WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO FLIGHT 93?

One apparently legitimate account of a call from one of the doomed airplanes involved Jeremy Glick, an Internet company salesman. Left unguarded with the rest of the passengers in the rear of Flight 93, Glick called his family using an Airfone, not his cell phone. “These three Iranian guys took over the plane,” Glick told his wife, Lyz. “They put on these red headbands. They said they had a bomb. I mean, they looked Iranian….A passenger said they're crashing planes into the World Trade Center, is that true?” Told that the World Trade Center buildings were on fire and that the Pentagon had just been struck, Glick cursed and said, “Okay, I’m going to take a vote. There's three other guys as big as me and we're thinking of attacking the guy with the bomb.” Three big guys and Glick, being a national collegiate judo champion and student at the University of Rochester, could not overcome three slender hijackers armed only with small knives?
Bombs? Small men with pocket knives? The questions kept piling up. According to Pilots For 9/11Truth, air traffic control (ATC) transcripts even revealed United Flight 93 was still airborne after it's reported crash time. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Flight Path Study, United 93 allegedly impacted the ground at 10:03 a.m., September 11, 2001. But transcript excerpts of the conversations between Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) East, management officers and other various facilities provided by the Federal Aviation Administration revealed these words:
10:05 a.m. Ok, United Ninety-Three we're now receiving a transponder on and he is at eighty-two hundred feet…now transponder and he's eighty-two hundred…southeast-bound still…eighty-two hundred feet and now getting a transponder on him…correct.
10:10 a.m. Ya, thirty-nine fifty-one north, zero seven eighty four-six west…that's the last known position of United Ninety-Three.
So, seven minutes after Flight 93 reportedly crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside, air traffic controllers were still receiving a transponder signal and had a fix on the plane. Furthermore, seismic records from four seismology stations in the area, originally pegged the impact time at 10:06 a.m. It was only later that the Pentagon and the 9/11 Commission decreed that the correct impact time to have been at 10:03 am.
In addition to official dissembling, it is indeed difficult for many people to believe that four jetliners with crews, some military veterans, trained in detecting and deflecting a hijacking attempt could all be taken at the same time by a handful of men armed only with knives—some reports said plastic knives—and “box cutters” and then flown with great precision from high altitudes into targets while evading the defenses of the American military on its home turf—and to do all this with rudimentary flying skills at best. It is more believable to think that the four craft were captured by electronic technology such as that used on Global Hawk.
After learning of the WTC and Pentagon attacks and the news that a fourth jetliner was in the air and that fighter jets had been scrambled, many people's first thought upon learning of the Flight 93 crash was that it had been shot down.
The government quickly denied this and, instead, built up the legend of the courageous passengers deciding to attack their captors. This, of course, provided a foundation for the story that the jet crashed during a ferocious battle on board. It would appear, however, that this story was constructed to give the American people an inspiring drama of struggle around which to rally in the grim aftermath of the attacks rather than a truthful account of the facts concerning the fate of Flight 93.
For example, the last cell phone call received from the doomed flight came from an unidentified male passenger who called the 911 emergency number about eight minutes before the plane crashed. Operator Glen Cramer told the Associated Press on September 11 that the man said he had locked himself in a toilet. “We're being hijacked! We're being hijacked!” the man screamed into his phone.
“We confirmed that with him several times,” said Cramer, “and we asked him to repeat what he had said. He was very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down. He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the wing, but he didn't know where. And then we lost contact with him.” The FBI confiscated Cramer's tape and ordered him not to discuss the matter further. No explanation of this cell phone conversation has been offered.
Supporting the original theory of a shoot-down was a statement by top government officials that President Bush had authorized the use of military force early on the morning of September 11.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press less than a week after the attacks, Vice President Cheney said Bush “made the decision that if the plane [Flight 77, which reportedly struck the Pentagon] would not divert, if they wouldn't pay any attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out.”
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that the military was closing in on Flight 93. “We responded awfully quickly, I might say, on Tuesday,” he said in a PBS interview. “And in fact, we were already tracking in on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I think it was the heroism of the passengers on board that brought it down, but the air force was in a position to do so if we had had to.”
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also confirmed that fighters approached Flight 93, but denied that they fired on the craft.
