America Attacked: 9/11

An American Airlines Boeing 767 (Flight 11) left Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59 EDT heading for Los Angeles. Mohamed Atta (who had flown to Boston from Portland, Maine early on 9/11 and whose suitcase, containing a video on flying airplanes, a fuel consumption calculator and a copy of the Koran was later found at Logan Airport was on board. So were four other hijackers.

When Atta and his compatriots took control of Flight 11, they diverted the plane south toward New York City. It struck the North Tower between the 95th and 103rd floors at 8:46:40 EDT. (The video links in this paragraph depict what Jules Naudet filmed [move the cursor ahead, to 21:04, to see his interview with Charlie Rose] as the first attack took place.) All 92 people onboard died, including nine flight attendants and both pilots.

Air traffic controllers could hear part of the conversation in the cockpit after the hijackers took control of the plane. (A quick-thinking member of the flight crew had managed to activate that system.) At 8:28 EDT, one of the attackers said:

Don’t do anything foolish. You are not going to get hurt. We have more planes. We have other planes.

One of those “other planes” was already on its suicide-murder mission.