Hijacker Crashed Flight 93 on 9/11

WASHINGTON - U.S. investigators now believe that a hijacker in the cockpit aboard United Airlines Flight 93 instructed terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah to crash the jetliner into a Pennsylvania field because of a passenger uprising in the cabin.

This theory, based on the government's analysis of cockpit recordings, discounts the popular perception of insurgent passengers grappling with terrorists to seize the plane's controls.

The government's findings — laid out deep within the report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that was sent to Congress last month — aim to resolve one of the enduring mysteries of the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history: What happened in the final minutes aboard Flight 93?

The FBI strenuously maintains that its analysis does not diminish the heroism of passengers who — with the words "Let's roll" — apparently rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overtake the hijackers.

President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have regularly praised the courage of those aboard Flight 93, some of whom told family members by telephone they were planning to storm the cockpit.

"While no one will ever know exactly what transpired in the final minutes of Flight 93, every shred of evidence indicates this plane crashed because of the heroic actions of the passengers," FBI spokeswoman Susan Whitson said Thursday.

Citing transcripts of the still-secret cockpit recordings, FBI Director Robert Mueller told congressional investigators in a closed briefing last year that, minutes before Flight 93 hit the ground, one of the hijackers "advised Jarrah to crash the plane and end the passengers' attempt to retake the airplane."

Jarrah is thought to have been the terrorist-pilot because he was the only of the four hijackers aboard known to have a pilot's license.

Mueller's description was disclosed in a brief passage far into the 858-page report to Congress. Previous statements by FBI and other government officials have been ambiguous about what occurred in the cockpit.

Mueller's explanation was based on the FBI's efforts to decipher the cacophonous sounds on the cockpit recorder and produce a comprehensive transcript, said one official, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

The FBI is convinced it may never know for certain what transpired in those final moments, but Mueller represented the information as the FBI's leading theory, this official said.

The same cockpit recording was played privately in April 2002 for family members of victims aboard Flight 93, and the FBI also provided them with its best effort at producing an understandable transcript.

Some family members indicated afterward they were led to believe that passengers used a food cart as a shield and successfully broke into the cockpit.

The FBI has been loath to publicly put forward a contradictory theory out of sensitivity to the families and because of uncertainty about what happened.

People who have heard the recording describe it as nearly indecipherable, containing static noises, cockpit alarms and wind interspersed with cries in English and Arabic. Near the end of the tape, sounds can be heard of breaking glass and crashing dishes — lending credence to the theory that passengers used the food cart to rush the jetliner's narrow aisle.

Separately, the data recorder showed the plane's wings rocking violently as the jet flew too low and too fast for safe flight.

Intelligence officials believe the likely target for Flight 93 was the White House, based on information from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaida terrorist leader in U.S. custody who is believed to have played a key role in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors have sought a U.S. judge's permission to play recordings from Flight 93 during the terrorism trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant in a U.S. case prosecutors have directly tied to the attacks. Moussaoui is accused of conspiring with the hijackers.

The government has said it can link Moussaoui to Jarrah, using a telephone number found on a business card recovered at the Shanksville, Pa., crash site. Prosecutors believe the card belonged to Jarrah and that Moussaoui had called the same number.

Moussaoui has acknowledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida but says he was not involved in the attacks.

My guess is the passengers did break into the cockpit and one dude was one cool character.

