Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Sep 11 2026

Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show is dominated by a powerful and emotional discussion marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, with Clay and Buck reflecting on the historical significance of 9/11, the ongoing impact on American society, and the importance of preserving the memory of that day for younger generations. Drawing on personal experiences, the hosts note that a growing share of Americans were born after 9/11 and may view the attacks as distant history, underscoring the need for families and educators to pass along firsthand accounts of the tragedy and its consequences. They discuss nationwide memorial ceremonies, the heroism displayed by first responders and ordinary citizens, and the profound ways the attacks reshaped American life, foreign policy, national security, and public consciousness.

A focus on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, featuring a deep-dive conversation with former White House national security official Steve Yates, who was serving in the George W. Bush administration on the day of the attacks. Yates provides a firsthand account of being inside the White House complex as the events unfolded, describing the transition from confusion after the first plane struck the World Trade Center to the immediate realization that America was under a coordinated terrorist attack when the second plane hit. He recounts the emergency evacuation of White House personnel, the heightened security response, and witnessing the chaos in Washington, D.C., as smoke rose from the Pentagon and fears grew that additional attacks were imminent.

A major theme throughout Hour 2 is the historical significance of 9/11 and the lasting impact it had on American national security, foreign policy, and global affairs. Clay, Buck, and Yates discuss the possibility that the White House or U.S. Capitol were intended targets of the hijacked planes and reflect on how the heroic actions of the passengers aboard Flight 93 may have prevented an even greater national catastrophe. The conversation emphasizes the symbolic importance of Washington’s government institutions and explores how the successful defense of those targets became one of the defining stories of the day.

Clay and Buck also discuss public memory and historical education, responding to listener feedback from younger Americans who were born after 9/11. Buck expresses concern that many younger people are increasingly detached from the historical reality of the attacks and argues that organizations dedicated to preserving 9/11 history play an important role in ensuring future generations understand what occurred and why it mattered. Clay and Buck contrast the atmosphere of America in the months before September 2001 with the dramatic changes that followed, recalling high-profile news stories that dominated headlines before the attacks and illustrating how suddenly the nation’s priorities shifted.

An in-depth interview featuring David Rutherford, former Navy SEAL and host on the Clay & Buck Podcast Network. Rutherford shares his firsthand recollections of September 11, explaining that he was serving as a SEAL instructor in California when news of the attacks reached his unit. He describes the shock experienced by military personnel, the realization that America had entered a new era, and how the attacks fundamentally changed the trajectory of the lives of special operations forces for the next two decades. Rutherford recounts speaking to a class of graduating SEAL candidates shortly after the attacks, telling them that some would not survive the wars to come, a prediction he said tragically proved accurate.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in. It is the Friday edition of Clay and Buck,
a time of reflection for many of us as it
is the 25th anniversary of 9-11. And there are ceremonies
taking place all over the country, including right now a

(00:21):
ceremony in New York City that is being taken live
by all of the different networks. And I'm sure that
we will have many different thoughts of how we spent 9-11,
what we remember. And it's also important to remember as
well yourself that one in three Americans was not born

(00:45):
on 9-11. So as much as it still may feel
like a moment that many of us remember quite clearly...
It is important to understand that for many young people,
it is history. And, Buck, I was talking about this
yesterday a little bit. I was down in Dallas. I

(01:05):
was born in 1979, 25 years before 1979, 1954, if
I'm doing the math right there, Brown versus Board of Education.
I remember being a kid and Brown versus Board of
Education might as well have been to me the Civil

(01:26):
War in that it felt ancient because anything that happens
25 years before you're born, by the time you're 20,
it's been 45 years. It feels like a completely different world.
That's where a lot of 25-year-old kids are today who
were born in the aftermath of 9-11. To them, 2001...

(01:49):
is the equivalent to me of Brown versus Board of Education.
It's just a totally different world. And I do think
the way that we teach history, and you and I
are both big history people, oftentimes we never get to
modern era history. We start back, all of you who remember,
you're in history class, you start back in the 1600s

(02:10):
and the 1400s and You work your way up through
the Civil War, maybe. You very rarely get into much
of the 20th century. Most of the time don't get
past much more than.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
World War II.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Contemporary history is often not known at all. A lot
of kids just don't know anything about 9-11. And so
I think this is an opportunity for everybody out there
in this audience to make sure as you come into
the weekend and you're going to be around your kids
and your grandkids to tell them about the lived history,
your experience on that day. and what it can mean.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
So I'll give you an example from the present of
what I think is important to guard against as we
talk about 911 and what it meant. And we have, Clay,
I just want to take a moment to say, I'm
sure we have people listening who lost friends and family
on that day. We have a WOR, for example, is

(03:06):
a station that goes throughout the entire tri-state, uh, or
certainly the New York city and its environs of the
tri-state area. Um, uh, my uncle was on his way
to work at, uh, Aon corporation, which lost the second
most people after Kenner Fitzgerald. He was okay. He was

(03:27):
not in the, there were, this is another part of
it that people forget about. And Carrie, Carrie and I
were watching a documentary actually a couple of days ago
about nine 11 and, and, bringing people together who successfully
escaped and sometimes very emotionally thanking someone for helping them
get down the stairs or helping them get out of the,
you know, the office in time or get out of

(03:49):
the elevator or whatever it may have been. But there
were a lot of people who, because it was early
enough in the day, weren't in the buildings yet.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
It was, you know, people show up at, you know, nine,
nine 30, nine 45 to work. And so there were
far fewer people in the buildings. Now, we lost almost
3,000 people that day.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
It's horrific.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
But it could have been a much higher body count,
including my own uncle by marriage on one side. And
we have a lot of people, Clay, who are listening
right now who are part of what we call the
9-11 generation, who joined up to fight, who said, I'm
going to serve the country. A lot of people joined
the Army, the Marines, Air Force, Navy, thinking that rightfully

(04:36):
we were under attack. And we then had decades of war.
Let's just be honest about that. We had decades of
war against the Middle East and South Asia enemies that
had consolidated against us in the form of Al Qaeda.
But on the one thing, for example, that is going
to bother me today, and it has been bothering me

(04:58):
for some time, Clay, the mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani,
wrote this, I attended a memorial mass at St. Patrick's
Cathedral in honor of those who died on 9-11, which
I appreciate that he's going in solidarity to the St.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Patrick's Cathedral. That's fine.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
A lot of Catholics were lost that day, a lot
of firefighters, a lot of cops, a lot of just
Catholics who worked in those buildings, but a lot of
human beings in general. 25 years ago, he writes, we
bore witness to unimaginable suffering But New Yorkers met that
moment with a spirit of love, sacrifice, and solidarity that
guided us forward. As we remember those we lost, let

(05:39):
us continue to take refuge in one another. Clay, that
could be the writing from Mamdani about a tsunami.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Or an earthquake. Or a structural failure in the building
that just happened. We were attacked. We were attacked by
an ideology that had spread around the world, that sought
our eradication, that planned far more attacks, that has been
an ideology of conquest and bloodshed for centuries, I might add.

