The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Transcript

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer. Terrorists use hijacked airliners to kill thousands of Americans on this September 11, 2001 -- another day of infamy for the United States of America. The tragic details tonight on this special PBS NewsHour report.

SPECIAL REPORT - HOUR ONE - DAY OF TERROR

JIM LEHRER: Good evening from Washington. Welcome to this special PBS NewsHour report on a most horrific day in American history. A well-organized group of terrorists, as yet unidentified, hijacked four U.S. airliners with a total of 266 people on board. Two of them were flown suicide bomb fashion into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the third slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, and the fourth crashed into an open field 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Within hours, both of the World Trade Center Towers collapsed, and later in the day a smaller building in the complex fell apart after burning for hours. More than 2,000 people were injured, and Mayor Giuliani said the number killed would be "horrendous." The crash at the Pentagon touched off a raging fire and collapsed one side of the building. Dozens of people were hurt, and many more were feared dead. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks. President Bush promised to hunt down and punish those responsible. He ordered the military on high- alert and flew to a highly secure Air Force base in Nebraska. Later, he returned to Washington and planned to address the nation this evening at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time. The attacks brought much of the country to a standstill. In Washington, the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court and most other federal buildings were evacuated; congressional leaders were taken to secure locations; the financial exchanges in New York were closed, all domestic aviation nationwide was grounded; and landmarks from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the Space Needle in Seattle were shut down. Now to the detailed story of this awful day, told chronologically as it unfolded by Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: 8:47 A.M. Eastern Time: A commercial jetliner smashed into the north tower of the 110-story World Trade Center building on the tip of Manhattan. 18 minutes later, these live TV pictures showed another airliner flying directly into the other tower.

JOHN DELGIORNO: We have two airplanes that struck each building of the World Trade Center. The north building was struck on approximately the 80th floor. My estimation is that the south building, which is what you're looking at now, that was struck at approximately between the 50th and 60th floors.

WOMAN: We heard a big bang. And then we saw smoke coming out. Everybody started running out. We saw the plane on the other side of the building. There was smoke everywhere. People were jumping out the windows over there. They were jumping out the windows I guess because they're trying to save themselves. I don't know.

MAN: Big explosionhappened. Some guy came out. His skin was all off. I helped him out. There's people jumping out of windows. I've seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows. It's horrific. I can't believe this is happening.

REPORTER: Anything else that you saw? Were you there for the second hit by the plane?

MAN: Yeah, about ten minutes later, the second building went off.

REPORTER: Did you see it?

MAN: Yes, I saw it. It just blew up. Big explosion. People started running. It was just chaos everywhere.

KWAME HOLMAN: A few minutes later, the President's chief of staff, Andrew Card, told Mr. Bush about the New York City events during an appearance at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. President Bush then gave this statement.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Today, we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country. I have spoken to the Vice President, to the governor of New York, to the director of the FBI, and I've ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.

KWAME HOLMAN: 19 minutes after the President spoke, a third airliner smashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon building, a mile from downtown Washington, causing a huge fireball followed by heavy smoke. People were carried out; others lay on the ground.

MAN: It came in at such a deep angle at such fast speed. You know, the severity, I was telling the gentleman, it was a severe intention is what it had to it. You could tell it was like a suicide bomber. I'm not saying it was a bomb. You know, it was a plane. It just came streaking down and it hit short. It didn't go into the top of the Pentagon. It came like in short. Then everything sprayed up like a fireball sprayed up on the wall.

KWAME HOLMAN: Within minutes of the attacks, officials in Washington began evacuating the U.S. Capitol Building. Later in the morning, armed security personnel were seen on the roof of the White House, which was evacuated. Later, all other federal buildings in the capital were closed down. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide. Meanwhile, there were reports of a fourth jetliner crash outside Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania. 10:06 A.M., back in New York City, the second World Trade Center tower to be struck collapsed. ( Sirens )

MAN YELLING: Back, back, back, back.

MAN YELLING: Move it. Back.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10:28 A.M.; much of the top floors of the other tower also fell to the streets below.

PERSON YELLING: Give him air. Give him air.

MAN: I need some water.

KWAME HOLMAN: This was the view across the Upper New York Bay past the Statue of Liberty at about 10:30 in the morning.

JIM LEHRER: There was immediate speculation about who was behind these attacks. Most centered on the Middle East. Again, to Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10:56 A.M., U.S. Eastern Time, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat spoke in Gaza.

YASSER ARAFAT: First of all, I am offering my condolences, the condolences of the Palestinian people, to their American President, President Bush, to his government, to the American people, for this terrible time. We are completely shocked, completely shocked. Unbelievable.

KWAME HOLMAN: In the West Bank, a spokesman for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine-- or DFLP, a radical PLO faction-- denied his group was involved in the attacks.

QAIS ABDEL RAHIM: The DFLP has no relation to this accident, or this incident. We have always been against terrorist actions, against civilian targets, and especially outside the occupied territories. But in spite of that, we deny our responsibility. But we call upon the American administration to review their attitude and their policies towards the Palestinian question because this policy arouses the anger and the hatred of our people and of all our Islamic peoples. And it is liable, actually, to harm the interests of the United States in our region, and therefore, it has to be reviewed.

KWAME HOLMAN: The spiritual leader of Hamas, the pro-Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, said this:

SHEIK AHMED YASSIN (Translated): First of all, we don't support attacks on civilians, and we don't support aggression towards innocent people. However, the United States should revise its current stance, and has to look again at its position very carefully towards people all over the world if the U.S. doesn't want to be targeted and suffer the same way as other people are through oppression, injustice and exploitation. In that regard, America finds itself today weakened in the face of the rest of humanity, taking its own revenge against American oppression and injustice.

KWAME HOLMAN: And in Pakistan, an ambassador of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban also denounced the attacks.

ABDUL SALAM ZAEEF (Translated): I strongly condemn these incidents. I want an investigation to be carried out, and who has committed this should be brought to justice. We do not allow Osama bin Laden to operate from our land for such activities. We have taken all communications from him, and he is not in contact with anybody. He has no facilities to carry out such activity. The powerful rivals of America can carry out such activities, but not Osama. ( Crowd yelling )

KWAME HOLMAN: At Jerusalem's Damascus Gate, some Palestinian men, women and children took to the streets in celebration after hearing of the events in the United States. (Gunfire) In Lebanon, at a Palestinian refugee camp, there were more celebrations as men fired their weapons in the air.

JIM LEHRER: President Bush vowed to find and punish the people behind the terrorist attack. Here is what he said, and, in a separate statement, the reaction of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

KWAME HOLMAN: Just before noon, Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke from Lima, Peru, where he cut short his first official visit to South America. Before leaving, he thanked foreign ministers for adopting a message condemning terrorism.

COLIN POWELL: A terrible, terrible tragedy has befallen my nation but has befallen all the nations of this region, all the nations of the world, and befallen all those who believe in democracy. Once again, we see terrorism, we see terrorists, people who don't believe in democracy, people who believe that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people they can somehow achieve a political purpose, they can destroy buildings, they can kill people and we will be saddened by this tragedy but they will never be allowed to kill the spirit of democracy. They cannot destroy our society. They cannot destroy our belief in the democratic way. You can be sure that America will deal with this tragedy in a way that brings those responsible to justice. You can be sure that a terrible a day as this is for us, we will get through it because we are a strong, a nation that believes in itself.

KWAME HOLMAN: A short time later President Bush spoke to reporters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He had flown there following his education event in Florida.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended. I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, the national security team and my cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high-alert status and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government. We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans. I ask the American people to join me in saying thanks for all the folks who have been fighting hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families. The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test. God bless.

JIM LEHRER: President Bush is on his way back to Washington now. He'll be addressing the nation later tonight around 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time. We'll carry those remarks live.

JIM LEHRER: Now some further reaction to now some further reaction from the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama; Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, also a member of the Intelligence Committee; and Strobe Talbott, who was the Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration. Senator Shelby, what can you tell us about who did this?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: Well, we're not exactly sure as of this hour. I talked with George Tenet, the director of the CIA within the hour. We talked about some of the details of it. He gave me some opinions that were preliminary. I will not divulge knowledge them now, but I can tell you this. These were dastardly deeds but we're going to go through some more of this unless we get timely information. You know, this was not an intelligence success. We've been going through this. To fight terrorism, we have to beef up intelligence. We have to have the best intelligence in the world. And obviously, we don't have it today.

JIM LEHRER: I want to come back to that point in a minute, Senator Shelby, but are you saying that the CIA has a very good idea as to who is behind it, you're just not going to tell us or they don't know yet?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: Well, they're not sure yet. But this was within the hour. I'd say it might be a matter of hours. I don't think it will be days before they will have a pretty good, if not a definitive, idea who was really behind this.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Durbin, what would you add to that?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Only that the appropriation for the next year was already focusing on putting additional resources into human intelligence, the electronic surveillance research, things that are essential. But certainly what happened today, a day that in American life that we will never forget, is going to change the contour of that debate dramatically. When it comes to our intelligence effort and our defense effort, it will be defined based on September 11, 2001 for a long period of time.

JIM LEHRER: Strobe Talbott, much of the attention, rightly or wrongly, has been put on Osama bin Laden, the Saudi...former Saudi resident who is headquartered, believed to be headquartered in Afghanistan, and has been identified with other terrorist acts including during the Clinton administration. Does this sound like Osama bin Laden to you?

STROBE TALBOTT: I think the only proper and prudent thing to say, Jim, is sure he's a plausible suspect, but there are others as well. And, as the two Senators have said, the first thing to do is to establish the facts. Well, the first thing to do is to try to save as many of our people as possible -- but to establish the facts and not jump to conclusions.

JIM LEHRER: But based on... I mean, this was incredibly well coordinated....

STROBE TALBOTT: Jim, what I was going to say in that regard is that the magnitude of the disaster that has befallen our country and the world-and I want to stress that it's befallen the world as well-- seems to derive from the extraordinary sophistication that the perpetrators of this brought off. I'm sure that Senator Shelby in his conversation with George Tenet probed this question. But is it possible for private or non-governmental groups to have pulled off something like this without the support of a nation state? And that is part of the investigation that Senator Shelby, his colleagues in the intelligence community will be pursuing.

JIM LEHRER: It sounds to me like you're suggesting that maybe it wouldn't be possible for some private group of people to do this?

STROBE TALBOTT: Well, I think even the most knowledgeable officials who have had the benefit of all of the briefings available to them during the course of the day are as stunned as we are out here watching it from around the country that something with this degree of synchronization could be pulled off. So one of the questions is to try to extrapolate from what we've seen today who could possibly have the resources to do this, and that raises the question not just of individual terrorist organizations and individual terrorists but also that will have to follow the trail of evidence into capitals as well.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Senator Durbin?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: I certainly do. And I think that the investigation, which is underway, is an important one to find the source of this terrorism. I think that the basic advice being given by all the leaders in Washington is, don't point a finger at any specific source until we are certain. We've learned in the past that many times we were wrong in our speculation. We want to be certain, as certain as we can be, of the source of this terrorism and make certain that we have the appropriate response.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Shelby, whoever did it, should this be considered by the United States an act of war?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: I really believe it's an act of war. It's a different type of war. It's a war without borders. It's a war without defined enemies. But nevertheless, Jim, it is a war. And I believe that we've got to do better. Dick Durbin just mentioned that we are doing a lot in the Intelligence Committee, and on the Appropriations Committee to fund properly the intelligence agencies, but we've got to have NSA. That's on the cutting edge of technology. We've got to have --

JIM LEHRER: That's the national security agency -- the electronic eavesdropping organization.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: Absolutely. And it's fallen behind, and we know that, and we're beefing it up. But we've got to do better. People have said in the last year or so all over the Hill, well, we spend too much money on intelligence. That's not right. We're going to have to spend more because we live in a free, open society, and we're going to want to continue that. We must continue that. And we've got to run this information, wherever it leads us. We've got to find out, as Strobe Talbott said, who did this. It could be nation state. It could be something big, big because this was not an amateur job.

STROBE TALBOTT: Jim, could I just add one point on that?

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

STROBE TALBOTT: I think it's very important for us to see it not just as an attack on the United States. It of course is an attack on the United States, but I suspect that when we go through the dreadful process of toting up the carnage here and we start putting names and faces to the victims, one thing we will see is that there were many, many people killed today who are not americans. This was really a blow against the entire international system. All the world suffered from this. And the response has to be equally international. We were able in the past-- and a lot of references to Pearl Harbor today, to assembly great alliances that were able to defeat great villains and a new alliance is necessary to defeat this villain. It has to be an international response just as the target was enter that the.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Durbin, is that right? Should we see this as Pearl Harbor and an international effort must be mounted as there was during World War II?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Absolutely. I think what happened today was just as heinous as Pearl Harbor. The casualties will unfortunately I'm afraid be much larger. It certainly is a mobilizing moment for us....

JIM LEHRER: In other words, more people were probably killed once the death toll mounts, more people were killed today than were killed at Pearl Harbor. Is that what you're saying?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: It appears that that will be the case. I think what it says and I agree with Strobe Talbott, we would come together with our NATO allies for example, an attack against one nation is an attack against all and invite them and others who are not formal members of that alliance to join us in a common defense against terrorism to say to those rogue nations that want to harbor terrorists or to entertain their activities that that's unacceptable conduct and that they are going to pay a price for doing so. That's the only way we can bring this under control.

JIM LEHRER: Strobe Talbott, back to you for a moment. You just left the executive branch of government. You were one of the so-called consumers of intelligence for the... within the government of the United States. The average person, the average American today is wondering a highly sophisticated attack like this, that clearly involved many, many people and many, many resources, how in the world did our intelligence apparatus miss something like this?

STROBE TALBOTT: Well, Jim, just as earlier I think we all agreed we shouldn't jump to conclusions about who perpetrated this, we certainly shouldn't jump to conclusions about this being an intelligence failure. My eight years in government left me with the highest respect for the intelligence professionals. They're up against a very tough problem here. I mean essentially we have an enemy here that's exploiting what makes our society as strong and as effective as it is, which is its freedom, its openness and its mobility. So anybody who wants to take advantage of that is going to have some clean shots along the way. The extraordinary thing about this one is that they were able to take a number simultaneously. Now that said, I think both in our approach to intelligence and in our approach to defense, what happened today, even though it's not the first terrorist attack, the sheer magnitude of it, is going to bring about a revolution in the way we set priorities for what we're looking for and how we deal with it.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Shelby, in your conversation with CIA Director Tenet, did you ask him directly, hey, George, how did you miss this one?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: I didn't say that. But I did say, George, to the effect that this was certainly not an intelligence success, and if it's not a success, it's a failure. What intelligence is about is timely information. If we don't have timely information in a democracy like we have, an open society like we have, we're going to have these kinds of situations, disasters. If we don't continue to improve our situation with intelligence gathering and preventing terrorist attacks, we're waiting for the next attack. We can do better. We must do better.

JIM LEHRER: Let me ask you -- let me put the question to you in a more difficult fashion. Based on your... You've been on the Intelligence Committee now for how long?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: Seven years, chaired it nearly five.

JIM LEHRER: Right and you were the chairman for five, right. Based on your knowledge of the intelligence community, did it surprise you that we didn't know about this?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: It surprised me. It didn't shock me -- because we've had a number of intelligence failures. Look at Khobar Towers. Look at the Trade Towers One, as we would call it. Look at today. Look at the "U.S.S. Cole." Look at the strategic intelligence failures, some of us called it dealing with the lack of information on the Indian nuclear testing. We can go on and on. We can do better. We must do better.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Durbin, what's wrong with our intelligence?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, frankly, we need to not only invest the appropriate resources in it; we need to hold those who are responsible for it to a standard that really reflects the danger in the world today. That, of course, is going to be a tough thing to do -- to ask for that kind of assessment. But I think that after this tragedy that Congress will demand it of all of the leaders in the Pentagon as well as those in our intelligence agencies. We understand that we live in a dangerous world. We're warned all the time about the possibility of terrorism. Who could possibly have imagined that two major aircraft would crash into the World Trade Center Towers within 18 minutes of one another coming from separate airports? This was a highly sophisticated and coordinated attack on America. And I think that's going to teach us that we have to be that much more vigilant in the future.

JIM LEHRER: Strobe Talbott, beginning with you and then going back to the two Senators after you. What about the fear and the uncertainty that this unleashes among the average American as a result of this? We thought we were safe and now we're not. How does the leadership of this country deal with this and what should they do about it?

STROBE TALBOTT: I think not just the leadership but the American people as well need to be... beware of a danger, which is that the fear that you're talking about, so justified after today, will push us in the wrong direction. Colin Powell in his opening statement that you showed at the top of the show said that this was an attack on the spirit of democracy. We've got to be very careful that we preserve that spirit in the way we deal with the problem. And that means civil liberties. It means making sure that we remain an open society because if we don't, then the terrorists who struck today will have won.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Shelby?

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: Well, I believe that he's right, Strobe's right on his remarks there. But if we don't improve our intelligence gathering-- I know I'm harping on this, but it's so important -- our information gathering -- we're just going to continue to be vulnerable to the next attack because there will be other attacks. And it could be sooner than later. We have so much to gain here. If we are aggressive and we're prepared, we can do better. We can penetrate a lot of these rings... we've penetrated a lot of these cells. But we can do better. We have to do better for the American people.

JIM LEHRER: Senator Durbin?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, I might say that the intelligence community doesn't receive a lot of plaudits when they avert disasters -- and they have helped us avert many. That should be remembered during the course of this debate. But it also means that we need to change the way we do business in some ways in America. Members of Congress are the biggest frequent flyer club in our nation. We understand what we go through at airports with metal detectors and searches and questions being asked and the procedures on airplanes. It's not enough. We have to do more. It means more inconvenience and some sacrifice on each of our parts, but that may be the small price that we're going to pay to avert this kind of disaster from reoccurring.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, all three, thank you very much.

JIM LEHRER: Now a more detailed look at the still developing personal and practical aftermaths of what happened today. First, reaction from New York's Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City. They held a press conference at 2:30 this afternoon.

MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI: We have 1,500 people at Liberty State Park who were evacuated, described as walking wounded. They were evacuated by ferry and other means. There are about 600, as of about 15 minutes ago, in local hospitals that we account for, 600 people that are being treated in local hospitals. And there are 150, in particular, that were critical that were moved by EMS. New York City has 170 hospitals, so we have a lot of hospitals, and we're utilizing all of them.

GOVEROR GEORGE PATAKI: The people of New York are not only the freest and most diverse people in the world; we are also, I believe, the most capable of rising to meet the challenges of this type of attack. And right now we want New Yorkers to remain calm, to go about their business, to appreciate the fact that everything to provide for their safety is being done.

JIM LEHRER: Earlier today Ray Suarez spoke with a reporter who was in the area.

RAY SUAREZ: We're joined now from New York by Scott Gurvey who is the New York bureau chief for public television's "Nightly Business Report."

Scott, I understand you were on your way to work when the first attack occurred.

SCOTT GURVEY: On my way to work, yes, actually just putting on my jacket. I live in an apartment that is within walking distance of the World Trade Center and of our bureau here. I heard a noise; it sounded like a tremendous crumbling, a crunching. I thought as if someone were unloading gravel in front of the building only much louder of course. I ran to the window and saw the smoke and flames already burning from the top floors of the World Trade Center. We were looking out of my office window later on when the second explosion occurred and then still later on when the Towers themselves collapsed.

RAY SUAREZ: You're pretty close to the World Trade Center area at the "Nightly Business Report" studios.

SCOTT GURVEY: Yes, about two blocks. Outside it was like nighttime. There was so much debris, smoke, dust, papers flying through the air that it was just very, very dark. Even now, hours later, as you see the sunlight begin to pour through, when you think it's beginning to clear up, there must be secondary settlings or additional explosions or something, and it just gets dark again. It is unbelievable how much debris is still in the air.

RAY SUAREZ: It must have taken some time before you even fully understood what was happening.

SCOTT GURVEY: Yes, and in fact of the local television stations, almost all of them, all except I think WCBS, have their transmitters on that tower. WCBS is on the Empire State Building, or has a secondary transmitter there, so that the people of the city are listening to radio. They are getting cable feeds. You know, there's a lot of cable television in market -- but not over-the-air broadcasts. The streets are pretty well deserted. You may be hearing -- there's an alarm that goes off here about every minute or so. It is an evacuation signal that has been raised; the mayor has asked everybody in the southern part of Manhattan really if they can leave to leave.

RAY SUAREZ: Were there in evidence a large number of emergency personnel vehicles? What did you see?

SCOTT GURVEY: Unbelievable. My remark from just a few moments when I was down there, which was probably about, oh, half an hour after the first explosion and before the Towers collapsed, I was seeing ambulances coming from places I had never heard of as if every ambulance was available -- they had probably just put out a call saying anything out there, come. And they had come. The enormity of this has not sunk in. I have to be honest with you. I was here for the 1993 bomb, which was, you know, a much smaller thing. Early in my career I was one of the first reporters on the scene of the crash of the DC-9 American Airlines 191 in Chicago, which is my hometown. So I've seen some of these things. But if you consider how many people must have been in those two buildings, you're talking about tens of thousands. I don't know, you know, how well they had evacuated the Towers already by the time they actually did collapse. The enormity of this has not sunk in yet. That's going to have to come in the days ahead.

RAY SUAREZ: For people who have seen it in person or for people who have only seen it in the movies or on television, these two buildings are symbols of the New York skyline. It must be shocking to see a skyline without those.

SCOTT GURVEY: Absolutely. Watching, you know, we're watching the shots from across the river, the video that's being taken. The skyline of New York has now irrevocably been changed. If someone had said to me, postulated this kind of thing to me yesterday, I would have said, yeah, that's a pretty far-fetched movie script or something. Nobody would ever have believed this could happen.

RAY SUAREZ: Scott Gurvey earlier today from his office in lower Manhattan.

RAY SUAREZ: For the latest on the ongoing emergency, we're joined from New York by Frank Donaghue of the American Red Cross. He is a member of the organization's national disaster response team; and Thor Valdmanis, a reporter for "U.S.A. Today," who's been on the scene all day. And here in Washington, our health correspondent, Susan Dentzer.

Well, Susan it's been many hours since the first attack. Is it at least now possible to start getting a feel for the human toll in injuries, in deaths?

SUSAN DENTZER: It's possible, Ray, but it really is only a beginning. Mayor Giuliani said earlier today that 2,100 people had been injured. It's not clear whether that is a very preliminary number as we suspect it is. It's also not clear how many are dead. In New York, all of the New York area hospitals were almost instantly put on alert. We are told that there were people taken as far away as Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut by helicopter to be treated today. There were people on alert at Stanford Hospital 50 miles north of the city waiting for wounded to arrive on Metro North commuter trains later this afternoon. That had not happened as of show time tonight but they were still on alert. Of course much closer to the world financial center, to the World Trade Center, Saint Vincent's Hospital, for example, then Greenwich Village about ten minutes north of the World Trade Center, was the site where many, many of the injured were taken, more than 200 as of late this afternoon. Several had died as they were arriving at the hospital and after the hospital. Down here in Washington, as a consequence of the attack at the Pentagon also, roughly 40 people at least were injured and taken to area hospitals. I spent much of the day over at Virginia Hospital Center Arlington, which is the official hospital of the Pentagon. That's where people who fall very seriously ill at the Pentagon are taken to be treated. Roughly 31 people were taken over there -- some of them quite seriously injured as a consequence of smoke inhalation. Some were intubated. Some were in intensive care. Others were treated and released. We were not able to speak to them. They were asked if they were willing to speak to the press. They were obviously too shell shocked to do so, so we don't know much of what happened.

RAY SUAREZ: Any number yet of dead coming from the Pentagon attack?

SUSAN DENTZER: We do not know. We do not know. We suspect there had to have been a number of fatalities. You saw the pictures earlier of what had happened at the Pentagon. We did speak with one Pentagon employee who did not want to be identified. She happened to be in the news bureau at the Pentagon. They were watching the World Trade Center attack on television as suddenly the attack occurred at the Pentagon. She was... The Pentagon is in five concentric rings A through E. She was in the B ring -- one of the more innermost rings. There were immediately -- many of the people were immediately evacuated into the courtyard in the interior. She was then helping... she described people coming out of the building -- she said injuries I don't even want to describe -- some very horrific burns, some very horrific injuries. She was one of a number of Pentagon employees who attempted to accompany people who were injured to area hospitals. She said she was in a car -- actually people were being taken in regular passenger cars. There were not even sufficient emergency vehicles at that point to take people. She was in a car with a very seriously injured person and a doctor trying to navigate through horrendous traffic back to, about 20 minutes away to Virginia Hospital -- beating on car windows to try to get people to move aside -- and doctors saying floor it, this person is seriously injured. So there were some serious injuries. Again to put it in context though, as yet we have reports of only about 40 of seriously injured people going to area hospitals in Washington.

RAY SUAREZ: Thor Valdmanis, when I heard the mayor of New York talk about injured being put on ferry boats and taken to New Jersey and to Staten Island, I was figuring it must have been pretty hard to

move around the island of Manhattan in the middle of the day today.

THOR VALDMANIS: It was absolutely impossible. Everything was -- all transportation systems were basically stopped. I arrived on the scene shortly after the second Tower had collapsed. And thanks to a helpful police officer, I was brought in to about a block from the World Trade Center. The only way to describe what I saw was absolutely war zone. There were body bags strewn all over the place, burning buildings, blown-out buildings, cars that were burning, some of them upside down -- a lot of wounded being escorted on to stretchers -- a lot of heroism. The ambulances were streaming in and they would just pick up whoever they saw immediately and try to help them. But it was absolute carnage, just total devastation.

RAY SUAREZ: Now with the television towers on top, the World Trade Center buildings are about a quarter of a mile tall -- when two of them come down on to the streets, I mean, the streets must be covered with the leavings of this building. What's it like there right at ground zero?

THOR VALDMANIS: That's a good question. I mean, a number of survivors described the scene as when the Trade Centers came down, it was... It was just basically a avalanche of darkness. And they couldn't run past it. It just consumed everybody. There were a number of horrifying stories. One woman told me how she saw a woman pushing her baby in a stroller when the second Tower came down and all of a sudden she just disappeared in a cloud of smoke. It was really, really horrendous. I was down by the World Trade Center for, I guess, the better part of four hours and watching the whole complex was on fire. There was nothing left except maybe four or five stories of just burning, red-hot flame and firefighters who were incredibly brave just sort of watching, you know, a real icon, financial icon, just being destroyed.

RAY SUAREZ: But if the debris is continuing to burn, does that mean it's impossible for rescue workers to get anywhere near the scene to see if there's anybody in the rubble?

THOR VALDMANIS: Well, they are trying, but they also have to worry about... There's a lot of concern that the surroundings buildings have been so damaged that they're unstable as well. So whatever they do, they've got to do it very carefully. But as one firefighter said to me, there's nobody left. Anybody that was in the World Trade Center complex is dead now. It's unbelievable. I'll never forget it. There was actually a piece of the World Trade Center that fell. It's probably about 20 or 30 stories long, just lying on one of the side streets.

RAY SUAREZ: Frank Donaghue, with a disaster of this magnitude, what does the Red Cross do first? There are so many needs that have to be met.

FRANK DONAGHUE: Absolutely. I think most important is that we coordinate with the emergency response folks here in New York. And have a long history of working in greater New York. We were there with the first bombing of the World Trade Center and worked closely with emergency management, with the mayor, and other emergency response folks. We have disaster vehicles out throughout the neighborhood. I've been there since about noon today. We have disaster response vehicles in the area providing support to the emergency firefighters and the ambulance drivers, et cetera. We have facilities at all the major transportation centers, the Port Authority, Grand Central Station, and throughout New York so the people have a place to go. Providing primarily mental health... We have mental health volunteers that are responding, providing people whatever we can. I had a gentleman come up to me that needed his heart medicine. We connected him with the right disaster volunteers that could provide him medicine he had left in his apartment. Standing on the street today handing out water just talking to folks who had left their pets or wanted to make sure that someone that they knew was okay in one of those buildings -- and it's that kind of contacting people, emergency needs that Red Cross workers are providing tonight -- as well as obviously shelter for thousands and thousands of New Yorkers.

RAY SUAREZ: When the World Trade Center was first built, they weren't there. But today there are two big neighborhoods right by there. Have they been evacuated and where are those people going?

FRANK DONAGHUE: Battery Park, that whole neighborhood, the apartments in that region -- I just came tonight before the show, Stiverson High School which is right next to those new apartment buildings in Battery Park - at Stiverson High School there happens to be an incredible emergency hospital set up. Red Cross is there with mental health workers. But most of that neighborhood has been completely evacuated. Those folks tonight will be finding shelter. Red Cross will be setting up shelter. It is going to be announced later this evening where all the shelters are in Manhattan that folks can go to that Red Cross will be providing.

RAY SUAREZ: Do you have all the help and the blood that you need?

FRANK DONAGHUE: Well, clearly people have been so responsive. Coming tonight I was saying that every time I stop at a light between coming from the financial district up to midtown tonight for this show, people would stop me at every corner and ask, could they volunteer? Could they give blood? What could they do to help? The people of New York have been incredibly responsive. The blood center of New York, people have been standing in lines -- I just left there -- standing in lines waiting to give blood at hospitals. Volunteers -- we need mental health workers, certified mental health workers that can provide assistance to these folks. So we always need trained volunteers to help us. We always need blood. We have 50,000 units of blood on standby... But I think a disaster like that is a great reminder to Americans that we should never let our blood supply go down. I mean everyone should be calling 1-800-GIVE-LIFE. And this is a great opportunity to be reminded of that.

RAY SUAREZ: Frank Donaghue, Thor Valdmanis, Susan Denzter, thank you all.

JIM LEHRER: The wire services are moving explosions now of explosions north of Kabul, Afghanistan near the airport in the capital city. They say there have been no sounds of airplanes or anti-aircraft fire. There's no reason to suggest or believe at this point that they may be related to any attack by the United States but they could be related to these terrorist attacks in some indirect way. We do not know yet. Hopefully there will be more information as the evening goes on. Finally in this hour of our special report, a look at how in this age of tight security at U.S. airports four large airliners could have been hijacked. And once again to Kwame.

KWAME HOLMAN: As the day progressed, details emerged about the planes involved in the attacks. The two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center Towers were American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767; it carried 81 passengers, nine flight attendants,and two pilots. And United Airlines Flight 175-- also a Boeing 767-- with 56 passengers, nine crew members. In the Pentagon crash: American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, with 58 passengers, six crew. And the plane that went down in western Pennsylvania was United Flight 93, a Boeing 757, with 38 passengers, seven crew.

JIM LEHRER: And to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: And joining me to discuss airline and other security issues are: James Kallstrom, former assistant director of the FBI and head of the bureau's New York division. He led the FBI investigation into the TWA Flight 800 explosion, and Darryl Jenkins, head of the aviation institute at George Washington University.

Mr. Kallstrom, I guess the question everybody is asking themselves today is, how could this happen and how did it?

JAMES KALLSTROM: It's a sad day, Gwen. And, you know, my heart goes out to all the victims of this tremendous series of tragedies and their families, all the people that don't know the outcome of their loved ones and the World Trade Center at the Pentagon or on those airplanes. So how could it happen? I think that's the question.

GWEN IFILL: Do we think it was in your experience would this be a breach of security, a breach of what?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, that's what the investigators are going to be looking for obviously. The FBI, the intelligence community, are looking at their database, their intelligence base. They have up on the board the short list of people that would have the ability to do such a horrendous thing. They're putting together what they know about that now. They're bringing to the national command authority intelligence that will tell the national command authority, you know, who did this horrific act.

GWEN IFILL: At this stage should that investigation be focusing on the air or on the ground?

JAMES KALLSTROM: It's going to focus everywhere there's evidence. It's going to focus around the world. It's going to be conducted by our allies in conjunction with us. It's going to be a unified effort.

GWEN IFILL: Darryl Jenkins, what's your take on this? How could this have happened?

DARRYL JENKINS: Well, what's interesting on this is we have no details right now that would indicate that the horrible acts today were a result of any breach in airport security at all. We have no evidence right now that any of the terrorists who did this came on board with guns or anything. Most likely they had very small knives, under two inches, which you are allowed to take on board an airplane. The terrorist in the 21st century is different than any terrorist we have ever worked with before. They're more adaptive, they're smarter; they're brighter. When you think about all the logistics that went into planning this, carrying it off almost flawlessly and at the same time keeping any information away from the authorities, these are probably some of the brighter people that we've ever had to deal with. Simply having a screening device at an airport that picks up an explosive or a gun is really of little use against terrorists like this.

GWEN IFILL: When you say terrorists like this, you mean terrorists who are willing to die in the actual act?

DARRYL JENKINS: That's correct. What it shows is how important it is in airport security that we have a very strong intelligence gathering capability in the United States, which obviously in the last 10 or 15 years since the, you know, the fall of the Berlin Wall, we haven't had. To have good airport security, a necessary condition is that we have good national intelligence about things like this, and the reason this has never happened before is in the past we've always been able to gather intelligence, find these things before they happen and stop them before they happen. Today our luck ran out.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Kallstrom, if Darryl Jenkins is right and in truth there is no breach that happened, there is nothing -- that suggests there's nothing that could have been done to protect against it.

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, we don't know the facts. I think I largely agree with what he said about that. It's a difficult, difficult situation in a free society -- people moving at will. All of us have been at airports. And we know the crowds. We know the necessity to get airlines out. We've all been in those lines. We've all complained to people, you know, what's holding up this? What's holding up that? It's a difficult situation when you have people that are that crazy to do something that they did today, I think it's going to galvanize this country. I think we all need to get behind the President and the leadership in Washington. I think they made a big mistake today. It's sad, it's horrendous but the United States will come back from this, we'll find out who did it, we'll take the necessary action and we'll be a stronger country for it.

GWEN IFILL: How can the country be any more galvanized in many ways than it was? There are already extraordinary security precautions taken here in Washington around federal buildings, around landmarks, after the Oklahoma City bombing. What more was there to be done without shutting people's lives down entirely?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, that's the thing we don't want to do. We don't want to change our way of life. We don't want to change our ability to go places and do things. You know, this will be the debate for the next months and the next years. It's why we need a strong and competent and highly motivated intelligence agencies, why we need a strong and competent and highly motivated FBI. We have those people. I was part of those organizations, you know, and nothing like this in their minds would ever happen. They don't ever want this to happen. But the realism is that we live in a very tough situation today. We've seen that hatred played out in the World Trade Center back in '93, and all the conspiracies and all the terrorists acts that have led up to today, that there are people that have that type of hatred and are willing to sacrifice their lives. And that's a tough, tough thing to combat. The free nations of the world, the free people of the world, democracies of the world, all peace-loving people of the world, need to unite against terrorism and those that harbor terrorism.

GWEN IFILL: Earlier in the program tonight Senator Shelby said he had spoken earlier with the CIA Director. And even though he wouldn't tell us what he said, he did say that he felt there was a failure of the intelligence community on this point.

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, I'd be very cautious about talking about failures. I mean, obviously nobody in that business, no citizen, nobody in the world that would want this to happen other than those people that are supposedly dancing in the streets somewhere. But failure is a strong word to put out at this point. Yes, it happened. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's not start talking about failure and the lack of people's professionalism and their ability to do things. It happened. Let's move ahead. Let's do whatever we can to make the situation better. Let's have realistic tools for law enforcement and for the intelligence community in this new age that we livein.

GWEN IFILL: Darryl Jenkins, what is it about these two particular kinds of planes, 757's and 767's? What would have lent them to such a horrendous attack?

DARRYL JENKINS: They're very large planes. They carry an awful lot of fuel. They're both common in that if you can fly a 757, you can also fly a 767. So they have the same cockpit. So basically what they did is they found the biggest bomb that probably the people that they had available to them to fly and they picked those off and flew them into buildings and they performed just exactly like they predicted.

