The 911 Consensus Project has developed a list of 37 questions that are designed to undo the lies the government and the media require us to believe to be admitted into polite society. Today I want to examine questions 29 thru 37. We begin with Mohamed Atta’s trip to Portland
29) Mohamed Atta’s Mysterious Trip to Portland
Mohamed Atta, accompanied by fellow al-Qaeda operative Abdul Aziz al Omari, “boarded a 6:00 AM flight from Portland [Maine] to Boston’s Logan International Airport,” stated The 9/11 Commission Report. After arriving in Boston at 6:45 AM, they boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which was scheduled to depart at 7:45 AM.
Atta and al-Omari needed to take that early morning commuter flight because, although they had already been in Boston on September 10, they then “drove to Portland, Maine, for reasons that remain unknown,” and stayed overnight in a Comfort Inn in South Portland.
No theory as to why Atta and al-Omari did this seems “entirely satisfactory,” wrote the New York Times in 2002, “given the risk . . . that, had the commuter flight been at all late, they would have missed the very flight they intended to hijack.” In 2004, the 9/11 Commission still considered this trip a mystery.
Nevertheless, that Atta and al-Omari made this trip was proved by an FBI chronology of their movements in Portland on September 10, complete with stops where they were videotaped, plus an affidavit, signed by a judge as well as an FBI agent, stating that the blue Nissan Altima found at the Portland Jetport had been rented by Mohamed Atta, and that “American Airlines personnel at Logan discovered two bags [checked to passenger Atta] that had been bound for transfer to AA11 but had not been loaded onto the flight.”
Atta’s trip turned out to be helpful to the investigation, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who said: “Following the crash of Flight 11, authorities recovered two pieces of luggage in the name of Mohamed Atta that had not been loaded onto that flight.” This luggage contained Atta’s will and other materials that incriminated al-Qaeda.
To summarize the story’s main facts: (1) Atta and al-Omari drove a blue rented Nissan from Boston to Portland on September 10, then stayed overnight. (2) The next morning, they took a commuter flight back to Boston in time to board AA Flight 11. (3) After Atta had flown American 11 into the World Trade Center, authorities at Boston’s Logan Airport found incriminating materials in Atta’s luggage that had not been loaded onto American 11.
The official story about Atta’s Portland trip contains three mysteries:
(1) Why were Atta’s bags not loaded onto AA 11? In the affidavit, pointed out a Newsday story in 2006, “there was no explanation of why they had not been loaded.”
The loading failure could not be attributed to a late flight: The commuter flight back to Boston was on time, so there was an hour until AA 11 was to depart.
This failure also could not be explained in terms of a careless ground crew, because “Atta was the only passenger among the 81 aboard American Flight 11 whose luggage didn’t make the flight, American sources confirm[ed].”
(2) Why would Atta have put his will in a bag that was to be loaded onto a flight he intended to crash into the World Trade Center?
(3) Why would Atta have taken the risky trip to Portland?
The reasons why these three mysteries exist become understandable in light of news reports in the first days after 9/11:
According to CNN reports of September 12 and the morning of the 13th, two al-Qaeda operatives, Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari, drove a rented Nissan to Portland, stayed overnight, and then flew back to Boston the next morning in time to board AA 11.15
Materials that incriminated al-Qaeda were found by authorities in a Mitsubishi sedan, which had been rented by Mohamed Atta and then left in the parking lot of Boston’s Logan Airport.
Up to that point, this had been the official story, but later in the afternoon of September 13, CNN apologetically reported that neither of the Bukharis could have died on 9/11: Adnan Bukhari was still alive and Ameer Bukhari had died the previous year.
On September 14, although CNN continued to state that Mohamed Atta had left a rented Mitsubishi at Boston’s Logan Airport,18 the Associated Press stated that the rented Nissan had been driven to Portland by Mohamed Atta, who with his companion “spent the night at the Comfort Inn in South Portland before boarding the plane the next morning.”
This story still said that authorities had found the incriminating materials left by Atta in a rental car at Boston’s Logan Airport, although this part of the story was incoherent, because the new story entailed that Atta must have left his rented Nissan at the Portland Jetport.
On September 16, a full transition to what would become the official story appeared in the Washington Post: Besides stating that “Atta and Alomari rented a car in Boston, drove to Portland, Maine, and took a room Monday night at the Comfort Inn,” it also said that Atta’s incriminating materials were “left in his luggage at Boston’s Logan Airport.”
By October 5, the FBI had created a chronology of the claimed movements of Atta and al-Omari in Portland on September 10, complete with videos and photographs. Internal evidence, however, shows this chronology to be a fabrication.
Internal evidence also shows that the aforementioned affidavit – which indicated that the FBI had from the outset claimed that (a) Atta had driven the Nissan to Portland and (b) the incriminating materials were found in his luggage inside Boston’s Logan Airport – could not have been written and dated on September 12.23
Summary and Conclusion As shown by the evolution of the story about two al-Qaeda operatives flying from Portland to Boston, this story originally had no inexplicable mysteries. But after it was realized that the Bukhari brothers could not have died on AA 11, the three mysteries – (1) why Mohamed Atta’s luggage was not loaded onto AA Flight 11, (2) why he put his will in a bag that was supposed to be loaded onto that doomed flight, and (3) why he would have taken the risky trip to Portland – came about as by-products in the course of creating, over the course of several days, a revised version of the original story (according to which Atta and al-Omari replaced the Bukhari brothers as the al-Qaeda operatives who drove a rented Nissan to Portland).
Although this story is complex, it suggests that what became the official story was most likely based on creative imagination, not fact.
30) The Alleged Calls of Todd Beamer, Flight UA 93
Todd Beamer was one of the passengers on UA 93 who heroically prevented the hijackers from hitting their target in Washington D.C. He became the most celebrated of these heroes for saying, as a group of passengers were preparing to make their move, “Are you guys ready? Okay, let’s roll.”
This fact was made known by GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson, with whom Beamer had a 13-minute conversation before the plane crashed, and was later included in The 9/11 Commission Report.
Beamer ended up talking to Jefferson because, having tried to make a credit card call to his wife, Lisa Beamer, his call was routed to a GTE (Verizon) customer-service operator named Phyllis Johnson, who then forwarded the call to Jefferson. Beamer continued talking to Jefferson, rather than having her transfer him to Lisa Beamer, because his wife was pregnant and he did not want to upset her.
The telephone records show that Beamer initiated four telephone calls, only the fourth one of which was connected. This call lasted for 3,925 seconds (slightly over 65 minutes), although Beamer was on the phone talking to the two GTE representatives (Johnson and Jefferson) for only about 20 of those minutes. “Mr. Beamer told the operator,” said the FBI’s summary of its interview with Jefferson, “that the plane had been hijacked and that he saw two hijackers with knives and someone else enter the cockpit.”
In November 2001, President Bush used “Let’s Roll” in a speech to call America to war to hunt down the terrorists. In 2002, the Washington Post wrote: “Embraced and promoted by President Bush as a patriotic battle cry,” the phrase “Let’s Roll” was also “emblazoned on Air Force fighter planes, city firetrucks, school athletic jerseys, and countless T-shirts, baseball caps and souvenir buttons.”
There are eight reasons to doubt the authenticity of the reported call to Lisa Jefferson from the man who identified himself as Todd Beamer.
1. It is very unlikely that a passenger on UA 93 could have been able to talk to Jefferson continuously for 13 minutes. According to Lisa Beamer’s 2002 book, Jefferson herself was amazed, saying that “it was a miracle that Todd’s call hadn’t been disconnected.” As to why Jefferson considered it a miracle: “Because of the enormous number of calls that day, the GTE systems overloaded and lines were being disconnected all around her . . . She kept thinking, This call is going to get dropped!“
2. The man self-identified as Todd Beamer talked to GTE operators Johnson and Jefferson for approximately 15 minutes rather than talking to his wife, Lisa Beamer. Jefferson asked him, “Would you like me to try to reach your wife and patch her call through?” He replied: “No, no. I don’t want to upset her unnecessarily. She’s expecting our third child in January, and if I don’t have to upset her with any bad news, then I’d rather not.”[11] This explanation is inconsistent with the FBI report that he had first tried to reach his residence at 9:43:48 AM.
