20 Years Since September 11
We return to our 2018 series on September 11, 2001 to mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly attacks.
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Episode Resources
The Day (7/9/18)
A New Kind of Terrorism (8/6/18)
How Did We Miss This? (8/13/18)
America at War (9/2/18)
The Memorial (9/10/18)
Transcript
[00:00:00] Alise: Hi friends, this is Alise, the Managing Director of Pantsuit Politics. Three years ago, we put together a deep dive into the events of September 11th, 2001. As we mark 20 years, since that tragic day, it felt right to us to revisit that series. All five of those episodes are linked in the show notes. But what you'll hear today are the first and last parts of that series.
First, a step-by-step recounting of the day itself followed by Sarah and Beth's 2018 visit to and reflections on the Memorial at Ground Zero in New York City.
We hope a return to these episodes will be a meaningful part of your own processing this anniversary. We also know that this topic still carries a lot of pain for many people, especially in the middle of an already difficult year.
So please be gentle with yourself as you listen and reflect on the events of that day. We'll be back with our regular content next week. Thanks as always for listening.
[00:01:14] Beth: In 2001, the World Trade Center complex consisted of seven buildings, which included the twin towers. When those twin towers were built in 1973, they were at the time, the tallest buildings in the world, six of the seven buildings in the complex were connected by an underground shopping mall where it's over 13 million square feet of office space in the complex and the World Trade Center had initially been run by new York's Port Authority.
It was privatized in 1998. I thought that the National Geographic's description, written on September 13th, 2011, so two days after 9/11 was a good way to talk about perhaps why the World Trade Centers were targeted by Al-Qaeda the sophisticated structure of the slender crystalline twin towers made them especially inviting symbols of America's achievement, glass, and steel pillars reaching into the clouds, their a theorial surfaces, reflecting the changing moods of New York city.
The World Trade Center represented the elite and the powerful its tenants were household names. It was the financial hub of the country, and even, some would argue the world. To America's enemies, the World Trade Center can be seen to represent America's pervasive, cultural and economic imperialism.
[00:02:33] Sarah: So I want to spend just a few seconds talking about the construction of the World Trade Center, which was very different than the way skyscrapers had been built in the past, which was with usually they were built with a skeleton of interior supporting columns that support the structure, but the twin towers were really radically different in that it was the exterior wall that's used as the load bearing wall.
And the interior columns were located in the core, which contained the elevator. That's going to become really important. And that was made for a lot of different reasons, including cost savings and to expand the amount of real estate available for rent. So that was a decision that was made, that when it, when it was built in the seventies, that I think will become very important as we look at the events on 9/11.
[00:03:14] Beth: So we're going to try to go through. The timeline of what happened on 9/11, it can get confusing. There were four flights and 19 total terrorists involved in hijacking those flights. And we have each taken responsibility for two of the four flights. So we'll go back and forth a little bit. Even if you know this story, I hope you'll stick with us because as we revisited it, there are so many things that I learned that I had never known before.
As much as this has been covered, as many retrospectives as I've seen, there's so many pieces that were new to me as we did the research for this episode. And I hope that's the case for you.
[00:03:52] Sarah: So one of the first things that I didn't know is that two of the main hijackers aboard American airlines flight 11 actually flew from Maine on a commuter flight from Maine at 5 45 that morning on September 11th, they boarded the commuter flight from Maine, and then they flew to Boston, Logan international airport.
They boarded American airlines flight 11, which was a Boeing 7 67. So this is a really big plane, big enough that it has the two aisles down the center, but it was not very full. There were only 92 people aboard the plane. Now these are big planes, like I said, and they carry a lot of jet fuel. So this flight 11 was carrying 9,717 gallons of jet fuel.
And now this is 14,000 gallons under its capacity. So it was carrying a lot of jet fuel because it was flying to Los Angeles, but not its max capacity and was also not fully seated so that it was not to its full capacity seating is as well. So. The flight takes off at 7:59 AM at 8:13 AM. It was the last direction given by air control that the pilot responded to.
So they were told I believe to turn and they did. And then after that, they'd no longer responded to air control. Now from the phone calls from the planes, the investigators have been able to piece together a little bit of what happened in the first moments when the hijackers took over the flights. And I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about the flight attendants in a minute, but there was recordings of the flight attendant saying we can't breathe.
They believe that some of the hijackers used to mace in particular because one of the hijackers luggage was never put on the plane at Logan. And that later was found to have contained some masons. We all know, probably at this point that they also had box cutters and attack several of the passengers.
And it seems that they also, from the reports of several of the passengers and flight attendants had sort of fake bombs strapped to their chest in order to intimidate the passengers and scare them. The plane, this first flight American airlines flight 11 contained a passenger who they believe is the first person killed on 9/11.
His name was Daniel Lewin. He had served in the Israeli army. He was only 30 years old and he had actually invented an algorithm for optimizing internet traffic. And it seems as if he tried to protect the cockpit, he was seated in first class. So he exhibited a large amount of bravery, I think, in that scenario.
And it's so sad to think about a young man who held such promise, being killed as so many were that day. So he seems to have tried to prevent them taking the car. At 8:14 AM is when United airlines flight 1 75, another Boeing 7 67 with 65. People on board also takes off from Boston, headed to Los Angeles.
It is also not fully seated. It's about 56 people, and there's also 9,000 gallons of jet fuel on that plane as well at 8:19 AM. So this is about five minutes after flight. 1 75 takes set flight attendants, aboard flight, 11 alert ground personnel that the planes have been hijacked. And I want to take a moment to really talk about these two flight attendants in a minute, we're going to share some of the audio of one of these calls from Betty Ong and from Madeline Amy Sweeney, who had built in from another flight attendant who was ill that day.
These women were so calm and so collected and exhibited such bravery and calm. Ground control, giving them specific details about what had happened about where the descriptions of the attackers, about where they were seated. Their ability to remain calm was instrumental and investigators being able to put together later what happened aboard those flights and who was responsible for these attacks.
So I want to share just a little bit of Betty Ung's call to flight control.
[00:07:39] Clip: Number 3 in the back. The cockpit's not answering and somebody's stabbed in business class.
