“The Only Plane in the Sky”

An interview with historian Garrett M. Graff about his spectacular oral history of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the importance of understanding the significance and reverberations of that day.

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, by Garrett M. Graff (2019)
(Bookshop.org / Amazon)

Hello! And welcome to the ScienceBorg Librarian. My name is Vasile Decu, I’m a science journalist, amateur astronomer and professional bookworm. And this is my book talk blog, where you’re invited to read (and soon listen to) interesting conversations with some of the best authors of nonfiction books, from media to tech, history and nature.

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9/11 Memorial, New York. Photo: Vasile Decu

“9/11 is the hinge on which all of modern history turns. It is as clear a dividing line between the 20th century and the 21st as we actually have,” says Garrett Graff. “If you look back on these first 20 years of the 21st century there are two stories that changed the entire world. One is 9/11. And one is the rise of technology. Of the internet and cellphones and social media. The two are very closely linked. But everyone of us is continuing to live every day in a world that is shaped in ways big and small by 9/11. And understanding the world in which we are living today begins with understanding that day.”

An image of New York under attack on September 11, 2001, captured by NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson, on a mission on the International Space Station. Photo: NASA

Vasile Decu: Thank you for this talk, and thank you for your book. It’s such an important historical document! And it’s one of those rare cases when an oral history gets better and better and more relevant as time goes by, because you need to understand what really happened in those moments and your book offers a direct connection to those hundreds of voices that talk to us from the past.

You start the book from the perspective of the American astronaut, Frank Culbertson. As an amateur astronomer and space journalist, I was hooked from the first lines.
Everybody who lived through 9/11 can remember exactly what they did and how they saw it on television. That day, I had just gotten the news that I was going to university. I was finally escaping my small town in Eastern Europe — and suddenly the world was turning upside down. And the tragedy itself, of the attacks, was horrible. I couldn’t move myself away from the tv set.
What were your emotions on living it?

Garrett M. Graff: I was in college and so I have a lot of that sort of same experience. I was at breakfast… As you mentioned in your story… One of the most interesting and important aspects of that day is the timing of the attacks, which meant that the whole world watched. That 9:00 a.m. East Coast US was early afternoon, mid-afternoon for Europe, and even for most of Asia it was evening. It was catching people sort of just before they went to bed at the end of the day. And so 9/11 was this collective world experience in a way that we almost have never seen in any other aspect of human history. To me, one of the things that is so striking about studying and writing about 9/11 is the way that the world reacted in the same way to those images. You know, I’ve heard from readers in Poland, in Korea, and Egypt, and Brazil, all over the world about how they saw the attack on the US as an attack on them and sort of experienced the same chaos and confusion and fear and trauma that America experienced that day.

And, to me, what is so important about trying to tell this story as an oral history is to capture not just the facts of the day, but the emotion and the human experience of the day. Because what stands out when you go back and you look at that day and you think about the history that we teach in the US now, a quarter of the US population is too young to remember 9/11. It’s a larger percentage, actually, of the world beyond, because the world is actually younger than the US. And the story that we tell them is a neater and cleaner and simpler and tidier history than the day that any of us who were alive and watched it experienced. You know, we tell this story of… There were four planes. The first attack came at 8:46 a.m. New York time. The whole thing was over one hundred and two minutes later with the collapse of the second tower at 10:28 a.m., There was the Pentagon, there was Shanksville, and the Twin Towers.

But that’s not the day that any of us alive experienced. That’s not the day that I had in Boston. That’s not the day that you had in Romania. We didn’t understand when the attacks began. We didn’t understand when they were over. We didn’t even understand for much of that day how many attacks there had been total. There were reports of other things, like a car bomb at the State Department. There was fear of other hijacked planes in the air, still well into the afternoon. And then, worst of all, none of us knew what came next. We didn’t know whether there was a second wave of attacks, set for that afternoon; or on Wednesday; or October; or 2002. And so for us, when you try to understand the way that 9/11 changed the world, you can’t understand that by looking at the facts of the day, you can only understand that by looking at the emotions and the experience of that day, because it’s the emotions and the experience of that day that drove the US response, drove the military response, drove the government response and drove the world response.

The world had live footage of burning buildings and smoke coming out of the towers, but we kind of forget what happened. A lot of things happened on the ground. What surprised you most while doing your research?

To me, what really came out of going back 15, 17, 18 years after the day, when I was doing this work, was how much of the day’s drama none of us understood at the time. And what I mean by that is there are all of these stories that if they had happened on literally any other day of modern world history or modern American history would be among the most interesting and dramatic moments to have unfolded in modern world history or modern American history. And yet, that day, we didn’t understand that they had even happened at all. There are sort of three stories that I cite when when I talk about that. One is the maritime evacuation of lower Manhattan, which is this incredible makeshift armada of pleasure yachts, ferries, tugboats, fishing vessels, rescue boats that comes together that morning to evacuate somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people from the tip of lower Manhattan, people who were trapped by the collapse of the Twin Towers. It is the largest maritime evacuation in world history. It is larger than the British evacuation of Dunkirk. And yet that day it unfolds literally in the shadow of the Twin Towers. And it was months or years before people really understood that it happened at all.

