Terrorism United States

Thanks to the San Fernando Swap Meet, pilot Jerry Hider will have his first job today since the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults. "I'm back with my banners," said Hider, who flies long, plastic strips promoting Sony PlayStation, shrimp specials, adult entertainment Web sites and other messages in the skies above Southern California's beaches, stadiums and residences. "Well," he said, pausing, "at least I'm back in the San Fernando Valley."

This is a list of names added to the total of confirmed dead in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. This list, released since April 19, updates accounts that have appeared in The Times each Sunday since Sept. 11. The number of people unaccounted for, according to New York City officials and Associated Press, is now believed to be 128. Vincent Brunton Patrick Byrne Thomas Farino Robert Hamilton Scott Larsen Salvatore P. Lopes Michael Otten Josh Piver Edward Rall Barrington L. Young

Concern about bioterrorism mounted Wednesday as early tests showed that 31 staff members at the Capitol have been exposed to anthrax and that spores mailed to the publisher of supermarket tabloids in Florida and to NBC News in New York were the same strain. And in an unprecedented move, the House of Representatives was closed to allow what Speaker Dennis Hastert called an "environmental sweep" of the chamber.

The MD-88 passenger jetliner was cruising above 25,000 feet but there was no one at the controls. Preoccupied with protecting the cockpit door while they took turns going to the bathroom, the pilots momentarily forgot the cardinal safety rule that the captain or the co-pilot must be strapped in and in control of the aircraft at all times. The November incident illustrates an emerging safety issue: The focus on aviation security since Sept.

He was last in the line moving up the ramp into a waiting C-130 at Tan Son Nhut air base--a tall, husky man with an open Midwestern face who was about to step into history. It was March 29, 1973, in Saigon. And Master Sgt. Max Beilke was officially designated as the last American combat soldier to leave Vietnam. He had survived two wars, Korea and Vietnam. Now he was going home to his family in Minnesota.

As 19 hijackers made their way along the concourses at three East Coast airports on Sept. 11, bent on executing the deadliest terrorist attack in history, they were subjecting the U.S. aviation security system to its most critical test. At almost every step along the way, the system posed no challenge to the terrorists--not to their ability to purchase tickets, to pass security checkpoints while carrying knives and cutting implements nor to board aircraft.

Anthrax spores, which killed a man in Florida last week, gave a mere sore to an NBC employee in New York, who is recovering. Experts say the same spores can cause different types of infection, depending on how they enter the body. "If you're unlucky, you're going to shake it up and inhale some of the stuff," said Raymond Zilinskas, senior scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

In the photo, sweaty young Mike Kehoe is headed up--all the way up a smoky stairwell in the north tower of the World Trade Center just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 11. Kehoe wasn't aware that someone was taking his photograph at that particular moment. He's a firefighter. His mind was focused on hustling all the way up the tower and evacuating office workers. "Civilians," as he calls them.

The terrorists who piloted two planes into the World Trade Center apparently managed--either by careful calculation or evil luck--to have hit the buildings at their weakest spot to cause their disastrous collapse, structural engineers said Tuesday. "It's like hitting someone at the back of the knee," said Nabih Youssef, a structural engineer who heads the Tall Building Council in Los Angeles and is an expert on the design and strength of skyscrapers.

In the worst terrorist attack ever against the United States, hijackers struck at the preeminent symbols of the nation's wealth and might Tuesday, flying airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killing or injuring thousands of people. As a horrified nation watched on television, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan collapsed into flaming rubble after two Boeing 767s rammed their upper stories.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the man indicted as a Sept. 11 accomplice, tried to speak with prosecutors about the death penalty and classified information but they refused, the government said Thursday. Prosecutors said they were informed of the request Tuesday by a jail official, an indication that Moussaoui, who wants to represent himself in the case, is already trying to do so. Moussaoui, however, cannot make that decision on his own. U.S.

A defiant Zacarias Moussaoui--the only person charged in the United States with terrorism in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks--told a judge Monday that he wants to represent himself in a trial without a jury, and called for the destruction of America and Jews everywhere. Moussaoui's fiery remarks appeared to surprise even his own court-appointed defense team. They came during what was supposed to be a routine hearing before U.S.

Microbiologists, like nature, abhor a vacuum, and in the absence of an FBI arrest in last fall's anthrax attacks, some of the nation's top scientists are offering their own theories.

Chantyl Peterson bursts through the front door, greets her mother and slings her schoolbooks onto the floor. She's a healthy seventh-grader who loves horseback riding and playing the flute and doesn't mind homework. Nine years ago, she was dying. A New York City firefighter saved her life back then, but not in the usual way. His bone marrow was a perfect match for the little Nevada girl, then 5 and badly needing a transplant.

A patched and battle-ready guided missile destroyer Cole returned to duty with a flag-waving, horn-blasting send-off Friday, a year and a half after a terrorist bombing in Yemen blew a hole in its side and killed 17 sailors. Hundreds of people cheered along the shore as the Cole, gleaming in the sunlight, set off from Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ingalls Shipyard for its home port in Norfolk, Va. The Cole returns to duty after 14 months of repairs and improvements.

The FBI, acting on information from a captured senior aide to Osama bin Laden, warned banks and financial institutions throughout the Northeast on Friday that they face the threat of terrorist attacks.

Some days only one or two show up. Other days there are so many he has to see them in strained, 20-minute sessions that stretch all day long. Since Sept. 11, 255 workers have been tapped on the shoulder by a supervisor on the floor of the giant kitchen near the airport and told: Report to Human Resources. In his office, Ramsey Salomon waits for them, knowing they know what's coming. Before handing them the formal letter, he explains in simple terms that they are no longer needed.

Thirty feet below an onramp to the New Jersey Turnpike, Victoria Leacock balanced atop a mound of charred and twisted steel. Out of the millions of tons of World Trade Center debris, this pile at a temporary storage yard is Leacock's personal crusade. "Is this OK?" she wondered, aiming her camera to document every wavy piece. "I'm walking on art."

Amid warnings that another terrorist strike might come tucked inside one of the 17,000 cargo containers that enter the United States each day, researchers are scrambling to make the nondescript metal boxes--and their modes of delivery--tamper-proof.