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Attorney General Eric Holder faced tough questions during a Senate hearing yesterday, but the toughest of all came after the lawmakers filed out of the room. Alice Hoagland, whose son, Mark Bingham, was killed in the 9/11 hijacking of Flight 93, politely laid out her own concerns with the plan to put accused terrorists on trial in Manhattan. "I can't help thinking that it does make New York City a more dangerous place and a target and it will give these ugly people . . . every elegant access to all of the media sources in the United States. We...

What The Heroes of Flight 93 Could Teach Obama If They Sat Together On a Plane 2009 November 13 tags: Flight 93, Ft. Hood Massacre, Obama, Terrorismby Jeanette Pryor . Eight years ago, a young father boarded United Flight 93, waving good-bye to his two sons and lovely pregnant wife, Lisa. Shortly after the plane took off, three radical Islamic Jihadists hijacked Todd Beamer’s plane and forced the passengers to the back of the aircraft. Phone calls made to family told of the horror in New York and Washington D.C. The stewardess, the businessmen, the young girl all looked at...

The desecration has begun. A ground-breaking ceremony was held at the Shanksville crash site on Saturday. Bulldozers will start reshaping the land this week. Never mind that the only rule for the Flight 93 memorial's design competition was that the landscape had to be left as it was. In order to complete the full arc of the Crescent of Embrace (now called a broken circle, but still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent), an earthen causeway will have to be built across the wetlands that lie about 50 vertical feet below the crash site. A contractor posted recently about his decision...

Burned by the resulting firestorm of protest, the (National) Park Service agreed to get rid of Islamic symbol shapes in the Flight 93 Memorial, but they never did. They added an extra arc of trees, and they call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent.

People rhetorically ask where God was on 9/11 as though He wasn't anywhere. Or they ask it accusingly, the way a detective asks a suspect if he has an alibi. "Where were you on the morning of September the 11th?""Can anyone confirm your alibi?" God was there, at every point in time and space of significance in the events of that day. He was in the date; He was in our mouths; He was in an open Bible found at the crash site (more on that in a moment); a powerful distortion of Him was the motive force behind the...

The following is a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder aboard United Airlines Flight 93. All times are in EDT on Sept. 11, 2001. Text in parentheses was translated from Arabic. "Unintelligible" indicates that the tape couldn't be transcribed.

Good evening fellow Freepers, I just want to send out this FYI as many of you have been amazingly kind in your thoughts and prayers after hearing the news about my father on Flight 93. For those of you who don't know the background of the "Walk With Joe" - here you go.... On 9/11 my father, Joe Driscoll – an avid walker/hiker, was on his way to Yosemite National Park to go on an annual hiking trip with some friends. The flight he was on, United #93, never made it to California . It was hijacked and crashed in...

News broke yesterday that construction on the Flight 93 memorial will begin in November. EC brings back guest and author Alec Rawls to talk about the frightening design they've settled on to honor the heroes who saved that plane from hitting Washington DC... and gave their lives to protect others.

The federal government will pay about $9.5 million to acquire land so the Flight 93 National Memorial can be built by the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. With the National Park Service reaching agreements with eight landowners, construction is expected to start in November, Salazar said. Salazar called the site where the plane crashed, near Shanksville in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, hallowed ground and said the nation was "eternally grateful for the heroes of Flight 93." United Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when it was diverted by hijackers...

Smoke Cloud from Flight 93 after impact We shall never forget. We will never forget. Our leaders have forgotten. History is doomed to repeat itself.

After denying for 4 years that the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 will contain 44 inscribed memorial panels (equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists) the Memorial Project has announced a new design that appears to collapse three of the panels into one: Artist's depiction of the slightly altered design for the Sacred Ground Plaza. [If you are a newcomer, the Plaza sits in the position of the star on architect Paul Murdoch's giant Islamic crescent and star flag. They call the giant crescent a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle--what symbolically...

