9/11 remembrance live – Biden arrives in NYC ahead of speech with George W Bush as he's slammed over Afghanistan

PRESIDENT Biden arrived in New York City on Friday night ahead of memorial events for 9/11.

Americans will mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks this weekend.

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden are expected to travel to all three sites where 9/11 attacks were carried out on Saturday to pay their respects.

They have visits planned for NYC, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

According to CNN, Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff will also travel to the site of the United 93 crash in Shanksville, before joining the president and first lady at the Pentagon.

Former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush will also be in Shanksville, according to CNN, where George W. will speak at a ceremony.

Other memorials will be held all over the country and around the world, to remember the 2,977 people killed in the horrific attacks 20 years ago.

Read our 9/11 remembrance live blog for the latest news and updates…

 

  • Julia Fields

    WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PICTURE?

    The picture was eventually sold to Sir Elton John who revealed to Sunday Morning, that he had to purchase it for his personal collection.

    "It's not a shot that a lot of people probably would want to hang on their wall," John said.

    "Because it's, again, it's just the … most beautiful image of something so tragic. It's probably one of the most perfect photographs ever taken."

    The picture now sits among John's photo collection that contains over 8,000 photographs.

    "It’s kind of taken over my life,” John told CBS back in 2016. “I must buy at least three or four photographs a week. I just bought three this morning.”

  • Julia Fields

    WHAT DID RICHARD DREW SAY ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHING 'FALLING MAN'?

    As the 20th anniversary approaches, Drew sat down with CBS News to talk about the historic picture two decades later.

    Drew revealed that prior to the attacks, he was on assignment at a maternity fashion show in Midtown when he got a call from his office about the attacks.

    CBS correspondent John Dickerson asked Drew, "When you made the 'Falling Man' picture, did you know that you had done something extraordinary?" to which Drew responded: "I didn't take the picture. The camera took the picture of the falling man.

    "And when these people were falling, I would then put my finger on the trigger of the camera and I'd hold the camera up, and I'd photograph and follow them going down, and then the camera would open and close and take the pictures as they were going down. I have, I think, eight or nine frames of this gentleman falling, and the camera just happened to cycle in that time when he was completely vertical. I didn't see that picture really until I got back to the office and then started looking at my stuff on my laptop. I didn't see it."

    Drew's picture was seen in multiple newspapers the following day.

  • Jocelyn Cook

    PRESIDENT BIDEN ARRIVES IN NYC AHEAD OF 9/11 EVENT

    President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrived at LaGuardia International Airport on Friday evening ahead of 9/11 events in New York City on Saturday.

    President Biden and Dr Jill Biden arriving in New York CityCredit: AP
  • Julia Fields

    WHERE IS THE FALLING MAN PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD DREW NOW?

    For the past 51 years, Drew has worked for the Associated Press as a photo-journalist.

    Following the September 11 attacks, Drew continued to photograph and went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.

    Born December 6, 1946, Drew is currently 74 and has been working since he was 19 years old.

  • Julia Fields

    GEORGE W BUSH SPEAKING AT MEMORIAL

    Former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush will also be in Shanksville, according to CNN, where George W. will speak at a ceremony.

    Other memorials will be held all over the country and around the world, to remember the 2,977 people killed in the horrific attacks 20 years ago.

  • Julia Fields

    KAMALA HARRIS TRAVELING TO THE SITE

    According to CNN, Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff will also travel to the site of the United 93 crash in Shanksville, before joining the president and first lady at the Pentagon.

  • Julia Fields

    WHERE IS JULIE NOW?

    Since the death of Brian, Julie remarried and had two children. 

    She currently works as a substitute teacher and spends her time volunteering at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

  • Julia Fields

    HOW DID BRIAN AND JULIE MEET?

    A memorial for the victims was erected where the Twin Towers once stood in New York City

    • Julie and Brian met at a bar in Philadelphia
    • She said he stood out from the suited men by wearing a denim shirt and a baseball cap, and at 6'3" was "a force to be reckoned with"
    • Julie and Brian moved in together after seven months of dating and married shortly after

    JULIE SPEAKING ABOUT THE MESSAGE CONTINUED

    "When I got it, it was just so Brian. It was his final request of me, and his final way to let me know that he was gonna be okay and that he believed that he would see me again. And that's all I needed to know," she said.

