PBS News Hour - Full Show - September 9, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Wednesday on the News Hour, a top AI researcher quits and goes public with fears that AI companies are ignoring potentially catastrophic risks in the race for profits. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces political pressure after an investigation alleges he was warned about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Plus, a look at the psychological impact of the Sept. 11 attacks, 25 years later. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. I'm the Navaz as on assignment. On the news hour tonight, a top AI researcher quits and goes public with fears that AI companies are ignoring potentially catastrophic risks in the race for profits. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces political pressure after an investigation alleges he was warned about the October 7th Hamas attack. And as the country approaches the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, a look at the psychological impact. Many Americans who didn't live in the world before 9-11 in the United States don't realize how innocent our country really was. Welcome to the News Hour. Concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence erupted across the tech world today. So did questions about whether the companies building it are doing enough to keep it safe.

That followed the public resignation last night of an AI researcher at Anthropic who said he no longer wants to take part in developing AI that could eventually advance beyond human control and pose a serious threat to humanity. Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at Open AI, wrote in a post that has now been seen more than 70 million times, that the industry understands the potential risks, but is moving ahead anyway. Quote, the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear the same people express.

fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. For more on the warnings that Coxon is raising. And the broader questions about whether the AI industry is doing enough to address it, we're joined now by Amrith Ramkumar, tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Welcome back to the program. Thanks so much for having me. So we hear warnings about AI. It feels like all the time now. Why did this one break through in the way that it did? I think because he's quitting the industry, frankly. This is someone who no longer has skin in the game. game, and he's worked at two of the top AI companies, and he's talking about major risks late next year or the year after, and then following after that maybe the potential extinction

of humans, depending on how things go. So I think the severity of the claims, the fact that he's leaving, and the fact this is coming on top of several incidents of AI systems hacking other companies. All of that together made this a pretty volatile moment. And what he said was backed up by other AI researchers last night? 100%. You could have seen a world where he puts this out. Our story goes out. His statements go out.

And then others at the company distanced themselves. Instead, one of their top scientists said, we absolutely believe this. We think there's a more than 10% chance that basically the human race is extinct within a decade because of AI. So it was a really remarkable sequence of events and highlighted how many at Anthropics specifically

have this sort of doom and gloom concern out there. And Anthropic is interesting because that company built a reputation around AI safety and regulation. You spoke exclusively with Jacob Coxon yesterday. What more did he say to you about his decision to step down, and what does this mean about Anthropic, really? Well, the first thing that he said was interesting

was he left OpenAI for Anthropic a few months ago. So he spent a few years at OpenAI helped train some of their most advanced models, but he wanted to work at Anthropic because of what you said, the safety reputation. Dario Amade, the CEO, and other top executives, speak about this a lot. But within a few months, his takeaway was

that no company can do this safely. He wasn't knocking Anthropic. He was saying that the private sector is not in position to do this right now because of the competitive forces and the race with China. So he and others are really putting the onus on the government to get involved. And I want to unpack part of this, because when he says that there's a roughly 10% chance that AI could spell the end of humanity,

when people say that, they're not suggesting that there's a chatbot that's out to kill everybody. What they're describing is this sort of like theoretical chain of events involving a much more capable future AI system, right? That's 100% right. So the key first thing to understand there is they're very worried about this thing called recursive self-improvement.

And that is when a model can essentially improve by itself and train itself. And other AI systems can then get much more powerful. People say we could hit that within a couple of years. After that, they say it's very hard to predict what could happen. So there's a high degree of uncertainty. But one or two of the scenarios

those are some of the scenarios involve models training themselves and essentially learning how to reject human commands. And once they can do that, and then they can do things like command drone swarms or robots or whatever the case might be, they might decide that humans aren't necessary to fulfill their objectives. So that's sort of the worst case scenario they're painting. And it's important to say they assign probabilities to all of these things. So they're not saying it's a high probability necessarily, but it is on the table what is possible.

And there has long been skepticism about the motives here. When CEOs and researchers sort of raise alarms about the potential future of AI, there are people who suggest that they're doing this because it serves their own interests and they want to have a hand in shaping the regulation that would affect their own industry. 100%. You hear this a lot from people like David Sachs, an advisor, to the president on AI, and he's a venture capitalist, very well known. and he says this is called regulatory capture when people like Anthropic make these doom and gloom claims

to hype up their models and raise more money, et cetera. The interesting thing here, though, is he left the company. So that sort of is a counterargument that he doesn't have anything to gain necessarily from these regulations. So there is a community here that is very focused on the risk post by AI and these sort of doom and gloom scenarios.

