Almost Impossible: The Story Behind Our Aaron Brown Interview on 9/11

Legendary former CNN news anchor Aaron Brown, has died, his family has reported. For me, he was the face and the voice of the news coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, the Pentagon and on United Flight 93.

And so, well before the 20th Anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I planned an ambitious series of special Shaping Opinion Podcast episodes, each one focused on a first-person story. Because I felt Aaron Brown was so important to that story, securing him as a guest was my dominant focus in plans for the series. He was my starting point. I knew if I could get him, the project would be worth it. If not, it would not be the same.

There was one problem. Aaron wasn’t doing many interviews. In fact, he almost seemed reclusive. This isn’t my observation. There were actual news stories on just how hard Aaron was to find.

Based on my internet research, he had been a college professor in Arizona and had given a smattering of interviews and speeches over the years, but in 2020 when I did my prep work, it seemed to have been at least four years since he had given an interview of any substance.

In the course of my work on the Shaping Opinion Podcast, which is currently on hiatus, I’ve always approached landing guests the way I learned in the early days of my career when I worked in newsrooms. In fact, landing a hard-to-get-interview was always one of my favorite parts of the job.

And so, when I could see that the person I wanted to build my special series around was hard to find, I saw that as a nice challenge. I decided to pursue the interview at least until the man himself told me, “No.”

It didn’t take long.

Based on my web research, I could see that the only recent mentions of Aaron were about his participation in a handful of charity golf events, and a few of them were at the same course. The news hound in me surmised that he was likely a member of that club. As such, the one person I knew that might actually see Aaron on any regular basis might be the person staffing the pro shop.

So, on a Sunday morning, I called the pro shop at the course and left a message for Aaron via the person who answered the phone. I made sure the pro shop staffer wrote everything down. The staffer could not have been more accommodating. I told her to let Aaron know I’m a podcaster doing a big series on 9/11 and absolutely had to talk to him about his story.

She said she would, and she did.

That was on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 12:49 p.m. At 1:16 p.m., 27 minutes later, Aaron sent me a short email that said in its entirety: “I hear you’re trying to find me. You have.”

That began months of back-and-forth emails, a prep phone call, and on April 8, 2021, our recorded interview for the podcast where you can hear for yourself his full story from 9/11.

On the day of the interview, we recorded about 60 minutes of conversation, 50 of which made the cut. But after I stopped recording, Aaron and I talked for another 60 minutes or so, sharing old war stories from different parts of our careers. He was as much of a listener as he was a yarn-spinner. He was naturally curious about my own story, which caught me off guard.

He told me of his own career origins in Western Pennsylvania, who some of his mentors were, what some of the tough lessons he learned in journalism, and some of the most enduring ones.

He told me the only reason he did our interview was the gumshoe way I found him. That impressed him.

For a news junky like me, this was perhaps one of my favorite moments of the Shaping Opinion Podcast. Aaron Brown could not have been more kind, more gracious, more humble, or more candid and forthcoming than I could have hoped. He had the news business in his DNA.

We didn’t speak again after that but based on the analytics that the podcasting platforms serve up, the Aaron Brown episode is one of the most popular of the 340-plus Shaping Opinion episodes.

Today, the headlines of the sad news of Aaron Brown’s passing universally mention his groundbreaking work on 9/11 and at CNN. But there is something more, and it’s quite simple.

Aaron was someone who just wanted you to know. And so, in the process, he saw it as his job to get to the source of that knowledge, process it as accurately, ethically and thoroughly as possible. And then give it to you because you deserved that much. If you were his viewer, he held you in the highest regard. And today, we do that for him.