You see the incredible story of the air traffic controllers that day. Ben Slimey, who was the national operations manager for the FAA that morning, was in his first day on the job and his first day running the U.S. airspace. And in his first day, in his first two hours, he gives two orders that no one has ever given before or since. Shortly after the second crash, he gives the order to stop any further takeoffs across the country. And then around 9:45, he gives the order “land everything, land everything now!” And air traffic controllers across the country forced down at the closest airport all 4,500 planes that are in the air at that moment. They are forced down regardless of the plane’s destination and regardless of whether the airport is in any way prepared to receive them. It’s this Herculean, incredible drama. In the first 10 minutes after Ben Slimey’s order, air traffic controllers land seven hundred and fifty planes across the country. Americans, if they know this story at all, only know this tiny, tiny sliver of it, of the thirty eight transatlantic flights that are forced down in Newfoundland and dropped into a town of 9,000 people on this remote Canadian island seven thousand passengers and crew. We know sort of this tiny little sliver, but that same type of drama unfolds basically at the entire national level, at every airport in the country.

Photo: Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo, public domain

How hard was it to weave a narrative out of thousands of voices and stories?

This is always my dumb comment about writing the book, but I was really unprepared for how emotional writing a book about 9/11 would turn out to be. You know, it is a terrible, awful, tragic day and one that is incredibly hard as a researcher, historian or journalist to go back and research because you’re sort of showing up on people’s doorsteps and asking them “tell me about the worst moments of your life”. And one of the things I was really heartened by was that virtually everyone that I spoke to said yes, that actually one of the things that’s really remarkable about the people who survived that day is that they understand that an important part of ensuring that we as a world never forget that day is about continuing to share their stories. And so, basically everyone said yes to participating.

At the same time, what you see unfold over the course of the day is this very intense, very human drama. Part of what makes this book be able to work is that there was such a collective experience to that day that you can sort of weave all of these stories together. That it is a story with a very intense and obvious chronology, as it unfolds minute by minute. There are many people having similar experiences at similar moments. And I think, in some ways, 9/11 is a relatively simple story to tell. You know, I’ve thought a lot over the last year about, for instance, how difficult it will be to write the history of the pandemic that we are all living through because there is no similar pandemic that we all are having. My covid-19 pandemic in Burlington, Vermont, is wildly different than the pandemic of my friends in New York City or Washington or Los Angeles, and it’s unrecognizable to someone in South Carolina or Florida. And similarly, when you and I talk about our memories of 9/11, my memory as a college student in Boston is similar to yours as a soon to be university student in Romania. I hear you tell your story and I recognize that. But your experience in Romania is totally different than the experience of any one pandemic wise in the US. Totally different than the experience of someone in the U.K., totally different than the experience of someone in India.

I totally get it, because I was experiencing the pandemic as a journalist writing about books and astronomy. And my sister is an E.R. doctor, so we had very different experiences…

I remember reading your book and thinking that, oh my God, the author must have PTSD out of researching this book. It often hits you hard, even as a reader. But there are also so many stories of courage and humanity at its best.

Yes, and to me that’s actually sort of the silver lining, even if it feels like a weird way to phrase it. When you look at 9/11 in its totality, it is a story of immense loss and tragedy. But, to me, when you go through the whole block and you go through the whole day, it is a story that is actually packed with an immense amount of hope and love and the best of humans and, in totality, is actually this incredible story about the resiliency of the human spirit. I’m really glad that you see that, that you got that out of the book, because that to me is a really, really important part of this and one that I think is really important to go back and try to recapture. In part because… It’s really important to remember where this story began — and the story began with this day of incredible national unity and international unity. And what I think is so tragic and heartbreaking about the day and its legacy, as we look back on it now from this fall and the 20th anniversary, is the beginning in this place of such unity and strength…. The legacy of 20 years of the war on terror is a country and a world that is more divided, more polarized, more partizan and darker than, in some ways, the world that we woke up with on the morning of September 12th. And I think that we’re feeling that right now, like literally this week, this day, this hour as we watch Afghanistan. But I can draw you very clear lines from 9/11 to Brexit in Europe and the challenges of the ideals and hopes of the European Union. I can draw a really straight line for you from 9/11 to Donald Trump and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. There is a very, very dark legacy now, 20 years later, to 9/11 that we didn’t have to have. That was not the place that we began.

This may be an unfair question, but do you have stories that stuck with you? And I want to give you an example. My biggest fear is to lose in an instant somebody that I love, a family member or a loved one. And I remember the story of the wife of the firemen… She had terminal cancer and the plan was to say goodbye and for the father to take care of the kids. And then she she lost him that day, in an instance….

