Best of the Program | 9/11/18

The Blaze Radio Network.

On demand.

Hi, it's Stu, along with Glenn Beck here.

Hi.

As we

have a show that airs on 9-11.

We've done many of these now.

One of the first,

a lot of people started listening to the radio show after 9-11 for the first time.

Well, we went national

three days after 9-11.

Yeah.

We were actually had a contract to take Dr.

Laura's space with Premier Radio Networks

on many of the East Coast stations.

And we were supposed to do that in January, like January 8th of 2002.

And September 11th happened.

And they pushed it up.

The company called me on like Thursday and said, why aren't you doing your national show?

And I said,

I thought that would be your call.

And I think our first national show was that following Monday.

Yeah, I think you're right.

And that's, you know, a lot of people heard your voice for the first time around the country

that day.

So it's a, you know, we go through a lot of that.

The show starts with something we've played every year for 17 years.

Taking you back to that moment, you'll hear a clip of Glenn talking on the radio on September 11, 2001, at that point just locally in Tampa, as that went on.

We also have a great interview with Bob Beckwith.

He is the fireman who was next to George W.

Bush when George W.

Bush had the bullhorn moment, as kind of everybody remembers it.

You'll hear from him, and his story is completely the opposite of what I thought it was.

Incredible.

And if I may, I'd like to end the podcast today with something that happened to me last night that

is kind of a reminder that the postmodern movement is wrong, that words do have meaning on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Glen Beck program.

It's Tuesday, September 11th.

Glenn back.

It's Tuesday, September 11th.

You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

Yeah, that transmission he said was unreasonable.

It sounded like someone said they have a bomb on board.

Sir, did you guys have the airplane just said he had a bomb on board?

The affirmative, he said there was a bomb on board.

That's what we thought.

We just

didn't get it clear.

That aircraft he can't get a hold of.

Did he turn to the east now?

He's just turned to the east, also.

FP 956, we had a visual out of this standby.

Do you have a visual out of Mount?

We did, but we lost him at the turn.

He's making turn back to 220 heading.

Let me know if you can see him.

They were making a turn for 956.

American 106 and executed 956, We just lost a target on that aircraft.

Man, Z-100-852.

Something weird is going on.

The World Trade Center is on fire.

Oh, my God.

Seriously, the top of the building.

We're trying to get information.

Top level of one of the windows.

From New York City.

A plane crashed.

My sister's in that building.

Okay.

And I hope she's okay.

And I gotta run through New York.

Oh, my God.

It's complete pandemic.

First of all, calm down.

We're gonna raining papers and everything.

Oh, right.

God, it was a huge explosion.

Forget about the manpower!

People are jumping out the windows.

Oh, dude, they're jumping out the windows.

I guess

A second plane has now flown in

a third location on and outside of Washington.

I don't have words to describe what I'm witnessing right now.

Defected immediately until further notice.

Flight operations in the National Airspace System by United States civil aircraft and foreign civil and military aircraft are prohibited.

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward.

And freedom will be defended.

I need to go.

Oh, God.

Oh, my God.

it just landed on Manhattan.

Alright, so now we look back up to the TV.

One of the World Trade Towers

has collapsed and fallen.

I've never seen anything like this.

We got an ambulance full of cops and uh pedestrians.

Building just collapsed.

I got another tower that just came down 1013.

She got a female officer down.

Female officer, where are you now, Camp?

Where are you, Campbell?

We're not gonna be stopped.

We're not gonna be deterred.

We're not gonna stay at home.

We're not gonna be frightened.

We're gonna live our lives as Americans.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

We're all brothers.

We've all gotta stick together.

One nation, under God, indivisible.

My God, look at the skyline without the towers.

It is Tuesday, September 11th,

2001.

This is Glenn Beck.

Nateline, New York.

In one of the most audacious attacks ever,

terrorists hijacked two airliners,

crashed them into the World Trade Center in a coordinated series of blows today that brought down the twin 110-story towers.

Thousands may be dead.

58,000 people

work at the World Trade Center.

