WEBVTT
00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:21.280
At 819 in the morning, a flight attendant on a Boeing 767, 20 minutes out of Boston, reaches an airline reservations agent in North Carolina.
00:00:21.519 --> 00:00:24.160
She gives her name and her crew position.
00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:27.280
The cockpit will not answer, she says.
00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:32.880
Two flight attendants have been stabbed, and so has a passenger business class.
00:00:34.079 --> 00:00:36.719
Welcome to Same Day Difference Century.
00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:37.840
I'm Zach.
00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:40.399
Today is September 11th.
00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:53.119
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born engineer who had taken a degree at a college in North Carolina, brought the idea to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996.
00:00:53.600 --> 00:01:01.679
He proposed training pilots, hijacking 10 airliners, and flying most of them into buildings on both American coasts.
00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:06.159
Bin Laden heard him out and made no commitment for three years.
00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:16.480
Al-Qaeda, the organization bin Laden led, had grown out of the Arab volunteers who came to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviet army.
00:01:16.719 --> 00:01:18.640
The name means the base.
00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:27.840
By the end of the decade, it ran training camps in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, the movement that governed most of the country.
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:36.159
Its operatives bombed two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing 224 people.
00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:43.760
And in 2000, they blew a hole in the side of an American warship refueling in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:51.840
In 1999, bin Laden approved a reduced version of the plan and began choosing men for it.
00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:54.159
Four of them would have to fly.
00:01:54.400 --> 00:02:05.920
One, Hani Hanjour, a Saudi who had spent years in Arizona, was found the next year in a training camp, and he already held an American commercial pilot's license.
00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:10.560
Three more came out of a circle of students in Hamburg, Germany.
00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:23.280
Mohammad Ada, an Egyptian studying urban planning, went to Afghanistan in late 1999 with Marwan al-Shehi of the United Arab Emirates and Ziyad Jara of Lebanon.
00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:29.360
All three entered the United States in 2000 and enrolled at flight schools in Florida.
00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:39.039
Between April and late June of 2001, 13 more men arrived, most of them Saudis in their 20s with no flight training.
00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:42.400
American intelligence held pieces of this.
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:56.080
The CIA tracked two of the men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, to an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, and knew that Midhar carried a visa for the United States.
00:02:56.479 --> 00:03:02.479
Neither name reached the FBI or the border watch lists until late August 2001.
00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:09.360
Both men were living in San Diego under their own names, one of them listed in the telephone book.
00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:22.879
In July 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix named Kenneth Williams sent headquarters a memo urging a survey of American flight schools for students tied to bin Laden, and nothing came of it.
00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:37.039
In August, agents in Minnesota arrested a French Moroccan student named Zacharias Moussaoui, who had paid cash for lessons on a Boeing 747 simulator, and they could not obtain a warrant to search his laptop.
00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:41.759
On August 6, the intelligence summary delivered to President George W.
00:03:41.919 --> 00:03:46.479
Bush carried the title Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.
00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:58.159
19 men passed through airport security in Portland, Maine, Boston, Newark, and Northern Virginia that Tuesday morning carrying knives and box cutters.
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:04.080
Federal rules at the time allowed blades under 4 inches aboard commercial aircraft.
00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:13.840
At 759, American Airlines Flight 11 left Logan Airport in Boston for Los Angeles with 92 people aboard.
00:04:14.159 --> 00:04:20.480
United Flight 175 left the same airport for the same city at 8.14.
00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:25.920
American Flight 77 departed Washington Dolas at 8.20.
00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:34.959
United Flight 93 pushed back at Newark on schedule and then sat about 40 minutes in the ordinary morning line for the runway.
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:43.519
All four were transcontinental flights, loaded with fuel and carrying far fewer passengers than they could hold.
00:04:44.399 --> 00:04:52.480
Boston Center, the air traffic facility that handles New England, stopped getting answers from Flight 11 at 8.14.
00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:58.160
At 8.24, a controller heard a voice from the cockpit that was meant for the cabin.
