UA 93: Burnett's surprising prophecy

[John Doe II]

Based on a great finding of spooked911:

At 9:45 Burnett phoned his wife Deena a third time.
Two FBI agents are listening in. The call is recorded.
An excerpt from the transcript:

A plane can survive a bomb if it's in the right place," Deena said.
"Did you call the authorities?" he asked.
"Yes. They didn't know about your plane."
"They're talking about crashing this plane into the ground. We have to do something. I'm putting a plan together."
"Who's helping you?"
"Different people. Several people. There's a group of us. Don't worry. I'll call you back."
(Star Tribune, 9/11/02)
(See also Jere Longman's account in "Among the Heroes")

On the first glance this might not look strange as passengers had heard of the crashs into the WTC...

From Spooked's comments:
First of all, no one else has said there was more than one hijacker guarding the passengers. Thus, how could Burnett hear them discussing this?
Second, why on earth would the hijackers be talking about putting the plane on the ground-- before the passenger revolt? This is clearly BEFORE the passenger revolt because Tom says: 'We have to do something'.

Also, since when did Burnett understand Arab?
And while Todd Beamer asks Liza Jefferson if the hijackers want money Burnett assumes they want to crash the plane into the ground??
A decision they only took (officially) because they had no other choice as the passengers were attacking?
And btw if the hijackers really would have intended at that moment to crash the plane into the ground then nobody could have prevented them from doing so.
This makes absolutely no sense. And there is no doubt about the source.


P.S. Sounds like on Flight 175 where a passenger imagined the hijackers would crash a plane into a building in Chicago ....

[paulthompson]

1. I agree this is curious...

...but I also think you're making some big assumptions. We don't know what was actually said by the hijackers, or who it was said to. You assume it was said in a discussion between hijackers that was overheard, when this isn't necessarily so. For instance, we know the hijackers were periodically broadcasting messages to the passengers, for instance at 9:39: "Hi, this is the captain. We’d like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board. And we are going to turn back to the airport. And they had our demands, so please remain quiet."

The hijackers had a habit of saying some things that weren't too smart. For instance, the comment on Flight 11 "we have some planes" seems like something said in a moment of excitement that could only have hurt them by tipping off flight controllers about other hijackings. They may have similarly said something on Flight 93 like "this plane is going down!" which was interpreted to mean into the ground and not into a building.

Your assumption that they spoke in Arabic when saying this is just that, another assumption. So while this is interesting and I'll be adding it to my timeline, I think you're making too many assumptions.

[spooked911]

2. While your caveats are well taken, this is still a very odd thing

for the hijackers to say.

"We have some planes" could be seen as some sort of brag. But why would the hijackers talk about crashing the plane into the ground when they clearly would prefer to hit a major target?

Twice on flight 93 (and once or twice with flight 11), the hijacker pilot made an announcement meant for the passengers but put it over the radio. There is every reason to think that if the hijacker pilot made an announcement about crashing the plane into ground to the passengers that he would be (also?) transmitting it over the radio so the ATC could hear-- as they heard the other announcements.

Moreover, Burnett says the hijackers are "talking about crashing the plane into the ground" as if he overheard a conversation. It seems to me if the hijacker pilot really made an announcement over the PA to that effect:
a) Burnett would say "the hijackers made an announcement" that they were going to crash the plane into the ground.
b) more passengers would have heard it and said something in their phone calls about it

Finally, it doesn't make sense that the hijackers would announce this. Why would they? They are already threatening the passengers with a bomb?

Personally, the real speculation here is if Burnett was "improvising" this part of the hijacking or if this was written into his script.

Interestingly, from the passengers' phone calls, there are four possibilities for what might happen with flight 93:
1) the hijackers crash the plane into the building
2) the hijackers crash the plane into the ground
3) the hijackers blow up the plane with their bomb
4) the plane was shot down (the Ed Felt call)

I can sort of imagine the 9/11 planners planting all these memes into the plot line, which will give them flexibility for what to do and also create confusion for people like us trying to sort out what happened. How they would get these people to make these phone calls is a really interesting but important question.