One plane, United Flight 93,

crashed north of Somerset County Airport,

a small airport 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

United said that flight

Boeing 757

left New York at 8.01

and entered San Francisco in 38 minutes.

It is as old as the scriptures

and is as clear

as the American Constitution.

That is

the news

of this day.

September 11th,

2001.

Is that United 93?

Is that United 93 calling?

United 93.

United 903.

United 93.

United 903.

People who were born around 9-11

are getting ready to vote for the very first time.

They don't

remember an America that

wasn't at war.

An America

where Fox wasn't, the powerhouse wasn't.

It wasn't us versus them.

Katie Couric was America's sweetheart.

Now most people don't even know who Katie Couric is.

It was a time before Matt Lauer

was known as a predator.

Our home phones were still really our primary source of communication, and they were wired, usually on the wall in a kitchen.

There were no smartphones.

There were no text messages, no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

In fact, the largest social network in the history of the world

was still four years away.

And that social network was MySpace.

People who will be voting for the first time don't remember a time before there was a TSA

being patted down at the airport.

The intrusions that are made with the people in the blue gloves and the blue shirts.

There was no homeland security.

There was no

snooping

that we knew of.

It was a time before

It was a time when it was rare to see amputations.

Robotic arms,

robotic legs,

feet and legs that have been replaced by a blade or a ski.

I don't even know what they are.

Before September 11th,

most people didn't really have a strong opinion on Islam.

They didn't even know what it was.

Nobody knew who Osama bin Laden was.

There was a time

so long ago now

where twenty-one soldiers at best

killed themselves every day.

There was a time

before words were meaningless.

There was a time

when we could come together.

There was a time

when truth and justice

meant the American way.

And then September eleventh happened.

On a beautiful Tuesday morning.

We woke up for a moment,

and then we went back to sleep.

But the good news is,

we are, as individuals, should we choose, stronger because of it.

More wise.

We know what our country is, what our country has done, what our country can do, who we are as a people,

who we hope to be, who we wish to be.

We're bogged down in the smoke and the dust of all the old lies coming down, tower after tower.

But should we choose, that dust will settle,

and we can clean ourselves up

and reunite.

Because it's not September 11th

that

is the memory we choose.

It's September 12th, the day after.

That's the memory that all of us

wish we could relive over and over and over again, all of us Republicans and Democrats.

Because that was the day

we came together, not with our fist raised in our hand,

fist raised in the air, but our hand down with palm open, willing to share, willing to help, willing to lift up.

We thought it would be really fascinating today to give you three perspectives that you haven't heard before.

One of them is from a guy named Bob Beckwith.

You might remember Bob.

He was the firefighter that stood next to George W.

Bush on the fire truck and the famous bullhorn speech that George Bush gave.

I've kind of made this deal with myself that I'm not going to spend another day

where I have access to people who have witnessed history and not talk to them.

Bob is now in his, what, 80s?

And we called him up and said, Bob, can you tell us?

Can you tell us about that experience and what happened?

He told us the most amazing story that

we've never heard anyplace.

And I don't know why, because it is a fascinating story.

He's coming up in hour number three.

Also, we thought we would spend time with two people with very different perspective.

One was on the other side of the planet and actually saw it happen in a bar on television, but thought it was just a bad movie.

And the other was 20 blocks away and watched it fall.

We want to welcome to the program

Jason Battrill and also Riaz Patel.

How are you, Riaz?

We're all laughing because we just corrected you on our names.

Now we're very sorry.

I know I'm so bad.

I'm so bad.

I've known you guys forever, and I can never get your pronunciation right now.

No, I never will.

To be clear, he went one for two there.

Yeah, Patel and Buttrell.

Butrell.

Jason Buttrell.

That's his way through my name.

How are you?

Jason,

you were actually in the military.

Yep.

And

you were on shore leave.

Yep.

Where?

Darwin, Australia, which was like a crazy bucket list item for anybody that's in the military.

Well, I guess really anybody really wants to go to Australia.

Yeah.

But like, you got to think about the time.

It was peacetime.

You know, like all of us that joined the military were doing it probably to pay for college.

Like there was no wars breaking out.

There was no sign that it wasn't like now.

Like now you pretty much expect if you go into the military, you're probably going to see combat.

But that was not 2001.

That was definitely not then.

No, we hadn't seen combat really since the Gulf War.

And even then, it was over so fast, you know, and it's just over with.

But so that was our mindset.

So like we were, our deployment schedule was basically just like a big vacation schedule.

You go and do a quick little, you know, you know, exercise, which we were doing with the Australian Marines.

And but no one really cared about that.

We were just going out and having fun in Australia.

But so that was that was the day of September 11th was crazy.

So like they let out everybody off the boats.

We hit, you know, and you can imagine if you've been cooped up on a a ship for two or three weeks You are ready to have some fun.

So we ran out sightseeing all day long

None of us had a clue about what was gonna happen that night because we were still asleep Yeah, that's right.

So it was like yeah, it was during the daytime towards the end of the night I guess it was probably morning or I don't even know what time the actual planes hit

9 8 50 something like that.

9 30 9 0 0 yeah something like that.

Okay, so we're winding down our shore leave.

It's supposed to end that night around 11 or 12 a.m.

I think that night.

So we're taking it all, you know, in.

We're taking as much as we can.

We're soaking it all in.

I'm sitting at a sports bar.

Tons of Marines, tons of sailors

all over the streets.

There's fights breaking out.

You can imagine how it is.

It's not very pretty.

So I glance over my shoulder and I see what looks like a bad Australian movie.

There's one of the towers that's on fire.

I didn't even think I connected it to the World Trade Center at the time.

I looked over, saw it,

kept on having the conversation, drinking my last beer of shore leave before we go back on ship.

And

things started getting a little bit crazy maybe about an hour later.

A lot of commotion down the streets, tons of commotion.

You're screaming.

Everyone's freaking out.

I think more fights are breaking out.

Stupid Marines.

That all changed maybe about 15 minutes later when all the military police and the Marines on duty and the

Navy people on duty came out,

stopped all the music.

Like, everyone, now get to van, get to the vans we have parked outside.

If there's overflow, get in a taxi cab.

It's on you to make it out because we are pulling out in about 60 minutes.

Which was nothing you had ever seen before.

No.

When you're in the military, sometimes they want to test you to see if you could be a conscientious objector.

And they want to see, like, they'll trick you into thinking an attack happened.

Some of us thought that's what was happening.

Like, well, this is just an exercise, elaborate.

So you get into the van, you get to the ship, and what happens next?

Fox is, you know, doing a compilation of all the films from 9-11.

and Bob Beckwith, that firefighter that we're going to be speaking to here in about two hours,

that was standing next to George Bush with the bullhorn, is up there, and we're all laughing now going,

we look at that video now, and you will too, in completely different ways.

And we're like, he was afraid of getting caught.

It's a fascinating story.

17 years I thought about that.

I thought he ran the entire recovery operation down there.

That's why I thought he was up there.

Wait until you hear it.

Totally different.

Wait until you hear the story.

It's amazing.

Okay, so we were with Jason.

He was in Australia

and

you were an enlisted guy.

This is you joined, you know,

get an education, go have some fun.

And all of a sudden...

You're being jammed into a van in the middle of the night.

You've seen the World Trade Center on fire, but you thought it was just a bad Australian movie.

Right.

I'm still not connecting connecting anything to that, really, because we, like we were talking in the break, how sometimes they try and do little tricks on you to see if you're a conscientious objector.

Um, because that literally, that was the time we were in.

You know, the people did not really join because they thought they were going to combat.

It just was that was not the state of mind during that time.

You went for college education or right.

Yeah.

But so we're in the we're in the vans and we're heading on.

There's a sergeant that's in the in the passenger seat riding shotgun.

And I'm like, Sergeant, what's going on?

And he's like, well, I don't know fully myself, but thousands of Americans have just died.

The United States is under attack, and that's all I know.

And really, you're just like, I mean, it was like a gut punch.

We're like, what?

I mean, I still, it's like, is this real?

