Daughters of 9/11 victims seek justice, answers about accused mastermind’s stalled trial

Two women who lost their fathers in the 9/11 attacks are forced to grapple with the fact that the man accused of orchestrating them has not yet been brought to justice. It’s a legal conundrum they have aimed to clarify as they seek answers about what happened.

Elizabeth Miller was 6 years old when her father, New York City firefighter Douglas Miller, died inside the burning World Trade Center. Jessica Trant was 19 when her father, bond salesman Daniel Trant, died on the 104th floor of the North Tower. He had called Trant’s mother to say goodbye.

Friday marks 25 years since the 9/11 attacks.

“It’s a busy week. I think there’s an overwhelming sense of love that we’re being shown, but I’m also ready to retreat,” Miller told “CBS Mornings” on Thursday.

Miller and Trant became friends on a shared quest to hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind behind the attacks, accountable, despite their opposing views on exactly what accountability should look like. Mohammed confessed to planning and executing the attacks while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

A new documentary, “Daughters of 9/11,” which airs Friday, follows their pursuit of information and closure, which they were determined to find for themselves, other families who lost loved ones in the attacks and the American public at large.

“We had to share losing our loved one with the world, our grief with the world,” Trant said on “CBS Mornings.” “People forget that when the buildings go down, they’re not watching buildings; they are watching our loved ones being murdered. … My grief turned into a responsibility when I was finally ready to deal with it. That responsibility was going to Guantanamo and it became my mission now.”

Frank Pellegrino, a former FBI special agent who dedicated years of his career to hunting Mohammed and, eventually, interrogated him face-to-face once he was captured and transferred to Guantanamo, told “CBS Mornings” that Mohammed appeared arrogant when they spoke and he didn’t display remorse over the attack.

During the four-day interrogation, parts of which are featured in the new documentary, Mohammed confessed that he “was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” telling Pellegrino, “I did it.” But whether or not that confession should legally be used to prosecute him has been widely debated.

A military court ruled in August that the interrogation would be inadmissible in an upcoming criminal trial against Mohammed, which is slated to begin at Guantanamo in 2028, because his confession couldn’t be separated from the earlier torture he’d undergone following his 2003 capture.

Pellegrino admitted he still deals with guilt over his failure to catch Mohammed before 9/11.

“I had five years to find him, and we didn’t,” he told “CBS Mornings,” recounting instances in the years leading up to the attack where his team came close, but Mohammed got away. “It’s uncomfortable at times.”

Trant said Pellegrino shouldn’t feel guilt because “he was the only one looking for him, with his partner.”

“It’s a big world out there and I think he was one of the only people that was screaming from the rooftops who this guy was and nobody was really listening to him,” she said of Pellegrino. “Even after 9/11 happened, Frank was saying, ‘This is my guy.'”

She added: “And I think, I feel indebted to Frank, if anything, and I think it’s been a privilege doing this documentary with him, because I think that he has dedicated, even after 9/11, to us families. So I think he shouldn’t feel an ounce of guilt.”

The documentary aims to shed light on the legal processes and disputes that have long prevented Mohammed’s criminal trial from moving forward. He faces a range of charges including conspiracy, terrorism, hijacking and murdering 2,976 people.

“Daughters of 9/11” airs tomorrow, Sept. 11, at 9 p.m. ET on CBS. It will also stream on Paramount+.