Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (102 page)

Slowly it was beginning to dawn on
New York Control just what had taken place. "Anybody know what that smoke
is in lower Manhattan?" said another pilot flying over the area. "A
lot of smoke in lower Manhattan is coming out of the top of the World Trade
Center—a major fire."

By now it had been eleven minutes
since New York Control had heard from United Flight 175, and the controller
again tried to regain contact. "UAL one seventy-five," he said,
"do you read New York?" But, just as with Flight 11, there was only
silence. Growing more and more concerned, he checked that his equipment was
working correctly and asked whether other locations may have picked him up.
"Do me a favor, see if UAL one seventy-five went back to your
frequency," he asked a southern traffic control center. "He's not here,"
came the response.

After another minute of agonizing
quiet, he expressed his suspicion. "We may have a hijack," he told a
colleague. "I can't get hold of UAL one seventy-five at all right now and
I don't know where he went to." "UAL one seventy-five, New
York," he called again. But by then the hijackers were in full control.
Near Albany, they made a U-turn back to the east and were at that moment
screaming south toward Manhattan over the Hudson Valley at about 500 miles per
hour—more than double the legal airspeed. The hijack pilot probably followed
the Hudson River, like a thick line on a map, directly toward his target: Tower
Two of the World Trade Center.

At the time American Airlines
Flight 11 hit Tower One, the CNN program
Live at Daybreak
was carrying a
report on a maternity-wear fashion show in New York. Then, at 8:49 anchor Carol
Lin broke into a commercial. "This just in," she said. "You are
looking at—obviously a very disturbing live shot there—that is the World Trade
Center and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed
into one of the towers of the World Trade Center."

CNN then switched to Sean Murton,
the network's vice president of finance, who had observed the crash from the
twenty-first floor of 5 Penn Plaza. "I just witnessed a plane that
appeared to be cruising at a slightly lower than normal altitude over New York
City," he said during a live telephone interview. "And it appears to
have crashed into—I don't know which tower it is—but it hit directly in the
middle of one of the World Trade Center towers. ... It was a jet, maybe a
two-engine jet, maybe a seven thirty-seven, a large passenger commercial jet.
It was teetering back and forth, wing tip to wing tip and it looks like it has
crashed into probably twenty stories from the top of the World Trade
Center."

Fighting the blinding, choking,
oily smoke, black as chimney soot, Steve Mclntyre made his way out to the
nearly impassable hallway and began looking for the emergency stairwells. The
first one he tried was filled with water and debris. After locating the second
emergency exit he found it dark and worse than the first. "Where the hell
is the third fire stair?" he cursed. A few seconds later he found it, but
in the rubble-filled darkness he slipped on a piece of gypsum board and fell,
sliding down to the next landing and then bouncing down to another.

Throughout the building,
terrorized occupants were dialing 911 on cell phones and pleading for help from
fire rescue, which was sending every piece of emergency equipment in its
inventory to the Trade Center. At 8:56 a man from the eighty-seventh floor
yelled that his office was on fire and there were four other people with him.

Picking himself up from his long
tumble, Steve Mclntyre knew that he had found the only way out and he headed
back up to get the other employees. He noticed that very few people were
passing him coming down. Above McIntyre's ninety-first floor, occupying floors
93 to 100, was the giant insurance, consulting, and financial firm, Marsh &
McLennan. And above them, from 100 to 105, was Cantor Fitzgerald, a large bond
dealer. One of the trade center's oldest tenants, it had gradually taken over
five floors as it expanded. Finally, there was Windows on the World, the famous
restaurant with its breathtaking views, on the 106th floor. Many of the people
on those floors, where the plane hit and above, were trapped and would never
get out.

Christopher Hanley, who worked for
a division of Reuters on Sixth Avenue, was among 150 people attending a special
breakfast conference at Windows on the World. At 8:57 he called fire rescue to
tell them the room was filling with smoke and people could not get down the
stairs. About the same time, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee called from the 103rd
floor. As people were screaming in the background, he told the operator that he
was trapped, could not breathe, and that the smoke was coming through the door.