So

we get back to the ship, and

it looks like one of those World War II movies where there's just hundreds and hundreds of people getting on the boats because everyone's getting on in mass.

What kind of ship were you on?

It was a, I think it's called an LHA.

So it looks like an aircraft carrier, but it's a little bit smaller than that because it's for helicopters.

So mostly just tons of Marines and tons of pilots on this thing.

So I hit the ship.

First thing I went was straight to the Skiff, which is the place where all the classified information goes.

Because you were in intelligence.

Right.

And I went in there.

I barely was able to squeeze in.

The captain of the ship was there.

Everyone's there.

This is the kind of room that you need a combination to get into

the room.

It's one of those you see them in the movies where it's all red lit, all red lights.

Right.

Go inside there.

I barely was able to squeeze in uh instantly got kicked out but i was able to confirm that yes the attack on the twin towers happened uh they were tracking everything going on at the pentagon everything and i was like oh my gosh this is insane uh i got kicked out because i was very low man in the totem pole and uh went out to go find my buddies we were just starting to push off and something that i noticed uh it's weird the things you notice that really have an impact but we were always told that you know you never see the navy manning their big 50 cal machine guns on the side of the boats that just doesn't happen unless they're going through like the Persian Gulf or something like that.

Well, they were, the covers were off the guns.

They were manning them.

The kids looked scared.

I remember that.

I'd never forget the looks on some of their faces.

Their kids are like 18, 19 years old.

And they're manning these guns, not knowing what's going on.

Because at this point, only a select few people know what's going on at that point.

So they have no idea.

There's rumors that we've been attacked.

That's all everyone knows at this point.

But they're manning these guns fully loaded and we're pushing out.

We're like, what is going on?

So a couple hours later, everyone that's not on duty gets called up to the flight deck.

And, you know, it's your typical like top gun scene.

You know, everyone's up on the flight deck.

We're all in formation.

And I, to this day, I cannot remember what the captain of the ship said.

I have no recollection of what he said at all.

I think we were just kind of just dazed.

But I'll never forget what the colonel of the Marine Expeditionary Unit said.

Fullbird Colonel has us all, you know, information.

And it was very short, very sweet, and to the point.

But it was something along the lines of this.

He said, Men, my father and your grandfather's day of infamy was December 7th, 1941.

And I remember he stopped, kind of collected himself, and he was like, that's in the history books, but that is their history.

Our day of infamy will forever be known as September 11th, 2001.

He said, men, we've been attacked.

We're going to war.

And we're supposed to not say anything during those formations, but everybody

elated.

Everyone's, you know, it was

a roar, basically, is the best way to describe it.

Everyone was pissed off.

It was confirmed.

It all hit home at that point that this is very real.

What we've been training for, the reason why we joined the military was not to, you know, get our colleges paid for, it was to protect our country.

And it was a weird feeling.

It was, you know, we were all mad, but we were all disappointed.

There's a feeling of, this was our watch.

This happened under our watch.

So what are you going to do about it?

Well,

we did a brief humanitarian stint in East Timor that we did.

From there, we immediately went off to the coast of Pakistan.

From there, we stayed in Pakistan for about a month.

This all went very, very quickly.

So, I had no idea what was going on back home, everything going on, but we were invading Afghanistan within just a couple months later.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

When I was a

when I was a teenager, my mother died.

Right after that, my grandfather died.

And then I moved away from home.

And I learned

not Not to deal with things.

As a recovering alcoholic, I have dealt with many of my demons, but one

I have not been able to shake

to my shame

has been

hide from those who you love

that you are losing or have lost

and move on.

Last night I went home and I was just so beat-tired

and the phone rang.

And it was a

wife of a dear friend

who has cancer,

and they didn't know if he would make it

through the night.

He's battled cancer for years.

He is a spiritual giant.

For the last few weeks I have wanted to be there with everything in me

and

everything in me

at the same time has

told me to stay away or tomorrow.

I I drove to his house last night and I my legs were like lead as I walked up his pathway to his house hand in hand with my wife.

I went into his bedroom.

