858 Chapter 32 Shocks and Responses: 1992–Present
equally responsible for the attack. Bin Laden, in a
video recorded from an undisclosed location, denied
involvement in the attack but praised those who car-
ried it out.
Several weeks later, Bush declared that bin Laden
would be taken “dead or alive.” The president also
offered a $25 million reward for his death or capture,
an evocation of swift frontier justice that suited the
national mood. Within the United States, thousands
of Arabs were rounded up and detained; those with
visa and immigration violations were imprisoned.
Then more trouble arrived at the capital, this
time in the mail. Several letters addressed to govern-
ment officials included threatening messages and a
white powder consisting of billions of anthrax spores,
which could prove fatal if touched or inhaled.
Thousands of government employees took antibi-
otics as a precaution, but some spores had seeped out
of the envelopes and killed five postal workers and
mail recipients.
Bush responded to these multiple threats by
creating a Cabinet position, the Office of Homeland
Security, and naming Pennsylvania Governor Tom
Ridge to direct it. Repeatedly Ridge issued vague
warnings of imminent terrorist attacks. How exactly
Americans were to protect themselves, he did
not say.George W. Bush, Address to Congress
(September 20, 2001)atwww.myhistorylab.comAmerica Fights Back: War in Afghanistan
Bush had declared a war on terror, a war unlike any
other the nation had fought. Al-Qaeda had secret ter-
rorist cells in many countries. Bin Laden was
ensconced in remote Afghanistan, protected by thou-
sands of Taliban soldiers who had inflicted heavy
losses on Soviet invaders in the 1980s. The source of
the anthrax letters proved even more problematic,
because the spores resembled a strain developed in
American military laboratories. (In 2008, an
American scientist who had worked in a federalReadtheDocumentA second jetliner approaches the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The north tower had already been hit and was
engulfed in flames and smoke.