(06:18):
And this whitewashing of 9-11 that is always, always coming
from people on the left, is something we're going to
have to remind ourselves of. No one speaks about Pearl Harbor, Clay,
when they go to Hawaii or they're thinking about Pearl Harbor. Like, yeah,
it was a sad day where things happened. No, we

(06:41):
were attacked by Imperial Japan, which allied with the Nazis,
which sought world domination and came pretty close to knocking
our fleets entirely out of the Pacific theater and changing
the world and maybe having us all living under tyranny. Like,
let's remember the real history. And I just think that
on 9-11, 25 years on, it is taught to people
like a thing that happened, not the enemy came for

(07:05):
us and we rallied and took the fight back to them.
That's my main takeaway, Armis. I don't want anyone to
forget what really happened and what it led to. Also
that they would do it again if they could. which
I think is a big part of this, too. World
War Two after Pearl Harbor, you could say we utterly

(07:26):
vanquished Japan. Obviously, the Nazis lost in Germany and there
was a sense of conclusion to that conflict. You know,
and many of the people listening to us right now
are still working to try to keep radical Islam terrorists from.
doing again to us what they did on 9-11. In

(07:48):
other words, the vigilance necessary to protect innocent people from
being taken is still necessary. It's not something that just
ended and we can declare victory and we can move on.
And by the way, you mentioned your uncle who hadn't
gotten there yet. I think it's worth mentioning Howard Lutnick

(08:09):
is the Commerce Secretary right now in Trump's cabinet. The
only reason he didn't die on 9-11 that day, Buck,
was because it was his son's first day of kindergarten,
and he took his son to kindergarten that day. I
believe his, I think it was Cantor Fitzgerald, was the
employer that lost the most lives. They were at the

(08:29):
very top of one of the World Trade Center buildings.
I think over 600 of their individuals died in that attack,
and he says, but for the fact that that morning
he was taking his son to kindergarten, He would have
been in that building and he would have died. And
he's commerce secretary now. And Trump that day and in
the immediate aftermath, this was long before Trump was known

(08:52):
as any sort of political figure, was you can speak
to this because you're from New York. And I know
you weren't in New York at the exact time of
the attack. You were away in college and I was
away in law school. But I remember going within a
couple of weeks of the attack, maybe within 10 days
or so. and standing on the roof of a George
Washington apartment building, George Washington University apartment building, you could

(09:16):
still see the smoke from the Pentagon for a long time,
and you could see the smoke still coming from the
World Trade Centers for a very, very long time, too.
And in the immediate aftermath, for those of us who
were traveling and those of us who were moving around,
I mean, you went, I mean, you could speak to it.
Would you have joined gone into the CIA if 9-11

(09:36):
hadn't happened? Or do you think you might have gone
in a different career trajectory if that attack hadn't happened?

Speaker 1 (09:42):
No, 100%.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
I went into the CIA because of 9-11. And I
had no family history of intelligence work or anything. It's
not like I came to this because that was something
expected of me or anything else. And quite honestly, we
talk about how important it is to read books. And
the effect that books can have on your life. I
knew about the CIA from Tom Clancy and the Jack

(10:04):
Ryan novels, really, and the movies. But that was really
what made me think of the CIA. And I thought
because of my background at the time, I was studying
Middle East history and politics and even Arabic, believe it
or not. Before 9-11. I signed up for Arabic before 9-11,
which is quite a coincidence. But then it was just
sort of a ramp, a pathway into the intelligence service.

(10:28):
So that's what ended up happening for me. But for
so many listening.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
They were army. They were rangers. They were Marines. They
were airborne.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
In Fallujah, in Mosul, in Baghdad, in Jalalabad, in Kabul,
and name it. And they've been to all these places. And,
you know, I understand now there's there's been this lesson
of we shouldn't have these. We don't want to do
Middle East wars interventions. Let's all remember rooting the Taliban
and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was being hosted by the Taliban.

(10:58):
They were kind of a symbiotic organism at the time
rooting them out of Afghanistan. There was no choice. That
was an absolute must. There wasn't some, oh, maybe we're
going to just sort of let things lie. They had
created terrorist training camps and were plotting to hit us.
not just in America, but all of our allies all
over the world, we had to go in and cut
the head off of that snake. Now, the occupation afterwards

(11:22):
and trying to set up Afghanistan as a stable democracy,
that was a challenge. Iraq, interestingly enough, the justification for
the war, I think people feel particularly shaky about in
the aftermath of 9-11 and what we found out later.
But Iraq is actually doing much better as a country
than a lot of people would think right now. I'm

(11:42):
not saying that was worth the cost in blood and treasure.
I'm just pointing out that it isn't the totalitarian hellscape
that some thought it would descend into. I mean, Afghanistan
is actually in a worse spot than Iraq is as
a country. So it changed the world, Clay, and there's
so much to take from this. One thing is that
you could be an American, especially if you're in New

(12:06):
York City, and everyone remembered this, Clay. It was in
the Northeast just generally, too. It was one of the
most beautiful days. I mean, September, I think, is the
most beautiful time in the northeast of the United States.
And it was just a perfect, crystal clear day. And
the country was in a good place and a good feel.
And everything was coming along, right? We weren't at war.
We weren't in the midst of a depression. We didn't

(12:27):
have some huge financial calamity. And then, boom, it all changed.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
We were actually on track to pay off the national debt.
People forget, as we sit $ 40 trillion in debt now,
there was talk of, well, what are we going to
do when the United States suddenly pays off the entirety
of the national debt? Because we had balanced budgets in
the late 90s, and that's what people cared about, balanced budgets.

