those today our fellow citizens our way of life are very freedom came under attack following the first attack i implemented our government's urgent response plan i directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement community to find those responsible and to bring them to just we will make no distinction between the terrorist committed my name is patricia because i lost my husband john he worked for cantor fitzgerald one hundred fourth floor of the first tower my name is mandy clime garg and i lost my husband alan he worked for cantor fitzgerald on one hundred fourth floor of the north tower i got a message from him on the morning of september eleventh saying that i love you i'm in the world trade center the building was hit by something i don't know if i'm going to get out but i love you very much and i hope i see you later bye and i didn't make it to the phone on time to speak with him i tried calling him back and i was never able to reach him so i never spoke to him again actually doing laundry when i got a call from my husband and he had thought that a bomb had gone off in his building and by the time he had called me he had checked all those ha on september eleventh two thousand and one two thousand nine hundred seventy two people from more than eighty countries were killed leaving thousands of loved ones behind mode and that's when i started questioning it i spent a lot of time on the computer i started reading every single article that i could get my hands on i mean there was no sleeping at the beginning because we were grieving it was hard to lay tuesday morning the last plane was reported to have crashed in pennsylvania just after ten a m that's almost two hours planes were flying around the skies of the united states military respon coming across an article in the canadian paper the jersey widows learned it had been a routine for the military apparatus in charge of defense to scramble fighters to intercept planes during suspected were looking for answers feverish lee at the beginning and there was very little information being put out through the major media that answered our questions there were just more questions every time we would look into something we'd have more questions one article led to a question that be get another question that got another question and when you couldn't read them together and you couldn't come to an answer that made sense you know we started to catalog our and our questions the families raise questions about the track record of the f b i and the elusive search for justice after nine eleven i've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement to find those responsible and to bring them to justice throughout the week after the attack there were numerous accounts that the hijackers had a large number of accomplices in the united states seventy five individuals who are currently detained over four hundred eighty people arrested nearly one thousand individuals the families waited for the nine eleven trials to begin but they never came after the public spectacle of round ups the justice department quietly let the suspects go one by one a year later the families would learn that only six of the original detainees were still in custody and none have been charged with any terrorist a by november going to become the sense among most nine eleven families that an independent investigation would be necessary to do with the justice department and the news media seemed unwilling to do we felt that the country was at risk a nine eleven commission bill was being sponsored in congress and senator tom daschle said last week that you called him several times and urged him not to investigate the events of september eleventh times were wrong he has a i think in this case  we still don't know what happened in those the jersey would have us we're not the only ones seeking answers and becoming frustrated in new york sally regenhard who had lost her firefighter son christian in building's collapse was forming the skyscraper safety campaign and nine one one emergency tapes and recordings plus five hundred interviews done with the fire department and how could skyscrapers just like crumple to the ground in ten seconds that fire caused a steel framed building to collapse world trade center building number seven never hit by an airplane also collapse that evening building seven leeds at the moment and apparently getting ready to lapse the largest structural collapse in world history the largest loss of life american soil since the civil war and how one governmental or elected official wanted to know why and how this happened seek out the difficult answers we must as a country grow and be made stronger and safer by the better lessons learned on september eleventh we are asking america to stand behind us i was terrified to talk in front out of the blue i was floundering by myself just talking to people trying to find anyone that was the first time we all got together and a new direction to push for the commission sharing many of the same questions and concerns a coalition of family members began to take form it's called a formal investigation call your congressman tell them that you want to be safe an investigation  interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack frustrated with the attitude of the white house and seeming lack of interest from the public the family members began actively seeking support from the news media and given the persistence of the media's focus on pain and suffering it was not difficult for the jersey widows to get their attention you know it was my private pain and my private story and i really did not want to share that but we made a conscious decision that we could start the fate of them ok well i will tell you about me personally if you talk about the fact that there's not an investigation i'm joined right now by four women who lost their husbands in the attacks of kristen bright wife who is one of four new jersey widows and he's with and banded together after their husbands were killed and now they're leading a campaign to find out exactly how did nine eleven happen and finally the order to make anything happen in washington i mean they need huge public pressure to move them president bush signed legislation today creating an independent commission to investigate the september eleventh attack on america but buckling under pressure  the white house was finally agreeing to a deal reversed himself under pressure but in a stunning series of revelations it soon appeared that the white