APTOPIX Sept 11 Anniversary Pentagon
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, and other officials, watch as the flag is unfurled at the Pentagon, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026 in Arlington, Va.
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The U.S. is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead and the nation shaken. On Friday, people laid wreaths, flew flags, read victims' names and held moments of silence and vigils. In 2001, attackers took command of four commercial jets and rammed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. On Friday, President Donald Trump attended a ceremony at the Pentagon. Former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and current Vice President JD Vance went to ground zero in New York, where victims’ relatives read aloud the long list of names. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum laid a wreath at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
Several dozen presidential briefing documents have been declassified on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. These documents detail intelligence gathered about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida leading up to the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people and upended American national security. The records trace CIA analysts’ evolving understanding of al-Qaida and their efforts to warn of bin Laden’s attack plotting. CIA Director John Ratcliffe calls Friday's release “an act of exceptional transparency.” The documents include reports from April 1998 to Sept. 12, 2001. They don't appear to break any new ground on the planning of the attacks or on U.S. officials’ understanding of how they had unfolded.
