By Keith Hennessey

Introduction

This document is for my current and former students, most of whom are too young to remember the September 11th attacks as adults.

This is mostly a list of links, a 9/11 Study Pack. I have chosen only responsible, intellectually sound content that you can rely on—you will find no nut-job conspiracy theories here.

Yes, the Wikipedia page on this topic is quite good. I wanted to build a separate study pack here that goes a bit deeper in certain areas and relies more on content from that time to give you a feel for these events. Also, I wanted something that I could curate, to present what I think it's important for you to know about that day.

On 9/11, I worked in the U.S. Capitol Building as an economic advisor to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS). The passengers of United flight 93 may have saved my life by sacrificing their own. I later worked as an economic advisor to President George W. Bush. I now teach economic policy and American civics to MBA students at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Fair warning and work-in-progress

I will make an exception here to my general skepticism of trigger warnings. 9/11 was a tragic day on which thousands of people died. While what you will find below is less graphic than a typical R-rated slasher horror movie, it can nevertheless be even more upsetting, in part because it's real. There are a few even more gruesome images of this event that I have excluded from this study pack, based on the logic that their informational value is small compared to how nightmare-inducing they are to see.

I do not recommend this study pack for those younger than age 16. If you're in high school, I recommend talking about it first with your parents. If you don't remember 9/11 as an adult, I recommend you ask someone over age 40 or so what it was like, what they remember. No matter what age you are, it's better to study this along with someone so you can talk about it and deal with the tragedy. This topic is grim.

This document is an incomplete and evolving work-in-progress, I hope improving over time. Please forgive me if parts are under construction when you read this. As of 11 September 2020, I have a lot more I want to review before deciding whether to include it. At the top of my to-do list are adding sections on the Pentagon and United 93 attacks, the role and importance of first responders, the American response to al Qaeda, and the professional documentaries, which I have not watched in many years. My intent is to be selective, curating only content I believe is of the highest quality and greatest importance to someone learning this subject from scratch.

What was 9/11?

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four commercial airline flights departed from Boston, Newark, and Washington, DC. Nineteen members of the Islamic extremist terrorist group al Qaeda hijacked those four planes. They crashed two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within 92 minutes, both towers had collapsed, killing thousands. The terrorists crashed the third plane into the Pentagon just outside of Washington, DC. Passengers aboard the fourth plane foiled their attackers by trying to retake control of the plane, which was likely targeted at the U.S. Capitol Building in DC. Instead, the fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

Those 19 terrorists killed 2,977 people that day: 2,606 in the World Trade Center, 125 at the Pentagon, and 246 passengers and crew on the four planes. The death toll exceeded that of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (2,403).

The attack was orchestrated by al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden (sometimes written Usama bin Ladin, and abbreviated either OBL or UBL) and coordinated by his deputy Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes abbreviated KSM). Bin Laden and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan. Almost ten years later, American forces found and killed bin Laden in Pakistan.

A historical pivot point

9/11 was a historical pivot point for the U.S.

By this I mean: