Return to Transcripts main page
Amanpour
Interview with Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Professor Vali Nasr, Interview with "Ghost Wars" Journalist and Author Steve Coll; Interview with "The Uprising" Director Paul Greengrass, Interview with "The Inheritance" Author Janet Reitman. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired September 11, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE COLL, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR, "GHOST WARS": When the second plan went in it, it finally occurred to me, oh, this is Al-Qaeda.
VALI NASR, PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: This is not something that just happened in New York,
but actually, everybody in the around the country felt it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A day that lives in infamy, 9/11, and the 25 years since a world order reshaped. Reflections on that terrible event and the wars that
followed. Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL GREENGRASS, DIRECTOR, "THE UPRISING": Those people on that airplane met the moment and that inspires me and gives me hope in our difficult
times that we still can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- the heroes of United 93 on 9/11 forever immortalized by film. Legendary director Paul Greengrass reflects and discusses his new film The
Uprising.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET REITMAN, AUTHOR, "THE INHERITANCE": The war on terror is a war on fear. It's not a war on anything. There is no nation of terror. There's no
ideology even of terror. It's a feeling.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- fear begets extremism. The lives forever changed by the war on terror and what America and the world inherited from the tragic events
of September 11th.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Twenty-five years ago today the world was utterly changed. The September 11th attacks were an assault not just on the United States but on the very
psyche of the free world. The deaths of almost 3,000 innocent people, men, women and children from around the world, seared in the memories of
millions far beyond the American homeland.
And in the quarter century since, hundreds of thousands more have lost their lives by the decisions of leaders in response to those evil acts.
Those not even born on 9/11 have felt its impact deeply. America's NATO allies united then to defend one of its own. Wars were waged. Lies were
told. Autocracies and theocracies fell and then rose again. History was rewritten.
To reflect on that extraordinary day and the earthquake of events that followed and to join the dots to where we are today, I'm joined by
journalist and author Steve Coll, renowned for his investigative work on the roots of the attacks and the post-9/11 wars, and by Vali Nasr, well
known to this program and around the world for being an academic and former State Department adviser specializing and analyzing the Middle East.
Vali Nasr and Steve Coll, welcome to the program. I want to just start by getting each one of you to reflect and react to what you remember from that
day itself. Vali, in Paris, where were you and what do you remember?
VALI NASR, PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: I was actually in Tucson, Arizona at a conference. And
early morning I had gone jogging back at the hotel. I turned on the television and I saw pictures of the airplane going into the second tower.
And then I was stuck there for two days trying to make sense of it and also trying to get back home since all flights were canceled.
AMANPOUR: Where did you see what had happened, Steve, and what immediately went through your mind?
STEVE COLL, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR, "GHOST WARS": Well, I was the managing editor of the Washington Post at the time and I was at home just outside of
Washington doing some work at my home office and I had CNN on mute because I had news responsibilities. I saw the first plane go in and I thought, oh,
my goodness, this can be a busy news day. I went I got my stuff and I saw the second plane go in.
And by an accident of professional assignment, I had been in Afghanistan and covering Al-Qaeda during the '90s. And so, when the second plane went
in, it finally occurred to me, oh, this is Al-Qaeda. And then I drove into Washington. And the next six weeks were pretty much of a blur of news
gathering, as I'm sure it was for you.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: Vali, at what point, because Steve knew pretty quickly that this was Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, what did you think it was in those first
hours and a couple of days?
NASR: We didn't have any confirmation about who exactly it was, but I also thought that it was Al-Qaeda largely because we had had the attack in
Africa. And also, I had been working on Pakistan and I knew essentially that it was part of the entire sort of groups that were around Al-Qaeda
that supported it, that they had their sights set on the United States.
And that ultimately, I remember even about six months before I had been in Islamabad and at a gathering, I saw a poster which I bought and brought
back with me, which was of a camp in Afghanistan and on the hill behind a fighter with his face covered, it had written in stone America, we are
coming. So, there was no other candidate, right, at that point in time that would have carried out something like this other than Al-Qaeda.
AMANPOUR: Wow. That is a dramatic thing to remember, that inscription. And obviously, Steve, this was the first attack on the American homeland since
Pearl Harbor. And it fundamentally, obviously terrified the nation, but changed the nation's psyche. Do you agree? I mean, did it have that
dramatic an impact that kind of the DNA flipped that day and in the intervening weeks and months and years?
COLL: Well, yes, I think it unfolded in stages, as you say, the initial feeling in the country, and especially in New York and Washington, where I
was spending my time was sort of disorientation. I remember driving into the city that morning, and thinking, as you know, someone like you has
covered a lot of wars, that the experience of being under fire was not new to me. But I realized, almost everyone around me, this had never happened
before.
