Original subtitles

[night bird calling]

[man] I'm from South Carolina.

Lexington, South Carolina, to be exact.

Born and raised.

[blowing bird call whistle]

My name is Michael Smoak.

Everybody just calls me Smoak.

[imitating bird call]

I've been called by my last name my entire life.

Everybody from when I was a child has called me Smoak.

If you call me Michael, I'm in big trouble. So…

[soft, somber music playing]

I was five years old when 9/11 happened.

I didn't really know what was going on,

but I could tell by the emotion in the room

that something serious had happened.

I was actually home sick from school that day.

I was at my grandmother's house,

and I remember me, her, and my granddad watching it on the TV.

I just remember both of them standing up out of their chairs

and kind of walked towards the TV, getting closer to it.

[Tom Brokaw] It looks like a big chunk of it has just peeled away.

[reporter] One can only hope that the area has been evacuated, but of course…

[Smoak] I started to understand 9/11 more and more as I got older.

I understood what happened, but not really why it happened.

[indistinct dialog]

Later, on YouTube, I saw videos of the war…

[soldier] Target!

[firing]

[Smoak] …and I wanted to serve my country.

I don't even remember where I heard the term "Marine Corps,"

but I just remember looking at all the videos

and the uniforms and all that stuff on the internet.

I was like, "That's gonna be me one day."

"I'm going to be a Marine when I get older."

[helicopter whirring]

We got told that we were going in for a non-combative evacuation.

[reporter] The war in Afghanistan is over.

This puts an end to America's longest war. Twenty years, 2,400 lives lost.

[Smoak] And then it got pretty crazy.

[people clamoring and shouting]

This was nearly 20 years after 9/11.

[clamoring continues]

-[distant siren wailing] -And what started on 9/11

ended right here at Abbey Gate.

[woman screams]

My thoughts were, "What the hell have we been doing for 20 years?"

If they didn't have the right paperwork,

most of the time, you're sending them to their death,

which is a pretty crazy responsibility for a 23-year-old.

[dramatic music playing]

[soldier] Move!

[explosion]

[people clamoring and screaming]

[solemn music playing]

[Garrett M. Graff] We're at a moment in American life

when the events of 9/11 are beginning

to slip meaningfully from living memory into history.

[rumbling and whooshing]

At some point in the next couple of years,

we will cross the point where 50% of Americans

were born after 9/11 or were too young to remember the events of that day.

Now they're learning about the attacks

and seeing those images from the day in school.

[student] It's just, like, taught as,

it happened, and we should just know that it happened.

I haven't really heard of it much outside of, like, the anniversary of 9/11.

It just feels like another part of the wars that we've learned about

because I wasn't alive for it or there for it.

[Azmat Khan] On 9/11, I was in English class.

I was in 11th grade.

I think we were the only Muslims at school.

[Laurel Homer] I was ten months old on September 11th.

A lot of times I feel kind of like collateral.

[Wyatt Wilson] I had just turned three years old.

I was probably getting my diaper changed.

I was three years old.

[An Nguyen] I just turned four.

That's 25 years past.

It's basically a generation since the attacks.

It's critical to know the pain and the grief.

The ramifications of 9/11 are evolving.

And even some consequences from that event

are still unfolding to this day.

[whooshing, then exploding]

[Graff] 25 years later, the current generation lives in

a world that was created by 9/11.

[somber music playing]

[Anand Gopal] We had a sense back then that we were at a transformative moment.

And we were.

I was asleep.

I was an undergrad at NYU at that time.

I was living in Lower Manhattan,

and I felt a loud sound.

[airplane approaching]

[airplane gets louder]

[loud explosion]

[Stephen McArdle] That was an explosion. That was an explosion.

[indistinct clamoring]

[man] Holy shit!

[Gopal] I turned the TV on.

[reporter] We have a breaking news story to tell you about.

Apparently, a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here in…

[Gopal] That's all we had, is the main television stations.

I don't mean to interrupt the fun, but this is a breaking news story.

A plane has crashed…

-Hold it… Into the World Trade Center. -[Robin Quivers] You're kidding!

[reporter 2] We have no further details.

We don't know anything about what they have concluded happened there.

So anyway, we go on now. How are you?

-I know you're in shock. -I'm really in shock.

I've never… I don't know what to say.

[reporter 3] CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story,

obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened.

[reporter 4] …fire is nowhere near under control…

[Jenny Pachucki] For 10 years, I was an oral historian

and curator at the 9/11 Museum,

recording oral histories with survivors, first responders, family members.

If you're trying to have hope for a generation,

I think that helping them understand what happened

is an important part of creating good for the future.

When these people become real and this event becomes personal,

that's the most powerful way to understand, ultimately,

what this was and why it mattered.

[sirens wailing]

[police operator] Police operator 133, what's the emergency?

[Battaglia] I'm on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center with 30 people.

[Pachucki] People are calling 911.

They're reporting being trapped.

They're reporting being stuck.

[operator] How are you doing? This is the fire department.

[Battaglia] Hi. It's hard to talk.

-[operator] Yeah. -A lot of smoke.

-[operator] Right. -The heat…

We're all overreacting. Please come right now.

-[operator] What floor are you on? -[Battaglia] 100 Northeast.

[operator] All right.

[people clamoring and coughing]

[woman] It's too hot!

[operator] What's your phone number there?

[Battaglia] I'm on a cell phone.

[operator] All right, no problem. We'll get to you.

-[Battaglia] Please, immediately. -[operator] They're on the way.

[Pachucki] Really, the only thing that people can say is,

"Hang on, we're coming for you. We'll be there as soon as we can."

Our son, Brad, had just graduated from Bucknell University.

On September 11th, he was working on the 89th floor of the South Tower.

Hey, Mom, it's Brad.

I just wanted to call and let you know, I'm sure that you heard

that a plane crashed into World Trade Center One.

We're fine, we're in World Trade Center Two.

I'm not… I'm obviously alive and well over here.

But obviously a pretty scary experience.

[Pachucki] For most people, it was just a confusing, atrocious accident.

[woman] They believe it was an airplane.

I'm going to go watch the news now.

We thought we were invincible, but we also thought we were invulnerable.

In other words, that no one could attack us.

9/11 shatters that complacency.

[news playing in background]

[woman on phone] …get through, and I'm far away right now,

I thought it might be a little dangerous to get too close.

I saw lots of debris coming…

[Graff] You see in that moment between 8:46 and 9:03

how innocent America actually is.

In those 17 minutes, America still felt innocent.

[reporter] And as fire crews are descending on this area,

it does not appear that there's any kind of an effort up there yet.

Now remember-- Oh my God!

[newsreader] My God. My…

[newsreader 2] That looks like a second plane.

[plane approaching]

[woman on phone] It was a jet. It was a very large plane. It was going fast.

It went past the Ritz-Carlton Hotel that's being built in Battery Park.

It went through right past, almost hit it…

-[people screaming] -…and then went in.

[newsreader 2] So this looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort

to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York.

[sirens wailing]

[man] My name is Andrew Ansbro.

I joined the FDNY in February of 2001.

I was assigned to Engine 58 in Harlem.

On September 11th, I was 29 years old.

I was the new guy.

You know, I was actually getting off a 24-hour shift

when, uh, you know, the first plane hit.

We got assigned to the second fifth alarm, which was the South Tower.

-[fire alarm bell ringing] -You get the alarm, get the adrenaline.

