As people in the United States and around the world woke up on September 12, 2001,
they faced a world that had been changed in very many ways that
could not possibly have been anticipated when they woke up the day before.
So as we bring this course to its conclusion,
I'd like to try to review and assess the damage that al Qaeda has
wrought and consider the magnitude of the challenges
that were being faced by the United States government and people and
allies around the world trying to deal with the enormity of the attacks of September 11.
President Bush, of course,
had been in Florida on the day of the attack and then spent much of
the rest of September 11 traveling to various bases on Air Force One,
concerned about coming back to Washington
while a national security event was in progress.
He did make it back to the White House and addressed
the nation from the Oval Office that weekend.
But I could only imagine as he started the day and
started to face these challenges and look at what had happened
and why of the enormity of the feelings of responsibility and
difficulty that he as president and those with him must have faced.
First, of course, southern Manhattan was still literally
smoldering with the wreckage of the 9/11 attacks.
Thousands, of course, were dead.
Many families possibly still clinging to
the slim hope that more survivors would be found,
that their loved ones might be located in an area hospital,
but that was not to be for the vast, vast majority.
Many others, of course,
many thousands of others had been in the site had
been near the towers when they collapsed and were traumatized,
of course, by these events.
And of course, the nation was traumatized in many ways.
This was a terrorist attack seen over the span of hours and then of
course replayed over and over again over the course of days and weeks on live television.
The nation, as a whole,
was of course deeply affected and had,
of course, a multitude of emotions.
There was, of course, deep sadness, fear,
anger, desire for retribution, uncertainty, confusion.
And this was the state of the nation that
the government and of course the government in the form of the presidency,
really had to consider and address.
Massive crime had been perpetrated in many airports on the ground in New York,
at Washington, and Shanksville,
Pennsylvania and of course, in the air.
And so an investigation had to ensue to determine who was responsible.
But more importantly, were there other episodes,
other events that had been planned or were possibly going to be follow-ons?
So there was a massive manhunt law enforcement effort
to investigate the ins and outs of the 9/11 attack.
Of course, we've read hundreds of pages of the 9/11 commission report but
virtually none of this information was known when we woke on September 12, 2001.
We did not know very much about al Qaeda and the big question of course,
on everyone's mind was is this attack over?
We did not really know.
We knew the planes were on the ground,
so it would be very difficult for
an exact same type of attack. But what were the networks?
What were the operations? How deeply had this organization,
which had enabled 19 individuals to enter
the United States undetected live here for a number of weeks,
and then execute a massive terrorist attack.
How many others were there?
What were their linkages?
Where were they, either in the United States or elsewhere around the world,
getting ready to either continue or execute a brand new attack?
Another immediate impact inside the United States
was that the Muslim American population,
totaling anywhere between three and 5,000,000 people,
in the eyes of many Americans,
were immediately suspect because of the infamiliarity
with Islam are the mystery and the uncertainty about what al Qaeda was.
But it was clear from early on that the attackers were Muslim and so grave
concerns and fear among the Muslim community that they
would be targeted for retribution and uncertainty,
for many other Americans about the nature and
character of a community that they did not know very much about.
Airports and the entire aviation industry around the United States was,
of course, shut down on 9/11.
Question being, when could it reopen?
When would normalcy resume?
What kinds of measures would have to be taken to
give American people and people around the world
the confidence to get back on airplanes when airplanes had
been used as weapons the previous day and toppled buildings.
So tremendous questions around just the confidence of the aviation industry.
Not only were the airports closed,
but al Qaeda had literally made a mockery of
the entire aviation security industry by waltzing
through the airport checkpoints and
then to be able to hijack a plane with barely any weaponry on board,
take control of those planes,
and crash them into the World Trade Center,
the Pentagon, and into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
So the entire security apparatus would have to be scrutinized,
called into question, and radically changed.
In addition, we woke up on September 12,
the executives in American Airlines and United
wondering literally about the solvency of their companies.
Planes, of course, of all the companies were grounded and not able to generate revenue,
but these particular airlines were potentially facing a crippling liability from
potential lawsuits by victims both on the ground and in the air.
So questions about what types of measures would have to be taken
potentially to save these two very large and very important American companies.
The attacks near the World Trade Center had damaged the infrastructure of
the New York Stock Exchange and the financial sector
but more importantly had rattled confidence in the American financial system.
The stock market would remain closed for a number of days,
but questions loomed about what would happen to the markets.
Would capital flee from the United States thinking that it would be
subject to future and multiple attacks,
not knowing the extent of the devastation that had occurred?
So this element of our economic future and security also loomed.
Not only were the planes taken out of the sky,
but our land border entry points between the United States,
Canada, United States, and Mexico were shuttered on 9/11.
So not only are these the places where
large volumes of passenger cars, tourists, workers,
family cross the border,
sometimes daily to work or engage in other commerce,
but also huge amounts of trade.
So this is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy coming through these ports of entry,
and of course, impacts on our Canadian and Mexican neighbors as well.
So the decisions would have to be made when these borders could be open,
but the president would surely have had to have been advised that given
the infrastructure that was in place and the number of employees,
that there's no way that these borders could continue to properly
function or that even once they started to function at a slow pace,
that we would have 100 percent transparency into everything,
all the people or all of the cargo,
literally millions of pounds of cargo per
day that would be coming into the country, and that of course,
after the 9/11 attacks,
when only 19 people from another country could
have executed such an attack and caused such devastating damage,
the notion that large trucks could be coming into the United States and we would not
have visibility into what was in each of
those trucks must have been enormously concerning and frightening.
Our immigration system had also been abused and made a mockery of by the 9/11 hijackers,
almost all of whom were in the country illegally,
in one way or the other.
This a picture of the visa of Hani Hanjour,
one of the 19 hijackers.
So large-scale questions about our visa system,
the way that entries were permitted
and that visas were issued usually abroad outside the United States,
how many other potential terrorists were currently holding
visas which would allow them to pass through security?
How many had already come?
What can we do to tighten this system with the recognition that,
again, our country in many ways relies on,
the free flow of people from either visitors,
people to come and do business,
students to come and learn,
people coming for international conferences?
In many cases, the vitality and the lifeblood again of
our country relying on the free flow of people,
yet our immigration system had been abused and taken
advantage of and shown to be insecure by the attacks of September 11.
There was of course the grave specter of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear materials,
of which we would soon learn did not have to come in
a sophisticated nuclear weapon on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but could literally be packed into a suitcase and
exploded in a major town or city; biological weapons,
it could be used to spread disease; and chemical munitions,
gases that could kill thousands if they were dispersed properly in a crowded urban area.
All of this, as I mentioned the prior lecture had been made
apparent and a relevant threat by the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in Japan.
Now the specter of al Qaeda having been
successfully acted inside the United States are feeling a vulnerability
to these weapons was another huge concern as we awoke on September 12.
And a great concern was that these types
of materials could be contained in the thousands and thousands of
cargo containers that are shipped from
abroad into the United States and loaded into ports
many of which these boxes were stacked at
sometimes within 10 to 15 miles of major American cities.
Could there be a nuclear weapon,
chemical ammunitions loaded into any of these cargo containers,
many of which would be put on trucks or trains and then driven
under or through places with huge population densities?
Of course, these fears relating to
biological attacks were made even more prevalent and real by
the anthrax attacks that took place through
the American Postal system in literally just the months following 9/11.