GWEN IFILL: Another thing that was said earlier on the program tonight, Strobe Talbott the former Deputy Secretary of State said that basically such a coordinated attack would have had to have been carried out perhaps by a nation state. Does that kind of level of coordination ring true with you especially with these types of aircraft?

DARRYL JENKINS: Well, these are trained pilots. If you look at the videos of the plane going in, it was a flawless approach. The wings were not jiggling up and down. The plane was not porpoising. The people who were flying that knew what they were doing.

GWEN IFILL: James Kallstrom, do we routinely get warnings about these kinds of terrorist attacks? Is it that we get a lot of warnings and perhaps we only pay attention to a few? You never know it's going to be real. How does that work?

JAMES KALLSTROM: We get a lot of warnings. Obviously we pay attention to all of them. We have to assess which ones are more important than others. That's a tough thing to do. We stopped the blind shook and his co-conspiracies to blow up the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel many years ago. We stopped another act through the good word of the Philippine police in a conspiracy to blow up nine or ten major American-flag jumbo jets not that long ago. So, we do an awful lot to stopping terrorism.

GWEN IFILL: You were very involved in the TWA 800 investigation. How does this compare in your mind? Does it ring familiar to you?

JAMES KALLSTROM: The grief is certainly rings to me -- the sadness of the event and the impact on our society. What the families are going through at this minute rings to me. I can understand that. All of us fly on airplanes. We all picture ourselves on one of these airplanes. We all picture the terror that must have went through the folks on these airplanes, the small children, the teenagers, the people like you and I before that plane crashed into the Trade Center. It's just one of the worst things that I can ever remember.

GWEN IFILL: Darryl Jenkins, if we are as vulnerable as you say we are, what should we be doing, if anything, to guard against this sort of action in the future?

DARRYL JENKINS: I think the thing that we need to do to really make airports as tight as they possibly can be. Certainly there's some changes in terms of screening and things like that which we need to do. There are holes there, no doubt. But the necessary element for airport security and to ensure the safety of all flying public is to have very good national security and intelligence gathering capabilities. If Shelby wants to point fingers at anyone, the Senators in Congress might have cut back budgets in the last ten years in these things. That's why we don't have the intelligence gathering capabilities that we used to have. I assume in the next year that probably as in the 1990s the dot-coms were the place to go get jobs, intelligence gathering in the next ten years. The graphics which we saw today were so horrific that they will last with usfor decades to come. I doubt the United States will ever make the mistake of cutting back its intelligence gathering capabilities as much as we have during the last decade.

GWEN IFILL: One question about the flight that, the direction that these planes flew when you were hijacked. They were off course for a very long time. Is that something that should have been picked up on, should have been noticed?

DARRYL JENKINS: Obviously when a plane takes off it has a transponder. And it's signaling to the air traffic control the flight number of that plane plus other information as well. I assume what happened is the terrorists got on, turned the transponder off. So you have a beep out there but you don't know which beep that is, what type of a plane. Obviously the airlines, which have system operations controls, which is the nerve center of the airline, knew right away and was in coordination with the FAA what was going on.

GWEN IFILL: And James Kallstrom, what should we be doing if anything to prepare, to guard against this in the future?

JAMES KALLSTROM: I guess I would just add to your previous question, what do you do about it in the 15 minutes that... Before this event happens? You don't know where that plane is going? Do you shoot it down with innocent civilians on board? What do you do? These are not easy decisions 1. These are very sobering events. I mean, every day of my life and those of us that have had the proud service in law enforcement and in intelligence, you know, those are the issues we went to bed with at night and those are the issues we woke up with in the morning. This is serious stuff.

GWEN IFILL: James Kallstrom, Darryl Jenkins, thank you very much for joining us.

JIM LEHRER: Just moments ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to reporters in a makeshift news room at the Pentagon.

DONALD RUMSFELD: It's an indication that the United States Government is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country. I should add that the briefing here is taking place in the Pentagon; the Pentagon's functioning. It will be in business tomorrow. I know the interest in casualty figures and all I can say is it's not possible to have solid casualty figures at this time. The various components are doing roster checks. We'll have information at some point in the future and as quickly as it's possible to have it, it will certainly be made available to each of you. I'll be happy to take a few questions after asking first General Shelton if he would like to say anything and then we will allow the others to make a remark or two.

GENERAL HENRY SHELTON: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Ladies and gentlemen, as the Secretary just said today we have watched the tragedy of an outrageous act of barbaric terrorism carried out by fanatics against both civilians and military people -- acts that have killed and maimed many innocent and decent citizens of our country. I extend my condolences to the entire department of defense families, military and civilian, and to the families of all those throughout our nation who lost loved ones. I think this is indeed a reminder of the tragic... the tragedy and the tragic dangers that we face day in and day out both here at home as well as abroad. I will tell you up front I have no intentions of discussing today what comes next, but make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready.

JIM LEHRER: And we will continue our special coverage of this horrific day in a moment on most public television stations.

SPECIAL REPORT - HOUR TWO - DAY OF TERROR

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer. Terrorists use hijacked airlines to kill Americans on this 11th day of September, 2001. The tragic details tonight on this special PBS NewsHour report.

JIM LEHRER: And welcome back to our special PBS NewsHour coverage of this awful day. For those just joining us, there is still no preliminary death toll numbers from the attacks in New York and Washington. A well-organized group of terrorists, as yet unidentified, hijacked four U.S. airliners with a total of 266 people on board. Two of them were flown suicide-fashion into the World Trade Center in New York City. The third slammed into the Pentagon in Washington, the fourth crashed into an open field 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both of the World Trade Center Towers later collapsed. Hundreds of people were injured; Mayor Giuliani said the number killed would be horrendous. The crash at the Pentagon touched off a raging fire and collapsed one side of the building. Dozens of people were hurt; dozens more were feared dead. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks. President Bush promised to hunt down and punish those responsible, and he ordered the military on high alert, and he remained at a highly secure air force base in Nebraska before flying back to Washington. The attacks brought much of the country to a standstill. In Washington , the capital, the White House, and the Supreme Court and most other federal buildings were evacuated. Congressional leaders were taken to secure locations, and the financial institutions in New York were closed. All flights nationwide were grounded, and landmarks from the Sears Tower in Seattle to the Space Needle in Seattle were shut down. Now to the detailed story of this awful day told chronologically as it unfolded by Kwame Holman.

MAN: Big explosion happened. Some guy came out. His skin was all off. I helped him out. There's people jumping out of windows. I've seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows. It's horrific. I can't believe this is happening.

REPORTER: Anything else that you saw? Were you there for the second hit by the plane?

MAN: Yeah, about ten minutes later, the second building went off.

REPORTER: Did you see it?

MAN: Yes, I saw it. It just blew up. Big explosion. People started running. It was just chaos everywhere.

MAN YELLING: Back, back, back, back.

MAN YELLING: Move it. Back.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10:28 A.M.; much of the top floors of the other tower also fell to the streets below.

PERSON YELLING: Give him air. Give him air.

MAN: I need some water.

KWAME HOLMAN: This was the view across the Upper New York Bay past the Statue of Liberty at about 10:30 in the morning.

KWAME HOLMAN: And this afternoon, just before 5:30, a 47-story building in the Trade Center complex collapsed.

JIM LEHRER: There was immediate speculation about who was behind these attacks. Most centered on the Middle East. Again, to Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10:56 A.M., U.S. Eastern Time, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat spoke in Gaza.

KWAME HOLMAN: In the West Bank, a spokesman for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine-- or DFLP, a radical PLO faction-- denied his group was involved in the attacks.

KWAME HOLMAN: The spiritual leader of Hamas, the pro-Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, said this:

KWAME HOLMAN: And in Pakistan, an ambassador of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban also denounced the attacks.

JIM LEHRER: President Bush vowed to find and punish the people behind the terrorist attack. Here is what he said, and, in a separate statement, the reaction of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

KWAME HOLMAN: A short time later President Bush spoke to reporters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He had flown there following his education event in Florida.

KWAME HOLMAN: The President then flew to the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Nebraska.

JIM LEHRER: And the President landed at the White House moments ago. He will address the nation around 9 P.M. Eastern Time. We'll carry that live. About half an hour ago, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to reporters in a makeshift newsroom at the Pentagon.

JIM LEHRER: Now more on who might have been behind this tragedy and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: We get three views on that question. Larry Johnson was the state director for counter terrorism in the first Bush administration, and a counter terrorism official at the CIA before that; he is now a security consultant. Bruce Hoffman is vice president of RAND, a research organization; his latest book is "Inside Terrorism," and Shibley Telhami is a professor of sciences at the University of Maryland. He has written widely on the Middle East. Who could have done this? Welcome, gentlemen.

Paul (Bruce) Hoffman, who could have done this? Who had the wherewithal, the motive, the opportunity?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, I think what's clear is you had a dedicated terrorist, a dedicated group of terrorists who carried out detailed reconnaissance, had the right preparation, the commitment and the professionalism to pull it off. But I don't think these are necessarily qualities that are exclusively in one or another group throughout the world.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you narrow it down to the Middle East, or not even that?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Certainly the foment in the Middle East provides plenty of opportunities to carry out an attack like this. And the United States has incurred the enmity of many of the parties there.

MARGARET WARNER: Larry Johnson?

LARRY JOHNSON: Well, I would go a little further. When you look back over the last eight years in terms of which individuals and groups have been involved in killing America's, the one that's at the top of the list responsible for about 80 percent of those is Osama bin Laden. In addition to that --

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking - and briefly describe him just for people who don't know who he is.

LARRY JOHNSON: Osama bin Laden is born of a Yemeni mother; he is a Saudi Arabian expatriate; he is hiding out in Afghanistan. We do have from the court case he is clearly implicated in the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in East Africa. It was the first coordinated terrorist attack of this type against the United States. Add to that, there are intelligence reports which indicate that Osama bin Laden's forces were receiving flight training in the last several months. To my knowledge, we don't know of any other groups that have been getting that kind of training. When you see what happened today, the groups that carried this out, at a minimum, they had somebody that knew how to maintain air speed and steer the plane. It is not to bash bin Laden and to say he is a convenient villain, so I think sometimes we've made too much of him. But you don't have anybody else in the world that on a such consistent basis is calling for the death of Americans and inciting people to violence. The good news in this is the vast majority of Muslims reject his nonsense.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Go back to this flight training, are you saying these were intelligence reports that the U.S. Government had before today?

LARRY JOHNSON: My understanding is before today there was intelligence information that indicated that Osama bin Laden forces were receiving training in flight operations.

MARGARET WARNER: Shibley Telhami, your view on possible perpetrators here, the motive, why these targets?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, first of all, I think it is - we know that it is unlikely to have been organizations that are operating in the Palestinian areas or Lebanon on the Israeli out front for three reasons: one, we don't know of any organization that has the capacity and the reach to carry out such operations. Number two, all of these organizations, whether they're Lebanese or Palestinian, have pretty much in the past few months focused all their attention on the Israeli, Palestinian, and Lebanese arena, and, number three, any perpetrator of such an attack -- this is not an ordinary attack - this is like a declaration of war -- would have to worry about the host country. And none of the host countries in the Israeli/Arab arena would allow this space to conduct such an operation.

MARGARET WARNER: So you mean, for instance, Syria, which hosts some of these groups, these groups - you believe -- would not put Syria at risk from the United States?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Absolutely. Absolutely. Syria would not allow it. And if they were to undertake such an operation, it would be the end of them. And clearly - because Syria very much knows that an operation like this will lead to attacks against it, not just against those groups. This is like a declaration of war. And I do not believe that there is any country in the Arab/Israeli arena that would allow this to happenknowingly. That any group that operates in that arena would test them in this particular environment.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Bruce Hoffman, do you agree with that? But, if so, then why would Afghanistan be different?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, I think Afghanistan, in a sense, because there isn't a unified government there, because there is a vacuum of power, that certainly bin Laden and his minions have had the opportunity to carry out the training that Larry has described, at least that territory is the most likely suspect. But there are any number of terrorists experts that are speculated before the perpetrators and been proven wrong.

MARGARET WARNER: People earlier in the program tonight have talked -- have said that this couldn't be done without state sponsorship or state support. What's your view on that?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: I disagree with that. I think there is more than four people in the world that know how to fly jet planes. It's not a providence that just governments can do that type of instruction. Certainly the preparation involved is something extraordinary. It is very rare ever that terrorists carry out simultaneous attacks, especially of this order. But at the same time, I think, you have to put it into perspective. It is the difficulty of penetrating obviously the security of three different airports showed that it was vulnerable; terrorists looked for breaches in security, were able to penetrate it. I mean, yes, this is a very sophisticated operation, in the general scheme of terrorism, but to say that therefore there has to be a state behind it, I'm not ready to make that conclusion yet.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you think an operation like this, the simultaneous sophisticated operation could have escaped U.S. Intelligence?

LARRY JOHNSON: Well, Number one, U.S. Intelligence is in an abysmal state. We have lost our human capability, it is so oriented towards a Cold War. The reality is to go into this arena, you've got to be willing to enter a sewer. We want to fight rats, but we're not willing to get into the sewer. We want to stay outside and shoot them if they pop their heads up. We have to make a choice in this country - and I've talked to several friends who are still in the agency. There is enormous frustration. They're relying largely on liaisons, intelligence reporting from other countries, not actual on-the-ground human sources, because of the risk that are entailed in recruiting the resources, open people up to prosecution. Just because several years ago CIA officers that were in Iraq training Kurds to attack Iraqis wound up being temporarily detained and threatened with arrest by the FBI because they were, "violating the order of the assassination," because the Iraqi Kurds were going to go kill possibly Saddam. This is insane. We have entered a land of Alice in Wonderland where we want to be clean and we want to be neat and we want to be antiseptic, but we don't want anyone to kill us; we have got to make some choices. And unfortunately this horrible tragedy today is a wakeup call that will galvanize this country in the same way we were galvanized in 1941 after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

MARGARET WARNER: Did you want to add something to that?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, I would take a slightly different view. I think this certainly proves - the area of intelligence -- I wouldn't say this is completely broken or this is exclusively an intelligence failure. I think at the end of the day, we're going to find plenty of blame to go around, not the least in the physical security measures that should have beenin place at our airports to prevent exactly this type of thing. And we have to keep into perspective that the intelligence community has over the past more than three years effectively stymied bin Laden at several different junctures. I think to expect that we'll ever stop him all the time is unrealistic. Where I would agree with Larry though is that I think fundamentally, the architecture for the intelligence community, indeed how we view threats in this country has proven before but certainly today anachronistic, it's directed almost exclusively against military threats coming from nation states. What we see today is that the threats are more diffuse; they're different from that, from non-state actors as well. And that I think is where the change has to come, not just overhauling the intelligence community, but the whole way we look at security.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: If it turns out to be bin Laden, and that's certainly possible, it really would be an extraordinary circumstances where you have the intelligence failing, because he has been the number one priority of U.S. anti-terrorism activity. He has been watched day in and day out, internationally, with so much focus. And you have an operation on this scale by so many people that took so many months of planning on the U.S. territory, in the Washington area, in New York. Something is wrong.

MARGARET WARNER: Does it surprise you, Professor, that nobody has claimed responsibility? There was one group that claimed responsibility this morning, a Palestinian-linked group, then a spokesman, we just ran him, said, no, no, we didn't do it, but other than that, no claim.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: We have not heard from Osama bin Laden, but it doesn't surprise me that all of the other groups will distance themselves from it, including the extremist groups operating in the Middle East, because, Number one, they know that in the terms of public opinion, most understand that most of them understand that the consequences are negative, Number two, they know that they can bear the brunt of the retaliation, and I do not believe that it was in their interest to carry it. It does surprise me that no one at all does take responsibility, but it is too early.

MARGARET WARNER: So how difficult will it be to get to the bottom of who did this?

LARRY JOHNSON: Well, we have the ability - in this case it looks like the flight data recorders are going to be recovered, Number one. Number two, they're going to be able to identify the people that got on the plane. And that's fairly --

MARGARET WARNER: You mean from rosters and such?

LARRY JOHNSON: Good certainty and reviewing video footage from the security checkpoints at the various airports. It is not like the wreckage is scattered over an ocean, which makes -

MARGARET WARNER: Question: Is everybody who's getting on a plane, are they --

LARRY JOHNSON: It various by airport. This highlights something that Bruce pointed out and you need to understand. The United States still has a dual standard with aviation security. We have one standard internationally, one standard domestically. These folks clearly understood that. They knew understood if you're on an international flight, you're going to run into flight marshals. If you're on a domestic flight, you're home free.

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking about armed marshals on a plane?

LARRY JOHNSON: Correct. And this does -- the early reports indicated the people used knives or some sort of object to threaten staff people --

MARGARET WARNER: You're basing that on the cell phone call -

LARRY JOHNSON: On the cell phone call.

MARGARET WARNER: -- that was made from the wife --

LARRY JOHNSON: I think when they review it, it will be one of two things: It will be -- either be that or someone threatened they had an explosive, whether it was genuine or not because getting on planes with a firearm has been difficult. But I think we have to review a minimum keeping of that pilot's door locked and not opening it under any circumstances.

MARGARET WARNER: Bruce Hoffman, what's your view on how tough it's going to be to make good on essentially what the President said, which is, we're going to hunt down and punish those responsible?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Well, first we have to identify who is responsible for it. And that's, I think, one of the challenges that underscores how we have a very different enemy. In the past, when we faced these types of threats, there has been a government; there's been a target for us. It is going to take some time and some effort to identify the correct target. So I think we have to resist the temptation to do something, do anything, but be more patient and do the right thing and do something that will truly have a demonstrable effect.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think there is anything the United States can do -- and I don't mean to make it sound so futile, but the United States has launched attacks, tit for tat kind of attacks after other terrorist bombings -

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: You know, there are two things we have to keep in mind: Number one, you can't fight it alone. You have to fight it with others. Even if we identify who the perpetrators are, you need the cooperation of the international community and countries in the region, and, therefore, you have to have robust political relations and common interests to fight it. So that one has to remember, because even if you identify it as was suspected with the bombings in Africa, in fact, the operation didn't quite work and even though, it had political consequences. Number two, like anything else, terrorism depends on supply and demand. And the supply, you have to work on. You have to try to eliminate the responsibilities, to fight those who carry it out, but you also have to understand that there is deprivation out there. There is frustrations. Those groups try to essentially use the sentiments in the region, and now there is a lot of anti-American sentiment, and a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment, and they're trying to use it for their own political purposes, and there is a political dimension that has to be employed in the fight against terrorism.

LARRY JOHNSON: I have a much more pragmatic approach, let's go after the people that kill Americans. And when you do the body count list, the two individuals that have killed more Americans in the last 20 years -- Igmat Mugi, a security chief for Hezbollah, who's still hiding out between the Bekkah Valley and Iran, and Osama bin Laden. Those facts are irrefutable. We don't need to focus on the world; we don't need to focus on 150 countries. We focus on a very narrow area, but you get those people, you eliminate the major source of death and destruction for American citizens.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Larry Johnson, Bruce Hoffman, and Professor Telhami, thank you all three very much.

JIM LEHRER: Now to Elizabeth Farnsworth for another view of what happened today.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And joining me is General George Joulwan; he was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 1993 to 1997.

General Joulwan, speaking as a military man, what do you see when you look at these attacks? What is it that characterizes them for you?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): It makes me very angry, to be very blunt about it, that this sort of attack could take place in our country and against targets, as we saw them in New York and the Pentagon. So it is very disconcerting to me that this could happen in our country.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what do you see specifically, the coordination of it, the different places that were attacked?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): Well, it was very well planned, as was set in the earlier segment. Attacks like this take months to prepare. This has been going on for some time; well rehearsed, and they chose their airports and targets well. They knew exactly what they were doing, and as was mentioned by several commentators, we have to really look at our intelligence collection effort and our entire strategy in this post-Cold War period on the real threats that face Americans and indeed much of the free world. This was an attack on democracy, this was an attack on our way of life. This was an attack against America and what it stands for.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: General, because it was so well coordinated, and it may have taken so long to plan, should it have been easier to pick up?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): It should have been. And that's what we need to find out. We've been through Beirut in '83; we've been through the Khobars Tower; we've been through the Cole and now this. We need to have a focused effort. This is every bit an asymmetrical threat, as we like to call it, a threat against the United States, and we need to have the early warning, as we would in a conventional way, in a conventional attack. We need to develop intelligence collection, human and other sources, to prevent this thing from happening again.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You know a lot about some of those earlier attacks. What did you learn afterwards, the kinds of hints that were intelligence that were missed?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): I'm not really trying to speculate here, but after each one of these, there were clues. There were tidbits of information that when pieced together after the fact could have given us this early warning that we need. It is trying to do that before the fact, trying to develop ways to have temporary information, critical information, come to the forefront and brought to the attention of the decision makers before something like this occurs. We need to develop our intelligence apparatus to prepare for this because I don't think this is going to be the last attack of this feature against the United States.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How can we do that?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): It takes a different mindset. We have to understand what human intelligence collection, not just technical means from satellites, very important, or UAV's, very important, unattended area vehicles, we have to get human intelligence, and we have to get back into that in a big way. There are risks in doing that. We have to make sure we have good controls over it, but we need to get back into that in order to prevent the sort of tragedy we saw today.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Explain human intelligence.

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): Human intelligence is eyes on the ground, people on the ground, people infiltrating other organizations, and a government that is willing to take those risks. And we have been, I think, in the last at least ten to twenty years, we have not been able to get the funding, nor the resources, nor the political will to be able to do that at the level and the scale that we need to.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: General, do you think these acts could havebeen carried out by an organization without government help?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): I don't want to speculate on that, but probably yes. We are entering a period in the 21st century where individuals and organizations have the capability to do this, I think, without being state sponsored, but I think we have to wait for the facts. We need to get the facts. I'm sure there are many now working on trying to array those facts and then fix the things that need to be fixed, particularly in the intelligence area.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You mentioned that people are trying to get those facts. Describe for us what military planners are doing now.

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): There is going to be a massive investigation of all of the intelligence over the last several months to see if we could piece together these little tidbits that I'm talking about. We saw that after Beirut, where there were tippers, as we call them, and I think people are going to look for those to see if we can narrow down who may be responsible for this: Telephone calls, faxes, other special intelligence to try to find out who is responsible.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And when is it appropriate to respond?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): As soon as we know who is responsible for this, I would hope that it would be swift, it would be lethal, and it would be focused. And we should not say anything unless we're going to really carry it out. And when we say something, we've got to do it. And we've got to do it to make a clear signal here. We should do it, by the way -- if we have to, unilaterally, but I would hope it would be in confrontation with our allies and friends around the world. We need to create a worldwide effort to combat this sort of terrorism.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: General Joulwan, I know that friends of yours are still missing in the Pentagon and it's been a very difficult day for you. Were you surprised that even the Pentagon was attacked?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): Yes, to be very blunt about it, but we are always vulnerable in this country, given our society, given our way of life. It is going to take special action here, and I think -- I hope the American people are ready for it. Not just for tomorrow, but six months from now or twelve months from now because I could assure you that some terrorist organization is already thinking about another target somewhere in our country or against one of our interests overseas, and, remember, we have a lot of deployments of troops and embassies, and we always have to be on the guard for that, try to anticipate, not react after the fact, but try to anticipate the event before it occurs.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: General George Joulwan, thanks very much.

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN (RET.): Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Members of the President's cabinet spoke to reporters at the White House briefing room a short while ago.

JOHN ASHCROFT: Today America has experienced one of the greatest tragedies ever witnessed on our soil. These heinous acts of violence are an assault on the security of our nation. They're an assault on the security and the freedom of every American citizen. We will not tolerate such acts. We will expend every effort and devote all the necessary resources to bring the people responsible for these acts, these crimes, to justice. Now is the time for us to come together as a nation to offer our support, our prayers for victims and for their families, for the rescue workers, for law enforcement officials, for every one of us that has been changed forever by this horrible tragedy. The following is a summary ofthe known facts surrounding today's incidents: American Airlines Flight 11 departed Boston for Los Angeles, hijacked by suspects armed with knives. This plane crashed into the World Trade Center. United Airlines Flight 175, departed Boston for Los Angeles, was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 departed Washington, Dulles for Los Angeles, was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, departed Newark for San Francisco was hijacked and crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It takes courage for individuals to come forward in situations like this, and I urge anyone with information that may be useful and helpful to authorities to use this opportunity. The Office of Victims of Crime has established a toll-free 800 number for family and friends of victims. They can call 1-800-331-0075 to leave contact information for a future time when more information is available -- to find out information about a victim or to find out information about the rights of victims and the services available to victims' survivors and victims' families. The determination of these terrorists will not deter the determination of the American people. We are survivors, and freedom is a survivor. A free American people will not be intimidated, nor will we be defeated. We will find the people responsible for these cowardly acts, and justice will be done.

NORMAN MINETA: We are currently looking at a wide variety of additional security measures to increase traveler security. Travelers will indeed see increased security measures at our airports, train stations, and other key sites. There will be higher levels of surveillance, more stringent searches, airport curbside luggage check-in will no longer be allowed. There will be more security officers in random identification checks. Travelers may experience some inconveniences, but we ask for your patience, but we must do whatever it takes with safety as our highest priority. The Department of Transportation is working closely with the White House and appropriate federal agencies to mount a coordinated nationwide recovery effort. Each American must know that we will restore our national transportation system to a safe and efficient status as quickly as possible. Our system has been severely burdened by the stress of these horrendous attacks, but we will recover.

JIM LEHRER: Now some perspective on the day's events from NewsHour regulars presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and journalist/author Haynes Johnson, plus Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Center at the University of Kansas, and Roger Wilkins, professor of history at George Mason University.

Michael, has there ever been a day like this in U.S. History?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Not exactly like this, Jim. You know, you look at something like the Battle of Antitum; that was once called the bloodiest day in American history - that was 23,000 Americans killed. And you go back to D-day, probably about half that, Pearl Harbor, a little over a thousand, so the magnitude is stunning. And the other thing is there are moments in history that are really shocks to all of our systems. Pearl Harbor was one. After Pearl Harbor, no American could feel comfortable anymore that we were protected by the big ocean moats. That's a large reason why many Americans had been isolationists; after Pearl Harbor that wasn't possible anymore. And another thing I'm reminded was the announcement by John Kennedy that there were nuclear missiles in Cuba. That was I think the first time that Americans felt that an escalation into World War II -- the incineration of the northern hemisphere might be possible. So I think, after today, this is going to be another shock. I think all of us have known intellectually that something like this could happen; now we understand it emotionally.

JIM LEHRER: Richard, do you think that's it, we're going to understand this emotionally now?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Well, I hope that is the beginning of what we do. I mean to understand this emotionally is a prelude perhaps to understanding it intellectually and taking conservative sustained effort based upon both. You can go back to the War of 1812 when the British actually occupied Washington briefly and destroyed the capital and the White House; you can think of times in the Civil War when the nation's capital was threatened with capture, but there really has never been anything on this scale. And another factor too, thanks to the mass media, the global immediacy about what happened today. We heard Strobe Talbott earlier in this broadcast saying the world was attacked today, and I think that's absolutely true. One other difference -- we heard the Pearl Harbor analogy repeatedly throughout the day. One significant difference is on December 7th, we knew at the time of the attack precisely who was responsible. It didn't take us long to know what we had to do to punish those who were responsible. It took us three-and-a-half years to carry it out. This attack, on the other hand, even if we do identify those responsible, even if we punish them wherever they hide out, we still confront the fact that there are states that sponsor them, that provide them with safe haven, and even if we deal with that issue, we still have a middle east which is festering with the hatreds that give rise to these acts of terrorism. It is extraordinarily complex, and that's, I think, a unique historical event.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, unique historical event, Haynes?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Oh, absolutely. And I think what Richard just said is right, that Pearl Harbor we know is a terrible event, galvanized the country, but you knew who the enemy was.

JIM LEHRER: Galvanized against -

HAYNES JOHNSON: Against - by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The country rose and united, and you knew exactly who the enemy was, and you forced, and right away the war started and you knew what we're going to do. And we were going to win the war and that was this. This is them, it, they, terrorism, amorphous, wherever it is going to happen, and we're used now, we're conditioned, I'm struck, too, we see these scenes over and over again. We've had shocks through the television, John Kennedy's assassination, and all of the rest, but this one is different in a funny way because it is almost as if we knew it was going to happen, we've seen Lockerbie, we've seen planes coming down, but there has never been anything quite as riveting as to what we saw on those screens. Everyone alive will remember everything they saw today.

JIM LEHRER: Amen to that, Doris?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, I think there is no question that the event is unique. I think there probably are, however, parallels to the feeling of vulnerability that people felt who were alive at the time of Pearl Harbor. As Michael said, we had always believed those great oceans would protect us from any kind of air attack. Roosevelt tried to warn us the previous May, May of 1940 actually, that we were no longer safe because of the air warfare but the isolationism kept up until Pearl Harbor. But I think the major difference, which has been hintedat, is that when Roosevelt went on to the Congress after Pearl Harbor, he had going for them not only there was an enemy, but the country had things it could do immediately. He could call for a quadrupling of production - those factories could get going, people could put mattresses on their cars and go to where the factories were; soldiers could join up to join in the arguments against what was happening eventually in Germany and at that point in Japan. So there was a sense of common action that we don't have easily at our disposal today.

JIM LEHRER: And that results in what, a frustration?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think so. I think what happened - it's interesting, when you read about the reaction to Pearl Harbor, it was almost as if the indecision of the previous months was finally met by common action, and there was a relief in the country at large in a sense that at least we knew as a nation we were going to move forward. It is hard to imagine what President Bush could say to make us feel we had something to do. People gave blood today. I think that was the symbolic sense of wanting to do something, but most of us are not going to be able to contribute in a way that the military intelligence and the people who are going to have to go after these people are going to do. So that leads us to a sense of impotence, and a sense of vulnerability gets increased because there is no way we can act. Action is the answer that people need when something like this happens, and it is hard to figure out what the country as a whole is going to do.

JIM LEHRER: Roger Wlkins, what analogies leap to your mind today?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, I see this as a process and maturation of America's sense of itself -- we thought of ourselves originally as an innocent people and an invulnerable people because as somebody said earlier of not only our oceans, but a friendly neighbor to the North, a weak neighbor to the South. We're not invulnerable anymore, and we're not innocent anymore. We started learning those lessons in the Revolution. We certainly learned it -- I think back to the first Battle of Bull Run, when people from Washington went out with their picnics to watch the great Union Army chase the Rebs away, and the Rebs hit them in the nose, and these people fled back to Washington frightened to death. I think of our loss of innocence in Vietnam in so many ways. Each time the world got closer to us, and we got closer and closer to what we thought of as the world's other human beings' problems. Well, today, what these people did was to let us know our innocence and our invulnerability is over. There couldn't be anything more in your face than what they did. They took our airplanes; they flew them into icons of American industry and American urbanization and American finance. They flew it into our Pentagon, the heart of our defense, and apparently they were also going to hit the President's summer place.

JIM LEHRER: We should point that out. The airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania, there are reports that it was headed towards -- its target was to be Camp David, which is in Maryland, not too far from where the plane actually went down.

ROGER WILKINS: I think this really gives us a test of our maturity. We've got to respond to this fast, we've got to respond to it very intelligently, and as Strobe Talbott and others have said, we've got to be fierce about defending at home, our own freedoms and taking them very seriously and not getting hysterical about what has happened to us.

JIM LEHRER: And you used the word frightened. Do we have a right to be frightened tonight, Roger?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, I think that a lot of the innocence we had about jumping on and off airplanes, and complaining and moaning and groaning about having to go through these routine checks at the airports, the fears we have for our relatives -- my heart aches for the people who are waiting for news for the relatives who were on those airplanes, as well as the other people who were killed. We're all going to think about that now. We'll never forget this.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you all very much. Now members of the congressional leadership spoke outside the Capitol Building a short while ago.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT: At a time like this, no words that we should utter today, or this evening, can help the hearts and souls and feelings of the victims and the families that were a part of this great tragedy that happened in this country today. Our prayers and thoughts and words of consolation goes out to all those who have suffered, but one thing that happens here in this place is when America suffers, and when people perpetrate acts against this country, we as a Congress and a government stand united, and we stand together. Applause Senators and House members, Democrats and Republicans will stand shoulder to shoulder to fight this evil that has been perpetrated on this nation. We will stand together to make sure that those who have brought forth this evil deed will pay the price. We're not sure who this is yet. Applause But we have our suspicions, and when that is justified, and when those suspicions are justified, we will act. We will stand with the President, we will stand with this government, and we will stand as Americans together through this time. Thank you. Applause

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Today's despicable acts were an assault on our people and on our freedom. As the representatives of the people, we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened by these horrific and cowardly acts. Congress will convene tomorrow. Applause And we will speak with one voice to condemn these attacks, to comfort the victims and their families, to commit our full support to the effort to bring those responsible to justice. We, Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, stand strongly united behind the President and will work together to ensure that the full resources of the government are brought to bear in these efforts. Our heart-felt thoughts and our fervent prayers are with the injured and the families of those who have been lost.

JIM LEHRER: And we close this hour now with the views of Tom Oliphant of the "Boston Globe" and William Kristol of the "Weekly Standard."

Tom, what do the American people need to know about their government tonight?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, probably more than they've been shown today. The government has been hunkered down probably for necessary reasons. But from what I can gather from Congressmen and Senators, particularly Intelligence Committee members today, Jim, is that administration officials are telling them that we should all be prepared, first of all, domestically for a massive establishment of security throughout the American transportation system, and other key installations, but that, also, the tolerance for a system of terrorism over the past 25 years in the world, where you -- where a country goes on a list because it helps terrorists and nothing much happens, that this is in the process of ending. So while I think security in the United States is going to be quite visibly greater in the next several days, weeks, months, maybe even years, what people probably need to know more is that a very major change in American policy towards international terrorism is in the process of being made.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Bill?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think we're now at war.

JIM LEHRER: We're at war?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: We're at war with terrorism, with the terrorist group that launched this incredibly bloody and destructive attack on Americans, with the states that harbor these terrorist groups, we need to track them down and kill them, and remove the government of those states, and that will mean a huge increase in defense spending, and not just security measures here, but it will require an active foreign policy. I think George Bush's speech tonight is his first speech as a war President.

JIM LEHRER: What is his job tonight?

TOM OLIPHANT: From what some of us have been told this afternoon, it is not clear that the President is prepared to, -- especially to go into any kind of depth on what the thinking is with regard to our foreign and security responses here, it is still in the process of happening. Also, we do need allies. This is a universal evil, and attacking it intelligently is going to require even more vigorous a foreign policy effort than Jim Baker made on President Bush's behalf a decade ago before the Persian Gulf War. So it is not clear how much the people will be told today, but there is no question in my mind that particularly on this trigger of any state sponsorship, that no more tolerance probably means thinking about military responses against countries.

JIM LEHRER: Against countries. General Joulwan told Elizabeth Farnsworth a minute ago that he wasn't sure the American people were ready for that and they have to be made ready for that. I'm paraphrasing what he said, but they need to be made ready for that by the leadership of this country.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: That's what Presidents do and that's been what war Presidents do. That's why tonight's speech is just the beginning of a whole new phase of the Bush presidency, and I dare to say perhaps the phase by which he will be fundamentally judged by history. Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said this is an attack on the world and people say it is a universal problem. It wasn't an attack on the world. It was an attack on America. The institutions that were attacked were the Pentagon, the symbol of our military might, and the World Trade Center, the symbol ff our financial might. And the President needs to tell the American people this is going to be a war. Like all wars, it could be messy, it could be complicated, there could be further U.S. casualties, but we can't live in fear and terror; we can't abandon our role of global leadership, so we need to fight this war and win this war.

