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"Let's Roll" Our Eyeballs!
UK Terror Case Tops "Fatty Bin Laden" on Absurd-o-meter

by Kevin Barrett, http://mujca.com

Even CIA disinfo rag The Nation magazine--home of David Corn, the notorious 9/11 truth denier and fawning biographer of CIA drug mob honcho and prime JFK suspect Ted Shackley--can't quite believe that another 19 magical Muslims were going to somehow sneak onto transatlantic jetliners with no passports, no tickets, no bombs, no chemicals, nada--and somehow, for some reason, blow themselves and their fellow passengers to kingdom come...perhaps by squeezing a little bit of toothpaste into their shampoo, shaking the mixture violently, and screaming "Allahu akbar!"

Prediction: If the American sheeple accept this one, the next "terror plot" will involve Muslims with exploding genitalia, and all passengers will undergo strip-searches at the security gate. Security personnel will be trained to leer and point at naked crotches, force passengers into Abu Ghaib style naked human pyramids, and otherwise demonstrate the passengers' mindless submission to equally mindless authority.

And that, of course, is what all this is really about. Even if there WERE any Muslim knuckleheads stupid enough to think attacks on airline passengers would help their cause, yet smart enough to pull off successful plane downings (and there obviously are not) the number of deaths they could conceivably cause, in the absolute worst case analysis, would be a minuscule fraction of a few weeks' traffic fatalities. So please tell the morons and the sheeple you know that EVEN IF THERE WERE NO AIRLINE SECURITY WHATSOEVER, THE RISK YOU WOULD BE TAKING BY DRIVING TO AND FROM THE AIRPORT WOULD BE FAR GREATER THAN THE RISK YOU WOULD BE TAKING BY GETTING ON A PLANE WITHOUT PASSING THROUGH ANY KIND OF SECURITY AT ALL. If you're too stupid to figure that out, or too paralyzed by the fantasy fears you've been brainwashed into feeling, you are a pathetic excuse for a human being.

And speaking of "let's roll," anyone who's still stupid enough to believe the "let's roll" Hollywood-style legend about Flight 933 and its "heroic passengers" needs to be slapped upside the head and forced to read Rowland Morgan's conclusive debunking--scroll down for the short version.

So "let's roll"...on the floor laughing. And then let's storm the pilot's cabin of this insane fascist airliner we're stuck on, overpower the psychotic Captain Cheney and his whole sick neocon crew, and land the plane safely back at the airport of constitutional democracy.

--Kevin Barrett, 8/24/06

* * *

August 16, 2006
The Nation

The UK Terror Plot: Could This Case Blow Up?
[note: the "bombs" sure couldn't!  scroll down to next story. --KB]
by James K. Galbraith

Let's see... It's August. Bush is in Crawford on a "working vacation." His polls are in the tank. Congress is in revolt. The economy is going soft. The next elections don't look good. Cheney is off in Wyoming, or wherever he goes. It's 2001. No, it's 2006.

In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx reports that "Hegel writes somewhere" that the great events of history tend to occur twice, first as tragedy and then as farce.

On September 11, nineteen hijackers commandeered four airplanes and succeeded in killing some 3,000 people. On August 10, we are told, British authorities upended a suicide-murder plot aimed at destroying twelve airplanes, killing everyone on board including the bombers, possibly with more fatalities than on 9/11. As a senior British police official put it, "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

From all official statements so far, we are led to believe that August 10 was a highly developed, far-advanced conspiracy, under surveillance for some time, which could have been put into action within just a few days. And perhaps 8/10 really was the biggest thing since 9/11. But then again, perhaps it wasn't. We don't know yet. And it's not too early to ask the questions on which final judgment must depend.

Well, then. Here is a checklist of some things we should shortly be hearing about. Bombs. Chemicals. Detonators. Labs. A testing ground. Airline tickets. Passports. Witnesses. Suspicious neighbors. Suspicious parents. Suspicious friends. Threats. Confessions. Let me spell this out: By definition, you cannot bomb an aircraft unless you have a bomb. In this case, we are told that there were no bombs; rather, the conspirators planned to bring on board the makings of a bomb: chemicals and a detonator. These would be mixed on board.

Exactly what the chemicals were remains unclear. Nitroglycerin has been suggested, but it's too likely to go off on the way to the airport. TATP, made of acetone and peroxide, has been suggested, but there are two problems. One is that the peroxide required is highly concentrated--it's not the 3 percent solution from the drugstore. The other is that acetone is highly volatile. As anyone who flies knows, you can't open a bottle of nail polish remover on an airplane without everyone within twenty feet knowing at once. It's possible to imagine one truly dedicated and competent bomber pulling this off. But it is impossible to imagine twenty-four untrained people between the ages of 17 and 35 all getting away with the same trick at once.