I have all sorts of those stories. The one that stuck with me more than any other and one that I still have trouble talking about is the story of… So I have a now three year old daughter. She was six months old when I was working on the book. And there’s a story that we follow in the book of a father who has a six month old and they lose their mother in the book in the collapse of the Twin Towers. And him sort of trying to figure out how do you explain that to a six month old. And, man, it was… it took me a year or two of talking about the book before I could even talk about that story without fully breaking down and crying because that story unfolds for 3,000 families that day, in different ways. You see that story play out in some incredibly human ways that morning and that day. You see these tightly interconnected generations of New York City firefighters or New York City police officers. Stories of men losing brothers, fathers searching in the rubble for their sons. These incredible moments of personal tragedy amid mass tragedy.

Reviewers were applauding your editing style and the construction of the quotes. But I think that your main accomplishment, or your main skill, was your capacity to listen. Hours after hours of absorbing those stories. I had a thought that you were also helping them, because when there is so much loss, sometimes your loved one is just a name lost in huge list of thousands of people. And then you came and listened to their story — and it mattered.

Yeah. And I think that that goes to what I was saying earlier about the way that people are actually, in a very weird way, very happy to tell their 9/11 stories. That despite it being awful and traumatic and the literal worst moments of their life, there is a catharsis, I think, for many people in trying to tell that story. And also an immense and important understanding of what it means to keep those memories alive. I actually talk about this in the opening of the book — one of the things that is so weird about 9/11 is most people don’t listen, because the moment you bring up 9/11, someone starts wanting to be like, well, let me interrupt you and tell you my story of where I was that day.

I did the same, yeah…

And we sort of almost immediately start talking over the people that we’re trying to have this conversation with. What I think is so powerful about the oral history tradition for this type of story is the way that you just sit back and let it sort of flow over you.

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 — Audible Audibook

In a way, every published work gets its own life and it’s out of your control, the control of the author. Do you reread your book?

Yes, I actually do. I less reread it and I actually listen to the audio. The audiobook in the US has the original audio from 9/11, from the air traffic controllers. And they did this incredible job and it’s this cast of 45 different voices telling the day and the story. And for me, that’s how I actually still experience the book. I’ll keep relistening to parts of that story over, particularly when the anniversary rolls around.

As you said, a lot of Americans were too young to remember it. So it’s a crucial piece of understanding, because we tend to surmise 9/11 in just a few words, a tragedy. You actually help to preserve that history, not just describe it. What were the messages after the book came out?

The reaction has been probably almost exactly what you would expect. It’s a book that is a deeply meaningful experience for a lot of people to read and sort of wrestle with. It’s not an easy book to read. It’s not an easy book to listen to. And I say that, you know, not out of any bragging of my genius in putting the book together, because I sort of see my role in it as really a sort of collecting and sharing other people’s stories. It’s less my book and more their book. But I still hear from readers almost every day about what the book had meant to them, what they have taken away from it and also inevitably people also sharing their own experiences on 9/11.

And it’s a book that’s not only a history for Americans. The victims of that day came from a lot of countries. And the impact, as you said, then reverberated around the world in the next decades. Your book essentially should be read by every European, for example, even in my corner of the world. What would be your hook to them, the pitch for reading it?

9/11 is the hinge on which all of modern history turns. It is as clear a dividing line between the 20th century and the 21st as we actually have. If you look back on these first 20 years of the 21st century there are two stories that changed the entire world. One is 9/11. And one is the rise of technology. Of the internet and cellphones and social media. The two are very closely linked. But everyone of us is continuing to live every day in a world that is shaped in ways big and small by 9/11. And understanding the world in which we are living today begins with understanding that day.

My message to the readers of these book blog is that, if you want to understand that day, especially an event that is so complex as 9/11, don’t just watch a 10 minute media montage, but get the best books written about it. Your book is my first recommendation. What would the other titles be, recommended by you?

This is Peter L. Bergen’s new biography of Osama bin Laden, which is excellent! The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden. And it is… It sounds really weird to say that reading a book about Osama bin Laden can be a joy, but Peter Bergen does a really tremendous job in trying to capture sort of the reality of bin Laden. And I think one of the shames of when we look back, as a government in the US, is we underestimated bin Laden before 9/11 and then vastly overestimated bin Laden after 9/11. I think it important to understand both halves of that equation. That, for me, is actually a really important part of my own day of 9/11. I remember exactly where I was standing when I saw the first photo on TV of Osama bin Laden. People started talking about this thing called al-Qaeda, but I had never heard of bin Laden before and had never heard of al-Qaeda before. And I was so puzzled, as a college student, how everyone on TV seemed so sure that this man and this thing had attacked the US when I had never heard of them. Who could these people be and what does that mean? And I think a lot of Americans have something similar in their own reaction.

The other book that I think is always worth mentioning is called 102 minutes, by Jim Dwyer. That is probably the definitive work… a remarkable work, in part because it came out basically a year after 9/11. It came out very, very quickly and yet still managed by that point to have pulled together many of the best stories to emerge from 9/11.

Those are the two books that I most recommend.

And there’s the classic, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, which is the story of the US government’s fight against al-Qaeda before and up to 9/11.

If you enjoyed this interview, please buy me a coffee and/or a chapter of a new and bloody expensive hardcover, via Buy Me a Coffee or Donorbox.