Adding to this confusion was the small furor created in late 2004 by an off-the-cuff remark from Donald Rumsfeld during a surprise Christmas Eve visit to troops in Iraq. Recalling past terrorist events, Rumsfeld included, “…the people who did the bombing in Spain or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon…” The Pentagon later said this was simply a misstatement, not some sort of Freudian slip of the tongue.
More difficult to explain was the well publicized story of Andrews, AFB F-16 pilot Billy Hutchinson. After refueling, Hutchinson learns of the attack on the World Trade Center is vectored by the FAA to the area where Flight 93 was last picked up on radar. Locating the errant airliner, Hutchinson realized he only had 105 rounds of training ammunition, as he had been participating in the wargame exercise of that morning. This ammo was not lethal enough to stop a jumbo jet. Actually contemplating ramming the airliner with his fighter, Hutchinson was relieved when he saw the plane go down.
“This is a thrilling, inspiring tale of fighter jock heroism,” wrote 9/11 Commission senior counsel John Farmer. “There is only one problem with it: it never happened. It is flat-out not true.”
The 9/11 Commission presented radar records of the day which indicated Hutchison did not take off until more than a half-hour after United 93 had crashed near Shanksville and some 20 minutes after the wreckage had been located. He could not have seen United 93 on his scope, and could not have intercepted it. According to Farmer, when Hutchinson was question by commission staffers regarding the discrepancies between his media accounts and the radar and radio transmission, “…he stormed out of the room. ‘You know what happened,’he said. ‘Why are you asking me?’”
In a 2008 op-ed article in the New York Times, 9/11 Commission staff members John Azzarello and Miles Kara joined Farmer in noting that Major Hutchison's false account was “part of a larger and totally discredited story.”
“After 9/11, military and government officials undertook an aggressive public relations effort,” they wrote. “In testimony before Congress and the 9/11 Commission, in numerous interviews, and in an official Air Force history, these officials told the country that by the time United 93 turned toward Washington, President Bush had issued the shoot-down authorization, Vice President Dick Cheney had passed it on, fighters were standing by over Washington and, as the military's commander at the Northeastern Air Defense Sector (NEADS) headquarters in Rome, NY, told ABC News of the authorization to shoot down the planes: ‘We of course passed it on to the pilots. United Airlines Flight 93 will not be allowed to reach Washington.’
“Yet the commission established that none of this happened. Once we subpoenaed the relevant tapes and other records, the story fell apart. Contrary to the testimony of retired Gen. Larry Arnold, who on 9/11 was the commander of continental defense for the North American Aerospace Defense Command [NORAD], fighters were not scrambled that morning to meet the threat posed by United 93. In fact, the fighters were sent up in response to an unrelated and mistaken report that General Arnold and others had not disclosed to the commission. Flight 93 hadn't even been hijacked when the planes were ordered scrambled, and General Arnold's command found out the plane was hijacked only after it had crashed. The authorization to shoot it down came after it had crashed, and was never passed on to the pilots.”
Many ground witnesses reported sighting a small aircraft—some described it as a military jet—circling the area before and after Flight 93 crashed. Many thought this plane in the area supported the idea of a shoot down. Later, the FBI explained that it was a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet that was asked to descend to 5,000 feet some minutes after the crash to locate and give co-ordinates to the site.
The FBI’s explanation is wanting for a number of reasons. First of all, by the time of the crash of Flight 93—at 10:06 a.m. and not 10:03 a.m. (according to this book's independent timeline)—all air traffic nationwide had been grounded for about a half hour. In addition, the plume of smoke from the wreckage, plus numerous calls to 911, would have provided a sufficient location bearing. Furthermore, FBI has failed to provide any information concerning this aircraft or its passengers, none of whom has come forward to give their account.
One craft that was in the area was a single-engine Piper piloted by Bill Wright. Wright said he was within sight of Flight 93, in fact so close he could see its United markings. He said he suddenly received orders to get away from the airliner and land immediately. “That's one of the first things that went through my mind when they told us to get as far away from it as fast as we could, that either they were expecting it to blow up or they were going to shoot it down,” Wright told newsmen.
There is also a serious factual question concerning the wreckage. According to the official story, Flight 93 barreled into the ground at close to five hundred miles per hour. Yet, wreckage was strewn for up to eight miles, including paper mail, personal belongings and even magazines and newspapers the plane was carrying. One engine, which weighs in excess of one thousand pounds, was found more than two thousand yards from the crash scene, indicating it came loose prior to ground impact. One piece of fuselage the size of a dining room table was recovered from a marina in Indian Lake, a couple of miles away from the crash site.