It is implausible that Beamer would have later decided not to call his wife, for three reasons:
According to Jefferson’s account, Beamer was convinced he was going to die, yet was passing up a last chance to talk to his wife.
He did not ask to talk with her because he did not want to upset her, although learning of his death would presumably upset her.
The self-identified Todd Beamer said to Lisa Jefferson: “I just want to talk to somebody and just let someone know that this is happening.” However, he did not ask to be connected to any of his relatives or friends.
3. In spite of the situation he was in, the alleged Todd Beamer remained remarkably calm during most of the call. Jefferson recalled: “Todd, when he came to me, he was calm. . . . [H]e stayed calm through the entire conversation.” Jefferson also wrote: “[H]is voice was devoid of any stress. In fact, he sounded so tranquil it made me begin to doubt the authenticity and urgency of his call.” She later told Beamer’s wife: “If I hadn’t known it was a real hijacking, I’d have thought it was a crank call, because Todd was so rational and methodical about what he was doing.”
4. There was no way to confirm that the man who talked to Phyllis Johnson and Lisa Jefferson was really Todd Beamer.
Neither of these women knew him, so they would not have recognized his voice.
Because the caller did not want to be connected to Lisa Beamer, she also could not say whether the voice was really that of her husband.
According to Jefferson, she did not have the call recorded, nor did the adjacent Airfone Operations Surveillance Center (AOSC), to whom Jefferson immediately reported the call.
There was no reported FBI interview with Phyllis Johnson, the GTE operator who allegedly first took the call.
5. According to the FBI’s telephone report on UA 93, which was provided for the Moussaoui trial in 2006, four calls were attributed to Todd Beamer. The first lasted “0 seconds” (meaning it was not connected). The second, which also lasted “0 seconds,” reportedly occurred at exactly the same time as the first one (9:42:44). The third call also lasted “0 seconds” and was dialed to the Beamer’s home. The fourth call – which allegedly reached a GTE operator and lasted 3,925 seconds (about 65 minutes) – was placed at exactly the same time (9:48:48) as the third one.Thus two sets of numbers were evidently connected in the identical second, and no official explanation was given as to how this could have occurred.
6. According to Jefferson, the phone of the man to whom she was speaking remained connected long after UA 93 crashed. Reporting that he had left the phone after saying “Let’s roll,” she wrote that the line “just went silent.” Although she held on for “probably 15 minutes” (the early evidence had indicated it was 13 minutes), she “never heard a crash.” She added: “I can’t explain it. We didn’t lose a connection because there’s a different sound that you use. It’s a squealing sound when you lose a connection. I never lost connection, but it just went silent.”
7. On September 29, 2001, the FBI received detailed records from Verizon’s wireless subscriber office in Bedminster, NJ, that Todd Beamer’s cell phone made 19 outgoing calls after the alleged 10:03 AM crash time of Flight UA 93. This fact, along with the sixth one, indicates either that the man self-identified as Todd Beamer was not on UA 93, or Tod Beamer’s cell phone was not on the flight, or this flight did not crash.
8. Todd Beamer was celebrated for having said: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!” But this expression was not contained in the FBI’s summary of its interview with Lisa Jeffersonon the day of the phone call. Instead, according to the FBI summary: “At approximately 9:00 AM Central time, Beamer said the passengers were about to attack the hijackers. . . . [H]e asked Jefferson to call [redacted] to tell them that he loved them. . . . Next, Jefferson heard another passenger give the go-ahead to make their move. After that point, she heard nothing.”
The first time Todd Beamer’s alleged “battle cry” was quoted in print was evidently in an article by Jim McKinnon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette five days later, on September 16. McKinnon had apparently learned this phrase from Todd Beamer’s wife, Lisa Beamer, whom McKinnon had interviewed. Having stated that Todd Beamer had (reportedly) dropped his phone after asking Lisa Jefferson to call his wife, McKinnon wrote: “That’s when Jefferson heard what Lisa Beamer believes were her husband’s last words: Let’s roll.”
In any case, the FBI summary of its interview with Lisa Jefferson did not merely fail to contain the phrase “Let’s roll!” (which could have simply been an omission on the part of an FBI agent). It also explicitly attributed the go-ahead signal to another passenger, not to Todd Beamer.
Conclusion
First, the true nature of the reported conversation between GTE employee Lisa Jefferson and the man identifying himself as Todd Beamer is in serious question.
Second, there are eight problems with the official account of this call. The first three problems show that the call was implausible. The fourth one shows that there is no way to confirm the authenticity of the call. The next three raise very serious questions about the connection of the call. Finally, attributing “Let’s roll” to Todd Beamer contradicts what Lisa Jefferson told the FBI on 9/11, the day she received the call.
Given the pivotal importance of this call in starting the “war on terror,” these problems, like the problems in the Barbara Olson story, show the evidentiary basis for this “war” to have been as weak as the evidence for the “weapons of mass destruction” in starting the Iraq “war.”
31) The Todd Beamer Call from UA Flight 93: A Serious Problem in the Timeline
As explained in the previous point, the famous “Let’s Roll” story of how Todd Beamer led a passenger revolt aboard UA Flight 93, thereby preventing the plane from reaching the Capitol, was based on an alleged telephone call from Mr. Beamer to GTE telephone supervisor Lisa Jefferson.
In November 2001, President Bush used “Let’s Roll” to call America to arms in a rallying speech to hunt down the terrorists.
In 2002, the Washington Post wrote: “Embraced and promoted by President Bush as a patriotic battle cry,” the phrase “Let’s Roll” was also “emblazoned on Air Force fighter planes, city fire-trucks, school athletic jerseys, and countless T-shirts, baseball caps and souvenir buttons.”
“The Alleged Calls of Todd Beamer, Flight UA 93,” raised eight serious questions about the authenticity of the Beamer calls. The present point raises another problem: a fatal contradiction between three official reports and the telephone records, concerning the start time of the hour-long Beamer airphone call to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson.
1. According to the 9/11 Commission Report of 2004, the hijacking of UA Flight 93 began at 9:28 AM (Eastern):
“The hijackers attacked at 9:28. While traveling 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio, United 93 suddenly dropped 700 feet. Eleven seconds into the descent, the FAA’s air traffic control center in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the aircraft. During the first broadcast, the captain or first officer could be heard declaring ‘MayDay’ amid the sounds of physical struggle in the cockpit. The second radio transmission, 35 seconds later, indicated that the fight was continuing. The captain or first officer could be heard shouting: ‘Hey get out of here – get out of here – get out of here.’”
The 9/11 Commission Report cited several studies from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and the Aircraft Communication and Reporting System (ACARS) to substantiate the time of the beginning of Flight 93’s hijacking as 9:28 AM.
2. The evidence presented by the FBI under oath to the Moussaoui Trial in 2006, and backed by telephone records, shows that the Beamer call reached GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson at 9:48:48 and lasted 3,925 seconds (or 65.4 minutes).
The two official timelines presented above in The Official Account are glaringly at odds with one another.
In addition, GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson reported in her interview with the FBI on September 11, 2001 that at approximately 8:45 AM (Central Time, 9:45 AM Eastern):
“Beamer called to state that the airplane was about to be hijacked. He stated that three individuals, two wielding knives, the third with a bomb strapped to his waist with a red belt, were preparing to take control of the flight. Jefferson estimated that she spoke to Beamer for seven minutes before the two hijackers with arms entered the cockpit, securing the door behind them.”
