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August 27, 2002 9:00 a.m. Reliving the 11th CBS has it on DVD.

here were you when you first heard the news about the World Trade Center? Chances are in front of a television. That's how most Americans learned about the horror unfolding in downtown Manhattan. Word first reached me by phone, after which I put on my shoes, grabbed my notebook, and ran for the Brooklyn Bridge. Since that day, I have regretted not popping a tape into the VCR before I left, so that I would have on record the first television draft of one of the most important days in American history.

Happily for news junkies like me, CBS News has just released a DVD compilation of highlights of its coverage from September 11, and the days, weeks, and months following. The documentary comes with a 140-page hardcover book titled What We Saw, which includes photographs, transcripts, news articles, short essays, and remembrances of the 9/11 events and their aftermath. The approximately 90-minute video documentary is the real draw, however. It's the kind of thing you'll be taking out again and again as the years go by, to show your grandkids and even remind yourself what it was like to live through those dramatic days.

The presentation begins with Bryant Gumbel, then the host of The Early Show, reporting at 8:52 a.m. that a plane had just hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. It's a strange feeling to see the painfully familiar image of the black smoke gushing out of the gash in the building's north face, and to hear Gumbel grappling to understand what has happened. He speaks on the phone with a doorman from the Marriott World Trade Center hotel, who in retrospect seems so innocent in his pitiful inability to make sense of what he's experiencing.

Listening to the doorman's nervous banter is nerve-wracking because we know that United 175 is bearing down on the city. It hits its target as Gumbel is on the phone with a female witness, who exclaims, "Oh my God! Another plane has just hit — it hit another building, flew right into the middle of it." As often as we have seen that image, it is electrifying to see it reported in real time.

At some point, Dan Rather takes over the anchor seat as all hell breaks loose at the Pentagon. It is startling to observe his coolness under fire. Say what you will about his politics, the man is a professional, and showed it that day. A breathless correspondent Harold Dow telephones from an underground shoeshine shop in a subway tunnel, where he's taken refuge from the collapse of the south tower. Incredibly, even as we see on the screen that the south tower has fallen, Rather seems not to know what he's looking at. My guess is that like many of us, his mind wasn't prepared to accept what his eyes were telling him. It is an extraordinary moment.

Reporter Carol Marin, who was nearly killed in one of the collapses, arrives on the set covered in dust. Rather grabs her hand to steady her as she tells of the fireman who saved her life. Bob Schieffer reports live from Washington that, "This is being seen on Capitol Hill as another Pearl Harbor." By day's end, a gaunt and emotional Byron Pitts presents the main CBS Evening News report from Ground Zero, swallowing hard to keep from crying as he says, "We have seen blood. We have seen body parts. We have seen people die in front of our eyes."

The greater part of the What We Saw documentary presents lengthier, produced pieces relating particular aspects of the immense story as it later developed. They aren't as exciting as the "day-of" reports, which the disc could have used more of. It would have been thrilling to have seen how Rather reported the crash of United 93 in Pennsylvania, or introduced President Bush's first statement to the nation, which was made from Barksdale Air Force Base. I seem to recall being quite affected last year by TV reports showing candlelight vigils and memorials the world over, but none of this made the CBS documentary.

Nevertheless, the slower, meatier pieces are still worthwhile to have as a record of how things were. I had forgotten how good it felt to live through the national outpouring of patriotism, solidarity, and fellow feeling until I saw the CBS reports, particularly Ed Bradley's terrific "60 Minutes" segment on the "city within a city" that volunteers built at Ground Zero. Rather's lengthy 48 Hours report on the FDNY's pipe and drum corps, which played for all the firefighters' funerals — including one for a fellow piper — was especially moving.

The regimented clatter of snare drums and the mournful whine of the bagpipes — that was the sound of New York City last fall. So were the tearful remembrances of grown men digging in the rubble for their lost comrades, and the love and enthusiasm of Americans giving what they could to help their countrymen. Here on this disc are former drug addicts who drove up from Dallas to barbecue for the rescue workers, and who found redemption for themselves in so doing. One of the Texas boys, just as thrilled as he can be to be doing something meaningful says, "Even though this is a horrific tragedy, this is New York's finest hour."

It's good to relive this again. All of it. It must not have cost CBS anything to compile the best of its reporting for the What We Saw DVD presentation, but they have produced a video document whose value to viewers will increase as the years pass, and the immediacy of the September 11 events for those who lived through them is lost to history.