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FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH
TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE
UPDATED. (CONTINUING BREAKING NEWS)
AARON: Patty,
Patty, I'm going to interrupt you for a second.
We
told you there was a second plane that went down, this one
around 80 miles or so southeast of Pittsburgh. We will try to
connect with KDKA TV, in Pittsburgh.
So much for
planning. We tried. We will try again.
Again, we have
reports that a plane has crashed in the Pittsburgh area,
southeast of Pittsburgh about 80 miles, and at varying times
we have heard this was a 767 or a 747; I'm not sure it matters
which it is. What matters is that a plane has crashed in
Pittsburgh area.
The Pentagon continues to monitor
reports that another plane, a hijacked plane, is headed for
that area. All flights have been canceled around the country,
international flights heading towards United States are being
diverted into Canada this morning.
Patty, let me go
back to you as we look at some tape from the ground. Patty,
why don't you go ahead and continue.
PATTY: Aaron, I'm
now in the main building of Pace University, which is inside
the fallout zone of all the debris from the two building
collapses. At the time of the first building collapse, I was
at Broadway and Park Place. It was a huge cloud of smoke, and
it overcame the crowd. People were stampeding. Literally, the
debris was so thick you could you not see your hand in front
of your face.
I ducked around into a building that was
on Park Place and Beekman Street. When I was in there, people
were coming in; they were crying, they were wailing. You
couldn't see anything outside.
After the smoke had
cleared a little bit, I came outside. The scene was like a
ghost town in the financial district -- very eerie. You saw
people being wheeled on guernseys away from the site of the
explosion. People coming out with masks over their face,
anything they can put over their face because the air was
still very thick with debris. The ash on the ground is at
least two inches thick, it's more like snow cover, a very
eerie snow cover blanketing downtown Manhattan right now.
Now, at the time I was back on the corner again of
Broadway and Park Place, at that time, the police started
running toward us telling everybody to move, who was left on
the street. I looked up, and that's when I heard the
explosion, that's when the second tower came down. Again,
whoever was left on street started stampeding. I'm in the
office -- right now, I'm in the main building of Pace
University; people are crying, they have gas masks on their
face. Authorities are make people go towards the basement.
They're just doing anything that they can to move people away
from the financial district. But, again, it is a very
horrifying scene down here, very eerie like...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Patty -- Patty, let me
interrupt you.
Mayor Giuliani is on the telephone, is
part of New York 1's coverage. We join our affiliate for that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mayor Giuliani, since we have New
Yorkers listening, and obviously their thoughts with people
who are down there.
MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI, NEW YORK
CITY: Again, I would urge them to remain calm, to remain at
home or to remain at their place of business, unless they're
in lower Manhattan. By that I mean south of Canal Street. If
you're south of Canal Street, get out, walk, and walk slowly,
carefully, there are plenty of police around, but just walk
directly -- if you can't figure out what else to do just walk
directly north; that will get you out of the dangerous smoke
area; it will also do us a big favor, it will open up those
streets, because we're going to moving a large number of
ambulances and emergency personnel in and out of there all
day.
I've talked to the governor, he is putting the
National Guard on alert so that they can relieve our police
officers and our firefighters later this afternoon. And we
have asked the federal government for help, from the -- Urban
Search and Rescue Team.
So, right now, we are using
all of or police and firefighters and emergency personnel to
help the people down there. Later on we're probably going to
need reinforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mayor
Giuliani, I realize that it must be more than a chaotic
situation, particularly since the bunker has been compromised
and cordoned off, but can you give us any sense, there are so
many people watching now who must have loved ones down in that
area and are concerned of the systematic...
GIULIANI:
My heart goes out to them. I've never seen anything like this.
I was there from shortly after it happened and saw people
jumping out of the World Trade Center. it's a horrible,
horrible situation. And all that I can tell them is that every
resource that we have is attempting to rescue as many people
as possible. And the end result is going to be some horrendous
number of lives lost. I don't think we know yet, but right now
we have to just focus on saving as many people as possible.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you giving as you sense of,
if there is in fact some system implemented, what that system
is and what where people are being taken? GIULIANI: People --
we're triageing. People are being taken to every area hospital
possible, even virtually within minutes of -- I drove down
right past Saint Vincent's hospital, and I could see them
actually on street ready to take people, and that was within
minutes of the first airplane hitting the World Trade Center.