I thought, "Here we are, we're going down there to put it out."

[siren wailing]

The street was very different.

Everyone got out of the way of the rig, and, uh, people were cheering for us.

It was like being a gladiator heading down to battle.

Everyone was, you know, cheering and clapping as we're going.

And I just remember passing a block in the 70s

and focusing on this one person who was standing there looking at us, crying.

And then it hit me.

[indistinct dialog over dispatch radio]

Shit.

[Ansbro] And then the lieutenant said,

"Listen, make no mistake,

everyone above that fire is dead or gonna die."

[sirens wailing]

[newsreader] Thousands, tens of thousands of people

actually work inside those two buildings

in the heart of New York's financial district.

You could see the fire, the flames, and all the smoke.

And I said, "Oh my God, my wife is there."

She worked on the 96th floor,

but I was hoping for the best.

My daughter was two years old.

A few days later, she just started screaming and crying, calling her mother.

That's when it hit me.

[sirens wailing]

[Pachucki] People are coming down the stairwells.

It is smoky, depending on where you were.

It is crowded.

There's women wearing full stiletto heels walking down

many, many stairs.

People describe people helping each other in the stairwells.

There were stations set up by responders to provide people with oxygen.

People were being handed water.

There's this moment when the first responders

are gathering at the incident command post,

and they're preparing to go up and developing their strategy.

And somebody looked at the little group that was about to go up the stairs

and said, "We may not live through today."

[sniffles, stifles sob]

[crying] And they took a moment to shake each other's hands.

[sirens wailing]

[Rudy Giuliani] All that we know… All that we know right now

is that two airplanes struck the two large towers of the World Trade Center.

[man on radio] Stand by. Just stand by. We'll get 'em.

[Pachucki] There was no question that the city was being attacked.

Later, we realized it was the country.

Another plane is headed towards Washington, D.C.

[man] I'm An Nguyen.

I am the son of Khang Nguyen,

who was working at the Pentagon on September 11th.

My father, he was born in South Vietnam.

And then he came to America after the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

But he is a testament of basically the American dream.

There were opportunities here in the US

that was not given to him when he was younger back in Vietnam.

My father was an electrical engineer

with the Navy Command Center at the Pentagon.

I'd just turned four.

I was in preschool,

and on that Tuesday morning,

when my mom was taking me out to the bus to go to preschool,

my father ran towards the bus

to just say goodbye to me one more, just one last… one last time.

[melancholy music playing]

[plane approaching]

[Pachucki] At 9:37, Flight 77 crashed into the E ring of the Pentagon.

[dispatcher] Engine 101, [indistinct]…

[firefighter] 105 is on the scene. I have a [indistinct]…

…transport, the Pentagon.

[siren wailing]

[newsreader] It would appear that there has been another major explosion,

this one in the nation's capital.

You are looking at a scene of apparent blast aftermath.

There is smoke in the air over the Pentagon.

[Nguyen] I just went home when preschool ended.

And I was just waiting for my father to show up on the driveway with his car.

And I just kept waiting and waiting…

just hoping that he would come home.

With the days that followed, especially the funeral,

that's when I realized that he's not coming back home.

An outpour of tears started to show.

Terrorism is a word that you will never understand

in any visceral way until you experience it.

I did not know how to come to terms

with a loss of that magnitude,

but I knew that my life would change forever.

And now I'm trying to make an identity within a world

without having my father by my side.

[sirens wailing]

[Pachucki] The Pentagon is a private area.

It's a lower building.

And the force of the plane,

the amount of jet fuel,

and the size and structure of the building

creates like an inferno.

[fire roaring and crackling]

And at the same time,

the South Tower was burning for 56 minutes.

The impact zone was a little bit lower.

So an hour burning at extremely hot temperatures,

ultimately the building began to pull into itself.

[tragic music playing]

At some point there was a deep rumble in the earth.

It felt like an earthquake.

-[people clamoring] -[sirens wailing]

[car horns honking]

[Ansbro] We saw a whole bunch of cops lined up like a roll call.

Then they just started running.

We thought something was falling out of the sky.

Or there was a disturbance because they all ran north.

What we didn't know was that the police officers in the helicopter

had radioed down to them.

The top of the South Tower had started to twist.

And they could see it.

They told them to evacuate.

None of us got that message.

[Pachucki] There was a man named Sean Rooney

who called his wife, Beverly Eckert.

They connect over the phone, and he's trapped.

[Beverly Eckert] It was about 9:30 a.m. when he called.

And he told me he was on the 105th floor.

And he'd been trying to find a way out.

He told me that he hadn't had any success and now the stairwell was full of smoke.

We stopped talking about escape routes.

And then we just began talking about

all the happiness we shared during our lives together.

He just kept whispering "I love you" over and over.

Then I heard a sharp crack,

followed by the sound of an avalanche.

Take two.

Take two and two, one.

This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center.

-You see the firemen assembled here… -[bang]

-…the police officers, FBI agents. -[another bang]

-And you can see the two towers. -[louder bang]

A huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us.

We better get out of the way!

Come on, Glenn. Come on, Glenn, you can do it, man.

[Ansbro] There was this loud crack and a boom.

And you know… Bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop.

And that was the floors pancaking and coming down.

[people screaming]

The street got dark and went from day to night in seconds.

So, instinctively, myself and whoever came from the south, we ran south.

[whooshing]

[reporter in Japanese] Just now with a loud crash

a building has collapsed!

[Ansbro] When the building hit the ground, it kind of came over us

and the air pressure from the compressed air

-blew the windows in. -[whooshing]

[man] Oh shit. Oh shit.

[Ansbro] We were airborne.

I don't know how far I flew, but I landed in a pile of people.

And, uh, immediately your next breath was like sucking in a cup full of sand.

It was just… [choking]

And you're getting hit with, you know, little pieces of debris.

And you just say to yourself, "This is how it ends."

[man] I hope I live.

I hope I live. It's coming down on me.

[Gopal] I ran just ahead of the front of the smoke and I got under a car.

There was a subway grate under the car,

and I used the subway grate to breathe for the next three or four hours.

It was too thick to see outside.

[people clamoring]

[Pachucki] At 10:28 a.m.,

the North Tower collapsed,

killing about 1,500 people

who were unable to make it out of the building.

-[loud bang and rumbling] -[people screaming and exclaiming]

[sirens wailing]

[woman] Miss, get in here! Get away from the glass.

[woman 2] All my shit is out there!

My shit is out there!

[woman] You want your life or your stuff?

[man] Wanna die? Don't worry about your shit.

[woman] The building, watch the debris come down the street.

-Don't open the door. -[man] Get away from the windows.

-[woman] Don't open the door! -[man] Here it comes! Get behind!

[woman 2] Oh my God. Oh my God!

-[man] Look at the shadow of death. -[woman 2 screams] Oh my God!

[rumbling and whooshing]

You're right! Oh, my God, you saved my life!

-[man] I told you-- -[woman 2] You saved my life, thank you!

-[sirens blaring] -[fire truck honking]

[reporter] Words cannot describe it, except to say that the towers are gone.

Church Street is littered with people still lingering, uh, looking, watching.

They don't know what to do.

Some people are down on their knees praying.

[anchor] You're looking at the collapse of one of those towers right now.

We now have an AP news alert out of Pittsburgh.

Officials at Somerset County Airport are confirming

the crash of a large plane just north of the airport.

[somber music playing]

I'm Laurel Homer.