Another Cantor Fitzgerald employee
unable to make his way out was forty-five-year-old Ian Schneider. The son of a
truck driver, balding with a thick, black, barbershop-quartet mustache, he
worked as a senior managing director of the firm. Schneider, like many others,
took the dangers of working in the high-profile building in stride. He had been
there during the earlier bombing in 1993 and had gone back to work the next
day. And he would hang pencils from the ceiling to see them sway. Minutes after
the plane hit, he called his wife, Cheryl, at home in Short Hills, New Jersey,
to say he was leaving the building. But this time it would be different: the
stairways were blocked or destroyed. Schneider pulled out his cell phone and
called fire rescue to tell them that he and many other people were trapped on
the 105th floor and that smoke was filling the room.

Over at Tower Two, many people
headed down the emergency stairwells soon after the crash, but after a few
minutes, once it was determined that their tower was not affected, they were
told that they could return to their offices, which many did. One of those in
Tower Two was Sean Rooney, a fifty-year-old vice president for Aon, one of the
numerous insurance and financial services firms that populated the twin towers.
At the time of the attack on Tower One, his wife, Beverly Eckert, a vice
president with GeneralCologne Re, was attending a conference in her Stamford,
Connecticut, offices. Hearing of the explosion at the World Trade Center, she
quickly went for her phone where she found a message from Rooney. "It's
the other building," he said. "I'm all right. But what I'm seeing is
horrible." Relieved, Eckert went back to her meeting.

When Steve Mclntyre arrived at his
office after finding an open emergency stairwell, the other employees were
gathered in the reception area. Quickly they began making their way down.
Despite the confusion, Claire Mclntyre had managed to grab her pocketbook and
flashlight. "The first two flights were dark," she recalled,
"with no emergency lights, and water was pouring down the stairs. We could
barely see and I put my flashlight on. Then the emergency lights came on, and
water was still flowing down." But the slick, oil-covered debris was
dangerous and colleague Emma "Georgia" Barnett slipped and fell down
three flights of stairs. Nevertheless, she got back up but this time tripped
over a hose, injuring her knee. Still, determined to survive, she continued
down with the rest.

The skies had turned deadly. By
8:56 an air traffic controller in Indianapolis was becoming very worried.
American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles, the plane on which
Barbara Olson and the hijackers from Laurel, Maryland, were flying, was not
answering. "American seventy-seven, Indy," he kept repeating. The
controller then called American Airlines operations to see if they could raise
the crew. They also had no luck, so the controller asked a different operator
to try again. "We, uh, we lost track control of the guy," said the
Indianapolis controller. "He's in coast track but we haven't, we don't
[know] where his target is and we can't get a hold of him. You guys tried him
and no response. We have no radar contact and, uh, no communications with him
so if you guys could try again." "We're doing it," said the
American Airlines operator. But there would be only silence.

Among those watching the events
unfold on television was John Carr, the president of the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association. Shortly before nine his cell phone went off.
"Hey, John, are you watching this on TV?" said one of his associates.
"Yeah, I am," replied Carr. "That's American eleven," said
the friend. Carr nearly dropped his coffee. "My God, what are you talking
about?" he said. "That's American eleven that made that hole in the
World Trade Center." Carr still could not believe it. "You're kidding
me," he said. "No," replied his friend. "And there is another
one that just turned south toward New York." Then, referring to United
Flight 175, he added ominously, "We lost him, too."

At 9:02 on the ABC News program
Good
Morning America,
correspondent Don Dahler in New York was giving hosts
Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson an update on the Trade Center explosion as the
camera focused on the twin towers. "It appears that there is more and more
fire and smoke enveloping the very top of the building," he said,
"and as fire crews are descending on this area it does not appear that
there is any kind of an effort up there yet. Now remember— Oh, my God!"

