How I experienced 9/11

It was twenty-two years ago, to the day. Wife Ingrid, who was at the dentist, suddenly rushed back home and said: “Quick, switch on the TV!” One of the doctors had told people in the practice that there was some very alarming news.

For the next six or eight hours we sat there, transfixed, watching the most horrific terrorist attack in history. During this coverage two things happened that have stuck in my mind. Our friend Birgit came over on a surprise visit. She watched in horror with us, and around midnight she said she wanted to stay over. There was no way she could go home, where she lived alone. The next day she spent many hours trying to contact a friend who worked in the World Trade Center. She found her. The friend had luckily taken the morning off. That had saved her life.

The second incident on September 11 was that I received a casual call from Nigel Short. He started the call with a joke. “Nigel,” I interrupted, “switch on the TV!” He was baffled. He was in Argentina — how could I know what was on TV there? “Just switch it on,” I insisted. He reluctantly did. I just heard him exclaim, “Holy sh**!”

In New York my good friend Stepan Pachikov, who lived in an apartment building on the banks of the Hudson, was wakened by a noise outside his bedroom window. He looked out and then grabbed his camera. Stepan shot the following set of pictures of the attack in progress:

Stepan watched it happen, including the moment when the second plane, flight 175, hit the South Tower, at 9:03 a.m., all the way to the collapse of both buildings.

We learned all about what took place on September 11, 2001 in the days and weeks that followed. Four coordinated attacks had been staged by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda. They resulted in 2,977 fatalities, 25,000 injuries, and over $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.

I had a special connection to the twin towers. I had visited them a number of times, because the company SciSys/Saitek, which manufactured chess playing computers, had their US office in one of the towers. I was considered an expert in Artificial Intelligence and was advising them.

In 1995 Intel sponsored the world chess championship, a battle between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand. The prize fund was 1.5 million US$. I was one of the organizers, and we decided to stage it on the Observation Deck at the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, 400 meters above New York City’s financial center Wall Street. Here are some pictures I took during the event.

Crossing from New Jersey to New York on the Staten Island Ferry

Kasparov pondering a move on the 107th story of the World Trade Center

Audience watching the moves of game 16

GM Yasser Seirawan explaining the position in the VIP room

Following chess moves on the observation deck

Son Thomas Friedel feeling a bit queasy while looking down on Manhattan...

...from the very top of the World Trade Center

I proposed two ideas to Intel: one was to stage a public relations game with each of the players on top of separate towers, within sight of each other; and secondly, during the match itself, to signal the winner of each game with a laser beam into the sky coming from the Kasparov or the Anand tower.

 Unfortunately, both ideas did not materialize, for technical reasons.

I was home in Hamburg, Germany, when disaster struck, six years later. I should mention that the above pictures are taken from a report on the ChessBase news page. Our new CMS was launched on September 12th, 2001, and that was the very first report I posted.

This was the front page blurb:

9/12/2001 – Yesterday, in one of the most horrifying terrorist atrocities in history, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed. We extend our deepest sympathies to the people of America. Our thoughts and feelings are with the victims and their families. The World Trade Center had a special meaning for chess. In 1995 the World Championship was staged on the Observation Deck on the 107th floor. We look back at in a commemorative picture gallery.

There was one more shock in store. The ringleader of the 9/11 attack, Mohamed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, had studied at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, and had stayed in a flat within short walking distance from where we were (and still are) living.

It is chilling to think that in the years that Atta spent here, we must have encountered him, seen him in the Harburg city center, where people congregate, shop and eat. We probably travelled on buses or on the underground with him. Once, when I had my passport refreshed, I asked the official in charge whether he had seen Atta. He sagged in his seat. “Yes, the guy was here, where you are currently sitting, a number of times.”