TOM OLIPHANT: I still think it is an open question how ready America is for such a fundamental change in our policy, but I think today there has been detected something which has immense political power, and, that is, and increased feeling of vulnerability on the part of the people. I mean if there is one purpose for a government to exist it is the protection of the people. And I don't think there's been any question as you listen to the individual stories of either victims or people who didn't know what was going on today, that that feeling of vulnerability is present, and that is the first thing a leader must deal with.

JIM LEHRER: And terrorism is designed to terrorize people, and it worked today, didn't it?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, it won't work if we fight back and if we defeat the terrorist organization and remove thegovernments that have harbored them.

JIM LEHRER: And when you say remove the governments, you mean that, right? I mean you're talking about going to war with this country, that country, not just getting let's say Osama bin Laden or something -- if he turns out to be the one, take out Afghanistan?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think you'll have to try to change the government in Afghanistan, and possibly remove governments that helped elsewhere in the world. If it turns out --

JIM LEHRER: Oh, sure. I'm using that as an example.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I do believe that will be necessary. I think the President needs to lay the groundwork for that. We can't just talk about better security measures in our airports or better counter terrorism measures at home. I think he needs to prepare the American people for a serious foreign policy offensive against what is now the most serious threat to Americans in this world.

TOM OLIPHANT: The words people might want to look for tonight, Jim, would will something on the order of the United States will not tolerate the harboring of anybody like this anywhere in the world.

JIM LEHRER: If you do it, you do it at your own risk.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Or the assistance to people like this -- not just harboring them physically but assisting them.

TOM OLIPHANT: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: And, again, we'll continue our special coverage of this awful day in just a moment on most public television stations.

SPECIAL REPORT - HOUR THREE - DAY OF TERROR

JIM LEHRER: Welcome back to our special PBS NewsHour coverage of this awful day. For those just joining us, there are still no preliminary death toll numbers from the attacks in New York and Washington. A well-organized group of terrorists as yet unidentified, hijacked four U.S. airliners with a total of 226 people on board. Two of them were flown suicide bomb fashion into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The third slammed into the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth crashed in an open field 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Within hours both of the World Trade Center towers collapsed and later in the day a smaller building in the complex fell apart after burning for hours. More than 2,000 people were injured and Mayor Giuliani said the number killed would be horrendous. The crash at the Pentagon touched off a raging fire and collapsed one side of the building. Dozens of people were hurt and many more were feared dead. This evening Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said search crews were still removing bodies, but he said the Pentagon would be open tomorrow. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks. President Bush promised to hunt down and punish those responsible. He ordered the military on high alert and flew to a highly secure air force base in Nebraska. Later he returned to Washington and planned to address the nation this evening at 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time. The attacks brought much of the country to a standstill. In Washington, the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court and most other federal buildings were evacuated. Congressional leaders were taken to secure locations. The financial exchanges in New York were closed. All domestic aviation nationwide was grounded. And landmarks from the sears tower in Chicago to the Space Needle in Seattle were shut down. Members of the cabinet spoke to reporters at the White House briefing room a short while ago.

JOHN ASHCROFT: Today America has experienced one of the greatest tragedies ever witnessed on our soil. These heinous acts of violence are an assault on the security of our nation. They're an assault on the security and the freedom of every American citizen. We will not tolerate such acts. We will expend every effort and devote all the necessary resources to bring the people responsible for these acts, these crimes, to justice. Now is the time for us to come together as a nation to offer our support, our prayers for victims and for their families, for the rescue workers, for law enforcement officials, for every one of us that has been changed forever by this horrible tragedy. The following is a summary of the known facts surrounding today's incidents: American Airlines Flight 11 departed Boston for Los Angeles, hijacked by suspects armed with knives. This plane crashed into the World Trade Center. United Airlines Flight 175, departed Boston for Los Angeles, was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 departed Washington, Dulles for Los Angeles, was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, departed Newark for San Francisco was hijacked and crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It takes courage for individuals to come forward in situations like this, and I urge anyone with information that may be useful and helpful to authorities to use this opportunity. The Office of Victims of Crime has established a toll-free 800 number for family and friends of victims. They can call 1-800-331-0075 to leave contact information for a future time when more information is available -- to find out information about a victim or to find out information about the rights of victims and the services available to victims' survivors and victims' families. The determination of these terrorists will not deter the determination of the American people. We are survivors, and freedom is a survivor. A free American people will not be intimidated, nor will we be defeated. We will find the people responsible for these cowardly acts, and justice will be done.

JIM LEHRER: A reminder that President Bush is expected to address the nation about 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time, and we will carry that live. More now on what's known about the casualties from today's attacks and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: And with me is our health correspondent Susan Dentzer. And now that it's been many hours since is first attack, do we know much more than we did at midday about the human toll of this series of terrorist bombings?

SUSAN DENTZER: Well, Ray, as one physician put it it's a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. And at this point we just don't literally know what those proportions are. Mayor Giuliani said this afternoon that 2100 had been injured. I just spoke a few moments ago with someone at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village in New York. 150 people came up there over the course of the day to be seen. Many were admitted. A number have already been released and discharged but were treated for minor injuries and so on. But the disparity is obviously huge. You saw what happened to the World Trade Center. It suggests that the next wave, as this person at Saint Vincent's told me they'd been told that the next wave that is coming is bodies. Apparently many city workers now have been called to the World Trade Center to begin the process of digging out and taking out the bodies. It seems as if most of the injured who are going to be gotten out of there alive are now in New York area hospitals and at best the estimates seem to be around 600 or so.

RAY SUAREZ: And what about the situation closer to studios here in Washington at the Pentagon? You've been following that closely all day as well.

SUSAN DENTZER: Yes. After the attack at the Pentagon this morning, the first individuals were taken to area hospitals about 10:30 this morning. I was over at Virginia Hospital Center, which is in Arlington, not too far from here, 20 minutes from the Pentagon. It is the official hospital of the Pentagon. So people who fall ill at the Pentagon are usually taken over to that facility. As of tonight, a total of 42 people have been taken over there. 31 were actually Pentagon officials, civilian and military, who had been injured. Another 11 or so as of this evening were firefighters and emergency service workers who were over at the Pentagon. There were eight people put into intensive care units with very, very serious smoke inhalation and other injuries. They were intubated. Tubes were put into them and they were attached to ventilators. Their injuries are very, very serious. For the most part though we understand the injuries are burns, some smoke inhalation, et cetera. We did speak with one Pentagon worker who actually was in the news information office at the Pentagon; they were watching this on television earlier today. They were actually watching what was going on at the World Trade Center when the attack took place at the Pentagon. Some of them were immediately evacuated. They filed out into the interior courtyard. This one worker we spoke to had actually accompanied some injured people over to Virginia Hospital Center. It was quite apparently a nightmarish scene. She said people were walking out of the Pentagon with injuries that she did not want to describe, of course, very, very serious burns. We know that a number of fatalities did occur at the Pentagon. At this point we do not know how many those were.

RAY SUAREZ: Our health correspondent Susan Dentzer. Thanks a lot.

SUSAN DENTZER: Thanks, Ray.

JIM LEHRER: Now a view of the intelligence angles to today's events, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: We turn now to, we hope two long-term intelligence experts. With me here James Woolsey, who was Director of Central Intelligence during the Clinton administration; and former Senator David Boren, who we hope to be joined soon by former Senator David Boren, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee during the Gulf War. Mr. Woolsey, let's start with the big intelligence question everyone keeps asking. How could U.S. Intelligence have missed the planning of an operation this sophisticated, this simultaneous, this multi-faceted?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, they may well have had some kind of indication that something was going to happen. You remember a few weeks ago in the aftermath, a few weeks after the Cole, there were a number of....

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking about the U.S.S. Cole.

JAMES WOOLSEY: The destruction of the ship or the near destruction of the ship in Oman, I'm sorry in Yemen. We had a number of alerts. And we had troops in Jordan and we had ships in the Persian Gulf. They went on alert, put out to sea and so forth. At that time there was a lot of concern that something might be about to happen. That's been a worry I think of the intelligence community now for the last number of weeks. But this is often the case. You get a general warning sometimes, but not a specific one.

MARGARET WARNER: But explain how groups could communicate and one assumes individuals would have had to have been communicating without that being picked up by electronic means, or would it be picked up by electronic means but not sort of caught?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, there's several things. First of all it's harder to intercept communications in the last few years because of encryption being generally available around the world. Secondly even when things are picked up-- I don't know if this was in fact the case with Mr. bin Laden -- sometimes press leaks hurt. There was an indication in the press some weeks or months ago, that he was overheard using a telephone, a particular type of telephone, and if he was overheard, you can be sure that he stopped using it after that. I think another thing is that terrorist groups are notoriously hard to penetrate. We've made it a little bit harder than it needs to be. In the aftermath of the Jennifer Harbor -- Bamako business in Guatemala a few years ago, my successor Mr. Deutch put out some guidelines that made it harder to recruit spies if those spies had a background of violence. Well, that might be all right inside governments. There are a lot of good people trapped inside bad governments who spy for the U.S. or for Britain because they're honest democrats and so forth. But in terrorist groups, there isn't anybody except people who want to be terrorists. So it cuts back on your ability to recruit spies inside terrorist organizations if you can't recruit people with some kind of a violent past.

MARGARET WARNER: So now you're talking about so-called "human intelligence."

JAMES WOOLSEY: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: So you would agree with some of our previous guests who have said things like... maybe you wouldn't agree with this. But our human intelligence is abysmal or it's been shortchanged recently. It's really not what it should be.

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, I don't think it's been shortchanged recently. It has... We had some cuts from the Congress that I fought against when I was Director of Central Intelligence, but I know George Tenet has worked very hard to try to build up human intelligence. Bill Webster did. Most of that, those cuts were back during the late '70s. And I think the agency has recovered largely from those, but there have been some overall budget trimmings in the last few years that I think probably have hurt a bit.

MARGARET WARNER: But then, are you saying that... We had another guest, Larry Johnson who used to be at the State Department, deputy chief of counter terrorism, who said the U.S. Government isn't willing to, quote, get in the sewer which is what you have to do and take those kinds of risks to really recruit, keep on payroll and so on, the kinds of spies you're talking about.

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well that's a little bit of what I was saying. Up until late '95, case officers had the flexibility to recruit pretty much whom they would as long as their station chief approved it. But these guidelines that came out in late '95 deterred them. It doesn't block them but it does deter them from recruiting people with violent pasts. If you're going to recruit someone in a terrorist organization, it's going to be someone with a violent past.

MARGARET WARNER: We are joined now by Senator Boren.

Welcome Senator Boren.

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: I understand you were actually having breakfast with the CIA Director, George Tenet, this morning when this attack occurred and stayed at the agency for some time. Is there anything knew you can tell us on what the thinking is on who was responsible for this?

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: Well, not really. We were actually having breakfast downtown at a hotel. We thought we were having a very peaceful breakfast on a beautiful morning. And, of course, we were interrupted right in the middle of breakfast with this news. I think -- I don't have access and if I did I wouldn't divulge it as to what our latest thinking is -- but clearly I think you have to put on the list those that have the resources to do something as sophisticated as this. I think you have to have bin Laden on the suspect list. You probably have some nation states that ought to be on the suspect list as well. You know, looking at this, it's very clear-- and I think this hopefully will give us leads to trace back and find and affix responsibility-- the training that had to have been there by those who took over the aircraft, the ability to pilot the aircraft. It appears that perhaps they were piloting the aircraft, the knowledge to turn off the transponders that would make it very difficult to trace these aircraft from the ground and through our air control system. These were people that were highly trained; they knew what they were doing. It was all very carefully coordinated. So we're dealing with people with a lot of sophistication here. Some of that training and some of that preparation is bound to have left clues that hopefully we'll be able to thread through pretty quickly.

MARGARET WARNER: You said you put some states on the list. Which states?

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: I'd rather not start naming but I think obviously there are states that have reason to have strong feelings -- Iraq, for example. We knew back during the Persian Gulf conflict -- and that's when we had a lot of intelligence successes because a lot of efforts were broken up to mount terrorist attacks that Saddam Hussein among others was trying to recruit every terrorist organization in the world to serve his purpose. But I think now we're in a situation where we must respond so strongly and send such a very strong signal for the sake not only of our security but the stability and security of the world that nation states that condone terrorism, that harbor terrorists, let alone those that sponsor terrorism will pay a very heavy, heavy price. It was interesting to me that Mr. Qaddafi rushed out with a statement deploring the incident today. It's pretty clear that none of these people who have harbored terrorists in the past want to suffer the consequences or have a risk of suffering the consequences.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with that, Jim Woolsey, pay a higher price and if so what do we mean a higher price?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, we have to be very vigorous in recruiting spies and we have to do and sometimes that's costly. But I think the key thing is what David said earlier about nation states -- because Iraq has a lot of incentives to damage the United States heavily. There was an FBI agent in charge of the early investigation of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Jim Fox, who had the view that there may well have been Iraqi government involvement in that. The Clinton administration, Justice Department, brushed that aside after the time but some of the information that came out at trial that had been under grand jury secrecy during the investigation looks as if there may well have been Iraqi government involvement. And this time this administration, I hope and trust, will not brush aside the idea that there might be state involvement. We may well find that Osama bin Laden or some other terrorist group in the MidEast or elsewhere, probably the MidEast, is behind this. But they may well be a subcontractor or a junior partner. There conceivably could be a state behind this. Iran is possible. But I think we should focus very hard on the possibility of state backing.

MARGARET WARNER: David Boren, when you say states that sponsor terrorism should pay a higher price, what are you saying specifically?

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: Well, I think the infrastructure of those countries needs to be severely damaged in terms of physical, military damage, strong military action, if that is required. We have to be able to deliver that message very, very strongly so that no one will even want to be on the suspect list in the future for harboring terrorism. You know, I hope that out of all this, something will happen that I felt strongly about for a long time. And that is we cannot really deal with terrorism just like we can't deal with environmental problems all by ourselves in the United States. Like environmental problems, national borders are really irrelevant when you talk about the movement of terrorism and the terrorist organizations. We really need to sit down and we need to get the leading nations of the world, not only just our NATO allies but also the Russians if they'll join us, the Chinese, if they'll join us, all of us have a stake in world stability. And we need to say, "we need to form some kind of international inspection regime that will enable us to go in to areas of the world, hopefully with the acquiescence of the host governments, but if not, forcefully go into areas of the world, inspect a suspected terrorist camps, training camps and operation camps and break them up." When all of this happened, as I was walking along this morning, I thought back about a conversation I had about six weeks ago with President Putin of Russia in Moscow. We were talking about the threats. We had started talking about the missile shield. And he said, you know, we worry about missiles being launched by rogue states. He said my worry-- and he said, I think we all need to get together and figure out how to work together on this-- is that car bombs and airplanes, he mentioned airplanes, could be used, much more conventional devices to inflict this kind of terrible damage. And we were talking about the opportunities for intelligence sharing and really building a strong leadership with the international community. Maybe the shock of this incident will cause other countries around the world to wake up and I hope that our president will take the lead internationally in bringing together the top dozen nations of this world to become committed to this kind of international cooperative activity.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, David Boren, Jim Woolsey, thank you both very much.

JIM LEHRER: A reminder that President Bush is scheduled to address the nation in about ten minutes, 8:30 Eastern Time. We'll certainly go to that live when that occurs. We'll certainly go to that live when that occurs but now some perspective on what it took to bring down those twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Those twin towers, which were completed in 1973 were 110 stories tall, 1,360 feet. They were the tallest buildings in New York City, roughly 50,000 people work in them. They were designed to be a hub for international trade and were part of a seven-building complex, which was completed in 1988. In addition to the twin towers, one other of the seven buildings in the World Trade Center complex also collapsed late this afternoon.

For more on the buildings we turn now to two structural engineers, Ron Hamburger, chief structural engineer at UQE, an engineering firm, and Hassan Astaneh, professor of engineering at UC Berkeley who is helping develop guidelines for the American Institute for Steel Construction, guidelines that would help structures withstand terrorist attack. Ron Hamburger, you've seen the video and the plane hitting. You've seen the fires and the collapse. What do you think happened?

RON HAMBURGER: Well, incredible as it may seem, the buildings survived the aircraft attack. Both of them were able to stand for the better part of two hours after the crash. What they just were not able to survive was the incredibly intense fires that ensued from all of that burning jet fuel. Structural steel, these buildings were steel billings. Structural steel when it gets hot loses strength. The steel elements that held up the building where the crash occurred got hot from the fires at about the 90th floor. They were supporting 20 floors of building above it. And when they lost the ability to support that, all of that mass, like another building, came down on top of the rest of the structure like a pile hammer and just essentially drove the rest of the building into the ground.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, we don't know for sure, do we, that, Mr. Astaneh... We don't know for sure that there wasn't some kind of a bomb. But you didn't think there had to be a bomb for this happen?

HASSAN ASTANEH: That's exactly case. We are not sure, of course, what was in those planes but the amount of fuel that came and was delivered to this building was enough, in my opinion, as I agree with Ron, that the cause of this collapse and tragedy was really what we call progress of collapse. What happened here was the initial impact did not cause much damage; it just ignited the fire. The fuel was supplied. The fire on almost four hours - and at that time the temperature of the columns - they have reached the critical level which is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, and when steel reaches that level of temperature, it loses its strength, and of course the upper floors, the weight of those upper floors completely collapsed on the lower part and hammered it down and collapsed it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Astaneh, was it important where the aircraft hit the towers?

HASSAN ASTANEH: Exactly. What was really amazing to me this morning watching the footage was that actually - I don't know by design or by accident - but they really hit the worst part of these towers. If you hit these towers at the top, very top, you might lose several floors, but that will not collapse the whole, entire building. If you hit them at the base, the columns at the base are so strong, as we saw during the past bomb attack on this building; that really those columns will not collapse. You hit in the middle, these columns are not very strong as the base but at the same time they have very heavy weight of upper floors on them. So this was the worst combination of strength reduction and increased weight on them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Hamburger, anything to add to that?

RON HAMBURGER: Well, not really. I think Dr. Astaneh said it very well. Really the terrorists picked the perfect place to strike these buildings.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about the buildings. Were they more or less vulnerable than other tall buildings like them? I read that the structural engineer that designed them said they were designed to take a hit from a 707.