So, there must have been training. That means there must be a lab, or labs. There must have been trial bombs. There must be various bits and pieces of equipment used to mix the chemicals and set them off. There must be a manual. There must be a testing ground. And each one of the young men under arrest must have been to these places. Interestingly, it must have all happened, too, without a serious accident, injury or death among the conspirators. If so, they are a lot more competent than the Weather Underground ever was, in my day.

Arrests were made at night, catching the culprits at home. Houses have been raided, and are being searched. So far as we know at this point, no bombs have been found. No chemicals. No equipment. No labs. No testing ground. Maybe this will come out later, but it hasn't so far, even though the authorities seem anxious to tell just about everything they know.

Now, in order to get on an airplane, even the most devout suicide terrorist needs a ticket, and these generally must be purchased with money. Apparently, not one ticket had been purchased by the detainees. One little-known feature of airline security (in the United States, anyway) is that people traveling on one-way tickets bought at the last minute get special scrutiny at the gate. Those tickets are also (a lot) more expensive. If you want to pass unnoticed, you will buy your ticket round-trip, in advance, and also save money like everyone else. Actually, if you didn't know this already, you're not fit to be let out of the house.

Further, to get on an international flight from Britain to the United States, in these days of the modern nation-state, you need something else. It's a document called a passport. Apparently, some of the detainees don't have them. Someone lacking a passport can, I think, safely be excluded from the ranks of potential suicide bombers of UK-to-US flights. They could, of course, have a counterfeit or be operating in a support role--but so far we are not being told of any counterfeit documents or any support operation. And to pass security you would use a different person to carry each chemical you needed. For twelve flights, that's twenty-four people.

As for the suspicious parents, friends and neighbors--it's technically possible that the bombers' security was so excellent that none existed. It's just that, in dealing with young people swept up in a fervor of religious hatred, the odds are extremely low. Of all the Islamic groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon is the only one that maintains effective military security, which it does by isolating its fighters as completely as possible from the civilian population. But these young men were picked up at home; they were well-known and yet apparently suspected by no one at all.

As to threats: A joke going around the Manchester Airport on August 10 was that at least the IRA would remember to call. What's the point of a suicide bombing if no one knows what it's for? The downing of twelve airplanes would be horrific to those on them (including me, as it happened), but it wouldn't put a dent in Western capitalism. It would have to be part of a much larger, ongoing, unstoppable campaign. Otherwise, why bother? A once-off attack shows the weakness, not the capacity, of the plotters, and in the end it strengthens not them but the governments they attack. After 9/11, terrorists should know this.

Finally, confessions. Twenty-four suspects have been arrested, according to some reports. Nineteen have been named. Happily, the detainees were taken alive. Unlike the man arrested in Pakistan, we may presume (I trust) that they are not being tortured. Therefore, they will have a chance to make an uncoerced statement of their intentions in open court. By then the authorities will have found the labs, testing grounds, airline tickets and passports. Credible witnesses too will have emerged. By then the young zealots will have no expectation of acquittal or mercy, and nothing to lose. We may therefore confidently expect them to face the judges and declare exactly what their motives and intentions were. If they do that, I'll eat my hat.

In short: Could this case blow up? Could it turn out to have been an overreaction, a mistake--or even a hoax? Yes, it could, and it wouldn't be the first one, either. I'm not saying it will, necessarily. I'm not accusing the British authorities of bad faith. I'm not suggesting the plot was faked--at least, not by them. But dodgy informants and jumpy politicians are an explosive mixture, easily detonated under pressure. Everyone knows that.

* * *

Liquid Bombers Prove: 'They Hate Our Freedoms!'

By Edgar J. Steele

http://www.rense.com/general73/liq.htm
8-19-6


Muslims were planning to blow up a bunch of jetliners enroute from London to America - or so say George Bush and Tony Blair.
 
Muslims without tickets.
 
Muslims without passports.
 
Muslims without bombs.
 
Muslims without a clue ... and they aren't the only ones, it turns out.  Without a clue, that is.
 
What kind of bombs?  TATP bombs, short for triacetone triperoxide.  What's more, Bush and Blair told us that Muslims favor the TATP bomb, mixed on the spot with separate liquids.  With that lie, both Bush and Blair foreclosed any possibility that the Muslims involved actually were guilty.  With that lie, both Bush and Blair disclosed themselves for the treasonous, lying criminals that they are.  Why?  Glad you asked.
 
To Build the Impossible Bomb
 
You see ... it can't be done.  It quite simply cannot be done.  Not in any airplane toilet.  Not with any resources that might be available aboard any airplane other than Tom Swift's Flying Lab.  Not with the time afforded by a Trans-Atlantic flight.  And certainly - not by anybody without chemistry lab training and experience - not under the circumstances claimed, anyway.
 
If Muslims favor TATP bombs - and there is evidence to support the claim that Muslims use TATP bombs - then Muslims who might do so know full well the limitations and hazards inherent to such an explosive.  No Muslim in his right mind would attempt what has been claimed, because he would know it can't be done - and, believe me, doing it under any circumstances would require a Muslim in his right mind.  At best, the guy simply would kill himself, and do little damage to the plane's toilet.  Regardless, nobody would be allowed the opportunity to spend hours in the toilet ... not aboard a jetliner.  In a moment, I will prove to you why TATP simply cannot be made aboard jetliners, but first, please be really clear about the significance of that fact:  that it conclusively proves Bush and Blair to be lying weasels.  Not just dumb.  Not just stupid.  Lying, treasonous, unforgivable, murdering bastards.
 
TATP or Not TATP? - That is the Question
 
A friend with a doctorate in chemistry sent me the following: 
 
    "According to the official government story, TATP (triacetone triperoxide) was the explosive these conspirators were planning to manufacture aboard the airliners.
 
    "This story is not plausible for a number of reasons, but let's take a quick look at just enough of the science so as not to provide anybody with a guide to making an actual bomb:  TATP is made from hydrogen peroxide solution, acetone and sulfuric acid.  The reaction can be carried out with just about any concentration, but is best done with concentrated solutions of both peroxide and acetone. 
 
    "The peroxide and acetone can be pre-mixed, but the acid must be added, a drop at a time, to the solution, all the while continuously stirring it and keeping it continuously chilled.   This step of the process will take several hours, during which the fumes given off will be substantial and quite overpowering, thus a lab-quality air evacuation system is required.  (ES:  right here, the whole idea of a TATP bomb becomes ludicrous.  Difficult in a lab, but impossible in an airplane due to the environment - the toilet - and the time requirement.)
 
    "One then must let the resulting solution stand for an extended period at temperatures above the freezing point, but definitely below 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit).  Above 10 Celsius, the TATP does not form; instead, diperoxide forms, which is so unstable it cannot be worked with.  The time required for the reaction to go to completion is at least 24 hours and often several days. 
 
    "Once the TATP forms, it crystallizes as snowflakes from the solution and must be harvested by filtration and the liquid discarded.  The TATP then is dried and carefully stored until needed.  It must be stored below 10 Celsius or it converts spontaneously to the unstable diperoxide.
 
    "There is neither the time, the workspace nor the other materials required to make TATP on an airliner.  The time required, the temperatures required, the workspace required and the need to dry the chemical prior to use preclude this story being reasonable.  This chemical process is much more sensitive than making, for example, nitroglycerin."
 
The technically proficient reading this will recognize that a necessary step has been omitted and some others have been altered in critical ways.  None of these purposeful camouflages alter the ingredients or the time, care and equipment required.  Nor will I describe how TATP can be fabricated beforehand and then detonated aboard an airliner in flight.  After all, though we want to demonstrate the impossibility of what has been claimed, we don't want anybody actually trying this at home - and there really are some genuine whack jobs out there.  After all, we elect some of them to public office.
 
An excellent (and humorous) on-line discussion by British writer Thomas Greene, also as to why TATP simply cannot be made aboard a plane: "Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?"   Mr. Greene agrees with my friend, the PhD in chemistry, and concludes his description of the process of creating TATP with:  "So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question."
 
    So it's impossible to make TATP as claimed, yet still they confiscate liquids from us, including sodas and baby formula, not to mention toothpaste and, even, lipsticks?  Even if possible to make TATP as claimed, the individual smells of  peroxide, acetone and sulfuric acid are obvious enough to preclude people having to be shaken down and terrorized by the airport Gestapo in this fashion.  You have to wonder:  Just exactly what is going on?
 
