News Sept.13,2001

Please Pray For America At This Time Of Crisis

Terror Attacks Rock New York, Washington, D.C.

Attack On America Time Line Click Picture

U.S. Searches For Perpetrators, Survivors

update NEW YORK--As the smoldering ashes of the World Trade Center slowly yielded unimaginable carnage, investigators fanned out across the country Wendesday to track the conspirators who orchest- rated an unprecedented day of terror from the air.

The few stories that remained of the World Trade Center's south tower collapsed Wednesday afternoon in yet another plume of thick smoke. No injuries were reported, but rescuers were evacuated from a portion of the area where the 1,350-foot titans stood.

Police and fire officials said there were problems with other "mini-collapses" among some badly damaged buildings nearby, and when the towers were destroyed, the Marriott World Trade Center hotel fell with them. But the search and rescue mission continued despite the problems.
The devastation turned the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan into a dust-covered ruin of girders and boulders of broken concrete. A Brooks Brothers clothing store became a morgue, where workers brought any body parts they could find.

The workers' grim task was interrupted by brief epiphanies of life, when a fortunate victim was pulled alive from the wreckage of the steel-and-glass buildings. Four victims, three of them police officers, had been pulled from the wreckage.

In Washington, the Bush administration disclosed that the White House and Air Force One may originally have been among the targets of Tuesday's devastation.

The investigation swept from a Boston hotel to Florida and points beyond--all in an attempt to determine just who was behind the attacks in which two hijacked airliners blasted into the 110-story towers, a third dove into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania.

President Bush condemned the onslaught as "acts of war" and NATO gave the United States its backing for a military response if the attacks were directed from abroad.

While investigators and diplomats moved forward in their tasks, progress for rescuers in New York was slow. Cranes and heavy machinery were used, but only gingerly, for fear of dislodging wreckage and harming any survivors. Searchers with picks and axes worked slowly, too--sometimes when they opened pockets in the debris, fires flared.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the best estimate is that "a few thousand" victims would be left in each building. There were 55 confirmed fatalities--a number that was sure to grow. Another 1,700 injuries were reported.

The four hijacked planes carried 266 people, none of whom survived. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an estimate that as many as 800 people were killed at the Pentagon may be far too high.

Authorities had "specific credible information" that both Air Force One and the White House were targets, and that "the plane that hit the Pentagon may have been headed for the White House," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council.

There also was speculation that, in the case of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, the hijackers intended to jet elsewhere but were thwarted by the male passengers.

In a phone call from the air, businessman Thomas Burnett had told his wife, Deena: "I know we're all going to die--there (are) three of us who are going to do something about it." Then, Burnett told his wife, "I love you, honey" and the call ended, according to the family's priest, the Rev. Frank Colacicco.

Investigators fanned out across the nation, and beyond, looking for information that would pinpoint the culprits.

A Venice, Fla., man said FBI agents interviewed him and said that two men who stayed in his home last summer while training at a local flight school were among the hijackers.

Officials confirmed a car believed to belong to the hijackers was confiscated in Boston, where two of the hijacked planes took off, and that it contained an Arabic-language flight manual. Investigators also raided two Boston area hotels believed to be used by the hijackers.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities had reviewed "numerous credible leads," and were checking whether four separate cells of terrorists were involved. One set of hijackers is believed to have crossed from Canada and have ties to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile who authorities say is the suspected mastermind behind the attacks.

Bin Laden has been given asylum in Afghanistan, where international aid workers fled from the capital city of Kabul on Wednesday as residents worried about a possible U.S. military strike.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers demanded to see evidence backing allegations that bin Laden runs a global terrorism network responsible for the hijackings.

In New York, the rubble at the trade center was taken by boat to a former Staten Island garbage dump, where the FBI and other investigators searched for evidence.

One volunteer, Peter Coppola, said he had found four dead bodies in his 24 hours of searching. "The air down there is totally toxic," he said.

Smoke continued to billow upward, as it did all day Tuesday, and smaller fires still burned. Twisted metal piled 50 feet high filled the streets.

New Yorkers were told to steer clear of lower Manhattan and the financial markets were closed and were to remain so at least until Friday.

Schools also were closed and the New York Yankees' game was postponed, along with the rest of the major-league baseball schedule, including Thursday's games. Many other sporting events were either being canceled or postponed.

