A Day of Infamy

Hijacked planes hit WTC and Pentagon

By Paul Moses | STAFF WRITER

September 12, 2001

Plane crashes into one of the World Trade Center, September 11, 2001. Photo by John J. Seagriff. (Photo by John J. Seagriff)

In an unprecedented attack that told Americans they're no longer safe, two hijacked jets on a horrifying suicide mission slammed into the World Trade Center yesterday - killing thousands in the nation's worst terrorist assault - and another crashed into the Pentagon.

The attack did far more than punch a gap in the New York skyline; it tore a hole in the national psyche as Americans watched live television images of the devastation, a frightening exhibit of American vulnerability.

Each of the 110-story Twin Towers collapsed within 90 minutes of the attacks in an unforgettable, eerily slow-motion cascade of ash and blood, trapping an untold number of the buildings' 50,000 workers.

The attack also left a hole in a city's heart, with officials saying as many as 300 firefighters, including top officials and a department chaplain, apparently died in the rescue. Scores of police were feared dead, too.

"It was like Pearl Harbor, but worse, because this is civilians, not the military," said Jim McDonald, who said he saw screaming masses of people flee the trade center when he arrived at his job in TriBeCa. "You don't feel safe anywhere. It feels like a war zone."

President George W. Bush, pledging to hunt down those responsible for an attack he said killed thousands of people, put the military on its highest level of alert and declared New York a disaster area.

"Today, our nation saw evil," said Bush, denouncing "these acts of mass murder."

Authorities in Washington immediately called out troops, including an infantry regiment. The Navy sent aircraft carriers and guided missile destroyers to New York and Washington. Gov. George Pataki mobilized the National Guard, and by afternoon, armed soldiers were directing traffic on Manhattan street corners.

The dead included all 266 passengers and crew members on four hijacked commercial flights, hundreds of city rescue workers, thousands of World Trade Center employees and, according to preliminary reports, perhaps hundreds more people killed at the Pentagon.

Despite the hazards, rescue efforts continued last night at the World Trade Center. Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said that there were people still alive in two buildings, including police officers.

Onlookers said that after the jets pierced the skies over lower Manhattan and struck each tower 18 minutes apart, they saw people jumping to their deaths to escape hellish flames.

"I saw 10, 15 bodies fall from one of the towers," said Robert Rios, 24, of Ridgewood, trembling. "People were running everywhere, screaming, crying. It was like war, the bodies dropping from the sky."

The grim chain reaction continued when a fourth hijacked jet carrying 45 people crashed into a field at Shanksville, Pa. A Virginia congressman who got a military briefing said it was apparently targeting Camp David, the presidential retreat, 85 miles away.

In New York, fire spread to a third high-rise in the World Trade Center complex, the 47-story building No. 7, and it collapsed into a pile of debris early in the evening. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he had left the city's high-tech emergency command center, located in the building, 10 minutes before the collapse. A power substation beneath the building was damaged, cutting off electricity to most of lower Manhattan.

Federal officials quickly focused on an old foe - Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, whom authorities say was behind attacks that killed more than 220 people at two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and 17 sailors on the USS Cole last year.

"There are indications that individuals associated with Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network have been involved" in yesterday's attacks, said an administration official closely linked to U.S. intelligence.

The surprise attack was planned so intricately that a radar device that alerts authorities to a hijacking had been disabled in the cockpits of both planes that hit the World Trade Center, sources said.

The terror assault came eight years after a bombing in a World Trade Center garage killed six people and injured more than 1,000. Ramzi Yousef, a ringleader in an attack aimed at punishing U.S. support for Israel, had bragged to federal agents that he wanted to topple one tower on top of the other, killing thousands of civilians, prosecutors said during a 1997 trial.

Beyond toppling the towers, this attack shut down New York - a primary election was canceled and financial markets and the United Nations closed. For the first time, all of the nation's air traffic was grounded.

"This is one of the most difficult days in the history of the city and the country," Giuliani said, ordering Manhattan closed below 14th Street, including financial markets.