(12:55):
Don't want to be the womp-womp here on the state
of the country, but I think you're very right.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Then we went into Iraq. We spent trillions of dollars
on Iraq and on Afghanistan, and we lost thousands of lives.
And all of it was directly connected to what happened
on that day in New York, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We
shouldn't forget about the brave people on Flight 93. And
also the fact that they hit the Pentagon, the loss

(13:25):
of life there. But the fact that they didn't hit
the Capitol or hit the White House, as certainly was intended.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Thanks to Todd Beamer and his crew on Flight 93.
And that was another thing, whether it was the NYPD
and the FDNY running into the buildings and trying to
evacuate people in New York, people who were running into
the rubble of the Pentagon and trying to save those
who were severely wounded when the Pentagon got hit. And
then on Flight 93, Todd Beamer lets roll. There is

(13:57):
something about that. I just hope every American school-age child
who is old enough to hear about 9-11, I hope
they hear about Todd Beamer and that moment where he
called his wife, where he knew what he was facing,
and he knew what the stakes were, and he.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Ran into the maelstrom. Lord knows, Clay, what would have
happened to the country if.
That, you know, if we had seen.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
The Capitol destroyed or the white house or the white house, just,
just obliterated on that day. I mean, it was damaging
enough what we suffered with. So never forget.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
I always thought as someone who was in DC buck,
the fact that they chose the Pentagon, I know there
was lost life there instead of the Capitol and the
white house. A lot of people don't think of the
Pentagon as symbolic of the nation in the same way
as they do the white house and the Capitol. Um,
What those guys did on Flight 93 was so important.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
I mean, I think, Clay, if the enemy, in retrospect,
could pick, they were trying to hit the Capitol, too.
I think they would have rather hit the Capitol than
the Pentagon, but Beamer and his crew stopped them.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Look, we're talking about Tunnel to Towers all week as
we've been talking about the 25th anniversary of 9-11. I
was up in Washington, D.C. for a great event. that
they did to talk about that day. Last week, Frank
Siller was on with us talking about what his brother did,
his life that he gave up. For months, we've been

(15:32):
telling you about the Steel Across America Tour, 16,900-pound steel
beam moving from the World Trade Center all across the
country and back. The goal is to educate so many
people out there in America, one in three of whom
were not alive when 9-11 happened. about just what occurred
on that day. The Steel Beams journey ended this morning
where it began in New York City at the very

(15:53):
place where the story of Stephen Stiller and the Tunnel
to Towers Foundation came to be. You guys know we're
huge supporters of Tunnel to Towers Foundation is honoring the
anniversary through an ongoing commitment to so many people out there.
They're also helping the families of those who have lost
their lives to 9-11-related illnesses, which now triples the number

(16:15):
who lost their life on 9-11. One way to make
sure we never forget is to support organizations like Tunnel
to Towers. Join us in donating $ 11 a month to
Tunnel to Towers at T2T. org. That's T, the number two, T.org.

Speaker 6 (16:32):
Clay and Buck, smart, fun, sane, oh, and saving the
country one liberal at a time.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Second hour, Clay and Buck kicks off now. We have
the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks today, and we're
spending a lot of time on the show, of course,
in memoriam for those lost and talking about what this
did to change history, change the world as well. Our
friend Steve Yates joins us. He is a former... senior

(17:02):
White House national security.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Official in the Bush White House.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
In fact, he is, and also, of course, the host
of Nation States with Yates, the podcast you should all
be subscribing to for your national security updates and analysis. Steve,
you were in the White House on 9-11. I wanted
to do something here. Cut 28, guys, is the first
report of a plane hitting the building from NBC. Just
to set the scene, Steve, we're going to play this,

(17:28):
and then I want you to take us into The
opening moments of you in the White House working on
the national security staff and finding out on September 11, 2001,
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Play 28, guys.

Speaker 7 (17:40):
We have a breaking news story to tell you about. Apparently,
a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center
here in New York City. It happened just a few
moments ago, apparently. We have very little information available at
this point in time. But on the phone, we do
have Jennifer Oberstein, who apparently witnessed this event.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Jennifer, can you hear me?

Speaker 8 (18:00):
Hello?

Speaker 5 (18:00):
Hi, Jennifer.

Speaker 8 (18:01):
Hi, Katie.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Hi.

Speaker 7 (18:03):
Can you please tell me what you saw and give
me any information about what's going on there?

Speaker 9 (18:07):
Yes, I have to tell you.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
It's quite terrifying.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Stephen, one of the first reports there on broadcast news
about a plane hitting the buildings.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
You are in the White House.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
It is September 11, 2001. Take us through what you remember,
what it was like.

Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, Buck, I went into work roughly around 6 a.m.
It was an extremely clear, crisp, kind of borderline beautiful morning.
I went in, had my intel briefing. I was preparing
Vice President Cheney to go up to Capitol Hill to
receive the Prime Minister of Australia, who was going to
give an address to a joint.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Session of Congress.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
There was a Hong Kong official who was going to
come into town and meet with the Vice President.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
I'd gone over to the West Wing to talk through.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Some of those movements. And what I needed to do
as a staffer to try to support. And when I
came back across West Executive Avenue into our national security
suite in the executive office building, an army officer stopped
me right at the doorway. This is before we had
sort of news alerts via social media and things like that.
He says, sir, you have to see what's on TV.

(19:16):
And I turned and probably was watching Fox or CNN.
I don't even remember which network. And immediately we were thinking,
how does someone hit?

Speaker 8 (19:24):
Tower.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
What happened?

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Was this a small craft, a large craft? And we're
just immediately thinking of how horrifically challenging it would be
to try to rescue people from that high up.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
And as we're sort of trying to mull through, is
this a first responder emergency?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Is this a homeland security problem? Somewhere in that conversation, the.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
Second plane hit, and it was just an instantaneous bell
that rang where you knew this was not one-off. This
was not accidental. That can't happen by accident. It was
larger scale. Before too long, very significant alarms were going
off across the White House and some extremely well-armed men

(20:08):
were coming up out of the bowels of the broader
White House complex. I'd seen a lot of security before.
I had never seen these guys. And they were just
pouring out, and they basically were just saying one word, evacuate.
And if you couldn't understand the English language in one word,
they'd give you evacuate again and use a little body
English to move.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
You along your way.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
And that was sort of the beginning of of recognizing
that even though I had a pin to be within
arm's length of the president, I had a pass that
I could go anywhere in the White House, there's a
very short list of people who are truly essential for
continuity of government. And I call those the people that
go in the no-fry zone down at the Emergency Operation Center.

