America marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11

0:00Hello and welcome to Neesah. For the BBC World Service, we're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. 25 years ago today, New Yorkers woke to an now famously clear crisp morning. We had live shots from Washington, DC, Miami, Florida and a couple of live pictures in New York, including this one. That's the World Trade Center. It's going to be an award winner of a day here today. Cooler, less human, bright sunshine. Bring your wallet, come to New York, spend it all. Well, September the 11th, 2001 was a date that would change the world forever. Minutes before nine o'clock, a passenger jet dipped and flew low across Manhattan. It approached the north tower of the World Trade Center and slammed straight into the side of it, cutting a broad scar through the towering skyscraper. On the street below, a filmmaker was following New York firefighters on which it had been a routine shift. When he heard the sound, he turned his camera upwards. Steve Evans, a BBC correspondent, was inside the World Trade Center when the aircraft struck

1:23and began to report. I was in the base of the building when this happened. First of all, there was a huge bang and it felt as though a construction company or something like that had rubbed away from a very, very great height. The building physically shook. I initially thought no more about it thinking there's a bit of a problem on a building side, but then seconds later there were two or three more very big explosions and this building, this huge building, towering into the sky, again physically shook and at that point people came screaming past me saying, just get out, just get out, just get out. In those first moments, confusion reigned. It looked like a terrible accident around the world. TV networks switched to rolling coverage as millions watched the drama unfold live. Any doubt about the cause vanished 17 minutes later. It does not appear that there's any kind of an effort up there yet. Now remember, oh my god. That looks like a second plane as just get to the plane going.

2:24That's just exploded. You just saw another plane coming in from the side. You did, that was out of my view. Yes, and that's the second explosion. You could see the plane come in just from the right hand side of the screen. This looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York. A second hijacked airliner had torn into the South Tower. It was no accident. America was under attack and the scale was yet to be realized. The scenes in Lower Manhattan were unimaginable. Survivors emerged from the tower's covered in dust and debris. Thousands fled through streets filled with smoke, fear and falling ash. And it was smoke everywhere and people jumping out the windows. Over there they're jumping out the windows. I guess because they're trying to see themselves. I don't know. And I don't know. Everybody just doesn't know where to go. They want that everything is blocked off. You can't even tell us to get out, but there's nowhere to go. And then I heard that another plane hit. The attacks were not yet over.

3:25Soon there came reports that a third hijacked aircraft had struck the Pentagon. Inside the twin towers, conditions were deteriorating rapidly. Thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel had fatally weakened. The steel structures, and less than two hours after the attacks began, both towers collapsed. The whole streets disappeared beneath clouds of dust and rubble as people ran for their lives. This is ABC News at the moment, The South Tower fell. This is as close as we can get to the base of the World Trade Center. You can see the firemen assembled here, the police officers, FBI agents, and you can see the two towers. A huge explosion now raining debris on all of us. You better get out of the way. One of the skies above Pennsylvania, news of the devastation had reached passengers aboard what was now a fourth hijacked plane in an act of extraordinary bravery. They and the crew formulated a plan to fight back against the attackers on board to stop

4:27them from hitting another target. United 93 crashed down into a field near Shanksville, killing everyone on board. In just a few hours, nearly 3,000 lives had been lost. It was and remains the deadliest act of terror in modern history. The ceremonies are now underway to remember those who died at the Memorial Service in New York, which has been attended by the four surviving former American presidents, a pipe band played. Well, let's speak to our North America correspondent, Gary O'Donnell, who joins us from Washington, DC and Gary. Just give us an overview of what is happening and what's going to be happening today. Well, you've seen those pictures from New York already that are marking the moments and

5:27with the presidents, the former presidents, as you say, paying their respects there. The reading of the names is something that always happens. That is something that's considered a very important part of this process and that's underway now. Just as we came on air, you came on air, the Pentagon commemorations began early this morning. They did the traditional unveiling of the stars and stripes down the side of the building, the side of the building, the Pentagon, where flight 77 hit. And as you were mentioning there, 125 people were killed inside the building, 59 people on the plane itself. And in about less than an hour or so, the president's Donald Trump will make a speech at that site along with the defense, the Secretary of Defense, PXF and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yes, I'm just watching those images from the Pentagon right now, Donald Trump, per flanked by the first lady. And as I also mentioned, four surviving former American presidents attending those ceremonies