00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:04.720
The speaker said they had some planes, and told everyone to stay quiet and nothing would happen to them.
00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:09.920
They pulled the tape and listened to it again and again before they were sure of the words.
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:21.439
At 8 46, Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors at more than 400 miles an hour.
00:05:21.759 --> 00:05:28.959
The impact severed all three stairwells and spread thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel through the core of the building.
00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:35.199
More than 1,300 people were at or above the impact, and none of them had a way down.
00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:43.759
Joseph Pfeiffer, a battalion chief, was half a mile north checking a reported gas leak and watched the plane go in.
00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.720
He reached the North Tower lobby within minutes and set up the command post there.
00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:58.240
The elevators were dead, so firefighters began climbing the stairs carrying more than 60 pounds of equipment, passing office workers coming down.
00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:10.800
Inside the South Tower, which had not yet been hit, an announcement over the public address system at about 8 55 told occupants the building was secure and they could return to their offices.
00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.920
Thousands of people left the building anyway.
00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:18.000
Others turned around on the stairs and went back up to their desks.
00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:28.720
At 9 03, United 175 hit the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, banking hard as it came.
00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:36.720
The angle of the strike left part of one stairwell, designated stairwell A, passable through the impact zone.
00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:42.879
At least 18 people came down through it from floors at or above where the plane went in.
00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:49.120
President Bush was sitting with second graders at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.
00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:57.680
His chief of staff, Andrew Card, leaned down and told him a second plane had hit the second tower and that America was under attack.
00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:08.399
Bush left the school about 30 minutes later and boarded Air Force One, which flew to Louisiana and then Nebraska before returning to Washington that evening.
00:07:09.120 --> 00:07:15.360
At 9.37, American Flight 77 struck the west face of the Pentagon.
00:07:15.759 --> 00:07:25.199
That section had recently been renovated with reinforced steel and blast-resistant windows, and it held for about 20 minutes before collapsing.
00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:32.000
125 people inside the building and 64 aboard the aircraft were killed.
00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:44.560
Ben Sliny, working his first day as the National Operations Manager at the Federal Aviation Administration, ordered every civilian aircraft in American airspace to land at the nearest airport.
00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:49.519
About 4,500 planes were on the ground within two and a half hours.
00:07:49.759 --> 00:07:53.920
More than 200 international flights were turned toward Canada.
00:07:54.720 --> 00:08:03.439
United 93 was over eastern Ohio when four men took its cockpit at 9.28 and turned it back toward Washington.
00:08:03.759 --> 00:08:12.160
The passengers and crew made more than 30 calls from airphones and cell phones, and from the people they reached they learned what had already happened in New York.
00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:18.639
They talked among themselves, took a vote, and at 9.57 moved on the cockpit.
00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:24.160
Jara at the controls pitched and rolled the aircraft to throw them off their feet.
00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:32.879
At 10.03, the plane went into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, inverted at about 560 miles an hour.
00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:35.840
All 40 passengers and crew died.
00:08:36.159 --> 00:08:39.840
Washington was roughly 20 minutes flying time away.
00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:48.399
At 9.59, the South Tower came down at about 10 seconds, 56 minutes after it was hit.
00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:55.519
The collapse buried the streets around the complex and cut off the fire department's command post from most of its units.
00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:01.919
Police helicopters circling the North Tower radioed that it was bulging and would not hold.
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:08.799
That warning reached the police department, which pulled its officers out, but it did not reach the fire chiefs.
00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:18.159
An evacuation order for the North Tower went out over fire department radios within a minute of the South Tower falling, but it didn't reach everyone.
00:09:18.399 --> 00:09:22.559
Some who heard it stayed anyway to help bring more people down.
00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:29.519
At 1028, the North Tower fell, 102 minutes after impact.
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:34.320
The fire department lost 343 members that morning.
00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:40.320
The Port Authority Police lost 37, and the New York City Police lost 23.
00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:49.120
Chief of Department Peter Gancy, the fire department's highest-ranking uniformed officer, was killed near the base of the towers.
