It has been nearly 25 years since the horrific attacks of 9/11. Did you know as of August 17, 2025, CBS/60 Minutes News tells us, the following: (this is from the transcript of a story ran on August 17, 2025.)
This month, against all odds and expectations, the remains of three victims of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center were identified for the first time. After nearly a quarter century, the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced that it had put names to fragmentary remains using the latest advances in DNA technology. As we first reported last year, not many are aware, but the medical examiner made a promise to identify the lost souls of 9/11. And that work has never stopped because more than 1,000 families still wait for word. You’re about to meet two for whom the promise was kept. For Ellen Niven, the moment came in December 2023. She was decorating her Christmas tree when two police officers came to her door with news of her husband, John, who had been missing 22 years.
Ellen Niven: John was my husband, I met him when I was 24 years old and had moved to New York. Incredible person, described by people who knew him as a real gentleman, very old school, old soul. Wonderful father. Very happy when we had our young son and spent a lot of time with him. Great friend to a lot of– a lot of people.
John Niven was a 44-year-old insurance executive bound for his office on the 105th floor of the South Tower as the terrorist attack began.
Scott Pelley: The first building was hit; John was in the second building.
Ellen Niven: The South Tower, yes.
Scott Pelley: And he had an opportunity to call you.
Ellen Niven: Yes, he said, “Hi, honey, it’s me. If you hear anything on the news, don’t worry, I’m okay. It was the other building.”
In the “other building,” a different family tragedy was unfolding. Twenty-five-year-old, “Haberman, Andrea L.” had just received a visitor pass on her first trip to her company’s headquarters on the 92nd floor. Back home in Chicago, “Andy” as her family called her, had just been fitted for her wedding dress. In Wisconsin, her mother Kathy, was watching the news.
Kathy Haberman: I was shocked. And I ran upstairs to wake up Gordy, to tell him. And then, I came back downstairs just in time to see the second plane hit.
That was United Flight 175, as Gordon Haberman joined his wife.
Gordon Haberman: I threw a cup against the wall. I remember that. Thing is, we didn’t know what tower she was in. We didn’t know where she was.
The search for Andrea Haberman, John Niven and nearly 3,000 others would become the passion of Dr. Charles Hirsch, the city’s chief medical examiner. He raced to the base of the burning towers with a team that included a young scientist named Mark Desire.
Mark Desire: Both towers were standing. They were on fire. We parked our truck. We were to set up a temporary morgue and begin to preserve the evidence. Wasn’t down there very long. I had just received my orders from Dr. Hirsch. I picked up our gear box and the South Tower cracked. It was– it was right over us, that plume. I could see the steel and the fire coming down. And I thought, “This is it. This is how I die.”
The South Tower, with John Niven inside, foundered after 56 minutes.
Scott Pelley: As you’re running away from the collapsing South Tower, you were heading for a door in an adjacent building. And then, you got blasted off your feet?
Mark Desire: Yeah, it just knocked me right out of my shoes. Never made it to the door. But it was enough to get me through– through the– partially through the window, which really what saved my life. If I was on the outside, everything that came down across my legs would have– would– taken me out.
The medical examiner’s team survived. That’s Mark Desire, in the middle in the green shirt. The North Tower, in the distance, is minutes from collapse. Andrea Haberman is inside. Her parents, her sister Julie and fiancé, Al, drove 16 hours to Manhattan where they picked up a list of hospitals.
Gordon Haberman: But with those lists of medical centers– Kathy and I split up — and Julie and Al took the west side of Broadway. And we took the east side. 32 different medical centers, working our way down towards the tip of Manhattan and Ground Zero. ‘Course, the answers were–
Kathy Haberman: No.
Gordon Haberman: No.
“No” for Andrea Haberman and, thousands of others. Manhattan was papered in pleas for the missing. and longing remained after hope had washed away.
Julie Osmus: Everybody has a flier. Everybody is looking for their people…
Families lined up at a National Guard armory and waited hours to give DNA samples to the medical examiner.
Mark Desire: 17,000– 17,000 reference samples; toothbrushes, razors, hairbrushes, anything that the person touched when they were alive. If we couldn’t get one of those samples, what living relatives do we have? Moms and dads, kids…
Ellen Niven: There was DNA swab done of my young son, Jack’s cheek. You filled out descriptions, you gave photographs. You filled out many, many forms.
Scott Pelley: They swabbed your son’s cheek for DNA.
Ellen Niven: Yes.
Scott Pelley: How old was he?
Ellen Niven: Eighteen months.
His father was among those entombed in a mountain of misery. Nearly two million tons of debris were searched by hand for human remains. After a year, they thought they had found everything, but then in 2006, there was a shocking revelation– bone fragments on the roof of a building across the street from ground zero. The medical examiner sent anthropologist Bradley Adams.
