Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  “What are we gonna do?”17 Nasypany asked. “I got to give my guys direction.”

  In the midst of tightly controlled chaos, Nasypany wanted an immediate, actionable, military answer to a question that had long vexed ethicists. Decades earlier, the British philosopher Philippa Foot formulated the dilemma as the Trolley Problem:18 Would it be morally acceptable for a trolley driver to divert a train directly onto a track on which stood one rail worker, knowing that that worker would be killed, if the driver felt certain that his action would save five workers on the other track?

  From an ethical standpoint, Nasypany’s question could be phrased this way: Would it be permissible for U.S. fighter pilots chasing hijacked planes to shoot down a passenger jet filled with innocent people, if they believed that such action would prevent a potential catastrophe with greater loss of life?

  Defense had been Nasypany’s life work. Now he kept pressing for an official answer, even as he personally believed that he and his team would do whatever needed to be done,19 no matter how shocking, to prevent another disaster.

  With each passing second, Flight 93 flew lower in the sky and drew closer to Washington, D.C. At 9:48 a.m., it reached 19,000 feet.20 Two minutes later, 16,000.

  At 9:53 a.m., the terrorists either overheard or sensed a revolt brewing among their hostages. Speaking in Arabic, one hijacker, apparently Ghamdi, suggested that the hijackers congregate inside the cockpit and use the fire ax to hold off the passengers. That was, of course, the very action that United dispatcher Ed Ballinger had hoped his ACARS warnings would prompt among the legitimate pilots.

  “The best thing,”21 the hijacker said. “The guys will go in, [you] lift up the [unintelligible word] and they put the ax into it. So everyone will be scared.” After some confusion among his collaborators, he explained that they should hold up the ax to the peephole in the cockpit door: “Let him look through the window. Let him look through the window.”

  Soon after, Jarrah revealed with certainty that the fourth hijacked plane’s target was in the U.S. capital, although he didn’t specify the exact location. Instead, he dialed a navigational code22 into the flight computer for Reagan National Airport, located within five miles of landmarks including the U.S. Capitol Building and the White House. Both buildings were targeted by al-Qaeda leaders and operatives at different times during the lead-up to the Planes Operation. Bin Laden reportedly preferred the White House,23 but Atta thought the home of the U.S. president would be too difficult to reach. He focused instead on the hilltop Capitol, its dome crowned by the bronze Statue of Freedom.

  Even after he knew that Flight 93 had been hijacked, United flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger kept trying to reach the cockpit and to alert his other flights. He sent pilots Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer Jr. more warnings, with higher degrees of alarm. At 9:32 a.m., four minutes after the terrorists acted, he wrote ACARS messages to several flights including Flight 93: “High Security Alert.24 Secure Cockpit.”

  As the terror unfolded, Ballinger could only wonder25 if a few minutes or a few alternative words of warning might have made a world of difference. Perhaps he could have phrased his first cautionary message with more urgency, or with more specifics about the threat of hijacking. Maybe Jason and LeRoy would have barricaded the cockpit door. Or maybe they would have been inspired to grab the fire ax before the intruders entered the cockpit, to fight them off.

  The “what if” questions seemed almost endless. What if United Flight 93 had been delayed longer in Newark? Maybe the plane would have been caught in the FAA ground stop and would never have taken off. Or maybe a longer wait on the ground would have delayed the start of the terrorists’ attack, giving Ballinger more time to warn the pilots to secure the cockpit. What if the United maintenance employees in San Francisco, who first learned of United Flight 175’s hijacking from a flight attendant, had immediately relayed word to United headquarters instead of waiting for nearly ten minutes? Or what if the flight attendant had used a different telephone code, to dial Ballinger directly at United’s Chicago headquarters? What if American Airlines and the FAA had immediately spread word about the hijacking of Flight 11? What if Mohamed Atta’s statement about “planes” had been deciphered sooner?

  Ballinger knew he wasn’t to blame, but he’d be tormented by the questions, especially one: What if he’d sent his first ACARS cockpit warnings about intrusions a few crucial minutes earlier?

