Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (101 page)

As the plane passed over the small
Massachusetts town of Gardner, about forty-five miles west of Boston, the smell
of coffee was starting to drift through the cabin. Flight attendants were just
beginning to prepare the breakfasts of omelets, sausages, and fruit cups.
Seated in business class, in seat 8D, Mohamed Atta, a clean-shaven
thirty-three-year-old Egyptian in casual clothes, did not bother lowering his
food tray. He had already eaten his last meal. Instead, he pulled his small
black shoulder bag from under the seat in front of him, withdrew a plastic
knife and a box cutter, and stepped into the aisle. At that same moment, as if
choreographed, four other men assigned to Row 8 also rose and headed toward the
front of the plane.

John Ogonowski again heard the
crackle of a traffic controller in his earphones. Sitting in front of a
twenty-seven-inch, high-resolution Sony TV console, the controller could see
Flight 11 's key information— its altitude, direction, and identifying number.
"AAL eleven, your traffic is at, uh, two o'clock, twenty miles
southwestbound, MD eighty," he said, alerting Ogonowski to a McDonald
Douglas MD-80 nearby.

"AAL eleven, roger,"
said the captain, adding, "Twenty right, AAL eleven."

At that very moment, 8:13 A.M.,
the move was on. Atta and his men quickly grabbed a flight attendant, likely
put the cool gray edge of a box cutter to her throat, and forced her to admit
them to the cockpit. "Don't do anything foolish," one of the men
yelled in English. "You're not going to get hurt." But, likely within
minutes, the two pilots were killed and Atta took over the left seat.

Sixteen seconds later, unaware of
the horror then taking place in the blood-splattered cockpit, the Boston
controller again radioed Flight 11. "AAL eleven. Now climb maintain FL
three fifty," he said, giving the pilot permission to climb from 29,000 to
35,000 feet. Hearing nothing, he repeated the message ten seconds later, again
eleven seconds later, and once more fifteen seconds later at 8:14:23, but still
with no reply. Then, suddenly, in an electronic blink, the critical information
on Flight 11 disappeared from his screen, indicating that the plane's
transponder had been turned off.

Two hundred miles to the south, at
Washington's Dulles International Airport, American Airlines Flight 77 was
preparing for takeoff to Los Angeles. "American seventy-seven, Dulles
tower," said the controller at 8:16 A.M. "Runway three zero taxi into
position and hold. You'll be holding for landing traffic one left and for
spacing wake turbulence spacing behind the DC-ten." 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 Hani Hanjour
and his four associates.

As American Airlines Flight 77
nosed into the crystal clear sky, Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller
in the Dulles tower, passed them on to another controller at a different
frequency. "American seventy-seven 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.' "

By 8:15, the air traffic
controller in Boston was becoming greatly concerned. Despite his numerous
calls, there was only silence from American Airlines Flight 11. "AAL
eleven, if you hear Boston center, ident please or acknowledge," repeated
the controller, his voice rising. Then, at 8:24, frightening words poured from
his earphones. "We have some planes," said a voice. "Just stay
quiet, and you'll be okay. We are returning to the airport." It was a
message, likely from Mohamed Atta, intended for his passengers but relayed
accidentally to the Boston center.

"And, uh, who's trying to
call me here?" said the controller. "AAL eleven, are you trying to
call?"

Then another troubling message.
"Okay. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the
airplane. Just stay quiet." And finally, at a second before 8:34, came one
more. "Nobody move please," said the voice, "we are going back
to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves." Six minutes later, at
8:40, the worried controller notified the North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD).

Responsible for defending the
country against airborne attack, NORAD had become a Cold War relic. Outdated,
unable to think outside the box, it had been transformed into little more than
a weed-watching agency for the drug war. Protecting the country from hostile
attack were fourteen aged fighters at seven bases, none near Washington, DC.,
or New York City, long the two prime targets for terrorists.

The hijack warning was received at
NORAD's North East Air Defense Sector in Rome, New York. There, at the Mission
Crew Control Desk, men and women in blue uniforms huddled intently over rows of
green glowing screens. The transponder on Flight 11, they were told, was no
longer working. Also, the Los Angeles—bound plane had suddenly made an
unexpected left turn toward New York City. And then there were the frightening
transmissions.

Concern deepened when, just three
minutes after the first, another alert of a possible hijacking came in from the
FAA, this time for United Flight 175. Like American Airlines Flight 11, United
Flight 175 was a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles. Sitting in the
pilot's seat was Victor Saracini, a fifty-one-year-old Navy veteran from
Pennsylvania who often took his guitar along with him on flights. Saracini had
also heard the troubling messages from Flight 11 and notified New York Control
in Rokonkoma, New York. "We heard a suspicious transmission on our
departure from Boston," said Saracini. "Sounds like someone keyed the
mike and said everyone stay in your seats." Now Saracini knew he had his
own set of hijackers on board.

As a result of the two alerts,
NORAD's Weapons Desk sent out a scramble order to Otis Air National Guard Base
at Falmouth, Massachusetts. There, on a quiet Cape Cod marsh, a flock of
seagulls suddenly began flapping toward the sky as a Klaxon let out a series of
deafening blasts and red lights began flashing in the corner of the alert
barns. Within minutes, two national guardsmen, one a commercial pilot on
temporary duty and the other a full-time member of the guard, began racing
toward their jets, "hot and cocked" on the tarmac. Crew chiefs
quickly pulled protective covers from the two vintage F-15 Eagles, built in
1977. Chocks were yanked from the wheels and the heat-seeking and radar-guided
missiles were armed. At 8:52 the F-15s were screaming down the tarmac.

