the anger and grief that followed the death and destruction caused when terrorists turned four commercial passenger jets into guided missiles. But the memories won’t die. The pain of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history cut too deep, leaving knots of psychic scars that make each day an experience of before and after, of adapting to a world changed physically by every security checkpoint and psychologically by every mention of the “homeland,” a word seldom used in the United States prior to the events now known as 9/11. (The month-and-day abbreviation became the universal shorthand for the attacks largely because the digits corresponded to the nation’s 9-1-1 emergency call system; there’s no evidence the terrorists chose the date for that reason.)
Already an entire generation has no direct memory of 9/11, despite its daily effects on their lives. The historian Ian W. Toll described this progression in relation to another shocking enemy assault that also led to war: the raid on Pearl Harbor, sixty years earlier. “The passage of time strips away the searing immediacy of the surprise attack and envelops it in layers of exposition and retrospective judgment,” Toll wrote. “Hindsight furnishes us with perspective on the crisis, but it also undercuts our ability to empathize with the immediate concerns of those who suffered through it.” He quoted John H. McGoran, a sailor on the doomed battleship USS California: “If you didn’t go through it, there are no words that can adequately describe it; if you were there, then no words are necessary.”
Even if words might fail, they’re the best hope to delay the descent of 9/11 into the well of history. That is the purpose of this book. The approach is to recount the chaotic day as a narrative in three parts: events in the air, on the ground, and in the aftermath, focusing on individuals whose actions and experiences range from heroic to heartbreaking to homicidal. For every account included here, a thousand others are equally important. I’ve tried to choose stories that reveal the depth and breadth of the day without turning this into an encyclopedia. The goal is to provide a fresh perspective among readers for whom the attacks remain “news,” and to create something like memories for everyone else.
Another hope is more intimate: to attach names to some of the people directly affected by these events. Of the nearly three thousand men, women, and children killed on 9/11, arguably none can be considered a household name. The best “known” victim might be the so-called Falling Man, photographed plummeting from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Yet even he remains nameless to most people, an anonymous icon.
THIS BOOK HAS its roots in the day itself. On September 11, 2001, as a reporter for the Boston Globe, I wrote the lead news story about the attacks, with contributions from several dozen colleagues. The work was at once historic and local: both hijacked planes that struck the Twin Towers took flight from Boston’s Logan International Airport. Five days later, with help from four reporters, I published a narrative called “Six Lives” that became the scale model for this book. It wove the stories of six people affected by, responsible for, or otherwise connected to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 and the North Tower calamity. As we explained at the time, the story was designed to reveal “a nation’s shared experience, as told through their memories and the memories of their loved ones. It also creates a memorial to all those who were killed, and provides a record for all who lived.”
Several years ago, I discussed “Six Lives” at Boston University, where I teach journalism and where at least twenty-eight 9/11 victims earned degrees. Talking afterward with my friend and agent Richard Abate, we feared that many of my students, as well as several of our own children, felt little or no personal connection to 9/11. To some it seemed as distant as World War I. That realization triggered an idea: I could expand “Six Lives” to cover not only the first flight and the first tower, but all four flights and their unscheduled destinations, along with the ripples of physical and emotional effects. Time would serve not as an eraser but as an ally, yielding information and perspective collected in the years since 9/11 to deepen the account while keeping it accessible and truthful.
Speaking of truth, this book follows strict rules of narrative nonfiction. It takes no license with facts, quotes, characters, or chronologies. Descriptions of events and individuals rely on firsthand or authoritative accounts, checked for accuracy and cited in the endnotes where appropriate. All references to thoughts and emotions come from the individual in whose mind they arose, either from interviews, first-person reports, or other primary sources.
The attacks of 9/11 are among the most heavily covered events in history. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that some individuals featured in this book have had their stories told elsewhere. Several are subjects of entire books, among them Rick Rescorla, Welles Crowther, Father Mychal Judge, former FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill, and several heroes of United Flight 93. Some accounts included here rely on testimony from the 2006 trial of al-Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty to being involved in the 9/11 plot. Overall, I mined information from government documents, law enforcement reports, trial transcripts, books, periodicals, documentaries, and broadcast and online works from reputable sources, credited where appropriate. Mainly, I relied on my own interviews with survivors, family and friends of the lost, witnesses, emergency responders, government officials, scholars, and military men and women.
Despite my efforts, and despite years of investigations, unanswered questions remain. Certain details and timeline elements are vague or in dispute. I have pointed out some of those gaps and disagreements in the text or in the notes. I have not included unfounded allegations or pseudoscience from the cottage industry of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Facts are stubborn and powerful: this is a true story.
THE ESSENTIAL JOB of journalism, from daily reporting to narrative history, is to answer six fundamental questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Motivation being the great mystery of human existence, the most elusive is usually “why.” As in: “Why did terrorists who claimed to be acting on behalf of Islam hijack commercial airliners to crash them into U.S. civilian and government targets on 9/11?”
By focusing primarily on the day itself, I’ve left deep exploration of that question to others. Readers inclined toward further pursuit of “why” should seek out additional works. Three worth reading are Steve Coll’s excellent Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001; Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It; and Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
Wright traced the forces, philosophers, and practitioners of the 9/11 brand of jihad, an Arabic word that translates as “struggle.” His accomplishment cannot be reduced to a few lines, but he masterfully examined the mindset of those responsible for the attacks:
Christianity—especially the evangelizing American variety—and Islam were obviously competitive faiths. Viewed through the eyes of men who were spiritually anchored in the seventh century, Christianity was not just a rival, it was the archenemy. To them the Crusades were a continual historical process that would never be resolved until the final victory of Islam.
Wright also provided insight into the men who carried out the hijackings:
Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities… . Anger, resentment, and humiliation spurred young Arabs to search for dramatic remedies. Martyrdom promised such young men an ideal alternative to a life that was so sparing in its rewards. A glorious death beckoned to the sinner, who would be forgiven, it is said, with the first spurt of blood, and he would behold his place in Paradise even before his death.
Of the other exceptional books about 9/11, including those cited in the Select Bibliography, several deserve acknowledgment: The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by John Farmer, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, distills how government and military officials served (and misled) the public; The
