A changed America: Marking 10 years since 9/11

A changed America: Marking 10 years since 9/11.

Ten years. Of longing for loved ones lost in the worst terrorist attacks to happen on American soil. Of sending sons, daughters, fathers and mothers off to war in foreign lands. Of redefining what safety means and worrying about another 9/11 — or something even worse.

Ten years has arrived. And with it, memories. Of that September morning, when terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed into a field in rural western Pennsylvania. Of heroism and Samaritans and unthinkable fear.

And of nearly 3,000 killed at the hands of a global terror network led by Osama bin Laden, himself now dead.

On Sunday, people across America gather to pray at cathedrals in their greatest cities and to lay roses before fire stations in their smallest towns. Around the world, many others will do something similar because so much changed for them on that day, too.

Bells will toll. Americans will see new memorials in lower Manhattan, rural Pennsylvania and elsewhere, symbols of a resolve to remember and rebuild.

But much of the weight of this year's ceremonies lies in what will largely go unspoken. There's the anniversary's role in prompting Americans to consider how the attacks affected them and the larger world and the continuing struggle to understand 9/11's place in the lore of the nation.

"A lot's going on in the background," said Ken Foote, author of "Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy," examining the role that veneration of sites of death and disaster plays in modern life. "These anniversaries are particularly critical in figuring out what story to tell, in figuring out what this all means. It forces people to figure out what happened to us."

On Saturday in rural western Pennsylvania, more than 4,000 people began to tell the story again.

At the dedication of the Flight 93 National Memorial near the town of Shanksville, former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden joined the families of the 40 passengers and crew aboard the jet who fought back against their hijackers.

"The moment America's democracy was under attack our citizens defied their captors by holding a vote," Bush said. Their choice cost them their lives.

The passengers and crew gave "the entire country an incalculable gift: They saved the Capitol from attack," an untold amount of lives and denied al-Qaida the symbolic victory of "smashing the center of American government," Clinton said.

They were "ordinary people given no time at all to decide and they did the right thing," he said.

"And 2,500 years from now, I hope and pray to God that people will still remember this."

The Pennsylvania memorial park is years from completion. But the dedication and a service to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks are critical milestones, said Sally Ware, one of the volunteer "ambassadors" who has worked as a guide at the site since the disaster.

Ware, whose home was rocked when the jet crashed two miles away, recalled how hundreds of people flocked to the site in the days afterward to leave their own mementos and memorials. She began volunteering after finding one along the roadside — a red rose placed atop a flight attendant's uniform.

"It really bothered me. I thought someone has to take care of this," said Ware, whose daughter is a flight attendant.

Now, a decade later, she said the memorial may do little to ease the grief of the families of those who died in the crash.

But the weekend's ceremonies recall a story with far broader reach. The ceremonies honor those who "fought the first battle against terrorism — and they won," Ware said. "It's something I don't want to miss. It's become a part of my life."

On Sunday, the focus turns to ceremonies at the Pentagon, just outside Washington, D.C., and in lower Manhattan for the dedication of the national Sept. 11 memorial. President Barack Obama planned to attend events at the sites and was to speak at a Sunday evening service at the Kennedy Center.

The New York ceremony begins at 8:30 a.m., with a moment of silence 16 minutes later — coinciding with the exact time when the first tower of the trade center was struck by a hijacked jet.

And then, one by one, the reading of the names of the 2,977 killed on Sept. 11 — in New York, at the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania.

They include the names of 37 of Lt. Patrick Lim's fellow officers from the police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Lim, assigned to patrol the trade center with an explosives detection dog, rushed in to the north tower after it was hit to help evacuate workers. He and a few others survived despite still being inside a fifth-floor stairwell when the building fell.

In the years since, Lim said he has wrestled with survivor's guilt. He took shelter in selective memory, visualizing the ground covered with women's shoes amid the destruction. "That's how I got through that because what was attached to the shoes was a lot worse," Lim said.

The 10th anniversary has forced Lim to revisit an experience he's worried too many people have pushed from their minds. But the approach of Sunday's ceremonies has convinced him of the value of revisiting Sept.11, both for himself and others.

When it happened, talking about the events of that day "wasn't easy for me. This was very difficult. But it became ... a catharsis," he said. "What I want is for people to remember what happened."

And so arrives a Sunday dedicated to remembrance, with hundreds of ceremonies across the country and around the globe — from a memorial Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to a ceremony featuring nine-stories-tall replicas of the twin towers on a plaza in Paris.

But some of the most powerful ceremonies will likely be the smallest and most personal.

In Newtown, Conn., retired American Stock Exchange floor broker Howard Lasher planned a ceremony Sunday morning under the canopy of six maple trees standing alongside his gravel driveway; their trunks are painted to resemble an American flag.

Lasher commissioned the painting as a tribute to nine colleagues and the son of another who died inside the trade center.

"I wanted something that would reach out to people, that people would not forget," Lasher said.

And in tiny Brown City, Mich. — with no direct connection to the attacks — firefighters plan to lay 343 roses on a 15,000-pound steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center, in honor of their New York City brethren who perished. It has already become a local shrine, Chief Jim Groat said.