(20:50):
And the rest of us that live in the fry zone,
you get to walk home. And that's basically what I
did that day.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
I walked a.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Good chunk of the way through Northwest D.C., went the
rest of the way home, spent the rest of that
day watching the news with America. My daughter was almost
three years old, was sort of processing what was happening
in television with her.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Did you see the Pentagon smoke, Stephen? Did you see it?
I assume you saw the Pentagon smoke as you were
walking through Northwest.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
Yeah, well, so we had there's a few thousand people
that work in the executive office building. People think of
the West Wing, which is actually smaller than people think
it might be. And then the executive office building is
where way more staff are than people probably think work
in the White House. And there are a few thousand
sitting ducks that evacuated the building as if it was
a fire drill before people realized the cell signal didn't work.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
It was overwhelmed.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
And there are two things that happened while these thousands
were standing in 17th Street in D.C. right next to
the White House. One was the smoke coming up out
of the Pentagon. And we had colleagues who were working
there who had husbands or friends that were in that
and they were worried. And then there was this bang
that went off around the State Department that we thought
was an explosion.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
It turned out not to be an explosion. This is
an example of the chaos of what that was. But, yeah,
we went out into the street at some point, realized
you've got to get the rest of the way out
of here. And yes, we did see the smoke up there.
And we were.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
Told by the Situation Room and by our staff that
we're inside.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Get out.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Washington, D.C. is the target. And we fear that the
White House is a target.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
We were talking about that. Thank you for sharing that
experience with us, Steve. We were talking about the situation
in Pennsylvania. And as much of a national gut punch
as the World Trade Centers were and as devastating as
the Pentagon attack was, hitting the U.S. Capitol dome or

(22:51):
the White House with a commercial jetliner, I actually think
would have been maybe the most catastrophic cultural thing that
could have been done there. And I think it's important
to remember that. that but for the bravery of those
on the Shanksville where ended up being in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

(23:11):
I mean, the Capitol Dome or the White House basically
could have been obliterated by one of these planes.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
Well, there there's a lot of lore that I don't
know that we'll ever get to the bottom of. But
I sort of tend to believe that the flight that
hit the Pentagon probably initially intended to hit the Capitol
and circled around and ended.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Up hitting the Pentagon.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
And I believe the flight that was in Pennsylvania probably
was meant to come and try to hit the Capitol
after the other one didn't. And there's no way to
go back and be able to verify these kinds of things.
But if you just think in a very sick way logistically,
the Capitol is the highest, most visible point. That would

(23:53):
have been the much more natural target. Hitting the Pentagon
is kind of a hard thing to do. Hitting the
White House is even harder. And so I felt violated
in a way because I sort of think of the
White House especially, but the Capitol too. These are sacred spaces.
And to be forced to evacuate out from your sworn

(24:15):
duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, to try to
do whatever you could, it felt like a deep violation.
Certainly if they had been hit, it would have been
an event like no other, basically, since the British burned
the White House way back when.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
So, Stephen, you were in that White House for also
the response to all of this, not just in the
immediate hours. I mean, the military invasions, interventions, occupations of
Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as I think people forget
a lot of my former outfits, contingency operations in other

(24:51):
places all over the world going after very bad guys,
which have since been written about and talked about pretty extensively.
A question for you, which is going to be too
broad to have any perfect answer for, but you are
the man, I think, to ask it. Did we win
the GWAT, the Global War on Terror? This started that war.
Did we win that war?

Speaker 4 (25:13):
Well, first, I think you alluded to this a little
bit earlier. There was quite a debate about what to
even call it. And I don't like GWAT because the
T is a euphemism for what the real problem was.
And that was, in a way, I think, baked into
the concrete at the outset of you're not going to

(25:34):
win if you can't clearly name the enemy or the
threat or the problem. The problem was a radical form
of a particular religion. And there really wasn't any escaping
that reality. And the more we tried to paper over it,
the less accurate our policy and actions were going to be.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
I felt it then. I was young and it wasn't
my primary brief.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
I was sort of handling the rest of the world
and all of the adjustments to it while the core
team was hitting right face first into the Middle East challenges,
which enveloped a.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Lot of the rest of the administration.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
But people can forget most of 2001 was focused on
readjusting to the China challenge, treating it as a strategic
threat rather.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Than some form of cooperation.

Speaker 4 (26:25):
And that ended with 9-11. So we had major strategic
rebalancing after that. I do think it's really important to
remember the good that happened. President Bush, I think, was
at his best trying to hold a lot of people
together and doing some things right in the immediate aftermath.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
But the big.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
Wrong piece, I think, was failing to accurately tell the
truth with what the threat was And then the biggest,
biggest mistake afterwards, I think, is the Pottery Barn analogy
of if you break it, you own it. It became
talked about from the State Department, but more broadly, and
I just fundamentally disagree with that. I think we paid

(27:06):
dearly for that mistake. If the United States has to
go and break things, that's too bad. It's because we're
the only ones left to do it. We don't own it.
And you'd better take care of your neighborhood so that
we don't have to come in and break things.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
That's how I think.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
I think America would be better off if we had
operated that way instead of massaging what the nature of
the threat is and pretending like we had an obligation
to build those who hit us.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Alternative history is difficult. But you were there. Buck and
I were talking about just how everything seemed to be
going great in America right before 9-11. Budgets balanced. We're
on path to potentially pay off. the entire national debt.
We haven't spent trillions of dollars going into war in
the Middle East. I know I'm asking you to project

(27:55):
an alternative version of history. If 9-11 doesn't happen, do
you think based on your experience that the terrorists of
the Middle East were so committed to a gigantic strike
in the United States that we were sort of sleepwalking
and at some point we would have gotten hit? Or
do you think if we stop 9-11, it's possible that

(28:16):
the world goes in a completely different direction. How would
you assess 9-11 happened? Was 9-11 inevitable in your mind
to have a strike like that be successful given our sleepwalking?
Or do you think if we had happened to stop
this one, the world may have spun in a completely
different place and we never have a 9-11 like event?

Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, Clay, I think it's a super important question. I
am 100% on the side that this was coming. One
of the very, very deep lessons from this is that
there is evil in the world. And we as parents
deal with the challenge of how do we protect our
children from the evil and how do we prepare them

(28:59):
for the evil?

Speaker 3 (29:01):
But we don't get a vote on whether the evil
is in the world.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
I think this was brewing and something was going to
happen at some point.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Unless we were dealing with it.