And a lot of them happen to work at Anthropic. And that does rub people on the other side of the digital debate in Silicon Valley the wrong way. What's undeniable is that the risks here are rising. Like I said, you've had models hacking other organizations, hundreds of models working together, essentially, hundreds of AI agents to hack this company hugging face a few months ago, and many other examples that could come out that we don't even know about from the new powerful models. So you're seeing people on both sides of the aisle respond. You've seen administration officials talk about the need to respond. So the risks here are becoming undeniable, even to the

people that say people like Jacob Cox and are Dumers? Risks are undeniable for sure and there's no regulation on the horizon and we should make clear it's easy to say AI needs to be regulated but if you regulate too aggressively you stifle innovation you stifle competition and certainly that's the case a concern about China that's right yeah it's very easy to say there are no federal regulations the Trump administration has made a huge error here and there has to be something on the books much harder to get agreement on what that looks like even with the number of voices on the left and right that have come out today saying that we need regulations. There's a little agreement on what those should be even in Congress, even in the House, even in the Senate,

even within those factions. So what is interesting, though, is that you have this momentum, and you do have the administration a little bit more willing to look at models before they're released, even if it's on a voluntary basis, and things are clearly trending in that direction. What Cox and Cochon and Coe want is global coordination. That's even harder than just U.S. policy. They want the U.S. and China to reach an agreement and other leading economies to get on board with sort of a globally coordinated slowdown in the event that AI becomes too powerful. That seems like a long shot right now, but the technology is moving very fast. We'll see where things go.

All this doom and gloom with a smile, Amrith. Amrith Ramkumar, tech journalist for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for being with us. Thanks so much for having me. In the day's other headlines, the White House is defending holiday gifts from President Trump to a number of his aides, including his executive assistant Natalie Harp. According to new financial disclosures, the president gave Harp $45,000 in cash or about one-third of her annual salary.

He gave the same amount to communications advisor Margo Martin and White House aide Chamberlain Harris, as well as $20,000 to director of Oval Office operations, Walt Nata. The payments raise legal and ethical concerns. Federal employees generally can't receive outside compensation for their work, and experts warn the payments could leave AIDS financially beholden to the president. In a statement provided to the news hour, the White House says Mr. Trump has a, quote, longstanding practice of giving such gifts, adding that they are, quote, entirely permissible under relevant, legal and ethical standards. The U.S. and Iran are trading more attacks in a fight to exert

control over the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation that sent oil prices back over $100 a barrel. Iran says it launched missiles at targets overnight, claiming to strike several tankers and two American ships, which U.S. Central Command denies. Tehran also fired missiles at a U.S. base in Jordan, which the Jordanians say were intercepted. Hours earlier, the U.S. military said it had destroyed five Iranian tankers in the water near Iran. In Iran today, some residents expressed concern about the impact of U.S. pressure on their daily lives. The people are certainly in hardship. War is not good for the economy at all in the short term.

But I hope that in the long term, it turns out in such a way where we can say it was truly worth it. Separately today, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported Iran to the Security Council for the first time in 20 years for failing to cooperate with an investigation into uranium found at undeclared sites. The move is largely seen as symbolic, though, since Iran's allies, China and Russia can veto any sanctions against Tehran. The trade war between the U.S. and Canada is escalating even further after the Trump administration announced a ban on certain Canadian imports that includes some Canadian dairy products, motorcycles, molasses, and most alcoholic beverages. The ban will take effect later this month.

It is the latest step in the unraveling of relations between the two historic allies. Earlier yesterday, Canada rolled out retaliatory tariffs on 20 billion. dollars worth of U.S. imports. Across Hawaii residents and work crews are cleaning up after Hurricane Lowell left widespread damage in its wake. Parking lots and buildings were flooded by several feet of storm surge. Winds topping 80 miles per hour damaged power lines and left tens of thousands still without electricity.

Hawaii's governor says one man on Hawahu was killed by a fallen tree. On Kauai, some areas got more than 17 inches of rain, washing out huge, stretches of beachside roads. Now a tropical storm, Lowell has pulled away from Hawaii, though the threat of floods and mudslides remains. The Transportation Security Administration is bringing back gate-side goodbyes and post-flight pickups for certain people without a ticket. Authorities are rolling out a program that allows TSA pre-check members to pass security and enter gate areas at more than a dozen U.S. airports. The program is free for members and other people with known traveler numbers, but they must apply online beforehand and get approval. The practice was

eliminated following the September 11th attacks 25 years ago. The agency says it plans to expand the program to more airports in the coming months. On Wall Street today, stocks ended lower after that latest rise in oil prices. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell around 400 points. The NASDAQ lost more than half a percent. The S&P 500 also closed in negative territory. Still to come on the news hour, we report from Dallas where Republicans are holding their first ever midterm convention. National redistricting efforts and conflicting court rulings throw Missouri's election maps into chaos. And Pulitzer Prize winning author Kai Bird discusses his new book on the controversial attorney and mentor to President Trump, Roy Kohn.

