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How toxic was the cloud of debris?

In January 2006, New York police officer James Zadroga died of respiratory failure due to ''granulomatous pneumonitis,'' or fatal scarring of the lungs by hazardous material. Part of the 9/11 rescue effort, Zadroga was the first person whose death was officially linked to the debris and smoke at Ground Zero. The asbestos from the towers, pulverized cement and fiberglass, dioxin, PCB, the toxins from 50,000 vaporized computers, along with the diesel fuel from the excavators, have left some 15,000 people suffering from respiratory problems or the so-called WTC cough. A class-action suit has been filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by local residents and the parents of schoolchildren: shortly after the attacks, its director had suggested that residents return home and schools reopen, arguing that the air in Manhattan did not represent a health risk.

Additionally, a suit against the City of New York has been brought on behalf of 8,000 firefighters who claim they were given inadequate breathing equipment for use at the World Trade Center site.

Were the flight data recorders of the WTC aircraft ever recovered?

The 9/11 Commission Report puts it succinctly: "The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175 were not found." Even before the report's release, experts expressed doubts about the recorders' ability to survive the crash into the towers, the ensuing fire, and finally the buildings' collapse. But thanks to statements made by firefighter Nicholas DeMasi, the whereabouts of the flight data recorders remains one of September 11's unresolved mysteries. In his 2003 book, DeMasi claimed he found three of the four black boxes at Ground Zero during October 2001.

DeMasi's assertions gained further credibility in December 2005 when the magazine CounterPunch quoted an anonymous source from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB): "Off the record, we had the boxes," the source said. "You'd have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here."

Unfortunately, the source's identity remains a secret. But it is unlikely that three of the four black boxes would have been found during a single search at a time when the rubble of Ground Zero was still smoldering.

To this day, the FBI and the NTSB deny that the boxes were recovered.

Who was the woman in this picture?

The photograph shows the area where the plane struck the North Tower. A woman is visible near the bottom edge - on about the 97th floor. She is holding on to a severed pillar, waving. The picture conveys the utter despair of those trapped inside.

Numerous websites identified the woman as Edna Cintron (46), an employee with the insurance brokers Marsh & McLennan. Cintron's husband reportedly confirmed her identity.

Because Cintron was standing at the point of impact, some bloggers have assumed that the heat couldn't have been sufficiently intense to melt the steel inside the building. Cintron's photo ostensibly supports the hypothesis that the towers were intentionally blown up.

This is, of course, nonsense. Telephone calls made by victims show that not all the offices on the floors hit by the planes were destroyed immediately. Nor was the temperature consistent throughout each floor. Some of the trapped reported that they had fled to cooler areas - and the areas where the fire was sucking in fresh air were coolest of all, i.e. at the points where the aircraft had breached the walls.

Most likely, hardly anything about this story is accurate, even the woman's name; there is no evidence to substantiate her identity. Her husband, who reportedly recognized her, has discussed his wife's death in several interviews without ever referring to the picture. None of her colleagues, including the company's own memorial site on the Internet, has mentioned the photo. The only certainty is that the real Edna Cintron was not among the survivors. Nobody knows if she is the mystery woman in the picture.

Why did WTC 7 collapse?

The 47-story World Trade Center 7 building burned for seven hours beside the rubble of the Twin Towers - before collapsing in just eight seconds at 5:20 p.m.

FEMA's 2002 investigation concluded that WTC 7 had sustained comparatively slight damage prior to caving in. The 9/11 Commission made no mention of WTC 7 in its findings. And when the authorities remain silent or withhold information, rumors are guaranteed. Didn't the structure collapse a little too neatly? Could it have been dynamited?

The collapse of WTC 7 is currently being reviewed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its experts believe that the building suffered far more damage from the plunging towers' rubble than had previously been assumed, particularly on the south side, the upper floors and the southwestern corner.

NIST's experts also attribute the building's ultimate collapse to the unusually heavy load borne by its individual supports. The buckling of a single support could have brought the entire structure down. The institute has found no evidence to suggest that bombs, missiles or explosives caused the building to cave in.

The final report has already been postponed several times. It is now due to be released this year.

How did the plane fit through the hole?

The hole that the Boeing 757 drilled in the Pentagon's exterior wall was some 10 yards narrower than the airliner's width. Just how credible is the assertion that flight AA 77 really did crash into the building? And if the damage could not have been caused by a Boeing 757, could a cruise missile have been responsible?

Conspiracy theorists like the Frenchman Thierry Meyssan maintain that a silhouette of the smashed plane should have been visible on the building's façade - an assumption refuted by physicists, who say that the remains of the plane after impact would have acted like a solid object rather than a fluid. Eyewitness accounts reveal that part of the right wing came off when the plane struck a huge generator in front of the building. The plane's left wing was smashed by the façade's support pillars.

The cruise-missile theory is also discredited by the various eyewitnesses who saw a jetliner crash into the Pentagon. What is more, the remains of the plane's crew and passengers have been identified.

Another obvious question presents itself: If flight AA 77 didn't smash into the Pentagon, where is it today?

Where is the wreckage from flight AA 77?

