presentation on 9/11

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Timeline: The September 11 terrorist attacks

The day that defined the beginning of the 21st Century for Americans

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people were killed in the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history.

The moment shocked the nation. Two planes, hijacked by Islamic jihadists vowing death to all Americans, plowed into both towers at the World Trade Center in New York. Another plane was flown into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane, presumably headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol, was heroically diverted by passengers and ended up crashing in an empty field in Pennsylvania. After reports of the first plane hitting the North Tower, millions watched the second plane hit the South Tower on live television.

It was a terrifying, startling, and humbling event for the country. The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest on American soil since the shock attack at Pearl Harbor 60 years before, and the sense of outrage was reminiscent of that moment. The attacks in New York occurred in the country’s busiest city on a busy workday. And the staggered nature of the attacks meant that news footage captured almost everything as it happened, ensuring that millions of Americans saw the events precisely as they unfolded.

September 11, 2001

5:45 AM – Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. They board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, they then board American Airlines Flight 11 .

7:59 AM – Flight 11 takes off from Boston, headed for Los Angeles, California. There are 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:15 AM – United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, also headed for Los Angeles. There are 51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:19 AM – A flight attendant on Flight 11 , Betty Ann Ong, alerts ground personnel that a hijacking is underway and that the cockpit is unreachable.

8:20 AM – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles, outside of Washington, DC, headed for Los Angeles. There are 53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:24 AM – Mohamed Atta, a hijacker on Flight 11 , unintentionally alerts air controllers in Boston to the attack. He meant to press the button that allowed him to talk to the passengers on his flight.

8:37 AM – After hearing the broadcast from Atta on Flight 11 , Boston air traffic control alerts the US Air Force’s Northeast Defense Sector, who then mobilize the Air National Guard to follow the plane.

8:42 AM – United Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a delay due to routine traffic. It was headed for San Francisco, California. There are 33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 hijackers are on board.

8:46 AM – Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. All passengers aboard are instantly killed, and employees of the WTC are trapped above the 91 st floor.

9:03 AM – Flight 175 crashes into the WTC’s South Tower. All passengers aboard are killed instantly and so are an unknown number of people in the tower.

9:05 AM – President George W. Bush, in an elementary school classroom in Florida, is informed about the hit on the second tower. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers the chilling news into the president’s ear. Bush later wrote about his response: “I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm… I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing the leader has to do is to project calm.” ( Miller Center )

9:28 AM – Hijackers attack on Flight 93 .

9:37 AM – Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All passengers aboard are instantly killed and so are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.

9:45 AM – US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon. All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

9:55 AM – Air Force One with President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.

9:57 AM – Passengers aboard Flight 93 begin to run up toward the cockpit. Jarrah, the pilot, begins to roll the plane back and forth in an attempt to destabilize the revolt.

9:59 AM – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:02 AM – Flight 93 plows into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although its ultimate target is unknown, it was likely heading for either the White House or the US Capitol.

10:18 AM – President Bush authorizes any non-grounded planes to be shot down. At that time, all four hijacked planes had already crashed but the president’s team was operating under the impression that Flight 93 was still in the air.

10:28 AM – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:53 AM – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders the US military to move to a higher state of alert, going to DEFCON 3.

11:45 AM – Air Force 1 lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.

12:15 PM – Airspace in the United States is completely free of all commercial and private flights.

1:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Barksdale.

2:30 PM – Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City, visits the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at what becomes known as Ground Zero.

3:00 PM – Air Force 1 lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and President Bush is immediately taken to a secure bunker that is capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

4:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Offutt and heads back toward Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC.

5:30 PM – Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses.

8:30 PM – President Bush addresses the nation.

Although to many Americans 9/11 seemed like a random act of terror, the roots of the event had been developing for years. A combination of factors that coalesced in the late 1990s led the catastrophic event. These factors included regional conditions in the Middle East that motivated the perpetrators, as well as intelligence lapses and failures that  left the United States vulnerable.

Osama Bin Laden was relatively unknown in the United States before 9/11, even as he was amassing popularity, followers, and fame in the Middle East during the 1990s. In 1988, he was one of the founders of al Qaeda, a militant Islamic terrorist organization that organized and carried out the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden called for indiscriminate killing of all Americans who, he claimed, were “the worst thieves in the world today” (9/11 Report, page 47). It was the perfect historical moment for that rallying cry.

Throughout the 20th century, a wave of secular, nationalist revolutions swept through the Middle East, taking root in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries. While these movements were awash in promising ideology, the new regimes quickly became autocratic and suppressed dissent. Their critics turned to violent revolution to express their dissatisfaction with the secular governments.

At the same time, social malaise, especially among young men who were struggling to find decent jobs and start their own families in corrupt oil states, provided easy targets for radicalization. Bin Laden’s message that America was the “head of the snake” and the root of all society’s problems resonated well with the discontent.

By the mid-1990s, Bin Laden was the head of al Qaeda, a multifaceted and highly developed terrorist network carrying out attack after attack on Americans in the Middle East. It was a new type of terrorism to which the US intelligence agencies struggled to adapt. Much of the intelligence community had not even imaged the specific type of hijacking and terrorism carried out on 9/11. They were preparing for threats such as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and bombing in 2000 of the USS Cole .

Much of the intelligence community’s focus was on reactive law enforcement activity rather than proactive countering of terrorism. A telling quote from the 9/11 commission report focuses on the lack of a proactive response: “The process was meant, by its nature, to mark for the public as the events finished – case solved, justice done. It was not designed to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come. Nor did it allow for aggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to terrorist tactics more generally – methods of entry and finance, and mode of operation inside the United States” (Commission Report, p. 73).

Bin Laden had amassed substantial power due to conditions in the Middle East as well as his charismatic leadership, and the US intelligence community was underprepared for a 9/11 style attack. In the aftermath of 9/11, these two factors continued to affect US policy in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq.

The immediate response to 9/11 was the George W. Bush administration’s War on Terror, which began in Afghanistan as a retaliation against al Qaeda for carrying out the attack. The Bush administration soon expanded the War on Terror into Iraq, and the consequences of these wars continue to affect the Middle East to this day. Almost 20 years later, the United States is still at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

There were domestic long-term effects of 9/11 as well. Thousands of people struggle with cancer and lasting chronic health problems relating to the toxicity from Ground Zero, the site where the Twin Towers used to stand. The September 11 attacks also changed American air travel as airlines began to require stringent security checks designed to prevent the types of weapons the hijackers used from slipping through.

Finally, the 9/11 attacks resulted in changes to the federal government and an expansion of executive power. A new cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security, was created, and the intelligence community was consolidated under the Director of National Intelligence to improve coordination between various agencies and departments. New legislation such as the USA Patriot Act expanded domestic security and surveillance, disrupted terrorist funding by cracking down on activities such as money laundering, and increased efficiency within the U.S. intelligence community.

The tragedy of September 11, 2001 will never be forgotten, and the aftermath is still continuing to unfold. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum opened on the site of the former World Trade Center on September 11, 2011, and features reflecting pools in the footprints of where the Twin Towers once stood.

Katherine Huiskes

Katherine Huiskes is a member of UVA's class of 2021, where she studied foreign affairs and history, with a particular interest in policymaking, cybersecurity, and military budgeting.

More on the presidency of George W. Bush

Read the 9/11 commission report, click here to read the report, more about the september 11 attacks, the road to 9/11, the road from 9/11, lessons learned from september 11, the roots of september 11: america and afghanistan, world politics after september 11: a clash of civilizations.

Lesson Plan

Sept. 10, 2023, 7:45 p.m.

Lesson plan: 9/11 — Ways to reflect on the day’s legacy

September 11th will remain a day that shaped the course of the nation’s — and the world’s — history. Students in high school and middle school who were not yet born on September 11, 2001, have still grown up in a cultural and political environment that owes much to the actions of the United States in response to 9/11.

The purpose of this lesson is to invite participants to generate and share their own questions about both the day of 9/11 and the larger context of the response that followed, including the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan that is just now ending after two decades.

You can see more stories from the NewsHour examining how this recent history has shaped the nation and the world. These NewsHour pieces will become optional components of the lesson.

Click here for a series of slides that can supplement this lesson (note: you will be prompted to make a copy).

• Understand the history and impact of the 9/11 attacks
• Construct critical questions around the anniversary of 9/11 and its present-day context
• Evaluate & reflect on personal understanding of 9/11 through critical questions

Grade Levels

Supplemental links.

• GOOGLE DOC VERSION
• SUPPLEMENTAL SLIDES

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.9: Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

Original lesson appeared Sept. 11, 2021.

Sun setting behind Twin Towers. (Photo by Robert Pirillo/Ovoworks/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) For a Google version of this lesson click here . A note on teaching hard history: Most educators can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when 9/11 unfolded. Today’s generation of students does not share this collective memory, with today’s high school seniors being born a few years after 2001.

Teaching 9/11 on its anniversary has its merits, as does teaching 9/11 within the curricular context of American and global history. We encourage educators to explore the wealth of resources provided in this lesson plan, to examine their own unanswered questions and biases, and to reflect on pedagogical practice before bringing in traumatic and provocative images of 9/11. Check out “Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies” and consider how you might design lessons that engage with hard history with a trauma-informed lens. Read Learning for Justice's article “Debunking Stereotypes About Muslims and Islam” and incorporate media literacy education as you confront misinformation.

In addition, consider doing the following:

• Preview your expectations or reminding your class about norms
• Name clearly the topics; create time for participants to reflect and process
• Teach with a trauma-informed lens
• Consider the emotional response of your participants and yourself

Warm up activities (5-10 mins):

Note for instructors: Whether you’re teaching about 9/11 on the anniversary of the attacks or as a part of your broader curriculum, starting with the questions participants have can set up an anchor and circular flow (returning to those questions to close out or build upon them in the end). Remind participants to be and stay curious and to practice the skill of writing and developing strong questions.

• Generate: Participants write as many questions as they can about the September 11 attacks — without stopping to revise, edit, evaluate or answer their questions.
• Reflect: Then, participants circle or mark their three most important questions — and briefly reflect on why they selected these three.
• Turn & Talk: Participants turn and share their three questions, noting what may overlap or be different, and have partners share out questions to gauge what participants are curious about. This is also an opportunity to note any misinformation or incorrect assumptions participants may have to clarify & revisit. Read “Debunking Stereotypes About Muslims and Islam” by Learning for Justice to learn more.

Main activities (30-45 mins)

Directions: Choose one or more activity best suited to your class based on the many factors your role as a teacher requires you to know.

• Watch the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s short film (3 minutes): This video outlines the events on the morning of 9/11. As participants listen, instruct them to watch for any answers to the questions they just constructed. CONTENT WARNING : This video contains images of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon after they are hit.
• Optional: Take a detour into a robust timeline of the 9/11 attacks using this interactive guide at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and pair it with this “Historical Timeline of Afghanistan” from PBS NewsHour . Focus on context-building, asking participants to investigate questions, connections and narratives they see represented.
• Clarify and reflect (5-10 mins): Turning to talk with their partners again (or return to their notebook to write), what did participants notice about the short clip or (timelines) that answered some of their questions?
• Together with their partner, what new questions can they create? Note: If a participant replies with “I don’t have any questions,” encourage them to practice the skill of questioning and examining what they think, why they think it and what they wonder. Encourage curiosity.
• Share this infographic with participants. After reviewing, ask participants: What surprises them? Does anything connect to the questions they crafted?

via slideshow -- see link at top of lesson

via slideshow — see link at top of lesson

• Ask participants: What stories do these numbers tell? What stories don’t these numbers tell? (Can invite participants to update their list of questions here, pushing into open-ended questions vs. closed questions.)
• Watch The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has a trailer (3 minutes) for one of their programs featuring some personal connections individuals have to 9/11.
• What did you notice, what surprised you, or what do you now wonder after hearing from some individuals who have a personal connection to that day?
• Now that you’ve reviewed or learned some of the historical context of 9/11, what do you know or wonder about the legacy of 9/11? What impact has the 9/11 terrorist attacks had on the United States? Other countries? Ordinary and everyday people in the United States?
• Turn & talk: Have participants share some of their ideas, questions and reflections with their partner.
• Whole group: Invite participants to share any ideas, encourage questions and discuss together.

Part 3 (Choose one or more of the following activities)

Each night this week, PBS NewsHour features stories that examine some of the ways 9/11 transformed the nation and world. Choose one or more of the following available stories to discuss.

• What do you notice?
• What do you wonder?
• Does your community share anything in common with the communities of the speakers? How so?
• How does (or did) 9/11 impact different communities? How so?
• What other connections or questions can you craft?
• NewsHour's Amna Nawaz says: “20 years later, there is now an entire generation of young American adults, including American Muslims, who don’t have firsthand memories of [9/11], who did not live through the trauma, as all of us did.”
• How do you think the impact of 9/11 varies from generation to generation? What similarities or differences do you notice among your generation versus your parent’s generation? And older generations?

