1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:07,280
on the morning of 9/11 I was a Washington-based 
national correspondent for the CBS national news  

2
00:00:07,280 --> 00:00:11,520
network. I was covering a lot of healthcare 
at the time I remember being in boston  

3
00:00:11,520 --> 00:00:16,800
at Mass General we were doing a story we had to be 
at the ER at seven o'clock and we were wrapping up  

4
00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:22,960
when we saw on the monitors all of the 
emergency room staff began looking at the  

5
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:28,320
television. I remember feeling annoyed what is 
everybody watching? And then my producer says,  

6
00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:35,760
"Wyatt, two planes have struck the world trade 
center in Manhattan and one just crashed into  

7
00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:40,880
the Pentagon we have to go. Your mind wanted 
to say this had to be an accident. That that  

8
00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:49,360
was my first reflex and then i realized this 
is extremely serious, we do need to leave.  

9
00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:55,040
We're not that far from Manhattan, but we need 
to go. CBS news was a New York based operation  

10
00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:04,640
and dozens of my colleagues were getting up from 
their desks um in our headquarters on 57th street  

11
00:01:04,640 --> 00:01:11,840
in in manhattan and going toward the twin towers 
and several of my colleagues from CBS to this day  

12
00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:19,600
have are fighting off various levels of permanent 
damage to their lungs and I have several friends  

13
00:01:19,600 --> 00:01:27,440
who suffer lung damage to this day. I think we 
we should all still feel impacted by 9/11 in a  

14
00:01:27,440 --> 00:01:32,560
very fundamental way. We have to remember that 
right now in this country we cannot convince  

15
00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:40,480
tens of millions of our fellow citizens that 
a physical attack on a sitting congress while  

16
00:01:40,480 --> 00:01:47,520
congress was doing its electoral duty is a 
danger to our country or to our democracy.  

17
00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:53,440
And the reason we can't convince um those tens 
of millions of Americans is because they don't  

18
00:01:53,440 --> 00:02:00,720
agree they have been fed a different set of facts. 
Contrast that to 9/11 where there was no dispute  

19
00:02:01,360 --> 00:02:06,800
about the facts there's nothing the United 
States cannot do there's no obstacle too great  

20
00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:13,840
and no problem that we can't solve when we share 
the same set of facts and agree on the information  

21
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:21,840
but on 9/11 there was no left America there was 
no right America there were no left-right cable  

22
00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:28,800
tv stations. There was no dispute about what 
had happened that feeling of national unity  

23
00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:32,800
what we needed to do next 
how can we help each other  

24
00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:39,600
that thread in our character still 
exists and we need to find that again.