Flight 11

Flight 11
The morning of September 11 dawned bright and clear over Boston's Logan Airport as crews arrived for the first flights of the day. The departure lounge for American Airlines Flight 11 was already filling with passengers when John Ogonowski, the pilot, and Thomas McGuinness, the first officer, arrived to board their Boeing 767 and begin the pre-flight check.

As they walked through the lounge, Ogonowski casually scanned the waiting passengers, a longtime habit. Nothing out of the ordinary.

In the cockpit, he and McGuinness worked through the long checklist and, when they came to engine start-up, the two giant General Electric turbofan engines roared into life. The weather reports were good all the way to Los Angeles. It would be a routine flight.

At 7:45 the flight crew closed the cabin doors and the 767 began to taxi out to the runway. Clearance came minutes later and, at 7:59, the engines opened to full throttle and the 767 became airborne. It climbed into clear blue skies, leveled at 25,000 feet, and headed west toward Los Angeles. Ogonowski called up the coordinates for Los Angeles on the flight control computer, then engaged the INS/autopilot system. A flight attendant brought coffee to the cockpit and stayed to chat briefly, before resuming her duties.

The flight continued normally until 8:27, nearly half an hour into the trip. At that point Ogonowski's chest felt tight and he experienced difficulty breathing. Was it a heart attack? He glanced nervously at McGuinness, thinking that if the symptoms got worse, he should warn the co-pilot that he was having a medical problem. But McGuinness' face was white and he appeared to be gasping for air. Then he vomited. "We have a situation," declared Ogonowski, trying desperately to think. There were shouts and screams coming from the passenger compartment behind the closed cockpit doors. His mind seemed to be clouding over and breathing was now impossible. He managed to say, "Call the flight attendants," before passing out. McGuinness' head was already lolling to one side.

Back in the passenger area, the last flight attendant to lose consciousness, sank slowly to her knees before passing out in the aisle. The aircraft smelled of vomit and feces. Except for one or two passengers lying in the aisles, most remained in their seats. They appeared to have all fallen asleep, but they were dead. Everybody in the aircraft was dead.

Back in the cockpit, pilot and copilot sat dead in their seats, eyes staring blankly at the deep blue sky above the cockpit windows. The aircraft continued to fly normally, when suddenly the numbers on the inertial navigation system display changed. Instead of the coordinates for Los Angeles airspace, new numbers jumped into place. The aircraft banked steeply to the left and began a slow descent, adding another 100 mph to its airspeed.

In the distance, the New York skyline was growing steadily larger through the cockpit windows, though no one saw it. The aircraft, continuing to descend, headed for lower Manhattan.

By the time the 767 crossed the East River, it would have been all too clear where the aircraft was going. The World Trade Center Towers loomed steadily larger, dead ahead, through the cockpit windows. At 8:45, the Boeing 767 slammed into the North Tower. A huge ball of flame, burning jet fuel, blossomed from the southeast side of the North Tower. The passengers and crew of Flight 11, having been gassed, were now cremated, along with hundreds of office workers in the North Tower......http://www.feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html

And I'll be happy when the refurbished version of his http://www.physics911.org site is up again!

Why are you trying to exonerate the terrorists who did this terrible crime, demodewd?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092001hijack.story

Aboard Flight 11, a Chilling Voice
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Times Staff Writer

September 20, 2001
WASHINGTON -- A chilling telephone call from a flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11 details for the first time the frantic struggle aboard the doomed airliner as hijackers slit the throat of a passenger and stormed the cockpit.

"I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!" Madeline Amy Sweeney told a ground manager in Boston after the hijacked plane took a sudden and unexpected detour, according to an investigative document compiled by the FBI and reviewed by The Times.

The water she saw in those agonizing final moments was the Hudson River. The buildings were the famed New York City skyline, its trademark towers still upright. And the detour was Flight 11's calamitous descent into the World Trade Center's north tower about 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11.

In recent days, snippets of cell phone calls that originated from the four hijacked flights have revealed tearful goodbyes and valiant pledges of resistance.

But Sweeney's phone call, with details that coincide with the hijackers' takeover of the cockpit, could provide investigators with one of their most valuable pieces of evidence in reconstructing the hijackings.

FBI officials in Dallas, where American Airlines is based, were able, on the day of the terrorist attacks, to piece together a partial transcript and an account of the phone call. American Airlines officials said such calls are not typically recorded, suggesting that the FBI may have reconstructed the conversation from interviews.

