Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We will start quietly today by joining the September 11th Moment of Silence, observed every year at exactly this time 9:59 when the South Tower, World Trade Center II collapsed. [silence]

Female Speaker 1: Christine Lee Hanson.

Male Speaker 1: Peter Burton Hanson.

Male Speaker 2: Sue Kim Hanson.

Female Speaker 2: Vassilios G. Haramis.

Male Speaker 3: James A. Haran.

Brian: As the reading of the names resumes, good morning, everyone. It was 19 years ago when the September 11th attacks occurred and killed, by the count of the Associated Press, 2,753 people here in New York City that day, 2,977 overall. We should acknowledge that they were just the ones who died on the day of. According to Newsday, more than 125,000 people, including 79,000 first responders, have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program. It says at least 18,000 have been diagnosed with a 9/11 related cancer according to federal statistics. More than 2,000 first responders, office workers, and residents of Lower Manhattan have died from a 9/11 related illness and officials anticipate that figure will eventually exceed the nearly 3,000 deaths that occurred on 9/11 itself. We don't know exactly how many will have died from complications of COVID-19 I will add, but the 9/11 related lung conditions and cardiac conditions are certainly among those that would make someone vulnerable to the worst COVID-19 outcomes. For some of us or some of my neighbors, the two gigantic and quickly lethal shocks to the city system of the 21st century compound each other today, 19 years apart. We'll do two things for our September 11th observance on the program this year-- three really. We'll talk later in the hour to New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who's observing ceremonies at this moment. We'll talk later with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who is in the news for different reasons relating to Trump and Russia. He was also one of the investigators after 9/11. I know he'll have some thoughts because they're in his new book about this day 19 years ago, and the FBI's role. We'll talk right now with WNYC's Jim O'Grady, who has a new historical podcast. We've come to learn these terms are Al-Qaeda, jihad, things like that, over the years, but the two moments in which the two towers came down, and we'll observe the other moment of silence for that at 10:28, were preceded by a decade of preparation and terrorism on the part of Al-Qaeda, and investigations by the law enforcement officers and bureaucrats who chase them. A new WNYC podcast called Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, takes us back to that time. Joining me now is the host of Blindspot, and WNYC features reporter Jim O'Grady. Hey Jim, welcome back to the show.

Jim O'Grady: Hey, Brian, it's great to be with you.

Brian: Why do you think almost 20 years later, it's time to look back to the events that led up to that national tragedy when there are so many things going on today?

Jim: I just got a reminder of that in one sense, it's a long time ago, and another it's not just hearing the sound from ground zero just now reminding me--

Brian: It's hard every single time, and I hear it in your voice. It's hard for all of us certainly, who were there and present, as was everybody working at WNYC six blocks away that day. I saw it out my window, the flames, my office window down there, heard the two towers get crashed into by the airplanes. It is tough every year this day. I hear it in your voice, obviously.

Jim: Yes, sorry about that. I myself saw it from the waterfront in the northern tip of Staten Island. I was standing there with a group of other people. We were watching the smoke billowing up from the buildings and I cannot ever forget the deep sense of confusion, of not understanding what we're seeing with our own eyes. Everyone was just staring and trying to figure it out in stunned silence. The woman next to me just said very quietly, "This is the chickens coming home to roost," quoting Malcolm X. I know she didn't mean it that in the way of the United States was the blame in any way, that was not her tone. I think what she was getting at was that what we are seeing here and trying to understand is the result of gigantic forces, of global politics coming together in this tragic moment. I think she was right. I think she was onto something. This podcast, which covers the 11 years leading up to 9/11, is trying to do what we're still trying to do. We put the pieces together and tell the story of how all the prelude to 9/11 and how the events came together. If I could just tell you how it starts, in 1990, in a Midtown Manhattan hotel on a November night, a young man named Sayyid Nosair, who is a radical jihadist goes to hear a Rabbi give a talk, and that is extremist rabbi Meir Kahane. At the end of it, Sayyid Nosair gets up, walks to the front, and shoots Kahane down and assassinates him. This moment is, some people have called it, I would call it, the first attack on US soil, in what we now call the War on Terror. It was so deeply misunderstood at the time. The NYPD just wanted to brush it under the rug, they called it the act of a lone, deranged gunman, when in fact, he was not a lone deranged gunman, he was an ideologue, and he was embedded in a terrorist cell that was organizing in Brooklyn. From the very beginning, you could say law enforcement was running and rushing to catch up, they were already behind. It took them so long to figure out that this strange assassination had international routes, and these forces were gathering and targeting the US.