And I think there's mace- that we can't breathe.
I don't know.
I think we're getting hijacked.
Which flight are you on?
Flight 12.
And what seat are you in?
Flight attendants had been trained to communicate only with the cockpit in hijacking scenarios.
And without that being an option, these two flight attendant. Just had to improvise and the fact that they did that. So skillfully and so calmly is just remarkable.
[00:08:14] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There was some interesting writing. I read that there was a lot of sort of gendered reporting after 9/11. And that we lean toward narratives that supported a lot of heroism that we sort of already had stories around.
Not that one's better or one's less, but that the, the, the stories of these flight attendants sort of got missed. And so I've really wanted to take a moment and highlight their bravery for sure.
[00:08:50] Beth: At 8:20 American Airlines flight 77 took off from Dulles international airport outside of Washington, DC. The Boeing 757 was headed to Los Angeles. Like the other two flights that Sarah just talked about with 64 people on board to pilots for flight attendants, 58 passengers, including three elementary school children selected for a trip hosted by national geographic.
All five of these hijackers were flagged by security for extra scrutiny, for one reason or another, including that one of them didn't have a photo ID and agents found them to be suspicious. The only consequence of being flagged for this extra scrutiny ended up being that their checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that they had boarded three of the hijackers set off metal detectors and had extra screening before boarding the plane, the screeners didn't resolve what set off the alarms and allowed the hijackers to board the plane.
Anyway, and this seems unthinkable today. And the reason that it seems unthinkable today is because we have all been flying in recent years in a post 9/11 world. And I think this is one moment to kind of flag as a way in which. Our everyday lives substantially changed after 9/11. When you read about the way security was conducted, then it's just unimaginable compared to what we do now, the five hijackers boarded the plane at 7:50 AM to have them set in coach in three.
In first class, the plane was scheduled to depart at 8:10. It took off at 8:20 and reached its cruising altitude at 8:00 AM.
[00:10:29] Sarah: Okay, so this plane takes off at 8:20 at 8: 24. The lead Hijacker on flight 11 makes the first of two accidental transmissions. Now I also read that there is some theory that the, the pilot before I'm assuming they either attacked him or killed him, pressed a button so that the transmissions would go to ground control before he was forced from the cockpit, or there's some understanding that maybe he was trying to communicate to the planes cabin, but either way they made the first of two accidental transmissions.
Now, what is. And saying to me that I learned about it this time is that the pilot of flight 175 heard these accidental transmissions. And I think try to communicate to air control that there was a plane being hijacked minutes before his own plane was hijacked.
8:37 Boston air traffic control based on the calls from the flight attendant alerts the north American aerospace defense command NORAD Northeast air defense sector. So that's just the sector that defends the Northeast about the suspected hijacking of flight 11 in response needs scrambles to fighter planes located at Cape Cod's Otis air national guard base to locate and tail flight 11.
They are not yet in the air when flight 11 crashes into the north tower. And there is some really intense audio of people thinking, is this a test? No, it's not a test. This is not a drill. This is real. And the problem was that once they said tail flight 11, the hijackers had turned off the transponder and that was a really easy thing to do.
And it's still assuming I'm assuming an easy thing to do from a cockpit because they have to turn them off when they're landed or else they wouldn't. It would be a chaos of transplanting with all the planes landed at especially big airports. So he turned off the transplanter, so they couldn't find, they couldn't tell the fighter planes where to go to tail flight 11.
[00:12:19] Beth: And there also, as you go through all of the agencies' responses to this, the idea of a commercial flight being weaponized in this way was just new. They just weren't prepared for this at all. So a few minutes after that alert to NORAD United airlines flight 93, a Boeing 7 57 with 44 people, including the hijackers on board, took off from Newark international airport in New Jersey and en route to San Francisco.
This flight was supposed to have departed at eight o'clock about the same time as the other three planes. It had 48,700 pounds of fuel onboard. So much more jet fuel than the other three planes.
[00:13:04] Sarah: I think it's, I think it's so important to emphasize that because this plane being late, being the one carrying the most jet fuel and being the one in theory, headed for Washington DC had things played out differently.
The events of 9/11. It would have been, I think almost in comprehensively, more tragic.
[00:13:26] Beth: Four hijackers boarded, this flight, there was likely supposed to be a fifth Hijacker. The three other planes had teams of five. One individual in August had been prevented from immigrating to the United States, by an agent in Florida who the 9/11 commission believes was supposed to be the fifth team member for this flight.
So only four hijackers on this plane. One of them had been selected for extra scrutiny by the computerized system that flagged passengers at the time, the security area lacked closed circuit television monitoring. So we don't know exactly what happened in their screening process and no one who was interviewed remembered anything suspicious.
So at this time each individual airline was responsible for security screening and. United had contracted that out and I'm sure lots of other airlines did as well. And so there were vastly different procedures in place and monitoring of those procedures, the four hijackers all set in first class one, right by the cockpit two together in row three and one in row six, the flight didn't actually depart until 8 42.
So 42 minutes late to pilots, five flight attendants and 37 passengers were on this plane. That was well below the normal passenger count for a flight like this. At the time, there has not been any evidence that the hijackers deliberately sought out smaller flights or bought extra seats to facilitate their plans.
And Sarah and I were talking before, you can imagine so many different scenarios at every turn as you examine these facts. So think as we talk about United flight, 93, about what the ramifications could have been, if the flight had been. When the plane took off, the crew was unaware that American 11 had been hijacked just before 8 25 Boston center realized that a Hijacker on American 11 had used the phrase, quote, we have some planes, but no one at the FAA or the airlines had ever dealt with multiple hijackings and people were just struggling to get their heads around what was happening.
It doesn't seem to have immediately occurred to anyone that they needed to alert other planes in the air of what was going on.
[00:15:43] Sarah: So at 8:46 AM the hijackers aboard American airlines flight 11 crashed the plane into floors. 93 through 99 of the north tower of the World Trade Center. They killed everyone on board, including several children and hundreds inside the building.