And it was also disorienting that it wasn't a state that had attacked us after a long period of tension and declared war. The President was informed
by the afternoon that day of 9/11 by the CIA that they were 100 percent sure it was Al-Qaeda because they had obtained manifests of the hijacked
aircraft and had identified a couple of people they've been following. To their horror, they had missed them.
But to explain to the country what Al-Qaeda was, why bin Laden would do this contributed to the disorientation. But I remember the rally around the
flag effect very clearly. I remember going to a sporting event, you know, maybe 10 days after the attacks and having people, you know, just
emotionally shouting out, screw the Taliban, we're coming, things like that.
And so, there was this intense support for the president for the for the country for the military. And then we moved into a phase of, you know,
expeditionary warfare that imposed an enormous cost on our volunteer military on the country. And, you know, I think we can talk about that as a
sort of separate subject that is still with us.
But that -- I think of that phase is really beginning with the president's decision to invade Iraq, because that that broke the consensus. It divided
Americans about the value and the purpose of these expeditionary wars. And since it was based on a false premise, it shattered trust in the
government.
AMANPOUR: That is the lasting impact, plus the forever wars. I just want to rewind a little bit and ask Vali to pick up on something you just said,
Steve, because it was the -- I guess, the beginning of intense Islamophobia, which has lasted since the since then, screw the Taliban was
maybe the least of the issues in America.
People were, you know, attacking, throwing stones at anybody who even looked Muslim, whether they were or not, even though President Bush went to
a mosque and said, this is not about all Muslim people. This is about terrorists.
But, Vali talk -- did you imagine that this kind of Islamophobia, which emerged from there, would be so visceral and last to this day?
NASR: Well, at that point in time, we didn't know that it would lead to wars, as Steve said, and that it would last. But it was very clear that the
scale of the attack and the fact that it was so disruptive immediately, all airports, all flights in the United States was cut off. It was very clear
that this is not something that just happened in New York.
But actually, everybody around the country felt it. Everybody was basically didn't know when the next attack would come. The message immediately from
Washington was that they really didn't know if there were other terrorist cells or that was this just it. So, I think, you know, the shock basically
continued after the initial attack.
[13:10:00]
And then it was very clear, because I actually lived in San Diego at the time, which was far removed from all of this, that a lot of Americans for
the first time far away from Washington and New York were really, really absorbing this idea that we have a problem in the Middle East, that there
are enemies there. And they not only mean us -- mean the United States harm, but they actually have the capability to reach America.
And regardless of what the president said, very quickly from the circle around him, from Dick Cheney, from his wife, from many people close to the
administration, this was not about a particular terrorist group, was actually about Islam itself. It was about Islamic radicalism. Something was
wrong with the region. Something was wrong with the Arabs. And in fact, it became part of the language of the administration that not that they have
to destroy a particular terrorist group, but they actually have to fix the Middle East, get to get radicalism out of the mind of the people.
And so, this -- and then for 20 years, the administration followed a global war on terror, the ideological anchor of which was essentially, you know,
going after the Muslim world, going after its belief system, demanding of Muslims to be following a different kind of faith. And the administration
never really tried to separate the religion from the radicalism. It said it sometimes, but everything it did suggested that it was not really observing
any kind of distinction. So, the Americans basically took that on and reacted to it viscerally as well.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to ask you because you are there in Paris, you remember the day after 9/11, Le Monde, the famous French newspaper wrote,
we are all Americans. And that was the moment days, the weeks after 9/11, when there was a true outpouring of solidarity for the United States, all
leaders were pledging shoulder to shoulder.
And it was generally assumed, certainly in the U.S. and other circles, that the Afghan war was a just war. It had to happen. It was self-defense. It
was attacking those who had attacked the United States. I'm going to ask you before I turn to Steve on this, but, whoa, look where we are now. The
countries where you are, allied countries, are definitely not saying we're all Americans today.
The -- all these years later, 25 years later, the relationship is no longer shoulder to shoulder in the way that it was.
NASR: No, it is not. I mean, I think that was a very unique moment. And it could have gone in a different direction. I mean, we are talking now where
the United States is actually at a war with Iran. Iran was actually -- the only country in the Muslim world where you had people come in the streets
in sympathy with the United States. Candlelight vigils in Tehran of the time, basically sympathizing with the U.S. and decrying what they saw as
the kind of Taliban-like Sunni radicalism.