His eyes opened, and

he saw me and

tried to smile, tried to speak, but couldn't.

I knelt by his bedside last night, holding his hand.

I am a

as you can imagine, I'm sometimes a sloppy crier.

Sometimes I get, and I think we've all had this, where it's that ugly cry to where if you speak, you're going to blow snot all over yourself, and it's just going to be ugly.

I held his frail hand.

and for twenty minutes I said nothing because I was unable to speak.

He was

so weak,

and all I could think of

was you cannot leave here

without saying this.

It was nine words.

For twenty minutes, I struggled to say nine

words.

I thought he was sleeping.

and I had composed myself enough to where I thought I could get those nine words out.

And I did

first the first four,

and then the remaining five.

He moaned,

and he squeezed my hand as tightly as he could.

It took him about five minutes

as he

breathed

deeply

to respond and say

the three words he needed to say

They were the three words

that mean everything

This morning I got up and I started looking at the news

I started reading the stories in a world that is teaching us that words are meaningless

or have

or have for power purposes.

Words' meanings have been changed,

or those words have been thrown around so much they have become meaningless.

But before I begin this hour,

I want to tell you

words have power,

they have the power to create

the power to lift up,

or the power to destroy.

While the world may teach our children that words are meaningless,

I want you to know that they are not.

I know the.

I know the power of words.

And I know them today

better than most.

You're listening to the best of the Glenbeck program.

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He might not be able to save the country, but at least we can all go down laughing.

Glenn Beck Live, the Addicted to Outrage Tour, on tour this fall.

For tickets, VIP packages, and more, visit Glenn Glennbeck.com.

We have a fascinating

person I want to introduce you to.

Her name is Heather McDonald, and she is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and she's written for just about everybody.

And she's seen something that she finds really disturbing, and she's put it together in a new book called The Diversity Delusion.

How race and gender pandering corrupt

the university and undermine our culture.

And it is what we're all feeling now.

And it's appropriate that you're here today because it's all about words having meaning.

Hello, Heather.

How are you?

Well, thanks for having me on, Glenn.

I greatly appreciate it.

Sure.

So,

you know, I've just, my book comes out next week, and it really revolves around the idea of postmodernism that most people don't even understand.

And it's what's being spoon-fed to our children in universities.

And they come home and they speak a different language and we're just like, ah, that's crazy, but it's not.

It's really powerful.

Can you get into

how you define it and what you're seeing?

Well, that's absolutely right, what you're saying, Glenn.

The public has had a tendency to laugh off the counterintuitive, counterfactual, delusional ideology that's coming out of the universities that holds that there's no differences between males and females, that America is endemically racist and sexist, that any differences in representation in groups must be the result of bias rather than different inclinations, different habits.

And they've tended to think, ah, it's just those silly college students.

Once they get out into the real world, they'll stiffen up their spines and

the marketplace will take care of things.

That's not happening.

The delusional ideology that believes that racism and sexism are the most pervasive features of American society, that society is

and college campuses in particular, but society in general, is divided into victim groups, their oppressors, and then if you're if you work really hard to get out of the oppressor category, you get to be an ally.

That is transforming the world at large.

We see trigger happy reactions to any unorthodox speech.

The Google fired a computer engineer who dared to challenge the the dominant feminist ideology at that company.

Other Silicon Valley companies are obviously likewise under the thrall of feminism and

sort of the diversity thinking.

So this is happening very quickly and it is worth the public's while to pay attention to what's happening and to start pushing back against this narrative.

So I want to talk to you about that, Heather, because

there hasn't really been an effective dismantling of this tool because it makes no sense.

Its purpose is to destroy language, families, people, self, you know, everything.

Absolutely everything.

Reality is destroyed under this.

And because it's so nonsensical,

it has built this,

I don't even know what it is, but a way for

reason to be dismissed because reason is part of the problem.

So how do you dismantle this?

By pointing out the facts, but you're absolutely right to be sort of apocalyptic in your rhetoric.

This is very profound.

We are playing with the legacy of the Enlightenment, of reason, of science.

Science is now coming under enormous pressure from the National Science Foundation no less to hire by race and gender instead of merit.