house was stacking the odds against an investigation it had not wanted in the first place the president named a support some very pointed questions would you have any american clients that you would like to tell us about and was very uncomfortable kind of twisting and turning on the couch and commissioners were all former d c insiders and lawyers evenly split between republicans and democrats remember in the ninety's they spent one hundred million dollars investigating sexual exploits a hundred million dollars and they first allocated only three million dollars to investigate the murder of three thousand people the budget was eventually raised to fourteen million but the investigation was also given less time th had wanted a year and a half to monitor the commission leading victims relatives established the family steering committee the group provided the commissioners with hundreds of well researched questions for which they expected answers that's the official start of the first public hearing of what is going to be a very extraordinary difficult and important job the march eighth two thousand and three four hundred forty one days after the ten and lauren seven to the bus stop at about eight forty a m brad was twenty four years old and the oldest of our three sons family steering committee members were among the first to testify before the commission and michael bloomberg of the city of new york from the outset many families were concerned by how the investigation was being conducted we begged and pleaded that people should be put under oath at the beginning they were not  sort they gave them boxes and boxes of documents but not enough partner documents out a deal yesterday between the white house and the commission investigating the september eleventh attacks is proving to be rather controversial under the agreement only certain members of the commission will be allowed to review classified documents from the white house and their notes will be subject to administration review i mean i remember the commission the president has said only a minority of the commission can see a minority the documents and then they have to clear what they're going to say to the rest of the commission with the white house the only two commission members allowed direct access to the documents jamie gorelick the deputy attorney general it's a scale it's absolutely disgusting this is important we cannot do our responsibilities if we don't have all of us access to all the documents we need including what's in the white house and with the investigation nearing its deadline the president vice president and national security adviser were still refusing to testify publicly yet few americans were aware of the family's plight up till then the hearings had received only in testimony before the nine eleven commission later this week and in a new book to be published tomorrow against all enemies clarke will tell the story of what happened behind the scenes at the white house during and after september eleventh talks testimony provided the families with the timely leverage they needed to increase public pressure on reluctant white house witnesses the bush administration will allow national security adviser congolese arise to testify publicly before the nine eleven commission for president bush it was a dramatic reversal of order this level of cooperation because i consider it necessary to gain a complete picture of the mind and even the president and vice president agreed to meet with the commission but with a catch they insisted on meeting together behind closed doors and not under oath reza next why are you in the vice president insisting on appearing together before the nine eleven commission because  eleven commission wants to ask questions is why we're meeting and i look forward to meeting with them and answering your questions that's why you're appearing together rather than separately which was their request because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the nine eleven commission is looking for to asking us and i'm looking forward to answering them let's see if we have to have one story so i'll say part and if i get it wrong heads a little bit will give me the next i wan thank the chairman and vice chairman for giving us a chance to share views on different subjects and they have a lot of good questions and i was glad i did it i'm glad i took the time what topic did the public don't you think that the families deserve to have a transcript or to be able to see with as you asked me that question yesterday i got the same answer yeah in july two thousand and four the commission published officials past and present and you've produced a a truly bipartisan report that honors the thousands who died on nine eleven honors their grieving family members thank you for creating a report report to come out and were hopeful i was always hopeful that we would get a report that answered my questions however the commission report failed to meet many of the families expectations and concluded that nine eleven was merely a failure of imagination the percentage of the questions that are answered was very very low i'd say maybe thirty percent got touched upon seventy percent of the stuff that's included as the stuff that  they have too much choice and because they knew what we know you can do an investigation and if you don't really want to research an area you just don't look at it if you don't want the questions or you don't let them tell you the whole story you know then you can write a report based on half virtually impossible to conceive of any way in which these attacks could have been stopped even had the best things happened on nine eleven the media started out by doing its job and somehow got waylaid and stopped doing its job  i personally was hoping for was another word working bernstein with regard to nine eleven someone anyone that was willing to put their teeth into th the families discovered a website created by independent investigator paul thompson his complete nine eleven timeline an integrated internet research tool stitches together information from over seven  mainstream news stories it was all our binders i thought laid out beautifully on line and he had the ability to connect the dots he would put a time up there and then he would this i began researching and it is this curious phenomenon which is that there's a lot of explosive information that has come out of the mainstream press but it comes out buried as a casual observer of the news i've never noticed any of this