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FLIGHT 93

Let's consider Flight 93. It crashed in Pennsylvania. We all know the basic story by now. A group of three passengers decided to stop the hijackers by force. Some of them had phoned their wives. But this information came out only later. What came earlier is what I find interesting. It has not been pursued.

On September 12, The Guardian, the liberal British newspaper, ran a story on the attacks. Toward the end of the report, we read this:

At 10.27 a.m. in New York, the second tower of the World Trade Centre came tumbling down.

Minutes later, news broke of another crash, this time around 80 miles south-east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At 9.58 a.m., an emergency dispatcher had answered a telephone call from a man who said he was a passenger locked in a bathroom on United Airlines flight 93. "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked," he told the dispatcher, while repeatedly insisting that the call was not a hoax. The plane was "going down", he said. He had heard some sort of explosion and said there was white smoke coming from the aircraft. Then the dispatcher lost him.

You might imagine that some reporter since September 12 might have followed up on this story. Why was there smoke coming into the cabin? What was the explosion? Who was the dispatcher? When was the call made? What was going on here?

A hint of an answer was published the next day in Newsday (Sept. 12).

FBI Probing Reports That F-16 Neared Pa. Hijack Plane

SHANKSVILLE, PA. -- William Crowley, a Pittsburgh FBI agent among those directing the search operation on a hijacked airliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pa. here, said today the FBI is looking into reports from local residents that an F-16 fighter jet was seen in the area of the crash before the plane hit the ground.

"We've heard that and we're looking into it," Crowley said.

United Airlines flight 93, a Boeing 757 headed from Newark Airport to San Francisco, was one of four hijacked Tuesday morning. It made a sharp turn after reaching Cleveland, heading south and east. It crashed shortly after 10 a.m., following earlier crashes of other airliners on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Asked whether the FBI had ruled out the possibility that the plane was shot down by military jets, Crowley said, "No we have not. We haven't ruled out anything yet....We certainly haven't come to that conclusion either."

Asked whether the Department of Defense had been questioned about whether an F-16 was in the area, he said, "I'm sure that's been asked." He said that was a matter for officials in Washington rather than field officers investigating the scene

[Rest of Newsday article, added by this website:]

On the day of the attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had "absolutely no information" that a military plane shot down another plane, and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said "I have not heard" any reports of a military action to down the plane.

At the news conference this morning, Crowley and Maj. Lyle Szupinka of the Pennsylvania State Police acknowledged that the debris field for the crashed jetliner is spread over a six-mile area and they urged local residents who have found debris in their yards to contact authorities.

As recently as yesterday, officials had said the debris was confined to a crater in an abandoned coal mine about 20 miles south of Johnstown. At the news conference today, they said wreckage had been found in the Indian Lakes residential area about six miles from the crash site.

Szupinka said, "How it got there, we're not sure." He described the debris there as "all very verysmall" and said it was possible it had been blown there by air currents.

[End of addition by this website:]

What we need is a full report, publicly verified by nongovernmental agencies other than the FBI, regarding the details of the flight recorder. We also need an unexpurgated version of the 30-minute loop tape of the cockpit recorder.

Yesterday, the day after I reported that we have heard nothing about the contents of the recorders, an an article appeared in USA Today. It reported on the testimony of an FBI agent about the contents of the Flight 93 cockpit recorder. Here's what we learn:

The digital recording, according to officials with knowledge of its contents, picks up sounds of people shouting and screaming in the cabin and cockpit shortly before the crash. But a high level of background noise has made it difficult for investigators to interpret exactly what was being said or done during the final minutes of the flight.

Also unclear from the recording is who was at the controls of the jet -- the hijackers or the passengers -- when it slammed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing all 44 aboard. A preliminary review of the jet's flight data recorder indicated that it turned on its back and flew relatively straight into the ground, sources said. . . .

Authorities have asked outside experts to analyze the recorder a second time in an attempt to glean more from its contents. The use of filters and other computer analysis of cockpit voice recorders is common after an accident.

So, what do we learn from this? Just about nothing. What about the original report regarding an explosion and smoke? What about the report of the F-16 in the vicinity? Not a word. All this is just not worth following up. Some things are just not newsworthy, don't you know?

The government has made posthumous heroes of the three men who supposedly attacked the hijackers. What are the odds that we will soon see an official report that says that just after they secured the plane, an F-16 shot it down?

At this point, we don't know what happened in the final minutes of Flight 93. Three men are now national heroes. They had the right idea. But as to what happened, we don't know. The government ought to say, "We don't know."

I called an old friend of mine, a retired airline pilot with about 30 years in the air. He told me, "I would not trust anything the government says is on those tapes."

So, we'll wait. We'll see if a group of independent, non-government organizations gets access to the tape. We'll see if the major news media are given open access to all of it, not just summaries.

As for the other seven boxes... nothing has been released so far. One of these days.

Real Soon Now.

 

 

David Irving says:

THE above item, to which we have added where indicated, is the only other website page which I have seen to focus interest on the U.S. Government's attempt to cover up what actually happened in the skies above Pennsylvania.

The most likely scenario, and the only one to explain that the wreckage is scattered over a wide area, and that the crater shown to the media is so small and free of major wreckage, is that the airliner was blown up in mid-air.

FBI Agent Crowley himself ruled out a terrorist bomb. That leaves only intervention by the F16 fighter planes, scrambled on President Bush's orders with orders to shoot.

Why does he not come clean? The U.S. public would understand that in "war" tough decisions sometimes have to be made. Instead it seems that the facts are being suppressed, and the U.S. media are conniving in the cover-up.

Was that the real reason why he invited Todd Beamer's young widow to stand beside him when he addressed the U.S. Congress? A deep and human sense of guilt -- that he had given the order that killed her husband and the other passengers?

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