Now, this is where the, the construction of the World Trade Center is important because the columns were located. At the interior of the building and not the exterior as they used to be with other skyscraper construction, it's severs all three emergency stairways. It also severs the water line so that none of the sprinklers are putting out water to help stop the fire.
And I think that's really important. So anybody above the 99th floor on the north tower had no way of getting down because those elevators and stairwells were severed by the plane itself. After the plane crashes in to the north tower within seconds. I mean, the listing on the time most timelines is 8 47.
So just a minute later in YPD and F D N Y forces dispatch units to the World Trade Center with the port authority police department officers onsite, and they began the immediate evacuation of the north tower.
[00:17:05] Beth: At 8:50, the White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card alerted president George W. Bush that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
The president was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. At the time he elected to remain in the classroom to keep reading until he knew more. And he wanted, according to everyone who was interviewed at the time to really project an image of calm and strength to remember, they didn't know what had happened yet.
At first one plane in the World Trade Center, it seemed like it could have been an accident. They just didn't know yet what was happening.
[00:17:38] Sarah: So when the plane hit the north tower with the 9,000 pounds of jet fuel, and because of the construction of the tower, those inner stairwells and elevator shafts, but as basically acted as a chimney and shot fire up and down, the heat itself from the flight was traveled much faster than the flames themselves.
So the upper floors became almost unbearably hot immediately. And just let me take us a time out for us a second to just say that my one small note on the conspiracy theories, if a person spouting 9/11, conspiracy theories cannot explain to you the difference between heat and temperature, tell them to shut up time back in.
That's my time only time out for the conspiracy theories. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the heat, because I think it's very important in this timeline to talk about victims of 9/11 that are difficult to think about, but who I think that we have not done a good job as a society, giving them the full attention and the full telling their stories in a way that they deserve.
So at 8:51 AM. The first jumper is recorded jumping from the 93rd floor of the first tower. Again, because the heat was so intense. Many people jumped from windows surrounding the impact. Now there are reports from the south tower of people who could see this happening. And many people report that people were dazed and confused, trying to exit found fresh air and just walk toward it, not realizing what they were doing, but there were also people who stepped to the windows and seemingly jumped of, of I don't want to use the word choice.
It wasn't a choice, but I think that because it's such a difficult thing to talk about someone being in an impossible position and making a decision. That maybe some of us don't understand, we sort of have just avoided talking about these people, but over 200 people are estimated to have jumped from the World Trade Center.
At that time, there seems to be, there was no effort on the, on the part of our government to determine who they were, several victims have families have gone out of their way to determine or who sort of had an instinct that some of the people in the photos where their loved ones and some of them, you know, report feeling like they finally got closure, they understood, they knew what happened to their loved one.
But then some people just don't want to talk about it. Don't want to ha don't want to, don't want to face sort of any discussion that this is maybe a choice, their loved one, again, don't use the word choice. They don't want to have any discussion of the way their loved one died. And you know, it's, it's handled in an alcove set often and the 9/11 Memorial, there's been a lot of writing and documentaries about some of the photos, especially the, the famous photo of the falling man. But I just, it was really important to me. To take a moment and talk about the impossible situation that these people found themselves in and not just gloss over it, because it's really, really difficult to think or talk about.
[00:20:39] Beth: I think that is a theme of this entire day, right? People just in impossible, unimaginable situations, subject to their instincts. Right. And and to just doing the best that they could under the circumstances also at 8 51, the last normal radio communication from American flight, 77, the flight that departed from Washington Dulles was recorded. The hijacking of that flight began between 8 51 and 8 54. The hijackers use knives to move all the passengers to the back of the plane.
One passenger reported that the hijackers had box cutters as well. Hijacker assumed control of the plane and turned itself. He turned off the transponder as Sarah talked about a minute ago. So that radar contact with the plane was lost at nine o'clock, an American airlines executive learned that flight 77 wasn't communicating.
So that happened pretty quickly. He ordered all American airline planes in the Northeast that weren't currently in the air to stay on the ground. After the second tower was hit in New York, American airlines executives thought that it must have been flight 77. And when they learned that United was also missing a plane, that's when they ordered a ground stop of all their planes nationwide.
At this time, according to the 9/11 commission report, at least two passengers on flight 77 called family members from the plane. Renee may called her mother and told her that the plane had been hijacked. She asked her mother to alert American airlines and her mother did that right away. Another passenger Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, Ted Olson at the time was the solicitor general of the United States.
The call was cut off about a minute into the conversation at which time Ted unsuccessfully tried to reach John Ashcroft, the attorney general Barbara called back and shared more details. She asked Ted for advice on what she should tell the pilots and the crew to do. And at that time, Ted told Barbara about the World Trade Center crashes.
Barbara did not panic, and she did not seem aware that a crash was imminent. She was trying to look out the window to tell Ted where they were. She told him that they were flying over some houses and the call was cut off.
[00:22:53] Sarah: 8:55 AM. There was an announcement to the south tower of the World Trade Center, and everyone was told to stay in their offices and to stay put and not evacuate.
I know that this is very difficult to hear or think about, but there were thousands of people in these towers. And I think that the thinking was if they flip. Streets, it's going to make any sort of evacuation or emergency vehicle movement around the towers. Any more difficult. Now this didn't direction to stay put didn't last very long.
So at nine o'clock, along with the flow, the calls coming from flight 77 flight 1 75 has also several passengers and flight attendants on that. Plane are making calls as well and reporting very similar things. Box cutters, hijacking the transporters is turning it's a it's a similar, they were clearly following a similar plan.
So at 9:02, after the initial instruction of the, for the people in the south tower to stay put the port authority, officially broadcast orders to evacuate both towers via the public address system and estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people are already in the process of evacuating. When. At 9:03 AM hijackers crash, United airlines flight, 1 75 into flower into floors, 75 through 85 of the World Trade Center, south tower, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.
This is only 17 minutes after the first impact, which is an incredibly short amount of time. Although I will say at this point, I highly recommend everyone watching 102 minutes. That changed America. It's a hun it's a history channel documentary, and it is just found footage from new Yorkers. And people are in the surrounding area of that day.