Brian: In the first episode of the podcast, you explore the meaning of the word jihad. More importantly, you explore how the Islamic concept which is meant to really be a personal struggle, was co-opted by Al-Qaeda in the late '80s. Let's take a listen to a stretch of your podcast, about a minute and a half in length, which explains this and introduces an extremist cleric named Abdullah Azzam.

Jim: Jihad, they said, is the inspiring call for Muslims to be true to Islam and build a just society, but jihad is more than that. It's a complex ethical construct, it also means holy war. In 1989, a small group of extremist preachers spread out to mosques in America to purge the word of its multiple meanings and flatten its distinctions. They announced that jihad was about one thing now, and one thing only, violence. Violence against a decadent West full of non-believers, pursuing imperialist foreign policies.

Abdullah Azzam: [speaks Arabic]

Translator: Over time, our power was weakened, and generations fell due to the psychological defeat brought on by the orientalist's continuous attacks. Under the pressure of the current reality, the definition of jihad became skewed, so that working for a company became jihad, justice became jihad, child support became jihad. All of this is a distortion of the essence of the Quranic texts and the divine terms encapsulated in the word jihad.

Jim: This is the Imam Abdullah Azzam, a prolific and influential messenger of jihad.

Translator: That is number one, jihad is fighting.

Brian: That excerpt and we'll hear more excerpts as we go, from WNYC's Jim O'Grady's new podcast series called Blindspot: The Road to 9/11. Can you talk about why it was important for you to dig into the term jihad and define it for listeners, maybe re-introduce it to listeners who aren't already familiar with what it really means.

Jim: Sure. We try to make clear at many points that these violent jihadists that started gathering in the early '90s, especially in New York City, were extremists. They were way off on the fringe. At one of the trials for one of the groups, the judge, Judge Mukasey who would later go on to serve in the second Bush administration, from the bench at sentencing said, "Listen, the vast majority of Muslims in this country contribute constructively to this country. These people right here, are not them, they are separate from them." What these extremists did beginning in the early '90s, by fanning out across the US and giving talks and raising money was, preached a sort of perverted, very strictly limited version of jihad as only violence. It's not about charity, it's not about internal spiritual development which is what it's really about." You could hear it in Azzam's exhortation there. He's trying to lure people to join a war, to lead the exalted life that comes with putting everything on the line, in this case, to attack the West which he considered decadent, and he considered imperialist, and he faulted for propping up regimes he considered un-Islamic in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and supporting Israel. Men like Osama bin Laden completely agreed. It's funny, Abdullah Azzam is such an interesting character. He is teaching at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia in the late '70s when he comes across a promising student called Osama bin Laden and takes him under his wing and teaches him about the radical theorist Sayyid Qutb who was one of the leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood and who surveyed the world at the end of the Cold War, and he came up with this formulation, "Communism has failed, that's over. The West looks strong right now but it's a spent force, it's devoted to materialism and centralism. The time of Islam and the Muslim community is now, it's our turn to take over the world." This lesson was passed through Azzam, to Osama bin Laden. They would meet up again later in our story. We trace that relationship, how this father figure for Osama bin Laden helped set him on his path.

Brian: Listeners of this show might know, some will even remember, that the United States' involvement in Afghanistan began around the same time that Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The US supported the Afghan guerrilla forces called the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion. Osama bin Laden was part of that. Your podcast points to one really interesting politician at the time in this country who was stoking the flames of support for Afghan guerrilla fighters. Let's take a listen to a clip from the podcast of Charlie Wilson, a former 12-term Democratic United States representative from Texas.

Charlie Wilson: Basically, the Afghan war is a morally unambiguous war.