• What are some of the ways these students' lives have been directly impacted by the legacy of 9/11?
• What are some ways these students sees their generation's experience as different from past generations?
• What is Middletown’s connection to the 9/11 attacks?
• What were the different perspectives shared on how families coped with the loss of loved ones in the attacks?
• How does this feature story expand or inform what you already know about 9/11?
• Why is it important to understand the emotional reaction of U.S. citizens on the day of 9/11, according to Graff?
• What is the connection that Graff makes between 9/11 and political polarization?
• What do you think Graff means when he says 9/11 is slipping “from memory into history”? What are your first memories of learning about 9/11 or understanding the day’s events and legacy?
• As a generation, what has shaped your view and understanding of 9/11? How so? How might this differ from other generations or communities?
• What perspectives and narratives are you seeing and hearing surrounding the 20th anniversary of 9/11?
• How do you think the legacy of 9/11 will continue to evolve?
• Whose stories are being told? Is anyone’s voice missing?

Closing (10-15 mins)

Circle back to warm up questions for clarifying and answering the unanswered questions. (Could be collected as an exit ticket or final turn and talk.)

• Look back over the questions you created at the start of class.
• What’s one question that has been answered today?
• What’s a new question you have or are thinking about? What’s left unanswered for you? What are you wondering about?
• What’s the impact of 9/11 on your generation? What do you predict will be the legacy of 9/11 for future generations?

Extension activities

Extension 1, Poetry Focus: Days before 9/11, poet Lucille Clifton welcomed a granddaughter into the world and remembers eating lunch on the day itself as she “watched on television the devastation of the Twin Towers.” In her poem “September’s Song: A Poem in Seven Days,” she examines “love and continuing and fear and hope.”

Share this excerpt of Tuesday and Sunday from the longer poem with students , reading aloud together or ask participants to annotate a copy of the poem (or digitally with a partner using this Google Doc). [Note: September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday]

Write in response:

• Ask participants to write their own day poem connecting to the themes of hope and fear, of love and continuing, mimicking some of Clifton’s style.
• Do not require participants to write specifically about 9/11. Instead leave the invitation open for them to write about what they choose.
• Or invite participants to identify vivid imagery, metaphors or symbols in the poem.
• Compare Clifton’s poem with excerpts from “ With Their Eyes: September 11th — The View From A High School at Ground Zero. ” What word choice evokes an emotional response in the reader? How does the physical structure of the poems impact the way it is read aloud? As writers, what writing moves might participants employ in their own writing?

Extension 2 : Just over a year ago, more than 123,000 Afghan refugees, many fearing for their lives, were evacuated from Afghanistan and were resettled all over the world, including the United States. Thousands of Afghans did not make it out of the country before the U.S. military's departure on Aug. 30. Explore who, what, when, where and how of the refugees arriving in the U.S., and what local community organizations are still working to provide assistance. Read this NewsHour article for more information.

• Inquire: What do trustworthy and credible charities and organizations look like?
• Explore: What is being done locally in your area or state?
• Understand: What don’t you know? What questions do you have?
• Apply: How could your class, school, or community support and welcome refugees?
• What are the latest updates as to the Afghan refugees welfare and status in the U.S. and around the world?

U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load passengers aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 24, 2021. Picture taken August 24, 2021. U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/Handout via REUTERS

Kate Stevens, M.S. in Curriculum & Instruction, is an instructional coach and educator with more than a decade of experience in online, hybrid, and blended learning. In 2015, Kate was honored with Colorado Department of Education’s Online & Blended Teacher of the Year. Connect with Kate on Twitter @KateTeaching.

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National Archives News

Remembering 9/11

Smoke rises from the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, September 11, 2001. (Photo by Paul Morse;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997250 )

Map of four flights and timeline of events on September 11, 2001. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5899988 )

President George W. Bush and White House staff at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, FL, watch news coverage of Flight 175 striking the South Tower of the World Trade Center. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 204326996 ) 

Onboard the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower , U.S. Navy sailors watch televised news reports, showing the World Trade Center, during the terrorist attacks. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Justin K. Thomas, USN;  National Archives Catalog ID 6610647 )

A sign states "All Crossings to New York Closed" after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City. (Photo by Paul Morse;  National Archives Catalog ID 205206239 )

President George W. Bush visits New York City on September 14, 2001. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997294 )

President George W. Bush waves to rescue workers while touring the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York City. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997292 )

A helmet and flowers sit atop a rack at New York City's Engine Co. 55 firehouse in New York City. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997366 )

Firefighters try to contain the fire after the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. (Photo by U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Jim Varhegyi;  National Archives Catalog ID 6523862 )

An aerial view of the Pentagon two days after September 11 shows the impact point where the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building. (U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill;  National Archives Catalog ID 6523869 )

Firefighters gather outside the Pentagon hours after American Airlines Fight 77 was piloted by terrorists into the building. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jim Watson;  National Archives Catalog ID 6610676 )

As rescue and recovery operations continued, family members gathered at the Pentagon on September 15 to view the area where their loved ones perished. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. John Valceanu;  National Archives Catalog ID 6519375 )

Near Shanksville, PA, a chain-link fence bearing flags, hats, rosaries, and other items served as a temporary memorial honoring the passengers and crew of Flight 93. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5616340 )

A marker at the temporary memorial, near Shanksville, PA, honors the passengers and crew of Flight 93, hijacked on September 11, 2001. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5616321 ) 

The National Archives safeguards many records related to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, including those of the 9/11 Commission , the 9/11 Federal Aviation Administration records, and the records of the George W. Bush Presidential Library .

Most of us remember where we were and how life changed that day. As an agency with facilities in Washington, DC, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California, the immediacy of the events felt that much closer to our homes and workplaces.

Left: Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry render honors as firefighters and rescue workers unfurl an American flag at the Pentagon. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Pendergrass) View in National Archives Catalog

Video: A Life of Selfless Service, Sacrifice, and Civic Engagement: Cyril "Rick" Rescorla

• Teaching Activities for all grade levels focused on Rick Rescorla, who helped thousands of people to safety in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
• More primary sources  

Blogs and Social Media

First pitch showcased in all american exhibit demonstrates how sports helped unite nation after 9/11.

The photo of President Bush throwing out the first pitch of the World Series remains a symbol of a step toward a return to normalcy following the attacks, both for New York City and the United States. More

‘In our New York office: A day like no other’

On the anniversary of the attacks, we reprint the firsthand account from staff at the National Archives at New York City. (National Archives News) More

• AOTUS:  We Remember: 20th Anniversary of 9/11
• NARAtions: Remembering 9/11: Photos from the George W. Bush Library on Flickr
• National Archives News:  9/11 Fireman’s Son Sees Dad on National Archives Instagram
• Pieces of History:  9/11: An Address to the Nation
• Pieces of History: Ten Years Later: Handling 9/11 Commission Records
• Pieces of History: 9/11: The World Series and a President’s Pitch
• Pieces of History: The Patriot Act
• Pieces of History: 9/11: An Address to the Nation
• The Text Message: Shutting Down the Sky: The Federal Aviation Administration on 9/11
• The Text Message: Rusty the Comfort Dog
• The Text Message: The Zone
• The Text Message: September 11 Through the Eyes of Children
• The Text Message: The Best Prophet of the Future is the Past: September 11—1970, 1981, and 2001
• Transforming Classification: PIDB Recommends the Prioritized Declassification of 9/11 Records
• Today’s Document: The Twin Towers
• Unwritten Record:  Remembering 9/11
• Facebook: Reflections on a 9/11 Anniversary

Images from 9/11

9/11 Flickr Collection from the George W. Bush Presidential Library

• 9/11: A Presidential Reaction
• 9/11: A National Resolve
• 9/11: A Day of Remembrance
• 9/11: A Global Response
• 9/11: A Spirit Renewed

Selection of photographs in the National Archives Catalog

9/11 Commission Records at the National Archives

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, aka the 9/11 Commission, was an independent, bipartisan commission created by Congress to provide a "full and complete accounting" of the 9/11 attacks. The Commission operated from 2003 to 2004 and held hearings, conducted interviews, and issued a final report. 

When the 9/11 Commission closed on August 21, 2004, it transferred legal custody of its records (approximately 570 cubic feet of textual records alone) to the National Archives. As part of the Legislative Branch, the Commission’s records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. 

Due to the collection’s volume and the large percentage of national security classified files, the National Archives staff continues to process these materials.

9/11 Commission Resources Online

• 9/11 Commission records : Introductory page
• 9/11 Commission records FAQs : Answers to frequently asked questions about access to the records.
• 9/11 Commission's website preserved as it appeared on August 21, 2004 (the Commission's closing day). Includes staff monographs, staff biographies and statements, the final report, hearing transcripts and video, lists of witnesses, and press releases.
• 9/11 Commission Memoranda for the Record (MFRs): Commission staff conducted and summarized more than 1,200 interviews.

9/11 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Records

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) compiled records to support internal and external investigations of the events. This collection consists of 126 cubic feet of textual, audio, and electronic files.

• 9/11 FAA Records web page and FAQs 
• Finding aid to 9/11 FAA records
• 9/11 FAA Open Files 
• 9/11 FAA Glossary and Vocabulary
• 9/11 FAA File Inventory and Corrected File Names

At the Presidential Libraries

William J. Clinton Library

• USS Cole and September 11, 2001

George W. Bush Library

• September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks
• Video: Address to Nation on Terrorist Attacks, 9/11/2001
• Video: Remarks from Emma E. Booker Elementary School, 9/11/2001
• Video: Remarks at Barksdale Air Force Base, LA, 9/11/2001
• Video: President Bush Visits Ground Zero, remarks to First Responders, 9/14/2001
• President George Signs the Patriot Act, 10/26/2001
• Archived website from the George W. Bush White House: Remembering 9/11

Barack Obama Library

• President Obama Speaks at 9/11 Museum Dedication, 5/14/2014
• Proclamation—Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, 9/9/2011
• Vice President Joe Biden on Remembering 9/11: "We are a Nation about Possibilities"
• Presidential Address: Death of Osama Bin Laden, 5/2/2011

Donald J. Trump Library

• What the World Learned on September 11, 2001
• Continuation of National Emergency Re: Persons who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism
• Presidential Proclamation on National Days of Prayer and Remembrance, 2019

Building the World Trade Center

"Constructing the World Trade Center" - VISION USA, No. 06, 1972 ( National Archives Identifier 58975 )

World Trade Center Photographs from the DOCUMERICA Project

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For those who remember Sept. 11, 2001, details of the day – the confusion, chaos and collective grief – are as clear now as they were 20 years ago when the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred.

But many college students today have no memories of 19 al-Qaida operatives hijacking four commercial airplanes and killing nearly 3,000 people in a terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Teaching this next generation about the passion and the intensity that defined that pivotal moment is difficult, says Condoleezza Rice , who was the U.S. National Security Advisor at the time of the attacks.

For the new generation of students, 9/11 is now a part of history. “It would be like people trying to convey the intensity of World War II to me,” said Rice, who went on to serve as the 66th secretary of state of the United States under President George W. Bush before returning to her professorship at Stanford in 2009.

Rice, now the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution, was in the White House on that Tuesday morning of Sept 11. When she discusses the attacks with her students, her experiences on that day inevitably come up.

She is candid in her recounting. “That helps to vivify it because it’s a personal story,” Rice said.

When President George W. Bush returned to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, he met with Condoleezza Rice, who was then U.S. National Security Advisor, as well as from left: Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief of Staff Andy Card and Special Agent Carl Truscott of the U.S. Secret Service in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House. (Image credit: Eric Draper, Courtesy George W. Bush Presidential Library / Getty Images)

Condoleezza Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security advisor before becoming the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, is pictured here taking notes from a phone call through a window in the Outer Oval Office on September 18, 2001. (Image credit: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images)

Rice shares how, when the first plane hit the North Tower at the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., she and others were uncertain about the cause of the crash. She remembers wondering whether it could have been an accident. But when the second hijacked plane hit the remaining South Tower 17 minutes later, Rice knew it had to be a terrorist attack on the United States.

Then there was the short period when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not be reached because the Pentagon was also hit that morning, Rice said. She, along with other senior government leaders, were ushered into the White House bunker. She tells students that around noon that day, oxygen levels started to drop because too many people were crammed into the fortified space. “So the Secret Service was going around saying, ‘You have to leave, you are not essential; you have to leave, you are not essential.’ You would never plan for such a thing as that,” she said.

Inevitably, a student will ask her if she was afraid. Rice was so taken aback the first time she faced that question that she actually paused to think about it – and then concluded that she wasn’t. “I didn’t have time to be scared,” Rice recalled. “You can fear for your loved ones, but you are not allowed to feel personal fear. You don’t think about that in the moment.”

