2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 12, 2001 AMERICA IN CRISIS I Bush.: WASHINGTON (AP) - A grim-faced Presi- dent Bush mourned the deaths of thousands of Americans in yesterday's atrocities and vowed to avenge their killings. "Today, our nation saw evil" he said. In his first prime-time Oval Office address, Bush said the United States would retaliate against "those behind these evil acts," and any country that harbors them. Bush spoke from the Oval Office just hours after bouncing between Florida and air bases in Louisiana and Nebraska for security reasons. Fighter jets and decoy helicopters accompanied his evening flight to Washington and the White House. 'Today With smoke still pouring out of rubble in Washington and New York, he said, "These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." Bush spoke for less than five minutes from the desk that Bill Clinton and John E Kennedy used before him. Beside the door, a TelePromTer operator fed Bush the words that he and his speechwriters hastened to pen just an hour earli- er. He stumbled a couple of times even as he strove to maintain a commanding air. Aides pushed an American flag and one with the presi- dential seal behind him for the somber occasion. Bush said the government offices deserted our nation saw evil' after the bombings yesterday would open today. He asked the nation to pray for the families of the victims and quoted the Book of Psalms, "And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages. in Psalm 23. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me." The United States received no warning of the attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center towers, White House press secre- tary Ari Fleischer said. U.S. officials privately said they suspected ter- rorism Osama bin Laden, protected by Afghan government, was behind the tragedies. The Afghan government has rejected the accusations. "We will make no distinction between the ter- rorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them," Bush said. "Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom, came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts." He said thousands of lives were "suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror," Bush said. The Oval Office address was his third state- ment on the tragedy. He began his day in Sarasota, Fla., where he intended to talk about education. The remarks were scrapped and Bush headed to Louisiana. He made a brief statement from a conference room at a Louisiana military base, assuring Americans that he was in regular contact with his command post in Washington: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House national security team. He then boarded Air Force One at 1:30 p.m. EDT for a secret destination that turned out to be Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base,,home to the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the nation's nuclear weapons. Until three years ago, the Strategic Command also housed the so-called doomsday plane that had been specially equipped to serve as a flying White House in the event of nuclear war. 41 immediately ater first plane crashes Los Angeles Times NEW YORK - In a matter of just a few minutes, the nation's largest city, was plunged into an unimaginable disaster. In New York, huge clouds of smoke billowed from the World Trade Center as fire engulfed the two towers. Workers.at the center began jumping from the 60th floor and higher, some with their legs in a bicycle motion as they plunged to their deaths. Then came a crash and one tower was gone, altering the New York skyline in a matter of seconds. As the mass of steel and glass settled to the ground, the reverberations sounded like thunder in the distance. Streams of police moved back from where the building had once stood because their stag- ing areas was being buried under building debris. In the street, Kevin McNeal, was in his office on the eighth floor of Tower 1 when the plane struck. He was covered with dust. "My whole floor was destroyed," he said. "I thought it was a bomb." On that same floor, Robert Liipiak was just opening his office door when the first plane struck and the force of the crash slammed him into his desk. Liipiak guided his office workers to the stairwell, but it was locked. For a few moments, they were trapped. Then police arrived to help them down to the ground floor. Robert Knowles was on the 54th floor when the first plane struck. As he was knocked to the ground, the windows of his office blew out. AP PHOTO People take off running, trying to escape the debris as one of the World Trade Center towers collapses yesterday morning in New York City. FBofficials ponder ogistics behnd orchestrated attacks "It snapped the desk out of the window like a piece of paper," he said. "I was praying I wouldn't get sucked out the window." Knowles said he managed to make it to the 30th floor, where progress in walking down the smoky stairwells slowed dramatically. Water from the sprinkler system was everywhere and the acrid smoke was so thick that breathing became difficult. "It was really tough," he said. "I was praying for people in wheelchairs." On the ground, there was panicas police and firefighters tried to rescue survivors through the blinding smoke that was everywhere. In only minutes, the first tower began to top- ple and police cars began racing backward, away from the carnage. Behind them came a huge plume of smoke and debris blowing down the street. Traffic did not move and people got out of their cars. Thousands gathered in the streets staring up at the flames and the smoke. There was a sense of incomprehension. Mark Asnin, a New York television photog- rapher, had rushed to the buildings after the first fire alarm. "We had no warning," he said, his voice shaking. "Suddenly there was this tremendous explosion and it was like a tornado was coming, a big black cloud of dust and debris. The debris was blowing at our backs. I saw a photographer for The New York Post who got cut up. We had no time. We just dove under a fire truck. It was black, black, so black. and people were scream- ing for their lives." Ash covers a street in downtown New York City after the collapse of the World Trade Center following a terrorist attack. .....h""..' Y."