We are putting our scientific

competitive edge at risk.

What I do is simply point out the facts.

I start with the college campuses.

The conceit is that to be a female, let's say, on a college campus today is to be the target of lethal threat.

This is absurd.

There has never been a more tolerant, compassionate environment in human history for society's traditionally oppressed groups than a college campus.

As far as race goes, and I have never been discriminated in my life as a female.

I was at Yale in the 1970s, right after it went co-education

co-ed.

If ever there would have been a time when Yale was discriminating against females, it would have been then.

Not a chance.

Every professor I ever had wanted me to succeed.

We also hear that colleges pose a lethal threat to minorities, that they are hostile to people of color.

The reality is this, Glenn.

There is not a single college campus today whose administrators are not twisting themselves into knots to try and hire and admit as many underrepresented minorities as possible.

They employ vast racial preferences and admissions to try to bring in blacks and Hispanics.

This is a misguided policy.

It's extraordinarily destructive to its alleged beneficiaries, but they insist on doing it.

So we have an environment that's a test case.

It is demonstrably false to say that these are racist, sexist environments.

And yet there's a massive diversity bureaucracy on

all large college campuses today costing millions and millions of taxpayer dollars dollars and tuition dollars devoted to indoctrinating students into this narcissistic ideology of victimhood.

The university campus is a threat, but it is, I believe, only a threat.

And by design, and people need to understand this.

This is not hyperbole.

It is designed to take apart the Western world.

It is by design taking apart everything that the Enlightenment gave us.

And what the Enlightenment gave us was a way out of the Dark Ages.

It's why they can say that math is racist.

Again, I applaud, Glenn,

your sense of urgency.

You're the only person I've encountered that is willing to say what is at stake because, frankly, it sounds unhinged.

You know, a university, the university's duty is to serve as the transmission belt for our precious inheritance.

Who would think that the people who are the faculty who are so privileged to be the bearers of this inheritance, they should be down on their knees in gratitude to be the curators of greatness, beauty, and sublimity.

Instead,

they dismiss it, they disparage it.

I was

the subject of one of these massive violent silencing efforts at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California two years ago to prevent me from speaking about the police.

And afterwards, black students at Pomona College, another of the Claremont colleges, wrote a manifesto against me that I quote in my book that is just a stunning example of student ignorance.

It purports to talk about the Enlightenment.

It purports to argue through a sort of

an inept version of high theory of Foucaultian postmodernism that you're so aware of.

Yes, to argue that the Enlightenment is the source of oppression.

They say that the search for truth is a way of oppressing minorities.

The thinking is so unbelievably garbled, and yet they're picking this up from their professors.

This

is the best of the Glenn Glenn Beck program.

The picture seared in the nation's memory.

President Bush at Ground Zero three days after the attacks.

A bullhorn in one hand, the other draped around firefighter Bob Beckwith.

With President Bush was Bob Beckwith.

Beckwith stood shoulder to shoulder with President Bush.

Bob Beckwith, a firefighter from Queens, New York in his mid-60s.

That day, he stood alongside the president and stepped onto the national patriotic stage.

Bob, are you there?

Yes.

Hi, Bob.

How are you?

Very good.

And yourself?

I'm very good, sir.

Very good.

I just wanted to touch base with you

your experiences with 9-11, because I painted a painting of you a couple of weeks ago for an auction.

And as I was painting you, I thought,

you know, I know this man's story, but not really.

And now that you've had, you know, almost 20 years to digest it, I'd love to hear, first of all, where were you on 9-11 when it happened?

When it happened,

my daughter had called me that my grandson, going to school on his bicycle, was hit by a car about two blocks away from me.

And I ran over there to see what was happening, and I saw him on the ground, but he was moving, so

that was a plus.

And I found out from the ambulance driver what hospital they were taking him to.

And I came home to get my car.

I listened on the radio, and it said I heard a guy saying...

has crashed into the World Trade Center.

We don't know anything about it.

And so I came inside and my wife had it on the television already and they had cameras there.