    "I'm thankful for it, so thankful for that message because at least I know without a shadow of a doubt, what he was thinking."

    “The calmness in his voice soothed me, so I do have that. And because it's on a message I'm able to share it with anybody that wants to hear it. And it's very powerful. He made very powerful statements with that message," Julie said.

    • Julia Fields

      WHAT DID JULIE SAY ABOUT THE MESSAGE?

      In an interview with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, Julie spoke about how much the message Brian left meant to her.

      "You hold out this hope, especially for someone like Brian, who—this is a silly way to put it—was a warrior, and you just didn't believe that something like this could take him away," she said.

      "So you hold out hope until it's validated somehow. And all I needed was that message and I think he very selflessly left it."

      “I don't think he left it until he knew that he wasn't coming home. "

      She mentioned also feeling at peace knowing she knew what was on Brian’s mind before the plane crashed. 

    • Julia Fields

      WHAT MESSAGE DID BRIAN LEAVE HIS WIFE?

      Julie shared a voicemail message Brian left her on his doomed flight with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. 

      The voicemail said: "Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I'm on an airplane that's been hijacked.

      "If things don't go well, and it's not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you, I want you to do good, go have good times, same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I'll see you when you get there."

      “Bye, babe. I hope I call you," he said before ending the call.

    • Julia Fields

      WHO WAS BRIAN SWEENEY?

      Brian Sweeney was a former United States Navy pilot and had worked as an instructor at the The US Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, more popularly known as TOPGUN, in Miramar, California.

      He was medically discharged from the Navy in 1997 after an accident left him partially paralyzed.

    • Julia Fields

      RENAMING THE SITE

      The renaming came after Bloomberg urged the city to move past a term long linked with the Twin Towers destruction.

      At 104 stories and towering 1,776 feet above sea level, the name One World Trade Center is meant to be a symbol of hope and remembrance.

    • Julia Fields

      WHAT DOES GROUND ZERO MEAN?

      Ground Zero originated as a term to describe the site of a nuclear explosion and later was used to refer to the point of any dramatic or violent event.

      New Yorkers started calling the World Trade Center site Ground Zero shortly after suicide hijackers destroyed the Twin Towers.

      For several years the site was also known as “the pit” because the reconstruction of a new World Trade Center was stalled, leaving a large hole in the ground.

      On the 19th anniversary in 2020 the site featured four skyscrapers along with a memorial and museum.

    • Julia Fields

      WHERE IS GROUND ZERO?

      Ground Zero is a 14.6-acre area located in Lower Manhattan.

      The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, the West Side Highway to the west, Liberty Street to the south, and Church Street to the east.

    • Julia Fields

      WHAT IS GROUND ZERO?

      Ground Zero is where the World Trade Center stood in New York City before terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed the jets into the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

      They were part of a complex of seven buildings, all of which were destroyed when the skyscrapers collapsed.

      The attacks caused nearly 3,000 deaths and each year, America still remembers the lives that were lost. 

      After the collapse of the World Trade Center people began referring to the site as Ground Zero before it was change in 2014 to One World Trade Center by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

    • Julia Fields

      WHO WAS THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE 9/11 ATTACKS?

      Osama bin Laden was a founder of Al-Qaeda who orchestrated the September 11 terror attacks.

      Following the attacks, President George W. Bush sent troops to Afghanistan to find Bin Laden, who was finally hunted down and killed by US forces in May of 2011, nearly 10 years following 9/11.

      It was revealed that Bin Laden may have communicated with terrorists by encoding messages into porn videos.

      The claim was part of a the National Geographic special, titled Bin Laden's Hard Drive, which analyzed and revealed the digital materials recovered in his compound.

    • Julia Fields

      GEORGE BUSH ON 9/11 CONTINUED

      Shortly after Bush’s address the President’s national security team convene in the situation room – a secure communications basement in the west wing.

      Vice President Dick Cheney is there along with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice.

      Meanwhile, the President leaves Florida, his destination at take-off a secret as a high security risk is put in place.

