An Interesting Problem With the Story fo Flight 93

Hello All,


Like many of you, I have yet to make up my mind about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I have not yet drawn a concrete conclusion about who was behind the attacks, and abouthow much our government knew, or if they even helped carry out these attacks. There is much evidence that needs to be sifted through to try and gain a clear picture.

However, I read a news article, completely unrelated, that was talking about cell phone usage on airplanes. My coworkers were all talking about how horrible it will be if people on planes can start yacking on and on on their cell phones. In the article, they discussed the biggest set back, which is technological in its scope. Because of the altitude and speed at which a plane travels, it's impossible for a cell phone to make a call, since the phone, if it's even able to pick up a cell phone tower, is traveling so quickly from tower to tower, the calls continually disconnect as you move to a new area of coverage.

Here's a very in depth articel about the technology they are creating to allow a small cell phone broadcast tower to be installed on planes which will allow cell phone calls to be made from planes.

www.mobile-review.com...

As I read the article, i couldn't help but think about the supposed phone call that was made from Flight 93, which later crashed because the passengers overpowered the terrorists. How is it possible that a cell phone call was made, when the airlines admit this is impossible, and are investing money in technologies to make cell phone usage possible to it's passangers?

It's just another crack inthe official story of 9/11 in my opinion. I tried searching for this subject, and couldn't find anything, so I apogize if I missed it, or this has been covered elsewhere. It just seemed pretty interesting.

I don't think this issue has been conclusively addressed. I don't really know that it can be, because of the amount of variables to take into account on which we have little information.

It is my personal opinion that there were both forged and authentic calls from the flights.

First, let's look at the calls:

Flight 11

Madeline Sweeney allegedly makes a 25-minute call (supposedly the last 25 minutes of the trip) to her ground manager on the plane's airfone, of which there seems to be no available transcription or etc., but in which details of passenger injuries, the hijackers' seats, etc. are allegedly given. She is quoted as saying, "I see, buildings, water, ... Oh my God!," just before the plane crashed into WTC1.

This strikes me as artificial, and thereby fake, because such features would be nothing noteworthy to someone who had spent 12 years as a Massachusetts-based flight attendant. Rather than noting any buildings distinctive of Manhattan, she describes seeing "buildings" and "water." You think, "Madeline?" If you were a Massachusetts-based flight attendant for 12 years, do you think seeing buildings or water, or even both at the same time, would be anything new to you, or even anything worth mentioning while reporting a hijacking? Maybe she would've went on to describe the presence of clouds, and sunlight, too, if she had had the time.

Betty Ong allegedly called Vanessa Minter at American Airlines and talked for the last 23 minutes of the plane's voyage. The FBI had a recording of the first 4 and a half minutes of the conversation that they refused to release to the public, but at one of the 9/11 Commission's hearings, that recording was played. If anyone knows where a transcription of recording of this call can be found, please fill us in.

Important note: These two calls are the only two alleged calls that have any publicly-available evidence (discounting the witness testimony that all the other calls rest upon).


Flight 175

Peter Burton Hanson allegedly makes a call (apparently on a cell phone). He is cut off several times and repeats himself.

Brian Sweeney called his wife (with a cell phone I'm assuming) and left a message.

"Unnamed female flight attendant call": This call is referenced here, but it is also stated that there is no available evidence that this call ever took place.

Flight 77

Barbara Olson called her husband, according solely to her husband's own testimony on Sept. 12. Her husband testified that Barbara had asked, "What should I tell the pilot?," indicating that (a) the pilot, Chic Burlingame, was allegedly still alive, and seated in the back of the plane with Barbara, from where she was calling, and (b) Barbara felt obligated to "tell" him something, as if it were necessary for a passenger to calm or reassure Chic, who was a veteran F-4 pilot of the Vietnam War, and a graduate of the Naval Academy.

Flight 93

There were many calls from this flight, most of which involving cell phones.

Todd Beamer, allegedly calling home via airfone, conveniently coined the phrase "Let's roll" before allegedly leading the other passengers to revolt, thus causing Flight 93 to somehow crash into a crater that displayed little-to-no debris, while the bulk of the actual debris was somehow spread out over a mile. That's some hell of a passenger revolt you led, Mr. Beamer.

Let's contrast this with another call from Flight 93:

At 9:58, a frantic passenger called from a bathroom to report an explosion and smoke. The tape of this 911 call was seized by the FBI. The 911 operator who took the call, Glenn Cramer, was told by the FBI not to discuss the call.

This would have been the last known call from Flight 93.

Hell of a passenger revolt, Mr. Beamer! Explosions and smoke and almost completely debris-less craters (which might not be so remarkable if not for the fact that debris was found in quantities elsewhere..).. All I can say is: wow.