[spooked911]

3. By the way-- how could the hijackers fly a 757 but not know how to operate

the fucking PA system?

Doesn't this just seems really unbelieveble in itself?????????

[John Doe II]

4. Too many assumptions

There are logically only two explanations for whar Burnett is saying:

Either there are at least two alleged hijackers and discussing crashing the plane into the ground.
Contradicted: No more than one alleged hijacker is with the passengers at that moment. How could Burnett understand Arab? Why did the alleged hijackers discuss something that really can't have been on their minds, nor their mission?

Or it was said by PA:
First of all it's good to know that finally after failing on AA 11 and UA 93 several times the alleged hijackers manage to use this system and not to be heard by the tower. But ten minutes before Jarrah is supposed to have told the passengers that they are going back to the airport. Why would he say that they're crashing the plane into the ground? While telling passengers that they're going back to the airport calms them certainly telling them that they die soon does the contrary and makes absolutely no sense from the point of view of the hijackers. Your example of "we're having planes" is by far not as clear and error as this. If you want a passenger's revolt then you breally should say something like this especially if you're still more than 30 minutes away from your target. And why, Why does not a single other passenger mention that they will be crashed into the ground if it was told via PA? On te contrary Beamer believes at that point that the hijackers would ask money. And last but not least (even if English is not my mother tongue) I don't think Burnett would use the word "talking about".

For me both explanations are very very hard to believe.

You write that the hijackers might have said "this plane is going down" and Burnett interpreted. This doesn't change the problem. Again: Why is he the only one and also

[paulthompson]

6. Again...

...you're making assumptions. You're assuming two options only. In fact, there are others. Another very logical one would be that a hijacker is standing near the passengers and talk to them in English. We know they did this, for instance even allowing them to make phone calls (a strange thing in and of itself, by the way).

Furthermore, why assume that hijackers would only speak to each other in Arabic? I thought that the cockpit recording from Flight 93 shows a mix. Sometimes the hijackers are talking to each other in English, sometimes in Arabic.

So many assumptions. And I'm not even going to talk about your complaint that Burnett wouldn't use the phrase "talking about", which is just silly.

Yes, this is a curious thing. But don't draw conclusions that are based on assumptions.

[John Doe II]

8. Simple question

You don't answer the basic questions.

Why does no other passenger mention this threat?
Jeremy Glick is already on the phone and he doesn't mention it at all although he gives us many information as possible to what's going on on the plane. Nor Todd Beamer who phoned Liza Jefferson at 9:45. he even asks her if the hijackers want money?
When Burnett phoned they were most likely left alone. No surveilling hijacker.

"About midway through the tape, one of the hijackers said to another “Let the guys in now,” apparently referring to other terrorists entering the cockpit."
(Among the Heroes, p. 291)

Moreover in no plan the passengers take into consideration that they have to fight a hijacker before getting to the cockpit door.

So, why does not Burnett tell other passengers at once that they have to attack right away. If the hijackers want to crash the plane into the ground then the passengers really can't loose a second.

And why why would the hijackers talk about it? It was a last minute decision. If you leave the passengers alone then it is really the best tactic to arouse a counterattack by telling them you'd crash the plane into the ground.

[RedSock]

9. Why does no other passenger mention this threat?

Why does no other passenger mention this threat?

********

We have no idea. Maybe some of them did, but without a complete transcript of every single phone conversation, we'll never know for sure.

All we can go on is what has been published in various articles.

We have no idea of the complete content of ANY of the calls.

[John Doe II]

12. We do have

very detailed presentations (which could be considered as transcripts but of course they aren't official) of Jeremy Glick's call (starting at 9:37) and Todd Beamer's call (starting at 9:45). We have numerous quotes of other phone calls. No mention of "crashing into the grounds". As I said Todd Beamer first starts asking Liza Jefferson if the hijackers wants to have money.... Doesn't really sound if he would know what Burnett is supposed to know. Same goes for Glick.