      It is later revealed that he had landed at Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base where, following a meeting with senior officials, he makes another formal address.

      Bush pledges that the US will retaliate saying: “Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.“

      The President then flew to the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska – the US strategic air command centre.

      At a bunker in the base, he convenes a national security meeting – joining his team via a teleconference.

    • Julia Fields

      WHAT HAPPENED ON UNITED FLIGHT 93?

      Heroic passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit and most likely saved lives by preventing the four hijackers on board from crashing the plane into the unknown destination.

      All 44 people aboard the plane were killed when it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

      “The attitude of passengers tended to be that airlines would give the hijackers what they wanted, and so there was relatively little threat to the passengers,” Brendan Koerner, author of The Skies Belong To Us, told History.com.

      “There aren’t really that many instances of passengers getting involved.”

      Some authorities believe that the target was either The White House or the Capitol Building in DC as the hijackers were targeting populated buildings and American Airlines Flight 77 had already attacked the West wall of the Pentagon.

    • Julia Fields

      HOW MANY FLIGHTS WERE HIJACKED ON 9/11?

      On 9/11, 19 Islamic terrorists hijacked four planes departing from different locations throughout the United States.

      The flights hijacked on 9/11 included:

      • American Airlines Flight 11, which departed from Logan International Airport at 7:59am en rote to Los Angeles
      • American Airlines Flight 77, which departed from Washington Dulles International Airport at 8:20am en route to Los Angeles
      • United Airlines Flight 93, which departed from Newark International Airport at 8:42am en route to San Francisco
      • United Airlines flight 175, which departed Logan International at 8:14am en route to Los Angeles

      While four planes were hijacked, only three crashed into buildings. The destination of United Airlines Flight 93 is still unknown.

      WHEN DID THE FREEDOM TOWER OPEN?

      The Freedom Tower, also on the original World Trade Center site, opened in November 2014.

      The centrepiece is One World Trade Center which now rises even higher than the Twin Towers at 1,776 feet tall.

      It is the tallest building in the United States and Western Hemisphere.

      • Julia Fields

        WHAT IS 'REMEMBERING ABSENCE'?

        The memorial “Reflecting Absence" sits outside the museum in an eight-acre park.

        It consists of two reflecting pools with waterfalls rushing down where the Twin Towers once rose into the sky.

        The names of all 2,996 victims are engraved on the 152 bronze panels surrounding the pools, arranged by where individuals were on the day of the attacks, so coworkers and people on the same flight are remembered together.

      • Julia Fields

        WHAT DOES ONE WORLD TRADE LOOK LIKE NOW?

        In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, the site changed its name to Ground Zero to commemorate where the World Trade Center once stood.

        The term is used to describe the site of a nuclear explosion and later was used to refer to the point of any dramatic or violent event.

        The 14.6-acre area in Lower Manhattan is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, the West Side Highway to the west, Liberty Street to the south, and Church Street to the east.

        However the site changed its name to the World Trade Center Site after New York mayor Michael Bloomberg urged the city to rename the site.

        The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum opened on September 11, 2011, at the original World Trade Center site in time for the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

      • Julia Fields

        WHAT WAS THE WORLD TRADE CENTER?

        The towers were built in 1973 and meant to symbolize globalization and America's economic power and prosperity.

        At 110 stories each, the buildings were used for businesses and accommodated 50,000 workers and 200,000 daily visitors. They were the hub of the bustling Financial District, a top tourist attraction and a symbol of America.

        Until the construction of the Sears Tower, the towers were known as the tallest buildings in the world at 1,360 feet. In order to build the towers, engineers needed to dig down 70 feet to reach bedrock.

      • Julia Fields

        HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR THE TOWERS TO FALL?

        The first American Airlines Boeing 767 Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45am at a speed of 466mph (790km/h).

        The crash left a burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping many more in higher floors.

        The second plane – a Boeing 767 United Airlines Flight 175 – hit the south tower 18 minutes later at 590mph (950km/h) at 9:03am near the 60th floor.

        Taking less than an hour to burn, the south tower collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke.

        The North Tower fell not long after.

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