6:31in New York. It is traditionally a day for national unity and yet already there's been a little friction, hasn't there? Yeah, I mean, there was the White House announced that the president will be going to New York. There had been some suggestion that he might want, I've wanted to make a speech, but the organizers don't genuinely allow any speeches at that event in New York. And so the president is going to be at the Pentagon and he will be speaking there and we'll see what he says. So you're right, this has been a sort of time of unity normally, a time of reflection. And at the time, I think I've tried to turn them, especially at 25 years of trying to work out, you know, what has been achieved over those 25 years because as we know, it sparked a 20 year occupation of Afghanistan and a rather ignominious and chaotic withdrawal.

7:31And the return of the Taliban who are al-Qaeda's protectors. And so for many, that will be a difficult reflection. Gary, thank you very much, and to Gary Adonio joining us live from Washington. Well, for anyone caught up in the attacks, memories are of course still raw. Ron DeFranchesco, who's from Canada, was working for a company called Eurobrokers on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center South Tower. Ron has thought to be the last person who managed to escape from the building before it collapsed. He suffered extensive burns, a broken vertebra and serious injuries to his head and eyes. While over the years, Ron's given talks about his experience, embracing positive psychology to inspire others and help himself to cope with the trauma. He has traveled to New York for today's anniversary, but before he left home in Toronto, he spoke to New South James Camarra Summy about his remarkable escape and his long road to recovery. I was at my desk taking calls.

8:32When back to the right, there was this loud explosion. Our building shuttered and we saw a huge fireball sucking in on itself. And we saw a huge gaping hole in the side of the building. But you have to understand, given the size and scale of those buildings, we just thought a light aircraft had gone off course and crashed in. They said on the speaker system too that building two, which tower two that I was in, was secure and please go back to your desks. But we saw people in the window there and they were anicking and frantic and some of them decided to jump, which was horrifying. I went back to my desk to call my wife, Mary, and tell her that I was okay. I got a call from a friend here in Toronto and started yelling at me to told me to get out of the building. I grabbed a colleague of mine and as we were leaving, the second plane hit our building. It went from 78th floor to the 85th floor. We got knocked flying and all the ceiling tiles came down and we picked ourselves up and

9:39we made our way to the stairwell. We started to go down and I guess about two or three flights of stairs and we met a woman being carried by two men telling us we couldn't go down. We climbed I guess to about the 91st floor and I realized now that all the floors are locked from the inside for security reasons. So at this point, you're above where the plane had crashed. Correct. We started to head back down. I told some people that I was with to lie down and try to get beneath the hot choking smoke and then someone called me and said come this way. So I followed that voice into the thickest of smoke and then in the last itch effort for air, I pushed against it and it re-vealed the staircase down below. I am surmising that there was no physical person attached to the voice. There was no one there and there was no one there on my way down all the way down.

10:43You are a man of faith. Correct. You do believe that it was a higher presence speaking to you. I do. Some people may say it's an angel. Some may say it's God and some may say it's my adrenaline field synapses working over time and that is possible. But if I ever hear a voice that clear and calm again, I'd follow it. When I reached ground level, I just wanted to run and get away from that place but there was a security guard. He told me I couldn't go out there. There was too much debris and there were bodies everywhere. They made us go underneath in the path system. As I started going down there, I ran into a colleague of mine, a sweet jovial man. Him and I started walking and I looked to my right and saw a huge fireball coming at us. I just yelled to John to run. That's all I remember. I remember getting hit on the head and then starting to drift off.

11:46I woke up three days later in the hospital. It burns on 60% of my body and it took me a while to come through. I didn't know that the towers had come down. I didn't even know it was a terrorist attack. It took a while for things to start to come back to me. I was just on edge, loud noises, planes, things frightened me. The kids screaming and anybody screaming bothered me. I wanted to hold up. I didn't want my colleagues spousers seeing me. I got out and they didn't all carry my survivor's guilt with me to my grave. But after a while, somebody said to me, it's just like you need to tell your story. People need a vision of hope if they can or resilience. I tell people now I talk about resilience and gratitude and adversity. If I can help somebody on their journey, then I believe it's important to do that. One different Chesco speaking to NewsHours James Kumaris Sami.

