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.

There was nothing found at a distance from the crash site that is not perfectly consistent with 1)partial breakdown of structural integrity caused by extreme maneuvers (that's techie for "the plane was and a few bits sheared off) and 2)normal dispersal from the crash.

Except for the pieces of human remains. Unless the plane was "gyrating out of control" while a moose bit someone's sister while standing on the wing.

"Although controllers don't have complete details of the Air Force's chase of the Boeing 757, they have learned the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet, the employee said."

360-degree turns? Did Maxine Waters write this?

I have to assume the writer meant the F-16 was having to do complete circles to match the speed of the airliner... which is bogus.

While the speed an F-16 can achieve is far faster than the top speed of a 757, the F-16 is certainly capable of flying slower than its top speed and matching and pacing the 757 if necessary.

Towers just don't fall like trees. These towers were designed to support loads from above, and that's all. How in the world would they have enough lateral strength to support the loading necessary to impart rotational momentum on that big a mass?

Once those towers started falling they were going to take the shortest path toward the center of the earth, straight down. This was a very sophisticated attack, and the attackers would have to know this. It's not rocket science!

Actually, it is probably more complex than rocket science.

Assuming the bombers knew the building would fall straight down...or that the attack itself was very sophisticated... is wrong. A sophisticated, knowledgable attacker would have known that the van bomb was inadequate to the task and would also have known where the best placement was... they didn't.

The testimony of some of the conspirators was that they expected to blow out the side supports "and have the building fall into the second tower."

Silas-

A fighter pilot spends 5 hours chasing around New York and Washington asking planes to land and looking for bogies. Nobody knows what's going on, no real details, but lots of rumors and scuttlebut. Information flow is chaotic and contradictory. Some people like sensationalism, some people are venting frustration and fear. He lands, and speaks to other pilots and ground crew who know that authorization to shoot has been given, and that Flight 93 has augered in in PA. Someone says, "I heard it was shot down".

The pilot is interviewed and he says, "I heard from someone the Pennsylvania plane was shot down."

This "news" based on tired, frightened people who just do not KNOW what the heck is going on, gets reported as "news" worldwide in two hours.

Later on, we find that ther just were no planes with live ammo nearby. The "fighter jet" eyewitnesses saw turns out to be a white Lear or Cessna twin jet. The debris field is actually a bit smaller than initially reported, and it looks like the plane broke up a bit before crashing. We have all learned a bit since those first 12 or 20 hours, and the story pieces together a little differently.

Because of the Web, the first confused stories filed by people who did not have all the facts (but were still reporting what they honestly heard) are still out there, for us to read.

Actually, considering that lots of al Queda stuff was going on, like calling in bomb threats to hundreds of control towers and three flight control centers, it would not surprise me if there were calls to newspapers with "eyewitness accounts" and "I am a flight controller. I can't give my name but..."

In other words, deliberate disinformation which could be delivered with very little risk to the perpetrator.

We do know there are many hostile operatives in the US (and I sometimes wonder if some carry press passes).

Anyway you look at it our goverment failed us big time on 9/11. And now they are hidding the facts. The plane was shot down. Simple. Passengers could have fought but I do not think they crashed the plane into a field. I guess I am an Axhole for believing that. The Goverment never lies...

I believed what you are saying for about a month. In October of 2001, I played golf with an FBI Agent who was investigating not this flight, but the Pentagon flight. Eyewittness accounts had the plan inverted and intact when it crashed. We all love a conspiracy, but your theory (shared by a lot of us) has too many holes. Better to realize that the terrorists realized that they could not defend themselves against the superior numbers of a brave assault and they took the coward's way out. That is what happened.

Answer me this: If the passengers did not gain access to the cockpit (ie. the cockpit was sealed with the hijackers commanding the plane) then why would the hijackers deliberately crash the plane? It doesn't make sense.

The hijackers knew that the passengers were trying to retake the cockpit from them, and might well succeed.

So rather than possibly lose to the passengers and end up dead or in an American prison, thus "failing" in the eyes of Allah, the hijackers decided that going for the "sure thing" and crashing the plane immediately and killing 40 Americans (33 passengers, 7 crew) was good enough to earn them their martyrdom. So that's what they did.