Federal officials partially lifted a ban on nationwide air travel, allowing flights that had been diverted on Tuesday to finish their journeys and empty planes to be moved around. All other flights remained grounded.

Copyright © 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

News Sept.12,2001

Attack On America

update NEW YORK--Mounting an audacious attack against the United States Tuesday morning, terrorists crashed two hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and brought down the twin 110-story towers. A jetliner also slammed into the Pentagon as the government itself came under attack.

Thousands could be dead or injured, a high-ranking New York City police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A fourth jetliner, also apparently hijacked, crashed in Pennsylvania.

President Bush ordered a full-scale investigation to "hunt down the folks who committed this act."

Authorities had been trying to evacuate those who work in the twin towers when the glass-and-steel skyscrapers came down in a thunderous roar within about 90 minutes after the attacks, which took place minutes apart around 9 a.m. But many people were thought to have been trapped. About 50,000 people work at the Trade Center and tens of thousands of others visit each day.

American Airlines said two of its planes, both hijacked, crashed with a total of 156 people aboard, but said it could not confirm where they went down. Two United airliners with a total of 110 aboard also crashed--one outside Pittsburgh, the other in a location not immediately identified. Altogether, the planes had 266 people aboard.

"This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that's ever taken place in the world," said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Transport in London. "It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups is on that list...I would name at the top of the list Osama bin Laden."

Within the hour, the Pentagon took a direct, devastating hit from a plane. The fiery crash collapsed one side of the five-sided structure.

The White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol were evacuated along with other federal buildings in Washington and New York.

The president put the military on its highest level of alert. Authorities in Washington immediately called out troops, including an infantry regiment, and the Navy sent aircraft carriers and guided missile destroyers to New York and Washington. The U.S. and Canadian borders were sealed, security was tightened at naval installations and other strategic points, and all commercial air traffic across the country was halted until at least noon on Wednesday.

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. The Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed nearly 2,400 people and drew the United States into World War II.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said: "These attacks clearly constitute an act of war."

In June, a U.S. judge had set this Wednesday as the sentencing date for a bin Laden associate for his role in the 1998 bombing of a U.S. embassy in Tanzania that killed 213 people. The sentencing had been set for the federal courthouse near the World Trade Center. No one from the U.S. attorney's office could be reached Tuesday to comment on whether the sentencing was still on.

Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers condemned the attacks and rejected suggestions that bin Laden was behind them, saying he does not have the means to carry out such well-orchestrated attacks. Bin Laden has been given asylum in Afghanistan.

Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he received a warning from Islamic fundamentalists close to bin Laden, but did not take the threat seriously. "They said it would be a huge and unprecedented attack but they did not specify," Atwan said in a telephone interview in London.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians celebrated the attacks, chanting "God is Great" and handing out candy.

In New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said about 600 of the injured were taken to area hospitals, 150 of them in critical condition. It could take weeks to dig through the rubble for victims.

American Airlines initially identified the planes that crashed into the Trade Center as Flight 11, a Los Angeles-bound jet hijacked after takeoff from Boston with 92 people aboard, and Flight 77, which was seized while carrying 64 people from Washington to Los Angeles.

Law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon.

In Pennsylvania, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh with 45 people aboard. United said another of its planes, Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles with 65 people on board, also crashed, but it did not say where. The fate of those aboard the two planes was not immediately known.

United's pilots union said United Flight 175 crashed into the Trade Center. But the airline had no immediate comment.

An emergency dispatcher in Westmoreland County, Pa., received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer.

"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Cramer quoted the man as saying. The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.

Evacuations were ordered at the United Nations in New York and at the Sears Tower in Chicago. Los Angeles mobilized its anti-terrorism division. Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., was evacuated, and Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada line was closed to visitors.

In New York, hours after the attacks, huge clouds of smoke billowed from the ruins, obscuring much of the skyline.

The two planes blasted fiery, gaping holes in the upper floors of one of New York's most famous landmarks and rained debris on the streets. About an hour later, the southern tower collapsed with a roar and a huge cloud of smoke; the other tower fell about a half-hour after that, covering lower Manhattan in heaps of gray rubble and broken glass. Firefighters trapped in the rubble radioed for help.

"All this stuff started falling and all this smoke was coming through. People were screaming, falling, and jumping out of the windows," from high in the sky, said Jennifer Brickhouse, 34, of Union, N.J., who was going up the escalator into the World Trade Center.

