Like most, I thought it was a horrible accident when it was just the first plane. When the second plane hit, I believe my first thought was just the general panicked feeling that the country was under attack, followed very shortly by the realization that it was terrorists. I don’t think I ever seriously considered domestic terrorism, simply because the WTC had already been a target for foreign terrorism.
I thought it was an accident too, remember saying, “How can the pilots not see this huge skyscraper in front of them?” before my boyfriend told me it was most definitely intentional. I had no thought as to who it might have been other than the generic “terrorists.” I wasn’t very up on current events at the time.
I fervently hoped it was bizarre white militia World Order-battling nutters, and not muslim fanatics, because I thought that the latter would mean a really shit time in the Middle East, and possibly for muslims (and non-muslim Arabs) in America.
So, in conclusion, fuck.
I too thought the first one was an accident, if it was a plane at all. It seemed likely that the heat of an internal fire would have blown some windows out and I’d tended to assume the least sensational cause, wrongly dismissing the reports of a plane as coming from a “chicken little” witness. Even if it was a plane, I figured it had to be a private pilot in a small plane, think Cessna, never a commercial jet.
My gullible mindset persisted even when the second plane swooped down and lined up on the second tower. I remember thinking “Wow, a water tanker is going to drop a load in an attempt to douse the fire!”
Then… “Holy fucking shit!”. Repeat a dozen times. All was clear. We were under attack.
Early reorts had a Palestinian group taking credit. File footage, which later proved from a different time and event, showed supposed Palestinians dancing in the street. It seemed a huge escalation by them but not outside the realm of possibility.
Funny now to have seen it as anything other than al Queda. Just shows how searing upon the conscious their message has become in the interim.
I immediately thought of OBL after the first plane hit. I was on my NJ Transit train when people started pointing at the twin towers. We saw a chunk of the tower missing and smoke coming out. It was such a clear day and once we learned (from a fellow passenger who got the news on his cellphone) that it was a plane that hit the tower, we knew it couldn’t be an accident. So within several minutes after the 1st plane hit, everyone on my train was talking about a terrorist attack, well before anyone in the media was talking about it. The Wisdom of Crowds rung true that day. The 2nd plane hit just as I reached Times Square. In my elevator up to work, I mentioned that I thought it was probably Osama bin Laden, due to some knowledge of his anti-American goals from, of all places, Maxim Magazine.
I blamed the Borg.
I thought it was domestic terrorists like in Oklahoma City.
Me, too. I had just finished re-reading it not too long before the attack. My first thought was terrorists (generic) and they were following the same game plan that he outlined.
The office manager, my boss and I were all in his office that day trying to figure out who did it. We eliminated the Palestinians (hate Israel enough, maybe, but not US), Sadaam (Hates us enough, but nobody loves him enough to go on a death mission for him), and decided on bin Laden.
Sitting at work and getting web news of the first plane: I thought what kind of idiot was flying his Cessna or whatever that close to those buildings? Very early reports were that it was a small plane. As soon as I heard a second plane had hit, I was thinking “terrorism”. I didn’t know bin Laden from Adam, I was thinking Palestinians due to it being New York, home of so many Jews.
Didn’t know, and didn’t care. I was riveted to the news waiting to see if there were further attacks (and there were) and to see if mass panic was going to set in (thankfully not) so I had enough time to get home and get the “World’s Gone To Shit” duffel bags out, grabbing the girlfriend and making it to Mom’s house.
The first reports I heard said it was a small plane too. I assumed that it was either someone who did something really stupid, like tried to fly between the towers and missed, or it was some suicidal wacko. They were saying on the news that it might have been an air traffic controller mix up, which I didn’t see how that was possible. Even if the air traffic controller routes you in the wrong direction you are going to turn to avoid that really big building in front of you.
I was getting ready for work at the time, and had just finished getting dressed. I walked out into the living room just in time to see the 2nd plane hit. At that point I knew it wasn’t a single wacko or some idiot.
Once I was thinking terrorism, my first thought was that it was basically the same group responsible for putting the bomb in the parking garage a few years earlier.
Being on the West coast, the attacks were pretty much over before I even got out of bed. My first impressions were formed by blithering morning DJs who were incoherent in their rage and confusion. All I got at first was that the air port was closed and a group of Palestinians was taking credit. I remember one DJ asking why someone would want to take credit for something they didn’t do. Anyway, I was ignorant of world events, and I knew many considered the Palestinians and Yassir Arafat to be the “bad guys,” so that’s who I assumed it was until I learned different. I’d never heard of bin Laden before. And I honestly don’t recall considering Saddam.
The first report I heard made it sound like a small plane had hit one of the towers. But as soon as I heard that commercial airliners had hit both towers I thought it was Bin Laden.
I’d been working on counter-terrorism videogames for four years at that point and I had a pretty good understanding of the various terrorist groups around the world and what they were capable of.
Bin Laden. He was the only suspect who had the resources to pull this off and didn’t have a country we could attack in retaliation.
Islamic terrorists were high on my internal possibilities-list, but I guess my most-likely suspect was the Serbians allied with Slobodan Milosevic, and I also thought about Irish (orange or green either way) or domestic militia types, and among Islamic terrorists was thinking Palestinians more than some freefloating breakaway group like Al Qaeda.
No matter who I thought of, I kept simultaneously thinking “What the fuck were they thinking?!? They are SO dead. The US was in the deep nadir of internationalist sentiments, current admin was elected on a platform of isolationism and ‘let the rest of the world handle their own shit’, national mood was against interventions and getting out of the role of World Cop… whoever the fuck you guys are, you could’ve done pretty much anything in wherever-the-heck you’re at and be left alone for it, but NOW YOU’VE DONE IT.”
Oh yeah, that too. Bunch of people crammed around televisions in some underground beauty shop or some such thing, making it hard to get out of the #6 subway under Rockefeller Center. “What the hell is everyone milling around for?”, I ask in annoyance. “Uhh, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center” Me, visualizing a Cessna or a Piper Cub: “Oh, that was smart. Gee, there’s a big tall building at the lower tip of Manhattan, who woulda guessed?” I worm my way through the crowd, muttering about pilot licenses in the bottom of Cheerios boxes.
I get upstairs and someone says a second plane has flown broadside into the other tower. :eek:
Several people mentioned that they initially suspected the Serbs, which is an interesting idea, and one that had never occurred to me. Forgive my ignorance, but had Milosevic and his ilk ever been caught planning a terrorist attack on the US before 9/11?
Al Qaeda and Iran (Hezbollah) were the only groups that were realistic suspects on that day. I almost immediately discounted Iran because they would never throw themselves into the path of what would surely be a furious response. I was frantically reassuring my Iranian wife of this on that morning.
I also kept saying another attack would be coming because Al Qaeda always attacks multiple targets. I didn’t have to wait long for that shoe to drop.
Arab terrorists. Whether specifically Al Qaeda or not, I cannot say as I do not remember whether I had heard of Al Qaeda by then or not.
I turned on the TV about 10 seconds before the second plane hit. Seeing the tower on fire, my first thought was terrorists, because I had a memory of a report on the radio where someone involved in the first WTC attack had stated “We will strike it again, and this time, we will bring it down”. I can’t corroborate that quote anywhere though, so I don’t know when I heard it or who said it.