The point of the article is that contrary to earlier assumptions that the passengers might have actually broken into the cockpit and been physically struggling with the hijackers for control of the plane when it went down, they actually had not made it into the cockpit (yet) at the time the plane crashed. It's not saying they *couldn't* get into the cockpit, just that they hadn't by the time the hijackers decided to end it on their own terms.

But again, the passenger uprising *was* the reason for it, and they're still heroes who saved countless lives and a priceless national landmark/symbol at the intended target.

But the truth ain't quite like Hollywood, so therefore the passengers were not really heroes. Is that the point of this story?

Contrary to many other people, I really don't see anything derogatory in the article, and no indication that it's trying to "de-hero" the passengers.

In fact, it goes out of its way to quote a lot of folks who specifically say that they're still heroes even in the new scenario, and doesn't even try to find anyone to disagree.

It's just saying, prior popular belief had the passengers actually grappling with the hijackers in the cockpit, but the actual events were somewhat different.

I think the line that people are reading negatively is, "This theory...discounts the popular perception of insurgent passengers grappling with terrorists to seize the plane's controls." But I think it's a mistake to read that as "discounts the perception of heroism". Instead, it's just literally saying, it contradicts the notion that the passengers were literally fighting over the controls of the plane at the time it went down.

For people who wonder why the article was written and presume an ulterior motive, the fact remains that this is newly released information, and disseminating information is the news media's job.

The only new concrete(?) piece of information being reported in this story is that cockpit tapes seem to reveal that a hijacker apparently gave a command to another hijacker to crash the plane.

If true, this command could have been given during a fight in the cockpit. (I happen to think this is a stronger possibility than not, but there you go.)

In any event, the exact details of what actually unfolded do not matter in the end (and will never be known for certain, anyway), because there is no question but that some of the passengers fought back and were indeed valiant heroes. We know this from solid evidence. Beyond that, it's all theory and guessing games.

Regards,
LH

Except for the pieces of human remains.

I can assure you that if a plane is tumbling out of control violently enough to rip pieces of the plane off, pieces of passenger can go with them as well.

Furthermore, a 700+ mph crash can fling pieces of debris (and body parts) amazing distances. As a car or plane breaks up in high-speed crashes, various parts begin to spin with enormous force and can "catapult" parts of themselves or other pieces of debris off in practically any direction, like a baseball batter hitting a fastball.

Finally, another poster has pointed out that one of the hijackers may have set off an explosive belt during the descent, which would have left body parts (his, or someone else's) scattered through the air.

None of these three scenarios require a shootdown by a missile.

If you had bothered to read the article you cited, it is WND quoting from the Mirror. It is third hand bullshit, as anyone who is not a dope can plainly see. It says much about the credibility of the WND that they use the Mirror as the source for their article.

There has been much more written about the crash of flight 93 than that single WND article quoting the not credible Mirror which is worse than our National Enquirer.

The sum total of all that has been written by credible sources leads anyone who is not a nut to conclude that the airplane crashed intact due to the passengers attempting to take over the cockpit.

Get a clue, nitwit.

Since you are too thick to notice that the WND report is based on the Mirror, I thought I would help you out by selecting quotes from your cite.

"Echoing reports made immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, several eyewitnesses claim in a report by London's Daily Mirror"

"The Mirror report quotes multiple residents in and around Shanksville, Pa., "

"For instance, the Mirror reports some"

"The Daily Mirror cites other factors "

See some of my earlier posts giving links to an article that states that the terrorists were shouting "Get out of here! Get out! Get out of here!" a few minutes before the end of the tape.

The new information from digitally filtered processing reveals someone giving the order to crash the plane, but that is after the Get Out comments.

Seems likely to me that the hijackers were shouting because passengers were pushing their way into the cabin. Cowards hate losing, hate having to face the music, and they probably thought that the passengers just might compromise their mission.

Imagine being in prison with other al Quaeda and having your cellmates know that YOU failed in your critical mission, that a bunch of American civilians beat you up and a female flight attendant tied you up with First Class cloth napkins?

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