Serious Problems with the Beamer Call:
1. There is an insurmountable conflict between:
a) the NTSB, FAA, and ACARS reports of 9:28 AM as the start time of the Flight 93 hijacking, and
b) the telephone records presented to the Moussaoui trial showing that the call to Jefferson was placed by Beamer at 8:48 AM Central time (9:48 AM Eastern) which Jefferson estimated was seven minutes before the hijacking began.
2. Jefferson’s estimate that she spoke with Beamer for seven minutes “before the two hijackers armed with knives entered the cockpit” places the Beamer account of the hijacking at approximately 9:52 AM, more than 20 minutes after the 9:28 AM time shown in the various NTSB, FAA, and ACARS flight data reports.
3. Although The 9/11 Commission Report stated that the plane dropped abruptly[9]from 35,000 feet at 9:28 AM, Jefferson reported in her FBI interview that during his (approximate) 9:45 AM call, “Beamer stated that after a short period, the aircraft maneuvered erratically and continued to do so.”
4. Although The 9/11 Commission Report stated that there were struggles and shouts of “MayDay” and “Get out of here” from the cockpit during the hijacking, Jefferson noted in her FBI interview “that there was an unusually low amount of background noise.”
5. The problem about the time of the start of the Beamer call reinforces the 6th problem discussed in the previous point about the ending of the call (namely, that Beamer, according to Jefferson, had left the phone after saying “Let’s roll.” Although she held on for “probably 15 minutes,” she said, she “never heard a crash” and, she added: “I can’t explain it. We didn’t lose a connection because there’s a different sound that you use. It’s a squealing sound when you lose a connection. I never lost connection, but it just went silent.”)
Thus the call, according to Jefferson’s report, remained open 10-15 minutes after the official crash time of 10:03 AM.)
Conclusion
The two conflicting timelines differ by more than 20 minutes. Given the problems with the Beamer call outlined in the preceding Point PC-1, three questions arise:
1. Why was Beamer describing an event that had, according to three official sources, occurred 20 minutes earlier, as if it were unfolding in the present moment?
2. Why do the telephone records presented by the FBI to the Moussaoui trial in 2006 place the Beamer hijacking call at 9:48 AM, although three official sources place the hijacking 20 minutes earlier?
3. Given that airphones are powered by the airplane’s electrical system, how could the Beamer line have remained open for the Moussaoui-Trial reported 45 minutes after the plane had crashed and disintegrated?
Hence, these questions about the beginning of the alleged Beamer call complement the time-related questions about the end of the alleged call raised in PC-1, thereby reinforcing the doubts about the authenticity of the Todd Beamer call to Lisa Jefferson – upon which was founded the entire “Let’s roll” campaign glorifying the heroism of the passengers of UA Flight 93.
32) The Alleged Calls of Todd Beamer, Flight UA 93
Todd Beamer was one of the passengers on UA 93 who heroically prevented the hijackers from hitting their target in Washington D.C. He became the most celebrated of these heroes for saying, as a group of passengers were preparing to make their move, “Are you guys ready? Okay, let’s roll.”
This fact was made known by GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson, with whom Beamer had a 13-minute conversation before the plane crashed, and was later included in The 9/11 Commission Report.
Beamer ended up talking to Jefferson because, having tried to make a credit card call to his wife, Lisa Beamer, his call was routed to a GTE (Verizon) customer-service operator named Phyllis Johnson, who then forwarded the call to Jefferson. Beamer continued talking to Jefferson, rather than having her transfer him to Lisa Beamer, because his wife was pregnant and he did not want to upset her.
The telephone records show that Beamer initiated four telephone calls, only the fourth one of which was connected. This call lasted for 3,925 seconds (slightly over 65 minutes), although Beamer was on the phone talking to the two GTE representatives (Johnson and Jefferson) for only about 20 of those minutes. “Mr. Beamer told the operator,” said the FBI’s summary of its interview with Jefferson, “that the plane had been hijacked and that he saw two hijackers with knives and someone else enter the cockpit.”
In November 2001, President Bush used “Let’s Roll” in a speech to call America to war to hunt down the terrorists. son continuously for 13 minutes.[9]According to Lisa Beamer’s 2002 book, Jefferson herself was amazed, saying that “it was a miracle that Todd’s call hadn’t been disconnected.” As to why Jefferson considered it a miracle: “Because of the enormous number of calls that day, the GTE systems overloaded and lines were being disconnected all around her . . . She kept thinking, This call is going to get dropped!“
2. The man self-identified as Todd Beamer talked to GTE operators Johnson and Jefferson for approximately 15 minutes rather than talking to his wife, Lisa Beamer. Jefferson asked him, “Would you like me to try to reach your wife and patch her call through?” He replied: “No, no. I don’t want to upset her unnecessarily. She’s expecting our third child in January, and if I don’t have to upset her with any bad news, then I’d rather not.” This explanation is inconsistent with the FBI report that he had first tried to reach his residence at 9:43:48 AM.
It is implausible that Beamer would have later decided not to call his wife, for three reasons:
According to Jefferson’s account, Beamer was convinced he was going to die, yet was passing up a last chance to talk to his wife.
He did not ask to talk with her because he did not want to upset her, although learning of his death would presumably upset her.
The self-identified Todd Beamer said to Lisa Jefferson: “I just want to talk to somebody and just let someone know that this is happening.” However, he did not ask to be connected to any of his relatives or friends.
3. In spite of the situation he was in, the alleged Todd Beamer remained remarkably calm during most of the call. Jefferson recalled: “Todd, when he came to me, he was calm. . . . [H]e stayed calm through the entire conversation.”[14]Jefferson also wrote: “[H]is voice was devoid of any stress. In fact, he sounded so tranquil it made me begin to doubt the authenticity and urgency of his call.”[15]She later told Beamer’s wife: “If I hadn’t known it was a real hijacking, I’d have thought it was a crank call, because Todd was so rational and methodical about what he was doing.”
4. There was no way to confirm that the man who talked to Phyllis Johnson and Lisa Jefferson was really Todd Beamer.
Neither of these women knew him, so they would not have recognized his voice.
Because the caller did not want to be connected to Lisa Beamer, she also could not say whether the voice was really that of her husband.
According to Jefferson, she did not have the call recorded,nor did the adjacent Airfone Operations Surveillance Center (AOSC), to whom Jefferson immediately reported the call.
There was no reported FBI interview with Phyllis Johnson, the GTE operator who allegedly first took the call.
5. According to the FBI’s telephone report on UA 93, which was provided for the Moussaoui trial in 2006, four calls were attributed to Todd Beamer. The first lasted “0 seconds” (meaning it was not connected). The second, which also lasted “0 seconds,” reportedly occurred at exactly the same time as the first one (9:42:44). The third call also lasted “0 seconds” and was dialed to the Beamer’s home. The fourth call – which allegedly reached a GTE operator and lasted 3,925 seconds (about 65 minutes) – was placed at exactly the same time (9:48:48) as the third one.Thus two sets of numbers were evidently connected in the identical second, and no official explanation was given as to how this could have occurred.
6. According to Jefferson, the phone of the man to whom she was speaking remained connected long after UA 93 crashed. Reporting that he had left the phone after saying “Let’s roll,” she wrote that the line “just went silent.” Although she held on for “probably 15 minutes” (the early evidence had indicated it was 13 minutes), she “never heard a crash.” She added: “I can’t explain it. We didn’t lose a connection because there’s a different sound that you use. It’s a squealing sound when you lose a connection. I never lost connection, but it just went silent.”
7. On September 29, 2001, the FBI received detailed records from Verizon’s wireless subscriber office in Bedminster, NJ, that Todd Beamer’s cell phone made outgoing calls after the alleged 10:03 AM crash time of Flight UA 93. This fact, along with the sixth one, indicates either that the man self-identified as Todd Beamer was not on UA 93, or Tod Beamer’s cell phone was not on the flight, or this flight did not crash.
