25 Years Later: CBS News' Jim Stewart Reflects on Reporting 9/11 Live

On the 25th anniversary of September 11, host Steve Hartline sits down with Jim Stewart, the former CBS News correspondent whose live, on-air reporting alongside anchor Dan Rather helped inform the nation as the attacks unfolded. The conversation opens with the original clip of Stewart naming Osama bin Laden as a suspect within hours of the attacks — one of the first network correspondents to do so.

Stewart recounts learning of the first plane strike from a source inside the FBI, the "old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting" and decades of built relationships at the Pentagon and FBI that gave him access that day, and the roughly 20-hour stretch he spent live on air.

He also shares striking, lesser-known details from his reporting: bin Laden's ambitions for a far larger "second wave" of attacks involving multiple simultaneous transatlantic and transpacific plane bombings; the intended target of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania; how flight crews and investigators identified the hijackers by name before some of the flights had even gone down; and the "shoe bomber" plot that followed. The interview closes with Stewart's sober assessment of the terrorism threat landscape 25 years on — from AI and drones to bioweapons — and his belief that another attack is not a matter of if, but when.

A firsthand look back at 9/11 from one of the journalists who covered it as it happened.