On the day of 9/11, TV audiences were shown aerial views of a hole with horizontal scars stretching out from both sides, indicative of an airplane body and wings hitting the ground. This was depicted as the crime scene at Shanksville. However, a 1994 US Geological Survey photo of the area showed the same lengthy scar or gouge in the earth. So, the only new addition on 9/11 was the crater, which, according to local officials only measured about six to eight feet deep and no more than 20 feet in diameter prompting the question of how could the 100 tons of a Boeing 757 fit into such a small space? Then there was an additional question of the bodies.
Rick King of the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department told newsmen when he arrived at the scene, he found small brush fires, some insulation and debris but no human remains. “I looked around and I’m thinking,’Where are the people?” wondered King.
Shanksville coroner Wallace E. Miller was among the first to arrive at the scene. He said it looked “like someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch and dumped all this trash into it.” He added, “I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.” Miller was required by law to establish the cause of death of the victims. “I put down ‘murdered’ for the 40 passengers and crew, ‘suicide’ for the four terrorists,” Miller told a reporter, adding significantly that he could not prove what actually happened.
Subsequent actions by government authorities did little to dissuade conspiracy theorists. For example, as mentioned previously, the FBI didn't make public the flight data recordings until April 18, 2002, and then only played edited excerpts to the victims’ family members, who were ordered not to discuss what they heard. It was played once again in closed chambers for the jury at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial on April 12, 2006. A transcript that included English translations of Arabic statements that were alleged to have been made by the hijackers was made available to the public at that time. However, this translation could not be compared to the recording itself.
Bureau agents also muzzled Cleveland air traffic controllers involved in the last moments of the flight, ordering them not to speak about what they saw on their radar screens.
Amidst near-hysterical cries of national security, the public was once again asked to blindly accept official pronouncements backed by little, no, or even contradictory evidence. With all hard evidence locked away by the government, speculation has run rampant on the true cause of Flight 93’s demise. Countering the official story of the crash occurring during a heroic battle with the hijackers are other equally credible theories. One plausible theory holds that, since one air traffic controller tape available on the Internet speaks of a bomb on board and considering the Airfone calls, including the one from Jeremy Glick, one of the hijackers may have been carrying a bomb, which was detonated in the air either by one of the hijackers or by remote control. But the most prevalent theory is that a US aircraft downed the craft with missile and/or cannon fire, a suspicion supported by all the available evidence.
Furthermore, the shoot-down theory takes on great strength when one analyzes the obvious distortions of known facts about Flight 93 in The 9/11 Commission Report, which appear to be an attempt to cover-up the truth about the real fate of that flight. We've noted earlier that the report falsely claims that the military was not even notified that Flight 93 had been hijacked until after it had crashed at 10:06 a.m. But even the aforementioned statements attributed to Cheney and Wolfowitz themselves flatly contradict that assertion, with Wolfowitz saying for example that “the air force was in a position” to shoot the plane down if need be. The Commission's assertion also conflicts with statements of Norman Mineta, Richard Clarke and Barbara Honegger as well. Furthermore, numerous reports in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other major newspapers made it clear a few days after 9/11 that the final shoot-down order had been issued at least by 9:56 a.m., in time to engage Flight 93 before it was supposedly brought down by the on-board struggle. Author David Ray Griffin convincingly shows that, while offering no supporting evidence for its revisionist position, the 9/11 Commission ignores the well-established fact that the shoot-down order had been issued earlier and simply asserts that this order was not given until 10:25 a.m. It is not hard to see that this falsehood was promulgated in a “desperate attempt,” as Griffin puts it, to rule out the possibility that an American president could actually shoot down a civilian plane.
In this connection, a variety of theorists have suggested that the shoot-down was ordered and then covered up when it was realized that—if the plane had been successfully taken over and landed by the passengers—the real truth about the plot might have been more easily learned through interviews with the surviving hijackers or that the flight crew would tell how they had lost control of the craft. Others have even suggested that Flight 93 was headed toward WTC Building 7, with the mission of obliterating the evidence of the plot contained in its OEM center. Its failure to arrive necessitated the “plan B” demolition of Building 7 later in the day.
