Thursday September 13 10:49 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
The Defense Department said on Thursday 126 people were still missing two days after a hijacked
airliner slammed into the Pentagon, suggesting a possible death toll of about 190 at U.S. military
headquarters, including the 64 people aboard the commandeered flight.
Officials said they were zeroing in on the aircraft's so-called black box, which could shed new light
on the attack that punched a gaping hole in the huge, five-sided complex. ``We have ideas where it is,'' Bob
Blecksmith, special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, told reporters touring the building's
fire-scorched wedge. ``That's obviously an important issue.''
The first official tally of the missing was far lower than the worst-case scenario of up to 800 cited
shortly after Tuesday's blitz by Fire Chief Ed Plaugher of Arlington County, Virginia, where the Pentagon
is located. The highest-ranking victim appears to have been a three-star general who was the Army's
personnel chief, a defense official said. The department said its tally was preliminary. If accurate, the final
toll could be 190, including those aboard the American Airlines Boeing 757 seized by knife-wielding hijackers.
All aboard the aircraft, seized after leaving nearby Dulles International Airport en route to Los Angeles,
were presumed dead.
The attack on the nerve center of the world's mightiest military coincided with assaults that
destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers in Manhattan and with the crash in western
Pennsylvania of another hijacked plane.
The Navy said its operations center -- likely to play a key role in any U.S. military response to
what President George W. Bush has called ``acts of war'' against the United States -- had been damaged.
``We have reestablished our operation center, and it is functioning,'' Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval
operations, told a Pentagon briefing. He declined to say if it was still housed in the long, polished Pentagon
corridors or had been moved elsewhere.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Bush's choice to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said 20 percent or less of the building was out of commission. ``There is a wedge taken out of the building,''
he told the Senate Armed Services Committee considering his nomination. ''Roughly 20 percent of the
square footage is out of commission.''
Flames brief