AM Show Hr 3 | 9/11 Remembrance and Personal Heroism

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Berry Show
is on the air. Live from Television City in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
A poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed. Just a
good old boy. Never meaning no harm. Beats all you
never saw.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Been in trouble with the law since the day they
was born.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome back.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Your dreams were your ticket out.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Welcome back. I say this calls for action and now,
nip it in the bud. I'm living on the air
in Cincinnati. Cincinnati WKR. The world, yes, it does. It
takes different strokes to move the world. These days are ours.

(01:14):
By the way Glenn Miller played. Songs that made the
hit parade. Guys like us, we had it made. Those
were the days. Did you hear that, Elizabeth? I'm coming
to join you. So I asked the question about, it's

(01:55):
pronounced Micah, turns out. I asked the question about this
dust material that was on the folks on 9-11. D.R.
Westbrook says, it's pronounced mica. We used it at the
refinery in Old Ocean, Texas, where I worked for 35
and a half years. Robert Calhoun writes, it's used in

(02:20):
industrial applications like gaskets for its high heat resistance. Debbie K. says, mica,
as in Mike. Then I looked it up. It says,
micas are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical
characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split

(02:44):
into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect
basal cleavage. Ramon, perfect basal cleavage. Mica is common in igneous.
Micas are used in products such as drywalls, paints, and fillers,
especially in parts for automobiles. roofing and in electronics. The

(03:06):
mineral is used in cosmetics and food to add shimmer
or frost. So I thought, oh, I bet that's where
we get formica. Must be a type of mica. So
I looked it up. Formica laminate is a composite material
invented at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in these United States

(03:31):
in 1900 and Originally used to replace mica in electrical applications,
it has since been manufactured for multiple applications. It has
been produced by Formica Group manufacturing sites across the globe
ever since. Formica Group are best known for the company's

(03:52):
classic product, a heat-resistant, wipe-clean laminate of paper with melamine resin.
The mineral mica was commonly used at that time for
electrical insulation. Because this new product acted as a substitute
for mica, the inventors used the name Formica as a trademark.

(04:20):
My daughter's love of sports. And we did our best.
The hell was that? I told you don't clean up.
Unloaded pots are loaded pots during the show. That's what happens. See,
people get hurt. The word already existed as the scientific
name for a genus of wood ants from which formic

(04:41):
acid and the derivative formaldehyde compound used in the resin
were first isolated. And that is what it's like to
be my wife or child at the dinner table. When
I learn something new and go, okay, I got to
hear this. You got to hear this faster. Remember we
were talking about Micah this morning? Remember we were talking

(05:01):
about Micah? I looked it up. It's really, really interesting.
You're going to love this story. Dad, can we not? No, no, no, no, no, no.
You're going to want to hear this. You are definitely
going to want to hear this. It's really good. Dad,
let's not. Let's not do this right now. Yeah, no, no,

(05:22):
we're going to do it. One day you remember this story.
One day you're going to think, man, I actually knew that.
My dad told that story. I forgot because I wasn't
paying attention. But I remember my dad telling that story
like 30 years ago. Yeah, because that's how that happens, Ramon.

(05:43):
That's how these things happen. Dave Carnes was 42 years
old and he was an accountant at a firm in Connecticut.
He'd done 23 years in the Marine Corps, and he
was out. Staff sergeant, retired, suit and tie now, spreadsheets,
air conditioning, indoors, low stress. He watched the second plane

(06:03):
hit on the television at that office, and he turned
to the room and said, we are at war. Now,
here's what that man did next, in order. He told
his boss he might not be back for a while.
He drove to his church and prayed, specifically that God
would lead him to somebody still alive. Then he drove
to a barbershop in Stanford, Connecticut, sat down in the

(06:27):
chair and said, give me a good Marine Corps squared
off haircut. Then he went home and put on the
camouflage utilities he still kept pressed and starched in his closet.
On why he kept them, he said, it's kind of
weird to do, but it comes in handy. He grabbed
rope and repelling gear and a K-bar knife out of
a storage unit and he pointed his car at New

