The Day the World Changed

It’s Friday, September 11. Today, we’re bringing you a different Front Page. It’s dedicated to one thing: the attack on America 25 years ago, what it meant then, and what it means now.

September 11 was an epochal break, the violent punctuation mark with which one era ended and another began. We have stories on how it changed the world, the war on terror that followed, its contested legacy today, and more. We have the insights of our columnists, like Niall Ferguson and Douglas Murray, as well as the perspectives of those who served on the front lines in the War on Terror, like David Petraeus and H.R. McMaster. But 9/11 was, first and foremost, an atrocity in which wicked men murdered thousands of Americans. And so we begin with the day itself.

On September 11, 2001, Kristina Jones was three months into her job as an attending psychiatrist at St. Vincent’s, the closest hospital to the World Trade Center. She worked 13 hours that harrowing day. The next day she wrote for seven hours, trying to record what she had seen before it evaporated from her mind. Then she put away her recollections, confiding in only a few close friends about them, because her experiences felt small compared with people who had lost lives, family members, or friends.

Twenty-five years later, Dr. Jones decided that she wanted to share what she wrote about St. Vincent’s. Her words are a time capsule of September 11, and a remembrance of those whose lives were lost.

Dr. Jones was one of millions of Americans caught up in the attacks. We gathered 10 first-person testimonies from the day the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon was hit, including a photojournalist who ran toward the World Trade Center when almost everyone else was running away, and got the shot that changed her life; a woman who was a toddler in the Pentagon day care when the plane hit and is now a U.S. Air Force captain; a firefighter who came from Maryland to help with the search and rescue; and memories from The Free Press’s Joe Nocera and Will Rahn, who were in New York City that day.

The morning after the towers fell, Nicholas Clairmont recalls, his mother bought an issue of all four major New York City newspapers—and saved them. Two decades later, Nick read them for the first time, and now he reads them again every September 11. What do they tell us about the day the world changed? Read Nick on the first rough draft of 9/11 history.

Frank Siller was waiting for his firefighter brother, Stephen, to show up for golf on September 11, 2001. He never did. Frank sits down with Coleman Hughes to discuss how he channeled his unimaginable grief into a cause that has changed thousands of lives.

Twenty-five years ago, Americans watching monuments to the country’s security and prosperity wondered: Where will the next attacks occur? Answering that question has been the job of the U.S.’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies ever since. And the country has succeeded in preventing another major jihadist attack after September 11, write William Barr and Michael Mukasey, two former U.S. attorneys general. But, they warn, 25 years later, we’re starting to forget the vital importance of a post-9/11 surveillance law to “detecting and disrupting a new generation of terror plots.”

In response to the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror and the era-defining invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In our pages today, General David Petraeus recalls a pivotal moment in that war: the surge. Read his inside story of how Bush navigated one of the most consequential moments of the post-9/11 era—and why he views Bush choosing to double down in Iraq as “one of the most courageous presidential decisions of the 21st century.”

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster was on the phone with the Pentagon when the building was struck on September 11. He joins Aaron MacLean to discuss the wars that followed, including the rise of ISIS, and why McMaster thinks the latest Iran ceasefire was “a big mistake.”

For some, 9/11 was a sign of the fall of the American empire. Twenty-five years ago, Niall Ferguson was one of the people predicting the decline of American power. He looks back on those forecasts and admits: I was wrong.

Today, not just the legacy of 9/11 but the basic facts of what happened on that day are contested in a way that would have been unimaginable to an America that unified immediately after the attack. Revisit Douglas Murray’s recent essay on why the lies about that day must be resisted.

For more on 9/11 from The Free Press, read . . .

And, reprinted from the archives, Matt Labash’s report from Ground Zero in the aftermath of the attacks.