A more fanciful theory, though not backed by solid science, was offered by researchers citing Harvard academic Elaine Scarry. In a series of articles and books, Scarry postulated that some recent airline crashes were caused by high-tech military “electronic warfare” weaponry akin to Global Hawk remote-control technology and capable of disrupting an aircraft's control system, the FBI did confirm that a C-130 military plane was within twenty-five miles of Flight 93, and since 1995 the air force has installed “electronic suites” in twenty-eight of its C-130 aircraft.
Numerous and credible witness accounts of a mysterious white jet seen in the air just after Flight 93 went down support the idea of another craft in the area. Jim Brant, owner of the Indian Lake marina where a large piece of debris was found, reported the roar of jet engines overhead. He said he then saw a fireball rise into the air. He looked up and noticed a white plane circling the wreckage that “reminded me of a fighter jet.”
Witness Tom Spinelli, said, “I saw the white plane. It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash.” Spinellii described the craft as having high tail wings and no markings on it. John Feegle, another witness, said, “It didn't look like a commercial plane. It had a real goofy tail on it, like a high tail. It circled around, and it was gone.” Dennis Decker and a friend, Rick Chaney, were close to the impact site. They too noticed “a mid-sized jet flying low and fast.” They too said it was white with no markings. “It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out,” they said. Together, there were at least 12 eyewitnesses to the white jet. Witness Susan McElwain complained that the FBI did not make a record of her comments after telling her there was no such plane.
Based on this eyewitness testimony and descriptions that seem to match that of a Global Hawk craft capable of firing missiles such as used in Afghanistan, the Scarry scenario does not seem so fanciful. This scenario also leads to yet another possibility positing that the plane's passengers were successful in their attempt to regain control of the craft but then found they could not control the plane due to electronic seizure. Under the theory that all the aircraft were captured and flown remotely using Global Hawk technology, the masterminds behind such a scheme could not possibly allow Flight 93 to land safely and give away the game. Since both the shoot-down orders and the fighters were in place, it would be simply a matter of giving the go-ahead and then sweeping it all under the rug of “national security.”
If the questionable phone calls, the missing engines and scattered debris and lack of bodies mean that it was not Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, what became of that flight? The answer to this question may be found in the strange mix-up that took place at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. There is intriguing information that a United Airlines plane, initially identified as Flight 93, landed there on the morning of September 11, 2001.
An Associated Press news bulletin was published on the ABC affiliate station WCPO-TV website stating that about 11 a.m. that day, Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White announced that “a Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard.” He said an unconfirmed report was that the plane might have been hijacked or was carrying a bomb and that the craft had been moved to a secure area of the airport and the passengers evacuated. The story also stated United Airlines had identified the craft as its Flight 93 and also was concerned about another plane, Flight 175.
In a brief news conference, White stated, “Let me walk through the most current situation that we are grappling with. At this moment, we have a Boeing 767 in a secure area of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The initial reports were that this plane was hijacked and that there was a bomb on board. There was, before this, an additional plane in our airspace. I am told through unconfirmed reports that we could hear screaming in the control tower. This plane has been diverted from Cleveland and at last report was in the Toledo airspace.”
However, in the middle of the news conference, he suddenly said the plane had not been hijacked, and later in the day, he said no bomb had been found and White later failed to mention the screaming.
The station also quoted from a United bulletin issued at 11:17 a.m. on 9/11, in which United Airlines CEO James Goodwin said, “The thoughts of everyone at United are with the passengers and crew of these flights. Our prayers are also with everyone on the ground who may have been involved. United is working with all the relevant authorities, including the FBI, to obtain further information on these flights.”
Some time later, WCPO’s Liz Foreman, who had posted the original AP news report, said the whole thing was just a mix-up on a very confusing day. She said the AP quickly changed the story and that, while she pulled the link from the station's website, she simply failed to remove the story itself. Sources at the airport were saying the FBI evacuated the plane and searched it with bomb-sniffing dogs after the passengers had deplaned but no bomb was found.
