by Dean King
The Tragic Story of 9/11…The Day That Changed America
Chapter 1 – A Nightmare In The Daylight Chapter 2 - A Timeline of Terrorist Attacks Before 9/11 Chapter 3 – Refining The Plot Details Early Warnings Planning The Attacks And Training Of Hijackers
Chapter 4 – The Looming Danger Coordinated Suicide Attacks Targets of Attacks Hijackers and the Planes
Chapter 5 - The Collapse Of the Twin Towers American Airlines Flight 11 American Airlines Flight 77 United Airlines Flight 93 United Airlines Flight 175
Chapter 6 – Rescue and Recovery Efforts
Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) New York Police Department (NYPD) The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and Interagency Preparedness Rescue Operations Rescue in the North Tower Rescue in the South Tower The Collapse of South Tower The Collapse of North Tower The Pentagon
Search, Rescue and Recovery After 9/11
Chapter 7 – The Heroes Of 9/11
Captain Anthony Whitaker Sergeant Alan DeVona Rick Rescorla Captain Jay Jonas Betty Ong Amy Sweeney Welles Crowther
Chapter 8 – Casualties, Damages And Aftereffects
Death Structural Damage Sense of Vulnerability and Fear Economic Impact Health Effects
Chapter 9 - Who Is Responsible?
Al Qaeda Osama bin Laden Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Chapter 10 – A New Day For America Chapter 1 – A Nightmare In The Daylight
September 11, 2001, started out as a very bright and gorgeous day, a respite for the rain the day before. Many people woke up early to go to work, or to just enjoy the beautiful morning. One of these was Trisha who lived in Brooklyn. She walked to work from her apartment in Tribeca. As she walked, she thought that the day was perfect, with blue skies, chirping birds, smiling people…New York was a great place to live.
She arrived at the office and briefly talked with her co-workers. The building she worked at was near the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. As they talked, they heard what sounded like explosion, but in the noise of New York City, such noises were not unusual. Then a co-worker broke the news that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers.
Concern turned to alarm, and then a few minutes later when the second plane hit and exploded, all hell broke loose. Trisha and her colleagues were scared and overwhelmed by the events unfolding before their eyes . But she was one of the lucky ones...managing to escape the area with her husband and baby before the area around the towers was engulfed in choking dust and debris. But many others were not so lucky.
After 9/11, things would never be the same again.
The destruction of the World Trade Center, the event we now know as 9/11, was an act of terrorism. Over a decade since the bombings, we still feel grief over the loss of lives. For the survivors and the victims’ families, it was difficult to move on. The heartache and memories continued to haunt them. It was painful to wake up each day and get used to the fact that their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers or relatives were not coming back to be with them.
What was potent was the fear that the attacks instilled among us. We learned a lesson that not even a powerful country like America was safe against terrorism. For many years, the USA had enjoyed unrivaled military superiority. But the attacks made it clear that a new age of fear was dawning.
Chapter 2 - A Timeline of Terrorist Attacks Before 9/11
The September 11 attacks were not the first and definitely not the last terrorist act to trouble the world. From all over the world, there are suicide bombings and murders that point to extremist terrorist groups whose political views and understanding of religious issues led them to attack Americans.
Even before the former President George Bush’s election to office, several major terror attacks were carried out victimizing Americans. Here is a list, although not exhaustive, of the major attacks that took place during the Clinton administration.
• 1993, January 25 – A Pakistani fired an AK-47 into traffic heading towards the CIA headquarters in Virginia. Two CIA employees were killed.
• 1993, February 26 – Islamic terrorists detonated truck bombs in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center. While the towers remained standing, the bombing killed six and injured more than 1,000.
• 1993, March 12 – Mumbai, India witnessed car bombings that resulted in 257 deaths
• and 1,400 injuries.
• 1994, July 18 – Hezbollah was blamed for the attacks at a Jewish community center in Buenos, Aires, Argentina. The attacks killed 100 people and wounded 200.
• 1994, July 19 – Terrorists bombed Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 in Panama. Twenty one people aboard died. Some pointed to Hezbollah as the mastermind, but the Ansar Allah, a group linked to Hezbollah, claimed responsibility.
• 1994, July 26 – Hezbollah was assumed to be behind the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in London which injured 14.
• 1994, December 11 – Ramzi Yousef orchestrated a test bombing in the Philippines Air Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman and injuring 5 others. Investigations found out that Yousef prepared the bomb in the lavatory, set the timer for four hours and put it under his seat. He deplaned at Cebu.
• 1994, December 24 – Just a day before Christmas, Islamic terrorists hijacked Air France Flight 8969 and planned to crash it in Paris. All of the terrorists were killed, but not before they were able to kill three passengers and injured 25.
• 1995, January 6 – The Bojinka Plot was discovered. The plot was a large-scale attack to bomb a dozen U.S. airliners and their 4,000 or more passengers who would have traveled from Asia to United States. The attacks were planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They also planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The plot was inadvertently discovered when a test that Yousef carried out caused a fire in the apartment he was occupying. It drew the attention of the Philippine National Police and they discovered a laptop computer in the apartment which contained incriminating evidence.
