United States Security

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."

One new name, Raymond Meisenheimer, was added in recent days to the list of confirmed dead in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The addition of Meisenheimer 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 believed to be 130.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Four miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, 6-foot waves are hammering the pilot boat, slathering its windshield in foam and rocking it like a roller coaster car. Petty Officer 2nd Class Jeremy Zimmer of the U.S. Coast Guard is about to go to work, stepping into the unknown with only a pistol to protect himself. The launch draws alongside Stena Clipper, a freighter arriving from the Dominican Republic. A rope ladder dangles down 25 feet to the sea from an open hatch in the rusting hull.

The cost of bolstering airport security is mounting rapidly, and this year alone could run more than triple what has been budgeted, congressional and aviation industry officials say. The unexpectedly steep costs facing the new Transportation Security Administration, created after Sept. 11, stem from greater manpower needs, more expensive bomb detection equipment at airports and other factors. They have prompted the Bush administration to ask Congress for an additional $4.

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 in the last week, 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, is now believed to be 149. Victor Daniel Barbosa Felix "Bobby" Calixte John Chipura Kyung "Kaccy" Cho Joseph Collison Titus Davidson Benilda P.

Two rental cars driven by terrorist Mohamed Atta before the Sept. 11 attacks are for sale, attracting offers up to $250,000, the vehicles' owner said. James P. Glynn said he has received bids from dealers in collectible cars and museums--and one person who wanted to charge people to sledgehammer the white 1995 Ford Escort and 1996 faded-blue Chevrolet Corsica.

When FBI and immigration agents arrested Zacarias Moussaoui at his motel in suburban Minneapolis on Aug. 16, they suspected he might be a potential airline hijacker. He wanted to fly "the Big Bird," he'd said. He was in a hurry to learn. And despite more than 50 hours at the controls, he couldn't even solo a single-engine Cessna. But the only direct evidence of his breaking the law were technical violations of his visa. More than seven months later, U.S.

From the pews of Brooklyn's St. James Lutheran Church came the whispers. "Is Rudy really coming?" a boy asked his mother. "I don't know if he can make it. The mayor is very busy." Busy enough that everyone would have forgiven Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani if he had skipped the wedding Sunday afternoon. Almost from the moment of the attack on New York, Giuliani has been the tireless, unwavering voice of comfort and resolve, a chaplain, friend and field general.

When he heard about the World Trade Center disaster, Mike Gerson was home in suburban Virginia, writing a "communities of character" speech that his boss, President Bush, was to deliver in Cleveland several days hence. Gerson quickly got in his car and drove toward the White House--just in time to witness a hijacked airliner on its final descent into the Pentagon. Within minutes, he was conferring with senior White House aides on what Bush should say about the incidents.

A top federal health official and several prominent medical experts suggested Thursday that voluntary vaccinations for smallpox may be appropriate, three decades after immunizations stopped in this country. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and other researchers said they want to open a national debate on mass inoculation to prepare the nation for an unlikely--but potentially devastating--bioterrorist attack.

The nation's 103 nuclear power reactors are vulnerable to a potentially catastrophic terrorist attack but have taken few safety countermeasures since Sept. 11, even though they have been targeted by Al Qaeda, a congressman alleged in a report released Monday. In the document--which was immediately discounted by the nuclear power industry--Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.