Sweeney, a 35-year-old mother of two young children, had worked for American Airlines for 12 years, usually taking weekend duty so she could spend more time during the week with her family in Acton, Mass. She was one of nine flight attendants working Flight 11, which left Boston's Logan International Airport with a light load of 81 passengers at 7:45 a.m.

The plane lifted off uneventfully, but investigators think it was commandeered within about 15 minutes.

Sweeney (identified in the law enforcement report as Amy Sweeny) called American flight services manager Michael Woodward on the ground at Logan. She displayed remarkable calm as she related numerous details about the unfolding events.

"This plane has been hijacked," Sweeney said, according to the FBI report.

Two flight attendants, whom she identified by their crew numbers, had already been stabbed, she said. "A hijacker also cut the throat of a business-class passenger, and he appears to be dead," she said.

Investigators have identified five suspected hijackers on the flight--Satam Al Suqami; Waleed M. Alshehri; Wail Alshehri; Mohamed Atta; and Abdulaziz Alomari. They are believed to be part of a well-orchestrated network of 19 hijackers who used box cutters, razors and even small knives concealed in cigarette lighters to take control of the four planes.

But Sweeney apparently saw only four of the five men.

All four were Middle Eastern, Sweeney told Woodward. Three of them, she said, were sitting in business class, and "one spoke English very well."

Investigators noted that Sweeney even had the presence of mind to relay the exact seat numbers of the four suspects in the ninth and 10th rows, although a few of those seats do not match up with the seats assigned to the hijackers on the tickets they purchased.

It is unclear from the phone account where Sweeney was when she was talking to the ground manager or what type of phone she used. But even as she was relating details about the hijackers, the men were storming the front of the plane and "had just gained access to the cockpit."

Then, she told Woodward, the plane suddenly changed direction and began to descend rapidly.

"At that very point, Sweeney tried to contact the cockpit but did not get a response," according to the investigative report. The pilot reportedly also was trying to alert authorities of the situation by surreptitiously clicking his radio transmission button.

Woodward then asked Sweeney whether she knew her location.

The chilling reply: "I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!"

At that point, according to the report, the conversation ended.

Officials at American Airlines said information about the phone call was turned over to the FBI, but they refused to discuss details. "The FBI has told us not to discuss anything," said airline spokesman John Hotard. Officials at the FBI also declined to discuss the call.

But one official familiar with the phone conversation who asked not to be identified said that Sweeney's account could aid the investigation significantly. "She was very, very composed, very detailed. It was impressive that she could do that."

it's manufactured.....
face it, the ONLY ones capable of BENEFITTING from a 911 event is also the ONLY ones capable of arranging it!...obviously that is our own assholes, not allah's
why anyone wants to believe mediawhores like ny times or cnn or tom friedman etc is biggest mystery in gods fuked up creation.

There's the testimony of the people who were listening to this phone call from Flight 11. There's the people who knew Madeline Sweeney and recognized her voice. There's the tape of the phone call itself, which most people have heard.

Now to impeach this phone call, you need to prove:

All these people are lying - what's in it for them? No base speculations, please. What we need are receipts of the payoffs, witnesses showing up in brand new cars with unexplained cash, that sort of thing. Madeline Sweeney discovered alive somewhere would be nice. A few witnesses talking about how the tape was made, along with the equipment it was made on - that would be good, too.

If you have none of this, then you impeach your own credibility. "Just reading it" is no basis for you to conclude anything, and it's certainly no basis for me or anyone else to believe you.

And know very well that all the real covert culprits here only had to get a few little recorded samples of these peoples voices, and then they can re-synthesize that voice saying whatever they wanted it to say! With today's digital audio processing technology, you can make the fake sound like the real thing even to a person's closest relatives. Moreover, USING SUCH A TECHNIQUE IS COMPLETELY CONSISTANT WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S CONSTANT PATTERN OF DISSIMULATION AND EVIDENCE FABRICATION OF BOTH AUDIO AND VISUAL MATERIALS which can be seen in their production of bogus evidence about Iraqi weapons, their simulations of Osama Bin Landin saying things he never really said and so on. It all adds up.

Around the planet the Bush Administration is the most distrusted regime America has ever had....and people have great grounds for suspicion!

