More Missing, as Return to Normalcy Urged

Sept. 23 -- With hope of finding survivors growing dimmer and the number of missing growing, officials are telling New Yorkers to defy terror with a return to everyday business.

"The ultimate victory in this war is when everyone whowants to can do what everyone of us did today," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said outside of a television show taping, "and that is get up, let your children go to school, go out of the house and not in fear, stand here on a sidewalk and not worry about a truck bomb driving into us, and be able to be free in speech and thought and activity andbehavior. And that's victory."

Rumsfeld's remarks followed similar comments Saturday afternoon by former President Clinton and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as officials delivered grim statistics about the missing and dead from the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. The number of missing was revised upward today from 6,333 people to 6,453 as officials removed duplicated names and added new names. As of Saturday, 261 people were confirmed dead, 194 of whom have been identified.

Another 189 people are missing or dead at the Pentagon, also the site of a terrorist attack by a hijacked jetliner. An additional 44 people were killed when passengers apparently struggled with hijackers in another plane, which crashed in western Pennsylvania.

Nevertheless, Giuliani told New Yorkers: "You can go back to your normal way of life. And I think you honor the people who are missing and the people who died if you did that. After all, they died to protect our normal way of life.

"Stop being afraid," he added. "Stop being afraid doesn't mean that you can get rid of the emotion. It means overcoming it. Just going out and doing the things that you normally do."

Return to Offices, Homes

As work continued at ground zero and passers-by looked on in a daze, many business owners and office workers waited in long lines this weekend to get police escorts into buildings nearby.

John Horran, an attorney, said the stuff he had to leave behind is now desperately needed.