Day Of Infamy
- Two Planes Slam Into Twin Towers; Both Later Collapse
- .Pentagon Ablaze After Massive Explosion
- Enormous Casualties Likely; U.S. Officials Suspect bin Laden
NEW YORK, Sept, 11, 2001
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| CBS |
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The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed Tuesday morning.
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(CBS) In the most devastating terrorist onslaught ever waged against the United States, hijackers crashed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center on Tuesday, toppling its twin 110-story towers. The deadly calamity was witnessed on televisions across the world as another plane slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed outside Pittsburgh.
Said Adm. Robert J. Natter, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet: "We have been attacked like we haven't since Pearl Harbor."
Establishing the U.S. death toll could take weeks, but it was expected casualties would be in the thousands. The four airliners alone had 266 people aboard and there were no known survivors. The dead and the doomed plummeted from the skyscrapers, among them a man and woman holding hands. A fire official told CBS News Correspondent David Martin Tuesday night that rescue teams were waiting to remove between 100 and 800 bodies from the Pentagon. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said late Tuesday night that some people remained alive in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
And late Tuesday night, CBS News reported, the FBI stopped a truck laden with explosives as it headed toward the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey to upper Manhattan. Two men in the truck were arrested. It was unclear whether the incident was related to the day's earlier events.
"Today, our nation saw evil," President Bush said in an address to the nation Tuesday night. He said the United States would retaliate against "those behind these evil acts," and any country that harbors them. He said that the terrorist attacks today were supposed to frighten the country into "chaos and retreat" - but that they have failed.
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| Interactive: America Under Attack |
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Mike Carter, vice president of the firefighters union, estimated that half of the 400 firefighters who first reached the scene may be dead. "We have entire companies that are just missing ... We lost chiefs ... We're going to have to bury a lot of people," he said. WCBS reported that many of the top officials of the New York Fire Department and some of the Port Authority are among the dead.
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning and, I assure you, freedom will be defended," said President Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the catastrophe. As a security measure, he was shuttled to an Air Force base in Louisiana, and then to a Strategic Air Command bunker in Nebraska.
"Make no mistake," he said. "The United States will hunt down and pursue those responsible for these cowardly actions."
No one took responsibility for the audacious events that rocked the seats of finance and government, but federal authorities identified Osama bin Laden, who has been given asylum by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, as the prime suspect.
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| National Hotline |
| For information about a friend or family member who may have been a victim of these attacks, call 800-331-0075, The Office Of Victims Of Crime, at the Department Of Justice. |
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The nation's aviation system was shut down as officials considered the frightening flaws that had been exposed in security procedures.
Just before 7 p.m. ET, speaking from the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon is functioning, and will be open for business Wednesday. He said the number of casualties at the Pentagon "will not be a few."
Early Tuesday morning, Barbara Olson, the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, used a cell phone to tell her husband that her plane had been hijacked by attackers using knives and sharp instruments. The plane carrying Mrs. Olson, a frequent CNN commentator, crashed into the Pentagon shortly afterwards.
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| Blood Needed |
Disaster relief agencies were rushing blood supplies to New York City and Washington as Americans jammed donation centers to help an untold number of victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The New York Blood Center sent all of its inventory to the city's hospitals, in some cases hand-carrying it through chaotic streets. It also mobilized blood banks throughout the region to collect more. "There's enough to handle emergency needs at the minute. That could change in an hour," spokeswoman Melissa McMillen said.
The American Red Cross said it had 50,000 units ready to ship to New York if needed. However, it urged blood donors throughout the country to keep any appointments they have this week to give blood. Anyone who wants to give blood can do so at any hospital. |
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Officials across the world condemned the attacks but in the West Bank city of Nablus, thousands of Palestinians celebrated, chanting "God is Great" and handing out candy.
At the Pentagon, the symbol and command center for the nation's military force, one side of the building collapsed as smoke billowed over the Potomac River. Rep. Ike Skelton, briefed by Pentagon officials, said, "There appear to be about 100 casualties" in the building.
In Manhattan, the attacks altered the very skyline, destroying two buildings where 50,000 people worked. In the evening, huge clouds of smoke still billowed from the ruins. A burning, 47-story part of the World Trade Center complex collapsed in flames just before nightfall. The building had already been evacuated.
Major U.S. financial regulators Tuesday said domestic securities and futures markets will remain closed on Wednesday in the aftermath of attacks on several U.S. landmarks but added the markets will reopen as soon as it is "appropriate and practical."
The violence sent waves of fear across the continent and beyond. The aviation shutdown was the first in history. Financial markets were closed, too.
Top leaders of Congress were led to an undisclosed location as were key officials of the Bush administration. Guards armed with automatic weapons patrolled the White House grounds and military aircraft secured the skies above the capital city.