I was 10 months old on September 11th.

[woman] Is that on his wedding day?

[Homer] Yeah.

I'm the daughter of Leroy Homer.

My dad was the copilot on Flight 93.

[Pachucki] There were 44 people on Flight 93.

And because the flight is already underway,

a lot of the passengers on the flight

are getting information from the outside

about the attacks unfolding in New York,

and then later the Pentagon.

There were 37 calls that were exchanged on that flight,

messages that were left.

[Linda Gronlund] Elsa, it's Lin.

Um, I only have a minute. I'm on United 93 and it's been hijacked

by terrorists who say they have a bomb.

Apparently they've flown a couple of planes into the World Trade Center,

and it looks like they're going to take this one down as well.

Mostly I just wanted to say I love you… [crying]

…and I'm going to miss you.

And, and…

please give my love to Mom and Dad, and…

[shuddering breath]

Mostly I just love you, and I just wanted to tell you that.

I don't know if I'm going to get a chance to tell you that again or not.

[Pachucki] The assumed target we now know was the United States Capitol.

They understood that they were on a suicide mission

and they understood pretty quickly that it was up to them to do something.

[man] The, uh, remains of an airplane crash over on, uh, Lambertsville Road.

[Pachucki] And the passengers decide with the crew to charge the cockpit.

Ultimately, the hijackers made the decision to down the plane.

[Homer] They diverted the plane from where the terrorists wanted it to crash into,

and they saved a lot of people in doing that.

It's hard. Like, obviously I'm grateful that more devastation wasn't caused,

but at the same time, like,

I still lost him, so…

it's kind of a… struggle,

because it's like, I know he was a hero, but I wish he didn't have to be.

My mom, she told me at one point

she thought she was going to die of heartbreak.

She was, like, devastated…

and she has this young kid that she needs to take care of.

My entire life was kind of built around this.

I'm still struggling so much,

[voice breaking] and it has taken over my whole…

my whole life.

[siren wailing in distance]

[George W. Bush] Good evening.

Today our fellow citizens,

our way of life,

our very freedom came under attack

in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

-[indistinct dialog] -[sirens wailing]

[Graff] There are four attacks, and almost 3,000 people die.

But what that misses is what it was like to live and experience 9/11.

[woman sobbing]

That we miss the fear, the chaos, the confusion and the trauma of that day.

[person sobbing]

[man] They say someone needs help.

[Graff] We didn't know when the attacks began.

[woman] …needs some water.

[Graff] We didn't know when the attacks were over.

We didn't know for much of the day

how many attacks there had been.

We also didn't know whether there was another wave of attacks coming

in the afternoon of September 11th,

didn't know what was coming on September 12th.

We didn't know what was coming in October or in 2002.

If you miss the fear, the chaos, the confusion and the trauma,

you miss the entire reason that the US ends up responding in the way that we did.

[protesters shouting]

This was an epochal change in American life.

The feeling of violation

made it feel like anything could happen.

Like the pit had opened up.

The skies had rained fire, and who knows what could come next.

[Christian Sanchez] It felt justified to go.

Like, if we got attacked and they killed a bunch of our people,

obviously we should bring some justice to those that did it.

[man] It's like a war right now in the world.

-[man 2] This is gonna start a war. -Yeah.

-[man 2] This is gonna start a war. -Yeah.

It's gonna start a war. Sure, man. Hey.

[Smoak] I heard grownups talk about it,

so I started to understand more and more as I got older that what happened,

not really why it happened,

but other than they didn't like Americans.

[Homer] The way that my mom described what happened

was that there were bad men on his plane.

[Nguyen] I knew that the terrorists were involved.

I know they were coming from the Middle East,

but I didn't really fully understand, what was the intention?

Like, what was their goals?

[Bush] Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve…

for the children whose worlds have been shattered,

for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened…

and I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us.

Spoken through the ages in Psalm 23,

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil,

for you are with me."

[Dr. Joseph Geraci] It just kind of broke my heart, seeing the posters and the signs

for people looking for their family members.

The towers were still smoldering,

the rubble was still smoldering at that time.

You know, I don't think that I had ever felt such a calling.

Like what my life was for

is like, you know, we needed to help be part of the solution

and we needed to help to find the individuals who had done this.

[Jack Goldsmith] Within days, I think three days after 9/11,

there was just a lot of panic and uncertainty and ignorance and fear.

Immediately, the people in the White House and in the Justice Department realized

that they needed robust authorities to respond to it.

The one big sticking point tonight

is how much power to give the president to conduct this war

and to respond to any future acts of terrorism.

And they sought a super broad authorization to use military force,

as it's called, an AUMF,

from Congress for a very open-ended authorization to go after all terrorists,

essentially, all terrorist threats and to deter all terrorist threats.

[reporter] This draft resolution from the White House

authorizes use of armed forces

against all those who planned,

authorized, harbored, committed, or aided in the attacks

and to deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism.

[Dennis Hastert] Yeas are 420, the nays are one.

This resolution, joint resolution, is passed.

-[applause] -[gavel bangs]

[Oona Hathaway] The Constitution was written to really constrain

the president's authority to use military force.

The idea was we didn't want to have a king.

We didn't want to have one person who could

just launch the country into war.

And so the Constitution very carefully separates out the powers.

It's Congress that gets to declare war.

The 2001 authorization for use of military force

was enacted not with a lot of time for deliberation and careful reflection.

[Wolf Blitzer] Would you be willing to give up some of your liberties

in this country in order for the government

to crack down on terrorism?

66% said yes.

[General Stanley McChrystal] The AUMF, this 2001 statute

passed a few days after 9/11,

turned out to be the foundation stone on the next 25 years of war.

The basis for using force abroad all over the world,

the basis for the Guantanamo detentions,

and the basis in some sense for the black sites abroad.

It was really the legal foundation for everything that would come.

[Osama bin Laden in Arabic] We hold the American government responsible

for its transgressions on Muslims as a whole,

and for its support of the regimes in our countries

against the interests and well-being of the people.

[McChrystal] The 9/11 attacks had been orchestrated by Al-Qaeda

and led by Osama bin Laden, and he was in Afghanistan.

[speaking indistinctly]

[McChrystal] He was there as a guest of the Taliban-controlled government.

The US went to the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban,

and said, "Give him up, or push him out."

[British reporter] Under mounting pressure, Afghanistan's Taliban regime

today replied to charges that the attacks on New York and Washington

were coordinated from its territory.

And they refused.

And that meant that the United States said,

"All right, well, we're gonna come in after him."

[Geraci] We got the call to go forward and deploy in Afghanistan with my unit.

And being in a unit that was at the tip of the spear,

that was our job, to go forth and to accomplish that task.

[firing]

We felt overwhelming support for our mission during that time.

There was a sense of excitement about it,

a sense of like, fulfilling, like, what your profession is.

"This is what I'm here for. This is what we were trained for."

And kind of an aspect of pride

to be in a unit that, you know, was trained for moments like that.

[people cheering]

[reporter] One by one, the Afghan cities

started to fall to the US-led opposition forces.

[cheering continues]

[Obaidullah Durani] I was living in Afghanistan, in Kunar Province.

In Afghanistan, it was a complete dictatorship.

There was just set-up rules by the Taliban for the people.

I was like, uh, 10 or 11 years old.

My father was listening to the radio and the news.

That's how we found out about the 9/11.

