A Pretext for War (4 page)

Over at Tower Two, about two-thirds of the occupants headed down the emergency stairwells soon after the crash. But after a few minutes, once it was determined that their tower was not affected, they were told that they could return to their offices, and some did. One was Sean Rooney, a fifty-year-old vice president for Aon, one of the numerous insurance and financial services firms that populated the twin towers. At the time of the attack on Tower One, his wife, Beverly Eckert, a vice president with GeneralCologne Re, was attending a conference in her Stamford, Connecticut, offices. Hearing of the explosion at the World Trade Center, she quickly went for her phone, where she found a message from Rooney. “It’s the other building,” he said. “I’m all right. But what I’m seeing is horrible.” Relieved, Eckert went back to her meeting.

When Steve McIntyre returned to American Bureau of Shipping after finding an open emergency stairwell, the other employees were gathered in the reception area. Quickly, they began making their way down. Despite the confusion, Claire McIntyre had managed to grab her pocketbook and flashlight. “The first two flights were dark,” she recalled, “with no emergency lights, and water was pouring down the stairs. We could barely see, and I put my flashlight on. Then the emergency lights came on, and water was still flowing down.” But the slick, oil-covered debris was treacherous and colleague Emma “Georgia” Barnett slipped and fell down three flights of stairs. She got right back up, but this time she tripped over a hose, injuring her knee. Still, determined to survive, she continued down with the rest.

As the occupants of Tower One struggled to get out, air traffic personnel were becoming increasingly worried about the fate of United Flight 175 out of Boston. At 8:52, the same moment Duffy and Nash became airborne from Otis Air National Guard Base, a technician at New York Control once again tried to reach the missing aircraft. “UAL175,” he said, “do you read New York?” But, just as with Flight 11, there was only icy silence. Growing more and more concerned, he checked that his equipment was working correctly and asked whether other locations may have picked him up. “Do me a favor, see if UAL175 went back to your frequency,” he asked a southern traffic control center. “He’s not here,” came the response.

After another minute of agonizing quiet, the controller expressed his suspicion. “We may have a hijack,” he told a colleague. “I can’t get ahold of UAL175 at all right now, and I don’t know where he went to. UAL 175, New York,” he called again. But by then the hijackers were in full control of United Flight 175. Near Albany, they made a U-turn back to the east and were at that moment screaming south toward Manhattan over the Hudson Valley at about 500 miles per hour—more than double the legal airspeed. The hijack pilot probably followed the Hudson River, like a thick line on a map, directly toward his target: Tower Two of the World Trade Center.

Among those watching the events unfold on television was John Carr, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Shortly before nine, his cell phone beeped. “Hey, John, are you watching this on TV?” said one of his associates. “Yeah, I am,” replied Carr. “That’s American 11,” said the friend. Carr nearly dropped his coffee. “My God, what are you talking about?” he said. “That’s American 11 that made that hole in the World Trade Center.” Carr still could not believe it. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “No,” replied his friend. “And there is another one that just turned south toward New York.” Then, referring to United Flight 175, he added ominously, “We lost him, too.”

Over in Tower One, Steve McIntyre and his fellow employees were still attempting to make their way down the crowded and rubble-strewn stairwell. “We stopped at around the eighty-fifth floor to take stock and to calm each other,” McIntyre recalled. “That was much better. We realized the fire was above us and that it was clear below. We just had to get down.” His emotional state was “up and down like a yo-yo,” he said. “We were completely encased in tunnels. And then we would open a door onto a floor and there would be guys fighting a fire, and then we would open another door and there would be people just milling around.” As people or debris blocked their paths, they would zigzag across floors to other emergency stairwells. By the time they reached the sixties, Claire McIntyre was exhausted. “I was thinking: ‘How much more to go?’” she said.

Sixty miles to the south, at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, American Airlines Flight 77 bound for Los Angeles was getting ready to board. At 7:18, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi faced their final security hurdle. Having evaded the CIA, NSA, FBI, INS, State Department, and assorted other intelligence and security organizations with barely a drop of sweat, they now simply needed to get through airport security and they were home free to carry out their deadly suicide mission.

