Week That Changed the World: 100 Hours That Led to War

News of the World
September 16, 2001

 

In the half light just after dawn on Tuesday, September 11, a driver pulls into the car park of Boston's Logan International airport.

He's in a hurry and looking for a space. There aren't many and he argues with five Arab-looking men in another car then moves on.

It is an argument he will remember for the rest of his life.

The five men lock their car. From there it is a short ride on Shuttle Bus 22 to Terminal B.

It is about 6.30am on America's east coast, 11.30 in Britain. The clock is ticking...100 hours of mayhem and death brought by 19 suicide terrorists who shook the world. Two, plus other detainees, are on the right.

By Saturday afternoon, all the pieces will be in place for full-scale war, with the finger of suspicion and blame pointed squarely at Osama bin Laden, the billionaire Arab.

He was once a dissolute playboy until his hatred of America turned him into a scheming monster bankrolling an evil worldwide web of terrorists, including notorious Palestinian Abu Nidal.

Three thousand miles from Boston an attractive woman is waking up in London. Over the past two weeks she has twice met the same group of five Arabs. The first time is at the China White club in Air Street.

Although the place is famous for its celebrity clientele, the backbone of its business is big-spending oil-rich Arabs and wealthy Palestinians, though these five fit into neither group. The management don't know them.

"These men looked more like athletes than lounge lizards," the woman will later tell police. "They were all quite young, below 40, and they were very fit.

"We started chatting but they wouldn't tell me what they did for a living; just that they'd soon be leaving for New York where they had a big job to do."

The woman thinks little of it, until she meets them again at another nightclub called Attica. Recalling their earlier conversation, she asks: "What exactly will you be doing in New York?"

To her surprise one of the men denies that they have ever mentioned the city. When the woman replies: "I'm sure you did, in China White," the men become clearly agitated and leave.

At about the same time American Airlines issue a memo to employees to be on the alert for impostor pilots after burglars break into flight crews' rooms in Rome, stealing uniforms and ID badges.

Back across the Atlantic, in Venice, Florida, business is brisk at the Huffman Aviation school, run by Rudi Deckkers.

Their records will show that two pupils who enroled in July 2000 were Mohamed Atta, 33, and his friend Marwan al-Shehhi, 23. Both will appear on the FBI's list of terrorists who took over death planes. Further records will turn up their henchmen, including Ziad Jarrah who signed a lease agreement for a New york apartment.

Charlie Voss, who worked at the Huffman school and put the Atta and al-Shehhi up for a time, will remember them as "two men who said they were cousins and had just come from Germany. They wanted flight training."

In fact, they have both been students at the technical university of Hamburg, the city where the European Airbus is assembled.

Voss will recall: "Within 20 minutes of them moving in both me and my wife Drucilla began to regret it. They never spoke to us except to grunt and tell us what they wanted. Whenever we invited them to eat with us, they'd sneer and chat to each other in their own language.

"What we didn't know was that they were bringing in their own food. We found rotting pizza and mouldy doughnuts stuffed down beside the bed and behind curtains. Underneath the beds we found half empty cans of Coke with the contents tipped out on to the carpet along with coffee stains running down the wall. They turned the place into a pig sty. They treated Dru like a servant and expected her to constantly clear up after them. It would take her the whole morning to clean the bathroom after they'd used it. But the final straw came when they'd belch and break wind in front of us as though it was normal. After five days we asked them to leave."

In a separate development, it emerges that Atta used to work as a handyman for Sheik Sultan bin Khalifa at his home in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Sheik Sultan is also the owner of China White club.

By 7am on Tuesday, September 11, New York's Manhattan area is already clogged with office workers keen to be at their desks by 7.30am. The towering World Trade Center alone holds 50,000 people. Already there is a queue for the lifts and escalators.

On the outskirts of Boston airport, 350 miles north of New York, Captain John Ogonowski, a 50-year-old Vietnam veteran, is almost at the airport where he'll pilot American Airlines Flight 11 to Los Angeles. Ninety minutes earlier he left his wife and three daughters asleep in their farmhouse in Massachusetts, then, just down the road, gave his Uncle Al the usual toot on his horn.

Inside the terminal are at least ten Arabs. Five arrived by car. Two others have come into America via Yarmouth in Nova Scotia on the north-east coast. From there they took a connecting flight to Portland in Maine and then the ferry to Boston. A ten-dollar ticket by water shuttle from Rowe's Wharf brings them to Logan's boat dock.

A further three are already in the airport. They've been there for hours, maybe days, 'casing' the joint.

Flight 11 from Boston is called and the group splits up, one section heading for the departure lounge, the other making for United Airlines Flight 175, also bound for Los Angeles.

It is a crisp morning with a hint of autumn in the air. Yet passengers may have noticed the two groups of men sweating heavily. At this point, only they know that they are all going to die.

The planes, both Boeing 767s, leave a minute apart. Flight 175 takes off at 7.58am carrying 56 passengers, two pilots and seven flight attendants.

There is plenty of space. The 767 is a big twin-engined, twin-aisled jet capable of carrying 245 passengers. It has a take-off weight of 450,000lbs and the capacity for up to 23,920 gallons of fuel in the wings. At 7.59am Flight AA11 trundles down the runway carrying 81 passengers, two pilots and nine flight attendants. The planes are now cruising bombs that will shatter the World Trade Center.

Among the passengers is Mohamed Atta. His passport says he's from the United Arab Emirates. Police will later find a rented car at Boston's Logan airport with flight manuals in Arabic, videos on how to fly a large plane, a fuel calculator...and a copy of the Koran.

Atta is not in a chatty mood, though even if he was it is unlikely he would broadcast the fact that he is on the FBI's master-list of Arab terrorists.

In New York the sun is now just high enough to shine into the top and middle floors of the World Trade Center. Office workers gaze out of the windows over 1,200ft to the sidewalk below.

