CBS Sets September 11 Special "Daughters of 9/11": Two-Hour Film Asks Whether the Attacks' Mastermind Will Ever Face Justice
CBS will air "Daughters of 9/11," a two-hour special, on Friday, September 11, from 9 to 11 pm, with streaming on Paramount+ Deadline.
The special centres on Elizabeth Miller and Jessica Trant, two women whose fathers died in the World Trade Center attacks. According to the programme's logline, twenty-five years after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, Miller, Trant and FBI special agent Frank Pellegrino confront a single question: will Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of masterminding the attacks, ever face justice Deadline?
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003. His trial before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay has been delayed for years by legal disputes over interrogation methods, evidence and procedure. As of 2026, no verdict has been reached.
The special is produced by three companies. Wolf Entertainment — the production banner behind the "Law & Order" and "Chicago" franchises — has executive producers Dick Wolf and Tom Thayer. Blowback Productions brings executive producer Daniel Voll, director Marc Levin, producers Daphne Pinkerson and Levin, and consulting producer Terry McDermott, who co-authored the book "The Hunt for KSM." See It Now Studios, CBS's in-house documentary unit, contributes executive producers Susan Zirinsky and Terence Wrong, with supervising producers Aysu Saliba and Cara Tortora Deadline.
The score comes from composer Brendan Ryan, who lost his newlywed bride in the World Trade Center on 9/11 Deadline. That personal thread runs through the film's fabric: the people telling this story are themselves shaped by the day it examines.
What makes the programme unusual is its narrow, personal aperture. Rather than a broad anniversary retrospective, it follows two daughters and an FBI agent as they track the unresolved legal case against the accused architect of the attacks. The focus is not on what happened on September 11, 2001, but on what has — and has not — happened since.
The September 11 airdate is fixed on the calendar regardless of what falls around it. A two-hour block on a Friday night, on a broadcast network and a streaming platform, gives the programme reach across both traditional and on-demand audiences.