Their hand luggage likely contained such things as a shiny silver Leatherman utility pocket knife—a spring-action tool-style device that opens up at the center into miniature pliers and has an assortment of blades, wire cutters, screwdrivers, and other attachments fitted into it. Because it had a blade of less than four inches, it would have been permitted, whether in their bag or on their person. They also may have had razor-sharp box cutters, which would have been forbidden unless the blades were removed. Another item they likely carried were aerosol cans containing Mace or pepper spray—also prohibited. Finally, at least one of them probably had some sort of square- or rectangle-shaped object and a number of colored wires, which, when attached, would look like a bomb.

But the Mace may have been camouflaged as hair spray; the box cutter may have been empty, with the small, slim blade easily hidden elsewhere; and the phony bomb could have simply been an innocent-looking box with some wires packed separately. At the time, security was haphazard at best. There had not been an airline hijacking or bombing in the United States for more than a decade, and most of the people who operated the security checkpoints were low-paid contract workers with minimal experience.

Alhazmi placed his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt and walked through the arched magnetometer. Suddenly, there was a deep electronic buzz. A security official directed him to walk through another, secondary magnetometer. Again the alarm went off. Finally, a guard asked him to stretch out his arms and passed a metal-detecting wand around his body. Not discovering any guns or long knives, the security official allowed Alhazmi to pass. Then his hand luggage was swiped by an explosives trace detector and found to be harmless. Like the four other members of the team, he successfully evaded the final check.

At 8:16, the wide-body jet began to taxi away from the terminal. “American 77, Dulles tower,” said the controller. “Runway three zero, taxi into position and hold. You’ll be holding for landing traffic one left and for wake turbulence spacing behind the DC-10.” Among the sixty-four people on board was Barbara Olson, a cable-TV talk-show regular who turned bashing the Clintons into a professional blood sport. Her husband was Theodore Olson, the Bush administration’s solicitor general. Also on board were Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, Hani Hanjour, and two others from the Valencia Motel in Laurel, Maryland, near the headquarters for the National Security Agency.

As American Flight 77 nosed skyward, Danielle O’Brien, an air traffic controller in the Dulles tower, passed them on to another controller at a different frequency. “American 77, contact Washington center one two zero point six five,” she said. Then she added, “Good luck.” Later, she thought how odd that was. “I usually say ‘Good day’ as I ask an aircraft to switch to another frequency, or ‘Have a nice flight.’ But never ‘Good luck.’”

At 8:56, just as the fighter pilots took off from Otis Air National Guard Base and controllers were becoming very worried about United Flight 175 from Boston, an air traffic controller in Indianapolis was getting the same kind of jitters. American Airlines Flight 77 was not answering his call. “American 77, Indy,” he kept repeating. The controller then called American Airlines operations to see if they could raise the crew. They also had no luck, so the controller asked a different operator to try again. “We, uh, we lost track control of the guy,” said the Indianapolis controller. “He’s in coast track, but we haven’t . . . we don’t [know] where his target is and we can’t get ahold of him. You guys tried him and no response. We have no radar contact and, uh, no communications with him, so if you guys could try again.”

“We’re doing it,” said the American Airlines operator. But there would be only silence.

At 9:00
A.M.
on September 11, 2001, there were 4,205 planes in the skies over the United States.

Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, high up in Newark, New Jersey’s air traffic control tower, forty-one-year-old controller Rick Tepper was looking out the facility’s large windows when all of a sudden he saw a large explosion at Tower One of the World Trade Center. “Wow! Look at that,” he said, having no idea what had caused it. “How are they going to put that out?’’

A few minutes later, Tepper received a call on the high-priority “shout line” from another controller at New York Center. “We’ve lost an aircraft over Manhattan,” he was told. “Can you see anything out your window?” But Tepper still had not connected the two events. “No,” he said. “I don’t see anything. But one of the towers, one of the Trade Towers, is on fire.”