Speaker 4 (29:12):
And I think part of the proof of that is
we are still in 2026 dealing with a violent theocracy
that has to be.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Contained, if not defeated, coming out of Iran.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
And while we can debate what's the difference between Sunni
and Shia, and I know Buck spent a good part
of his life trying to deal with things like that,
what is not disseparable from all of this is the
inherent evil that animates a billion people being primarily at
risk of this violent ideology.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
And that's going to hit at some point. And U.S.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
Got hit in the most profound way on 25 years ago.
And thankfully, we haven't been hit similarly since. But this
was going to happen whether it was in 2001 or later,
in my estimation.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Steven Yates, thank you, sir, as always, for being here
with us. Everyone should go check out Nation States with Yates.
And we appreciate your service.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
To the country, too, Steven. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Pleasure. Take care, guys.

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(30:34):
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Speaker 6 (31:24):
Prepare for the midterms. Listen to Clay and Buck. Do
your part and red pill a liberal today.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
This morning, we also remember how America responded to that wickedness.
On days like 9-11, we learn what a country is
truly made of.

Speaker 8 (31:41):
We're learning right now what we're made of.

Speaker 5 (31:44):
We have to be strong and we have to be smart.
And Americans are made of a goodness and spirit that
can transcend any earthly force. And that's what we're doing
better than anyone else has ever been able to do
it because we are sustained by a supreme strength, far
more powerful than steel alone.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Aboard flight 93 in the.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
Skies over Pennsylvania, brave flight attendant, boiled water to fight back.
A loving father from New Jersey, Todd Beamer, asked a
telephone operator in Illinois to join him in the Lord's Prayer.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. And then he said his last words,

(32:26):
let's roll. Today, as we remember the many lives lost
on 9-11, we also give thanks for the countless lives
saved by the immortal heroes of Flight 93.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
A very deserved.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Eulogy there for those on 93 and particularly those who
fought back. And yes, they weren't able to regain control
of the plane because the terrorists just decided to bury
the nose down and kill everybody on board. But they
certainly saved. I don't think anyone believes that that plane
would have been shot down in time before it found

(33:06):
another target. most likely the Capitol building, uh, maybe the
white house. So be Beamer, you know, in your life, um,
be that guy, the poise, the courage, the strength that
people showed. And that's why I said in those, uh,
a lot of those recordings that are out there. And

(33:27):
I know at the nine 11 museum, which I have
been to the memorial.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
I haven't toured inside the museum. I need to do that. Karen,
I have talked about it.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Um, I'm told that it's done very well, and a
part of it is the voice messages that people play
who knew that they were probably never going to see
those loved ones again. And it's powerful, powerful stuff, and
something that we should think about today. Producer Ali is

(33:56):
telling me that it is phenomenal, very well done. She's
been there, but you should bring tissues. But there are
lessons about life and mortality.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
And what really matters today.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
That come across in all of those calls. So, all right,
let's do some talkbacks here, Clay. Eric in upstate New
York on WGY.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
This is Talkback A. Play it.

Speaker 8 (34:21):
Hey, Clay and Buck.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Happy Friday.

Speaker 10 (34:22):
And my heart goes out to anybody who was affected
by September the 11th, 2001. I was born a week
after that day, and I cannot imagine growing up without
knowing that or learning about it at such a young age.
And the fact that so many kids don't learn about
it nowadays goes to show how separated we are from
learning about our American history.

Speaker 8 (34:43):
It was only 25 years ago.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Clay, I would just note that I think that people
are certainly all taught about it. And look, they're a
partner and a sponsor and just a longtime ally of
this program. But part of what Tunnel to Towers Foundation
does is just make sure that people remember the real
history of 9-11 and what happened i worry clay and

(35:06):
this is what i took from that mom donnie tweet
uh that people are being taught this as though it
was a natural disaster you know it's like we came
together after a big earthquake and we saw the best
of us okay yeah we came together and we saw
a lot of the best of us in bravery but
we were attacked by an enemy of who sought the

(35:27):
annihilation of our civilization and had that enemy had access.
And we know this from their own writings. We know
this from Al Qaeda leadership, from detainee reporting. If they
had had the ability to park a nuclear device in
downtown Manhattan and kill a million people, they would have
done it.

Speaker 5 (35:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
And this is where I was just texting with you. Interestingly,
the headlines on newspaper, September 11th, 2001, I'm like the
last person who still reads print newspapers, but they're going
viral today. It was about Andrea Yates, a mom in
Houston who killed five of her kids, and whether she

(36:07):
could be held legally insane or not. In many ways,
a lot of stories are cyclical. I remember Buck in
that era. You remember, we've talked about her a few
times on the program just because it was a huge story,
Chandra Levy. was in the D.C. area. She vanished the

(36:30):
whole summer of 2001 while Al Qaeda was preparing to
attack the United States. Basically, the country was asleep at
the wheel and we were really obsessed with things like
murder mysteries. What happened with Chandra Levy? It was the
number one story in Washington, D.C. She was an intern.

(36:51):
It was coming on the heels of the Clinton intern story.
Gary Condit, everything associated with that was an obsession in D.C.
I left to go off to law school. And on
that 9-11 day, it was like all the frivolity stopped.
But on that day itself, the number one lead story

(37:11):
was a mom who killed five of her kids. And
what was going to happen? Wall Street Journal, USA Today.
That's what the obsession of the country was. If you
go back, and I just did.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
And one of the tools that obviously we use here
and just to be, to always tell you guys that
I'll be doing this all the time. Cause I, Clay
doesn't do the show with a laptop in front of him.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
I do.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
So if you ever see me looking down on the stream,
it's because I'm doing research on the fly as we go.
So is our team, by the way. But that's how
we're able to bring you facts and recall so quickly.
But I just did a quick, what were the biggest,
and this is where AI is so helpful, right? What
are the biggest news stories, Clay, for the month of
August 2001, just to set the scene?

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Oh, this is good.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
The biggest news stories were California Representative Gary Condit denying
knowledge of missing federal intern Chandra Levy, to be clear,
he didn't do anything.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Correct. It was not him. She was murdered, and they
found her body like 15 years later or something in
Rock Creek Park in D.C.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
I think it was an illegal, by the way, who
raped and murdered her.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
He had nothing to do with it. That was the D.C.
obsession of August 2001.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
And I will say, because I remember at that time,
there was a sense people were really giving Gary Condit
the long stink eye on this one.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
He had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
So it is a reminder that there are those times
when the public perception about who is guilty can be
way off, and they were way off on that one.
He had nothing to do with it, and that was proven.
Anwar Drilling. Remember when Anwar Drilling was.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Such a big thing?

