Posted on 09/12/2001 7:30:59 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Sept. 12 — President Bush declared Tuesday’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon “acts of war” and asked Congress for emergency funding to do “whatever it takes” to help the victims and protect national security. As authorities said there was “credible evidence” the terrorists also meant to fly their hijacked jetliners into the White House and Air Force One, the president appeared in public Wednesday for the first time since the disasters, journeying to the Pentagon to express his anger and sorrow at the devastation he saw there.BUSH JOINED Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, where workers had unfurled a giant U.S. flag from the roof of the smoldering headquarters of America’s defense establishment.
“I am overwhelmed by the devastation and destruction,” Bush said emotionally, reassuring workers that “our country cannot be cowed by terrorists, by people who don’t share our values.”
The crowd applauded and, echoing Tuesday evening’s patriotic display by members of Congress at the Capitol building, spontaneously began singing “God Bless America.”
Bush then went inside the building for private meetings with advisers and military officials, including Rumsfeld and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
TARGET: BUSH
Shortly before Bush emerged into Washington’s sunshine, Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that investigators had uncovered “real and credible evidence” that Bush’s plane, Air Force One, and home, the White House, had also been intended targets of the terrorists who flew three hijacked jetliners into the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center twin towers.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer earlier had told NBC News that one of the airliners was thought to have been targeting the White House.
He said that “credible evidence,” based on cell phone communications, suggested that Air Force One also was a target, forcing the president to zigzag across the country instead of returning directly to Washington from Florida, where he had been when the strikes occurred.
At a briefing for reporters after Ashcroft’s, however, Fleischer dropped use of the term “credible evidence,” saying only that authorities had received “credible information.” And Fleischer did not repeat his assertion that the information had come from cell phone calls, saying repeatedly that he would not discuss “sources of information.”
Bush, resolute in the face of the attacks, which were expected to have claimed thousands of lives, had told reporters at the White House earlier that “this battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it — we will win.”
He said he had asked Congress for funding authority to confront “a different enemy than we have ever faced” and to ensure that the nation has “whatever it takes to rescue victims, help the citizens of New York City and Washington, D.C., and to protect our national security.”
Fleischer told reporters that it was “a correct assumption” that the funding request would be in the billions of dollars.
House Republicans immediately began drafting an emergency spending package to pay for rescue and recovery operations, stepped-up security at airports and other facilities, and costs of tracking down the perpetrators and other needs.
Fleischer refused to be drawn into confirming whether Bush intended to seek a formal congressional declaration of war. “We will work with the Congress on the appropriate language at the appropriate time,” he said.
“At all times, it is important to work with Congress, but it is especially important at this time,” he said.
Across the nation, the attacks have had a deep impact:
Military in armored vehicles protected federal buildings in Washington, a day after the White House, the U.S. Capitol and other federal buildings were temporarily evacuated.
Bush placed U.S. military forces on the highest possible state of alert, and the aircraft carrier USS George Washington joined three other warships Wednesday off the coast of New York.
Financial markets were closed until at least Friday, New York Stock Exchange officials said. All Major League Baseball games were postponed through Thursday, and the National Football League said it was considering postponing its games this weekend.
The United Nations postponed next week’s scheduled International Children’s Summit. NBC’s Linda Fasulo reported that the U.N. General Assembly was concerned that New York’s need to focus on the aftermath of the Trade Center attacks would compromise security efforts at the summit.
The 12 FBI agents probing last year’s suicide attack on a U.S. warship left Yemen on Wednesday, apparently fearing fresh attacks, a Yemeni security official said.
The FBI set up a Web site for reporting tips: www.ifccfbi.gov.
The Justice Department established a hot line for families seeking information about victims and survivors. The number is (800) 331-0075.
In the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, hijackers crashed two jets into the World Trade Center, reducing both twin towers to huge piles of concrete and steel rubble. Other hijackers flew a jet into the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field, possibly missing its target because of a struggle on board.
Officials have not identified suspects, but suspicion immediately fell on Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi terrorist who has received sanctuary in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and his associates have boasted that they were preparing attacks against the United States in retaliation for its support of Israel.
