On 11 September 2001, a date that changed the history of the West, 4 airliners carried out a sensational terrorist attack on the territory of the United States, this time the natural defense constituted by the immense expanse of water of the Atlantic Ocean not he defended what was considered a world superpower.
Below we propose the testimony of an Italian, who asked to remain anonymous, who was in the US that day for work.
That morning I had to go to the Pentagon to collect high-ranking documents, it was a shift that interested all the employees of theEmbassy of Italy in Washington. I remember as if it were yesterday, my name stamped on the metal board of the secretariat for the Pentagon service. At the time I worked in an area of the Addettanza where it was not allowed to bring in televisions, radios and any other equipment connected to electricity. I was in a hushed world detached from real life. At 10 in the morning I leave my vault to carry out the outside service. I saw the faces of my colleagues with wide eyes. The boss told me: "But where are you going?". At the Pentagon, I replied. He invited me to his office: he watches TV. I still didn't realize, "boss but what is an action movie? Hey wake up, he replied, "They attacked the Twin Towers and a plane just crashed in the Pentagon". Did my blood run cold if I went out a few minutes early to go to the Pentagon?
The minutes that followed were terrifying. The US government applied a total "blackout" throughout the nation. Fixed, mobile and internet telephony did not work. All of America had been isolated from the rest of the world. The next day communications resumed and we received phone calls from our relatives from Italy, very worried about what had happened and above all for not being able to ascertain our condition.
The following days we went to New York several times for work. The situation was surreal. Marble dust and debris everywhere, the streets sparkled because they were invaded by tiny fragments of glass from the Twin Towers. I do not deny that the smell in the streets of the Big Apple was not pleasant at all. The smell of burning was not what I knew, it was different, the American firefighters whispered to me: "here it continues to burn everything, even human bodies".
A year later we went to New York to represent Italy at the commemorations, I met the heroes of that cursed day, the firefighters. One of them thanked our country for its proximity and gave me a cd-rom with unpublished images, taken during the research phases among the debris of the Twin Towers. I prefer not to tell the details… !!!
Since that day everything has changed.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers (fifteen Saudis, two from the United Arab Emirates, one Egyptian and one Lebanese) boarded four airliners, two of United Airlines and two of American Airlines, which operated transcontinental flights within the United States. United States. Using edged weapons, they attacked the flight crew and passengers and took possession of the cockpits.
Some of the hijackers were certified air pilots and had undergone training courses for the hijacked types of airliners (Boeing 757 and Boeing 767). It was later discovered that the flight instructors reported to the FBI that the Arab students were only interested in the take-off phases of the aircraft.. Nobody went into this precious indication. The pilot hijackers took over the aircraft and shut down the transponder (radio beacons) that allowed flight controllers to locate planes. The hijacked flights thus became essentially unavailable.
The flight controllers noticed the disappearance of the planes from the radars and initially hypothesized a failure of the transponder or an accident. Then they tried to contact the planes but in vain, it was some passengers who with the on-board telephones warned the airlines and their families that they had been hijacked.
At the time, the normal course of a hijacking was that the hijackers had claims and wanted to use the passengers as hostages, so the standard procedure was to indulge them, land them and negotiate the release of the passengers. Before 11/9, no hijacking had ever used an airliner loaded with passengers and fuel as a flying car bomb, to crash into a target for a suicide mission. Initially, therefore, there was no particular urgency to launch fighters to intercept missing planes. And the fighters, according to the rules of the time, would have simply followed the hijacked planes at a distance. There was no prior authorization for the shooting down of a domestic civilian aircraft. At 8:46 orders were given to launch two F-15 fighters from Otis base, which took off at 8:53.
This triggered the military alarm, but for years, with the lowering of the tension of the Cold War, the patrolling of the American domestic territory was entrusted to less than twenty fighters, which moreover in this case did not know where to go because the hijacked planes were not identifiable on radar. Even if they found the hijacked planes, they wouldn't be allowed to shoot them down.
All 9:37, the third hijacked plane, Flight AA77, an American Airlines Boeing 757, crashed into the Pentagon, in Arlington (near Washington, less than four kilometers from the White House), under the eyes of at least 55 witnesses who were on the highway adjacent to the building and in its vicinity. The plane entered the building, like the Twin Towers. The impact started a fire and caused the collapse of a portion of the Pentagon.
In New York, at 9:59 the fire of the South Tower overwhelmed the structure: the heat did not melt the steel, but heated it so much that it lost the ability to carry the load of the floors located above the burned impact area. The skyscraper collapsed on live TV, killing everyone still inside and slowly evacuating it. It was clear, at that point, that the toll of the attacks would be catastrophic.
All 10:03, the fourth hijacked aircraft, Flight UA93, a United Airlines Boeing 757, crashed almost vertically in a Pennsylvania field near Shanksville. Examination of the artifacts and radio and telephone recordings later determined that the passengers had attempted to overwhelm the hijackers barricaded in the cockpit and that the hijackers had chosen to crash the plane rather than surrender.
All 10:28 the second tower of the World Trade Center also collapsed. The collapses and fires also affected six other buildings in the complex: the Marriott Hotel, a 22-story skyscraper; the World Trade Center 4 and 5, two nine-story buildings; World Trade Center 6, an eight-story building; World Trade Center 7, a 47-story skyscraper; and the orthodox church of St. Nicholas. Other surrounding buildings were damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers.
World Trade Center 7 was evacuated and left to burn because there was no more water to put out its fires: the primary pipes had been severed by the collapses of the Twin Towers. The firefighters realized that the structure was unsafe and created a security perimeter around the building, which collapsed at 17:20.
A total of about 3000 people lost their lives in the attacks. 343 firefighters perished in the collapse of the Twin Towers. 265 people were on board the hijacked planes. 125 Pentagon occupants were killed by the impact of the hijacked aircraft.
The attacks were attributed to the al-Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden, already known for other attacks on US military and civilian installations. Bin Laden initially denied his involvement, but later claimed it repeatedly, even releasing videos showing himself alongside the hijackers. Several of its associates, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also claimed ownership of the attacks.
Raised in a wealthy Saudi family, Osama Bin Laden fights with the Afghan mujahideen who manage to put the Red Army to flight in 1989, in February 1998 he signs with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad of Ayman Al-Zawahiri the manifesto "against Jews and crusaders "From which Al Qaeda was born, and the protection granted to him by the Taliban of Mullah Ornar allows him to conceive, plan and carry out a devastating attack on the United States. Bin Laden's intent, writes Molinari in the Corriere della Sera it is to bleed the "Great Satan" in order to force him to leave the Middle East, condemning his allies to defeat and turning Al Qaeda into the leader of the whole of Islam.