“I try to help [students] understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11.” —Condoleezza Rice Director, Hoover Institution; Former U.S. National Security Advisor and 66th Secretary of State

Rice also emphasized the importance of talking to students about how 9/11 transformed the world and that what seems routine today – such as additional airport screenings and the formation of new government institutions – didn’t even exist before the attacks.

“I try to help them understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11,” said Rice. “It isn’t an event that happened one day and then was over, but everything from the way that you go through an airport to something called ‘homeland security,’ which you didn’t have before 9/11.”

Teaching 9/11 since 9/11

The attacks also introduced into the wider vernacular new places – like Afghanistan – and people – like Osama bin Laden – that students 20 years ago knew very little or nothing about.

Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Martha Crenshaw experienced this firsthand on the day of the attacks when they found themselves in the surreal situation of teaching about 9/11 on 9/11. Both were so shocked by the unfolding events that they were unable to do anything except the one thing they were supposed to do that day, which was teach.

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has written extensively on the issue of political terrorism; her first article, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1972. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Zegart led a crisis simulation for POLI SCI 114S: International Security in a Changing World. (Image credit: Rod Searcey)

When they showed up to their respective classrooms – at the time, Crenshaw was at Wesleyan University teaching a course on decision making and foreign policy; Zegart at UCLA – they found them packed. There were more students in the lecture hall for Crenshaw’s course than were enrolled.

Students – horrified and trying to make sense of what was happening – sought clarity and comfort from their teachers, who just happened to be experts on the issues that would come to define the next two decades of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

“A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.” —Amy Zegart Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution

“When something that shocking happens, our natural inclination is to make sense of what’s going on together, right now,” said Zegart, who is a leading scholar on national security and the Central Intelligence Agency and is now a senior scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Students wanted to know more about the terms and names they were hearing for the first time that day, like jihadism and the Taliban. Over the months that followed came more complex challenges to explain: the global war on terror, torture, rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is the world that today’s students have inherited. Even the current generation’s media, as Zegart’s research has shown, has become increasingly saturated with a proliferation of “spytainment” : movies and TV shows depicting, often inaccurately, the clandestine world of intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Like Rice, Crenshaw has also found herself having to explain that none of this was normal before 9/11.

“I have to go back and say, ‘All this wasn’t always here before 9/11.’ I have to trace the trajectory of policy changes,” said Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Shifts in emotion

In the first decade after the attacks, Zegart said her students were incredibly emotional about 9/11 and its aftermath, including the expansion of U.S. conflict abroad. A few years after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq broke out, Zegart remembers one of her students, a recently returned veteran, telling her that he was taking her intelligence class because he wanted to learn more about why he had gone to Iraq, and what his friend who had deployed with him had died fighting for.

In 2018, Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Condoleezza Rice co-taught the course POLECON 584: Managing Global Political Risk. (Image credit: Rod Searcey)

“It was a really raw, personal experience for students studying foreign policy in the first decade after 9/11 because they were living with war and uncertainty,” said Zegart. She had to push them be more analytical and objective in their class discussions of what a post 9/11 world entailed.

As the years progressed, though, 9/11 increasingly became less personal for the next generation of students. Perceptions began to shift. So much so that Zegart now finds herself in the opposite predicament: How to insert those feelings back in .

“Because they didn’t live through it, they look at it distantly and dispassionately,” Zegart said. “The challenge is, how do you help students better understand the context in which decisions were made and the raw emotion that unavoidably affects how we perceive threats and how we deal with policy responses.”

Teaching the emotions of the day

To evoke a visceral response to 9/11, Zegart shows a 4-minute montage of news clips. Students get a sense of how the day unfolded, from the breaking reports of the first tower being struck to a reporter’s on-air reaction as the second plane crashes live into the remaining tower. There are also scenes of people fleeing lower Manhattan amid dust, smoke and debris.

“You just cannot convey that day in a normal lecture or a book,” Zegart said. The video is effective; her students are often left with a sense of the sadness, horror and anguish that defined 9/11.

Zegart then asks her students to imagine they are policymakers at the White House and have to decide what to do next. “We often teach U.S. foreign policymaking as a sterile, Spock-like process where people weigh the pros and cons of options and make dispassionate decisions,” Zegart said. “But human emotion and searing national experiences are important and hard to convey. A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.”

Through the exercise, students get a sense of the urgency that policymakers, like Rice, have to grapple with while making decisions amid a national emergency.

“In retrospect, everything looks quite orderly,” said Rice, who co-taught a class on global risk with Zegart at the Graduate School Business. “It looks like ‘of course that decision led to that decision.’ Political scientists are always talking about the options that were put before the president. That’s not how crisis decision making unfolds. You are dealing with really incomplete information, you are dealing with the need to act now, and you are often reacting from instinct because you don’t have time to think through things.”

Viewing the attacks from all sides

When political scientist Lisa Blaydes teaches 9/11 to her students, she tries to give an international perspective of the issues, particularly on how grievances can arise – both legitimately or falsely constructed – in countries abroad and how that can lead to extremism and political violence. For example, in her course Political Science 149: Middle Eastern Politics , several classes are dedicated to examining anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world and the conditions under which individuals become radicalized.

“I try to make sure that students understand both the individual motivations associated with the radicalization of political thought as well as the global context that empowers radicalized individuals to undertake violent action,” said Blaydes, a professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at FSI. She asks students to read Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower , which picks up on themes Blaydes covers in the course, particularly those dealing with how authoritarian regimes in the Arab world provided a backdrop for the rise of al-Qaida.

Lisa Blaydes, a professor of political science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, focuses on comparative politics and politics of the Middle East. (Image credit: Courtesy Lisa Blaydes)

In recent years, Blaydes has found her students showing an increased interest in learning more about radical groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and how they have terrorized communities across the Middle East. “While Sept. 11 made terrorism a salient threat for Americans living in U.S. cities, both terrorism and state-sponsored violence are unfortunately a trauma shared by people around the world,” she said.

Similarly, Crenshaw said, it is important to explain to students the conditions that lead to such extremist views. But, she added, explaining motives should not be mistaken as justifying them. “We are not trying to excuse it; we are trying to understand why something happened,” she said.

With her students, Crenshaw has also looked at how terrorism has been used across history. In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism almost exclusively became associated with a particular ideology and religion. But there are other examples throughout history of how it has been used as a form of political violence, she said.

“As an instructor, one of my goals was always to show students that 9/11 was something extraordinary, but there are other instances of terrorism and it can be associated with any ideology,” Crenshaw said.

Given its elasticity, terrorism is a confusing and contentious term with no standard definition, Crenshaw said . Thus, as both the term and the acts associated with terrorism have evolved over the past two decades, so has her teaching of it. “The phenomenon that you are trying to teach is changing over time as well, so it’s really a very dynamic subject requiring constant adjustment to take into account the vast outpouring of writing on terrorism but changing terrorism and counterterrorism as well,” she said.

In addition to situating 9/11 against a global and historical backdrop, teaching the attacks also requires a critical look at the domestic challenges that led up to it, including the shortcomings in U.S. intelligence. Zegart assigns students an article she wrote about the failures within the U.S. intelligence communities to adapt to the threat of terrorism, as well as a critique against her piece. “There’s no one perfect view, and if students can realize that their professor is part of an argument and people can disagree, that’s really important,” she said.

Zegart and Crenshaw have also assigned students the 9/11 Commission Report , the official report of the events that led up to the attacks and detailed account of the circumstances surrounding it.

‘Still hard’

Even though 20 years have passed since 9/11, it does not mean that teaching about the attacks has gotten easier.

“I still have a hard time,” Zegart said. “For years, my screensaver was a picture of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was important to me not to forget. I’ve spent my career researching why our intelligence agencies failed to stop 9/11 and how they can better meet threats in the future. I think about that day every day.”

Media Contacts

Melissa De Witte, Stanford News Service:  [email protected]

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9/11 Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 11, 2023 | Original: June 21, 2011

On September 11, 2001 —a clear, sunny, late summer day—al Qaeda terrorists aboard three hijacked passenger planes carried out coordinated suicide attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. , killing everyone on board the planes and nearly 3,000 people on the ground. A fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all on board, after passengers and crew attempted to wrest control from the hijackers.

Below is a chronology of the events of 9/11 as they unfolded. All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

• 7:59 am – American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 with 92 people aboard, takes off from Boston’s Logan International Airport en route to Los Angeles.

• 8:14 am – United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 with 65 people aboard, takes off from Boston; it is also headed to Los Angeles.

• 8:19 am – Flight attendants aboard Flight 11 alert ground personnel that the plane has been hijacked; American Airlines notifies the FBI .

• 8:20 am – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. The Boeing 757 is headed to Los Angeles with 64 people aboard.

• 8:24 am – Hijacker Mohammed Atta makes the first of two accidental transmissions from Flight 11 to ground control (apparently in an attempt to communicate with the plane’s cabin).

• 8:40 am – Air traffic controllers at The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alert North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS 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.

• 8:40 am – Air traffic controllers at The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alert North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS scrambles two 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.

• 8:41 am – United Airlines Flight 93 , a Boeing 757 with 44 people aboard, takes off from Newark International Airport en route to San Francisco . It had been scheduled to depart at 8:00 am, around the time of the other hijacked flights.

• 8:46 am – Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash the plane into floors 93-99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center , killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.

Photos: The World Trade Center

• 8:47 am – Within seconds, NYPD and FDNY forces dispatch units to the World Trade Center, while Port Authority Police Department officers on site begin immediate evacuation of the North Tower.

• 8:50 am – White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card alerts President George W. Bush that a plane has hit the World Trade Center; the president is visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida at the time.

• 9:02 am – After initially instructing tenants of the WTC’s South Tower to remain in the building, Port Authority officials broadcast orders to evacuate both towers via the public address system; an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people are already in the process of evacuating.

• 9:03 am – Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 75-85 of the WTC’s South Tower, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building

• 9:08 am – The FAA bans all takeoffs of flights going to New York City or through the airspace around the city.

• 9:21 am – The Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the New York City area.

• 9:24 am – The FAA notified NEADS of the suspected hijacking of Flight 77 after some passengers and crew aboard are able to alert family members on the ground.

• 9:31 am – Speaking from Florida, President Bush calls the events in New York City an “apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

• 9:37 am – Hijackers aboard Flight 77 crash the plane into the western façade of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 59 aboard the plane and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building.

Photos: The Pentagon

• 9:42 am – For the first time in history, the FAA grounds all flights over or bound for the continental United States. Over the next two-and-a-half hours, some 3,300 commercial flights and 1,200 private planes are guided to land at airports in Canada and the United States.

• 9:45 am – Amid escalating rumors of other attacks, the White House and U.S. Capitol building are evacuated (along with numerous other high-profile buildings, landmarks and public spaces).

• 9:59 am – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

• 10:07 am – After passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked Flight 93 contact friends and family and learn about the attacks in New York and Washington, they mount an attempt to retake the plane. In response, hijackers deliberately crash the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania , killing all 40 passengers and crew aboard.

Photos: Flight 93

• 10:28 am – The World Trade Center’s North Tower collapses, 102 minutes after being struck by Flight 11.

• 11 am – Mayor Rudolph Giuliani calls for the evacuation of Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street, including more than 1 million residents, workers and tourists, as efforts continue throughout the afternoon to search for survivors at the WTC site.

• 1 pm – At Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana , President Bush announces that U.S. military forces are on high alert worldwide.

• 2:51 pm – The U.S. Navy dispatches missile destroyers to New York and Washington, D.C.

• 5:20 pm – The 47-story Seven World Trade Center collapses after burning for hours; the building had been evacuated in the morning, and there are no casualties, though the collapse forces rescue workers to flee for their lives. It is the last of the Twin Towers to fall.

• 6:58 pm – President Bush returns to the White House after stops at military bases in Louisiana and Nebraska .

• July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission Report is released. It includes classified documents, airport security footage of the hijackers, and cockpit voice recordings from United Airlines Flight 93. The report claims all 19 hijackers were members of al Qaeda.

• October 17, 2006: A federal judge rejects New York City’s motion to dismiss lawsuits from first responders who are requesting health payments.

• January 2, 2011: The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 is signed into law by President Barack Obama . It renews and expands the Victim Compensation Fund.

• May 2, 2011: Osama bin Laden is killed by U.S. Navy Seals.

• September 11, 2011: The World Trade Center Memorial opens to the public on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

• May 10, 2014: The unidentified remains of people killed in New York City on 9/11 are returned to the World Trade Center Site.

• May 15, 2014: The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is dedicated in lower Manhattan.