This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. Republicans are gathering in Dallas tonight for an unusual two-day midterm convention, with President Trump set to address the party on both nights. The event, part rally and part political showcase, is aimed at energizing Republican voters. Our White House correspondent Liz Landers is in Dallas and joins us now with a preview. So, Liz, based on your reporting, what should we expect? Jeff, the Republican Party chairman himself has called this a Trumpapalooza.

The Republicans have never done a midterm convention like this, but this was something that President Trump wanted and the party delivered here in Dallas. This looks like a convention in here. There are even balloons up in the ceiling behind me here. But this is not focused on a floor agenda or a policy platform. Instead, this is really going to be focused on President Trump and what Republicans think are their accomplishments going into this midterm cycle. We should expect to hear about the one big beautiful bill passing, them trying to root out fraud and waste out of government spending and securing the southern border. One thing, though, that is a lot of rankling voters across this country and is high on the issues list for people that I'm talking to

is the high price of gas and energy. I asked Republican Congressman Brian Stile of Wisconsin if this was going to harm the party going into the midterm convention. Costs are high for American families. That's absolutely true. What are the policies that drive that down? The tax reform of Republicans, our relation to American energy, in our work to make life more affordable. Contrast that again with a high-tax policies of the Democrats and anti-energy policies that actually makes life more. President Trump was asked about these high gas prices as he left the White House today. He said he thinks that they will come down after the midterms. President Trump will be here both nights.

He's speaking tonight and tomorrow evening. We're also expecting to hear from about 50 other speakers today, including everyday Americans sharing why they support the Republican Party. President Trump's request to voters here, Jeff, going into the midterm, has been to please consider him on the ballot. We will see if that helps Republicans. And on that point, Liz, do you have a sense of which House and Senate GOP candidates are actually in Dallas at that convention? Organizers say that more than 100 House and Senate candidates are here in Dallas and expected to attend. President Trump, though, posted on truth social yesterday saying,

quote, we're really asking only those candidates that are in tight races, a little up, a little down, or even to speak, we want to save the stage for them. But despite the president's post-Jep, many Republican candidates in tight races are skipping this convention. I spoke last week with a Republican consultant in Michigan, Jason Rowe. He works with Congressman Tom Barrett, a vulnerable Republican there in that state. And he told me that for Tom, there are no voters in Dallas, he said, of this event that's happening here.

And he said that the congressman's time is much better spent in Lansing in Michigan, talking with voters. Among some of the other big names that will not be in attendance are also Susan Collins of Maine, John Sununu, who won that New Hampshire primary just last night in Dan Sullivan of Alaska. On the other hand, there are Republicans in tight races that are hugging the president and that are here for this event, including Texas candidate for Senate, Ken Paxton, also Michael Watley in North Carolina, Mike Collins in Georgia and Mike Rogers from Michigan. And we are expecting to hear from members of the president's cabinet, including the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett, and unusually, Jeff, the Attorney General Todd Blanche, is also expected to take the stage tonight. And Liz, this event is aimed at energizing the base, but it's also a major fundraising opportunity for the party and for the candidates. Is that right? This has been a large part of the conversation around this, the cost of being here in Dallas.

I got an invite that went out to Michigan party members back over the summer. And just for an individual who wanted to come, an honorary delegate is what they called it, that was going to cost $7,500 just for that individual ticket that did include floor seating and a hotel that did not include air travel here. It is $25,000 for members of Congress to attend. And the Wall Street Journal had some really staggering information about some of the fundraising, that's going on here that President Trump is doing. They say that an RNC fundraiser this afternoon with the president is costing $250,000 per person. If donors want to take a picture with the president, that costs $88,600.

Vice President J.D. Vance is also holding fundraisers as well. A photo with him only costs $35,000. But MAGA, Inc., which is the super PAC that is aligned with President Trump, has an enormous war chest of $400 million. They have hardly spent any of that. But some of the races that they have started spending on include that Texas Senate race here, where Ken Paxson is running, where Republicans that I've talked to are very nervous that this seat could finally flip blue to Democrats as they have been hoping to see happen for years now.

The MAGA Inc. Super PAC has already promised $10 million in that race, Jeff. Liz Landers reporting for us from Dallas tonight. Liz, our thanks to you. Well, with less than two months until the midterm elections, the congressional maps are still not entirely settled. Republicans had hoped mid-decade redistricting would give them a bigger advantage in the battle for the House. But those efforts have run into a series of legal challenges, and now conflicting court rulings have thrown Missouri's congressional map into limbo, leaving candidates and voters uncertain about which maps will be used in November. For the latest, we're joined now by our congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardin.