So the hospitals are ready. We'll be moving them to all
different area hospitals, triageing them.
The main
thing is having those streets open so we can get people in and
out of the southern part of Manhattan as quickly as possible
so that we can move them, you know, to the hospitals all over
city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Mayor Giuliani, we'll let
you...
GIULIANI: ... they're doing it. We just need
the cooperation of people in getting out of there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll let you get back to the
operations there, and we do appreciate you taking the time for
us here.
GIULIANI: Once again, the only thing to do
now is to remain calm and try to assist in the rescue effort.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
GIULIANI:
Let's pray all of us.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of
us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is New York's mayor, Rudy
Giuliani, talking to a CNN affiliate New York 1 here, saying
that clearly there's going to be tremendous number of lives
lost on these attackings here in New York, urging people to
stay calm and to leave the area calmly. The area is in the
southern part of Manhattan, way down on tip of Manhattan
island. The mayor urging people to calmly move north.
CNN's Jamie McIntyre is at the Pentagon.
Jamie,
why don't you start, if you can, at the beginning here as we
try and put some order to all of this. What happened?
MCINTYRE: Well, let me just describe the scene that we
have here and I will back up a little bit, but right now, I'm
looking at the charred facade of the Pentagon, a huge gaping
hole on the side where the Pentagon heliport is located, the
side that faces Arlington Cemetery.
In front of me is a
long line of rescue personnel with backboards; they're just
waiting for victims to be brought out so they can rush them to
nearby medical facilities. I see a few victims being treated
on the grass outside the Pentagon.
Firefighters
continue to pour streams of water on to side of the building
and a huge black cloud of smoke continues to billow out. It is
a scene of utter destruction here. I'm sure it pales in
comparison to the World Trade Center, but I have never seen
anything like this myself in the history of the Pentagon.
There's been nothing like this.
Again, a huge gaping
hole. You can see exposed five floors of the Pentagon offices
just ripped apart.
Our report is that an aircraft of
some kind, and at least in one witness identified it as a
civilian aircraft, hit the side of the building, shortly after
those -- the incident at the World Trade Center this morning.
People who were in their offices nearby reported hearing huge
explosions, seeing charred shrapnel come by their window. The
entire Pentagon has been evacuated.
A short time after
this attack there were urgent announcements made over the
loudspeakers telling people to quickly get away from the
building because they had reports of a second plane heading
this way just two minutes away. F-16 jets were scrambled over
the Pentagon. I saw several of them go by, but no second plane
ever materialized. And the building remains completely
evacuated as firefighters continue to pour columns of water on
the devastated side of the Pentagon and rescue personnel
continue to whisk victims away.
We have no report at
this time of how many casualties. Clearly, dozens and dozens
of people have been hurt and we presume that there have been
some deaths as well. It's hard to imagine otherwise
considering the extent of the damage to that side of the
building.
And I can see just some of the windows -- a
stretch of the building perhaps, about perhaps 40 or 50 feed
wide, it just looks like it has collapsed under the weight of
the impact -- Aaron.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT:
Jamie, thank you.
So we have planes hitting the
Pentagon or a plane hitting the Pentagon, two planes hitting
the World Trade Center towers in New York.
Alan Dodds
Frank joins on the phone in lower Manhattan -- Alan?
FRANK: Aaron, just two or three minutes ago there was
yet another collapse or explosion. I'm now out of sight, Good
Samaritan has taken me in on Duane Street (ph).
But at
a quarter to 11:00 there was another collapse or explosion
following the 10:30 collapse of the second tower. And a
firefighter who rushed by us estimated that 50 stories went
down. The street filled with smoke. It was like a forest fire
roaring down a canyon.
Now, as I think Patty
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) and others have told you, all of Manhattan is
covered -- downtown Manhattan is covered with thick white ash
and building material. The ambulances have been coming now
from as far as Long Island. All the rescue workers are being
equipped with gas or face-filter masks. And firefighter have
been arriving even by pick-up truck. Otherwise the streets are
now deserted.