• November 3, 2014: One World Trade Center officially opens on the site of the Twin Towers

• July 29, 2019: President Donald Trump signs $10 billion legislation authorizing support for the Victims Compensation Fund through 2092.

• August 30, 2019: A U.S. military court judge in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba sets a trial date of January 11, 2021 for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four men charged with plotting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the trial was later postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

• July 31, 2022: Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key planner of the attacks and the leader of al Qaeda following bin Laden's death, is killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

HISTORY Vault: 9/11 Documentaries

Explore this collection of extraordinary documentary films about one of the most challenging days in U.S. history.

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A timeline of everything that happened on 9/11

A memorial to the 3,000 people who died during the 9/11 attacks. Image:  REUTERS/Timothy A. Clary/POOL

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Stay up to date:, united states.

• This visualization provides a timeline of what happened on morning of 9/11.
• In the space of three hours, two planes hit the World Trade Center, one plane hit the Pentagon and one crashed in Pennsylvania.
• Nearly 3,000 died during the attacks, and many more suffer ongoing conditions from injuries and smoke inhalation.

9/11 timeline: Three hours that changed everything

For Americans and people watching around the world, September 11, 2001, is a day that will never be forgotten.

Within three hours, New York’s tallest buildings were reduced to rubble, and the Pentagon—the nerve center of the American armed forces—was burning and partially collapsed. Thousands of civilians had lost their lives and were seriously injured, and the entire country was in collective shock, still trying to make sense of how a coordinated act of terrorism of that magnitude was allowed to take place on American soil.

In the 20 years since 9/11, the events that occurred that morning have been analyzed in-depth from a thousand different angles. Even though the attacks took place in the era just before mobile phones had viable cameras, there are countless images and videos of the event. As well, we now have the 9/11 Commission Report , which compiles interviews from over 1,200 people in 10 countries, and draws upon two and a half million pages of documents to present its findings.

For many people younger than Generation X , 9/11 is a feeling—a grim milestone from their youth—but the details are likely more fuzzy. The timeline visualization above is a high-level record of what happened that morning during the three hours when everything changed.

Have you read?

An entire generation of americans has no idea how easy air travel used to be, a chronology of terror.

In its most simple form, the 9/11 attacks can be described as a coordinated hijacking of four commercial airplanes, which were then used to fly into high profile targets in New York City and Washington, DC. Here is a summary of the planes involved in the incident:

These four flights play a central role in what unfolded that morning. In the early hours of September 11, 2001, a collection of 19 would-be hijackers made their way through security at airports in Boston, Newark, and Washington, DC.

Our three-hour timeline begins just before 8am, as the first plane involved in the attack leaves the tarmac just outside of Boston. (In situations where the exact time isn’t known, a range is given.)

Sept 11, 2001, 7:59am – American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, departs from Logan International Airport in Boston, bound for Los Angeles International Airport. 8:14 – United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767, carrying 56 passengers and 9 crew members, departs from Logan International Airport in Boston, bound for Los Angeles International Airport. 8:14 – Flight 11 is hijacked over central Massachusetts. There are five hijackers on board. 8:20 – American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 58 passengers and 6 crew members, departs from Washington Dulles International Airport, for Los Angeles International Airport. 8:42 – United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 with 37 passengers and 7 crew members, departs from Newark International Airport, bound for San Francisco International Airport. 8:42–8:46 – Flight 175 is hijacked above northwest New Jersey. There are five hijackers on board. 8:46 – Flight 11 crashes into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99. All 92 people on board are killed. 8:50–8:54 – Flight 77 is hijacked above southern Ohio. There are five hijackers on board. 9:03 – Flight 175 crashes into the south face of the South Tower (2 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 77 and 85. All 65 people on board are killed. 9:28 – Flight 93 is hijacked above northern Ohio. There are four hijackers on board. 9:37 – Flight 77 crashes into the western side of The Pentagon. All 64 people on board are killed. 9:45 – United States airspace is shut down; all operating aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport. 9:59 – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, 56 minutes after the impact of Flight 175. 10:03 – Flight 93 is crashed by its hijackers in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Later reports indicate that passengers had learned about the World Trade Center and Pentagon crashes and were resisting the hijackers. All 44 people on board are killed in the crash. 10:28 – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses, 1 hour and 42 minutes after the impact of Flight 11. The Marriott Hotel at the base of the two towers is also destroyed. 10:50 – Five stories of the western side of the Pentagon collapse due to the fire.

Two and a half hours after the first plane left Boston, the iconic “Twin Towers” lay in ruins in Lower Manhattan, and brave first responders and military personnel were scrambling to save lives and secure the country.

Life in America was set on a new trajectory.

Information shockwave

Two decades is a long time in the world of technology and media. Though the communication channels of that era may seem slow by today’s standards, the September 11 terrorist attacks still took place in the age of 24-hour cable news coverage and nascent online reporting.

Add in the fact that New York was (and still is) a linchpin of global media, and it’s easy to see why media coverage of the attack spread so quickly.

Within two minutes of the first impact on the World Trade Center, a nearby camera crew covering New York’s mayoral primary election was already broadcasting a live feed of the burning building to a TV audience. Within three minutes, news of the attack hit the Associated Press newswire, and moments after that, most major networks cut away from scheduled programming to cover the story.

Less than 10 minutes after the impact, President Bush–who was attending an event at a Florida elementary school–was informed of the crash (which at that point was characterized as an accident).

Because media outlets were able to cover the incident so quickly, millions of people witnessed the second plane striking the South Tower in real-time a mere 17 minutes after the first impact. This was a defining moment as millions of people around the world experience the events precisely as they unfolded.

The still-young internet was strained that day. Moments after the impact of the North Tower, the CNN and MSNBC websites experienced a crushing load of traffic that overwhelmed servers. The FBI’s website also experienced issues after posting the images of the 9/11 hijackers later that day.

The Data for the City of Tomorrow report highlighted that in 2023, around 56% of the world is urbanized. Almost 65% of people use the internet. Soon, 75% of the world’s jobs will require digital skills.

The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Urban Transformation is at the forefront of advancing public-private collaboration in cities. It enables more resilient and future-ready communities and local economies through green initiatives and the ethical use of data.

Learn more about our impact:

• Net Zero Carbon Cities: Through this initiative, we are sharing more than 200 leading practices to promote sustainability and reducing emissions in urban settings and empower cities to take bold action towards achieving carbon neutrality .
• G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance: We are dedicated to establishing norms and policy standards for the safe and ethical use of data in smart cities , leading smart city governance initiatives in more than 36 cities around the world.
• Empowering Brazilian SMEs with IoT adoption : We are removing barriers to IoT adoption for small and medium-sized enterprises in Brazil – with participating companies seeing a 192% return on investment.
• IoT security: Our Council on the Connected World established IoT security requirements for consumer-facing devices . It engages over 100 organizations to safeguard consumers against cyber threats.
• Healthy Cities and Communities: Through partnerships in Jersey City and Austin, USA, as well as Mumbai, India, this initiative focuses on enhancing citizens' lives by promoting better nutritional choices, physical activity, and sanitation practices.

Want to know more about our centre’s impact or get involved? Contact us .

Lasting impact

The Pentagon has been repaired, and a shiny, 94-story World Trade Center now punctuates the skyline of Lower Manhattan, but not all wounds have healed.

For one, many 9/11 survivors are living with lingering health issues believed to be linked to the toxic smoke from the attack and building collapse. Many others are living with the absence of the nearly 3,000 loved-ones who died during the attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still a lasting legacy of the 9/11 attacks. When DHS began operations in 2003, it was the largest U.S. government reorganization in the 50 years since the Department of Defense was created. In addition to this largely “hidden” layer of security, people now encounter more vigorous security protocol at airports around the world.

As well, the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan was a reminder that long shadow of the attack is still influencing events today, even two decades later.

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Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11

Table of contents, a devastating emotional toll, a lasting historical legacy, 9/11 transformed u.s. public opinion, but many of its impacts were short-lived, u.s. military response: afghanistan and iraq, the ‘new normal’: the threat of terrorism after 9/11, addressing the threat of terrorism at home and abroad, views of muslims, islam grew more partisan in years after 9/11.

Americans watched in horror as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 20 years later, they watched in sorrow as the nation’s military mission in Afghanistan – which began less than a month after 9/11 – came to a bloody and chaotic conclusion.

The enduring power of the Sept. 11 attacks is clear: An overwhelming share of Americans who are old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Yet an ever-growing number of Americans have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or not yet born.

A review of U.S. public opinion in the two decades since 9/11 reveals how a badly shaken nation came together, briefly, in a spirit of sadness and patriotism; how the public initially rallied behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though support waned over time; and how Americans viewed the threat of terrorism at home and the steps the government took to combat it.

As the country comes to grips with the tumultuous exit of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, the departure has raised long-term questions about U.S. foreign policy and America’s place in the world. Yet the public’s initial judgments on that mission are clear: A majority endorses the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, even as it criticizes the Biden administration’s handling of the situation. And after a war that cost thousands of lives – including more than 2,000 American service members – and trillions of dollars in military spending, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that 69% of U.S. adults say the United States has mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.

This examination of how the United States changed in the two decades following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is based on an analysis of past public opinion survey data from Pew Research Center, news reports and other sources.

Current data is from a Pew Research Center survey of 10,348 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 23-29, 2021. Most of the interviewing was conducted before the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, and all of it was conducted before the completion of the evacuation. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used  for the report, along with responses, and  its methodology .

Shock, sadness, fear, anger: The 9/11 attacks inflicted a devastating emotional toll on Americans. But as horrible as the events of that day were, a 63% majority of Americans said they couldn’t stop watching news coverage of the attacks.

Our first survey following the attacks went into the field just days after 9/11, from Sept. 13-17, 2001. A sizable majority of adults (71%) said they felt depressed, nearly half (49%) had difficulty concentrating and a third said they had trouble sleeping.

It was an era in which television was still the public’s dominant news source – 90% said they got most of their news about the attacks from television, compared with just 5% who got news online – and the televised images of death and destruction had a powerful impact. Around nine-in-ten Americans (92%) agreed with the statement, “I feel sad when watching TV coverage of the terrorist attacks.” A sizable majority (77%) also found it frightening to watch – but most did so anyway.

Americans were enraged by the attacks, too. Three weeks after 9/11 , even as the psychological stress began to ease somewhat, 87% said they felt angry about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of 2001. Most Americans said they were very (28%) or somewhat (45%) worried about another attack . When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half of adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.

Even after the immediate shock of 9/11 had subsided, concerns over terrorism remained at higher levels in major cities – especially New York and Washington – than in small towns and rural areas. The personal impact of the attacks also was felt more keenly in the cities directly targeted: Nearly a year after 9/11, about six-in-ten adults in the New York (61%) and Washington (63%) areas said the attacks had changed their lives at least a little, compared with 49% nationwide. This sentiment was shared by residents of other large cities. A quarter of people who lived in large cities nationwide said their lives had changed in a major way – twice the rate found in small towns and rural areas.

The impacts of the Sept. 11 attacks were deeply felt and slow to dissipate. By the following August, half of U.S. adults said the country “had changed in a major way” – a number that actually increased , to 61%, 10 years after the event .

A year after the attacks, in an open-ended question, most Americans – 80% – cited 9/11 as the most important event that had occurred in the country during the previous year. Strikingly, a larger share also volunteered it as the most important thing that happened to them personally in the prior year (38%) than mentioned other typical life events, such as births or deaths. Again, the personal impact was much greater in New York and Washington, where 51% and 44%, respectively, pointed to the attacks as the most significant personal event over the prior year.

Just as memories of 9/11 are firmly embedded in the minds of most Americans old enough to recall the attacks, their historical importance far surpasses other events in people’s lifetimes. In a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in association with A+E Networks’ HISTORY in 2016 – 15 years after 9/11 – 76% of adults named the Sept. 11 attacks as one of the 10 historical events of their lifetime that had the greatest impact on the country. The election of Barack Obama as the first Black president was a distant second, at 40%.

The importance of 9/11 transcended age, gender, geographic and even political differences. The 2016 study noted that while partisans agreed on little else that election cycle, more than seven-in-ten Republicans and Democrats named the attacks as one of their top 10 historic events.

It is difficult to think of an event that so profoundly transformed U.S. public opinion across so many dimensions as the 9/11 attacks. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. 11, the months that followed also were marked by rare spirit of public unity.

Patriotic sentiment surged in the aftermath of 9/11. After the U.S. and its allies launched airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaida forces in early October 2001, 79% of adults said they had displayed an American flag. A year later, a 62% majority said they had often felt patriotic as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

Moreover, the public largely set aside political differences and rallied in support of the nation’s major institutions, as well as its political leadership. In October 2001, 60% of adults expressed trust in the federal government – a level not reached in the previous three decades, nor approached in the two decades since then.

