Rumsfeld: Doing the Dance over Flight 93 By Sean Murphy (For indymedia) iod3k@yahoo.com

In a speech to US troops in Baghdad on Christmas Eve, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld made passing reference to United Airlines flight 93 that crashed over Pennsylvania after being hijacked on September 11th, 2001. His remark that the plane was “shot down” was routinely ignored by most major media outlets but ignited a storm of speculation by independent journalists on the internet that the Secretary’s comments might have been a “Freudian slip”, a telling sign of cover-up in the official account of the 9/11 attacks. Was all the internet noise last week just idle chatter, or are the geeks onto something? The government’s reluctance to offer anything more concrete on the crash of flight 93 is still highly controversial and the list of unanswered questions is still absurdly long, but officials like Rumsfeld remain conspicuously insouciant and unconcerned with establishing the facts once and for all. Rumsfeld’s most recent attempt to ignore his own statements is a prime example of what has been called the administration's policy of "official dismissal."

The remarkably childlike reply by the Defense Department to Rumsfeld’s comment wasn’t lost on indymedia. As if to say, “I don’t know Mom, some kids were playing and the lamp just broke,” Rumsfeld’s opinions do little to silence complaints that September 11 still merits questions. The widespread interest in Rumsfeld’s unfortunate gaffe is a symptom of persistent doubts forever haunting UA 93’s fate. While the administration is happy to trumpet the heroism of the famed passenger rebellion, appropriating slogans like Todd Beamer’s “let’s roll” for personal and political use, their attitudes do little to serve the facts or to put them in any meaningful context. The deficiencies at issue rest not with the answers given but on the questions avoided, questions like: was flight 93 lost by accident or was it deliberately shot down? A meaningful investigation would have to first establish whether it was possible to intercept UA 93 that day, and if contact was made to answer whether the pilots had a chance to open fire. In the absence of the pilots’ testimony and military ordinance receipts we're left to speculate. Making matters worse is the question of a possible on-board explosion; whether it was the result of an explosive device brought on board by the terrorists or the work of air-to-air weapons used by the F-16s remains uncertain.But let’s begin with the question of the time: Did the F-16s have the ability to reach UA93? At 9:22 a.m. a sonic boom caused by a supersonic flight registered on earthquake monitoring equipment at an army facility in southern Pennsylvania sixty miles away from flight 93’s crash-site, indicating that an aircraft capable of super-sonic speeds (such as an F-16 fighter) was violating prohibitions against breaking the sound barrier and making a nuisance in the area. We know that the F-16s had orders to pursue flight 93 under emergency conditions by that time, so this isn’t all that exceptional.

Six different witnesses reported sighting a small white “military-style aircraft” circling the crash site immediately after flight 93 hit the ground, testimony that the government refuses to either support or deny by releasing official records and pilot debriefings. The eyewitness accounts lend much credibility to the claim that flight 93 was in fact intercepted before she crashed. Flight 93 didn’t go down until at least 10:06 a.m., so if the F-16 pilots hit their afterburners at 9:22 a.m. this would give them a substantial head start. Since UA 93 was still in the air when the sonic boom was registered and the only other supersonic planes in the area were the F-16 fighters on route to intercept her, then it’s entirely reasonable to suggest that the sonic boom was made by a fighter rapidly approaching striking distance of flight 93. Every private and commercial flight had been or was in the process of being grounded, so if it wasn't the fighters then who was it? NORAD, for it's part, offers conflicting accounts of civilian air-traffic but maintains that there were no military aircraft in the immediate airspace. In lieu of consistent statements from NORAD the only logical conclusion is that the F-16s did in fact have time to reach her, and that they most likely did. Some have raised the possibility that flight 93 was blown up by a bomb smuggled onto the flight by one of the hijackers. Mr. Rumsfeld’s opinion holds that the plane crashed because the crew was fighting with the terrorists. Even if his opinion proves correct it stills seems rather odd to imagine the pilots of those F-16s just sitting on their hands while tailing a hijacked plane bound for Washington. Any imaginable scenario would have undoubtedly been tense, but Mr. Rumsfeld’s opinion doesn’t give us any details of how tense it really was, or why. At 9:58 a.m. passenger Todd Beamer ended his cell phone conversation with an emergency operator explaining that he and others on-board were planning to subdue a hijacker holding a bomb in the rear of the plane. The presence of explosive residue from an alleged bomb was never discovered or reported by the NTSB team that investigated the UA 93 crash site, presumably ruling out the use of an explosive device. Furthermore, there was never any evidence other than a passenger phone call to suggest that there was an explosive device on board UA 93 in the first place.

