Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald

Reprinted with permission

September 11, 2002, Wednesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1ss;
HEADLINE: How we're changed: No longer a feeling war can't come here
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
We've changed.
Imagine what you would have thought 366 days ago if airport security workers
told you to take off your shoes while they pawed through your carry-on luggage.
Imagine what you would have thought 366 days ago if the president of the
United States suggested we might launch a full-scale war on a nation that had
not recently attacked us or anyone else.
Imagine what you would have thought 366 days ago if the government had
proposed secret courts or detaining immigrants indefinitely based only on
suspicion.
Remember the awe with which you used to gaze at skyscrapers.
Remember the disdain with which Midwesterners used to regard New Yorkers.
Remember the "lockbox" that was going to protect Social Security funds from
being spent on other government needs.
Sure, we've changed.
As much as we could, we resumed our normal lives after the attack of Sept.
11. Air travel resumed that Friday. Stock markets opened the following Monday.
Sports resumed within a week. By November, it was OK to cheer when someone other
than the Yankees won the World Series. By February, Warner Bros. felt
comfortable releasing "Collateral Damage," the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about
a firefighter battling terrorists.
However much we moved ahead, the changes were undeniable. In air travel. In
the economy. In security. In civil liberties. In law enforcement. In how we
viewed people we likened to the heroes of 9/11 and how we viewed people we
likened to the villains of 9/11.
"I look at law enforcement and public safety people much differently than I
did before," said former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who moved to New York
earlier in 2001. "I had respect for what they did, but it brought sharply into
focus the risks that they take to protect us."

Change came immediately when the second airliner hit the second tower, and
we all realized instantly that this was no accident. This was war, and it
wasn't being fought over there, wherever there was.
Our security had been shaken before, but not like this. Pearl Harbor was an
attack on the United States, but not the mainland. The 1993 World Trade Center
attack was an attack on the mainland, but it failed to topple a tower or cause
mass casualties. The Oklahoma City bombing caused mass casualties in the heart
of America, but it was a crime committed by one of our own.
This was war, a sneak attack on our political and economic capitals.
"No longer can we be secure in the thought that here in this country we're
going to be safe," said Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns. "We realized that this war
is going to be fought right here in this country and there's no escaping it."
You can't escape it when you fly especially. The original warnings that we
should arrive at the airport two hours before departure were exaggerated,
especially at Omaha's Eppley Airfield and other midsized Midwestern airports.
But the security measures are noticeable and intrusive. And accepted.
Gloria Dinsdale of Palmer, Neb., shrugged off the inconvenience when airport
security seized her manicure scissors as she prepared to board a recent flight.
"That was a small price," she said. "Now we're living like the rest of the
world."
When it comes to freedom, though, we expect to live better than the rest of
the world.
The USA Patriot Act, passed last October, gives federal authorities
increased power to wiretap and detain suspects. It changes rules for trials,
evidence and foreigners.
While the measure moved quickly through Congress and reassured many citizens
hoping we could prevent future attacks from within, opponents warned that the
law infringes on cherished freedoms.
"We've replaced probable cause with suspicion," said Tim Butz, executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska. "The Patriot Act
certainly sets the country in motion toward walking away from the basic founding
principles that terrorists find so repugnant."
Immigrants and visitors, the subject of major provisions in the USA Patriot
Act, also felt hostility and discrimination from Americans who didn't know which
visitors they could trust.