At that moment the image of a
large commercial jetliner, tilted to one side, zoomed across the television
screen and smashed into Tower Two, pushing desks, people, and file cabinets out
the windows. Paper began to slowly rain down, sparkling in the sun like
confetti. Then, a fraction of a second later, United Flight 175 exploded with
the force of a fuel-air bomb, sending superheated flames and dense, black smoke
in all directions.

"My God!" repeated
Sawyer, almost in a whisper. "That looks like a second plane," said
Gibson flatly and with no emotion, as if describing a passing bus. "I just
saw another plane coming in from the side. That was the second explosion—you
could see the plane come in, just on the right-hand side of the screen. So this
looks like it is some kind of concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center
that is under way in downtown New York."

Hearing of the second explosion,
Beverly Eckert once more grabbed the phone to call her husband, Sean Rooney.
Again, another message was waiting—but it had come in prior to the most recent
event. "Just letting you know I'll be here for a while," he said.
"They've secured the building." After trying unsuccessfully to call
him, she rushed home to Glenbrook. The two had been married for twenty-one
years and had known each other since meeting in their native Buffalo in 1967.
For Rooney, it was a long commute to the World Trade Center every day, but he
greatly enjoyed playing carpenter, plumber, electrician, and mason at his home
in Connecticut. Since buying the house fourteen years earlier, he had added
cement steps by the front door, built a fireplace mantel in the living room,
and laid marble floors in the master bathroom. He even cultivated an herb
garden. Eckert especially liked the way her husband laughed—and how it made his
shoulders shake. But now she was very worried.

Soon after she reached their house,
only about a mile away, the phone rang. It was Rooney telling her that he was
trapped on the 105th floor of the burning Tower Two. He had tried to make it
down the emergency stairwell, he said, but around the seventy-sixth floor the
heat and smoke had become too intense, driving him back. Then he tried to
escape to the observation deck just above his office, but the thick steel door
was locked. He said he was now on the north side of the building, and Eckert
said she would pass the information on to the rescue workers. Confused as to
what was happening around him, Rooney asked his wife what she could see on the
television. Eckert said there was fire on his side of the building, but it was
many floors below. "The smoke is heavy," Rooney said. "I don't
understand why the fire suppression isn't working."

"Maybe they can get a
helicopter to you," said Eckert, desperately trying to get her husband to
the roof and possible rescue. "Please try the door again. Pound on it.
Maybe someone is on the other side and will hear you. Who is with you?"
she asked. "I'm alone," said Rooney. "Some other people are in a
conference room nearby." He then went back to the observation deck to try
the door again.

The man charged with protecting
the continental United States from a surprise attack was NORAD Major General
Larry K. Arnold. Yet he himself was among the most surprised by the attack. He
watched the deadly assaults unfold on his office television set. Then when
United Flight 175 hit Tower Two, Arnold blinked. "I couldn't believe that
that was actually happening," he said. NORAD's public relations officer
was talking to his brother in Tower Two when the United 767 hit it. "Well,
I better get out of here," the brother said quickly and then hung up. But
he never made it out.

At the time of the impact, NORAD's
two fighters from Otis Air National Guard Base were still seventy-one miles
away—seven minutes' flying time.

Over in Tower One, Steve Mclntyre
and his fellow employees were still attempting to make their way down the crowded
and rubble-strewn stairs. "We stopped at around the eighty-fifth floor to
take stock and to calm each other," Mclntyre recalled. "That was much
better. We realized the fire was above us and that it was clear below. We just
had to get down." His emotional state was "up and down like a
yo-yo," he said. "We were completely encased in tunnels. And then we
would open a door onto a floor and there would be guys fighting a fire, and
then we would open another door and there would be people just milling around."
As people or debris blocked their paths, they would zigzag across floors to
other emergency stairwells. By the time they reached the sixties, Claire
Mclntyre was exhausted. "I was thinking: 'How much more to go?'" she
said.