NEW YORK (AP) --
"..CBS will air a two-hour special next month featuring exclusive video shot inside the World Trade Center on September 11 as rescue workers charged in and occupants escaped.

The material, caught on tape by French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet, is believed to be the only such video available from inside the complex after the planes slammed into it.

It will air on Sunday, March 10, at 9 p.m, the night before the six-month anniversary of the terrorist attack.

"It's something that's very vivid, very moving and very heroic," said CBS President Leslie Moonves. "I thought it was very important as a broadcaster to show this footage."

The Naudets were in lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, shooting a documentary on New York City firefighters. Hearing a roar above him, Jules turned his camera toward the sky and caught pictures of the first plane striking the trade center. He later sold the images to a video service and they were widely broadcast.

Both filmmakers rushed to the scene and kept filming, Jules inside the building complex and Gedeon outside. For awhile, neither brother knew whether the other was still alive, Moonves said.

None of this other material has been broadcast. The brothers brokered the deal with CBS through friends at Vanity Fair magazine and its editor, Graydon Carter, who contacted Moonves.

The CBS executive would not say how much the network paid for the material. He said there was no bidding war with other networks.

The video is dramatic but not gruesome, said Susan Zirinsky, the executive producer of the CBS broadcast. "It is remarkable to be in the belly of the beast but it is not difficult to watch," she said.

It's unclear whether the footage will show recognizable images of people who did not survive, which may be upsetting to family members. Firefighters who were at the scene are involved in putting the CBS show together, Moonves said.

The CBS executives said they are sensitive to critics who will be watching to see if the event is exploitative.

"All of us feel humbled by the goal of presenting this in the right way, in the right tone, in the right context," Zirinsky said. "Nobody is out for anything other than showing a remarkable body of work."

The Naudets hope that part of the broadcast will be used to raise money for family members of firefighters killed on September 11, according to CBS.

It's the second high-profile TV documentary about September 11 to be announced in recent weeks, but will be the first to air. HBO has a deal with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to air a documentary about the attacks and their aftermath seen from his perspective. It is scheduled for telecast on May 26. .."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/nyregion/01TAPE.html

CBS Is Asked to Postpone Showing Tape From Sept. 11
By JIM RUTENBERG

"..New Jersey prosecutor has asked CBS to consider postponing a March 10 documentary special that is to feature vivid videotape shot at the World Trade Center complex on Sept. 11.

The prosecutor, William H. Schmidt of Bergen County, suggested in a letter dated Feb. 26 that CBS wait six more months before showing the documentary, "9/11," lest it cause new trauma for family members of victims of the terrorist attack who are trying to heal emotionally.

"Exposure through media to graphic details," he wrote, "can be potentially disruptive to the fragile psychological equilibrium they are so desperately attempting to regain and maintain."

Mr. Schmidt said in the letter that he was writing it on behalf of a victims' advisory board set up by his office that includes representatives from the Bergen County branches of the Red Cross and the United Way, as well as local family members of victims. He did not threaten any sort of legal action against CBS.

Last week the United States senators from New Jersey, Robert G. Torricelli and Jon Corzine, also sent a letter to CBS, urging that it exercise taste and caution in producing the documentary.

In its response to Mr. Schmidt, CBS said it was treating the material with the utmost caution. The network also indicated that it was going ahead with its March 10 scheduling as planned.

Many victims' families expressed alarm at CBS's announcement early last month that it would show the videotape, described in a front-page article in The New York Times on Jan. 12 as containing powerful scenes of firefighters heading into the towers and then scrambling, often disoriented and covered in debris, to escape the collapse of the two buildings.

The video was shot by the filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were making a documentary about a firefighter recruit on Sept. 11. Jules Naudet was in the north tower when the south tower collapsed. When CBS acquired the rights in early February, it agreed to use the special to help promote the Uniformed Firefighters Association Scholarship Fund.."