>> thanks very much. that's it for "360." see you again at 10:00 p.m. thanks for watching. "piers morgan tonight" starts now. on september 10, 2011, he was a hard charging, high-living ceo. september 12, he was the only family of the families of 658 people, cantor fitzgerald made it out alive. >> i thought everyone i ever imagined working with ever had been killed. >> he attempted his own life. he tells us how he rebuild his business and his life over the dust of ground zero. and a woman whose life went up in flames on that terrible day. >> out of the elevator shaft blew a wall of fire that enveloped me. >> she had an 8% chance of living through it. this is a special edition of "piers morgan tonight." good evening, tonight new york city is a city on edge. we hear more about the terror alerts from 9/11. communications from a known al qaeda operative in pakistan discussing plans for washington or new york with a car bomb. the operative's information has been accurate in the past, that's why officials are taking this threat very seriously. it comes as new york remembers the first day ever. it's changed completely on 9/11. not a single person who was a at work that morning at candor fitzgerald made it out alive. how he rebuilt his business. he joins us now. a bittersweet day in many ways to you hearing of the latest threat now coming from an al qaeda plot possibly to car bomb new york or washington. when you heard about this, what kind of emotion did you go through? >> well, you know, i -- i've always been surprised that these kinds of threats were not more often, you know, the bombing in the subway in london and madrid. you know new york and washington are targets. so it doesn't surprise me and, you know, what makes me feel more comfortable is i lookout side of my win dope and right outside of this studio, the new york city police are stopping every single truck or van on the street and checking them. so makes you feel a whole lot better to know the new york city police department is out there working their tails off more. >> it does. the security level is extraordinary there at the moment. does it feel though, to you, the battle with al qaeda, which caused the devastating event ten years ago, that it's just ongoing. you're going to see a time when it will end in your lifetime? >> i can hope it will end. the ideals of western society, of freedom, of democracy, our lives that we live are going to make people who believe differently jealous. they're going to attack our philosophy. >> let me take you back if i may to september 10, 2001. you were running a large company. you were one tough, some would say ruthless businessman. what kind of man do you think you were? looking back on it then, what kind of character that you were. and how do you think you've changed sin what happce what ha? >> cantor fitzgerald september 10, 2001 was a winning organization. we had all of the tools necessary for us to be successful. we didn't look for partners. we didn't need help from anybody. we were in a nice spot. and we were going forward. and we were a partnership. we had had certain ideals, for instance, after the 1993 attack, we had made the decision that we're the only ones to work for people that we like. folks, we have somebody called encouraged nepotism. we wanted to hire your friends, your relatives, that was fine. as long as they could do the job well, we wanted them to be there. we were an independent place but a tightly niched place. but then september 11 made us really, really focus on the human aspect of things. i didn't want to go to work. god knowles i didn't want to work for money. the reason we went back to work and the reason cantor fitzgerald survived, because all of our employees decided that we were going to rebuild this company one reason and one reason only. that was to take care of our friends and families who we lost. we needed to be there for him. and that's what we set out to do. >> total freak of chance, you happen to be not at work that day. you normally would have been. a fabled story, your son, kyle, was on his way to the first day of kindergarten, that's why you weren't there. what was the precise moment you heard there was something going down at the tower? >> they took a picture of my son, the classic wet behind the ears, the backpack picture at 8:45, i have the picture. it has the time on it. 8:45 or 8:46. we wnlt upstairs to his classroom. my cell phone kept ringing. i picked it up, no one is there. why are they bothering me at work. i'm just dropping my son off at the first day of school. then the administrator came down, so it was probably like five or six minutes later. so maybe just before 9:00 and said a plane hit the building, mr. ludnick. i ran down the stairs and got in my car. i thought it was a small cessna, a piper, a crazy person or a horrible pilot had missed the building and i hasn't seen the picture of this giant airliner driving into the building. so i didn't realize that until i got down fifth avenue. because i went fifth avenue so i could see the building right away. and, you know, we saw flames flowing out of the top of the building with all of my floors, we were from the 101st to the 105th floors. it was so horrible-looking. i knew i had to get there because i was praying that my guys had been able to get out. that they didn't look -- it didn't look good. >> your brother was there, your closest friends were there. 