(06:47):
York City. He got waved through every checkpoint between Connecticut
and Ground Zero because he put the top down so
he could see the haircut, so they could see the
haircut and the uniform. He got there about 5.30 that evening,
and on that pile, he ran into another man in
Marine Utilities. Sergeant Jason Thomas, been out of the Corps

(07:09):
about a month. He was on Long Island dropping his
daughter off at his mother's house when it happened, and
he kept his uniform in his truck. Two Marines who
had never met. At dark, they pulled the rescuers back
off that pile because it wasn't safe. And those two
men walked out into it anyway. They hollered into the wreckage,

(07:30):
United States Marines, if you can hear us, yell or tap.
For about an hour, nothing. Then Carnes said, be quiet,
I can hear something. Twenty feet down under the concourse,
two Port Authority police officers were buried in a freight
elevator shaft. Sergeant John McLaughlin and a rookie named Will Jimeno,
one year on the job. Jimeno yelled up, don't leave us.
Those Marines found him. Other men dug him out. Took

(07:52):
three hours to get Jimeno out and most of the
night to get McLaughlin. And it was done by NYPD
emergency service and a paramedic, mostly by hand. But they'd
have never dug at all because nobody knew anybody was
under there. Two of the 20 people pulled out alive
from that pile because an accountant got a haircut there.
and couldn't stop serving our country. These are the people

(08:16):
the Democrats will tell you are a threat to this country.
They happen to be white male service member veterans. It's
time we stop letting them be called the bad guys.
These are the heroes among us.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
I've always thought Alicia Keys' music was remarkable because it
doesn't follow the cookie cutter.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
I think her brain is more advanced. I think her
musical sense is more developed. They're very complex arrangements. You
know who does that in Texas country music, believe it
or not? Roger Kreger. Roger Kreger songs, Having Fun All Wrong.

(09:06):
Give Having Fun All Wrong a listen, and you will realize,
wait a second, this does not follow the traditional format
How a song is very, very complex. You know, I
like to insinuate myself into stories, Ramon. So I'll just
tell you that I was hiking. I was about to
begin hiking in Colorado. And yeah, I know how you know,

(09:30):
because they'll tell you. But it's part of the story.
All right. She's coming down off the mountain. I'm heading up. Alicia. Yeah.
And she's got her head down. Because she doesn't want
to be recognized. She doesn't have very much makeup on,
but she has a little bit on. And I look
at her and I give her the nod like, yeah,

(09:50):
I know who you are, but I'm not going to
bother you. Could we just take a self? No, I didn't.
I didn't do it. And she gave me the nod back. Now,
I've chosen. to interpret that nod as, well, I know
who you are. And I'm a super fan. I don't
know if that's what she intended by that. It might

(10:11):
have been. I mean, it could have been. I got
your message. You know who I am. but you're not
going to bother me. And I'm grateful for that because
I'm a vain black woman whose hair is not done,
who's not wearing much makeup. And I've just come down
off the mountain and I'm sweaty and I'm tired and

(10:32):
I'm not in any mood to talk to anybody. So
I appreciate that you're not going to bother me. It'd
have been better if you didn't do the nod to
tell me that so that I have to be reduced
to acknowledging the nod. So that could have been the
other thing she was saying. But I choose to believe.
that what she was saying was that first thing. Yeah.

(10:53):
9-11-2001 was Sheila Moody's second day, 42-year-old civilian accountant in
the Army Budget Office, first floor of the Pentagon, the
West Side. You want to put into perspective how big
Tara Fab's going to be? I'm going by memory, but
I think this is right. The Mall of America is
5.5 million square feet. The Pentagon is 6.5 million square feet,

(11:16):
largest office building in the world. 6.5. The Giga Texas
in Bastrop is 10 million square feet. TerraFab is projected
to be 100 million square feet. She's working in the Pentagon,
the West Side, newly renovated wedge again, earlier story. She

(11:38):
had reported in on Monday. Tuesday was her second day
at work. She got to work at 6.30 in the morning.
Her words, it was just my second day there. I
hadn't a clue where the closest exit was. Why would you?
You just started. A little after nine, a co-worker named
Louise Kurtz came around to her cubicle and told her