Alan, thank you.
Alan Dodds Frank
in Manhattan.
A little more on this plane crash which
is the fourth incident, if you will. There was the plane crash
at the Pentagon, crashing into the Pentagon. There were the
two planes that hit the World Trade Center here in New York.
And we don't know whether this fourth one is related or not.
But the report is that a 747 en route from Chicago to New York
City crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 80 miles
to the southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That's the
incident. That's what we are hearing.
UNIDENTIFIED
MALE: And I'm standing next to a fireman and he said, yes,
they just bombed the Pentagon too.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN
CORRESPONDENT: Our colleague Jeff -- well, we have a little
more sound here from witnesses.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The doorman goes
to me, wow, I never seen a plane flying so low. And we looked
out it, all of a sudden, boom, it seemed like it wasn't even
real. And we came running over here closer to the place, and
all of a sudden we saw the other explosion. I don't know. I
don't know.
(SCREAMING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I
was in B Tower -- A Tower.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What
floor were you on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: B-1.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What floor?
UNIDENTIFIED
MALE: The first one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened?
Tell me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A big explosion happened.
Some guy came out, his skin was all off. I helped him out,
(UNINTELLIGIBLE). There's people jumping out of windows. I
seen at least 14 people jumping out of windows. It's horrific.
I can't believe this is happening.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE:
Anything else that you saw? Where you there for the second
hit?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. After -- about 10 minutes
later the second building went off.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE:
Did you see it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I saw it. It
just blew up, a big explosion, people started running. It was
just chaos everywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where you
there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I was right there. I
was in the -- I was down in the basement, came down, all of a
sudden the elevator blew up, smoke. I dragged a guy out. His
skin was hanging off, and I helped him into the
ambulance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED CNN
ANCHOR: The words of some of the witnesses here in Manhattan
this morning, and the pictures of what will I suspect before
this is over go down as one of the most horrific days in our
lifetime.
We're joined by our colleague, CNN's Jeff
Greenfield.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron,
you know, in 1993, when terrorist bombed the World Trade
Center, their plan was to knock one of the towers into the
other, bringing them both down. That disaster was averted, and
bad as that was, in a sense, America has been lucky.
Another terrorist attack in the planning was
interrupted to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and submerge dozens,
maybe hundreds of people.
At the eve of the
millennium, a suspected terrorist was intercepted at the
Canadian border on his way to Seattle. And I know that not so
long ago that former President Clinton in a private talk to a
group ruminated how lucky the United States has been over the
years, to -- with the combination of luck and the skill of
antiterrorist people, to avoid such thing.
What we see
now is nothing less than the worst nightmare that one could
imagine come to life, probably worse than anyone could have
imagined. You may remember that Tom Clancy wrote a novel that
ends with a terrorist hijacker crashing into the Capitol. The
worst act of terrorist on American soil, the Oklahoma City
Bombing, killed fewer than 200 people. All we know today is
that tens of thousand of people work in that complex that has
been destroyed, and I hate to say it this way, but this may be
the day that America's luck ran out.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN
ANCHOR: It hard, isn't it?
When you look out here, and
see the Statue of Liberty to the right, the buildings off to
the left, the attacks on Washington. We don't know a lot about
who is behind this or what this is all about. But the
symbolism of these attacks is extraordinary. It's
extraordinary.
CNN's David Ensor is in Washington and
he joins us -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT:
Aaron, I'm talking to U.S. officials who are obviously working
on who is responsible for this. They're working thesis is that
this is overseas terrorism, not domestic. They cannot rule out
additional attacks yet to come. In terms of claims of
responsibility so far, there is an Agion (ph), France press
report, in which a group with a word Palestine in the name
claims responsibility. There is a also a report quoting
personnel close to Osama bin Laden. The fugitive Saudi accused
terrorist denying that that group was involved.
