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The fourth plane crashed into a rural area in Pennsylvania, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It was not known what caused that aircraft to crash so far from any obvious targets, leading to speculation that it may have been shot down by the military.
A Virginia congressman, Rep. James Moran, said the intended target of the Pennsylvania plane was apparently Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, 85 miles away.
All four flights were transcontinental flights, with three heading to Los Angeles and one to San Francisco. They may have been selected because their fuel tanks would have been nearly full upon impact.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a nationwide "ground stop" at about 9:25 a.m. EDT Tuesday morning, ordering all departing flights canceled nationwide and any planes already in the air to land at the nearest airport. Flights heading to the United States from overseas were redirected to Canada.
Unconfirmed reports initially said that as many as eight airliners may have been hijacked, but there were no more crashes reported after 10 a.m. EDT. as the skies cleared.
"This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that's ever taken place in the world," said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane's Transport in London. "It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups [are] on that list. ... I would name at the top of the list Osama bin Laden."
The nearly simultaneous attacks pointed to a meticulously planned strike that may well have employed trained pilots, other experts on terrorism said.
"No pilot, even with a gun to his head, is going to fly into the world towers," said Gene Poteat, president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
"They [the presumed terrorists] flew the planes themselves," he speculated.
American Airlines Flight 11, on its way from Boston to Los Angeles, was hijacked Tuesday morning shortly after takeoff from Logan International Airport. The airline said it was a Boeing 767-200, carrying 81 passengers, nine flight attendants and two pilots.
American stated that Flight 11 was the plane that struck Two World Trade Center, the northernmost of the twin towers on the southern tip of Manhattan, crashing into it at about 8:50 a.m. EDT.
About ten minutes later, another commercial jet, apparently United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles, approached from the southwest and crashed directly into of Two World Trade Center, the south tower.
United Airlines could only say that Flight 175 lost radio contact between Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia. It carried 56 passengers, two pilots and seven flight attendants.
A second American Airlines plane, Flight 77, en route from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, was thought to be the craft that crashed into the Pentagon. It was a Boeing 757 carrying 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots.
News commentator Barbara Olson, wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, was among those aboard Flight 77. Sources tell Fox News that Ms. Olson called her husband from her cell phone twice during the flight, telling him that the hijackers were using knife-like instruments to control the passengers in crew.
Undercover FAA special agents found that American security screening transported unaccompanied baggage, failed to properly check passenger identification and did not ask appropriate security questions of passengers.
United Airlines has no related security breaches, but was fined recently for shipping inappropriate flammable materials.
Both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed within hours as their internal structures failed, apparently from the heat of the fires.
Military jets were spotted circling New York City at about 11 a.m. EDT.
Two World Trade Center, with a television broadcast tower adding several hundred feet to its height, was briefly the world's tallest building when it was erected in 1972. It was surpassed by Chicago's Sears Tower in 1975, which in turn was topped by the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1998.
Several New York television and radio stations, including WABC-TV and WNBC-TV, effectively went off the air when Two World Trade Center collapsed.
Four hundred miles to the southwest, American Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon at about 9:45 a.m., within an hour of the attacks in New York City.
Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said there were "extensive casualties and an unknown number of fatalities. "We don't know the extent of the injuries," he said.
"The leadership of the Defense Department is OK. The secretary [Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld] is OK," Flood told reporters.
"The whole building shook" with the impact, said Terry Yonkers, an Air Force civilian employee at work inside the Pentagon at the time of the attack. "There was screaming and pandemonium," he said, but the evacuation ordered shortly afterward was carried out smoothly.
"I saw a big jet flying close to the building coming at full speed. There was a big noise when it hit the building," said Oscar Martinez, who witnessed the attack.
The departments of Justice, State, Treasury and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency were evacuated — an estimated 20,000 at the Pentagon alone. Agents with automatic weapons patrolled the White House grounds.
About half an hour later, part of the Pentagon, one of the world's largest structures and the headquarters of the U.S. military, collapsed as well.
The crash at the Pentagon could have been a lot worse, as the wedge of the Pentagon that was hit recently underwent renovations and was largely "unoccupied" at the time of the impact.
However, there are reports of "dozens" of fatalities, perhaps from adjacent offices or from passengers on board the aircraft
United Airlines Flight 93, a 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed about 10 a.m. about 8 miles east of Jennerstown, Pa.
