September 11 attacks

• 1. Introduction

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  The September 11 attacks, known around the world simply as 9/11, unfolded across a single Tuesday morning in 2001. Four airliners bound for California left airports in Boston, Washington and Newark that morning. Before the morning ended, nineteen men had taken control of all four aircraft. Within hours, the skyline of lower Manhattan had changed forever, part of the Pentagon had collapsed, and a field in rural Pennsylvania had become a crash site. The attacks were carried out by the organization al-Qaeda, and they remain the deadliest terrorist attack in history. This documentary asks how a plot of this scale was conceived and assembled, and what the man behind it said he wanted. It asks why warnings that seemed so clear in hindsight never reached the people who could act on them. It follows the passengers, office workers and rescuers who made decisions in minutes that others will examine for decades. And it asks what the attacks set in motion: wars, new laws, new fears, and a rebuilding that took years to finish.

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• 2. A Fatwa and a Grievance

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  In 1996, Osama bin Laden, by then stripped of his Saudi Arabian citizenship, issued a fatwa declaring jihad against the United States. He demanded that American troops leave Arabia. Bin Laden read the teachings of Muhammad as forbidding non-Muslims from the land, so he saw every American soldier stationed there as a provocation to all Muslims. Before this, he had lived in Sudan, until the Sudanese government expelled him under Saudi and American pressure. He then returned to Afghanistan, where the Taliban governed and allowed al-Qaeda to use the country as its base.

  A second fatwa in 1998 widened his list of complaints. He objected to American support for Israel and condemned the sanctions against Iraq, which he called a "protracted blockade". In a 1998 interview with the American journalist John Miller, he argued that American history draws no line between civilians and soldiers, and he extended that logic even to women and children. Investigators have treated these statements as evidence of what drove him.

  After the attacks, his story shifted. On the 16th of September 2001, Al Jazeera broadcast a statement in which he said: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation". Videos in the following years moved him from praise of the attacks to a full admission. In a 2004 video, he said the sight of towers destroyed in Lebanon during the 1982 war inspired him to "destroy towers in America, so it could taste some of what we are tasting".

  A 2002 manifesto added more grievances, from the treatment of Palestinians to the conflict in Kashmir and the American refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Some authors have proposed deeper motives, including a sense of humiliation across the Islamic world and a hope of provoking a wider war. In April 2002, the Al Jazeera journalist Yosri Fouda met two men in hiding, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who admitted their part in the plot.

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• 3. Years in the Making

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  Handwritten notes seized in the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden carried a revealing heading: "The Birth of the Idea of September 11". Dated September 2002, they trace the idea to the deliberate crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 in October 1999 by its co-pilot, Gameel Al-Batouti, which killed more than 200 people. Bin Laden wrote that only Mohammed Atef and Abu al-Khair knew of it at first. Yet the American government told a different story at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. It said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed conceived the plan and first presented it to bin Laden in 1996.

  Mohammed was no newcomer to attacks on New York. He had organized and financed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, carried out by his nephew Ramzi Yousef. The two later planned the Bojinka plot for January 1995, which failed but influenced what followed. Bin Laden rejected the 1996 version as too elaborate. Its list of targets included the Library Tower in Los Angeles, now called the U.S. Bank Tower. After the 1998 African embassy bombings, bin Laden approved a new version in late 1998 or early 1999.

  The first operatives were Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, veterans of the Bosnian war, who reached the United States in mid-January 2000. They took flying lessons in San Diego, spoke little English and performed poorly, so they became secondary "muscle" hijackers. A better pool came from the Hamburg cell in Germany. In late 1999, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh travelled to meet al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bin Laden chose them because they were educated, spoke English and knew life in the West.

  The fourth pilot was found by screening. Al-Qaeda discovered that Hani Hanjour already held a commercial pilot's license, and he arrived in San Diego on the 8th of December 2000. Bin al-Shibh was refused a visa, since as a Yemeni he was judged likely to overstay, so he coordinated from Hamburg. The three Hamburg pilots trained at Huffman Aviation in South Florida. In July 2001, Atta met bin al-Shibh in Spain to settle details, including the final targets.

  Mohammed later said al-Qaeda first considered nuclear installations, then dropped the idea for fear things could "get out of control".