RON HAMBURGER: That's correct. These buildings actually were very strong. The steel columns that support the building were spaced at about three feet apart all around the perimeter of the building. Typically on a building like this, you'll see column spacings on the order of three to four times that. So this was an exceptionally strong building. As I said, it did actually survive the impact of the aircraft both towers did.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: They even survived the impact going right through it. You saw that picture of the aircraft going through it.

RON HAMBURGER: Yes, that's right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Anything to add about the buildings themselves?

HASSAN ASTANEH: All I can tell you is if there's any positive thing here today is that actually the fact that these buildings were steel structures. When we had the Oklahoma City tragedy, that structure was concrete. When it happened the concrete could not tolerate the impact and the columns were pretty much collapsed and the whole building collapsed and there was no time for people to get out of the building. In this case, because the structures were steel structures, the columns were able to tolerate easily the impact. Even they could tolerate the fire if we were able to reach the fire and extinguish the fire. But since it wasn't possible, the fire was too intense, and then the steel lost its strength and collapsed after one hour. But that one hour apparently was enough for many people, as I heard, in fact, from Ron when we were sitting outside, that his firm had people in that building and they were able to evacuate from the 91st floor after the fire started. So they were out before the collapse. So one positive thing I see is that at least we were lucky in a sense that the collapse actually happened in a progressive way, not in a very sudden, immediate after attack. So I see a very, very positive point in the design of these buildings that they were really strong, as Ron mentioned, and they were really designed well. But unfortunately they could not tolerate that intense fire due to the jet fuel perhaps.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Could any building designed in the future in a different way-- I'm really asking what needs to be done in the future-- have withstood the heat of that fire.

RON HAMBURGER: Well, really, I don't think you would have to do much to the design of the structure -- what you would have to work with would be the protective coatings that are put on the steel to guard them against fire.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There won't those protective coatings on this steel.

RON HAMBURGER: They were there but they're designed for the type of fire you would have in an office building: Burning paper, carpet or furniture not burning jet fuel. They're designed to resist that for a period of two or three hours. It would be possible to put additional coatings on the steel that would allow them to survive such a fire. But you'd have to weighthe cost of that against the likelihood of the repeat of such an occurrence.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You're designing guidelines, which are supposed to help prevent such a building from collapsing if there's a terrorist attack. Structural engineers worry about these things, right?

HASSAN ASTANEH: Yes. Basically, the American Institute of Steel Construction, that organization develops guidelines and design recommendations for profession to design structures for everything. Now since Oklahoma City collapse, the Professional and American Institute of Steel Construction has started a committee and I'm a member of that committee and our work is to develop guidelines and provisions that structural engineers can use in order to prevent what we call progressive collapse -- which means if you... for either due to car attack, car bombs or rocket attack or other means, if you remove a column or part of a building, can you prevent the full collapse of a building? These guidelines are in the process and hopefully they will help in the future to prevent progressive and catastrophic collapse.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Hassan Astaneh and Ron Hamburger, thanks very much for being with us.

JIM LEHRER: Now to Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe and William Kristol of the "Weekly Standard." Bill, the President in about two-and-a-half minutes or so is going to address the nation. What is his mission? What is his job?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Who would have thought eight months ago that the President's first two prime time special televised addresses would be on embryonic stem cell research and now tonight in the wake of an attack on the continental United States with thousands of casualties? I think his job is to tell the American people how serious this is, that we are in a war, that it won't be resolved easily or quickly perhaps, but that he intends to lead us through to victory.

JIM LEHRER: Tom?

TOM OLIPHANT: In putting this together, Jim, I've heard that there's a difficult line being walked here because I think the first thing Americans probably want to hear tonight is that what has happened today changes everything -- something almost only a President can drive home.

JIM LEHRER: Excuse me. Does he have to... would a lot of people also be listening for him to say, "It's over"?

TOM OLIPHANT: Precisely. Whether you talk... In other words, I think the fine line here is on the one hand, reassurance to an obviously shaken country that has had vulnerability stamped on its forehead. That's one thing. But at the same time the idea that this is it -- we have no more tolerance for this kind of thing. And that is the kind of leadership act that is going to ask things of people, not just to give up curb side check-in at the airlines, but to be prepared in terms of backing policies and spending money to have in place the kind of response to international terrorism with our allies that we're going to need that can be successful after 20-plus years of abject failures.

JIM LEHRER: And when you say "go to war," you said earlier, you mean go to war.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: The question is will the President ask Congress for a declaration of war on those entities and the states that have assisted them that are responsible for this act? That would not be a ridiculous thing to do I think if he seriously wants to tell the American people that will require expenditures of money, expenditures perhaps of life, a change in certain habits we have here at home. I think that is under consideration, a congressional declaration of war.

JIM LEHRER: Is that right?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, you know, there was one little untoward moment that cast a little doubt on that in my mind. That was where Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld kind of shied away from the word, which made me wonder whether he'd go that far.

JIM LEHRER: You mean from the....

TOM OLIPHANT: The use of the word "war." As if it were a legal concept. Here is an event that is more than ten times Pearl Harbor perhaps.

JIM LEHRER: Now we go to the Oval Office and President Bush.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Good evening. Today. Our fellow citizens are..., Our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes, were in their offices, secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we're the brighten beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could. Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military's powerful and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington D.C. to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks. The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington, which had to be evacuated today, are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance. America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism. Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve -- for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me." This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world. Thank you. Good night. And God bless America.

JIM LEHRER: President Bush addressing the nation from the Oval Office. Back to Tom Oliphant and Bill Kristol. Tom, your comments.

TOM OLIPHANT: A short speech. I hope we don't bury the lead as we say in journalism because there was one sentence in there that was very important to focus on. That is that we will make no distinction, the President said, between terrorists and those who harbor them. I think in that sentence is the message of resolve that we have been hearing about all day from the administration. The task of leading the country to what it will actually take to change and get ready to carry out a policy like this has been left by the President for the days ahead. He spoke very briefly but certainly forcefully. It may be that the enormity of this horror almost negates any attempt at summing it up with rhetoric.

JIM LEHRER: Bill?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Yeah, I agree. It was a very good speech, I thought, an appropriate speech. But it did put off the fundamental decisions about foreign policy and defense policy that the President will have to make and will have to go to Congress to seek legislative and budgetary support for.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Tom, that that's the key sentence?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think that was a key sentence. On the other hand, he spoke about the intelligence and law enforcement communities and did not make clear, I would say, that he regards the war on terrorism as a foreign and military policy priority as opposed to a matter of catching bad guys and punishing them. It's not clear to me whether he and his administration see this as war against an enemy or as the need to punish some bad groups out there in the world.

TOM OLIPHANT: Within the context of today, I think, you know, officials have not been willing to say they know for sure what happened. That could account for the restrained nature of the rhetoric at this point. But that sentence sticks out like a sore thumb to me.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. All right. Now, we close this hour with a special edition of Washington Week in Review and to Gwen Ifill.

SPECIAL EDITION - WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW

GWEN IFILL: Thanks, Jim. Welcome to a special edition of Washington Week. Joining me tonight to take stock of today's terrible events are four reporters who've been covering the story. Joining me here in the studio are David Broder of the Washington Post and Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times; plus still on the job in Washington tonight, Martha Raddatz, who covers foreign policy and intelligence for ABC News and Tom Gjelten, who covers the Pentagon for National Public Radio.

David and Doyle, let's start here with you. What was your sense of what the President did? Did he do what he had to do?

DAVID BRODER: Well, I wrote down three things that I thought the President had to do before this speech began. He had to display strength, compassion and give reassurance. I think on the first two he did well. I don't think that given the way in which these events have unfolded he provided great deal of reassurance, that we know how to prevent it from happening again. As Bill Kristol said, when it came to the strategy for countering this kind of terrorism, he was at this point silent.

GWEN IFILL: He needed a bigger response, a more Presidential response?

DAVID BRODER: Well, I think he did what he could do at this moment. But there is much more that needs to be done.

GWEN IFILL: Doyle, what is your take on it?

DOYLE McMANUS: I think David is right. All day long we have heard the terms of the debate over terrorism policy essentially laid out. Is this law enforcement? Or is it war? If it's law enforcement, you do limited things. If it's war, you step up to a much higher level. The President did not resolve that question tonight. He basically said it's a little bit of both. We're going to continue to treat it essentially as law enforcement. He didn't talk about vast new resources coming into this. He basically said we're going to do it what we would do for....

DAVID BRODER: But the sentence that Tom Oliphant focused on is a very significant sentence if it is translated into policy. Let's be blunt. United States has been squeamish up to this point about saying to countries that harbor terrorists, "you have a problem as long as that terrorist is living within your borders." We have not taken that kind of strong pre-emptive stand. If the President's sentence means that we are now about to draw that line clearly with those countries, which Richard Holbrook was saying earlier so, we know are harboring terrorists, then it is a very significant shift.

DOYLE McMANUS: Exactly. To be more specific, if it turns out that this is Osama bin Laden's operation, as most of the initial fragmentary evidence indicates, the harboring country there is Afghanistan. Until now the United States has carried out only limited sanctions against Afghanistan under the United Nations Security Council. If the President means what he said, then we are coming close to a state of war of some kind with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let's turn to Tom Gjelten over in downtown Washington tonight. But today when all of this happened it was actually inside the Pentagon. Tom, give us some sort of sense about what it was like.

TOM GJELTEN: Gwen, as you say, I was inside the Pentagon but I was on the complete opposite side of the building. To tell you the truth I didn't at first feel it. That gives you an idea of the size and scale of this massive fortress, the Pentagon. It's two miles all the way around, remember. But nevertheless, there was an evacuation order that we all heard and within moments, within minutes the 20,000 people who work at the Pentagon had poured outside. By the time we got outside, smoke was billowing over the courtyard and around the building. I think none of us really realized at first until we saw that a whole chunk of the building had been taken out, a chunk of that massive fortress with the thick, concrete walls. But we now know, of course, Gwen, that the plane that hit that had taken off from Dulles Airport for Los Angeles, meaning it was loaded with fuel. And, as someone said, a commercial airliner loaded with fuel is like a flying bomb.

GWEN IFILL: Now, prior to the plane actually hitting the Pentagon, was there a concern, was there alert within the Pentagon about the earlier bombing that had already, not bombing but the earlier crash that had already happened at the World Trade Center?

TOM GJELTEN: Of course there was, Gwen. In fact they had already realized that it was a hijacking. They had a sense, in other words, that this was a terrorist action. Yet, significantly the Pentagon itself had not yet been put on high alert. There was a little bit of a lag. I mean there wasn't a lot of time between the World Trade Center bombing and the time the plane hit the Pentagon, of course. Nevertheless, when I entered the Pentagon, which was just a few minutes before the plane hit, it really seemed like quite a normal day.

DOYLE McMANUS: Tom, I gather you weren't able to get back into the building after you left. How much of the Pentagon, how much of the national military command is functioning?

TOM GJELTEN: Well, the national military command center is located inside in the bowels of the building; it was not affected by this. Smoke did get in there but it was not enough smoke that they actually had to evacuate the command center. So the command center, which is like the war room of the Pentagon, it was staffed throughout and operations there were, of course, continued right through the whole crisis.

DAVID BRODER: Tom, do you have any sense about the casualties at the Pentagon itself?

TOM GJELTEN: No, I don't, David. There were five or six stories that were completely collapsed. There were dozens of offices in there. Now we heard one report from a Congressman who said he had heard that 100 people were killed, and, of course, hundreds more injured. The Pentagon has not released any casualties. The one little piece of good news as far as the Pentagon is concerned is that that portion of the building was under renovation and had recently been renovated. Many of the offices there were still unoccupied. If there was one spot on the Pentagon that an aircraft could have hit with relatively fewer casualties, that was, in fact, the spot.

GWEN IFILL: That's really interesting, Tom. But I'm also curious about what happens tomorrow. I noticed today there were two news briefings at the Pentagon, one at a gas station across the street. One in what was described as a makeshift pressroom.

TOM GJELTEN: They actually bussed reporters back into the Pentagon to the briefing room and then bussed them back out again. So the briefing room itself was not damaged, not affected. As I say this is where the reporters hang out. It's on the complete other side of the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the Pentagon will be open for business as usual tomorrow. Not quite as usual, of course, a big chunk of it has been taken out of commission. But much of the building remains usable.

GWEN IFILL: By the end of this extraordinary day in Washington, the country's leaders had gathered to send a single strong message to those listening at home and to those abroad. That message that the United States was wounded but not fatally. In addition to the President's (no audio).

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.

GWEN IFILL: In addition to the President's address tonight, we heard from members of Congress and the cabinet. Congressional leaders received intelligence briefings and gathered at the Capitol, which had been evacuated earlier today to show solidarity with the President, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went before the cameras in the damaged Pentagon late today to say that the nation's military operations are still up and running.

GWEN IFILL: Martha Raddatz, you have been covering the State Department, you've been covering Colin Powell and you've been covering the intelligence community. What is the latest information on what they think of this terrorism issue?

MARTHA RADDATZ: All I can say, Gwen, is everyone in the intelligence community at the State Department seemed stunned, bewildered, completely caught unawares by this. There had been a worldwide caution released on September 7, updated on September 7, last Friday, warning Americans traveling abroad that military facilities might be hit, civilian facilities might be hit. I talked to one administration official today. I said what about that? Did that have anything to do with this? He said that had absolutely nothing to do with this. They had no information about that. We were evacuated at the State Department this morning shortly after the plane hit the Pentagon, and there were several people out in front. The special envoy to the MidEast, William Burns. I said, did you have any information about anything like this happening? He said none at all.

GWEN IFILL: What's the most startling thing? It seems the enormity of this act is part of what's so amazing about this whole day. Is that what has people consumed about what to do next?

MARTHA RADDATZ: I think what the intelligence community will do, I can hear myself a little bit coming back in my ear -- if they can make that stop. I think what the intelligence community has to do now is look and listen to itself at this point and the Defense Department. All we've been hearing all afternoon is we're on the highest state of alert. Security... Everyone's is to batten down the hatches. And yet four aircraft took off, three hit these buildings. There is a new security problem in this country. Certainly Americans had been warned. Certainly people were saying, look, this can happen anywhere on our soil. We never know when they'll hit. But there is a new security problem here. And this is the kind of thing they really don't know how to fight. Remember a few years ago there was an airplane, a small plane that went into the White House. And I remember talking to a lot of security officials about that then saying what could you possibly do about a plane going into the White House? They said really there's nothing we can do. I'm sure there were a lot of conversations today. In fact, when we left the State Department, there were reports, credible reports, that a plane was on its way to Washington perhaps going for another building when we were standing outside. And I'm sure there were conversations around Washington on whether or not they would shoot down an aircraft, a passenger airplane if it was headed for a crowded building. Those are the decisions that they're going to have to look at in the future and how they can stop this because at this point this is obviously something they don't know how to do.

DAVID BRODER: From your diplomatic sources, could you make any early judgment as to how much international support there would be for an American policy that is the President... That, as the President says, makes no distinction between terrorist and the country that is harboring the terrorist?

MARTHA RADDATZ: I too was struck by that statement. I'm sure they have discussed this with the allies before they... Before President Bush went on the air tonight. They were probably well aware of what the President was going to say. Obviously that's the kind of support they're going to have to rally in the coming days. As you probably know, Colin Powell was not in town, was not in Washington. He has been on a trip to Peru and Colombia was and was called back immediately. He is now back in Washington. I'm sure all the foreign policy apparatus will rally and try to rally the allies as well.

GWEN IFILL: What about the reactions from other foreign governments? We talk about this need for some sort of consolidated response. Have we gotten any indication that we'll get that?

MARTHA RADDATZ: I think the opinion is still coming in. The broadcasts I heard today and the wires I read from overseas and what I was hearing from diplomatic sources here is that they're certainly condemning this bombing. But frankly, the world is as stunned as the United States at this point. They want to put on the best face possible. As you heard, Donald Rumsfeld said the Pentagon will be open tomorrow for business. I'm sure Washington will try to rally up. Bull it's a ghost town tonight. They're reaching out to whoever they can.

DOYLE McMANUS: One of the things this event is clearly going to do is to turn Washington's agenda upside down a little bit. Up until now in the last few weeks we had all been talking about how there wasn't going to be any money left for new defense spending. The sentiment on that is likely to change. In terms of threats there at the State Department, worries have been about china, about the problem of missile defense. Terrorism of this nature hasn't really been that high on the radar screen. Have you begun to see the focus move already?

MARTHA RADDATZ: I think what you've begun to see is the conversation moving already. People are already wondering what this will do to a national defense system because certainly people on the Hill will say, wait a minute, that doesn't appear to be the problem. There will be budget battles back and forth. I've already heard people today saying, look, you know one of the reasons the intelligence had no inkling anything like this would happen is because we didn't get enough money. I think you're going to hear those kinds of arguments in the coming months.

GWEN IFILL: We actually started hearing some of those arguments tonight on the NewsHour... Tom Gjelten, you were at the press conference that Donald Rumsfeld gave this evening and I'm wondering if you -- what you took away from that and whether you think he is setting himself up for some big statement. There was a flurry of activity involving some bombing in Kabul Afghanistan which it turned out the United States said it had nothing to do with. What's your sense from being at the Pentagon today what the Pentagon is prepared to do?

TOM GJELTEN: Well, I was told by a Navy admiral that what happened at the Pentagon was, quote, a full assault on United States of America. When you have language like that, you can be certain that there will be a response commensurate with that kind of attack. Of course, General Shelton says that he was appearing... General Hugh Shelton, the chairman, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was at Rumsfeld's side said that he would not say what would come next but make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready. So while indeed they did say definitively that the United States was not behind the strikes in Afghanistan, there is virtually no doubt that there will be a response.

GWEN IFILL: It also sounds like they were saying that there's no such thing as a response that's too small.

TOM GJELTEN: Well, when you have an attack like this described as a full assault on United States it's not any longer in the category of a terrorist incident. It is in practical terms it is an act of war.