George W. Bush, who had become president nine months earlier after a fiercely contested election, saw his job approval rise 35 percentage points in the space of three weeks. In late September 2001, 86% of adults – including nearly all Republicans (96%) and a sizable majority of Democrats (78%) – approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president.

Americans also turned to religion and faith in large numbers. In the days and weeks after 9/11, most Americans said they were praying more often. In November 2001, 78% said religion’s influence in American life was increasing, more than double the share who said that eight months earlier and – like public trust in the federal government – the highest level in four decades .

Public esteem rose even for some institutions that usually are not that popular with Americans. For example, in November 2001, news organizations received record-high ratings for professionalism. Around seven-in-ten adults (69%) said they “stand up for America,” while 60% said they protected democracy.

Yet in many ways, the “9/11 effect” on public opinion was short-lived. Public trust in government, as well as confidence in other institutions, declined throughout the 2000s. By 2005, following another major national tragedy – the government’s mishandling of the relief effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina – just 31% said they trusted the federal government, half the share who said so in the months after 9/11. Trust has remained relatively low for the past two decades: In April of this year, only 24% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.

Bush’s approval ratings, meanwhile, never again reached the lofty heights they did shortly after 9/11. By the end of his presidency, in December 2008, just 24% approved of his job performance.

With the U.S. now formally out of Afghanistan – and with the Taliban firmly in control of the country – most Americans (69%) say the U.S. failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan.

But 20 years ago, in the days and weeks following 9/11, Americans overwhelmingly supported military action against those responsible for the attacks. In mid-September 2001, 77% favored U.S. military action, including the deployment of ground forces, “to retaliate against whoever is responsible for the terrorist attacks, even if that means U.S. armed forces might suffer thousands of casualties.”

Many Americans were impatient for the Bush administration to give the go-ahead for military action. In a late September 2001 survey, nearly half the public (49%) said their larger concern was that the Bush administration would not strike quickly enough against the terrorists; just 34% said they worried the administration would move too quickly.

Even in the early stages of the U.S. military response, few adults expected a military operation to produce quick results: 69% said it would take months or years to dismantle terrorist networks, including 38% who said it would take years and 31% who said it would take several months. Just 18% said it would take days or weeks.

The public’s support for military intervention was evident in other ways as well. Throughout the fall of 2001, more Americans said the best way to prevent future terrorism was to take military action abroad rather than build up defenses at home. In early October 2001, 45% prioritized military action to destroy terrorist networks around the world, while 36% said the priority should be to build terrorism defenses at home.

Initially, the public was confident that the U.S. military effort to destroy terrorist networks would succeed. A sizable majority (76%) was confident in the success of this mission, with 39% saying they were very confident.

Support for the war in Afghanistan continued at a high level for several years to come. In a survey conducted in early 2002, a few months after the start of the war, 83% of Americans said they approved of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. In 2006, several years after the United States began combat operations in Afghanistan, 69% of adults said the U.S. made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan. Only two-in-ten said it was the wrong decision.

But as the conflict dragged on, first through Bush’s presidency and then through Obama’s administration, support wavered and a growing share of Americans favored the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In June 2009, during Obama’s first year in office, 38% of Americans said U.S. troops should be removed from Afghanistan as soon as possible. The share favoring a speedy troop withdrawal increased over the next few years. A turning point came in May 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs launched a risky operation against Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the al-Qaida leader.

The public reacted to bin Laden’s death with more of a sense of relief than jubilation . A month later, for the first time , a majority of Americans (56%) said that U.S. forces should be brought home as soon as possible, while 39% favored U.S. forces in the country until the situation had stabilized.

Over the next decade, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were gradually drawn down, in fits and starts, over the administrations of three presidents – Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Meanwhile, public support for the decision to use force in Afghanistan, which had been widespread at the start of the conflict, declined . Today, after the tumultuous exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a slim majority of adults (54%) say the decision to withdraw troops from the country was the right decision; 42% say it was the wrong decision. 

There was a similar trajectory in public attitudes toward a much more expansive conflict that was part of what Bush termed the “war on terror”: the U.S. war in Iraq. Throughout the contentious, yearlong debate before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Americans widely supported the use of military force to end Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.

Importantly, most Americans thought – erroneously, as it turned out – there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In October 2002, 66% said that Saddam helped the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In April 2003, during the first month of the Iraq War, 71% said the U.S. made the right decision to go to war in Iraq. On the 15th anniversary of the war in 2018, just 43% said it was the right decision. As with the case with U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, more Americans said that the U.S. had failed (53%) than succeeded (39%) in achieving its goals in Iraq.

There have been no terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 in two decades, but from the public’s perspective, the threat has never fully gone away. Defending the country from future terrorist attacks has been at or near the top of Pew Research Center’s annual survey on policy priorities since 2002.

In January 2002, just months after the 2001 attacks, 83% of Americans said “defending the country from future terrorist attacks” was a top priority for the president and Congress, the highest for any issue. Since then, sizable majorities have continued to cite that as a top policy priority.

Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats have consistently ranked terrorism as a top priority over the past two decades, with some exceptions. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have remained more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say defending the country from future attacks should be a top priority. In recent years, the partisan gap has grown larger as Democrats began to rank the issue lower relative to other domestic concerns. The public’s concerns about another attack also remained fairly steady in the years after 9/11, through near-misses and the federal government’s numerous “Orange Alerts” – the second-most serious threat level on its color-coded terrorism warning system.

A 2010 analysis of the public’s terrorism concerns found that the share of Americans who said they were very concerned about another attack had ranged from about 15% to roughly 25% since 2002. The only time when concerns were elevated was in February 2003, shortly before the start of the U.S. war in Iraq.

In recent years, the share of Americans who point to terrorism as a major national problem has declined sharply as issues such as the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and racism have emerged as more pressing problems in the public’s eyes.

In 2016, about half of the public (53%) said terrorism was a very big national problem in the country. This declined to about four-in-ten from 2017 to 2019. Last year, only a quarter of Americans said that terrorism was a very big problem.

This year, prior to the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover of the country, a somewhat larger share of adults said domestic terrorism was a very big national problem (35%) than said the same about international terrorism . But much larger shares cited concerns such as the affordability of health care (56%) and the federal budget deficit (49%) as major problems than said that about either domestic or international terrorism.

Still, recent events in Afghanistan raise the possibility that opinion could be changing, at least in the short term. In a late August survey, 89% of Americans said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was a threat to the security of the U.S., including 46% who said it was a major threat.

Just as Americans largely endorsed the use of U.S. military force as a response to the 9/11 attacks, they were initially open to a variety of other far-reaching measures to combat terrorism at home and abroad. In the days following the attack, for example, majorities favored a requirement that all citizens carry national ID cards, allowing the CIA to contract with criminals in pursuing suspected terrorists and permitting the CIA to conduct assassinations overseas when pursuing suspected terrorists.

However, most people drew the line against allowing the government to monitor their own emails and phone calls (77% opposed this). And while 29% supported the establishment of internment camps for legal immigrants from unfriendly countries during times of tension or crisis – along the lines of those in which thousands of Japanese American citizens were confined during World War II – 57% opposed such a measure.

It was clear that from the public’s perspective, the balance between protecting civil liberties and protecting the country from terrorism had shifted. In September 2001 and January 2002, 55% majorities said that, in order to curb terrorism in the U.S., it was necessary for the average citizen to give up some civil liberties. In 1997, just 29% said this would be necessary while 62% said it would not.

For most of the next two decades, more Americans said their bigger concern was that the government had not gone far enough in protecting the country from terrorism than said it went too far in restricting civil liberties.

The public also did not rule out the use of torture to extract information from terrorist suspects. In a 2015 survey of 40 nations, the U.S. was one of only 12 where a majority of the public said the use of torture against terrorists could be justified to gain information about a possible attack.

Concerned about a possible backlash against Muslims in the U.S. in the days after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush gave a speech to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in which he declared: “Islam is peace.” For a brief period, a large segment of Americans agreed. In November 2001, 59% of U.S. adults had a favorable view of Muslim Americans, up from 45% in March 2001, with comparable majorities of Democrats and Republicans expressing a favorable opinion.

This spirit of unity and comity was not to last. In a September 2001 survey, 28% of adults said they had grown more suspicious of people of Middle Eastern descent; that grew to 36% less than a year later.

Republicans, in particular, increasingly came to associate Muslims and Islam with violence. In 2002, just a quarter of Americans – including 32% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats – said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. About twice as many (51%) said it was not.

But within the next few years, most Republicans and GOP leaners said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Today, 72% of Republicans express this view, according to an August 2021 survey.

Democrats consistently have been far less likely than Republicans to associate Islam with violence. In the Center’s latest survey, 32% of Democrats say this. Still, Democrats are somewhat more likely to say this today than they have been in recent years: In 2019, 28% of Democrats said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers than other religions.

The partisan gap in views of Muslims and Islam in the U.S. is evident in other meaningful ways. For example, a 2017 survey found that half of U.S. adults said that “Islam is not part of mainstream American society” – a view held by nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) but only 37% of Democrats. In a separate survey conducted in 2017, 56% of Republicans said there was a great deal or fair amount of extremism among U.S. Muslims, with fewer than half as many Democrats (22%) saying the same.

The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 has had a profound effect on the growing number of Muslims living in the United States. Surveys of U.S. Muslims from 2007-2017 found increasing shares saying they have personally experienced discrimination and received public expression of support.

It has now been two decades since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 – where only the courage of passengers and crew possibly prevented an even deadlier terror attack.

For most who are old enough to remember, it is a day that is impossible to forget. In many ways, 9/11 reshaped how Americans think of war and peace, their own personal safety and their fellow citizens. And today, the violence and chaos in a country half a world away brings with it the opening of an uncertain new chapter in the post-9/11 era.

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The legacy of 9/11: reflections on a global tragedy.

(Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein)

Twenty years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the tragic consequences of that day continue to resonate across the world. On this somber anniversary, members of the Yale faculty reflect on the painful and complicated legacy of 9/11 and how the trauma of the event, which for a time created unity in the United States, has in the decades since led to a more divided nation and dangerous world.

Trauma, solidarity, and division

By Jeffrey Alexander Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Societies shift between experiences of division and moments of solidarity. It is collective trauma that often triggers such shifts.

When Osama Bin Laden organized acts of horrific mass murder against civilians on September 11, 2001, he declared that “the values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed” because “those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have… gone up in smoke.” What happened, instead, was that Americans recast the fearful destruction as an ennobling narrative that revealed not weakness, but the strength of the nation’s democratic core.

Before 9/11, American had been experiencing a moment of severe political and cultural division. In its immediate aftermath, the national community was united by feeling, marked by the loving kindness displayed among persons who once had been friends, and by the civility and solicitude among those who once had been strangers …

Read more from Jeffrey Alexander

No clean break

By Joanne Meyerowitz Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and professor of American studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, historians pointed to precedents: the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, say, and terrorist attacks — domestic and foreign — that had targeted civilians. They soon moved on to warnings against unnecessary and prolonged wars, with frequent reference to Vietnam, and to placing the security state within the long history of domestic surveillance, racial profiling, and violations of civil liberties. The common thread was that Sept. 11 did not represent a clean break with the past. It was not “one of those moments,” as The New York Times had claimed, “in which history splits” in two …

Read more from Joanne Meyerowitz

An embrace of profiling

By Zareena Grewal Associate professor American studies; ethnicity, race, and migration; and religious studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

In 2001, the New York City Police Department established a secret surveillance program that mapped and monitored American Muslims’ lives throughout New York City, and in neighboring states, including Connecticut. In 2011, journalists leaked internal NYPD documents which led to an outcry from public officials, activists, and American Muslim leaders who protested that such racial and religious profiling was not only an example of ineffective policing and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, but it collectively criminalized American Muslims. The leaked documents revealed that Yale’s Muslim Students Association was among the campus chapters targeted …

Read more from Zareena Grewal

A new outlet

By Paul Bracken Professor emeritus of management and political science, Yale School of Management

Following the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment was spoiling for another fight to overthrow tyranny. Yet there was no domestic support for such a war. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait led to the first Gulf War. But the failure to end his regime left a good part of the establishment with a sense of unfulfilled destiny. These were the trends underway before 9/11. But there was no outlet to give them voice.

By linking a war on terror with a projection of our idea of democracy onto the Middle East, the attack on 9/11 provided that outlet …

Read more from Paul Bracken

A war game, gone terribly wrong

By Kishwar Rizvi Professor in the history of art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

September 11, 2001, is a Tuesday. At 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., two hijacked planes fly into the towers of the World Trade Center. Six hours later, I give my first class of the year, in Street Hall. It is unclear how the afternoon will unfold, but as the class gathers, we find comfort in each other’s presence.

