The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

[tone] [tone] I'm Jim Lehrer. Terrorists use hijacked airliners to kill 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. Major funding for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer has been provided by

Imagine a world where we're not diminishing resources, we're growing them. Ethanol, a cleaner burning fuel, made from corn. ADM, the nature of what's to come. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Good evening from Washington, and 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 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. 8:47 a.m. Eastern Time. A commercial jetliner smashed into the north tower of the 110-story World Trade Center bbuilding on the tip of Manhattan. 18 minutes later, these live TV pictures showed another airliner flying directly into the other tower. 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. We heard a big bang, and then we saw a smoke coming out, and everybody started running out, and we saw the plane on the other side of the building, and there was smoke everywhere

and people are jumping out the windows over there, they're jumping out the windows, I guess, because they're trying to save themselves, I don't know. Big explosion happened, some guy came out, his skin was all off, I helped him out, this is all over. There's people jumping out of windows, I seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows. It's horrific, I can't believe this is happening. Anything else that you saw? Were you there for the second hit by the plane? About 10 minutes later, the second building went off. Did you see it? Yes, I saw it. It just blew up, a big explosion, people started running, it was just chaos everywhere. 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.

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 have 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. Nineteen 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.

It came in at such a deep angle, at such fast speed, it was, the severity of, I was telling the gentleman, it was a real severe intention, is what it had to it. You could tell it was like a suicide bomber, but I'm not saying there was a bomb, it was a plane, and it just came streaking down and hit short. It didn't go into the top of the Pentagon, it came like in short, and then everything sprayed up like a fireball, sprayed up on the wall. 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 Capitol 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 AM, back in New York City, the second World Trade Center tower to be struck, collapsed.

[sounds of sirens and crowds] 10:28 AM, much of the top floors of the other tower also fell to the streets below. [sounds of sirens and crowds] This was the view across the Upper New York Bay passed the Statue of Liberty at about

10:30 in the morning. There was immediate speculation about who was behind these attacks, most centered on the Middle East again to Kwame Holman. 10:56 AM U.S. Eastern time, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat spoke in Gaza. First of all, I am offering my condolences, the condolences of the Palestinian people to the American president, President Bush, to his government to the American people for this terrible act. We are completely shocked, completely shocked, unbelievable.

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. 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 policy towards the Palestinian question because this policy arouses the anger and the hatred of our people and of all Arab and Islamic peoples and it's liable actually to harm the interests of the United

States in our region and therefore it has to be reviewed. The spiritual leader of Hamas, the pro-Palestinian Islamic resistance movement said this. 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. f the U.S. doesn't want to be targeted and suffer the same way as other people are through oppression, injustice, and exploitation. n that regard, America finds itself today weakened in the face of the rest of humanity, taking its own revenge against American oppression and injustice. And in Pakistan, an ambassador of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban also denounced the attacks. 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. 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. In Lebanon, at a Palestinian refugee camp, there were more celebrations as men fired their weapons in the air. President Bush vowed to find and punish the people behind the terrorist attacks. Here is what he said, and in a separate statement, the reaction of Secretary of State Colin Powell. 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. 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 as terrible a day as this is for us, we will get through it because we

are a strong nation, a nation that believes in itself. A short time later, President Bush spoke to reporters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He'd flown there following his education event in Florida. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended. I want to reassure the American people that full 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 a 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. The president then... President Bush is on his way back to Washington now. He'll be addressing the nation later tonight around 9 p.m. Eastern time. We'll carry those remarks live. Now some further reaction to today's events 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? Well, we're not exactly sure as of this hour. I talked with George Tenet, the director the CIA within the hour. We talked about some of the details of it. He gave me some opinions. They were preliminary; I will not divulge 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 a intelligent success. We've been going through this. To fight terrorism, we have to beef up intelligence. We've got to have the best intelligence in the world, and obviously we don't have it today. I want to come back to that point in a minute senator Shelby, but are you saying that that the CIA has a very good idea as to who was behind it? You're just not gonna tell us? Or they don't know yet? Well, they're not sure yet, but this was within the hour. I'd say it won't be, 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 who was really behind this. Senator Durbin, what would you add to that? 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'll be defined based on September 11th 2001 for a long period of time. 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? I think the only proper prudent thing to say, Jim, is sure, he's a plausible suspect but there are others as well. As the two senators have said, the first thing to do is to establish the facts. Well, 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 but based on, who, I mean this was an incredibly well coordinated... Jim, what I was going to say in that regard is that the

magnitude of the disaster that is 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. And 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 the Senator Shelby and his colleagues and the intelligence community will be pursuing. It sounds to me like you're suggesting that maybe it wouldn't be possible for some private group of people to do this. 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 into capitals as well. You agree with that Senator Durbin? I certainly do, and I think that the investigation which is underway is an important one to find the source of this terrorism and 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. Senator Shelby, whoever did it, should this be considered by the United States and act of war? I really believe it's an act of war. t's a different type of war. t's a war without borders. t's a war without defined enemies, but nevertheless you know it is a,