Still, the majority of evidence suggests that there was an explosion before flight 93 went down. This was the report of passenger Edward Felt during a later emergency call before all contact with UA 93 was lost. He reported that they experienced “an explosion” and that he could see “white smoke”. That flight 93 suffered such an explosion is corroborated by the sound of rushing wind on UA 93’s “black box” cabin voice recorder, which suggests that the plane was holed and the cabin depressurized. Too much evidence suggests that UA 93 suffered an explosion and that it subsequently disintegrated prior to coming down. The pattern and distribution of flight 93’s light debris, scattered in pieces “no larger than a carrier bag” over more than a mile paired with the discovery of a badly damaged portion of the engine roughly 2,000 yards away suggests the use of “air-to-air” heat-seeking weaponry—like the sidewinder missiles equipped on F-16s. Confirmation of an explosion without corroboration of a bomb on board, not to mention the fact that there were F-16s armed with heat-seeking missiles and permission to engage flight 93, points to the fighters as the likely culprit of flight 93’s destruction. Certainly, such an admission would be difficult to make for an administration whose top priority is making people feel safe and secure. Questions, like flies, smell something good and won’t go away. What about the F-16 fighters and the rules of engagement that day? Weren’t the pilots given orders to intercept flight 93 and try to force her down before attacking her and ending the lives of everyone on board? What exactly were their standing orders and who gave them? These are difficult questions to answer and the official story of who ordered what is riddled with the same gaps and inconsistencies as the rest of the timeline.

Between 9:56 a.m. and 10:06 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001 after receiving word at an undisclosed location that there was “a plane eighty miles out [and] there is a fighter in the area,” vice president Dick Cheney was asked for permission for the fighters to attack the airliner in question. He answered in the affirmative, saying simply and unequivocally “Yes.”

Reports of the vice president’s orders raises questions in light of other facts. Did Cheney forward the president’s orders to force flight 93 down before attacking it to the pilots directly, as he implied on NBC’s “Meet the Press” a few days later? According to sources Cheney only gave permission for the F-16s to engage flight 93, that he didn't specify for the pilots to force flight 93 to land first. There is no record of what Cheney specifically said to contrast with his later comments. The vice president has maintained that these were the pilots’ orders, but he has never been asked to explain in detail. The 9/11 Commission’s final report does not mention the specific language of those orders. Did Cheney instruct the pilots to attempt to force flight 93 down before opening fire or not?

Vice president Cheney was asked a total of three times that morning if the F-16s indeed had permission to engage UA 93, and the record shows that the vice president only answered by saying “Yes” to each of the three requests. Apparently, Cheney did not specify the orders in any way directly to the pilots or to others in the chain of command. He communicated through proxies by answering the questions asked of him in the affirmative "Yes". This means that Cheney only ever said “Yes” when others asked, but those are hardly orders that express a commander's intent. If he said something else that day, why hasn’t he been questioned about it for the record like we do with anyone else who gives orders to members of the military to fire on American civilians?

On the September 16th , 2001 edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Vice President Dick Cheney told Tom Russert about the administration’s policy regarding rules of engagement. When Russert asked if the government would shoot down a commercial aircraft heading for the Capitol, Cheney responded:

“Yes. The president made the decision … that if the plane would not divert … as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out. Now, people say, you know, that’s a horrendous decision to make. Well, it is … are you going to, in fact, shoot it down, obviously, and kill all those Americans on board? …It’s a presidential-level decision, and the president made, I think, exactly the right call…”

What Russert failed to ask and what the vice president inexplicably failed to mention was whether or not this so-called “presidential-level” decision had been Cheney’s to forward to the pilots. He also failed to mention that the only record of his orders that day consisted of a series of three short answers to questions about the rules of engagement. Mr. Cheney failed to tell the journalist that he never mentioned forcing flight 93 to divert before opening fire on her as the record suggests.

Since no record of Cheney’s orders have been released to the public and neither the pilots or the vice president are on record to tell whether or not such an attempt was ever made, no can say whether the F-16s opened fire on flight 93 or whether they hit their target. If the plane was 10 to 15 minutes from Washington, how much time did the fighters have to try to communicate with the hijacked airplane? Was it enough time to force the plane down, especially if the passengers were in open revolt against their hijackers? Was it enough time to determine who was in control of the cockpit? These and other questions remain unanswered by the government even after the 9/11 Commission’s investigation. Again, we are left to seek comfort in the opinions of people like Donald Rumsfeld while we try to answer the questions for ourselves.