Nacke...Glick...Bingham...Beamer...Burnett

The Final Moments of United Flight 93
“We’re going to do something,” one of the passengers told his wife during a final phone call. Then a group of strangers banded together and took on the hijackers
By Karen Breslau
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Sept. 22 — United Flight 93 was late. After pushing off from the gate at 8:01 a.m., the Boeing 757 made its way slowly through the runway traffic at Newark International, finally taking off at 8:41 a.m., 40 minutes behind schedule. In the first-class cabin, Mark Bingham, a San Francisco publicist, had settled into his seat. Next to him was Tom Burnett, an executive for a health-care company in the Bay Area. It was a routine flight for both men. Bingham shuttled regularly between New York and San Francisco, working with technology companies; Burnett was on his way home from a business trip.
FURTHER BACK in the business-class cabin, Jeremy Glick, a 31-year-old sales manager for an Internet company, was in Row 11. Behind him sat Lou Nacke, a toy-company manager on his way to Sacramento for a day trip. In the main cabin was Todd Beamer, 32, a manager for software giant Oracle, headed from his home in New Jersey to the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters.
There was, in airline parlance, a “light load” that morning. Only 37 of the plane’s 182 seats were occupied. Some of the passengers had never planned to be on the flight. Nacke had booked his seat only the night before. Out to dinner with his family, he had a received a phone call from one of his customers who needed help with an inventory problem. Nacke rarely traveled, but, reluctant to let his client down, he planned to make a one-day trip to California, returning on the red-eye late Tuesday night.
Jeremy Glick was supposed to have been on Flight 93 a day earlier, but missed the Monday flight after getting stuck in traffic on his way to Newark Airport. It was his first business trip in months. Since the birth of his daughter, Emmy, three months ago, he had been reluctant to leave home. But there was a conference in San Francisco, and his wife had urged him to get back to work and stop worrying about the baby. Another passenger, Lauren Grandcolas was on her way home to Marin County, north of San Francisco, after attending her grandmother’s funeral in New Jersey. Originally scheduled on a later flight, she had been pleasantly surprised to easily get a standby seat on Flight 93 at the airport. “I can’t wait to see you,” she told her husband Jack in a message she left on the couple’s answering machine before dawn in California, telling him she would be home a few hours early.
At 8:45 a.m., four minutes after takeoff, Flight 93 was still climbing to cruising altitude, moving west across Pennsylvania, when, in New York, American Airlines Flight 11 plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At that same instant, hijackers were already in control of other aircraft. United Flight 175, which had taken off from Boston a minute earlier than Flight 11, was making a sharp turn over northern New Jersey, bearing down on the South Tower. American Airlines Flight 77, which had taken off for Los Angeles from Dulles at 8:10 a.m., had made its own U-turn in the skies over Kentucky, and was headed back toward Washington.
All three of these aircraft were under the control of the Boston air-traffic control center, which handles airline traffic in New England and New York airspace. While the Boston controllers were trying to deal with the three planes’ abrupt changes in course, bomb threats were being called in to the center. Cleveland, which takes control of flights as they pass into the Midwest, was receiving similar threats. Officials suspect that the bomb threats were intended to add to the chaos, distracting controllers from tracking the hijacked planes.

8:48 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 en route from Boston's Logan Airport to Los Angeles International with 92 people onboard, slams into the north tower, 1 World Trade Center.
9:05 a.m. Approximately 18 minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767 enroute from Boston to Los Angeles with 65 people onboard, hits the south tower, 2 World Trade Center.
9:21 a.m. New York City Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in New York City.
9:24 a.m. President Bush calls the crashes "an apparent terrorist attack on our country."
9:32 a.m. New York Stock Exchange closed
9:40 a.m. The FAA orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down. All flights at U.S. airports are stopped.
9:43 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 enroute from Dulles Airport outside Washington to LAX with 58 passengers and six crew members, crashes into the Pentagon. One of the building's five sides collapses.
9:45 a.m. The White House is evacuated.
9:59 a.m. The south tower of the World Trade Center collapses in a plume of ash and debris.
10:00 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco with 38 passengers and seven crew members, crashes just north of the Somerset County Airport, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Shortly before impact, a passenger called on his cell phone from a locked bathroom: "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" At this time there was concern the plane was headed to Camp David.