Evidence that this conversation was faked would be -

-Testimony of the sound engineers and computer experts that did it.

-Records at the recording studio where the faking was recorded.

-The script that the engineers used.

-The original tapes of Madeline Sweeney's voice that the faked recording was lifted from.

-The court orders allowing tapping of Madeline Sweeney's phone, and other surveillance of Madeline Sweeney to obtain said original tapes

Do you have any of this? Anything at all? No?

All you have is your speculations. That's it. Grounds for suspicion or not, you have no evidence. None. While the "Official Story" has plenty of it. And you can't impeach it with "Well, they can do this and it's consistent with that." That's baloney.

Do over.

...you're going to get testimony from some black ops specialist...join the real world.

is going to say "I see water and buildings.Oh my God oh my God!" They know the city scapes....and they surely know MANHATTAN.She might have said "we're heading straight towards Manhattan". Phony phony phony. I'm not exonerating any terrorists. Who are the "terrorists"?????

From the book of Motivations, chapter 3:16:

And the LORD said unto Demodewd: Seasoned flight attendants always recognize skylines instantly. Failure of seasoned flight attendants to do so always means that records of such are faked.

And the congregation replied, Bullshit.

Has it occured to you that "Oh my God oh my God!" was her reaction on recognizing the Manhattan skyline and all that it implied? That's actually a pretty quick recognition.

As I said above, the evidence on this side of the aisle includes the taped conversation, the testimony of the person Madeline talked to, the testimony of the others who listened to the conversation as it happened, the testimony of her family and friends that it is her voice, and the fact of her boarding Flight 11 in the normal course of her job.

You have your speculations. Do over.

She knows right away what she sees...Manhattan! Once you've seen Manhattan you would never forget the skyline. "I see water,I see buildings"??? Never. That line is a dead give away. Her voice patterns were replicated.

Umm, the guys that did it. Al Qaeda. You remember them?

Most of the "hijackers" are still alive in the Middle East!!!!

The hijackers died when the planes they hijacked were crashed by their express purpose. The people whose identities they stole are still alive.

But Madeline reported the hijackers sitting in different seats from where the FBI announced that they were sitting!!!!

These wacky conspirators - they can remote control planes into buildings, they can frame innocent terrorism organizations that have declared war on the United States, they can precisely coordinate three jets in a room-a-zoom-zoom distraction air show over the Pentagon, but they can't get the seats right between the manufactured recording and the FBI presentation. Close enough for government work, I guess... :eyes:

No barely-trained pilot could have pulled off a descent in eight minutes to crash precisely into the WTC the way Flight 11 did! It was remote control!

You're right.

As long as you consider the autopilot "remote control." The hijackers, I believe, used a GPS unit to program a precise location (the face of the North Tower) into the autopilot. They then programmed an exact altitude (calculated before the flight for accuracy) and let the autopilot fly the plane into the WTC.

"As long as you consider the autopilot "remote control." The hijackers, I believe, used a GPS unit to program a precise location (the face of the North Tower) into the autopilot. They then programmed an exact altitude (calculated before the flight for accuracy) and let the autopilot fly the plane into the WTC."

Is that a strictly personal belief? What did the other members of that "screenwriting organization" you say you belong to, have to offer? Wait, wait, I know: "They have more important things to do than sit around and spread disinformation."

That's why I used the term I believe when explaining what I believe happened, personally. I have as much evidence for it as anybody has for three plane theories, controlled explosives, or Hillary Clinton behind the OJ murders. It's my personal belief that explains the facts.

I can't help it that my personal belief is a lot more plausible than your personal belief. I just think that way naturally. You can learn how to think plausibly too. Plausibility is in the grasp of everyone.

All you ever put up is stupid shallow appeals to PREJUDICE. Never one authentic constructive idea.

All you ever put up is stupid shallow appeals to PREJUDICE. Never one authentic constructive idea.

And how did you get to be an expert on all of my posts? You've read every single one of them?

This is too easy.

It's all about making sure the truth doesn't come out. And, the Government doesn't have to rely on volunteers.