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| World Trade Center |
| The World Trade Center complex, situated at the southwestern tip of Manhattan, was made up of seven buildings and was best known for its giant twin towers. Built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a central facility for international trade, it was the world's largest commercial complex. Completed in 1970, the towers were each 110 stories tall and had 104 passenger elevators. The first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center occurred on Feb. 26, 1993, when a car bomb exploded in an underground garage, killing six people and causing more then $300 million in damages. Ten Muslim militants including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman were found guilty of conspiracy and other bombing charges in 1995. Ramzi Yousef, the leader of the attack, was found guilty of the bombing and was sentenced to life plus 240 years in prison.
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Evacuations were ordered at the tallest skyscrapers in several cities, and high-profile tourist attractions closed - Walt Disney World, Mount Rushmore, Seattle's Space Needle, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
"No one has been ruled out, but our initial feeling is that this is the work of bin Laden," said a high-ranking federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He is top of our list at this point."
In Afghanistan, where bin Laden has been given asylum, the nation's hardline Taliban rulers rejected suggestions he was responsible. More than nine hours after the U.S. attacks began, explosions could be heard north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, but American officials said the United States was not responsible. "It isn't us. I don't know who's doing it," Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said.
Bin Laden came to prominence fighting alongside the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedeen - holy warriors - in their war against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Former followers say he turned against the United States during the 1991 Gulf War, seething at the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait. He has repeatedly called on Muslims worldwide to join in a jihad, or holy war, against the United States.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he received a warning from Islamic fundamentalists close to bin Laden, but had not taken 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.
This is how Tuesday's mayhem unfolded:
At about 8:45 a.m., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the Trade Center. Clyde Ebanks, an insurance company vice president, was at a meeting on the 103rd floor of the south tower when his boss said, "Look at that!" He turned to see a plane slam into the other tower.
The enormity of the disaster was just sinking in when 18 minutes later, the south tower also was hit by a plane.
"All this stuff started falling and all this smoke was coming through. People were screaming, falling, and jumping out of the windows," said Jennifer Brickhouse, 34, from Union, N.J. The chaos was just beginning. Workers stumbled down scores of flights, their clothing torn and their lungs filled with smoke and dust.
John Axisa said he ran outside and watched people jump out of the first building; then there was a second explosion, and he felt the heat on the back of his neck. At 9:50 a.m., one tower collapsed, sending debris and dust cascading to the ground. At 10:30 a.m., the other tower crumbled.
Glass doors shattered, police and firefighters ushered people into subway stations and buildings. The air was black, from the pavement to the sky. The dust and ash were inches deep along the streets.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said it was believed the after-effects of the plane crashes eventually brought the buildings down, not planted explosive devices.
Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering professor and the construction manager for the World Trade Center, speculated that flames fueled by thousands of gallons of aviation fuel melted steel supports.
"This building would have stood, had a plane or a force caused by a plane smashed into it," he said. "But steel melts, and 24,000 gallons of aviation fluid melted the steel. Nothing is designed or will be designed to withstand that fire."
At mid-afternoon, Giuliani said 1,500 "walking wounded" had been shipped to Liberty State Park in New Jersey by ferry and tugboat, and 750 others were taken to New York City hospitals, among them 150 in critical condition.
Bystanders helped the injured, along with multitudes of emergency workers who poured into the area.
Meanwhile, at about 9:30 a.m., an airliner hit the Pentagon, the five-sided headquarters of the American military. "There was screaming and pandemonium," said Terry Yonkers, an Air Force civilian employee at work inside the building.
The military boosted security across the country to the highest levels, sending Navy ships to New York and Washington to assist with air defense and medical needs.
A half-hour after the Pentagon attack, a United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 jetliner en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. A congressman said the hijackers intended to crash the plane into Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
Minutes before the crash, a passenger told an emergency dispatcher in a cell phone call: "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!"
Airline officials said the other three planes that crashed were American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 from Boston to Los Angeles, apparently the first to hit the Trade Center; United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767 from Boston to Los Angeles, which an eyewitness said was the second to hit the skyscrapers; and American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington-Dulles to Los Angeles that a source said hit the Pentagon.
The nightmare sent shockwaves across the country. The Federal Reserve, seeking to provide assurances that the nation's banking system would be protected, said it would provide additional money to banks if needed.
Americans reacted strongly to the attack. "This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.
"Someone is trying to make a serious statement and I hope we do likewise," said Scott Gilmore at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Another man, a World War II veteran in Nashville for a reunion of the U.S.S. Intrepid aircraft carrier, was incensed. "I feel like going to war again. No mercy," said Felix Novelli, a New Yorker with friends who work at the World Trade Center. "We have to come together like '41, go after them."
"We're at war," said Gaillard Pinckney, an employee at the Housing and Urban Development office in Columbia, S.C. "We just don't know with who."
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