The official count of the dead and missing in the attack on the World Trade Center has fallen sharply in the last few weeks to below 3,900, a total that is nearly 3,000 fewer than the number city officials feared had perished in the first weeks after the towers fell.
City officials said on Tuesday that the tally, which dropped by at least 200 over the last weekend alone, could continue to fall, perhaps to 3,000, as duplication and errors on their list are resolved. Unofficial compilations by news organizations, using information from companies, the airlines and other sources, so far have reached no higher than 2,700 to 2,950.
PHOTO: AP
The culling of the official list of those killed in the twin towers and on the hijacked airplanes that destroyed them has been proceeding quietly since late September, when it reached its high of about 6,500.
But this has taken place largely out of public view, with everyone from world leaders to military officials to newspaper columnists and radio talk show hosts continuing to believe and assert that anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 people died in the attacks on the towers and the Pentagon and aboard the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania.
For instance, in the last several weeks, in speeches and interviews, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers and Secretary of State Colin Powell have cited the loss of 5,000 or more people in the combined attacks. Don Imus, the radio talk show host, put the number for the World Trade Center alone at 6,000 during a television interview Saturday.
But for weeks, if one used the city's own numbers for the dead and missing in the collapse of the towers, it has been clear that such numbers were wrong. Using the figure released on Tuesday, the death toll for all three attacks could not be higher than 4,142, and could fall to 3,245 as the city's revisions continue. Either figure would be greater than the total number of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor, 2,400.
"Thank God so many of these people are alive and well," said Charles V. Campisi, the chief of the New York Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau, which is supervising the count.
A State Department official in Washington said he was unaware that the number of dead or missing in the Trade Center attack had decreased so markedly. He said he would bring up the matter with the secretary of state's staff and the press secretary. What is important, he added, is that a still-horrific number of people died on Sept. 11.
"It is not to obfuscate or create any more sympathy, because regardless of whether or not it is 3,900 or 5,000, the magnitude and severity of the events on Sept. 11th are clear," said the official, who asked not to be identified because his comments had not been cleared with the department.
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