WASHINGTON – Americans found themselves at war Tuesday with a shadowy enemy whose ruthless precision raised fears that more – or even worse – might lie ahead.
As rescue crews in New York and Washington readied for the ghastly task of pulling bodies – perhaps thousands – from the rubble of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, explosions rocked the Afghan capital of Kabul.
But U.S. military spokesmen denied that the attacks on Kabul were the result of a U.S. strike. They attributed the blasts to civil conflict within Afghanistan, leaving open the possibility that they were the work of American allies.
A grim-faced President Bush condemned the attacks on Washington and New York and vowed to “find those responsible and bring them to justice.”
In the second Oval Office address of his presidency, he said the United States would retaliate against “those behind these evil acts” and any country that harbors them.
“Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature,” he said.
Earlier, at a Pentagon briefing, Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would not discuss what is being planned in response “but make no mistake about it, our armed forces are ready.”
The Taliban regime in Kabul has sheltered Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, singled out by many analysts as the likely author of Tuesday morning’s twin assaults in New York and Washington.
Those attacks – carried out with hijacked commercial airliners – left Americans deeply shaken, as they watched the most potent symbols of the nation’s financial and military might disintegrate, sickeningly, in billows of black smoke.
A woman on the streets of New York captured the enormity in a single word: “Armageddon.” Said a police officer, “New York is crying.”
The devastating terrorist onslaught was the worst attack waged against the United States since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“This is obviously an act of war that has been committed on the United States,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona.
Officials hesitated to speculate about the number of fatalities. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said it probably would be Wednesday before informed estimates were available. What is certain, he said, is that the toll would be “more than any of us can bear.”
The calamity unfolded on television, including live shots of the second plane crashing the World Trade Center and the twin towers collapsing. Few Americans escaped the horrific images, and millions experienced some direct effect:
• Officials said the four airliners alone had 266 people aboard – more than were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing – and there were no known survivors.
• At the World Trade Center, the dead and the doomed plummeted from the skyscrapers, among them a man and woman holding hands.
• Air travel throughout the nation ceased and near chaos reigned at airports. Flights in the air were directed to land at the nearest available airport, stranding tens of thousands of passengers far from their intended destinations.
• Trading on Wall Street was suspended. Major buildings were closed and evacuated around the country, from the United Nations to the U.S. Capitol to Disneyland in California.
• The military boosted security across the country to the highest levels, including the Navy sending ships to the New York and Washington to assist with air defense and medical needs.
More than 50,000 people work in the 110-story World Trade Center towers, which collapsed after airliners slammed into their upper reaches Tuesday at 7:45 and 8:03 a.m. Dallas time.
Mr. Giuliani said 2,100 people were injured – 1,500 “walking wounded” who were taken to New Jersey, and 600 others who were taken to area hospitals, 150 of them in critical condition.
About an hour after the first New York attack, a third airliner crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, where 20,000 people work. Early estimates indicated that 100 people may have died there.
A half hour after the Pentagon was hit, a fourth airliner crashed in a field near Pittsburgh. A passenger on that plane used a cell phone to call 911 and report that it had been hijacked. Some authorities speculated that it had been en route to attack the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.
Two of the hijacked planes were operated by American Airlines; the other two by United Airlines.
No nation or group had claimed responsibility by Tuesday night. Analysts who specialize in terrorism immediately invoked the name of Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to have orchestrated several attacks, including those on two U.S. embassies in Africa.
“This is perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack that’s ever taken place in the world,” said Chris Yates, an aviation expert at Jane’s Transport in London.
“It takes a logistics operation from the terror group involved that is second to none. Only a very small handful of terror groups is on that list. … I would name at the top of the list Osama bin Laden.”
In June, a federal judge scheduled a bin Laden associate to be sentenced Wednesday at a courthouse near the Trade Center for his role in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. However, that sentencing had been delayed some time ago.
Tuesday, Taliban officials condemned the attacks on New York and Washington and denied that Mr. Bin Laden was behind them.
Both airline pilots and anti-terrorism experts said the attackers’ plan was well thought-out. The pilots of each plane apparently were overwhelmed before they could alert air traffic controllers that something was amiss.
All the hijacked flights originated on the East Coast, giving the FAA and other officials little time to react once they were hijacked. And all were long-haul flights, full of fuel that essentially made them flying bombs.
Once they crashed, the spilled fuel would have spread flames throughout the stricken buildings, possibly melting their steel supports.
“This building would have stood had a plane … smashed into it,” said Hyman Brown, a University of Colorado civil engineering professor and the Trade Center’s construction manager. “But steel melts, and 24,000 gallons of aviation fluid melted the steel. Nothing is designed or will be designed to withstand that fire.”
FBI analysts in Dallas on Tuesday poured over passenger flight logs provided by American Airlines in an effort to single out hijackers who were on board the passenger jets that destroyed the towers, said Special Agent in Charge Danny Defenbaugh.
Renee Cottrell-Brown of Arlington, vice president of Dallas-based Pro-Line Corp, was inside the second tower when the jet’s impact rocked it. Before they fled, said her husband, Eric Brown, they saw people who had fallen or jumped from higher floors hurtling past their window.
Jennifer Riveiro, who works across the street from the Trade Center, said she had just emerged from the subway and noticed smoke billowing from one tower when the second one seemed to explode.
“It was like an inferno,” she said. Her eyes burned as soot and debris rained down. She clung to the side of a building to avoid being trampled.
“It was a madhouse,” Ms. Riveiro said.
“I don’t know what to expect or what I’ll be waking up to,” she said.
Hundreds of volunteers and medical workers converged on triage centers, offering help and blood. Officials waited into the evening to launch a full-scale rescue operation, because fires still burned and other, nearby buildings had been weakened.
Their caution was vindicated around 4:20 p.m., when another, smaller building in the Trade Center complex collapsed under the weight of the debris.
Paramedics waiting to be sent into the rubble were told that “once the smoke clears, it’s going to be massive bodies,” said Brian Stark, a former Navy paramedic who volunteered to help.
He said the paramedics had been told that hundreds of police and firefighters, who had rushed to the scene in the immediate aftermath of the blasts, were missing.
In New York, where many subway lines shut down, thousand of workers streamed out of lower Manhattan on foot. By early afternoon, most of the streets were eerily quiet.
From her home in Brooklyn, Sheree Lane could see the spot where the towers had stood only hours before. “Now there are fighter jets circling over lower Manhattan,” she reported. “That’s something you don’t want to see.”
At the New York insurance agency where Diana Louros works, grief mixed with a sharper emotion. “Some people are very angry,” Ms. Louros said. “But they don’t know who to be angry at.”