12:48Live coverage of the ceremonies on our website, BBC.com forward slash news. You're listening to NewsHour. Still to come on the programme more on the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. We're going to be speaking to Lawrence Wright, the journalist who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book about 9-11. And now wonders if Ben Laden or some have been Laden one. Even though he didn't achieve any of his aims. Now we find ourselves, you know, shedding allies. We've depleted our arsenal. We're in a terribly vulnerable state like we were on 9-10. Now we're in a new era of technology where small groups or even individuals like Alkaida will be empowered with artificial intelligence and crypto and 3D printing drones. And all of these are gifts to terrorists and to tyrants. On that later, also this our reports from Yemen say Iranian-backed hoothies have taken

13:50control of an island at the mouth of a key shipping lane. We'll have more on that in 15 minutes. This is James Menendez. We news our live from the BBC. To India now where the cockroach's janitor party is embarking on a new campaign, the Gen Z movement, which started as a satirical group in which took India by storm with mass protests in July, is now demanding improvements to the state of public schools. It says it wants to keep youth issues such as education and jobs sent to stage of national politics. Well, in a country facing a crisis of youth unemployment despite impressive growth numbers, how far can the cockroach party succeed? And what does that mean for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party? The BBC's Yogi Telemai begins her report from Hingoli in the Western state of Maharashtra where she met the founder of the cockroach party.

14:51I'm at a rural public school in the Western state of Maharashtra and we're following a new campaign launched by the cockroach and the party or the CJP demanding that the condition of public schools be improved. The CJP, of course, is the online satirical movement that started after the Chief Justice of India made a crude comment in the month of May likening unemployed youngsters with cockroaches. It became a mass Gen Z street uprising demanding accountability from the government over exam paper leaks and eventually the education minister of the country was forced to resign. The main face in the founder of this movement, Abhijit Deepke, who was a student himself studying overseas in the US, he is going from one classroom to another. What I'm hoping to accomplish is that the students or the kids who are living in the rural India, they should at least give a dignified life because they have been neglected for last seven or eight decades.

15:55So what they've discovered at the school is that there is no toilet for female students that the food they are giving in school lunches, some of that is being made from expired products. And I can see now that Abhijit is sitting surrounded by villagers from the area. He's asked further the number of the official in charge of the school, he's called them and he's asking them questions about why these basic facilities are not available here. AIM of the Cockroach Jantapartis to change the political discourse of the country because since last 10-12 years we have been seeing that the political discourse has been around the communal politics, Hindu Muslim politics and we want to bring it to education and employment. This contentment and anger has been simmering for a very long time in India about these issues. But what the Cockroach Jantapartis has managed to do is that it's given them a vent, it's brought them to a forefront in a way that we haven't seen in India in a very long time. So to get a sense of how acute this crisis of unemployment is, we've come away from Orangabad to the national capital Delhi.

16:57We've come specifically to an area where there are numerous coaching institutes for students who want to join government services. In the last exam that happened, a million students applied just around a thousand of them actually got through. Hi my name is Yogita, what's your name? Devesh Shukla. I would say there are two core problems. One is income levels not rising in India. So there is stagnation of income and the second is unavailability of jobs for the Genji. My name is Ahana Singh, it's very depressing honestly. I always tell this to people that the only people who are staying in India are not out of choice. They have to stay in India because they don't have a choice to go out. So it's evident that it's a really complicated picture here in India because what those voices are saying, it doesn't really tally with a more than 7% growth rate that India has recently seen making it one of the fastest growing major economies in the world. And I think the question a lot of people are asking is will the protests have an electoral

17:57impact in this country? It's a question I put to the founder of the Kakarajanta party Abhijit Deepak. I do believe that. Say we have been seeing across India, all political parties have started to catering to the youth. They're trying to have a dialogue with them. I think the key question, you've got the attention of the youth. How will you sustain that in the future? I think although the attention span of our generation or even the genesis might be very short, but one thing that I have realized is that if they care about something, they're very outspoken about it. Weeks on from the euphoria of their win, the Kakarajanta party is now confronted with the difficult mandate, approving it wasn't just a flash in the pan and that it is here to stay. That was the BBC's Yogiita Lemai reporting that from India. There's been a torrent of warnings this week, hasn't there, about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Most of them, it seems emanating from the firm anthropic.