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
 
Incidentally, British officials often claim that the "London 7/7" train/bus bombings, without any proof whatsoever, were done by Muslims with TATP in their backpacks.  Those explosions, per eyewitnesses, came from beneath the floors, where the explosive had to have been placed earlier, then detonated either remotely or via timer.  And Blair fed Bush some of the lies he has been caught out in by so many.  Need any more proof that Blair is a liar, as well?
 
Did you know that, with a huge and increasingly restless Muslim population in England, only 12% of all British Muslims arrested on terror charges ever end up being charged with a crime, while only 2% get convicted, almost always of something minor and never of anything related to terrorism?  You heard about the arrests, though, didn't you?  Why the difference?  Because the war on terror quite simply is a war on us, not on Muslims. 
 
In the government's eyes, we are the terrorists.  In the memorable words of my buddy, Al:  "The Patriot Act - so named because it was designed to find and eliminate Patriots before they expose how corrupt our government has become."  Why does government fear us so?  What does it know that we do not?  In other words, exactly what is it that our government officials intend to do to us, such that they feel the need to create a police state so as to protect themselves from us? 
 
They Hate Our Freedoms
 
Don't forget:  They hate our freedoms.  Bush, Blair and the others, that is.  Not the Muslims.  However, the Muslims are getting downright pissed about our wading into their countries, either directly or via Israel, then killing and maiming everybody in sight and destroying their villages, roads and cities.  The Muslims now have every reason to hate us.  Honestly - do you really blame them?
 
One week after 9/11, in a televised speech to Congress, Bush laid down the mantra - his justification for eternal war:  "Americans are asking, why do they hate us? ... They hate our freedoms..."
 
I nearly puked when I first heard Bush say it.  I cannot tell you the response it now provokes, else they would come and take me away, for sure.
 
Bush has run out of the sort of lies that "fool all of the people some of the time."  Now he is left only with fooling "some of the people all of the time."  Regrettably, those people, who believe anything told them by CNN and Fox News, are beyond our reach because, as comedian Ron White likes to say:  "You can't fix stupid!"  There is a segment of both America and Britain that quite simply will roll along, believing anything that Bush, Blair and their controlled media have to say. 
 
However, now you and I know better, don't we?  In fact, most of us no longer believe anything that Bush and Blair tell us.  What's more, we now know better than to believe anything Bush and Blair ever did tell us.
 
Yes, it has become more than clear why there is so much killing all around the world these days.  They hate our freedoms.  There's only one problem:  "They" are you, Mr. Bush ... you and the other members of the blood-thirsty and oil-hungry Zionist regime running America, Britain, Israel and most of the rest of the Western World these days. 
 
You clearly have demonstrated, Mr. Bush, with your appointment of Zionists and incompetent sycophants (all too often, one and the same) into every crack, crevice and cubby of your administration, with your stacking of the courts, with your abandonment of the rule of law, with your purging of the military officer corps, with your shocking misuse of our military enlisted personnel and with your treasonous disdain for the Constitution ... that it is you who hates our freedoms!  You sort of told us the truth back in 2001.  What you neglected to mention was that you meant your entire administration and the criminal cabal for which you are but a belly-crawling, lickspittle lackey. 
 
You first proved just whom you meant hated our freedoms with your abysmally-misnamed Patriot Act.  With the increasing revelations of your involvement in 9/11, still more of us awakened.  Torture.  Murder.  Illegal spying on us.  Now, with event after event, lie after lie, there is a huge number of Americans wise to your lying.  And our number grows every day. 
 
To Dream the Impossible Dream
 
Meanwhile, your days are numbered, Mr. Bush.  First, we're going to replace every single Congressman, Republican and Democrat alike, who voted you the right to conduct war in our name without a formal declaration - every single Congressman who voted support for Israel's campaign of genocide against innocent civilians in the Middle East.  Lieberman was just the first.  Then we're going to impeach and convict you, then remove you from office, for the highest crimes ever committed against America by a sitting President.  Then, Mr. Bush, you will be handed over to an appropriate tribunal to be tried for your war crimes.  Finally, Mr. President, it will be our singular honor and pleasure to witness your being hanged by the neck until you are dead, as judges like to say, for your unspeakable crimes against humanity, both at home and abroad.
 

#########################################################
"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country."  -- Mark Twain

* * *

from Flight 93: What Really Happened On The Heroic 9/11 ‘Let’s Roll’ Flight by Rowland Morgan

Conspiracy theory?

Flight 93 'was shot down' claims book

by ROWLAND MORGAN 19th August 2006

The heart-thumping moment came when when passengers on board one of the hijacked 9/11 jets fought back against the ruthless fanatics hellbent on crashing the plane into the heart of America.

