we have a breaking news story to tell you about. apparently a plane has just crashed in to the world trade center here in new york city. it happened just a few moments ago, apparently. we have very little information available at this point in time, but on the phone we do have jennifer oversteen who apparently witnessed this event. jennifer, can you hear me? hello? hi, jennifer? hi, katie. hi. can you please tell me what you saw and give me any information about what s going on there? yes. i have to it s it s quite terrifying. i m in shock right now. i came out of the subway at bowling green, heading to work in battery park, at the ritz-carlton hotel, and i came out and it s i saw a i heard a boom, looked up, there was a big ball of fire. i m looking north at the world trade center and it is the last twin tower. if i m looking north. i m looking north in battery park right now. you can hear the fire engines and emergency crews behind me, and it is unbelievable. when t
military to simply scramble jets and put them in the air. according to officials here, then do what? this area, of course, according to officials here, is obviously going to be declared off limits in terms of any air traffic. but right now officials here at the pentagon are simply scrambling to find out first, what happened, and what potential reaction the u.s. military could provide in terms of protection. possible further protection against any further potential attack. and, mik, it s important to note that, if the planes were hijacked, carrying passengers, there isn t much that military officials could have done. you can t shoot down a plane like that for risk of the people on board, plus for the injuries you could cause on the ground in a place like manhattan. reporter: that s exactly right. and the president, as we said
terrorist attack based on very preliminary information. the information that intelligence officials are getting in terms of a possible hijacked plane, and of course the very horrifying video of the plane veering into the tower itself is a clear indication to everyone here that this is not an accident. primary concern right now is protecting the american public in the new york area right now against any possible further attacks by the air. they have no indications there will be, but there is some concern that since this appeared to be such a highly coordinated attack, that there may be other terrorist attacks that could be planned either in new york or elsewhere. this is absolutely the worst case scenario for the counterterrorist planners, because apparently according to intelligence officials, there
a plane to get into this area without being completely tracked or identified by air traffic control. so you would have to imagine that, a, if this plane were headed right for the world trade center there must have been someone trying to talk or communicate with that pilot, and for it to fly right into the side of the building the smaller plane, you can understand almost. but a jumbo jet, a large jet, completely let s rerack that video if we could in the control room where we actually saw the jet flying into the building. which was unbelievable. elliott walker said it was a big plane. i was looking in the distance and saw a small plane which might have been a helicopter to see this plane come into the picture. there it is. that is a big plane. and i mean, it s hard to imagine, it s a 737 we re now being told. flying directly into the midsection of the the eastern tower of the world trade center. needless to say, it s
the air is filled with hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper that are sort of floating like confetti. the area is swarmed with emergency vehicles and sirens. obviously we re very sensitive to this kind of thing in this neighborhood. elliott, of course because of the incident that occurred in the early 1990s, have you seen evidence, elliott, of people being taken out of the building? you say emergency vehicles are there. understandably so. but of course a major concern is human loss. do you know if there were many people in the building? oh, another one just hit! something else hit. another large plane hit. there s been another collision. can you see it? oh, my. something else. it looked like a 747. we just saw a plane circling the building, a second ago on the shot right before that. i think there may have been another impact. can you tell? i just heard another very loud bang and a very large plane that