And so, Lisa, what is happening in Missouri right now? Jeff, this is a chaotic match over one congressional seat that's based in Kansas City, Missouri. It has been held by Democrats for seven decades and more. But Republicans redrew it in the state last year. After they did that, trying to favor themselves, voters in the state circulated petitions and actually met the requirements to have a referendum, to reverse it, to overcome the Republican redrawing. That has not happened. And because of that, we saw the Missouri Supreme Court.

in the last couple of days rule that these Republican maps should not stand and it should go back to the old maps. Yesterday, the Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court backed that up, saying basically the old maps, it must be in place. They backed up the state Supreme Court. However, just minutes after that, a federal district judge Stephen Clark ruled the opposite way, say, no, it must be the new maps to go in place because primaries have been held under those new maps. So where are we right now? No one knows. This still has yet to be resolved.

There has been sort of a rainstorm of court filings in the last day, but time is of the essence. Not only our elections soon, but Missouri is supposed to start early voting next month. And Republicans launched this latest redistricting race at the urging of President Trump. Now Missouri is the latest obstacle in their plan. So take us through where this entire effort stands now. Let's do something I love. Let's go look at the map. First of all, this is a reminder of what happened.

we had seven Republican-led states that have for sure redistricted and Missouri there in yellow is still pending. Now, for Democrats, there were two states that remapped favoring them. California will be in blue, and that was remapped by Democrats themselves, and then Utah was something that was remapped by courts. Now, that does show you the overall picture, but it doesn't get out what's changing now, which is the fate of these races. So for that, I want to go to the math.

First of all, let's look at Democrats' maximum opportunities here. Because of remapping, Democrats could gain up to six seats in the House, but Republicans have a much bigger number. That's 16 seats, is their maximum. Those are the maximums. But here's what's interesting now. What is actually likely? If you look at the Cook Political Reports' ratings on all of these races, for Democrats,

they would have a pick-up, likely pickup. They're favored right now in five of those races. So a lot of the races they remapped. But look at this. Republicans are favored to pick up just seven of the seats that they've targeted right now, according to the Cook Political Report. In other words, Republicans are poised to get something

on net over Democrats, but far less than what they intended. So Lisa, why are Republicans having trouble clinching these districts? They redistricted. Let me show you an example. Texas, the state that started it fall. These are the five districts that Republicans are hoping to pick up through remapping. They've moved them from Democratic leaning to Republican leaning.

However, when you look at what's happening in the races, only these two in red are solidly favored to be picked up by Republicans. The others could go either way at this point. And what's more, there's another district, Texas 15, which is held by a Republican now, but she is now more vulnerable because of the way her voters have been spread out. Look at these districts, especially around the Rio Grande, and you'll notice something, a lot of Hispanic voters.

That's a key vote right here. And those are folks who went for Trump in 2024 by larger margins than in the past. But it's not clear they will go the same way this time. We spoke to Republican strategist Malik Abdul. Some of those districts have larger Hispanic than black or white populations. If they decide that they don't like the implementation of Donald Trump's policies, or if they don't like the state of the economy, That is something that could hurt Republicans where we don't make the gains that we otherwise assumed that we would because it was in a place like Texas.

In other states, there are also a number of Democratic incumbents who've been targeted who are doing very well in their races. They're outperforming what Republicans thought they would do. And Lisa, with all of the focus on the impact of these redrawn maps, where does the battle for the House stand right now? All right. We're sitting here today. Much can happen in the next month. A lot of money will be going into. to these races. But as we sit here today, Republicans are on track to pick up a net of maybe a couple of seats because of redistricting, despite all of the states that have been involved, it boils down to just a handful of states that they are looking to gain, and they might

gain none overall. What we think is going to matter more for the race of the House is all these other battles around the country that are not in redistricted states. Despite all of the Republican effort, it will help them, but it may not determine the fate of the House. Lisa Desjardin, thanks as always for this reporting. You're welcome. New reporting in Israel alleges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an explicit warning that Hamas was planning a major attack just days before October 7th, but did not act on the warning. Netanyahu strongly denies the report and says he will sue the newspaper and the journalists behind the story.

Here's Ali Rogan. Yesterday, the Israeli newspaper Haarets reported that the president and crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, called Netanyahu to warn him of a coming Hamas onslaught just a week and a half before the attacks on October 7th in 2023. MBZ reportedly advised Netanyahu that the Hamas military chief in Gaza, Yaya Sinwar, told an intermediary that he was planning a terrifying operation. In the lead-up to this reported call, Hamas and the Israeli government had been negotiating the lifting of Israel's blockade of foreign. Gaza, increasing food shipments there, and a prisoner exchange.