Jim: That's Charlie Wilson making his case on a TV call-in show.

Charlie: There's no one opposed to the mujahideen because they've proven themselves to be so courageous. Everybody, thanks to mujahideen, are worthy of our support.

Brian: In the podcast, you say the Congressman Wilson was a pretty unlikely character to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan, why?

Jim: He represented a district in Texas and Texas Monthly Magazine covered him and called him just a skirt-chasing, just the worst of congressman in Congress at the time. He was a laughing stock. There's been a movie made about him so people might be familiar with his story. He liked to go to Vegas and hang out with showgirls in a hot tub, but here, with this cause that he stumbles across by seeing Dan Rather in native dress in the hills of Afghanistan talking to the mujahideen, Charlie Wilson decides, "Maybe I can redeem myself by supporting this." As you just heard him say, which was to him, a morally ambiguous cause. This guy he's such an --

Brian: Unambiguous.

Jim: Sorry, unambiguous. Sorry my bad, morally unambiguous cause, which is so American to just barge right forward. Wilson is instrumental because he convinces the CIA to go all-in on supporting, not only the mujahideen which were the native Afghan fighters but Abdullah Azzam who we just heard. He will go on to have the nickname, The Father of Global Jihad. He was its most effective recruiter, he recruits extremists from around the world to come to Afghanistan, and get together, and support the Afghan rebels. Charlie Wilson says, "This is a great idea." One thing leads to another and eventually, the CIA pours $3 billion into this effort. In the process, these extremists meet each other, get to know each other, learn how to fight a war, become operationally savvy, and this is where the term blowback is coined because the blowback from their meeting and their getting to know each other will start turning at the end of this war, will start turning its eyes to the West and to the United States. Charlie Wilson was very successful on his own terms, the Afghan rebels won the war, the Soviets ran home with their tails between their legs, but he didn't know what he had helped create. He had helped create global jihad.

Brian: It was so simple for him, I guess, as the enemy of the enemy is our friend and so if the enemy was the Soviet Union, the enemy that he had his eye on, then the mujahideen as a legitimate Afghan resistance force, whatever other radical anti-West elements they may have been starting to grow, that was overlooked. Does that sound about right?

Jim: That's the perfect summary. That was America's operating principle in the Cold War is oppose the Soviet Union through proxy wars in Latin America, in Africa, and in this case, in Afghanistan.

Brian: As you point out in the podcast, the 1990s, meaning the decade leading up to 2001, were a time of terrorism in New York City. Let's take a listen to a montage from the podcast of reporter John Miller. Some people know that John Miller went on to be very high up in the NYPD in counter-terrorism, but he used to be a police beat reporter for Channel 4. He was covering, among other things, the assassination of Meir Kahane that you mentioned at the time,

John Miller: If you look at the 1990s in New York City, New York was the United Nations of terrorists.

Female Reporter: Bombing, armored card heist, bank robberies and assassination.

John: We had the anti-Castro Cuban terrorists who had been blowing up the Cuban missions, we had the Jewish Defense League terrorists who had been blowing up the Russian mission to the United Nations, we had Armenian terrorist attacking the Turkish missions, we had Croatian terrorists attacking the Yugoslav mission.

Brian: With all those things going on, no one in law enforcement had really heard of Al-Qaeda. Tell us more of that history since this is a history podcast, what happened after the Kahane assassination when investigators began to look into what this organization was really doing on American soil?

