The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden

by Anthony Summers

26 firefighters: ibid., 64–, 78–, 93–.

  27 CIA briefer/room shaken: interview of Donald Rumsfeld by Alfred Goldberg & Rebecca Cameron, “Rumsfeld on Intel,” B7, T2, CF

  28 left office/“it was dark”: Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, NY: Scribner, 2007, 1–

  29 “hundreds”: int. of Rumsfeld

  30 “people lying”: transcript of Rumsfeld int. for Parade magazine, 10/12/01, www.​defenselink.​mil & see Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, NY: Sentinel, 2011, 336–

  31 examined/gurney: Cockburn, 2

  32 photographed: Goldberg et al., photo section 82–

  33 “suit jacket”: Torie Clarke, 221. Victoria “Torie” Clarke, whose timing of 10:15 we have used, took notes of events that day. Rumsfeld himself believed he was back inside the Pentagon from the crash site “shortly before or after 10:00,” and then used the phone before proceeding to the Executive Support Center (took notes: int. of Rumsfeld; “shortly before or after”: testimony of Donald Rumsfeld, 3/23/04, CO).

  34 news reached/escort to advise: CR, 39, 463n206

  35 President hurried: Bamford, Pretext, 62

  36 “Sounds like”: CR, 39

  37 “They were taxiing”: int. law enforcement officer, now member of Joint Terrorism Task Force, who asked not to be identified

  38 “like a rocket”: CBS News, 9/10/03

  39 northeast/west: corr. Miles Kara, 2011, Stephen Hayes, 341, St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/04

  40 Instead of returning: CR, 39, 325.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 Melodie/Leroy Homer: 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: Counter Punch, 12/19/05, NYDN, 9/28/05, NY Post, 4/5/04, “Black Box Cover-Up,” 12/12/04, www.​American​FreePress.​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. 51 “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).

  18 Sliney first day: USA Today, 8/12/02

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

  20 bomb/“ground stop”: CR, 25, 28.

  21 “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 040181
54, 4/20/04, MFR 04017327, 7/22/03).

  22 4,540: Freni, 59

  23 By 12:16: WSJ, 3/22/04.

  24 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)

  25 Defense: Farmer, 184–, Tenet, 163

  26 first matter: Tenet, 163

  27 contingency/Hastert: Bamford, Pretext, 70–, 80–, transcript, 9/11, ABC News, 9/11/02, WP, 3/2/02

  28 Byrd: corr. Jesse Jacobs, 2010

  29 people pouring: int. Eleanor Hill

  30 White House evacuation: testimony of Norman Mineta, 5/23/02, CO, Richard Clarke, 8, CNN, 9/11/01, Newsweek, 9/24/01

  31 “CNN says”/“Does it”: Richard Clarke, 9

  32 humor: Dwyer & Flynn, 175.

  33 golf club/computers: Dwyer & Flynn, 175–

  34 “There’s another”: int. Edward Chacia, TF, 12/6/01

  35 “They hit”: int. James Canham, TF, 12/18/01

  36 “What happened?”: Dwyer & Flynn, 178.

  37 locked doors: CR, 294. Any faint possibility of going up had vanished at 9:30, when security officers tried and failed to activate a lock release programmed to open all doors—including doors leading to the roof—as explained on p. 22

  38 Beyea: Dwyer & Flynn, 178, 243

  39 Lillo: int. Manuel Delgado, 10/21/01, TF, NY Post, 9/21/01

  40 “The Chief said”/Suhr: int. Paul Conlon, TF, 1/26/02, NY Daily News, 11/1/01.

  41 “We didn’t have”: Staff Statement 13, CO. The World Trade Center did have such a radio repeater system, but most chiefs were unable to use it on the day—either because it was malfunctioning or because they failed to use it properly. To bridge the communications gap, chiefs attempted to use shorter range equipment available—sometimes even their own cell phones—with little success. This left the chiefs in the lobby or outside the towers largely in the dark about the progress of the units moving up and around the building (“FDNY Fire Operations Response on September 11,” www.​nyc.​gov, CR, 188).

  42 “People watching”/men struggled: Staff Statement 13, CO.