-[man on radio] …explosion… -[reporter] Oh my God,

another plane just hit the World Trade Center.

Another plane. It was a medium-sized plane.

Unbelievable. It looked like… Oh my…

[indistinct singing]

[Durani] In the time of Taliban, we were not aware of the war,

what's going on outside.

Like, it was just somewhere something happened.

But after American arrival in Afghanistan, then we realized, like,

that something bad happened.

[speaking Afghan language]

[Gopal] When the US invaded in 2001,

the Taliban were viewed by most Afghans as an extraordinarily repressive regime.

[joyful music playing in background]

And people viewed the Americans as liberators.

And there was a lot of hope, there was a groundswell of hope

that the US would come and bring development and peace.

By December 2001, the Taliban had collapsed.

[Durani] One day is Taliban rule.

Another day, there is no rules of Taliban. Like, everything is brightened up.

Everybody is, like, "We are liberated right now

and we can live our life as we want."

[instructor speaking indistinctly]

[reporter] Sources tell ABC News there is evidence Osama bin Laden is still alive,

still on the run, and still in control.

That is why we are there. That is why we are chasing them.

That is why we are bombing.

That is why we are working with Afghan forces.

[pilot speaking indistinctly]

It was my dream from childhood to become a pilot.

And I follow up with my dream and I became a pilot.

I came to the United States to become a fighter pilot.

And I moved back to my country

and served in the military against the Taliban.

Our main goal is to keep our people safe from the Taliban and the Taliban rules.

[glass breaking]

[liquid hissing]

Because I have seen them before…

[indistinct dialog over radio]

…and I didn't want them to come back in the power.

[explosion]

Americans… Like, we were counterparts.

We were, like, allies.

[indistinct speaker on computer]

[Mohammad Razvi] In 1978, I was about seven years old.

I came here, and the first thing I ate was pizza. [laughs]

I was like, "Oh my God."

The place I grew up is known as Little Pakistan.

It's right in Brooklyn, New York.

My dad opened up the first store,

and then there was a mosque, and then things started to grow.

You know, immigrants, what do they do? They work, they work, they work.

And I had a grocery store across the street, a 99-cent store.

I also had a restaurant.

[laughing] I was living the American dream.

[indistinct chatter]

Everybody, we all were immigrants but we are, like, Americans.

I never felt my identity

was negative.

[woman] The whole second tower collapsed.

The whole building is gone.

The whole building.

[sirens blaring]

[Razvi] And the attacks happened.

No, I was just in tears. I just couldn't believe it at that time.

[exhales]

And these people, what they've just did, it's just unbelievable.

[woman] Oh, those poor people. Oh God.

[Razvi] After the buildings fell, the ashes floated

towards right in front of my doorstep.

[crying] When the ashes came, that was the devastating part…

because that was a moment like, "Oh my God."

[indistinct dialog]

I was working actually in this fabric store,

and my Italian paisans who were next to me,

they're like, "How could you people do this?"

And I'm like, "These are not my people."

We have three daughters and two boys.

At that time it was just two and two.

I went home and just sat.

I just told them, we have nothing to do with this.

And when the country's going to war with this particular group,

what do you think the local people are going to do?

They're going to go to war on us.

[woman] I hope they send all of you back.

I hope they kill your people, innocent people also.

Go back to your country. We don't want you here.

-There's another one. -[machine] To delete, press one.

[beeps]

[man] Hello, Muslims.

Why'd you kill at least 5,000 people at the World Trade Center today?

You just woke up a sleeping giant with the Americans.

We're gonna kick your ****ing ass now.

[indistinct dialog]

We are also Americans

and we are just as much involved in this tragedy as everybody else.

I'm saying the man that was the leader of your people

is the man that makes all the threats against America.

It's very important for us to not point fingers at a religion.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims on the face of the earth.

We are being blamed for something that we have no control or nothing to do with.

Muslims are not terrorists.

Muslims are not terrorists.

All of a sudden, I'm a foreigner.

I'd never felt that.

[reporter] He's felt under constant surveillance

and is convinced he's been closely monitored.

[Razvi] Maybe a week after 9/11,

I get a knock on the door, FBI.

"Do you have gatherings in your basement?" I said yes.

"I have a large family. We go downstairs and we pray."

Asked further questions. He goes, "Where do you work?"

I said, "I run the grocery store and the 99-cent store."

"All right, so maybe we'll stop by and just see you later then."

If it can happen to me,

could you just imagine if it's happening to a person who barely speaks English

or who is here and does not understand the system?

He's going to be terrified.

My oldest daughter, she was pushed down the steps,

her scarf was pulled off, and she was cursed at.

I was like, "My God, why'd you…"

She goes, "Dad, that's exactly why I didn't tell you."

"Because I know you would have done a huge thing."

It just broke my heart that she didn't tell me.

But I understood why she didn't tell me

because then she would become center of attention.

[applause]

[Bush] The Homeland Security Act of 2002 takes the next critical steps

in defending our country.

[Ackerman] There was never something called Homeland Security

in the United States before 9/11.

[woman] …most dynamic federal government organization.

[Ackerman] It sounds off.

It sounds like something that's a relic of European nationalisms,

as opposed to what had been a conception of the American way of life,

which is that you can come from anywhere,

and provided that you believe in these sorts of things

and are willing to work to live in harmony with one another,

great, we've got another American here.

[applause]

The Department of Homeland Security

was a harbinger of how all of that was about to change.

Very quickly, it seemed the focus of the War on Terror

was something much larger,

much more difficult to define.

Now, all of a sudden, the elements of

American immigration policy

had a counterterrorism mandate behind them.

That was the beginnings of the agencies that would become ICE.

[protesters chanting] Fuck ICE!

[Ackerman] The Department of Homeland Security established conceptually, firmly,

that the War on Terror was not just happening overseas,

it was happening at home.

[train horn blowing]

[woman] You look so happy.

-[Homer] I like that one. -[woman] That's a great one.

[Homer] I have a copy of that in my wallet.

My dad became a pilot at 16 years old.

He got his license and then he went on to the Air Force Academy.

I've kind of stopped myself from learning a lot of things about him.

It's still really difficult for me to know anything

because the more that I do know,

the more that I think about what I didn't have

and the life I missed out on.

You do look like him.

I know. [laughs sadly]

[sniffles]

I'm not good at looking through photos.

[woman] I know, it's very emotional.

-[Homer] Yeah. -It's okay.

[Homer] My generation learned about 9/11 through social media,

so Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

I'm, in a way, like, some sort of slightly public figure

because you can look me up.

There have been multiple times where I've been messaged, DM'd about him.

If they're just trying to get a rise out of me, I don't know.

People will make jokes about Bush doing 9/11,

jokes about Osama bin Laden,

and it's just become such a meme.

And there's so many conspiracies.

I've seen so many YouTube channels

posting whole videos about conspiracies.

Do you think it was possible that 9/11 was an inside job?

Well, I think it's not only possible, but confirmed that they lied to us about it.

[Homer] Comments that this is all a hoax

or an inside job.

Comments are very insensitive.

And I've had people comment just, like, disgusting things.

[crying] It just made me realize how vulnerable I felt

because there's so much information about this event,

which is something that somebody could attack me about, basically.

It is kind of just a historical moment now.

We have a whole new generation of people who weren't even, like, alive,

or they were young when this happened.

But it's inescapable.

In recent years, I've really been reflecting on my childhood

and what should have been, kind of.