[paulthompson]

14. Exactly

I have said this before to you and I'll say it again (though I hate to quote Rumsfeld): absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

And keep in mind that the info we are given is often censored. Note how some revelations from these phone calls show up only years later, like with the Amy Sweeney call. Note how when the New York Times released transcripts of the flight cockpit recordings, some details mentioned in other articles didn't show up, and the entire Flight 93 recording wasn't included at all, just the other three flights. There's a lot of censoring going on. I'm sure a lot of relatives were told to be quiet about things too, and in fact we find that sometimes. For instance, one or two relatives who refuse to state what they heard the last few minutes of the calls, near the end of the flight.

We're given a very, very partial view only, and what we know is probably distorted and garbled too, both intentionally (cover up) and unintentionally (by bad reporting or whatever). Look at the nearly completely contrasting versions of the cockpit struggle according to the 9/11 Commission compared to relatives who heard the tape, for instance.

[John Doe II]

19. Evidence

Of course it is possible that the recordings of other phone calls are censored. But why did Longman report that Burnett mentioned the hijackers talking about crashing the plane into the ground yet for other calls this information was censored?

But I wouldn’t agree that all evidence is absent.
We have the information that Todd Beamer calling Liza Jefferson at 9:45 asks her if the hijackers want money. How is this question explainable if he knew of the hijacker’s plan to crash the plane into the ground? And if he wasn’t aware how come he wasn’t aware and didn’t hear of this information until he left the phone at 9:58?
While the description of Beamer’s call seems to be in sharp contrast to Burnett mentioning the plane to crash the plane into the ground Jeremy Glick’s call doesn’t offer a clear contradiction but still his calm passing of information to the emergency dispatcher who listened into his call is very strange. If he is aware that the alleged hijackers plan to crash the plane into the ground decision making is extremely urgent because the hijackers could go for their plane at every moment. But in no call and in no behaviour we do see this urgency.Why is there no urgency in decision making in any call after 9:45?
Moreover: As I pointed out in my last post everything indicates that at this moment the passengers were left alone. Even if Burnett would be the only one to know about the plan of the hijackers (which already I find hard to believe) why is there no decision taken much earlier to attack?

P.S. Comparing waht the Commission and the family members heard on the CVR. Keep in mind that also officials said beforehand that nothing could be heard on the CVR that tells what happened at the end and Newsweek obtained a transcript and didn't mention the decision of the hijackers neither. And it is hard to understand how family members could have failed to hear the decision which was discussed twice. The text was projected on a screen and the Arab text was translated and the translation shown as well. So how can it be possible that all and not only the family members failed to hear what the Commission claims to have taken place?

P.P.S. In view of censor and media. I'd be very intersted to hear what you think about the two articles that deal with Sandra Felt listening to Ed Felts's call. See the thread on him.

[spooked911]

21. Good points, John Doe II

Certainly Beamer wouldn't have asked Lisa Jeferson what the hijackers wanted if they had broadcast their intentions to crash the plane on the gorund over the PA system.

And why the lack of urgency in the passenger revolt?

I found something else interesting in Burnett's calls-- he said they were going to try to take control of the plane over a rural area. (!)

Now that is some planning, huh? Like they could time the takeover so perfectly? Granted, they were flying over mostly rural area, but why would he bother to say this then?

[Woody Box]

7. assumptions

I think it's very reasonable to "assume" that this sentence was not meant for the passengers or air controllers (what for? as a threat?). Otherwise, you would expect similar statements from the other passengers (phone calls), but there is none.

After reading Longman's "Among the heroes", it was absolutely clear to me that the UA 93 passenger revolt story is a big hoax to fake a hijacking and to mobilize American patriotism, and I really don't understand why you, Paul, take this stuff so serious.

