NEW YORK — President Bush will visit all three sites of the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed 2,973 persons five years ago and then deliver a primetime address tomorrow to tell Americans the United States is safer — but still not safe from attack.
Mr. Bush and first lady Laura Bush will visit ground zero in New York today, where they will lay a wreath and attend a church service.
Tomorrow, the president and Mrs. Bush will begin the day at 7:40 a.m. with a breakfast with New York City first-responders at Fort Pitt Firehouse. At 8:46 a.m. — the moment that hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center — they will bow their heads in a moment of silence.
At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, will observe a moment of silence near the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon five years ago.
Just before noon tomorrow, the Bushes will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony in Shanksville, Pa. A lush hilltop on Skyline Road now serves as a memorial for those killed aboard United Flight 93, when passengers battled terrorists likely targeting the Capitol or the White House, eventually bringing the plane down. The president also will meet with family members of those who died in the crash.
Mr. and Mrs. Bush then will return to Washington to attend a 3:30 p.m. ceremony at the Pentagon.
The president’s address at 9:01 p.m. tomorrow “is not a political speech,” Bush spokesman Tony Snow said Friday.
“It will be a reflection of what September 11th has meant to the president and to the country; the realities that it has brought to all of our attention, and how we can move forward together to try to win the war on terror,” Mr. Snow said.
The president will speak just before the second part of a controversial ABC miniseries that blames in large part the Clinton administration for lapses in national security that led to the September 11 attacks, a charge that has incensed Democrats.
Mr. Bush said yesterday in his weekly radio address that a CIA detention program to interrogate terrorism suspects, which was at issue, had been “invaluable” in efforts to prevent another attack on the United States.
“This program has been invaluable to the security of America and its allies, and helped us identify and capture men who our intelligence community believes were key architects of the September the 11th attacks,” he said.
Meanwhile, Democrats, seeking to win control of at least one chamber of Congress in the November elections, are highlighting an increasingly unpopular Iraq war with voters.
Five years after the September 11 attacks, “America is not nearly as safe as we can be and we must be,” said Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio in the Democratic radio address.
“This anniversary of 9/11, we must refocus our efforts on the war on terror by ending our open-ended commitment in Iraq and by redirecting our efforts to destroy al Qaeda,” Mr. Brown said.
“Democrats will fight for this goal even as the president and as congressional Republicans stubbornly insist on staying a failed course,” he said.
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