President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and honor the 2,996 victims who were killed that day, the White House announced Saturday.
The president, along with first lady Jill Biden, will go to New York City, the Pentagon, and the memorial outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site where United Flight 93 crashed in a field after passengers regained control of the aircraft from hijackers, to “honor and memorialize the lives lost 20 years ago,” the White House said.
The 20-year anniversary of the fatal attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives on U.S. soil comes less than two weeks after the end of the War in Afghanistan, which lasted for almost two decades. The United States invaded the country weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks to retaliate against the extremist group al Qaeda, which plotted the commercial plane hijackings, leader Osama bin Laden later admitted.
BIDEN ORDERS DECLASSIFICATION REVIEW OF DOCUMENTS RELATED TO FBI’S 9/11 INVESTIGATIONS
Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was a continuation of policy plans created under former President Donald Trump, who brokered the initial deals with the Taliban to plan a withdrawal from the country. However, under Biden’s lead, the final days in Afghanistan were marred by criticism over the chaotic evacuation efforts and the 13 U.S. service members who died in late August after a suicide bombing near the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The president announced Friday that certain documents related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks would be declassified over the coming months, as victims’ families have long sought the records in their hope to implicate Saudi Arabia’s government for complicity in the 2001 attacks.
“We must never forget the enduring pain of the families and loved ones of the 2,977 innocent people who were killed during the worst terrorist attack on America in our history,” Biden said in a statement Friday afternoon.
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Last month, 1,800 friends and family members of 9/11 victims, first responders, and survivors released a statement saying they “would be compelled to publicly stand in objection to any participation by his administration in any memorial ceremony of 9/11” if Biden reneged on his 2020 campaign pledge to declassify the documents.
