Kaity Tong’s lips tightened angrily as she glared into the camera and said, “You’re an idiot.”
As though caught in a bad dream, we kept replaying those awful images of passenger planes turning into fireballs, and clouds of dust replacing once-majestic buildings. My voice had become strained and heavy. In contrast, the sound bites from our public officials were strong. New York Senator Charles Schumer referred to the terror attack as “the 21st-century Pearl Harbor.” Mayor Rudy Giuliani emerged as a towering figure early on. Almost a casualty of the buildings’ collapse himself, he was reassuring as he told reporters,
“The city will survive…it’s going to be a difficult time, but we’re not going to let terrorists stop us.” In the almost 20 years I had known Giuliani, I had never seen him quite like this before. He certainly had his moments of arrogance as a politician—and sure, he was combative with the media—but now, in the midst of crisis, we were seeing a different side of him. He was compassionate, comforting and reassuring, all while grieving with the rest of us. His leadership during the calamity would later be likened to the manner in which Winston Churchill had guided the city of London through its darkest hour during the Nazi bombardment in World War II.
There were so many haunting images that day. One of the more subtly powerful images struck me after nightfall. It was from a remote camera facing toward lower Manhattan, where on any clear night we would ordinarily have seen the twinkling lights of the Twin Towers. On this night, however, there was a void in the darkness, like a gaping hole in the heart of New York. My voice cracked as I observed to my viewers, “Hard as it is to believe, they are no longer there.” A cloud of white smoke, brightened by the powerful lights of emergency crews, now filled the space where the towers had once stood.
* * *
That first day was intense. I spent almost 14 hours on the job, including more than six hours live in the studio as WPIX canceled all other programming for continuous coverage of the calamity. On the way to the hotel where I would stay for the next four days, I could smell the smoke that permeated the air throughout the city. In my hotel room, I became fixated on the television; it was the first time I had seen news coverage of the day’s events without actually delivering it. Now alone, I could let out some of the emotion I had been holding back all day. I grabbed two small bottles of vodka and a bag of chips from the minibar, and drifted off to sleep.
In the days ahead, I was compelled to get to Ground Zero. To report it, I felt I had to see it for myself. Reaching out to every contact I had nurtured over the course of almost 40 years as a reporter in New York City, I finally reached a friend in the city’s Office of Emergency Management, who hooked me up with a pool group of reporters. As our motorcade headed downtown, we passed clusters of people applauding rescue workers and waving American flags and supportive placards. They were standing in front of makeshift shrines. Pictures of missing loved ones clung to metal fences; candles flickered with hope; flowers wilted in the wind.
We had to go through several security checkpoints, showing our picture identification at each one. The environment changed as we got closer to Ground Zero. Colors on the street morphed slowly into an eerie grayness that covered the facades of buildings and the faces of beleaguered rescue workers. I stood in frozen disbelief at my first glance at the blackened, jagged remnants of the façade of the North Tower. Fires were still burning. It was all so surreal. I feared the scent of death, but there was none. There was just the choking smell of fire…and calamity. It must be part of the disaster ride at a movie theme park, I mused for a fleeting moment. If only! There was no way our television viewers could truly grasp the horror of it all. Being there and seeing the magnitude of the destruction was incomprehensible.
We were given hardhats and facemasks, and were instructed not to photograph any bodies if any were found during our visit. “Point your lens to the sky,” our escort decreed. In small groups of six, we were led into what had once been the magnificent plaza between the two towering structures. Now it looked like the crater of a volcano. I stood on a concrete precipice overlooking the scene. Hundreds of workers in hardhats swarmed over the debris. Acetylene torches were cutting through steel, jackhammers cracking through concrete. Remnants of the buildings’ façade jutted from the ashes like bits of modern sculpture. Columns of steel that had held up two of the tallest buildings in the world were outstretched like Pick-Up Stix. I was astounded to see very little concrete or glass in the rubble—these, I was told, had been completely pulverized. The stench of toxic smoke and ash was choking, but again to my surprise, there was no scent of death, though upwards of 5,000 people were still missing.
As I eyed the devastation, my mind flashed back to the many times I had been in those buildings before—when I had lunch with my children at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor, when I had covered news conferences in the towers’ spacious offices and conference rooms. And there were all those pictures I had taken of the Twin Towers over the years—from helicopters and a blimp high overhead, from my powerboat in the harbor, from Ellis Island at night. From every angle the buildings were a photographer’s delight; at night, their thousand lights had sparkled like jewels. Those bold, majestic buildings that defined the skyline of New York took on different personalities at different seasons and times of day. They stood tall as monumental symbols of our nation’s financial power—truly among the manmade wonders of the world.
The last time I had worn a hardhat to the World Trade Center as a reporter was in 1970, as I stood on the incomplete 92nd floor of the North Tower, gazing in awe at the progress of its construction. It was a clear day, and I could see for miles from the open space around the steel and concrete in which another floor was taking shape of what was to be the tallest building in New York and, at that time, the world. The buildings were architectural masterpieces in their time, built to the highest construction standards. Engineers had declared that the towering edifices could withstand severe winds, extreme weather—even a crash of the largest airliner at the time, a Boeing 707.