658 employees were there. it must have been the ultimate nightmare for you? >> it's impossible for it to happen. they couldn't all be in a place where they would all be in risk. two or three people can be in a car. only could be in a plane. it's not possible to lose 668 people. not possible to lose all of my friends, all of my co-workers. people don't really pay enough attention to how much love and respect to the people you work with. the people to your left and right, you spend as much time with them, if not more time with them than you do your family. they matter to you so, so much. then just the thought of them all being killed at the same time, it's impossible. so i would often say that this is the worst wizard of oz movie. going to wake up and say, wow, that was one heck of a dream. it can't are been real. >> what was the moment that you had? when you looked up at the towers, what was the moment that you feared that there was going to be no way out for your friends and employees? >> well, so i was in my car. i drove right down to the buildin building. everybody is running away from the towers. i'm driving toward the doorway of one world trade center, the north tower. i worked there for 20 years, no one called the north tower in 20 years. i was working in the one with the antenna. i'm standing at the doorway, grabbing people as they come out. asking what floor they're on. i asked everybody around to grab and ask what floor -- i knew this was only one doorway. if i found one person from one of my floors and they were streaming out of the doorways. i got to the 68th floor, the 92nd floor. and we heard a roar. i thought another plane was coming in to hit the buildings. i've never seen a picture of this. so i had no idea what's going on. number two world trade center, the other tower collapsing. i'm standing under the next building, i start running. for no reason, i run to my right. i run to my left, i get killed and run into the falling building. i look to my right. i look over my shoulder and there's a black tornado of smoke. i'm a guy with a suit and a tie with shoes on running my tail off from this tornado. you see that movie, it doesn't work out well for the guy in the suit running from the tornado. i dive under the car. the world goes absolutely black. i couldn't see my hands, couldn't hear a sound. at first i thought i was blind and i thought i was deaf. then i thought for a while, maybe i'm dead. but i was holding my breath and, you know, don't bleed, don't bleed, don't breathe. i took a breath and i breathed this sort of thick -- i don't know what was in the air. it was thick, it was particles, it was thick. and i was suffocated and i was outside in new york. and so right then and there, i knew that the people inside, they were gone. because what air could they have? so from that moment on, it was my view that they were all gone. and so five minutes later when the sort of the color of the sky, you know, the world changed. i could now see my hands. you know, i stood up and i realized not only wasn't i dead, but i could walk. and i started walking. from that moment on, i thought all my friends were gone. >> i mean, this is just an extraordinary moment for you. you built this company. you've hired all these people. they've become close friends. your own brother is up there. you've had this miraculous escape. there's no other way to describe this. what is this possibly going through your mind, howard, as you walk away from this devastation in what are you thinking in that moment? >> i'm thinking that -- that i'm done. that, you know, we have -- i had no company. that everybody is dead and everybody is gone. i -- you know, that i'll take my family, i'll move to, you know, montana and i'll just, you know, change my life. i'm finished. there is no -- there is no "there" there. there's nothing left. i didn't -- i don't think i knew i had a london office. i thought everyone i ever imagined working with, ever, had been killed. and so i was just a zombie walking uptown. i walked uptown until i realized the people were clean -- remember, i was just covered in ash. i was one of those people with just the wild ash-covered body. and i walked up, i saw a line -- cell phones didn't work. there were a line of people waiting for the pay phone. and there was a woman talking on the pay phone. i walked over to her and i took the phone from her and i hung up the phone and she looked at me and she looked as if i was a ghost. and i called my wife to tell her i was alive. and the sound that she made was, you know, was one could never forget. she knew i was in the building when she saw that tower collapse. she probably assumed i was gone. she hasn't heard from me for an hour. so i just thought i was finished, simply. >> and your wife suddenly realizes that you're still alive. i think -- didn't she take a call before the tower came down from your brother in the tower, is that right? >> my sister, she was with me at school. so her phone wasn't working. but my sister had heard from my brother. and, you know, gary called my sister instead and said, you know, she picked up the phone and heard his voice, oh, my god, gary, thank god, gary, you're not there. he said, i am there. and i am here. and he told her that he loved her and he told her he -- that he was going to -- he was probably going to die. he told her he loved her and asked her to please tell me and my children how much he loved us and he was saying good-bye. and that's the saddest -- it's just so sad because what he did was he got up in the morning and he went to work -- living the american dream, working in the most beautiful offices high above new york with the most spectacular views in the world. and someone attacked america and chose our building. >> i want to take a break, howard. and come back and talk to you about the moment that you realized, ch, i'm not done, i'm going to rebuild this company bigger and better than ever. and in the process of doing that, i'm going to help all of the loved ones that these people that i loved and lost. 