Oddly enough, the story of White's news conference was removed from WCPO’s website in June 2004, during the time of the 9/11 Commission hearings. Later, the story shifted and it was claimed the entire incident was a case of mistaken identity as the grounded plane actually was Delta Air Lines Flight 1989, a regularly scheduled Boeing 767 nonstop flight from Boston to Los Angeles. On September 11, 2001, Delta Flight 1989 was one of several flights initially thought to be hijacked. Adding to this apprehension was the fact that a Cleveland air traffic controller overheard a male voice state, “Please sit down. Keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board.” Cleveland controllers “realized” a hijacking was taking place but confused Flight 1989 for Flight 93. The Cleveland operators then notified the FAA’s Herndon Command Center and asked for jet fighter assistance but were told “personnel well above them in the chain of command were responsible for making that decision and were working on it.”
Once it was established that the hijacked plane was actually Flight 93, the FAA’s attention continued to be fixed on Delta 1989 as, like American Flight 175 and Flight 11, it too had originated from Boston and was due to fly to Los Angeles. By 9:57 a.m., about the time of the reported passenger counter-attack on Flight 93, officers at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) were still tracking Delta 1989, not Flight 93. According to 9/11 Commission counsel John Farmer, “The essential ‘flaws by design’ that separated the top policy-making officials within virtually every department of government from operational employees, and that left individual agencies largely isolated from one another and alienated from the national command structure, were now playing out in the frenzied and compressed final moments of United 93.”
Flight 1989, after finally notifying the FAA that it was not hijacked, agreed to land at Cleveland, which it did about about 10 a.m. But confusion continued to reign at the Cleveland airport. There were conflicting statements about Delta 1989 concerning the moment of landing, the number of the passengers, and even the ultimate location of the grounded plane. The Associated Press, the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer all reported that a plane landed at 10:45 a.m., which must have been Flight 1989 as United 93 had crashed at 10:03 a.m., according to the 9/11 Commission which based this time on analysis by commission staffers of ATC transmissions, infrared satellite data, the flight data recorder and the NTSB. Yet, Delta Air Lines recorded that a plane landed at 10:10 a.m. and firemen at Cleveland Hopkins confirmed that a landing took place before 10:30 a.m. The 9/11 Commission Report merely gave a time of 9:42 am and stated Delta 1989 “reversed course over Toledo, headed east, and landed safely in Cleveland.”
One Delta 1989 passenger related her experience on in a letter posted on the Internet but with her name and other personal details obscured for privacy. She said, “Many of you knew that [my spouse] and I and many [fellow] employees were on an 8 a.m. flight from Boston to LA on Tuesday morning. I am happy to be alive and to be able to tell you of the events of our harrowing journey. Even though it has been only 48 hours since we departed Logan, it feels as though a lifetime has passed.
“[My spouse] and I and six other fellow [company] employees were on the 8 a.m. flight from Boston to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but we were on the Delta Flight [1989], the one out of three 8 a.m. flights departing Logan that did not get hijacked. Instead, we were forced to make an emergency landing in Cleveland because there were reports that a bomb or hijacking was taking place on our plane. The pilot had radioed that there was suspicious activity in the cabin since one of the passengers was speaking urgently on his cell phone and ignored repeated flight attendant requests to stop using his cell phone while in flight. Also, there was an irregularity in the passenger manifest because there were two people [with the same Middle Eastern name] who were listed but only one aboard.
“After our emergency landing, our plane was directed to go to an isolated area of the airport, and we waited for over two hours in quarantine before FBI agents and bomb-sniffing dogs came out to the plane. Just after we landed, the pilot gave us permission to make one very brief telephone call before we were banned from any further telephone use. The sixty or so passengers were thus able to gather some alarming details of the unbelievable fates of the other two LA-bound planes and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the suicide bombing of the Pentagon as well as reports of other plane crashes in PA and LA (LA proved unfounded) before we were cut off from any further communication. Unfortunately, all this information only added to the alarm and confusion we felt as we waited for over two hours far away from the gates of the airport.
“Finally, a caravan of cars bearing FBI and Treasury agents and bomb-sniffing dogs approached our airplane. About twenty or so armed FBI agents and police officers boarded the plane and said there were concerns about our flight and that they were taking precautions to rule out any further danger. We finally were allowed off the plane, told to take all of our personal items and leave everything at the edge of the tarmac. While our personal effects were examined we were taken to a secure building at the airport where for three hours we were interrogated at length about any unusual or suspicious activities we observed at Logan that morning or during our flight. We were all alarmed and distraught about the dribs and drabs of information we were slowly getting from our telephone calls (none of us was able to see a TV or listen to a radio) and feeling unbelievably lucky to be alive.”