• 1995, July – October – a series of bombings in France killed eight and wounded more than 100 people.
• 1996, February - March – a series of suicide bombings in Israel killed 60 and injured 284.
• 1996, June 25 – 19 people were killed and 515 were wounded when a truck bomb exploded near a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia.
• 1997, November 17 – 62 tourists were killed in Egypt and 26 were wounded by Islamist gunmen.
• 1998, February 14 – In Coimbatore, India, 50 people were killed when Islamic extremists set off bombs at a rally.
• 1998, August 7 – the Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombings at the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. The bombing killed 292 and wounded more than 5,000 in Nairobi and killed 11 and wounded 86 in Tanzania.
• 1998, September – Chechen rebels bombed Russian apartment buildings, resulting in around 300 deaths.
• 1998, December 24 – Islamic terrorists hijacked the Indian Airlines Flight 814, and the 189 people on board were held hostage for almost a week. One was murdered before the negotiations ended the crisis.
• 2000, August 8 – 13 were killed and more than 100 were wounded at a bomb explosion in Moscow.
• 2000, October 12 – Al Qaeda was responsible for bombing the USS Cole, resulting in 17 dead US sailors and 39 wounded.
More bombings and attacks took place during the Bush administration, in the United States and other countries. In Israel alone, numerous suicide bombings took place, either k
illing or injuring a large number of people. What makes the 9/11 attacks different from previous terrorist attacks was the enormous scale of destruction, the number of deaths, and the use of modern technologies to aid the attacks.
Chapter 3 – Refining The Plot Details
The 9/11 attacks were the result of careful planning. The result of this planning was a large-scale disaster that caused an enormous number of deaths and injuries, plus grief and panic on a global scale.
Early Warnings
Following the 9/11 attacks, many people believed that some institutions or individuals had foreknowledge of the attacks and should have taken action to prevent it from happening. Some media reports claimed that the CIA, FBI and other major organizations in the United States knew of the possibility that airplanes could be used as missiles after the foiling of the Bojinka Plot.
The Chicago Sun-Times claimed that the FBI was aware of the indications of plans to attack the United States by using airliners. But they did not act on that knowledge or spread the intelligence to local police agencies. Also, US officials was said to have known about the method of flying planes into buildings. Here are just some of the articles that pertain to this foreknowledge:
• In 1994, three attempts to crash planes into buildings failed.
• The Bojinka Plot was discovered by Philippine police. The plot detailed a large-scale attack against America using 11 airliners and their passengers.
• The FAA’s annual report on 2000 cited that, although Osama Bin Laden had not set his eyes on civil aviation as a tool for his activities, he had the motivation and the resources to do so.
• In 2002, it was confirmed that the Intelligence Community had received 12 reports over a seven-year period advising that the terrorists had the capacity to use airplanes as weapons.
Aside from all of these, the CIA, FBI and the US administration had received warnings from other countries and intelligence services, such as Germany, Israel, UK, and Egypt, among others. The warnings had one message: that Al Qaeda might attack the United States. Michael Meacher, a member of the British parliament, claimed that some of the warnings were deliberately ignored. Some of the warnings were the following:
1.) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon allowed the leaking of a document containing sensitive information. The documents revealed that United States intelligence agencies were warned about a terrorist attack weeks before September 11. As early as August, a Mossad warning reached the CIA. It said that terrorists planned to use commercial airplanes to attack several important establishments.
2.) The Italian Intelligence also warned the United States that Al Qaeda planned to attack America using aircraft.
3.) Jordan and Morocco advised the US that Al Qaeda were planning to carry out airborne attacks within the US.
4.) The UK was warned multiple times of an attack by Al Qaeda against the US. The third warning specified airplane hijackings. This warning was said to have been passed to President Bush.
5.) In August 1998, the US government was told that a group of Arabs plotted to fly a plane carrying explosives into the World Trade Center.
There were countless other warnings, all of which point to one thing: that the Al Qaeda was plotting an attack against Americans using airplanes laden with explosives. The question now is, Why did the American government or any other organization fail to take any action?
Planning The Attacks And Training Of Hijackers
As an extremist group in the Islamic world, Al Qaeda had been responsible for many atrocities across the globe. At the start of the new millennium, the organization was stepping up its activities. Osama Bin Laden had been leading the organization from remote parts of the Arab world, planning to unleash new forms of terror on the world.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), head of Al Qaeda’s media committee, presented the idea for the attacks to Bin Laden in 1996. This was the time when Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were in a transition, as both have relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan. This seemed the perfect time for Mohammed to share his idea, especially following Bin Laden’s fatwa which declared that it is a Muslim’s duty to kill American civilians and military personnel for supporting Israel and for deplying military forces in Islamic countries.