But
again, U.S. officials say they can't add -- shed any light on
whether these reports are correct or incorrect. Usually when
this kind of attack occurs, you have claims of responsibility
from all sorts of people who have nothing to do with it. So
it's a very fluid situation at this point. But the Central
Intelligence Agency of the United States has been evacuated
from its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There are some key
personnel in the headquarters, but the operations center has
been moved elsewhere. U.S. officials say they don't want to
talk about where exactly the headquarters staff and operations
staff has been moved to.
But staff now has been
focusing on trying to find any shred of information that could
help the U.S. government figure out who is doing this and how
to put a stop to it -- Aaron.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR:
David, as a -- tell me if I'm right or wrong here. As a
practical matter, there are not a whole lot of groups that the
United States government knows about that are sophisticated
enough and the kind of money and resources to pull off
something like this, fair enough?
ENSOR: That's
absolutely true. And, obviously, despite the denial, attention
will quickly turn to the bin Laden group, because it has long
tentacles, has connections with all sorts of other groups. We
saw at the millennium, a group of Algerians apparently
involved in trying to arrange bombing in the United States,
and now there is evidence being produced in court sessions
that those Algerians were working for the bin Laden group. So
that group certainly will come under immediate suspicion.
There are very few others that could have pulled this off.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: All right, just because of
the enormity of it all, and the sophistication required to
stage these multiple attacks, this is not something some small
cell can pull off. This is obviously a group or groups
well-financed and extraordinarily well
organized...
ENSOR: That's correct. Now another thing
you will notice is that the you remember the attack on USS
Cole in the Yemen harbor. That's the first time that kind of
attack with small boats and bombs has been used against an
American warship. It worked once. Now the U.S. Navy has taken
steps to make that much more difficult to do. Officials saying
this may work once, they will now have to take measures to
make sure this can't be done again. But these are apparently
hijacking of civilian aircraft. So it was a sort of modus
operandi that was dreamed up in some evil terrorists mind and
done on a massive scale here today -- Aaron.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: David, thank you.
CNN's David Ensor, our national security
correspondent, on what he is hearing, what he knows, what the
reports are, as we approach 11:20 Eastern Time.
For
those of you just joining us, and as you can see on your
screen, the Taliban, the government in Afghanistan, expected
to make a statement soon, and we will monitor that for you.
For those of you just joining us, let me try to put as
many of these pieces together as I can as we stand here in New
York. At about 8:45 Eastern Standard Daylight Time this
morning, the first of the trade center towers was hit by a
plane. It crashed into the south side of the tower. About a
half an hour later, a second plane came from the right, and
you can see it coming behind the first tower, and then it hits
the tower, and you will see the flame and smoke coming out, I
guess three-quarters maybe a little bit more up the tower.
That's where this all began. About a half hour after that, the
first of that tower that is now you see inflamed in that shot,
collapsed. The top collapsed. And there was an enormous -- I
don't want to say explosion, but there was an enormous plume
of smoke, sparks as we looked over from where we are standing.
And then a little bit after that, and I want to be
careful on time, because it seemed perhaps 10 or so minutes,
but I'm not sure, the second tower, which in fact was the
first one hit, collapsed as well, and that's what you are
about to see. Our reporters in the area say they heard loud
noises when that happened. It is unclear to them and to us
whether those were explosions going on in the building, or if
it was simply the sound of the collapse of the buildings as
they collapsed, making these huge noises as they came down.
But as we look back, the smoke now, which has gone
from white to kind of gray clearing away, we are -- I guess
Jeff -- as -- I don't -- I want to know what's behind the
smoke. But I have the worst feeling is that very little.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And the fact is
that we've already been hearing from even the fragmentary
reports from people on the ground stories beyond horror,
people jumping out of windows, because of the flames. The fact
that this happened shortly before 9:00, and then the second
hit shortly after 9:00, means that most of the people were
either right in the vicinity or actually at their desks. So
one doesn't want to be overly grim, but the fact is, there
were large -- thousands of people were in these buildings.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: You get 50,000 people come to
work in those buildings. Many thousands more pass through
those buildings every day. There are retail shops on the lower
floors of the trade center.
GREENFIELD: It's where the
packed trains from New Jersey come in.