But according to Haaretz, Sinwar caught off contacts because Netanyahu kept delaying a decision. That was just before October 7. The UAE refused to comment on the report, but did not deny it, and underscored that the Emirati and Israeli governments maintained open and direct communication since establishing relations more than five years ago. For his part, Netanyahu wrote on social media that no such call took place. between September and October 7th, and called the story a malicious fabrication

with a clear political timing. For more on this story and how the actions of Netanyahu before the October 7th attack are impacting the current election campaign in Israel, we turn to David Mikovsky, distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

David, welcome back to the News Hour. I'm glad to be with you. Thanks for being with us. The big headline in this story is that there was a call between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Muhammad bin Zayed saying, there's going to be an attack and reportedly Netanyahu dismissed that.

You know well, you are very familiar with the sort of back-channel negotiations and communications that were happening during this time. So what do you make of this report and what do you think was going on around this time? Look, it's clear, delighted to be with you, Ali. I think it's, you know, the whole media focuses on, was there a phone call or there wasn't a phone call between Muhammad bin Zayyad, the head of the UAE and Prime Minister Netanyahu. I tend, from what I've been hearing, I do not find support for a call itself. But I do find some indications that there were some back-channel communications

between Yichia Sinwar through an intermediary, a Palestinian intermediary, that made its way back to Israel, which was limited at least to the issue of pre-Israel, which was limited at least to the issue of prisoner exchanges. I actually think there was a broader thing going on. I think that was limited. I don't know if that was, you know, a distraction from the broader macro that was going on at that time. But I do think those broader developments in September, October,

23 are worthy of note. Right. And what you're talking about here in terms of those broader dynamics, you're saying that that could have extended beyond any conversations about a possible truce and really had more to do with some of the broader context of what was happening in Israel at the time remind us of that broader context. There were two critical things, mega stories that were going on at that time in 2023. One was the judicial overhaul of this government of Israel, which was very controversial about changing

the role of the courts and perhaps diluting Israel's liberal character, which prompted a backlash among Israeli pilots saying that they were not going to fly in reserve duty. In return, senior security officials were saying, after October 7th, on the record, I happened to hear it before October 7th, saying, David, the Arabs think Israel is weak because the pilots won't fly in reserve duty. And they are plotting. They are meeting. Something big is about to happen.

And Aron Khaliva, the head of military intelligence, has gone public and said, I warned the government in writing three times, saying, this is dangerous, they're drawing the wrong conclusions. Now, he didn't connect the dots saying, therefore, in October 7th, on the Gaza fence, this would happen, this horrible massacre, the worst since the Holocaust. But their hair was on fire. That was one mega event. The other mega event was Saudi normalization.

There was an interview of MBS, Mohamed bin Salman, of Saudi Arabia, saying every day we're getting closer to Saudi normalization. And I think for Yir Chia Sinwar, and I think President Biden has said, He believes this, President Trump has said he believed this one, maybe one of the few things they agree on. But they said they both believe that Yehiz-Sinwar did October 7th to derail Saudi normalization with Israel, because if the biggest, the most powerful Saudi Arab state made peace with Israel, Hamas would be a footnote. And all of this is happening as we prepare for an election in Israel on October 27th. Opposition parties are using this report as a call for, renewed calls for an independent state.

Commission of Inquiry, what would that look like? And do you, how does this change the election? By the way, you've had 70% of Israelis, not just the opposition parties, saying that after every fiasco, debacle, whatever word you want to use in Israeli history, Israel has gone through a cleansing inward, I would say brutal self-reflection, a self-reckoning, what went wrong? And I always talk to Arab leaders who say, hey, that's part of Israel's strength. They go through that self-reckoning exercise to investigate what happened here. And the prime minister, though, is convinced that because the rules of the game, that the commission of inquiries led by the chief of Justice Supreme Court, who is liberal, and therefore he thinks he won't get a fair shake.

And he's resisted these calls and for the opposition, which, by the way, includes two right-wing parties, by the way, not just centrist or central left parties. Their view is this is central. The first day of the government, after the elections, there has to be an announcement of a commission of inquiry into what actually happened October 7th, and hopefully many of these details will become unearth. And Netanyahu doesn't want this commission to happen. Do you think that affects ultimately his election chances here in 20 seconds? All I could say is two-thirds of Israeli Jews, which are 80 percent of the country, have just said in a poll this week, an incredible poll, that October 7th is going to be a big factor. on how they vote. So I think... David Mikovsky, thank you so much for your insights.

Thank you very much. For decades, Roy Cohn operated at the center of American power from his work with Senator Joseph McCarthy to his role as a lawyer, political fixer, and mentor to a young Donald Trump. Now, a leading biographer traces Cohn's life and the influence he still exerts on American politics 40 years after his death.

