Biden to mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 with visits to all three memorial sites

President Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.

Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pa., where United Flight 93 was forced down, the White House said Saturday. First Lady Jill Biden will accompany him.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Shanksville for a separate event before joining the president at the Pentagon, the White House said. Harris will travel with her spouse, Doug Emhoff.

Biden’s itinerary is similar to the one President Obama followed in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Obama’s visit to New York City coincided with the opening of a memorial at the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

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Sept. 4, 2021

Next Saturday’s anniversary falls less than two weeks after the end of the nearly two-decade U.S. war in Afghanistan. The war was launched weeks after the 9/11 attacks to retaliate against the Al Qaeda plotters and the Taliban, which provided them safe haven.

Biden on Friday directed the declassification of certain documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks in a gesture toward victims’ families and others who have long sought the records in hopes of implicating the Saudi government. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who took over the three airliners on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia.

The conflict over what classified information to make public came into the open last month after many relatives, survivors and first responders said they would object to Biden’s participation in 9/11 memorial events if the documents remained classified.