"When we traveled especially, we faced harassment of people who had Muslim

names or Muslim attire or who looked Middle Eastern," said Raheem Yaseer of the
University of Nebraska at Omaha. "They treat me like an Arab," said Yaseer, an
Afghan native and U.S. citizen who despises the Muslim extremism that Arabs
brought to his homeland.
The economic jolt of Sept. 11 is undeniable, yet difficult to measure. The
economy already was slumping, and corporate collapses such as Enron and WorldCom
would have hurt anyway.
This much is clear: More than a million more workers were unemployed this
August than a year earlier. And the Dow Jones industrial average is more than a
thousand points lower than before the attacks.
"The economy was sputtering along, but Sept. 11 definitely shook the
confidence of the country," Johanns said. "That confidence affects thousands of
decisions about not investing, not expanding, not hiring."
Federal, state and local governments across the country overhauled budgets
to account for slumping revenues and increased spending on security.
Some sectors of the economy bounced back quickly. Others continue to limp.
"The advertising business since 9/11 has experienced some of the most
serious economic times since 1939, the last year of the Great Depression," said
Scott Moore, president and chief executive of Bozell & Jacobs, one of four
executives who were buying the Omaha agency back from a New York company a year
ago.
Of course, a year is too soon to know how profound or lasting any of the
changes will be. The change continues and deepens even now, as President Bush
and Congress consider a war with Iraq.
Many of the changes wrought by the attacks relate not so much to issues, but
to feelings. Do you feel the same as you did a year ago when you board a plane?
When you see the twin towers in an old movie or a television rerun? When you see
a firefighter? When you see the American flag?
Sure, we've changed.
The stories that follow were part of a page about people directly affected by the events of
Sept. 11. Other colleagues contributed to the package as well, but their stories are not
reprinted here.
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald

Reprinted with permission

September 11, 2002, Wednesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4ss;
HEADLINE: Where tragedy led them
By Stephen Buttry
World-Herald Staff Writer
Everyone shared this tragedy. Beyond the fear, grief and anger that were
nearly universal, the Sept. 11 attacks reached personally into homes across the
country.
Across the Midlands, many feared fro loved ones they could not reach
immediately and grieved for loved ones actually lost. Others joined the search
and recovery effort, gave blood, changed travel plans, knelt in prayer or went
overseas to fight terrorism.
These are the stories of people who personally felt the impact of Sept. 11.
Lynn Castrianno
Until she visited Ground Zero for the third time, Lynn Castrianno did not
understand what people meant when they referred to that horrible site of
terrorism and murder as sacred or hallowed ground.
When she traveled from her Omaha home to the World Trade Center site in
April, Castrianno understood. "You could feel the souls. You could feel their
presence."
One of the souls was her brother, Leonard Castrianno, who worked on the
105th floor of the north tower of the Trade Center for the Cantor Fitzgerald
brokerage.
Leonard vanished into the rubble at Ground Zero. Medical examiners have not
identified any of the 20,000 recovered body parts as his remains.
For weeks, as the nation mourned, Leonard's sister in Omaha held out
unreasonable hope. Her head gradually accepted the horrible truth, but Lynn's
heart hoped for a miracle.
Though the siblings moved different directions from their childhood home in
Buffalo, N.Y., Leonard and Lynn Castrianno had stayed close. Her son, Rosario
Leonard Galante, bears his uncle's name. Four months before he died, Leonard
visited Omaha to be the godfather at the baptism of Lynn's daughter, Antonia.
Lynn got her first inkling of the disaster when her secretary at Girls and
Boys Town stopped by the morning of Sept. 11 and asked, "Did you hear about the

plane hitting the World Trade Center?" Lynn's immediate reaction: "My brother
works there."
As she and co-workers crowded first around a radio, then around a television
set, she wondered whether he was at work that day. Leonard, who was 30, was
taking some classes relating to a change in jobs, so she hoped he was away that
day.
As she watched the raging fire right below the floor where he worked, "I
thought for sure he was going to get out."
After she watched the tower collapse, she leaned against a cubicle wall. "I
could feel myself want to sink to the floor. I made a conscious effort to stay
upright." Still, she clung to hope. "I kept waiting to hear from him."
Two days later, Lynn's family headed to Buffalo to await news with the rest
of the family. She wondered how to tell 5-year-old Rosario. He figured out from
the television coverage and the family's anguish.
"What is rubble?" the boy asked. A few hours later, he asked, "Is Uncle
Leonard in the rubble?" Then he asked, "Is he dead?"
The following week, as she visited the temporary headquarters of Cantor
Fitzgerald, Lynn was surprised to see a bulletin board with listings of memorial
services. "You see that and you say, 'Oh, they gave up hope,' and we weren't
there yet."
When her parents gave DNA samples to help medical examiners identify body
parts, Lynn balked at accepting what that meant.
Her father and brother-in-law gave away Leonard's old clothes, a wardrobe a
co-worker described as "a cross between Banana Republic and Versace." Lynn
remembers thinking, "He's going to be pissed when he gets home."
Even at her brother's memorial service in Buffalo on Oct. 8, she felt he
must be surviving in a tunnel down in the rubble somewhere. An e-mail she wrote
four days later reveals a sister tortured by unanswered questions:
"How many bodies have they found? Have they found any from my brother's
floor? Have they found my brother? Will they find him? How hot are those fires
burning? What do they do when they find a body? What's it like to be there, a
part of all this? ... Did he know that the other tower collapsed? Did he have
any idea that his tower might collapse? I want to believe he wasn't panicked.
Was he with friends? I want to believe he went peacefully. What I really want
though is for him not to have been in that building that fateful day. My poor
brother."