The above was quoted from this page at The 9/11 Research Site, which was in turn taken from this Associated Press article, dated September 12, 2001 and cached via the 9/11 Research Site (the original article no longer exists).

In all, at least thirteen people made cell phone calls from Flight 93, most of them being short, of which of course there is no public evidence.

In relation to the last quote, regarding the "explosion and smoke," the Mayor of Shanksville, Mr. Ernie Stuhl, seems to confirm similar activities while recalling discourse with a couple locals, one of which being a Vietnam vet:

I know of two people -- I will not mention names -- that heard a missile. They both live very close, within a couple of hundred yards... This one fellow's served in Vietnam and he says he's heard them, and he heard one that day.

Stuhl has also attested to the fact that a 1000-pound piece of engine was found a "considerable distance" away from the crater, to the West and in a nearby wood. A bit odd for this to occur if the plane was simply driven into the ground.

You can find much more information on the situation in Shanksville in a cache of a Daily News article here.


But I've sort of got off-subject here.

As to whether or not cell phones will work on planes for long amounts of time, I wouldn't know. I've read members post that cell phones will work, but that it's discouraged while onboard a plane for various technical reasons, and that the signal is not optimal. The cell phone calls were apparently mostly interrupted on 9/11. If there were any cell phone calls of any length from any of the planes, I would be suspicious. Most of the lengthy calls seem to have been from the airfones, though (Sweeney, Ong, Beamer).

That should serve at least as a decent backdrop for whatever information other ATS members may have to offer on cell phone usage on planes, so that we may apply it accurately and directly to the calls made from the various flights on 9/11.

All those calls you posted, whether you think they are fake or not were made from airphones, not cellphones. No one questions whether or not you can make calls at altitude from phones made to do exactly that.

I am curious as to why you think they are fake. They were either made from airphones or made at low altitude. How exactly were they faked?

Regarding 93 I always found this story to be interesting.

wcpo.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Link

That's the archive version to be later replaced with this.

www.wcpo.com...

(link is dead at the moment but hopefully wcpo's server will be back up again soon) It basically states that the story was removed due to inaccuracies yet there was no correction of what plane "actually" emergency landed there.

It also wasn't "corrected" until 8/13/04!

The origional story states that "the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated".

Flight 93 had an unusual number of calls out and telephone contacts and messages compared to the others that day.

Could they have been taken somewhere and given scripts to read?

[edit on 10/19/05 by redmage]

Mod Edit: Link Waistline Reduced.

[edit on 19/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by LeftBehind
All those calls you posted, whether you think they are fake or not were made from airphones, not cellphones.

Please check your information before you post. This statement is incorrect. I have a bad feeling about taking you off my ignore list.

And if you had read my post, you would've noticed statements such as this, the second-to-last paragraph:

Originally posted by bsbray11
Most of the lengthy calls seem to have been from the airfones, though (Sweeney, Ong, Beamer).

Most calls were made from cell phones, not airfones (with an f; example of usage).

And now, before this turns into a LeftBehind-style word game or anything else that would cause me a headache, I'll post a bunch of sources to back me up in the fact that numerous cell phone calls were reported from the flights on 9/11.


CNN.com Article:

Hijacked passenger called 911 on cell phone [This is the headline, btw]

September 11, 2001 Posted: 11:35 PM EDT (0335 GMT)

SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 called on his cell phone from a locked bathroom and delivered a chilling message.

Minutes before the 10 a.m. crash, an emergency dispatcher in Pennsylvania received a cell phone call from a man who said he was a passenger locked in a bathroom aboard United Flight 93.

Another CNN.com Article:

Passenger Jeremy Glick called his wife Liz and in-laws in New York on a cell phone to say the plane had been hijacked.

Another CNN.com Article:

CeeCee Lyles of Fort Myers, Florida, was a flight attendant. She reached her husband, Lorne, by cell phone...

Jeremy Glick, 31, from West Milford, New Jersey, called his wife, Liz, and in-laws in New York on a cell phone...

MSNBC.MSN.com Article:

Elizabeth Wainio, 27, was speaking to her stepmother in Maryland. Another passenger, she explains, had loaned her a cell phone and told her to call her family.

Another MSNBC.MSN.com Article:

Cell calls from planes reveal horror [Another article headline.]

CeeCee Lyles called her husband at home in Fort Myers, Fla., on her cell phone.

On board the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, former federal prosecutor and conservative political commentator Barbara Olson called her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, on a cell phone twice.

GlobalResearch.Ca Article:

In the absence of surviving passengers, this "corroborating evidence", was based on passengers' cell and air phone conversations with their loved ones.

The Report conveys the impression that cell phone ground-to-air communication from high altitude was of reasonably good quality...

Wikipedia Article:

Westmoreland County emergency dispatchers said they received a last-ditch 911 cell phone call from a passenger at 9:58 a.m...