8. Todd Beamer was celebrated for having said: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!” But this expression was not contained in the FBI’s summary of its interview with Lisa Jeffersonon the day of the phone call. Instead, according to the FBI summary: “At approximately 9:00 AM Central time, Beamer said the passengers were about to attack the hijackers. . . . [H]e asked Jefferson to call [redacted] to tell them that he loved them. . . . Next, Jefferson heard another passenger give the go-ahead to make their move. After that point, she heard nothing.”
The first time Todd Beamer’s alleged “battle cry” was quoted in print was evidently in an article by Jim McKinnon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette five days later, on September 16. McKinnon had apparently learned this phrase from Todd Beamer’s wife, Lisa Beamer, whom McKinnon had interviewed. Having stated that Todd Beamer had (reportedly) dropped his phone after asking Lisa Jefferson to call his wife, McKinnon wrote: “That’s when Jefferson heard what Lisa Beamer believes were her husband’s last words: Let’s roll.”
In any case, the FBI summary of its interview with Lisa Jefferson did not merely fail to contain the phrase “Let’s roll!” (which could have simply been an omission on the part of an FBI agent). It also explicitly attributed the go-ahead signal to another passenger, not to Todd Beamer.
Conclusion
First, the true nature of the reported conversation between GTE employee Lisa Jefferson and the man identifying himself as Todd Beamer is in serious question.
Second, there are eight problems with the official account of this call. The first three problems show that the call was implausible. The fourth one shows that there is no way to confirm the authenticity of the call. The next three raise very serious questions about the connection of the call. Finally, attributing “Let’s roll” to Todd Beamer contradicts what Lisa Jefferson told the FBI on 9/11, the day she received the call.
Given the pivotal importance of this call in starting the “war on terror,” these problems, like the problems in the Barbara Olson story, show the evidentiary basis for this “war” to have been as weak as the evidence for the “weapons of mass destruction” in starting the Iraq “war.”
33) The Reported Phone Calls from Barbara Olson
Americans were first told that terrorists had hijacked an airliner when CNN gave a report about US Solicitor General Theodore “Ted” Olson, who said that his wife, well-known TV commentator Barbara Olson, had called him twice from American Airlines (AA) Flight 77, stating that terrorists had taken over this flight. This would have been roughly a half hour before this plane, according to the official story, crashed into the Pentagon.
Ted Olson reported, according to CNN, that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,” saying that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers,” who had “knives and cardboard cutters.”
Although Olson had originally told CNN that his wife had used a cell phone, the FBI’s September 11th summary of its interview of him said: “[Mr. Olson] doesn’t know if the calls were made from [Barbara Olson’s] cell phone or the telephone on the plane.” But during a September 14 interview on Hannity & Colmes, Olson suggested that his wife had reached him at the Department of Justice by using the “airplane phone.” Ted Olson continued to go back and forth between the two alternatives.
In any case, the first call from his wife, Olson told the FBI, lasted “about one minute.” The second call, he told Larry King, lasted “two or three or four minutes.”
The 9/11 Commission Report stated (in 2004) that the FBI and the Department of Justice believed that there had actually been four calls from Barbara Olson.
The story about Barbara Olson’s report of the hijacking of AA 77 was foundational for the official account of 9/11. This foundational role is illustrated by the fact that, although it has been widely held that the hijackers had box cutters, this idea was provided only by Ted Olson’s report of his wife’s phone calls. In any case, in spite of the foundational role of the Olson story, there were three serious problems with its credibility:
1. One problem is that, although Ted Olson went back and forth on whether his wife had used an onboard phone or a cell phone, she evidently could not have used either:
With regard to the possibility that Barbara Olson had used a cell phone, the FBI ruled this out in 2004, saying: “All of the calls from Flight 77 were made via the onboard airphone system.”
There is also evidence that Barbara Olson could not have made the calls attributed to her in The 9/11 Commission Report: This is the evidence, cited in the Burnett section of Point PC-4 : “Cell Phone Calls from the Planes: The Second Official Account”), that the cell phone technology available in 2001 would not have allowed cell phone calls from this airliner.
Further evidence that Barbara Olson could not have used an onboard phone to call from AA 77 is provided by a page in the Boeing 757 Aircraft Maintenance Manual (757 AMM), dated January 28, 2001. The first sentence of this page states: “The passenger telephone system was deactivated by ECO FO878.” (ECO F1463 and F1532 were later orders to remove the phones.) This page indicates, in other words, that by January 28, 2001, the passenger phone system for the AA 757 fleet had been deactivated.
The impossibility of Olson’s having used an onboard phone is further supported by a pilot and a flight attendant.
After being a fighter pilot, and having attended the US Navy Fighter Weapons School, Captain Ralph Kolstad served as an airline pilot for 27 years, during 13 of which he flew Boeing 757s and 767s for American Airlines. He wrote: “[T]he ‘air phones,’ as they were called, were . . . deactivated in early or mid 2001. They had been deactivated for quite some time prior to Sep 2001.”
Flight attendant Ginger Gainer, after reporting that the Boeing 757s prepared for international flights had stickers on the seatback phones “indicating that they were inoperative,” added: “I asked several current and former Flight Attendants for American, . . . who flew domestic . . . , and they all said that they recalled the phones as having been disabled at the time, or gone.”
There is one more reason to be skeptical about the claim that Barbara and Ted Olson talked that morning by telephone: Neither the telephone company records, nor the Department of Justice phone call records, nor Barbara Olson’s cell phone call records have ever been made public, in spite of the fact that there has been much discussion of the authenticity of the reported phone calls from her.
2. A second more serious problem is that the Olson story was contradicted in the FBI’s 2006 report to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. In its report about phone calls from AA 77, the FBI stated that there was one call from Barbara Olson (not two), and that this call was “unconnected,” so that it lasted “0 seconds.” This report thereby contradicted Ted Olson’s report that his wife had made two calls to him, one that lasted “about one minute” and another that lasted “two or three or four minutes.”
3. A third problem is that Barbara Olson’s story as told by her husband is simply implausible. According to this story, 60 passengers – including pilot Charles “Chic” Burlingame, a former Navy pilot who was a weightlifter and a boxer – were held off in the back of the plane by three or four hijackers (one or two would have been in the pilot’s cabin). And yet these alleged hijackers were, as a 9/11 Commission staff document mentioned, “not physically imposing, as the majority of them were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height and slender in build.” If these small men were armed only with knives and box cutters, the pilots and the male passengers could have easily overpowered them.
Although Ted Olson reported two calls from his wife and the 9/11 Commission attributed four calls to her, the best evidence shows three problems in the official account. These problems, taken in reverse order, lead to this threefold conclusion: (1) Barbara Olson’s account of what occurred on AA 77, as told by her husband, is implausible. (2) The FBI’s report on phone calls from AA 77 indicates that she did not reach her husband from that flight. (3) Various accounts indicate that she could not have called her husband from AA 77.
34) Cell Phone Calls From the Planes: The First Official Account
Although the public’s understanding about the 9/11 attacks depended heavily, from the beginning, on alleged “cell phone calls from the planes,” for several years – from September 2001 until July 2004, when The 9/11Commission Report was issued – there was no official statement about the reported calls. But ideas about such cell phone calls were conveyed to the public in this period by America’s mainstream media,[1] and these ideas were never challenged by the FBI or (later) by the 9/11 Commission. This set of ideas, by default, can be called the first official account of the reported cell phone calls.
This first official account is of interest because in 2006 it was contradicted by the FBI, and The 9/11 Commission Report can be seen, when read in light of this later FBI report, to have explicitly endorsed only two of the reported cell phone calls, both of which came from low elevations.
The Official Account: First Version
Passengers and flight attendants on the 9/11 flights were able, reported the media, to use cell phones (as well as onboard phones) to let people on the ground know what was happening on their planes:
The day after 9/11, a BBC story said: “A senior U.S. intelligence official told MSNBC.com that mobile phone communications [cell phone calls] from [UA] Flight 93 indicate that three passengers overpowered the hijackers but were unable to maintain control of the plane.”