And it's, it's, it's the 102 minutes. So it's just, it's editing of the audio and the video from that time. And it's really impactful to see it unfold in real time and to see how people were putting together, what's happening. There is an incredibly. Horrific moment when there are some students at NYU filming from their dorm room and they film as this second flight crashes into the south tower and just their, their terror, their terror feeling like.
We're under attack it, you know, we are marching through this, knowing what we know now, but like Beth said it wasn't just government officials that couldn't comprehend. Even the, when people who knew that it was a hijacking from the beginning couldn't comprehend what was happening. People on the ground.
It was so many people thought that the first plane it was an accident and they had just accidentally flown into a tower that had happened early in the 20th century with people flying into skyscrapers. It's interesting. And we'll talk about this in the events leading up to 9/11, that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had more of an impact, I think on new Yorkers than it did on the rest of America, because there were several people in the found footage who say, oh, they came back.
This is, remember they tried in 1993, they kind of instantly thought that this was terrorism, but the second plane hitting the south tower is when you feel the energy in this footage and in the audio. And people's tear really shift dramatic.
[00:25:58] Beth: And that's when you start to see the government understanding what's happening as well, because at 9:08, the FAA banned takeoffs of flights going into New York city or throw the airspace around the city, a 9 21, the port authority closed all bridges and tunnels in the New York city area at 9:24.
The FAA notified needs of the suspected hijacking of flight 77 because of the calls that were coming from passengers on that plane. And at 9 31, president Bush spoke from Florida and called the events and apparent terrorist attack on the county. So back on board flight, 77 at 9 29, the autopilot on that flight was disengaged at 9 32 controllers at Dulles observed something on the radar, tracking east at a high rate of speed at 9 34, Ronald Reagan airport advise the secret service that an unknown plane was heading toward the white house.
The plane made a 330 degree turn and descended rapidly through 2,200 feet pointed toward the Pentagon, the pilot advanced the throttles to maximum power and dove into the Pentagon at 9:37 AM. The plane was traveling at about 530 miles per hour. Everyone on board and 125 civilians and military personnel at the Pentagon were killed.
[00:27:20] Sarah: Now, this was a part of the building, correct me if I'm wrong. That was sort of under construction. So it was actually not as fully stuffed as other parts of the building. So at 9:42 AM, for the first time in American history, that FAA grounds, all flights over are bound for the continental United States, some 3,300 commercial flights, and 1,200 private planes are guided to airports in Canada, the United States over the next two and a half hours.
I have several friends that were in flights are grounded in separate parts across the world. And I think that the impact of people that this decision was really far reaching and, and brought home the seriousness of the events in a real way, for people all over the world.
[00:28:02] Beth: It's also a place to say as much as you can fault the FAA and you can, for many things that happen.
It is amazing that all these planes landed safely. It is amazing when you think about, you're trying to make these decisions, as you come to understand that your planes had been hijacked in a way that you've never anticipated or trained for, and you've got all the other, all these other planes in the air, and I'll talk more in a second about how some of the folks who were starting to understand what was happening, started identifying other planes that would have been good candidates for hijacking.
And so they're worried about those planes, but you have all these planes in the air, and then you've got to get them all down safely. And that happened professionally in an orderly way, without a whole lot of wreckage or chaos or problems. And that's incredible. And a whole lot of people had to do an excellent job in unprecedented circumstances, making that happen.
The white house at 9 45 and the us Capitol building were evacuated. Along with quite a few other high-profile buildings, landmarks, and public spaces. There were myriad conference calls being rapidly put together, you know, as they're trying to secure everyone, they're also trying to connect the military with the FAA, with the airlines.
You can imagine the scramble bureaucratically that no one was prepared for trying to. Get together. People were very frustrated about who was on certain calls and who wasn't on the calls. They were frustrated because they were operating on such limited information. And at the same time, the president is down in Florida.
Dick Cheney is being evacuated as the vice president. They're trying to keep the president and the vice president in touch with one another. There's a whole section of the 9/11 commission report devoted to the communications between the president and the vice-president and the orders that were given and the authority that was granted at particular times, it was, it was a really chaotic period.
[00:30:09] Sarah: I want to take a minute while we're talking about evacuations which were very chaotic to talk about one story that's really stuck with me. This is the story of Rick Rusk, Orla, who is known as the man who saw it coming. He was the director of security. Morgan Stanley. He, after the 1993 attack felt very strongly that at the time it was, the firm was known as Dean Witter, that they should move out of the towers.
They basically neglected his advice, but he stayed as a security consultant and he really felt like that the tenants of now Morgan Stanley couldn't depend on the first responders and that, that they needed to have take the security of their firm into their own hands. And so he had all that. He would do all these security drills with people and the day of the attack, all that training and all of his insistence on looking at the risk involved after 1993 and all these drills really paid off.
And then during the evacuation, he is credited with saving over 2000 people leading over 2000 people in the evacuation, out of the tower. And he was last seen going back up, looking for any stragglers and he was killed in the end.
[00:31:18] Beth: Something that I read about him, said you should learn his story and have patience with that one person in your office.
Who's obsessed with disaster scenarios, which really hit home with me.
[00:31:29] Sarah: Yeah. I thought that that was speaking of the profits, like we were talking about the people that are like, no, we have, we have to pay attention to this, that he tried to get them to move to New Jersey and all these things. I think it was such a powerful story that I've thought a lot about during our research.
Okay. So at 9:59 AM the south tower of the World Trade Center collapses and just 10 seconds after burning for 66 minutes, killing all 800 people inside the south tower actually was of course the second tower hit, but because it was hit lower in the structure, it was believed to have affected the core structure, burned, hotter, and burned in the middle.
And so the collapse, that's why it collapsed before the north tower.
[00:32:17] Beth: So between, I mean the first crash and the second crash and the third crash, you have all these agencies trying to figure out what to do. At 9:07 AM. FAA controllers at Boston center requested that Herndon command center tell planes in the air to increase their cockpit security, but there's no evidence that Hern Herndon did.
Boston center started worrying that a particular Delta transcontinental flight could be in danger. That flight had not been hijacked, but based on what they saw from the first two flights, they were concerned that that one might be as well. FAA air traffic controllers later testified to the 9/11 commission that air carriers, not the FAA were responsible for notifying planes of security problems.