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Oh, yeah, I've heard that in a long time. I
remember that obsession back in the day. Anwar Drilling was
a top, top story, and... the death of R &
B singer Aaliyah in a plane crash, those were, for
the month of August, the biggest news stories in America,
according to AI research on coverage across all the networks.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
So just give everybody a sense of, oh, and an
interest rate cut, okay? Give everybody a sense of where
things were going to 9-11. It's not like we were
gearing up for war and they got, you know, you
can say what you will. Pearl Harbor, the world was already,
you know, the European theater, the Soviets, the Germans. I mean,

(39:33):
the war was at the world. Sorry, I can't say
the words. The world was at war before we got
pulled into it. So while it was a shock to
us at some level, and I know people say, oh,
FDR knew it was coming and there's all that.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Put that aside. Right, Clay?

Speaker 2 (39:49):
The idea that we were brought into this was not
out of nowhere.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
That's why I was asking Steve, because I do think
one of the great paths of history, and I didn't
ask you, let's pretend that somehow 9-11 hadn't happened. Somehow
they had caught the guys with the box cutters going
through on that day, or There had been a plane malfunction,

(40:14):
and those lights hadn't been able to take off that day.
Any number of things could have occurred, or obviously we
could have caught them. Do you think if we had
been fortunate enough to avoid 9-11, Steve said he thinks
that they still would have hit in a catastrophic way
because we were basically sleepwalking and not aware of the

(40:34):
threat that was building against us? Or do you think
that we would have gone in a completely different direction
and 9-11 might not have happened? I am as.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Certain you can be of a thing you can never
prove that Steve is correct on that. Because remember, I
went into the CIA CTC and saw, which is the
counterterrorism center there, which was basically the bin Laden center,
just so everyone understands. The origins of CTC and the
CIA was a unit that was tracking bin Laden. In

(41:09):
the years before 9-11, I remember finding out from the
superintendent of my building that the World Trade Centers were
bombed in 93, which people also don't really remember. By
the way, you mentioned that book. It is an excellent book,
Looming Tower. It's still worth it for anyone who has
not read it. I mean, I read it a long

(41:30):
time ago. it was one of those, if you're going
to work in national security, if you're going to go
to the CIA or the FBI, you got to read
that book.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
I mean, it's just, it's phenomenally well, it's a very, uh,
Lawrence Wright, Lawrence Wright.

Speaker 6 (41:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Uh, very good. It is a good one to put
on the list. Um, I read also, and I can't remember, um,
It was an oral history of everybody from 9-11's perspective.
Looming Tower is a big nonfiction work that is incredible.
I mean, and by the way, it takes you into
Al-Qaeda and their planning of the attack and all of
the details surrounding it.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
I would also put, if anyone hasn't read it, Steve Cole, C-O-L-L,
Steve Cole, Ghost Wars, which is about the rise of Al-Qaeda.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
And about Afghanistan pre-1990.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
9-11 leading up to the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud,
who was the head of the Northern Alliance, by an
al-Qaeda team posing as journalists in Afghanistan the day before
the 9-11 attack. So they knew exactly what they were
doing with that one. Ghost Wars is a fantastic book
for the period if you're looking for something to read.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Cole's written a whole bunch of books.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
But, Clay, I think that we were– I brought up CTC–
Because it really was the bin Laden unit, essentially. And
that's why I wanted to work there in the CIA.
I didn't show up to the CIA saying, I want
to work on Ukrainian grain harvest analysis. I mean, there
are people doing all kinds of stuff in national security.

(43:01):
Wanted to track and find al-Qaeda senior leadership. That was
what I told my interviewers. That was what I wanted
to do. And Clay, there were so many of these plots.
So many of these plots under discussion. Some went operational.
Some were thwarted. So many more than people realize. So,
I mean, I can say to you with, in my mind, certainty,

(43:22):
if they had somehow just aborted, let's say, the mission
on 9-11, we would have gotten hit with a catastrophic attack.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And maybe it could have even theoretically been worse.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Om Shinrikyo, which I write about in Manufacturing Delusion, which
was a cult based out of Japan, you know, they
did a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways. if
they had known a little bit more about what they
were doing in the dispersal system, they could have killed
thousands of people. There are some estimates, 50 to a
hundred thousand people that could have killed in those attacks.
So things could have theoretically even had a higher body

(43:54):
count than.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
What we saw.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Um, and, and which is obviously astonishing and horrible. Uh,
but we were, we were not willing to take the
threat of jihad. We thought it was a foreign, you know,
We'll send our badasses to go kick some ass over
there when we have to.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
We'll send some special operations team. We'll send SEAL Team 6.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
We'll send Delta, and we'll do some snatch and grab
of some bad guy somewhere once in a while, and
that will kind of trim the grass.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
That wasn't going to work.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Not with how advanced and how deeply enmeshed al-Qaeda was,
not just in Afghanistan, but in many countries all over
the world.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
When Looming Tower is great, the only plane in the
sky and oral history of 9-11 is a propulsive, difficult
to put down narrative arc told through the voices of
the people who experienced 9-11 that day. I read that
a few years ago as well. Those are two books

(44:56):
that if you've got kids reading, I'm sure there are
audio books. Unfortunately, kids don't want to read. What do
we see? The kid reading scores hit 25-year lows this week,
I think is what I saw, Buck. Nobody will read anymore.
If you want your kid to have an advantage in
an AI age, have them read books because I think
you have to be able to read deeply in order

(45:17):
to make the connections necessary in an AI age to
even know what's real and false. It's troubling how many
kids can't do that. Reading books is doing push-ups for
your brain. That's a great line. It's just true.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
It's doing push-ups for your brain, everybody. So you want
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Speaker 4 (47:34):
Laugh.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
Learn.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Hang with the guys. Right there when you need them most.
Clay and Buck.

Speaker 6 (47:39):
Just preset them on the iHeart app.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Welcome back in. Hour number three. Final hour of the week.
We are joined now by a member of the Clay
and Buck podcast family. He is doing fantastically well.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
In that role.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Many of you listening to him on a regular basis.
David Rutherford joins us now, and obviously it is the
25th anniversary of 9-11, and you were kicking down doors
for a while. We had Steve Yates in, and he
was telling us the perspective of being in the White
House on that day and being run out of the

(48:16):
White House because there was a concern of one of
the planes hitting the Capitol, which they evacuated as well
as the white house. And thankfully the bravery of those
on flight 93 helped to keep that from occurring. Where
were you on nine 11? Uh, right.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
What do you recall about that day?

Speaker 8 (48:32):
Well, great to be with you guys.

Speaker 9 (48:35):
You guys are doing a phenomenal job of, of remembrance today.
I just really appreciate you guys and always keeping this
in the forefront of people's consciousness.

