Witnesses were just describing the horror of the first impact when another passenger plane crashed into building, on the other side and below the first impact.

An eyewitness said the first plane appeared to hit one of the skyscraper's twin towers about 20 floors from the top.

He said he thought the plane was still embedded in the smashed and burning building.

Another he said it appeared that the first plane lined up on the tower before crashing.

Jeanne Yurman, told CNN she was watching TV when she heard what she thought was a sonic boom. "I thought it was Concorde," she said.
There was no immediate word on injuries or fatalities in the twin disasters, which happened shortly before 9 am (1300 BST) and then right around 9 am

The towers were struck by bombers in February 1993.

"The plane was coming in low and it looked like it hit at a slight angle," said Sean Murtagh, a CNN vice president.

Large holes were visible in sides of the 110 storey buildings, landmark twin towers.

The tops of the twin towers were obscured by the smoke.

Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper came drifting over Brooklyn, about three miles from the tower, one witness said.

The centre bombing in February 1993, killing six people and injured more than 1,000 others.

In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in dense fog.

An American Airlines flight from Washington to Los Angeles crashed into the Pentagon with 64 passengers and crew aboard. The fuel-laden jet, which had just taken off from Washington's Dulles Airport, set the world's largest office building ablaze and forced thousands of employees to evacuate.

The attack occurred shortly after two other commercial jetliners were hijacked and flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A fourth plane that was hijacked crashed in a wooded area in Pennsylvania.

Casualties were expected to be high, but Rumsfeld released no estimates Tuesday.

In addition to the "many dozens in the aircraft," he said, "there are a number of people that they have not identified by name, but have identified as being dead, and there are a number of casualties. The number has yet to be calculated, and it will not be a few."

The Pentagon suffered widespread damage on the building's fourth, fifth and sixth corridors, and the impact tore a gaping hole in one side of the building. Firefighters continued to battle the blaze on the building's west side Tuesday night, describing it as "contained" but not yet under control.

Rumsfeld was joined by Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin; and Virginia Sen. John Warner, the committee's ranking Republican.

Shelton called the attacks "barbaric terrorism carried out by fanatics."

"I would tell you up front, I have no intentions of discussing today what comes next, but make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready," Shelton said.

U.S. intelligence officials told CNN there were "good indications" that persons linked to Osama bin Laden -- the Saudi millionaire suspected in a number of anti-U.S. terror attacks -- may be responsible for these attacks.

Taliban officials in Afghanistan, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding, said they doubted he was capable of coordinating attacks of such magnitude and pledged to conduct their own investigation.

Debbie Weirerman, public information officer of the FBI office in Boston, said she couldn't confirm or deny a report in Wednesday's Boston Herald newspaper that authorities have identified at least five Arab men as suspects in the attacks launched from Logan International Airport.

But Peter Judge, public information officer at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said the FBI seized a vehicle at the airport with "a lot of suspicious materials in it."

The Herald report also said that Arabic-language flight training manuals were found in a car in the airport's parking garage and said the two of the men were brothers, one a trained pilot. The Herald reported that at least two other suspects flew to Logan on Tuesday from Portland, Maine.

President Bush issued a brief statement Tuesday night, vowing, "We will find these people and they will suffer for taking on this nation." Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the attack, said the nation's military had been placed on "high-alert status." Rumsfeld would not disclose Tuesday whether U.S. military officials had any kind of warning of an attack.

The jet struck a section of the Pentagon that housed U.S. Army offices about 9:40 a.m. Tuesday. Among those aboard the jet was Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator who appeared frequently on CNN and the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.

"It was like a cruise missile with wings, went right there and slammed into the Pentagon," Mike Walter, an eyewitness, told CNN. "Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out, and then it was just chaos on the highway as people either tried to move around the traffic and go down either forward or backwards."
20,000 Pentagon staff evacuated

The more than 20,000 civilians and military men and women who work in the Pentagon streamed into the surrounding parking lots, driven by blue and white strobe alarm lights and wailing sirens. All federal office buildings were ordered closed.

Rumsfeld was uninjured. After the crash, he ran from his office and assisted some victims onto stretchers.

One witness told CNN she saw a commercial jet flying "too fast, too low" and then she saw an explosion at the building.