[cat meows]

I've been trying to find a word for it,

feeling like you were supposed to have this life

and then, like, something destroys that entire future.

[disturbing music playing]

[Graff] The shifting technological landscape

of, you know, the web and social media

supercharges the pre-existing conspiratorial nature

that has long existed in corners of the United States.

You see 9/11 really collide with

the turbocharging of conspiracies in America

to launch this entire, you know, incredibly dark movement

that we now call 9/11 Truthers.

Hello, I'm Alex Jones.

[Graff] And this poison spreads out across

all of the sort of far right and far left

conspiratorial circles in America

and infects our politics.

It affects our national culture and debate.

And what companies realize very quickly is

that the thing that drives engagement is content that enrages.

[woman] We know that open air fires cannot burn hot enough to melt steel,

but metal had melted at the base of the towers.

[Graff] And so you see these conspiracies spread,

you see political polarization spread.

We are facing the rise of Islamo-Nazism rising all around the world.

[Graff] Other countries figure this out, like Russia,

begin to sort of use some of these tools against us

to spread disinformation and polarizing content online.

There is a very clear through line

that takes us from the darkest corners of 9/11

to the darkest corners of our politics today.

[Wendell Clyne] I guess that went off automatically.

They've evacuated everyone in the hotel.

They've evacuated all employees.

-[Bryant Gumbel] They evacuated the hotel? -Yes.

-[Gumbel] Immediately? -Yes.

[Gumbel] Are you hearing anything, Wendell,

-about what kind of a plane it was? -No.

-[Gumbel] Or how many were on board? -No.

[Gumbel] All right. Mr. Clyne, thank you very much, sir.

I understand Teresa…

[Gopal] Immediately during the attack,

I remember the types of rumors that we were hearing,

there was just extraordinary levels of confusion.

We ended up,

meaning undergrads at NYU who were living near the towers,

ended up being put into a hotel.

And I lived in a hotel for a couple of months.

At that time, I was studying physics,

but I began to pay attention to the rest of the world for the first time.

I was young. I was 20.

And I began to follow the War on Terror.

The reason I went to Afghanistan is because

I'd been following all the news

and felt really dissatisfied with the way the news was being portrayed,

because I didn't really understand what was happening.

When I got there, pretty quickly I began to report,

and I began to see a different side of the conflict…

in Afghanistan.

You had this weird situation

where you had thousands of American troops on Afghan soil,

and there was no enemy to fight.

So the way this contradiction was resolved is that the US began to ally

with warlords around the country.

And they said, "We're here to fight a War on Terror."

"We're here to fight bad guys, and you need to produce us bad guys."

"Give us intelligence. Where are the bad guys?"

-[man] Talib! Talib! -[man 2 shouting]

[Gopal] They paid these warlords to do so.

So these warlords are now incentivized to produce intelligence.

So, for example, you have a plot of land,

and I want that land,

I'm going to go tell the Americans you're a member of Al-Qaeda.

The US troops would take this intelligence,

they would raid the household, take the people away.

[in Afghan language] No, I'm not a member of Al-Qaeda. I'm a student.

[Gopal] This happened again and again and again.

And the consequence of this was that

whereas there had been only a groundswell of support for the US,

gradually villagers started to turn against the Americans,

and no longer saw them as liberators, but began to see them as occupiers.

[man] Woohoo!

[Gopal] This laid the seeds for the reconstitution of the Taliban.

9/11 and the War on Terror set in motion a process

where trust and faith in government leaders

was systematically undermined.

We were told that we had to invade Iraq, for example,

because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

[Bush] We owe it to our children, our children's children,

to free the world from weapons of mass destruction.

Weapons of mass destruction.

Weapons of mass destruction?

It turned out not to be true.

And that set in motion a crisis of confidence

and a divisiveness that has never really been healed, much less repaired.

[protesters shouting]

We stand for liberation and democracy, gentlemen!

The killing of Osama bin Laden really, to many people,

signified an end to the War on Terror.

It was over. It was just mopping up.

[all singing]

[chanting] USA!

[Hoffman] But meanwhile, in Iraq, a new terrorist group is arising.

[rapid gunfire]

[Gopal] In the chaos of the US occupation of Iraq,

all sorts of groups start to pop up to resist the occupiers.

One of those groups is Al-Qaeda.

Eventually, through the course of that war,

Al-Qaeda radicalizes, and a section splits off

and becomes what we know as ISIS.

ISIS becomes one of the most formidable terrorist organizations in history.

[Khan] On 9/11, I was in English class,

and somebody came into our classroom and said, "Turn on the TV."

And we did.

And not long after that, the principal called me and my sister and said,

"You guys can go home."

I think we were the only Muslims at school,

and they, out of a desire to be proactive about taking care of us,

let our parents come pick us up.

And as I came of age,

the United States started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And you saw the real spread of the cycle of violence.

[Barack Obama] Happy you're here. Thank you.

[Hoffman] Obama began to rely much more heavily on targeted assassinations,

using unmanned aircraft, drones,

Predator and Reaper drones that fired a Hellfire missile.

And would target not just identified terrorist leaders,

but also undertake what were called signature strikes.

In other words, even if there wasn't

actual intelligence identifying the specific individuals,

we would still launch the attack.

And of course, inevitably, tragedy ensued in the sense that

in some attacks, innocent civilians were mistakenly killed.

[McChrystal] When you watch these from afar,

it's almost like drone strikes on anything.

They look like a computer game,

and it's an explosion.

On the ground, it's very different.

It's a gruesome activity. People are blown up.

People are burned badly.

[Hathaway] The Obama administration decided that

they could use military force against ISIS,

even though it didn't exist on 9/11,

using authority granted in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

It set the stage for the continued use of military force

under that authority for another decade.

[pilot] I took my first flight when I was 14 years old.

And I had my private pilot's license when I was 16.

And I always wanted to be a fighter pilot.

When I was a kid, I burned through two VHS copies of Top Gun.

After 9/11, I went to the Marine Corps recruiter,

and he said, "How many pull-ups can you do?"

The mission we were supporting was Operation Inherent Resolve.

It encompassed Iraq and Syria.

Our job was to provide air support

either through reconnaissance or direct action,

dropping bombs, strikes, things like that,

against ISIS.

I would like my identity to remain anonymous just because

I'm sure that there's people out there that would want to seek retribution.

I wish we didn't have to do it.

I loved my job.

I loved killing ISIS.

But it's not lost on me of the gravity of what we were doing.

I'd rather be back in San Diego

eating fish tacos on the beach.

But this is what I signed up for. This is what they're paying me to do.

This is what they're trusting me to do.

So I'm going to do it.

[Khan] I remember so well these really impossible statistics coming out.

The United States saying that they'd killed as many as 25,000 ISIS fighters.

And at the same time, only admitting 21 or 24 civilian deaths.

That's just not possible.

I began trying to get on the ground and investigate civilian casualties myself.

You know, if you take the government's data

about what percentage that they admitted civilian deaths were occurring,

it would be less than 1% of all these strikes

were resulting in a civilian death.

But I spent a lot of time going on the ground,

going to a sample of these airstrikes,

and what I found was that

one in five strikes was resulting in a civilian death.

That's not two times higher, three times higher than what the government thought.

That was 31 times higher.

And people were so inviting.

They were so welcoming.

I can't remember anyone who said no to talking to me.

For so many of these civilians, there had been a belief

that the Americans can be precise. They can be surgical.