stuff  you might find one important bit of information and say a newspaper story and another bit of information on a news show  you start to put all those rather obscure stories together you end of the normals absolutely different narratives remember just about any area relating to nine eleven of the story is quite different and clearly something yesterday took place in new york that was not foreseen that we had no specific specific information about like most american mr thompson initially didn't question the bush administration's first statements about the ministration consistently maintain that there were no warnings or specific threats of a threat no specific threat involving really domestic operation involving what happened obviously the cities airliner and so forth if there were no warning signs and i'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country i first became interested in nine eleven around mid two thousand and two right around the time that president bush is now famous august sixth p t b became leaked to the press president bush was told in august that osama bin laden might be planning an attack involving the hijacking of u s aircraft  a revelation that the white house had no intention of making public an official spent the entire day in full damage control i don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile a hijacked airplane as a missile nobody in our government at least and i don't think the prior government could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale his interest thompson began to search for new stories that might help him determine exactly where the white house had been of all kind his desire to use planes as weapons he was quickly able to compile a wealth of examples that any journalist should have the plan to blow up multiple airliners over the pacific was heavily reported but thompson noted most journalists failed to mention the second aspect of the plot only c n n international dug deeper into th targeted the pentagon and the world trade center and the f b i using the philippine documents did check the for flight schools named there but found no evidence of any other planned terror attacks c reported a stunning confession by a man allegedly trained by been lot it was over a year before nine eleven a pakistani british man told the f b i an incredible tale that he'd been trained by followers sixty seven before being sent to america where it was told he would hijack a plane from j f k and into a building i told him before the nine eleven about more than page and another story that comes out on page b twelve but what i found is that many times the story that comes out on b twelve is more important than the story that comes out on the front page much the talian intelligence gave information to the us based on their wired up and all kind of selling a lot of the l a times and the washington post so the wiretaps warrant of brothers going to the united states and a massive strike involving aircraft august according to moroccan and french newspapers an intelligence agent reported that bin laden's men were preparing large scale operations in new york and the summer or fall of two thousand and one agent was then called to the u s to report this information directly august britain warned three times of an al qaeda attack in the us the final warning specifying multiple airplane hijackings according to britain's sunday herald the warning was passed on to president bush a short time later it's unknown how many of these warnings reported but buried in back pages reached the white house through official channels but one threat assessment is well known to have reached president bush directly it was known as the presidential daily briefing or p b of august sixth the bush administration kept it from the public for months until it was revealed in part on the c b s news in may two thousand and two putting the white house on the defensive all of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking you take a plane people were worried they might blow some blow one up on the i'd like to ask you about the august sixth p p p or you mentioned two years later president bush responded to questions about what led him to request the august sixth briefing government and i asked for the briefing and the reason i did is because there had been a lot of threat osama bin laden to assassinate george w bush the l a times reported u s officials were warned of a threat posed from the air by commercial airliners it's terrorists as well as protesters the italian government so we're on standby at the airport congolese so rice was present there president bush ari fleischer karl rove president bush's own family they were going to meet on a boat so that a plane couldn't go into a bell that this placing result will be home for three days of the g eight leaders necessary for their safety if the august sixth p t b was prompted by a threat from the air and general clearly president bush his spokesperson ari fleischer and his national security adviser condi rice were more than aware of the threat of planes as weapons but the news media appeared to miss the lead to get information about simultaneous hijackings no specific threat planes being used as weapons i don't think anybody could have predicted this if it targets including mentions the pentagon the world trade center the threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of two thousand and one was not specific as to time nor place nor manner of attack almost all of the reports focused on al qaeda activities outside the united states this in stark contrast to one was really trying to get into the nitty gritty did you tell the president at any time prior to august sixth of the existence of al qaeda cells in the united states but first let me just make certain if you could just reporting there was no new threat information and it did not in fact warn of any coming attacks inside the united states and what was the title of the memo i believe the title was finland determined to attack inside the united states know bin laden was planning to exploit the operatives access to you to the u s to mount a terrorist strike abodes abida was planning his own u s attack us f b i information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings are other types of attacks including recent surveillance of federal buildings in new york that's present tense and domestic ari fleischer came out right after september eleventh and said there were no warnings i watched him tell me there were no warnings ok i want