The anguish continued in a private visit to Ground Zero on Oct. 27 and a New
York City memorial service the next day. Lynn told her feelings in an e-mail:
"What I wanted to do was leave the platform, walk on the site and get on my
knees and cry. I wanted to feel the dirt and let it sift through my fingers. I
wanted my clothes to get dirty and I wanted the smell to stay with me forever,
as though by having that smell there would be a piece of my brother to remember
him by."
At a memorial area in Battery Park, she left Leonard a note and a teddy
bear.
Her heart was admitting what her head knew: Leonard was gone.
Lincoln firefighters
Miles and months away from Ground Zero, the sights, sounds and smells linger
for Lincoln firefighters Rick Klein and Dan Wright.
And the emotions.
"I was probably angry more than anything," Klein says, as he recalls
entering the fire station adjacent to the World Trade Center site. "You run that
gamut of feelings."
The fire station's overhead doors were open after fire crews rushed to help
evacuate the twin towers and fight the fires. When Klein arrived 15 days later,
the sight sickened him. "It was as if a massive wind shoved pieces of dust and
debris into every crack and crevice. That somebody could do that to a fire
station ..."
On the station's chalkboard were the names of the firefighters who had
answered the call that day - firefighters lost in the rubble through which the
Lincoln firefighters would search.
Klein and Wright were leaders of Lincoln's 62-person urban search and rescue
team, specially trained in dealing with collapsed structures.
Though the immense pile of rubble was overwhelming, the most haunting sight
at Ground Zero, Klein said, was the "fatigued, worn-out look" of the New York
firefighters, "hoping beyond hope" that they would find comrades alive.
With the roar of power equipment and the racket of debris being pried from
the pile, Ground Zero rumbled with a din that was "just horrendous," Wright

said.
The firefighters' nostrils filled with an array of sickening odors: smoke,
dust, chemicals, steam, occasionally a whiff of decaying bodies.
They remember piles of twisted steel several stories high and jagged spires
still standing, like an eerie skeleton of the fallen building. At one place,
crews had dug a hole in the debris several stories deep. Klein remembers looking
into the hole, not being able to see the bottom and thinking, "It's like the
Grand Canyon down there."
As cranes would lift a layer of debris, dogs would sniff for signs of
humanity while the Lincoln crew would use cameras to search through the wreckage
for any indication of human remains. When they got a "hit," the crew would
summon New York police and fire crews for a slower sifting of the debris.
The Lincoln crew did not recover any body parts. A nearby crew found a lock
of hair. That was cause for a memorial service.
Wright said, "I'll never forget the looks on the firefighters' faces."
Peter Tomsen
When the terrorist network that helped the Taliban rule Afghanistan struck
New York and Washington, Peter Tomsen was flying home from Rome, returning from
a meeting with Afghanistan's exiled king.
Before Sept. 11, few knew as much as Tomsen, ambassador-in-residence at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, about the Taliban, al-Qaida, the complex
struggle for control of Afghanistan and the danger the forces in Central Asia
posed for the rest of the world.
After Sept. 11, Tomsen, former U.S. envoy to the Afghan rebels, fielded a
constant stream of news media requests for interviews. He has stopped teaching
at UNO and moved to Virginia, though he remains a diplomatic associate at UNO
and is finishing a book, "False Dawn: The Rise of Muslim Extremism in
Afghanistan."
On Sept. 11, though, Tomsen was in the dark.
As U.S. authorities were grounding all airplanes in and bound for the United
States, Tomsen's flight from Rome to Philadelphia was approaching Newfoundland.
Without explaining to passengers why, the pilot landed at Gander, Newfoundland,
one of 33 aircraft grounded there. The airport couldn't handle all the people,
so passengers just stayed in their planes for 24 hours.