18:59On Wednesday, it was the alarming prediction from one of the company's top safety researchers that there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next 10 years. Well, now it's a report from anthropic containing all the cases of suspicious activity it's identified recently, including. I think it's models for work that could support the development of biological weapons. Let's talk to Will Giot, technology journalist who's been taking a look at the report, will is on the line. Welcome to NewsHour. Just on this rather alarming suggestion that some of the models have been used potentially for work on biological weapons, what's the firm actually said about that? Well, this is part of a report. So we've previously been critical to AI companies for not revealing breaches. Now we're obviously concerned when they've revealed technical issues and problems that have happened. And they have said that there have been a number of examples where Claude has been used to write software for conventional weapons, three of those were in China, two of those

20:00were in Russia, and one of those was in Yemen. And it's also been used for analysis and it's been asked questions about how to compose and create biological weapons. Now it's good or comforting, or the one bit of comfort I can give to listeners today is that they are watching and closely monitoring and reporting these examples. But what's particularly interesting for me is somebody that's watched this for years. AI is now erasing the skills gap for hackers at one point, state sponsored hackers with the powerful ones. Now with AI tools, the one man armies, the person working from their back room can have almost as much power or impact when it comes to creating harm globally. And some of this, I mean, it can be a gray area, can't it? Because especially when it comes to biological weapons, for example, people might be making innocent research requests that could potentially have benefits to human kind. I mean, it's anthropic in a position to kind of decide what's good and what's bad.

21:01Yeah, so they're kind of what happens in these scenarios is that the misuse for biological weapons was blocked, but it was then rooted around. So they were kind of asking jewel use queries involving pathogens and immunivation. They were asking certain questions about how to make mosquito diseases more transmissible and others were talking about redesigning toxins for a national program. So it's quite clear that they're able to analyze this stuff and that there is flagging. But the concern to some is what are these companies not reporting? Because this covers to the period at the start of August this year. And that was when the more powerful Miffos models were launched. Those are the ones that anthropic themselves were saying was so powerful at the start of the summer, they had to delay launch because they were worried about its hacking capabilities. So it's a very, it's an interesting report that's come possibly at a bad time for anthropic because of the news we've had this week and it just layers more concern over who is regulating

22:03and controlling this. Yes. And just briefly, I mean, for some of the, well, for all of these companies to some extent, there's, I mean, there's no incentive to downgrade the power of their models, is there? No, there isn't. But what we need is greater reporting, greater transparency. And there needs to be some kind of global regulation, which simply does not exist at the moment. Well, thank you very much and do D that was a technology journalist will guillot on that latest warning that report from the AI firm andthropic. You're listening to news air from the BBC World Service do stay with us. We've got lots more coming up in the second half of the program. We will have more on that 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks will be looking back at what led up to those attacks with the journalists who wrote one of the definitive accounts of the lead up to 9-11. Do stay with us for that. You're listening to news. Donald Trump is arriving in Ireland on Saturday to meet the country's leaders in Dublin

23:05and then watch the Irish open golf tournament that is resorting County Claire. Ireland has been a frequent destination for travelling US presidents as our correspondent, Chris Page, now reports. Since the 1990s, Ireland has stood out among small countries as hosting a big number of US presidential visits, often with huge public welcomes for the visitors. Over the years, towards this place have become part of my soul. I am happy to be in Ireland. I am now a free man of Dublin. The roots of the relationship lie in emigration during America's format of years, almost one in 10 Americans now claim Irish ancestry. The wheels of the presidential airline over running on Irish soil. John F. Kennedy was in the land of his fall days. JFK was the first president to visit Ireland in 1963. This is a man whose great grandfather somehow scraped together the four pounds for a sailing