Jim: Brian, this is so wild, the 1990s in New York, we both lived through it, and I venture to say, we both imagined that this high crime era, but I had forgotten that there was this speed of political bombings going on at the same time. Where nationalists and separatist groups and liberationist groups from around the world would come to New York and blow up a car or the door to an embassy in Manhattan, to get attention to their cause. That added to the general fog of what was going on and law enforcement had to figure out in each case,"Is this the one-off or is this the sign of a transnational group of terrorists being funded by a shadowy financier called bin Laden or something, and this is worth following up on?" It confused the situation and stretched law enforcement very thin and yet-- We follow law enforcement all along these 11 years, we walk in their footsteps, we talk to the guys who did the investigating, who interrogated the suspects, who did the stakeouts and try to recreate what they were thinking, what they were seeing and what they were missing. One thing that was missed after Sayyid Nosair was arrested, the FBI raided his house or searched his house in northern New Jersey, and in the attic found 47 boxes of materials. They were in Arabic. They looked at them for a couple of days, they didn't know what to make of them, and then the Manhattan DA took these boxes because they were in charge of the prosecution. In those boxes, it was later discovered, were fragments of manuals. How to take over an airplane, how to bomb a tall building, the footprint, the blueprints for the World Trade Center. These were hints, these were clues of what this group had in mind. Like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, these boxes went into storage, and these clues were missed in a timely fashion. This is the story we seesaw back and forth between progress, and between bafflement, and between mistakes, and we take the listener on that journey.

Brian: Listeners, if you're just joining us here on this September 11th, 2020, the 19th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, people called it a tragedy at the time. It was mass murder obviously, terrorist attacks. We're talking with WNYC's Jim O'Grady, who has a new historical podcast series called Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, which, well the title says what it is. It's about various blindspots that people who might have seen it coming had on the road to 9/11. We have a few phone calls coming in, Jim. Let's take one or two. 646-435-7280, listeners, 646-435-7280. Here's Jennifer in the East Village. Hi Jennifer, you're on WNYC. Jennifer you there? That's all right, I think we've kept Jennifer on hold so long she went and did something else. Let's try Diana in Lower Manhattan. Diana, you're on WNYC, do we have you?

Diana: Yes, hello?

Brian: Hi, there. You're on the air.

Diana: Hi. I just like to point out that even though I've lived in America for 55 years, and I'm not from here, and I had a strong view, I think, that most people who aren't American have a good memory or knowledge of, America's interference in various places, not necessarily on the right side, through history, in Turkey, in Congo, in Chile, and all these places, but particularly vivid in the Middle East, or least in the Middle East view. When the Egyptian Brotherhood was developing in Egypt, when various combination of Egypt and Syria was coming along, it was very much anti-American, not in the religious side of sense, of being America was a profligate Western state, but America had interfered for the wrong reason. When the second plane went into the World Trade Center, I live close by, and I saw it happen. I said to a friend today, that's Osama bin Laden, I understood exactly what was going on. Not just because of that history, but because the New York Times wrote extensively about Al-Qaeda in its coverage of the trial going on in the Southern District, of the bombers of the East Indian Embassy in Nairobi, and so on. It was common knowledge that anybody who followed American history and American politics ,what was going on in certain aspects of Middle Eastern society. I was so shocked that nobody, the talking heads, the politicians here, the news media, apart from the people you were talking about were following it, were so surprised. I was as horrified as anybody else was, but I wasn't surprised.

Brian: Diana, I'm going to leave it there. It definitely relates to material in your podcast, Jim, like you say that the Al-Qaeda training camps that she's referring to, didn't raise red flags with local law enforcement. For people who don't know this history, some of the timeline, when she talks about the embassy attacks in East Africa, those were 1998, and by Al-Qaeda. I think it was just the year before, 2000, that the USS Cole was attacked overseas, and that was Al-Qaeda. You want to connect some of those dots?

Jim: Well, she makes a good point that far more than any religious fundamentalism, the main actors were driven by politics and by power. To Osama bin Laden, the original sin in America's overseas actions was the agreement in 1945 between FDR and King Abdulaziz, that basically set up his deal, US gets the oil, and Saudi Arabia gets the military protection. Osama bin Laden was furious about that for his entire life, why should the infidels be invited into Islam's holy land? For another big character in our story, The Blind Sheik, and Egyptian imam who set up shop in Jersey City, New Jersey, he despised the secular government of Egypt. When bin Laden and The Blind Sheik, looked at these governments and looked at support for Israel, and they said, "Who is behind this? Who is the force behind this? Who's the power that's supporting this world arrangement that we disagree with?" The answer to them was always the United States, so they were pursuing a political agenda, they were pursuing a strategy. By the way, both of them wanted to take over their home countries. Osama bin Ladin wanted to rule Saudi Arabia and The Blind Sheik definitely wanted to rule Egypt. Their terrorist agenda was meant, in large part, to forward those plans. The caller is right. The US was, in the '90s, the world's sole superpower, it was throwing its weight around, it was bullying countries. In the case of Iran, it overthrew the government. Then, years later, the Ayatollah Khomeini takes advantage of a popular uprising, and sweeps in, and takes over the country. This was the template for a Osama bin Laden and men like The Blind Sheik, they wanted to remake the Middle East in terms of a strict Islamic culture in these countries, and then spread out from there, but first, they decided they had to attack America.

