The core of the New York was plunged this morning into a state of fear and confusion, with rumors of explosions all over town and thousands of people trapped in gridlock traffic. People scanned the skies for incoming terrorist planes. There were reports (sources unknown) of bombs and smoke all around the federal city.

They came one after another : A car bomb at the State Department. A bomb at the Capital. A bomb at the Old Executive Office Building. The USA Today building in Rosin was supposedly enveloped in smoke. Reported as fact on radio and television, the rumors were untrue. But so much had happened already, so many terrible things in New York and Washington - you could see the cloud of smoke from the plane crash at the Pentagon from almost anywhere in town - that anything seemed possible.

"Go!" shouted Michele Tocsin, an Office of Personnel Management employee helping direct cars out of the garage. A driver was balking at the direction to turn right onto 18th Street."But it won't get me anywhere I want to go," the driver protested. "But it would get you out of the building. We just got a phone call," Tocsin said - meaning, a bomb threat.

"They're not done yet. The object of this is to hit every major city in America," Venison employee Carillon Jones told coworkers as they tried to hike out of the city past the gridlock cars. At the White House, phone bank volunteers were hearing the voices of the American people soon after the first reports of the plane crashes that demolished the World Trade Center buildings in New York City.