For the week of  September 12 - 18, 2001

Day of terror followed by grim, dangerous task of retrieving bodies, chasing culprits

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NEW YORK (AP)—As the smoldering ashes of the World Trade Center slowly yielded unimaginable carnage, investigators fanned out across the country Wednesday to track the conspirators who orchestrated an unprecedented day of terror from the air.

The Bush administration disclosed that the White House and Air Force One may originally have been among the targets of Tuesday’s devastation.

The investigation swept from a Boston hotel to Florida and points beyond—all in an attempt to determine just who was behind the attacks in which two hijacked airliners blasted into the 110-story towers, a third dove into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania.

President Bush condemned the onslaught as "acts of war" and NATO gave the United States its backing for a military response if the attacks were directed from abroad.

Where the 1,350-foot trade center towers once stood, the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan were still a dust-covered ruin of girders and boulders of broken concrete.

Late in the day, the few stories of the south tower that had remained standing—the only recognizable vestiges of the steel-and-glass colossus—began to collapse, further complicating rescue efforts. Another nearby building was threatening to come down.

A Brooks Brothers clothing store became a morgue, where workers brought any body parts they could find.

The workers’ grim task was interrupted by brief epiphanies of life, when a fortunate victim was pulled alive from the wreckage of the steel-and-glass buildings. Four victims, three of them police officers, had been pulled from the wreckage.

Progress was slow. Cranes and heavy machinery were used, but only gingerly, for fear of dislodging wreckage and harming any survivors. Searchers with picks and axes worked slowly, too—sometimes when they opened pockets in the debris, fires flared.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the best estimate is a "a few thousand" victims would be left in each building. There were 55 confirmed fatalities—a number that was sure to grow. Another 1,700 injuries were reported.

The four hijacked planes carried 266 people, none of whom survived. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an estimate that as many as 800 people were killed at the Pentagon may be far too high.

Authorities had "specific credible information" that both Air Force One and the White House were targets, and that "the plane that hit the Pentagon may have been headed for the White House," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for President Bush’s National Security Council.

There also was speculation that, in the case of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, the hijackers intended to jet elsewhere but were thwarted by the male passengers.

In a phone call from the air, businessman Thomas Burnett had told his wife, Deena: "I know we’re all going to die—there’s three of us who are going to do something about it." Then, Burnett told his wife, "I love you, honey" and the call ended, according to the family’s priest, the Rev. Frank Colacicco.

Investigators out fanned across the nation, and beyond, looking for information that would pinpoint the culprits.

A Venice, Fla., man said FBI agents interviewed him and said that two men who stayed in his home last summer while training at a local flight school were among the hijackers.

Officials confirmed a car believed to belong to the hijackers was confiscated in Boston, where two of the hijacked planes took off, and that it contained an Arabic-language flight manual. Investigators also raided two Boston area hotels believed to be used by the hijackers.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said authorities had reviewed "numerous credible leads," and were checking whether four separate cells of terrorists were involved. One set of hijackers is believed to have crossed from Canada and have ties to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile who authorities say is the suspected mastermind behind the attacks.

Bin Laden has been given asylum in Afghanistan, where international aid workers fled from the capital city of Kabul on Wednesday as residents worried about a possible U.S. military strike.

The nation’s Taliban rulers demanded to see evidence backing allegations that bin Laden runs a global terrorism network responsible for the hijackings.

In New York, the rubble at the trade center was taken by boat to a former Staten Island garbage dump, where the FBI and other investigators searched for evidence.

One volunteer, Peter Coppola, said he had found four dead bodies in his 24 hours of searching. "The air down there is totally toxic," he said.

Smoke continued to billow upward, as it did all day Tuesday, and smaller fires still burned. Twisted metal piled 50 feet high filled the streets.

New Yorkers were told to steer clear of lower Manhattan and the financial markets were closed and were to remain so at least until Friday.

Schools also were closed and the New York Yankees’ game was postponed, along with the rest of the major-league baseball schedule, including Thursday’s games. Many other sporting events were either being canceled or postponed.

Federal officials partially lifted a ban on nationwide air travel, allowing flights that had been diverted on Tuesday to finish their journeys and empty planes to be moved around. All other flights remained grounded.

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