DAVID BRODER: Tom, I'd like you to give me a reality check on a theory that Doyle has already kind of alluded to. This budget gridlock that is facing Congress, my hunch would be now that any amount of money that the Bush administration asks for to beef up the defense and intelligence that there won't be ten votes against that in the Congress and that all of this sort of hang-up about whether or not we are touching the sacred Social Security Trust Fund now disappears. But give me your perspective.

TOM GJELTEN: I fully agree with you, David, but the point I was going to make a little earlier is that this is, in fact, coming, as you say, in the midst of this budget debate. What I do anticipate is that there will be a lot of debate about how that money should be spent. Indeed you're absolutely right. I'm sure that there won't be any doubt that there will be more money for defense and probably just as much as the administration is seeking. But I would guess there will be some debate and some disagreement about how the money in that budget should be allocated -- whether as much should go for a national missile defense when we have just seen an example of a much lower-tech terrorist attack on the United States -- or whether should be some shifting of the money within that defense budget perhaps more for intelligence, more for national guard operations to beef up preparations for terrorist attacks. So I think that there is going to be some debate about how to respond to this in a budgetary fashion.

GWEN IFILL: Martha, I'll get to you in a moment. I want to ask everybody this question and I want you all to take turns responding, which is: Doesn't this change the context for every debate in Washington not just for the debate over the defense budget or the debate over Social Security? David?

DAVID BRODER: Absolutely. I mean, we've been dealing with issues that were pretty abstract, whether or not to touch a supposed trust fund. This is real. It's going to become ever more real as we learn the human cost of today's events.

GWEN IFILL: Doyle.

DOYLE McMANUS: In fact I think it becomes the key challenge for George W. Bush's presidency for the foreseeable future. It's one thing to debate whether you want to put money into a tax cut, into education or into missile defense. When you're looking at war and peace, that's the real test of leadership.

GWEN IFILL: Martha.

MARTHA RADDATZ: I was struck today, Gwen, thinking about foreign policy. As I watched this special MidEast envoy standing out front thinking nobody's really going to be talking about the MidEast peace process anymore. This is a domestic issue. Americans will want to know who did it and why they did it and get them back. But I don't think you'll see as much focus on what's happening in other parts of the world for months and months and months.

GWEN IFILL: What if, Martha, this turns out to be a retaliation for our stand in the Middle East peace process?

MARTHA RADDATZ: Which that would certainly talked about a bit today as well. Then focus will be on the MidEast. But in terms of what Washington talks about the rest of the world, where Colin Powell will be focused, where other secretaries in the building will be focused -- I think you'll see them focusing just on this for a long time to come.

GWEN IFILL: Well, Tom Gjelten, it seems as if there's not a whole lot of choice but to focus on this one issue right now especially at the Pentagon which is going to be the lead act inner whatever happens next.

TOM GJELTEN: That's right, Gwen. I would just reinforce what others have said. I mean if President Bush now does decide to go after Afghanistan as the country that is harboring Osama bin Laden, that will be essentially declaring war on Afghanistan. The United States will be at war and that condition, that experience, will just overwhelm everything else.

GWEN IFILL: So, Doyle, what are the big challenges which now face the United States as it attempts to grapple with this especially not only domestically but also with our international relationships?

DOYLE McMANUS: Well, of course, the first ones are the basic intelligence problems of figuring out who did it and coming up with a reasonable response. But the big diplomatic problem is going to be most of the world has not embraced the notion of going to war with the sponsoring country or of something Israel pioneered and some people in the Bush administration are even talking about-- although not officially yet-- and that is preventive attacks -- going after them before they hit you. The rest of the world, which wasn't touched in this, would rather keep it a limited law enforcement kind of operation with a lot of international cooperation in terms of intelligence sharing. We are going to find some pushback, potentially, from some of the allies.

GWEN IFILL: When you talk about intelligence, before you can even plan to do something before they do it to you, don't you have to know what's going on? That seems to have been a big gap today.

DOYLE McMANUS: Well, you have to know what's going on. Of course one problem in previous retaliatory strikes was when you try to do a precision strike you may miss the people or the person that you're going after. One of the lines we haven't crossed yet is whether to go into a much larger and less discriminate kind of strike. One of the questions here now is will the American public and the allies be willing to tolerate larger military strikes that, yes, would harm innocent people?

DAVID BRODER: That's the key point. That's what I meant when I said we had been... Our policy in the past had been squeamish because a very important criterion was no collateral damage, no civilian casualties. If you're really going to treat the harboring country in the same terms as you treat the terrorists' organization itself, then there are going to be civilian casualties. Whether or not we have the will as a people to say to those countries that harbor the terrorists, this is your problem, it's not our problem. You have to deal with these terrorists in your borders or your people are going to feel the pain.

GWEN IFILL: Tom and Martha, when you go back to work tomorrow over at Pentagon and State, what do you expect to be happen something what questions will you be happening?

TOM GJELTEN: Well, the first question I'll be asking is to find out how U.S. troops around the world will be responding to this, what kind of mobilizations there will be, what kind of troop movements, what kind of ships and so forth. Clearly we're all going to be waiting for the military response.

MARTHA RADDATZ: And certainly the State Department -- we want to know what the Arab countries are saying about this, what the response has been internally away from the cameras. You saw a lot of people out front today condemning the bombing. The Arab world has not been too happy with the United States and has seen it siding with Israel. We know we had the U.N. Racism Conference last week where the U.S. walked out, the Arab countries weren't happy with that and wanted to condemn the United States for that. So that will be very interesting to see.

GWEN IFILL: Tom and Martha, thank you very much. Stay safe. David and Doyle, thank you as well. We'll leave it there for now. It's been a tough day. Now for more of our continuing PBS coverage, we head back to Jim Lehrer.

SPECIAL REPORT - HOUR FOUR

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington I welcome you back to the special PBS news coverage for today. For those just joining us, a summary of what has happened. President Bush tonight condemned the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. He called them, "evil, despicable acts." In a nationally televised address, he said thousands of lives had been lost. But he promised the United States would find those responsible. What is known so far is that a well-organized group of terrorists, as yet unidentified, hijacked four U.S. Airliners with a total of 266 people on board. Two of them were flown suicide bomb fashion into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The third slammed into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in an open field 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Within hours, both of the World Trade Center towers collapsed. And later in the day, a smaller building in the complex fell apart, after burning for hours. More than 2,000 people were injured, and Mayor Giuliani said the number killed would be horrendous. The crash at the Pentagon touched off a raging fire and collapsed one side of the building. Dozens of people were hurt, and many more were feared dead. This evening, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said search crews were still removing bodies, but he said the Pentagon would be open tomorrow. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks. But Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah said there was information linking them to Osama bin Laden's organization. Hatch told the Associated Press that U.S. Intelligence had intercepted communications between bin Laden supporters. The attacks brought much of the country to a standstill. In Washington, the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court and most other federal buildings were evacuated. Congressional leaders were taken to secure locations. The financial exchanges in New York were closed. All domestic aviation nationwide was grounded. And landmarks from the Sears Tower in Chicago to the Space Needle in Seattle were shut down. Now a chronology of this day and to Kwame Holman.

MAN: Big explosion happened. Some guy came out. His skin was all off. I helped him out. There's people jumping out of windows. I've seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows. It's horrific. I can't believe this is happening.

REPORTER: Anything else that you saw? Were you there for the second hit by the plane?

MAN: Yeah, about ten minutes later, the second building went off.

REPORTER: Did you see it?

MAN: Yes, I saw it. It just blew up. Big explosion. People started running. It was just chaos everywhere.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10 minutes after the President spoke, a third airliner smashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon building, a mile from downtown Washington, causing a huge fireball followed by heavy smoke. People were carried out; others lay on the ground.

MAN YELLING: Back, back, back, back.

MAN YELLING: Move it. Back.

KWAME HOLMAN: 10:28 A.M.; much of the top floors of the other tower also fell to the streets below.

PERSON YELLING: Give him air. Give him air.

MAN: I need some water.

KWAME HOLMAN: This was the view across the Upper New York Bay past the Statue of Liberty at about 10:30 in the morning. And this afternoon just before 5:30 a 47-story building in the Trade Center complex collapsed.

JIM LEHRER: And tonight shortly after 8:30 President Bush addressed the nation from the Oval office in the White House. Here are excerpts.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we're the brighten beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could. Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military's powerful and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington D.C. to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks. The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington, which had to be evacuated today, are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

JIM LEHRER: Now some reaction to the President's speech and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: Joining us are Lawrence Eagleburger, who was Secretary of State in the first Bush administration; James Woolsey, who was CIA Director in the Clinton administration; and David Boren, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee during the Gulf War. He is now president of the University of Oklahoma. Larry Eagleburger, beginning with you, how do you read the President's speech? What was he saying do you think in terms of his intentions and this current's intentions in the way of responding to this event?

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: He said one thing that was absolutely critical, and that is that we are not going distinguish between the terrorists and those who have harbored them, protected them, trained them, financed them. And that to me is absolutely critical. And if he means what he says, and I think he does, it means first of all that this is the beginning of a long siege against these people. It's about time. We have to face the fact that either terrorism now is faced and faced heavily and hard, or we have to understand that this is the beginning of something that is going to go on for a long, long time. And I think finally the terrorists have made a massive mistake because they have gotten the American people thoroughly, thoroughly angry, and I think we will show and in this sense it's like Pearl Harbor, I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution. And I hope that is going to be the case.

MARGARET WARNER: Jim Woolsey, how did you read what he said in terms of his intentions?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, on the whole good, but there are a couple of implications. First of all he talked about no distinction between those, as Larry said, who harbor the terrorists and the terrorists themselves. If this was bin Laden, that suggests blaming Afghanistan, and fine, but he also said that we would use law enforcement and intelligence to bring them to justice. Now this was the Clinton administration approach to assume that terrorism was largely a law enforcement matter, and if you found the people who perpetrated the act and convicted them, you have done the job. There's I think a substantial body of opinion that is starting to rethink that. A number of people are starting to suggest, for example, as did the FBI agent we were talking earlier - who headed up the first part of the World Trade Center investigation in 1993 - that there may have been Iraqi government involvement behind Ramsey Youssef, the mastermind of that plot as well as the plot to bomb a number of American airliners in the Pacific, which is what led to his being caught. Now, if there was Saddam Hussein behind the screen - like the Wizard of Oz -- pulling the levers, it's much more important both in '93 and now than even the people who harbor the terrorists or even the terrorists who carry is out. So first and foremost our intelligence agencies, I think, have to go back into some of this material that was not looked at in '93, '94, '95 because it was under grand jury secrecy because it was solely in the possession of the FBI and Justice Department -- and we need to decide whether or not we may have ourselves in a situation of being at war with a country. I think it's possible, it's certainly not proven, but we need to find out.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. David Boren, how did you read our previous guests pointed out two difference sentences -- did you read the President as saying there is going to be a new policy here or did it sound more like a continuation though perhaps intensification of the old?

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: Well, I don't know whether you call it old or new policy; I thought the President was very clear. I applaud what he said. I think he spoke for all Americans without regard to party. I thought he was extremely effective tonight. He showed the kind of strength that we need from a leader at a time of crisis like this. He said very clearly -- and I agree with Larry Eagleburger -- we are going to hold both those terrorist organizations themselves, those individuals accountable and we're going to hold the nations, if it is a nation state, those that harbor them accountable. And they will be brought to justice. And when he said brought to justice, I interpreted him as meaning they will be punished. And that includes perhaps a possibility, the strong possibility of military punishment; infrastructure of those states will be punished militarily. There will be very strong retribution. And I think that's so important because if we don't act now, as Larry Eagleburger has just said, we're going to continue to ask for this kind of thing. You know, Qaddafi tonight, I thought it was so interesting; he expressed his disapproval of the action and his condolences. But what was he really trying to do? He was trying to make sure that he took himself off the suspect list and he took Libya off the suspect list. We must be so firm in what we do and so forceful in our retaliation that no country in the world will want to be on the suspect list in the future. And I hope this will also give us the opportunity for our President to take the lead in bringing together the leaders of the dozen or so leading nations of this world to form a compact to work together - not alone to share intelligence - but to establish inspection teams that will have the backing of the leading nations of the world to go in anywhere in the world where we suspect there are terrorist operation centers, training centers, and otherwise. It's time for us to mobilize not only our national effort, but it's time for us to lead an international effort.

MARGARET WARNER: Larry Eagleburger, how would you describe the U.S. Government's position or posture in the past towards the states that sponsored terrorism? David Broder, a few moments ago, used the phrase the term "squeamish" - that we haven't really been willing to put it to these states; how would you describe it?

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: I would describe it the same way - squeamish, cautious, careful. Look, I think what you need to understand, Margaret, is if we do what I think we should do and I think Senator Boren clearly thinks we should do, this is asking for a long-term hard line rather unpleasant time for us. This is not something we can react to for two weeks and then give it up. It means that it's a major effort on our part including if necessary attacks, if you will, on sovereign states. And under those circumstances we ought to understand that we are biting off a lot. I hope we can chew it. But I think we have to understand before we go into this that it's not short term. It could be very unpleasant and it did cost us some resources. But short of that I think we're not going get by with this and I think one of reasons we're faced with this now is because we were all so cautious before in part because we always seem to have to insist that we know who did it.

MARGARET WARNER: When you say attacks on these states to what purpose? Are you talking about retaliatory strikes, or are you talking as Bill Kristol was earlier about trying to change the government's in these states? What are you really talking about?

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: Well, you know, too many people think we are capable of changing governments in these countries. I'm talking about retaliation, retribution -- indicating to these people that the price of supporting these terrorists is simply too high for them to pay. And if that means we succeed in getting rid of a government, it will probably be replaced by another one we don't like anyway. I don't care about replacing governments, I do care about making them understand they have to behave themselves or the costs are going to be horrendous.

MARGARET WARNER: Jim Woolsey, do you think the rest of the world would support us in that kind of an all out attack, assault?

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, if we go attacking anyone, we should be sure that we're attacking the right people. I mean, we didn't do that quite right in Sudan, for example, in 1998. But it seems to me if we find that there is state-sponsorship behind here -- Iran is possible -- I think Iraq is more likely -- then we're at war with that country. This was an act of war against the United States. This was Pearl Harbor. The difference is in December 7th of 1941 we saw those rising suns on the wings of Japanese aircraft and we knew who had attacked us. Now we need to be careful and be sure - but if we are sure not only I think military action, but particularly things like supporting the democratic opposition in Iraq, there are a number of steps that we can and should take very much along the lines of what we did against the worst nations that we were opposed to during the Cold War and more because we would be involved in military action. We have to get, I think, very serious now.

MARGARET WARNER: David Boren, the United States has had trouble in the past getting international support against terrorism?

FORMER SEN. DAVID BOREN: Well, we have but I think that the magnitude of this particular incident is going to be so shocking, not only to Americans but to the rest of the world that I think this is the time for us to really act. We do need a policy, as Larry Eagleburger has said, that is long term. Sometimes we Americans, we take action and then we kind of forget about it. We're short-term in our thinking. This must be long term" it must be relentless; the President used the world "unyielding". This must be a long-term policy - that the costs are so high. You know, that's one of the things that Ronald Reagan understood when you had the Reagan Doctrine. And he said when the old Soviet Union tried to expand anywhere in the world, we should make them pay such a price for it that they would stop these attempts to expand. He understood that. That'sthe kind of unified effort we need now -- relentless effort against terrorism. And you know, I do think other countries may be more ready to join us. I had a very interesting conversation with the President of Russia, President Putin in Moscow just a few weeks ago. We were talking about the missile shield. And he went beyond that and he started about the fact, you know, we talk about a missile threat, but really these terrorist groups are more a threat, they are more likely to use car bombs, airplanes even mentioned, in terms of weapons that are more conventional; they're easier to get their hands on to use against us. And we were talking about the need for more intelligence sharing and more joint efforts because they too, for example, Russia today has a real concern about some of their border areas being used as launching pads for terrorism against their system. I think even the Chinese need to be made to understand that stability in the world -- if you're a nation very much involved with the rest of the world, world stability is an interest to all of us, this is the time for us to be very strong, relentless in terms of American policy and also really attempt to reach out to the other nations in the world to join us in this long-term effort.

MARGARET WARNER Secretary Eagleburger, when we talk about price, there has also been a lot of discussion tonight about that the U.S. has to be willing to pay more of a price just financially. Do you see money or lack of money at the root of any of this, whether it has to do with the way we supported intelligence or the way we spend our defense dollars? Do you see a reordering of priorities coming, or should it?

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: I - the answer to that I think is yes, I think probably and again, others could comment on this better than I, but I suspect our money to some degree and the intelligence side has been spent too much on technical facilities and too little on human activity, human intelligence, and I think we have already begun to try to change that. We have recognized that as a problem. I personally believe that the defense budget is woefully under done and that the Defense Department needs substantially more money to get itself back into a better state of readiness. That isn't to say that they aren't prepared at this stage to handle some of this but, again, if it's a longer effort, I think it's going to cost more money. Let me make one other comment, if I may. I think Senator -- President Boren, excuse me David, is I hope right when he says that we'll get the support of our allies. I'm less confident. I think we'll get some - we'll certainly get it from the British; we will get it grudgingly from the French for a little while. I personally am not that hopeful that we'll get sustained support, which I think is going to be necessary. I think we're going to have to do everything we can to organize our allies in this regard, but I'm not at all sure we can count on that too much. I would say one more thing, if I may, and that is I agree that we need to know who did this, but at the same time that's not to me the only compelling point here. We know who a lot of these terrorists are that one way or another do not wish us well. We know the governments that have harbored them in the past and I think we need to be a little bit broader in our look at this whole issue than simply trying to define specifically who committed this particular act.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Larry Eagleburger, David Boren, Jim Woolsey, thank you all three.

JIM LEHRER: Now a more detailed look at the still developing personal and practical aftermaths of what happened today. First, earlier in the day Ray Suarez spoke with a reporter who was in the area.

RAY SUAREZ: We're joined now from New York by Scott Gurvey who is the New York bureau chief for public television's "Nightly Business Report."

Scott, I understand you were on your way to work when the first attack occurred.

