Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
September 11, 2001, Tuesday ,SECOND EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 2054 words
HEADLINE:
EXTRA EDITION / 2:00 P.M ATTACK ON AMERICA Stephen Kurkjian, Thomas Farragher,
Sean Murphy, Michael Paulson, Peter Canellos, Stephanie Ebbert, and Sarah
Schweitzer of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Wire reports were also
used.;
REIGN OF TERROR CONCERTED ATTACKS DESTROY WORLD TRADE
CENTER; PLANE HITS PENTAGON; THOUSANDS ARE FEARED DEAD
BYLINE: By Anne Barnard,, Liz Kowalczyk,, and Elizabeth
Neuffer, Globe Staff
BODY:
NEW YORK - The twin
towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed this morning
after two airplanes crashed into them, in what seems to have been the largest
terrorist attack in history. The raid, followed by a plane that
crashed into the Pentagon and another plane crash outside Pittsburgh, prompted
comparisons to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Police
estimated that casualties in New York alone were in the thousands, and airlines
said that four crashed planes had carried a total of 266 passengers and crew.
New York's mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said there had
been no threat or warning of the attack. He asked people in other parts of the
city to go about their business. Less than an hour after two passenger airplanes
- at least one hijacked from Boston - crashed into the World Trade
Center, another hit the Pentagon, the nerve center of
the US military, in northern Virginia.
A bit later, a United Airlines
flight bound from Newark to San Francisco crashed southeast of Pittsburgh.
Initially, American said both planes that hit the World Trade
Center were theirs, Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles and Flight 77
from Washington to Los Angeles. But the United pilots' union said that United
Flight 175 had also struck the tower, leaving some confusion as to where the
planes had crashed.
In Washington, officials denied a report of a car
bomb explosion outside the State Department.
The Federal Aviation
Administration shut all US airports, effectively closing civilian airspace.
As smoke billowed above a panicked scene in New York's financial
district, authorities moved to evacuate the White House, the United Nations
building, and the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as all of lower Manhattan.
"We had a lot of our police officers and fire fighters in the building,"
when the towers collapsed, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told CNN, his voice shaking
with emotion.
Lower Manhattan was covered with dust an inch thick.
Lisa Nell, 30, an accountant, was just getting off the Staten Island
ferry when the first plane hit the building. "I covered my mouth. I'm thinking
about the people who are trapped in the building. I can't imagine their
families. It was just an ordinary day going to work."
"It was like a
science-fiction movie," said Jake Binner, 24, who had just moved to New York
from Hanover, N. H., and was watching the tower burn when the second plane hit.
Federal officials closed the borders with Mexico and Canada, and
grounded air traffic across the nation, amid reports that other hijacked planes
might still be in the air. Trans-Atlantic flights heading for the United States
were diverted to Canada.
Bush, who was in Florida, vowed to "hunt down"
those responsible. "Terror against our nation will not stand," he said. "The
United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly
acts." He also called for a moment of silence.
Bush initially said he
would head back to Washington immediately, but federal officials said later that
he would go to an undisclosed location to ensure his safety.
The attacks
unfolded just as people arrived for work all along the East Coast, and as of 1
p.m., there was no sure sign that they had ceased. The attacks were almost
impossible to believe for a nation that even during World War
II escaped bombardment of its major cities.
"The symbolism and the
actual reality are staggering," Richard Schultz, a professor at the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, told a local television
station. "We've been at war for a long time with terrorism but we don't like to
think of it as such."
One of his students, Schultz said, told him, "It's
another Pearl Harbor."
There was speculation that Osama bin Laden, a
Saudi Arabian dissident and Islamic fundamentalist who has been linked to
terrorism against the United States in the past, was behind the attacks.
"This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that's ever taken
place in the world," said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at
Jane's Transport in London. "It takes a logistics operation from the terror
group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror
groups is on that list. . . . I would name at the top of the list Osama Bin
Laden."
In London, Reuters quoted an Arab journalist with access to bin
Laden as saying he had warned three weeks ago that he and his followers would
carry out an unprecedented attack on US interests for its support of Israel.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, an
Arabic-language weekly news magazine, said Islamic fundamentalists led by bin
Laden were "almost certainly" behind the attack on the World Trade
Center.
Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, a spokesman for the Taliban, the
theocratic rulers of Afghanistan where bin Laden has been based, said his
government opposes terrorism and should not be blamed.
"We want to tell
the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain and we hope that the
courts find justice," said another Taliban spokesman.
A Palestinian
group claimed responsibility for the attacks, Abu Dhabi television reported.
This account was questioned by US officials and observers, as no definitive
authentication was immediately available.
The horrific sequence of
events began after American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked shortly after its
7:45 a.m. takeoff from Logan Airport, bound for Los Angeles. At 8:45 a.m., it
crashed into the east tower of the World Trade Center.
Eighteen minutes later, a second hijacked plane, Flight 77 from
Washington to Los Angeles, crashed into the other tower, and that crash was
captured on television. An evacuation began immediately from the 110-story
towers, where 50,000 people work.
A person who answered the phone on the
trading floor at interdealer-broker Cantor Fitzgerald, near the top of the
World Trade Center, said "We're fing dying," when asked what
was happening, and he hung up. There was screaming and yelling in the
background. A follow-up call was not answered.
About an hour after the
original crash, one of the Twin Towers collapsed, raining bodies and debris onto
the street, according to witness accounts.
The second tower appeared to
start leaning, and then collapsed as well, in a cloud of smoke.
"People
on the street just started crying and bawling," one man told television
reporters.
