George W. Bush was President of the United States on , when al-Qaeda orchestrated a series of coordinated terrorist attacks. The attacks destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York City and severely damaged the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The September 11 attacks were a series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 terrorists associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil; nearly 3,000 people were killed. The attacks involved the hijacking of four planes, three of which were used to strike significant U.S. sites. American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center’s north and south towers, respectively, and American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon. United Airlines flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. The plane was believed to be headed to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.Timeline of the September 11 AttacksRead more about the events on that day.How many people were killed in the September 11 attacks?The exact number of victims—particularly the number of those killed at the World Trade Center—is not definitively known. However, the official death toll, after numerous revisions and not including the 19 terrorists, was set at 2,977 people. At the World Trade Center in New York City, 2,753 people died, of whom 343 were firefighters. The death toll at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was 184, and 40 individuals died outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.Who planned the September 11 attacks?See full list on britannica.comThe September 11 attacks were precipitated in large part because Osama bin Laden, the leader of the militant Islamic organization al-Qaeda, held naive beliefs about the United States in the run-up to the attacks. Abu Walid al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a bin Laden associate in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, explained that, in the years prior to the attacks, bin Laden became increasingly convinced that America was weak. “He believed that the United States was much weaker than some of those around him thought,” Masri remembered, and “as evidence he referred to what happened to the United States in Beirut when the bombing of the Marines base led them to flee from Lebanon,” referring to the destruction of the marine barracks there in 1983 (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombings), which killed 241 American servicemen. Bin Laden believed that the United States was a “paper tiger,” a belief shaped not just by America’s departure from Lebanon following the marine barracks bombing but also by the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia in 1993, following the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu, and the American pullout from Vietnam in the 1970s.The key operational planner of the September 11 attacks was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (often referred to simply as “KSM” in the later 9/11 Commission Report and in the media), who had spent his youth in Kuwait. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became active in the Muslim Brotherhood, which he joined at age 16, and then went to the United States to attend college, receiving a degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986. Afterward he traveled to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviet Union, which had launched an invasion against Afghanistan in 1979.Britannica QuizDisasters of Historic ProportionAccording to Yosri Fouda, a journalist at the Arabic-language cable television channel Al Jazeera who interviewed him in 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned to blow up some dozen American planes in Asia during the mid-1990s, a plot (known as “Bojinka”) that failed, “but the dream of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed never faded. And I think by putting his hand in the hands of bin Laden, he realized that now he stood a chance of bringing about his long awaited dream.”In 1996 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. The 9-11 Commission (formally the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), set up in 2002 by U.S. Pres. George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress to investigate the attacks of 2001, explained that it was then that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed dreamed up the tactical innovation of using hijacked planes to attack the United States, al-Qaeda provided the personnel, money, and logistical support to execute the operation, and bin Laden wove the attacks on New York and Washington into a larger strategic framework of attacking the “far enemy”—the United States—in order to bring about regime change across the Middle East.See full list on britannica.comNov 3, 2025 · On , the United States faced a dark day. You might wonder who was at the helm during this critical moment in American history. George W. Bush was the President of the United States. His response to the September 11 attacks had a lasting impact on his presidency and US history. · The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 2,977 people and changed the world as we knew it. President George W. Bush led the national response in the uncertain days after the attacks, comforted a grieving nation, and demonstrated to the world the strength of American resolve. · George W. Bush (1946-), America’s 43rd president, served in office from 2001 to 2009. He led the country during the 9... President George W. Bush delivered this address to a joint session of Congress on , little more than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. · On , the United States faced a dark day. You might wonder who was at the helm during this critical moment in American history. George W. Bush was the President of the United States. His response to the September 11 attacks had a lasting impact on his presidency and US history. George W. Bush, America’s 43rd President (2001-2009), was transformed into a wartime President in the aftermath of the airborne terrorist attacks on , facing the “greatest challenge of any President since Abraham Lincoln.” · The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 2,977 people and changed the world as we knew it. President George W. Bush led the national response in the uncertain days after the attacks, comforted a grieving nation, and demonstrated to the world the strength of American resolve. · George W. Bush (1946-), America’s 43rd president, served in office from 2001 to 2009. He led the country during the 9... President George W. Bush delivered this address to a joint session of Congress on , little more than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