RAY SUAREZ: You're pretty close to the World Trade Center area at the "Nightly Business Report" studios.

RAY SUAREZ: It must have taken some time before you even fully understood what was happening.

RAY SUAREZ: Were there in evidence a large number of emergency personnel vehicles? What did you see?

RAY SUAREZ: That interview was earlier today. With me now is our health correspondent Susan Dentzer.

And I guess you've been getting information from the hospitals both here in Washington and up in New York. Any better picture of the human cost of these attacks?

SUSAN DENTZER: Slightly clearer picture, Ray, and not a happy one. It now appears that roughly a people total were taken to New York hospitals, all the area hospitals were put on alert. Manufacture those went to for example St. Vincent's Hospital Medical Center with a total of roughly 400 persons were seen. A third were admitted the others were discharged having experienced minor injuries as a consequence of smoke inhalation and others. Those that were admitted seemed to be much more seriously injured suffering from smoke inhalation, toxic fumes broken bones and so on consistent with falling debris. Worse still are the reports now emerging about the fatalities; of course we are now hearing that as many as 200 or more New York City area firefighters were at the scene when the buildings came down, portions of the building came down at the World Trade Center later today -- that 80 or more New York City policemen may have been killed as those buildings came down. Down here in Washington now estimates of basically 100 persons who were injured or killed at the Pentagon, the scene of the Pentagon attack when the plane slammed in. 60 of those roughly speaking have been take to Washington area hospitals at Virginia Hospital Center where I spent a good part of the day, 42 were eventually seen; eight of those people now remain in the intensive care unit, again very seriously injured. We saw late this afternoon people coming in bare-chested men coming in in khaki pants clutching their briefcases, civilians and military personnel being evacuated from the Pentagon brought into Virginia Hospital Center about 20 minutes away. In Washington at the Washington Hospital Center -- many where there is a large burn unit -- many were treated for serious burn injuries as well -- in some cases over 30-70 percent of their bodies -- and one Pentagon person who had been evacuated today told us that there were injuries that she preferred not to describe they were sufficiently horrific -- they had that impact on her.

RAY SUAREZ: Earlier in the day a number was given out of the number of wounded and then the number - not that many were very seriously wounded - and that number didn't go up. What can we infer from that?

SUSAN DENTZER: We infer from that obviously that the number of fatalities is quite large. We have no estimate of this point of what it is. Nobody knows exactly who was left in the buildings when they collapsed; nobody knows how many were killed instantly as the plane slammed into them this morning. The likely toll at this point in terms of fatalities is quite possibly in the thousands. We will only know more as more people are taken out of there -- New York area hospitals - we're told now that most of those who they can expect to see have now been injured have now been delivered to them; the next wave of people coming in, if anybody comes now, is likely to be bodies.

RAY SUAREZ: Susan Dentzer, thank you very much.

SUSAN DENTZER: Thanks, Ray.

JIM LEHRER: Now some perspective on what it took it bring down those twin towers of the World Trade Center and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Astaneh, was it important where the aircraft hit the towers?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Hamburger, anything to add to that?

RON HAMBURGER: Well, not really. I think Dr. Astaneh said it very well. Really the terrorists picked the perfect place to strike these buildings.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: They even survived the impact going right through it. You saw that picture of the aircraft going through it.

RON HAMBURGER: Yes, that's right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Anything to add about the buildings themselves?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Could any building designed in the future in a different way-- I'm really asking what needs to be done in the future-- have withstood the heat of that fire.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There won't those protective coatings on this steel.

RON HAMBURGER: They were there but they're designed for the type of fire you would have in an office building: Burning paper, carpet or furniture not burning jet fuel. They're designed to resist that for a period of two or three hours. It would be possible to put additional coatings on the steel that would allow them to survive such a fire. But you'd have to weigh the cost of that against the likelihood of the repeat of such an occurrence.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Hassan Astaneh and Ron Hamburger, thanks very much for being with us.

JIM LEHRER: And now some general perspective on the day's events from NewsHour regulars presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and journalist/author Haynes Johnson, plus Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Center at the University of Kansas, and Roger Wilkins, professor of history at George Mason University, Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe, and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard.

Roger Wilkins, what are your closing thoughts as this day comes to an end?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, there's been a lot of talk about the December 7th and the greatest generation. It seems to me we do a lot of talk in this country about how great country is and there's less action to back up that talk. As has been mentioned time and time again today, this is a complex and diffuse enemy that is going to require steady, long-term attack by the United States to eradicate it. It's going to require of us it seems to me - a steadier kind of resolve and maturity than we Americans are used to deploying in defense of our democracy. We want to get them, we want to make sure we get the right them and we want to make sure that in the process we don't damage our own people; we don't have the equivalent of a red scare. So we have to work hard, it seems to me, on both fronts, on finding out who did it over there and being steady and getting them and on working on our democratic institutions and making sure they are strong.

JIM LEHRER: Bill Kristol?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think tonight was just the beginning obviously for the President in particular. I assume he will have to speak to a joint session of Congress within the next week.

JIM LEHRER: Joint session of Congress?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think so because he needs the entire establishment on board. I think he will need to ask for a supplemental appropriation for defense for intelligence purposes. He may want to consider asking for a declaration of war, particularly if -- and I base this on a couple of conversations tonight with people in the intelligence services of the government -- if it does turn out that Saddam Hussein - and it seems increasingly the case -- has links to Osama bin Laden - in other words, if we're not just dealing with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban Afghanistan but if we are basically looking at finishing the job we began in 1990 with Saddam Hussein. So the President needs, I think, to speak to Congress at much greater length than he spoke tonight. He needs to make clear this will be a long and difficult struggle, it won't be easy, and that we're in it for real.

JIM LEHRER: Doris?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Two things; one following up on Bill. I do agree that tonight was a conversation and a symbolically important thing for the President to appear before us, especially since he went visible earlier today, but when you go before a Joint Session of Congress, as Roosevelt finally did when he declared war on Japan, then you have mobilized the collective wealth of the nation. You have asked for appropriations; you're asking for action and I think that is going to have to come in the next days. The only other thought that I've had is just what this impact will have on the children of this generation. Think of my generation who had to grow up under the thought that in an entire moment everything you knew in the world could be destroyed by an atomic bomb or the air raid drills, hiding under one's desk, doing instant fallings at night under your bed. It really had a subconscious effect on a whole generation. I think that was reduced over the last couple of decades and maybe this generation of children has seen pieces of it with the school bombing, but today will have an impact. And that's the sad thought, that these kids will be afraid perhaps to fly on planes; all of that is all the more important to try and get this thing resolved, if we can, and get moving on it, so we feel that action is being taken.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, your thoughts?

HAYNES JOHNSON: There's never been a day quite like this, we all agree. It's not Pearl Harbor. It's not D-Day; it's not Gettysburg, probably America will never be the same. But the hard part now comes. If there's a consensus - if there's a declaration of war, as Bill said, against whom and is the country prepared it go to war in Afghanistan or in Syria, or Persia, just you name it - wherever it is. We haven't been able to commit ourselves. We have volunteer army when you and I wore the uniform - you were in the Marine Corps, I was in the Army. That's not the case with today's generation and maybe it shouldn't be the case. But I think the hard choices now and it's a long choice -- this is just the beginning when I think the most difficult time probably the most complicated time. The other thing - one last thing. We think we're so technologically superior. This just showed us how it had nothing to do with our technology or Star Wars or missile systems, you can hijack planes turn them into a bomb and get away with it.

JIM LEHRER: Tom?

TOM OLIPHANT: It's been about a decade since 45 years of basic American consensus helped produce the end of Cold War successfully and the freedom of Eastern Europe, and I'm struck at how little we have done together as a nation since then. This is the kind of assault that ought to produce some of the unity that has been lacking in the America in the last decade and that's why I was so struck tonight at President Bush's essentially minimalist response right now. I think he has given us an intention but it is far from a policy.

JIM LEHRER: Richard?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: I think what the President said tonight probably matters much less than when he does tomorrow and in the days ahead particularly if, as I suspect, he lets the American military do some of the talking for him. The image that I have had all day, we have been watching the skyline of the New York, which was so radically, violently reshaped today and in the foreground, of course, the Statute of Liberty - and I guess being a presidential historian I thought back to something that Grover Cleveland said in dedicating that statute more than a hundred years ago. He said, we shall not forget liberty has made her home here. Tonight we're still liberty's home and no amount of imported violence or thuggery can be allowed to change that.

JIM LEHRER: Michael Beschloss.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Well, you know, Jim, we have been living through about ten years of very artificial false innocence. After World War II, our Presidents in order to get Americans to support a big defense buildup against the Soviet Union made such a point of saying the big danger to you Americans is going to be an attack from the Soviet Union -- Either those bombers coming over the North Pole or nuclear missiles so that in 1991 when that danger went away, many Americans sort of felt that we're now living in a really safe world and we don't have to worry about anything beyond our boundaries. That is now going to look like a very antique view. But the other things is I think a President does really make a difference in even what he says. In the case of Roosevelt, the doors mentioned in 1941 he said in that speech to a joint session of congress after Pearl Harbor - you know, with the in-bounding determination of our people we will gain an inevitable triumph so help us God. Triumph wasn't inevitable, and rationally there were a lot of reasons in 1941 to think that we were going to lose World War II -- when Kennedy talked about the missile crisis in the middle of the crisis and said we will prevail - rationally there was a lot of reason to think we wouldn't prevail and we'd be in a nuclear war. One big test for George Bush in the next week is going to be how much he can make Americans feel perhaps more secure than rationality would suggest they really have a right to be.

JIM LEHRER: Roger, when you look ahead you said earlier too that you think the American people have to change some attitudes and you mentioned this also in an earlier segment. Do you think it's going to happen? When you look ahead at the prospects of getting this resolved in some way that is an American way to resolve an American problem, what you do you think?

ROGER WILKINS: I think it is the President's huge test. I think that Larry Eagleburger was quite right when he said earlier this evening that this is going to be really tough and really long, and it may turn out to be fairly messy. The American people are stunned and angry and hurt tonight. The question really is whether that stunned, angry and hurt can be turned into a long-range determination without a whole lot of hysterical internecine struggle here in the United States. I think that is going to not only be a test of the President but a test of bipartisan leadership on the Hill as well.

JIM LEHRER: Doris, do you think our country can take care of something that is tough, long and messy?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I have doubt that that they can. And I think that's the real President's to remind us that we have done it before. Now in a certain sense Japan when they attacked us in Pearl Harbor thought we were soft and weak and Yamamoto warned that if they didn't get rid of us completely in that day that there might be a strength there that the rest of the Japanese people didn't think we had and we did indeed have it for the long run. But Presidents in the past have always recalled the history. When Roosevelt spoke on Pearl Harbor another day, he talked about Washington and Valley Forge and those soldiers wading through the ice and the snow and holding on to the Revolution. When Lincoln, he talked he talked about those people in the past and later people talked about the strength of the North during the Civil War. I think the President has to remind us we have had lots of challenges before, people have thought we were soft; Hitler said we were a bunch of playboys and soft, we could never stand up to him and that's what we did before. And we've had it in our fiber, in our person. We have to be reminded of it. I don't how we do it right now. It's different from calling us out to go to factories; it's different from having our soldiers as a non-volunteer drafting force all over the country. It's different from getting those people in their cars to go wherever those factories are, but there are things we can do. And I don't know that I can think of them too right now, but I hope the leadership can, because he had better do it; that's the important thing. Unless you can mobilize the spirit of the people, in some ways, that's what democracy's strength is about.

JIM LEHRER: Bill, do we have it this time?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: I think so. I think so. When the Japanese attacked us in Pearl Harbor, Churchill said the Japanese thought that America had gone soft. He quoted a predecessor of his as saying the American people are like a giant boiler; they're very quiet but when lit, they can have explosive force. I think that's the case. But it really does depend on presidential leadership. We have divided government, the Congress is awfully important on all these domestic policy issues. The courts play a big role. On this kind of foreign policy issue, this is why we have a President.

JIM LEHRER: Haynes, how do you see it the future?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Absolutely. A supreme test of leadership for the President, for the country. We've got to have unity, everybody says. Yamamoto said, "I fear you arouse only a sleeping giant," after Pearl Harbor. The question is now I'll bet you won't find people going to draft wars that don't exist tomorrow morning enlisting to fight terrorism. Now, maybe they'd like to - if they knew what it would be -- that's the test of our political system's leadership to say here is what we have to make very clear, the steps we're prepared it take and see if your willing to follow us, and if that means calling more people into the service or getting more money, okay; that's what a president has to decide.

JIM LEHRER: Richard, what do you think, do you think the country is prepared to follow good leadership on this and if so where, what should the American people be prepared to do?

RICHARD NORTON SMITH: It's interesting, Jim. Roger mentioned the greatest generation. Implicit in most discussions of the greatest generation is the suggestion that there was something unique about their courage and their capacity for sacrifice. I've always thought that it was a little bit backyards; it isn't whether a generation is great; it's how great the tests that are posed. And we're about to have a test posed that will indeed test our metal as a democracy, as a people. It isn't just the President. The President's words are important, the President's leadership is important. I would remind you that this is an unfolding horror story. We're very early in this. The President has days. I think as the horror quotient rises in the days ahead, as the death toll rises, I think you'll find even more of a rallying to the colors but it's also Congress and it's a willingness of both parties to adjourn the petty bickering which has trivialized so much of politics of late.

JIM LEHRER: Is it going to happen, Michael?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Sure it will, but it's going to be very will be very tough for President Bush. I think no one should doubt that. In Roosevelt's case at the time of Pearl Harbor we all knew about the problem with the Japanese and the Germans and he doesn't have to educate anyone. And the policy was there, you intervened. Same thing with Kennedy -- we didn't have to be told that there was a Cold War on in 1962 and Kennedy announced the missiles in Cuba the same time as he said I'm going to put a quarantine around the island. In this case, George Bush has to explain the terrorism problem to many Americans who were barely aware yesterday that it was a serious one and at the same time come up with a policy, sell it to Congress, sell it to the American people. That's a towering test of presidential leadership.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think the American people are going to be receptive to it?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think after what happened today I mean bizarrely enough --and it's a horrible thing to say -- this was a gift because it dramatized for anyone as almost nothing could have how serious this is. And that's very much like Pearl Harbor because as was said in 1941 for a lot of Americans who wondered whether Hitler and the Imperial Japanese were a danger Pearl Harbor made that case.

JIM LEHRER: The American people got educated today on this, Tom?

TOM OLIPHANT: Two early clues, Jim: I do not discount these massive lines at blood banks around the country because by and large people weren't called out to them. Secondly, you cannot tell Democrats from Republicans in the way people are talking about this, the anger has a richness that I think is exemplified in its depth and even almost its quiet. As far as what happens now -- and the President's role in of all this; it's interesting that over the last 20 years you search in vein for a detailed call to arms or explanation to the American people in depth by their President's of the nature of this menace and the need to confront it in what you might call another long twilight struggle. And so that is yet to come from our national leadership, but the signs at the grassroots are that this time the sleeping giant woke up.

JIM LEHRER: Tom Brokaw, who invented the term greatest generation has lamented that it took a war, a Depression, then a war, to rally people to do their greatest. Is that what we're talking about here?

TOM OLIPHANT: Not necessarily. Again, I share Smith's reluctance to see this in generational terms, because I think it's always been interesting that the people we call our greatest Presidents were Presidents in crisis. When we see ourselves at our best as Americans, it tends to be in crisis. So generation doesn't explain this; challenge does.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: And in closing tonight two final reactions from this day: First from Capitol Hill and congressional leadership and then from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington. He spoke at a Mass earlier today at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT: At a time like this no words that we should utter today or this evening can help the hearts and souls and feelings of the victims and the families that were a part of this great tragedy that happened in this country today. Our prayers and thoughts and words of consolation goes out to all of those who have suffered, but one thing that happens here in this place is when America suffers and when people perpetrate acts against this country, we as a Congress and as a government stand united and we stand together (cheers and applause) Senators and House members, Democrats and Republicans will stand shoulder-to-shoulder, to fight this evil that has been perpetrated on this nation. We will stand together to make sure that those who have brought forth in evil deed will pay the price. We're not sure who this is yet (applause) -- but we have our suspicions and when that is justify and when those suspicions are justified we will act. We will stand with a President, we will stand with this government and we will stand as Americans together through this time. Thank you. (applause)

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: Today's despicable acts were an assault on our people and on our freedom. As the representatives of the people, we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened but these horrific and cowardly acts. Congress will convene tomorrow (applause) -- and we will speak with one voice to condemn these attacks, to comfort the victims and their families, to commit our full support to the effort to bring those responsible to justice. We Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, stand strongly united behind the President and will work together to ensure that the full resources of the government are brought to bear in these efforts. Our heartfelt thoughts and our fervent prayers are with the injured and the families of those who have been lost.

SINGERS: From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam God bless America, my home sweet home God bless America, my home sweet home ( applause)

CARDINAL THEODORE McCARRICK: We must pray for our nation -- these beloved United States of America, that God may always keep us strong and together, united in the continuing search for peace with justice throughout the world. We must also pray for those who have lost their lives or who have been seriously injured in this calamity. But we must finally resist the temptation to strike out in vengeance and revenge and in a special way not to labor any ethnic group or community for this action which certainly is just the work of a few mad men. We must seek the guilty and not strike out against the innocent or we become like them who are without moral guide or direction.

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening with our regular edition of the NewsHour and continued coverage and analysis of this attack on America. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.

Transcript

Transcript

Series: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Producing Organization: NewsHour Productions

Contributing Organization: NewsHour Productions (Washington, District of Columbia)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/507-j09w08x36x

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Description

Credits: Producing Organization: NewsHour Productions

AAPB Contributor Holdings: NewsHour Productions
Identifier: NH-7152-9P (NH Show Code)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Preservation
Duration: 01:00:00;00

Citations: Chicago: “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” 2001-09-11, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 24, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-j09w08x36x.; MLA: “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” 2001-09-11. NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. April 24, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-j09w08x36x>.; APA: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Boston, MA: NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-j09w08x36x