"I saw the building collapse. There was a stampede up all the
avenues on the West Side," said a Reuters reporter, Marjorie Olster. "People
were hysterical, saying 'We're going to die.' A huge cloud of smoke and dust
came up the avenue, looking like it was going to engulf everybody."
At
St. Vincent Hospital in Greenwich Village, one of the nearest hospitals to the
scene, doctors and nurses rushed out on the street urging people to give blood,
said Emilie Bruzelius, 19, a sophomore at the New School in Manhattan.
Less than an hour after the New York crash, an aircraft crashed into the
helicopter pad at the Pentagon. Later, witnesses said, they saw the tail of a
large airliner sticking out of the building, suggesting that the plane had
plowed directly into it.
United Airlines' pilots union said that another
flight, No. 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, had crashed into the World
Trade Center. United itself had no immediate comment.
A
political consultant, Paul Begala, who saw the explosion, described a huge
orange fireball rising near the Pentagon.
There were also reports of an
explosion at the Capitol Building.
Another jetliner, United Airlines
Flight 93 bound from Newark, N.J. to San Francisco, crashed in Western
Pennsylvania around 10 a.m., 8 miles east of Jennerstown, Pa., and 80 miles
southeast of Pittsburgh. Authorities were trying to determine if the crash of
the Boeing 757, bound from New York to Chicago, was related to the other
attacks.
Television reports quoted witnesses as saying there was another
explosion in downtown Manhattan, outside the Embassy Suites Hotel. It was not
clear if this was related.
All bridges and tunnels into New York were
closed, and cellular phone service was closed down. Regular telephone lines were
jammed, as people tried to reach friends and relatives.
Financial firms
in and around the building, as well as in other neighborhoods in New York closed
operations. The New York Stock Exchange said trading had been halted
indefinitely, while the New York Mercantile Exchange evacuated its personel.
In Boston, City Hall and the J. Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse were
evacuated. Governor Jane Swift ordered all nonessential state employees to leave
state buildings. She planned to meet with emergency and safety personnel at the
Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency's office in Framingham. State police
met to decide whether to close down tunnels and roads.
Mayor Thomas M.
Menino released nonemergency employees at 11, citing city hall's proximity to
federal and historic buildings. The public schools, however, were operating on
schedule, and Menino convened a meeting with public safety leaders.
Secretary of State William F. Galvin requested that the 9th District
election election be canceled.
South Station was crammed with people
trying to leave downtown, and roads were snarled at midday.
Charles
McDonald, spokesman for the state office of Public Safety, said he was not aware
of any terrorist threats being received by State Police or other Massachusetts
law enforcement personnel in recent days.
MacDonald said the state had
instituted emergency security and safety procedures in response to the attacks
in New York and at the Pengaton but declined to detail what those steps were.
At 10 a.m., Governor Swift ordered all nonessential state employees to
leave state buildings. Although Swift was not acting in response to any threat,
she said, she felt it was the safest course to take considering the morning's
events.
Swift also ordered tightening of security around all state
buildings.
The hospitals of Harvard Medical School were placed on high
alert yesterday, with additional security added. Doctors vowed patient care
would not be inturrupted.
Alan Cohen, a psychologist and an
international expert on the effects of terrorism, said Americans today are under
siege.
"This is not just an attack against people physicallly. It's an
attack against what Americans stand for," Cohen said. "It s not just an attack
against people in the street. This is designed to strike at the heart of every
American."
In New York, heavy black smoke billowed into the sky above
the gaping holes in the side of the 110-story twin towers, one of New York
City's most famous landmarks, and debris rained down upon the street, one of the
city's busiest work areas. When the second plane hit, a fireball of flame and
smoke erupted, leaving a huge hole in the glass and steel tower.
People
ran down the stairs in panic and fled the building.
George Canellos, an
assistant US attorney, and the brother of a Globe editor, was in the federal
courthouse near the World Trade Center.
"I heard the
explosion and looked and saw it," he said. "You just saw this huge burst of fire
and you couldn't tell if it was a secondary explosion or an offshoot of the
first one. It became clear, from people running, that it was a second explosion.
"I walked to my office and it was pandemonium. Just imagine what it's
like. The World Trade Center just looms over these buildings
and smoke and fire were pouring from the towers. All you could see was plumes of
smoke and fire.
"Mary Jo White, the US attorney, ordered everyone to go
home. Through some law-enforcement foresight she could foresee that they might
collapse. But who could imagine it would. The impetus, absolutely the consensus,
was to stand still. You shouldn't travel, you shouldn't leave the area.
"I got on the Sixth Avenue subway and it was fairly empty. No one wanted
to use the subway. I got off in the village and started walking up Bleeker
Street. There were people gathered on each street corner just watching what was
happening downtown. It's a beautiful day, just crystal clear. And I was walking
and just looking and then the East tower of the World Trade
Center just collapsed." SIDEBAR: WORLD TRADE CENTER
TOWERS DESTRYED
50,000 PEOPLE WORK IN THE TWO TOWERS. PLEASE REFER TO
MICROFILM FOR CHART DATA.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO DIAGRAM
MAP, 1. A plane approaching the World Trade
Center and then crashing in a ball of fire. / AP PHOTOS 2. Firefighters
working amid the rubble of the World Trade Center this
afternoon after both towers collapsed. / REUTERS PHOTO 3. Crowds fleeing the
collapse of the World Trade Center this morning. / AP PHOTO 4..
Rescue workers bringing a man out of one of the World Trade
Center towers in New York. / REUTERS PHOTO / SHANNON STAPLETON
LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2001