Homeland Security: Despite overwhelming support in and out of Congress, legal protection for airline passengers who report suspicious behavior is being blocked by Democratic leaders. Wasn't one 9/11 enough for them? Were it not for the courage and sacrifice of the passengers of United Flight 93 who forced their plane into a Pennsylvania field, many in Congress might not be here today, with a gaping hole where the U.S. Capitol still stands. We wonder if this fact is appreciated by those trying to block final passage of the so-called "John Doe" provision protecting from legal action those who report suspicious...

BOSTON (AP) — A woman on a trans-Atlantic flight diverted to Boston for security concerns passed several notes to crew members, urinated on the cabin floor and made comments the crew believed were references to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks, according to an affidavit filed Thursday. Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., was to appear in federal court later Thursday on a charge of interfering with a flight crew after disrupting United 923 as it flew from London to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members, landed safely with the escort of...

SOMERSET, Pa. -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the U.S. government will not use eminent domain to seize people's land for a permanent Flight 93 memorial and instead will renew negotiations with landowners near the terrorist crash site in Somerset County. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Salazar met with families of victims and landowners on Friday in Shanksville to discuss issues surrounding the planned national memorial for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, fatal hijacking. Specter's office said Friday's meeting also focused on what still needs to be done for the memorial to be complete in time for the...

Two Pennsylvanian’s quit the Flight 93 Memorial Commission last week, protesting Park Service plans to condemn five crash-site properties that it never negotiated for in good faith. Consider the case of the Lambert family, who have been on their land for three generations: "It's absolutely a surprise. I'm shocked by it. I'm disappointed by it," said Tim Lambert, who owns nearly 164 acres that his grandfather bought in the 1930s. The park service plans to condemn two parcels totaling about five acres — land, he said, he had always intended to donate for the memorial. "To the best of my...

Almost anyone who reads this remembers the brave passengers of flight 93, who, on 9/11, overpowered the hijackers on their flight and caused the airplane to crash in a Pennsylvania field instead of the White House or Capital. Certainly we would all agree that those brave souls should be memorialized. But do you imagine any of them would want their memorial for selfless sacrifice to come at the price of their fellow American’s property? Can anyone explain why a memorial to these brave Americans must be 2,200 acres in size and force property owners in the area where the airplane...

PITTSBURGH – The government will begin taking land from seven property owners so that the Flight 93 memorial can be built in time for the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the National Park Service said.

As details of the Maersk Alabama episode emerge, one clear lesson surfaces: The Spirit of United Flight 93 lives on. The ending of the hostage story at sea will soon be followed by the requisite second guessing and questions. Not to mention the inevitable criticism of the killing (someone will call it execution without due process) of three pirates. Then, if the fourth pirate is brought to the U.S. for trial, that promises to become a legal mini-series. But all of that will pale in importance in the face of what happened this Easter Sunday at sea.

For two years, Tom Burnett Sr. has been speaking out against the crescent-shaped memorial to Flight 93. This week Beverly Burnett (mother of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.) stepped into the public eye to support her husband, and to make her own appeal for a full investigation: Today, I am adding my voice for a full and transparent review of the National Park Service and Flight 93 design selection process that produced Crescent of Embrace. Does it have Islamic symbols or doesn’t it? Let's settle this once and for all. Why do you think Tom Sr. opposed this design?...

The "war on terror" went away with George W. Bush, but there's still a postscript here and there to be attended to. If you're one of the dwindling band of Americans interested in the Flight 93 memorial, this exchange with the presiding honchos of the "Circle of Embrace" (formerly the "Crescent of Embrace") makes for glum reading: “In your depiction, who is breaking the circle?”“The passengers and crew,” said [Memorial Project Manager] Reinbold.“But the circle is a symbol of peace,” Rawls continued. “Who broke the peace? It was the TERRORISTS who broke the peace on 9/11.”Reinbold countered that that the...

The official explanation for the Crescent of Embrace design is that the path of Flight 93 breaks the circle, turning it into the giant crescent. They call it the Circle of Embrace now, but the Memorial Project’s own website acknowledges that the circle is still broken: In summary, the memorial is shaped in a circular fashion, and the circle is symbolically "broken" or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site... The fact that the Circle of Embrace is really a broken circle means two things. First, it means that the giant...

