Editor’s Note:
We are devoting many posts today to the anniversary of 9/11, with first-hand accounts, insight, and commentary dedicated to that day seven years ago that changed our world.
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2007 Memorial ceremony for flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

David Mattingly | Bio
AC360° Contributor

I was the first network correspondent to reach the Shanksville crash site.

I had been on vacation at my mother-in-law’s house in central Pennsylvania with plans to go fishing when news of the crash came in.

I remember having to talk my way through police check points using my CNN cap and my Georgia drivers license as the only proof that I was a CNN correspondent. Fortunately it was enough.

I was astonished when authorities let me view the crash site. The destruction was unlike any airline crash I had ever seen.

Keep reading

David Mattingly | Bio
AC360° Contributor

If you blinked, you missed me. Just as I started talking during my liveshot, the deluge that is Tropical Storm Hanna blew out our lights. Electronics and water don’t mix.

The really strange thing was the timing. I had been standing there with the light working for almost 15 minutes before Anderson spoke to me. I continued reporting in the dark. Take my word for it…even though you couldn’t see it, it was raining–a LOT!

David Mattingly | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

For the last several days I have been hearing Tropical Storm Hanna described as “disorganized” and “poorly shaped”. This kind of unflattering talk has apparently made Hanna mad.

This storm is getting it’s act together just in time to hit the northern South Carolina coast tonight. I am in Myrtle Beach where we’ve been told to not be surprised to see Hanna become a hurricane just as it arrives late tonight.

A lesson from the recent past should tell us not to take Tropical Storm Hanna lightly. If predictions are correct and it upgrades to a Cat 1 hurricane before landfall, don’t make the mistake of calling it a “minimal” hurricane.

The last time I was reporting live from a Cat 1 Hurricane I was knocked off the air by torrential rains. I remarked later (after we re-established a signal) that it was pouring so hard I would choke on the blowing rain as I tried to breathe.

That happened three years ago in Hollywood, Florida and the storm was called “Katrina”. That “minimal” Cat 1 left behind widespread flooding in Florida before moving on to terrorize the Gulf Coast.

Hanna is expected to go north and diminish as it goes up the eastern seaboard. But all hurricanes deserve respect. Here’s hoping Hanna remains “just” a tropical storm.

Fundamentalist LDS Church spokesman Willie Jessop talks with reporters on Capitol Hill, today, following the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: Crimes Associated with Polygamy.

David Mattingly
AC360° Correspondent

When Senator Harry Reid of Nevada accuses polygamists of forming “a sophisticated, wealthy and vast criminal organization” and calls polygamous communities “a form of organized crime,” he speaks from experience that goes beyond his role as Senate Majority Leader.

Years ago, Reid was the head of the Nevada Gaming Commission and worked to root out organized crime from Las Vegas casinos. He says polygamous communities in the U.S. are not the same as the old Vegas mobs but he says they continue to engage in crimes too serious to ignore. Keep reading

David Mattingly
AC360° Correspondent

All roads to Gulfport, IL lead to nowhere. They all dead-end into Mississippi flood waters. The closest we could get to the inundated Village using roads in Illinois was a police roadblock that is SEVEN MILES from town. That might tell you how close this river town of about 200 was to disaster when the flood waters started to rise.

But people lived here comforted by a levee system that the government said would protect them from a 100 year flood. No one was required to have federal flood insurance. Only 28 property owners had it. Some now say they were misled about the risks they were taking and that the chance of catastrophic flooding was miscalculated.

Keep reading

Ismael Estrada and David Mattingly
AC360° Producer and Correspondent

ELDORADO, Texas — Schleicher County, Texas is the kind of small community where everyone knows your name. This tiny town has two traffic lights and gas stations, a few restaurants, a small, local weekly paper and now — possibly hundreds of new voters.

A few years ago, when the FLDS polygamist sect set up camp on their new 1,700-acre property, they told local officials they wanted nothing to do with local government. They say they just wanted to stay to themselves in their secluded YFZ ranch, where they were building massive homes and a temple as more FLDS members moved in.

But their promise to stay out of local government has changed since Texas authorities raided their property on April 3. Keep reading

David Mattingly
360 Correspondent

It looks like payback time in Eldorado. Members of the secluded, polygamist sect felt vindicated yesterday when the Texas Supreme Court agreed state authorities did not have the right to take all 400-plus children into custody. But the FLDS families don’t plan to go home quietly. Come November…they plan to vote.

I spoke at length with sect spokesman Willie Jessop about plans to register five to six hundred FLDS voters. Schleicher County has fewer than 19 hundred registered voters and no candidate is safe.

Sheriff David Doran, one of the leaders of the April raid at the YFZ ranch was the leading county vote-getter four years ago with just 903 votes. He’s in for the re-election campaign of his life.

The County Commissioner from the precinct where you find the FLDS compound should also be worried. He ran unopposed four years ago and got into office with just 154 votes. Just a couple hundred write-in votes could conceivably land a sect member a seat on the county commission.

You can view court evidence here.

According to testimony, one of the girls seen kissing Jeffs was the baby’s aunt, lived in the same home with the parents and was only 13. The state provided no context for the photos–we don’t know why they were taken or where authorities found them. But, it’s clear, these pictures had an impact on this hearing and proved to be an effective weapon for the state when they try to prove the existence of a pervasive pattern of abuse at the Yearning for Zion Ranch.

The pictures are of Warren Jeffs and 2 minors…

These pictures were entered into evidence on Friday for the Jessops custody hearing but also released to the media…

Here is what we know about one of the girls in the photos

• Lived on the YFZ Ranch in the same building with the Jessops
• Is a minor
• Was supposed to testify in the Jessop’s custody case, or called as a witness, but the two parties reached an agreement before that happened

David Mattingly
360° Correspondent

Conversation with adults from the FLDS sect in west Texas are usually very polite and very short. Few have been willing to share more than a friendly “hello” with me and even fewer have been willing to discuss any details of this mammoth child abuse investigation.

But today, 32-year-old father James Jessop tells me he and his wife are weary. The couple has 5 children in four different foster care facilities.

State child protection officials say they’ve tried to keep family groups together. But that is not the case with the Jessops.

The kids are spread from Houston to Abileen. The Jessops figure that a single visit to each child is an 18-hundred mile journey.

James Jessop also has two other children by two other wives. He plans to be back in court when each of those cases are scheduled.

Jessop firmly believes the state has attacked the sect for its religious beliefs. But he is among parents who now say they will do anything the state requires to get his children back.

David Mattingly
360° Correspondent

Why did the state have to take all of the kids when it raided the polygamous sect’s ranch in West Texas?  Come Monday, the state of Texas will have to start explaining itself one child at a time as these 400-plus custody cases go before judges in San Angelo.  Frustrations abound in this case.  Families say many of the girls in custody who are pregnant or have already given birth are actually adults.  State investigators say they continue to get conflicting information when they ask about ages and try to match kids to their biological parents.  Attorneys representing the kids say the state won’t give them the information they need.  No one is happy and no one has any idea how all this will end.  Judges start to try and make sense of it all on Monday when each mother and father begin to find out what the state says they will have to do if they want to get their children back.