# Ground Zero 911 Special Report From Clyde Lewis - Canonical: https://groundzeroplus.com/ground-zero-911-special-report-from-clyde-lewis/ - Published: 2026-09-11T22:44:33+00:00 - Modified: 2026-09-12T01:59:45+00:00 - Author: Ground Zero Plus --- ### Kite, Hit, Steel, Plane, Must – Play It Again Scam September 11, 2001, has been examined from almost every imaginable angle. We have seen the aircraft striking the World Trade Center countless times, watched the towers collapse, heard the emergency calls, studied the intelligence failures and debated the political decisions that followed. Yet some of the smaller details surrounding that morning remain far less familiar, even though they were captured on camera and became part of the historical record. One of the strangest occurred inside Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, where President George W. Bush was visiting a second-grade classroom as part of an event promoting literacy and education. The scene has become one of the most recognizable images of the entire 9/11 timeline. Bush was sitting with schoolchildren when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card approached him and quietly delivered the news that a second aircraft had struck the World Trade Center. ![Bush whisper](https://groundzeroplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Bush-whisper-300x193.png) Card later recalled telling the president, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” The president remained seated while the cameras continued recording. What is remembered far less often is what had been happening inside that classroom around this historic moment. ### The Strange Words From the Classroom The children were participating in phonics and reading exercises. Among the words spoken during those exercises were – “kite,” “hit,” “steel,” “plane,” and “must.” There is nothing inherently unusual about any of those words in an elementary-school lesson. Each can be explained within the context of teaching children phonics and reading skills. There is also no credible evidence establishing that the words were deliberately selected to predict the attacks or communicate some hidden message. However, once those words are heard with the knowledge of what was simultaneously unfolding in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, their accidental symbolism becomes difficult to ignore. A “kite” is something flying through the air. “Hit” describes an impact. Steel was one of the principal structural materials associated with the World Trade Center. “Plane” needs no explanation in the context of September 11. The final word, “must”, has subsequently added another layer of mystery for people who have studied and repeatedly replayed the footage. None of this proves foreknowledge. Coincidence is not evidence of conspiracy. Nevertheless, it represents precisely the type of historical anomaly that Ground Zero has spent decades examining: an apparently insignificant detail that becomes unsettling when placed back into its original context. ### Clyde Lewis And Play It Again Scam Clyde Lewis returned to the subject of September 11 on September 11, 2019, during a Ground Zero broadcast titled PLAY IT AGAIN SCAM. Rather than simply repeating the familiar story of 9/11, the program challenged listeners to think about memory itself and how major historical events are gradually transformed through repetition. By 2019, eighteen years had passed since the attacks. An entire generation had grown up knowing September 11 primarily through archived television footage, documentaries, anniversary specials, political speeches and the memories of people who had actually experienced that morning. This raises an uncomfortable question: when the same pieces of history are replayed repeatedly, do we eventually remember the event itself, or do we remember the version of the event that has been constructed for us? The phrase “Never Forget” became inseparable from September 11. It was intended as a tribute to those who died and to the first responders who risked and, in many cases, sacrificed their lives. B ut the phrase also creates a deeper question that fits the theme Clyde explored: What exactly are we remembering? Collective memory is selective. Certain photographs, television clips and political statements become iconic while thousands of smaller details gradually disappear from public consciousness. The Bush classroom footage provides an excellent example. Almost everyone familiar with 9/11 remembers Andrew Card whispering into the president’s ear. Far fewer remember what the children were actually doing and saying around that moment. ### Rewind The Tape When we return to the original footage instead of relying exclusively on our memory of it, the classroom becomes much more interesting. President Bush had arrived at the school expecting an ordinary presidential event about education. Teachers were conducting lessons, children were reading and television cameras were documenting what should have been a routine public appearance. Outside that classroom, however, one of the most consequential events in modern American history was already underway. That collision between the ordinary and the catastrophic is what makes the footage so haunting. The children could not have understood the significance of what was happening. Their teacher was conducting