Our senior arts correspondent, Jeffrey Brown, has the story for our Arts and Culture series, Canvas. He was a villain. Flat out, I mean... Without any question. But an interesting villain. He is Roy Cohn, one of the most polarizing figures in 20th century American life. His new biographer is Kai Bird, who heads a center on biography at the CUNY Graduate Center

in New York. You know, the biographer doesn't have to like or admire your subject. You just have to be obsessed and figure out what makes this villain tick. Bird is best known as co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus, the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. What do you know about quantum mechanics? The basis for the Oscar-winning 2023 film. And many of his books have centered on leading establishment figures of the post-war era.

Most recently, a biography of Jimmy Carter. In his latest American scoundrel written with Susan Goldmark, his wife and chief researcher, he found something different. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd spent all these decades writing about these powerful establishment figures, and that world was gone. It's disappeared. There's no longer this bipartisan consensus in our political world. And there's instead this divisive world that was created by Roy Cohn. He was more important than you would ever imagine.

Yeah, suddenly in over the last 10 years because of the Trump era, he suddenly, he suddenly. is clearly haunting us from his grave. Judge Kaufman pronounced the death sentence. In the 1950s, Cohn, still in his 20s, burst into the national spotlight as prosecutor in the espionage trial that led to the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Roy Cohn is here speaking for Roy Cohn to give the back. And as Chief Counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist crusade. He was the attack dog that Joe McCarthy sent out.

Joe McCarthy, you know, was sort of an empty vessel. What jumped out at you? What stood out, especially vis-à-vis Roy Cohn's involvement? Roy was a gay closeted man then, but he went after gay civil servants in the State Department ruthlessly. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had this private life, and yet he was shamelessly. shamelessly going after fellow gays.

That was shocking. In birds telling, Cohn was fueled by ambition and resentments, ruthless with perceived enemies, pushing up to and beyond legal boundaries for friends, with an attention getting personal style and flamboyance. I quote in the book H. L. Mencken's observation that the world would be a very dull place for us, honest men, if it were not for the sinners. And that's Roy Cohn. He was fascinating. He was charming over the dinner table. But he was transactional. He knew how to make things happen. He knew how to make things happened and to fix things for people. In New York, his clients included mafia heads and the owners of Studio 54, the famed nightclub at the heart of 70s celebrity life, of which Cohn himself was a fixture.

He made and helped friends in high places, including mentoring a then 27-year-old developer named Donald Trump. Trump had an annoying federal case that was being filed by the feds against some of his housing developments in Queens, accusing the Trump Organization of anti-discrimination against blacks. And Roy's advice to him was, don't settle. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. Attack. Counter-attack. in fact, sue them for libel, which was outrageous.

This was the kind of advice that the young Trump relished. He became essential to the rise of the young Trump. The two would remain close personally and professionally for years. And decades later in his first term, angry at then Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the probe of Russian election interference, Trump reportedly demanded, Where's my Roy Cohn? He was under indictment at that point by Robert Morgenthau for bribery. Burr showed us FBI investigation files.

Cohn was indicted three times, including for perjury, bribery, and extortion. Remarkably, he beat every charge, though he was eventually disbarred for professional misconduct shortly before his death in 1986 at age 59 from complications related to AIDS. I'm going to be a lawyer, Joe. In his afterlife, he's been played by Al Pacino in the TV series based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-winning play, Angels in America. I'm brutal. That's right.

More recently, by Jeremy Strong, opposite Sebastian Stan's young Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice. But his most enduring afterlife, says Kai Bird. But it's his values, his resentment of the establishment. that now prevails in our politics. He is the architect of this politics of resentment, resentment against the establishment of the elites, this sort of right-wing populism,

this suspicion of immigrants. This is all Roy Cohn. You have to live with this person for a long time, a person you've described as a bad person. How do you do it? Gleefully. Really? I had no problem sleep.

sleeping at night. As a biographer, you want to become obsessed, and I was. All right, the book is American Scoundrel. Kai Byrd, thank you very much. Thank you, Jeff. We turn now to Judy Woodruff, who recently visited the September 11th Memorial in New York, for a look at how the attacks, 25 years ago, continue to shape our lives today.

It's part of her ongoing series, Crossroads, America at 250. Water, I think, is very important to make you kind of stop, reflect one hopes and reverence. I met David Blyde and Garrett Graff at the 9-11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan last week, where for nearly 15 years water has fallen into the empty footprints of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, surrounded by the names of the nearly 3,000 victims who lost their lives that day 25 years ago. Every time I come, I'm just struck by the enormity of the death toll. Graff authored The Only Plain in the Sky, an oral history of 9-11, and is behind the

podcast Long Shadow, the first season devoted to telling the story of 9-11. We had whole sessions on Saturdays about specific issues that they faced. David Blight is a Yale historian who, lexious. on traumatic events in our past, like the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11. He advised the team that created the museum that sits below the memorial, helping to tell the stories of what happened that day in 2001. The first strike happens into the North Tower at 846 that morning. The second plane hits at 9.03, 17 minutes later.