  43 towers’ casualties/survivors: “Federal Investigators Classify WTC Victims’ Locations,” 7/20/04, NIST, Staff Statement 13, CO, Dwyer & Flynn, 252, 312. Estimates vary as to the number of people in the Twin Towers at the time of the attacks. We have here drawn on numbers cited in 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn—which take into account not only the 2005 Final Report of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but also of figures supplied by the Port Authority of New York (Dwyer & Flynn, 280, “Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers,” Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sept. 2005, 19, 34, 37–, 48).

  44 Clark/Praimnath: Bernstein, 225-

  45 Rooney: Banford, Pretext, 32–58

  46 70th floor: Staff Statement 13, CO

  47 Palmer: Dwyer & Flynn, 206

  48 PEOPLE TRAPPED: NY Daily News, 9/30/01

  49 overwhelmed: Staff Statement 13, CO

  50 “Some of them”: int. Roberto Abril, TF, 1/17/02.

  51 Turi wondered: int. Albert Turi, TF, 10/23/01, CR, 302, 549n134—the chief is not identified in line with the 9/11 Commission’s agreement with the city of New York, corr. Kristen Wilhelm, 2010.

  52 He shared: int. Peter Hayden, TF, 10/23/01, & see Staff Statement 13, CO

  53 “The potential”/“I think”: int. Peter Hayden, TF, 10/23/01, Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero, NY: Viking, 2002, 33

  54 “Everything above”: New Yorker, 2/11/02

  55 “Tommy”: int. Richard Carletti, TF, 1/2/02

  56 “I believe”: Dwyer & Flynn, 149–, De Martini’s comments were made in an interview for the History Channel, NYT, 8/29/03

  57 707/“low on fuel”: Seattle Times, 2/27/93, MedServ, 9/11/01, “Painful Losses Mount in the Construction Family,” 10/1/01, www.​construction.​com, “WTC Building Performance Study,” FEMA, 5/02, Ch.1.17

  58 drooping/molten metal: “World Trade Center Investigation Status,” 12/03, & “Investigation of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center Disaster—FAQs,” 8/30/06, NIST, “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” Ch. 2., Pt. 2.2.3, FEMA, May 2002

  59 “large pieces”: CR, 304, 321, 549n148

  60 9:37 call: NY Daily News, 9/30/01, “Increasing FDNY Preparedness,” FDNY report, 8/19/02, 46–.

  CHAPTER 7

  1 over Ohio/Flight 93: “Flight Path Study—United Flight 93,” 2/19/02, NTSB, ed. James Boyd, After September 11, Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003, 88

  2 managed to telephone: MFR 04020029, 5/13/04—detailed study of phone records, used throughout chapter, Moschella to Marcus (& attachments), 4/26/04, “Flight 11 Calls—DOJ Response,” B13, T7, CF. In addition to the passengers named in the text, several others succeeded in making or attempted to make calls to the ground. Three who did get through were Linda Gronlund, Lauren Grandcolas, and Joseph DeLuca. Two others, Andrew Garcia and Waleska Martinez, got through only momentarily (several others: MFR 04020029, 5/13/04, Longman, 190).

  3 Bingham: This is what Bingham said to his aunt by marriage, the first family member to get to the phone. Some, who question the authenticity of the calls from the air on 9/11, have made much of the fact that—when afterward his mother came on the line—he reportedly said, “Hello, Mom, this is Mark Bingham [authors’ italics] …” No one, the skeptics suggest, would address his own mother with such formality. There is no tape or transcript of the call so far as the authors know—the earliest version of the quote is in an FBI report. Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoglan, however, herself remembered her son greeting her that way. To her, she said, it merely showed that he was a “little rattled” and fell back on the way that—as a young businessman—he regularly introduced himself on the phone. One cannot hang any significant doubt on the reported formality—least of all the idea, as some suggest, that the Bingham call itself is part of some complex fabrication. The call, like the other calls from Flight 93, is included in a list of air and cell phone calls compiled with the help of GTE engineers and released in 2009. For further discussion of the “fake calls” issue, see Ch. 11 (“This is Mark”/“Bingham“: FBI 302 of ints. Alice Hoglan, Carol Phipps, & Kathy Hoglan, 9/11/01, “Flight 93 Calls,” B12, T7, CF, FBI 302s of [names redacted], 9/19/01 & 9/23/01, INTELWIRE; doubt: David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch, 2007, 89–, James Fetzer cited in “Osama Tape Appears Fake,” PR Web, 5/30/06; “little rattled”/repeatedly: transcript of int. Hoglan, Newsnight, 2001, www.​bbc.​co.​uk, int.of Hoglan, The Flight That Fought Back, Brook Lapping Productions for Discovery Channel, 2005).