The next day (September 13, 2001) a Washington Post story said: “[Passenger Jeremy] Glick’s cell phone call from Flight 93 and others like it provide the most dramatic accounts so far of events aboard the four hijacked aircraft.”
The same Post story about this flight said: “The plane was at once a lonesome vessel, the people aboard facing their singular fate, and yet somehow already attached to the larger drama, connected again by cell phones.”
The media also gave accounts of particular passengers and flight attendants on the planes who used cell phones to communicate with people on the ground. (Wherever possible, the FBI interview of the recipient of the cell phone call, usually conducted the morning of 9/11, is sourced in the footnote):
On the afternoon of 9/11, CNN reported that US Solicitor General Theodore “Ted” Olson told CNN that his wife, well-known CNN commentator Barbara Olson, had “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,” stating that the plane had been taken over by hijackers armed with “knives and cardboard cutters.” When interviewed by the FBI, Olson said that he did not know if her calls were made from her cell phone or the telephone on the plane. In subsequent media interviews, Olson went back and forth on whether his wife used her cell phone or a seat-back phone, but her call was almost unanimously reported in the media, in line with the initial CNN story, as a cell phone call.
Later on 9/11, an Associated Press story reported that businessman Peter Hanson called his father – Lee Hanson of Connecticut – from United 175. The AP stated that “a minister confirmed the cell phone call to Lee Hanson.”
According to The Washington Post on September 13, Kathy Hoglan talked about her nephew, Mark Bingham. In “his cell phone call to her” from UA 93, she reportedly said, he “managed only to tell his aunt and mother, Alice Hoglan, that the plane had been hijacked and that he loved them.”
On September 16, a Washington Post writer David Maraniss, discussing UA 175, said: “Brian Sweeney called his wife Julie: ‘Hi, Jules,’ Brian Sweeney was saying into his cell phone. ‘It’s Brian. We’ve been hijacked, and it doesn’t look too good.’” According to the FBI’s interview with Julie Sweeney on October 2, 2001, she had been out when her husband called. She “returned home to find that her husband had left a message, made from his cell phone aboard the plane, on their answering machine. The answering machine recorded that the message was left at approximately 8:58 AM.” At that time, US 175 was reportedly at about 25,000 feet. (It is important to note that the message was on Julie Sweeney’s answering machine, which would make it difficult to argue that her report – that her husband had called on his cell phone – was based on faulty hearing or memory.)
Maraniss also, saying that people aboard UA 93 were “connected [to the larger drama] by cell phones,” added: “Thomas E. Burnett Jr., a California businessman, called his wife, Deena, four times.”In an AP story on September 12, Martha Raffaele wrote: “In a series of four cellular phone calls, Burnett had his wife, Deena, conference in the FBI.” The FBI’s report of its interview with Deena, carried out on 9/11 itself, indicated that she had spoken of “three to five cellular phone calls.” A year later, McClatchy reporter Greg Gordon wrote that Deena Burnett had been “strangely calmed by her husband’s steady voice over his cell phone.” A segment about Deena Burnett on CBS’s Early Show said: “Tom Burnett made four cell phone calls from Flight 93 to Deena Burnett at home, telling her he and some other passengers were going to ‘do something.’”
On September 22, a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about UA 93 passenger Marion Britton began: “She called longtime friend Fred Fiumano, from whom she had borrowed a cell phone.”
Summary: Responses by the 9/11 Commission and the FBI
The 9/11 Commission Report appeared to support the truth of the picture provided in the media – that there had been several cell phone calls from the 9/11 planes – by virtue of referring to FBI interviews reporting cell phone calls, while never suggesting any reason to doubt this view.
With regard to the aforementioned report about businessman Peter Hanson – according to which he had called his father – the FBI, which had interviewed the father (Lee Hanson), wrote this: “He believed his son was calling from his cellular telephone.”
With regard to the aforementioned stories that Deena Burnett had received several calls from her husband, Thomas Burnett, the FBI, which interviewed her on 9/11 itself, wrote: “Burnett was able to determine that her husband was using his own cellular telephone.”
In discussing UA 93 (which was the source of most of the reported cell phone calls), the Commission wrote: “Shortly [after 9:32 AM], the passengers and flight crew began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones. . . . . At least ten passengers and two crew members shared vital information with family, friends, colleagues, or others on the ground.”
Accordingly, the media clearly suggested that passengers and flight attendants on the 9/11 flights communicated with people on the ground by means of cell phones, and this suggestion was never challenged by the FBI or the 9/11 Commission until 2006 when the FBI presented evidence under oath at the Moussaoui Trial, that there were only two (low-elevation) cell phone calls.
Various technological reports between 2001 and 2004 indicate that, given the cell phones available in 2001, cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners – meaning ones above 20,000 feet – were very unlikely.
The most extensive of these reports were by Canadian mathematician and scientist A. K. Dewdney, who for many years had written a column for Scientific American.[19] In 2003, he published reports of experiments he had carried out in single- and twin-engine airplanes, showing that at 20,000 feet, there was a one-in-a-hundred chance of successful calls from a single-engine plane, and in a twin-engine plane (which has greater insulation), the success rate at 7,000 feet was 0 percent. He also pointed out that cell phone failure would occur at even lower altitudes in large airliners, which are even more insulated.
When the times of the reported phone calls are compared with the official flight data paths, it is clear that some of the cell phone calls reported in the mainstream press occurred when the planes were above 40,000 feet, and all of them occurred above 20,000 feet.
Dewdney’s report did not stand alone. Several other articles published between 2001 and 2004 cast doubt on the cell phone calls as being credible.
In 2004, Qualcomm announced a successful demonstration of a fundamentally new kind of cell phone technology, involving a “picocell,” that would allow passengers “to place and receive calls as if they were on the ground.” American Airlines announced that this new technology was expected to be commercially available in 2006.[23]This technology, in fact, first became available on commercial flights in March 2008.
The cell phone companies have, even before 9/11, kept extensive coded data on each call from the 3-sided cell phone towers, and these data provide triangulation location points. Such data are routinely requested for court cases and would have been used in the massive cell phone investigation that ensued.
Therefore the above-reported cell phone calls almost certainly could not have been received from any of the 9/11 planes.
Conclusion: Beginning with the reported cell phone calls by Barbara Olson aboard UA 93, the (first) official account of the 9/11 attacks depended heavily on media stories of cell phone calls from the 9/11 planes.
From 2001 until 2006, such stories appeared to be supported by the FBI and the 9/11 Commission. The Commission reported the stories about Barbara Olson from American 77; Peter Hanson and Brian Sweeney from United 175; and Mark Bingham, Marion Britton, Tom Burnett, and Jeremy Glick from United 93. The 9/11 Commission and the FBI, moreover, did nothing to cast doubt on the belief that these people had, while in 9/11 planes, used cell phones to talk to people on the ground.
Therefore, the (first) official account of phone calls from the 9/11 planes, which fleshed out the dramatic public story, is objectively so improbable as to be unbelievable – a fact that casts doubt on the credibility of the official account of 9/11 as a whole.
35) Cell Phone Calls from the Planes: The Second Official Account
According to what served as the official account of cell phone usage from the 9/11 planes until July 2004 (when The 9/11 Commission Report was released), more than a dozen calls – from a combination of passengers and flight attendants – were made to people on the ground by means of cell phones.The belief that such calls had been made was conveyed to the public by the mass media, with apparent support by the FBI and (later) The 9/11 Commission Report. According to the first version of the official story (Point PC-3), there were reportedly cell phone calls from passengers and/or flight attendants from all four flights, although most of them were from UA 93.
The fact that the first version of the official story about cell phones had been replaced by a second version became obvious in the FBI’s testimony for the Moussaoui trial, which occurred in early 2006. This second version is also implicit in The 9/11 Commission Report (which appeared in 2004), although this fact did not become obvious until after (a) the FBI presented its report to the Moussaoui trial and (b) a 9/11 staff report of 2004 became available.