~,'': AP PHOTO Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - The air attacks yester- day morning in New York and Washington and a jetliner crash in Pennsylvania were the work of a carefully orchestrated conspiracy that deftly skirted a beleaguered U.S. airport security system and placed terrorists on four separate planes, senior FBI officials believe. Authorities suspect that the terrorists had help from airport ground crews, that they chose cross-country flights because the planes would be heavily loaded with fuel and their ranks included hijackers who could fly planes. But what investigators found most surpris- ing was the timing. They mar*veled at how teams of hijackers working in at least three different cities simultaneously overpowered commercial planes in the air before federal authorities could shut down all flights across the country. In doing so, the terrorists penetrated an air- port security net that many had warned previ- ously is inadequate. Lewis Schiliro, who as head of the FBI office in New York helped oversee investiga- tions into the explosion aboard TWA Flight 800 and an earlier bombing at the World Trade Center, was left in utter disbelief by what he saw unfold yesterday morning. "I've been chilled by a lot of things," Schiliro said. "But this is something I just can't begin to comprehend. They put this together very, very neatly." A senior FBI official in Washington said, simply: "We're just amazed at the level of coordination this would have taken." Now begins the painstaking law enforce- ment process of trying to determine how America's security was breached. "You've got every place that these jets were hijacked from," said one senior FBI official in Washington. "We will check for cars in the parking lots that may have been left. What happened at the airport gateways? How did they get through? What is on the passenger lists, the luggage lists? "We will be screening television monitors and if there are cameras available, we will look to see if there was more that one hijacker. There probably were four or five on each flight, maybe, and what are their connections with other passengers? "Were the tickets purchased sequentially? What about cab drivers? Who gave people rides to the airport? It's just an incredible myri- ad of leads to follow up on." "And then you look at our own intelligence. Did we miss something? Was there radio tele- phone traffic that referred to something that was going to occur today?" It is unclear whether any guns were used in the hijackings. But a passenger in one of the hijacked planes called her husband and report- ed that the terrorists were armed with knives and cardboard cutters. "My guess is you have to put somebody in the pilot's seat, and I would tend to think you would need a gun," Schiliro said. 6 Chaos spreads quickly through acapital WASHINGTON (AP) - A frantic guard outside the Supreme Court shouted at strolling passers-by: "You don't have time to stay in this area!" Why, he was asked, what hap- pened? "Explosions! Leave!" Secret Service agents similarly yelled at White House tourists to get away. At the Capitol, stunned congressmen hud- dled under the shade of trees outside. Some officers who typi- cally keep firearms out of sight made a show of toting pump-action shotguns. Across Washington, people left work and jammed streets and subways to try to get home as the seat of government was evacuated after devastating terrorist attacks at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. Sirens wailed. Cars packed the streets, and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled the Washington Monument. Unmarked official cars flew through red lights and raced down the wrong sides of streets, holding up insignia to identify themselves. And a TV news crew worked a deal to perch on a church rooftop with a picture-perfect view of the Capitol framed against a brilliant blue sky, providing a clear shot just in case a plane should demolish the home of Congress. "I just want to get out of downtown, get someplace safe," said Tracey Nicholas, who had collected her son, third-grader , --- --..2--r. nl1tUaC Officials immediately launch investigation, eye bin Laden 6 WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. offi- cials began piecing together a case link- ing Osama bin Laden to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, aided by an intercept of communications between his supporters and harrowing cell phone calls from victims aboard the jetliners before they crashed yester- day. U.S. intelligence intercepted commu- nications between bin Laden supporters discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "They have an intercept of some information that included people asso- ciated with bin Laden who acknowl- edged a couple of targets were hit," Hatch said in an interview with The Associated Press. He declined to be more specific. Hatch also said law enforcement has data possibly linking one-person on one of the four ill-fated flights to bin Laden's organization. Government and industry officials said at least one flight attendant and two passengers called from three of the planes as they were being forced down in New York and Washington - each describing similar circumstances. The callers indicated hijackers armed with knives, in some cases stabbing flight attendants, took control of the plane and were forcing them down toward the ground, officials said. One of the passengers was Barbara Olson, the wife of a top Justice Depart- ment official who called her husband as the hijacking was occurring. Olson, the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that left Dulles Inter- national Airport in Washington and was forced to crash into the Pentagon. The officials said Olson told her husband the attackers had used knife- like instruments to take over the plAhe, and forced passengers to the back of the jet. Theodore Olson confirmed his wife made the calls before dying. "She called from the plane while it was being hijacked. I wish it wasn't so but it is," he said. AP PHOTO A helicopter surveys the damage as smoke billows out of the Pentagon yesterday following a terrorist attack. makers stayed put. "They tried to throw me out three times, but they didn't suc- ceed," said Rep. Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "I figured I was safer in the building than out on the street." Some Congress mermbers insisted on more symbolic acts, singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps. Congres- sional leaders kept the Capitol Dome bathed in floodlights all night to reinforce the message that the light of democracy chn(-,nn nnw in Genre Washinton University student U.S. denies any responsibility for explosions that rock Afghanistan __ _ .. " " 1 T.l'1_ ___ _._.t_...... .....