They said it wasn't the FAA’s place to order the airlines. What to tell their pilots. American airlines seems not to have sent any cockpit warnings United didn't share that information with pilots in the air until 9:19. When a dispatcher on his own took the initiative to transmit warnings to his 16 flights that he was responsible for.
That man's name was Ed Ballenger and he was giving the message to all 16 of his flights. Flight 93 was one of his flights at 9 24. He told the pilots of flight 93 to take extra care. And the cockpit because of these hijackings, two minutes later, the pilot asked ed to confirm that message and sounded a little bit confused.
They had been the air for 46 minutes. They were having a normal flight so far. And then two minutes later, the hijackers attacked that plane, the plane dropped 700 feet very rapidly over Eastern Ohio. The pilot issued a Mayday 11 seconds into the dissent and his transmission picked up sounds of a physical struggle in the cockpit.
35 seconds later, there was another radio transmission in which you can hear the captain or the first officer shouting. Hey, get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here at 9 32, a Hijacker announced to the passengers on that flight. Ladies and gentlemen here, the captain, please sit down, keep remaining sitting.
We have a bomb on board. So CIT the flight data recorder also recovered indicates that the hijacking pilot then instructed the planes autopilot to turn the aircraft around and head east. The voice recorder indicates that a flight attendant was being held captive in the cockpit. She struggled with one of the hijackers.
Killed or otherwise silenced her at that point. So the passengers on flight 93 start calling friends and family, and these calls were really important because by now people on the ground knew about the World Trade Centers. And so they are communicating to the people on this plane what's happened elsewhere.
The hijackers of this plane tried to make a second announcement telling the passengers that there was a bomb onboard and that the plane was going back to the airport, but the Hijacker broadcast his message to Cleveland's air traffic control instead of to the passengers. And the 9/11 commission report says that this probably was because this particular Hijacker had never flown a commercial airliner and just didn't know how to work the radio and the Intercom.
So it was probably just a mistake that he broadcast in the wrong way. Passengers making calls aboard flight 93 told friends that the hijackers had knives, that they were wearing red bandanas and had forced them all to the back of the plane. Just like in the other scenarios, one passenger had been stabbed and they saw two people lying on the floor of the cabin, which possibly were the captain.
And the first officer one caller on this plane thought that the hijackers might have a gun, but no one else corroborated that. And there has never been any evidence to indicate that guns were on board. It also sounds to investigators like the bomb threats on all four flights were fake because no trace of explosives were found at the crash sites.
So they think that they just. Mentioned bombs to try to intimidate passengers and keep them from realizing what was really happening. So as the passengers on flight 93 are realizing what's happened elsewhere. They start sharing information from their calls, with each other and talking about an attempt to revolt against the hijackers.
One person said that the passengers voted on whether to rush the terrorist and retake the plane. And at 9 57, that's what they did. One caller ended her message by saying, everyone's running up to first class. I've got to go by and I don't know why that detail struck me so hard, but it really did. The passengers mounted a sustained assault on the terrorists.
The pilot tried to knock them down by turning the plane sharply left to right several times and pitching the nose of the plane up and down. And in recordings, you can hear loud thumps and crashes and shouts and breaking glass, but the passengers kept at it. I just wanted to read directly from the 9/11 commission report about what happened next at 10 o'clock and 26 seconds.
A passenger in the background said in the cockpit, if we don't we'll die, 16 seconds later, a passenger yelled roll. Draw, who was the pilot stopped the violent maneuvers at about 10 o'clock and one minute and said, Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. He then asked another Hijacker in the cockpit.
Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down to which the other replied? Yes. Put it in it and pull it down. The passengers continued their assault and it 10 0 2 and 23 seconds. A Hijacker said, pull it down, pull it down. The hijackers remained at the controls, but must've judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them.
The airplane headed down the control wheel was turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back. And one of the hijackers began shouting. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest with the sounds of the passenger counter attack. Continuing the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 580 miles per hour.
About 20 minutes flying time from Washington DC. Their objective was to crash the airliner into symbols of the American Republic, the capital or the white house. They were defeated by the alerted unarmed passengers of United 93.
[00:38:52] Sarah: I just, I can't stop thinking about how different things would have been had that flight not been delayed and had those passengers not done with it.
[00:39:01] Beth: You know FIM for me, as I have been reading all about what happened that day was thinking about how difficult it is to find the right balance between chain of command and decentralized decision-making because none of this had been anticipated, really the people who were able to effectuate the most change that day were disconnected from any authority.
You know, they just, the flight attendants who in the moment decided to make calls and the passengers on this plane, who in the moment band together to rush the cockpit and elsewhere decisions were stuck. Running from decision maker to decision maker trying to just understand what happened and put the right teams and the right responses together.
And we need a balance of those things, but that's something that I've thought a lot about what is the appropriate balance between structures and de-centralization of decisions based on just what is in front of you in these unanticipated circumstances?
[00:40:03] Sarah: So at 10 0 2, this plane crashes, 20 minutes later.
Approximately at 10:28 AM the World Trade Centers. North tower collapses. It's 102 minutes after being struck by flight 11, killing 1600 people inside at 11:02 AM. Mayor Rudy Giuliani calls for the evacuation of lower Manhattan south of canal street, including more than 1 million residents, workers, and tourists as efforts continue through the aftermath to search for the survivors at the world trade center site.
I got to tell you in the 102 minutes documentary, I don't think I fully comprehended what the collapse of the buildings were like now, because of, we talked about the structure of the world trade center complex. There was basically a pit and the buildings went into the pit. But this mushroom cloud you know, in some of the footage, it seems like the people are, it sounds like the camera is under water.
It is just all consuming. It looks like the apocalypse. Just a total war zone, you know, that the heat from these buildings and they're collapsed, burned out cars, parked around the world trade center. So you see these burned out shells of vehicles and people. I mean, people are running for their lives from this cloud.
They don't know what's coming behind them. It's just, it's so hard to watch and to comprehend the fear that people must have felt as this cloud just rolls through lower Manhattan. And then as once this evacuation is called, I mean, then you just, you don't just have the mushroom cloud roll and you just have a river of people exiting the island, walking across bridges, getting on the boats helping each other where they can it's it's just, it's unbelievable.