The sun also shines off the fuselage of Flight 175, making passengers shut their window shades. Among them is Marwan al'Sheddi. On both flights the Arabs are secretly armed with retractable craft knives with heavy plastic handles and hidden inside sponge bags, largely invisible to metal detectors.

At 8.01am, United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 and considerably smaller than the 767s, leaves Newark, a city in the state of New Jersey, but just a few miles from New York.

It is bound for San Francisco on the west coast, with two pilots and five flight attendants. Among the 38 passengers are another group of Arabic-looking men. These too are armed with knives. Nine minutes later American Airlines Flight AA77, also a Boeing 757, leaves Washington's Dulles Airport, also for San Francisco. There are four flight attendants and two pilots. The 58 passengers include Barbara Olson, 46, wife of America's Solicitor General.

Barbara, a former US prosecutor turned author and television pundit, had been due to make the flight on Monday. But at the last minute she delayed until today so she could have breakfast with her husband Ted to celebrate his 61st birthday.

At 8.28am it is clear that something is wrong with Flight AA11. Bizarrely, it executes a perfect 50 degree turn to the south as it passes over Albany in New York state.

Inside the cabin, all hell is breaking loose. The Arab-looking men, wearing red headbands, have grabbed the flight attendants and stabbed one of them to death, her blood staining the American Airlines livery.

Passengers are screaming as they are herded to the back of the plane. At this moment the attackers' trump card is that everyone on board believes it is a 'normal' hijack and have a chance of getting out alive if they follow orders.

Besides, in the tail, their movement is restricted. There is also less access to window seats, so frequent flyers on the route may not be noticing that the plane is heading down the eastern seaboard and not across the middle of America.

The killing of the stewardess is a ploy to get the captain from behind the controls. American law insists that the cockpit door is kept locked.

Peter Hanson, a 32-year-old computer expert with a Boston firm, is huddled close to his wife Susan and their young child. Surreptitiously, he uses his mobile phone to contact his father Lee in Easton, Connecticut "Something's wrong with the plane," he hisses down the phone. "Oh my God! They just stabbed the airline hostess! I think the airplane's being hijacked." The line goes dead.

Another man, locked in the plane's lavatory, also uses his mobile. "We're being hijacked, we're being hijacked," he cries. "This is not a hoax...this is not a hoax."

Pilot John Ogonowski is contacted over the cockpit intercom to tell him there is a problem and he is "not going to get hurt" if he comes out to investigate. Meanwhile the terrorists continue slitting throats.

Capt Ognowski thinks fast. He knws he has to go out to help but activates a "push-to-talk" button intermittently so authorities on the ground can listen to events unfolding on board.

Air traffic controllers in New Hampshire are dumbfounded as they hear an unidentified voice finally step into the cockpit through the unlocked door and warn: "We have more planes, we have other planes."

Captain Ognowski and his co-pilot Tom McGuinness are pulled away from the controls and possibly killed with razor slashes to the throat.

At 8.39am, two F16 fighter jets are scrambled from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, to the north of New York, with orders to investigate. But by the time they are airborne there are just ten minutes to impact and a terrorist is at the controls.

He is glad the flight deck looks reassuringly familiar to that displayed in Flight One Software's Microsoft Flight Simulation course $34.99 by mail order. It is so realistic the US Navy uses it to train recruits. Introductory pages even offer browsers the chance to "fly over the World Trade towers and Manhattan."

The new pilot's final trick, though, is pure evil. He flicks off the plane's transmitter so its position cannot be beamed to ground control.

Around two minutes later, Flight 175 also banks sharply to the south and heads for New York. A terrified female flight attendant secretly telephones United Airlines to report that her colleagues are being stabbed. Crucially, she also gives the seat number of one of the attackers and hands the FBI one of the first precious leads in the inquiry.

At around 8.40am the passengers on Flight AA11 have their worst fears confirmed. "Phone your families and tell them you are about to die," one hijacker screams.

Phone records will show a torrent of calls from that mobile sector; all in a few seconds as the plane flies horrifyingly close to Manhattan skyscrapers.

In the cockpit, the new pilot is carefully taking aim. The wingspan of a Boeing 767 is 156ft, the width of the north tower of the Trade Center is 208ft, so he only has 26ft of leeway on each side.

He is also aiming for a point close to the top. His masters have been told by structural engineers that the twin towers of the World Trade Center are of a type known as 'tube buildings' which consist of an outer layer of closely spaced steel columns and beams around a steel and concrete inner core.

When terrorists tried to destroy the place in 1993 they made the mistake of bombing the basement. But buildings like this are designed to withstand the stress of hight winds, so they are stronger and thicker on lower floors and flimsier, allowing for greater flexibility, at the top.

At 8.45am the plane hits exactly where it will do most damage, unleashing its cargo of aviation fuel in a huge fireball.

At least 25,000 men and women, half the workers employed in the 110-storey towers, are in their offices as the nose cone of the Boeing punches through the glass and concrete of the 95th floor, quickly followed by the huge wings.

The heat of the fireball is so intense that 70-year-old Katherine Ilachinski, an architect on the opposite south tower's 91st floor, is thrown from her chair. She rushes for the stairs and lives.

Gateshead-born father of three George Sleigh is at his desk in the north tower when he first hears the whining engine.

"I looked up out of the window and just a few feet away from the building was this huge jet plane," he will say days later. "The wheels were down and I could see the people in the cockpit. I thought to myself, 'Man, this guy is low in the air', but I still thought it would clear us. But then it smashed into the tower a few floors above me."

George, 63, hides under his desk then makes his way to the stairwell, eventually emerging with wounds that look like he has been peppered with shrapnel.

Also at his desk, but this time on the 105th floor, 33-year-old Nigel Thompson, from Sheffield, is chatting by phone to his twin brother Neil, who works on the other side of New York. He says he thinks a bomb has gone off but will keep talking until, he says, he is evacuated. Then the line goes dead.

Nigel is based in the offices of brokers Cantor Fitzgerald Securities. They will later reveal that 700 of their staff on Floors 101-105 remain unaccounted for. The twins' father, Norman, will say: "We are slowly beginning to realize we have lost Nigel."

The chairman of the company, 40-year-old Howard Lutnick, cheated death because he was late for work after taking his son to his first day of kindergarten.

When he arrives at the World Trade Center "all hell has broken loose." Desperate to find his staff, he calls to everyone dashing through the doors: "What floor were you on?"

He meets no one who came from a floor higher than 91. Days later he will weep uncontrollably and say: "My view of business is different now. I need to try to be successful in business so I can take care of 700 families who are dreaming to find someone."

Security consultant Joseph Gomez says: "I thought the world was going to end and the whole building shuddered.

"Everyone made for the fire exits. There was screaming and panic. People were shoving and pushing."

The explosion, fanned by the winds that always swirl around the towers, ignites a firestorm that incinerates huge swathes of some of Manhattan's most prestigious office space.

Melissa Harrington-Hughes, stuck above the blast, phones home and leaves a message on the answerphone for her husband Sean. "Sean, it's me," she says, her voice trembling. "I just wanted to let you know I love you and I'm stuck in this building. A plane hit or a bomb went off, we just don't know. But there's a lot of smoke and I just wanted you to know I loved you."

It is the last Sean hears from her.

A pall of smoke and flame engulfs the north tower, huge chunks of concrete and metal raining on the streets below. There is pandemonium on the roads as traffic screeches to a halt and cars attempt U-turns.

In offices across the road workers look in horror as faces appear at the north tower windows. At this height, faint screams are carried on the wind. Suddenly there is a further series of explosions and the crash of falling masonry is accompanied by the sickening thud, thud of bodies crashing to the ground far below.

Architect Bob Shelton has his foot in a cast after breaking it falling off a kerb two weeks ago.

He hears the explosion of the first plane hitting the north tower from his 56th-floor office in the south tower. As a good Samaritan carries his crutches, Shelton supports himself on a railing to make his way down the stairs.

"You could hear the building cracking," says Shelton. "It sounded like when you have a bunch of spaghetti and you break it in half to boil it."

Gilbert Richard Ramirez works for BlueCross BlueShield on the 20th floor of the north tower.

"Someone pulled an emergency alarm switch, but nothing happened," he says. "Someone else broke into the emergency phone, but it was dead. People began to say their prayers.

"I was telling them, "Breathe, breathe. Christ is on our side, we're gonna get out of here."

Ramirez sees victims with appalling burns. "Their skin was like a greyish colour," he shudders. "And it was dripping or peeling off their bodies.

"One woman was screaming. She said she lost her friend. A gust sucked her out of the window."

"I saw those guys one time, but they're not gonna be there again."

Robert Falcon, who works in the parking garage at the towers, has his own tale of horror. "When the blast shook it went dark," he reveals later. "I had a flashlight and everyone was screaming at me. People were ripping my shirt to try and get to my flashlight. They were crushing me."

Court officer Ed Kennedy hides behind a pillar for protection. He grabs the arms of a woman to pull her to safety too...then realises he is holding just an arm.

Yet in these still early moments of carnage, others are unaware of the horror around them.

Richard Prescott Stearns is working in a windowless room on the 8th floor. "All I felt were a couple of judders, no alarms of any kind," he will tell rescuers.

"Since construction was going on and large bangs were common, I worked on. When I stepped out the fire escape was full of smoke and panicked people. We eventually got out."

As crowds pour down the stairs they even cheer firefighters walking up to the higher floors. Meanwhile, workers in the south tower, alerted by the mayhem in the north tower, are busy leaving the building. But announcements tell them to go back to their desks, insisting the problem is confined to the other skyscraper.

Many go meekly back up in the lifts or the stairs...to meet their death.

Simon Shellacker, from Islington, North London, is in a meeting on the 71st floor of the south tower when he is alerted to a "problem" in the north.

He leads his group down the stairs. "By the time we got to the 51st floor," he will say later, "there were announcements that a fire in the north tower was contained.

"We stopped but took the decision to carry on down the stairs."

It saves their lives.

A few blocks away, the Duchess of York and her aide Kate Waddington are on their way to a charity meeting at the World Trade Center when her taxi becomes snarled in traffic.

As she sits in chaos, the second airliner, Flight 175, crashes into the Center's south tower. It is 9.06am. The orchestrated delay between the two hits is just enough time to get TV cameras on the scene to cover the aftermath of the first blast.

Richard Stearns' statement will continue: "When I got out I turned to see both towers on fire with people jumping out of the windows."

A police van weaves through the mostly-stationary traffic broadcasting the warning: "You're all going to die! Run away!"

It is too late for a financial seminar organised by British company Risk Waters in the Windows On The World restaurant with its stunning views of New York City.

Days after the explosion, the firm will fail to trace anyone in that restaurant...16 employees, including ten from Britain, and 124 delegates.

But emergency services have to get into the building to help with the evacuation--by tomorrow their stories will make headlines around the world.

John Bussey, 42-year-old foreign editor of the Wall Street Journal whose offices are just yards from the World Trade Center, sees the south tower explode then watches men and women plunging out of windows.

"Some fell swinging their arms and legs, looking down as the street came up at them," he says later. "Others fell on their backs, peering upward towards the flames and the sky.

"Some crashed into the awning over the entrance to the North Tower. Others hit a retaining wall and still others landed on lampposts and shrubbery.

"After the 80-floor drop, the impact left small puffs of pink and red smoke drifting at ground level.

"Unknown to the dozens of firefighters on the street and those of us still in offices in the neighborhood, the south tower was weakening structurally.