  4 Burnett: FBI 302 of int. Deena Burnett, 9/11/01, INTELWIRE, Longman, 107, MFR 04020024, 4/26/04.

  5 knife point/bomb: Burnett also told his wife that he thought one of the hijackers had a gun. His wife believed this, because her husband was familiar with guns. Fellow passenger Jeremy Glick, however, specifically told his wife that he saw no guns on the hijackers, only knives. Janet Riffe, an FAA security inspector assigned to American Airlines on 9/11, told the 9/11 Commission that she was told by an American employee that day of a flight attendant’s report that Flight 11 passenger Daniel Lewin had been shot. R
iffe said she was later told she had been wrongly informed. A partly redacted FBI summary states that passenger Peter Hanson, who phoned his father from Flight 175, said he had seen a flight attendant shot. Available reports of what Hanson said include no such reference. The presence of guns aboard any of the hijacked flights would of course indicate a grave security lapse. The 9/11 Commission concluded that the reports of guns were mistaken, that the weight of the evidence indicated that knives were the only weapons the hijackers brought on board (Burnett told: MFR 04020024, 4/26/04, Longman, 108; very familiar: The Times [London], 8/11/02, bio at www.​tomburnett​foundation.​org; Glick: Reader’s Digest [U.K.], 9/06, MFR 04020025, 4/22/04, “FBI Documents—Inc. Joanne Makely Call Transcript,” B13, T7, CF; Riffe: MFR 03007067, 9/11/03, “Flight 11 Gun Story,” B16, T7, CF; Hanson: Chicago to Director, 9/12/01, FBI 265D-NY-280350-CG, INTELWIRE; Commission: CR 13, 452n25, 457n82).

  6 Glick: Reader’s Digest (U.K.), 9/06, FBI 302 of Lyzbeth Glick, 9/12/01, INTELWIRE, Longman, 146

  7 told him/“My God”/“A group”: FBI 302 of int. Deena Burnett, 9/11/01, INTELWIRE, Longman, 110–

  8 “I’m going”: Reader’s Digest (U.K.), 9/06

  9 equipped: Longman, 19, 108–, 114, 27–, 137–, 132–

  10 Beamer: ibid., 17–, 200, 202

  11 Jefferson account: Jefferson & Middlebrooks, 29–

  12 “Shit!”: “Recording of Conversation,” 9/15/01, “Flight 93 Calls,” B12, T7, CF

  13 “Oh, my God”: Jefferson & Middlebrooks, 44–

  14 Flight Data Recorder: “Study of Autopilot, Navigational Equipment, and Fuel Consumption Activity Based on UA Flight 93 and AA Flight 77 Digital Flight Recorder Data,” 2/13/02, www.​ntsb.​gov

  15 23rd Psalm: Longman, 200

  16 “We just lost”: Joseph Gregor, “Air Traffic Control Recording,” NTSB, 12/21/01, int. John Werth.

  17 executive jet: transcript of audiotape, FAA Cleveland Air Traffic Control Center—Lorain position, 9/11/01, int. John Werth, CR, 30. There had not yet been time to comply with the nationwide grounding order. The FAA transcript indicates that the plane that sighted Flight 93 was Executive Jet 956. The authors’ reading of relevant sources, including a transcript of the Cleveland Air Traffic Control recording, suggests the Jet 956 sighting occurred soon after 9:41. The 9/11 Commission Report, meanwhile, refers to a sighting of Flight 93 by an aircraft at about 9:53. The sources cited in the Report do not make entirely clear whether this reference is to a sighting by Executive 956 or by another airplane (CR, 29–, 461n167, Full Transcription, “Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position, 9/11/01,” B1, NY Office files, CF, int. John Werth).