Speaker 8 (48:44):
I really respect it a lot. Um, I was, uh,
An instructor at SEAL qualification training.

Speaker 9 (48:49):
I was going through a combat swimmer or dive kind
of certification where I could manage dives for a class
I was in.

Speaker 8 (48:59):
And it was just one of those insane days. You know,
I had a buddy.

Speaker 9 (49:03):
It was like, hey, man, turn on your TV. And
I didn't have a tight TV at the time. He's like, well,
flip on the radio. That initiated this whole thing. It
took five hours to drive into Coronado to get on base.
Once we were there, we continued training. Everybody was getting spun.
up and we continued the training. And throughout the day,
when we would have a break, we'd flip the television

(49:26):
on and, you know, one minute, you know, you'd see
the buildings and then we'd go into class and we
flip it on again, then they're gone. And then, you know,
we go into class and it was just this really
surreal feeling um, component, especially because I was in the
teams and, you know, prior to 9-11, there wasn't a
lot going on. So you had gotten to a point like,

(49:48):
are we ever going to go to combat? And that
day changed the trajectory of all of our lives for
the next 22 years, obviously.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Did you remember a moment either just in your own
head or in conversation with some of the other SEAL
CLT members around you where you realized, oh, this is
the big one and we are going to be gearing
up and getting into the fight?

Speaker 8 (50:14):
A hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (50:16):
Once that week's finished, we drove out on Friday, all
the instructors that have been in this course, we drove
out to, we had a huge class. I think it
was like 40 plus kids going who had graduated BUDS.
They're going to We're doing land warfare at our facility
in Nilan, California, where we were starting IADs, immediate action drills.

Speaker 8 (50:36):
So really where you learn how to shoot, move, and communicate.

Speaker 9 (50:39):
And I always used to give kind of like a
hoo-yah speech to the group, like, hey, you know, this
is where you really focus. But, you know, obviously this
time is a lot more somber. And so I started
the speech out like this and just said, hey, I
want everybody to look to your left of you, look
to the right of you, look.

Speaker 8 (50:56):
Behind you and look in front of you.

Speaker 9 (50:58):
Because in the next few years, many people that are
in this class are going to no longer be with us.

Speaker 8 (51:05):
And that came true to a high degree. So, yeah,
it was the.

Speaker 9 (51:10):
Absolute change of mentality from that moment on that I think–
was really the driving factor to why guys grew so
committed and endured the length and time with which they
committed themselves to this endeavor to root out terrorism.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
As part of the tip of the spear of special operations,
was there an eagerness to get into the fight given
what was done to America? Can you speak to that, Dave?

Speaker 8 (51:39):
A hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (51:40):
I mean, very quickly we knew You know, damn next
seal team six got it. And at the end of
really around October, we knew the agency was over there.
And then, you know, seal team three was on deck.

Speaker 8 (51:54):
So they deployed over.

Speaker 9 (51:56):
I don't know if you remember, Buck, but remember Mike Spann,
who was a ground branch guy.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
His daughter is a friend of mine.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Sure.

Speaker 8 (52:05):
I've talked to her before.

Speaker 9 (52:07):
And, you know, when Mike died, that really kind of
was like, whoa, all right, what's going on? And then
immediately after, you had Roberts Ridge, where Neil Roberts kind
of was technically fell out of a helicopter because.

Speaker 8 (52:20):
He got shot.

Speaker 9 (52:21):
And then you had the Chapman and Blaze story, which
they both received Medal of Honors for. And then very
shortly after that, a friend of mine that was at
a damn neck, Matt Bourgeois, was blown up at Tarnac Farms, where.

Speaker 8 (52:34):
Bin Laden's compound was. And so Not long after that,
I was fortunate enough.

Speaker 9 (52:39):
I got on an augmented platoon for SEAL Team 1,
and we deployed over.

Speaker 8 (52:44):
And so I hit the ground in May of 2002.

Speaker 9 (52:47):
And all of those things were so palpable that, yeah,
it was, all right, we're going to get after it now.

Speaker 8 (52:54):
We're going to deliver some revenge.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Right. I know we're talking about the 25th anniversary. A
third of Americans weren't born before. Now, it's kind of
crazy to think about since 9-11. So there's a huge
lack of experiencing this. And then you factor in that
a lot of people were young kids when it was happening.
And so they don't really recollect it. Buck, we haven't

(53:18):
talked about this, but the amount of unity that we
saw after 9-11 was frankly extraordinary. And we have not
seen anything else like it even close to it in
the 21st century. This is a tough question. We haven't
really talked about it. If 9-11 happened today, if we
had a similar terror attack by a similar group of people,

(53:41):
do you think we would see unity or do you
think almost immediately it would turn toxic with people saying
publicly all too often that we deserved it now? I
don't remember it being as paramount then. How do you
think 9-11 today would play in a divided country?

Speaker 9 (53:58):
Oh, Clay, this is the question, man. Thank you for
bringing that up. It's the reality of what we're facing.
I literally just finished recording a show with Joseph Scott Morgan, Dr.

Speaker 8 (54:08):
Morgan, who is one of the top forensics guys.

Speaker 9 (54:11):
He's covering all these cases, the Clancy and Charlie Kirk thing,
and digging into the forensics versus the craziness and all this.
And I wanted to talk to him about this very question.
Why are people so fascinated by and engage in death in.

Speaker 8 (54:28):
Such a trivial manner. So, and that was really what
we're getting at.

Speaker 9 (54:31):
Like it's almost entertainment, catastrophe or, you know, death or
warfare is like something that you just flip by on
your screen.

Speaker 8 (54:40):
And so, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 9 (54:42):
I don't think it would be in the same context
that we experienced that profound unification. I think you'd immediately
have conspiracy theorists say, well, it's an inside job or whatever.

Speaker 8 (54:54):
And, That certainly plays a major.

Speaker 9 (54:56):
Role in the context of why I think we're in
that space where the gravity of 9-11 has been diluted
to a.

Speaker 8 (55:06):
Significant amount, because people are arguing that it was an
inside job. Look at Tower 7, all these things, right?
But yeah, I doubt.

Speaker 9 (55:14):
There would be a profound unification across at least our society,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
And Dave, I was wondering if you could speak to
as somebody who was downrange and and engaging the enemy,
you said May 2002, right? Beginning that deployment to Afghanistan.
Right now, I feel like, and particularly even on the right,
people have this, oh, it was all really meaning Iraq
and Afghanistan. It was all a mistake. We never should have.