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Posted By:Catherine MoyPermalink9/11 Victims Families: Obama Must Visit Gitmo and Reverse Dangerous Order Debra Burlingame’s brother, Charles “Chick” Burlingame, died as he piloted the plane that was hijacked by terrorists on 9/11. She opposes the closure of Gitmo. Families of those killed on 9/11, a Gold Star mother, and Sen. James Inhofe, sent a strong message today at Move America Forward’s press conference at the National Press conference in Washington DC: Keep Gitmo open for the sake of Americans who will be endangered by President Obama’s order to close the facility for terrorists. MAF has the...

Background For three years, the Flight 93 Memorial Project has been relentlessly dishonest, publicly denying damning facts like the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent while making excuses for these facts in private. Example: Before the 2007 Memorial Project meeting, Project Partner and Flight 93 family member Patrick White was asked by the press about claims that the giant Crescent of Embrace points to Mecca . He said that all of the claims about what is in the design had been thoroughly investigated and been found to be untrue and "preposterous." In private conversation at the meeting itself, White acknowledged...

It has been more than seven years since 20-year-old Deora Bodley and 39 other passengers and crew died in the fiery crash of United Airlines Flight 93, their hijacked plane disintegrating in a grove of hemlock trees outside Shanksville, Pa. Most of the remains from the tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, were never recovered, making the bowl-shaped crash site in the western Pennsylvania countryside an unofficial cemetery and, for surviving relatives, sacred ground. But efforts to buy property for a national Flight 93 memorial have bogged down in federal red tape and a protracted land dispute, angering family members and...

PHILADELPHIA – Relatives of those who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93 want the Bush Administration to seize the land needed for a memorial where the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa., in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Families of Flight 93 sent a letter earlier this month asking President George W. Bush to empower the Secretary of the Interior to take the land in dispute from a homeowner who had been in negotiations with the National Parks Service, said Patrick White, vice president of the families' organization. The group says ground must be broken early next year in time for...

If you have a fast connection, there is a high quality viewing option at the lower right of the viewing screen here. Part 1 focused on the blatant Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial, and on Tom Burnett's efforts to stop this desecration of his son's grave. Part 2 is about the terrorist memorializing features. On first examination, the Islamic symbol shapes in the Flight 93 memorial are found to be slightly imprecise: The giant crescent does not point quite exactly at Mecca . The Sacred Ground Plaza that sits roughly in the position of the star on a...

Defenders of the Flight 93 memorial repeatedly insist that the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent HAS to be a coincidence.

Powerful video of Tom Burnett Senior and Alec Rawls at the August 2nd Memorial project meeting. The clip below is Part 1 of Alec’s new video exposé, starting with Mr. Burnett 's appeal to the American people to please help him stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic shaped crescent atop his son's grave.

Lisa Beamer, whose husband died on Flight 93, is left with her sons, David, 3, (left) and Drew, 18 months, and a third baby on the way The Real Story of Flight 93 The terrorists had years to plan their hijacking. The passengers had just minutes to respond. But a band of patriots came together to defy death and save a symbol of freedom. What happened on that flight—and inside the cockpit Dec. 3 issue — In the first few days after September 11, Lisa Beamer could not sleep for more than an hour. Then she would wake up ...

The federal law authorizing the Flight 93 National Memorial has been changed to allow the federal government to use eminent domain proceedings to obtain the 275-acre Svonavec Inc. property. Patrick White, vice president of The Families of Flight 93 and buyers agent for the Families, said on Wednesday that the Justice Department would be the one to file for condemnation and will make the decision if and when to do so. It is not the Families of Flight 93’s decision, he said. “The time has come for the residents and citizens of Somerset County to understand what the law is...