At 1230, there were 13 first responders and one citizen rescued from the north tower, stairwell B, which is really unbelievable to think about that. These people survived, you know, a hundred plus story-building falling on top of them and live to tell the tale.
[00:42:15] Beth: At one o'clock President Bush at an Air Force base in Louisiana announced that the U S military forces would be on high alert worldwide at 2:51 PM.
The US Navy dispatched missile destroyers to New York and Washington DC
[00:42:31] Sarah: 5:20 PM. The 47 stories, seven world trade center collapses after burning for hours, the building had been evacuated. There are no casualties though. The collapse forces rescue workers to flee for their lives.
[00:42:44] Beth: President Bush returned to the white house at 6:58 PM.
After stops at military bases in Louisiana and Nebraska at 8:30, he addressed the nation calling the attacks, evil despicable, acts of terror and declaring that America its friends and allies would stand together to win the war against terrorism. And that's pretty significant because up until this point, president Bush had not intended to be a foreign policy president.
This was not what he ran to do. And I think that the image we have of George W. Bush today is so different than the image we might have had of him. Have these attacks not happened and that's not a positive or a negative comment. It's just an observation. And you can tell. I think in reading some of what happened this day and some of his communications with Dick Cheney that early on, he was really struggling with taking on the Commander in Chief role under these circumstances.
[00:43:52] Sarah: I think we were all struggling under these circumstances. You know, as we stated at the start of this show in this series, it's really important for us to just spend some time and to bear witness to the horrific events of that day. So we have walked you through a timeline, but I highly encourage. Everyone to spend some time looking at some of the really, really great resources online.
The 9/11 Memorial has a really great timeline that we'll link to. We're going to put together a blog post with all our resources that we've used in doing our research. Beth has been reading the 9/11 commission reports. The there are, you know, stories of the victims and people whose lives were lost that day.
I just think that it's a really powerful and important exercise as American citizens to spend some time grieving and thinking through the tragic events of that day. And you know, the, the timeline we put together today is just the beginning.
[00:45:27] Beth: We started our tour of the world trade center complex at Trinity Church St. Paul's Chapel. And if you don't know anything about the history of St Paul's it's well worth your time to look into it's. One of the only buildings in the United States, that's still standing where all of the founding fathers met at one point.
And it's a really remarkable landmark now because despite its very close proximity to the world trade center, the twin towers. It only had a window broken on 9/11. The destruction of those towers destroyed lots of buildings around them. There was a huge damage. Most of them had to be completely demolished and rebuilt, and a large tree fell in front of St.
Paul's creating this canopy over the building. And so only one window was broken and it became a base out of which first responders were able to work. They slept there, they showered there, they took their meals there and it was a really powerful way to kind of walk into this experience.
[00:46:36] Sarah: They even have one of the pews from the church inside the museum itself. And as we walked through the tour, I was so struck, particularly at the beginning, by our tour guide, John talking, he, you can tell he spent so much time reflecting on how we experienced that day. How so many people reported that it was a small passenger plane at first.
And he was like, there's no way that, that's what it looked like. That the explosion looked like that. But when our brains can't comprehend something, it's like, we'll find something that makes sense and stick to that. And just hearing him talk through his own personal, he spent so much time reflecting on his experiences, both through the lens of memory and through the lens of moving forward and living your life afterwards, he put this great sort of framework about everything we walked through.
This is what it was like, then this is how we've thought through it, since this is how we're reaffirming life and moving forward. And the church itself to have been such a historical landmark in the founding of our country to be protected by a life-giving thing. Like a tree is so. Intense to sort of, to start this experience of this area.
And honestly, the impact of that day on the surrounding buildings was not something that I understood fully until we started doing our research. But I mean, you have, you have a firetruck within the museum that the first, the first part of the firetruck is just, you can't even recognize it as like with wheels and a steering wheel, it's just completely mangled and melted because of the heat and the intensity and the debris just destroyed.
It was like a war zone destroyed everything in its wake. So to see this church, protect it and to, to start to experience the area through the lens of that historical framework and moving forward was really powerful.
[00:48:23] Beth: It was also powerful to learn about a small version. It's a replica of the Liberty bell that was brought over from the UK and what happened around the church.
It really became a place for the world to express its love and support and grief with New York. And part of that is this bell. And so now whenever there is a bombing somewhere in Europe, it's, it's just, it continues to be a place where new Yorkers connect with the rest of the world through difficult things. And I think the symbolism of that is really powerful too.
[00:49:01] Sarah: So then we walked around the area itself and sort of tried to try to orient ourself in this space. What was that? On that day. And what is there now? One of the most amazing things is there was a sculpture in the Plaza of the world trade center.
It's a big, it's sort of like a sphere it's black and it has brass. And as they started to clear the rebel over time, they discovered the sculpture. And instead of fixing it, it now stands sort of in its new form, which I think is beautiful in its own way. And this Liberty park area that is sort of adjacent to the Memorial site.
So you can see, and I remember seeing the sculpture when I went to the world trade center the first time. So it's, it's so powerful to see it back there. And it's sort of new shape taking on all the, the heat and the, and the, the way it's been sort of mangled, but still, it's still beautiful. It's still.
[00:49:57] Beth: And really, I think the way that they set up the entire Memorial is an unbelievable tribute to the lives lost and to the bravery of first responders, because it is all about as our tour guide kept saying reaffirming life. So there are hundreds of white Oak trees planted, and he talked about how those are trees that have a very long lifespan and grow very, very tall.
So 50, 60 years from now, it is going to be an amazing sight of trees. There's also a tree called the survivor tree that actually. Grew in the original world trade center complex somehow made it through 9/11. They found green leaves on it a month out from 9/11 and transported it to take care of it.
It survived a lightning storm before they brought it back. This tree is just a resilient tree.
[00:50:52] Sarah: Very true. And it's not like, it's not like it's an Oak tree. It's like, it's like an ornamental pear. It's not a tree you necessarily associate with sort of a hearty breed of tree, but man, it's survived and it's grown beautifully now at the site.