00:09:50.159 --> 00:09:54.480
Below the floors where the planes hit, the evacuation worked.
00:09:54.720 --> 00:10:05.200
Somewhere between 16 and 19,000 people were in the complex that morning, and 99% of people below the impact zones got out alive.
00:10:05.919 --> 00:10:15.679
At 5.20 that afternoon, a third tower at the site, 7 World Trade Center, collapsed from fires that had burned since the North Tower came down.
00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:21.200
President Bush addressed the country from the Oval Office at 8.30 that night.
00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:29.679
Crews worked the World Trade Center site until May 2002, removing about 1.8 million tons of debris.
00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:36.320
The attacks killed 2,977 people from more than 90 countries.
00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:44.480
Fewer than 300 whole bodies were recovered from the site, and roughly 40% of the dead there have never been identified.
00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:54.879
Congress passed a resolution on September 14 authorizing the president to use force against those responsible, with only one member voting no.
00:10:55.519 --> 00:11:00.320
American and British forces began striking Afghanistan on October 7.
00:11:00.799 --> 00:11:09.759
A new federal agency was created that November to take over airport screening, and its screeners were at almost every checkpoint a year later.
00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:16.000
Cockpit doors on American airliners were rebuilt to lock and resist forced entry.
00:11:16.799 --> 00:11:27.120
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003, held in secret CIA prisons, and moved to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:30.320
His case still has not gone to trial.
00:11:30.639 --> 00:11:33.519
Last month a military judge set a date.
00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:35.679
June 2028.
00:11:36.639 --> 00:11:42.159
Bin Laden was killed by American forces in Pakistan in May 2011.
00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:45.519
That same day, different century.
00:11:45.679 --> 00:11:46.559
I'm Zach.
00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:49.840
We'll be back Monday with another date, another story.
00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:51.519
Thanks for listening.
00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:21.280
At 819 in the morning, a flight attendant on a Boeing 767, 20 minutes out of Boston, reaches an airline reservations agent in North Carolina.
00:00:21.519 --> 00:00:24.160
She gives her name and her crew position.
00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:27.280
The cockpit will not answer, she says.
00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:32.880
Two flight attendants have been stabbed, and so has a passenger business class.
00:00:34.079 --> 00:00:36.719
Welcome to Same Day Difference Century.
00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:37.840
I'm Zach.
00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:40.399
Today is September 11th.
00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:53.119
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born engineer who had taken a degree at a college in North Carolina, brought the idea to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996.
00:00:53.600 --> 00:01:01.679
He proposed training pilots, hijacking 10 airliners, and flying most of them into buildings on both American coasts.
00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:06.159
Bin Laden heard him out and made no commitment for three years.
00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:16.480
Al-Qaeda, the organization bin Laden led, had grown out of the Arab volunteers who came to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviet army.
00:01:16.719 --> 00:01:18.640
The name means the base.
00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:27.840
By the end of the decade, it ran training camps in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, the movement that governed most of the country.
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:36.159
Its operatives bombed two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing 224 people.
00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:43.760
And in 2000, they blew a hole in the side of an American warship refueling in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:51.840
In 1999, bin Laden approved a reduced version of the plan and began choosing men for it.
00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:54.159
Four of them would have to fly.
00:01:54.400 --> 00:02:05.920
One, Hani Hanjour, a Saudi who had spent years in Arizona, was found the next year in a training camp, and he already held an American commercial pilot's license.
00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:10.560
Three more came out of a circle of students in Hamburg, Germany.
00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:23.280
Mohammad Ada, an Egyptian studying urban planning, went to Afghanistan in late 1999 with Marwan al-Shehi of the United Arab Emirates and Ziyad Jara of Lebanon.
00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:29.360
All three entered the United States in 2000 and enrolled at flight schools in Florida.
00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:39.039
Between April and late June of 2001, 13 more men arrived, most of them Saudis in their 20s with no flight training.