Brian: Jim, we've got about a minute left before we end our part of the show today and we join the ceremonies in lower Manhattan for just a minute to join the 10:28 moment of silence when the second tower collapse. You've also released Episode Two of the Podcast Series Blindspot: The Road to 9/11. Do you want to give the listeners a bit of a preview?

Jim: Sure, Brian. If you listen to the podcast for no other reason, there's an amazing character named Emad Salem. He's an Egyptian immigrant to the United States. When he was in the Egyptian Army, he was present at the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat, swore revenge against the sheik who inspired it, The Blind Sheik, and one day the FBI just knocked on Emad Salem's door and asked him to infiltrate The Blind Sheik's terror cell. What he did next is astounding. He did it at a very human combination of revenge against the man who killed who he called his president, Anwar el-Sadat and just patriotic love of America as an immigrant to this country. Emad Salem, amazing story.

Brian: And an amazing podcast series, Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, WNYC's Jim O'Grady, thank you so much.

Jim: Thank you, Brian.

Brian: Now, let's rejoin for a minute the ceremonies in lower Manhattan as they read the names of the dead as they move toward the 10:28 moment of silence to commemorate the time when the North Tower World Trade Center One collapsed,

Male Speaker 4: Daniel M. Lewin.

Male Speaker 5: Adam Jay Lewis.

Female Speaker 3: Jennifer Lewis, Kenneth E. Lewis.

Female Speaker 4: Margaret Susan Lewis.

Female Speaker 5: Ye Wei Liang. [pause 00:29:04] [bell rings]

Female Speaker 6: Orasri Liangthanasarn.

Male Speaker 6: Daniel F. Libretti.

Female Speaker 7: Ralph Michael Licciardi.

Female Speaker 8: Edward Lichtschein.

Male Speaker 7: Samantha L. Lightbourn-Allen

Female Speaker 9: Steven Barry Lillianthal

Male Speaker 8: Carlos R. Lillo.

Female Speaker 10: Craig Damian Lilore.

Female Speaker 11: Arnold Arboleda Lim.

Female Speaker 12: Darya Lin.

Male Speaker 9: Wei Rong Lin.

Female Speaker 13: Nickie L. Lindo.

Female Speaker 14: Thomas V. Linehan, Jr.

Male Speaker 10: Robert Thomas Linnane.

Male Speaker 11: Alan Patrick Linton, Jr.

Male Speaker 12: Diane Theresa Lipari.

Brian: As they read their names in alphabetical order, in lower Manhattan as they've done every year, since September 11th, 2002, of the 2,753 people, to be exact, at least that's by The Associated Press' count, we round it up, or round it down so casually, but as precisely, if the number is right, 2,753 people, and that's why they say the names. Loved ones and others reading the names of the individuals. Let's listen to just a few more before we break.

Female Speaker 15: Catherine Lisa Loguidice.

Female Speaker 16: Jérôme Robert Lohez.

Female Speaker 17: Michael William Lomax.

Female Speaker 18: Stephen V. Long.

Female Speaker 19: Laura Maria Longing.

Female Speaker 20: Salvatore P. Lopes.

Male Speaker 13: Daniel Lopez.

Female Speaker 21: George Lopez.

Female Speaker 22: Luis Manuel Lopez. Maclovio Lopez, Jr.

Female Speaker 23: Manuel L. Lopez

Female Speaker 24: Joseph Lostrangio.

Female Speaker 25: Chet Dek Louie.

Male Speaker 14: Stuart Seid Louis

Brian: This is WNYC. I'm Brian Lehrer. We'll continue in a minute with New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

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