"I was collecting my thoughts for my next report when I heard metallic crashes and looked out the window to see explosions from each floor. One after the other, from top to bottom and with a fraction of a second between them, the floors blew to pieces."

Seven minutes after the second plane hits, President George W. Bush is reading to a group of schoolchildren in Florida when chief of staff Andrew Card whispers in his ear. Bush is ashen.

Within 15 minutes reports emerge that the FBI is investigating claims of hijacking. Any lingering thoughts that the crashes are a terrible accident are dispelled. By 9.30am Bush announces "a national tragedy." Five minutes later all bridges and tunnels in New York City are closed.

In Washington, CIA director George Tenet is having breakfast with former senator David Boren at the St Regis Hotel. Their omelettes have just arrived when Tenet's security detail appear with a cell phone. "Give me the quick summary," Tenet says calmly on the phone. Then he tells Boren: "The World Trade Center has been hit. We're pretty sure it wasn't an accident. It looks like a terrorist act."

Tenet returns to the phone and names a dozen people he wants summoned to the CIA situation room. "Assemble them in 15 minutes," he says tersely.

Vice-President Dick Cheney is in his West Wing office when the Secret Service burst in, hurrying him out of the room. "We have to move. We're moving now, Sir, we're moving," the agents say as they take him to a bunker on the White House grounds.

Once there, they tell Cheney what they believe--that a rogue plane is heading for the White House.

The passengers on board flight AA77 know nothing of this. They are consumed by their own hijack terror.

At around 9.36am Barbara Olson calls her husband on her mobile to tell him the plane has been hijacked.

Theodore Olson is at his desk in the US Justice Department. He is aghast when she tells him she is in the toilet, and hijackers are on board with box-cutters and knives. They are speaking in Arabic, she adds.

The line goes dead. Acting swiftly, Mr Olson calls his department's control centre. He is told that nobody knew Flight AA77 was in peril.

Minutes later Barbara calls again. "What shall I tell the pilot?" she asks in despair. The line goes again. Those are the last words her husband hears her speak.

Within moments of Barbara's alert, her plane is being tracked. White House staff, two miles from the Pentagon, are told to "run for your lives."

"I've never been so scared and so, so sad at the same time," says one White House aide. "We never thought that anything like that could happen to us."

The plane suddenly banks 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west. It crashes into the building at 9.40am.

Senator Chuck Hagel says: "This is the second Pearl Harbor." Between 100 and 800 people are believed to be dead.

Initial reports are that the plane has scored a direct hit, but 23-year-old David Marra, an information technology specialist, has turned his BMW off an exit to the highway just west of the building when he sees the jet swooping in, "wings wobbly".

He adds: "It was 50ft off the deck when he came in. It sounded like the pilot had the throttle completely floored. The plane rolled left and then rolled right. Then he caught an edge of his wing on the ground."

The wing touches a helicopter pad then cartwheels into the building.

News spreads fast across the world. The blasts were timed for daytime and early evening across Europe and the middle east. Over 16million people are watching in the UK alone.

But the streets of Jerusalem are filled with a mob chanting: "God is great." One of them, Nawal Abdel Fatah, throws sweets in the air and declares: "America is the head of the snake."

By 10am, the White House, Treasury and CIA buildings are completely evacuated. Airports across America are shut down for the first time in history.

But worse is to come. At 10am the south tower of the World Trade Center buckles and collapses. Almost everyone left inside is killed. The thunderous roar, the screams of crowds running for their lives below and the mushroom cloud of dust spewing up and through the streets of New York become some of the most enduring images of desolation and horror ever seen on worldwide TV.

Associated Press reporter Dunstan Prial says: "There was a strange sucking sound. Windows are shattering. People are screaming and diving for cover."

Stunned survivors are staggering in the pall, coated in white dust, their faces streaked with blood and tears. They look like tormented ghosts.

Volunteers with the least bit of medical training are diverted to blood-donation centres or sent to join the 'black teams' where they know they are not going to be called on to save a life - just handle dead bodies.

The colour code is black for dead, red for helping immediately life-threatening wounds, yellow for serious but non-life-threatening injuries and green for the walking wounded.

Photographer Dennis Van Tine, 40, joins the first wave of emergency crews to arrive on the scene.

He has recently recently returned to New York from Israel's West Bank but has never seen anything like this.

He will say later: "I didn't stop for 48 hours. For as long as I could I kept shooting pictures, but there were times when I just had to work alongside the firecrews."

Dennis takes his pictures from a ferry leaving Staten Island, heading for Manhattan. It's only a short ride across New York's harbour and takes you close to the Statue of Liberty.

"We arrived just as the second tower was collapsing," he says. "The whole area was thick with smoke and dust, it made you gag.

"The remains of the tower are actually shards of metal from high up in the building which have fallen and embedded themselves about 30 feet into the ground. There are eight stories below ground which this metal will have cut through.

"I can't speak highly enough of the guys on the ground. The job they did in the most impossible circumstances makes them all heroes.

"There was one firecrew who arrived while the towers were still standing. They went to enter one of the towers when their lead man was killed outright by someone who had leapt to escape the fire.

"Then there was another who dived under his fire engine when the first tower came down. They are trained to do this when there's falling debris.

"But the fire engine spun through 180 degrees, hit by falling rock and metal. This guy was holding on and he ended up on top of it. He lived. Many other firefighters who did the same died by being crushed.

"The bodies I saw were like tattered rugs in a black and white movie...everything had been coated in dust and debris.

"I went inside a dress shop with a firecrew and all the clothes on sale seemed to be a low brown colour - again it was the dust.

"My throat was caked with dust, I was parched. I pushed the door open on a bar in a building close to the towers. It was deserted. All I could find at first was hard liquor.

"I didn't think Jack Daniel's would be right so in the end I found a bottle of Carlsberg in a fridge, rinsed my mouth out with it then drank the rest. I left two dollars on the bar."