24:08ship passage and emigrated to the United States. Barack Obama was another president with Irish heritage and he paid homage with humor. My name is Barack Obama of the money goal of Obama's. And I've come home to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way. One of the most visible and diplomatically valuable outworkings of the country's links happens every year on the 17th of March in Washington. Let me wish everyone a very happy St. Patrick's Day. On Ireland's national holiday, the Irish Prime Minister of the T-Shick has a meeting under ceremony with the president. Time on a tradition I'm going to present to Bolo Shamrock's president. Stan Woll Hall is a former Irish ambassador to the US. I don't know of any other country that has a guaranteed annual outing in Washington. Some of our European colleagues kind of puzzled us to how Ireland had managed to pull this off. Donald Trump's visit here to Dublin and to the west of Ireland will be different to

25:10most of his predecessors. He has no known Irish ancestry. There won't be a large public rally involving him. The protests are being planned, focused on US actions in the Middle East. Dr. Peter McLachlan believes there are parallels with another visit that have Ronald Reagan in 1984. The US was severely criticized at that point by people in Ireland. And what was going on in the Cold War broadly but very specifically in Central America. Many people in Ireland would have a close nurse or someone who was serving abroad as an honour of priest in Latin America and was able to bring back these first-hand reports of how there were very controversial associations there with US policy. And yet at the same time this was the US president who needed to be courted and that was the start of the real investment of the US in the Republic of Ireland and indeed Northern Ireland. I want you to know that for this great grandson of Ireland, this is a moment of joy. Ireland is more used to the most nations to hosting the holder of the most powerful office in the world.

26:11This weekend of diplomacy and demonstrations will be another episode in a story dating back decades. And that was the BBC's Ireland correspondent Chris Page reporting. This is the BBC in London, you're listening to News Air and I'm James Menendez. Well, let's turn to what's happening in Yemen now because fighters from the Iran-backed Houthi movement appear to be tightening their grip on the entrance to one of the world's most important shipping routes, the Red Sea. The latest reports say that they've taken control of an island at the narrowest point of the Babel Mandab Strait, where the southwest corner of Yemen meets the horn of Africa just 30 kilometres away. Well, passage through the strait is crucial for Saudi Arabian oil exports, especially given the disruption to the traditional route on the other side of the Arabian peninsula through the strait of Hormuz. And it is the Saudi connection that perhaps explains the Houthi's latest advances. Saudi Arabia backs Yemen's internationally recognised government against the Houthis.

27:16Well, let's talk to the journalist, Ionakregg, who's been covering Yemen for many years after being based there. Ion are very good to have you with us as ever on News Air. They've captured this island. They've also captured a port mockery little way up the coast. How significant are these advances, do you think? Well, they're very significant for kind of two reasons, really, in turning in Yemen's war. This is the most significant shift in territorial control since probably 2021, really, in the country's long-running civil war. But more broadly than that, of course, it's about the control of the Babel Mandab, the Houthis have been for several years now affecting and impacting shipping in the Red Sea on and off since Israel's war on Gaza was launched. But they've been doing that more remotely with missiles and drones and even waves of drones. But now this gives them direct control from the small little island of Perim, or also known

28:17as Mayun, that is right in the middle of the Babel Mandab now. It means that they have very... They have the international shipping routes is now at very close quarters for them, and it gives them a huge amount of leverage now. Against... Against... Sorry to interrupt you. Against Saudi Arabia. Yes, absolutely. The Houthis have been trying for many years to negotiate a deal with Saudi Arabia, particularly over Saudi paying several million, if not billions, of dollars to civil servants in Houthi territory and government salaries. But the Saudis had not been too keen to do that. And with escalating fighting over recent weeks and certainly since July, the Houthis now in the last 24 hours have very much got the upper hand. The internationally recognized government forces folded quite quickly in the end yesterday, and then they were able to push on and take this island earlier today, which gives them