Lisa Burgess, a reporter for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, said she was walking in a corridor near the blast site and was thrown to the ground by the force of the blast.

Pentagon officials said the national military command center deep inside the building remained intact.
Navy deploys ships off both coasts

In the aftermath, helicopters patrolled the air space over the nation's capital. At one point, fighter jets scrambled to intercept what was reported to be a second aircraft headed toward the area. The second aircraft never appeared.

All U.S. military sites around the world have gone to ThreatCon Delta, which means that a terrorist attack has occurred or an attack at a specific location is likely, Pentagon officials said.

Two aircraft carriers left the Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia, to boost air defense for New York and Washington.

The Navy's Pacific Fleet has deployed an aircraft carrier, two guided missile cruisers, five destroyers and five frigates armed with missiles to protect the West Coast and Hawaii, according to a Navy official, who asked not to be identified.

And in the Persian Gulf, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise -- which had been stationed in the Persian Gulf recently and relieved by the USS Carl Vinson -- has been told to stay in the region, Pentagon officials told CNN.

-- CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre and CNN.com writer Matt Smith contributed to this report.

7:27:57 PM

The American nation reeled in horror and security measures spun into effect as the work day began with a series of plane crashes that tore through the World Trade Center and left smoke billowing from the Pentagon.

"I'm very afraid. I don't feel safe," said Charlin Sims, taking a cigarette break outside her office in downtown Columbus, Ohio. "I want to hug my son."

Bells at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus rang for the victims, and flags were lowered to half-staff in many states. Nationwide, crowds gathered around television sets in airports, bars, hotel lounges. The space station commander could see the smoke rising above New York.

"My whole family's from Boston, and two are always flying," said Diane Morse, dialing her cell phone in tears in downtown Cleveland. "We always fly American." Relatives and friends worked at the twin towers, she said.

Government offices from coast to coast launched emergency preparedness operations, even as questions were raised about how what appeared to be a well-coordinated terrorist attack could be carried out.

"It's sort of like a terrorism movie you see on television," said terrorism expert Michael Gunter at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville.

Other planes were apparently hijacked and crashed, including one that crashed near Pittsburgh.

The memory of Pearl Harbor was offered up again and again, with all its images of sneak attacks, national honor and war.

"This is our second Pearl Harbor, right here in the nation's capital and New York City," a somber Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., said as he stood in a capitol park after his office building was evacuated.

Also speaking of Pearl Harbor were an airplane passenger stranded in Orlando, military veterans, a Wall Street worker fleeing the smoke and debris of the attack itself.

"Someone is trying to make a serious statement and I hope we do likewise," said Scott Gilmore at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

A World War II veteran in Nashville for a reunion of the U.S.S. Intrepid aircraft carrier was incensed. "I feel like going to war again. No mercy," said Felix Novelli, a New Yorker with friends who work at the World Trade Center. "We have to come together like '41, go after them."

"We're like everyone else, in shock," said Carol Windham, a spokeswoman at Birmingham International Airport in Alabama. Planes were grounded nationwide.

Heightened security went into effect at government and corporate offices - at the Army's main germ warfare defense laboratory in Frederick, Md., city offices in Colorado and oil refineries in Louisiana.

Monuments like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis were closed.

"I don't think there's any place in America right now that's not at risk," said Andrew Hudson, a city spokesman in Denver, where emergency preparedness officials gathered in the basement of City Hall.

Students at Kansas State University in Manhattan skipped class to gather at television sets, sometimes with professors' blessing.

"It seems ridiculous that I would stand in front of my class talking about Plato when something this important is going on," said Laurie Bagby, an associate professor of political science.

In a Philadelphia hotel lounge, where dozens of people gathered to watch television coverage, a visitor from Texas wept.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime," said 20-year-old Beverly Evans of Dallas. "How can we stop something like this from happening?"

Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he received a warning from Islamic fundamentalists close to bin Laden, but did not take the threat seriously.

"They said it would be a huge and unprecedented attack but they did not specify," Atwan said in a telephone interview in London.

"We usually receive this kind of thing. At the time we did not take the warnings seriously as they had happened several times in the past and nothing happened. "This time it seems his people were accurate and meant every word they said."

