WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – From baseball stadiums to Wall Street, Americans grappled with new security fears on Tuesday — one week after attacks demolished New York’s World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and raised the twin specters of a new U.S. war and a global recession.
As investors waited to see if share prices would plunge again after the biggest one-day point drop in history Monday, U.S. officials awaited word from Afghanistan, where senior Islamic clerics were due to decide the fate of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born guerrilla leader identified as Washington’s prime suspect behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bush, in his clearest warning yet, said on Monday that he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive” and would hold Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban government accountable with the full power of the U.S. military if it failed to turn him over.
The Taliban, which has warned of a “holy war” in response to any U.S. attack, has given no indication it is ready to surrender the fugitive multimillionaire. In New York, recovery work continued at the site of the World Trade Center’s 110-story twin towers, now a half-million-ton mountain of smoking rubble in which as many as 5,000 people are feared entombed.
Officials said that hopes were dwindling that anyone would still be found alive in the wreckage.
Nerves were also frayed on Wall Street, where Monday’s effort to restart America’s financial heart after its longest closure since the Great Depression of the 1930s unleashed a stampede of sell orders.
After a day of wild trading, the Dow Jones industrial index plummeted 684.81 points, or more than 7 percent, its biggest one-day point drop ever. The Nasdaq composite index and the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index also slumped to their lowest closes since October 1998.
There were signs of hope in Asia, where stock markets from Tokyo to Sydney rallied in early trading on Tuesday, sparked in part by moves by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to cut interest rates by half a percentage point in an effort to bolster economic confidence.
But caution persisted, with many economic analysts concerned that Washington’s promised campaign against global terror could hit consumer sentiment worldwide.
OUT THERE?
Those jitters were felt across the United States as senior officials warned that the country was heading into a period of “increased risk” for future attacks.
Officials have named 19 men they say used knives and boxcutters to commandeer four commercial airlines last Tuesday, sending two planes hurtling into the World Trade Center and smashing another into the Pentagon. The fourth jet crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
U.S. authorities have arrested on sealed warrants at least four witnesses who had key information about the attacks or who posed a flight risk. They have also detained 49 other people for immigration violations in the course of questioning about the attacks.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, pressing Congress to expand the ability of law enforcement to wiretap telephones, conduct searches and seize assets, warned Monday that associates of the hijackers may still be at large in the United States and ready to strike.
“We need to understand that there is a risk, and when this nation responds globally, I think it’s fair to understand that it maybe that there would be an increased risk associated with acts against the American people,” Ashcroft said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” program.
Along with dramatically increased security at the nation’s airports, Americans are facing a range of new security measures everywhere from baseball stadiums to office high-rises.
Airline pilots and crews, preparing for a government task force created in the wake of last week’s attacks, have advocated more secure cockpit doors and guns for pilots in the effort to block any future hijack attempts.
BUSH WARNS TALIBAN, BIN LADEN
Bush, who has warned Americans to prepare for what he has called “the first war of the 21st century,” continued to ratchet up the rhetoric, warning both bin Laden and Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban that the United States will not rest until those behind the attacks are brought to justice.
Although both the Taliban and bin Laden have denied involvement in the attacks, Bush clearly had them in his sights on Monday when he spoke to reporters during a visit to the Pentagon.
“I want justice,” said Bush, surrounded by senior U.S. military officials. “And there’s an old poster out West that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.”‘
In Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, senior Islamic clerics were due to meet on Tuesday after the country’s supreme leader said it would be up to them to decide the fate of bin Laden, who has been sheltered as a “guest” of the purist Taliban regime.
“The decision and edict of the clerics … is important and compulsory and the government will implement it fully,” Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutamaen told the Afghan Islamic Press.
A delegation of officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan’s neighbor and a key player in the unfolding U.S. effort to mount a global united front against terror, extended their visit to Afghanistan by another day in a bid to convince the Taliban of the danger they face by continuing to harbor bin Laden.
Officials began fleeing Kabul amid growing expectations of a U.S. attack, and the Taliban moved weapons, including Russian Scud missiles, near the border with Pakistan, a nuclear power.
With Washington warning the world it was time to pick sides, Britain and Italy said they would contribute militarily if asked to.
But there were also words of caution. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, said it was “too early” to speak of a coalition against “terrorism,” while Iran’s supreme leader warned that any attack on Afghanistan could lead to even more problems for America.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT FEARED
As New Yorkers resolutely returned to work on Monday, untold numbers of people missing loved ones in the World Trade Center ruins began the more painful task of accepting that the miracles may not happen.
The toll of the missing stood at 5,422, with 201 confirmed dead, after six days of rescue efforts at the still-smoking remains of the 110-story twin towers. Of the dead, only 135 have so far been identified.
At the mountain of rubble dubbed “the pile,” hundreds of firefighters crawled through narrow tunnels and donned harnesses to lower themselves into holes looking for life — even as officials acknowledged that spirits were flagging.
“I think we all basically realized the chances of finding somebody are next to nothing,” retired police veteran Robert Crystal said. “It’s getting somber, and I think the anger is getting to us.”
But family members urged them on. Christina Barton, who drove from Florida to search for her missing daughter Jeanmarie Wallendorf, was braced for the worst after learning that her daughter worked on a floor directly hit by a hijacked jet.
“If there was a little, God forbid, piece of her left, I’m taking my daughter back. No matter what,” Barton said.
The economic fallout from the disaster was also looking increasingly grim, prompting Bush to announce that he was prepared to work with Congress to develop an economic stimulus package that aides said could contain more tax cuts.
“I’ve got great faith in the economy. I understand it’s tough right now,” Bush told reporters.
One sector desperate for help is the airline industry, which led Monday’s stock market decline and faces financial chaos in the wake of last week’s nationwide shutdown and the raft of new security measures airline companies have been ordered to implement.
With layoffs already under way, several major airline company executives were due to meet with Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta on Tuesday to go over a request for $24 billion in government aid to stabilize their finances.
“This is not a bailout. This is survival we’re talking about,” Air Transport Association spokesman Michael Wascom told Reuters.