I remember one man pointing at a teacup,

holding his teacup, and saying,

"The Americans could just hit this teacup if they wanted."

That was his belief.

"And look at what they did to my family."

Over and over,

I heard from parents who would tell me about

the way their daughter laughed,

or would show me a photo of her holding, like, a firework,

the night before she was killed.

Like her vibrancy, her youth,

that particular loss of outliving your child.

That always stays with me.

Like I don't know how…

people move on after that.

[Stephen Wertheim] By the time Obama left office,

the United States was fighting terrorism in some form

in approximately 13 countries.

The phrase "endless war" and "forever war,"

become more widely used.

[siren wailing]

Obama, even as he is the drone president,

conducting these drone strikes on a routine basis

over more and more of the Earth,

is saying out loud, you know,

how do we know if we're not creating more terrorists than we're killing?

[man] We have a problem in this country.

It's called Muslims.

We know our current president is one.

-Right. -You know he's not even an American.

-We need this question. -[man] Birth certificate, man.

But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us.

That's my question. When can we get rid of 'em?

We're gonna be looking at a lot of things.

And you know, a lot of people are saying that

and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there.

[Ackerman] Donald Trump is not a subtle man

but understands subtext extremely well.

[crowd chanting] Trump! Trump!

[Ackerman] What he saw very early on was that the War on Terror

was a pathway to power

for inflamed nativist elements

that felt the country was further and further slipping away from them.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown

of Muslims entering the United States. Until…

[Ackerman] Trump's movement recognized that there was

still a tremendous amount of political potency to be had

from the War on Terror.

I think Islam… hates us.

Build the wall! Build the wall!

I want surveillance of certain mosques.

[siren blips]

[Graff] The border becomes this dominant topic of conversation

all out of proportion to the actual problems at the border

in the 2016 campaign.

Folks, brick by brick,

that wall is going to get built.

We're gonna have a situation on our border that isn't mired in violence and chaos.

-…The left. Who is on your list? -Will you shut up, man?

[Hoffman] Four years later, in the 2020 presidential campaign,

I think arguably there was only one issue

that President Trump and presidential candidate Biden agreed on,

and that was ending the endless wars.

[Trump] Afghanistan, how about that?

Where, by the way, I started the process, all the troops are coming back home,

they couldn't stop the process.

[cheering]

[reporter] Militants captured the pilot in December

when his F-16 crashed in Syria.

This video may be…

[Wilson] I had just turned three years old on 9/11.

My birthday was nine days before everything went down.

At least for me personally, joining the Marine Corps

was to fight ISIS because that is kind of what I saw.

[reporter] …by the Islamic State extremist group.

A video posted online today shows the captors burning the man alive, while…

[Wilson] It was like, I'm pissed and I want to go do something about it.

It wasn't 9/11.

I think that's a big shift between the early GWOT war

compared to mostly my generation.

And I remember being like, I want to be a part of that,

of trying to stop that.

[indistinct shouting in background]

[Sanchez] I shipped to boot camp August 26 of 2017.

And then graduated boot camp

in October or early November.

I had always heard that Marines were the killers.

I wanted to go to Afghanistan or Iraq and kill terrorists.

That was my dream as a kid.

So that was the same unit as Smoak and Wyatt.

Wyatt, he was a very serious guy. [laughs]

He would always look annoyed.

[exhales]

I remember always seeing him

and he would always look annoyed or pissed or something.

But he was a good guy. I mean, I liked him a lot.

[Hoffman] In April 2021,

President Biden announced that the United States would be withdrawing

from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.

We went to Afghanistan

because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago.

[reporter] President essentially defending a position he has held for a while now,

which is that there was no military option left in Afghanistan.

And he said he didn't want to send another generation, essentially,

of young men and women to go fight an unwinnable war, in his view.

[reporter 2] From the moment US troops started pulling back,

the Taliban went on the offensive.

[reporter 3] In a matter of days,

the Taliban has blitzed across Afghanistan,

taken over city after city.

[Smoak] We were sitting in the chow hall eating probably lunch or dinner,

and I was watching it on TV,

and all the provinces were falling.

They were changing them red on the TV when the Taliban would take them.

And it was all just surrounding, headed towards Kabul.

My thoughts were,

what the hell have we been doing for 20 years?

Why were all the lives wasted, pretty much,

if we're just going to turn around

and they're just going to take it right back over?

[siren blaring]

[man speaking Afghan language]

You see all the Talibans on the road.

This is scary.

Think about it.

They're in the control.

Someone with my history,

through all the records,

like, the place where we have bombed,

it's still in the computers with them.

My biometric data is with them.

Everybody's biometric data is with them.

There is no government, nothing.

It's like if you are living in a bright place

and suddenly the light goes out…

[man] Allahu Akbar!

…you're just in the middle of chaos.

[Hoffman] Hamid Karzai International Airport was just thronged

with Afghans desperate to flee.

[people clamoring]

People who had worked with the United States military,

with the United States government,

office clerks, translators, mechanics, cleaning personnel,

or who worked for any United States organization, even for US NGOs.

[person screaming]

They feared that they'd be singled out for vengeance.

[reporter] Evacuations are proceeding slowly with thousands of Americans still

wanting and waiting to get out.

[reporter 2] It could be the largest evacuation

since the fall of Saigon 46 years ago.

[Nguyen] Seeing the fall of Kabul,

it was striking but also painful

from a family perspective.

My mom told me about when the South Vietnamese government fell

to the communist north.

You know, the similarity is just like the Taliban taking over the capital city.

And just people trying to escape

from what they know that would be a catastrophic situation.

It has very similar emotion, but also just the imagery itself.

[people clamoring]

History somehow repeats itself.

Sometimes there's no words.

[people shouting and clamoring]

[reporter] Many of them, of course, have legitimate claims

they are eligible for flights,

but the Taliban aren't letting them through,

and their response on the ground is brutal.

[rapid gunfire]

They're firing automatic weapons over the heads of the crowd repeatedly.

[gunfire]

[people shouting and clamoring]

They're using sticks to beat people.

They're pointing guns in people's faces.

[Wilson] That's when we started to hear rumors.

It's like, "Oh shit, what's happening? What's gonna happen?"

And then it comes down that, "Hey, you're going."

And we're like, "Oh shit, here we go. This is what we want."

Just feeling like, finally a real world mission.

[reporter] US President Joe Biden

authorized the deployment of roughly 5,000 troops

to support the drawdown.

[Wilson] And it's like, all right, gear check.

Are the guys ready to go? Who's going? Who's not going?

[Sanchez] You start loading ammo. Everybody's loading ammo, getting ready.

[soldier] Everyone up! Target gun!

-[Sanchez] Everybody's excited. -[rapid fire]

This was, like, the dream.

The dream place to go for a Marine Corps infantryman is Afghanistan, Iraq.

[rapid fire continues]

[Smoak] I was kind of talking to my guys about before we go, you know,

whatever God you believe in,

you need to get right with him because anything can happen.

We got told that we were going in for a noncombative evacuation.

We were going to go get US citizens, Afghans with the proper credentials.

We were gonna get them out of the country.

Operation Allies Refuge.

We flew out of Jordan,

landed in Kuwait.

We were in Kuwait 36 hours maybe.

[Smoak] And then we flew from Kuwait into Afghanistan

and landed at night at Kabul Airport.

You could hear gunshots in the distance and then you'd see tracers fly.