(11:59):
a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Ten seconds later,
she heard an engine. Quote, then the whole building just shook.
A burst of hot air came through. It hit my
face so hard I had to shut my eyes. When
I opened my eyes, a fireball was passing to the
right of me so close that I could have stuck
my hand out and touched it. I heard a few screams,

(12:22):
and then it was very quiet. You know, you hear
the term deafening silence, right? But it's not until a
moment like that. A good movie can capture that moment.
There's nothing like being in it. Nothing like that feeling.
It's hard to replicate, hard to explain. The sound of silence,

(12:43):
the powerful sound of nothing. Everything around her was burning.
She had no idea which way was out, so she
climbed up on a pile of debris and tried to
punch out the window. It was a blast-resistant glass, and
they had just installed it in the wedge, that part

(13:03):
of the Pentagon where she was stationed, where she was deployed, working.
I left a handprint of blood on the window. That's
when I realized I was bleeding. She decided she was
going to go die. She was going to die that day.
And she said so out loud. She said, I don't
believe you brought me here to die like this. That's

(13:24):
the shades of Reverend James Cleveland. I don't feel always tired. Okay, Hillary.
And she heard a man's voice. She called out, I'm here.
And he said, I can't see you. She said, I
can't see you either, but we're here. Please keep coming.
Then the smoke took her voice. That's like a bad dream.

(13:45):
You know that dream where you're trying to scream out
and you can't? Oh, man. She was doubled over coughing
and she couldn't make a sound. A man was in
the room looking for her and she had no idea
how to tell him where she was. She clapped. She
kept clapping. Of the roughly three dozen people in that office,
three came out alive. Chris Brauman said this about the
whole thing. I prayed to go in that building and

(14:06):
she was praying to come out and God answered both
our prayers. I think about how many young men after
this day 25 years ago who have the mindset these

(14:28):
are the kind of guys these are the sheepdogs in society.
They're a very small percentage of society and in any
society for that matter. They saw what happened and they
didn't Tsk, tsk, isn't that unfortunate and go back to work.
They quit their jobs. If you heard the discussion we
had with R.C. Slocum the other day, he told the

(14:50):
story about Coach Ted Jeffries. And Ted Jeffries had coached
Bum Phillips. Was it Bear Bryant? Who else had he coached?
He coached a number of– it was Bear Bryant, wasn't it?
They won the state championship on– December 6th. December 7th,

(15:13):
of course, the day which will live in infamy, Pearl
Harbor is attacked. And December 8th, he and the boys
on his team go down and sign up to go
serve in war. You think about how many Marcus Luttrells,
how many people didn't keep a diary that you'll never
hear their story. They're walking around right now with a

(15:36):
tattoo of their buddy they lost in in Iraq or
Afghanistan on their arms so they never forget. You think
about how many guys the age of my boys Michael T.
and Crockett how many young men had just finished high

(15:58):
school and were going off to college were going to
trade school had started to work in dad's plumbing business
whatever they were doing and they saw this And they said,
here am I, send me. It's a special kind of
person with special values. It's a special kind of people.

(16:21):
Your society has to have them. And I don't want
to say I don't want to make this political because
everything is political. But so I don't mind making it
political and I don't mind blurring the lines because it's
the unwillingness to do so that has allowed the nonsense
to run them up. But these are the people that

(16:45):
the Barack Obamas have insulted. Donna Shalala, his cabinet secretary,
said the greatest threat to America is white Christian males
coming home from war who don't trust the government. Oh, okay. Well,
that's who our terrorists are. That's why Timothy McVeigh was

(17:06):
such a. a wrapped Christmas present to them because they'd
have you believe that every person coming home from war
is a potential terrorist. In fact, like Tallarico, they see
terrorists in Christians, in good people, in veterans, in our neighbors.
But they see good people in terrorists and terror supporters
and terror threateners. Isn't that crazy how that works? And

(17:31):
too many of our people are unwilling to realize that
dog bites. And potentially to our detriment. If we're not
bold enough to see it for what it is. If
we're not willing to offend some people. Because it is real.