Jumping out of their seats to a rallying cry of ‘Let’s roll!’, they charged towards the front of the Boeing 757 and began smashing down the cockpit door to reach the hijackers at the controls.

Amid the desperate commotion, the plane rolled violently from right to left and pitched up and down as the rogue pilots tried to throw the passengers beyond the door off balance. As the struggle continued, the cockpit voice recorder captured the hijackers urgently discussing
whether to ditch the plane. ‘Is that it? Shall we finish it off?’ asked one of the fanatics.

‘No, not yet. When they all come, we finish it off,’ was the reply. Minutes later, at10.03am, with the same voices shouting in Arabic, ‘Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest,’ the plane headed down, banked hard right and rolled on to its back. It smashed into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at its top speed of 580mph and exploded into a massive fireball.

*Evidence suggests a sinister twist*

The flames set nearby woods on fire as the impact sprayed body parts and other debris into the trees and up into the sky, to float to earth as far as eight miles away.

This, then, is the legend of United Airways Flight 93, one that has been vigorously promoted in a stream of books and films, most recently in the £9.6 million Hollywood movie United 93. It is the story of how 33 innocent passengers and seven crew gave their lives to save countless
others as their plane flew kamikaze-style towards the White House or the Capitol in Washington.

To a nation still reeling from the attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that same September morning, these were men and women every bit as heroic as those who had fought at the Alamo.

Yet my own exhaustive investigations have led me to conclude that the story of Flight 93 is far from being the straightforward account of supreme courage that the authorities would have us believe.

Instead, the real story is mired in cynical manipulation and warmongering propaganda. I am convinced there is evidence to suggest a wholly sinister twist to the tale that already holds pride of place in American folklore. For I believe that Flight 93 may well have been deliberately shot down as a means of stopping it from reaching its ultimate target — even at the expense of the 40 blameless people on board. It is a suspicion that was held even by the FBI, but was swept aside as a shaken America clung on to the official version of selfless
sacrifice and raw patriotism.

Today, with the approach of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, some will still say that such speculation only serves to lend comfort to terrorists and does a disservice to the dead.

Others, however, will feel there are too many disquieting circumstances and unanswered questions to simply ignore.

But let us examine the evidence — so that you can come to your own conclusion. The massive impact caused the entire plane to disappear 30ft deep into the earth, telescoping down on itself and crushing everyone and everything inside the fuselage beyond recognition.

*Why did the engines go missing?*

However, the absence of any significant debris — including tailplane and wings — bewildered witnesses, relatives and, more importantly, some crash experts.

They found it hard to believe that an airliner up to 155ft long, with two engines each weighing more than six tons, could have penetrated the ground so completely as to utterly disappear. Had it, in reality, been blown to pieces in mid-air?

Certainly it is unclear how a single piece of fuselage the size of a dining room table could have been recovered from a marina in Indian Lake, a couple of miles away from the crash site — unless it fell from the sky during an aerial break-up.

But a bigger mystery is why the engines went missing.

Considering their weight, they should have plunged deep into the earth along with the rest of the airliner.

Yet they weren’t in the crater and only a one-ton segment of an engine was ever recovered, again more than a mile from the crash site. The FBI said, unconvincingly, that it had ‘bounced’ there.

The FBI also claimed metal fragments found up to eight miles away could have been carried there by the wind, even though the breeze was very light.

Witnesses said nothing was left at the crash site, yet the FBI belatedly claimed to have made two sensational discoveries — a red bandana and a passport allegedly belonging to the hijackers.

Very conveniently, these turned up as prosecution evidence earlier this year at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the socalled 20th hijacker and only terrorist to be convicted over the 9/11 atrocities.

If flight 93 was shot down, there must have been a fighter jet in the skies to unleash a guided missile.

The U.S. government has admitted that two F-15s were flying above New York City before 9am on September 11 and three F-16s were patrolling over Washington by 9.40am. They could have reached Shanksville in minutes.

According to investigative writer David Ray Griffin, several witnesses saw two F-16s tailing Flight 93 minutes before it went down.

*Twelve eyewitnesses state seeing another jet nearby.*

They claim they saw an F-16 move closer in and fire what were probably two Sidewinder missiles, one of them catching at least one of the Boeing’s huge engines, after which the ‘plane dropped like a stone’.

