Bush Pledges Victory; Reagan National Closed Indefinitely

By David Von Drehle Washington Post Friday, September 14, 2001; Page A01 President Bush promised triumph in "the first war of the 21st century" yesterday, as the threat of further terrorist attacks disrupted another day in Washington and clouded efforts to restore the country to a more normal life. Such was the grim harvest of Tuesday's assaults with hijacked jets on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Officials here and in New York indicate the death toll from the attacks is likely to approach -- or even exceed -- 5,000. "Now that war has been declared on us, we will lead the world to victory," said Bush, whose very visible emotions yesterday ranged from warm tears to cool fury. Commercial airplanes began flying again yesterday morning on a still-limited basis, but Reagan National Airport remained closed indefinitely. And even this half-step toward normalcy was followed by a wave of further cancellations out of respect for the dead or concern over new threats of violence new violence. The leading stock exchanges will remain closed today, with plans to reopen on Monday, scant blocks from the stupefying, still-smoldering heaps of wreckage in Manhattan. Three television networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- postponed the opening of their new television seasons. Most professional sports -- Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the PGA Tour, professional soccer -- canceled their weekend schedules. "We tried to be sensible, sensitive and right," said NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. The Pentagon took a tangible step toward war yesterday, requesting authorization from the White House to call up more than 40,000 reservists. If approved as expected, the first wave of reservists could be ordered to active duty next week, a senior military official said. The call-up will be paid for with some of the $40 billion in emergency spending that Congress agreed to yesterday -- half of it to cope with the catastrophe, and half to launch the war. What sort of war is coming was still unclear, but Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said it will not be an isolated retaliatory strike. Strategists are planning a "sustained and broad" campaign, he said. U.S. diplomats continued to line up support from nations around the world. "Now is the opportunity to do generations a favor," Bush said, "by coming together and whipping terrorism. . . . This is now the focus of my administration." Death, real and threatened, continued to haunt the country. New York officials announced that more than 100 bodies have been recovered and at least 4,763 people are missing after two jets smashed and destroyed the famous twin towers of the World Trade Center. At the Pentagon, where a third hijacked plane ripped a huge hole in an outer wall, authorities tentatively set the death toll at 190 -- 126 inside the building and 64 on the airplane. A fourth jet crashed in rural Pennsylvania en route to Washington -- its "black box" was recovered by investigators yesterday -- and 64 more people were killed. So it was also a time for mourning. The president called for a national day of prayer, urging all Americans to spend the lunch hour today in a house of worship and encouraging candlelight vigils tonight. Bush himself will visit New York today after leading a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral. Washington was severely disrupted by the threat of another attack -- though no one seemed to know whether it was real or remote. National monuments were ordered closed. Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Park outside the White House were cleared of pedestrians, sealed, and patrolled by Secret Service agents in flak jackets, and buildings near the White House were evacuated. The Capitol was also evacuated briefly yesterday afternoon. National Guard troops continued to watch Washington streets, and combat aircraft patrolled the sky. Street closings and other heightened security measures gridlocked the evening rush hour. Bush spent most of the day at the White House in meetings and making phone calls but left briefly with first lady Laura Bush to visit victims of the Pentagon attack in a local hospital. Vice President Cheney was at Camp David as a security measure, the Secret Service confirmed. Since Tuesday, agents have not felt safe having Bush and Cheney in the same place. As for Reagan National, two senior federal officials said the airport will remain closed indefinitely. "It won't be hours. It won't be days," said one official of the timetable for reopening the airport. "We have not closed the loop on the threats." Dulles International Airport was allowed to open. Several key airlines at Baltimore-Washington International opened their counters only to rebook passengers -- their planes did not fly. Across the country, the return to the sky was more symbol than reality. Service was extremely spotty. Airports in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Miami and elsewhere were cleared to open. The three New York area airports, after opening for a few hours, were shut down again after nine men and one woman were detained at John F. Kennedy International and La Guardia airports. Police officials said at least one of the men used a forged pilot's identification to bypass a security checkpoint. At Chicago's O'Hare International, security officials were stationed every few feet when the airport