The unconditional empathy and bravery shown by my students that day 20 years ago is something I carry with me. It is a necessary requirement for studying and teaching about Islam today. Art and architecture, framed through social and political discourse, serve as important conduits for understanding the history and culture of the West and South Asia — the epicenter of the “War on Terror” launched soon after 9/11. I find clarity in the work of Shahzia Sikander and Lida Abdul, women artists from the region …

Read more from Kishwar Rizvi

For millions of refugees, the crisis continues

By Marcia C. Inhorn William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs; chair, Council on Middle East Studies

September 11 was a devastating event for the United States, causing the senseless deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and the injury of more than 6,000 others. September 11 was also a tragedy for the Middle East, as the U.S. responded by initiating two wars, one in Afghanistan in 2001 and one in Iraq in 2003. These long-term and costly wars in the Middle Eastern region have killed thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions of people.

Of the 26 million refugees and 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, the majority are from the Middle East, especially Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Indeed, we are now in the midst of an Afghan refugee crisis, the magnitude of which is yet to unfold …

Read more from Marcia C. Inhorn

The loss of history

By Eckart Frahm Professor of Near Eastern languages & civilizations, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The events of 9/11 have led to actions on the part of the U.S. that have thoroughly transformed the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite an enormous investment of lives and money, the region remains deeply troubled. The world’s attention has been focused, for good reasons, on the political and humanitarian catastrophes that have befallen it. But for someone like me who is studying the civilizations of the ancient Near East, a particularly devastating aspect of the crisis has been its disastrous effect on the region’s cultural heritage …

Read more from Eckart Frahm

Tragedy for the world

By Samuel Moyn Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and professor of history, Yale Law School

September 11 was a tragedy for America, but it prompted an American response that has been a tragedy for the world. After two decades of war, every place American force has touched has been made worse, with the risk of terrorism often exacerbated, and at the price of millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

More than this, even though Joe Biden has followed his two predecessors in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the authorities the American president has arrogated over two decades to send force abroad have not been reined in. Nor does the war on terror — as distinct from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that started it — seem likely to end in the foreseeable future …

Read more from Samuel Moyn

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Sept. 11 Attack 20th Anniversary: Live Updates With Bowed Heads, Americans Reflect on 9/11 and Its Aftermath

There were moments of silence and the reading of thousands of names as the nation marked two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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America Observes the 20th Anniversary of 9/11

Ceremonies were held in remembrance at the sites where nearly 3,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks on sept. 11, 2001..

[Bell rung] Edelmiro Abad. Marie Rose Abad. Andrew Anthony Abate. And my husband, Joseph Reina Jr. And my uncle, James Francis Quinn. And my sister Cecilia Elizabeth Richard Lawson. Evan Jay Baron. Kelly Ann Booms. [Bell rung] On the days that followed September 11, 2001, we were all reminded that unity is possible in America. We were reminded also that unity is imperative in America. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together. I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I’ve seen. On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another.

Mets and Yankees share a moment of silence.

Chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” began ringing through a capacity crowd at Citi Field as early as 30 minutes before the first pitch of the first Subway Series game between the Mets and Yankees played on an anniversary of Sept. 11. Current members of the teams met on the field for handshakes and hugs before standing intermixed on the two foul lines for the national anthem , which was performed by the New York Police Department’s Police Athletic League Cops & Kids Chorus.

The players and coaches of both the Mets and the Yankees wore hats honoring New York City’s first-responder agencies, especially the Fire Department and the Police Department, echoing the same on-field tribute made by the 2001 Mets team in their first game back home after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Mets wore home white jerseys in the same style as their 2001 predecessors but refashioned with “New York” across the chest in place of “Mets.” For this 20th anniversary, the teams’ managers from 2001, Bobby Valentine of the Mets and Joe Torre of the Yankees, both threw ceremonial first pitches.

A moment of silence for those who lost their lives 20 years ago. #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/OH2NoL2A3u — FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) September 11, 2021

More than a dozen players and coaches from that 2001 Mets team were in attendance, escorting agency representatives who participated in the ground zero rescue and recovery efforts. Among them was the Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza, who hit a come-from-behind, game-winning home run for the Mets in the first sporting event in the city after the Sept. 11 attacks. He and others reflected not only on that moment of healing but also on the club-organized efforts in the aftermath of the attacks to collect needed supplies and visit with emergency medical workers.

“Unfortunately, you do have to experience tragedy to see triumph and see courage and bravery,” Piazza said. “And so as much as I’m sad to see and remember the sad events, it’s still uplifting to continue to reflect on the positive stories that did come out of that week.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and Democratic nominee for mayor, were in attendance.

Before the game, Mets first baseman Pete Alonso spoke to media members on Zoom while wearing a shirt with the logo and nickname of F.D.N.Y. Engine 319, “The Lone Wolf.” Alonso visited the ground zero site earlier in the day and announced that he was donating the proceeds of a new NFT — a nonfungible token, commemorating his 100th career home run — to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

“It’s not just today that people are suffering,” Alonso said. “People go through those pains and scars every single day of the year.”

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Corey Kilgannon

Scenes at ground zero as a disaster-weary nation marked 20 years since 9/11.

The Saturday sky over ground zero was a brilliant, cloudless blue, just like that Tuesday morning 20 years ago when hijacked airliners struck and brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Except this day two decades later was not marked by death and terror but rather by heartfelt remembrances of the 2,753 lives lost at ground zero that day, as loved ones gathered to mourn once again and to mark the 20 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

In groups big and small, they filed quietly in by the thousands to the memorial fountain at the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum and gathered at the spot where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood.

They honored the departed in a ceremony marked by singing, silence and the traditional reading of the names that lasted four hours into early afternoon.

Many people inserted flowers into the engraved names of the dead.

After the national anthem, there were moments of silence marking the minute each plane hit and each tower collapsed.

Three presidents — President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — attended. They wore blue ribbons and held their hands over their hearts as a procession marched a flag through the memorial, and they stood somberly side by side as the names of the dead were read off by family members and stories and remembrances were shared.

Those who could not enter the memorial event gathered on the perimeter of ground zero and gazed up at the Freedom Tower, which now stands at the location.

Some brought American flags. Others brought handwritten signs and photos in tribute to lost loved ones. Thousands of white ribbons were tied by mourners to the iron fence surrounding St. Paul’s chapel nearby.

There were children, like Ariana and Briana Mendoza, 13, twins from the Bronx whose sister, Dephaney, 22, brought them to the memorial to educate them about the attacks.

“I was only 2 when it happened, but I have learned a lot about it, and now I am teaching them,” Dephaney said. “We take pride in being New Yorkers, and this was an attack on our home.”

There were also older visitors like John Fackre, 76, a U.S. Army veteran from Long Island who served in the 1960s and said: “The horror here in 2001 was worse than anything I saw in Vietnam.”

Kevin Armstrong

She survived 9/11 and Covid: ‘You just keep going.’

Wendy Lanski, 51, monitored the helicopters flying overhead as she stood by the Empty Sky Memorial inside Jersey City’s Liberty State Park on Saturday afternoon.

“To you it’s a helicopter, to me it’s suspicious,” she said. “If there is an unexpected loud noise, it doesn’t go away. The PTSD, the health effects, all of that.”

Ms. Lanski was a project manager for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield on Sept. 11, 2001, and was preparing for a 9 a.m. meeting in her office on the 29th floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into her building. She felt the impact and fled down the stairs.

When she got to the lobby, she heard people shouting at her to run, cover her head and not look up. She saw people jumping and ran through the rubble of the collapsed tower before losing her shoes along the way. She reached the Hudson River and escaped via the New York Waterway Ferry to New Jersey.

On Saturday, she met Armand Pohan, the ferry’s chairman and C.E.O., before a remembrance ceremony that featured Gov. Philip Murphy and Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker of New Jersey. Ms. Lanski, who has “9/11/01” and “survivor” tattooed above her right ankle, credited the ferry with saving her life two decades ago.

“I burst into tears,” she said of her meeting with Mr. Pohan. “It was full circle.”

Ms. Lanski, who lives in West Orange, N.J., is a secretary on the board of directors for the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation and works for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. In March 2020, she was diagnosed with Covid-19, and she had to breathe through an oxygen mask while hospitalized.

When she beat the virus, Mr. Murphy called her, and before he took the stage on Saturday, she reintroduced herself and shook his hand.

“It just keeps coming,” she said. “If Osama bin Laden didn’t kill me, I’m not dying from a virus. You just keep going. Just because you had a tragedy, it doesn’t stop you from having others.”

Kevin Roose

A conspiracy film energized the ‘9/11 truther’ movement and fueled the current age of disinformation.

I was not a particularly persuadable “Loose Change” viewer — too young, too self-absorbed, more interested in using my computer to play video games than chase down conspiracy theories. But millions of Americans were seduced by the viral documentary film that popularized the Sept. 11 “truther” movement and became a rallying cry for Americans who believed that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were an inside job, perpetrated by the U.S. government against its own citizens.

After watching it, they disappeared down rabbit holes and emerged days or weeks later as, if not full-fledged 9/11 truthers, at least passionate skeptics. They had opinions about obscure topics like nano-thermites and controlled demolition, and they could recite the melting temperatures of various construction materials. Some believed the government was actively involved; others merely thought Bush administration officials knew about the attacks in advance and allowed them to happen.

I recently went back and watched several versions of “Loose Change.” (There are at least five English-language versions in total.) I also spoke to Korey Rowe and Jason Bermas, a producer and editor on the film, along with several experts on the 9/11 truther movement. (The film’s director, Dylan Avery, declined my interview request after concluding that I was writing a “clickbait article that blames a movie that came out 15 years ago for everything wrong with the internet today.”)

What I found, in short, was that 16 years after its release, “Loose Change” is still bizarrely relevant. Its DNA is all over the internet — from TikTok videos about child sex trafficking to Facebook threads about Covid-19 miracle cures — and many of its false claims still get a surprising amount of airtime. (Just last month, the director Spike Lee drew criticism for indulging Sept. 11 conspiracy theories in a new HBO documentary series.) The film’s message that people could discover the truth about the attacks for themselves also became a core tactic for groups like QAnon and the anti-vaccine crowd, which urge their followers to ignore the experts and “do their own research” online.

Angela Macropoulos

At a beach memorial on Long Island, law enforcement officers say a collective prayer.

On Tobay Beach in Massapequa, N.Y., is a grotto, inscribed with the names of Town of Oyster Bay residents who died on 9/11. It was placed on the bay side of this barrier island because visitors have a direct line of sight to the spot where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

The names on the wall reflect who lived in that part of Nassau County 20 years ago: members of the New York Police Department and the Fire Department alongside those in financial services who worked in the World Trade Center.

Roughly 50 members of the Long Island chapter of the Sworn Guns Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club came to the memorial Saturday to say a collective prayer. Some bikers stared at the wall, while others turned toward the bay and stared up at the sky, as blue as it had been on Sept. 11, 2001.

The bikers then moved to the tiki bar at Surf Shack Flip Flop Coastal Kitchen, about 200 feet from the memorial, and raised beer cans and shot glasses to, in the words of the club’s founder, Chris Bottcher, “the collective memory.”

Mr. Bottcher, 47, of Manorville, N.Y., who retired from the Police Department in 2018, was at the South Tower when it fell. Every year he and his fellow bikers ride on the anniversary to a 9/11 memorial, and this year, the club decided to return to Tobay Beach.

He said he was determined to teach his children about the events of 9/11 through his own recollection, as well as the stories of his fellow law enforcement officers who were at ground zero that day.

“I would like people to remember how police officers, firefighters and first responders were treated with dignity and respect thereafter, and I think a lot of that has gone away,” Mr. Bottcher said.

Téa Kvetenadze

Windows on the World employees are remembered amid calls for better pay for service workers.

Survivors, labor leaders and politicians came together on Saturday afternoon to commemorate the 73 employees of a World Trade Center restaurant who died on 9/11, and to call for improved conditions in the service industry nationwide.

The ceremony was as much a rally for workers’ rights as a solemn memorial for those who died at Windows on the World, which occupied the top floors of the North Tower.

“On 9/11 I lost three precious things,” said Fekkak Mamdouh, who worked at Windows on the World and is now senior director for One Fair Wage, the advocacy group that hosted the event.

“I lost my brothers and sisters that work with me. I lost my sense of security and safety as an Arab Muslim,” he said, “and I lost a good paying job.”

He and others criticized the $2.13 federal minimum wage for tipped workers — the same rate that existed in 2001 — calling it “subminimum.” (Federal law requires that tipped workers receive at least $7.25 an hour, but up to $5.12 of it can come from tips, leaving the employer to pay as little as $2.13.)

“We’ve heard the phrase ‘essential worker’ so often in the last year and a half, and we are truly going to recognize that this work is essential,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. “We must do much more than words.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, echoed that sentiment.