Someone else ‘heard a loud bang’ and saw the airliner plummet. A Vietnam War veteran said he ‘heard a missile’, a sound he knew well. It is debatable how seriously we should take these reports. But there are numerous and highly credible witness accounts of a mysterious white jet being seen after Flight 93 went down.

Jim Brant, owner of the Indian Lake marina where debris was found, said he heard the roar of jet engines overhead, then saw a fireball rise into the air. He looked up and noticed a white plane circling the wreckage.

‘It reminded me of a fighter jet,’ he said.

Another resident, Tom Spinelli, said: ‘I saw the white plane. It was flying around all over the place like it was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash.’

He said it had high tail wings and no markings on it. John Feegle, another witness, said: ‘It didn’t look like a commercial plane. It had a real goofy tail on it, like a high tail. It circled around, and it was gone.’

Dennis Decker and his friend Rick Chaney were also close to the impact site. ‘As soon as we looked up we saw a mid-sized jet flying low and fast,’ said Decker.

‘It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out.’ Decker and Chaney described the jet as white with no markings. Decker added: ‘It was a jet plane, and it had to be flying real close when that 757 went down. If I was the FBI, I’d find out who
was driving that plane.’

A total of 12 eyewitnesses are on record as having seen the white jet.

One witness, Susan McElwain, complained that the FBI told her there was no plane and did not note down her account.

However, amid the growing furore over the sightings, the FBI was forced to offer an explanation, which again many found unconvincing.

It claimed the jet was a passing civilian Fairchild Falcon 20 that was asked to descend to 5,000ft some minutes after the crash to give co-ordinates for the site. The plane and pilot have never been produced or identified.

*The military’s role in 9/11 is a mystery.*

One commentator pointed out: ‘The reason why this seems so implausible is that, first, by 10.06am on September 11, all non-military aircraft in U.S. airspace had received orders more than half an hour earlier to land at the nearest airport.

‘Second, such was the density of emergency phone calls from people on the ground in the Shanksville area as to the location of the crash site, that aerial co-ordinates would have been completely unnecessary.

‘Third, with F-16s supposedly in the vicinity, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that, at a time when no one knew for sure whether there might be any more hijacked aircraft still in the sky, the military would ask a civilian aircraft that just happened to be in the area for help.’

The military’s role in 9/11 is shrouded in confusion, ambiguity and inconsistency.

A news report on September 20, 2001, said: ‘America’s defence establishment has disclosed that it ordered its fighter jets to intercept all the passenger aircraft hijacked in last week’s attacks on New York and Washington.’

The report also stated that military intelligence was aware of the hijackings before any of the aircraft had hit their targets.

Three years later, however, the military said it hadn’t heard about Flight 93 until after the plane had crashed — a line accepted by the official 9/11 Commission, which published its findings in July 2004.

The official inquiry said the Federal Aviation Authority — responsible for the security and safety of U.S. civilian aviation — had been incompetent in failing to alert the U.S. Air Force.

But the FAA had already acted quickly in ordering more than 4,000 aircraft to land at the nearest airstrip to avoid any more hijacks. And the military would have learned of Flight 93’s hijack via teleconferences set up by the FAA, the White House and the U.S. Defence
Department as events began to unfold on September 11. Richard Clarke, who ran the White House video conference, stated that at 9.27am, the FAA informed both Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chief of Defence Staff, of a number of ‘potential hijacks’ including ‘United 93 over Pennsylvania’. Therefore, more than 25 minutes before Flight 93 went down, both Rumsfeld and Myers knew all about it. No wonder the military’s claim to have learned about Flight 93 only after it crashed is dismissed by many as a bare-faced lie.

*The FBI was in charge of the investigation.*

In other air crashes, information from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — the black box recorders — were dealt with in an open manner, with crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board discussing the progress of their inquiries with reporters. But in the case of Flight 93, the Transportation Safety Board was not in charge of the investigation — the FBI was.

The black box recorders were reportedly found buried 25ft deep inside the crater. But a three minute discrepancy in the crash time led to suspicions of foul play.

Seismic records, consolidated from four seismology stations in the region, originally pegged the impact time at 10.06am. It was only later that the Pentagon and the 9/11 Commission decreed that the correct impact time to have been at 10.03am.

But Terry Wallace, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of man-made events, was puzzled.

He complained: ‘The seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10.06am and five seconds plus or minus two seconds. I don’t know where the 10.03 time comes from.’ So there were two crash times.

Sceptics note that a lot could happen in three minutes — minutes that could be removed from the end of a flight-deck recording to delete evidence of an attack by U.S. jets.

