So I've been looking for the last half hour on google and even altavista, for the text of the cockpit to control towers for the four planes involved in the 911 assault on Wash and NY. The best I've found merely says that, as of 9/14/01, the cockpit voice recorders from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and the one that hit the pentagon appear to be "damaged and unusable" for gathering information.

Have any of you folks been more successful in tracking down this info?

Doesn't it seem almost certain that there would have been some sort of notification by at least one of these pilots that his plane was being hijacked?

And even if the pilot was never able to broadcast this info, wouldn't there have been recordings of the attempts by the air traffic controllers to contact the pilots to see what the hell was going on, after it was noticed that they were flying in the wrong direction?

One site DID mention that the Air Force was about to shoot down the plane that crashed in Penn, but the plane crashed beforet they had to do so.

JOJ

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 06, 2001

Answers

American flight 11

Nando Times

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), November 06, 2001.

"Our military establishment today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime ... we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions ... three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all [U.S.] corporations. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every StateHouse, every office of the Federal Government. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process." — President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell speech, January 17, 1961

http://www.stratfor.com/home/sitreps.htm Local Pittsburgh radio and television are citing eyewitnesses as saying that the United Airlines 747, which originated from Newark and crashed 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh, was shot down by U.S. fighters before it could reach Washington, D.C. An airliner which took off from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport en route to Los Angeles is reportedly unaccounted for, Dallas radio reported. Nearly 4,000 aircraft ­ military and general aviation ­ are in the sky right now. Fox News is also reporting that the second plane which hit the World Trade Center originated from Washington’s Dulles airport. 1545 GMT, 091101 [note: this latter point was wrong - the Dulles plane hit the Pentagon]

http://www.konformist.com/911/wtc-questions.txt On September 16, Vice President Dick Cheney revealed in an interview that in the hours following the attacks, President Bush had ordered the downing of any commercial jet that endangered Washington. As well, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz noted that the U.S. Air Force had been tracking the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and had been in a position to bring it down. However, the official government position is that apparently, all four planes crashed before such an unprecedented order could be brought into effect. Furthermore, Wolfowitz denied that it was the action of the Air Force that brought down the fourth plane, but rather the heroism of its passengers, who are believed to have frustrated the hijackers' efforts to hit another landmark building. In spite of this, there remain eye-witness and insider accounts which show that something else happened. On September 13, the Washington Times ran a story affirming that by 10:30 a.m., the military had taken control of U.S. airspace, quoting an unnamed Federal Aviation Administration employee at the Nashua control facility. By 10:37, the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. According to the Washington Post, "the employee also told the newspaper that FAA air traffic controllers in Nashua learned through discussions with other controllers that an F-16 fighter stayed in hot pursuit of another hijacked commercial airliner until it crashed in Pennsylvania." Moreover, "they have learned the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet, the employee said." Commenting about the F-16 pilot's view of Flight 93's end, the employee mentioned: "He must've seen the whole thing." Yet, serious questions still remain, casting profound doubt upon official accounts. On September 13, CNN aired a live interview with Daryn Kagan, CNN anchor, and Brian Cabell, a CNN correspondent, in which he was asked to update the situation at the Pennsylvania crash site: "Well, Daryn, in the last hour or so, the FBI and the state police here have confirmed that they have cordoned off a second area about six to eight miles away from the crater here where (the) plane went down. This is apparently another debris site, which raises a number of questions. Why would debris from the plane - and they identified it specifically as being from this plane - why would debris be located 6 miles away. Could it have blown that far away? It seems highly unlikely. Almost all the debris found at this site is within 100 yards, 200 yards, so it raises some questions." He continued, "...what we do know is that there's a site about (a) half mile behind me, where the plane went down, where most of the debris is, and then about six miles away up by a lake, there is another area that's been cordoned off, and state police and the FBI have said definitely there is debris from the plane located there." This report does not contradict state police and civilian citings, as reported on September 13 by Reuters: "Pennsylvania state police officials said on Thursday debris from the plane had been found up to 8 miles away (from the crash site) in a residential community where local media have quoted residents as speaking of a second plane in the area and burning debris falling from the sky." The Somerest PA paper The Daily American also reported that a passenger locked in a bathroom aboard United Flight 93 called 911 saying, "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" the paper quoted dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer from Westmoreland County as saying. The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said. All of these accounts prove that the plane must have exploded in the air, or else it would not be logical to assume that the wreckage from the plane could have been dispersed in an approximately six to eight mile radius, if it were only a crash. This conclusion leads us with only two options; either the hijackers exploded the plane, or the plane was shot down by the F-16 which was reportedly following it. Whatever the case, the F16 would have at the very least witnessed this event, all of this differing from official accounts.