The attacks stunned the nation and brought the government to a halt. For the first time ever, the Federal Aviation Administration closed all U.S. airports. New rules — including a ban on curbside luggage check-in — meant airports were unable to resume service at noon Wednesday as the FAA had hoped.
The FAA said that flights diverted Tuesday would be allowed to continue to their destinations Wednesday but that other flights were still on hold indefinitely.
On Wednesday, rescuers looked for any survivors while police and FBI agents looked for clues. NBC’s Pete Williams reported that law enforcement agents were rounding up “material witnesses” — people who might have been acquainted with the hijackers.
MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield reported that four firefighters had been found alive in the World Trade Center rubble Wednesday afternoon. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said earlier on NBC’s “Today” show that two police officers were rescued overnight after contacting rescuers by cell phone.
New York firefighter Rudy Weindler spent nearly 12 hours trying to find survivors overnight and found four — three people in the rubble and a pregnant woman sitting on a curb.
But hundreds, if not thousands, of people were feared dead, and rescue efforts were hampered Wednesday as some damaged buildings in the area threatened to come down.
“I lost count of all the dead people I saw,” Weindler said. “It is absolutely worse than you could ever imagine.”
INTENSE INVESTIGATION
Ashcroft told reporters Wednesday that the “most massive investigation ever conducted in America” so far had found that three to six hijackers had been aboard each of the four jetliners. He said they were armed with knives and box cutters and had “in some cases” made bomb threats.
Pilots were among the hijackers, “a number of them trained as pilots in the United States,” he said.
More than 4,000 FBI agents and 3,000 support staff were sifting through passenger manifests, rental car receipts, telephone logs, videotape from parking garages and pay phone videotape records, Ashcroft said.
NBC’s Pete Williams reported that one of the passenger lists led agents to a flight school in Florida, where officials said they believed at least two of the terrorists received pilot training during the past year.
In Boston, agents swarmed hotels where registration records matched suspicious names from passenger lists, Williams reported. At least three people were detained for further questioning, held officially over their immigration statuses.
FBI Director Robert Mueller stressed that no arrests had been made anywhere as part of the investigation, but he confirmed that some people had been detained over their immigration status.
The FBI also impounded a car at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where two of the deadly flights originated. In the car, which a witness was reported to have seen being driven by two Arabic men, authorities discovered airplane technical documents, Williams reported.
The luggage of one of the two men did not make his scheduled connecting flight, authorities said. The Boston Globe reported that it contained a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners and a fuel consumption calculator.
Tuesday’s attacks began before most of the 50,000 people who worked at the World Trade Center had arrived for work, and officials estimated that only 10,000 to 20,000 people were in the buildings when the first plane crashed. Many fled, rushing down dozens of flights of stairs before the second jet hit and the towers collapsed.
About 400 firefighters were working at the center when the first tower collapsed, and 202 of those men and women were listed as missing Wednesday morning, Giuliani said. Fifty-seven police were also feared buried under rubble.
The 1,250-foot-tall towers, which survived a terrorist bombing in a basement parking garage in 1993, were reduced to a pile of stone and steel about five stories high.
At the Pentagon, where 20,000 people work, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski said officials now believed 100 people had died, down from an earlier estimate of 800.
The four hijacked jetliners alone carried a total of 266 passengers and crew.
PRIME SUSPECT: BIN LADEN
Although no one has claimed responsibility, suspicion focused on bin Laden. He is suspected in previous attacks on U.S. interests, among them the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and last year’s bombing of a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen.
A bin Laden aide told a Palestinian journalist Wednesday that bin Laden congratulated the people who carried out the strikes but denied that he was involved.
A spokesman for Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban condemned the attacks and denied that bin Laden was behind them. The sophistication of the coordinated assault required the expertise of a government, the Taliban said.
But a senior U.S. official told NBC News’ Robert Windrem late Tuesday that information that had been developed left officials “90 percent certain” that bin Laden’s organization was responsible. “This is not just surmise,” the official said. “This is new information.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell refused Wednesday to single out bin Laden as a suspect, although he pointed a finger at Afghanistan and Pakistan, where bin Laden is also thought to operate, telling reporters their diplomats would be asked to cooperate with the United States.
In a strong show of support, Washington’s NATO allies declared that the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington could be considered an attack on the whole alliance if it turned out that they were directed from abroad.
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