The Eleventh Day

President Bush is told that a second plane has crashed.

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

In the Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House, Vice President Cheney speaks by phone with Bush. To the left of him is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. To the left of her, kneeling, is Navy commander Anthony Barnes.

U.S. government

The facade of the Pentagon before it collapsed. Skeptics doubted that it could have swallowed a Boeing 757 airliner.

U.S. government

Wreckage at the Pentagon. Some skeptics suggested that evidence had been planted.

Moussaoui trial exhibit

Flight 93’s Cockpit Voice Recorder—hauntingly, minute by minute, it tracked the progress of the hijacking.

Moussaoui trial exhibit

Investigators search the Pennsylvania field where Flight 93 crashed. In the foreground is the crater.

Tim Shaffer/Reuters

After, in New York.

Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images

Nine months later, draped in the flag, the last steel girder is removed from the ruins of the World Trade Center. It stands now in the memorial at Ground Zero.

Peter Morgan/Reuters

Osama bin Laden and his “holy war” against the United States, acclaimed by a crowd in Pakistan after 9/11.

Ruth Fremson

/The New York Times

/Redux Pictures

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed credit for the plot. Ramzi Binalshibh

(below left)

acted as a go-between for the hijackers. Abu Zubaydah

(below right)

, a key al Qaeda logistics man, was gravely wounded during his arrest. How reliable are their confessions, obtained under “enhanced” interrogation?

Heroes to some: a poster produced two years after the attacks, glorifying the hijackers.

Authors’ collection

Mohamed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, and Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah in Afghanistan preparing to videotape martyrdom statements. The beards came off on their return to Europe.

AP Images

The men believed to have been at the controls of three of the hijacked airliners: Marwan al-Shehhi (top left), Hani Hanjour (right), and Ziad Jarrah, with his lover, Aysel Sengun (bottom), and in the cockpit of a light aircraft— he had recently completed pilot training.

Khalid al-Mihdhar

(above left)

and Nawaf al-Hazmi

(above right)

were the first future hijackers to arrive in the United States. Omar al-Bayoumi

(below left)

, a Saudi living in California who assisted them, said he met them by chance. Did Mohdar Abdullah

(below right)

, who also befriended them, get advance information that an attack was coming?

Anwar Aulaqi, an American-born imam, at a mosque after 9/11. He is characterized as having been a “spiritual adviser” to two future hijackers. Now in Yemen, he is considered a possible successor to bin Laden. The Washington Post/

Getty Images

Saleh al-Hussayen, a Saudi religious official. On the eve of 9/11, he stayed at the same hotel as two lead hijackers.

Saudi Arabian government

Saudi Prince Bandar

(rear left)

meeting at the White House with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Adviser Rice, two nights after the attacks.

The White House

The joint chairmen of Congress’s probe, Senators Bob Graham

(center)

and Richard Shelby

(right)

, present their Report in 2003. They pointed out that many pages had been suppressed, on President Bush’s orders. The pages are still suppressed today. The Washington Post/

Getty Images

9/11 Commission members and staff watching video of the Twin Towers burning, at a hearing in 2004.

AP Images

Some of the bereaved who pressed for the creation of the Commission, and closely followed its progress, rejected its findings.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Osama bin Laden, apparently pictured here in hiding in Pakistan, was shot dead by U.S. commandos in May 2011.