On August 6th 2001, George W Bush, former President of the United States, received his daily brief. This day’s brief was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”. This report which was declassified in 2004 tells of a man called Osama bin Laden, who had been planning an attack on the USA since the late 1990s. The majority of the brief details previous attempts by Bin Laden to attack the United States. However, the ending of the report stated that since 1999, the FBI had been conducting investigations, reporting that Bin Laden was “[indicating] patterns of suspicious activity in this country, consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” After having read this, Bush chose to brush it off and do nothing about it.
Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 0800 hours. It is a cloudless day. At Logan International Airport in Boston, USA, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 are having their passengers board. The American Airlines Flight is a Boeing 767-223ER and the United Airlines flight is a Boeing 767-222. The American Airlines Flight had 97 passengers onboard, little do they know that 5 of them are Al-Qaeda hijackers, one of which is one of the main leaders of the attacks called Mohamed Atta. While Flight 11 is taking off, United 175 has been delayed by fourteen minutes, which contains 65 passengers and 5 hijackers. At 8:14, it takes off. At the same time, United Airlines Flight 93 is being boarded at Newark Airport in New Jersey. Meanwhile, at Dulles Airport in Washington, American Airlines Flight 77 is also boarding. The aforementioned United 93 is delayed by 40 minutes, the most important 40 minutes in human history. Flight 77 is delayed by 20 minutes and took off at 8:20. As you guessed, all these planes were meant to take off at 8:00, and that was the terrorists plan the whole time. 0819 hours, Betty Ong, a flight attendant, contacts ground control and says “The cockpit’s not answering. Somebody’s stabbed in business class an I think there’s Mace, that we can’t breathe. I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.”
5 minutes later they seem to accidentally receive a call from Mohammed Atta. 0833 hours, another announcement from Mohammed Atta plays, saying that they are “going back to the airport.”:
As most of you very well know, this was not the case. Over the state of New York, the plane turns around, with a target of New York City.
In New York City, in New Jersey, the Naudet Brothers are practicing their camera skills. While they are filming a drain with a firefighter, they hear a plane fly overhead. This is uncommon in Manhattan, so they decide to follow the track of the plane with the camera and the plane hits. This became some of the most famous footage associated with the attacks
A few seconds before impact, flight attendant, Amy Sweeny, says: “We are in rapid descent…we are all over the place. Oh, my God, we are too low!” 0846 hours, Flight 11 strikes the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on the 93rd to 99th floor. Smoke clogs the air as United 93 passengers received the news. A world-wide panic ensues. Everyone across the globe are in shock. Every TV in the world are showing the events at the World Trade Centre unfold, and 15 minutes later the second one hit.
Flight 175 was hijacked at around the same time that Flight 11 hit the North Tower. It had a near collision with Delta Airlines Flight 2315, having to roll on its side and missed the aircraft by 300 ft, or 90 m. 0903 hours, United 175 hit the south tower, having turned around over New Jersey. It crashes into the 77th and 85th floor. This is broadcast on live TV across the planet. All elevators in both buildings were taken out, so anyone in elevators could not escape. This concept is explored in the not very well received, 2017 movie, 9/11, with 4 people trapped in a north tower elevator. The heat of the blaze begins to weaken the infrastructure of the building. After this, The White house engage an evacuation. During this evacuation, another plane attacks, but instead of hitting another part of the World Trade Centre it attacks the military HQ of the United States in Washington DC in Virginia, The Pentagon. 0937 hours, Flight 77 crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, killing all 64 passengers and 5 hijackers on board. It turned around over the Ohio and Kentucky border and also ground control lost contact with the aircraft around about there as well. This attack had a total of around 189 deaths. No audio recordings were found of this hijacking but there is security camera footage of the plane striking the Pentagon.