NYPress.com Article:

Each call was initially reported as coming from a cellphone. Later, when skepticism reared its ugly head and the Grassy Knollers arrived, the narrative became fuzzy; it was suggested that $10-a-minute Airfones were involved. Olson was an easy candidate for Airfone (one doesn't call collect from a cell), but as the stories developed, Olson and Felt were said to have called from inside locked lavatories. No Airfone there.

USAToday.com Article:

In cell phone calls to his wife... [regarding Thomas E. Burnett Jr.]

Husband Jack Grandcolas said his wife made a quick cell phone call before the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. [regarding Lauren Grandcolas]

I could go on.

I am curious as to why you think they are fake.

If you had read my post you would not be so curious.

And before you respond with some line about how I simply don't tolerate your opinion after you go back on my ignore list, and that's how you're correct after all, try to find some somewhat credible sources claiming no cell phones were used, after considering the calls made from bathrooms, etc.

RedMage,

I've found that article very interesting as well. I honestly doubt we'll ever be told exactly how 9/11 went down, short of some insider betraying his buddies for the sake of the rest of the world. Some confusing paths to follow, considering articles such as this, but at the same time they're definitely worth holding on to and remembering.

Originally posted by redmage
Could they have been taken somewhere and given scripts to read?

That's been one of the proposed theories. There is technology available today to duplicate voices perfectly, but apparently it wasn't used on 9/11, as, if I remember correctly, some family remembers reported odd qualities in the personalities and voices, etc. of loved ones on 9/11, but simply attributed the oddities to stress from the frightening circumstances. Then again, maybe the the tech was there, and such references were to certain authentic calls.

Remember, too, that only 2 calls have any public evidence going for them anyway, so it's not like we can dig up any of the alleged cell phone calls, etc. and analyze them to really be able to prove or disprove any qualities indicative of such measures being taken anyway.

[edit on 19-10-2005 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
if I remember correctly, some family remembers reported odd qualities in the personalities and voices, etc. of loved ones on 9/11, but simply attributed the oddities to stress from the frightening circumstances

I think hijacking or someone holding a gun to your head saying "read this" would both be quite frightening.

That article being removed years later with no correction always struck me the wrong way.

Released by the AP with comments from the mayor and the United CEO; the article seems worthy, at a minimum, of at least a correction not just a removal.

With going through the trouble of collecting comments/quotes from those sources, if it was false, it's the biggest AP mistake in history on the worst day possible for it.

Originally posted by redmage

Mod Edit: Link Waistline Reduced.

[edit on 19/10/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Thanks for the shortening

If you shorten the other that's fine but please don't remove it as the whole WCPO site is down at the moment not just the link.

[edit on 10/19/05 by redmage]

I remember reading one transcript where one passenger supposedly called his mother and said, "Hi, mom? It's me, [Joe Bloggs]." How many times do you call your mother and tell her your full name including surname? And then he supposedly told her about the hijacking and lastly asked, "Do you believe me?" She said, "of course", and then *click*, he hung up. WTf is that? "Do you believe me?" lol

I'll see if I can find the transcript.

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by LeftBehind
All those calls you posted, whether you think they are fake or not were made from airphones, not cellphones.

Please check your information before you post. This statement is incorrect.

You don't have anything like the evidence to claim that definitively, because saying "cellphone" in an article doesn't make it true. Especially when other articles say the opposite.

Glick, for example. You have a quote saying cellphone, but another says ""Jeremy Glick was on an Airfone" ( www.life.com... ).

Lauren Grandcolas & Honor Wainio is another (and a double, because apparently Grandcolas passed per phone to Wainio when she was done). You have a quote saying it was a cellphone, but according to www.post-gazette.com... it was an Airfone.

So, why are the cellphone accounts accurate, and these ones not? Is there any evidence that reporters who quoted the use of cellphones did any checking to see if this was true, or did they simply assume they were cellphone calls? An example.

Five minutes later, Peter Hanson, 32, a software executive travelling with his wife and two-year-old daughter, telephoned his parents in Connecticut on his mobile.
www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2001/09/16/watt16.xml

Look, proof that he didn't call from an Airfone! Except, maybe not, because further down the same article we read...

Those with no mobiles could only pray silently.

Oh dear. The author doesn't even know that there were Airfones on the plane -- his quote proves nothing at all. So how many other reporters simply assumed calls were made on cellphones for the same, mistaken reason?

[edit on 19-10-2005 by ashmok]

Ashmok - calls were made from toilets and other odd places where you wouldn't find airfones, and there were also cut-offs, etc. typical of cellphones and not airfones.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Ashmok - calls were made from toilets and other odd places where you wouldn't find airfones, and there were also cut-offs, etc. typical of cellphones and not airfones.

Apologies, I quoted the wrong part of your message before. I was actually responding to your claim that "Most calls were made from cell phones, not airfones", and your use of those quotes to back you up -- I don't think they get even close to proving the case, for the reasons I've just said.