The Official Account: Second Version
Most of the phone calls from the 9/11 planes were made from onboard (seatback) phones; only two of them were made by means of cell phones. This was stated at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006, reported journalist Greg Gordon, who was covering the trial for the McClatchy Newspapers. Summarizing this part of the FBI testimony, Gordon wrote: “In the back of the plane, 13 of the terrified passengers and crew members made 35 air phone calls and two cell phone calls to family members and airline dispatchers, a member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force testified Tuesday.”
Both of the reported cell phone calls were from UA 93, after it had descended (shortly before crashing) to the altitude of 5,000 feet. The two reported cell phone callers were flight attendant CeeCee Lyles and passenger Edward Felt (who were not mentioned in Point PC-3, “Cell Phone Calls from the Planes: The First Official Account”). The FBI’s reports about the calls from Lyles and Felt are profiled – like the FBI’s reports about all phone calls from the 9/11 planes, whether reportedly made from cell phones or onboard phones – in an interactive computer presentation on the US government website for the Moussaoui trial. Each report consists of a graphic that summarizes the information about the reported call.
The graphic for flight attendant CeeCee Lyles indicates that she made two calls, one of which was a “cell phone call” to a residential number at 9:58:00 AM.
The graphic for the call from Felt, which was also said to have occurred at 9:58:00 AM, says “call placed from bathroom,” from which readers can infer that it must have been made from a cell phone. There is an even more explicit – albeit less accessible – graphic, which says: “9:58 AM: Passenger Edward Felt, using his cell phone, (732) 241-XXXX, contacts John Shaw, a 911 Operator from Westmoreland County, PA.”
Based on the belief that other phone calls from the 9/11 planes were made from cell phones, some people have argued that the reported calls from the 9/11 planes could not have been received, on the grounds that in 2001 cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners were impossible. However, given the fact that the only reported cell phone calls were from UA 93 at 9:58:00 AM, after it had descended to 5,000 feet, there is no problem.
The Best Evidence
By stating this second version of the official account – that the only reported cell phone calls from the 9/11 planes were made from UA 93 at 9:58:00 AM, after it had evidently descended to 5,000 feet – the FBI seemingly avoided the problem created by the fact that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners could at best connect momentarily in 2001. But five problems remain.
1. The Calls by Lyles and Felt
As stated in Point PC-3 (“Cell Phone Calls from the Planes: The First Official Account”), A. K. Dewdney reported that he found the success rate of cell phone calls from twin-engine planes fell to zero at 7,000 feet. He also said that the cell phone failure would occur at lower altitudes in airliners, because they are much more insulated. How much lower? According to many anecdotal reports, Dewdney has said, “in large passenger jets, one loses contact during takeoff, frequently before the plane reaches 1000 feet altitude.” The fact that UA 93 was at 5,000 feet does not necessarily show, therefore, that Felt and Lyles could have made successful cell phone calls at 9:58 AM.
Indeed there is evidence that they did not make such calls: The UA 93 phone records for the precisely timed 9:58:00 AM calls by both Lyles and Felt show no cell phone number and no duration — information included on any cell phone bill[10] — in spite of “an exhaustive study . . . of the cell phone records of each of the passengers who owned cell phones.”
2. The Falsity of the First Official Account
By virtue of holding that all of the reported cell phone calls, except for those of Felt and Lyles, were made from onboard phones, the FBI’s 2006 report implied that one of the chief elements in the story about 9/11 told – or at least allowed – by authorities from the outset – that the presence of hijackers on the 9/11 flights were reported in cell phone calls by numerous passengers – was untrue. The question becomes, then, whether the FBI’s second account is plausible.
3. A Priori Reason to Doubt the Second Account
The 2006 FBI account entails that all of the reported calls that had been presented in the first official account as cell phone calls had actually been – except for those by Felt and Lyles – calls from onboard phones. That is, the calls by seven passengers – UA 93 passengers Mark Bingham, Marion Britton, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick; UA 175 passengers Peter Hanson and Brian Sweeney; and AA 77 passenger Barbara Olson – had been misascribed.
It might be possible that all of these reported calls had involved errors, perhaps due to mishearing, misspeaking, or poor memory (whether by the journalists who reported the calls or the people who received them). The probability of this many errors, all in the same direction, would be extremely low.
Two of the reported calls, moreover, could not be explained away as errors due to mishearing, misspeaking, or poor memory: the calls to Julie Sweeney and Deena Burnett.
4. The Call Received by Julie Sweeney
As reported in the Point: Cell Phone Calls from the Planes: The First Official Account,”WashingtonPost writer David Maraniss said in a discussion of UA 175: “Brian Sweeney called his wife Julie: ‘Hi, Jules,’ Brian Sweeney was saying into his cell phone. ‘It’s Brian. We’ve been hijacked, and it doesn’t look too good.’”
However, that Point did not include information in the FBI’s interview with Julie Sweeney on October 2, 2001. Having been out when her husband had called, she “returned home to find that her husband had left a message, made from his cell phone aboard the plane, on their answering machine. The answering machine recorded that the message was left at approximately 8:58 AM.” At that time, UA 175 was reportedly at about 25,000 feet.
Given the fact that the 27-second phone call was on Julie Sweeney’s answering machine, one could not argue that her report – that her husband had called from his cell phone – was based on faulty hearing or memory. How, then, could the FBI have later stated that Brian Sweeney left a voice mail message “using a GTE Airfone”?
5. The Calls Received by Deena Burnett
Deena Burnett, a former Delta Airlines flight attendant, told FBI interviewers, shortly after the calls had come, that she had received three to five calls from her husband, Tom Burnett, on UA 93.
In the first years after 9/11 (from 2001 through 2006), these calls were described in books and newspaper articles as cell phone calls.
These UA 93 calls were allegedly made from high altitudes (35,000 and 40,700 feet), so Tom Burnett could not have called his wife on a cell phone at that time. Even Deena Burnett herself, who had been a flight attendant, later wrote: “I didn’t understand how he [Tom] could be calling me on his cell phone from the air.”
When the FBI report on phone calls from the 9/11 airliners was issued in connection with the 2006 Moussaoui Trial, it indicated that Tom Burnett had made three calls, none of which were from a cell phone: All were said to have been made from onboard phones. The FBI report also specified the rows from which the calls were made.
This FBI 2006 report, according to which Tom Burnett had called his wife from seat-back phones, removed the problem of how he could have been using a cell phone at flight UA 93′s high elevation. But it introduced a new problem:
According to Deena Burnett’s FBI interview on September 11, she knew that her husband had used his cell phone: “Burnett was able to determine that her husband was using his own cellular telephone because the caller identification showed his number, 925-980-3360. Only one of the calls did not show on the caller identification as she was on the line with another call.”
This creates a seemingly insuperable problem: If Tom Burnett had really used onboard phones, his cell phone number could not have shown up even once.
The FBI’s categorizing of the Burnett calls as onboard phone calls in spite of the FBI’s early interview with Deena Burnet to the contrary is contradicted by the FBI’s opposite treatment of the case involving UA 93 flight attendant CeeCee Lyles:
Its summary of her husband’s testimony says: “At 9:58 AM, Lorne Lyles received a call at home from her celular [sic] telephone.. . . . Lyles commented that CeCe [sic] Lyles’ telephone number 941-823-2355 was the number on the caller ID.” This account was faithfully reflected in the FBI’s telephone report for the Moussaoui trial.
But even though Deena Burnett provided the same evidence – that her spouse’s cell phone number had appeared on her phone’s Caller ID – the FBI’s report for the Moussaoui trial did not reflect her testimony.
This difference in treatment may be explained by the fact that, whereas the reported Burnett call was from an elevation that was clearly too high to make cell phone calls, a cell phone call from 5,000 feet might seem plausible.