And not only nothing was built on that sort of a momentary sympathy going forward, but very soon Iran and the U.S. would be at each other's throats
in Iraq. And then here we are, 20-some years later, what started at that moment at clashes in Iraq has now ended up in a full-blown war.
AMANPOUR: Steve, you've done, as we said, so much work and so much writing on Al-Qaeda, on Afghanistan, on this whole issue, the war on terror. Where
do you think it all started to go wrong? Because there was support for the Afghan part of this. And as Vali has said, as we kind of know, Iraq did
divert. But it wasn't just that, right? It was Abu Ghraib. It was Guantanamo. It was all sorts of things. In your mind, can you analyze how
it all sort of went wrong for the United States after that?
COLL: Yes. I mean, it's a great question and a big one. But just to distill a few points, I think, first of all, to globalize an abstraction as
the basis for policy was a fundamental and early mistake that led us down a lot of, you know, dark roads. To declare war on terrorism was such an
undisciplined idea amidst the fear and the, you know, emotive reaction to the surprise attack, it allowed our government to act in an undisciplined
way. Almost anything was justified if you're fighting something abstract like terror.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the
United States as a hostile regime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[13:15:00]
COLL: I think we also didn't know what we didn't know. And that is hard for governments and for societies. There was a lot of fear. And, you know,
the fear was not irrational. The attack had taken the government by surprise. It had missed the particular cell, but also underestimated, you
know, Al-Qaeda's determination to cross borders and do something hugely ambitious.
And so, there was an assumption -- and the president was briefed by the FBI after 9/11 that there were -- you know, I forget the exact number, 9, 10,
11 sleeper cells in the United States. Then evidence emerged that bin Laden had had conversations with Pakistani nuclear scientists. And suddenly,
everyone was thinking that they were going to attack the United States with a bomb. So, the circumstances, you know, they seemed extreme. And then the
president made decisions that were based on that fear that proved very hard to undo.
And then, I think finally, I would say on the counterterrorism front, you're right. I mean, the counterattack in Afghanistan was a just war
recognized as a just war by NATO allies. And, you know, the coalition that went in there in 2001, actually hung together all the way to 2021. But to
militarize counterterrorism was another fundamental error.
In the end, Al-Qaeda, it turned out, had its moon shot on September 11th. They did not have the capability to carry out the follow-on attacks. And
their offshoots and successors in Islamic State proved challenging. But the best way to contain them, it turned out, was through cooperation, policing,
better borders, better information, better surveillance, and especially alliances with a lot of other states who didn't want loose bands of violent
people coming into their cities and blowing up cafes. And so, that cooperation succeeded.
But the thing we remember correctly, because it's what we did, was that we actually attacked the problem of terror with large expeditionary armies
that were sent abroad into societies that didn't want them there. And that was the final, I think, huge error that I worry we haven't learned from
very well.
AMANPOUR: So, I'll put our final question then to Vali on that, because clearly Osama bin Laden's aim was to upend the United States' dominance,
its leadership in the world. He had a visceral hatred of the U.S. presence in his own country, Saudi Arabia. And here we are 25 years later with Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United States, and Israel, all involved in this war against Iran, war on Iran.
When you think about that, and you try to join the dots, and you're such an expert on the Middle East, you wrote that book, "The Shiite Revival," and
what happens next?
NASR: Well, in some ways, based on what Steve was saying, building on that, I think the United States, after 9/11, also made a mistake of going
to war with an idea, and having this view that somehow radical surgery in the Middle East would actually get rid of all the problems. In other words,
Islamic fundamentalism was caused by dictatorship.
So, if you went to war with Iraq, you brought democracy over there, you built a shining city on a hill in Iraq, the rest of the Middle East would
basically become democratic, and the problems would go away. And the Bush administration failed in achieving that. It caused 20 years of blood and
treasure in the Middle East with nothing to show for the consequence of which was the rise of China.
And in some ways, President Trump is back at that kind of a maximalist goal in the region. In other words, using war in order to remove a regime in
Iran as a sort of radical surgery of the Middle East, after which there would be peace and prosperity in the region, and we'd be done with the
Middle East. So, we're back to the same mistake President Bush made.
And so, yes, the circumstances of the war on terror after 9/11 were different, but the mistake looks to be very much the same mistake.
AMANPOUR: And it really does lead to a question of where America's leadership is now and going forward. There's so much more to talk about.
Hopefully we can again, but thank you both so much for joining us. Vali Nasr and Steve Coll, thank you on this anniversary.