Both airport visitors and employees mentioned that some 200 passengers were removed from a grounded airplane and moved to a NASA facility at one end of the airport. But rumors persisted that a second plane, the earlier arrival, had been moved to a separate area of the airport. Jason Bermas, one of the producers of the popular video Loose Change said an airport employee told him, “Well, that one Delta flight was grounded here and another was grounded at NASA Glenn [Research Center].” The employee denied the second plane was Flight 93, but could not explain its presence or what happened to it. Bermas recalls. “We told her we had heard the plane at NASA was United 93. “But there was another plane at NASA Glenn that day and no one has ever explained that. I’m hoping a news agency will go ove and follow up on that,” added Bermas.
One possible explanation for a second plane at Cleveland might be a flight of NASA scientists dressed as civilians, who deplaned from a military craft during this same time period. Vernon “Bill” Wessel, director of safety and mission assurance at NASA Glenn Research Center, said he and other workers watched the horror taking place at the World Trade Center, then called an emergency meeting of directors. It was decided to evacuate the NASA facility. Wessel said when he learned that Delta Flight 1989 was on the tarmac and that it might have a bomb on-board, he decided to evacuate the 3,500 NASA Glenn employees out a back gate of the airport. “It took about an hour and a half to evacuate everybody,” Wessel recalls. He said a scientific team was on hand from Houston's Johnson Space Center, conducting gravity experiments. The plane which was to return them to Houston, a large KC-135 transport, had returned before taking off to the hanger after all planes were grounded. The scientists, “dressed as civilians” according to Wessel, were taken to a nearby hotel on shuttle buses.
Of course, a group of scientists stuck in Cleveland did not account for the mayor's news conference nor reports of a bomb and screaming on an aircraft. It should also be noted that the KC-135 could not have seated the 200 passengers reported on Delta Flight 1989 and that, according to FAA data, this plane landed at 10:08 a.m., some time after the 10:45 a.m. landing of Flight 1989 as reported by the news media and the 9/11 Commission. It is also problematic to believe that anyone might mistake a military transport plane for a commercial airliner. Plus the NASA evacuation and the landing of Delta Flight 1989 did not really explain the draconian measures taken at Cleveland Hopkins—the facility was sealed with not even bus drivers or taxis allowed to enter of leave and departing passengers had to leave their cars parked and walk out.
Delta Flight 1989, with a reported 69 passengers landed at 10:10 a.m., according to news reports, and was quarantined near the I-X Center, a convention facility created in 1985 from a former air defense hangar located on 188 acres adjacent to the Cleveland airport. Other media reports as well as airport visitors reported a plane landing about 10:45 a.m. with some 200 passengers evacuated after 11 a.m. near the NASA Glenn Research Center.
But yet even another plane was added to this confused mix. Lt. Col. Alan Scott, a retired officer who analyzed the air responses for the Air Force, told the 9/11 Commission, “[At] 9:27 [a.m.] Boston FAA reports a fifth aircraft missing, Delta Flight 89—and many people have never heard of Delta Flight 89. We call that the first ‘red herring’ of the day, because there were a number of reported possible hijackings that unfolded over the hours immediately following the actual attacks. Delta 89 was not hijacked, enters the system, increases the fog and friction if you will, as we begin to look for that….He is kind of a red herring for us….9:47 is when Delta 89 clears the system by landing in Cleveland. So he is not a hijack.”
What does all this mean? Keep in mind, that it is a simple matter to repaint aircraft and copy or substitute tail identification numbers. In fact, two of the 9/11 airliners—the aircraft reported as United Flights 175 and 93—remained on the “active” flight list until September 28, 2005. This designation was only changed a month after inquisitive researchers made repeated calls to the FAA inquiring about this anomaly. “[W]hy it took United more than four years to ‘de-register’ the airplanes and fill out the official FAA paperwork remains a mystery and never has been fully explained by the FAA, United or the government,” noted journalist Greg Szymanski. “In fact, in stark contrast, a check of FAA records shows the two other American Airlines flights, Flight 11 and 77, both were ‘deregistered’ and classified as ‘destroyed’ only months after 9/11 on January 14, 2002.” According to FAA records, United Airlines Flight 93, identified as N591UA, and United Airlines Flight 175, identified as as N612UA, were both officially taken out of service in 2005 with the reason given as “canceled,” unlike the American Airlines craft which were listed as “destroyed.”