When the pilot finally announced the news of the attack on the intercom,
Tomsen immediately worried about the safety of his daughter, Kim Budinger, a
lawyer in New York City. He finally was able to reach his wife, Kim Tomsen, back
in Omaha, and learn that their daughter was safe.
Eventually, the passengers were taken to emergency shelters set up at
schools and churches in Gander. The shelters had television sets, so they could
catch up on the terror that had unfolded earlier in the day.
When flights resumed, Tomsen caught one to Philadelphia. The pilot announced
when the plane was back in American airspace. As someone waved a flag colored on
a piece of cardboard, the passengers sang "God Bless America."
Gary and Todd Schwendiman
Todd Schwendiman loved his office on the 78th floor of the north tower of
the World Trade Center. "You'd just look out the window and you'd see little
planes and helicopters actually flying below you."
Schwendiman and his father, Gary, had lunched in the courtyard below the
tower on Friday, Sept. 7. "We marveled at its amazing height of 110 stories and
its stark beauty," Gary Schwendiman recalled. "We talked about how lucky we felt
to be there."
The Schwendimans co-founded their Lincoln-based investment firm, Schwendiman
Partners. Gary, former dean of the College of Business Administration at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, heads the operations in Lincoln. Todd heads the
international operations in New York.
Todd had worked in the tower office late the night of Sept. 10, leaving
after midnight. The next morning, he was making European calls from the firm's
midtown office, planning to head downtown to the World Trade Center in the
afternoon.
Gary had considered working out of the Trade Center office that week, but
instead attended a Monday meeting in Washington, then flew back to Lincoln. A
call from his daughter, Heidi, awakened Gary Tuesday morning. She already had
talked to Todd, so they knew he was safe. But for hours, they would not know
what happened to the six employees who worked in the tower office.
But they were all safe. Four of the six had not arrived for work yet when
the plane hit the tower. A fifth, Max Khan, who would have been at work by 8
a.m., took the day off to take care of the family car, damaged in a
fender-bender the day before. "That was kind of a miracle there," Todd said.
Sameerah Oodally, an intern from Dartmouth University, forgot her security

pass, so she could not take the elevator to the 78th floor. She was waiting in
the lobby until 9 a.m., when security officers could issue her a day pass, Todd
said.
When the plane hit, Oodally fled from the building. She was cut on the
shoulder and neck by falling glass, requiring treatment at a hospital.
Schwendiman Partners operates out of the midtown office now. Gary plans to
carry his World Trade Center security pass for the rest of his life, "as a
reminder of how precious life is - and how soon, for no good reason at all, it
can be gone."
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
September 5, 2002, Thursday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A;
HEADLINE: UNO program reflects a changed world
The university's Afghan studies program was obscure - but then came 9/11.
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
A year ago, the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Center for Afghanistan
Studies was a bit like Hamid Karzai: largely unknown, frustrated, passionate.
And standing at the threshold of momentous change.
In its 30 years, the UNO program had seen several peaks and valleys of
activity and funding, caused by events in Afghanistan and access to grants.
Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, the program was in "Death Valley," says director
Thomas Gouttierre, a longtime friend of Karzai, now Afghanistan's president.
UNO had no education programs in Afghanistan a year ago. Its biggest school
program lost its federal funding in 1994. An oil company pulled the plug on a
short-lived UNO vocational education program in Afghanistan in 1998.
Gouttierre had failed in efforts to win funding to continue a 1999 program
bringing various Afghan leaders to Omaha for dialogue on issues that divided
them. Foundations and private donors showed little interest in supporting UNO
programs for Afghanistan.
"The interest and enthusiasm went down and down and down," said Raheem
Yaseer, an Afghan native who is campus coordinator for UNO's education program
for Afghanistan. "We had nothing going on inside Afghanistan."
Leaders of the UNO program knew Afghanistan was important. But few were
listening to the UNO officials, except Karzai and other exiled Afghan leaders.