The FBI kept the contents of the voice recorder secret until it was forced by bereaved relatives to play the tape under heavy security at a hotel in April 2002.

The family members later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning at 9.58am, with a final ‘rushing sound’ at 10.03am, when the tape fell silent. Could the ‘rushing sound’ have been made by the plane being holed? And what of the moment when the plane hit the ground?

‘There is no sound of the impact,’ said Kenneth Nacke, whose brother Lou had been on Flight 93. There is a further twist. In 2006, when the judge at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui ordered a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, it ended with the sound of the hijackers shouting
praises to Allah.

Just where had those praises been in 2002 when the tape was first played to relatives? For many, their sudden appearance confirmed suspicions of tape tampering.

At first, the FBI was keen to show it was keeping an open mind over the fate of Flight 93.

Within days of the crash, Reuters reported from Shanksville: ‘Federal investigators said they could not rule out the possibility that the United Airlines jetliner that crashed in rural western Pennsylvania during this week’s attacks on New York and the Pentagon was shot down.’ ‘We have not ruled out that,’ FBI agent Bill Crowley told a news conference when asked about reports that a U.S. fighter jet may have fired on the hijacked Boeing 757. ‘We haven’t ruled out anything yet.’

Why did Crowley later retract his statement — and on the same day as the U.S. Air Force issued its official denial of any involvement?

At the crux of the legend of Flight 93 are the phones calls passengers are said to have made to their loved ones after the hijackers took control.

These are said to have alerted the passengers to the fact that they were victims of no ordinary hijacking, but a co-ordinated mission by fanatics to strike at the heart of America in New York and Washington. At the same time, a number of passengers allegedly told relatives of their resolve to fight back. Interestingly, phone contact from passengers on the two hijacked planes that hit the Twin Towers and a third jet which crashed into the Pentagon that same morning was scarce to non-existent.

Yet officially there were 35 calls made among the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93, with callers using either mobile phones or GTE Airfones fitted into the backs of the aircraft seats.

The use of mobile phones is suspect anyway because telecommunications experts say that — given the technology of 2001 — calls at an altitude of six miles could have only occurred by fluke at best. Just as baffling, the FBI insisted there were 13 mobile phone calls — of which there were no billing records — yet reduced this number to just two at the trial this year of Zacarias Moussaoui when the evidence risked being exposed to the harsh light of law.

Why had the FBI failed to put the record straight over the previous four-and-a-half years?

One answer is that it suited the heroism legend to keep silent as the Pentagon banged the drum for war in Iraq.

* Mrs Beamer only learned of her husband’s final call four days later.*

The 9/11 Commission claimed that five of the calls described the intent of the passengers and crew to revolt against the hijackers. One caller, the Commission said, ended her message with the words: ‘Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.’ But all this begs the
question: why did the hijackers allow such a free-for-all of phone calls as they attempted to terrify their hostages?

After all, the hijackers would have realised that experts would have been able to locate the lost aircraft if people were using their mobiles.

The most intriguing of the calls is the one said to have been made by Flight 93’s most famous passenger Todd Beamer, whose ‘Let’s roll!’ phrase became a byword for the victims’ heroism and patriotism.

Beamer’s call was said to have been taken by a telephone supervisor working for the Verizon Corporation, owners of GTE Airfones, the gadgets on the airplane seats.

At the time, Verizon had a contract worth £750million for installing a high-security telecoms package across U.S. government departments, including the Pentagon.

One of its supervisors, Lisa Jefferson, an evangelical Christian like Beamer himself, retains a vivid recollection of her 15-minute conversation with him.

After discovering that she shared her first name with Beamer’s wife, they apparently talked about his two little boys and the new baby on the way, Beamer’s fear that he might not make it home, and his faith.

Faced with the awful prospect of dying on board Flight 93, Beamer supposedly recited the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 with Mrs Jefferson. He also asked her to promise to call his wife. Mrs Jefferson received a Verizon Excellence Award from her bosses for her handling of the call.

To some this may have seemed inappropriate.

She had not taken a recording of it, contrary to convention. She had not gone through the routine questions in her distress-call manual. She had not connected this agitated man to his wife waiting anxiously at home.

Nor had she informed his wife subsequently of the call as promised.

Mrs Beamer only learned of her husband’s final call four days later, when a representative of United Airlines got in touch.

She says the United Airlines representative told her: ‘The FBI had been keeping the information private until they’ve had the opportunity to review the material. But now they’ve released it, I have a written summary of the call.’