29:20a real sort of crucial control over this vital, important shipping way. I mentioned that the Houthis are backed by Iran, and one can see that having control of another crucial waterway is useful to Iran, is Iran behind this? Is it using the Houthis to flex its muscles in this way? Absolutely, the Houthis are allied with Iran, but I think with this it serves both interests. Those are Iran, of course, because it increases their leverage now over the US, but also the Houthis. I think the Houthis long-term goal, always with the Babel Mendeb was to be able to monetize it themselves, much like we've heard talk of Iran trying to do the same over the straight of Hormuz, where traffic would have to pay a toll to go through the straight. I think the Houthis would dearly very much like to do the same with the Babel Mendeb, and now they have physical control over that route. It opens up that possibility for them. It serves both parties, the Houthis and Iran at the same time, but Iran will certainly

30:27be very supportive of this Houthi move, which I think they've wanted for some time since the war started with the US back in March, but it's only been recently that the Houthis have prepared to make that push south and actually were able to do it quite easily in the end. The government of Iceland says it will put forward a bill early next year, which could lead to a permanent ban on wailing in its waters. If a proof that would leave Norway and Japan as the only two countries that still allow commercial wailing, Iceland's hunting season runs from early summer to the end of this month. Its quota is up to 150 animals, usually thin whales. In fact, there's only one wailing company left in the country. Earlier today, the BBC's James Coppna last its chief executive, Christian Losson, why he'd made wailing his career. I've been asked this question a million times, but I could ask you, why are you in radio?

31:27This is like any other industry catching whales from a sustainable resource, and we have fishermen here in Iceland, and that's how we live. But is that how most Icelanders live? How much of a history of commercial wailing is there? I've been talking to Ragnar Edvutsson, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Iceland. Commercial wailing has never been throughout the centuries, one of the most important things in Iceland. You know, Iceland is primarily hunted whales for subsistence through harvesting beach whales. It isn't until the 20th century that Icelanders actually begin commercial wailing. Yeah, when is they using beach whales? So how were they used? A whale that died was washed on the shore, whether it was from that had been harpooned or died of natural causes. It washed on somebody's farm. The law was clear about that, that the owner of the farm had all rights to the whale and could use it for his own purposes. So it was a very important addition to the farm economy in Iceland in the past.

32:28Yeah, and of course, whale, fat, blava is useful for oil, isn't it? And for burning to create light and heat and so on. And what about the meat? Is there a long tradition of eating whale meat? Eating whale meat probably was always part of the culture, all the way back to the settlement period and continued well, well, well, into the 20th century. You know, it was like a, you can say, a tradition to eat whale meat. And people looked at beached whales as a gift from God, basically. And this was during famine and the difficult times of beached whale could get a whole community through the through the through the winter, for example. And yet commercial whaling persisted throughout the 20th century. And whales were almost hunted to extinction, I understand, in Icelandic waters. So who was doing that hunting? It all began in the 17th century with the Basque and the Dutch and the Old French and English whalers. But commercial whaling didn't really take off until the 19th century, the 19th century

33:29with the invention of the of the explosive harpoon and the steam engine. Because now whalers could actually hunt the fast swimming whales like blue whales. It was the Norwegians primarily who began the whaling around Iceland in the late 19th century, primarily focused on the blue whales. And they almost hunted them to extinction. When you reach the late 19th century, Iceland started realizing actually that they could benefit from this themselves if they started whaling. And we can say that they learned from the Norwegians both how to run, you know, whaling factories and how to how to go about hunting whales. They begin in 1930, Icelanders, but that really doesn't kick off until about 1940. And after that Icelanders really are committed to commercial whaling. And what about attitudes now towards whaling? I mean, how would you assess those in Iceland at the moment? In general, I would say that Icelanders are seeing that this is not really beneficial neither for the economy nor with our reputation.

34:32So I think in general Icelanders are against whaling rather than, you know, and want to stop it. That's what I personally think. Just out of interest. Have you ever eaten whale meat in your life? Yes. I've done that both here in Iceland and in the pharaohs. The big whales are not personally, I don't think they're when it's tasteful, but pilot whales. They are actually tasteful taste like which is like beef, but you know, in general, the world is turning more towards, you know, watching the whales instead of hunting than I think that's beneficial in itself. Ragnar Edvardson is a maritime archaeologist at the University of Iceland. The first Republican National Convention to be held midway through a presidential term came to an end on Thursday. And it made headlines not least because of President Trump's startling pledge to give every American adult $5,000 if the party were to retain control of Congress in November's elections. So what does a former close ally of Mr. Trump think of the odds of them doing that?