“Coming here gives me strength to keep pushing one fair wage until we get it done in the United States Congress,” Mr. Schumer said. “When we make your lives better, we make New York better, we make America better.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thanked the service workers and advocates for “taking your grief and your loss and turning it into this movement,” and urged them to “keep going.”

Mr. Mamdouh and other former Windows on the World employees lit 20 candles and read aloud the names of the colleagues they lost.

Tez Termulo Boiz said she started working at Windows on the World as a college junior and essentially grew up there.

“When you hit something like the 20th, it really becomes a much bigger event, and reminding you what you lost,” said Ms. Boiz, who now works in finance and lives in New Jersey.

She had an even more basic request than a living wage: kindness.

“Don’t deny a tip. Don’t berate your server,” she said. “Be a decent human. That’s all we ask.”

The New York Times

Scenes from 9/11 ceremonies at the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery.

In California, amid 9/11 remembrance, five young men join the military.

As part of a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., five young men took the U.S. Army Oath of Service. Among them was Patrick Franks, who was celebrating his 24th birthday and fulfilling a lifelong dream of joining the military.

“I’ve always wanted to serve my country,” he said. “That’s the best way I can help the most people.”

Mr. Franks recalled his fourth birthday in 2001. His planned celebration at Disneyland was canceled as news of the terrorist attacks spread and the park closed, so his mother organized a small party with friends in her backyard. The children laughed and played, unaware of the tragedy, while the adults tried to process the events of the day.

Twenty years later, Mr. Franks and his peers were the stars of Saturday’s memorial ceremony, receiving a huge ovation after they were sworn in. Mr. Franks’ father, also named Patrick, described his son as “a natural warrior.” He trains in mixed martial arts, works part-time at a gun range, and grew up hearing World War II stories from his grandfather, who was in the Marines.

Still, Mr. Franks acknowledged being scared of heights, airplanes and the whole idea of boot camp.

“Oh, I’m terrified,” he said with a smile. “But you’ve got to do it.”

The ceremony began with a procession of cars, trucks, motorcycles, helicopters and a flatbed truck carrying 23 tons of World Trade Center wreckage.

Don Barnes, the sheriff of Orange County, noted the bravery of emergency workers and soldiers in the days and years after Sept. 11. He reminded the crowd of the promise to never forget.

“As your sheriff, I am worried we are reverting to a Sept. 10, 2001, mentality,” he said. “We’ve forgotten the lessons of that day.”

Michael Gold

Hochul, in first 9/11 as governor, emphasizes the human cost of the attacks.

During her first commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks as governor, Kathy Hochul spent time with the families of victims at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan, attended a Fire Department Mass and paid tribute to the New York National Guard.

It had been an “emotionally draining day,” she acknowledged as she spoke to the Guard members at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center — and, she said, a remarkable and humbling reminder of the profound loss 20 years ago.

“We all have to remember that behind every number, there’s a person who is loved, who was loved,” said Ms. Hochul, who took office less than a month ago.

The governor announced on Saturday that she had signed bills intended to help provide emergency workers with better access to state benefits after they took part in rescue, recovery and cleanup efforts at the World Trade Center in 2001.

Earlier, she attended the ceremony in Lower Manhattan, along with a number of other current and former elected officials, including Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey. The two of them had lunch nearby and discussed “shared priorities” including the coronavirus pandemic, infrastructure and the economy, Ms. Hochul said on Twitter.

Ms. Hochul then went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan, joining firefighters and top officials for a memorial Mass to honor the 343 members of the Fire Department who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

She will later travel to Citi Field in Queens to attend a memorial ceremony being held there before the Mets and Yankees face off in a game on Saturday night.

Thomas Kaplan

The wreath-laying ceremony was held at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial and included a Marine bugler playing taps. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were joined by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Ali Watkins

The Sept. 11 attack fundamentally transformed New York’s police department.

Since the fall of the World Trade Center, the security apparatus born from the Sept. 11 attack has fundamentally changed the way that New York City’s police department operates , altering its approach to finding and foiling terrorist threats, but also to cracking minor cases.

New Yorkers simply going about their daily lives routinely encounter post-9/11 surveillance tools like facial recognition software, license plate readers or mobile X-ray vans that can see through car doors. Surveillance drones hover above mass demonstrations, and protesters say they have been questioned by antiterrorism officers after marches.

The department’s Intelligence Division, redesigned in 2002 to confront Al Qaeda operatives , now uses antiterror tactics to fight gang violence and street crime.

Policing technology has always advanced along with the world at large. And the police have long used surveillance cameras to find suspects caught on video, publicizing images of people and asking the public for help identifying them.

But both supporters and critics of the shift say it is almost impossible to overstate how profoundly the attacks changed American policing — perhaps most acutely in New York, which lost 23 of its own officers that day, and hundreds more from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since.

Current and former police officials say the tools have been effective in thwarting dozens of would-be attacks. And the department has an obligation, they say, to repurpose its counterterrorism tools for everyday crime fighting.

But others say the prevalence of the Police Department’s technological arsenal subjects ordinary New Yorkers to near-constant surveillance — a burden that falls more heavily on people of color.

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Israel's war in Gaza

Deadly storms sweep central US

US marks 20th anniversary of 9/11

By Fernando Alfonso III , Adrienne Vogt and Melissa Macaya, CNN

Biden attends wreath-laying ceremony at National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

From CNN’s DJ Judd

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are in attendance for the wreath-laying ceremony at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial this afternoon.

Also at the ceremony are Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Panetta on Bush's domestic terrorism remarks: "A terrorist is a terrorist," whether in US or abroad

Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta said he's glad that former President Bush called out domestic terrorism in his speech at the Flight 93 memorial today.

“I think just as 9/11 was a wake-up call to foreign terrorism and the threat from foreign terrorism, I think Jan. 6 was wake-up call for domestic terrorism. And the reality is that a terrorist is a terrorist, whether that terrorist is abroad or whether that terrorist is here at home. And this country has to recognize that we have a responsibility to protect ourselves from attacks from terrorists, whether they’re here or whether they’re in Afghanistan or elsewhere,” Panetta told CNN.

He also said said President Biden should "focus on the future" regarding Afghanistan.

"I really think it is important for President Biden to move on. He made a decision, whether you agree or disagree with the decision, he made it. I think what's important now is for the President to focus on the future and how is this country going to make sure that 9/11 never happens again,   and that we will protect our country from terrorists abroad and terrorists here at home. I think that's the key message he has to send to the American people," Panetta said.

Earlier today in Pennsylvania, Biden defended the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

California Rep. Lee says the tragedies of 9/11 "still echo in our hearts"

From CNN's Dan Merica

Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, acknowledged the anniversary in remarks and compared the unified response to the terrorist attack to the need to unite in the face of the pandemic.

“Today is a day of reflection. You know, the tragedies of Sept. 11 attacks and all our country has been through over the past 20 years still echo in our hearts,” Lee said in Oakland, California, today. “... As we honor the memories of those whose lives we have lost in 9/11, we have to remember, as we did then, we worked together through those tragedies."

Lee's remarks were made during an event for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a gubernatorial recall election next week.

"Now we are working together through this tragedy of the pandemic, of the inequities that we have within our system, and that means we have to make sure that we continue to work to beat back this recall and make sure that Gavin Newsom continues to be our governor, because he has fought to hard, so hard to close these inequities, to unify this state," Lee said.

Twin sisters fled Wall Street holding hands on 9/11

From CNN's Christina Zdanowicz and Deblina Chakraborty

Ivilina Popova and her twin sister, Elmira, came to the US from Bulgaria in 1991. After working at universities in different cities, they left academia so they could be together. The pair moved to New Jersey, Ivilina said, and landed jobs on Wall Street. When the second plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, she said she felt numb and as though darkness took over as she fled with her sister. 

Listen to Popova’s story, in her own words:

CNN asked readers to share how their lives have changed in the past 20 years. Listen to more of their stories here.  

Biden offers praise for Bush's remarks, expresses hope the US can "demonstrate that democracies can work"

From CNN's DJ Judd

President Biden spoke briefly with reporters Saturday while visiting the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department, where he reflected on the day's events.

“It’s a tough day for him and everyone who’s lost somebody—and I know you’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll probably get criticized for saying it again, but these memorials are really important,” Biden said. “But they’re also incredibly difficult for the people affected by them, because it brings back the moment they got the phone call, it brings back the instant they got the news, no matter how years go by.”

The President spoke about a friend of his from Delaware, who lost a son on 9/11, acknowledging he, “like a lot of people, is probably having a tough day today.”

Biden also offered praise for a group of passengers on board United Flight 93, who seized control of the cockpit and redirected the plane to an empty field in Pennsylvania, marveling, “Talk about genuine heroism." 

“Even though you knew they were probably going to do something and you’d lose anyway, it’s one thing to say, I know I should step up, it’s another thing to do it. That’s genuine heroism,” Biden said.

The president also offered praise for former President George W. Bush’s remarks earlier at the Flight 93 Memorial.

“I thought President Bush made a really good speech today, a genuinely good speech, about who we are, we’re not—the core of who we are is not divided, it’s just this notion of, I don’t know how to explain it,” Biden said.

After 9/11, this Muslim American knew life would never be the same again

Sept. 11, 2001, was a wakeup call, said Sadia Sheikh, who moved to the US in 1978 from Pakistan. When she turned on the TV that morning, what she saw on the screen hit her hard. At that moment, as a Muslim American, she said she knew her life would never be the same again. 

Listen to Sheikh’s story, in her own words:

Flight 93 widow says husband's last words to her were "don't worry, we're going to do something"

Deena Burnett Bailey, the wife of a Flight 93 victim, said this year's Sept. 11 anniversary is different for her — not because it's been 20 years since the attack but because her daughters are all now grown adults.

"Even though that's a very big milestone, for me, this is the first year all of my girls are educated, out of school and are grown, working, living on their own, living out of state. As a mom who was so incredibly concerned 20 years ago about how I was going to raise these three babies on my own financially, emotionally, mentally, how I was going to do that, this is really the first anniversary in which I have been able to say I did it. I did it," she told CNN.

"And so to be able to come back to Shanksville, to bring them, to show them where it all happened and to be able to share that experience with my adult daughters ... it brought us full circle," she said.

This is the first time all three of her daughters have gone to the memorial, she said. Her twin daughters were 5 and her younger daughter was 3 when her husband, Tom Burnett, was killed.

On Sept. 11, 2001, they talked to each other at least three times while he was on the plane, she said.

"He started sharing the information I was giving him to the people around him. He just sounded very matter-of-fact, like he was just gathering the information and trying to sort it out," she said.

"He called again a third time and he told me that he put a plan together to take back the airplane. They were waiting until they were over a rural area to take back the cockpit. He said not to worry," she said.

"He was a little concerned in the last phone call but he also was very confident, he was very capable. He seemed that he was very, very much in charge of the situation and going to make a difference. I believed him when he said everything would be OK. Then his final words to me were 'don't worry, we're going to do something.' He hung up the phone, they went up the aisle and into the cockpit," she said.  

CNN will air 9/11 special "Shine A Light" tonight

As part of the 20-year remembrance of 9/11, CNN will air  "Shine A Light," hosted by anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper.

The one-hour event will pay tribute to the nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks, their families, survivors, rescue and recovery workers and volunteers, and those in the military. 

The program will feature discussions with young adults who were affected by the events of 9/11 and its aftermath.

The event will also include musical performances by Brad Paisley, Common, H.E.R., and Maroon 5 and appearances by Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Eli Manning. 

"Shine A Light" will air on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español at 8 p.m. ET.

Trump visits NYPD precinct in midtown Manhattan

From CNN's Elizabeth Joseph

On the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, former President Trump visited the New York City Police Department’s 17th precinct in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood.

“It’s a sad day, a very sad day for a lot of reasons, and we just added to that reason last week,” he said, referencing the current administration’s “disappointing” pullout of US troops Afghanistan.

Trump issued multiple statements attacking President Biden Saturday, and unlike Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Trump was not in attendance at the National September 11th Memorial in Manhattan.

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Find answers to frequently asked questions about the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and the events of September 11, 2001. Visit our Learn and Explore from Home page for interactive experiences and our MEMO blog for stories of commemoration and memorialization.  Support our mission . 

What was the World Trade Center?

The World Trade Center (WTC) was a 16-acre commercial complex in lower Manhattan that contained seven buildings, a large plaza, and an underground shopping mall that connected six of the buildings. The centerpieces of the complex were the Twin Towers. On September 11, 2001, the entire complex was destroyed in a terrorist attack that has come to be referred to as “9/11.”

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What were the Twin Towers?

The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in New York City. At 110 stories each, 1 WTC (North Tower) and 2 WTC (South Tower) provided nearly 10 million square feet of office space for about 35,000 people and 430 companies. For a brief period upon their completion in 1973, they were the tallest buildings in the world. They attracted roughly 70,000 commuters and tourists daily.