0850 hours, the United 93’s passengers were informed of the news about the Twin Towers and about 30 minutes later, the plane is Hijacked. Panic ensues as call after call is made from and to 93. The four hijackers take the 44 passengers and flight crew by storm and take over the aircraft and turn it around over Ohio towards Washington DC. So far, all the planes have attacked a symbol of the greatness and power of America, so the intended target could’ve been either the White House or the Capitol building. An audio clip shows that the passengers were genuinely frightened for in the background you can hear someone say, “We’re all going to die in here!” 0928 hours, there is an attempt to make contact with the crew of 93 but all they receive are announcements from the leader of this hijack, Ziad Jarrah. 0939 hours, pregnant passenger, Lauren Grandcolas, informs her husband, Jack, that “there’s just a little problem with the plane.” Later, another female passenger, CeeCee Lyles called her husband to tell her that she loves him very much. 0957 hours, Todd Beamer makes a request to Airplane Supervisor, Lisa Jefferson.
“Would you do one last thing for me?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Would you pray with me?”
The passengers then recited the Lord’s Prayer together. At the end of this improvised sermon on the plane, Beamer concluded with this verse from Psalms 23
“Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
The verse that Beamer recited on United 93, Psalms 23:4
I will fear no evil;
For thou art with me”
Then Beamer tells the other passengers and crew members “Are you guys ready? OK, let’s roll.”
The plane starts moving around violently as Jarrah says, “Is there something? A fight?” CeeCee called her husband saying that the passengers are forcing their way into the cockpit of the aircraft. Jarrah turns the plane from side to side to knock the passengers off balance as he tells another hijacker, “They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold.” He then jerks the plane up and down 2 minutes into the assault. There is crashing, screaming and china and glass smashing. There are also shouts of pain from another hijacker outside the cockpit, presumed to be attacked. Jarrah stabilizes the plane at 1000 hours and asks, “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” “No. Not yet.” Says another Hijacker, “When they all come, we finish it off.” Jarrah starts jerking the plane again and a passenger says, “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.” And 16 seconds pass by. As a passenger screams, “Roll it!” they start using the food cart as a battering ram for the cockpit door.
Back in New York, people are in awe of the spectacle of the horrific Twin Towers burning and some committing suicide from jumping from the building from the heat. The structure of the building is weak from all the build-up of heat and, at 0959 hours, the South Tower collapsed like a house of cards in 10 seconds. In the collapse, Police officers and contemporary firefighters were trapped under the wreckage, many of whom would not come out.
As this occurs, Flight 93 plummets into a nosedive and is upside down. As one of the hijackers says, “Allahu Akbar” the plane makes a final nosedive into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The final part of the attack was at 1028 hours when the North Tower collapsed and since then, the ground in that area has been flat. America has never recovered since.
“I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
George W. Bush on the site of ground zero
Immediately after the attacks, Osama bin Laden praised the attack and its efforts but denied all claims of it being done by him, allegedly stating to an Arabic news corporation that he “[stresses] that [he had] not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.” He later went on to email a Pakistani newspaper, saying that “I have already said that I am not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.” However, the Taliban stated that Bin Laden had no source of contact during this time so could not have emailed this company with such a claim. In October 2001, an underground terrorist organisation called Al-Qaeda declared that they were responsible for the attacks. Al-Qaeda spokesperson, Sulaiman Abu Gaith, said that “I would like to touch on one important point in this address. The actions by these young men who destroyed the United States and launched the storm of planes against it have done a good deed. They transferred the battle into the US heartland. Let the United States know that with God’s permission, the battle will continue to be waged on its territory until it leaves our lands, stops its support for the Jews, and lifts the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people who have lost more than one million children. The Americans should know that the storm of plane attacks will not abate, with God’s permission. There are thousands of the Islamic nation’s youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live.” This led George Bush to invade Afghanistan, in the hope to find those responsible for the attack.
Later that month, CNN illicitly broadcasted an interview with Bin Laden, conducted by Al Jazeera about 9/11, in which Bin Laden stated that “If inciting people to do that is terrorism, and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists […] We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God before that occurs.” Furthermore, in November 2001, US Forces uncovered a video tape of Bin Laden speaking to Khaled al-Harbi, a member of Al Qaeda, where he explicitly planned the way in which the attacks went ahead, saying that “The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.” They could now put a face to the name. The head of the terrorist organisation, Al-Qaeda, who caused the bloodiest terrorist attack on American soil, was called Osama bin Laden.
Nice work, S.