I was looking

and I said, that's a little bit bigger than a small plane.

Yeah.

I figured I got a bad day going.

My grandson gets hit by a car and now a plane goes in.

Where were you living at the time, Bob?

I was living right here in Baldwin, New York.

When did the phone call come in that you had to go?

Were you with your grandson in the hospital?

Or

when did you find it?

So I went to the hospital to be with him everybody was watching television at the hospital and and i saw the the south tower come down

one world trade center has collapsed in its entirety one world trade center is gone

and then uh a few minutes later the uh the the north tower came down

and i knew that there was guys in the building you know because that's the firemen were in there you know what goes through your head when uh

it just hits you pretty hard.

Bob,

did you have any inkling that those towers might come down when you saw them?

I never thought it would.

I really, honestly, never thought that they were coming down.

Boy, was I shocked when that happened.

So

when did you first arrive at Ground Zero?

What happened was

I came home

from the hospital later that day,

and I told my wife and my kids that I'm going down to ground zero and they said, don't go down, you're too old.

I was 69 years old and they thought I was an old man there and I'm going to get in the way.

So just don't go down there.

The next day I find out that Jimmy Boyle, now Jimmy Boyle was the the president of the UFA, the Uniformed Firefighters Association,

and I was one of his delegates.

And when I found out his son is missing, I said, that's that's it.

I'm out of here.

And I suited up the next morning and I got to go down to ground zero.

So I'm driving down there.

I'm on a BQE, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, and I'm going towards the Willersburg Bridge.

Guess what?

The bridges are closed.

And I saw a cops car going over the bridge.

With two vans behind it, I said, I'm going to give it a shot.

And I drove between the cones and I went on the bridge.

But when I got over to the other side, there was nobody, nobody was there.

Everything was gray.

And I went over to the house watch at 55 Engine and I told him I'm going down to Ground Zero.

And they said, well, good luck.

I said, what the heck you think good luck about?

Anyway, the police department,

they're lined up in a perimeter all around Ground Zero.

I said, I got to get in there, you know.

And I showed them my badge, and they let me in.

And then the guy said to me, good luck.

So I went down about a block or two, and then I see the National Guard.

They were on the perimeter also.

And I said, we don't care that you're a fireman, but you're not getting in.

So I had to think fast.

And I talked my way in.

You know, I was at that perimeter.

I don't know how anyone could have talked themselves through that line.

How did you do it?

I told a little frivol.

I told them I missed the rig, and I was going to get in trouble if I didn't get in there.

And they bought it.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay.

So

you're there.

You snuck across the bridge on the island.

Then

you sneak across the barrier with National Guard.

Right.

And then what happens?

And then I came into Ground Zero, and I tell you, it was a shock.

You can see the people running fast as these buildings began to move.

I've seen them running, racing for their lives.

One of the buildings is marshaling and collapse.

It remains that as

The first thing that came to my mind was, since it's how it probably looked in the blitz when

you know what happened?

I worked down there all that day

and I went on the bucket brigade and I found a shovel and I started digging with the guys and

we found a plumper.

A pumper is a fire engine in the rubble.

And we told the crane operator to put the D-rig out on this in the street, which he did.

Some guy comes over and he says, the president is here.

And I saw the guys put their shovel down and I put mine down and I walked out to the street and there's that pumper we just dug out of the rubble.

I jumped up on it and right across the street was a command post, a tent with all microphones in front of it.

I figured, oh, that's where the president's going to talk.

This Secret Service man came over to me and he said, is this safe?

I said, yeah.

And he said, well, jump up and down on it for me.

So I jumped up and down on it for him.

And he said, okay, he said, somebody important is coming over here.

And when they come here, you help them up and then you get down.

I said, okay, because you do what the Secret Service guy tells you to do.

The president comes around and he does a hard right and he comes right in front of me and he puts his arm up.

So I pull him up, and I turn him around, and I said to him, are you okay, Mr.

President?

He said, yeah.

And then I started to get down.

He said, where you going?

I said, I was told to get down.

He said, no, no, you stay right here.

And he put his arm around me.

And that's my story.