Here are a few points:

Then not-mentioning of pilot Donald Greene, a big, big hope; instead, general fatalism among the passengers;

Jeremy Glick wants to hear details of the South Tower crash from his wife while the passengers' attack was already going on for two minutes;

The conflicting reports that the passengers were told to remain sitting (Beamer) or that they were driven to the rear (all others);

Elizabeth Wainio witnessed the begin of the revolt, but there was no background noise in the phone call (as opposed to CeeCee Lyles' call);

"Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham";

And, of course, the alleged but physically impossible cell phone calls;

And this list is not complete.

[spooked911]

10. Excellent summary! I'm working on a similar compilation.

We should try to make a really complete list of the contradictions in the flight 93 calls.

[paulthompson]

13. Phone calls

I try to look at these issues without preconceptions. Bush Administration officials have such a long record of lying that I don't trust anything from them further than I can throw them. But I've met some 9/11 victims' relatives, and I find them very believable. If they said they spoke to their loved ones, I would tend to believe it.

Things that other people find very suspicious I don't find suspicious at all, like the "Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham." I don't know about you, but I've done that kind of thing many times. (For instance, I used to work at Domino's Pizza where we had to answer the phone a lot. Even when I got home, I'd answer the phone as Domino's Pizza and not my own name.)

I do think that some of these calls and other details of the flight 93 flight are being manipulated however, for instance the suppression of mentions and details of Ed Felt's call, the entirely dubious Barbara Olson calls, or the manipulation to push the crash time to 10:03 instead of 10:06. That last one would explain the Jeremy Glick South Tower mention - the revolt happened three minutes later than the gvmt says it did.

As for the calls not happening at all, that seems suspicious, but I haven't made my mind up about that. There's one guy, John Doe II would know the article I'm talking about, who apparently saw the flight many minutes before the crash flying only a few thousand feet up. So it's possible, but I'll admit, fishy. Here's the entry I have on that:

September 13, 2001: “Series of Circumstances” Said to Make Hijacked Passenger Cell Phone Calls Possible
It is reported that the many phone calls made by passengers from the hijacked flights are normally technically impossible to make. A major cell phone carrier spokeswoman claims, “Those were a series of circumstances that made those calls go through, which would not be repeated under normal circumstances.” Supposedly, the calls worked because they were made when the planes were close to the ground and they were kept short. (WIRED, 9/13/01) However, many of the cell phone calls were made from high cruising altitudes and lasted ten minutes or more. The New York Times later reports, “According to industry experts, it is possible to use cell phones with varying success during the ascent and descent of commercial airline flights, although the difficulty of maintaining a signal appears to increase as planes gain altitude. Some older phones, which have stronger transmitters and operate on analog networks, can be used at a maximum altitude of ten miles, while phones on newer digital systems can work at altitudes of five to six miles. A typical airline cruising altitude would be 35,000 feet, or about 6.6 miles.” (SLATE, 9/14/01) Yet a spokesperson for the AT&T phone company notes that cell phone networks are not designed for calls from high altitudes. She suggests that “it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations.” (WIRELESS REVIEW, 11/1/01)

I also idly wonder if maybe the entire point of Flight 93 was so those calls could happen, for propaganda purposes. It's extremely odd that the hijackers were nice enough to allow the passengers to make calls at all. Certainly they must have considered the possibility that people would have figured out what was happening on the ground by then.

[spooked911]

16. There is also the issue of plane speed. Here is an article

that says that someone in a plane going 600 mph can not get a good cell phone signal because of the nature of how the cell phone signal is received:

"The cell phone calls from the aircraft could not have happened. I am a National Security Agency trained Electronic Warfare specialist, and am qualified to say this. My official title: MOS33Q10, Electronic Warfare Intercept Strategic Signal Processing/Storage Systems Specialist, a highly skilled MOS which requires advanced knowledge of many communications methods and circuits to the most minute level. I am officially qualified to place severe doubt that ordinary cell phone calls were ever made from the aircraft.

It was impossible for that to have happened, especially in a rural area for a number of reasons.

