Sept. 11, From Many Angles

Five years after terrorists ripped through the September sky, carrying out their precisely planned mission, the remnants of disbelief, anger and fear still linger -- on television as well as in life. A new dramatization of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the events preceding them, plus a documentary focused on the healing and rebuilding efforts, are among the broadcasts marking the grim anniversary.

Actor Harvey Keitel, star of ABC's "The Path to 9/11," said he believes movies and TV programs detailing what happened that day are important.

"They're putting the story into our faces. It's not too soon or too late; it just is," Keitel said. "We were the front line on that day."

"The Path to 9/11" is a new two-part drama based on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, which was created to discover how such an attack could take place. The mini-series, co-starring Patricia Heaton, Dan Lauria, Amy Madigan and Stephen Root, also revisits the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Via flashbacks, the drama depicts bureaucratic bungling leading to missed clues that might have unraveled the 2001 plot. With shifting viewpoints, from those aboard the planes, workers in the World Trade Center, government officials and victims' families, the film conveys the confusion and horror of that day.

Keitel portrays FBI agent John O'Neill, who was an expert on al-Qaeda. "He and his team were on it" prior to Sept. 11, Keitel said. "But the environment where they worked . . . they couldn't pursue a bad guy without getting permission. They were in the forefront of this assault on al-Qaeda, and they were blocked all along the way."

O'Neill, stymied by bureaucracy, retired from the FBI in August 2001. He began a new job as the World Trade Center's head of security on Sept. 11, 2001.

O'Neill's death in the towers "gave the story a tragic symmetry," said writer Cyrus Nowrasteh. "It's rare that happens in a real-life story, but clearly, he leapt out as an obvious part of it."

Filming the story behind the attacks "evoked in all of us . . . a sense of responsibility to the heroes of that day, to be as truthful as is humanly possible to honor them," Keitel said. "There isn't anyone from the top on down to the caterer and prop master who didn't have it in their bones to get it right."

Keitel, who lives in New York's TriBeCa neighborhood, visited Ground Zero a few days after the attacks.

"The sight, the stench, the feeling -- if I describe it as Hell, it would sound corny," he said. "But that is as close to Hell as I can think."

Other Sept. 11 Programming

A different view of Sept. 11 comes from PBS's "America Rebuilds Part II: Return to Ground Zero" (Monday at 9 p.m. on PBS). Narrated by Mariska Hargitay of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," the program follows the ongoing recovery -- physical, financial and emotional -- of the 16-acre area in lower Manhattan. Among those who talk about Ground Zero's afterlife are the engineers reclaiming the shuttered PATH commuter train route from New Jersey, a fireman whose firefighter son died in the towers and a real estate developer trying to entice new business to the site. To date, only Seven World Trade Center, which was the final structure to crumble on Sept. 11, 2001, has been rebuilt. Its first new tenant is the New York Academy of Sciences.

The program is the second of PBS's planned trilogy charting the recovery and ultimate reopening of the World Trade Center site.