Remembering September 11
The twin towers of the World Trade Center billow smoke, September 11, 2001. Photo: Reuters
Jittery US mourns 10 years on
A jittery, embattled United States comes together in grief on Sunday's 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks which killed almost 3,000 people and plunged it into an era of war and bitter internal division.
President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush will attend ceremonies at the site of the destroyed Twin Towers in New York, with Obama also flying to 9/11's other crash sites in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon.
With federal officials warning of a new terrorism scare, security in major cities was extraordinarily tight, and Obama has called for a "heightened state of vigilance and preparedness."
Heavily armed police squads and bomb sniffing dogs deployed across New York, while motorists in some neighborhoods were forced to go through checkpoints.
As every year since the horrific events of September 11, 2001, remembrance ceremonies will center on Ground Zero, where 2,753 of the day's 2,977 victims died in the inferno of the collapsing skyscrapers.
But unlike previous years, the ritual of reading the names of the dead will take place against a backdrop of the gleaming, three-quarter built 1 World Trade Center tower, rather than a chaotic-looking construction site.
Sunday will also see the dedication of a simple, but moving monument, consisting of massive fountains sunk into the footprints of the former towers, with the names of the dead written in bronze around the edges.
Even as US intelligence agencies chased down what officials said was a credible but unconfirmed threat of an Al-Qaeda attack around 9/11, Obama assured terrorism would never win.
"We will protect the country we love and pass it safer, stronger and more prosperous to the next generation," he added. "Today, America is strong and Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat."
Obama and Bush will attend the ceremony together for the first time, along with victims' family members, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani -- who led the city 10 years ago.
The 9/11 remembrances unite Americans like almost no other event. According to a poll last week, 97 percent of people remember where they were when they heard the news, on a par with John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The country was also thrilled -- with young people spilling onto the streets in Washington and New York -- at the news in May that US Navy SEALS had flown into Pakistan and shot dead al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
Yet while Al-Qaeda is severely weakened and New York is recovering, the anniversary still finds a nation struggling to overcome the longer-term impacts of the last decade.
In Afghanistan where US forces will also hold ceremonies on Sunday at the Bagram air base with a similar event at the US embassy in Kabul, troops are stuck in a seemingly unwinnable war against a Taliban guerrilla movement few Americans understand.
Though US troops have a reduced presence in Iraq, their occupation of the country, years of vicious inter-Iraqi violence, and a host of torture scandals, have bled the US economy and sullied Washington's image abroad.
And as unemployment and next year's presidential election become the focus for most Americans, those already distant wars can seem a world away.
Leading politicians may make patriotism part of every stump speech, but the loss of more than 6,200 US soldiers in wars launched by Bush, the hundreds of slain allied troops, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi civilians, rarely get a mention.
In this time of rancor, Sunday is at least a chance for brief reflection, and many ceremonies and services were being held around the world from New Zealand to Russia and Paris to honor those killed on 9/11.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday that Al-Qaeda had been weakened since the attacks.
"Al-Qaeda is now weaker than at any time in the decade since 9/11 -- and political progress through peaceful protest in the Middle East and North Africa has shown it to be increasingly irrelevant to the future."
But the Taliban hit back Saturday saying the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its allies "will remain a permanent stigma on the face of Western democracy."
We will never forget
President Obama vowed the United States will not waver in its fight against terrorism, as his predecessor said Americans will "never forget" 9/11 and the heroes who helped defend the country.
With the world marking a decade since the deadliest attack on US soil, and the tragedy seared into America's collective memory, communities across America honored those lost in the disaster, while New York and Washington beefed up police presence and Obama called for a "heightened state of vigilance" as Americans readied for the 10th anniversary under the shadow of a terror threat.
Relatives of victims also gathered on a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where former presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton and current Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a memorial on Saturday to those who died aboard hijacked United Airlines Flight 93.
Bush honoured as heroes the 40 passengers and crew who helped avert further disaster by overpowering the hijackers intent on flying the airliner into the US Capitol, saying they launched the "first counter-offensive in the war on terror".
But the president who launched that war also spoke of the wrenching pain that relatives still feel, 10 years on.
"With the distance of a decade, 9/11 can feel like a part of a different era, but for the families of the men and women stolen, some of whom join us today, that day will never feel like history," Bush said.
"The memory of that morning is fresh and so is the pain. America shares your grief," he added. "The United States will never forget."
The memorial was the most prominent yet in a series of events marking Sunday's anniversary.
New York held several events, including one in which residents somberly grasped hands in a kilometres-long human chain that snaked through lower Manhattan, and a memorial service for the 343 firefighters killed at the World Trade Centre.
Even as US intelligence agencies chased down what officials said was a credible but unconfirmed threat of an al-Qaeda attack around the September 11 commemorations, Obama assured that terrorism would never win.