Now, once again in a hardhat, standing on the ground where the towers once stood and surveying the unbelievable devastation, I felt an emptiness inside, and was enraged that terrorists could do this to us. Instinctively, I bowed my head in a moment of silence.
* * *
Arising from all this horror, there came an uplifting fervor of patriotism that would consume the country for some time after the attack. At Ground Zero, there were American flags everywhere. I saw a tattered flag flying in front of one damaged building, and a sea of small flags protruding from the hardhats of workers. They were on bulldozers and cranes, and drapings of red, white and blue brought color to the gray façades of the mortally wounded buildings. Through the smoke, a banner could be seen stretching across the American Express Building, which declared, “We Shall Never Forget.”
One news executive responded to this outpouring of patriotic sentiment by ordering his staff not to display the American flag in their programming. I was so incensed by this, I had to say something about it at the end of my weekly PIX11 News Closeup program.
“In my journalistic career,” I said, “I have never seen such a period of intense patriotic fervor sweep our nation. We display our flag as a symbol of solidarity and determination to overcome a cowardly act of terror.” Glancing at the red, white and blue ribbon blossoming from my lapel, I went on: “We display our flag as a symbol of who we are—one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This week, terrorists succeeded in destroying our buildings, but they failed to destroy our spirit.”
Often I return to the site of the attacks, hallowed ground that has since undergone a rebirth. A glistening new edifice now fills the void where two majestic buildings once stood. Rising a symbolic 1776 feet, the new World Trade Center symbolizes America’s resilience and resolve to never be defeated by those who want to destroy us. A beacon on top is designed to shine as brightly as the American spirit itse
lf.
war
19
JOURNEY TO SUEZ
Suez Canal 1970, during a lull in artillery exchanges.
For a reporter, there is no work more challenging and dangerous than covering global conflicts: traveling to combat zones and joining the military on the front lines to tell the human stories of war. Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed the ravages of war in the Middle East, Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1967 I cut my teeth in war reporting long-distance, by covering the six-day war between Israel and Egypt by telephone. As Assistant Bureau Chief for the Mutual Broadcasting System, I took in the early-morning feeds from our foreign correspondents. Len Whartman in Jerusalem, in addition to filing his reports, would regularly put me in touch with key military sources in the country. On the fourth day of the conflict, an Israeli operator was having difficulty reaching one of my sources. She tried repeatedly to call several numbers I had given her, then finally gave up in frustration, advising me, “Call back tomorrow. It’ll all be over.” The war was over two days later.
The optimism, confidence and determination of the Israelis that I observed over the phone during those tense days, I witnessed firsthand when I visited Israel in 1970 on a media tour. The tour had been arranged by an American Zionist organization, and as might have been expected, its principal goal was to promote a positive image of the tiny nation among foreign journalists. We met with many government leaders, businesspeople and natural-born Israelis—including settlers living on a kibbutz. One of our standout meetings was with Prime Minister Golda Meir. My lasting impression of this powerful leader was that of a grandmother on steroids. She exuded endless homebody charm and charisma at our meeting, welcoming us into her office and warmly embracing each of us. Along with her sweet familiarity, she left no doubt that she was the imperious “Iron Lady” of Israel. Her voice was strong, and her message stronger.
When asked what it would take to bring peace to the region, she replied, “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”
After several days, I decided I had heard enough of the official Israeli story. As a journalist I felt it was imperative that we hear the other side as well—the point of view of the Arabs. Venturing out on my own, I visited the Arab sector of Jerusalem, where I engaged a few Palestinians in conversation. They accused the Israelis of being the war’s real aggressors, by “throwing them out” of their own country. The country’s policy of discrimination against the Arab people, they claimed, was intolerable; they wanted their own land on which to settle their homes. Our benign tour continued through the relatively peaceful part of the country, while to the south, the battle between Israel and Egypt continued to rage. I wanted to visit the Suez Canal.
“Impossible,” I was told. Not one to easily accept no for an answer, I reached out to some of the military contacts I had nurtured three years earlier. I finally coerced an Israeli general to fly a pool group of journalists—representatives of print, radio and television—to Suez.
The next day, a television producer from NBC, an editorial cartoonist from an upstate New York newspaper and I flew in a cramped six-seat, non-military aircraft across the barren Sinai desert. Flying at a low altitude, we watched the wind whip across the sand dunes, spreading fine granules of sand across a two-lane black paved highway that stretched south into the distance. Occasionally, sand would whisk away to reveal remnants of the steel rails of the old Palestine-to-Egypt railway. From the air, it was easy to spot groups of Bedouin nomads crossing the foreboding landscape.
Our plane touched down on an old Egyptian airstrip, on the outskirts of the abandoned city of Kantara. The runway was short, and the plane overshot it by about 20 feet, coming to a dramatic stop when the prop tipped over into a sand dune. We were a little shaken, but managed to get out safely. We were told that another plane would be sent for the return trip.