The towers were massive. The North Tower rose 1,368 feet—1,730 feet with a large antenna—and the South Tower stood 1,362 feet high. Views extended 45 miles or more from the top of the towers in every direction—far enough to see all five New York City boroughs, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Each weighed more than 250,000 tons and contained 99 elevators and 21,800 windows. Each floor was an acre in size and there was enough concrete in the towers to build a five-foot-wide sidewalk from New York City to Washington, D.C.

The towers had been the target of an attack before 9/11. On February 26, 1993, terrorists with links to an Islamist extremist group detonated explosives in a van parked underneath the WTC. Six people were killed and thousands were injured.

What happened on 9/11?

“9/11” is shorthand for four coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, that occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Nineteen terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the upper floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed because of the damage sustained from the impacts and the resulting fires. After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, fought back, and the plane was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania about 20 minutes by air from Washington, D.C.

The attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations: 2,753 people were killed in New York; 184 people were killed at the Pentagon; and 40 people were killed on Flight 93.

What happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11?

The hijacked Flight 11 was crashed into floors 93 to 99 of the North Tower (1 WTC) at 8:46 a.m. The hijacked Flight 175 struck floors 77 to 85 of the South Tower (2 WTC) 17 minutes later at 9:03 a.m. When the towers were struck, between 16,400 and 18,000 people were in the WTC complex. Of those, the vast majority evacuated safely. As they rushed out, first responders rushed in trying to save those still trapped or injured.

The fires from the impacts were intensified by the planes’ burning jet fuel. They weakened the steel support trusses, which attached each of the floors to the buildings’ exterior walls. Along with the initial damage to the buildings’ structural columns, this ultimately caused both towers to collapse. The five other buildings in the WTC complex were also destroyed because of damage sustained when the Twin Towers fell.

The collapse of the buildings left the site devastated. Thousands of volunteers came to Ground Zero to help with the rescue, recovery, and clean-up efforts, and on May 30, 2002, the last piece of WTC steel was ceremonially removed.

What is Islam?

Islam is the world’s second-largest religion. An adherent of Islam is a Muslim. Islam’s beliefs and practices center around two key sources: the Qur’an and the Hadith. The Qur’an contains what Muslims believe is God’s final revelation, made to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, more than 1,400 years ago. The Hadith is a collection of Muhammad’s sayings and deeds during his life.

What is an Islamist extremist?

“Islamists” see Islam as a guiding ideology for politics and the organization of society. That is, they believe that strict adherence to religious law should be the sole basis for a country’s law, as well as its cultural and social life. While some Muslims believe this, many do not. Islamist extremists believe violence is acceptable to achieve these ends. Al-Qaeda is one of many Islamist extremist groups.

What is al-Qaeda?

Al-Qaeda is an international Islamist extremist terrorist network founded in the late 1980s by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. military operation on May 1, 2011, and others who were involved in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Their aim has been to overthrow governments in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, which do not strictly enforce a religiously sanctioned political and social order. Attacks against the United States were intended to reduce American support for many of these governments; U.S. support was viewed by al-Qaeda as a major obstacle to creating a global order under Islamic authority.

They have claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks since the early 1990s, including the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole ,   and the 9/11 attacks. They have also aligned themselves with and inspired other terrorist groups who have carried out attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombing, the 2004 Madrid train bombing, the 2005 London bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, among many others.

Why did the terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

The terrorists did not have the capacity to destroy the United States militarily, so they set their sights on symbolic targets instead. The Twin Towers, as the centerpieces of the World Trade Center, symbolized globalization and America’s economic power and prosperity.

The Pentagon, as the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense, serves as a symbol of American military power. It is thought that Flight 93 was headed to the Capitol building, the center of American legislative government.

Al-Qaeda hoped that, by attacking these symbols of American power, they would promote widespread fear throughout the country and severely weaken the United States’ standing in the world community, ultimately supporting their political and religious goals in the Middle East and Muslim world.

What countries did the terrorists come from?

Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and one was from Egypt.

What does Afghanistan have to do with 9/11?

Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. They operated training camps there, and openly lived in the country with the support of the Taliban, an Islamist group that ruled the country.

On September 20, 2001, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, former President George W. Bush asserted: “Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” No distinction was made between a harboring state and the terrorists it was harboring. The U.S. government insisted that the Taliban immediately hand over the terrorists and close the training camps or face an attack from the United States. When they refused, “Operation Enduring Freedom” was launched on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of 9/11.

What is the 9/11 Memorial?

The 9/11 Memorial opened on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It is located on the western side of the former World Trade Center complex where the Twin Towers once stood. The Memorial was designed by two architects, Michael Arad and Peter Walker, whose proposal was selected in a design competition out of 5,201 submissions from 63 countries.

The Memorial Plaza surrounds two enormous reflecting pools set within the footprints of the North and South Towers. This is where the towers used to stand. The pools feature 30-foot waterfalls—the largest man-made waterfalls in North America. The water cascades into reflecting pools, finally disappearing into the center voids. The names of people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and on Flight 93, as well as in the 1993 bombing at the WTC, are etched in bronze around the edges of the pools.

The plaza is lined with cobblestones and has more than 400 swamp white oak trees, creating a space for reflection separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city. The trees were selected from within a 500-mile radius of the WTC site, including nurseries located in New York, Pennsylvania, and near Washington, D.C., to symbolize areas impacted on 9/11.

What is the 9/11 Memorial Museum?

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened on May 21, 2014. It is located beneath the Memorial Plaza. Visitors enter the Museum through the Pavilion, where two steel “tridents”—remnants of the North Tower’s façade—stand in the building’s Atrium Terrace. The main exhibition space is located seven stories below the 9/11 Memorial at the bedrock foundations of the World Trade Center. The Museum offers displays of artifacts from the WTC and 9/11 attacks, interactive exhibitions, contemplative areas, and programs that convey individual and collective stories relating the experiences of survivors, first responders, area residents, and eyewitnesses. A memorial exhibition honors the individual victims of the attacks.

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Coa will offer a caregiving presentation on june 11th.

May 27, 2024 143 Views

A woman with expertise in caregiving for a loved one is coming to Three Rivers.

Thanks to the St. Joseph County Commission on Aging, Breeda Kelly Miller, an award-winning author and professional speaker, will be at Three Rivers High School Performing Arts Center for a presentation starting at 7 p.m. June 11.

Titled “Mrs. Kelly’s Journey Home,” the program will be preceded by a free dinner at 5:30.

Anyone currently or who will soon be caring for a spouse, parent or grandchild would benefit from attending Miller’s presentation.

Event organizers request potential participants to please RSVP in order to have an idea how much food to prepare. More information is available by phoning 279-8083.

One injured in Cass County crash

Cass County Sheriff Richard Behnke said deputies were called at 11 p.m. Saturday to Brownsville …

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WPF Gallery Preview

This developer tool demonstrates wpf ( windows presentation framework ) controls and styles to a wpf application in .net 9 and onwards. wpf is a ui framework for building windows desktop applications. it supports a broad set of application development features, including an application model, resources, controls, graphics, layout, data binding and documents. to learn more about the wpf and how you can write your desktop application, visit: https://aka.ms/wpf the source code for this app is available on github: https://github.com/microsoft/wpf-samples, 5/17/2024 11:51:54 am.

Sean Baker's 'Anora' wins Palme d'Or, the Cannes Film Festival's top honor

Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comic but devastating Brooklyn odyssey about a sex worker who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or

Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comic but devastating Brooklyn odyssey about a sex worker who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, won the Cannes Film Festival's top award, the Palme d’Or.

The win Saturday for “Anora” marked a coronation for Baker, the 53-year-old indie filmmaker of “The Florida Project “ who used iPhones to make his 2015 film “Tangerine.” It’s also, remarkably, the fifth straight Palme d’Or won by specialty distributor Neon, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness” and last year’s winner, “Anatomy of a Fall.” Baker accepted the prize with his movie’s star, Mikey Madison, watching in the audience at the Cannes closing ceremony.

“This, literally, has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life,” said Baker, laughing.

But Baker, the first American filmmaker to win the Palme since Terrence Mallick in 2011 with “The Tree of Life,” quickly answered that his ambition would remain to “fight to keep cinema alive.” The director said the world needed reminding that “watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone, answering emails and half paying attention is just not the way — although some tech companies would like us to think so.”

“So I say the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater,” said Baker, who dedicated his award to all sex workers “past, present and future.”

The awards were chosen by the nine-member jury led by Greta Gerwig, who told reporters she was “forever changed as a filmmaker because of this experience.” Gerwig praised “Anora” as having the feeling of classical cinema, saying it felt like an Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks film that lead in unexpected directions.

While “Anora” was arguably the most acclaimed film of the festival, its win was a slight surprise. Many expected either the gentle Indian drama “All We Imagine As Light” or the Iranian film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” to win. Both of those films also took home prizes.

It wasn’t the only jolt of the closing ceremony, though. Before George Lucas was given an honorary Palme d’Or, his old friend and sometimes collaborator Francis Ford Coppol a appeared to present it to him, reuniting two of the most pivotal figures of the last half-century of American moviemaking. Coppola, who earlier in the festival premiered his self-financed sci-fi epic “Megalopolis,” called him his “kid brother.” Lucas called Coppola “a big friend and a brother and a mentor.”

“I’m just a kid who grew up in a vineyard in Modesto, California, who makes movies in San Francisco, with my friend Francis,” said Lucas. “It’s definitely a different world. I’ve actually never made a film in Hollywood as a director.”

“All We Imagine As Light,” about sisterhood in modern Mumbai, won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor. Payal Kapadia’s second feature was the first Indian in competition in Cannes in 30 years.

Afterward, Kapadia urged a wide understanding of Indian cinema, saying “there’s amazing work going on in our country.”

“Not just Bollywood,” said Kapadia.

The jury awarded a special prize to Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig ,” a drama made secretly in Iran. Days ahead of the film’s premiere, Rasoulof, facing an eight-year prison sentence, fled Iran on foot. His film, which includes real footage from the 2022-2023 demonstrations in Iran, channels Iranian oppression into a family drama. The Cannes crowd met an emotional Rasoulof with a lengthy standing ovation.

Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore as a Hollywood actress who goes to gory extremes to remain youthful, won for best screenplay.

“I really believe that movies can change the world, so I hope this movie will be a little stone to build new foundations,” said Fargeat. “I really think we need a revolution and I don’t think it has really started yet.”

Some thought Moore, who attended the awards ceremony, might take best actress. But that honor instead went to an ensemble of actors: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz for Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to a woman. Gascón, who accepted the award, is the first trans actor to win a major prize at Cannes.

“This award is not just for me. It’s for all people who are fighting for themselves and their rights,” Gascón told reporters. “We’ve been insulted, denigrated, subjected to a lot of violence without even knowing why. I think this is award is so much more than anyone could imagine.”

Explaining the jury’s unusual choice of giving best actress to an ensemble, Gerwig said each performer was a standout, “but together they’re transcendent.” “Emilia Perez” also won Cannes’ jury prize, giving it a rare two awards at a festival where prizes are usually spread around.

Best actor went to Jesse Plemons for Yorgos Lanthimos' “Kinds of Kindness.” In the film, three stories are told with largely the same company of actors. Plemons, a standout in several chapters, didn’t attend the closing ceremony.

Portuguese director Miguel Gomes won best director for his “Grand Tour,” an Asian odyssey in which a man flees his fiancée from Rangoon in 1917.

“Sometimes I get lucky,” shrugged Gomes.

The Camera d’Or, the prize for best first feature across all of Cannes official selections, went to Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel for “Armand,” starring “The Worst Person in the World” star Renate Reinsve. Tøndel is the grandson of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actor Liv Ullman.

Last year’s top winners in Cannes went on to considerable arthouse success and awards-season runs through the Oscars. That included the Palme winner “Anatomy of a Fall” and the Grand Prix winner “The Zone of Interest.”

Whether this year’s Cannes lived up to that lineup was a regular conversation topic during the festival. But it was a notably eventful Cannes not just for the some of the films — including “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An America Saga” — that screened but for other surrounding dramas.

After stalling for years in France, the #MeToo movement gained momentum ahead of the festival following allegations by Judith Godrèche against two prominent French filmmakers. She brought her short “Moi Aussi” to the festival.

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine were sometimes referenced in press conferences and in subtly symbolic ways on the red carpet. Festival workers, seeking better protections, protested during the opening night ceremony. The Olympic flame, ahead of its arrival in Paris for the summer games, stopped by. Honorary Palmes were also given to Meryl Streep and the Japanese anime factory Studio Ghibli .

For more coverage of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/cannes-film-festival .