As Dennis is taking his pictures, another hijack drama is being played out on United Airlines Flight 93.

Again, the terrorists have taken over, but this time they don't get it all their own way.

Around the time the south tower collapses, passenger Tom Burnett calls his wife on his mobile and says: "I know we're all gonna die, but three of us are going to do something about it...I love you, honey."

Some passengers in the plane know the World Trade Center has been attacked, because relatives have told them during surreptitious conversations on mobile phones.

So the male passengers realise they face certain death anyway and sitting tight is not an option. Instead they bravely VOTE on whether to try and overpower the hijackers. It is still unclear whether Tom and the others die trying to wrest the controls away from their captors - or whether pilot Captain Jason Dahl deliberately crashed the plane to avoid the loss of even more innocent lives.

At the time Terry Butler, 40, is pulling the radiator from a 1992 Dodge Caravan at the junkyard where he works near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He looks up and sees Flight 93 cutting through the morning fog. "It was moving like you wouldn't believe," he says. The plane skims woodland, cattle pastures and cornfields until it passes over Kelly Leverknight's home.

"It was headed towards the school," she tells reporters later, "the school where my three children go."

Had Flight 93 stayed aloft a few seconds longer, it would have ploughed into Shanksville-Stonycreek School and its 501 students. Instead, at 10.06am, the plane smashed into a reclaimed section of an old coal strip mine.

At exactly 10.29am the north tower of the World Trade Center collapses as the New York skyline is changed forever. Fire marshal Mike Smith shouts: "It's like a war zone."

Stuck away from the action in Florida, George Bush is keen to return to Washington. But his security advisers have other ideas. They inform Bush that the attack is a "credible threat" - the military term for an act of war. Convinced the president is a target, they keep him airborne on Air Force One for much of the day.

The mood on the presidential jumbo jet is tense. Bush is in his office in the front of the plane, on the phone to Cheney, FBI director Robert Mueller and the First Lady.

Cheney tells him that law-enforcement and security agencies believe the White House and Air Force One are both targets.

Bush, the Vice President insists, should head to a safe military base as soon as possible.

One Secret Service agent reports that the Secret Service field office in New York City, with its 200 agents, is located in the World Trade Center.

The plane's TV monitors are tuned into local news broadcasts.

About 45 minutes after take-off, a decision is made to fly to Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, site of the nation's nuclear command and one of the most secure military installations in the country.

But Bush's aides don't want to wait that long before the President can make a statement.

Secret Service officials and military advisers in Washington consult a map and choose a spot for Bush to make a brief touchdown: Barksdale Air Force base, outside Shreveport.

Air Force One lands at Barksdale at 11.45am with fighter jets hovering beside each wing throughout the descent. The perimeter is surrounded by Air Force personnel in full combat gear: green fatigues, flak jackets, helmets, M-16s at the ready.

Bush makes a speech at 12.36pm from a windowless conference room in front of two American flags dragged together by air force privates.

"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward," he begins.

Bush later declares the country at Defcon 3 - a full war footing just two stages below Defcon 1, all-out nuclear war.

Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line to the presidency after Cheney, is taken by helicopter to an undisclosed "secure destination."

Soon counter-measures are being taken around the world. At 11.06am the European Parliament in Brussels is evacuated. Fifteen minutes later Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a crisis meeting with security ministers at the Kremlin. Just after midday the US borders with Canada and Mexico are closed. Nato announces that it has invoked Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty for the first time in its 53-year history. That move gives America full authority to strike when and where she chooses - with the support of 18 other nations and their armies.

On Tuesday night a senior member of the United Arab Emirates Defence Ministry is catching up on the day's events. He is on a shooting holiday in Scotland. There is a phone call from the CIA to alert him that Mohamed Atta once worked for a member of the UAE royal family.

A series of frantic calls are made from the palace in Abu Dhabi to all members of the ruling royal family to summon them home immediately.

Sheik Sultan has no idea Atta was a terrorist. A diplomatic source explains: "The last thing the Emirates want is to be associated with terrorism. Although they recognise countries like Afghanistan for symbolic religious reasons they've never supported terrorism.

"They don't want to be classed with the Gaddafis and Saddams of the Arab world."

Back in America, in the wasteland that is Manhattan, the rescue operation is continuing. Survivors are trapped in pockets under the mountainous rubble. Miraculously, they still have a signal on their mobiles and dial out for help, praying it arrives before their oxygen runs out or before another slap of concrete and metal shifts and crushes them.

Police officer Joe Lombardi is still on duty after the worst day of his life. He pauses in the rubble to convince himself that what he has seen really has happened.

Like many others he has watched in depair as office workers, demented by pain and fear, queued to throw themselves from the towering inferno.

"It was the most mortifying thing imaginable and the feeling of helplessness is almost unbearable," he says. "People were making lines and taking their turn to jump off silently. The only noise was when the bodies hit the sidewalk and that noise was in a steady rhythm for a few minutes."

When the second jet struck the twin towers Lombardi was showered by flaming limbs and body parts - in hindsight he now believes they were the disintegrating bodies of passengers killed by the plane's impact.

"Life has nothing else as grim as that," he says.

As the fires in both buildings raged Lombardi and fellow officer Steven Kennedy had fought to move people away from danger. But many seemed to be in a trance, fixated by the images before them. Others were plainly ghouls.

As he stands in the rubble, Lombardi finds it hard to cope.

"People wouldn't move back quickly enough," he says. "There were a lot of them who stood and took pictures with their disposable cameras.

"We tried everything possible to move them but there were too many to move back effectively and not everyone was listening. But when the buildings came down there's nothing we could have done as police officers and it was every man for himself. We all ran for our lives."

As he speaks he runs his finger across the laminated edge of a special ID tag - like so many others he has been ordered to carry it in case more rubble falls on him and he becomes another corpse. At least identification will be easier.