(17:53):
9-11 was real. There was no political correctness about that.
It was real. Whatever happened, why ever it happened. For
whatever reason. These things cannot be wished away, smiled away,

(18:16):
kindness away. Brian Sweeney was 38 out of Barnstable, Massachusetts, Ramon,
on Cape Cod. Did I ever tell you my mother
said Massachusetts? That's how she pronounced Massachusetts, Massachusetts. He'd been
a Navy fighter pilot. He taught at the Navy Fighter
Weapons School, which you and I would call Top Gun.

(18:39):
He got hurt in an accident in the 90s, a
few years before this. He was medically discharged, and he
went to work for a defense contractor. Flew out to
LA about one week a month. That's why he was
on United Flight 175 that Tuesday morning. Routine trip. He'd
done it a dozen times, probably more. At 8.58 that
morning from the back of a hijacked airplane, Brian Sweeney

(19:01):
called his wife, Julie, at home. She didn't pick up.
She was at work. She talked high school. So he
left a message on the answering machine. 21 seconds. By
the way, if you go to the museum in New York,
the 9-11 museum, you hear the voices of people who
called home from those planes. There's nothing I can tell

(19:24):
you that describes hearing their voices. I found myself just
tears streaming down my face thinking of that person who's
about to die. but also thinking about their husbands or wives,
their children, thinking how many times they went back and
heard that. It's a powerful thing if you've lost a

(19:47):
dear loved one. it's a powerful thing to hear their
voice after they've died Jules this is Brian listen I'm
on an airplane that's been hijacked if things don't go
well and it's not looking good I just want you
to know I absolutely love you I want you to
do good go have good times same to my parents
and everybody and I just totally love you and I'll

(20:07):
see you when you get there bye babe I hope
I call you. One minute later, he calls his mother, Louise,
and he got her live. She picked up. Mama will
always pick up. Told her the plane was hijacked. The
passengers were talking about storming the cockpit. Three minutes after that,
at 9.03 a.m., United 175 went into the South Tower

(20:31):
and his mother watched it happen on television. I want
you to hear what's actually in that message because it
is not panic. That man knew. He said so. He said,
it's not looking good. He's 38 years old. He has
a wife he married two years ago, and he has

(20:52):
about four minutes to live at that moment. What does
he do with them? He tells her to go have
good times, do good, tell his parents, even though he
would reach his mother when he hangs up, but he
didn't know that at that time. And then he tells
her he'll see her when he gets there. You ever
think about that? You have just a moment with no

(21:14):
preparation what you would tell your husband or wife? Julie
Sweeney would be pulled out of her classroom that morning
by a phone call from her mother-in-law. So Louise, who
he reached his own mother, would call and say, please
pull her out of class. I need to talk to her.
She knew he was dead before she ever heard his voice.
So when she hears that message... She already knows he

(21:38):
has died. She kept that. She would release it later.
She said, I embrace his message with all that I had,
and I'm living life as I know he would want
me to do. Why did 9-11 happen? Or how did
it happen? Depends on what you believe happened. People who

(22:09):
think it was an inside job have a natural predisposition, typically,
to distrust our government. I strongly suggest you distrust our government.
But those people who do that, it's difficult to have
them as fellow travelers because they are, by nature, contrarians.

(22:34):
So what happens with these people— and they're their own worst enemies—
What happens is that they will proffer their position and
wait for you to call them crazy, whereupon they pounce.
I don't think they're crazy. But that's not enough. You
can't just not think they're crazy. Because the point of

(22:56):
their very existence is to explain why everything you hear
is not true. I actually believe everything you hear is
not true. But what they want you to do is
call them crazy, whereupon they can say, no, you're crazy,
you're naive, or they want you to dismiss them because

(23:16):
you really don't care enough to argue, which a lot
of people will do, including their spouse, whereupon they will
pounce over your unwillingness to pay attention to do this.
And I have this tendency with regard to COVID. I'm
the same person with regard to COVID. But I think
it's healthy, very healthy, to Be skeptical of everything you hear.

(23:40):
Did FDR set us up to enter World War II?
I don't think he called Japan and said, drop the
bombs in Pearl Harbor. But I do believe that there
were intentions carried out to make us more vulnerable and

(24:04):
to such an attack. I do believe that the Japanese attack, which,
by the way, it wasn't a shock. We had cut
off their supply line, their fuel supply line. There was
a provocation to war. I'm not saying it was okay.
I'm not saying our grandfathers died because they deserved it.