And there were so many things where they're trying to be, you know, the trees are not just a Memorial. There they're a park. It's a place that will move forward and be a living, breathing. Space. And that was so true, you know, all across that area. I mean, they couldn't, they've built new office buildings and he talked about how it used to be like 90% of the office buildings around the world trade center where the financial industry, well, now it's new media, new media, like Spotify is down there, like the world has changed and they've adapted to those changes with the office buildings themselves.
There's a beautiful building called the Oculus and it sort of looks like big white eyelashes. I don't know how to describe it, but it's we'll put some photos in the show notes. It's a beautiful building and it's the transportation hub. And then there's also a mall down in there because there was a mall below the world trade center.
And he talked about how within this building, there are glass panels at the top. It can be opened. And on the anniversary every year they open the. Windows and li relate, you know, sort of bring in fresh air and let the air release because people died in that space and in the way that they need to move forward.
They also need to allow for this sort of breathing of fish, fresh air releasing and turning over every year, because it's, it's a very complicated space. Now, there are a lot of things in that space. There is death and Memorial. There is life and business and shopping and transportation and people moving and living their everyday lives.
All those things are present in this space. And I think that they've done a really good job of giving form to all those different functions within that space.
[00:52:52] Beth: Our guide talked about how the entire space is meant to draw people in and to constantly send a message that you cannot destroy a space. You cannot remove life from a space.
It will come back and no matter what happens anywhere on earth, there will be people to come and reclaim that space and make it something good and beautiful. And, and I think they've really done that. And so another way that they have commemorated the twin towers in the footprint of each of the towers is a large pool of water and pool.
Doesn't really do justice to what this is. There's water, just running down the walls of these pools. And then in the center of each one is what looks like just a bottomless second pool, almost where all the water, it doesn't look like a drain or something. It looks like a second pool. And so all of this water running down the walls then runs into this second pool.
That you can't see the end of which is supposed to symbolize the endless grief associated with this event, but it's also water and water is life. And there is a sort of shelf all the way around the pool where names of the victims are engraved in a way where you can put flowers and flags and objects into these individuals names.
You can touch them is a very sensory, heavy experience. And then you can slide your hands beneath those shelves and actually touch the water too.
[00:54:24] Sarah: So after our tour, we entered the 9/11 museum and immediately you, you realize sort of the depth of the space you go very sort of deep underground. There are soaring ceilings.
A lot of times, because they have to fit in massive structures that really give you the scale of the world trade center itself. In fact, as we were walking in, the first thing I was struck by was how they have to set up the world trade center. And here's my thoughts as I was sharing them with Beth, as we were walking through the museum, as we're starting through the Memorial, I'm realizing they have to spend so much time setting up the perspective of what the world trade centers were because for so many people they'll never know, you know, as someone who was pretty much into adulthood on September 11th, like I thought we would start with the attacks and what happened.
And because I understand the scope of the buildings, I understood what they symbolized. I'd seen them before in my life, but there will be generations of people or. So so many people that just don't understand what the buildings were before they fell. And that kinda hit me in a big way as we're walking through the Memorial.
[00:55:46] Beth: So you descend this staircase and as you do, you walk alongside that piece of stairway that was removed from one of the towers. And seeing that for me, just drew me right into the experience of these buildings. There is also an unbelievably powerful art installation of watercolor panels in different blues where different artists were invited to recall the color of the sky on the morning of September 11th.
And in the midst of that, there is a quote from bird. No day shall erase you from the memory of time, forged out of pieces of iron from the building. So it's a really powerful way to begin the museum. And as you come in, you hear voices of people talking about their experiences of that day.
[00:56:39] Clip: I wanted to talk to the people that I love the most...
[00:57:07] Sarah: The sensory experience of walking into the museum and hearing all those voices in the museum itself, it felt like walking through the documentary. I talked about a lot when we worked through the timeline, which is 102 minutes that changed America, which is just found footage that walks minute by minute, through the September 11th attacks, they have the audio of the, the commander asking for a roll call of the ladders and brigades present in the south tower with him.
They have that, that plays in one section of the museum. You ha you hear all these voices talking about throughout that you see the today show reporting. It's, it's very intense. It's it's like walking through the day itself because there are so many. Audio and sensory experiences, and they've done such a good job.
And in particular, in certain parts of making you really step into the moment of that day. So there is an alcove where they talk about people who'd fell out of the windows of the world trade centers because of the heat and the flames above the crash sites themselves. They made a choice that I thought was very profound and that they're, they show photos on the wall, but you have to look up, they push the photos way up the wall.
And so you literally have to look up at these photos and in exact same way that the people on the ground that day had to look up and witness this and they share two quotes, one woman saying, I felt like I had to look away. It was the only respectful choice. And another woman saying, I felt like I had to watch it was the only respectful choice.
And I thought that was a really nuanced, profound way to say. This was a very intense experience that everyone reacted to the same way and that's okay. That's okay. I don't know if we did a good enough job after 9/11 of telling each other, like we are all going to react to this differently and that is okay.
I mean, and I think that's even true of the experience of the museum and Memorial itself. You're good. Everybody's going to have a different experience. A lot of people have asked me, did you, did you hear it read some of the victims and the families and their responses to it? And I have, and I understand that some people don't enjoy the museum and don't enjoy the Memorial.
And I think that's fine. And I think the difficulty of the people designing it is as important as the victims families are. This museum has to stand decades, hundreds of years after anyone who was alive during that time. We'll still be here, including the victims and their families. And that's so difficult to think through how they're going to experience it.
But also think we have to explain, we'll have to explain this to people who were not even alive, sort of like I was talking about with the buildings. We have to set this up for people because not everyone who experiences the 9/11 Memorial museum will have been alive during 9/11 itself. And that's just so hard to think about that.
We all bring such different things to a Memorial and a museum like this.
[01:00:13] Beth: The day before we went to the 9/11 museum, Chad and I went to the Museum of Modern Art. And we spend a lot of time in this exhibit about Croatia and Slovenia and that area of the world and the architecture that was important there. And there were lots and lots of found household objects. And I spent a lot of time just kind of looking at those objects with curiosity and, and feeling myself transported to a different place in time.