(55:41):
I always want to stop that for a second and say,
we had to go into Afghanistan. Ron Paul voted to
go to war In Afghanistan. And I just think that
that sometimes like when you showed up there, we had
a deep entrenched infrastructure of highly connected global jihadis who

(56:02):
had already hit us once, obviously, with a mass mass
casualty attack. And we're planning dozens of others. So I
just wanted to just can you speak to the mindset
of you're on the ground there? And there was every
reason for you and others like you to be there. Oh,
for me, it was never a doubt, right? You know,
maybe later on when I.

Speaker 9 (56:21):
Was at the agency in 2011, you know, after the
bin Laden, after the raid, because I was in Pakistan
right before that and right after it. And, you know,
maybe then it's like, all right, we're done. Let's go
home and get out of it by then, maybe.

Speaker 8 (56:35):
But But for that first 10 years, I don't think.

Speaker 9 (56:39):
There was ever a doubt that this was the mission.
We have to go do it, and we're going to
do it at the highest level. I never served in Iraq,
so I always leave that to my buddies that served
extensively over there, and there's a lot of opinions, obviously.
But When it comes to going into Afghanistan and engaging

(57:00):
the way we did up until including the death of
bin Laden, I think there was no doubt that this
was a measure that needed to happen. And what, quite frankly,
the crazy thing is now, if you just If you
look at what's taking place in Afghanistan right now, there's
another hundred plus terrorist organizations that are.

Speaker 8 (57:19):
In there operating as we speak right now.

Speaker 9 (57:21):
So, yeah, we I think the problem is, it's like,
what do we have to show for it? And people
don't recognize that warfare against an ideology that's infinitely dedicated
towards destroying a particular way of life. That's a perpetual threat,
and you have to figure out, are you going to
face it in your own homeland, or are you going

(57:42):
to go face it downrange?

Speaker 1 (57:45):
I'm curious for this for you, Buck, too. How confident
are you guys that we would be able to forestall
a 9-11-like terror attack now compared to how we were
able to do it 25 years ago? I'll let Rut
go first.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Rut, you go first, yeah.

Speaker 8 (58:04):
Man, Clay, that's another just profound question. And I mean,
if you listen to some of the.

Speaker 9 (58:10):
Last year's reports from the senior intelligence operative, you know,
roughly they estimate it could be somewhere between six and
14000 terrorists have come in. across the border over the
last five years or plus, right? So it, all it
takes is, all it takes, like look at the Mumbai
incident or look at October 7th or whatever it is.

(58:32):
I mean, that was an exact, that was a giant operation,
but like a Mumbai incident, 10 guys took down Mumbai
for like 56 hours and killed 200 plus people, right?
And so that's a reality that can take place. Now,
thank God, I believe with the modern day technology and surveillance.

Speaker 8 (58:49):
Systems and all that, We have a better shot.

Speaker 9 (58:52):
But man, these people also understand how to operate independently
in their own in their own cells. And then all
they need is a directive, which can be, you know,
a checkmark on the side of a wall that gives
them the green light to go into a Walmart and essentially.

Speaker 8 (59:10):
Either clack themselves.

Speaker 9 (59:11):
Off with explosives they brought back or, you know, to
just buy guns on the street and go in with
five AKs.

Speaker 8 (59:17):
And 10 mags and recap it.

Speaker 9 (59:19):
So I think we're every bit as vulnerable as we
were back then and probably more.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
So I agree with everything Rutt said, so I don't
want to just repeat everything he said because he knows
this world quite well. Rutt, to that end, why do
you think things right now, we're 25 years since 9-11.
I mean, I remember I was talking to this before.
I would go on CNN and argue with these lunatics
when there was terror attacks happening all the time in

(59:46):
this country that were jihadist-enabled. I mean, it was every
few months, you know, the San Bernardino attack, the Pulse
nightclub attack in Orlando. There was the Bataclan attack in France.
There was the Bastille. I mean, we went through this
period with all of these mass casualty jihadist attacks post 9-11, really,
you know, in the in the later Obama years. And then,
you know, that was when it really ramped up. Why

(01:00:08):
does it feel like things are quiet, quieter now?

Speaker 9 (01:00:13):
I mean, I think, you know, partly because there's so
much division within the country, even without the kinetic nature
of attacks, right? You look at the various institutions. You
talk about this in your book, Buck, which is the reality.
We talked about it offline. Remember about the Rape of
the Mind.

Speaker 5 (01:00:30):
Book, right?

Speaker 9 (01:00:31):
We've been vulnerable across all of these institutions because of,
I don't know, maybe it's like this estimation that we
need to be more caring as Americans or whatever. But
you know, if you're an operator or guerrilla fighter or terrorist,
whatever you want to call it, you're going to utilize the,
the country, the civilization, the society, you're going to utilize

(01:00:54):
their weaknesses to penetrate their vulnerabilities. And that's just the
nature of it, of what it is. And I think
we've gotten to a place where kind of that, that,
that sympathy, that unchecked, uh, critical theory-based sympathy for the
fact that, no, if we just are open our arms
and more open, that all the bad people are just

(01:01:16):
going to keep themselves in check.

Speaker 8 (01:01:17):
That's just not the way the world works.

Speaker 9 (01:01:20):
So, you know, I just hope and pray that we
people understand the relevance of.

Speaker 8 (01:01:27):
This attack and the impact it had.

Speaker 9 (01:01:30):
Like, I mean, I had Jason Freewall, Dusty Markin died
on September 11, 2008 with Dev Group.

Speaker 8 (01:01:37):
I had Glenn Doherty.

Speaker 9 (01:01:41):
And Roan and Ty Woods, who were my good friend,
and Benghazi in 2012, right? This is something that it's not–
there's no end.

Speaker 8 (01:01:52):
To ideologies warring with each other.

Speaker 9 (01:01:54):
It's just the nature of how it works.

Speaker 8 (01:01:57):
So we owe it to ourselves to.

Speaker 9 (01:02:00):
Just like we did when we were kids with Pearl
Harbor and all these other things, man. We don't let
these historical lessons– fade off into oblivion because they keep
us sharp in the recognition of how valuable what we
do have in terms of this relative peace.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
We appreciate all the work. Encourage people to go subscribe
to David Rutherford's podcast as a part of the Clay
and Buck Podcast Network. Appreciate you, my man. Have a
good weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:02:29):
God bless you guys. And God bless all the families
and everybody who's suffered from 9-11.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Thank you, Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
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