Despite doubts we know with some certainty that the orders existed in some form at some point in the day—‘If the plane will not land then use force to shoot it down’—we just don’t know who gave them, who received them, or what was said verbatim. Which pilots intercepted UA 93? If things went as Cheney explained it, how exactly were the unarmed Langley pilots expected to attack flight 93? Their only option would have been to collide with the civilian aircraft. The 9/11 Commission report stated that the Langley pilots were unaware that their targets were civilian aircraft until after 10:25 a.m., long after the official time given for flight 93’s crash in Shanksville, PA.

It is certain that at least one F-16 pursued flight 93 on September 11th, but which group was the fighter from, the Langley squadron or the group guarding Washington D.C.? The F-16s patrolling Washington D.C. were the only fighters armed with weapons, and flight 93 went down ten minutes outside of the Capitol. There were no F-16s lost on September 11th, 2001. If flight 93 was downed by a fighter intercept, it would likely have been from the squadron over Washington D.C. as these were the only fighters available who could have downed the plane without resorting to suicide collisions.

Officially, we are told that flight 93 hit the ground a 10:03am, roughly fifteen minutes outside of Washington D.C. This time-frame is based in part on the evidence from the black box recording, that ends roughly one minute before the 10:03am. Nevertheless, without further information to corroborate this time frame, the choice seems arbitrary and unreliable. In fact, the official time of 10:03am is contradicted outright by the army’s seismic data that places the crash at 10:06:05 am, nearly four minutes later. The Philadelphia Daily News did an investigation of this discrepancy between the army’s findings and the official time noting the complete lack of any decisive rationale or supporting evidence for the government’s timetable. This discrepancy has yet to be resolved and was missing from the 9/11 Commission’s report. What happened to the last three minutes on the voice recorder?

Taken together, these discrepancies suggest the troubling but likely scenario that despite the efforts of UA 93’s passengers to subdue their captors, they never had the opportunity to consolidate control of the aircraft due to the untimely intervention of F-16 fighters with orders to shoot them down. Consideration of this plausible alternative scenario begs two relevant questions: Was flight 93 shot down on September 11th, and why did the 9/11 Commission fail to resolve issues like the timetable discrepancies?

The world may never get a chance to answer definitively these questions or to understand with any reassurance why those handling the government on that ill-fated day in September have done everything in their power to offer the least amount of serious investigation. The world may never know why they seem to have infinite time and resources to devote to frustrating or stopping others from doing serious investigation of UA 93 on their own. Whatever the reasons, Rumsfeld’s little “misspeak” can just be added to the long list of troubling facts. Even if he knows what really happened to flight 93 he can’t talk about it, especially after so many chances to talk about it have been lost. To add anything to what they’ve already talked about this late in the game would be political suicide for Rumsfeld and every other member of the Bush administration.

And besides, the only people who still care are “geeks” and “conspiracy nuts” on the Internet, and the Department of Defense doesn’t have to lift a finger to swat them away—that’s what CNN does for them. Seriously folks, who pays attention to what transpires on the Internet anyway?

Well, you are reading this, aren’t you?

Sources/Links:

The CNN.COM Transcript of Rumsfeld's Christmas Eve speech
Was Flight 93 Shot Down?

A list of links on the fate of UAL Flight 93

http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_latestupdate.html

A list of resources on flight 93

World News Daily

The article that spawned the internet controversy: DAY OF INFAMY 2001 Rumsfeld says 9-11 plane 'shot down' in Pennsylvania During surprise Christmas Eve trip, defense secretary contradicts official story

9/11 Commission

Download The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition

FLIGHT 93: Three-minute discrepancy in tape Cockpit voice recording

By WILLIAM BUNCH Wed Sep 18 16:54:26 2002 The Philadelphia Daily New’s investigation into the discrepancy between the cockpit voice recorder and the US army’s seismological data

A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH

Subtitled: “IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN’T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?”

‘America's Chaotic Road to War’

By Dan Balz and Bob Woodward Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A01

Center for Cooperative Research

Check cooperativeresearch.org for the complete 9/11 Timeline

9/11 Commission Report Still Full of Holes

(talk on the weblogs)

http://globalresearch.ca/

There's Something About Omar: Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11 by Chaim Kupferberg