There were even further questions regarding American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, neither of which apparently existed on 9/11, according to Bureau of Traffic Safety (BTS) records. Szymanski reported that according to BTS statistics, both American Flights 11 and 77 officially never took off. “The meticulous data kept on every airliner taking off at every airport in the country also showed no elapsed run-way time, wheels-off time and taxi-out time, not to mention several other categories left blank on 9/11 concerning the two flights. Although Flights 11 and 77 have the above data meticulously logged on September 10, it was suspiciously absent on 9/11, even when every other plane that took of that day had been recorded and logged by the BTS.”
Such confusion within both the US military and the American airline industry, which has an exemplary safety record, has lead many researchers to suspect that an insidious plot was devised and carried out within the wargame exercises being conducted on 9/11.
A commentator on Alex Jones’ website PrisonPlanet.com wrote, “There is an elegant possibility to clean up this mess: Delta 1989 had a dark doppelganger, not only when it landed at Cleveland Airport, but when it was flying, too. [Delta Flight 89?] This doppelganger started probably in Boston, too. It was part of the wargames which were taking place on this day…The transponder of the doppelganger was off from start…Its radar blip was hidden behind the blip of Delta 1989 from now on. The screams at 9:28 were not coming from Delta 1989, but from the doppelganger flight. That's why the Cleveland controller was so confused: he determined the origin of the screams by radio direction finding, a standard technique, and they were coming from Delta 1989’s position.
“The controller was not involved in the wargames, so he didn't know that there was a plane hiding behind Delta 1989. On board of the doppelganger flight, a simulated hijacking took place. Boston Center—or a department of Boston Center—was apparently in charge of the wargame, this explains why Boston Center was still involved at 9:27…Note that Boston Center reported directly to the military. At 9:41, the doppelganger left its cover, so its radar blip was visible. This was the moment when it was reported hijacked, falsely labeled as Delta 1989. The doppelganger was reported in the broadcast news as the ‘fifth’ plane. So what happened to the passengers of Delta 1989’s doppelganger? [Delta Flight 89?]”
War games. Doppleganger aircraft. Changed tail numbers. It all sounds like a Hollywood movie script until one considers the “Northwoods” documents of 1962. This story came to light when, incredibly, 40-year-old government documents thought to have been destroyed long ago were made public in the early 1990s. They show that the US military in the early 1960s proposed staging terrorist attacks in the United States and blaming them on Fidel Castro. Between the failure of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in April 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, there was a time when the Pentagon was given authority over the ongoing, and mostly secret, war against Fidel Castro's Cuba. The entire project was known as “Operation Mongoose” and was headed by Gen. Edward Lansdale, then deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations. Mongoose was a gathering point for CIA agents, virulent anti-Castro Cubans, gung-ho military operatives and even organized crime figures, all of whom detested President Kennedy and thought him “soft” on communism and a threat to their own preserves.
From this volatile fusion of violent elements came “Operation Northwoods,” which was to end up with then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In recent years, McNamara said, “I never heard of it.” However, the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs had heard of it, for it was Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer who recommended that the Joint Chiefs approve and administer this plan to turn world opinion against Castro. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were going along with this pernicious program but President Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods. Senior military officers ordered the documents destroyed. But someone slipped up and ironically the papers were discovered in the early 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board, created to look into Kennedy's assassination in the wake of the Oliver Stone film JFK.
The Northwoods plans called for hijacking American airliners and ships, setting off bombs in American cities and even assassinations—all to be done in such a manner as to lay the blame on Castro's Cuba. One proposed operation detailed in the Northwoods documents may have provided a prototype of the tactics used on September 11, 2001. On page 10 of the Northwoods plan it states: “An aircraft at Eglin, AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft…At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be boarded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [remotely-controlled aircraft] …[From a] rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin, AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be[gin] transmitting on the international distress frequency a ‘May Day’ message stating he is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal.” Could some slight variation of this Northwoods plan have been put into effect on September 11, 2001?
