Nation Marks Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks

In his statement, the Air Force general paid tribute to four CIA officers "who fell while serving in Afghanistan" and to seven Defense Intelligence Agency colleagues who died in the attack on the Pentagon.

"Five years have come, and five years have gone, and still we stand together as one," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the Ground Zero ceremony. "We come back to this place to remember the heartbreaking anniversary -- and each person who died here -- those known and unknown to us, whose absence is always with us."

Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who led the city's response to the catastrophe, said at the scene, "We've come back to remember the valor of those we've lost, those who innocently went to work that day and the brave souls who went in after them."

In Washington, Vice President Cheney escorted former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to a ceremony on the White House lawn this morning. The 80-year-old Thatcher joined current and former Cabinet members and White House staffers in bowing their heads to mark the moment the first plane struck. A bugler then played taps as a flag, flying at half-staff above the White House, fluttered in the breeze on an overcast day.

Among those attending the New York City commemoration were victims' family members, some of them holding framed photos of their loved ones or wearing pins bearing their pictures. New York police bagpipers played as people deposited flowers and mementos at the site. Family members hugged each other and wept as the names of the victims were read.

At the same time on New York's Lower East Side, Bush stood with firefighters and police officers outside a firehouse called Fort Pitt and observed moments of silence in front of a door salvaged from a fire truck that was destroyed at the World Trade Center.

Bush, joined by first lady Laura Bush, laid wreaths at the Ground Zero Sunday and at the site of the crash near Shanksville today. After the ceremony at the Pennsylvania field, Bush made the rounds of assembled family members, shaking hands, chatting, signing autographs and offering an occasional hug to those who lost relatives there.

From Shanksville, he flew back to Washington and laid a wreath this afternoon at the place on the Pentagon's southwestern side where a hijacked airliner struck five years ago. The damaged portion of the huge structure has since been rebuilt, but a blackened piece of limestone remains as a reminder of the attack.

As in Pennsylvania, Bush greeted family members of the victims and others in attendance after the wreath-laying, hugging women and posing with children as a military band played "Amazing Grace" and other songs. Among those present were Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, his arm in a sling from recent shoulder surgery, and members of Congress.

In an interview broadcast today on NBC's "Today" show, Bush said of Sept. 11, "My thinking about the world was changed dramatically on that day. I realized that my most important responsibility and that of all of us in government is to protect the people."

Bush added, "I realized that we were in involved in an ideological struggle akin to the Cold War. And every day in the Oval Office, with the exception of Sunday, when I'm in town, I get briefed on this -- you know, what the enemy is trying to do to us. And it's a sobering thought."

As a result of beefed-up security practices at home and the pursuit of the al-Qaeda terrorist network abroad, Bush asserted, "We are safer . . . but we're not yet safe. One way for your viewers to understand this is that the enemy has to be right once; we have to be right 100 percent of the time to protect us against people who are willing to kill in a variety of ways."