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Published
by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. CLICK FOR NEWSPAPER DELIVERY
Thursday, September 13, 2001
Some victims found alive
Investigators track conspirators; 6,000 body bags requested
By Larry McShane
Associated Press
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Associated Press
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Accompanied by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (left), President Bush examines the devastation at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday. The president thanked rescue workers for their efforts.
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NEW YORK - As the smoldering ashes of the World Trade Center slowly yielded unimaginable carnage, investigators fanned out across the country Wednesday to track the conspirators who orchestrated an unprecedented day of terror from the air.
In one indication of the potential death toll, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was asked about a report that the city has requested 6,000 body bags from federal officials.
"Yes, I believe that's correct," said the mayor.
In another, 2,500 people visited a grief counseling center handling questions about missing family members Wednesday.
The last few floors that remained of the trade center's south tower collapsed Wednesday afternoon in yet another cloud of thick smoke. No injuries were reported, but rescuers were evacuated from part of the area where the 1,350-foot titans stood.
Police and fire officials said there were problems with other "mini-collapses" among some badly damaged buildings nearby, and when the towers were destroyed, the Marriott World Trade Center hotel fell with them.
The search and rescue mission continued despite the problems.
The devastation turned the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan into a dust-covered ruin of girders and boulders of broken concrete. A Brooks Brothers clothing store became a morgue, where workers brought any body parts they could find.
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Associated Press
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FBI agents remove evidence from a home in Vero Beach, Fla., on Wednesday after serving a search warrant. Three homes in the area were searched.
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The workers' grim task was interrupted by brief epiphanies of life, when a fortunate victim was pulled alive from the wreckage of the steel-and-glass buildings. In all, five victims, three of them police officers, have been pulled from the wreckage alive.
In Washington, the Bush administration disclosed that the White House and Air Force One may have been among the targets of Tuesday's devastation.
The investigation swept from a Boston hotel to Florida and points beyond - all in an attempt to determine who was behind the attacks in which two hijacked airliners barreled into the 110-story towers, a third dove into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania.
Federal authorities have identified more than a dozen hijackers of Middle Eastern descent in Tuesday's bombings and gathered evidence linking them to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist networks, law enforcement officials said.
The massive investigation stretched from the Canadian border, where officials suspect some of the hijackers entered the country, to Florida, where some of the participants are believed to have learned how to fly commercial jetliners before the attacks. Locations in Massachusetts and Florida were searched for evidence.
Many terrorist cells
The names of two men being sought by authorities emerged in Florida. There, the FBI interviewed a family that gave them temporary shelter a year ago.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that multiple cells of terrorist groups participated and that hijackers had possible ties to countries that included Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The identities of more than a dozen of the men who hijacked four planes with knives and threats of bombs has been ascertained, the officials said. Several hijackers had pilot's licenses.
At least one hijacker on each of the four planes was trained at a U.S. flight school, said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. The flight schools were in Florida and at least one other state. The hijackers used both cash and credit cards to purchase their plane tickets and hotel rooms.
Authorities detained at least a half dozen people in Massachusetts and Florida on unrelated local warrants and immigration charges and were questioning them about their possible ties to the hijackers. No charges related to the attacks had been filed.
Searches in three states
Search warrants were executed in Florida, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Sealed warrants went out in several other states, officials said.
Atta
One of the vehicles the FBI was pursuing - a 1989 Pontiac - was registered to Mohamed Atta.
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"We're attempting to re-create the travels of each of the hijackers on the planes - either the hijackers themselves or their associates," FBI Director Robert Mueller said.
For some of the suspected accomplices, "we have information as to involvement with individual terrorist groups," Mueller added. He declined to say which groups or whether they were connected to bin Laden.
Officials said authorities were gathering evidence that the terrorist cells may have had prior involvement in earlier plots against the United States, and may have been involved with bin Laden. That includes the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and the foiled attack on U.S. soil during the millennium celebrations.
"This could have been the result of several terrorist kingpins working together. We're investigating that possibility," one law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.
Points to bin Laden
Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said the briefing he received Wednesday from law enforcement left him with the same impression.
"Most of it today points to bin Laden but the speculation at the end of the road is that he and his network were very much involved with Hezbollah, Fatah and other" terrorist organizations, Grassley said.
The senator said authorities told him all the hijackers were of Middle Eastern descent and that they had "a tremendous amount of ground support for each hijacker."
A Venice, Fla., man said FBI agents told him that two men who stayed in his home while training at a local flight school were involved in the attacks. Charlie Voss, a former employee at Huffman Aviation in Venice said the FBI told him one of men was named Mohamed Atta. A student at Huffman Aviation identified the second man as Marwan Alshehhi.
The FBI in Miami issued a national bulletin for law enforcement agencies to look out for two cars. Records with the Florida Division of Motor Vehicles show that one of the vehicles the FBI was pursuing - a 1989 red Pontiac - was registered to Atta, who previously had a driver's license in Egypt.
Numerous leads
Attorney General John Ashcroft said numerous promising leads were being followed up. "The Department of Justice has undertaken perhaps the most massive and intensive investigation ever conducted in this country," he said.
Ashcroft said authorities were conducting interviews and reviewing airline manifests, rental car records and pay phone records. He said between three and six hijackers, armed with knives and box cutters, seized control of the four commercial jets. Two hit New York's World Trade Center, a third smashed into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
Some 4,000 special agents and 3,000 support personnel are assisting in the investigation, and 400 FBI laboratory specialists are at the crime scenes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Crossing from Canada
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were investigating whether one group of hijackers crossed the Canadian border at a checkpoint and made their way to Boston, where an American Airlines flight was hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.
President Bush condemned the onslaught as "acts of war" and NATO gave the United States its backing for a military response if the attacks were directed from abroad.
While investigators and diplomats moved forward in their tasks, progress for rescuers in New York was slow. Cranes and heavy machinery were used, but gingerly, for fear of dislodging wreckage and harming any survivors. Searchers with picks and axes worked slowly, too - sometimes when they opened pockets in the debris, fires flared.
Companies that leased space in the trade center began realizing the awful consequences of the violence. Thirty-eight people from Fred Alger Management Inc. were missing, including the company's president, David Alger.
82 confirmed fatalities
Giuliani said the best estimate is that a "a few thousand" victims would be left in each building, potentially including 250 missing firefighters and police officers. Among the missing was John O'Neill, head of security for the trade center and a former FBI expert on terrorism.
There were 82 confirmed fatalities - a number that was sure to grow. Another 1,700 injuries were reported.
The four hijacked planes carried 266 people, none of whom survived. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an estimate that as many as 800 people were killed at the Pentagon may be far too high.
Authorities had "specific credible information" that both Air Force One and the White House were targets, and that "the plane that hit the Pentagon may have been headed for the White House," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council.
Searching for clues
In New York, the rubble at the trade center was taken by boat to a former Staten Island garbage dump, where the FBI and other investigators searched for evidence.
One volunteer, Peter Coppola, said he had found four dead bodies in his 24 hours of searching. "The air down there is totally toxic," he said.
New Yorkers were told to avoid lower Manhattan and the financial markets were to remain closed at least until Friday.
Schools remained closed and the New York Yankees' game was postponed, along with the rest of the major-league baseball schedule, including Thursday's games. Many other sporting events were either canceled or postponed.
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a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.
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