Between 1998 and 1999, Bin Laden gave the go signal for Mohammed to proceed with the plan. A series of meetings took place in 1999 between Mohammed, Bin Laden, and Mohammed Atef. Atef was responsible for providing operational support, choosing targets and arranging travel for the hijackers. At some point Bin Laden demanded changes in the plan, such as rejecting the US Bank Tower as a target.
Bin Laden himself was involved in the planning and plotting, providing financial support and selecting participants. He and Atef personally chose the muscle hijackers between the summer of 2000 and April 2001. At first he selected Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar who were both experienced jihadists. Jihadists are those who support 'holy war' in the Islam world. The two men arrived in the United States in 2000. They took flying lessons. But due to poor English and poor performance in flying, they served as secondary hijackers.
In 1999, Bin Laden selected Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh from Germany. The leader’s reasons for choosing these men included their being educated, ability to speak English, and experience living in the West. Bin Laden further screened new recruits, including Hani Hanjour who had a commercial pilot’s license, and Majed Moqed. They were two of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77.
Hani Hanjour
Hani returned to the United States on December 2000 and joined Hazmi. Hanjour took a series of pilot trainings. Al-Shehhi arrived on May 2000 and Atta arrived on June 2000. Jarrah arrived on June 2000 but Bin al-Shibh was not granted a visa to the United States. Months before the attacks, the men took pilot training. The secondary hijackers arrived in 2001. In July, Atta met with al-Shibh in Spain to polish the details of the plot. Al-Shibh told Atta to carry out the plot as soon as possible.
Twelve of the hijackers, excluding Nawaf al Hazmi and Mihdhar, were all from Saudi Arabia. Banihammad was from the United Arab Emirates. They were between 20 and 28 years old, most of whom held no jobs and were unmarried. KSM said that the operatives volunteered themselves for suicide operations and that they were not pressured to be martyrs. Those who want to be a part of their organization were given application forms which asked the applicants standard questions. They were also asked whether they are prepared to serve as suicide operatives. Those who affirm were interviewed by Mohammed Atef.
The selected muscle hijackers took basic training, which was the same for all Al Qaeda recruits. They trained in using firearms, heavy weapons and explosives and topography. They were taught discipline and military life. They also underwent artificial stresses to gauge their psychological fitness and commitment to jihad.
The selected muscle hijackers were asked by Bin Laden or other high officials to swear loyalty for a suicide operation. The recruits were then sent to KSM for further training and filming of a martyrdom video. Afterwards, he sent them to Saudi Arabia where they would obtain US visas. KSM instructed them to return to Afghanistan for further training after obtaining their visas. KSM also told the hijackers to obtain ‘clean’ passports in their home countries before applying for a US visa to avoid raising suspicion.
Atta and Binalshibh had met in Spain and discussed how the hijackings would be executed. They were to carry box-cutters with them, and they had no problems with this during their cross-country surveillance flights. They planned to storm the cockpit between 10-15 minutes after takeoff as this was the time when the cockpit doors were opened for the first time. Atta said they did not need other weapons.
Surprisingly, Atta did not have Plan B should the cockpit door remained lock. He considered using a hostage or threatening with a bomb, but he still believed that the cockpit doors would be opened. Atta also told Binalshibh that he wanted to choose planes that have long flights because they would be heavily fueled. He also e
xplained his preference for Boeing aircraft, saying that it was easier to fly than Airbus aircraft. Also, an Airbus aircraft has an autopilot feature that did not allow it to be crashed into the ground.
The hijackers had purchased their tickets for September 11 between August 25 and September 5. During this time, they had with them small knives, a GPS unit, and aeronautical charts. The planning was coming to an end, and Atta had selected a date for the attacks by the third week of August.
Chapter 4 - The Looming Danger
Even many years after the bombings, we still get goose bumps each time we watch the video footage. It’s like seeing the whole thing for the first time, or feeling as if you’re there right at the scene. You can imagine how people gasped, or covered their gaping mouth with their hand, or touched their chest at the gruesome sight that could only be from the movies. But this was no movie... the planes hitting the towers, the loud explosions, the shower of debris, and the falling bodies were real.
Coordinated Suicide Attacks
Early in the morning of 11 September, 2001, 19 hijackers took over four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco or Los Angeles after takeoff from Washington, D.C., Boston, Massachusetts, and Newark, New Jersey. According to the plot, they were to board and hijack the following airplanes:
• American Airlines Flight 11, which was set to leave Boston for Los Angeles
• United Airlines Flight 175, bound for Los Angeles from Logan Airport
• American Airlines Flight 77, scheduled to fly to Los Angeles from Virginia
• United Airlines Flight 93, bound for San Francisco from New Jersey.
Targets of Attacks
Bin Laden had declared to his people that Americans were the worst thieves and the worst terrorists. The only thing that could stop the country was retaliation in kind. He believed that military and civilian were alike, and that they were all targets. He had stood true to his word, for on September 11, four airplanes were hijacked and flown into buildings, causing the deaths of both military and civilian.