Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

int. of Melodie Homer on

American Morning

, CNN, 9/11/06, CR, 11, 456n70, FBI 302 of Tara Campbell, “FBI 302s ACARS,” B11, T7, CF;

2

Dahl nonplussed:

CR, 11, 456n70.

3

“Mayday!”/“Ladies and gentlemen”:

“Air Traffic Control Recording,” NTSB, 12/21/01. The hijackers’ transmission is rendered with minor variations—though essentially the same—in the 9/11 Commission Report, the NTSB’s “Air Traffic Control Recording,” and the transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recorder prepared for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006. We have used the latter (CR, 12, “Air Traffic Control Recording,” Government Exhibit P200056T 01-455-A [ID], “Transcript of the Flight Voice Recorder for UA Flight 93, Commission Copy,” B17, T7, CF).

4

panting:

Jere Longman,

Among the Heroes

, NY: Perennial, 2003, 70, 83;

5

Some investigators:

CR, 12.

6

Recorder survived:

Every commercial aircraft is required to carry two black boxes that record data about each flight—a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and a Flight Data Recorder (FDR). Skeptics have raised questions as to the whereabouts of the recorders that were aboard the four flights that crashed on 9/11. Both of Flight 93’s recorders were recovered in readable condition. The CVR for Flight 93 ran on a loop, constantly recording over itself, represented by the thirty-one surviving minutes of sound that we have from inside the cockpit.

The recorders from Flight 77 were found, but only the FDR contained usable data—its CVR was too badly burned to be decipherable.

Both the NTSB and the FBI have said that none of the four recorders from Flights 11 and 175 was located during the cleanup at Ground Zero. A 2003 book reported a claim by former firefighter Nicholas DeMasi to have found three of the four black boxes at Ground Zero during the recovery operation. His account of having found the boxes was corroborated by Mike Bellone, who also worked on the recovery operation. Something that NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told the authors may explain the DeMasi claim. The agency sent several dummy black boxes to Ground Zero, he recalled, specimens to help nonexpert volunteers in the hunt for the real ones. It may be the dummy boxes that DeMasi described (boxes general/re four flights: “Cockpit Voice Recorders & Flight Data Recorders,”

www.ntsb.gov

, CR, 456n76, corr. Ted Lopatkiewicz, 2009; DeMasi: Gail Swanson,

Behind the Scenes at Ground Zero

, NY: TRAC Team, 2003, 108–; Bellone:

CounterPunch

, 12/19/05,

NYDN

, 9/28/05,

NY Post

, 4/5/04, “Black Box Cover-Up,” 12/12/04,

www.AmericanFreePress.net

; FBI/NTSB denied:

CounterPunch

, 12/19/05).

7

partial record:

The authors have drawn on the transcript as released in 2009;

8

Welsh:

CR, 455n62,

NYT

, 3/27/02,

www.unitedheroes.com

;

9

Green:

CR, 455n62.

10 cockpit key/coded knock:Longman, 6. Accounts vary as to whether United attendants carried keys. The FBI was told that “some flight attendants used to carry the cockpit key on their security badge neck chains.” Jere Longman, a New York Times reporter who has written an excellent book on the Flight 93 hijacking, suggests that attendants did not carry keys (FBI 302 of [name redacted], 12/19/01, “FBI 302s Arestegui,” B10, T7, CF, Longman, 6).

11 forty-nine/tough, etc.:ibid., 25–, www.flightattendants.org, Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh), 10/28/01;

12 Green doubled:ibid.;

13 Basmala:“An Exegesis of the Basmala,” http://muslimmatters.org, “Bismillah,” defined at http://wahiduddin.net.

14 voice not heard again:The 9/11 Commission concluded that the voice recorder data indicated that a flight attendant was “killed or otherwise silenced.” United Airlines officials would later tell Deborah Welsh’s husband, Patrick, that an attendant was stabbed early in the hijacking, implying that the victim was his wife (CR, 12, NYT , 3/27/02).

