Diane Sawyer At Ground Zero: Getting That Shot

Animal New York’s Bucky Turco has a 9/11 anecdote up at his site: Remembering how, on the night of September 11th, rollerblading down to media-barred Ground Zero with a stealth camera in hand, 2001, Diane Sawyer tapped him on the shoulder and called him to duty.

ABC News had been barred from bringing cameras onto the scene — so it was up to Bucky to sneak as much footage of the ash-covered site as he could.

“Do your best,” Diane tells me. “I’m walking away to distract attention from you. Just keep shooting everything you can shoot.”

So he did. Video below; read Bucky’s full account here. Reading this reminded me of watching MSNBC’s replay of that morning’s live coverage earlier today, and a moment where MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield, coughing and covered in soot, with billowing clouds of smoke behind her, trying to get answers from a stonewalling police officer. The ghostly images Bucky captured below are pretty riveting, and otherworldly, and still extremely sad.

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