On the morning of September 11, 2001, as hijackers Khalid al- “Mihdhar and [Majed] Moqed entered Dulles Airport’s [Washington, D.C.] west security screening checkpoint, where they placed their carry-on bags on the belt of the x-ray machine and proceeded through the arched magnetometer. Both set off the alarm, and they were directed to a second […]
Category: quotes
9/11/2001
Speaking from the White House at 8:30 p.m. on September 11, 2001, President Bush said: ” ‘We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.’ It was the first articulation of a policy that would come to be known throughout the world as the Bush doctrine.” – […]
9/11/2001
“At 12:05 p.m. [on September 11, 2001], CIA director George Tenet called to report that just fifteen minutes after the Pentagon had been hit, the National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a phone call between a known associate of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and someone in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The bin […]
9/11/2001
“[I Want] best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’ [quote from] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s reaction to news of the September 11 attacks, as of 2:40 p.m. that day, according to notes […]
9/11/2001
“Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. …For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey.” – 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, Page 1 […]
9/11/2001
After hearing about the first crash at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, ” ‘The President [Bush]was surprised,’ said [White House Press Secretary Ari] Fleischer. ‘He thought it had to be an accident.’ Yet, despite having a secure STU-III phone next to him in the presidential limousine and an entire national security staff […]
9/11/2001
On September 11, 2001, “The terrorists thwarted the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] by turning off the transponders and not responding to radio transmissions. As for NORAD’s more sophisticated radar, it ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. ‘When you looked at NORAD on September 11, we had a ring of radar all around […]
9/11/2001
“At 2:40 that afternoon [September 11, 2001], an aide to the Defense Secretary [Donald Rumsfeld] jotted notes of Rumsfeld’s conversations. Written deep in the War Room, the notes describe the Pentagon chief as wanting ‘best info fast; judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only U.B.L. [Usama bin Laden].’ ‘Go […]
9/11/2001
Returning to the White House in Marine One, the President Bush’s helicopter, on September 11, 2001, presidential advisor Karl Rove wrote: “As we turned north, we could see smoke coming from the Pentagon. The airship was quiet; no one talked until the president broke the silence by pointing out the window toward the black plume […]
9/11/2001
In security screening at Dulles International Airport (Washington, D.C.) on the morning of September 11, 2001, hijacker “Nawaf [al-Hazmi] set off the alarms for both the first and second metal detectors. In his pocket or in his hand luggage he had the heavy Leatherman multitool utility knife he had purchased at the Laurel [Maryland] Target […]