"Still," he says, "despite the circumstances there's a lot I'm proud of in the way most people have reacted to this disaster.

As night falls, the remains of the twin towers are still burning. "This is what hell must look like," says one rescue worker, his hands already raw 'even under thick gloves' from shifting rubble. Throughout the night, under the glare of arc lights and the glow of flames, the rescuers work on. As Wednesday's dawn breaks the sun illuminates a scene of utter devastation dotted by sniffer dogs, rescue teams, and remote controlled robots with cameras. Construction workers look like ants against the giant, shredded girders.

Estimates of the dead and injured change by the minute as corpse after corpse is dragged out then ferried across the Hudson river to a makeshift mortuary in New Jersey.

City officials order 15,000 bodybags, then alter the order to 11,000. At least 202 firefighters and 259 other uniformed city workers are missing. Two of them are a father and son, both called Joseph Angelini.

The missing heroes were the first in to the fires, before the towers collapsed on them.

Louise Cacchioli, 51, assigned to Engine 47 is among the first in the second tower after the plane strikes.

He says later: "There were probably 500 people trapped in the stairwell. It was mass chaos. The power went out. It was dark. Everybody was screaming."

Paramedic Louis Garcia says many of the dead are buried under 2ft of ash and soot. "Vehicles are running over bodies because they're all over the place," he says.

"But there are also people running over to us burned from head to toe. Their hair is burned off. There are compound fractures, arms and legs sticking out of the skin."

Of the six patients in his first ambulance run, two die on the way to St Vincent's Hospital.

National Guard trooper Angelo Otchy adds: "I must have come across body parts by the thousand."

But every rescuer has a tale of horror. One, weeping with frustration, says: "I was following the sound of a voice when a steel beam came down and blocked my way. I was nearly there. I tried. I tried."

The body of a stewardess from one of the planes is pulled from the dust. The blast has failed to obliterate the fact that her hands are tied.

In Washington troops are pulling dead colleagues from the remains of the Pentagon. Estimates put the death toll at up to 800. Tony Blair warns that British casualties could run into hundreds.

Scotland Yard is flooded with calls from anxious relatives, but the scene is multiplied tenfold in New York as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers desperately roam the streets clutching pictures of their loved ones, stopping at each hospital with a hope that diminishes as each page of the injured list is checked and rechecked.

Snapshots are stuck on cars, trees, anywhere that might help the search.

The Risk Waters company who organised the Windows On The World seminar reveals that among the London staff presumed missing are mum-of-two Michelle Duberry, Simon Turner, whose wife is seven months' pregnant, and engaged couple Diana Webster and Neil Cudmore.

Sarah Redheffer, who set up the conference, is also missing. Her father, David Prothero, is the rector of Bathwick in Bath. "Every time the phone rings and it's not Sarah it breaks my heart," he says.

In Washington and Langley, the FBI and CIA launch the biggest criminal and intelligence investigations in US history. President Bush, on a steep learning curve so early in his presidency, vows to track down those responsible for "an act of war."

He says grimly: "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail."

Middle Eastern presidents join in condemnation of the attacks - not least because they are terrified that if they don't America's armed forces might bomb them to smithereens.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat gives blood in a bid to counteract the catastrophic public relations nightmare done to his cause as his followers cheered on the streets.

Iraq alone openly celebrates while the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, once so bullish, are now sounding distinctly uncomfortable. For years, the billionaire terrorist Osama bin Laden has been a 'guest' in their country. But the finger of suspicion is pointing directly at him.

And throughout the day stories of despair, of heroism and of the plainly miraculous begin to trickle then pour out.

Irishman Ronnie Clifford is helping pull bodies from the debris, unaware that his sister Ruth Clifford McCourt, 45, and her daughter Juliana, four, were in the plane that crashed hundreds of feet above him. He discovers the truth only when he returns home. "The people who killed them don't belong in civilised society," he says grimly.

Then, describing the horrors he has seen over the past 36 hours, he says: "I walked out of the Center, took a look around and walked back in the revolving doors, and as soon as I came back in there was an explosion and a haze and a smell of what I thought was diesel fuel. It was aviation fuel.

"For some reason I knew instinctively it was a bomb or it was a terrorist act because it's the World Trade Center and you're always wary there.

"Out of this haze came a woman. It looked like she was totally charred. She came from where I'd just walked with her clothes burned right on her body, no shoes. Her hair was literally melted with her face and eyes.

"She didn't know what was happening or where she was going. There was a lot of commotion and I was screaming for emergency help.

"There was a second explosion then. The building started to shake, pieces of ceiling and plaster started to fall and there was a hurricane. I smelled more fuel.

"We lifted the woman from the floor and started to go towards the door. Seventy per cent of her body is burned but she survived, I think."

Ulsterman Jimmy Loughran, an electrician from Kildress, Co Tyrone, sees bodies and huge fireballs raining down from the sky as he flees from the Center where he had been working.

The 47-year-old father of three says later: "While I was inside, the whole building began to sway about six of seven feet each way.

"We ran to the stairs and water was gushing down them."

Once on the ground floor, he makes it into the street and sees the body of a delivery man, still with packages in his hands, lying by revolving doors.

He says later: "I just froze. About 15 feet away I could see another body. It was then that I started to get really frightened."

He and another man run through the falling glass and debris.

He will recall later: "When I finally looked back I saw the twin towers on fire. I saw three people jump from the 80th floor. I never saw anything like it in my life. It was unreal.

"But it just wasn't my day to die. There was someone looking down on me."

Internet executive Omar Wasow, 30, says: "I was outside when the first building collapsed and just started running down the street. The billowing cloud of dust was chasing me. It was like that scene from Indiana Jones where he's running from that boulder."