(24:24):
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you
go back and read the historical account, it's not at
all surprising that they bombed. It's not at all surprising
that they would Engage in an act of war, whatever
that may be. Pearl Harbor made the most sense. Disabling
our Pacific fleet when you're trying to reestablish your fuel lines. Yeah,

(24:47):
it's a preemptive strike. Yes, I do believe. And at
some point, you've got to trust some reliable account and
make a decision based on what you think happened. Is
it altogether possible? Does it make sense? Occam's razor. Does
it make sense that FDR was trying to get us

(25:12):
into the war? Yes. Winston Churchill was begging him daily.
And Churchill was convincing. It was carrot, not steak. But yes,
I do believe FDR wanted us in the war. And yes,
I do believe that that was a way to do that.
I think there were other– the sinking of– American ships

(25:33):
with German U-boats and submarines and the like, I do
think there were provocations to get the Germans to attack.
You don't have to agree, and you can think I'm
crazy for that. That's perfectly, I'm okay with that. I
don't know why people struggle with that. We don't have
to agree on everything. And the truth is, I don't know.
I do find some very troubling aspects to 9-11 that

(25:56):
do not look entirely organic in nature. 19 young men
Young Saudis, how they ended up here, what they were
doing while they were here, the role of FBI informants
who turn out to be leaders of the FBI, including Mueller,
the intelligence that was said to have been passed, the

(26:20):
individuals that were involved. I don't know the answer. I
don't see a disturbing detail and immediately rush to the
conclusion someone else needs me to. But I also don't
see a disturbing detail and assume that it's just a
strange coincidence. In my 55 years, I've lived through enough

(26:41):
to understand. There were black men as part of the
Tuskegee experiment who believed they were getting a shot that
would help them. But in fact, they were being injected
with syphilis and they suffered because of it. And I
don't think it would be wise on your deathbed to
assume the government wouldn't do that to you. The government
is human beings, and human beings are by nature evil.

(27:03):
That's why we have laws. That's why we have morals,
to prevent us from doing what we are naturally capable
and often predisposed to doing. But I say all that
to say this. How did we have a situation where
these 19 men who had given every indication that they
were up to no good could carry this out if,
in fact, that's what happened. Because nobody wants to be

(27:27):
the one to be accused of being against Muslims. Because
nobody wants to say that that guy or that group
seems to be up to no good because somebody who
might very well be part of the terror cell will say,
you just don't like young Muslim men. And then other

(27:47):
people will say, oh, we don't want to be accused
of that. Because we don't mind having our country attacked.
What we don't want is to be said to be
against Muslims. We don't mind a George Floyd raping, pillaging,
committing a crime which he was in the middle of.
We just don't want to ever be called racist. We

(28:08):
don't mind our kids being exposed to grown men with
their wiener dangling out, declaring they're a girl dolled up
in makeup, dancing for our kindergartner at school. We just
don't want to be called anti-trans. I think about the
people who died on that day, 9-11, 2001. And I think, wow.

(28:30):
What would that person say that 25 years later, we
are afraid to express ourselves in this country? I don't
care what you express. I don't. I don't care if
you hate Jews, Muslims, Christians, white people. I believe in
the power of expressing yourself. And some people in this

(28:51):
country do. Muslims who say they hate Christians. Hasan Piker's
gotten rich off of it. Imams who are teaching and online.
Imams who taught the guy who went to Fort Hood
and shot the place up because it's a gun-free zone.
So our soldiers were murdered online. While serving our country
in a gun-free zone by a Muslim who was radicalized

(29:14):
by a Muslim in this country. But dear God, let's
not say anything about that because we're all really worried
that the Muslims are going to be targeted. They never are.
It's Christians. It's Americans. Because we sit idly by so
afraid of offending somebody and watching people jump from towers
as a result of it. And yet we still can't

(29:36):
do anything about it. We go to war in Iraq
and Afghanistan. but our own country is burning. That didn't
make us any safer. What the hell were we doing
over there? What was accomplished?