reopened its doors about 2 p.m. Inside, however, frustrated passengers quickly learned that many flights were still canceled. The carnage, the outrages, the fears and disruptions have made the public strong supporters of war -- even a long war in which innocent civilians are killed. A Washington Post-ABC News survey of 609 randomly selected adults Thursday night found that 7 in 10 Americans are prepared to accept a long war with many U.S. military casualties. Nearly 85 percent support an attack on Afghanistan, if the country harbors Osama bin Laden, suspected sponsor of the assaults. "We have no choice, we're at war," said Rodney Forsberg, 43, of Dacula, Ga. "Any thinking American dreads war, but here again we don't have a choice -- we're in for a big one." At the same time, a growing proportion of Americans -- two out of three, compared with less than half immediately after the attacks -- think the government could have done more to prevent Tuesday's attacks. And more than 4 in 10 acknowledge the attacks will probably make them "more suspicious of people you think are of Arab descent." It is this last strain of public opinion that moved the president to call on Americans to "treat Arab Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve. . . . We should not hold one who is a Muslim responsible for an act of terror," he said. In the sky, and in the marketplace, the aftershocks of the attack were global. Travelers were stranded and detoured all over the planet by the inability to cross most of North America. Regular transatlantic travel did not resume yesterday, and an estimated 80,000 travelers from Britain alone remained stuck in the United States and Canada. International stock markets experienced another very jittery -- though ultimately benign -- trading day. At the same time, the international complexion of the dead was revealed for the first time as governments in London, Melbourne, Seoul, Tokyo and Berlin announced that they had lost citizens -- in some cases more than 100 -- in the New York disaster. The atrocity -- wrought by 18 hijackers on the four jets, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday, and increasingly tied to bin Laden -- continued to raise a welter of emotions in Americans of every rank and kind. There were tears, of course. The president grew wet-eyed during a visit to survivors of the strike on the Pentagon. The first lady tried to console the nation's children in open letters to schoolchildren, distributed through state school superintendents. In the version she sent for elementary school students, she wrote: "When sad or frightening things happen, all of us have an opportunity to become better people by thinking about others. I want you to know how much I care about all of you." One of Wall Street's most successful bond traders wailed in agony as he told Connie Chung of ABC News that most of his company -- 700 employees -- appears to have been wiped out. Howard Lutnick, chief executive of the firm Cantor Fitzgerald, said he had taken his 5-year-old son to kindergarten on Tuesday and arrived at the base of Tower One when it was already in flames. His brother, Gary, was up above the fire. When Chung asked why Lutnick has not checked area hospitals for him, Lutnick heaved a sob and held up a list of 700 names. "Here's everybody I got!" he wailed. "Find somebody on this list. Because if you find someone on this list, then I get to call them. I get to give somebody else some hope, some dreams. Maybe, maybe they get to kiss their kids. It's, it's -- I'd love to find my brother, but I'd love to find, I'd love to find their brother, or their wife, or their husband, or anything, anything. . . . "Seven hundred families," he said. "Help them. 700 families. I just can't say it. I can't say it without crying." There was vengeful anger. Hundreds of demonstrators marched on a mosque in Bridgeview, Ill.; one of the marchers said simply, "I've always hated Arabs." There was numbness -- often mixed with tears in the ghostly streets of Lower Manhattan. Family members of presumed victims walked the streets bewildered or sobbing, distributing homemade fliers with pictures of their loved ones. There were jolts of fear. More than once at the World Trade Center site, air horns screeched a hideous alert. Another neighboring skyscraper was in danger of falling. Although the buildings remained standing last night, the prospect of another avalanche menaced an already unspeakable scene. Complicating the overnight rescue efforts, a storm broke out about 1:15 a.m., with high winds and torrential rains. As for hopes -- they were few, and mostly dashed. Early in the day, workers in Manhattan began rejoicing at the news that five firefighters had been dug, alive, from the rubble. The story raced around the world, heartening millions. The men reportedly were found trapped but largely unharmed inside a Chevrolet Suburban. Later, the realization grew that the men loaded into ambulances and cheered were not survivors of the falling towers. They had been working in the rubble alongside hundreds of others, in a Herculean task. So vast is the wrecked mountain in New York that thousands of tons have already been removed and still it seems alpine. So large was the work site that the five men could fall down a cliff in the debris and hardly anyone would notice. That is what happened. They were found, and recovered, and briefly gave a spark of faint optimism to the scene. Then the hope died.

Bush Vows Sweeping Response