UNIDENTIFIED
CNN ANCHOR: Correct. It is where the commuter trains come in
from the other side of river, from New Jersey, come in and
drop off, and pick up their passengers. So it is an
extraordinarily busy area. It is also an area, for a number of
reasons, rich in symbolism to this city and to the country.
You can see from where we are the Statue of Liberty in New
York harbor in the pictures. So that's what happened in New
York.
At about the same time -- and again, I don't
want to put times on much of this yet -- after one of the
hijacked planes hit the Trade Center in New York, events
started to unfold in Washington. A plane hit the Pentagon. And
then there was a major fire at the Pentagon and the Pentagon
has now been evacuated. The State Department has been
evacuated. The president who was in Florida, went before
cameras to denounce, as you would expect, and as we would
expect, this terrorist attack, promising to hunt down those
responsible.
It was the president himself who first
used, at least as I heard the story, the word "terrorism."
There was no doubt in his mind, at least. The president now
has -- is heading back.
We are now getting a report
that American Airlines say one of its flights, a flight from
Boston to, I believe, Los Angeles -- correct me if I'm wrong
-- is down. Or at least they've lost contact with it -- 81
people on board. This would be the second of American
Airlines' flights involved, presumably, in this event. Another
flight, this one from Dulles to Los Angeles is down, with 54
passengers on board.
So again, there are two American
airlines: one Dulles, Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, the
other Boston to Los Angeles. Both American Airlines planes are
reported by the airline to be down. It is also believed that
an American Airlines plane, a 767, was involved in one of the
hits on the Trade Center as well.
We don't know if
there's a reason why it's American and not any other. We won't
speculate as to whether there is or not. We will tell you what
the facts are as we get them, and that's what we have.
American says two of its planes are down. And I assume that is
two other than the one that hit the Trade Center -- and you
guys check that out to make sure I'm right.
GREENFIELD:
We have a report of a crash in Somerset county, outside of
Pittsburgh.
AARON (ph): Right, I believe, a 767, though
we are getting reports it's perhaps a 747, which doesn't quite
fit into what we believe flies Chicago to New York, is also
down, and I do not know the airline involved there. Let me go
back -- OK, I do now: It's a United Airlines plane.
So
we have a number of planes down, a number of planes involved
in these attacks.
The Boston to Atlanta, if I'm
reading the notes correctly, had an American 767, with 81
passengers on board, and nine fights attendants and two
pilots.
GREENFIELD: Flight 11.
AARON: That's
American Airlines Flight 11. And American Airlines Flight 7,
which is a 757 jetliner, from Dulles Airport, outside of
Washington, to Los Angeles International, with 58 passengers
on board, four flight attendants, two pilots; it's also
reported down. And then there is this united airlines jet,
which crashed about 80 miles to the southeast of
Pittsburgh.
GREENFIELD: We should also mention, I
think, Aaron, that, inevitably, some of these early
fragmentary reports are going to be needing correction, and
that will be done as soon as possible. We had a report of a
second hijacked plane on the way to Washington. Capitol police
were reporting there have been no signs of that plane. We
simply, at this point in this awful story, have just to tell
our viewers we will do everything we can to report this
accurately. If fragmentary reports need amending or
correcting, that will be done immediately.
AARON: I
think in fairness, there is, in a number of places right now
-- perhaps four or five -- chaos, and numbers that come out
are not necessarily going to hold up, and in our reporting, we
will be a bit conservative on some of this until we track it
down. There is no point in allowing this thing to seem worse
than it is; it is already horrendous, and we don't need to
make it worse by misstating numbers, and we want you to keep
that in mind.
CNN Medical Unit reports that the Centers
for Disease Control, in Atlanta, is preparing bioterrorism
teams to respond to the incidents. This, we are told, is
simply precautionary. We have absolutely no reports and no
evidence that there is any bioterrorism going on. Clearly,
what is happening in every department of the United States
government -- and I suspect in every department of most major
cities right now -- the plan, the plan that they hope they
never have to implement, the plan that they spent years
preparing, is now in effect -- not just here, not just in
Washington, but around the country, because no one knows
precisely where this is going.
(CONTINUING BREAKING
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