On the street, a crowd mobbed a man at a pay phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. Ash was 2 to 3 inches deep in places. People wandered dazed and terrified.

"I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. "Right now we have to focus on saving as many lives as possible."

The death toll on the crashed planes alone could surpass that of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which claimed 168 lives in what was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

"Today we've had a national tragedy," Bush said in Sarasota, Fla. "Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country." He said he would be returning immediately to Washington, but on news of the Pentagon attack, those plans were cancelled and Bush was flown aboard Air Force One to the safety of a military installation at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

John Axisa, who was getting off a commuter train to the World Trade Center, said he saw "bodies falling out" of the building. He said he ran outside, and watched people jump out of the first building. Then there was a second explosion, and he felt heat on the back of neck.

People ran down the stairs in panic and fled the building. Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper drifted over Brooklyn, about three miles away.

Several subway lines were immediately shut down. Trading on Wall Street was suspended. New York's mayoral primary election Tuesday was postponed. All bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were closed.

David Reck was handing out literature for a candidate for public advocate a few blocks away when he saw a jet come in "very low, and then it made a slight twist and dove into the building."

Terrorist bombers struck the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

"It's just sick. It just shows how vulnerable we really are," Keith Meyers, 39, said in Columbus, Ohio. "It kind of makes you want to go home and spend time with your family. It puts everything in perspective," Meyers said. He said he called to check in with his wife. They have two young children.

In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in dense fog.

In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later.

Pentagon Hit By Plane, Capitol Evacuated

WASHINGTON--The Pentagon took a direct, devast- ating hit from an aircraft and the enduring symbols of American power were evacuated Tuesday as an apparent terrorist attack quickly spread fear and chaos in the nation's capital.

President Bush, in Florida at the time of the attack, canceled plans to return to Washington and was flown aboard Air Force One to the safety of a military installation at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The nerve center of the nation's military burst into flames and a portion of one side of the five-sided structure collapsed when the plane struck in midmorning. Secondary explosions were reported in the aftermath of the attack and great billows of smoke drifted skyward toward the Potomac River and the city beyond.

Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said there were "extensive casualties and an unknown number of fatalities. "We don't know the extent of the injuries," he said.

"Terrorism against our nation will not stand," Bush vowed on a morning when not only Washington was struck, but the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were hit by planes and later collapsed.

Bush was in Florida when the strike occurred. Vice President Dick Cheney was in Washington and he and first lady Laura Bush were taken to an undisclosed secure location, officials said. Congressional leaders were hustled away from the Capitol to safety.

"The leadership of the Defense Department is OK. The secretary (Donald H. Rumsfeld) is OK," Flood told reporters.

Authorities immediately began deploying troops, including a regiment of light infantry.

The departments of Justice, State, Treasury and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency were evacuated--an estimated 20,000 at the Pentagon alone. Agents with automatic weapons patrolled the White House grounds.

And the FAA ordered the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down for the first time in history.

There was no attempt to minimize the impact.

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to the attack 60 years ago that surprised the nation's intelligence apparatus and propelled the country into World War II.

With Bush away from the capital, his advisers were preparing a list of options, including closing the nation's borders, according to a senior U.S. official.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was premature to discuss military options because investigators were still trying to determine who was responsible for the attacks.

Away from the Pentagon, unexplained explosions were reported in the vicinity of the State Department and the Capitol.

A torrent of people rushed from their office buildings throughout the nation's capital, eager to leave a city under siege. The cell phone networks were overloaded, clusters of people sprayed on the sidewalks and at least one suburban school district announced plans to close early.

The Pentagon was hit a short while after the World Trade Center was struck. a plane, described by witnesses as a jetliner, made impact in the portion of the building on side opposite from where Rumsfeld's office are located.

Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said he witnessed an explosion near the Pentagon, saying it sent a huge, orange fireball skyward.

AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner...It plowed right into the Pentagon."

Gen. Richard Myers, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that prior to the crash into the Pentagon, military officials had been notified that another hijacked plane had been heading from the New York area to Washington. He said he assumed that hijacked plane was the one that hit the Pentagon, though he couldn't be sure.

One of two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center was hijacked after takeoff from Boston and headed to Los Angeles with 92 aboard, American Airlines disclosed.

The second plane may have flown out of Newark, N.J., the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Asked if there was any possibility the crashes were anything other than deliberate, a government official said it appeared not to be an accident.