 Previous
statements by FBI and other government
officials have been ambiguous about what
occurred in the
cockpit.
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this website] 
Friday, August 8, 2003FBI:
"9-11 Hijackers Crashed Flight 93" By TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press WASHINGTON - A Sept. 11 hijacker
in the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93
instructed terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah to
crash the jetliner moments before it slammed into a
Pennsylvania field because of a fierce passenger
uprising in the cabin, recently disclosed testimony
by the FBI director shows. 
David Irving
comments: BIT by bit the US Government is obliged
to edge closer to the acknowledgement that
a US fighter plane brought down the United
Airlines flight 93 in Shanksville,
Pennsylvania, or at very least caused its
crash.
We have retained and
posted on this website complete reports on
the mysteries of that tragedy -- what
experienced observers on the ground saw
and heard, the burned and charred papers
that drifted across the countryside for
miles,  the plane's engine found over a mile
away from the ground impact, the FBI's
refusal to release cockpit tapes, the
FBI's order to a ground controller not to
release the recording of a phone call made
by a terrified passenger who reported an
explosion and white smoke in the cabin,
and -- perhaps most significantly of all
-- the pilot of another plane, recorded
by Cleveland Air Traffic Control whose
transmission ends with the words
[Click
here for the clip] "... There
appears to be a puff of black smoke."
This was just before
UA93 crashed -- not a column of
smoke, but a puff of smoke, hanging
in the air, with all that that
implied.
Eventually the truth
will come out, perhaps when there is a
regime change at the White House. The
FBI's latest report appears to be designed
to pave the way for a subsequent "theory"
that the hijackers may have deliberately
crashed the plane when they saw the F16
closing in and realised that the game was
up: from that it will be but a short step
to admit that the fighter plane actually
expended one of its missiles, as I
believe.   |
The theory described
by FBI Director Robert Mueller, based on the
government's analysis of cockpit recordings,
discounts the popular perception of insurgent
passengers grappling with terrorists inside the
cockpit, trying to seize the plane's controls,
immediately before the crash.The government's findings - laid out deep within
the July 24 congressional report on the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks - 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 newly published excerpts from
Mueller's testimony appear at odds with what
families of some passengers have come to believe
happened. 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 overwhelm the
hijackers. In phone calls from the plane, four
passengers said they and others decided to fight
the hijackers after learning of the attacks on the
World Trade Center in New York that morning. "In the cockpit! In the cockpit!" the passengers
are heard yelling, according to Alice Hoglan
of Los Gatos, Calif., who was among family members
permitted to listen to the cockpit recording.  Her son, Mark Bingham
[above, the
acknowledged homosexual], died in the
crash. She said the recording and a transcript the
FBI provided to her and other families "doesn't
leave very much doubt at all that passengers were
able to get that cockpit door open." President Bush and Attorney General
John Ashcroft have regularly praised the
courage of those aboard Flight 93. "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. Thirty-three passengers, seven crew members and
the four hijackers died when Flight 93 crashed, one
of four hijackings that killed more than 3,000
people on Sept. 11. Citing transcripts of the
still-secret cockpit
recordings, 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." Hoglan said the FBI's transcript quotes one
hijacker after fighting breaks out in the cabin
asking another hijacker in the cockpit in Arabic,
"Finish her/it now?", and she believed they were
discussing whether to crash the plane. The response
from the second hijacker, she remembered, was
either "wait" or "not now." Jarrah is thought to have been the
terrorist-pilot because he was the only one of the
four hijackers aboard known to have a pilot's
license. The congressional report also describes
the hijackers wearing bandanas and carrying knives,
and passengers reported seeing the captain and
co-pilot lying on the floor of the first-class
section, presumably dead. Mueller's depiction of
the events 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. 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 believe passengers
used a food cart as a shield and successfully broke
into the cockpit.  "It
is totally obvious listening to that flight
recorder that they made it into the cockpit," said
Deena Burnett, who lost her husband,
Thomas E. Burnett Jr., (right) on
Flight 93. "You cannot listen to the tape and
understand it any other way."
She declined to discuss specifics of the tape
because federal prosecutors
have asked families not to
describe the recording. She remembered
hearing a hijacker telling Jarrah in Arabic to
crash the plane deliberately, as Mueller described,
and Jarrah
refusing. Burnett also said U.S. authorities, including
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novak, told
families in April 2002 that the recording indicates
passengers made their way into the cockpit. Hoglan said the hijackers inside the cockpit are
heard yelling "No!" at the sound of breaking glass
- presumably from the food cart - and that the
final spoken words on the recorder seemed to be an
inexplicably calm voice in English instructing,
"Pull it up." She said the English voice toward the end of the
recording was so distinct that she believes it's
evident the speaker was inside 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
cockpit. 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 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. Novak, the
prosecutor quoted by Burnett and other family
members, is one of the lead attorneys in the
Moussaoui case. 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. Moussaoui has acknowledged allegiance to Osama
bin Laden and al-Qaida but says he was not involved
in the attacks. © 2003 The Associated Press 
Full text of the 858 page July 24
congressional report to the US Congress on the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: http://datacenter.ap.org/wdc/911report.pdf-
Our
dossier on United Airlines Flight
93
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