All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Our criminal justice system is based on the concept that criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty...that they have the right to a fair trial.

That sounds good on paper, but what if the accused is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the admitted 9/11 mastermind - and four alleged co-conspirators in a civilian courtroom in New York City is controversial at the very least.

Some Republicans, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, say the Obama administration is giving terrorists too many rights and a platform for their radical ideology.

But 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser supports the decision, saying New Yorkers and families like hers - want to see these men publicly brought to justice - to finally have closure.

And so just blocks from the scene of the crime, justice will be served - a right nearly three-thousand Americans lost on 9/11.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Phil Hirschkorn is a CBS News producer based in New York.

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The tight-knit community of September 11th victims family members who became activists mourned the loss of one of their own Friday, when it became known that Beverly Eckert was a passenger aboard Continental Flight 3407, which crashed in Buffalo.

She was on her way to celebrate what would have been her late husband Sean’s 58th birthday with family and friends, and to attend the presentation of a scholarship she had established in his memory at Canisius High School, where they’d met at a dance at age 16, only to become a lifelong couple.

"All of us are in shock,” said Carie Lemack, who lost her mother, Judy Larocque, on a plane in America’s worst terrorist attack, who channeled her grief into activism along with Beverly.

Beverly’s husband and high school sweetheart, Sean Rooney, then 50, was among the more than 200 people who died at work for insurer Aon Corp in the World Trade Center’s south tower – trapped above where the second plane struck on Sept. 11, 2001 ...

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While America remembers those who were lost on 9/11, we need to remember, as well, the thousands who are still suffering from serious illness. They are men and women who rushed in to the toxic cloud in lower Manhattan to help those who were trapped.

Click the video link for more.

Sharyl Attkisson is the Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News.

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Post-9/11, it doesn't take much to get security riled up on Capitol Hill.

This morning, it was a parachutist.

The parachutist (later described by police as a "blimp", though I saw a man hanging from a glider type parachute) was floating silently toward the Capitol building where Capitol police went on alert.

Was it a bird? A plane? Would he fly over the Capitol? Would he try to land on the grounds? Would he try to light on the Capitol building itself?
What was he carrying? Could he be dangerous?

Sharp shooters who are perpetually stationed at the Capitol would've been ready...if it was necessary.

But it wasn't.

Police determined he may have been powering his floater with a small fan, that he may have been carrying a camera, and that he may have been trying to take aerial photos of nearby RFK stadium.

The whole thing blew over.

This did bring up another topic of discussion, though.

Will police ever be able to really avert a terrorist attack before it happens? If the parachutist had come too close to the Capitol, if police weren't able to determine who he was, what he was doing and whether he was dangerous...should they shoot?

They probably wouldn't.

And if he turned out to be strapped with a hidden bomb, we'd all just be out of luck.

But if they did shoot and he just turned out to be a nut, or somebody off course, the fall-out would be unimaginable.

The Capitol police sometimes feel as though they're between a rock and a hard place. When split seconds count and tough decisions have to be made, which decisions will really be made?

Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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Let me just say upfront this is a tough story to do, and we’ll probably be criticized for hyping a threat that many people feel is improbable, if not impossible.

However, if the FBI is worried and the Russian government is worried, then I’m worried.

As far as we know, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have never gotten their hands on a nuclear weapon, but that’s not for lack of trying. In 1998, bin Laden said acquiring nukes “for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty.” And we know al Qaeda tried on at least one occasion to buy nuclear material from a bogus dealer who was more interested in stealing the terrorists’ money.

Now, the FBI has called together security officials from 28 countries to discuss the nuclear threat and to map strategies for sharing information and cutting off the supply of materials on the black market.

Tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric we’ll talk one-on-one with FBI chief Robert Mueller, who warns in stark terms that the destruction of 9/11 could pale in comparison that caused by a nuclear strike against an American city.

We’ll also take you inside the New York Police Department to show you what cops and technology are doing on the home front -- the last lines of defense.

While we don’t want to exaggerate the threat, we can’t ignore it either. The 9/11 Commission called the government’s missteps leading up to 9/11 “a failure of imagination”. Taking that lesson, no conceivable threat should be off the table for security officials or out of bounds for public discussion.

Yesterday's plane crash in New York City brought back some haunting memories. Katie reflects on those memories, and what 9/11 has done to our psyche, in today's Notebook.

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Katie is at Ground Zero today, covering the events down there. Before heading downtown, she filed her Notebook for today: a look back at 9/11, and why this anniversary makes her not only sad. It also makes her angry. Click the picture to have a look.

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If you aren’t glued to your TV set right now, there are a few other 9/11-related stories around the CBS News website worth your time.

First, if you missed it last night, there’s a recap of Katie’s report on 60 Minutes about dust at Ground Zero. This story is provoking a lot of email and viewer response. Check it out.

Earlier yesterday, Bob Schieffer weighed in with a commentary on Face the Nation, explaining clearly and, I think, persuasively, why September 11, 2001 was our finest hour. Nobody could say it better than Bob.

You’ll also find an exclusive interview with the United Flight 93 controller. With so much attention focused on New York City today, this is one part of the story we shouldn't overlook.

And, if we needed any reminders that Afghanistan is still a hotspot of violence and terror: there was a suicide bombing today at an Afghan state funeral.

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On this date in 2002, CBSNews.com's Andrew Cohen posted this reflection. As the names are read this morning, we thought it worth posting again.


It was as it should be.

One year later, America endured a day dominated by the poignant, eerie, overwhelmingly sad, long reading from the book of the dead. Nothing the politicians could say, and nothing the television and radio commentators could add, was even remotely as true or as honest as was the simple, windswept recitation at ground zero that took nearly twice as long as it was supposed to.

From the moment former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani read the name of Gordon M. Aamoth, Jr. until the moment, roughly two-and-a-half hours later, when the name of Igor Zukelman was read, the country was reminded of the elemental toll of last year's terror attacks.

Writing Wednesday in the New York Times, Dan Barry summed it up: "In its essence," Barry wrote, "the World Trade Center calamity is not about geopolitics, or security, or even terrorism. It is about death: a sudden, wholesale death whose aftershocks continue to rumble through the ground of the living, refusing to ease into memory's recesses in conformity with the natural order of things." If the story of Sept. 11, 2001 is essentially a story about death, the story of Sept. 11, 2002 is essentially a story about the dead and how we remember and revere them for the rest of our days and the rest of the life of this nation...

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"What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" - Shakespeare, Othello, Act ii, Sc.3

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