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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




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