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... That's the national security agency, the electronic eavesdropping organization. Absolutely, yeah, 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 and we've got to find out, as Strobe Talbott said, who did this and it could be a nation-state. It could be something big big because this was not an amateur job. Jim, could I just... Sure. ...one point on that. I think it's very important for us to see this 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, and 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, a lot of references to Pearl Harbor today, to assemble 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 international. Senator Durbin, is that right? Should we see this as Pearl Harbor and that an international effort must be mounted as there was during World War II? Absolutely. I think what happened today was just as heinous as Pearl Harbor. The casualties will unfortunately, I'm afraid, be much larger. And it certainly is a mobilizing moment for the United States. More people, more

people were probably killed once the, once the death toll mounts, more people were killed today than were killed at Pearl Harbor, is what you're saying? It appears that that will be the case, and 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 a 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. 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 within the government of the United States. The average person, 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? 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 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. Senator Shelby, in your conversation with CIA director Tenet, did you ask him directly, "Hey George, how did you miss this one?" I didn't say that, but I did say, "George, to the effect that this was certainly not 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, open society like we have, we're going to have these kind of situations, disasters, and 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. wWe must do better. Well 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? Seven years. Chaired it nearly five.

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? 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 USS 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. Senator Durbin, what's wrong with our intelligence? 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 and 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 imagine 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. Strobe Talbott, beginning with you and then going back to the two senators after you, what about the 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? I think not just the leadership but the American people as well need to be aware 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. Senator Shelby? Well, I believe that he's right. Strobe's right on his remarks there. But if we don't improve our intelligence gathering, now I know I'm harping on this. 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, and 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 doing a lot of these cells, but we can do better. We have to do better for the American people. Senator 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, and 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 in 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. All right. Gentlemen, all three, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. 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 Rudolf Giuliani of New York City. They held a press conference at 2:30 this afternoon. We have 1500 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 to 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. The people of New York are not only the freest the most diverse people in the world. We're 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. Earlier today, Ray Suarez spoke with a reporter who was in the area. 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. On my way

to work, yes. Actually, just just putting on my jacket. I live in an apartment that 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 when the towers themselves collapsed. You're pretty close to the World Trade Center area at the Nightly Business Report studios. Yes, about two blocks. Outside it was like nighttime. There was so much debris and 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 and 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. t must have taken some time

before you even fully understood what was happening. 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 this, in this market but not over the air broadcast. 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. Were there in evidence a large number of emergency personnel vehicles? What did you see? 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, was I was seeing ambulances coming from places I had never heard of as if every ambulance that 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, and I was here for the 1993 bomb, which was a, you know, 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 I, 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. For people who've seen it in person or for people who've 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 them. Absolutely and we're watching, you know, the...we're watching the shots from across the river, the video that's being taken of the skyline of New York has now irrevocably been changed. I mean, if someone had said to me,

postulated this kind of thing to me yesterday, I would have said, oh yeah that's a pretty far-fetched movie script or something. Nobody would ever have believed that this could happen. Scott Gurvey, earlier today from his office in Lower Manhattan. For the latest on the ongoing emergency, we're joined from New York by Frank Donahue of the American Red Cross. He's a member of the organization's National Disaster Response Team and Thor Valdmanis, a reporter for USA 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? It's possible Ray, but it really is only a beginning. Mayor Giuliani said earlier today that 2100 people had been injured. It's not clear whether that is still 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 apparently had not happened as of showtime tonight, but they were still on alert. And then of course much closer to the World Financial Center to the World Trade Center, St. Vincent's Hospital, for example, in Greenwich Village about 10 minutes north of the 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 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. Any number yet of dead coming from the Pentagon attack? We do not know. We do not know. We suspect that 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 eight, is in five concentric rings, A through E. She was in the B ring, one of the more innermost rings. They were immediately, many 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 by 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 very seriously injured. So there were some serious injuries. Again to put in context though, as yet we have reports of only about 40 of seriously injured people going to area hospitals in Washington. 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. 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 into a block from the World Trade Center, and the only way to describe what I saw was the absolute war zone. There were body bags strewed all over the place, burning buildings, blown out buildings, cars that were burning, some of them upside down, a lot of wounded being escorted onto 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. Now with the television towers on top the World Trade Center buildings are about a quarter of a mile tall, and when two of them come down onto the streets I mean the streets must be covered with the leavings of this building. What's it like there right at ground zero? That's a

good question. I mean, a number of survivors describe 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. And there were a number horrifying stories, but 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 the cloud of smoke. It was really, really horrendous, and 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. 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? Well they are trying, but they also have to worry about, there's a lot of concern that the surrounding 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, so it's unbelievable. I'll never forget it. There's actually a piece of the World Trade Center that fell. It's probably about 20 to 30 stories long just lying on one of the side streets. Frank Donahue, with a disaster of this magnitude, what does the Red Cross do first? There's so many needs that have to be met. Absolutely. I think most important is that we coordinate with the emergency response folks here