Bradley Adams: We ended up going through the whole rooftop– and we found over 700 small bone fragments on that rooftop. And then we ended up, you know, obviously if there’s remains there, we need to search other areas. So, we went through every floor of that building, even to the point of having vacuum cleaners and vacuuming up dust and debris.
The remains on the Deutsche Bank building were from American Airlines Flight 11. The discovery prompted a new search for clues at ground zero.
Bradley Adams: Computer floppy disks or golf balls or parts of office furniture that would be buried there. And if you’re seeing that, then you know there’s the potential there could be human remains mixed in with this World Trade Center debris.
Five years after the attack, Brad Adams began collecting 18,000 tons of excavation material over the course of a year. Seventy five anthropologists washed it through screens.
Scott Pelley: How many human remains did you find in that project?
Bradley Adams: There was the 700 on Deutsche Bank, and then over a thousand more were found during the sifting operations.
All together, the total World Trade Center remains came to 21,905.
Dr. Jason Graham: The recovery efforts have been monumental, and this was an unprecedented event as you know, this is the greatest mass murder in the history of the United States.
Today, Dr. Jason Graham is New York City’s chief medical examiner. He inherited this promise made by his late predecessor, Charles Hirsch.
Dr. Jason Graham: As long as there are families who are continuing to seek answers, this work will continue.
Scott Pelley: What’s the scope of what’s left to be done?
Dr. Jason Graham: There were 2,753– victims– homicide victims. 60 percent of those individuals have been identified. 40 percent– are left to be identified.
Forty percent comes to 1,100 victims with no identified remains.
Mark Desire: So, these are the steps from once remains are received…
Putting a name to those remains is the job of the last original member of the medical examiner’s 9/11 team, Mark Desire, now assistant director of forensic biology.
Mark Desire: These remains went through every possible thing that could destroy DNA, from jet fuel to diesel fuel, mold, bacteria, sunlight, all kinds of chemicals that were in the building, insects, heat, fire. All these things destroy DNA. Everything was present at Ground Zero, making this not only the largest forensic investigation in the history of the United States, but the most difficult.
Scott Pelley: Some of these World Trade Center remains have been tested how many times?
Mark Desire: Ten, 15 times? Yeah.
Scott Pelley: Without a result?
Mark Desire: Without a result. But if there’s DNA, we’re gonna find it. We’re gonna find it. We’re gonna generate a profile. It may take us a while.
All remains today are bone. In a demonstration with animal bone, Desire showed us new technologies that make breakthroughs possible. They include this cryogenic grinder, filled with liquid nitrogen at 320 degrees below zero.
Mark Desire: The early days of 9/11, 2001, we were doing this all by hand with a mortar and pestle.
With high-speed vibration, individual cells in the deeply frozen bone shatter—a chemical process releases their DNA.
Mark Desire: Equipment like this has taken it to the next level, given us so much more access to cells. We need as much DNA as possible because these samples have hardly any.
Other innovations chemically amplify DNA revealing more information from the smallest fragment.
Mark Desire: Some as small as the size of a Tic Tac, we’ve been able to get DNA from those and generate a DNA profile.
Samples are tested every week with advanced technology. John Niven’s bone fragments, 15 in all, had been tested for years. Then, in 2023, the lab made a “perfect” match to the swab of the cheek of his infant son—taken 22 years before. First notifications are made in person.
Samples are tested every week with advanced technology. John Niven’s bone fragments, 15 in all, had been tested for years. Then, in 2023, the lab made a “perfect” match to the swab of the cheek of his infant son—taken 22 years before. First notifications are made in person.
Ellen Niven: And the police came to the door, and my first reaction was, I said, “Is– is it my son?” And they said, “No, everything’s okay.” And these two wonderful, really kind– policemen said– “We’re here to deliver you the news,” and they had a letter, “That your husband’s DNA has been discovered.
Scott Pelley: When the police officers said, “we’ve found your husband’s DNA,” I mean, that must’ve hit you as quite a shock.
Ellen Niven: It was a shock that they’ve been looking all these, all these 22 years. I thought that that door had long been closed.
About half of 9/11 families have told the medical examiner that if their loved one is identified today-they don’t want to know. Time has lightened their burden of grief. But the other half still hope for word. Few understand this mix of emotions like Dr. Jennifer Odien. She’s the medical examiner’s World Trade Center anthropologist — a scientist and something of a counselor to those still hoping for the promise.
Continue reading: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyc-medical-examiner-still-identifying-september-11-victims-remains-60-minutes-transcript/