About fifteen minutes later, the “shout line” rang again and this time the controller asked Tepper if he had any idea as to the location of United Flight 175. “Can you see him out the window?” he was asked. In the distance, high above the New Jersey shipyards, Tepper caught sight of the plane as it was heading for Manhattan, traveling north over the Hudson River. It was moving too fast, Tepper felt, and rocking from side to side. Suddenly, its nose began pointing down as if in a dive. Then it began banking left and right, moving ever faster as it began to level off—something he had never seen before.

In her Manhattan apartment a few blocks from the World Trade Center, Mable Chan, a producer for the NBC program
Dateline,
was getting ready for work when she heard the first reports of the plane crash into Tower One. “I immediately rushed out of the bathroom with a toothbrush stuck in my mouth,” she recalled. “My eyes were wide open and glued to the tube.” Frustratingly, she kept getting a busy signal as she quickly began dialing her office to get her assignment to begin covering the story. “I decided to try sending a computer message to my boss,” she said. “While I was dialing up for connection, I suddenly heard a thunderous engine sound roaring past the window on my right side.”

At that moment, on the ABC News program
Good Morning America,
correspondent Don Dahler in New York was giving hosts Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson an update on the Trade Center explosion. “It appears that there is more and more fire and smoke enveloping the very top of the building,” he said as the camera focused on the twin towers, “and as fire crews are descending on this area it does not appear that there is any kind of an effort up there yet. Now, remember— Oh, my God!”

In a flash, a large commercial jetliner, tilted to one side, zoomed across the television screen and smashed into floors 78 through 84 of Tower Two, pushing desks, people, and file cabinets out the windows. Paper began to slowly rain down, sparkling in the sun like confetti. Then, a fraction of a second later, United Flight 175 exploded with the force of a fuel-air bomb, sending superheated flames and dense, midnight-black smoke in all directions. It was 9:02:54.

“My God!” repeated Sawyer, almost in a whisper. “That looks like a second plane,” said Gibson flatly and with no emotion, as if describing a passing city bus. “I just saw another plane coming in from the side. That was the second explosion—you could see the plane come in, just on the right-hand side of the screen. So this looks like it is some kind of concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is under way in downtown New York.”

High in the sky, Officer Timothy Hayes, a helicopter pilot for the New York Police Department’s aviation unit, noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He was the first to arrive at Tower One after it was hit by Flight 11 and was reporting on the fire back to his headquarters when he saw another jet coming right at him. “I realized how close it was coming to us,” he said. “I thought it was going to impact our aircraft. So we climbed. He went underneath us.” Then he realized what was happening. “Jesus Christ,” he yelled to his partner, “there’s a second plane crashing.”

On the phone, sitting at his desk on the eighty-first floor, was Fuji Bank loan officer Stanley Praimnath. “What I saw was the biggest aircraft ever, bearing down towards me, eye level eye contact. It’s coming towards me. I can still see the letters on the wing and the tail; big red letters. I screamed, dropped the phone, and dove under my desk.”

In Newark’s tower, Rick Tepper was still holding on to the telephone as he followed Flight 175 up the Hudson River into Manhattan. “Oh my God!” he shouted. “He just hit the building.’’

“It was the most excruciating sound you could ever hear,” said Stanley Praimnath as the plane sliced into his office. “It was like steel ripping against steel. And the revving of the engine just before it hit—it’s like the sound is still in my ears, it’s ringing. The wing was stuck in the office door, twenty feet from where I was.” Trapped, Praimnath began yelling. “Oh please, somebody help me,” he cried. “Help me, help me, don’t leave me to die, I don’t want to die.”

Three floors above, on the eighty-fourth floor, Brian Clark, executive vice president of Euro Brokers, dropped into a football stance when a wing of the Boeing 767 smashed into his floor. “Boom, boom,” he recalled. “There were these distinct two noises right after one another and in an instant our room just fell apart.” The tower shuttered, floors buckled, and walls collapsed. “For ten seconds,” he said, “it felt like ten seconds, the building swayed toward the Hudson River, just one way, it kept going and I thought it was never going to stop. I thought the building was going over.” But it suddenly snapped back.