U.S. attacked

World Trade Center towers destroyed by crashing planes. Pentagon also hit. Thousands feared dead. U.S. says those responsible may have ties to bin Laden, but denies involvement in explosions in Afghanistan.

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By Salon staff

Sept. 11, 2001 | The United States was devastated Tuesday morning by the most deadly terrorist attacks in world history. Thousands are feared dead, and the World Trade Center's landmark twin towers in lower Manhattan were destroyed.

Two hijacked airliners crashed into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, another hijacked jetliner crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., just outside the nation's capital, and yet another hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania.

CNN reported U.S. officials saying in the late afternoon that they had "new and specific information" that people with links to millionaire Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden may have been responsible for the attacks, though the officials weren't ruling out other possibilities.

In a solemn televised address to the nation at 8:30 EDT, President Bush said that the attacks had failed to shake America's spirit and filled the country with "a quiet, unyielding anger" at the perpetrators. He called for Americans to pray for the victims and their families. Bush vowed to find and punish those responsible, saying that the United States would make no distinction between those who carried about the attacks and those who harbored them. The latter statement opened the door to military action directed not just against terrorist organizations, but governments.

Earlier, in a press conference held at the Pentagon Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to speculate about who was responsible for the attack.

At about 5:30 p.m. EDT, Kabul, Afghanistan, came under heavy attack. Loud explosions and fires were visible and anti-aircraft fire and ground-to-air rockets filled the air. The attack took place at 2:30 a.m., Kabul time. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer denied that the attacks were launched by the United States, as did secretary Rumsfeld.

Authorities had been trying to evacuate those who work in the World Trade Center towers when the glass-and-steel skyscrapers came down in a thunderous roar within about 90 minutes after the two crashes, which took place 18 minutes apart just before and after 9 a.m. About 50,000 people work at the Trade Center and tens of thousands of others visit each day. Many people were trapped inside.

The collapse of the towers sent vast billowing clouds of smoke over lower Manhattan. Debris from the World Trade Center explosion apparently hit a neighboring building, causing another explosion there.

About 265 firefighters who were fighting the World Trade Center fire were crushed when the building collapsed. The fire chief and deputy fire chief were among those killed. Seventy-eight policemen were reported missing.

At about 5:20 p.m. EDT, another World Trade Center building, No. 7, which had been struck by debris and set on fire, collapsed. The building was 47 stories tall.

At New York hospitals, hundreds of doctors were treating the injured, many of them suffering from severe burns. A critical shortage of blood was reported in New York. At St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, people were turned away attempting to give blood and told to come back Wednesday because the hospital had run out of blood bags. According to a nurse, 400 people had been admitted to the hospital. But by late afternoon many medical personnel were reportedly waiting for ambulances that didn't arrive -- leading to speculation that the majority of the victims had been killed.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani, at a mid-afternoon press conference, said that about 1,500 "walking wounded" had been taken to a park, 600 were in local hospitals and at least 150 were in critical condition. Giuliani wouldn't speculate about how many people were killed or injured. He said that people were still alive in the rubble.

Eyewitnesses, including a visibly shaken Giuliani, reported seeing people leaping or falling, sometimes in flames, to certain death from the upper floors of the World Trade Center towers before the buildings collapsed. One couple held hands as they jumped. Dazed office workers covered in dirt wandered around like ghosts, weeping, trying to make sense of what happened.

The first plane to hit the World Trade Center was American Airlines flight 11, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles with 81 passengers and 11 crew members on board, which hit the north tower. The plane that slammed into the south tower 18 minutes later was United flight 175, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston to Los Angeles with 56 passengers and nine crew members.

The destruction of the World Trade Center was only part of a series of coordinated attacks: A hijacked airplane crashed into the Pentagon, collapsing part of the roof of the nation's defense headquarters. The jetliner was American flight 77, a Boeing 757 bound from Dulles airport near Washington to Los Angeles with 58 passengers and a crew of six.

United Airlines flight 93 from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed in Pennsylvania near the town of Somerset, about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. The plane was carrying 38 passengers and a crew of seven. The Associated Press reported that about 20 minutes before impact a passenger with a cellphone called authorities from a bathroom and yelled, "We're being hijacked! We're being hijacked!" Authorities stayed on the phone with the passenger until he heard a loud noise and the call went dead.

Altogether, the four crashed planes had 266 people aboard.

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.

"There has been an act of war of the worst kind, namely against civilians," said former Secretary of State George Schulz. "We know that this was carried out by an organization big enough to do something rather complex and complicated, so we have to know who those people are and we have to go after them."

All federal buildings in Washington, including the White House, were evacuated, and the city was declared to be in a state of emergency. CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., was also evacuated, as was the United Nations building in New York. Federal buildings across the country were closed. Military bases across the country stood on "Delta" alert, the war level. Fighter planes were in the air over Washington.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all airports closed and all planes in the air diverted to the nearest airport. By about 1 p.m. EDT, all commercial air traffic had been grounded, and there were no civilian planes in the air. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered that all air traffic be suspended until at least noon EDT Wednesday. He also issued orders limiting ship traffic in U.S. navigable waters.

President Bush was in Sarasota, Fla., speaking to schoolchildren when news of the attacks reached him. He was flown in Air Force One to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where he appeared at a hastily arranged news conference. "Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts," he said. Calling the attacks, "a national tragedy" and "an apparent act of terrorism against our country," he said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand."

Before heading to a National Security Council meeting in Omaha, Neb., Bush said, "I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks." Late in the day the president returned to Washington, from where he made his brief televised address to the nation.

White House spokeswoman Karen Hughes said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remained at the Pentagon, and other Cabinet officials were in secure locations and in contact with each other. Rumsfeld reportedly ran from his Pentagon office to help the injured in the wake of the crash there before being hustled to a secure location.

Next page: The world reacts with shock, horror -- and cheers