meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
HISTORY This Week

Blindspot: The Road to 9/11

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.54.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 1: The Bullet. The 9/11 attacks were so much more than a bolt from the blue on a crisp September morning. They were more than a decade in the making. Our story starts in a Midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom in 1990. Shots ring out and the extremist rabbi, Meir Kahane, lies mortally wounded. His assassin, El-Sayyid Nosair, is connected to members of a Brooklyn mosque who are training to fight with Islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan. NYPD Detective Louis Napoli and FBI Special Agent John Anticev catch the case and start unraveling a conspiracy that is taking place in plain sight by blending into the tumult of the city. It is animated by an emerging ideology: violent jihad.


More about the Blindspot: Road to 9/11:

While the devastating images of the 9/11 attacks are seared into our national collective memory, most of the events that led up to that day took place out of public view. Over eight episodes, Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, brings to light the decade-long “shadow struggle” that preceded the attacks. Hosted by WNYC reporter Jim O’Grady and based on The HISTORY® Channel's television documentary Road to 9/11 (produced by Left/Right), this podcast series draws on interviews with more than 60 people — including FBI agents, high-level bureaucrats, journalists, experts, and people who knew the terrorists personally — and weaves them together with original reporting to create a gripping, serialized narrative audio experience. Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 is a co-production of The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The History Channel, Original Podcast

0:04.0

Hey history this week fans, 20 years ago today the 9-11 attacks changed the world as we know it.

0:11.0

So on this anniversary we are bringing you something special,

0:15.0

Episode 1 of our podcast Blind Spot, The Road to 9-11.

0:19.0

This series, produced by the History Channel and WNYC Studios,

0:24.0

explores the lead up to the attacks and the warnings we may have missed along the way.

0:29.0

After listening to this episode you can find the rest of Blind Spot, The Road to 9-11,

0:33.0

wherever you get your podcasts. Here is Episode 1, The Bullet.

0:39.0

There's nothing special about my 9-11 story. Like everyone's story, it depends on chance.

0:46.0

By chance that morning I was living in a house on a hill at the tip of Staten Island.

0:52.0

When I heard about the first plane hitting the North Tower, I rushed to the hill

0:56.0

where there's this perfect view of the World Trade Center.

1:00.0

I remember standing there and suddenly feeling the second plane flying past me.

1:06.0

It was a jumbo jet and was coming in loud and low.

1:11.0

The plane ripped past and went streaking over the water and hit the South Tower at 903.

1:18.0

I saw the Firewall and the Smoke.

1:22.0

Back then I was a reporter for the New York Times.

1:26.0

So I ran down to the waterfront. I pulled out a notebook and my pen and I tried to start interviewing people.

1:33.0

But nobody had anything to say.

1:36.0

We all just fell silent and stared at the buildings.

1:40.0

Then the South Tower disappeared and we all looked at each other like,

1:46.0

did that? Did that just... there was so much smoke, it was hard to tell.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.