http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010913/ ts/attack_pennsylvania_dc_3.html FBI Does Not Rule Out Shootdown of Penn. Airplane

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (Reuters) - Federal investigators said on Thursday they could not rule out the possibility that a United Airlines jetliner that crashed in rural western Pennsylvania during this week's attacks on New York and the Pentagon (news - web sites) was shot down.

"We have not ruled out that," FBI (news - web sites) agent Bill Crowley told a news conference when asked about reports that a U.S. fighter jet may have fired on the hijacked Boeing 757. "We haven't ruled out anything yet."

"It's kind of a loaded question. We're basically at the infancy (of the investigation)," Crowley added. "We haven't certainly come to that conclusion either."

The Defense Department on Tuesday vigorously denied reports suggesting the U.S. military could have downed the hijacked flight in an effort to prevent it from reaching a target, perhaps in Washington.

United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed with 45 people on board, had been en route to San Francisco from Newark, New Jersey, when it veered off course over northeastern Ohio and headed back southeast toward Pittsburgh. It crashed 80 miles southeast of that city.

Pennsylvania state police officials said on Thursday debris from the plane had been found up to 8 miles away in a residential community where local media have quoted residents as speaking of a second plane in the area and burning debris falling from the sky. ....

http://eionews.addr.com/psyops/fourthplane.htm EYEWITNESSES SAW UNMARKED PLANE AS FLIGHT 93 CRASHED Plane had high back wings and remained briefly after crash

Video of the WTAE interviews is usually accessible. WTAE-TV

13th September, 2001 A PsyOpNews.com Alert

At least four witnesses who were at the crash scene within five minutes of the crash told local WTAE's Paul Van Osdol that they saw another plane in the area.

Somerset County resident Jim Brandt told local TV station WTAE that he saw another plane in the area. He said it stayed there for one or two minutes before leaving.

Another Somerset County resident, Tom Spinello, said that he saw the plane. He said that it had high back wings.

Both men said that the plane had no markings on it, either civilian or military

One passenger who called Westmoreland County 911 said he was inside a locked bathroom. Dispatcher Glenn Cramer said the unidentified man repeatedly said, "We're being hijacked!"

"He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said.

FBI officials had a tape of that call in custody. They would not comment on its contents or the speculation of a struggle on board.

Witnesses reported seeing military aircraft in the air just after the crash, and there were rumors that Flight 93 was shot down. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said that was not the case, according to Murtha.

As Flight 93 approached Cleveland, radar showed the plane banked left and headed back toward southwest Pennsylvania. Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White said air traffic controllers reported hearing screams on a plane with which they had communicated.

John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport tower chief Dennis Fritz said his tower, located about 20 miles from the crash site, got a warning call from Cleveland Air Traffic Control.

The Cleveland tower said the plane had done some unusual maneuvers, including a 180-degree turn away from Cleveland, and was flying at a low altitude. Johnstown tower controllers also could not see the plane from their tower, leading them to believe the plane was already very low and perhaps obscured by the surrounding topography.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/pit/news/stories/news-957912200109 12-130955.html

this article is probably a tacit admission that the shootdown happened - read carefully ... it reminds me of the book "FAIL SAFE"