And so it was such a different experience to be in a place where everything looked pretty contemporary. You know, there, there are shoes that some of the women leaving the building wore and they look like shoes that anyone would wear today. And there were Metro cards and driver's licenses and all of these things that just look like stuff you have in your house.
And it really did give me that feeling that you just described, Sarah, that this is preserved. Not for me. This is preserved for people who didn't live through this time and the television footage that they use throughout the museum, I think contrasted immediately. So, so for example, there is a giant projection of the north towers collapse, and it looks like something out of a movie, right?
It, the way it just goes straight down so fast. So you see that and then you turn around and there are huge pieces of concrete and iron to help you remember. This is very real. It isn't from a movie. You know, that that is very real. And look at the intensity of these materials, look at how deeply impacted the strongest things we know to build with where, by what happened.
I just thought it was a really important way to keep you grounded in the physicality of what occurred.
[01:02:06] Sarah: I mean, they literally have a steel beam that has bent into a horseshoe shape. And when you watch. Something that large collapse on something as small as a television screen, it's just so difficult to reflect on the size and intensity of what happened.
And so walking around within the footprints of the building, seeing the steel beams, seeing that they have the Surrey wall, which is an architectural part of the buildings themselves that were used to hold back because it was so close to the ports to hold back the water and to keep the water from seeping through and just they're, they're massive.
They're so huge. And to have that, like she said, the physicality of the buildings themselves surrounding you and the physicality of what the collapse meant was very intense. And the other thing, the other choice they make is. The white Oak trees outside are symbolic. And then within, they put a white Oak leaf next to the name of anyone who lost their lives on 9/11.
And they tell a lot of individual stories. And here's what I noticed as I was walking through the museum itself and interacting with the white Oak leaf symbols. I found myself being hyper aware of the white Oak symbols that symbolized somebody who passed away. And I would like start to read because they would put them towards the name at the heading, but not the paragraph.
And I'm just looking at the paragraph and I'll be like, no, why? No. And I can feel my brain being like, don't look up. Don't look, don't look, don't take the headline. I thought that was really smart though. It was, I think you could like lessen the impact by telling yourself, well, maybe that person survived. You know what I mean? But putting the white oak on everything, didn't allow you to do that.
[01:03:58] Beth: It is a Testament, I think, to how powerful the storytelling is throughout the museum, that you still feel yourself drawn in that way, even though, you know, what the inevitable conclusion is everywhere, there's still that element of feeling so connected to the people and to the city.
And to just, I think to the idea of America being threatened in this way, it, it occurred to me so many times as we were walking through, especially seeing melted vehicles and crushed concrete that these are sites. I don't see often through the luxury of where I was born, because there are places in the world where buildings collapse because of bomb.
Hmm regularly. And I think just getting myself in the mind frame of what it must be like to live that way all the time and what it means to be in a place where that doesn't happen. And then it does, it was a really profound experience for me.
[01:05:05] Sarah: Another thing that I learned from the museum that I found really impactful was they talked a lot about the physicality of the buildings and how they oriented people in the space.
And so when people came out or when people were walking around, particularly after the buildings collapsed and the dust went everywhere, like people did not know where they were. Like, they just couldn't orient themselves in the space itself because the buildings were so important to the space in the city and that particularly the downtown area and to think.
You know, new Yorkers who are so capable of moving around a city as massive of the one they live in to have come out and how different that space must have been. If people could not even tell where they were in this city, that they know, like the back of their hand.
[01:06:02] Beth: I was also struck by hearing some sound from a police officer who had been near the towers when the north tower collapsed and had gone to a hospital and was being treated.
And the folks at the hospital were saying, We don't mean to shove you aside, but we need to prepare because we know lots and lots of people are going to be coming. And the police officer looked up and said, there's no one to come. It's all gone. There's no one coming because she knew when she saw that tower collapse, how unlikely survival was.
And to just think about those moments when people were processing, what had happened, you know, our tour guide kept saying, you can't know how you would feel what your brain will do, how you'll make sense of things. And I hope that none of you ever have to be in a situation like this, where you, you just can't, you can't even begin to put yourself in the shoes of the people who witnessed this thing.
And I think all of those reflections and voices throughout the Memorial help give you a sense of how very different people. From all over the world who converged here in New York city made sense of this. And, and it was just really touching for me. And I think the thing I walked away with more than anything else was wanting to find a way to be a peacemaker in the world because.
You see all of this destruction and, and you can't name why, and it, it just really affected me on an emotional level about sort of what are we here to do? What are we here to do with each other?
[01:07:46] Sarah: So as we left the museum, Beth and I sat outside the Memorial and shared our initial reflections, as well as thoughts from our walking tour guide.
[01:07:56] Tour Guide: Thanks for coming on the tour.
[01:07:57] Sarah: Yeah. We just wanted to ask you why you started doing the tour.
[01:08:00] Tour Guide: Theraputic. You know, quite frankly.
[01:08:03] Sarah: Yeah.
[01:08:04] Tour Guide: You know, I mean, I'll tell you, I mean, I avoided this place like the plague. I had no desire to come anywhere near here, as long as there were ruins and everything down here.
And I just decided, you know, at a certain point they kept asking me, you know, we know you were right there. Right. And I'm not interested. I don't want to do that. I don't want to remember all that stuff. But then I came down here and saw just fantastic this place is. And I thought, you know, this I can do. Cause there's a message here. It's gets way beyond everything else that happened.
[01:08:31] Sarah: I found it really profound to both start with one, the north tower Memorial to go through the museum and the dead end sitting outside the south tower Memorial.
It's so profound how you can step up to the memorials and how the sound of water overtakes the sounds of the city in both small ways and big ways. You can still hear the sounds of the voices next to you and people are experiencing it in many different ways. And there's just this sort of flow of humanity standing next to this giant footprint and all the sound of this rushing water.
And so you see this big hole, but you can also stand there and touch both the water itself and the names of individual people. Will lives and it is such a profound experience that I hope every American has the chance to have.
[01:09:51] Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
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