Template:8:39 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 11

8:39 a.m. September 11, 2001: Flight 11 Flies Over Nuclear Power Station
While flying south along the, Flight 11 passes almost directly over the in Buchanan, NY, about 30 miles north of New York City. [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/4/2002; BERGEN RECORD, 4/7/2002]

The New Yorker will later comment, “An attack on a nuclear power plant would seem to fulfill, almost perfectly, al-Qaeda’s objective of using America’s technology against it,” and the New York Times will report, “Everyone within at least a 50-mile radius would be in danger if something terrible happened at Indian Point. That 50-mile radius contains more than 7 percent of the entire population of the United States—20 million people.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/4/2002; NEW YORKER, 2/24/2003]

Mohamed Atta supposedly earlier considered targeting a nuclear facility on 9/11, but the other suicide pilots did not like the idea.