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Rare video from ground zero on 9/11 – 60 Minutes
In the moment, Mark LaGanga did not know.
As the CBS News photojournalist drove down Manhattan’s West Side Highway on September 11, 2001, he did not know he was headed toward the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. He was unaware that the south tower had already collapsed in on itself, and he could not have imagined the north tower would fall shortly thereafter, engulfing him and everyone around him in a thick cloud of ashen debris.
All he knew was that he had to stay and film it.
Twenty-three years after the September 11th terrorist attack, the footage LaGanga captured that morning provides a unique firsthand account of the rescue workers at ground zero moments after the two planes hit. LaGanga’s footage gives viewers a rare, up-close look at the 29 minutes of dust, confusion, and stillness in between the time the two World Trade Center towers collapsed.
“I saw the Twin Towers fall”
Earlier that morning, LaGanga’s cellphone and home landline rang simultaneously. An editor on the CBS News national desk was calling and directed him to drive to downtown Manhattan to shoot what, at that time, was thought to be a plane crash into a building in lower Manhattan.
But the farther downtown he got, LaGanga, now a 60 Minutes cameraman, tried to make sense of the nightmare unfolding in front of him.
When he could not drive his news truck any farther, when the street in front of him was blocked by stopped cars and shell-shocked people fleeing north, he parked and stood on his truck’s roof to get a better angle of the smoke billowing out of the north tower. He turned on his camera a few minutes after 10 am.
The south tower had collapsed at 9:59 am, but LaGanga did not yet realize.
“There was so much dust and the street signs were hard to see that it never really dawned on me that one tower already came down,” LaGanga said in a 2018 interview.
As he walked from the highway toward the base of the north tower, he interviewed passersby, asking the question on everyone’s mind: “What happened?” A police officer thought the roof had caved in; a firefighter thought part of the building collapsed. Even those who watched it happen up close could not process that the entire south tower, a gargantuan skyscraper of 110 floors, had suddenly vanished.
As LaGanga walked toward the north tower, smoke and dust began to fill the cerulean sky. Eventually, it blotted out the sun. On the street near the remaining tower, New York City looked unrecognizable, all hazy and monochromatic. A thick layer of dust and soot caked every surface and dampened the sound of building alarms.
LaGanga turned his camera upward to film the north tower, smoldering and stark against a bright blue sky.
Minutes later, it too would collapse. LaGanga’s camera kept rolling.
“It sounded like a jet flying over,” he said in 2018. “That’s why I panned up.”
As the building fell in on itself, people sprinted down the street, panicked. An ensuing wave of smoke and dust engulfed LaGanga’s lens, and the screen turned to black. Several minutes elapsed. Finally, he coughed.
“Boy, that was close,” a voice said in the dark.
LaGanga returned to film the rescue and recovery at ground zero for a week after the attack. Remarkably, he says he’s experienced no adverse health effects as a result of his time on the site.
Since then, LaGanga has continued working as a photojournalist, most recently for 60 Minutes.
“At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is capture real moments,” he said in 2018. “So you just kind of follow and try not to get in anyone’s way. But document real moments of what’s going on.”
The video above was originally published on September 11, 2018 and edited by Will Croxton.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