When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is that your cell phone needs to contact a transponder. Your cell phone has a max transmit power of five watts, three watts is actually the norm. If an aircraft is going five hundred miles an hour, your cell phone will not be able to 1. Contact a tower, 2. Tell the tower who you are, and who your provider is, 3. Tell the tower what mode it wants to communicate with, and 4. Establish that it is in a roaming area before it passes out of a five watt range. This procedure, called an electronic handshake, takes approximately 45 seconds for a cell phone to complete upon initial power up in a roaming area because neither the cell phone or cell transponder knows where that phone is and what mode it uses when it is turned on. At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone's five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. Though it is sometimes possible to connect during takeoff and landing, under the situation that was claimed the calls were impossible. The calls from the airplane were faked, no if's or buts."

http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1591

Personally, I tend to think the cell phone calls were made by the actual passengers, but they were perhaps in a plane on the ground, doing a "terror exercise". Or they weren't cell phone calls at all, but more feasible airphone calls and the government has put out the idea that these were cell phone calls as disinfo or as a red herring.

[RedSock]

17. answering the phone

*****
Things that other people find very suspicious I don't find suspicious at all, like the "Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham." I don't know about you, but I've done that kind of thing many times.
*****

I've never been that close to death -- who knows what the F I would say? ... I was estranged from my mother for many years and when I did speak to her I would say, "It's ___, your son." Only because I was assuming that after 4 years or so, she might not recognize my voice right away.

*****
(For instance, I used to work at Domino's Pizza where we had to answer the phone a lot. Even when I got home, I'd answer the phone as Domino's Pizza and not my own name.)
*****

I work 12 hour days on the weekends and answer the phone WAY more than I like. I stay away from the phone at home during the week, but I have many times gone to our apartment intercom and I have to really force myself to not answer it like I answer the phone at work. ... Glad to hear I'm not the only one!!

[spooked911]

18. The thing about the Bingham call is that he wasn't suddenly answering the

phone, and using a reflex answer. He was CALLING HIS MOM-- he called her, so it is different I think.

Still, I think it probably was him. One possibility is that he had a script to call someone else and say he was Mark Bingham, but instead called his mom and used the same line.

[stickdog]

5. "They're talking about crashing this plane into the ground."

LOL. Typically bad Republican screenwriting.

[spooked911]

11. Indeed!

[philb]

15. Physics911 site has experiment that says that these calls couldn't happen

http://www.physics911.org
Does anyone have opinion about the findings on the Physics site?

[dbeach]

20. Ted Olson husband od barbara is repuke star...

from way back and was student of Scalia..who argued the fraud bush into the WH in 11/00 to 12/00 ..

There is no actual record that Barbara called him on 9/11 ONLY his word..
SERIOUSLY would you believe a guy like teddy olson after the way he usurped this first election through the SC???


I offer this only as someones theory not as facts from above..

http://www.911dossier.co.uk/hj10.html

"The little white lie was about Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator for CNN and wife of US Solicitor General Ted Olson. Now deceased, Mrs Olson is alleged to have twice called her husband from an American Airlines Flight 77 seat-telephone, before the aircraft slammed into the Pentagon. This unsubstantiated claim, reported by CNN remarkably quickly at 2.06 am EDT <0606 GMT> on September 12, was the solitary foundation on which the spurious "Hijacker" story was built.

Without the "eminent" Barbara Olson and her alleged emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof that humans played a role in the hijack and destruction of the four aircraft that day. Lookalike claims surfaced several days later on September 16 about passenger Todd Beamer and others, but it is critically important to remember here that the Barbara Olson story was the only one on September 11 and. 12. It was beyond question the artificial "seed" that started the media snowball rolling down the hill."

[spooked911]

22. Some other strange things about Burnett's account

First, towards the end, he said they were going to try to take control of the plane over a rural area. (!)

Second, Tom Burnett's wife said he seemed to be walking around (Longman, page 111). Why would the hijackers let him walk around? According to Beamer, one hijacker was guarding the passengers. Why did this hijacker let so many people make phone calls?