A few days ago, a couple from St. Joseph, Mich. who happened to be driving through, pulled into the fire station lot when they spotted a sign for the memorial. The woman explained to Groat that she was an American Airlines flight attendant on Sept. 11.

Then she turned to face the steel beam from the trade center and cried. "She said she was just honored that somebody still cares," Groat recalled.

The chief observed silently, before offering an invitation.

"Will I see you here on Sept. 11?" he asked.

"I'll be here," she answered.

9/11: The Most Powerful Photos.

U.S Government officials say, Threat suspects may be U.S. citizens.

U.S Government officials say, Threat suspects may be U.S. citizens. 

 At least two of the three men involved in a possible al-Qaida plot to pull off an attack coinciding with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 are believed to be U.S. citizens or have U.S. traveling documents, government officials said.

Their primary mission is to explode a car bomb in either New York or Washington, but if that proves impossible, they have been ordered to simply cause as much destruction as they can, one U.S. official said Friday.

Word that al-Qaida had dispatched would-be attackers reached U.S. officials in midweek. A CIA informant who has proven reliable in the past approached intelligence officials overseas to say that the men had been ordered by newly minted al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Sunday by doing harm on U.S. soil.

The tipster says the would-be attackers are of Arab descent and may speak Arabic as well as English. Counterterrorism officials were looking for certain names associated with the threat, but it was unclear whether the names were real or fake.

Counterterrorism officials have been working around the clock to determine whether the threat is accurate, but so far, have been unable to corroborate it, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

In the meantime, extra security was put in place to protect the people in the two cities that took the brunt of the jetliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a decade ago. It was the worst terror assault in U.S. history, and al-Qaida has long dreamed of striking again to mark the anniversary. But it could be weeks before the intelligence community can say whether this particular threat is real.

Undaunted by talk of a new terror threat, New Yorkers and Washingtonians wove among police armed with assault rifles and waited with varying degrees of patience at security checkpoints Friday.

Security worker Eric Martinez wore a pin depicting the twin towers on his lapel as he headed to work in lower Manhattan on Friday where he also worked 10 years ago when the towers came down. "If you're going to be afraid, you're just going to stay home," he said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, too, made a point of taking the subway to City Hall.

Briefed on the threat Friday morning, President Barack Obama instructed his security team to take "all necessary precautions," the White House said. Obama still plans to travel to New York on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary with stops that day at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Washington commuters were well aware of the terror talk.

Cheryl Francis, of Chantilly, Virginia, said she travels over the Roosevelt bridge into Washington every day and doesn't plan to change her habits. Francis, who was in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, said a decade later the country is more aware and alert.

"It's almost like sleeping with one eye open," she said, but she added that people need to continue living their lives.

The intelligence community regularly receives tips and information of this nature. But the timing of this particular threat had officials especially concerned, because it was the first "active plot" that came to light as the country marked the significant anniversary, a moment that was also significant to al-Qaida, according to information gleaned in May from Osama bin Laden's compound.

The U.S. government has long known that terrorists see the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and other uniquely American dates as opportunities to strike. Officials have also been concerned that some may see this anniversary as an opportunity to avenge bin Laden's death.

Britain, meanwhile, warned its citizens who are traveling to the U.S. that there was a potential for new terror attacks that could include "places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers."

Acutely aware of these factors, law enforcement around the country had already increased security measures at airports, nuclear plants, train stations and more in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11. The latest threat, potentially targeting New York or Washington, prompted an even greater security surge in those cities. U.S. embassies and consulates abroad had also boosted their vigilance in preparation for the anniversary.

At Penn Station in New York, transit authority police carried assault rifles and wore helmets and bullet proof vests as they watched crowds of commuters. Police searched passengers' bags as they entered the subway, and National Guard troops in camouflage fatigues moved among riders, eyeing packages.

In Washington, Police Chief Cathy Lanier warned that unattended cars parked in suspicious locations or near critical buildings and structures would be towed.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was "a specific, credible but unconfirmed report that al-Qaida, again, is seeking to harm Americans and in particular, to target New York and Washington."


"Making it public as was done yesterday, is intended to enlist the millions and millions of New Yorkers and Americans to be the eyes and the ears of vigilance," she said Friday morning during a speech at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

That the threat is credible but not corroborated means that the information came from a single source, New York Mayor Bloomberg explained Friday during his weekly WOR radio address.

"Corroboration means you get multiple sources, which increases the likelihood that it's real," he said. "Credible means that it's possible to do."

These sorts of vague descriptions are typical intelligence talk in an environment where tips come from all places and in all shapes— a stolen diplomatic cable, a satellite image showing tribesmen gathering in an area that's typically isolated, a snatched bit of conversation between two terrorists overheard by a trusted source, a phone number, a document, an email, an airplane ticket.

"Figuring out who would-be attackers are, or even whether they exist, could take months, where the drumbeat of national security wants answers in minutes or days," said Phillip Mudd, a former top counterterrorist official at the CIA and the FBI. "You have to tell everyone what you heard, and then try to prove the information is legitimate."