Edward Felt's phone call from Flight 93 was one of the first to be reported and alredy in the news on 911.
"We got the call about 9:58 this morning from a male passenger stating that he was locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93 traveling from Newark to San Francisco, and they were being hijacked," said Glenn Cramer, a 911 supervisor.
"We confirmed that with him several times and we asked him to repeat what he said. He was very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down. He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't know where.
"And then we lost contact with him." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2... There are three reasons why this phone call is very special, different from all other call from Flight 93 and highly important:
Before it has to be pointed out that Glenn Cramer who made all the statements right after 911 was the 911 supervisor but it was John Shaw who was the dispatcher and actually took the call of Edward Felt.
Cramer “monitored the call after Shaw alerted him that it was about a hijacking in progress.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011207dispatche... 1.) Edward Felt mentions an explosion. This was widely reported right after 911 based on direct quotes from Glenn Cramer.
But later the mentioning of smoke and an explosion was denied: e. g.
“A male passenger, Edward Felt, did call from the bathroom of the plane, but never mentioned an explosion or puff of smoke, said John Shaw, the dispatcher who took the call. “Didn't happen,” he said. Felt's wife, who heard a tape of the call, corroborated Shaw's story.” (Among the Heroes, p. 369)
(New York Times, 3/27/02)
2.) This 911 dispatch tape is sized by Agents on the day of 911.
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2... The phone call only lasted 78 seconds.
http://www.postgazette.com/nation/20020911shaw0911p9.as... “The supervisor who took the call has been gagged by the FBI.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=... The call lasted only 78 seconds so what else can possibly be on this tape that explains the seizing of it?
Jere Longman who denied the existence of the explosion claim gives some further details of the call which only helps to make the call even more strange:
“Following procedure, Shaw asked for the passenger's name and cell phone number. The passenger identified himself as Edward Felt.”
(Among the Heroes, p. 271)
But still on December 6, 2001 the caller is not identified:
“The passenger, whose name is not being released”.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/News/1106952/detail... (New York Times, 3/27/02)
Another detail given by Longman:
“Once he seemed to grow impatient with the dispatcher, but he kept his cool under the circumstances. “We're going down, we're going down”. (p. 275) (This detail is contained in other newspaper accounts, too).
But the Commission Report doesn't mention any loose of height for Flight 93 at that time of his call. “Ed seemed at one moment to be peering out of the bathroom, as if checking to see what was going on. (...) many voices were audible, but none that could be picked out”. (p. 275) Not only do all the details of the phone call make a duration of only 78 seconds unlikely but especially striking is that neither Edward Felt mentions the ongoing counterattack of the passengers nor is it to be heard when he is supposed to peer out of the bathroom.
In one of the rare interviews of John Shaw he states:
“He told me he locked himself in the bathroom, he gave me the flight number and the tail number , everything he possibly could, and that the plane had been hijacked” http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/News/1106952/detail... How did Felt know the tail number of Flight 93?
3.) Let's talk about Felt's behaviour
With an ongoing hijacking and a terrorist surveilling the passengers with a bomb around his waist etc it seems to be an understandable and even clever behaviour to look for a moment and sneak into the bathroom in order to alert the FBI. That might be also the reason why Felt's behaviour never strikes out as highly bizarre.
But it is very bizarre. Especially if one compares it to the behaviour of other passengers. But it's not about judging Felt as a hero or a coward. There are several reasons why his behaviour in the concrete situation of 9:58 on Flight 93 appears very, very, very strange:
There is no hijacker surveilling him. Since one minute the counterattack of the passengers is already underway.
So why does Felt go into a bathroom to phone? And even more why the need to lock himself? The call was disconnected because he used his cellphone. Why didn't he use the available airfone like so many other passengers?
And as his call was disconnected at 9:59 why didn't he try then an airfone?
It makes very much sense to alert the FBI. But basically EVERY passenger has done this already. Why now? And why didn't he phone before as basically EVERY passenger?
Why doesn't he loose a word about the ongoing counterattack?
If for whatever reasons he decided not to participate in the attack why doesn't he want to see if the others are successful? He was sitting 2D next to three hijackers. Why didn't he mention and describe them?
How can he see the smoke outside the airplane? Does a bathroom have a window?
How could he have known the tail number of the flight?
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/News/1106952/detail... How can one explain Felt's behaviour?
What about the explosion?
Why is Glenn Cramer gagged?
Why is the recording confiscated and not yet publicly released? There are still more oddities concerning Felt's call to come!
Right after 911 all accounts stated that the passenger who phoned from a restroom of UA 93 at 9:58 said that he saw smoke and he mentioned an explosion.
Until March 27, 2002 his identity wasn't revealed (only one newspaper account identified the passenger but as Mark Bingham!). The same article that revealed that it was Edward Felt who phoned stressed as well that he didn't mention any explosion:
"Earlier reports have said that a previously unidentified passenger, Edward Felt of Matawan, N.J., said in a 911 call from a restroom that he saw a puff of smoke and heard an explosion, leading some to cite this as evidence that the plane was shot down by the military to prevent it from crashing into sensitive targets. But the 911 dispatcher, John Shaw, and others who have heard the tape, including Mr. Felt's wife, Sandra Felt, say he made no mention of smoke or an explosion when he said, 'We're going down.'" (New York Times, 3/27/02)
So everything seems clear. But now have a look at the next article please:
Sandra Felt listened to the tape on April 18, 2002 just before joining all the family members to listen to the CVR of UA 93:
"And so, before they joined the other relatives to hear the cockpit voice recorder tape, Edward's widow, Sandy, his brother, Gordon, and his mother, Shirley, were led to a small conference room at the Princeton Marriott Forestall Village Hotel, where they were joined by two FBI agents and a victim-assistance counselor.
Sitting around a polished wood table, the agents handed each of the Felts a typed transcript of the 911 call, and then played it.
Ed's call was made at 9:58 a.m. In a conversation with dispatchers lasting about one minute, he spoke in a quivering voice saying, "We are being hijacked. We are being hijacked."
He went on to describe an "explosion" that he heard, and then white smoke on the plane from an undetermined location. " http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20020421flight930421p1.aspIt's clear in this article that Sandra Felt listens for the first time, that she listened twice to it and that she mentions the explosion! While the “New York Times” article quotes Sandra Felt indirectly the “Pittburgh Post-Gazette” quotes her directly.
So bizarre bizarre: We've one account that Sandra Felt listened to the tape and didn't hear the "explosion" (March 27, 2002) Then we've another account with a lot of direct quotes from Sandra Felt stating clearly that she listened to the tapes for the first time on April 18, 2002 and that she heard "explosion".
I made a Lexis-Nexis research and didn't find any article that identified Felt and stated if there was an explosion or not.
Only a web research had the following result:
"Sandra Felt has heard Flight 93 tapes made when her husband and 39 other passengers and crew battled with four hijackers. Some believe the Americans decided to crash the jet rather than let it be used as a missile to hit another Washington landmark.
"I heard my husband's voice. He was very calm in the face of death," she said. The government has refused to give her a copy or transcript of the tape at this time.
She disputes a 911 supervisor's Sept. 11 account of the conversation between Felt and Shaw in which the supervisor said Felt said he saw smoke after an explosion. " http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/terrorism/on ...
But here again this is not a proof as it contains a completely wrong description: All accounts agree (direct quotes from Glenn Cramer and John Shaw as well) that Felt was everything but calm. ("he sound as if he was crying" Among the Heroes, p. 271)
So, what's going on here?
When did Sandra Felt hear the tape and what did she hear?
Did Edward Felt really not mention an explosion and why is Glenn Cramer gagged? 
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