Jon Scott, who just conducted an amazing, compassionate interview with Alice Hoglan, the mother of United 93 passenger and hero Mark Bingham, then threw it to Catherine Herridge, live at the Alexandria Courthouse waiting for Zacarias Moussaoui to speak, and said something worth exploring. Jon said that Catherine has done an amazing job covering this case for the last five years, and that's not empty flattery. She has been so thorough and so meticulous in her homeland security reporting since 9/11--and that's why, when I heard her say this at the courthouse yesterday while waiting for the verdict, I took note, because Catherine has seen and heard everything at this point, so when she says she's never seen something before, that's really something:
HERRIDGE (4:13pm, 5/3/06): Actually, something happened that I have never seen in all my years in television, which is that they completely cleared the media area here for a good 15 minutes to do a sweep with some of the dogs. They do that periodically throughout the day but I've never seen police descend on an area like this to clear people at such an important moment, arguably in history, the only person to be charged in connection to 9/11 is now going to find out whether he lives or dies. One of the reasons they had the big sweep here is after the verdict is read, we can expect a fairly quick succession of news conferences. We will get those from the U.S. Attorney's office who prosecuted this case, also the public defenders, and outside counsel that was involved in Moussaoui's defense, and undoubtedly we'll get some of the 9/11 family members who have gathered at the courthouse many days to listen to some of the testimony. One of the reasons that we've had this hour or hour and a half delay between reaching a verdict and actually knowing what the verdict is is simply because those 9/11 families will have time to get to remote sites not only here in Washington, D.C. at the courthouse behind me, but also two sites in New York state, also Boston, Philadelphia, and Newark, so they can see the verdict read in open court and that will give them a personal way to bring this to a conclusion, if you will.