And that 17-minute period, to me, has always been the most. interesting moment of 9-11 because you see in those 17 minutes how different our country really was everyone in those first minutes when they hear of that first crash has a sort of similar befuddled reaction it's 852 here in New York I'm Brian Dumbull we understand that there has been a plane crash on the southern tip of Manhattan we have no idea what it was it was a tremendous boom just a few Oh, it was probably a small plane. Oh, maybe the pilot had a heart attack.

Maybe there was a mechanical problem. It must have been a terrible navigation error. That was my reaction when I heard that morning that a plane has gone into. Small plane, must be done. And then everyone sort of goes on about their morning. And of course, at 903, that second plane hits, and people all across the country realize America is under attack. And everything changes at that moment.

at that moment. And yet watching it happen is surreal. I mean, it's not anything we've ever imagined. No, and it becomes the most visual event in history. There is endless film footage, endless photographs. No one turned their television off for days on end. I remember my mother, who was still alive, he kept calling me constantly and saying, we'll never be the same again. Mom, I remember saying to turn off CNN. take it easy. Of course, I'm trying to give her some historical perspective, which was impossible. We were witnessing a colossal human mass murder, and we didn't know the extent of it for quite a while. We are all, everyone, I'm sure, on their minds is God rest the souls of those who've lost their lives this morning.

I was actually on the air on CNN that day, one of the people reporting watching the towers. Sorry, I was talking. Come down. No, there's no way, even people who watch terrible things all the time to get our arms around what we were describing, what we were talking about. And I think David raises an important point, which is, you know, here we are 25 years removed from this world-changing event, what I think is one of the great hinges of American history. 40% of the country is now too young to remember those attacks.

None of us knew that day what comes next. You know, whether there was a second wave that was coming that afternoon, whether there were more attacks coming on September 12th. And to really understand why America reacted in the way that we did, as a country, as a society, as a government, as a military, you really have to understand the deep fear, chaos, confusion, and trauma that the country experienced living through the events. You're a historian.

Was there anything? I mean, clearly, this country's lived through terrible things, the Civil War, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Is there anything in our history that we can compare what happened on 9-11 to? Yes, if it's destruction and slaughter on a single day, and if you think back to the press coverage at that very moment,

immediately people were using Antietam, because it was the largest single casualty count of the Civil War. Pearl Harbor came to mind for everybody. Fort Sumter, the start of the Civil War, there were analogies flying everywhere, which is what we do as humans. We want some parallel to help us know where we're standing. But nothing quite worked, to be honest. This was such an immediate in one hour mass murder that no one quite,

could process that. That takes historical time. And even then, I don't think most Americans could process it if they ever did for a very long time. Garrett, you've looked at the whole picture. What is it meant for this country if that happened? Yeah. 9-11 changes almost everything about daily life in America. Some of those changes are very obvious to us. You know, the taking our shoes off at the airport, the liquid ban that comes into our carry-on with one of the follow-on Al-Qaeda plots after 9-11. But I think there's a bigger backdrop too, which is we become a much more fearful and anxious country that I think many Americans who didn't live in the world before 9-11 in the United States don't realize how innocent our country really was. I also think Americans are very bad

at understanding even our own recent history. And it is impossible to separate from 9-11 the events that we are living through roiling our domestic politics here in the United States today in terms of the immigration crackdown by ICE, by CBP, by the Border Patrol, by DHS, all of which are an invention of the post-9-11 world and an attempt to ensure that these types of terror attacks

never happen again. I love the point Garrett made it about innocence. In the wake of 9-11, you may remember this. All sorts of people were writing, I mean really smart people were writing and asking, this might finally end American innocence, that we don't live above history, that we're not always exceptional, that we have enemies, big enemies, you know, why do they hate us. Remember that phrase was everywhere. But Americans have lost their innocence many times and regained it. Part of that civil religion is our sense of chosenness, our sense of specialness, that sense of exceptionalism. What did we do? In 2003, we invaded Iraq. Out of frankly, a rather innocent conception of that country, its history and the whole of the Middle East, and eventually

a horribly mistaken idea that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and so forth. We have a long history of losing innocence. I mean, you just think the American Civil War would have ended innocence forever, but it didn't at all. But we regain it. And look where we are now. We're having the biggest fight over history, who gets to control it, who owns it, who can control the narrative in museums,

We're having the biggest fight we've ever had about that. I've been spending most of my time on that. And that comes from a certain regained innocence as well, that there is some pure and rigid and static, good American history, if we can just get back to it. And all this conflict, all this difficulty, all right, we need to know something about it, but can't we just get beyond that?