Karzai visited Omaha in 1999 and helped choose the participants for the dialogue
at UNO that year.
In U.S. foreign policy circles, under both the Clinton and Bush
administrations, UNO and Afghanistan barely registered.
"We were all exceedingly frustrated with the lack of focus," Gouttierre
said. "We truly believed that Afghanistan was a threat to our long-term
interests internationally and domestically. We just felt our foreign policy
leaders had their heads in the sand."
The morning of Sept. 11, the nation learned the importance of Afghanistan.
"All of a sudden, bingo! It's the No. 1 foreign policy consideration in the
world," Gouttierre said.
Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to UNO's Afghanistan experts. Gouttierre
got 31 calls from the news media Sept. 11 alone. In the months that followed,
reporters often had to schedule several days in advance to squeeze in a
half-hour interview.
He stopped counting interviews when he reached 2,000 in May. The Nexis news
media database, which doesn't include all the outlets that have interviewed
Gouttierre, has 72 hits for stories citing Gouttierre and Afghanistan before
Sept. 11 and 317 since.
Peter Tomsen, UNO's ambassador-in-residence and an envoy to Afghan rebels in
the first Bush administration, has testified before congressional hearings six
times in the past year. His name draws 195 hits in the Nexis database since
Sept. 11.
"We were literally bombarded from all sides," said Tomsen, who is now based
in Virginia but continues as a diplomatic associate of UNO and is writing a book
about Afghanistan.
UNO geologist Jack Shroder, who has studied Afghanistan's caves and mineral
deposits, has 147 Nexis hits since Sept. 11, and Yaseer has 58.
"Every day I get a call from a journalist who is going to Afghanistan,"
Yaseer said.
More important, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International
Development renewed their interest in UNO.
USAID had funded UNO's education programs in Afghanistan and in refugee
camps from 1986 to 1994, and provided a $ 6.5 million grant for UNO to publish

textbooks and provide teaching kits and teacher training for Afghan schools.
Abdul Salaam Azimi, a UNO research associate and former president of Kabul
University, was invited first to be education minister in the interim government
and later to be its ambassador to Pakistan. He declined both posts but went to
Kabul to run UNO's revived education program in Afghanistan.
Education in Afghanistan, especially for girls, was a leading casualty of
the repressive Taliban regime, and Karzai's new government faced a monumental
task in opening schools in March.
UNO had competitors for the job of providing curriculum materials for the
schools. The United Nations Children's Fund and a coalition of nongovernment
organizations, many of them critical of UNO's books under previous programs, had
developed alternative materials.
But UNO involved Karzai's government in updating its textbooks and removing
the objectionable militaristic content of books developed during the war with
the Soviet Union. The strong ties UNO maintained even when others were
forgetting Afghanistan paid off when the Karzai government chose UNO to handle
the books and training. UNICEF handled other aspects of the school startup.
After years of being shut out of Afghanistan, UNO officials set up office in
Kabul. They had kept a printing operation in Peshawar, Pakistan, supporting it
with commercial printing jobs. The job of printing millions of textbooks in just
a few weeks required running the press day and night as well as contracting with
other printing plants in Pakistan.
So far, UNO has printed 10.6 million textbooks and trained 775 teachers. The
opening of schools is regarded as a primary success of the still-struggling
Karzai government. The schools have attracted 3 million students, twice the
number originally expected.
The university is seeking other grants for further expansion of its programs
in Afghanistan and for exchange programs that might bring Afghan educators and
scholars to Omaha.
Though other universities, companies and organizations are also seeking
government and private support for new ventures in Afghanistan, UNO is
optimistic about expanding its role.
"When Afghanistan gets attention," Tomsen said, "we get attention."