THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF 9/11
set off a war against terror that still rages four years later. Some highlights from our coverage of the first year after September 11, 2001:
Terror works like a musical composition, so many instruments, all in tune, playing perfectly together to create their desired effect. Sorrow and horror, and fear. The first plane is just to get our attention. Then, once we are transfixed, the second plane comes and repeats the theme until the blinding coda of smoke and debris crumbles on top of the rescue workers who have gone in to try to save anyone who survived the opening movements.
From If You Want To Humble An Empire
By Nancy Gibbs
Sep. 14, 2001
Flight 93 was the last of the hijacked planes to meet its fate. All three passengers knew about the attacks on the World Trade Center. Did they do what we think they did? Did three strangers on a flight in distress band together to fight their captors and ditch the Boeing 757 before it could harm untold thousands?
From Facing The End
Sep. 24, 2001
But the 19 men who carried out last Tuesday's attacks were different. They did their most important training right here, among us. They were 'sleepers,' unusually purposeful men, living ordinary lives as they prepared for extraordinary deeds; they had plenty of time to change their minds if they had wanted to.
From The New Breed of Terrorist
By Johanna McGeary and David Van Biema
Sep. 24, 2001
Other Presidents have issued a call to arms. But few have cast their challenge in terms as wide as Bush's. The war to find, stop and defeat 'every terrorist group of global reach,' he said, was 'civilization's fight.' That fight, indeed, has already started, as law enforcement officials attempt to discover who was behind the atrocities and how they might be brought to justice.
From "We Will Not Fail"
By Michael Elliott
Oct. 1, 2001
If fear can erode constitutional protections, it can also eat the soul. Few objects speak to numbing, nameless dread so much as the gas mask, which not long ago seemed an artifact of World War I battlefields. Now there is a run on them.
From "A Clear And Present Danger"
By Michael Elliott
Oct. 8, 2001
U.S. officials tell TIME that their immediate plan is to scare bin Laden and his aides out of hiding; gather as much intelligence as possible about their whereabouts; deploy commandos in and around Afghanistan to strike quickly if bin Laden can be found; and reassure Muslim leaders constantly that American war aims are limited.
From War On All Fronts
By Michael Duffy
Oct. 15, 2001
For the Taliban, for Osama bin Laden and his dwindling legion of lieutenants, Tora Bora is the last sanctuary. The Taliban's barbaric and medieval rule unraveled for good last week as the regime's soldiers fled from Kandahar, their last stronghold.
From Into The Caves
By Romesh Ratnesar
Dec. 17, 2001
Since the mid-'90s, proliferation experts have suspected that several portable nuclear devices might be missing from the Russian stockpile. That made the DRAGONFIRE report alarming. So did this: detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-kiloton bomb would kill some 100,000 civilians and irradiate 700,000 more, flattening everything in a half-mile diameter. And so counterterrorist investigators went on their highest state of alert.
From Can We Stop The Next Attack?
By Massimo Calabresi and Romesh Ratnesar
Mar. 11, 2002
Photos and Graphics
In recent months a combination of remarkable developments--the military supremacy demonstrated in Afghanistan, Bush's vertiginous approval ratings, continued public support for the war and the relative lack of opposition overseas--has persuaded Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to broaden the scope of military operations and planning. ... For proponents of this new, more assertive foreign policy--premised on the use of military power to destroy potential threats to U.S. security before they become all too real--Iraq is the most obvious place to start.
From Why Bush Had To Act
By Romesh Ratnesar
Mar. 25, 2002
. In August, it turns out, the President was briefed by the CIA on the possibility that al-Qaeda, the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, might use hijacked airliners to win concessions from the U.S. Sources tell TIME that the briefing, which was first reported by CBS News, was in response to a request by Bush for detailed information on the kind of threat posed by al-Qaeda, not to American interests overseas--which had long preoccupied the spooks--but at home.
From How The U.S. Missed The Clues
By Michael Elliott
May 27, 2002
Photos and Graphics
It is quite true that nobody predicted Sept. 11--that nobody guessed in advance how and when the attacks would come. But other things are true too. By last summer, many of those in the know--the spooks, the buttoned-down bureaucrats, the law-enforcement professionals in a dozen countries--were almost frantic with worry that a major terrorist attack against American interests was imminent. It wasn't averted because 2001 saw a systematic collapse in the ability of Washington's national-security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat.
From They Had A Plan
By Michael Elliott
Aug. 12, 2002
Photos and Graphics
For a while last year, we All were One, stunned, numbed, crushed and inflamed. But the road forked somewhere, dividing those most directly affected from everyone else. It is one thing to choke up when we read the 'Portraits of Grief' obituaries in the New York Times, another to wake up every morning knowing there's a pair of ski boots in your hall closet that will never be used again and decide whether this is the day you'll finally take off your wedding ring.
From What a Difference A Year Makes
By Nancy Gibbs
Sep. 9, 2002
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