Later in the program, the 9/11 acts of heroism immortalized by film. Reflections with the legendary director behind United 93. Paul Greengrass
joins me.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: The stories of courage and humanity amid the tragedy and evil of 9/11 are innumerable. Not least the heroic actions of the people aboard
United Airlines Flight 93. Thirty-three passengers and seven crew members valiantly fought back against the hijackers, diverting them from creating
further carnage in the nation's capital. All of those brave people lost their lives, but they saved countless others on the ground.
It's documented in the film, "United 93," a seminal project for director and former journalist Paul Greengrass. The man behind hits like the
"Bourne" Trilogy and "Captain Phillips." And he's got a new film out too, "The Uprising," which brings viewers to the hell of 14th century plague-
ravaged England when a farmer leads a rebellion against the king. Here's a snippet of the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is time to set the world on fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rebel armies converge on London. 10,000 maybe more.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who leads them? The Ploughman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There will be no peace until we are free.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen. Listen. Can you not hear their rage?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And when we met here in London, he told me about that little- remembered rebellion that resonates so strongly today.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Paul Greengrass, welcome to the program.
PAUL GREENGRASS, DIRECTOR, "THE UPRISING": Oh, thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR: You have done so many films and we've interviewed about them that are of the issue, but always of the moment, it seems. And the same
with this one. But why do the film version of the 1381 English peasant revolt now, and for the first time, it's never been brought to the silver
screen?
GREENGRASS: You know, it's funny. I actually started writing this on the second day of lockdown. So, six years ago. I'd been thinking about doing a
film about an English rebellion. I had a few. And then I thought, I'll do the peasant's revolt. I'd done quite a bit of work about it. And then I put
it all away and said, well, let's write the film.
It was quite uncanny to start because you were sort of journeying back 600 years to this medieval world. And yet, it was so eerily familiar. You know,
post-pandemic world, a world sharply divided by oligarchs protecting their power and wealth and an enraged population and them being blind to it. And
the tension building and then this sudden uprising. And it just felt incredibly, incredibly contemporary.
AMANPOUR: What specifically do you think -- you know, because this is about serfs. This is about being treated like, you know, excruciatingly by
the landed gentry, by the establishment. This is about a revolt against taxes when they were imposed. But it's also, as you say, about what
happened to people during a plague because it was the time of the plague. And you said you came to it with a COVID idea.
[13:25:00]
GREENGRASS: I think the main eerie similarity is that feeling of rage. Rage everywhere against a failing state, a system, a way of government.
And, you know, it's not a question of politics. I think wherever your politics are, right, left, center, wherever, I think that's a common
feeling. People feel the center's failing. It's not working. We're not delivering. And the rage is growing and it's growing and it's growing.
And you feel that in your country, in our country here in the U.K., I think all across Europe. It's a pervasive feeling. And the question is what to do
about it, what can be done about it. And in a way, this film is about what happened 600 years ago when you have that tinderbox and then it only needs
a spark.
AMANPOUR: And the spark was the demand after all the hardships, right, that the serfs were suffering, that they needed to pay taxes.
GREENGRASS: Well, there's a moment in this film, it's very early on, when Andrew Garfield's character, who's just a simple farmer.
AMANPOUR: Who you call Ploughman.
GREENGRASS: Ploughman. He's a simple farmer. And he goes into his village and they come for the taxes. And, you know, he sees the tax collectors, you
know, abusing the young women as they did. But what you really feel is rage brewing until finally he snaps. We've had enough. We've given you enough.
And again, that's 600 years ago. But that's what you feel. You go out in the streets on the tubes and in the streets and out in the vacant towns of
England. That's what people feel like. You can feel it all around.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to play a clip of the sort of the scene that you're talking about.
GREENGRASS: All right.
AMANPOUR: Again, it's Ploughman pushing back against the crown official who's collecting the taxes. Here's what he says.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW GARFIELD, ACTOR, "THE UPRISING": How much are you making?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you say?
GARFIELD: I said, how much goes into your pocket, you and the lord who sent you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen, you pay your taxes or you lose your hand. We're going to the chief (ph).
GARFIELD: Enough. Enough. We've given you enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Did the rebellion work? I mean, what should people 600 years later learn about this big, huge peasant revolt?
GREENGRASS: That's an interesting question. I mean, the truth about revolutions is that the ledger is not written the day after the rebellion
or even 100 years after the rebellion. Uprisings echo down the centuries. This was the most profound uprising in medieval Europe. Ostensibly, it
failed. But actually, it planted a seed. It's the first moment, really, where you can say that the common man and woman moved center stage and
said, what we want matters. Our rights.