in New York and have a long history 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 water, providing support to the emergency firefighters and the ambulance drivers, etc. 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 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. When the World Trade Center was first built they weren't there, but today there are two big neighborhoods right there. Have they been evacuated? And where are those people going? Battery Park, that whole neighborhood, the apartments in that region, I've just came before tonight, the show, Stuyvesant High School, which is right next to those new apartment buildings in Battery Park. At Stuyvesant 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, and those folks tonight will be finding shelter. Red Cross will be setting up shelter. It's going to be announced later this evening where all the shelters are in Manhattan that folks can go to. The Red Cross will be providing. Do you have all the help and the blood that you need? Well, clearly people have been so responsive. Coming tonight, I was saying that

every time I stopped 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, and we always need blood. We have 50,000 units of blood on standby, but I think a disaster like this is a great reminder to Americans that we should never let our blood supply go down, and everyone should be calling 1-800-give-life, and this is a great opportunity to be reminded of that. Frank Donahue, for Thor Valdmanis, Susan Dentzer, thank you all. Thank you. The wire services are moving stories now of explosions north of Kabul, Afghanistan near the airport there in the capital city. There are no, they say there have been

no sounds of airplanes or anti-aircraft fire. There's no reason to suggest or to 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. 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. And to 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 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? 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 in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon or on those airplanes, so it's, how could it happen? I think that's the question. Do we think it was, in your experience, would

this be a breach of security, a breach of what? 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 upon the board a 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. Should, at this stage, should that investigation be focusing on the air or on the ground? 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 Darryl Jenkins, what's your take on this? How could this have happened? 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 on 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. When you say terrorists like this, you mean terrorists who are willing to die in the actual act? That's correct. What it shows 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. Mr. Kallstrom, if Darryl Jenkins is right and in truth there's no way, there's no breach that happened, there is nothing that suggests there's nothing that could have been done to protect against it. Well, we don't know the facts, and I think I largely agree with what he said about that it's a difficult, difficult situation. In a free society, people moving, it will... All of us have been at airports, and we know the crowds. We know the 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. 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? 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, and this will be the debate for the next months and the next years, and 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 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 terrorist acts that have led up to today, that there are people that have that type of hatred and a willing to sacrifice their lives, and that's a tough thing to combat. The free nations of the world, 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. 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 it was a failure of the intelligence community on this point. 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 bath water. Let's not talk 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 live in. Darryl Jenkins, what is it about these two particular kinds of planes, 757s and 767s? What what would have lent them to such a horrendous attack? They are 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 in the buildings and they performed just

exactly like they predicted. Another thing that was said earlier in 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. Is that, does that kind of level of coordination ring true to you, especially with these types of aircraft? Well, these were trained pilots. If you look at the videos of the plane going in, it was a 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. 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 what's going to be real? How does that work? 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, and that's a tough thing to do. We stopped the Blind Sheikh and his co-conspirators to blow up the Holland Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel many years ago.

We stopped Ramzi Yousef through the good work of the Philippines police in a conspiracy to blow up nine or ten major American flag carrying jumbo jets not that long ago, so yes, we do an awful lot of stopping terrorism. You were very involved in the TWA 800 investigation. How does this compare in your mind? Does it ring familiar to you? The grief is certainly rings to me, the sadness of the event, the impact on our society. What the families are going through this minute rings to me, and 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. t's just one of the worst things that I can ever remember.

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 the future? 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 off-line public is to have very good national security and intelligence gathering capabilities. If Shelby wants to point fingers at anyone, the senators and congressmen have cut back budgets in the last ten years in these things, and 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, as intelligence gathering in the next ten years. The graphics which we saw today were so horrific that they will last with us for 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. One question about the flight, the direction that these planes flew when they were hijacked. They were off course for a very long time. Is that something that should have been picked up on, somebody should have noticed? Well, obviously when a plane takes off in its nose, it has what's called 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. And James Kallstrom, what should we be doing if anything to prepare against, to guard against this the future? I guess I would just add to your previous question. What do you do about it in the fifteen minutes that before this event happens where you don't know where that plane is going? Do you shoot it down

with innocent civilians on board? What do you do? Now these are not easy decisions. 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 intelligence, you know, those are the issues we went to bed with the night, and those of the issues we woke up with in the morning. And this is serious stuff. James Kallstrom, Darryl Jenkins, thank you very much for joining us. Just moments ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sstaff spoke to reporters in a makeshift newsroom at the Pentagon. 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'll 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, and the various components are doing roster checks, and 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. 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 mamed 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 tragedy and the tragic dangers that we face day in and day out both here at home as well as abroad. I would 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. And we will continue our special coverage of this horrific day in a moment on most public television stations. I'm Jim Lehrer. Terrorists use hijacked airliners to kill Americans on this September 11th, 2001. Another day of infamy for the United States of America. The tragic details tonight on this special PBS NewsHour report. [music]

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