You don't get beyond 9-11. You have to sit with it. It's authentic tragedy. Where do you fit 9-11 into a narrative of exceptionalism and relative innocence? You can't. It's not the whole story, but it has to be part of the story that we tell. It's a very big part because of all things that have changed. One of the challenges of the way that this history evolves is if you had stood here at the 10th anniversary of 9-11,

you would have said President Barack. Obama is a direct result of the forces of 9-11, that he comes to prominence in the Democratic Party because of his opposition to the Iraq War, that if you are standing here at the 25th, you will say Donald Trump is a direct result of the forces unleashed by 9-11, and that those stories are both true, and those are stories that are very different about where America is heading and what 9-11 will ultimately mean to our country. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Judy Woodruff in Lower Manhattan. Less than an hour after the first airplane hit the World Trade Center in New York on 9-11,

another plane flew into the Pentagon. Just a five-minute drive from the Pentagon are the studios of WETA, which have been home to PBS News for decades. And on that day, two WETA cameramen and a News Hour intern headed to, toward the scene, capturing images of the attack and its aftermath that would become part of the historical record. 25 years later, they reflect on what they witnessed. On 9-11, I was working as a cameraman for the news hour.

When I heard it on the radio, smoke was coming from the Pentagon. I was right at the exit for Washington Boulevard. About 10 seconds later, I came through and there was smoke coming from the Pentagon. Our assigned desk person said, I need a desk assistant to go with a cameraman to the I hooked up with this cameraman Ed, and Ed had been a weeder caraman and a news hour cameraman for a long time, and he's got this 24-year-old doofist. And he's just taking along to what will become a very intense day. We jumped in the van. We followed the fire engines in to the Pentagon. And just right in front of us is this burning.

And it was like a big animal that had been wounded. I was there. I got there like, I figured it out like nine minutes after the plane hit. There was no evidence of a plane anywhere. I had figured it had gone into the inner courtyard. But I didn't have time really to think about that because I just started to grab my gear in shooting. There was a heliport on that side of the Pentagon off Washington Boulevard.

There were a handful of bodies down. And I didn't know if they were dead or alive or what, but they were probably just blown back from the explosion, I figured. All these other people are going the other way. And we got to a certain point where the kind of security personnel said, you can't go any further. This is the farthest you can go. And Ed said, no, we're going farther.

We are here to cover this story. You can't stop us. And the reason that line was drawn in the sand of where press could go, where they were pushing all the other people back to, is because they had thought that if another plane hit, that was basically where the blast radius would have been. One thing that really struck me to, they were little pieces, like nuts and bolts and everything. These are from the airplane. What's it from? That's off an airplane.

An airplane or some kind. At one point, there was a small grouping of people pulling a body away, and then I noticed a man in a gray suit, and I thought that looked like Romsfeld, Secretary of Defense out there doing that. So it was like, wow, you know, that's something you don't see every day. The sky was blacked out with a black, thick cloud, and that fire just, it was like an oven. It just never stopped burning. And as I'm shooting, you know, the flames burst out at one point. And that was a strong visual for everybody to get. And that burned for quite a while.

And then all of a sudden at one point the wall came down. You would just be seen smoke coming up and the smell of like jet fuel, diesel fuel, whatever. And it would be drifting, you know, by the Capitol. And you're just thinking, oh my God, suppose. this had gone into the Capitol Dome, but wait, it's gone into the Pentagon and how, you know, how many people have been killed or injured? It was, it was something. All of a sudden, someone from the Pentagon says, there's another plane coming in, everybody run. Get back, get back! They got another inbound fire!

Josh! Everybody gets back! Get back! I'm pretty sure that was the plane that the people made sure crashed in Pennsylvania. It was total chaos. It's something that'll stay with me the rest of my life. I mean, I can still remember just about every detail. It was a matter of kind of like just getting as much as we could, and I had a clipboard with me all day, just keeping track of kind of who we met,

making sure that we did everything we were supposed to do. I felt an obligation to preserve. the moment, we were really proud that we had the best, closest footage that anyone else would ever have. I was running on adrenaline. You know, you run on automatic pilot. You know what you have to do as a news photographer. One moment I caught my breath and just sort of like, like that, it briefly overcame me. And I thought about what, you know, what this really meant being attacked on our own soil. It's just it never happened before and things are never going to be the same again, you know. And that's the News Hour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS NewsHour,

thanks for spending part of our evening with us.