The FBI claim that the Burnett calls were from onboard phones implied that (1) either Deena’s memory was faulty or (2) she was lying. However, (1a) Deena gave her FBI interviews within hours of receiving the calls]and (2a) there would seem to be no plausible motive as to why she would have lied.
The FBI has not explained the contradiction between her 2001 FBI interview and the FBI’s report that surfaced in 2006; it simply ignored this contradiction.
Moreover, the call to Julie Sweeney, cited above, provides additional support for the truth of Deena Burnett’s account.
Conclusion
Whereas the first official account of the allegedly hijacked planes rested heavily on reported cell phone accounts by passengers and flight attendants, the second official account – which was implicit in The 9/11 Commission Report and became explicit in the FBI’s report to the 2006 Moussaoui trial – claimed that all of the phone calls that had been reported in the press as cell phone calls, except the 9:58 AM calls by Edward Felt and CeeCee Lyles, were actually made from onboard phones.
This second official account, if we ignore the problems in the Felt and Lyle accounts, removed the main problem of the first official account, which claimed that cell phone calls were made at high altitudes. But this solution created new problems.
By denying the truth of much of the first account, which had been provided or at least allowed by the authorities, the second account raises a question about its own credibility: Why should the new account by the authorities be trusted?
The idea that all seven of the reported cell phone calls, aside from those by Felt and Lyles, were due to errors is implausible.
Moreover, two of the reported cell phone calls cannot be explained away, because the 25,000′ altitude call to Julie Sweeney was recorded on her answering machine and the calls to Deena Burnett were shown by her Caller ID to have been received from her husband’s cell phone when his plane was above 35,000 feet.
Therefore, the second official account is contradicted by inconvenient evidence: that two of the reported CELL phone calls were received when the plane was far too high to sustain such calls.
36) The Alleged Security Videos of Mohamed Atta during a Mysterious Trip to Portland, Maine, September 10-11, 2001
As explained in Point H-1, “Mohamed Atta’s Mysterious Trip to Portland” (which provides evidence that this trip was fabricated), The 9/11 Commission Report says that Atta and fellow al-Qaeda operative Abdul Aziz al-Omari drove a rented car from Boston to Portland (Maine) on September 10, stayed overnight, and the next morning took a commuter flight back to Boston, where they boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which they had planned to hijack and fly into the World Trade Center.
Given the ubiquity of surveillance cameras in many commercial establishments and at airport check-in counters, lounges, security checkpoints, boarding gates, and duty-free shops, we would expect that the presence of Atta and al-Omari in Portland would have been recorded by many cameras.
And indeed, according to the official account, stops made by Atta and al-Omari were videotaped at various places, including a gas station and a Wal-Mart on the evening of September 10, and the Portland Jetport (Portland International Airport), from which they allegedly departed September 11.
The Official Accounts and The Best Evidence for these stops is presented in three sections below.
As explained in Point H-1, “Mohamed Atta’s Mysterious Trip to Portland” (which provides evidence that this trip was fabricated), The 9/11 Commission Report says that Atta and fellow al-Qaeda operative Abdul Aziz al-Omari drove a rented car from Boston to Portland (Maine) on September 10, stayed overnight, and the next morning took a commuter flight back to Boston, where they boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which they had planned to hijack and fly into the World Trade Center.
Given the ubiquity of surveillance cameras in many commercial establishments and at airport check-in counters, lounges, security checkpoints, boarding gates, and duty-free shops, we would expect that the presence of Atta and al-Omari in Portland would have been recorded by many cameras.
And indeed, according to the official account, stops made by Atta and al-Omari were videotaped at various places, including a gas station and a Wal-Mart on the evening of September 10, and the Portland Jetport (Portland International Airport), from which they allegedly departed September 11.
The Official Accounts and The Best Evidence for these stops is presented in three sections below.
Official Account #1
Nineteen Muslim hijackers boarded four domestic passenger airliners on 9/11 and crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On the morning of September 11, two of these hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdul al-Omari, boarded American 11 at Boston’s Logan Airport after having taken a commuter flight to Boston from Portland, Maine. Although these men had already been in Boston on September 10, they drove a rented car to Portland, where they stayed overnight. The next morning, they drove to the Portland Jetport, where they boarded a 6:00 AM commuter flight to Boston.
Several surveillance cameras caught the men on videotape.
Surveillance Camera I: Jetport Gas Station Images, Evening, September 10
An FBI Press Release dated October 5, 2001, reported that on the evening of September 10, 2001, “Atta and Al-Omari were at [the] Jetport Gas Station, 446 Western, Avenue, South Portland, Maine. Atta was wearing a half dark, half light colored shirt with light colored slacks.”
The press release indicates that the FBI had seven images that were captured by a surveillance camera at the gas station.
The Best Evidence #1
Surveillance Camera I: Jetport Gas Station Images, Evening, September 10
There are two serious problems with the seven images from the Jetport gas station.
First, an examination shows that they bear the word “MON,” indicating “Monday,” which is consistent with the official account, because September 11 fell on a Tuesday.
However, an image discovered in the evidence presented by the FBI in 2006 for the Moussaoui Trial prosecution, provides reason to question the authenticity of these videos: Exhibit FO07011 is a full-size version of an image identical to the right-hand image in the top row on the FBI Press Release.
The original, un-cropped photo from the surveillance camera shows the date to be 11-10-01.
This date could be read as November 10, 2001 (which fell on a Saturday), or October 11, 2001 (which fell on a Thursday). Either way, this image does not support the official account, according to which Atta and al-Omari were in Portland on September 10 and 11, 2001.
The second problem is that the video was stamped “8:28 PM,” which does not match the FBI timeline, according to which Atta and al-Omari were at the Jetport station on September 10 at 9:15 PM.
One could reply that perhaps the camera was mis-set (a not uncommon problem). However, that would be speculation.
In any case, the material provided to the Moussaoui trial by the FBI does not support the official account.
Conclusion #1: Jetport Gas Station
Because the un-cropped image supposedly originating from the Jetport Gas station bore the wrong date and its time-stamp differs by 37 minutes from the FBI’s timeline, this image does nothing to support the claim that Atta and al-Omari were in Portland the evening of September 10, 2001.
Official Account #2
Surveillance Camera II: Atta at a Wal-Mart near Portland, Maine, 9:22 PM, September 10, 2001
According to Wal-Mart security camera images, Mohamed Atta visited a Wal-Mart near Portland (Maine) for 20 minutes on the evening of September 10, 2001, at 9:22 PM.
The Best Evidence #2
Surveillance Camera II: Atta at a Wal-Mart near Portland 9:22 PM, September 10, 2001
There are nine images allegedly provided by Wal-Mart security cameras: the first six bear no time/date stamp, showing only the word ENTRANCE. The last three bear only the word 0/X and a time of 21:39 (9:39 PM).
Conclusion #2: Wal-Mart
There is nothing in this purported visual evidence to support the FBI claim that:
the video originated from Wal-Mart,
Atta either entered or left Wal-Mart at 9:22,
Atta stayed for 20 minutes,
or that he was even at Wal-Mart at all.
Official Account #3
The FBI Press Release of October 5, 2001 also produced four images of Atta and al-Omari going through the security check at the Portland Jetport early on the morning of September 11, along with other security camera images documenting their presence in Portland.10
The Best Evidence #3
There are two serious problems with this video evidence:
First, each of the four images bears not just one time-stamp, which is standard in the industry,but two time-stamps: 5:45 AM and 5:53 AM. The FBI website’s caption below these images – which was published in October, 2001 – indicates that they were created at 5:45 AM.11
If that was the correct time, why would the photos also contain a stamp in the regular position for time-stamps at the bottom of the frame indicating that they were taken 8 minutes later at 5:53:41 (which was only 6 minutes before the flight was to leave)?12
In a newspaper article of September 20, 2001, the earlier time of 5:45 AM was stamped in the middle of the published image, but the 5:53 AM time, which in October appeared in the regular time-stamp position at the bottom of the image, was cropped out.13 And yet an exhibit of the same image presented by the FBI to the Moussaoui Trial in 2006 shows the 5:53 AM time.14
Second, the four images show Atta and al-Omari wearing open-necked shirts and not wearing or even visibly carrying ties and jackets.15 However, according to check-in agent Michael Tuohey, the men he identified as Atta and al-Omari had moments earlier been wearing jackets and ties.