Atwan, who interviewed bin Laden in 1996 and has since maintained contacts with his followers, said he believed the attack on the World Trade Center in New York was the work of "an Islamic fundamentalist group" close to bin Laden.

But Muttmain, who is the spokesman for the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and one of the most senior Taliban officials, dismissed allegations that bin Laden could be behind the attacks in the United States.

"Such a big conspiracy, to have infiltrated in such a major way is impossible for Osama," said Muttmain. He said bin Laden does not have the facilities to orchestrate such a major assault within the United States.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who espouse a harsh brand of Islamic law, have resisted U.S. demands to hand over bin Laden, indicted in the United States on charges of masterminding the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

After the attacks in East Africa, Washington retaliated with a blistering missile attack in August 1998, sending more than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles into eastern Afghanistan apparently targeting training camps operated by bin Laden.

The attacks killed about 20 followers of bin Laden's but the exiled Saudi millionaire escaped unhurt. Since then he has been forced by the Taliban rulers to stop giving interviews and making statements.

It's an especially intriguing question because controllers in New York, Boston and Cleveland suspected or knew quickly that three other airliners had been hijacked. They tracked two of them on a backup radar system as one slammed into the World Trade Center and another crashed in Pennsylvania.

They searched, without success, for the third, which also plowed into the World Trade Center.

In the case of American Flight 77, it is unclear whether additional warning time would have changed anything. Military jets were scrambled after controllers became aware of the hijacked aircraft, but the fighters could not get to the Washington area in time.

Thirty minutes' extra warning would have allowed the jets to arrive in Washington before Flight 77, but it is unclear what action they were prepared to take.

The aircraft, traveling from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, was hijacked sometime between 8:50 a.m. -- when air traffic controllers made their last routine contact with the pilot -- and 8:56, when hijackers turned off the transponder, which reports the plane's identity, altitude and speed to controllers' radar screens.

The airliner crashed into the Pentagon at 9:41 a.m., about 12 minutes after controllers at Dulles sounded an alert that an unidentified aircraft was headed toward Washington at high speed.

The answers to the mystery of the aircraft's disappearance begin with the fact that the hijacking took place in an area served by only one type of radar, FAA officials confirmed.

Although this radar is called a "secondary" system, it is the type used almost exclusively today in air traffic control. It takes an aircraft's identification, destination, speed and altitude from the plane's transponder and displays it on a controller's radar screen.

"Primary" radar is an older system. It bounces a beam off an aircraft and tells a controller only that a plane is aloft -- but does not display its type or altitude. The two systems are usually mounted on the same tower.

Primary radar is normally used only as a backup, and is usually turned off by controllers handling aircraft at altitudes above 18,000 feet because it clutters their screens. All aircraft flying above 18,000 feet are required to have working transponders.

If a plane simply disappears from radar screens, most controllers can quickly switch on the primary system, which should display a small plus sign at the plane's location, even if the aircraft's transponder is not working.

But the radar installation near Parkersburg, W. Va., was built with only secondary radar -- called "beacon-only" radar. That left the controller monitoring Flight 77 at the Indianapolis center blind when the hijackers apparently switched off the aircraft's transponder, sources said.

The airspace controlled by each of the FAA's 20 "en route" centers is further divided into a number of sectors, with separate controllers handling each sector. Flight 77 was flying through a sector in the eastern portion of Indianapolis's airspace when it was hijacked.

Sources said the location of the hijacking is likely just a coincidence, although there is a remote possibility that the hijackers knew where to turn off the transponder.

There are a number of locations across the interior of the United States that operate solely with secondary radars. Until Sept. 11, it was the written policy of the FAA to begin turning off some older primary radars as they broke down or came due for expensive maintenance.

The more modern secondary radar was considered sufficient for high-altitude navigation as the FAA began switching to satellite-based navigation systems over the coming decades. FAA officials said no primary radars had been turned off yet, and the events of Sept. 11 have reversed the policy.

Officials acknowledged that several other factors contributed to the lack of information about Flight 77, which killed 189 people when it hit the Pentagon.

- Unlike at least two of the other aircraft, whose pilots apparently held radios open so controllers could hear the hijackers, there was only silence from Flight 77.

- In the case of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center, the Boston en route center handed off the climbing planes to the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility, an FAA official said. TRACONs control lower-altitude airspace, and controllers in them routinely monitor both primary and secondary radar.

Also, as soon as it became known that airliners were disappearing from radar screens, controllers in the New York and Boston "en route" sectors turned on their primary radar. That left the Northeast blanketed with both types of radar.

- Alerts and groundings of aircraft on Sept. 11 came minutes too late to help find Flight 77. The aircraft disappeared just nine minutes after the FAA was notified that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and 12 minutes before the second plane struck, a period of general confusion.

An alert to controllers to watch for planes disappearing from radar or changing to unauthorized courses did not go out until 22 minutes after Flight 77 disappeared, when it was at least halfway back to Washington.

- When they reconstructed Flight 77's path, investigators determined that it was picked up by some distant radars, but none that were available to the Indianapolis controller, FAA officials said.

As the airliner sped east, controllers handling other sectors of high-altitude airspace in the Indianapolis center and the Washington center, at Leesburg, did not notice it, sources said. As usual, they were not monitoring primary radar, either. The two centers cover large areas of the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic areas.

With no signal on their radar screens, controllers did not realize that Flight 77 had reversed direction. At 9:09 a.m., unable to reach the plane by radio, the Indianapolis controller reported a possible crash, sources said.

The first time that anyone became aware an aircraft was headed at high speed toward Washington was when the hijacked flight began descending and entered airspace controlled by the Dulles International Airport TRACON facility, an aviation source said.

The first Dulles controller noticed the fast-moving plane at 9:25 a.m. Moments later, controllers sounded an alert that an aircraft appeared to be headed directly toward the White House. It later turned and hit the Pentagon.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown noted that the Indianapolis controller properly followed all procedures in effect before Sept. 11. He or she assumed an electrical power failure and made every possible attempt to contact the plane. In the meantime, the controller cleared other aircraft from the plane's presumed flight path.

Those procedures changed, effectively, 22 minutes after Flight 77 disappeared from radar, when the FAA Command Center -- reacting to the World Trade Center crashes -- told controllers nationwide to be alert for planes dropping from radar or making unauthorized course changes.

Today, controllers would alert supervisors, who likely would call for military aircraft to search for the missing plane.

What suggests that terrorism in THE USA was planned well in advance?

First, the conspirators possessed the professional skill to fly an aircraft. There had to be at least four of them with substitutes on hand in the event one of them failed. There is a high probability that the hijacking of an aircraft will fail, thus there had to be stand-by hijackers and/or pilots in this eventuality.

In the second place, all participants in the operation were ready to sacrifice themselves, and such individuals are not easy to find.

Finally, the departure times of the aircraft from four different points were coordinated minute by minute. This means that the routes and timing were known well in advance, and these particular flights were selected specifically for their routes and schedule.

All of this is sufficiently complicated to necessitate a long period of planning.

And how long, in your opinion, would it take to plan something like this? How large an organization would it require? Could, for example, the Red Army carry out such an operation? Some analysts say that only a National organization could do this.

As far as the time of preparation is concerned, it would require months. And such an organization must be very powerful. But, the participation of a National organization, such as a government of a country, is very doubtful.

I assure you that National resources have not been used here. No secret service would risk their operatives in this way. They spend a lot of time and money training their agents. However, if President Bush had been the target, then one would suspect a secret service of some organization. But here, the target was different: civilians.

As for the Red Army, it doesn't fit for one simple reason: it consists of mainly orientals and it is too easy to distinguish Japanese from Americans.

So, what do you conclude from all this?

You see, analyzing this situation, I was struck by one significant fact: it is known that there were telephone calls from the plane. One of the calling persons was a professional journalist. And yet, not one of the calling individuals said that they were being hijacked by "moslem terrorists." There was, apparently, nothing unusual about the appearance of the hijackers. There was no attempt to describe them. No one said: "Moslem terrorists have hijacked the plane," which would have logically been the first comment by this journalist IF it was apparent that the hijackers were "foreign." There was obviously nothing unusual about them in terms of appearance, accent, pronunciation, or other similar factors.

But, secret organizations could hide these things, couldn't they?

