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Artefacts recovered from the Pentagon following the September 11, 2001 attacks on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Image Credit: AFP

Washington: In the decade before September 11, a period when terrorists bombed the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993 and then US embassies in Africa, most Americans had never heard of Osama Bin Laden.

Even when he declared war on the United States in a television interview, Bin Laden remained a stealth-like figure and his importance largely unknown.

Many clues that were later uncovered about the September 11 mastermind's activities, which have been stored in the FBI's evidence lockers, went on public view for the first time yesterday at the a museum in Washington. The journalism museum, known as the Newseum, is expanding its current FBI exhibit with a new section, "War on Terror: The FBI's New Focus."

Artefacts

Among 60 new artefacts on view are engines and landing gear from passenger planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and hiking boots that would-be bomber Richard Reid rigged in December 2001 to explode aboard an airliner. Ten years after the attacks, the Newseum said it was time to examine the impact.

"They call it evidence, we call it artefacts," said Susan Bennett, a Newseum vice-president who oversees exhibits. "Just as we have the Berlin Wall as a reminder of the Cold War and the collapse of communism, we think it's important to use these artefacts to tell the story of 9/11 and how it changed our lives."

The FBI loaned an extensive collection for the exhibit, which will be on display through the end of 2012. Newseum exhibits director Cathy Trost said the objects would "connect people emotionally to the story."

It begins with the handcuffs used to restrain Ramzi Yousuf, who was convicted in 1997 of the first World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured more than 1,000, and details of how Bin Laden was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list in 1999.

Just two years later, when 19 hijackers boarded planes in Boston, Washington and Newark, the September 11 attacks quickly became the largest investigation in FBI history. Within hours, agents found evidence tying the hijackers to Al Qaida through their passports, credit cards and cars left at airports. The FBI released their names two days later.

Jet engines found blocks away from the World Trade Center hang as a stark reminder of the planes used as weapons to kill nearly 3,000 people.

In New York, 2,753 people were killed as a result of the attacks at the World Trade Centre, while 184 were killed at the Pentagon in northern Virginia and 40 were killed in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

There are personal items on view, such as a wallet of Ruth McCourt, who was taking her 4-year-old daughter Juliana to Disneyland on United Flight 175 before it crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Centre, and cell phones found in the rubble that rang for days after the attacks as family members tried desperately to find their loved ones.