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every person who came to work for me in new york, everyone who was in the office. every single one was there. not there anymore. you can find them, all of them. every one, every one. >> i remember watching larry king when you made that extraordinarily emotional experience. my heart wept out to you. i didn't know you from adam and i can imagine any worse scenarios for any human being. you lost family members, 658 employees, friends, associates, everything, gone. you say, you walked away like a zombie covered in all of this stuff, you're thinking, that's it. that's pretty much my life, done. what was the moment for you when you reassessed that, when you got a feeling, it's not done, i can turn this in to a positive? >> my wife told me that one of my partners was alive and living in greenwich village. i thought, all right, i could just walk there. i could walk there to his house. not realizing it was a 45-minute walk. i was walking up. i got to his apartment. i rang the bell, i opened the door. he was covered with blood, steven. i grabbed him. i said, you okay, you okay? he says, yeah. i said where did the blood come from? he said i was in the elevator of the tower. i said, are you all right? he goes, yeah. are you bleeding? no. i said whose blood is it? he said, i don't know. we were having this crazy out of body conversation and he said, you know, we should call london. the minute he said we should call london, i think it was news to me that i had 1,000 people who workled for me in london. i had thought that when everybody was gone, literally everyone who had ever worked for me had been killed. we spoke to the guys in london. they were in crisis mode. they were hard at it trying to figure out who was alive, what to do. i said, oh, we have to shut the firm. and in london they're saying, hell no, we're not shutting this firm. and they sort of snapped me back in to back into humanity and thinking, okay, maybe we've got something that we can give it a go. i wouldn't suggest that until that day on larry king, which was on the 19th, that we were confident that we were going to make it. but we could talk about when that was. but speaking to my guys in london was the first moment i thought we could at least give it a go. >> but one of the many contentious things that you have to look at was how you were going to afford a paycheck for the people who died. you had trouble locating the families. all of the computer records were all gone. all of the data was gone. you had no record. so an awful situation. but you took a very tough decision and you got heavily criticized at the time. you said, i can't pay the paycheck. we have no staff here in america and we have no ability to pay. we're losing i think $1 million a week. >> $1 million a day. we were losing $1 million a day. >> $1 million a day. a catastrophic crisis, never mind the loss of life, but businesswise it was devastatind. but you decided to do an extraordinary thing. you said, look, i can't pay the paychecks, but what i will do -- i will dedicate, along with the partners we have left here, 25% of all of the profits of the company for the next five years and we'll cover your health care for the next ten years to all of the dependents of those who died. their immediate reaction was 25% of zero is zero. it's no good to us. tell me about the decision, the reactions of those families which was i can imagine pretty distressing to you, pretty hurtful. and tell me about how you feel now being able to repay -- not repay, but to allocate $118 million to those families? way, way more than they would ever have expected? >> so we decided -- we had a call at 11:00 at night. i didn't know who was alive. if you work for cantor fitzgerald, call this number. i gave our employees two choices. you can shut the firm and go to our friends' funeral. imagine, 20 funerals a day for every day for 35 straight days. you couldn't -- it's unfathomable, you can't consider it. or we have to work harder than we worked ever in our lives. god knows, i didn't want to work, i wanted to hold my family and i sure as heck didn't want to work for money. the only way to go to work was to take care of our friends' families. this was the 11th at night. i said what do you guys want to do? while the reasons were different, the core decision by everybody on the phone was unanimously, we've got to work, we've got to help our friends' family. we lined up cots in the corner. you took a piece of paper and went to sleep for four hours. when four hours passed, you got up, they laid down on the cot. your kids came to play with your at the parking lot. you went outside for 45 minutes to play. everybody worked 24 hours to see what we could establish about this company because we had made this decision we were going to take care of our friends' family. we couldn't get 25% of the profits and pay for their health care until the 19th because on the 19th was the first day we successfully paid for -- started to pay for all of the things we bought before september 11 and started delivering out all of the things we had sold. because on wall street, you don't want to own the stuff, you're just buying it and selling it. so we had $75 billion worth of bought-and-sold on the 10th of september that we had not yet processed. and the bank made a very simple decision with me. if any -- they would let me reopen, but on one condition. but the $75 million i had not processed every single night had to go down. if i did more business and god knows that whatever business i was going to do because cantor fitzgerald could not have been more destroyed. but as long as we bailed out and got rid of the older stuff and less than the new stuff, we could survive. so i had a number, on the 19th of september, it was $58 billion. and when we had opened our equity business, this was unbelievable, we figured we would do one trade per client because we were afraid if you screwed it up, the banks would close us down. and what -- what happened was, our clients felt so much desire to help us, that they all did their business with us. we had the busiest on the first day we reopened it. we couldn't handle it. we were killed with kindness. we told the world we were hungry. and everyone in the world stuck a piece of bread in our mouth, we're done. when i see you play that part of the interview, i don't think i could have been a bigger mess. >> is it fair to say that until the money came in to the families, that the decision you could take that was tough was to cut off the paycheck to make you temporarily a bad figure to them? an enemy figure until the money began to come and they could see that you were going to be good to your promise? >> until i was able to send them money, and by the way, you sent them money on october 22. so what we did was obviously the firm was going to be much, much smaller. we calculated how much money we needed to survive. we had $45 million that we could get out. october 22, bang, we sent out $45 million to these families. then