(CNN) -- In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda's top leader in Afghanistan vows more "large-scale" attacks against the United States and its allies. Mullah Omar, chief of the Taliban, is shown in this undated headshot photo. In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies... Also on the video is a reading from the will of Saeed al Ghamdi, one of the 19 hijackers involved...

SHANKSVILLE — As the late morning sun began piercing steel-gray skies, U.S. Sen. John McCain thought back seven years. Directly above where the Republican presidential nominee was standing Thursday morning on a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, 40 heroes fought back against terrorism.

THE HEROES OF FLIGHT 93 AND HOW THEY HELPED FOIL AN ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL The terrorists used knives and box cutters to commandeer the three airplanes and then crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They also indicated that they had bombs. GTE Airphone calls from the hijacked aircraft indicated that the terrorists, who numbered between three and six on each aircraft, would take control of the aircraft by taking a stewardess or passenger and either threatening, or actually cutting or stabbing them, and then take control of the aircraft when the crew came out...

Here is video of Sen. John McCain today, September 11, 2008, speaking briefly at a ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to remember the brave passengers of Flight 93 who fought back against the terrorists on 9/11. The second video shows McCain laying a wreath there . . . . . (see video at link)

Crescent of Betrayal   By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 08, 2008 Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Alec Rawls, the author of Crescent of Betrayal, a soon-to-be published book about the giant Mecca-oriented crescent that the Park Service is planning to plant at the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania . Given the urgent public need to know, WND books has allowed Mr. Rawls to make a preliminary draft of his book available for free download until the print edition comes out in 2009. Mr. Rawls is working with Tom Burnett Sr., father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett...

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s campaign will donate $5,000 to the Flight 93 National Memorial. Paul Lindsay, the senator’s Pennsylvania campaign press spokesman, on Tuesday confirmed a report by network television stations that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate’s campaign will donate the contribution it received in April from Ted Stevens’ Northern Light PAC to the memorial. Indicted Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska pleaded not guilty on Thursday to accusations of planning to conceal thousands of dollars worth of gifts from an oil-services company. King Laughlin, campaign manager for the National Park Foundation, said he was aware of the news reports, but...

My Fellow American, Once upon a time it was September 11, 2001, and our homeland came under attack. On that fateful Tuesday morning 40 free people, the passengers and crew aboard United Flight 93, seized the opportunity to launch a counterattack against our enemy. Though each of the 40 - including our son Todd - was killed in action, together they succeeded in preventing the additional loss of life on the ground and, most likely, further disaster in our nation’s Capital. This day, this event, this true story of courage in action needs to be remembered and told to future...

The father of a Flight 93 victim says a crescent-shaped design as part of a memorial to the hijacked airliner "does not properly honor our people." Tom Burnett Sr. of Northfield, Minnesota, objects because a crescent is sometimes used as a symbol of Islam and the September 11th attacks were plotted by Muslims. Burnett spoke today at a meeting of the commission advising the National Park Service on the design. He wants an investigation of how the design was chosen. But Park Service officials and family members who like the design say it was fairly and impartially selected out of...

Folks, we have a national disaster brewing over the 9-11 Flight 93 memorial. Years ago an uproar ensued over the plan to memorialize those who died on Flight 93, considered the first battle on the War on Terror which Americans won, under the Islamic symbol of the crescent. I am not against Islam in general, and I am not of the opinion that vast Muslim community is ready for war with the rest of the world. But Islamic extremists are responsible for 9-11 and many other attacks on the West before and after 9-11, so we must make sure that...

On Friday, just outside of Dallas/Ft Worth International Airport, the first national memorial to 9/11 heroes was dedicated. Shirley Hall, who is a Flight Attendant and the Vice President of the 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial Foundation, explained the memorial sculpture's symbolism during the memorial's July 4, 2008, dedication ceremony: As volunteers on this project, we have each spent time describing this statue in our attempts to raise funds to turn Valerie’s dream into a reality. From Bryce Cameron Liston’s original interpretation to the final magnificent piece of art you see here today, each of us has shared our ideas on...