And they articulated very specific political and economic rights. And that flame, that dream, it never was extinguished entirely. And it stayed alive
in a number of very interesting ways. First of all, it stayed alive after the rebellion in outlaw stories that you see emerging from underneath,
particularly stories like the Robin Hood legend. But other outlaw myths, because people told stories about outlaws who stood up against power
because it was a way of keeping the dream of freedom alive.
But you can also tell that people in power never, ever could forget or take for granted again the mob, the masses, common people.
AMANPOUR: We're going to play another clip. And this is of "The Uprising," of the real-life character of a priest, John Ball, who's also been
radicalized. He's speaking to Ploughman.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARFIELD: God left my fields long ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, he has not left you. It is his plan.
GARFIELD: Plan? Why would God have a plan to cause us such pain?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The sickness was his punishment for the crimes of the rich.
GARFIELD: So, why do we suffer also?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To show us the truth. And fill us with rage. Surrender to it. And it will set you free.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREENGRASS: Isn't that where we are today? A lot of the beliefs, of course, in those days, people axiomatically believed in God. But what
people felt at that time was that justice, which they believed came from God through the king to be delivered to the people, had left.
[13:30:00]
What they were faced with was injustice created by man. You know, laws created by man. If you think of today, that's basically how people feel.
They don't express it in religious terms. But the beliefs that people have had in my lifetime, you know, I was born in '55. So, I'm the recipient of
everything wonderful that the post-war settlement gave us in terms of the welfare state, good education, public health systems. All those -- all the
trust and support that we grew up with has collapsed and is collapsing very, very fast.
So, there's this pervasive feeling that people have that they can't believe in what was given to them. What comes next is the issue for us today.
AMANPOUR: Exactly. So, the anger that you talk about, you can feel it everywhere you go. You can feel it in politics. You can feel it in
radicalization, left, right and far-right. And they're winning elections, certainly here in Europe.
I want to ask you about Andrew Garfield's comment in an interview that he sat for with you. And he addressed this very issue, the real division
between the haves and the have-nots. And he said, you know, this film should make the billionaires really scared.
GREENGRASS: Yes.
AMANPOUR: He is --
GREENGRASS: Look, I was next to him. It was a joke. But listen, first of all, can we not joke about billionaires anymore? Is that where we've got
to? That's point one. Point two, there's a serious issue. I don't think anybody, no matter what their politics, can look at our world today and
look at the staggering accretions of wealth amongst oligarchs, and not just in the U.S., I'm talking about across the world, the huge divide and not
say that that is a core part of the rage and the problem that we have. The hollowed out middle-class.
The settlement that I was talking about, you know, that was part of what the post-war world was about. Aspiring folk could see a way that they could
move forward in the post-war world and their children could move forward. They don't feel the same way now because society is sharply divided, I
would say, in the last 30 years, the last generation.
And the acceleration of that divide, the plutocratic power, it's not that I judge them. That's not the point, you know, or as I say, I don't -- if we
can't make a joke about billionaires, then we really are in a bad place. The point is, what are we going to do about the hollowed out, vacant
middle? Where do we plug that gap, huge gap, with aspiration and a place where people can bring their families up? That's the big challenge.
SOARES: Yes. I wonder, because it's this week and it's the 25th anniversary, if you can use that term, of 9/11, and your film, "United 93,"
was one of the best ever made about that day and about a specific issue. And I wonder, just 25 years later, what was that film about?
GREENGRASS: It was about a group of people on that last airplane who were the first people to enter the post-9/11 world for this reason. All the rest
of us, you and I included, were on the ground. And when those first planes hit, we didn't really know what was happening. Those 40-odd people on that
airplane knew because they knew what was going on and they saw what they saw in their plane. They knew what had happened on the ground. Those
messages we know for a fact got through to the airplane.
So, they -- the decisions they took, the courage that they showed, which still to me is astonishing even 25 years later. And I would say this about
those events or the events on that airplane. There are times today when you can look at the world and feel very depressed, anxious, the world off
kilter. And I was talking to some people because they're screening that film in Gettysburg this weekend.
And I did actually read Lincoln's address, which I hadn't, you know, read since college, I think. And he talks about meeting the moment. Those people
on that airplane met the moment. And that inspires me and gives me hope in our difficult times that we still can. Those people on that airplane met
the moment. And that inspires me and gives me hope in our difficult times that we still can.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: And lest anybody forget, and I didn't mention when I asked you about your memories, that was the plane that the passengers and the crews
commandeered, fought back, overpowered the hijackers, even though they knew it was going to drive them to their death.
GREENGRASS: And save the Capitol building.
AMANPOUR: And save the Capitol.