I'm not defending LeftBehind in saying that all the calls were made by Airfones, though -- I don't think that's true, either. There were a mix, I accept that.

I was also searching for info on this topic (cell phones) and found this interesting thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by LeftBehind
All those calls you posted, whether you think they are fake or not were made from airphones, not cellphones. No one questions whether or not you can make calls at altitude from phones made to do exactly that.

Very good point by the thread starter. I never really thought of this.

Also refer to this picture #12





[edit on 19-10-2005 by noslenwerd]

Originally posted by noslenwerd
Also refer to this picture #12

Not sure what that proves, other than my point that some reporters use "cellphone" incorrectly? Beamer was on an Airfone, speaking to an Airfone operator ( www.airfone.com... ) -- not a cellphone.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Madeline Sweeney allegedly makes a 25-minute call (supposedly the last 25 minutes of the trip) to her ground manager on the plane's airfone,

Todd Beamer, allegedly calling home via airfone


The cell phone calls were apparently mostly interrupted on 9/11. If there were any cell phone calls of any length from any of the planes, I would be suspicious. Most of the lengthy calls seem to have been from the airfones, though (Sweeney, Ong, Beamer).

There's no need to call me out personally Bsbray. Your own post even says that most of the calls were made from airfones. I do agree that some were made from cell phones. I do not agree that they were all faked. I was asking for some method they could have used to fake them, not a pointless list of quotes. How could they have been faked? That is the real questoin. We can debate on whether a call sounds faked, but without a mechanism to fake them, it gets us nowhere.

Originally posted by LeftBehind
Your own post even says that most of the calls were made from airfones.

Actually I said most of the lengthy calls were from airfones. There were like, what, three lengthy calls? Most of the calls were from Flight 93, and as I said in my post, I think most of those were cell phone calls, unless the airfones were behaving abnormally, were placed in the bathrooms, etc., and the passengers that were reporting using others' cell phones were somehow mistaken or lying or something.

I do not agree that they were all faked.

Neither do I, as I stated in my first post on this thread.

I was asking for some method they could have used to fake them, not a pointless list of quotes. How could they have been faked? That is the real questoin. We can debate on whether a call sounds faked, but without a mechanism to fake them, it gets us nowhere.

It would no doubt be possible to fake calls. One theory has already been mentioned, and the tech to do it is available, and easily, but if you're asking for me to produce hardcore evidence for exactly how it went down then you're being a bit unreasonable, as no one from either side of the case can do that. I believe asking for the full story, including asking for assumed details for which no evidence is available, is a known disinfo tactic as well:

14. Demand complete solutions. Avoid the issues by requiring opponents to solve the crime at hand completely, a ploy which works best with issues qualifying for rule 10.

Example: 'Since you know so much, if James Earl Ray is as innocent as you claim, who really killed Martin Luther King, how was it planned and executed, how did they frame Ray and fool the FBI, and why?'

Or, 'if these calls were faked, how on Earth could faking a call be possible?'

How they must've done it is not really relevant to any discussion pertaining to whether or not they did it in the first place. You're jumping ahead a bit too fast. But if you really want a couple of ideas:

A) People are brought in with similar voices to do some fake calls. If anyone close to the alleged callers notice anything odd about the voice, it's chalked up to stress from the extreme circumstances, and everybody buys it and goes about their business. If there are any revealing slips, ie, "Hi mom this is so-and-so first-and-last," the calls simply aren't reported or are played-down. No big deal; not many people raised a fuss about those calls on 9/11 anyway.

B) Modern speech synthesis technology is used. Calls with revealing slips are dealt with in the same fashion.

Neither one of those would be very hard at all to accomplish, considering the resources these factions would have access to. Now if we could get back to examining the evidence instead of side-tracking with disinfo..

I'm really curious as to how well cell phones actually perform for certain lengths of time on commercial aircraft. I would imagine a lot of interruption.

For the airlines to say they are looking at ways to allow cellphone usage on planes doesn't mean you can't make a call, only that it wont work very dependably...

I once forgot to turn my cellphone off on a flight, and got a text message... and a bunch of really angry looks from other passengers...

I also have given angry looks at passengers that received cell calls... it does happen occasionally...

I don't think Beamer's wife would lie to the world about Let's Roll...

However I think it is possible, that even if they conspired to wrestle the hijackers, that doesnt neccesarily mean it also wasnt shot down. The fact lights flickered in houses around the area just as a possible fighter jet flew overhead and past the crash indicates something was going on.

Originally posted by redmage
Regarding 93 I always found this story to be interesting.

wcpo.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Link

That's the archive version to be later replaced with this.

www.wcpo.com...

(link is dead at the moment but hopefully wcpo's server will be back up again soon)

For those concerned, WCPO's back up and running.