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• 4. Missed Warnings

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  In late 1999, the National Security Agency intercepted a phone call that mentioned a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, the name al-Mihdhar and the name "Nawaf". The agency feared that "Something nefarious might be afoot", yet it took no further action. The CIA already knew from Saudi intelligence that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi belonged to al-Qaeda. A CIA team entered al-Mihdhar's Dubai hotel room and found he held a U.S. visa. The agency's Alec Station alerted services worldwide but did not tell the FBI.

  Malaysian officers watched the meeting on the 5th of January 2000 and reported that the men were flying on to Bangkok. The CIA passed this to no one and never asked the State Department to put al-Mihdhar on a watchlist. When an FBI liaison asked to inform the bureau, he was told: "This is not a matter for the FBI".

  By late June 2001, the counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke and CIA director George Tenet were "convinced that a major series of attacks was about to come". The CIA expected them in Saudi Arabia or Israel. In early July, Clarke put domestic agencies on full alert and warned them: "Something spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon". He later wrote that information about known terrorists in the country and strange activity at flight schools never reached him or the White House.

  On the 13th of July, a CIA agent named Tom Wilshire emailed superiors asking to tell the FBI that al-Hazmi was in the country. Nobody answered. Also in July, a Phoenix FBI agent, Kenneth Williams, warned of bin Laden sending students to aviation schools. Jordan passed on word of a plot codenamed "The Big Wedding". On the 6th of August, the President's daily briefing was titled Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US. In mid-August, a Minnesota flight school reported Zacarias Moussaoui for "suspicious questions", but FBI headquarters refused a search of his laptop for lack of probable cause.

  In April 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft told the 9/11 Commission the greatest structural cause was "the wall" between criminal investigators and intelligence agents.

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• 5. Four Flights

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  Two Boeing 757s and two Boeing 767s were chosen because large aircraft on long routes carried the most fuel. American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston's Logan Airport at 7:59 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, five hijackers armed with boxcutters took over, using mace and an apparent explosive to frighten the hostages. United Airlines Flight 175 left Logan at 8:14 and was seized at 8:42, with both pilots murdered. American Airlines Flight 77 left Dulles at 8:20 and was taken at 8:51.

  On two flights, the hijackers tried to announce a ransom demand to calm the passengers. Atta and Jarrah pressed the wrong button, so their words reached air traffic controllers instead, and the controllers realized something was wrong.

  At 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 struck the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors. Many people assumed it was an accident. At 9:03, Flight 175 hit the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, which proved the attack was deliberate. At 9:37, Flight 77 hit the west side of the Pentagon. Nine minutes earlier, United Airlines Flight 93 had been seized, after leaving Newark 42 minutes late. The hijackers had waited 46 minutes before striking.

  That delay changed the outcome. Passengers and crew on Flight 93 learned of the earlier crashes through phone calls to the ground and organized a revolt at 9:57. As they reached the cockpit door, the hijacker-pilot rolled and pitched the aircraft. At 10:03:11 a.m., it crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was about twenty minutes from Washington. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later said the target was the Capitol.

  The South Tower, struck lower, faster and at a corner, collapsed first at 9:59 a.m. after burning for 56 minutes. The North Tower followed at 10:28. Debris from it set fire to 7 World Trade Center, which fell at 5:21 p.m. after burning for nearly seven hours.

  The confusion was enormous. One persistent report claimed a car bomb had gone off at the State Department. Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 was suspected of hijacking, then landed safely in Cleveland.

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• 6. Inside the Towers

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  On the 92nd floor of the North Tower, all 69 workers died. The crash severed every elevator shaft and falling debris blocked the stairwells. All three staircases in the tower were destroyed, so nobody at or above the impact zone could escape. Between 1,344 and 1,402 people were at, above or one floor below the impact, and all died. Some people climbed toward the roof hoping for helicopters, but the access doors were locked and no rescue plan existed.

  The South Tower told a different story. Stairwell A narrowly survived, and 14 people from the impact floors escaped through it, including Stanley Praimnath, who had watched the plane approach. Four more people escaped from the floors above. City 9-1-1 operators, poorly informed, told callers not to descend on their own. In total, 630 people died in the South Tower, fewer than half the North Tower's toll.

  Part of the reason was a decision by Eric Eisenberg, an executive at AON Insurance, to evacuate his firm's floors after the first crash. In the 17-minute gap, more than 900 of 1,100 AON employees present got out. Eisenberg was among the nearly 200 who did not. USA Today later called the failure to order a full evacuation "one of the day's great tragedies".