It was carrying 38 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendants.
The Somerset County airport, where Flight 93 plane may have trying to land, is a small, rural facility that does not handle such aircraft.
An emergency dispatcher in neighboring Westmoreland County received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in the bathroom on that flight, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer.
The man repeatedly told officials the call was not a hoax.
"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Cramer quoted the man from a transcript of the call.
The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.
"It shook the whole station," said Bruce Grine, owner of Grine's Service Center in Shanksville, Pa., about 2 miles from the crash. "Everybody ran outside, and by that time the fire whistle was blowing."
Michael R. Merringer was out on a mountain bike ride with his wife, Amy, about two miles away from the crash site of Flight 93.
"I heard the engine gun two different times and then I heard a loud bang and the windows of the houses all around rattled," Merringer said. "I looked up and I saw the smoke coming up."
In Chicago, United CEO James Goodwin said the airline is working with authorities including the FBI. United said it was sending a team to Johnstown, Pa., to assist in the investigation and to provide assistance to family members.
"Today's events are a tragedy and our prayers are with everyone at this time," Goodwin, said.
Los Angeles International Airport, to which three of the four hijacked airplanes were heading, was under tight security. Police were not allowing people to unload baggage to board flights at the American Airlines terminal.
At least 20 Los Angeles police officers were at the terminal.
One officer Lt. Howard Whitehead said, "All we know is what we've heard from radio and television. We're not allowing any unattended vehicles near the terminals."
Vehicle traffic was extremely light at the terminal area and the parking lot near the American terminal and the large international terminal were about only about one-third full.
Many people with canceled flights were at the American counter seeking information. Others were carrying and pulling their bags, looking for taxis and other ways to leave after their flights were canceled
WASHINGTON Two weeks before the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., FBI agents were at a flight school in Oklahoma asking questions about a man now suspected of having a link to those attacks, sources said.
The agents, sources said, were interested in Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested August 17 in Minnesota on an alleged passport violation. Moussaoui was in custody at the time of last week's attacks -- being held as a material witness -- but authorities are investigating whether he and others were part of a broader plot to hijack and crash even more jets.
The disclosure came as at least four people are being held as material witnesses into the U.S. investigation into the September 11 terrorist attacks.
An estimated 75 people are in government custody, held either as material witnesses to the investigation or on possible immigration violations. They are all being questioned about the attacks, the FBI said, and their level of cooperation has varied. Material witnesses are people who are not necessarily considered suspects but are believed to have valuable information and may pose a flight risk.
In another development, Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers on board the first plane to slam into the World Trade Center last week, met with an Iraqi intelligence official somewhere in Europe earlier this year, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
U.S. officials cautioned, however, that the meeting does not mean that Iraq had a role in last week's terrorist attacks. Investigators are exploring what the contact between Atta and the intelligence officer may mean.
The fact that FBI agents were at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, two weeks before any attacks would seem to contradict the agency's assertion that it was not aware of any connection between aviation schools and suspected terrorists.
"There were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country," FBI Director Robert Mueller said Monday.
In Oklahoma, Moussaoui had apparently raised suspicious because he sought training in flying commercial jets despite having a lack of experience.
The possibility that pilots were being trained for terrorist plots was revealed earlier this year during testimony at the trial of four men charged with the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa. U.S. prosecutors believe Osama bin Laden -- described as the "prime suspect" in the hijackings -- was behind that plot as well. He, in fact, was indicted for the 1998 bombings.
U.S. investigators also believe that two of the dead World Trade Center hijackers had toured the Oklahoma facility, seeking flight training. Those two hijackers later enrolled in a Florida aviation school.
Meanwhile, the FBI was warned six years ago of a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings, Philippine investigators said.
Philippine authorities learned of the plot after a small fire in a Manila apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef escaped at the time, but agents caught his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, who told them about plots to hijack U.S. jets.
-- The FBI is analyzing the hard drives from a number of computers seized during the investigation, an agency source told CNN. Investigators have collected e-mails from the hard drives and from cooperating Internet service providers.
The e-mails, in English and Arabic, contain "both evidence and chit chat," the source said.
-- A grand jury in White Plains, a suburb north of New York, will review evidence and issue subpoenas in the attack on the World Trade Center, according to a report by The Associated Press.