It emerges, too, that banker Simon Perkins from Plymouth, Devon, led 60 of his staff to safety just after the first plane exploded.

Simon worked at the Salomon Brothers offices on an upper floor of Building Seven, a 47-storey skyscraper in the Center complex.

The Brit started the evacuation after one of his colleagues saw the first plane explode. Simon's dad, Ray, says: "Until recently he had an office on the 76th floor of one of the main towers - almost exactly where the plane went in, so we can only thank God that he moved."

Fireman James Morgan, 36, is digging with his bare hands. "I saw a young fireman waiting in the wreckage to see if his father was alive," he says. "His father was a fire chief and they found the truck he had been in under the ruins.

"We pulled bodies out of there but none of them was his dad. The guy was heartbroken."

Then there is the story of Tony Avila, a young clerk who was supposed to take his test to become a trader on the American Stock Exchange this week.

He has returned to the scene, or as close as the barricades will now let him, and needs to share what happened.

"It was so like the movies," says Tony, 25. "Like running from a tidal wave. There were hundreds of us, running at full speed, down the street. We were shoulder to shoulder, looking back, unable to take our eyes off this cloud of debris that was chasing us.

"The man in front of me kept looking over his shoulder and ran into a phone booth, smashing his face."

At Houston Street he stares at the gap in the skyline, at the smoke still billowing and recalls every moment.

"I was in the American Stock Exchange offices, about half a block from the south tower, when I heard the first plane crashing," he says.

"The lights flickered and dimmed in our building. Then we saw fire and smoke. A voice came over the loudspeakers telling us that we were in the safest place.

"But one of my colleagues, Joe McCarthy, got on the phone with his brother Jason who works with us and was on his way to our office when he stopped in the World Trade Plaza to look up. He was standing there when the second plane crashed into the south tower."

"That's when Joe and I and a third colleague called Hector decided we were going to leave the building. We were walking south then we came around the corner and another one till we were moving north up Broadway.

"We were at the corner of Broadway looking head-on at the south tower when we heard the rumbling. We were just staring at it as it started collapsing and we started walking away but we couldn't take our eyes off it.

"And then someone screamed 'Oh my God!' and everyone started running. There were mobs tripping over each other, trying to get away, like the smoke was chasing us and getting closer.

"Joe, Hector and I made it to a doorway. We thought we'd get trampled. The smoke and ash were swirling around. There were shoes littering the street and so much paper, it looked like one of those tickertape parades. Everyone looked as if they'd dressed in beige suits that morning.

"Then suddenly we could hardly see anything, the smoke got so thick. We banged on what we thought was a door and we realised it was a restaurant of some kind.

"One of the people in there screamed at the man who opened the door to us and said, 'Don't let anyone in!'

But the guy who opened the door replied, 'What am I supposed to do? Let them die outside?' We stayed in there for ten more minutes or so and got wet paper towels to wipe off our faces.

"Later we found out that Jason had made it out of the area safely, too. But there was a lot of people who didn't."

The combined impact of both planes smashing into the center is the equivalent of one-sixth of the power of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Each plane gave off around 1.2 kilotonnes of energy - a total of around 2.5 kilotonnes - when they exploded, causing both towers to collapse in massive mushroom clouds. Professor Steven Block, of Stanford University, California, says later: "The impact of one crash generated an explosive force of 1.2 kilotonnes. We have just seen the dawn of a whole new generation of terrorism."

The billowing smoke is even seen by astronauts in the international space station 250 miles above Earth. Meanwhile policeman John McLoughlin falls 1,000ft from the 83rd floor and survives. Rescuers are stunned when they find him alive.

He tells them he "curled himself into a ball" and rolled down the floors as the building fell down.

Like most other victims he is covered in the cement dust hanging over the city like a shroud. Environment chiefs later reveal that it can kill by blocking lungs.

Willie McMartin, from the International Rescue Corps, says: "It dries on the skin and begins to affect your eyes, hands and it clogs in the back of your throat. That's why everyone wears goggles and face masks".

On Thursday Dutch officials say four suspects believed to be involved in an Islamist extremist network have been picked up in Rotterdam. On Friday the FBI name 19 hijackers, including seven pilots, who commandeered the four airliners used in the terror attacks. Investigators say they have a list of more than 100 people wanted for questioning.

The hijackers on the flight which gouged a huge hole in the Pentagon were Khalid Al-Midhar, who was in the United States on a visa, Majed Moqed, Nawaq Alhamzi, Salem Alhamzi and pilot Hani Hanjour, who may have lived in Phoenix and San Diego.

Terrorists on the flight that crashed into the north tower were Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Mohamed Atta, who had possible residences in Florida and Hamburg, Abdulaziz Alomari and Satam Al Suqami, whose last known address was in the United Arab Emirates.

The hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which slammed into the south tower, were pilot Marwan Al Shehhi, who lived in Hollywood, Florida, and was in the United States on a visa, Fayez Ahmed, Mohald Alshehri, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, all of whom were from Delray Beach, Florida. The hijackers aboard the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania were identified as Ahmed Alhaznawi, Ahmed Alnami, Saeed Alghamdi, all possible residents of Delray Beach, and pilot Ziad Jarrahi. And still the statistics mount like the rubble. Up to 20,000 feared dead, 5,000 still unaccounted for - among them up to 1,000 Britons, making it the biggest single bombing atrocity on UK nationals since Hilter killed 600 in Coventry during World War II. Events in America have consumed Prime Minister Tony Blair's week too.

He is in the Fitzherbert Suite of the Grand Hotel in Brighton on Tuesday afternoon when he first learns of the attack at the World Trade Center. He and Alastair Campbell are going over the final draft of a speech he is due to give to the TUC when an aide brings him the news.

At that stage he thinks it is a terrible accident. But then his press secretary tells him of the second plane crash. Mr Blair's reaction was "one of total shock."