[gunfire]

Made sure all my guys had all their stuff on, everything was good.

We get told we're going to Abbey Gate.

I'm like, "Hell yeah, okay, so we're going to Abbey Gate."

Nobody knew what Abbey Gate was.

I'm like, "Here we fucking go, dudes."

[indistinct chatter]

[dog barks]

[speaking indistinctly]

[Wilson] And we get there.

I remember looking around like, "What the fuck is this?"

[all clamoring]

[shouting]

[Sanchez] I remember seeing, like, so many people in front of this gate.

[shouting]

[Wilson] It's just a wall of humans.

[Hoffman] We deployed these young Marines who were trained, of course, in combat,

every Marine is a rifleman,

but they're doing things they've never been prepared or trained for.

Crowd control, for example.

Interpreting official pieces of paper

that may be written in one of the Afghan dialects,

not necessarily in English.

[soldier] Hey, hey!

[Hoffman] This is a highly unstable,

highly volatile situation.

[Smoak] This was nearly 20 years after 9/11.

And what started on 9/11

ended right here at Abbey Gate.

We were told we were to treat the Taliban like they were our allies.

We're there to work together to get these people out of Afghanistan.

That is

crazy to hear.

[men yelling]

Especially for, like, our platoon sergeants

who had been in for almost 20 years and had been at the height of the war

and been there, done that.

The people who killed my friends 10 years ago, they're my ally now.

It was very, very surreal to hear that.

[pilot] Abbey Gate was a microcosm of

the 20-plus year war in the Middle East.

Watching Afghanistan crumble,

I don't know how any person can see Afghanistan, Iraq,

anything other than a failure.

A lot of these people did not have a US passport, a green card, a visa.

They didn't have anything. They just wanted to leave.

They were just scared.

[horns honking]

There was chaos inside and outside of the city.

And going into the airport, the gates are closed,

and they're not letting people go inside because there were,

like, thousands of people.

I was holding the kids.

My daughter was three months old, and my son was two and a half.

[people clamoring]

[Wilson] We didn't have anywhere to send them back out if they were rejected.

So we made a hole in a chain-link fence, and we called it the Freedom Gate.

And if you couldn't make it, I'm sorry, but through there you go.

-[shot firing] -[people screaming]

[Smoak] The Taliban would be on the other side of this,

and if they did not get through, they would beat 'em,

shoot 'em, and then it just kind of sucked because,

you know, I'm the one sitting there, and I know what's going to happen to 'em,

but I-I… can't do nothing

if they didn't have the right paperwork,

which is a pretty crazy responsibility for a 23-year-old.

I would like to think that I didn't lose compassion for people,

but you definitely become numb.

[somber music playing]

Word was getting out that we were going to close all the gates.

There was a lot of desperation,

people giving their kids up.

[Sanchez] Some of those people had babies on them,

so they thought the best option was probably, like, throw the babies over.

[soldier speaking indistinctly]

It was very surreal to see, like, because I have kids,

and it was hard to think about giving one of them up like that.

[laughs sadly] Yeah.

[children crying]

[Wilson] I had a picture of my daughter in my Kevlar.

Four days after I deployed on my first deployment

is when my oldest was born.

My platoon sergeant also has kids,

and I don't know what it was,

but we kind of just bumped into each other in passing,

and I ended up just breaking down.

I lost it right then and there.

The new generation.

My wife was sick at the time.

She was weak.

She was not able to walk properly.

My daughter was so small, and the American Marine, he said,

"Give me your daughter, I will get her inside,

and you guys can come through the gate."

My wife was left behind…

[shouting in Afghan language]

…and they shut the gate after her.

And she's still back in Afghanistan.

That's terrible.

I was told that we will evacuate her.

I have not seen anything.

I was happy.

Suddenly you lose everything.

You have a happy life,

and you lose it in one day.

[Hoffman] To compound matters,

intelligence was received that ISIS-K…

So in other words, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,

had a branch in Afghanistan called ISIS-Khorasan.

Khorasan is the ancient name for that part of the region.

ISIS-K was planning an attack.

[Sanchez] We got told that it was going to be a suicide bomber

that would be probably clean shaved with a black bag with an arrow on it.

We were searching for this guy.

We didn't know when he was going to come.

[Smoak] And everybody was just kind of like,

"All right, how do you want me to pick that out of here?"

You know, there's thousands of people in front of me.

We were kind of at a standstill just holding everybody back,

waiting to get the final word if we're pulling out or not.

And somebody screamed, "IED."

[explosion]

The bomb went off.

I saw a big cloud of smoke, and an arm flying through the air.

[people clamoring]

[Sanchez] My ears are ringing. I can't hear anything.

And I start seeing a face in front of me.

Like, it didn't look alive.

And I was just like, I couldn't process who that face was.

[Smoak] I jumped up and started to run towards the hole in the fence

that we had cut through the Abbey Gate.

An officer grabbed me and tried to stop me.

I told him to get his fucking hands off of me,

that those were all of my friends in there.

And I turned around and started running towards…

Now I could see pretty much just a pile of bodies.

And the first person that I came to,

um, was one of my best friends, uh, Corporal Daegan Page.

I just knew as soon as I saw him that he was dead.

Somebody grabbed one side of his chest rig, and I grabbed the other

and started dragging him back to the hole

that we had in the fence.

My captain told me that he had Page

and told me to go back and get more people.

So I left him…

and, uh…

[sniffles]

Sorry.

[sniffles]

[clears throat]

[indistinct clamoring and dialog in Afghan language]

-[yelling] -[sharp snapping sounds]

And I start hearing screaming and, like, snaps coming.

[snapping sounds]

I thought I was seeing stars or something, but they looked like flashes.

My mind immediately went to, "I'm getting fucking shot at."

I had gotten shot in my left shoulder.

I was about 10 yards from the blast.

The canal wall was right here,

and then he was just on the other side of it.

My right lung had collapsed.

A bearing hit me in the jaw, in my lat, and then stitched up on my right side,

and I was shot down in the bottom of my right leg.

And I'm walking out, stumbling out.

It feels like I'm breathing through a straw.

Daegan Page and Max Soviak,

those two were inseparable.

They were just good dudes.

Everywhere Max went, Page went. Everywhere Page went, Max went.

[people clamoring]

Max and Page were behind me by a little bit, and then we got hit,

and when I turned around, I crawled over somebody.

And to this day, I'm still convinced

that who I crawled over was Page.

But yeah, they didn't make it.

[people clamoring in Afghan language]

That's when I tried to grab Kelsee.

Kelsee Lainhart was part of the female engagement team.

I grabbed her, I drug her as far as I could.

I've kind of come to the realization, "This is where I die."

"Fuck it."

I just rolled over.

"This is where it's going to happen."

Got as comfortable as I could and laid back.

[people clamoring]

[Sanchez] And then I looked to my right, and there's all this screaming going on,

and there's, uh…

I see Wyatt coming in on a stretcher.

[Wilson] They sent me down in a dimly lit hallway, while this JSOC doc

finds me pulseless.

He takes a shot in the dark and performs a emergency thoracotomy…

last-ditch effort.

They cut through your sternum and then they hand-pump your heart.

He got me going again and then,

I'm not sure how many units of blood your body holds,

but whatever they gave me is the equivalent of an entire body's worth.

[Smoak] Wilson, he's got a tattoo on his, I think his shoulder or his arm,

and it sums up his entire life.

It says, "I'm too stubborn to die."

