By Tom Brune New York Newsday
President Barack Obama is not expected to go to New York City next week to mark the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2011 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, a White House aide said today.
In his six years in office, Obama has only once gone to New York on September 11, and that was on the tenth anniversary in 2011 of the two airliners flying into the Twin Towers at the direction of al Qaida terrorists.
The White House has not released details of how Obama will mark the anniversary this year.
In the past two years, Obama has stood for a moment of silence outside of the White House as bells tolled at the time that each airliner hit. Then he has gone to the Pentagon for a moment of silence at a bell tolled at the time an airliner hit the Defense Department headquarters. Then he has made remarks.
This year, Obama already has commemorated the attacks. On May 15, he dedicated the National September 11 Memorial Museum in its Foundation Hall 70 feet below street level at the bedrock of the destroyed World Trade Center.
“No act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country. Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us; nothing can change who we are as Americans,” he said to the survivors and September 11 families in the hall.
