“America, offer a prayer.”
Those were the words Fox News anchor Jon Scott uttered on Sept. 11, 2001, as Americans watched the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse on live television.
Scott served as a voice, telling Americans what was unfolding before their eyes on national television.
The network was previously airing a segment on band Matchbox Twenty’s tour, and conducting a sit-down interview with Marisol Thomas, who was a model married to the band’s lead singer, Rob Thomas.
The Fox News crew came back from commercial break to breaking news that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
The hosts conducted the show with the information they had as Scott settled into the studio, and as crews rushed to the scene to set up cameras and establish their live shots.
“I like to think that I did probably my best work on the worst day that any of us has ever seen, because I was able to stay in the chair for eight hours and I think not get overly emotional and just try to convey the facts to a nation and a world that really needed the facts, and I don’t think we made many mistakes that day,” Scott told the Washington Examiner.
Scott was taking a call from former National Transportation Safety Board member Vernon Gross while on the air, when America saw the second plane crash into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on live television.
Scott cut off his previous sentence as he watched it unfold, and paused.
“There was another one. We just saw — we just saw another one, we just saw another one apparently go — another plane just flew into the second tower,” Scott said.
“This has to be deliberate folks,” he said.
It took Scott less than a minute to utter, “Osama bin Laden,” after the second plane hit the second tower.
Scott quickly tossed to Fox News reporter Eric Shawn, who was live on the field.
“As soon as I said his [bin Laden’s] name, I realized it’s really a little early, as with any crime, to be speculating on who’s responsible. And the control room was in my ear, telling me that Eric Shawn, our reporter, was ready to go with kind of a firsthand account of what he had seen, so I went right away to Eric Shawn,” Scott told the Washington Examiner.
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Scott said it didn’t initially occur to him that a jetliner could have gone into the building, and he was thinking, somehow, that al Qaeda was able to charter jets from overseas and get them into the United States without being intercepted.
“I thought, that’s what had to have happened, because it never occurred to me that somebody would be just so evil as to hijack civilian airliners, kill the pilots, and fly themselves and their passengers into occupied buildings. That kind of disregard for human life, and that kind of pure evil just never entered my mind, until, well, a few hours in, and it became clear what had happened,” Scott said to the Washington Examiner.
Once the second tower collapsed, Scott said the only thing he could think of to say at the time.
“I said, ‘America, offer a prayer,’ because that’s all I could think of to say. I never expected that those towers were going to fall. I thought the firefighters would get the flames put out, and there would be a horrific loss of life. But I didn’t think the towers would go down.”
“The president was watching it, just kind of a little footnote in history, and it means something to me,” Scott said.
In a separate interview with the Washington Examiner, Shawn described the profound impact many people experienced from being on the streets when the towers fell. Intense dust filled the air, blanketing the sky and surrounding area, leaving first responders and survivors with lasting health impacts. Scott commented on the first responders’ heroism that day.
“It was just the fact that they were willing to, you know, put hoses on their shoulders and march up, you know, 80 or 90 flights of stairs to try to put out the fire, and then they lost their lives in the bargain. It was just, I just hope we never forget them,” Scott said.
Scott also touched upon the psychological damage to the nation, and the importance of remaining aware of potential threats.
“I think we’ve taken every precaution we can take to prevent the same kind of attack, but the enemy is always thinking and improvising, and I’m sure that you know at some point somebody’s going to come up with another method of … doing terrible harm to the United States, and I just hope that we’re all aware that it can be done, and we’re kind of thinking outside the box,” Scott said.
Scott reflected on the other attacks on the Pentagon, and the heroic passengers who helped take down United Airlines Flight 93 to prevent plane hijackers from hitting their target in Washington, D.C.
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“The damage, I mean, to the national psyche was already bad enough, but it would have been so much worse if those heroes had not taken that plane down,” Scott said.
“I just hope that we all remember the horrors of that day, and the heroism of that day,” he added.