GREENGRASS: Could you imagine --
AMANPOUR: It is remarkable.
GREENGRASS: Oh, and could you imagine, I mean, how bad was 9/11, but imagine if that airplane had gone into the Capitol building.
AMANPOUR: And because everything often is sensationalized, and you don't know if you're telling somebody's story or not or whatever, tell us about
the enduring relationships you made with the family members, other officials who were on hand at the time.
GREENGRASS: Look, it was the most, the greatest privilege of my working life, to make that film and to engage with those families. And the
extraordinary thing about those families and the people on the airplane is that they were of very different political opinions, very different
cultural opinions, you know, all across section.
But they came together, the passengers on the plane, they engaged with that world. They made that sacrifice in an extraordinary way. And the families
have kept that flame alive. In the memorial at Shanksville, beautiful memorial with the wind chimes, the 44 wind chimes.
AMANPOUR: That's in Pennsylvania where it happened.
GREENGRASS: Where it happened, Shanksville.
AMANPOUR: The --
GREENGRASS: Yes, yes. And they're an absolute inspiration, I think, to us all, those families.
AMANPOUR: You started your career, very early in your career, you were a journalist.
GREENGRASS: World in Action, yes.
AMANPOUR: A little bit of foreign correspondent because you traveled a lot. And World in Action was a very famous ITV program, I think.
GREENGRASS: Yes, ITV, yes.
AMANPOUR: And it did what it said, it showed the world in action.
GREENGRASS: Correct.
AMANPOUR: What were your formative memories or the memories that last, the experiences that you had there covering the world, the upheavals, the
disasters --
GREENGRASS: It was amazing. It was an amazing program. No longer with us, of course, now. It was direct. It was tabloid. It was --
AMANPOUR: In the best way.
GREENGRASS: In the best way. Popular. It was a top 10 show.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
GREENGRASS: Didn't talk down to people. It spoke eye level. And when you joined that program, as I did as a very young man, you were told to tell
stories that people cared about in a way that people could grasp. It was direct. And it educated me in the world, the ways of the world, for sure.
But it also showed me the world and how the world is always in action and it is always about the struggle between those who have the power and those
who want it, wherever you are. That's the stress and tension, the push and the pull.
And I've said before, but it's true, I started off making world in action for Corrada Television, but I've tried always to make films about the world
in action. And "The Uprising" is no different. It's about the world turning in 1381 as it is turning right in front of us today.
AMANPOUR: Paul Greengrass, thank you very much indeed.
GREENGRASS: Thanks.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up after the break, how the war on terror shaped the lives of Americans and the reverberations still being felt today.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: America was so deeply affected by 9/11. The subsequent war on terror left profound wounds to scars that have yet to heal in many cases.
And they're best understood through the experience of individuals who are caught up in the extremism and fear of that time. Trauma that's
reverberated across generations.
The award-winning journalist Janet Reitman traces the long shadow of the war on terror in her new book, "The Inheritance." And she's now with Michel
Martin to reflect on what America's response to 9/11 set in motion and what the country, and indeed the world, has inherited from the choices made over
the past 25 years.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Janet Reitman, thank you so much for talking with us.
JANET REITMAN, AUTHOR, "THE INHERITANCE": Thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: Now, you've been reporting on national security, extremism, the war on terror for a long time. But this book, "The Inheritance," is about
people. Each of these stories stands on its own. I mean, there's a suburban military family whose son is drawn into neo-Nazism. There's a Muslim
teenager who tries to join ISIS. There's a Palestinian-American businessman who gets caught up in this post-9/11 terrorism crackdown. There's an FBI
agent who becomes so disillusioned with this war on terror that he actually starts leaking classified documents.
So, you've covered a lot of these stories, but I'm just sort of wondering, how did it become a thing where you realize, actually, this fear is going
to ossify, and it's going to turn this country into something that a lot of us aren't going to recognize?
REITMAN: So, coming out of the '90s, we were a fairly united country for as many divisions and as much, you know, kind of chaos as that era had,
that maybe sometimes we forget about a little bit. But, you know, there was a sense of Americans being one people, and you even heard it in President
Bush. You know, his was -- his initial rhetoric in the aftermath of 9/11 was to bring everyone together, not to say to divide us. And so, what I
would say is that fear element of it, I did not notice initially.
But what I began to notice was, I would say, as soon as they created a Department of Homeland Security, as soon as they redefined America as the
homeland, and sort of began to utilize rhetoric and create an infrastructure that was focused completely on defense and on this concept
of America being vulnerable to attack, and therefore, we need to protect ourselves from any enemies that we may have.