"Ten years ago, ordinary Americans showed us the true meaning of courage when they rushed up those stairwells, into those flames, into that cockpit," the president said in his radio and Internet address.
"We will protect the country we love and pass it safer, stronger and more prosperous to the next generation," he added.
"Today, America is strong and al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat."
US citizens may be behind terror threat
The spectre of fresh threats hung over Americans as they readied to mark 9/11. A US official told AFP that "the general outlines of the initial report are three individuals coming into the country" last month, confirming the plot had links to militants in Pakistan.
US officials told US media that up to two of the operatives could be American citizens.
The New York Times reported that word of the plot was passed to US intelligence agents on Wednesday by an informer based in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The informer said two US passport holders of Arab ancestry had left Afghanistan and reached the United States as recently as last week, according to the daily.
But the informer's report included only a vague physical description of the two men, the Times noted, with the first name for one given as Suliman, which is common in the Middle East.
Former national security advisor Frances Townsend told CNN on Friday that US spy networks had been alerted to a new threat after intercepting communications from a known, reliable operative in Pakistan.
"It's Washington or New York. A car bomb, three men. We know that one or two are US citizens," she said.
Obama met on Saturday with his national security team to review efforts to "mitigate potential terrorist threats," urging a heightened security posture even beyond September 11, the White House said.
There have been no changes to his plans to attend Sunday ceremonies at Ground Zero in New York, and Shanksville.
Ten years on: 9/11 babies
Nine years ago, the babies that lost their fathers on September 11, 2001 were brought together on the first anniversary of the fateful day.
Those kids now tell their stories of growing up without their fathers due to the horrible terrorist attack, and how it has impacted their lives.
They tell of the little ways they connect with the fathers they never knew, and how they still love and remember them.
John Howard remembers
Former prime minister John Howard says being in Washington when terrorists struck the US on September 11, 2001 may have hastened his decision to commit support to the US president in the war on terror.
"I think I would have reached the same conclusions, but maybe not immediately, if I hadn't been there," Mr Howard told Fairfax newspapers in the lead-up to the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
"But I don't think in the long run it made a fundamental difference.
"Certainly, being on the spot had a powerful effect on me. I knew how shocked and bewildered the Americans were, although everybody was very calm.
"Everybody understood that this was a game-changer."
Mr Howard said the war on terror has weakened al-Qaeda since 2001 and said the downfall of Saddam Hussein could have encouraged the Arab Spring.
The tragedy of 9/11
It has been a decade since America became the victim of the most calamitous terrorist attack in history which has so far claimed more than 3500 lives.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four Boeing 767 passenger jets , flying two of them directly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.
Within hours, the world was watching as both towers collapsed, coating the south end of the island of Manhattan with smoke and debris.
The third 767 jet was crashed by the hijackers into the west side of the Pentagon. When passengers attempted to take control of the fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The September 11 attacks left the world in a state in state of shock and would mark a dramatic shift in US foreign policy.
Two weeks after the attacks, US President George W. Bush ordered that plans for the invasion of Afghanistan be drawn up - one month later America and its allies had invaded the country, launching the War on Terror.
Their stated mission was to hunt down Osama bin Laden, the man considered responsible for coordinating the September 11 attacks, dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime which had supported the terrorist organisation.
Bin Laden, who had initially denied involvement, publicly accepted responsibility for September 11 in a 2004 videotape. He cited the US support of Israel, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives.
On May 2 this year, it was announced Osama bin Laden had been killed as the target of an operation in Abbottabad, a town north of lslamabad in Pakistan.
In 2003, Iraq was invaded by the US and Allied Forces with the publicly stated aim of disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and ending Saddam Hussein’s alleged support of terrorism.
A month before the Iraq invasion, 36 million people nationally took part in a worldwide protest against the invasion, the largest anti-way rally in history.
Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 and later sentenced to death by hanging.
As of July 2011, 4477 US soldiers have been killed in the conflict. A leaked document (the Iraq War Logs), estimates that 109,000 Iraqis have died since the 2003 invasion, 66,081 of those deaths are recorded as civilians.
Iconic photos from September 11
Meet the man behind the haunting Falling Man photo
Richard Drew put down his camera bag and looked up at the colossal skyscraper that seemed to be racing toward the clouds at an accelerated clip.
"I'm really surprised how fast this building's gone up," he said of the rising edifice at 1 World Trade Center, peering at the monolith from beneath the brim of a tan baseball cap. "I just hope it isn't another target."
It was around 2 pm on a bright Wednesday afternoon in mid-July, and Drew, a veteran Associated Press photographer with wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly cropped silver beard that betrays his 64 years, was standing near the northwest intersection of Vesey and West streets in Lower Manhattan, across from the noisy jungle gym of cranes and steel where a global business hub is currently being reconstructed.