Third, Burnett, although he was in first class, where all the hiajckers were, is unsure about whether they really have a bomb (unlike the Glick and Beamer). Burnett hasn't seen a bomb-- he thinks the hijackers are just making it up. Why isn't Burnett seeing the bomb the others see?

Fourth, Burnett is positive the hijackers have a gun, though Jeremy Glick says definitely they had no guns. For some reason Glick's account is taken as golden.

Finally, Burnett was using a cell phone the first time he called (when the plane would have been at maximum altitude), and thus this call may have been made somewhere besides in the plane in the air. His second call at 9:34am was apparently made by AirPhone. His third call at 9:45 was made by cell phone, and that one is supect. Longman doesn't say if the fourth call was cell phone or AirPhone.

Again, Burnett was supposedly in first class, and should have seen all of the hijacking action. But we don't have any details from him about how many hijackers there were or how they got in the cockpit.


So, there are some strange contradictions with Burnett.

[John Doe II]

23. Good points!

Moreover if I'm not mistaken since the turn before Cleveland they only flew close to Pittsburgh but otherwise basically rural area already.

[spooked911]

25. Yes, it's kind of a funny thing to say since when you're flying most of

the time you're in a rural area.

[stickdog]

24. one of them has a gun

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21/MN190309.DTL

On a wind-whipped hill, Deena Burnett gazed across the fields to the mound of brown earth marking the spot where her husband, Tom, and 43 others died on Sept. 11 in the crash of hijacked United Flight 93.

As the months passed, Burnett exuded the stoic, almost serene presence of a woman who now had a mission -- to wrest something worthwhile out of the plane's wreckage strewn over the Pennsylvania countryside.

It had all begun on the morning of Sept. 11, when her husband called her four times on his cell phone from aboard the hijacked Newark-to-San Francisco flight. She scribbled down notes and later made a transcript that she always carries with her.

Deena: Where are you? Are you in the air?

Tom: Yes, yes, just listen. Our airplane has been hijacked. It's United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco. We are in the air. The hijackers have already knifed a guy, one of them has a gun, and they are telling us there is a bomb on board. Please call the authorities.

-- 6:27 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001, from Burnett's transcript of her husband's first cell phone call to her that day

[seatnineb]

26. Another interesting thing with Deena.....

This was taken from a TV documentary that reconstructed the events of Flight 93:It was shown here in the UK in 2002......

Deena Burnett was interviewed and this is what she said....

"The last phone call came(from Tom Burnett) at 5 or 6 minutes before the top of the hour....."
"He was very quiet ...very solemn......."
"I could NOT HEAR ANYTHING IN THE BACKGROUND"
"It sounded like a routine flight..."
"All I could hear was the engines of the plane....."

Were all the 20/30 odd passengers that were huddled at the back of the plane so quite at this point that Deena could not hear anything?

[spooked911]

27. The accounts vary on whether the passengers were all in the back

Todd Beamer even claimed that 27 of the passengers were in first class, and just nine passngers plus the flight attendants were in the back.

The silnce is odd though, since other call around that time have a lot of background noise.

[Me.]

28. This May Be A Dumb Question

and I may have missed the answer somewhere in the thread, but why were "At 9:45 Burnett phoned his wife Deena a third time.
Two FBI agents are listening in. The call is recorded.
An excerpt from the transcript:"? How did they know they should be listening to that phone and already and have the taps in place?

[John Doe II]

29. It was Burnett's third phone call

Deena had already contacted the FBI before.That's why they were listening in and recording the third call.

[John Doe II]

30. Since around 9:45 not under control anymore

Jere Longman writes:

"about midway through the tape, one of the hijackers said to another, "Let the guys in now," apparently referring to other terrorists entering the cockpit". (Among the Heroes, p. 291)

That means that since around 9:45 the passengers are all left to themselves. Why, why, why, why, does Burnett (even if miraclelously he was the only one to have heard of the hijacker's famous plane to crash the plane into the ground) why didn't he tell ANYBODY else?