Phil Jaylan, administrator for LetsRollForums.com, voiced the suspicions of many conspiracy-minded researchers by outlining this hypothetical scenario: “The planes which picked up the passengers [in Boston, Washington and Newark] were drones previously fitted for the war games of 9/11; They were in all actuality the respective airplanes the people should have been boarding; Only difference is this; They are boarding planes with all the equipment pre-installed to fly remotely, turn off the oxygen and radio communication directly after take-off, and then be flown remotely to the spot in the Atlantic where the planes would be ditched, most likely…the Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench. So, in this scenario, Flights 11 and 175 are combined into one flight to make things easier for the planners. [A] Saab military drone which takes off just prior to Flight 11, and is the plane which transponds after take-off that it is Flight 11. Flights 11 and 175 are now combined into one flight, on one plane, yet unknown to them, they are on a military drone, recently retrieved from the sand desert junkyard, and refurbished for this last mission. This also explains why on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, some passengers’ family members from Flight 11, showed up at the wrong terminal for the memorial. Is [this] what happened when the single plane with the passengers from Flight 11 were done boarding, the plane pulled up to another tarmac and now became Flight 175?”
According to this scenario, this combined flight rendezvoused with a phony aircraft 18 minutes into its flight, which then became the official Flight 175. Oxygen and communication were cut-off on the combined flight which was then flown out to sea and ditched or shot down as part of the Vigilant Guardian wargame exercise by a distant controller who never knew his “drone” was full of unconscious passengers.
Jaylan's theorized the switch was made on the ground prior to the flights because it would have been the easiest way to dispose of both planes and passengers. He added, “The same scenario was done with Flight 77 and Flight 93, except they were individual flights. Thus, three planes were shot down over the Atlantic that day as part of Operation V[igilant] G [uardian]. Occam's Razor. This accounts for all of the aircraft. It accounts for why the plane which hit the first WTC [tower] was so small, because it was [a] Saab military drone. It accounts for the missing aircraft, Flight 175, which we know wasn't the plane at the 2nd WTC. It accounts also for the now missing plane in Pennsylvania, as well as the missing Boeing at the Pentagon. It also helps avoid any messy [mid-air] plane swapping [by radar] and the nightmare it might have been to do the logistics neccessary to get all the people onto one plane…
“I also now believe…that the entire days events, from start to finish was a four-part, multi-stage computer program completely out of the hands of men… [T] he actual take-off of the aircraft started each additional stage of the operations pre-programmed plan, with all the variants included. This is the only way in which they could so precisely time the… events…That is also the reason why Dick Cheney, even after [emphasis in the original] he was told we were under attack, commanded the [war] games go forward, and needed to be completed no matter what. This is odd behavior…”
Jaylan also noted,”[I]f Flight 93 really did land in Cleveland on 9/11, it was more than likely the Part B hypothesis of this scenario. Simple and short—Flights 93 and 77 are combined at Cleveland, and then the plane with the people, a drone, takes off, oxygen is then turned off, the plane taken over by remote, and shot down over the Yukon in Canada. At my old website…a Canadian girl came in the week after 9/11 and left this message, paraphrased on my old message boards: ‘My brother who is a ham radio freak, picked up a transmisson in the afternoon of 9/11 that the Canadian Air Force was shooting down a ‘commercial heavy’ over the Yukon in Canada.’ This would more than likely have been done under the cover of Operation V[igilant] G [uardian]; In this Part B scenario, the Canadian Air Force, which was participating in Operation VG, was scripted to have shot down a drone for the war games. In this case, the drone they shot down, more than likely over a large lake, was the combined passengers from [Flights] 77 and 93.”
While many people would consider Jaylan's theory—as well as any of all those who express doubt about the official government 9/11 theory—outlandish and not worthy of consideration, it might be pointed out that the official version, as expressed by the 9/11 Commission, has been demonstrated to be incomplete at best and untrue at worst. It is even doubted by some of its own staff members. As journalist Greg Szymanski remarked, “[The] state sponsored US media ignores the story, leaving ‘Internet hounds’ to smell out the truth behind what really happened to the passengers on the doomed flights.”
Considering the Northwoods plan to hijack commercial airliners and substitute unmanned drones slated for destruction; the war game exercises which were not known—even denied—for almost a year after 9/11; and the grim fact, as will be documented later in this work, that national leaders will allow deadly attacks on Americans if it is thought to further their purposes, it is not such a stretch of the imagination to think that an attack on the magnitude of 9/11 could be a false-flag operation—an inside job.