Hardly any aircraft parts are visible on photographs of the crash site at the Pentagon - according to skeptics, further evidence that a plane didn't hit the Pentagon.

But eyewitnesses who rushed to the scene reported seeing sections of the aircraft scattered widely throughout the vicinity of the crash. These included the nose, a tire, parts of the landing gear and fuselage, a cockpit seat and even a chunk of the tail with the plane's number on it.

There is no secret about the fate of the wreckage. On September 12, the Washington Post reported that a column of 50 FBI agents had marched shoulder-to-shoulder across the south grounds of the Pentagon, "picking up debris and stuffing it into brown bags. The lawn was scattered with chunks of the airplane, some up to four feet across," the newspaper reported.

Both of the plane's black boxes were also recovered. And all but one of the passengers on board flight AA 77 were positively identified - using remains recovered from the scene.

What is visible on the Pentagon videos?

In contrast to the attacks on the WTC, there is no live broadcast footage of the Pentagon crash. Until this spring, only five still photographs taken by a nearby security camera had been released. The photos showed only the fireball and not the plane, causing conspiracy theorists to believe that the administration had something to hide. The complete videos were released in May. A still shows an object approaching at high speed; the image is very blurred. Those who continue to believe that the United States attacked its own Defense Department will continue to maintain that the shape is a cruise missile.

After the crash, the FBI seized 85 security videos from the area. Legal proceedings to compel the FBI to release the videos are currently under way. It is unlikely that the footage would yield new information anyway as - according to an FBI official - most of the cameras weren't even trained on the Pentagon. She also stated that few cameras had captured images of the building after the attack, and just one had recorded the impact - as allegedly proven by the recently released film.

How were the inexperienced hijacker pilots able to hit the Pentagon with such accuracy?

The World Trade Center was a relatively easy target. Situated on the southern tip of Manhattan, it would have been instantly recognizable on the horizon. While the Pentagon is also a gigantic structure, it is relatively flat. As a result - as the black box has revealed - the pilot first entered Washington's Reagan National Airport as his destination in the plane's onboard computer. Nearly nine minutes before the crash, he switched off the autopilot.

From that point, the hijackers flew the plane manually, using the joystick and thrust control. Because the plane was still too high for a direct run at the Pentagon, they started a 330-degree turn five miles away. This is not difficult to accomplish and took about 2.5 minutes to complete.

It can be assumed that the terrorists were content to hit any part of the building. Their approach was tantamount to a controlled crash landing, a maneuver that can be practiced with any flight simulator software.

How could the passengers make phone calls from the planes?

Ten passengers and two crew members made phone calls from flight UA 93 before the Boeing 757 plunged into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Given the widespread belief that cell phones are all but useless at heights of over 8,000 feet, rumors were soon circulating that the calls had been faked.

It is difficult but not impossible to use mobile phones at such high altitudes. Numerous factors determine whether connections can be made and maintained. The odds improve when a plane is over a city or transmitter, or - at least with the latest cell phone generations - flying relatively slowly or at low altitude. Older phones with more powerful receivers - used for analog networks - frequently function at altitudes of 45,000 feet. These older models were relatively common in the United States until recently.

In any case, few of the calls from flight UA 93 were made using cell phones; the majority came from units built into the aircraft's seatbacks.

What happened during the final minutes of United Airlines 93?

UA 93 was the flight where the passengers tackled their hijackers - but they didn't regain control of the flight deck, as had initially been believed. This conclusion is supported by the voice recording played at Zacarias Moussaoui's trial this past spring.

The recording begins at 9:31 a.m., just a few minutes after the hijacking starts. A man, believed to be Ziad Jarrah, says: "Ladies und Gentlemen, this is the captain. Please sit down. Remain seated. We have a bomb on board. So sit."

A little later, someone calls out: "Go ahead. Lie down, lie down, down, down, down," followed by the voice of a crew member: "Please, please, don't hurt me." And a few seconds later: "I don't want to die."

At this point, the passengers hadn't taken any action. But the phone calls show that they were planning to rush the cockpit.

It is difficult to make sense of some of the recording. Many passages are unintelligible; there are scraps of Arabic such as "in the name of Allah" or "Allah is great." The cockpit door appears to be locked.

At 9:58 a.m., the hijackers realize that their guard at the door is being attacked: "Is something going on? A fight? Yes."

A passenger calls from outside: "In the cockpit, in the cockpit."

Then another voice in Arabic sounds from inside the cockpit: "They want to get in here. Hold the door, hold it from the inside. Hold it from the inside. Hold."

Apparently, the passengers were trying to ram the door open with a service cart.

And in the cockpit, the hijackers are screaming: "Is it over? Should we finish things?"

"No, not yet."

"When they all come, we finish things."

"Oh Allah."

A passenger calls out: "In the cockpit. If we don't, we'll die."

"Allah is the greatest."

"Cut off the oxygen. Cut off the oxygen."

"Down, down. Pull it down. Pull it down."

From 10:03 a.m. onward, the recording consists of nothing but cries of "Allah" with one single "no" in between. Nine seconds after 10:03 a.m., the recording stops.