00:02:39.599 --> 00:02:42.400
American intelligence held pieces of this.
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:56.080
The CIA tracked two of the men, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, to an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, and knew that Midhar carried a visa for the United States.
00:02:56.479 --> 00:03:02.479
Neither name reached the FBI or the border watch lists until late August 2001.
00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:09.360
Both men were living in San Diego under their own names, one of them listed in the telephone book.
00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:22.879
In July 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix named Kenneth Williams sent headquarters a memo urging a survey of American flight schools for students tied to bin Laden, and nothing came of it.
00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:37.039
In August, agents in Minnesota arrested a French Moroccan student named Zacharias Moussaoui, who had paid cash for lessons on a Boeing 747 simulator, and they could not obtain a warrant to search his laptop.
00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:41.759
On August 6, the intelligence summary delivered to President George W.
00:03:41.919 --> 00:03:46.479
Bush carried the title Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.
00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:58.159
19 men passed through airport security in Portland, Maine, Boston, Newark, and Northern Virginia that Tuesday morning carrying knives and box cutters.
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:04.080
Federal rules at the time allowed blades under 4 inches aboard commercial aircraft.
00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:13.840
At 759, American Airlines Flight 11 left Logan Airport in Boston for Los Angeles with 92 people aboard.
00:04:14.159 --> 00:04:20.480
United Flight 175 left the same airport for the same city at 8.14.
00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:25.920
American Flight 77 departed Washington Dolas at 8.20.
00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:34.959
United Flight 93 pushed back at Newark on schedule and then sat about 40 minutes in the ordinary morning line for the runway.
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:43.519
All four were transcontinental flights, loaded with fuel and carrying far fewer passengers than they could hold.
00:04:44.399 --> 00:04:52.480
Boston Center, the air traffic facility that handles New England, stopped getting answers from Flight 11 at 8.14.
00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:58.160
At 8.24, a controller heard a voice from the cockpit that was meant for the cabin.
00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:04.720
The speaker said they had some planes, and told everyone to stay quiet and nothing would happen to them.
00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:09.920
They pulled the tape and listened to it again and again before they were sure of the words.
00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:21.439
At 8 46, Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors at more than 400 miles an hour.
00:05:21.759 --> 00:05:28.959
The impact severed all three stairwells and spread thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel through the core of the building.
00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:35.199
More than 1,300 people were at or above the impact, and none of them had a way down.
00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:43.759
Joseph Pfeiffer, a battalion chief, was half a mile north checking a reported gas leak and watched the plane go in.
00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.720
He reached the North Tower lobby within minutes and set up the command post there.
00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:58.240
The elevators were dead, so firefighters began climbing the stairs carrying more than 60 pounds of equipment, passing office workers coming down.
00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:10.800
Inside the South Tower, which had not yet been hit, an announcement over the public address system at about 8 55 told occupants the building was secure and they could return to their offices.
00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.920
Thousands of people left the building anyway.
00:06:14.079 --> 00:06:18.000
Others turned around on the stairs and went back up to their desks.
00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:28.720
At 9 03, United 175 hit the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors, banking hard as it came.
00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:36.720
The angle of the strike left part of one stairwell, designated stairwell A, passable through the impact zone.
00:06:36.959 --> 00:06:42.879
At least 18 people came down through it from floors at or above where the plane went in.
00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:49.120
President Bush was sitting with second graders at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.
00:06:49.279 --> 00:06:57.680
His chief of staff, Andrew Card, leaned down and told him a second plane had hit the second tower and that America was under attack.
00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:08.399
Bush left the school about 30 minutes later and boarded Air Force One, which flew to Louisiana and then Nebraska before returning to Washington that evening.
00:07:09.120 --> 00:07:15.360
At 9.37, American Flight 77 struck the west face of the Pentagon.
00:07:15.759 --> 00:07:25.199
That section had recently been renovated with reinforced steel and blast-resistant windows, and it held for about 20 minutes before collapsing.
00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:32.000
125 people inside the building and 64 aboard the aircraft were killed.
