Pentagon Building

The Pentagon on Tuesday released the first video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters building and killing 189 people in the Sept. 11 attacks. The images, recorded by Pentagon security cameras outside the building, were made public in response to a December 2004 Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a public interest group.

Friends and relatives of Sept. 11 victims joined Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday for the groundbreaking on a memorial to the 184 people killed in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The 2-acre memorial, to be built near the site of the attack at the Pentagon's west wall, will feature benches set over small reflecting pools for each of the victims. It is expected to be completed by fall 2008. The memorial "will remind visitors that every one of these lives was special ...

Sensors at two military mail facilities detected signs of anthrax on two pieces of mail but Pentagon officials said the mail was irradiated, rendering any anthrax inert. Additional tests and other sensors at the two facilities, one of them at the Pentagon and the other nearby, found no presence of anthrax, which can be used as a biological weapon. There were no initial reports of illness.

A two-day anthrax scare that disrupted federal mail and prompted 700 Pentagon workers to take antibiotics ended Tuesday when federal officials said traces of a material detected by a Pentagon mail screening device apparently were not the deadly substance. Dozens of tests at two Pentagon mail facilities found no anthrax, William Winkenwerder, the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said Tuesday.

Pentagon auditors spent 1,139 hours altering their own files in order to pass an internal review, say investigators who found that the accounting sleuths engaged in just the kind of wasteful activity they are supposed to expose.

A fuel tanker truck crashed near the Pentagon, sparking multiple explosions that sent flames nearly 50 feet in the air and shut down a major highway for several hours overnight. The driver died in the accident. The truck apparently struck a guardrail as it drove onto an exit ramp of Interstate 395. "It sounded ... like artillery," said John F. Moroz, a nearby resident.

The 184 people who died at the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will be commemorated by individual benches and lighted reflecting pools, the Department of Defense said Monday. An 11-member committee, selected by the Pentagon, chose "Light Benches," by New York architects Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, from 1,126 entries submitted by an international group of designers.

The Pentagon postponed action on an $18-billion Air Force deal for 100 Boeing Co. 767 tankers until the deal is investigated, after Boeing's firing of two executives for ethics violations. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee in a letter dated Dec. 1 that he was ordering a "pause in the execution" of the Air Force contracts to lease and buy the midair refueling tankers, a major setback in Boeing's two-year effort to sell the planes.