35:34My colleague Sean Lake caught up with Steve Bannon, former Trump campaign manager and White House chief strategist in the president's first time. We have a very tough path ahead of us, but it's going to come down to about 20 seats in the house and it's going to come down to a handful of seats in the Senate and a couple of governorships. I strongly believe right now that we will hold the house by our cedar too as I see it. Oh, yes, going to be very tough. Don't give me a, but this is this election and I'm so glad the president, we have advocated for the beginning for President Trump to take charge here and put himself on the ballot. The reason is the Democrats in the DSA have very smartly and they're running a very smart campaign. They've nationalized this election around Donald Trump. Well, if they're going to do it, the advisors around President Trump continue to have this like it's a persuasion election. This is not a persuasion election. This is all about turnout. Fine, but as he left it too late. No, because it's a handful of, it's like 20 to 25 house seats of those over half he won overwhelmingly in 24.

36:34So you have to win about half of those seats to hold the house and I'm saying hold the house by one or two, one or two seats and in holding the house, remember, you're not going to have a massive legislative program. I'm talking about just hanging on so that the house does not turn into an impeachment machine. Well, that's what I was going to ask you because that's the risk, isn't it? If you don't succeed in the way you hope and at the moment, the polls just and of course they are only polls, they're not votes, but they suggest a similar outcome to 2018. I mean, that would be a pretty miserable last couple of years of Donald Trump. Sean, if they win by even a seat or two, the White House will become fort Apache. It'll be an onslaught every day from every different direction. They're going to come after the White House, the administration and the Maga movement. They'll be open political warfare if the Democrats take the house. And like I said, the White House will be fort Apache. Right. And you've made that point very clearly. I want to ask you about the war within the context of the foreign policy challenges America faces. You've been very clear.

37:35You're opposed to this war continuing. How do you think it's going to end? I mean, we heard the President say yesterday, oh, lend assumes the midterm elections are over really? I have adamantly opposed this war from the beginning. The good news, I think, is that we've now turned to economic warfare, which we should have done in the first place. We're going to enforce secondary sanctions. Scott Besson got destroyed. They're trying to say anyone who trades with Iran already come. And by the way, banks that deal with them. And not just in England, but in Europe, China's the big one. And she's coming at the end of September. This is all about China's support of it. So Scott Besson's a safe pair of hands. He's in charge of the economic warfare. I think the kinetic part, I hope is behind us. I'm an advocate of America first and hemispheric defense. We've got enough from the Arctic to Latin America and the Western Pacific to deal with. It's time the Middle East has been a side show in the Israel, Greater Israel project is a side show to a side show. I'm a strong advocate that we just, you know, wipe our hands of the whole mess and focus

38:40on those areas we need to focus on. Do you think Donald Trump is prepared to do that? Because in a sense, his pride is now on the line, isn't it? I think President Trump is a realist, a very practical person. Look, he's been trying to get to peace in Ukraine. He's been trying to get to peace with the Peace Board in Gaza. He wants some sort of accommodation with the Persian regime. He says this over and over again. And then he'll present Trump some man of peace. And so I hope that he's been quite honest about that. Well, I happen to believe a big advocate that he sure got in. That was Steve Banner talking there to my colleague Sean Lay. You're listening to News app. You're listening to News app with James Menendez. Well, let's return to our top story today, those events taking place right now to mark 25 years since 9-11, those attacks in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

39:42Well, later on that day in 2001, as a shock nation tried to comprehend what had happened, then President George W. Bush addressed the country. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and acquired, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorists attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings. But they cannot touch the foundation of America. Well, let's see now from someone who traced the story of 9-11 from its origins well before 2001, and catalog the multiple intelligence failures that led up to the attacks. Lawrence Wright is author of the looming tower, Al Qaeda and the road to 9-11, considered

40:47one of the definitive accounts of the plot. He's described recently 9-11 as an unsolved crime. Ask him why. Well, there's several instances that crimes were committed and haven't been solved. One was against our intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, which hid the information that Al Qaeda was present in America 19 months before 9-11. Two hijackers living in San Diego that the CIA was aware of and refused to tell the FBI about it. But probably they were trying to turn them with the assistance of Saudi authorities, but it led to 9-11 and had they been willing to turn over that information to the proper agency, which was the FBI. Then I'm convinced that 9-11 would never have happened. Was it incompetence or was it as you sort of hinted there in your answer something else? Well, these two agencies had a bitter feud.

