Sweeney, a former Navy lieutenant who had taught at the Top Gun Fighter Weapons School, did get through to his mother, Louise—with a very different sort of message. He and other passengers, he said, were thinking of storming the cockpit. “I might have to hang up quickly, we’re going to try to do something about this.”
Peter Hanson, meanwhile, managed another call to tell his father, who again made notes: “It’s getting bad, Dad … They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up … The plane is making jerky movements … I think we are going down … Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast.”
Hanson Sr. had heard a woman’s scream in the background. His son said, “My God! My God! …” Then the call ended.
It was 9:02. Ground controllers north of New York were gradually catching up with the reality. Boston Center told New England Region that the tape of the Flight 11 hijacker showed that he had spoken of “planes, as in plural.” Also: “It sounds like—we’re talking to New York—that there’s another one aimed at the World Trade Center.”
Even as they talked, controllers at New York Center were watching the radar blip that was Flight 175. “He’s not going to land,” one man exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “He’s going in …”
THE BOEING 767 roared in from New Jersey, looking for a moment as though it might collide with the Statue of Liberty. It rocked from side to side, then the nose pointed down. Fire marshal Steven Mosiello, already at the Trade Center, heard rather than saw it as it came ever “closer … louder and louder.” The Irish Times’s America correspondent, Conor O’Clery, watching the scene at the Trade Center through binoculars, saw the plane “skim” across the Hudson River.
On the 81st floor of the South Tower, Fuji Bank official Stanley Praimnath was at his desk, talking on the phone. Praimnath would recall how, in mid-sentence, for no apparent reason, “I just raised my head and looked to the Statue of Liberty. And what I see is a big plane coming towards me … I am looking at an airplane coming, eye level, eye contact, toward me—giant gray airplane … with a red stripe … I am still seeing the letter U on its tail, and the plane is bearing down on me. I dropped the phone and I screamed and I dove under my desk.”
Three floors up, on the 84th, Brian Clark of Euro Brokers had been consoling a woman colleague distraught at the sight of people jumping from the North Tower. He escorted her to the door of the ladies’ room, on the far side of the building, when: “Whomf! It wasn’t a huge explosion. It was something muffled, no flames, no smoke, but the room fell apart … For seven to ten seconds there was this enormous sway in the building … I thought it was over.”
It was 9:03. United Flight 175 had struck the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, at an angle. Clark’s chivalrous action in helping a distressed colleague had saved his own life. It had taken him to the side of the building furthest from the point of impact. Praimnath found himself, still under his desk, covered in debris, peering out at what looked like part of the airplane’s wing. He began shouting for help and was soon extricated by Clark, who had headed down a passable stairwell. The two were to make the long descent to the ground and safety.
Many others who had been working in their part of the tower had died instantly. Those who survived the initial impact and headed up, rather than down, would not survive.
Fifty minutes had elapsed since the terror began.
For those fighting for their lives in the towers, those rushing to the rescue, those charged with orchestrating the air traffic still in the sky, and those responsible for the defense of the United States, all was now confusion and chaos—against a drumbeat of breaking news, the biggest, most stunning news in the lifetimes of almost everyone it reached.
FOUR
CNN HAD THE BREAK. ON THE HEELS OF A REPORT ABOUT MATERNITY wear, Carol Lin cut into a commercial within two minutes of the first strike.
“This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot … We have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center … Clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan.”
On Good Morning America, ABC’s Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson had been smiling through a serving of breakfast-time fluff. Then, four minutes after CNN, they launched into nonstop blanket coverage. Like all the other networks, ABC was confronting a major national story armed with a minimum of facts.
“Was it in any sense deliberate?” asked Sawyer, now serious-faced. “Was it an accident? … We simply don’t know.” Behind the cameras, assuming pilot error, one ABC staffer made a reference he was to regret—to “stupidity.” On the radio, someone said the pilot must have been drunk.
The early news flashes triggered differing reactions at the highest levels of government. At the National Security Agency outside Washington, where America spies on worldwide phone and email communications, director Michael Hayden glanced at CNN’s live shots of the burning North Tower. He thought, “Big fire for a small plane,” and went back to his meeting.
Breakfasting with a friend at the St. Regis Hotel, CIA director George Tenet responded very differently. His instant reaction, he would recall, was that this was a terrorist attack. “It was obvious that I had to leave immediately.… I climbed back into my car and, with lights flashing, began racing back to headquarters.”
Earlier that morning, at a meeting at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had made a prediction. In the coming months, he said, there would be an event “sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong, healthy Defense Department.” He has not said what he thought when passed a note with news of the crash at the Trade Center, but he left for his office.
Richard Clarke, the long-serving national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, assumed the worst, summoned senior security officials to a videoconference, and headed for the White House.
Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were already at the White House. Rice merely thought, “What an odd accident!” Cheney, told of the crash while going over speeches with an aide, began watching the TV coverage.