According to Tuohey, the men had arrived so late that he was afraid that they would miss the flight.16 Tuohey added that Atta started demanding boarding passes for the second flight (American 11), to which Tuohey replied: “Mr. Atta, if you don’t go now, you will miss your plane.”17
If Atta was the ringleader for the hijacking operation and was to pilot AA 11 after it was taken over, the whole, long-planned operation would have needed to be canceled if he did not get to Boston on this flight. If Atta and al-Omari were so late they were in danger of missing the flight, is it likely that, although they may have needed to take off their jackets to go through screening, they would also have taken extra time to remove their ties and place both inside their bags?
The fact that the video images do not correspond to Tuohey’s description, therefore, counts against the authenticity of these images.
Conclusion #3: Portland Airport
The four images do not provide credible evidence of the claim that Atta and al-Omari flew out of Portland, for two reasons:
Although the Portland Jetport would have had security surveillance cameras at check-in counters,[18] security checkpoints, and boarding gates, the only purported Jetport images of Atta and al-Omari released by the FBI were at the security check-point.
These images had two different time-stamps, instead of the industry standard of one; and the attire of Atta and al-Omari did not fit the description givenby the check-in agent shortly before.
Summary Conclusion
Given the weak support for the authenticity of these three sets of security camera images, so weak as to suggest that they were fabricated, they – in conjunction with Point H-1 (“Mohamed Atta’s Mysterious Trip to Portland”) – raise compelling reasons to doubt the entire story about Atta being in Portland and taking a commuter flight to Boston.
37) Point Video-2: Was the Airport Video of the Alleged AA 77 Hijackers Authentic?
Official 9/11 Videotaped Evidence
Except for the reported security video image of Mohamed Atta and Abdul al-Omari at the Portland (Maine) airport, which was released to the press soon after 9/11 (see Point Video-1), the only photographic evidence showing any of the 19 hijackers at airports was allegedly taken at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. – from which American Airlines 77 departed – and was presented by the Associated Press the day before The 9/11 Commission Report was released in July, 2004.
This video, which was endorsed by the 9/11 Commission,can – along with the video images of Atta and al-Omari, which were endorsed by the FBI as well as the 9/11 Commission – be considered the official photographic evidence that members of al-Qaeda were preparing to board the 9/11 planes.
The Official Account
At 8:20 AM on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Dulles International Airport heading for Los Angeles. The flight was then hijacked by five members of al-Qaeda, who crashed it into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 AM.1 A closed-circuit television camera, as the 9/11 Commission reported,2captured images of these five hijackers – Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed – passing through the security checkpoint at Dulles airport before boarding AA Flight 77.3
The Best Evidence
Three types of evidence strongly suggest that the alleged video images of the five men,4 claimed to be al-Qaeda hijackers, are inauthentic.
First, there were over 300 security cameras at Dulles International Airport on September 11, 2001,5 which retained their images for 30 days, and which were painstakingly examined by information systems technicians and monitored by federal agents.6 The US government did not release a single time-stamped video or any of the images from these 300 security cameras.
Second, no supposed images of any of the alleged hijackers of AA 77 were released until the day before The 9/11 Commission Report was published (in July 2004), when the Associated Press released a video allegedly portraying the five reported hijackers passing through the Dulles security checkpoint.
There are serious problems with the authenticity of this video.
Although the 9/11 Commission reported that (alleged) hijackers al-Mihdhar and Moqed passed the Dulles security checkpoint and were recorded on closed circuit television (CCTV) at 7:18 AM, and that Hani Hanjour was recorded on the same CCTV at 7:35 AM,7 two researchers have pointed out that “a normal security video has time and date burned into the integral video image by proprietary equipment according to an authenticated pattern, along with camera identification and the location that the camera covered. The video released in 2004 contained no such data.”
An analysis from a top scientific publisher confirms that, although security videos typically record such information, neither the date, time, nor camera number was present.
Whereas most 24-hour surveillance cameras use time-lapse photography with 1-second intervals (in order to meet data storage limitations), the videotape with images of al-Mihdhar and Moqed was shot at 30 frames per second (30fps), the norm in continuous consumer video-camera taping (i.e., many times the normal speed of security cameras), which suggests that this videotape was not taken by a Dulles airport security camera.
This suspicion is further supported by the fact that the video, instead of being released by the FBI, was released to the Associated Press by a law firm “representing victims’ families, who are suing airlines and the security industry for failing to avert the terror attack,” and as such could not be assumed to be disinterested.
Conclusion from the First Two Types of Evidence
The Dulles airport video – which was never officially released and shows only a few people passing an unidentified security checkpoint at an unknown time – contains no information to link its images to AA 77.
The third type of evidence is that there were no positive identifications of the alleged hijackers by Dulles airport staff.
The 9/11 Commission Report stated that four of the (alleged) hijackers on Flight AA 7711 had been selected by the automated CAPPS (The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System)system for additional screening. (“Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Midhar and Majed Moqed were flagged by CAPPS. The Hazmi brothers were selected for extra scrutiny by the airline’s customer service representative at the check-in counter. He did so because one of the brothers did not have photo identification nor could he understand English.”)However:
1.None of the security screeners testified to having remembered any of the hijackers passing through security for Flight AA 11, and
2. The check-in agents did not mention CAPPS flaggings – which would have been memorable events — in their FBI interviews:
According to a recently available FBI interview (September 26, 2001) with Dulles check-in agent Allex Vaughn, who processed the al-Hazmi brothers, Vaughn did not mention that they had been selected by the CAPPS system for additional screening.
CAPPS is not mentioned in the September 12, 2001, FBI Interview with a trainee (name redacted on the FBI report) who was working with Vaughn at the time.
Mr. Vaughn said he was shown the security system video from nearby surveillance camera #31, which allegedly showed the al-Hazmi brothers, but this footage has never been released.
The 9/11 Commission Report stated that Hani Hanjour and the al-Hazmi brothers were seated in first class. Ticket agent Brenda Brown, who checked in first-class ticketed AA 77 passengers that morning, was interviewed by the FBI on September 17, 2001, and remembered clearly checking in several passengers on “a light travel day,” but she did not recall any Arab males.
Conclusion
According to the 9/11 Commission, there was photographic evidence of the five (alleged) hijackers of AA 77 passing through the security checkpoint at Dulles International Airport. However:
This claim was not supported by positive identifications of any of these men by Dulles airport staff.
The Commission’s claim that a surveillance video captured images of the men is undermined by four facts:
Although Dulles International Airport had over 300 surveillance cameras, the FBI did not release images from any of these.
The one and only video reportedly showing 9/11 hijackers was provided by a law firm representing families of victims planning to sue the airlines and security industry, which as such could not be assumed to be disinterested.
The unstamped images from this video do not provide the kinds of data normally present on security videos.
The video was far faster than the normal speed of security camera videos.
There is, therefore, no credible photographic (or witness) evidence that any of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were preparing to board AA 77, which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon.
Notes: This is part 3. Part 1 is here:
911 Consensus Points Contradict The Government Lies Part I
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/911-consensus-points-contradict-the-government-lies-part-i/
Part 2 is here:
911 Consensus Points Contradict The Government Lies Part II
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/911-consensus-points-contradict-the-government-lies-part-ii/
The above 911 questions with notes and other research tools are available here:
http://www.consensus911.org/the-911-consensus-points/
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