2002 State of the Union Address
Bush spoke about the September 11 attacks of the previous year that killed thousands of people in New York City, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda carried out the attack with 19 hijackers that took over four commercial airline flights and crashed them into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York City's Lower Manhattan, and into the Pentagon in Virginia's Arlington County.
Hijackers in the September 11 attacks
Two flight attendants called the American Airlines reservation desk during the hijacking. Betty Ong reported that "the five hijackers had come from first-class seats: 2A, 2B, 9A, 9C and 9B." Flight attendant Amy Sweeney called a flight services manager at Logan Airport in Boston and described them as Middle Eastern. She gave the staff the seat numbers and they pulled up the ticket and credit card information of the hijackers, identifying Mohamed Atta.