  Fifteen minutes into Todd Beamer’s call with Airfone supervisor Lisa Jefferson, he told her: “A few of us passengers are getting together.26 I think we’re going to jump the guy with the bomb!”

  Lisa asked if Todd was sure. Todd said he didn’t have much choice, so he’d rely on faith. Lisa got the impression that Todd believed someone among the passengers and crew members could fly the plane.27 That is, he said, if the bomb supposedly on board didn’t detonate, if they overpowered the knife-wielding terrorists, and if they recaptured the cockpit. Lisa told Todd that she’d stand behind him, whatever he and the others decided.

  Jeremy Glick mentioned a vote to his wife, Lyz. Do nothing or do something? With life or death at stake, “something” won.

  Strangers on a plane minutes earlier, the men and women aboard United Flight 93 called upon their survival instincts and discovered a warrior spirit that some might not have known they possessed. They boarded the flight as airline employees and everyday travelers, bound for home or business meetings or vacations or memorial services, but they emerged from a chrysalis of terror as a fighting band of brothers and sisters. They were at a distinct disadvantage, but they had numbers, they had one another, they had people on the ground who loved them, and they had a collective will that their captors had foolishly underestimated. If they went down, it would be on their terms. Their flight wouldn’t follow the catastrophic model they’d heard about in New York and outside Washington, D.C. Whatever the cost, the hijackers wouldn’t decide their destination.

  Several minutes before ten,28 Todd Beamer pulled away from the phone. Lisa Jefferson heard him ask, “Are you guys ready?”

  Lisa didn’t hear the reply. But next she heard three words, a command that set in motion men and women who’d become their own cavalry: “Okay. Let’s roll.”

  About one hundred feet separated the rear of the plane from the murderers in the cockpit. The insurgents’ only approach was through an aisle twenty inches wide. They’d have to counterattack single file. Fearsome yells29 accompanied their charge.

  The hijackers heard the racket from inside the cockpit.

  “Is there something?” one hijacker asked.

  “A fight?” said another.

  “Yeah?” said the first.

  From the first-class section, a hijacker banged on the cockpit door and sought refuge inside. Sounds of a fight and a man’s screams reverberated off the plane’s cabin walls. At the controls, Jarrah knew he needed more time to reach their target. He tried to rally his fellow fanatics.

  “Let’s go guys!” he yelled in Arabic. “Allah is greatest, Allah is greatest. Oh guys! Allah is greatest.”

  Jarrah turned the control wheel to rock the plane,30 left and right, left and right, to throw the hostages turned rebels off balance. The struggle outside the cockpit continued with grunts and yells. Jarrah yelled: “Oh Allah! Oh Allah! Oh, the most gracious!”

  A hijacker shouted “Stay back!” perhaps while threatening the onrushing fighters with a knife, or the cockpit ax, or the box they claimed contained a bomb. Still they came.

  “In the cockpit!”31 a native English-speaking passenger or crew member yelled. “In the cockpit!”

  Jarrah stopped beseeching Allah and turned to his accomplices for protection. At 9:59 a.m., he said in Arabic: “They want to get in there. Hold [the door]. Hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold.”

  Jarrah wagged the plane’s wings more sharply. But to no avail.

  A passenger or crew member yelled “Stop him.”

  A hijacker answered “Sit down! Sit down!
Sit down!”

  The fight continued, with yells and actions that became hard to distinguish on the cockpit voice recorder. In Arabic, someone said: “What? There are some guys. All those guys.” A passenger or crew member yelled: “Let’s get them!” A hijacker said: “Trust in Allah, and in Him.” From some distance away from the pilot’s seat, a hijacker insisted, “Sit down.” But it was too late for that. Passengers and crew members were done following anyone’s commands but their own.

  Jarrah continued his erratic flying in an attempt to frustrate the counterattack. Sounds of metal snapping rang out in the cockpit. “Ah!” yelled a hijacker. And again, louder: “Ah!” Glass or plates smashed loudly. Then silence. Warning tones sounded in the cockpit. Then came more crashing sounds. A third time someone yelled: “Ah!”