10:24 a.m. The FAA reports that all inbound transatlantic flights are to be diverted to Canada.
10:28 a.m. The World Trade Center's north tower collapses.
12:15 p.m. The United States closes some border crossings with Canada and Mexico.
1:02 p.m. New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani orders an evacuation of Manhattan south of Canal Street.
1:04 p.m. In a speech at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, President Bush announces that security measures are being taken and says: "Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
1:44 p.m. The Navy dispatches aircraft carriers and guided missile destroyers to New York and Washington. Around the country, fighters, airborne radar and refueling planes scramble. The North American Aerospace Defense Command go to its highest alert.
1:44 p.m. President Bush leaves Barksdale Air Force Base for Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base, home to the U.S. Strategic Command.
4:30 p.m. President Bush leaves Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska for Washington.
4:45 p.m. The City of New York announces that 200 firefighters have been killed and 78 police officers are missing.
5:20 p.m. Seven World Trade Center, a 47-story tower, collapses from ancillary damage.

By 9:35 a.m., both towers of the World Trade Center are in flames and Flight 77 is bearing down on the Pentagon. At this time, NEWSWEEK has learned, air-traffic controllers at the Cleveland center are listening “over the frequency,” the radio contact between cockpit and control center. They hear screams aboard the flight. Then a gap of 40 seconds with no sound. Then more screams. Then a voice, nearly unintelligible, saying something like “bomb on board.”
The controllers try to contact the plane, asking the pilot, Capt. Jason Dahl, to verify his altitude. There is no response from the cockpit. Minutes later, at 9:38 am, the plane makes a hairpin turn just south of Cleveland and heads for Washington. Air-traffic controllers hear a man, in thickly accented English saying “This is your captain. There is a bomb on board. We are returning to the airport.”
It’s possible the passengers never hear the false warning. The hijacker was accidentally speaking into a cockpit microphone that air-traffic controllers could hear, not the public-address system.
In the passenger cabin, it is bedlam. Three men wearing red bandannas are in control. The passengers had been herded to the back of the plane, near the galley. Burnett calls his wife, Deena, in California, where she is preparing breakfast for the couple’s three young daughters. “We’re being hijacked” he tells her, before giving the flight number and telling her to call authorities. When Tom calls back a few minutes later, Deena has the FBI on the phone. She patches Tom through so he can describe the men directly.
There are other phone calls. Jeremy Glick calls his wife, Lyz, in New York to say that three “Iranian looking” men, one with a red box strapped to his waist, have taken control of the plane and to call the authorities. He asks if it’s true, as he’s heard from another passenger, that two other planes have crashed into the World Trade Center.
From the back of the plane, Todd Beamer tries to use his credit card on an Airfone installed in one of the seatbacks, but cannot get authorization. His call is automatically routed to the Verizon customer-service center in Oakbrook, Ill. Although operators are used to crank calls from seatback phones, it is clear to the operator that Beamer’s report of a hijacking is genuine. His call is immediately sent to Verizon supervisor Lisa Jefferson who alerts the FBI. When Jefferson gets on the line at 9:45 a.m., she immediately begins interviewing Beamer. “What is your flight number? What is the situation? Where are the crew members?”
Beamer tells Jefferson that one passenger is dead. He doesn’t know about the pilots. One hijacker is in the rear of the plane, claiming to have a bomb strapped to his body. The conversation is urgent, but calm. Then Beamer says, “Oh my God, I think we’re going down.” Then adds, “No, we’re just turning.” At this point, investigators theorize, one of the hijackers was flying erratically. The plane plunges from its assigned altitude and the transponder is turned off.
Mark Bingham uses an Airfone to call his mother, Alice Hoglan, who is still asleep at her brother’s home in Saratoga, Calif., having been up late the night before caring for triplets. “Mom, this is Mark Bingham,” he tells her, so rattled he uses his last name. Bingham describes the situation for his mother, a United Airlines flight attendant. The call lasts about three minutes. Twice during the call, says Alice, “Mark was distracted. There was a five-second pause. I heard people speaking. There was murmuring, nothing loud.” She theorizes that Mark was talking to the other men, and planning to fight back.
At around the same time, Todd Beamer is telling the operator that the men plan “to jump” the hijacker in the back, claiming to have a bomb. “We’re going to do something,” Beamer tells operator Lisa Jefferson. “I know I’m not going to get out of this.” He asks Jefferson to recite the Lord’s Prayer with him. The last words Jefferson hears are “Are you ready guys? Let’s roll.”
It’s unclear when, in all of the telephony, Glick, Beamer, Bingham, Burnett and Nacke hatched their plot. It is also unclear if they attacked just once, or twice, first taking out the hijacker claiming to have the bomb, then storming the cockpit. Crucial evidence, NEWSWEEK has learned, may come from yet another phone call made by a passenger. Elizabeth Wainio, 27, was speaking to her stepmother in Maryland. Another passenger, she explains, had loaned her a cell phone and told her to call her family. “I have to go,” Wainio says, cutting the call short. “They’re about to storm the cockpit” referring to her fellow passengers.
Nacke is the only member of the group who is not known to have made a phone call, although his wife, Amy, did have a message on her answering machine that contained only noise and a click. United Airlines later told his family that he was apparently one of the fighters. “If you knew Lou,” says Nacke’s father-in-law, Dr. Robert Weisberg, “he never would have been far from the action.”
This much we know, they were big guys: Bingham was a 6-foot-4 rugby player; Glick, also a rugby player and judo champion; Beamer was 6 foot 1 and 200 pounds, and Nacke was a 5-foot-9, 200-pound weightlifter with a “Superman” tattoo on his shoulder. Investigators are operating on the theory that the men somehow made their way up 100 feet from the rear of the plane into the cockpit. The last transmission recorded is someone, probably a hijacker, screaming “Get out of here. Get out of here.” Then grunting, screaming and scuffling. Then silence.

