Historical
Overview
On September 11th, hijackers turned commercial airlines into missiles and attacked key symbols of American economic and military might. These hideous attacks leveled the World Trade Center towers in New York, destroyed part of the Pentagon, and left Americans in a mood similar to that which the country experienced after the devastating Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. The succession of horrors began at 8:45 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 92 people from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower. Eighteen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 65 people, also bound for Los Angeles from Boston, struck the World Trade Center's south tower. At 9:40 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, flying from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles and carrying 64 people aboard, crashed into the Pentagon. At 10 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93, flying from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Passengers on board the airliner, having heard about the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., apparently stormed the airplane’s cockpit and prevented the hijackers from attacking the nation’s capital.
As millions of television viewers watched in utter horror, at 9:50 a.m., the World Trade Center's south tower collapsed. At 10:29 a.m., the World Trade Center's north tower also collapsed.
More than three thousand innocent civilians and rescue workers perished as a result of these acts of terror. This was about the same number of Americans who died on June 6, 1944, during the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France, and nearly as many as the 3,620 Americans who died at the Civil War battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the largest number of Americans to die in combat on a single day. More Americans died in two hours on September 11th than died in the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, or the Gulf War.
Authorities quickly discovered that the attacks had been masterminded by a Middle Eastern terrorist network known as Al-Qaeda, led by a Saudi Arabian dissident named Osama Bin-Laden. This group had been responsible for earlier attacks against American interests, including a truck bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, which left six dead, and truck bombings at U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, which had killed 224 civilians. Based in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda claimed that its hatred of the United States was fueled by the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. embargo against the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and U.S. support for Israel.
The September 11th attacks were followed by apparently unrelated acts of bioterrorism. Anthrax-laden letters contaminated post offices and Congressional office buildings, and left five people dead. The result was to intensify Americans’ sense of vulnerability.