  At ten o’clock, as the plane flew at 5,000 feet, it dawned on the terrorists that they couldn’t hold the cockpit indefinitely. But they weren’t yet sure what to do.

  One hijacker said in Arabic “There is nothing.”

  Another, apparently Jarrah, asked “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “When they all come, we finish it off!”

  The other listened for more sounds from outside the cockpit: “There is nothing.”

  Maybe they’d have enough time to reach Washington after all. Jarrah pulled back on the control wheel, and the plane climbed. But the fight outside the cockpit resumed. Then came the voice of an English-speaking man: “Ah! I’m injured.”

  The sound of metal striking metal followed, and then, some distance from the cockpit, “Ah!” From the pilot’s seat, Jarrah resumed his spiritual pleas: “Oh Allah! Oh Allah! Oh gracious!”

  The rebellion geared up for another push. A leader among the insurgents shouted: “In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die!”

  Jarrah tried a new tactic. He toggled the control wheel forward and back, making the jet rise, then dive, then rise again. He repeatedly pitched the plane’s nose up and down. He instructed Ghamdi to work with him using the copilot’s control wheel. Switching between Arabic and English, Jarrah commanded: “Up, down. Up, down, in the cockpit.” Accompanying the hijackers’ exertions was a soundtrack of crashes, thumps, shouts, and breaking glass.

  “Up, down. Saeed—up, down!”

  But rocking wouldn’t stop the passengers and crew. Still trying to gain entry, they apparently repurposed a beverage cart to use as a battering ram. “Roll it!” a male passenger shouted.

  Around that time, a pilot in a small plane spotted Flight 93 streaking toward him at 8,000 feet,32 its landing gear down,33 flying erratically, banking hard left, then hard right, rocking its wings over farmlands and former coal mines southeast of Pittsburgh.

  The Flight 93 cockpit recorder captured a loud crash. Passengers and crew members might have pulled back the beverage cart and smashed it again into the cockpit door.

  “Allah is the greatest!” Jarrah yelled. “Allah is the greatest!”

  Jarrah stopped wagging the wings and ended his seesawing with the nose. He stabilized the plane. The battle resumed.

  At 10:01 a.m., an exchange between two hijackers revealed that they knew their time had nearly run out. They wouldn’t be able to hold the cockpit long enough to complete their murderous mission. Months of planning and training would be thwarted by passengers and crew members, outwardly ordinary men and women who revealed extraordinary strength in an effort to save themselves and perhaps others.

  Hijacked United Flight 93 wouldn’t reach Washington, D.C., some one hundred twenty-five miles away. Jarrah wouldn’t slam the fuel-laden 757 into one of his two most likely targets,34 the U.S. Capitol Building or the harder-to-reach White House. No one would die inside or around either building. Neither landmark would burn on television screens around the world. The ultimate goal of the fourth hijacking would fail.

  Instead, Jarrah defaulted to an option that Mohamed Atta created as a fallback: any hijacker who couldn’t reach his target should crash the plane35 into the ground.

  “Is that it?” Jarrah asked in Arabic. “I mean, shall we pull it down?”

  “Yes,” Ghamdi answered. “Put it in, and pull it down.”

  Jarrah tried to act quickly, before the passengers and crew breached the cockpit. He called out “Saeed!” Then, in Arabic mixed with English, he tried a desperate measure to slow the ongoing insurgency: “Cut off the oxygen! Cut off the oxygen!” He resumed his erratic flying, calling out “Up, down. Up, down.”

  Still the revolt continued. A confusion of crashes and sounds filled the plane, with metallic snaps mixed with loud grunts and shouts by Arabic and English-speaking men. At 10:02 a.m. came a series of yells: “Shut them off! Shut them off!” followed by numerous metallic clicking sounds.

  The passengers wouldn’t relent: “Go! Go! Move! Move!” one rebel exhorted fellow fighters. An English-speaking man shouted: “Turn it up!”

  A command sounded in Arabic: “Down, down. . . . Pull it down! Pull it down! Down!” Then in English, someone said, “Down. Push, push, push, push. . . . push.”

