BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION SEPT. 11-3, 2026) — It was 25 years ago that terrorists left Boston’s Logan Airport, flew over the Berkshires, and took down Manhattan’s Twin Towers. It was this century’s Pearl Harbor and JFK Assassination.

THE PLANET was live on the air that beautiful morning hosting another edition of The Dan Valenti Show on WBRK. Probably only a journalist will understand, but when a story like this breaks, there’s no better place to be than a newsroom. We’ve been involved first-hand in some big stories: breaking the Son of Sam capture in the summer of 1977 at the Syracuse Post-Standard and at the Times Leader in Pennsylvania in 1979, breaking news of the Three Mile Island meltdown and leading coverage that eventually took down congressman Dan Flood, Northeast PA’s Silvio Conte. The Twin Towers ranks up with them.

In the quarter century since that tragic day, the memory stays fresh. A listener called and asked if we knew what was going on in NYC. We hadn’t.

Then, Bob Shade came into the broadcast booth where we did the show and placed a slip under my microphone. It said a commercial jetliner had just crashed in one of the towers. In a situation like that, something kicks in. You don’t speculate. You simple relay the facts. You get into “Cronkite Mode.” In this case, the updates were coming into the WBRK newsroom on the wire. With each snippet of news, a runner would bring it in and we would share what we knew.

It was when the second liner took down the second tower that we declared the crashes were not accidental. That was getting ahead of the story, but there was no other reasonable conclusion to make. We improvised our live local coverage until we could plug into the direct CBS newsfeed. Jim Bouton in his book Foul Ball has an excellent account of the show that morning. Bouton was a regular listener.

The world has become a much different place since then. THE PLANET invites you to share your thoughts on that day … and to bring up any other topic you wish.

Remember, unlike the Boring Broadsheet, we don’t beg for your money and we actually welcome the free and full exchange of ideas.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“A day that will live in infamy” — Franklin Roosevelt

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE”

LOVE TO ALL.

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