Nine years and eight months earlier in this very spot -- now an austere pedestrian plaza in the shadow of the Goldman Sachs building - Drew took a picture that became one of the most iconic images of one of the most catastrophic events in American history.
"I don't like coming down here," he admitted.
But he had nevertheless returned to retrace his steps for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, when he had watched dozens die through the lens of a Nikon DCS620.
On that similarly brilliant morning a decade ago, two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers by the time Drew emerged from the Chambers Street subway stop around a quarter after nine.
The Falling Man and photographer Richard Drew. Photo: AP/Yahoo! News
The 110-story buildings looked like a pair of giant smokestacks spewing plumes of black soot into the crystal blue sky.
He began shooting, focusing on the topmost floors. It wasn't long before he realized that some of the people trapped inside - as many as 200 of them, it was later estimated -- had decided that plunging thousands of feet to their deaths was preferable to burning alive.
"There's one. There's another one," he said, recalling the horrific scene with a detached ease. "I just started photographing people as they were falling."
One of those people would come to be known as the Falling Man. Though his identity remains unconfirmed, some believe he was Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old sound engineer who worked in a restaurant on the top floor of the North Tower.
The man fell at 9:41, and Drew caught about a dozen frames of his fatal descent. In one of them, the subject soars earthward in a graceful vertical dive -- arms at his sides; left leg bent at the knee.
"Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it," wrote Tom Junod in a renowned 2003 Esquire piece that coined the title of the photo, which won a 2001 World Press Photo award and is the subject of a 2006 documentary film. "If he were not falling, he might very well be flying."
Newspapers the world over made space for the Falling Man in their Sept. 12, 2001, editions. But the widespread publicity sparked a debate as to whether the image was too gratuitous for public consumption.
"To me, it's a real quiet photograph," Drew argued.
Little known facts from September 11
Unlike fellow AP photographer Nick Ut's Pulitzer-winning 1972 shot of a naked 9-year-old girl fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam or Drew's famous photos of Bobby Kennedy's bloody dying breaths, "There's no violence in it," he said.
It was now close to 3 p.m., and Drew had decamped to a Shake Shack a few blocks from Ground Zero for a late lunch.
Waiting for his food to arrive, Drew said he doesn't attend the memorial ceremonies held each year at the hallowed site nearby, nor does he plan to show up for the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
He was just doing his job that day.
"I don't need to be here to commemorate what happened to me," he said. "I record history every day. Everything I do, whether it's photographing DSK [Dominique Strauss-Kahn] in court, or the World Trade Center, or spring training baseball, it's all part of history, no matter how small or how large."
Drew likewise doesn't reminisce much about his experience on Sept. 11. (No lingering nightmares or PTSD, either.)
He is reminded of the photo, however, twice a day, every day, through online news alerts that track mentions of the words "falling man" in the press. He picked up his BlackBerry to check the latest, in which "a 22-year-old man died Monday after falling off a rocky cliff and being swept out to sea in Hawaii," he reported.
The alerts, which he created on his Yahoo! and Google accounts about eight years ago, rarely have anything to do with the actual Falling Man, but he likes to keep up anyway.
“I'm curious to see if people are writing about it or talking about it," he said. "To see how they might interpret the picture."
Sometimes the Falling Man reveals himself where it's least expected. Drew's longtime neighbor, the author Helen Schulman, lives five floors above the apartment Drew shares with his wife, his two daughters, and the family's 5-year-old golden retriever, Ajax, in a prewar building on the Upper West Side.
Schulman wrote an entire novel without knowing that Drew, as she explains in the acknowledgements, had taken the "picture that haunted and inspired me throughout the years of writing" it.
Drew and Schulman serendipitously connected the dots after she completed the first draft of the book, "A Day at the Beach" - about a distraught family that flees Manhattan for the Hamptons on Sept. 11 -- which was published in 2007.
"It's always going to be a part of me," perhaps more than any other photo he's ever taken, Drew said.
But has it changed him?
He put down the last bite of his Chicago dog, took a sip of beer, and dabbed his mouth with a napkin before pausing to contemplate.
"I think of it as a learning experience," he said of the photo and Sept. 11 in general. "I get so caught up in the adrenaline of doing this job. So, looking back on it, I think a lot about being able to go home to my family every night. Whether I decide to think about it daily or not, it's always in the back of my mind. It's this world event that I have become a part of in my own little tangential way. I'm not a hero fireman; I didn't die there; I didn't have a loved one who passed away there. But it's something I'll never forget."
As for the anonymous soul whose legacy Drew has unwittingly preserved, "Even if people don't want to see my photograph, that man did fall out of the building," he said. "To me, he'll always remain the unknown soldier."
Timeline: events as they unfolded on September 11
Marcy Borders then and now. Photo: AFP and Coleman-Rayner