  Flight 93 nosedived toward the hills and streams of rural southwestern Pennsylvania. As the earth rushed closer, passengers and crew members apparently made a last-ditch effort to reach Jarrah and Ghamdi in the pilots’ seats. Although some aviation experts considered it unlikely that they succeeded, sounds from the cockpit recorder revealed some kind of last-second struggle. One possibility was that a passenger or crew member grabbed the pilot or copilot’s control wheel in a desperate effort to pull the plane out of its dive. A hijacker, apparently Ghamdi, shouted in Arabic: “Hey! Hey! Give it to me. Give it to me.”

  The hijacker repeated “Give it to me” six more times.

  Someone turned the control wheel hard to the right.36 The plane flew sideways, then turned completely over and flew upside down, its belly to the blue sky as it descended. Grunts and loud noises mixed with the voice of a hijacker, who shouted in Arabic: “Allah is the greatest!”

  Near the end of the instruction letter the terrorists carried were directions for the last moments of the operation:

  And if possible, when the time of truth and the Zero Hour arrives, then rip open your clothes, and bare your chest to embrace death for the sake of Allah! And you must continue to pronounce His name. And you either conclude with a prayer that, if possible, you begin seconds before the target, or your last words should be: “There is no god but Allah.

  “Mohammed is His messenger!”

  The struggle continued. A male passenger shouted “No!”

  Amid screams, loud noises, and whispers of “Allah is the greatest!” the cockpit recording ended. Having turned almost fully upside down at the last moments, flying at an estimated 563 miles per hour, pointing nose-down at a 40-degree angle, the Boeing 757 with more than 5,000 gallons of jet fuel cut through power lines and reached its termination point.

  United Flight 93 exploded in flames as the cockpit broke off, plowed forward, and shattered into countless pieces. The rest of the plane burrowed more than fifteen feet deep into the soft earth of a grassy field that had once been a coal strip mine known as the Diamond T. Originally bound for San Francisco, hijacked toward Washington, D.C., the flight ended near tiny Shanksville, Pennsylvania, population 245.37 The nation’s capital was about fifteen minutes’ flight time away.38

  It was 10:03 a.m.

  After American Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, Gofer 06 pilot Steve O’Brien asked his crew39 if they were too rattled to continue flying. They assured him they were fine, so O’Brien pointed the C-130 toward their home base in Minnesota, on a northwesterly route that took them over Pennsylvania.

  Several minutes after ten, a crew member looking out a window in the back of the plane spotted black smoke rising in the distance. He told O’Brien, who reported to Cleveland Center, that the plume, some twenty miles away, reached some five thousand feet40 into the air.

  “You say black smoke in sight?” asked
a surprised air traffic controller.

  “That’s affirmative, black smoke,” O’Brien said. “That’s not a cloud, it’s black smoke, sir.”

  The crew of the unarmed military cargo plane Gofer 06 had witnessed history for a second time on 9/11; they had seen the aftermath of the crash of Flight 93.

  At almost precisely the same moment as the crash of United Flight 93, Major Kevin Nasypany’s team at NEADS learned that a different plane they were worried about, Delta Flight 1989, wasn’t a hijacking after all.41 With an escort from fighters, it landed without incident in Cleveland. They also searched their screens for a jet from Canada that hadn’t been hijacked.

  At 10:07 a.m., four minutes after NEADS had heard the good news about Delta 1989, the defenders of a large swath of U.S. airspace first learned42 that United Flight 93 had been hijacked. That notification came not from FAA headquarters, but from controllers in the agency’s Cleveland Center. Yet despite the report of black smoke from Gofer 06, the Cleveland controllers didn’t tell NEADS that Flight 93 had already crashed.

  The delay in the notification was significant and baffling. More than a half hour had passed since the FAA confirmed that terrorists had seized Flight 93. Multiple calls from the plane had reached 9-1-1 operators, United Airlines, and family members and friends of the hostages. But again, no one had informed the military. Unaware that Flight 93 had already burrowed into a Pennsylvania field, NEADS technicians engaged in a wild goose chase, working their phones in an attempt to find out more about a hijacked passenger jet supposedly aiming for Washington.