'We Have Some Planes,' Hijacker Told Controller October 16, 2001 By MATTHEW L. WALD with KEVIN SACK [excerpts - fair use doctrine] Moments after the first jet hit the World Trade Center, a controller in Indianapolis was trying to make contact with American Flight 77, which was flying from Dulles International Airport outside Washington to Los Angeles. The pilot had confirmed receiving directions to fly towards a navigation beacon at Falmouth, Ky., but then failed to respond to calls from the ground. "American 77, Indy," the controller said, over and over. "American 77, Indy, radio check. How do you read?" By 8:56 a.m., it was evident that Flight 77 was lost. The Federal Aviation Administration, already in contact with the Pentagon about the hijackings out of Boston, notified the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, of American 77 at 9:24, 28 minutes later. Fighters scrambled immediately. The F.A.A. controller called American's dispatch office in Dallas, and the dispatcher there to try to raise Flight 77 on another radio, but failed. At 9:09 a.m., the American dispatcher said he could not reach Flight 77, but said the company had "an unconfirmed report the second airplane hit the World Trade Center and exploded." He seemed to suggest that American 77 might be that plane, but in fact American 77 was racing back over Pittsburgh, toward Washington. At 9:33 a.m., the same air traffic controller at Dulles who had handled the perfectly normal departure of American 77 about 70 minutes earlier, spotted an unidentified blip on the radar screen. The Dulles controllers called their counterparts at Reagan National Airport to report that a "fast moving primary target," meaning an airplane with no transponder, was moving east, headed toward the forbidden airspace over the White House, the Capitol and the Washington Monument. A Dulles supervisor picked up a hot line to tell the Secret Service at the White House. The president was in Florida, but Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House; Secret Service agents hustled him into an underground bunker there. At 9:36 a.m., National Airport, which was on American 77's flight path, asked a military C-130 cargo plane, taking off on a scheduled flight from Andrews Air Force Base - in Maryland, on the other side of the District of Columbia - to intercept and identify the fast-moving target. The crew of the C-130 said it was a Boeing 757, moving low and fast.