And it's the truth, because he is a stubborn son of a bitch.

[Wilson] I did not know he was ISIS,

but through the investigation and everything,

like, when I got back to California,

I kind of found out it was ISIS.

And the guy had actually been in jail,

but he was freed when the Taliban came through.

Yeah.

[Sanchez] We had, uh, 13 service members KIA.

Seeing Wyatt is like a gift. [laughs]

Uh, it really is.

Like, when I saw him on that stretcher…

[sniffles]

…and, like, when I see him now,

like, I don't know, I just get filled with joy. [laughs]

Like, I don't know how to explain that. Like… [sniffles]

Like, I'm just so happy he's here. [laughs]

[Wilson] Two or three days after I woke up, they wheeled me over there,

and I got to meet Kelsee.

Your brain's scrambled,

so you don't really realize the significance of everything.

Thankfully, those guys actually pulled her out.

She came to my retirement.

She was paralyzed.

[Sanchez] Like, every night or every other night,

we would get, like, an intel brief

of how many people we saved, like, throughout that week.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

Towards the end, it was like 120,000 people. Like, damn.

[Smoak] It feels good

to have done something,

to have been a part of it, and to help people's lives.

It feels good.

But at the same time,

what was it worth?

This might not be the politically correct answer, but in my opinion,

I would not have traded a single Afghan life for any of my friends.

[somber music playing]

I noticed it pretty quick that I was like, I should not have come home.

I should've been in the hospital for two more months.

Thankfully, they forced me in to go see a psychiatrist,

because I never would have done it by myself.

And still to this day, I see that same psychiatrist.

I didn't want to talk about it. I refused to talk about it. I hated it.

Then once I realized, like, talking about it, it's okay to talk about it,

It's okay to be vulnerable for five seconds…

And trust me, I have a huge fucking ego.

And when I finally do drop it

and realize it's okay,

things start getting better really fast.

-[child] Dada? -[Wilson] What's up?

[child] How do you get on this rock?

-Huh? -I want to get on that big rock.

-You're scared on the big rock? -Hey!

-Let me down. -Let you down?

Dad, stop!

Stop holding my butt!

[Wilson] So I had Pops on my first deployment.

[indistinct toddler chatter in background]

And then Pagie… Pagie was born in 2022.

She's about to be four.

And then she's named after Daegan Page and Max Soviak.

But I shortened Soviak to Sovi, so it kind of fits her a little bit better.

[indistinct family chatter]

Pops lived it. Yeah, she saw me in the hospital.

She was two and a half at that point.

Yeah, she's my little trauma baby.

We're going through this thing. We're going through it together.

She's raising me as much as I'm raising her.

[reporter] Scenes of desperation and chaos in Afghanistan

are being seen around the world.

[Wilson] I don't even know how to explain it.

I can barely explain it to you guys in a way that makes sense,

let alone to an 8- and 9-year-old when they get to that age.

-[Poppy] Oh! -Huh?

[Page] Daddy, I have these lemons!

Look!

[Sanchez] My kids, they've seen me shirtless with my bullet scar,

and they've asked me what it is.

I don't like to sugarcoat it, because I got shot.

There are bad people in this world, and some of them try to hurt you.

My wife hates it because they're already saying they want to be Marines

and put her through that trauma.

And now we got to see our kids go through it? That would probably suck.

[reporter] Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021,

some 200,000 Afghans, many who supported the US war effort,

have found refuge in the United States.

I got on the plane like it was a charter flight

from Kabul to Bahrain and from Bahrain to New Jersey.

In New Jersey, I've been in a camp for like a month.

Then I left the camp to come to Arizona.

Right now, I'm doing Amazon Flex,

like just an hour and two hours, three hours a day,

because I can't work properly because I have my kids all the time on me.

I'm waiting on my wife until she joins me.

She is the wife of a former pilot.

Since 2021, she's living under the hijab all the time.

It's the Taliban rules.

She do not feel good at all.

You lose your husband, you lose your son, you lose your daughter.

What's going to happen to you?

[Graff] The irony is the existential threat to American freedom and liberty

came not from these terrorists in Afghanistan,

and not from the threat of terrorism,

but from our nation's response to terrorism.

Bin Laden really believed that he could never destroy the United States,

but by attacking the United States,

by sort of pricking the edges of the US empire,

he could cause the United States to destroy itself.

If you start to scratch at almost any aspect of our daily lives

in the United States today,

I can show you how 9/11 changed that part of our country.

-[CBP agents yelling] -[protesters yelling]

[people screaming]

[Hathaway] We see the harm that this does

to our own sense of legal constraints on the president's authority.

We see these military tactics coming back home.

[man screaming] What the hell?

[Hathaway] We see some of the treatment of Americans

that looks awfully familiar for people who've seen the War on Terror abroad.

-Bro-- -[woman] Get the fuck off him!

[people yelling]

And now realize, "Oh, it's a terrible thing

when a single person can order a use of military force

or order a use of force that's lethal, and there's nothing I can do about it."

[reporter] The Trump administration now confirms

it hit an alleged drug boat not once, but twice,

the second strike ordered after the first failed to kill everyone on board.

[Trump] This military operation, I won't use the word "war,"

they don't like the word "war," because you're supposed to get approval,

so I'll use the word "military operation."

[Pete Hegseth] We will finish this

on America-first conditions of President Trump's choosing.

Death and destruction from the sky.

[explosion]

[Ackerman] People generally think the War on Terror is over.

Their political leadership has told them of that.

Well, the authorities, the institutions, and many of the operations persist.

They just find new targets.

We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we have seen its final form.

It will come for more and more of us.

[Goldsmith] We really are at an inflection point in terms of

there has to be soon a large turnover

among the very aged politicians who've been in power for a long time.

And it is true, just read the polls,

the younger generation thinks differently about these things.

My students literally weren't born then.

9/11 to them is like, uh, World War II to me.

Or even less so, it's an even dimmer memory.

They've kind of inherited the current situation.

[young woman] We don't know what it's like to not have

police officers in the subways or on every corner.

It's a lot more scary for us to think that

if we're in the wrong place at the wrong time,

our lives could be affected immensely

or even just our lives taken away from us.

[young man] Events like that happen, things that are so catastrophic,

they change the world, but there's nothing we can do about that.

So we just kind of live in the different world.

What did we get from the war in Afghanistan?

[Gopal] This is the longest war in American history,

and it's also the longest war in Afghan history.

So it's this intergenerational trauma.

I've spoken to a lot of American soldiers over the years,

and it's unclear if you talk to somebody who landed in 2021,

what they're doing at that moment has to do with the 9/11 attacks.

[Wilson] I mean, we got the guy in charge of it.

You can say that's a plus,

but it wasn't until 10 years fucking later.

[man] At 25 years since 9/11, how do you make sense of the global War on Terror?

That's the million-dollar question, right? Was it worth it?

[Homer] I feel like I went through so much,

and my family went through so much, when I was so young.

The fact that I've made it out of it, like, shocks me a lot.

I wish I knew what I would have been like

or what my life would have been like before,

but I didn't really get a "before."

I'm kind of just trying to catch up with, like, a life that I lost.

I'm just going to keep trying to do my best. [laughs]

Since the 25 years, our American society has become divisive

and just not willing to listen to each other.

So it is critically important to have dialogue

and a constructive way of resolving differences.

History will judge based on what we do right now.

[solemn music playing]

[music ends]