused on immigration and security, 17:58.580 --> 18:01.720 align:start and vast powers were granted to surveil Americans. 18:01.720 --> 18:05.520 align:start That fueled profiling and discrimination of Muslim Americans, as Asma was just talking 18:05.520 --> 18:10.180 align:start about, and people of color, and that set off a wave of hate crimes targeting Muslims in 18:10.180 --> 18:15.480 align:start particular. Pierre, I want to come to you. How do you - can you connect these two for us? 18:15.480 --> 18:19.800 align:start There's the issue, of course, of the way that the law enforcement agencies in this 18:19.800 --> 18:22.910 align:start country changed, but there was also the surveilling of Muslim Americans. 18:22.910 --> 18:26.930 align:start How do they connect? What was the good that came out of it but also, of course, the bad? 18:26.930 --> 18:32.640 align:start THOMAS: Well, one of the things that happened as a result of 9/11 is the law enforcement 18:32.640 --> 18:37.010 align:start and the intelligence community, but particularly the FBI, had to admit that they were 18:37.010 --> 18:39.800 align:start caught completely flat-footed. 18:39.800 --> 18:44.830 align:start And I can recall a meeting with a very senior official at the Justice Department in the 18:44.830 --> 18:49.690 align:start days just after 9/11 and this official basically admitted that the United States had no 18:49.690 --> 18:56.230 align:start sense of what other al-Qaida operatives might be inside the country, and there was this 18:56.230 --> 19:01.290 align:start desperate attempt to figure out, OK, we know the countries we think that al-Qaida 19:01.290 --> 19:06.170 align:start operates from; we need to figure out all the people that came from those countries, and 19:06.170 --> 19:11.890 align:start there was a huge issue of overstays and people who were - had stayed in the country 19:11.890 --> 19:20.550 align:start longer than was allowed by their visas, and the FBI and the Justice Department was saying 19:20.550 --> 19:23.490 align:start we don't know if there's another wave. 19:23.490 --> 19:29.890 align:start There was great fear of another wave, and I think those were the seeds of the Patriot Act 19:29.890 --> 19:34.790 align:start in terms of the government being granted these vast powers of surveillance all in the 19:34.790 --> 19:39.310 align:start name of we need to protect. It was out of fear that those things developed. 19:39.310 --> 19:45.830 align:start But you know what they say in the South and my mother used to say, haste makes waste, 19:45.830 --> 19:52.260 align:start and critics would say that they were granted too many powers. People were rounded up, 19:52.260 --> 19:57.940 align:start assumed to be terrorists when there was not much evidence indicating that they were. 19:57.940 --> 20:02.590 align:start And so I can tell you that it was born out of this sense that the United States 20:02.590 --> 20:08.590 align:start government had no clue as to whether, OK, is there going to be another wave, and they had 20:08.590 --> 20:13.660 align:start a very clear sense that al-Qaida was not done. And you recall a few months later 20:13.660 --> 20:21.780 align:start Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, and I just remember law 20:21.780 --> 20:27.220 align:start enforcement saying over and over these people, these terrorists are incredibly creative. 20:27.220 --> 20:32.330 align:start Who would have ever thought that they would use a plane and turn it into a missile? 20:32.330 --> 20:39.320 align:start So I think part of what your question belies is this notion that there was fear, and the 20:39.320 --> 20:45.190 align:start government started just acting very quickly to resolve what it thought was a huge vulnerability. 20:45.190 --> 20:51.470 align:start ALCINDOR: And Peter, this idea of civil liberties and fear, it also really turned into a 20:51.470 --> 20:56.310 align:start political issue. When you think about modern politics, the rise of former President 20:56.310 --> 21:00.900 align:start Donald Trump, talk a bit about how the Patriot Act and really the fear of Americans, 21:00.900 --> 21:04.130 align:start it turned into a sort of political movement. 21:04.130 --> 21:08.510 align:start BAKER: Yeah, it's really remarkable if you think about it what a difference we have seen 21:08.510 --> 21:10.950 align:start over these last 20 years. 21:10.950 --> 21:15.650 align:start You know, for all of the excesses there were in that post-9/11 period in terms of 21:15.650 --> 21:19.090 align:start targeting Muslims who had nothing to do with anything in the United States, you had a 21:19.090 --> 21:24.050 align:start president at the time who at least said that was the wrong thing to do, right? President 21:24.050 --> 21:28.950 align:start George W. Bush went to a mosque three or four days after 9/11 to make the point that this 21:28.950 --> 21:33.450 align:start was not a war on Islam, it was not a war on Muslims; it was a war against extremism and 21:33.450 --> 21:37.970 align:start against violence, but not against a part of the American public. 