The airplane was headed for the heart of Washington. But as it crossed the Pentagon at perhaps 7,000 feet - the exact altitude is uncertain because its transponder had been turned off - it began a 360- degree turn to the right that brought nearly to ground level. It crashed into the west side of the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m. At impact, it was moving at well over 500 m.p.h., which both maximized the destruction and made the plane easier to handle. Investigators later determined that it had been flying on autopilot on its path over the Pentagon. Pilots use autopilot to minimize their workload on long days and to assure a precise course and smooth ride. Just minutes before the crash at the Pentagon, United Airlines Flight 93, flying from Newark to San Francisco, went off course near Cleveland. It now appears that Flight 93 received a warning of the hijackings. Cutting through the background noise in the cockpit of Flight 93, the crew would have heard the sound of an electronic "ping" like one that might announce the arrival of e-mail message on a home computer. It was a text message coming by radio, from a flight dispatcher near Chicago. In green letters on a black background, it said, "Beware, cockpit intrusion." The message was sent by a dispatcher, sitting at the "transcontinental" desk at United's operations center near O'Hare International Airport, who had been assigned to follow both 175 and 93, as well as 14 other airplanes that morning. After United 175 was confirmed to have been hijacked, he sent the message to all the planes he was monitoring. In the cockpit of Flight 93, Capt. Jason Dahl and his first officer, Leroy Homer, continued westbound. In the last few moments of the pre- attack world, there was no particular reason for them to react radically. "Getting a message like that on any day in the U.S.A., well, I'd think, `Those poor bastards,' " one aviation official said. "Then I'd think, `It's already happened; it's probably not going to happen again.' " Since Sept. 11, details have emerged of a struggle between hijackers and passengers on Flight 93. People involved in air traffic control said the F.B.I. seized the air traffic tapes of the conversations with that airplane, and no transcript was made available of air-to-ground communications for the flight. But according to a person who heard the tape, "a very noisy sound of a confrontation was heard on the frequency, very garbled, but with some discernible phrase like, `Hey, get out of here!' " There was the sound of a foreign language on the frequency; controllers thought it was Arabic. Flight 93 crashed in a field western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. But before the final cockpit intrusion of the morning, one of the pilots apparently turned to the e-mail unit that carried the warning from Chicago, touched a button that made the screen display a keyboard and typed a one-word reply: "Confirmed." By the time the F-16's from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., arrived, the damage was done. At both Langley and at Otis Air National Guard Base at Falmouth, Mass., on Cape Cod, two sets of fighter pilots were spending the morning as usual: sitting, waiting, and wondering whether they would escape the day without hearing the shrill klaxon blast that occasionally sent them racing to the cockpits of their supersonic jets. For years, the threat of an incoming aerial attack on the American homeland had been considered so minor that on the morning of Sept. 11, the entire country was being defended by 14 Air National Guard planes dispersed among seven bases. The first call came to Otis about the hijacking of Flight 11 came at 8:46 a.m., six minutes after the F.A.A. had first notified the North East Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., a division of Norad. Six minutes later two vintage F-15's, built in 1977 and equipped with heat-seeking and radar-guided missiles, had been scrambled, according to a Norad timeline. One pilot was a part-time Guardsman who flew a commercial plane as his day job; the other jet was flown by a full-time member of the Air National Guard. But the orders came too late. The first plane was plunging into the World Trade Center when the Otis pilots were racing to their jets. United Flight 175 hit the second tower at 9:02 a.m., 10 minutes after the fighters were airborne, when the F-15's were about 71 miles and eight minutes away. When they arrived, the helpless pilots got the first aerial views of the devastation. The three F16's at Langley, all of them assigned to the North Dakota Air National Guard's 119th Fighter Wing, nicknamed the Happy Hooligans, were also scrambled too late to intercept American Flight 77 before it crashed into the Pentagon. But if United Airlines Flight 93 had not crashed in Pennsylvania, the three pilots from Langley - two of them commercial airline pilots themselves - may have faced the nightmarish decision of whether to shoot down the commercial airliner, along with its 38 passengers and crew of seven. "It kept us from having to do the unthinkable," said Maj. Gen. Mike J. Haugen, adjutant general of the North Dakota National Guard, "and that is to use your own weapons and own training against your own citizens." The military has not allowed the pilots to be interviewed, and The Times has agreed not to print their names because of security concerns. But details of their activities on Sept. 11 have emerged through interviews with other Guard officials. At Langley, the pilot designated as the flight lead, a 33-year-old pilot for Northwest Airlines, was getting a cup of coffee when someone yelled from the television room: "Hey, an airplane just hit the World Trade Center!" "All of a sudden," said Col. Lyle Andvik, a member and former commander of the unit, "something happens that none of us can believe. They get an order from Northeast Air Defense Sector, the pilots get a scramble horn, and they're down the stairs, out the door, in the jets and off they go. At the time, they didn't realize why they were being scrambled. They didn't realize that other planes had been hijacked." At 9:30 a.m., six minutes after receiving their orders from the defense sector, code-named Huntress, three F-16's were airborne, according to the Norad timeline. At first, the planes were directed toward New York at top speed, and probably reached 600 m.p.h. within two minutes, General Haugen said. Then, flying in formation, they were vectored toward the west and given a new flight target: Reagan National Airport. The planes, each loaded with six missiles, had slowed slightly to just under supersonic speed, flying at about 25,000 feet, when they heard over their radio headsets that the F.A.A. had ordered all civilian aircraft to land. The next sign of how serious the situation had become arrived in the form of a squawk over the plane's transponder, a code that suggests almost an emergency wartime situation. "They get the squawk and they've heard that planes are supposed to land and then Huntress says, `Hooligan flight, can you confirm that the Pentagon is on fire?' " General Haugen said, adding that the lead flier looked down and confirmed that the Pentagon was on fire. Then the pilots received the most surreal order of the awful morning. "A person came on the radio," General Haugen said, "and identified themselves as being with the Secret Service, and he said, 'I want you to protect the White House at all costs.' " http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/16/national/16PLAN.html?ex=1004280465&e i=1&en=388ad45a7bcfaf63

-- mark (mrobinowitz@nospam.igc.org), November 06, 2001.

Amazing!

What the hell does Ikes farewell message have to do with this thread? I find it a amusing that people will go to such great lengths to get their message across. I guess thats why there is a delete button.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), November 06, 2001.