All these calls were private. And even the FBI was not able to suppress the fact that these calls took place. So, the conclusion which comes to mind, is that the external appearance of the hijackers was in no way different from the other passengers. Only in such cases would the communicants indentify the hijackers in a shorthand way. This suggests that the hijackers were European in appearance.

There is also the suspicious fact that the conspirators left a huge "clue" in the leased automobile at the airport with a copy of the Koran and instructions for flying a plane in Arabic.

Now look, not one organization claimed responsibility. This means that the terrorists want to hide their identity. With every other aspect of total control and professionalism, how could they make such a mistake? This does not compute with all the rest of the perfection of the operation.

All this says that the criminals want to create a false track. In this way, the secret services have been induced very cleverly to look for "Moslem terrorists. "

But indeed the practice of self-sacrifice is typical to the Moslem culture?

You are completely right. But who told you that those who died were not Moslems? This way we can narrow the radius of our search. On the basis of this information which we have, by analysis, we may come to the consclusion that those who did it were Americans or Europeans who were followers of radical Islam. They were manipulated so that the true criminals will be thus spared for follow-up actions. It is completely clear that this is a multi-phase operation.

That means that you do think that there will be new terrorist acts?

Unfortunately, it seems to me, it is necessary to be prepared for more terrorism, in another form, but with equal effectiveness. According to the clues that we have, ships can be used to ram dams. Imagine, if you will, a passenger ship or a tanker with 200,000 tons of oil hijacked and rammed into a dam? It will flood the cities downriver with populations in the millions, with burning oil floating on a flood.

Another variant: There are railroad crossings under the Hudson river. This can be exploded from above or below, which would flood the subway.

Are you saying that these actions will take place in America?

Yes. In the first place, the terrorists will want to confirm their superiority. In the second place, remember that, besides the use of the aircraft as weapons, there was also a car bomb. So, what would prevent the terrorists from blowing up a few more cars in Europe if they intend to act globally?

No, it seems that the target is precisely America; precisely civilians.

But, we remember that some analysts were claiming that if George Bush was in the White House on September 11, then the aircraft would have been aimed at the White House instead of the Pentagon.

This is highly improbable. In that case the White House or the Pentagon, but not peaceful population would be the first targets. Indeed after a first successful terrorist act, the chances of success for the rest fall. You see that the last action did fail in the crash of the aircraft in Pittsburgh. It was most certainly shot down. However hard it is to admit, this was the correct thing to do.

So it is clear that the main targets are civilians. There is this formula that is part of the mentality of terrorists: the civilian population in the democratic countries are responsible for the actions of their government. The terrorists accept and use this formula. Therefore, the next terrorist acts will follow the same pattern. Obviously, they will occur on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. Why? I don't want to explain the terrorist's logic. But it is based on a certain sense of the "rightness" of the thing.

But I would like to repeat this: the fact that no terrorists are claiming responsibility, tells us that they will kill again and again until the next stage of global conflict is achieved. This is precisely the goal of these actions. Only then will they reveal their identity in order to get followers.

How could the special services OF THE USA fail to detect such a terrorist act?

I will give two examples. Half a year ago Israeli reconnaissance carried out studies through the use of aerial targets for conducting terrorism. It is certain that the Americans had access to these studies. But it seems to not have entered their minds to apply this information in defensive ways.

And other - in March of 1991 in our office sat Korzhakov, and we told him about the situation leading to the September government coup. We predicted that everything would occur in September. Everything actually occurred, exactly following our scenario, only it happend one month earlier: August. No one paid any attention. This means that when there are predictions of scenarios that seem to be improbable, no one takes them seriously, especially the secret services. That is why Putin says that what is needed is a union of all secret services of all nations.

What is the probability that the American secret services will succeed in finding the leader of this operation, or that they simply will present to society a fake?

Very high. There are people, there are apartments where they were located, which means, there are traces, certainly. Following these traces, one may find the leader.

And who this? Ben Laden?

Hardly. Yes, there was the interception of his conversation with someone, where they reported to him the destruction of two targets.This was seen as indirect confirmation of his participation. But he is not an ideologist. He is too well known. And the one who organized all of this is too smart to be noticed. Ever.