00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:44.560
Ben Sliny, working his first day as the National Operations Manager at the Federal Aviation Administration, ordered every civilian aircraft in American airspace to land at the nearest airport.
00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:49.519
About 4,500 planes were on the ground within two and a half hours.
00:07:49.759 --> 00:07:53.920
More than 200 international flights were turned toward Canada.
00:07:54.720 --> 00:08:03.439
United 93 was over eastern Ohio when four men took its cockpit at 9.28 and turned it back toward Washington.
00:08:03.759 --> 00:08:12.160
The passengers and crew made more than 30 calls from airphones and cell phones, and from the people they reached they learned what had already happened in New York.
00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:18.639
They talked among themselves, took a vote, and at 9.57 moved on the cockpit.
00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:24.160
Jara at the controls pitched and rolled the aircraft to throw them off their feet.
00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:32.879
At 10.03, the plane went into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, inverted at about 560 miles an hour.
00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:35.840
All 40 passengers and crew died.
00:08:36.159 --> 00:08:39.840
Washington was roughly 20 minutes flying time away.
00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:48.399
At 9.59, the South Tower came down at about 10 seconds, 56 minutes after it was hit.
00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:55.519
The collapse buried the streets around the complex and cut off the fire department's command post from most of its units.
00:08:56.080 --> 00:09:01.919
Police helicopters circling the North Tower radioed that it was bulging and would not hold.
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:08.799
That warning reached the police department, which pulled its officers out, but it did not reach the fire chiefs.
00:09:09.039 --> 00:09:18.159
An evacuation order for the North Tower went out over fire department radios within a minute of the South Tower falling, but it didn't reach everyone.
00:09:18.399 --> 00:09:22.559
Some who heard it stayed anyway to help bring more people down.
00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:29.519
At 1028, the North Tower fell, 102 minutes after impact.
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:34.320
The fire department lost 343 members that morning.
00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:40.320
The Port Authority Police lost 37, and the New York City Police lost 23.
00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:49.120
Chief of Department Peter Gancy, the fire department's highest-ranking uniformed officer, was killed near the base of the towers.
00:09:50.159 --> 00:09:54.480
Below the floors where the planes hit, the evacuation worked.
00:09:54.720 --> 00:10:05.200
Somewhere between 16 and 19,000 people were in the complex that morning, and 99% of people below the impact zones got out alive.
00:10:05.919 --> 00:10:15.679
At 5.20 that afternoon, a third tower at the site, 7 World Trade Center, collapsed from fires that had burned since the North Tower came down.
00:10:16.080 --> 00:10:21.200
President Bush addressed the country from the Oval Office at 8.30 that night.
00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:29.679
Crews worked the World Trade Center site until May 2002, removing about 1.8 million tons of debris.
00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:36.320
The attacks killed 2,977 people from more than 90 countries.
00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:44.480
Fewer than 300 whole bodies were recovered from the site, and roughly 40% of the dead there have never been identified.
00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:54.879
Congress passed a resolution on September 14 authorizing the president to use force against those responsible, with only one member voting no.
00:10:55.519 --> 00:11:00.320
American and British forces began striking Afghanistan on October 7.
00:11:00.799 --> 00:11:09.759
A new federal agency was created that November to take over airport screening, and its screeners were at almost every checkpoint a year later.
00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:16.000
Cockpit doors on American airliners were rebuilt to lock and resist forced entry.
00:11:16.799 --> 00:11:27.120
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003, held in secret CIA prisons, and moved to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:30.320
His case still has not gone to trial.
00:11:30.639 --> 00:11:33.519
Last month a military judge set a date.
00:11:33.840 --> 00:11:35.679
June 2028.
00:11:36.639 --> 00:11:42.159
Bin Laden was killed by American forces in Pakistan in May 2011.
00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:45.519
That same day, different century.
00:11:45.679 --> 00:11:46.559
I'm Zach.
00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:49.840
We'll be back Monday with another date, another story.
00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:51.519
Thanks for listening.
