Nine Eleven, New York City – September 2001

A second and much more deadly terrorist attack than the attack on New York City in 1993 occurred on the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, combined as it was with a simultaneous assault on the Pentagon. It created an altogether new situation for the U.S. government. The 1993 bombing of the WTC, while it was deadly and enormously destructive of American life, was a single event organized by a small group of terrorists who were in the country. The events of September 11 were at a new scale of violence. They were multiple attacks at the heart of the nation’s economic and military power and, had it developed as the hijackers intended, also at the center of political power. Furthermore, it was organized from abroad by well-known enemies of the United States and probably planned in detail soon after the 1993 failed attempt.

American Airlines Flight 11 on the morning of this day, with ninety-two passengers and crew members. Just before 9 A.M. it crashed into the upper floors of the North WTC Tower. Fifteen minutes later a second plane, Flight 175, also hit the upper part of the South Tower. It too had been taken over by hijackers. Fortunately, there were only 14,000 people in both towers at the time of the explosions, far fewer than in the 1993 attack. Later in the day there would have been three times that number. Those inside first experienced a gigantic blast and felt the towers swaying backwards and forwards.

After the destruction of the Twin Towers a third plane hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C.; and a fourth that many believe was headed for the White House, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers, at the cost of their lives, fought the hijackers but were unable to take control of the plane. The plane that hit the Pentagon began as American Airlines Flight 77 from Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles. Six months after the attack all traces of the original damage were gone and much of the reconstruction had been completed and one-third of the workers displaced by the events of September 11, were back at work.