Hey y'all, this is Sans Aunt Betty. This week the war on terror 20 years later.

All right, let's start the show.

Gosh, how many years now have you been covering terror, national security? What would you call the beat?

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, actually since for 20 years now.

Huh, after September 11th, yeah, my whole career in covering the so-called World of G.R. started with the attacks on 9-11, 2001.

This is Suat McKinnon. On September 11th, 2001, Suat was actually in Germany.

She had just graduated from journalism school in Hamburg.

So, I was actually listening to the lecture of my professor when my family started calling me and calling me.

So, when I got out during the break and then they told me, come home, come home now, something bad has happened.

At this early stage, we believe that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

As it turned out, a few days later, three of the four so-called 9-11 pilots used to live in Hamburg and study in Hamburg, Germany.

During the same period of time when I was in Hamburg, Germany, attending journalism school.

Now being a young journalist and being a woman and a Muslim woman, when you learn that three of the so-called 9-11 pilots,

used to live in the same city where I lived and had turned into mass murders and used the religion that I believe in.

As in justification, I felt a huge responsibility to figure out what happened there, what happened that those guys who could have taken a totally different path in their lives, right, who came as students to Germany.

What happened to them that they churned into these murderers?

You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders, and this week we are remembering 9-11.

It is almost cliché to say at this point, but 20 years later, it doesn't make it any less true.

September 11th changed everything.

In the immediate aftermath, for Americans, it meant unspeakable tragedy. If you were old enough to remember it, you never forgot where you were when it happened.

I was a senior in high school in South Texas at Marching Band Practice on a big asphalt parking lot when I heard about the attacks.

I remember perfect Texas fall weather, and I also recall everything coming to a standstill after that.

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