Terrorism & Security After 9/11

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower. A third plane hit the Pentagon. A fourth, United 93, crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought the hijackers for control of the cockpit.

By 10:28 a.m., both towers had collapsed. The dust cloud rolled through the streets of lower Manhattan for miles. 2,977 people were dead. They were office workers, firefighters, flight crews, paramedics, police officers, janitors, restaurant staff, visitors from 90 different countries. The youngest victim was two years old, a passenger on Flight 175 with her parents.

The attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with A transnational militant Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988. Al-Qaeda emerged from the networks of Arab volunteers who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The group carried out the September 11 attacks and multiple other operations worldwide. Its ideology blended a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam with anti-Western political grievances, particularly opposition to U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and U.S. support for Israel., a militant Islamist network led by Osama bin Laden from bases in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi nationals. They had lived in the United States for months, taken flight lessons in Florida, and boarded commercial aircraft with box cutters that morning.