21:37.970 --> 21:42.240 align:start And that was a theme he repeated throughout his presidency, even if there were examples 21:42.240 --> 21:45.960 align:start of his administration taking actions that would seem to belie that. 21:45.960 --> 21:51.350 align:start He at least believed or spoke to the notion that this was not supposed to divide us in 21:51.350 --> 21:55.690 align:start the way that, ultimately, it would. And you fast forward to see Donald J. Trump, 21:55.690 --> 21:59.480 align:start you know, in that clip that you showed at the beginning of the show speaking 21:59.480 --> 22:03.650 align:start during his campaign in, I think, 2015 saying we should ban all Muslims coming into the 22:03.650 --> 22:06.540 align:start country; what a radical change. 22:06.540 --> 22:11.270 align:start What a radical change in message from the very top leadership of America from 2001 to 22:11.270 --> 22:17.680 align:start 2015, you know, and rather than the other way around - rather than, you know, taking the 22:17.680 --> 22:23.660 align:start rhetoric too far at first and then moderating it, we've gone the other direction where it 22:23.660 --> 22:29.230 align:start became more fashionable later in this 20-year cycle to target Muslims who had nothing to 22:29.230 --> 22:33.710 align:start do with anything that was violent whatsoever. 22:33.710 --> 22:40.760 align:start It was suddenly acceptable and rewarded politically by the election of President Trump, 22:40.760 --> 22:45.890 align:start and he then of course enacted this travel ban that he had talked about in the campaign. 22:45.890 --> 22:50.460 align:start That's a - that's a remarkable evolution, and it's what was - I don't know is we'll see 22:50.460 --> 22:57.040 align:start where will this go from here. You know, will we, you know - where will this attitude, 22:57.040 --> 23:03.030 align:start you know, take us at this point in terms of our views of each other? The notion of other, 23:03.030 --> 23:09.420 align:start which was so, you know, taken by Trump as a political tool, will that continue to be - 23:09.420 --> 23:12.680 align:start ALCINDOR: And Republicans - taken by Republicans as a political tool. 23:12.680 --> 23:17.890 align:start Asma, there was - there's a poll from NPR and PBS that shows that Americans are split on 23:17.890 --> 23:21.810 align:start how the threat of terrorism presents itself. 23:21.810 --> 23:27.010 align:start Republicans see it as a(n) international threat; Democrats see it as a domestic threat. 23:27.010 --> 23:30.820 align:start We only have a couple seconds here, so I want to come to you: What does that tell us 23:30.820 --> 23:34.290 align:start about the way that America sees and the politics of this, if you can in about 10 seconds? 23:34.290 --> 23:37.800 align:start KHALID: Sure, just real quick, I mean, I think there is a clear partisan divide, and 23:37.800 --> 23:42.390 align:start that's established and developed and metastasized, I would say, over the last two decades. 23:42.390 --> 23:47.220 align:start Republicans were no different than Democrats in terms of how they thought of terrorism 23:47.220 --> 23:51.110 align:start immediately after when you look at polls from 2002, or marginally different I should say. 23:51.110 --> 23:54.810 align:start ALCINDOR: Martha, you get the last word. You were here 20 years ago. 23:54.810 --> 23:58.950 align:start Again, in about 10 seconds, though, reporters feel - Gwen Ifill said this. 23:58.950 --> 24:02.820 align:start She said that this made her look at the talk of war and peace differently. 24:02.820 --> 24:05.550 align:start That's what she said before she passed away. I wonder if you could - if you 24:05.550 --> 24:08.390 align:start could talk in just a couple seconds of what you think of that. 24:08.390 --> 24:11.900 align:start RADDATZ: I think it should. I think it should. I think all Americans should look 24:11.900 --> 24:16.870 align:start at why we go to war, when we go to war, and how we go to war, and ask themselves 24:16.870 --> 24:20.680 align:start questions all the time. We don't want this to happen again. 24:20.680 --> 24:24.610 align:start ALCINDOR: Yeah, we don't want it to happen again. We'll have to leave it there tonight. 24:24.610 --> 24:29.110 align:start Thank you so much to Peter, Pierre, Asma, Martha, and Vivian for sharing your reporting, 24:29.110 --> 24:33.090 align:start and thank you for joining us. It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since these attacks. 24:33.090 --> 24:37.060 align:start So many lost so much on that day and in the years that followed. My heart breaks for 24:37.060 --> 24:40.930 align:start every person and family touched by this tragedy. We will never forget. 24:40.930 --> 24:45.990 align:start And tune in Monday to the PBS NewsHour for "Fresh Faces," a report on the mayoral race 24:45.990 --> 24:49.930 align:start in Boston that includes a more diverse field of candidates than ever before. 24:49.930 --> 24:53.980 align:start And our conversation on how 9/11 changed American life will continue on the Washington 24:53.980 --> 24:57.530 align:start Week Extra. Find it on our social media and on our website. 24:57.530 --> 25:18.190 align:start I'm Yamiche Alcindor. Good night from Washington.