Now 12 miles from the front lines, we sat uncomfortably in a military vehicle, tightly encased in our flak jackets and steel helmets. The air was dry and hot as we rode along. The desert was barren, except for mysterious black patches just visible on the dunes in the distance. A great haze of dust kicked up from the roadway as a caravan of tanks and trucks passed. The young soldiers aboard were in full battle gear. They carried Uzi automatic carbines and held transistor radios to their ears. The sound of rock ’n’ roll was muted by the clatter of tank treads pounding over the concrete.
The afternoon sun was blinding, its brilliance casting deep shadows across the dunes and littered debris of war. The charred and rusting remnants of Egyptian tanks and trucks from the 1967 war struck our eyes like pieces of some avant-garde metallic sculpture. Off in the distance, the sound of shells whizzing through the air could be heard. Our anxieties built as we learned that the Israelis and Egyptians were engaged in a heavy artillery exchange across the canal. We observed gaping pockets in the sand where freshly delivered shells had been swallowed. Our military escort informed us that the shells were falling short; the Egyptians were trying to knock out the road we were currently racing across. The dunes drew closer and we discovered that the black patches we had seen along the way were in fact Israeli howitzers and anti-aircraft guns, protruding from the white, sloping sand. They were covered in tarps to camouflage them from the air.
The roadway narrowed as we approached the war-ravaged city of Kantara, the only major city on the banks of the Suez Canal to fall into Israeli hands. All of its residents had fled and now it was a ghost town, desolate and silent. Hardly a building had escaped the wrath of the Egyptian firepower. The walls of collapsed buildings and the minarets of wrecked mosques formed a jagged silhouette against the deep-blue Mediterranean sky. Window shutters flapped back and forth in the wind.
Our vehicle pulled up alongside the rubble of a villa. “Keep low and out of sight,” our escort bellowed to us. “You’re in Egyptian sniper range.” He pointed to a house mere yards away across the narrow stretch of the canal, its roof sagging from the many strikes of Israeli shells. “That’s enemy territory,” he told us. It was our first realization of just how close the lines actually were: the Egyptian and Israeli positions were separated by about 125 yards—little more than the length of a football field.
The air was beginning to cool as we advanced into the afternoon, but the heat under our flak jackets was intense. My palms were clammy. With our escort covering with his Uzi, we dashed across a dirt road one at a time, our backs humped forward in the running dance we had been taught to avoid becoming a sniper’s target. The half-block run felt like miles. We reached the other side, breathless.
We were now in a nameless Israeli fire base, where we entered a trench. The trench was narrow, only two-and-a-half feet wide. The sides were shored up with wooden planks and topped by a mountain of sandbags. With our knees digging into our chins, we began to move slowly toward a periscope. Without warning, we heard a crack like a thousand claps of thunder and felt the ground shake under the impact of falling Egyptian shells. Minutes later, another shell came flying across. I dove deeper into the trench, picking up splinters of wood in my flak jacket. I scribbled notes and recorded the sounds swirling around me; a cold sweat consumed me, but I was too overwhelmed by all that was happening to think about being frightened.
The soldiers on the front lines were a mix of young draftees and slightly older reservists. Manning a nearby gunnery position was David, an 18-year-old draftee from Tel Aviv who had been here three months. He told me that time passed quickly on the base.
“Everyone has a job to do,” he said, “and what little time remains is spent sleeping.” As for the constant shelling, he conceded, “It’s not one of the easy things in life, but we learn to live with it.”
The artillery fire soon ceased for a few minutes, and it felt safe enough for me to make my way to the periscope. This, as it turned out, was a modified pair of binoculars with two sighting extensions, poking out above the sandbags and covered with parts of burlap bags. Pressing my eyes agai
nst the scope, I could just barely see the edge of the canal in the foreground. I saw no signs of life on the other side, but as I panned I focused on a house that I was told was a sniper’s nest. As I scanned the area all around, it was clear that the Egyptians had sustained heavy damage from all the shelling.
Another explosion ripped through the air as we made a mad dash for the nearest bunker. There we followed a narrow, darkened passageway deep belowground to meet the base commander, a rugged, good-looking man who was introduced to us as “Deddy.” This was his nickname; journalists were not permitted to identify Israeli officers by their legal name or rank. As the base’s senior officer, Deddy assured us that we were safe in his bunker. He boasted that in more than three years of shelling, it had not been penetrated once. The facility, he explained, was reinforced with concrete and fortified with rails—again from the defunct Palestine-to-Egypt railway—which crisscrossed the top of the bunker, making it virtually impenetrable.
The underground quarters were cramped, but livable. The morale of the soldiers seemed to be good. “They have good backing from their people, and military backing as well,” Deddy told us. The soldiers certainly ate well—the food was plentiful, and the menu varied. I was particularly surprised to learn that here, in the throes of battle, the soldiers even managed to keep kosher: following the strictures of the Jewish religion, they kept separate dishes for meat and dairy, and maintained two sinks outside the bunker to clean them. As another part of the effort to maintain high morale, the Israeli army also permitted homesick soldiers to call home once a week; we saw miles of telephone cables strung across the combat zone. But there was nothing like a letter from home. The gunner, David, shared one with us that he had just received from his mother.
As I Saw It Page 12