That's unbelievable.

I didn't know any of those things.

What did the president say to you at one point, do you even remember, when he turned to you in the middle of the speech and he said some things to you?

Do you remember?

No, we couldn't hear.

We couldn't hear each other.

We did speak to each other, but we didn't hear each other.

It was too loud.

The guys would yelling.

I didn't remember him having that megaphone, that bullhorn.

Really?

And then he started to speak, and he's speaking to the right.

And the guys on the left, they're yelling, we can't hear you.

And then he turned to the left with the bullhorn, and he said, I can hear you.

And the whole world hears you.

And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

They went crazy.

They went nuts.

They started chanting USA, USA, USA.

And it was, he said everything in those three sentences.

So, Bob,

you were given

a flag right after his visit, right?

Yes.

When I was helping him get down from the rig,

somebody handed him the flag,

and he puts his arm up and he waves the flag.

I saw Governor Pataki standing there, so I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turns around and he grabs my legs, and he picks me up, and he puts me out in the street.

I said, you're going to hurt yourself.

He said, I'm a big guy.

I said, okay.

I'm walking back to go back to work.

And this Secret Service guy taps me on the shoulder and he said, the president's been looking for you.

I said, oh, now, what do they do?

And he said, he wants you to have this flag.

I said, oh, very nice.

Thank you.

And I stuck it in my pocket and I'm going back to work.

Anyway, Glenn, the Secret Service guy that told me when the politician comes over there and takes my spot to get down, when I went on television, I would tell them my story.

And I got a letter from the White House.

I'm the guy that told you what to do.

Thank you for calling me a Secret Service guy,

and he signs it.

Carl Rove, senior advisor to the president.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes, exactly.

That's what I said.

So let me ask you this, because the day before,

your family was saying you're just going to get in the way.

When you got home.

After sneaking across the bridge, sneaking past the National Guard, working, then the president is giving one of the most memorable speeches, probably since the day of infamy.

What did your family say?

I drove over and I said, who's going to believe that I was with the president?

There were no cameras down there, Glenn.

No cameras at all that I saw.

Anyway, I pull up in front of my house and people are coming out, my neighbors, and they all carry in the candles.

That was a day they had candles.

And they came into my driveway and

this police officer across the street from me, a city cop, and he said to me, Beck, you're right,

you're on television.

I said, get out of here.

There were no cameras down there.

So I came in the house and my granddaughter was sitting on a couch and she says, Grandpa,

you're on television.

And they were showing it over and over.

I said, wow.

I was surprised

that they had me and the president, who was the most important thing.

Yeah.

You stayed in touch with the president?

We did.

We still keep in touch.

Myself and my wife and a couple of my kids, we were invited to the Oval Office.

And it was very nice.

Everybody was there.

You know, Governor Fataki, Karl Rove was there.

Mayor Giuliani, Tommy Von Essen, the Commissioner, and Chuck Schumer.

You've had some special experiences because of that picture.

Yes, we were called into, excuse me,

Germany three times and then twice in Cologne

and that really treated top shelf.

So Bob, when you look back at this now,

what is it that you take away?

What is it that we should as a people take away from that moment on the fire truck?

You know what, Glenn?

We fought two wars.

We fought the Japanese and we fought the germans and we stuck together and that's the same thing that happened at at

9-11

people came in from every state to help us search and rescue and and rescue right and the and the food i was i was there bob and uh i saw people come from all over the country to feed you guys and my my wife and i went These firemen were coming out after a long day, and both of us just started to applaud.

Like,

I don't know.

It was just, it was, everything was upside down and the enormity of it was just remarkable.

Yes,

it really was.

But we stuck together and

we received rigs that we lost in it.

And other states helped, they built the rigs and sent them to us.

You know, this is America, and people are great.

They really are.

Bob, it's an honor to talk to you.

It really is.

I made a painting for charity, and I was wondering if you would be willing to sign it.

If I sent it up to you, would you be willing to sign it?

Of course.

That would be great.

That would be great.

Bob, thank you so much.

God bless you.

God bless you, Gwen.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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