  The losses were uneven across employers. Cantor Fitzgerald, on the North Tower's 101st-105th floors, lost 658 employees, more than any other firm. Marsh lost 358 and Aon Corporation lost 176. At the Pentagon, 125 workers died, including Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, the highest-ranking military official killed there.

  The rescuers paid dearly as well. The fire department sent more than 200 units, about half its strength. The fire, police and Port Authority police departments set up separate command posts and searched the same floors twice. Their radios were incompatible, and malfunctioning repeaters meant many firefighters never heard the evacuation orders. In all, 414 emergency workers died, including 343 firefighters, 23 New York police officers and 37 Port Authority officers. The attacks killed 2,977 people.

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• 7. The Home Front

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  Ben Sliney was on his first day as the FAA's National Operations Manager when he ordered American airspace closed to international flights. About 500 flights were turned back or redirected. Canada received 226 of them and launched Operation Yellow Ribbon to shelter stranded passengers. For the first time in U.S. history, the emergency plan SCATANA was invoked. NORAD, meanwhile, had only nine minutes' notice of the first hijacking. Fighters took off without live ammunition, and Vice President Dick Cheney's shoot-down order at 10:20 a.m. came too late to be relayed.

  Bush's approval rating rose to 90% after the attacks. Mayor Rudy Giuliani won praise for his visible role. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the largest restructuring of the federal government in contemporary history. It also passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which civil liberties groups criticized for weakening judicial oversight. The National Security Agency began warrantless surveillance of telecommunications. A victim compensation fund was created, and by the deadline on the 11th of September 2003, 2,833 applications had arrived from families of those killed.

  Six days after the attacks, President Bush visited Washington's largest Islamic Center and asked that American Muslims be treated with respect. Hate crimes followed anyway. Sikhs were targeted because of their turbans. On the 15th of September 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh mistaken for a Muslim, was shot dead in Mesa, Arizona. One advocacy group documented media coverage of 645 bias incidents in a single week. Muslim organizations quickly condemned the attacks and organized blood drives, and in the decade that followed, interfaith worship involving U.S. congregations doubled from 7 to 14 percent.

  The markets stayed closed until the 17th of September. When they reopened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 684 points, or 7.1%, a record one-day decline. By week's end it had lost 14.3%. Some 18,000 small businesses near the site were destroyed or displaced, and air travel capacity was cut by nearly 20%.

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• 8. The Long Shadow

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  On the evening of the attacks, the CIA told President George W. Bush that al-Qaeda under bin Laden was responsible. NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter for the first and only time. The U.S. Congress passed the Authorization for the use of Military Force Against Terrorists on the 14th of September 2001, and it remains in effect. On the 7th of October 2001, the war in Afghanistan began with American and British air strikes. Kandahar fell on the 7th of December. Bin Laden escaped across the Pakistani border after the Battle of Tora Bora. He remained out of sight for almost ten years, until a U.S. raid killed him in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.

  At 2:40 p.m. on the day itself, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked aides for evidence of Iraqi involvement. The Bush administration rejected attacking Iraq at a Camp David meeting on the 15th of September, but later invaded anyway. As many as seven in ten Americans believed Saddam Hussein played a role. Three years later, Bush conceded he had not. The Costs of War Project has estimated that deaths from the attacks and the conflicts they incited exceed 4.5 million. The last regular U.S. troops left Afghanistan on the 30th of August 2021.

  Abroad, the Security Council condemned the attacks in Resolution 1368. Tony Blair held 54 meetings with world leaders to build support. Iranians held candlelit vigils, and Iran's president Mohammad Khatami said "Nations should not be punished in place of terrorists".

  In lower Manhattan, hundreds of thousands of tons of debris containing more than 2,500 contaminants spread across the area. An estimated 18,000 people developed illnesses from the dust. The Zadroga Act of 2010 created the World Trade Center Health Program. By September 2022, the fire department confirmed that 299 firefighters had died of 9/11-related illnesses. A year later, it reported losing as many members to those illnesses as on the day itself.

  The work of identification continues. As of 2025, 1,103 victims of the World Trade Center attacks remain unidentified, about 40% of the dead there. One World Trade Center began construction in 2006 and opened in 2014. Memorials stand in New York, Arlington County and at the Pennsylvania crash site of Flight 93.

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