41:48They have different missions, you know, the FBI is to solve crimes, but people on trial and convict them. The CIA is, this job normally is just to follow the leads. Tell us about Omar Al Bayumi thinking about failures to follow up. There were documents that were seized from his home. They were not gone through and in fact they were kept hidden for years. Why is he a significant character, as you think? He was mentioned in the 9-11 Commission report and they saw him as kind of an amiable bumble who stumbled into history when the hijackers first arrived in America. They landed in Los Angeles in January of 2000. That day Omar Al Bayumi claims he was just happened to be in a restaurant in Los Angeles and overheard Gulf accents in Arabic and so he sat down and talked to these two young men who couldn't speak English.

42:48He offered to help them. Why don't you come down to San Diego where I live? I'll put you up. I'll give you rent money. You know, I'll introduce you to everybody you want to know. We have videotape of him introducing those future hijackers to the Muslim community. One of the people he introduced them to was the leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. And then there's a videotape of Bayumi describing the capital and where the plane would land. He points over. It was in a box in storage. I guess it was in the Scotland yard for a while and then it came to the FBI. I find inexplicable that here is a damning box of evidence that had been opened at one point and somebody just didn't see the significance of it. Do you think some of the lessons for those agencies have been learned?

43:48Yes. To some extent, there is now a national counterterrorism center where each of the 18 intelligence agencies in America have a desk and so they're mandated to talk to each other. But there's still institutional jealousies and so on. The one must credit them with stopping in a future 9-11. What about the wider reverberations from that day? What's the legacy, do you think? Is it a diminished America and a diminished America in America's own eyes as well? Oh yeah, it is no question that 9-11. It was a turning point and a sad one. We were so unprepared and still had that sense of invulnerability which was exploded right in front of our eyes. How we reacted to, I don't think it'd been Lodden thought he could destroy America, but

44:49he certainly undermined us. Since then, our actions have really taken a toll. It's undeniable that we followed a course of overreaction leading us into wars that went on forever. Millions of people killed. Our actions after 9-11 have really undermined the country that we thought we were. And in fact, at one point in your essay, he says it's fair to wonder if Bin Laden won even though he didn't achieve any of his aims. Well he couldn't have imagined he would undermine America to that extent. Now we find ourselves, you know, shedding allies. We've depleted our arsenal. We're in a terribly vulnerable state like we were on 9-10. And now we're in a new era of technology where small groups or even individuals like Al Qaeda will be empowered with artificial intelligence and crypto and fake identities

45:51and 3D printing drones. All of these are gifts to terrorists and to tyrants. And I'm sure that they'll be put to use. I just wonder what Osama Bin Laden would have done with those tools. Looking back, and it's a bit of a clumsy analogy, but 9-11, I mean now, looks like a very sort of analog act of terror, but the next one I guess will be digital. Well, which cities are really defended against the drone strikes, for instance? There will be another attack. There weakness such as the state we're in invites hostility and we're in a place where we can't defend ourselves. We can't defend our cities against drone attacks or against prospective diseases. It could be cooked up by artificial intelligence. This is a new world for us. Certainly prompted by the decline of our power, but technology is provided a whole new arsenal

46:52for terror. Lawrence, right, author of the looming tab. Before we go, let's hear again from New York and the service there for the four living former US presidents are attending. The names of the victims have been read out to the music of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Paul Vincent Huabaro. James William Barbella. Victor Daniel Barbosa. Christine Jonah Barbudo. That's it for this edition of News Air. Thanks so much for being with us until the next time. Bye-bye.