By then, however, they were
already too late for Flight 11. Nevertheless, the fighter pilots still had a
chance of catching up to United Flight 175. But distance and time were critical
factors. Cape Cod was nearly two hundred miles from downtown Manhattan. Another
Air National Guard base with F-16s was located at Atlantic City, New Jersey—and
Flight 175 would pass within just four minutes of the base before turning north
to New York City. But it did not have interceptors on alert. Time was also a
problem. Rather than push their throttles to the max, bringing the fighters to
their top speeds in excess of Mach 2, over 1,300 miles per hour, the pilots
cruised toward New York at just under the speed of sound, around 700 miles per
hour. This was apparently to avoid disturbing anyone below with a sonic boom.

At 8:41, around the same time that
NORAD was receiving hijack alerts concerning the American and United flights
out of Boston, another plane with hijackers aboard was roaring full throttle
down a runway at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. After a
forty-minute delay, United Flight 93 was on its way to San Francisco with a
light load of passengers.

In the cockpit, pilot Jason Dahl,
a NASCAR fan from Littleton, Colorado, gently pulled back on his controls to
take the jet up to 35,000 feet. As the plane climbed, Mark Bingham, a publicist
returning home from a meeting with high-technology clients, could feel the
pressure gently pushing him back into his cushy first-class seat. Sharing an
armrest with him was another Bay Area resident, Tom Burnett, a healthcare
executive. Behind the curtain in business class, Jeremy Glick, a sales manager
for an Internet company, was seated in Row 11 and no doubt happy to finally get
off the ground. Farther back, in the main cabin, Oracle software manager Todd
Beamer was on his way to the company's headquarters in Silicon Valley.

In Washington at 8:41, during the
penultimate moments before the most devastating surprise attack in American
history, the country's vast intelligence machine was humming along on
autopilot. George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, was enjoying a
leisurely breakfast with an old friend in royal splendor at the St. Regis, a
hotel built in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace. Surrounded by
European antiques and rich damask draperies, he was chatting about families
over omelets with David Boren. The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, and now president of the University of Oklahoma, Boren had been
Tenet's patron as the former Intelligence Committee staff director rose to the
top of the spy world.

Two hundred miles north, American
Airlines Flight 11 was tearing toward New York City. Huddling out of sight, a
shaken flight attendant managed to telephone a fellow American Airlines
employee at Logan Airport on her cell phone. Near rows 9 and 10, she said in
hushed tones, were several Middle Eastern—looking men, armed with knives, who
had wounded other passengers and had commandeered the plane.

In Manhattan, forty-eight-year-old
Steve Mclntyre left his Upper West Side home a good half hour earlier than
usual and was just arriving at the World Trade Center. The director of
regulatory affairs for the American Bureau of Shipping, he had an office on the
ninety-first floor of Tower One. For nearly a quarter of a century, since
graduating from the University of Michigan's Naval Architecture School, he had
worked for the company, which sets standards for maritime safety.

From his north-facing office, the
entire city was laid out below him. Silver towers and glass walls radiated in
the sun, and flat, tar-covered rooftops with stubby chimneys stretched to the
horizon. The glare was so great that he had to close the blinds before sitting down
at his computer. Until 1999, when ABS headquarters relocated to Houston, the
company had more than 130 workers in Tower One. Now it had only twenty-two to
handle local New York business. About half of them were then at work.

Nearly one hundred floors below,
French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet were shooting scenes for their
documentary about a typical day in the life of a rookie New York fireman. At
8:43, as they were zooming their lenses in on men closing a sewer grate, they
heard the sound of a low-flying plane. Curious, they pointed the camera almost
straight up just as American Airlines Flight 11 streaked across the lens. It
was headed directly toward Tower One of the World Trade Center.

Steve Mclntyre was plowing through
his e-mail when he heard what he thought was the roar of jet engines followed
by a shadow crossing the blinds. In a nearby office, Claire Mclntyre, no
relation, was also checking her e-mail when she heard the same sound—the blast
of a jet engine. Impossible, she thought. Then, to her horror, she looked up to
see the wing and tail of a colossal plane coming right at her. "Oh my God,
all my people," she thought. Screaming, she bolted from her office and
raced into the hall to alert the rest of the staff. "Everyone, get out
now," Mclntyre yelled at the top of her voice. At the same moment, Steve
Mclntyre also realized it was a plane but had no idea of its size. "Oh,
shit," he thought to himself. "Someone's lost control of a private
Lear jet."

Far below on the street, the lens
of Naudet's camera caught the fuselage of the massive Boeing 767, converted
into a flying bomb, slicing directly into the building. For a fraction of a
second, the event seemed almost graceful. The building simply swallowed up the
plane, like a bullfrog catching a grasshopper in flight. But in the blink of an
eye, when the nearly full fuel tanks were suddenly compressed like crushed soda
cans, a massive fireball exploded and it was bedlam in hell.

The plane entered on the
ninety-third floor, just two floors above the heads of Steve and Claire
Mclntyre, shaking the entire building as if an earthquake had struck. In the
American Bureau of Shipping offices, an interior wall and ceiling collapsed and
one employee had to be extricated from his cubicle. People began grabbing fire
extinguishers while another person had the presence of mind to soak a fat roll
of paper towels. Steve Mclntyre left to check the fire exits.

Seconds after the blast, at
8:43:57, the cockpit crew aboard U.S. Airways Flight 583 heard Flight ll's
eerie final gasp. "I just picked up an ELT on one twenty-one point
five," the pilot told New York air traffic control, referring to an
emergency locator transmitter and its frequency. "It was brief but it went
off." The sound probably came from the black box aboard the doomed
American Airlines flight in the second before it vaporized. "We picked up
that ELT, too," reported a pilot on Delta Airlines Flight 2433, "but
it's very faint."