15 “We are going back”:As before, the terrorist’s words were heard not as intended by the passengers but by ground control and by other aircraft.

16 Bradshaw/Starfix:MFR re Richard Belme, 11/21/03, “DOJ Doc. Request 35,” B12, T7, CF, MFR 04020029, 5/13/04, MFR 04017218, 11/21/03, “Ref. Lead Control No. SFA62,” FBI int. of [name redacted], 9/11/01, INTELWIRE, FBI 302s of Richard Belme, Ray Kime, & Andrew Lubkemann, 9/11/01, “Key 302s,” B19, T7, CF. Starfix was the same United facility that had earlier taken a call from an attendant on hijacked Flight 175—see p. 28.

17 “knives were”:Timeline compiled by Joe Vickers, “Timelines 9-11, 2 of 2,” B20, T7, CF.

18 “lying on the floor”:This information derives from accounts of the phone call made from the plane by passenger Todd Beamer, who from 9:43 used a seatback phone to hold a long conversation with Verizon supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Jefferson said afterward that Beamer was being passed information by a flight attendant whose voice sounded “African-American.” Of the two African-American flight attendants on Flight 93, Wanda Green and CeeCee Lyles, the attendant who spoke to Beamer is more likely to have been Lyles—who worked to the rear of the plane (MFR 04020031, 5/11/04, FBI 302 of [name redacted], 9/22/01, INTELWIRE, Lisa Jefferson and Felicia Middlebrooks, Called , Chicago: Northfield, 2006, 36, recording of conversation, 5/10/04, “Flight #93 Calls—Todd Beamer,” B12, T7, CF).

19 Sliney first day: USA Today , 8/12/02;

20 Delta flight:Spencer, 167, MFR 04017314m, 10/2/03, CR, 10, 455n68, 28;

21 bomb/“ground stop”:CR, 25, 28.

22 “Order everyone”: USA Today , 8/12/02. There has been controversy over the origin of this order. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, testifying later to a congressional committee, said he “immediately called the FAA, told them to bring all the planes down.… [It] was the right thing to do.” Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, writing in The Washington Post , attributed the decision to land all planes to Mineta. The book Out of the Blue , by The New York Times ’s Richard Bernstein, states that the order was issued by FAA administrator Jane Garvey. Joshua Green, for Slate , reported that the decision was in fact taken by the FAA’s acting deputy administrator, Monte Belger. The 9/11 Commission credited Sliney, citing the Command Center traffic transcript. In an interview with the authors, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown emphasized that the decision was collaborative—taken not only by Ben Sliney but also by facility manager Linda Schuessler and other senior staff at the Command Center. Schuessler said as much in a 2001 interview (testimony of Norman Mineta, 5/23/03, CO, WP , 1/27/02, Bernstein, 188, Slate , 4/1/02, CR, 29, 461n165, int. Laura Brown, Aviation Week & Space Technology , 12/17/01, see also Freni, 65, testimony of Monte Belger and Ben Sliney, 6/17/04, CO, MFR 04018154, 4/20/04, MFR 04017327, 7/22/03).

23 4,540:Freni, 59;

24 By 12:16: WSJ , 3/22/04.

25 Clarke’s videoconference:The Commission Report states that the White House teleconference began around 9:25. Information the authors have learned, however, suggests that it started with some—but not all—officials on line at about 9:37. At the Pentagon, a “significant event” conference call—already under way for some minutes—was upgraded to an “air threat” conference call at around the same time. The FAA, for its part, had begun its own teleconference at about 9:20. The White House teleconference, and Clarke’s desire to have the most senior representative of each agency participating, had the effect of “decapitating” the agencies at various points. Taking part in the White House conference call meant that individual agency heads were away from the very people from whom they could receive the most accurate incoming information, and to whom they needed to give moment-by-moment instructions (CR, 36–, corr. Miles Kara, 2011);