I think what happened with that was, we're a country that our just basic narrative has never been vulnerability. I mean, that's what made Americans
so special in a lot of ways, was that we were people that were supposed to be strong and proud. And we don't have much of a historic memory in some
ways, because we're constantly moving forward.
But what happened after 9/11 was, we discarded that narrative. And we created a new sort of template. The template became a template of national
security, a template of defense, and a template of being on guard. And what happens to you when you're on guard? I mean, basically, a war on terror is
a war on fear. It's not a war on anything. There is no nation of terror. There is no ideology even of terror. It's a feeling.
And when you declare war on something like that, you're basically declaring a state of hypervigilance. And hypervigilance is traumatic, and it has a
long-term impact. And I began to see, I would say, around 2000 and maybe 2002, 2003, certainly after the invasion of Iraq, because I started to see,
like, how this war was being sold to young people who went over there thinking that they were fighting a war to avenge 9/11.
MARTIN: Yes. So, let's talk about some of the stories, starting with the Oneschuk family. You've -- which -- I mean, they're kind of like the heart
and soul of the book, but there's just a fascinating family. The dad, Walt, he builds a career in the military, loves it, concludes his military
service, then builds a career as the sort of post-9/11 security world. But his son, Andrew, becomes attracted to the neo-Nazi movement. Can you
explain how that happened?
[13:45:00]
REITMAN: Walter was a freewheeling, fun-loving, adventure-seeking Navy pilot in the '90s who joined the Navy after college because he wanted to be
Top Gun, literally. And so, in the aftermath of September 11, he saw, well, I have a security clearance. How can I make a living using what I have? And
so, he became -- he got involved in doing R&D for military contractors. So, he worked for a government-funded R&D outfit that did -- oversaw designs of
a variety of technologies that were part of the national security infrastructure.
And that fed a lifestyle that was both a very profitable, comfortable lifestyle. It also continued his ability to have ventures all over the
world because he would deploy to Afghanistan, or he deployed -- he once deployed to Iraq as a reservist. But he made many, many, many trips to
Afghanistan as a contractor and leaving his family for weeks or months, sometimes many, many months. One time it was almost a year.
And so, his son grows up in a kind of, you know, he grows up a little bit in a vacuum without his father. He grows up, like, worshiping his dad's
lifestyle and freedom and adventure. And also, the sort of -- they were a particular family that I would say -- I hate this term, normalization, but
it's a good term for this. They normalized guns. They normalized a military lifestyle and a kind of a, well, this is just who we are. So, he grew up
with a kind of unique situation.
And I think that what I felt in terms of his becoming a neo-Nazi was that, like, something entered the water in that -- in the 2000s. Again, it's that
sense of, like, the way that Americans sort of defined -- redefined themselves in a militaristic manner.
Well, Andrew went crazy on this. He loved video games. He loved guns. He joined an airsoft forum. He started to -- you know, want to be even more of
a big he-man type dude than his dad. And I think that led him down a road, particularly online, that took him into communities that were very
militarized or militant, I would say, and also quite extreme in their rhetoric, and were really, really invested in the divisions.
MARTIN: Well, he wanted -- it's like he wanted to be somebody, you know? Like, his dad wasn't around, so he -- you know, his dad was doing something
honorable, but he was kind of creating an identity for himself. And then, you know, he goes down this rabbit hole. This does not end well, I'll just
say. It doesn't end well.
And here's where I wanted to bring this up, is that you also profile a young girl, a young woman named Mariam Khan, who was a child when 9/11
happened. She grows into a deeply religious teenager. She becomes increasingly focused on the suffering of Muslims abroad. And she then
connects with ISIS supporters online. And then she tries to leave the United States.
So, it just -- you know, what just fascinated me in reading this is that, oh, my goodness, it's like -- it's like she's like Andrew, like in the
sense that she wants to be part of something bigger than herself. And she's searching for something. I just found that fascinating.
REITMAN: Yes. They both interpreted sort of these ideological movements, for lack of a better word, as being giant causes. The neo-Nazi white
supremacist, white nationalist movement framed especially for young people. They were very active online.
During the time that our country was very focused on ISIS and on trying to find radicalized teens, like those who tried to go off and join the Islamic
State, the number of white supremacists, you know, accounts on Twitter was a far greater number. And they had this very specific outreach to young
people that was very similar to the Muslim world's outreach, which was that your country sucks. Your country sucks.