-- Law enforcement officials removed two cardboard boxes and five grocery bags of materials from inside a three-story house in Bayonne, New Jersey, late Monday in an investigation related to the attacks last Tuesday that leveled the World Trade Center.
-- Technicians have examined the so-called black boxes from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania during Tuesday's terrorist attack, but the FBI and the boxes' manufacturer aren't saying what information was recovered.
-- The hijackers left behind materials suggesting they had back-up plans for their mission of terrorism, according to government sources. No details about the plans were given.
The material was said to have been confiscated from one or more automobiles left at the airports where the hijackers began their suicide flights. It was not immediately known whether those automobiles included the car at Logan International Airport in Boston registered to Mohammed Atta, who was on the first jetliner that struck the World Trade Center
WASHINGTON The FBI retracted Wednesday a warning it had issued Tuesday to firefighters across the country that terrorists could hijack their trucks and use them as bombs.
"I was advised that that was a mistake, that that message was sent out," said Special Agent John Sennett of the FBI's office in Albany, N.Y.
"It's not considered to be a credible or specific threat."
Tuesday's FBI warning had said fire and emergency service vehicles could be stolen by terrorist groups and turned into rolling bombs aimed at military bases or other government installations.
The warning was sent by the FBI to the National Volunteer Fire Council and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, which passed it on to local fire departments.
The FBI had asked fire services to review the security of their stations and vehicles and, if a vehicle was stolen, to notify the FBI immediately.
The FBI did not say there was any specific and credible threat that caused it to issue the warning. But one official said, "In an abundance of caution, the FBI has taken a number of steps in reaction to every bit of information and threats received during the course of this investigation regardless of the reliability of the source."
That is, whether the information turned out to be true or not, the FBI was passing along all information it was gleaning from interviews and tips.
Some firefighters told CNN their vehicles -- even those carrying patients -- were stopped and searched upon entering medical facilities
More than a week after the terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center in New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Tuesday the likelihood of finding any more survivors in the rubble is "very, very small" but that "those chances are not totally ended or over."
Giuliani revised the confirmed death toll in the attacks to 218. Of those, 152 have been identified. The number of missing is now at 5,422 people.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Pentagon officials said they were considering ending the search for survivors a week after hijackers slammed a plane into a wing of the U.S. military headquarters.
The hope of recovering survivors still ran strong in New York, from makeshift memorials to the thousands working around-the-clock at the disaster scene. v Some emergency workers are being ordered to take time off after being on the job virtually nonstop since the attacks. And in observance of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana services were being offered for workers and their families at ground zero Tuesday.
Nine search and rescue teams worked at the site Tuesday, and two more teams were being deployed. Another four teams are expected to be sent Thursday.
Officials continue to refer to the operation at ground zero as a "rescue mission," emphasizing the possibility victims could be found alive in the seven-level underground complex, which housed a subway station, commuter train station and retail shops and restaurants.
"I think everyone wants to be the one to find somebody," said rescue worker Jack O'Brien.
U.N. Secretary-Gen. Kofi Annan toured the site Tuesday and thanked firefighters and police. "The U.N. is a New York institution," he said.
The city's Office of Emergency Management is putting teams together to assess what structural damage was caused to the buildings around the World Trade Center complex, spokeswoman Gay Ruby said.
Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate services firm, said all seven World Trade Center buildings either collapsed or partially collapsed as a result of the terrorist attacks.
The destroyed buildings included the twin towers; the 22-story World Trade Center Marriott Hotel; 5 World Trade Center, which housed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and various judicial offices; and 7 World Trade Center, which housed the U.S. General Accounting Office, the OEM, the Secret Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The partially collapsed buildings are 4 World Trade Center and 6 World Trade Center. The latter is the U.S. Customs House.
Five other buildings have "possible structural damage," according to Grubb & Ellis, including the American Express building in the World Financial Center and the Bankers Trust building, both across the street from the 2 World Trade Center, the south tower.
As many as 13 other buildings in the vicinity suffered less serious damage, the firm reported.
Electricity is being restored to streetlights and small businesses, and officials expect it to be back to normal for all businesses by Saturday morning.
The Environmental Protection Agency is removing asbestos from streets and buildings and set up monitoring stations around the site and in New Jersey.
Pentagon officials had not decided Tuesday whether to officially end the search for survivors but said the topic is on the table.
"That is definitely being discussed. I don't believe that decision has been made yet," Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman told Reuters Tuesday morning.
