U.S. government response to the September 11 attacks
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States government responded by commencing immediate rescue operations at the World Trade Center site, grounding civilian aircraft, and beginning a long-term response that included official investigations, legislative changes, military action, and restoration projects.
[1] Subsequent clean-up and restoration efforts led to the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, and federal grants helped support the development of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, both of which opened in the early 2010s.
The Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General conducted an internal review of the Central Intelligence Agency's performance prior to the September 11 attacks and was harshly critical of senior CIA officials for not doing everything possible to confront terrorism, including failing to stop two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they entered the United States, and hit failure to share information on the two men with the FBI.
[2] A federal technical building and fire safety investigation of the collapses of the Twin Towers was conducted by the United States Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
In addition, the report asserts that the towers' stairwells were not adequately reinforced to provide emergency escape for people above the impact zones.
The air traffic control system handled it with great skill, as about 4,500 commercial and general aviation aircraft soon landed without incident.
The Bush administration announced a war on terror, with the goal of bringing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to justice and preventing the emergence of other terrorist networks.
These goals would be accomplished by means including economic and military sanctions against states perceived as harboring terrorists and increasing global surveillance and intelligence sharing.
[13] From 2019 to August 30, 2021, President Joe Biden withdrew the remaining 14,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, marking the official end of the 2001-2021 war.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, another planner of the attacks who succeeded Bin Laden as leader of Al-Qaeda, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 31, 2022.
[17] Immediately after opening the hunt on Osama bin Laden, President Bush also visited the Islamic Center of Washington and asked the public to view Arabs and Muslims living in the United States as American patriots.
Incidents of harassment and hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners, and South Asians was reported rose by a factor of more than 16 in the days following the attacks.
Civil liberties groups have criticized the PATRIOT Act, saying that it allows law enforcement to invade the privacy of citizens and eliminates judicial oversight of law-enforcement and domestic intelligence gathering.
The Bush Administration also invoked 9/11 as the reason to have the National Security Agency initiate a secret operation, "to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications between the United States and people overseas without court approval.
[21][22] Ashcroft identified those required to register as "individuals of elevated national security concern who stay in the country for more than 30 days.
[25] It initially applied to nationals of five countries, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Sudan, who were required to register by December 16, 2002.
Although Homeland Security officials said that six men allegedly linked to terrorism were arrested as a result of the call-in program, that contention was challenged by the Sept. 11 commission, which found little evidence to support that claim.
