It was quickly determined that the assassin’s bullet came from a dilapidated rooming house on Main Street, in plain sight of the Lorraine Motel some 200 yards away. Once police finished their investigation there, I managed to sneak inside. Bessie Brewer’s boarding house was a two-story building—run-down, with paint peeling from the walls and ceiling. The steps were broken and creaky. I’ll never forget the awful stench permeating the place; rather than walk down the hall to the community bathroom, some residents chose to use large metal pretzel cans to collect their urine and feces. One resident told me he heard a single shot and saw a man, later identified as James Earl Ray, running from the bathroom.
When no one was looking, I walked into the bathroom for a look at the assassin’s lair. Investigators would later determine that Ray had to have had his feet firmly planted in the ceramic bathtub to take his deadly shot. With one foot on the edge of that bathtub, and the other on the toilet, I leaned on the ledge of the window facing the Lorraine Motel. I spoke into my tape recorder, describing just what the assassin would have seen. I realized that one did not have to be a marksman to hit such a target as King; at 200 yards away, with a high-powered rifle and a scope, the killer’s vantage was dreadfully clear.
Riots erupted in about 60 American cities in the aftermath of Dr. King’s murder, including Memphis. Its famed Beale Street, the birthplace of the blues, was off-limits to civilians, due to a curfew. As a reporter, I sensed an eerie silence as I walked along the desolate street, usually aglitter with flickering neon lights and music emanating from the dozens of clubs along the street. In contrast, all I could hear was the sound of broken glass beneath my shuffling feet, and the occasional rumble of military vehicles patrolling the area.
A local National Guard unit invited me to join them on patrol, looking for looters and snipers roaming the debris-littered streets. This was a bit disconcerting, as they placed me on the highest point at the rear of the Jeep without a protective helmet, pointedly calling me “the Yankee reporter.” The guardsmen with me were young: one was 19, a couple of others 20. They showed a lot of bravado, waving their carbines in the air. I was appalled when one of them swung his weapon around viciously, declaring, “I want to get me a nigger head tonight.” But eventually—and irresponsibly—they abandoned their patrol, and the young guardsmen rolled the Jeep into an apartment complex where one of their girlfriends was having a party.
After Dr. King’s body was released by the medical examiner, it was taken to the R.S. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home, where staff worked for 13 hours to prepare it for the funeral. The right side of his jaw had been shattered by the assassin’s bullet, as had his spinal cord. Before the wake, I was one of three reporters who managed to get inside the chapel where King’s body was laid out in an open casket. The tearful cries of a dozen women in black dresses occupying the front row of seats were piercing. It was hot and humid, and overwhelmingly emotional when Reverend Ralph David Abernathy—who assumed leadership of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference—Andrew Young and two others stood over the casket. King was dressed in a black suit, and aside from a slight mark on his jaw, bore no visible signs of his traumatic wound. I was standing close enough to hear Abernathy murmur, “Martin, Martin,” as he reached out to gently touch the body of his friend and colleague. The grief and magnitude of the loss were evident in the somber faces of those standing over the casket. They stood a few moments in silence, and then Reverend Abernathy led the group in a recitation of the 23rd Psalm.
During this entire emotional experience, I was recording the sounds of grief as I whispered a descriptive narrative of what I was seeing. I felt I was bearing witness to something truly extraordinary, and was fortunate to be in a position to share it with my listeners. But that moment turned out to be one of the greatest frustrations of my career. The audiotape jammed in the recorder, and I discovered afterwards that everything I thought I had recorded wasn’t there. The two other reporters who were there offered to share their recordings with me, but it wasn’t the same. Some things just can’t be replicated.
Before the funeral in Atlanta, King’s widow Coretta Scott King agreed to lead a march through Memphis in support of the city’s striking sanitation workers. The police department set rules for journalists covering the march, but these rules were too restrictive, and a meeting was requested with the police director. I was selected as a pool representative to join with two reporters from Tennessee in a meeting with the director. There, he bluntly threatened to arrest any reporter who failed to abide by his rules. I appealed that reporters be given reasonable access to the line of march, and gave assurances that we would not approach Mrs. King. Finally, the director relented, and said he would ease the terms for coverage if they were approved by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. They were; but on the day of the march, this deal was not honored and I was threatened with arrest. Days later, I was told that the word was out: if I or another outspoken reporter got in the way, we were “to be taken care of”—whatever that meant.
Arriving in Atlanta to report on the funeral, I got into a taxi with a “Negro” driver, who told me what an inspiration Dr. King was to him. He was overwhelmed with emotion when he learned that I had met and spoken with the fallen civil-rights leader. When we arrived at my hotel, he wouldn’t take any money from me. He was so thrilled, he said, to meet someone who actually knew Dr. King, and abruptly began to cry. Through his tears, voicing what would be the sentiment of history, he muttered, “I loved him.”
18
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001—A REMEMBRANCE
One of the most difficult reporting days after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The blackout shades in my bedroom shielded me from the brilliance of the sun in the early morning hours of that second Tuesday in September. I had no idea what darkness lay at the other end of the telephone, as the incessant ringing jolted me from a deep sleep. This was primary election day in New York, and I was scheduled to work nightside. I had gotten to sleep late. It was 18 minutes after nine when I brought the phone to my ear and heard my daughter Jill on the other end.
“Dad, do you have the TV on?” she screamed. “They crashed two planes into the World Trade Center!”
“What?” I shrieked, darting toward the TV.
I heard her words, but the reality of what my daughter was saying didn’t register until I saw the images filling my television screen. “Oh my God,” I thought aloud, grabbing the phone again to call the news assignment desk at WPIX. I couldn’t get through. I dialed every conceivable number at the office, along with the personal cell phones of the editors there, to no avail. An attempt to send a fax—Just heard news…unable to get through to you on phone…trying to come in immediately…understand tunnels and bridges are closed… trying to get ferry…where would you like me to go?—also proved futile. Television sets and radios were now on in every room of my home as I prepared to get myself into the city. My home is in New Jersey, just six and a half miles from my office in Manhattan, but with the bridges and tunnels closed I had to figure out another way to get across the river. I hoped my police-issued press credentials and honorary shields from law-enforcement groups would be my passport.
Those first images unfolding on the TV screen were devastating, and have haunted me ever since—particularly the video replay of the planes flying into the skyscrapers and exploding in balls of flame. I was frozen in horror and disbelief; as I watched and listened, it felt as though I was going through those moments in slow motion. Despite these feelings, I hadn’t yet connected emotionally to what was happening the way I had when I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV, or when the Challenger space shuttle exploded across my television screen. In this case, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of getting to the story—it felt like no other event I had ever covered. I had to get to the city.
My frustration grew with each failed attempt to reach the news desk and my inability to contact my fiancée, Lorri Gorman, who
was working in the city that morning. She finally got through to me on her cell phone to say she was safe, and she managed to connect me via conference call with my editors. Initially it was suggested that since I already was in New Jersey, I go to the Jersey City Medical Center, where it was thought that some of the injured might be brought; but I was determined to be closer to the story, and told them I would get into the city somehow.
It all hit me as I approached my parking lot. My eyes were drawn to the south, just across the river, where I was accustomed to seeing the Twin Towers defining the skyline of New York. They were no longer there. Ominous, thick clouds of smoke rose up in place of their gleaming presence. An awful chill seized my body. The number of casualties had to be staggering.
Traffic stood at a standstill as I began the one-mile drive to the ferry, which I expected would get me to Manhattan. My press card and familiar face helped get me past the first roadblock, where I claimed I was meeting a camera crew at the marina in nearby Weehawken. The scene at the ferry terminal was chaotic, with police, fire and medical personnel attempting to set up a triage area for the injured they were expecting to soon be ferried across. Thousands of others were there too—commuters who, hours earlier, had gone to work on the warm late-summer day, taking the seven-minute ferry ride across the Hudson River. Now they were returning, evacuating a city under siege. Their faces were ashen, horror clearly etched on their expressions. There were hugs and tears as friends and family embraced one another against the backdrop of the darkening clouds across the river.
I jotted down what observations I could in my notepad, but the anxiety of not being able to get to the story was making me crazy. Despite my pleas and protestations, however, neither the police nor the ferry-terminal managers would allow me to get aboard any of the ferries making return runs to Manhattan; they were all going back empty.
“New York is closed,” bellowed one police sergeant.
As I plotted my next move, I began taking video of the scene with my digital camera. I figured I could use it as part of a report on the city’s mass exodus. A sea of people coming off the boats flooded the terminal. Cops and doctors stood everywhere, awaiting something to do while, visible on the other side, that ever-present cloud of terror rose high into the air, blocking the clear blue sky with a layer of ominous gray dust.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a small powerboat at the nearby marina’s gas dock, about 60 yards away. I made a mad dash for it, and appealed for a ride to the other side. I flashed my press card at the boat’s owner.
“I know who you are,” he shot back.
“Will you take me across?”
I pleaded. “I’ll pay you anything.” He agreed to take me, graciously declining any money; and after we persuaded the dock master to fill our tank, I jumped aboard.
A crowd quickly gathered on the dock. Claiming they had loved ones at the World Trade Center, they appealed for a ride.
“Please,” screamed one woman in tears, “my daughter is there—I have to be with her!” Her cries, and those of the others clamoring to get aboard, were disturbing, but with six people already on the small boat, there simply was not enough room.
Pointing at a New York Post reporter and me, another woman demanded to know, “Why are you taking them?” The explanation that we were reporters accredited by police, and therefore more likely to get through a Coast Guard blockade, was of little comfort. As we left the dock, I felt guilty that we had abandoned these people at a moment of such grief and fear. But there was little else we could do. I still had to get to the story. As the white wake grew behind our boat, the dark cloud ahead loomed even larger as we neared the Manhattan side.