Four rescue teams of about 60 members each, along with dozens of medical personnel and firemen, have been working in the area.
Rescue crews overnight pulled the remains of five more people from the charred site where hijackers crashed an airliner into the five-sided building just outside Washington.
A Pentagon employee died Tuesday of injuries received in the attack, Pentagon officials said, raising the projected death toll from last week's attack from 188 to 189, including those who died on the airliner. Only 11 bodies have been identified so far.
The Pentagon plans on augmenting security with U.S. military troops, defense officials said.
The troops will be used to augment security provided by the Defense Protective Service, which is the Pentagon's civilian police force, and by military police who have already taken up posts inside the Pentagon building.
No timetable was provided by the officials for the arrival of the troops.
At the site of the World Trade Center, fires continued to burn under the rubble. So far, about 49,553 tons of debris have been removed, but city officials said 20 times that much probably remains.
"We pulled out a piece of steel of tower one that said '96th floor,'" said iron worker Anthony Esola. He said the fires still burning make the debris so hot that "if you stay in one place too long, your boots start to melt."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts it will take 45 days to complete the job.
At the firehouse at 8th Avenue and 48th Street -- which is missing 15 firefighters from the attacks -- a shrine of flowers, candles and signs has taken over the front sidewalk. The home of Engine Company 54, Ladder Company 4 and Battalion 9 also posted the pictures of the 15 missing men on the wall outside.
"Death is a part of every situation. This is just on a much larger level," said Capt. Dale Brown of the Intermountain Fire Department, which is working at the site alongside its New York counterparts. "Most guys from the New York Fire Department are feeling this just tremendous loss."
With more than 300 firefighters reported missing, the New York Fire Department is one of the city's hardest-hit public services. Thousands are expected to attend a mass interfaith memorial dedicated to the firefighters, planned for September 23 in Central Park.
The gradual reopening of lower Manhattan, evacuated after the twin towers fell, meant thousands of residents, business workers and students remained shut out of the area.
New York University spokesman John Beckman said the school is temporarily housing 1,700 affected students in two Midtown hotels, paying for their books and school supplies, and giving them a small allowance to buy clothes and necessities.
"That was a cause of anxiety, because they were starting classes without access to study materials," said Beckman, who declined to discuss the cost to the school.
He said it was unclear when the city would allow the students to return to the residence halls.
Little more than an hour after United Airlines Flight 93 left Newark International Airport for San Francisco, California, the 757 reversed course and started heading toward Washington.
Passengers began making frantic phone calls home.
Passenger Jeremy Glick, 31, a 6-foot-1 judo champ, called his wife to tell her his plane had been hijacked. He said the hijackers had stabbed a flight attendant -- and to find out if what he had heard was true -- that another plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
When she said yes, Glick put the phone down. When he came back on the line, he told her the male passengers had taken a vote to attack the hijackers.
Todd Beamer apparently was one of those male passengers who voted to attack. He used an air-phone to call a GTE supervisor who patched him through to the FBI.
Beamer told the FBI that one hijacker positioned in the rear of the plane claimed to have a bomb strapped to his body and that he -- Beamer -- and others were going to jump him.
He had the GTE supervisor promise to call his wife, Lisa, who was due with their third child in January. After Beamer put the phone down, the supervisor overheard him say, "Let's roll."
Passenger Tom Burnett, a 6-foot-2 former high school quarterback, was also apparently part of the group. He called his wife four times during the hijacking. On the last call, he told her the male passengers were getting ready to do something.
"He said, 'They've already knifed a guy; they're saying they have a bomb. Please call the authorities,' " said Deena Burnett.
The fourth member of the passenger revolt -- and there may have been others -- was Mark Bingham -- a 6-foot-5 rugby player. He was sitting in the first-class section of the plane with Tom Burnett and, it turns out, two of the hijackers.
Bingham called his mother to say goodbye.
"He said, 'I want you to know I love you very much, and I'm calling you from the plane. We've been taken over. There are three men who say they've got a bomb,' " said Alice Hoglan.
There's no way anyone can know what happened after the passengers decided to attack.
It is known that after the jet reversed course and started heading toward Washington, President Bush authorized U.S. fighter planes to shoot it down if it threatened the nation's capital.
It never got that far. Flight 93 crashed in western Pennsylvania in a field 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