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. I made my long-delayed Flight 93 pilgrimage a week before July 4 this year. This is where the United Airlines plane crashed on 9/11. It's the final resting place of 40 passengers and crew, some of whom apparently overwhelmed a group of terrorists - in all likelihood saving lives and national treasure in Washington, D.C., the terrorists' target destination. I've always marveled at the story: the image of ordinary people accepting what surely they feared would be a fatal challenge. On my brief visit, I learned there was even more to the story. Before they acted, they made...

U.S. officials are being advised in internal government documents to avoid referring publicly to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups as Islamic or Muslim, and not to use terms like jihad or mujahedeen, which "unintentionally legitimize" terrorism. "There' s a growing consensus [in the Bush administration] that we need to move away from that language," said a former senior administration official who was involved until recently in policy debates on the issue. Instead, in two documents circulated last month by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the multiagency center charged with strategic coordination of the U.S. war on terror, officials are...

Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN) gave a House speech this month, supporting Mr. Burnett's opposition to the crescent design. The speech is entered in the Congressional Record here, along with supporting statements from Tom Burnett Sr. (father of murdered Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.). That makes two Congressmen now who have come out publicly against the crescent memorial. (Tom Tancredo took the lead last November, asking the Park Service to choose a completely new design.) News coverage revs up confrontation at this Saturday’s public meetingRamstad's speech, and our ongoing petition drive, netted a full width banner headline on the...

April 07, 2008 © 2008 WorldNetDaily A group of concerned citizens has been raising alarms about the Islamic elements planned for the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pa., for years. And a member of Congress has demanded the National Park Service make changes in its plans. But there's been no substantive response, and now the activists say it's time for the American people to let officials know whether they want to pay for and have installed in the memorial a crescent that points to Mecca to make up a "mihrab," the foundational point for every Islamic mosque, a tower that...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned and helped execute the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. He also planned the 1993 World Trade Center Attack, the attacks in Bali and Kenya that killed hundreds more, and attacks that never had the chance to take place thanks to his capture and interrogation by American intelligence agents. We know this because KSM himself openly brags about his atrocities as a point of pride. Now some have decided to help him commit his final atrocity -- by painting himself as a victim: On Monday, some six years after 9/11, military prosecutors filed charges against Khalid...

Kevin Jaques: U.S. response to 9/11 should conform to sharia lawDr. Kevin Jaques is one of the Three Mosqueteers. Of the three academics who are helping architect Paul Murdoch to plant a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site, Jaques was most central to the Park Service’s fraudulent internal investigation. He has also left a revealing paper trail. Shortly after 9/11, Indiana University School of Law sponsored a forum on the likely legal fallout from the attacks: consequences for immigration law, civil rights, etcetera. As the university’s resident expert on Islamic (sharia) law, Jaques was invited to...

The terrorists had years to plan their hijacking. The passengers had just minutes to respond. But a band of patriots came together to defy death and save a symbol of freedom. What happened on that flight—and inside the cockpit follows. (Please click the source above to access the article)

Security: Newly released books and films show a growing pop-culture bias against U.S. counterterror efforts. It's another sign the pendulum is swinging back to a 9/10 state of mind. Six years ago we were united as a nation against a common enemy — 300 million Americans resolved to defeat Islamic extremists. Even Hollywood was on board. But as the nightmare that befell our nation dims, we have turned our anger inward. Now the enemy is portrayed in pop culture as the government, the military and law enforcement — the very forces aligned to protect us from the Islamist enemy. The...

Inviting Ahmadinejad was not enough. It turns out, Columbia University has opened a new School of Terrorism. http://www.columbiasupportsterror.com/

Homeland Security: We've warned for years that an Islamist underground exists in this country, secretly working to take over the U.S. Now the mainstream media is waking up to the threat. Yes, theirs is an ambitious plan. But the enemy lurking within is assiduous, patient and well-organized. We are only now starting to see its tentacles, thanks to a landmark federal terror-financing case under way in Dallas. News about the secret Islamist plot against the U.S. is starting to trickle out from the few media covering the trial against the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in America. It...