a planned lesson. Journalists were recording the president. Secret Service personnel and White House staff were beginning to receive rapidly changing information. Then [Andrew Card](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-911-andrew-card-on-the-moment-everything-changed/) entered the frame. It is only because we know what happened next that every gesture, expression and spoken word can appear loaded with meaning. That is precisely why historical analysis requires both curiosity and caution. Patterns can reveal overlooked information, but human beings are also exceptionally good at discovering patterns after an event has already occurred. The words “kite,” “hit,” “steel,” “plane,” and “must” therefore occupy a peculiar place in the mythology surrounding September 11. They are not proof of an operation, ritual, coded warning or government conspiracy. At the same time, dismissing people’s fascination with them misses the larger issue. Their importance lies in what they demonstrate about memory, symbolism and the way traumatic events are reconstructed long after they occur. ### The World That Emerged After September 11 The importance of revisiting 9/11 extends far beyond determining whether a classroom exercise contained an eerie coincidence. The attacks fundamentally altered the relationship between governments, citizens, technology, security and warfare. The United States entered Afghanistan and later invaded Iraq. The War on Terror became a defining element of American foreign policy. Airport security changed dramatically. Intelligence agencies received expanded capabilities and resources. Surveillance became increasingly normalized, while debates over privacy, detention, interrogation, executive power and civil liberties intensified. The attacks also created an information environment in which fear became extraordinarily powerful. Governments understood that terrorism represented not merely a physical threat but a psychological one. Television audiences repeatedly watched the towers collapse, while phrases such as “homeland security,” “terror alert,” “weapons of mass destruction” and “War on Terror” became embedded in everyday political language. This is where Play It Again Scam remains relevant. Repetition does more than remind us of history. Repetition can determine which parts of history become culturally dominant. When certain images are played continuously while others disappear, our collective understanding of an event can gradually become narrower rather than broader. ### Twenty-Five Years Later, What Do We Remember? September 11, 2026, marks twenty-five years since the attacks. That distance makes revisiting the historical record more important, not less important. Documents have been released, eyewitnesses have spoken, investigations have been conducted and enormous amounts of archival footage are now available to anyone willing to examine them. There are also legitimate unanswered questions alongside claims that have been convincingly debunked. Treating everything associated with 9/11 as conspiracy theory is intellectually lazy, but accepting every anomaly as evidence of conspiracy is equally problematic. Serious examination requires separating documented facts, reasonable questions, coincidence, speculation and demonstrably false claims. The classroom at Emma E. Booker Elementary School provides a remarkable illustration of that distinction. We know President Bush was there. We know the children were participating in reading exercises. We know some of the words spoken included kite, hit, steel, plane and must. We know Andrew Card entered the classroom and informed Bush that America was under attack. Those elements belong to the historical record. What they mean beyond that remains open to interpretation. ### Play It Again – But Listen More Carefully Perhaps the most valuable lesson from Clyde Lewis’s PLAY IT AGAIN SCAM is not that we should automatically distrust everything we have been told about September 11. It is that history deserves to be revisited rather than merely commemorated. “Never Forget” should mean more than watching the same footage once every September. It should mean returning to original sources, examining uncomfortable details, questioning our assumptions and distinguishing what we know from what we merely believe. It should also mean recognizing how easily collective memory can be influenced by repetition, emotion and the passage of time. Twenty-five years later, that Florida classroom remains frozen on video. Children were participating in an ordinary reading lesson while an extraordinary historical event unfolded hundreds of miles away. The President of the United States sat among them as his staff began receiving confirmation that the country was under attack. And among the ordinary words spoken in that classroom were kite, hit, steel, plane and must. Perhaps it was nothing more than coincidence. There is no evidence proving otherwise. But sometimes coincidence is precisely what makes us rewind the tape, examine the details we stopped noticing, and ask the question that has always been at the heart of Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis: What did we miss the first time? ###### Originally Aired:  9/11/19 [Download Episode](https://groundzeroplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GZ-09-11-2026.mp3)