At the pier, more than a thousand people were standing in line to board a charter boat that would shuttle them back across the river. My heart began palpitating and my breathing became more difficult as I ran in search of a taxi. There were none to be found. I stopped for a seemingly endless moment to look toward the devastation. Less than a mile away, I could see the cloud of smoke rising hundreds of feet into the air. In front of me sat an ambulance, its engine idling, and in front of that, there were at least 80 other vehicles of mercy, all waiting in anticipation of a mission that would never come.
Shortly after noon, more than three hours after the terrorists had struck, I finally reached the newsroom, where News Director Karen Scott directed me to relieve anchor Jim Watkins, who had been on the air for hours without a break. Initially, I was disappointed that I wasn’t being sent to the scene, as foreboding as conditions were—some had likened downtown Manhattan to a nuclear winter—I felt I should be at Ground Zero with the other reporters. Instead, the studio became my isolation chamber, where I spent untold hours. The anchor desk was a clutter of notes and news copy. A cold slice of pizza sat neglected on a table behind it. The images and sounds from the television monitors that surrounded us formed an incongruous tapestry of calamity. An ancillary impact of the World Trade Center attack was immediately evident in our studio. The colorful Duratron panorama of the New York skyline that formed the backdrop of our news set had already been altered: the Twin Towers, which had been framed in the center of the photograph, had been hastily removed, and the two remaining sections of the backdrop were now stapled together.
As I joined my solemn-faced co-anchor Mary Murphy, I knew I had a daunting responsibility to an audience craving to know more. I wasn’t reading from a script or teleprompter this time, but speaking extemporaneously, relaying information as it became available and tossing to our reporters near Ground Zero and at hospitals and other locations. Authority and credibility are important requisites for any reporter, but telling this story called for more: I had to be sensitive, calming and reassuring as well, in view of the fact that many of our viewers had loved ones who worked in the buildings, and at this point didn’t know whether they were dead or alive. This wasn’t a terror attack in some distant part of the world, but rather in our own city. Though the tone of my voice reflected the sadness I felt, I avoided talking about the anticipated death toll in those early hours, and focused on the number of survivors and the countless others we all hoped would be found alive in the rubble. Meanwhile, we kept eyes on what was happening through our reporters in the field, including our traffic reporter, Melinda Murphy, who remained aloft in the only news helicopter still allowed in the air. Our cameramen, their own lives in danger, captured some of the most graphic images imaginable of the planes slamming into the buildings, the horror of people jumping from the upper floors, the buildings crashing to the ground, people running for their lives—images that would be indelibly seared into the memory of the city and the nation.
It was a story that put us all to the test, because it was like nothing we had ever been through before. As reporters, we’re not supposed to show our emotions on the air. But this time, it was all but impossible not to. Unlike the case with Herb Morrison, who was criticized for his tearful outburst on live radio when the Hindenburg blew up in front of his eyes in 1937, no one was putting us down now for sharing our feelings with the rest of America. I had no qualms telling viewers that I was feeling exactly what they were feeling. You could hear it in my voice; you could sense it in my demeanor. A couple of times, I unconsciously found myself dabbing tears from my eyes on-camera. How could I not feel something after hearing the woman in an in-studio interview professing her love for her husband—who, she informed us, had been working on the 102nd floor of the North Tower when it went down—and expressing her confidence that he was safe and would be home for dinner? It was those interviews that were most difficult for me—coming face-to-face with people in their hour of grief. As difficult as these moments were for them, they needed to talk, and to show photos of their loved ones, in hopes that they would learn that they had gotten out alive. I listened to their heart-wrenching stories one after another, and on occasion my voice faltered in response. Following an interview with another woman whose father and brother were among the missing, I got choked up on-
camera; and afterwards, when we cut away for a report from the White House, I reached for the phone behind me to call my fiancée, my daughter and my son, to tell them all how much I loved them, and how glad I was that they were safe.
Most of us knew someone who worked in the buildings. My friend John O’Neil had just left his position with the FBI to become Chief of Security at the World Trade Center. He began his new job the day before the attack. We were supposed to have lunch that week, and from the studio I kept calling his cell phone, hoping to get some direct information from him. I left several messages, but he never returned my calls. John’s body was recovered a week later. I would later learn that he had initially managed to get out safely, but dashed back inside to help others. Kaity Tong, who soon joined me at the anchor desk, was concerned that she was still unable to make contact with her 14-year-old son Philip, who attended Stuyvesant High School just four blocks north of Ground Zero. She shared her personal story with our viewers and then, despite her own worries, gazed steadily into the camera and related the latest news developments.
It never ceases to amaze me how insensitive some people can be at times like this. One of our producers informed me in my earpiece that he had a man on the phone who claimed to have just crawled out from the rubble. I was skeptical. I voiced my misgivings, and suggested that the producer pre-screen the caller. Kaity agreed. But the producer demanded we take the call immediately. With some trepidation, Kaity and I greeted the man on the other end of the line. His voice was young and halting; right away, we could sense a fake cough in his voice.
He assured us he was okay, but when Kaity asked him for details on just how he had gotten out from beneath the rubble, he blurted, “Ah, ah, Howard Stern helped me.” The shock jock fan then laughed, and quickly hung up.
As I Saw It Page 11