After making his apologies to the TUC he catches the 3.40 train back to London for a special meeting with his cabinet secretary, MI5 and MI6. They assure him Britain is not under attack.

Nevertheless, the machinery of emergency slips into gear. He quickly chairs a meeting of Cobra, the Civil Contingencies Committee. The group is named after the secret bunker where meetings are held: Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

That evening Mr Blair addresses the press and announces emergency security measures including a no-fly zone over the City of London.

At 8am on Wednesday there is a bomb scare at Downing Street before Mr Blair chairs another Cobra meeting. He decides to recall parliament to show democracy in action.

Immediately after briefing the press Mr Blair has a 20-minute conversation with Mr Bush during which he assures the president Britain will stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States.

By 7pm Blair is back at the Cobra table. He is told to expect hundreds of British casualties. At 9.30am on Friday Mr Blair makes a statement to the House of Commons in which he says the attacks are an assault on basic democratic values. "It is therefore right that parliament, the fount of our own democracy, makes its democratic voice heard," he adds.

In the afternoon Blair makes another 20-minute phone call to President Bush.

By now it is clear that the insurance bill for the tragedy will top £27 billion, though not for the towers themselves.

The owners, the New York Port Authority, insured only one of the towers against collapse because everyone felt the chances of both going was negligible.

That means they face receiving around £1billion instead of the market value of £3.3billion for the pair.

But even these concerns pale beside the military retaliation America and her allies are now contemplating. As the clock has ticked on the five steps to war have steadily been fulfilled.

STEP ONE is an attack on America.

STEP TWO is a threat to the President.

STEP THREE is Nato intervention.

STEP FOUR is a move in Congress. On the afternoon of September 13 America's parliament, which controls the purse strings of the government, gives Bush a $40billion war chest to pay for both the war on terrorism and the reconstruction of New York and Washington. The cash is more than double what the President asked for.

Twenty-four hours later, the US Senate votes 98-0 to allow George Bush to utilise the Articles of War to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for Tuesday's deadly hijack.

STEP FIVE is mobilisation: On Friday afternoon Bush orders the Pentagon to call up 50,000 reservists to active duty.

The reserve force includes 13,000 air force reservists, 10,000 troops, 7,500 elite US marines, 3,000 naval reservists and 2,000 coastguards.

As the First Fleet patrols the eastern seaboard, the Fifth Fleet is ready to strike in the Gulf of Arabia and the massive Seventh Fleet is at sea off the Philippines.

On Friday evening, Secretary of State for Defence Donald Rumsfeld announces that 26 domestic fighter bases are extending their operations to patrol constantly in the American sky.

On Friday the terrorist attacks are dubbed a "deliberate act of war" by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Opening an emergency Commons debate on the tragedy, Mr Straw warns that Britain must develop its defences against "copycat" attacks.

SAS troops are flown out to the Middle East to team up with the elite American special forces unit, the Delta Force.

A large contingent of troopers from the Hereford regiment take part in advance exercises in preparation for any future combat action.

The combined group are believed to be training for a possible snatch operation against Osama bin Laden at his remote hideout in mountains of Afghanistan.

The whereabouts of the combined group is being kept secret but they are basing themselves in a 'friendly' Middle Eastern country. Small SAS squads have been carrying out clandestine reconnaissance missions into the area around Bin Laden's lair for the past five years.

Nato is warned that its Brussels headquarters is a prime target for a future air assault from Middle East terrorists.

The News of the World learns that a number of threats were received from Middle East terror groups during the summer.

We also learn that the armed services have been ordered to operate a 'shoot to kill' policy over the skies of Britain.

Fighter planes are put on standby to shoot down any aircraft that deviates from its flight path amid fears of a repeat of the American suicide bombings.

On Saturday investigators start analysing the black-box data recorder from the hijacked plane which crashed near Pittsburgh.

The recorder, which could hold crucial evidence of the minutes before it crashed, is the first to be recovered from the three crash sites.

Firefighters in the Pentagon are hopeful of finding the black box from the plane which crashed there.

FBI sources say the hijackers who crashed near Pittsburgh had been aiming to plough into the White House - or the President's Camp David retreat.

On Friday New Yorkers show their defiance of the terrorists and mourn the death of Father Mychal Judge, Chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, who went to the aid of victims.

President Bush is mobbed by rescuers chanting "USA, USA, USA!" as he clambers over the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

In torrential rain, he tells emergency workers: "Thank you for making the nation proud."

And he is wildly cheered when he tells them: "The people who knocked those buildings down will hear from all of us soon."

America is backed by horrified countries all over the free world. It is moving beyond words.

In London the band of the Coldstream Guards plays the American national anthem at the Changing of the Guard.

The Queen fights back tears at St Paul's Cathedral where 2,000 gather for a service of remembrance.

As the first chords of the Star Spangled Banner emerged from the great organ, the Queen begins to sing for the first time in all her 75 years the national anthem of a foreign nation.

Outside the cathedral, another 8,000 on Ludgate Hill listen to the service being relayed on loudspeakers.

At 11am on Friday the world falls silent for three minutes as people stop their everyday tasks to remember the dead.

Candlelight services of remembrance are held all over Britain.

Lord Ashdown, a former member of the the elite Special Boat Squadron, says: "We are going to remember this like we do the death of Kennedy.

"Like Pearl Harbor for the previous generation, those images of destruction will be etched into our memories for the rest of our lives."

On Saturday the Ferrari team taking part in the Italian Grand Prix strip off their cars' commercial logos and put black bonnets on them in tribute to America's dead.

And players in all soccer and rugby matches are asked to wear black armbands as a mark of respect.

On Saturday afternoon, the steady rumble of B-52 bombers and F-16 fighters are heard by residents next to Britain's massive US military base at Fairford in Gloucestershire.

It is 100 hours since that car park argument at Boston's Logan airport.

 

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