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"Planted evidence: Another difficulty arises in the matter of evidence discovered by FBI investigators in the parking lots of airports used by the hijackers. In more than one rental vehicle, field officers recovered copies of the Qur'an and aircraft flight manuals. In a context where the White House was stressing the "sophistication" of the attackers, as well as the high state of organization and coordination necessary to carry them out, it would seem reasonable to assume that all operatives would have been extensively briefed on the importance of leaving no trace of themselves or their mission (in pursuit of "nameless terror"). Such a briefing would certainly include all personal possessions, religious documents, flight manuals, and so on. The rental vehicles would be left as clean as they were when they were rented. No Muslim, (especially, one supposes, a "fanatic") would ever leave a Qur'an in a rented vehicle, especially if he knew he would not be returning to it.

Come to think of it, why would any terrorist organization with such a high level of competence rent cars in the first place? After all, it would be simpler (and no less reliable) to take a cab to the airport.

Again, there are very serious discrepancies between the facts as reported and on-the-ground realities." http://www.feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html

facts, we'll understand the who and how's. Until then, we have the official story that supports this administration's meme....and we have alternative theories that supports a scenario required to jumpstart the "war on terror".

Sadly, I doubt anyone posting here knows the actual answers.

A group of us intend to protest at ground zero in Manhattan on 9-11 for the second anniversary of the terrorist attack. We intend to protest the incompetence of the Bush Administration in failing to prevent the attacks despite the warnings issued by the Hart-Rudman Commission, Senator Hart himself, and the FBI agents in the field who raised the alarm of Arabs seeking commercial flight training, but not being interested in how to take off or land an airliner. We also intend to circulate petitions to have Senator Hart fill a vacancy (Sen. Cleland is leaving) on the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Tom Keane. The 9-11 Commission is studying how 9-11 could have been prevented. The Bush Administration is stonewalling the Commission. All those who feel that the events 9-11 were the result of the incompetence of the Bush Administration are welcome to join us.

Below is part of an interview with Senator Hart from Buzzflash:

August 4, 2003
INTERVIEW ARCHIVES
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/08/04_hart.html

Senator Gary Hart Talks about Terrorism, the Bush Administration and What's Not Being Done to Prevent Further Attacks

"And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen."

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

If anyone knows that the United States -– and the Bush Administration -– should have seen September 11th coming, it’s Gary Hart.

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart co-chaired both the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, which issued three public reports forecasting the age of terrorism and outlined a new, post-Cold War national security policy, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations task force on homeland security, which recently released its report "America -- Still Unprepared, Still in Danger."

Many of the issues Hart presciently raised and discussed in the 1970s and 1980s -- including military reform, intelligence reform, energy independence, and a number of others -- have now begun to re-enter the arena of national debate. In the late 1990s, Hart's mastery of security issues and grasp of foreign policy led him to make multiple and tragically unheeded predictions -- one as late as September 5, 2001 -- that America would be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction.

No longer a "prophet without honor" in the wake of 9-11, Gary Hart believes the United States is still woefully unprepared to intercept and respond to attacks on American territory. Like a latter-day Paul Revere, he is continuing to provide direction to both his party and his country in an age marred by terrorism.

(Much of this introduction is excerpted from Senator Hart’s weblog )

In the light of the recently released 9/11 report, BuzzFlash turned to Senator Hart to provide some insight into America's war on terrorism.

* * *
. . .
BUZZFLASH: Now, you co-chaired the Hart-Rudman report, and it was officially released just about the time that the Bush Administration came into office. And it received some coverage –- not a tremendous amount -- but some media attention was given to it. And I have a CNN article in front of me from February 1, 2001, which says, in the introduction to an article about the Hart-Rudman report, "While few officials doubt the group’s research, some question whether these suggestions are possible and necessary." How did you feel at the time that the report received coverage, but pretty much died down as much news does after awhile if there’s no one to keep it alive?

HART: Well, first of all, there were three reports. The first was issued sometime before the one you mentioned. These are all public -– rolled out in news conferences with full notification to the press. And the first report said that America would be attacked by terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, and Americans would lose their lives on American soil, possibly in large numbers. The date of that report was September 15th, 1999 -– two years, almost to the day, before the attack on the World Trade Center. Furthermore, a second report came out in the spring of 2000, and the third one is the one that you mentioned. The first of fifty recommendations, all of which were eminently doable, was to create a National Homeland Security agency. And if CNN or anyone else was saying that it wasn't feasible, well, two years later, we had one finally created. So the question was: are you going to do it before the terrorists attack, or afterwards? And unfortunately, the Administration waited until well afterwards.