Either it sucks because you as a Muslim kid grew up with parents who'd been afraid of being, you know, arrested or deported, and they've had to shut
their mouths and be quiet and be good Muslims, as they said, so that they won't get in trouble with the United States government and won't get, you
know, arrested or prosecuted for terrorism. And so, they're fearful, and they've forgotten who they are. That was the messaging that some of these
Muslim kids got. And then the white kids were like, your country sucks because it's too politically correct. It didn't win the war in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
[13:50:00]
In fact, writing about Andrew and having written about Mariam, I began to see that they were mirror images of each other and that this was very
interesting, in particular as well, because the FBI paid very close attention to the con kids. And they were arrested because they wanted to
join ISIS, and the FBI was looking very specifically at people who wanted to join the Islamic State. So, they were arrested.
And Andrew was not monitored at all, because the FBI did not monitor domestic actors and domestic groups. They did not look at white supremacist
groups in the same vein as they would have in ISIS or in al-Shabaab or in Al-Qaeda or something like that.
MARTIN: Meanwhile, these groups are exploding online. Many people forget now that there was actually a group of white supremacists who were trying
to kill President Obama, just as he was being nominated for the -- when he was about to receive the Democratic nomination. In fact, the FBI disrupted
a plot of -- and he was, in fact, the candidate who received the earliest Secret Service protection in history because of the level of threats being
directed at him.
Another fascinating character, a person named Terry Albury, who is an African-American man who joins the FBI, super gung-ho, and really believes
in the mission. And then -- so explain what happens to him.
REITMAN: So, Terry begins very idealistically as a person who is -- he's an African-American guy who is -- really believes, when he joins the FBI,
two things. One, that the FBI -- and this is legitimate. The FBI was incredible, in the '90s in particular, at finding missing and exploited
children. And this is one of his -- the things he really wanted to do was help children.
The other thing he believes is that the FBI was cracking down on local police forces that were, you know, in -- like in Los Angeles or in other
parts of California that were involved in police brutality. They were opening investigations on the LAPD and things like that. So, he saw the FBI
as the good guys. They're going to stop racist cops, and they're going to find missing children.
So, he joins the FBI, and it just so happened, right after graduating college, which was in 2001, and then 9/11 happens. And now, he has shifted
his mission entirely to become a foot soldier in the war on terror, as he was called. And what happens to him over these years is that he gets in at
the ground floor of an ever-expanding FBI in terms of its power.
And a complete shift in the mission of the FBI from being an organization devoted to investigating crime and finding criminals to more of an
intelligence operation. And so, he gets in at this very root level of, you know, spying on people, trying to, you know, make cases by linking a friend
of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of somebody who might have known somebody who committed an act of terror. Literally, this was the kind
of, you know, 25-degree separation of people that would be investigated at times.
And he was involving himself in that. And he began to think increasingly that this was sort of killing him soul-wise. This was not accomplishing --
it wasn't actually catching terrorists. He never caught any terrorists. He didn't know anybody that caught terrorists. He didn't -- he stopped one
plot, I believe. But most of what they were doing was just building cases for the sake of building cases and building a budget for the sake of
building a budget. And this budget got huger and huger and huger. And he started to, like, look at it, as he's described to me many times, as a
Ponzi scheme.
Which is very interesting because the tremendous expansion of the FBI is what I think is responsible for a lot of what we are seeing today when we
look at, like, ICE. I mean, you could draw a direct line from all of the stuff that you might have an issue with ICE doing to what the FBI did in
the 2000s.
MARTIN: There's just many, so many fascinating stories that you tell and so many sort of fascinating details. But I do want to sort of ask you,
because I think some people may question this. They say, well, you picked the most broken, damaged people to sort of tell the story of the country in
a post-9/11 world. And I just think some people may wonder if that's really fair. And what would you say to that?
REITMAN: I mean, I think we're a pretty broken, damaged country. You know, we see it playing out constantly, you know, in everything. And so, I wanted
to look at the roots of that. And in order to do that, you do have to, you do chase back people who have had a lot of either are damaged themselves or
who are grappling with the unraveling of some of these institutions, the unraveling of some of their ideals and their morals. I mean, these are all
things that happened.
[13:55:00]
And I think that, you know, we're at a moment in our history where it's time to look pretty honestly at our past and reckon with some of these
things in order to move forward. We're, you know, in the process of writing a story that will take us forward. And I hope, you know, we write a good
story. But in order to write a good story, you have to look at your past and be honest about where we've come from.
MARTIN: Janet Reitman, thank you so much for talking with us.
REITMAN: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And we must all remember the victims and we must never forget what 9/11 unleashed because we really do need to hope that correct policy
decisions are put in place to keep us all safe and to guarantee our democracies and our civil liberties going forward.
That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always
catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
