Bonus Content: Everything That Didn't Fit In Our 9/11 25th Anniversary Tribute

Michael Smerconish (0:00)

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Gerald Posner (1:03)

Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

Michael Smerconish (1:07)

Hey, gang, it's Michael Smerconish. You know the date. It's September 11, 2026 Today's the 25th anniversary. This morning on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel, I'll present my annual tribute broadcast. This is a bonus edition of the broadcast, everything that wouldn't fit into three hours of live radio. Before I get into what you're about to hear, let me tell you what the special itself on radio consists of, because you can find that too wherever you get your podcasts. We'll link to it on my website for sure.

Every year on this date, I've devoted entire programs to September 11 Over 25 years, I've accumulated quite a library of tape on the subject, conversations with the people who lived it, investigated it, wrote about it, hunted the man responsible for it. And every year, the challenge is fitting it all into three hours. This year, the challenge was impossible because I've recorded new conversations that deserved an airing of their own. So the archive was condensed into two hours, one and two of the radio program. Hour three was entirely new. And what came out, what was removed for timing reasons, is what you're about to hear.

Hour one was the buildup and the day. Jose Melendez-Perez, the Customs and Border Protection Agent in Orlando, who one month before September 11, turned away Muhammad al-Qahtani, the would-be 20th hijacker, while Muhammad Atta waited outside to pick him up. Michael Tuwey, the US Airways agent in Portland, Maine, who handed boarding passes to Atta and a guy named Omari on the morning of September 11 16 seconds of 9-11 Commission testimony from John Layman that exposed the fact that we had a prohibition against pulling more than two individuals of a certain demographic out of line as of the September 11 hijacking. That led to my first book, Flying Blind. Alice Hoagland on her son Mark Bingham and the fight aboard Flight 93 Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower on Who Hatched the Plan. Kevin Flynn, the co-author of 102 Minutes on What Happened Inside the Towers. And Fire Chief Richard Pitch-Pitchiato, the last man down. Plus a piece of my own broadcast from the afternoon of September 11, 2001 That morning, I'd been trying a case in Philadelphia City Hall, and that afternoon, I was speaking in afternoon drive about a man I barely knew who he was, Bin Laden. Hour two was the day from Two Vantage Points and then the hunt. Ben Sliney on his first day as the FAA's National Operations Manager, grounding every airplane in American airspace. Aaron Brown on his first day as a news anchor at CNN, who became the face and the voice for so many of us. On that fateful day, Gary Berntson at Tora Bora, then Senator Barack Obama in 2008 running for the presidency, telling me he'd go into Pakistan if necessary to get Bin Laden. Peter Bergen inside the Abbottabad Compound, and Rob O'Neill of CLTM 6, who was the shooter. And then, hour three, new stuff. A recent conversation that I had with Rudy Giuliani, the mayor on September 11, 2001 of New York City. An extended conversation about what he remembers from that day. Carol Rosenberg from the New York Times, who's covered Guantanamo Bay since the first prisoners arrived, and those who are still awaiting trial. And then, Gerald Posner on a prisoner who's not awaiting trial. What is the case of Abu Zubaydah? It's all great stuff.

And so, too, is this.

First, the archival conversations that had to yield their airtime this year. James Meigs of Popular Mechanics debunking the conspiracy theories. Michael Scherr and Peter Baker on the night that Bin Laden was killed and what went on in the White House Situation Room. Matt Bissonette of Seal Team Six, the full Rob O'Neill and Jennifer Senior Pulitzer Prize-winning interviews in her case about the McElvain family of Orland, Pennsylvania. And then, three new conversations, complete and unedited, Giuliani, Rosenberg and Posner.