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September 11-November 16, 2001: Pentagon Victims Taken to Dover Air Force for Mortuary Operations
Under the authority of the FBI, remains of 9/11 victims at the Pentagon are taken to a temporary morgue in the Pentagon’s north parking lot, where they are photographed, labeled, and then placed in refrigeration. [Stars and Stripes, 9/17/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A-47; Quartermaster Professional Bulletin, 3/2005] They are then transported to Davison Army Airfield at nearby Fort Belvoir, and from there to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, where there is a large mortuary created for use in wartime. FBI agents accompany the remains at all points during transportation. [American Forces Press Service, 9/15/2001; PBS, 9/21/2001; Soldiers, 10/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. C-55] About 250 people, including 50 medical examiners and 50 members of the FBI’s ‘disaster team,’ work at the mortuary to identify the remains. [Stars and Stripes, 9/17/2001] Remains are first scanned for the presence of unexploded ordnance or metallic foreign bodies. FBI experts then collect trace evidence to find any chemicals from explosives, and also conduct fingerprint identifications. [Pentagram, 11/30/2001] Other techniques used include dental records and X-rays. Tissue samples are sent to an Armed Forces laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, for DNA analysis. [PBS, 9/21/2001] Identification is problematic because specimens are often unrecognizable body parts, and are nearly always mixed with debris composed of aircraft and building materials. [Harcke, Bifano, and Koeller, 4/2002] However, by the time Dover staff formally end their identification effort, on November 16, they have identified remains of 184 of the 189 people who died in the Pentagon or aboard Flight 77, including the five hijackers (see November 21, 2001). [Washington Post, 11/21/2001]

September 13-December 19, 2001: Investigators Work to Identify Flight 93 Victims
Human remains from the Flight 93 crash site are moved to a temporary morgue that has been set up at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory, several miles away in Friedens. High-tech mortuary equipment has been brought to the armory in a tractor-trailer. [Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, 9/12/2001 pdf file; WTAE-TV, 9/13/2001] 75 to 100 specialists, including pathologists and fingerprint experts, are involved in the attempt to identify the remains. Forensic anthropologist Dennis Dirkmaat says that because the remains have suffered “extreme fragmentation,” most will need to be identified using DNA analysis. [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] When remains cannot be identified at the temporary morgue, samples are sent on to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, where samples from the Pentagon crash are also being analyzed (see September 11-November 16, 2001). [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/25/2001; Stars and Stripes, 10/8/2001; KCRA, 12/20/2001] By December 19, the remains of all 40 passengers and crew from Flight 93 have been identified, using fingerprints, dental records, and DNA. Investigators have, by a process of elimination, also been able to isolate genetic profiles of the four hijackers. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/30/2001; DMORT National News, 1/2002; Associated Press, 2/26/2002; Stripe, 9/20/2002] Searchers recovered about 510 pounds of human remains at the crash scene, equaling about eight percent of the total bodyweight on the plane. According to Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller, everything else was vaporized. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002; Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002; Canadian Press, 3/28/2004]

September 16-23, 2001: Images of Ground Zero Show Thermal Hot Spots
In response to requests from the Environmental Protection Agency, through the US Geological Survey, NASA flies a plane over the site of the WTC complex, equipped with a remote sensing instrument called AVIRIS. AVIRIS is able to remotely record the near-infrared signature of heat. Analysis of the data it collects indicates temperatures at Ground Zero of above 800 degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas above 1,300 degrees. On September 16, dozens of “hot spots” are seen, but by September 23, only four or five remain. [US Geological Survey, 11/27/2001; US Geological Survey, 10/2002 pdf file] Robert Shaler, the scientist who leads the forensic examination by the New York City medical examiner’s office to identify 9/11 victims, later will state that the “DNA in the bodies” of WTC victims “was in pretty bad shape. These bones were exposed to extreme temperatures.” [US News and World Report, 12/5/2005] Don Carson, a hazardous materials expert, later will say, “There are pieces of steel being pulled out [of the WTC rubble] that are still cherry red. It’s like the charcoal that you put in your grill.… You light it and it stays hot.” [New York Daily News, 11/1/2001] And Dr. Jonathan Barnett, a member of FEMA’s WTC investigation team, will describe steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extremely high temperatures. [New York Times, 11/29/2001] Despite the WTC rubble being pumped with an almost constant jet of water, eventually totaling thousands of gallons, almost 12 weeks after 9/11 at least one fire is still burning, making it the longest-burning structural fire in history. [New Scientist, 12/3/2001; CBS News, 12/19/2001] As well as the hot spots, numerous witnesses describe molten metal being found at Ground Zero (see September 12, 2001-February 2002).

November 21, 2001: Flight 77 Remains Identified, Hijackers’ Identities Not Confirmed
The remains of all but one of the people on board Flight 77, including the hijackers, are identified. However, the identities of the hijackers have still not been confirmed through their remains, and the FBI does not provide DNA profiles of the hijackers to medical examiners for identification. [NFPA Journal, 11/1/2001; Washington Post, 11/21/2001; Mercury, 1/11/2002] As of mid-2004, there still have been no reports that the hijackers’ remains have been identified by their DNA, except possibly for two unnamed hijackers.

Late February 2003: DNA Identifies Passenger Remains, but Hijacker DNA Is Not Tested
Medical examiners match human remains to the DNA of two of the hijackers that flew on Flights 11 and/or 175 into the WTC. The names of the two hijackers are not released. The FBI gave the examiners DNA profiles of all ten hijackers on those flights a few weeks earlier. Genetic profiles of five hijackers from Flight 77 and the four from Flight 93 that did not match any of the passengers’ profiles have been given to the FBI, but the FBI has not given any DNA profiles with which to match them. [CNN, 2/27/2003]

January 2004: DNA Tests Indicate Hijackers Could be Middle Eastern or European
The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory publishes a report on the examination of DNA of the presumed hijackers of Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, and Flight 93, which went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The hijackers’ DNA is identified by a process of elimination, i.e. it is presumed to be that which does not match the samples provided by the passengers’ relatives. Samples are not requested from the hijackers’ families, but it is determined that the DNA may have come from Middle Eastern men, although in two cases current but not very comprehensive databases indicate they are more likely to come from Europeans. Also, the DNA samples from the Pentagon indicate that two of the presumed hijackers may well have been brothers. Presumably this refers to Nawaf and Salem Alhazmi. [Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, 1/2004, pp. 82-84 pdf file]

October 4, 2005: Book Describes Scientific Effort to Identify 9/11 Victims
Robert Shaler, the scientist who led the forensic examination by the New York City medical examiner’s office to identify 9/11 victims, releases a book about this investigation, called Who They Were: Inside the World Trade Center DNA Story: The Unprecedented Effort to Identify the Missing. According to Shaler the investigation eventually identified three of the 9/11 hijackers. However, he writes that they were not identified by name because the ten DNA profiles supplied by the FBI had no names attached. Shaler writes, “No names, just a K code, which is how the FBI designates ‘knowns,’ or specimens it knows the origins of. Of course, we had no direct knowledge of how the FBI obtained the terrorists’ DNA.” He also believes the three hijackers they identified were in the backs of the planes, stating, “I still doubt the pilots have anything remaining to collect or analyze.” [Publishers Weekly, 8/22/2005; New York Daily News, 10/12/2005] The medical examiner’s office concluded its efforts at identifying the remains of those killed at Ground Zero in February 2005, having been able to identify 1,588 of the 2,749 victims. [Shaler, 2005; New York Daily News, 2/23/2005]