to know why nobody has gone back and said what did he mean howard dean recently seem to musial out whether you had advance knowledge of nine eleven the press has reported this one that one but they never really put it all together on how many different wordings did you get how many different ways was this information coming at you and why wasn't anything done about all these warnings remains and on the night before the attacks the president may have slept more soundly knowing surface to air missiles were placed on the roof of the service sort of florida resort where he was staying not a typical security procedure at the time it seemed night a particularly urgent warning may have been received causing some top pentagon brass to cancel their scheduled flights the morning of nine eleven why that same information was not available to the two hundred sixty six people who died aboard the four hijacked aircraft may become a hot topic on the hill it never did we took an oath not to talk about during the inside the united states you were told again by briefing officers in august that it was up to the dire threat didn't do anything the hard not border security didn't do anything to harden airports or security didn't do anything to engage local law enforcement didn't do anything to round up ins and consular office and say we have to shut this down and didn't warn the american people what did you do nothing so far as we can s the dots with there were many warnings most were detailed somewhere urgent and yet little or no defensive action was taken by responsible officials except for their own personal protection the public was better informed the summer of two thousand and one lives would have been saved maybe the attacks wouldn't been prevented lives would have been saved my husband if he knew that it was a terrorist attack he wouldn't have stayed in the building when they were told that the building was secure is wrong in its value because the nine eleven terrorists were not just lucky ones they were lucky over and over again when you have this repeated pattern of broken protocols broken laws broken communication one cannot still call that not only we don't look to hold the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how can we ever expect the terrorists to not get lucky again september the eleventh enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country and tonight the united states of america makes the following demands on the taliban delivered to united states authorities all the leaders america's apparently clear military victory in afghanistan was not so clear cut  the war ended very quickly but in the end the u s was only able to capture or kill one major i'll kind of figure a new taliban figures you know the fact is right now today we don't have any high ranking taliban or al qaeda but we haven't really captured anybody wanted to on the french his understanding of the from its actions before nine eleven now fundamentally changed thompson decided to take a similar look into what happened in afghanistan the pressed never looked very closely at how so many of these leaders were able to escape however if you piece together a number of different news accounts you can begin to understand the story early november the london times reported gun laden's closest advisers all escaped in a late night convoy from the afghan capital of kabul and eyewitness reported we don't understand how they weren't all killed the night before because they came in a convoy of at least a thousand cars and trucks that must have been easy for american pilots to see th bin laden had joined the convoy in jalalabad an intelligence official told knight ridder newspapers it was obvious that this area was to be the base for an exodus to pakistan we were amazed that nothing was done to prepare for  s special forces are working with pakistani troops on the border to block possible escape routes while there were two main escape routes newsweek reported that the u s bombed only one using the other route hundreds of all kind and taliban including senior leaders escaped in the wake of the attacks eyewitnesses told britain's the daily telegraph that they were shocked that the us had surrounded tora bora only on three sides in august two thousand and five a story broke that gave paul thompson a missing piece of the puzzle in an exclusive interview with newsweek the cia field commander in tora bora during the invasion gary berntsen broke his silence he explained that his intelligence operatives had tracked bin laden to tora bora mr bernstein feels so strongly about getting this story out and getting his book published that he actually resigned to your short of retirement from the cia in order to publish his book at the time of this interview he was required to speak through his attorney until the cia cleared his book for publication at various points in time they did have to my understanding definitive intelligence as to his general location within tora bora i can't go into detail as to the actual sources of the intelligence and the collection methods because those remain classified however we had osama bin laden essentially cornered in tora bora and for whatever reasons we did not do what was necessary in order to ensure that he did not escape the goal has never been to get bin laden obviously that's  desirable in trust and i just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in his organization who may have more effect by going after the middle managers because they're harder to replace toward the end of the war when all eyes were on bora the news media missed another major story again thousands of taliban and al qaeda escaped without drawing us spiral this time from the northern city of can do the taliban's only stronghold in the region all but full into the forces of the northern alliance once again the door was left open for a skate on our side in that battle at the enemy surrounding there were a reported perhaps eight thousand enemy forces in there  have the cream of the crop of al qaeda cause journalist seymour hersh later broke this story in the new yorker magazine briefly sparking t v news coverage and from there all of a sudden one night around thanksgiving in the middle of the siege an air corridor was set up between conduits in northern pakistan and at night pakistani relief playing regularly flew through that corridor was a very orderly organized thing that armed men would stand on the tarmac waiting for a flight that would come in and then they would be taken out i lost my