I would point out also that the so-called newspaper of record, the New York Times, didn't print one word about that final report. Keep in mind this wasn't just another federal commission. This was the most comprehensive review of U.S. national security since 1947. And so we weren't competing with a thousand other federal commissions. This was groundbreaking stuff, and we had spent two and a half years putting these recommendations and findings together.

. . .


BUZZFLASH: In a news story prior to the interview, we were looking back on the history of the recommendations from the Hart-Rudman reports. And one news story mentioned that you had tried to warn the Bush administration, I’m quoting from them, "Hart pleaded with the Bush Administration to take the Al-Qaida threat seriously, throughout the spring and summer of 2001, with Hart even meeting personally with Rice just one week before the Twin Towers were attacked." Do you have any comment about this interpretation of events?

HART: I’d put it differently. There were fourteen of us, and not all of us agreed or shared the same degree of urgency about this threat. We all concluded that it existed. We all concluded that it was going to happen. The question was: would it be sooner or later? I felt, and I think a few others felt, a higher degree of urgency about this. And in my case, I went around the country. Keep in mind the mandate of the commission required that it be dissolved by February 15th, 2001. We got an extension because there were Congressional committees that wanted testimony from us. But by and large, once we delivered the reports, as a body, we had pretty much completed our work.

But individually, I went around the country, gave speeches and urged people to pay more attention to this. I also urged reporters and journalists to pay more attention. One of the speeches I gave was in Montreal, ironically, to an International Air Transportation Association meeting. And the next morning, the Montreal papers’ headlines were: "Hart Predicts Terrorist Attacks on America."

BUZZFLASH: And when was that?

HART: That was the day I went down to Washington and met with Dr. Rice, whom I had known before. And I said, "Please get going more urgently on the issue of homeland security." And that was September the 6th, 2001 –- five days before the attack.

BUZZFLASH: Rice has said that Bush was briefed, I believe, on August 6th of 2001 -– if that’s not the exact date, it’s within a couple of days –- that there might indeed be serious bombings by Al-Qaida in the United States, or hijackings, but that they couldn't predict planes would be flown into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. Do you have any response to that?

HART: Our commission did not have the resources to give detailed projections as to how, when and where. But the fact is that for two years we had said this was going to happen, and one major step that needed to be taken was to coordinate existing federal assets, particularly our border control agencies -– Coast Guards, Customs and Border Patrol, and Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We were very explicit about that, and we had been. And that was our first recommendation to the President. And it was that failure to act -– to begin to do that -– that I think permitted this event to happen. No one believes in absolute security. But the goal is to make it as difficult for the attackers as possible, and we had not done that. There had been no –- to my knowledge -– no major step taken by this administration in the period between January and September to stop these attacks, including coordinating the databases and communication systems of the Board of Control Agency and the INS. Everybody since 9/11 that’s looked at the situation has said the porousness of that system is what permitted these people to do what they did. And the question is: what, if anything, did the administration do between January 31st and September the 11th? And the answer is: not very much.

Now a commission of fourteen people cannot substitute for the federal government of the United States. The President had the power. The President controlled the FBI and the CIA. And when the tragedy happened, no one was fired. Why is that? Why was there no accountability? So instead of pointing the finger at us, and say: well, if you’d just told us they were going to use airplanes, and that the target was the World Trade Center, and it was going to be September 11th, maybe we could have done something. That’s total nonsense.

BUZZFLASH: Well, we’ve pointed out on BuzzFlash on a number of occasions that when Rice mentioned that they knew of hijackings, but not hijackings into buildings, that this was beyond ridiculous, because the way you stop a hijacking into a building is the same way you stop a hijacking.

HART: Right.

BUZZFLASH: And so though the ultimate destination perhaps, according to her, was not known to them, the means of preventing it was the same.

HART: Yes. I was told very recently that there was somebody in the intelligence community that created a scenario that did involve the use of airplanes. I haven't seen that scenario or where it came from, but I didn't know it existed until somebody said it –- that it had been in one or more scenarios.

"Sadly, I doubt anyone posting here knows the actual answers.

That's sort of like the people who say 9/11 happened due to, or was the result of...negligence.

So, even without knowing all of the facts, we certainly know that 9/11 wasn't the work of a man with bad kidneys, living in a damn cave in Afghanistan or ReallyReallyBadistan...or anywhere else.