Why were there no bodies, no wreckage and no large crater from UA 93?

The crater from the crash near Shanksville is remarkably small. Pictures taken at the site revealed little in the way of wreckage or body parts. Even today, the town's mayor is quoted as saying that he didn't see a plane at the crash site.

In reality, UA 93 was smashed to smithereens by the force of the impact. Still, rescuers did find several substantial pieces of wreckage, including sections of the fuselage. Photos of it were submitted as exhibits in Moussaoui's trial. Body parts were also found at the site, and identified using DNA analysis. Eight months after the crash, 125 volunteers conducted a new search of the area, and found additional pieces of wreckage: metal and wiring. They also collected bucketloads of human remains.

For the record, the mayor was misquoted. He had said that there was virtually nothing left of the aircraft; not that there was no evidence of a plane at all.

Why did George W. Bush stay sitting in the classroom for so long?

Two minutes after flight UA 175 barreled into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered the news into the president's ear: "A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack."

President Bush didn't say a word, didn't even ask Card for more information. Nor did he issue any instructions. Instead, he remained seated in the classroom for five to seven minutes and listened to the children read aloud from the book My Pet Goat. Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, held out a sheet of paper with the words: "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET."

Around 9:15 a.m., Bush finally stood up, praised the children and left. He went to another room and asked for details.

Karl Rove, a key adviser to the president, later told the ABC television network: "The president thought for a second or two about getting up and walking out of the room. But the drill was coming to a close and he didn't want to alarm the children."

Bush told the 9/11 Commission that he forced himself to remain calm because he didn't want the American people to see a distraught president in a time of crisis.

It remains unclear why he didn't leave the school immediately. Instead, he even made a brief statement before he left. The visit to the school was publicized on September 7. Had Bush been a terrorist target, the children would have been in grave danger.

Allegedly, as the Commission later reported, no one on Bush's staff had been aware that two other planes were missing at the time. Accordingly, Bush didn't learn of the attack on the Pentagon until he was en route to the airport.

Why didn't the CIA share its information on the terrorists with the FBI?

In its report, the 9/11 Commission cited 10 opportunities to track down bin Laden and his cohorts before September 11. With hindsight, these were the 10 mistakes that enabled the attacks.

In January 2000, for instance, the CIA failed to inform the FBI that Chalid al-Midhar, one of the budding hijackers, had a valid U.S. visa, the report said. In March 2000, it failed to pass on information that Nawaf al-Hamsi, one of the hijackers in the plane that hit the Pentagon, had flown to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. In January 2001, the CIA failed to tell the FBI that Chalid, aka Taufik al-Atasch, one of the terrorists behind the attack on the USS Cole, had met Midhar and Hamsi in Kuala Lumpur. The two intelligence services worked in parallel - independently of and seemingly at odds with each other. After the 9/11 Commission's report had been released, its chairman Thomas Kean stated that neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush had been "well served" by the CIA.

In 1995, the U.S. Justice Department had tried to regulate the flow of information between agents and investigators, a practice that became known as "the Wall." The CIA didn't inform the FBI because it didn't want to endanger "sensitive sources." As a result, a memo headlined "Islamic Extremists Learn to Fly" landed on the desk of CIA director George Tenet, and no one at the agency understood its significance.

The CIA and FBI, former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the 9/11 Commission, had competed with each other and rarely cooperated. Her term was "systemic failure."

Why didn't U.S. air defense systems work on September 11?

The U.S. air defense network operates under the aegis of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). At the end of the Cold War, the number of planes available to NORAD was reduced. On September 11, 2001, seven response centers were operating, each with two combat-ready interceptors.

All four hijacked planes fell under the jurisdiction of the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) which was based in Rome, New York. Commanders could therefore call upon just two response centers and only four mission-ready fighter planes.

Emergency management entails a long bureaucratic chain of command. The prevailing assumptions were that any hijacked planes would be easy to locate, that there would be enough time to analyze the situation, and that hijackers would issue demands and thus be willing to negotiate.

Because the air traffic controllers didn't completely understand the first radio communication from AA 11 and because news of the hijacking worked its way up the air traffic control system hierarchy so slowly, valuable minutes were lost. It was only after an air traffic controller in Boston heard a third radio communication at 8:34 a.m. ("Nobody move, please. We're going back to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves."), that the military was alerted. But officials placed their first call to Atlantic City, whose response center had been defunct for some time. As a result, military commanders at NEADS did not learn that flight AA 11 had been hijacked until 8:37 a.m. - 9 minutes before it sliced into the North Tower.

The air defense unit only learned by chance about flight AA 77, which smashed into the Pentagon, when an employee at the national air traffic control center casually mentioned that they had also lost track of that flight.

By then, it was 9:34 a.m. When three fighters took off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, they headed east. Five years later, no one has been able to explain why. In fact, when the plane struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., the Langley aircraft were 150 miles from Washington.

The 9/11 Commission Report said that the defense of U.S. air space was not performed in compliance with the existing procedures: "What ensued was a hurried attempt to improvise a defense by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction."

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