The President, George W. Bush, was absent from the capital and would be all day, a circumstance that was to do his image no good in the hours that followed. When the first plane hit, he was in Sarasota, Florida, on his way to visit an elementary school—part of a drive for child literacy. White House photographer Eric Draper was in a limousine with press secretary Ari Fleischer and Mike Morell, a senior CIA official, when Fleischer’s cell phone rang.
“I heard him say, ‘Oh, my God! I don’t believe it,’ ” Draper recalled. “ ‘A plane just hit the World Trade Center.’ ” Fleischer then turned to Morell to ask if he knew anything about a “small plane” hitting one of the towers. Morell, who phoned CIA Operations, was told that the plane was in fact a large one.
Most likely, the President first learned of the crash as the motorcade arrived at Emma E. Booker Elementary. Navy captain Deborah Loewer, director of the White House Situation Room, ran over with the news as, at about the same moment, chief of staff Andy Card asked Bush to take a call from Condoleezza Rice in Washington. Rice knew less, apparently, than the CIA.
“The first report I heard,” Bush would recall, “was a light airplane, twin-engine airplane.… And my first reaction was, as an old pilot, ‘How could the guy have gotten so off course to hit the towers?’ … I thought it was pilot error … that some foolish soul had gotten lost and made a terrible mistake.” He told school principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, “We’re going to go on and do the reading thing,” and they went off to meet a class of second graders.
A THOUSAND MILES to the north, the first fire chief to reach the North Tower had called in three alarms in quick succession. Even before the second plane hit, a thousand first responders had been deployed. The
y included men who were off duty, who dropped everything on hearing of the crash and rushed to the scene. One man thought idly that the job would last “twenty-four hours easy—that’s a few hundred dollars, no problem.” In fact, he was joining what was to be the largest rescue operation in the history of New York City—focused principally on saving lives. Senior firemen rapidly concluded that it would not be possible to put out the fire in the North Tower.
Instructions to evacuate the North Tower had been announced over the public address system within a minute of the crash. The system had been knocked out of action, though, so no one heard the announcement. In the South Tower, where the system did still work, the disembodied voice at first advised, “There is no need to evacuate … If you are in the midst of evacuation, return to your office.” The instruction changed at 9:02, when occupants were told they could leave after all. Some four thousand people, two thirds of those reckoned to have been in the South Tower, had by that time chosen to leave anyway.
Then at 9:03, Flight 175 hit the South Tower. For the networks, broadcasting live, the task of reporting became incalculably complex—and totally impromptu. This from the ABC Good Morning America transcript:
SAWYER: Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
GIBSON: That looks like a second plane has just hit …
SAWYER: Terrible! … We will see that scene again, just to make sure we saw what we thought we saw.
GIBSON: We’re going to give you a replay … That looks like a good-sized plane, came in and hit the World Trade Center from the other side … it would seem like there is a concerted attack …
SAWYER: We watch powerless …
On Channel 5’s Good Day New York, the anchorman Jim Ryan took a flyer and got it right. “I think,” he said, “we have a terrorist act of proportions we cannot begin to imagine at this point.”
At the NSA, director Hayden said, “One plane’s an accident. Two planes is an attack,” and ordered that top priority be given to intercepts originating in the Middle East.
At the Defense Department, assistant secretary for public affairs Torie Clarke, accompanied by colleague Larry Di Rita, hurried to Secretary Rumsfeld’s office with the news. He said he would take his daily intelligence briefing, then meet them at the Executive Support Center where military operations are coordinated during emergencies. They left Rumsfeld standing at the lectern in his office—he liked to work standing up—one eye on the television.
Word of the second strike was slow to reach CIA director Tenet, still in his car racing back to headquarters. “With all hell breaking loose,” he remembered, “it was hard to get calls through on the secure phone.… I was in a communications blackout between the St. Regis and Langley, the longest twelve minutes of my life. It wasn’t until I arrived at headquarters that I learned that, as we were tearing up the George Washington Parkway at something like eighty miles an hour, a second plane had hit.”
Counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke learned of the second attack as he drove up to the White House. He was told Condoleezza Rice wanted him “fast,” and found her with the Vice President. “The Secret Service,” Rice said, “wants us to go to the bomb shelter.” Cheney, famous for his imperturbability, was looking a little shaken. He “began to gather up his papers,” Clarke recalled. “In his outer office the normal Secret Service presence was two agents. As I left, I counted eight, ready to move [Cheney] to the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker in the East Wing.”
Clarke, for his part, headed for the West Wing, to prepare for the videoconference of counterterrorism and other senior officials he would soon chair. He asked, “Where’s POTUS?”—White House shorthand for the President—and learned Bush was at the school in Florida.
“GET READY TO READ all the words on this page without making a mistake. Look at the letter at the end everyone, with the sound it makes. Get ready!”
As the second plane hit the Trade Center, George Bush had been listening intently to teacher Kay Daniels and her class of second graders. The teacher was going into a routine the children knew well, using a phonics-based system designed to promote reading skills. She intoned, “Boys and girls! Sound this word out, get ready!” “Kite!” chorused the children, then “kit!” then “seal” and “steal,” and so on, as Ms. Daniels beat time. Then, “Boys and girls, pick your reader up from under your seat. Open your book up to Lesson 60, on page 153.” The children and the President picked up the readers.
In a nearby room, members of Bush’s staff had been watching the news coverage from New York—the Marine assigned to carry the President’s phone had asked for the television to be turned on. One of those watching as Flight 175 hit was Captain Deborah Loewer, the woman who had run to tell the President about the initial crash. “It took me about thirty seconds,” she recalled, “to realize this was terrorism.”
Loewer spoke rapidly to chief of staff Andy Card, and—we calculate within about ninety seconds—Card was in the classroom and whispering in the President’s ear. By one account he said, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” As likely, given Loewer’s role as Situation Room director, is a version that had Card telling Bush, “Captain Loewer says it’s terrorism.”
IN NEW YORK at about that time, high in the South Tower, Brian Clark of Euro Brokers was pausing to pull Stanley Praimnath out of a wrecked wall, glimpsing fires raging through cracks in walls.
Operators at the Fire Department were logging a stream of emergency calls:
9:04 MC [male caller] CAGGIANO … STS [states] PEOPLE TRAPPED ON THE 104 FLR … IN BACK ROOM … STS 35–40 PEOPLE
9:04 MC—STS 103 FLR—CAN’T GET OUT—FIRE ON FLR—PEOPLE GETTING SICK
IN THE CLASSROOM in Florida, Bush’s expression changed. Told of the second strike, the President pursed his lips, gazing back at his chief of staff as he moved away. ABC’s Ann Compton, watching him, thought “his eyes got wide.” Teacher Daniels thought he seemed distracted. Natalia Jones-Pinkney, one of the pupils, thought he “looked like he was going to cry.” “His face just started to turn red,” said Tyler Radkey, another student. “I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom.”
In the adjacent room, the Marine carrying Bush’s phone turned to the local sheriff and said, “Can you get everybody ready? We’re out of here.” Not so—not yet, for the President did not move.
“On the count of three,” teacher Daniels said, “everyone should be on page 153 …” The children obeyed, and so did Bush. “Fingers under the title,” came the order. “Get ready!” The children chorused the title of a story: “The Pet Goat …”
For long and unforgettable minutes, the President of the United States sat dutifully as the second graders read:
The girl had a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did something that made the girl’s dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate cakes. He ate cakes and he ate cats. One day her dad said, “That goat must go. He ate too many things.”
On the other side of the room, press secretary Ari Fleischer had held up a handwritten sign for Bush’s attention. It read, in large black letters, “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET.”
IN THE NORTH TOWER, realtor James Gartenberg and secretary Patricia Puma had by now realized they were stuck in their office. “A fire door has trapped us,” Gartenberg told a WABC reporter who reached him on the phone. “Debris has fallen around us. I’m with one other person … on the 86th floor, facing the East River … I want to tell anybody that has a family member that may be in the building that the situation is under control at the moment … So please, all family members take it easy.”
It was a brave statement, but neither Gartenberg nor Puma would survive.
The flood of calls to the Fire Department continued:
09:07 CALL FLR 103—ROOM 130—APPROX 30 PEOPLE—LOTS OF SMOKE—FC [female caller] IS PREGNANT
09:08: FC SCREAMING
09:08: FC STS FIRE DEPARTMENT NEEDED TO PUT OUT FIRE
09:09: MC STS 2WTC—PEOPLE ARE JUMPING OUT THE SIDE OF A LARGE HOLE—POSS NO ONE CATCHING THEM
09:09: ON FLR 104—MC STS HIS WIFE IS ON THE 91 FL—STS STAIRS ARE ALL BLOCKED—STS WORRIED ABOUT HIS WIFE
IN FLORIDA, the children chorused on:
The goat stayed … the girl made him stop eating cans and cakes and cats and cakes. But one day a car robber went into the girl’s house. He saw a big red car in the house and said, “I will steal that car.” He ran to the car and started to open the door. The girl and the goat were playing in the back yard. They did not see the car robber. More to come.
The President, seemingly all attention, asked, “What does that mean—‘More to come’?” It meant, a child told him brightly, that there would be “More later on.”
• • •
MORE WAS IN FACT already happening. Since 8:56, well before Bush began listening to the second graders, FAA ground controllers had begun worrying about a third airliner. American Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles out of Washington’s Dulles Airport, had failed to respond to routine messages, and deviated from its assigned course. Its transponder was turned off and it could not be seen on radar. The controller of the moment, in Indianapolis, knew nothing of the events in New York. He thought the plane had experienced serious technical failure and was “gone.”
Soon after 9:00, as the second hijacked airplane crashed into the South Tower, controllers began circulating information that Flight 175 was missing, perhaps crashed. Air Force Search and Rescue and the police were alerted, American Airlines notified. Some at American, meanwhile, thought for a while that it was Flight 77—not United’s 175—that had crashed into the Trade Center’s South Tower. “Whose plane is whose?”: the gist of one conversation between an American manager and his counterpart at United summarizes the general confusion.
The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden Page 4