A jumbo jet airframe just isn't designed for violent maneuvers. Once it went out of control, it's actually quite plausible that stuff started falling off.

Speaking more generally, everything has tolerance limits. Your TV set, a baseball bat, the human body, jumbo jets ... they all are designed, whether by man or God or nature, to only be able to withstand a certain amount of stress before physically breaking apart. That stress can be from G-forces, temperature, pressure, age, any number of things.

Think of it this way: Imagine you found a way to supercharge your car's engine so that you could suddenly drive at 800 mph. No funky attachments or anything, just a few simple alterations to what's already under the hood, and whammo, you've got SuperCar. Now imagine actually attempting to get it up to 800 mph. Go ahead and presume you're alone in the middle of the desert and have plenty of room to go in a straight line without having to worry about any of the normal hassles of driving like other traffic; it's just you, the car, and an empty landscape.

Now think about how your car acts at normal speeds. Think about how it operates at 25 mph; pretty darn smooth. Now think about the speed limit, around 70 mph. Perfectly acceptable, but the ride's somewhat bumpier, wind resistance affects your driving a bit more, etc. Now imagine really gunning it ... up to 100 or 110. Now your car's really being buffeted by the wind, it's somewhat harder to control, you hear creaks and jiggling and clacking that you don't normally hear, you can see the antenna really getting bent back somewhat, etc. Now roll down your window for a moment. Oops. Pretty nasty. Tolerable, but unpleasant.

As you can see, as the speed increases, the stresses on your car's frame (and engine) increase as well. Now imagine the jump from 100mph up to 800mph. Assuming that your own body could even handle the G-forces without you passing out, imagine what would happen to your car as it kept being pushed closer and closer to that magic 800mph limit ... eventually it would just start breaking apart. The wind stress alone would just start ripping pieces off ... the antenna, the rear view mirrors at first, then more vital pieces ... then pieces of the engine would start failing, because while you may have found a way to make you car's engine go 800mph, it doesn't change the fact that the engine's parts were never designed to be able to handle that sort of speed, that many RPMs, that high of an oil pressure, etc.

It's the same concept with the jumbo jet, except in many ways the jet is actually far more fragile than your car. There's a reason they have to have a cursory inspection every single time they land, a serious detailed inspection after every X number of flight hours, and a total stripdown and rebuild every couple of years or so. (Here's a very nice thread explaining the various levels of checks commercial airliners must go through, in both technical detail and in a simplified way that compares each sort of check to what its equivalent would be in the auto world (scroll down to "Avioniker's" post for that one).

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