But later Mrs Beamer learned that the FBI had not kept the call so secret after all. Her husband’s boss at his computer company had already spun the story of Beamer the hero aboard Flight 93 before anyone else knew of his phone call.

As for Lisa Jefferson’s evidence, it was single-sourced, unsubstantiated hearsay of which there was no record. For spooks inside a sprawling empire of wires like Verizon, rigging up a phone call to Lisa Jefferson’s headset would have been simple.

* ‘Let’s roll!’ became the war on terror’s recruitment slogan.*

She had no idea what Beamer’s voice sounded like, and she would never hear it again to judge whether he had actually been speaking to her.

This year, Lisa Jefferson published a book entitled Called — the story of seeing ‘her life transformed, simply by answering Todd Beamer’s call’.

The blurb added: ‘Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God’s call.’

Evangelical Christians throughout America rallied to that call. But one puzzle remains: Todd Beamer’s wife later said she had never before heard of his reciting the Lord’s Prayer in pressure situations. Nor, she added, was Psalm 23 something he often recited.

Todd Beamer's ‘Let’s roll!’ phrase became the war on terror’s recruitment slogan.

President Bush had launched the legend in a speech on September 20, 2001 as he declared his unprecedented ‘war on terror’. Beamer’s story of selfless patriotism, according to the President, was a ‘defining moment’ in American history. Alongside President Bush on this occasion was Todd Beamer’s wife Lisa.

Nobody, of course, would begrudge Mrs Beamer her celebrity, given her tragic circumstances. But her presence undoubtedly helped President Bush’s cause.

The President again invoked her evangelical Christian husband’s courage in another speech a month later.

‘We will no doubt face new challenges,’ said the man widely regarded as having taken office fully intending to attack Iraq. ‘But we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans… let’s roll!’

Such a phrase couldn’t fail to chime with the President’s gung-ho admirers — nor with the 40 million evangelical Christians in the so-called ‘red’ states where the Bush regime had its most fervent support.

Later U.S. Navy personnel would spell out the words 9/11 LET’S ROLL by forming themselves on the deck of a warship bound for Iraq.

Lisa Beamer, always a staunch ally of the White House and its war on terror, had herself photographed unveiling a ‘Let’s Roll’ logo on the side of a U.S. Air Force F-16.

She even sought to have ‘Let’s Roll’ trademarked and signed a six-figure book deal which, along with her seven-figure compensation cheque, made her a rich woman. And in August 2002, just in time for the first 9/11 anniversary, she published her memoir entitled — predictably — Let’s Roll!

The front cover showed the author with the Stars and Stripes and the publisher issued a staggering one million copies in hardback.

*Secrecy is the first instinct of any war.*

Truly, the Let’s Roll slogan had become a call to arms — just at a time the White House needed it most.

Bush administration not admit its guilt? It could surely have argued that the poor souls lost in the airliner were a tragic but necessary sacrifice in order to prevent horror and destruction on a larger scale in at the Capitol Washington.

Air Force scrambles had been frequent enough in the past. One report said there had been 129 within the U.S. during 2000.

But secrecy is the first instinct of any war department, especially amid reports flooding in of a passenger revolt on the plane.

Any admission of a shooting down must have been ruled out politically because those brave passengers just might have retrieved the controls from fanatical hijackers.

For the U.S. military to have snatched victory from their grasp was unthinkable.

There are countless theories and areas of evidence to examine. There is even a theory that the plane could have blown up because of a bomb on board.

Air traffic controllers on the ground reportedly heard an anonymous voice in the cockpit announce: ‘Ladies and gentleman. Here is the captain. Please sit down and keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit.’

But if Flight 93 had been blown up by a bomb at cruising altitude, its debris area would have covered at least 20 miles, as in the Lockerbie crash.

The 9/11 Commission speculated that the rogue pilot jolted the plane violently in the minutes before the impact to disrupt a passenger revolt.

This in turn led to claims that he might have succeeded in tearing a wing off, or otherwise wrecking the aircraft in mid-air, causing it to crash.

Boeing has refused to discuss this possibility. Such movements, however, could easily have been caused by the pilot attempting to avoid an approaching heatseeking missile homing in on its engines.

EYEWITNESS reports differed from the official story. Along the plane’s route, people confirmed that the Boeing came in from the north-west, but they said it was not nose-diving. Instead it was flying low.

Bob Blair and Linda Shepley saw the plane when it dropped to 2,500ft. Rodney Peterson and Brandon Leventry noticed it at 2,000ft. Terry Butler saw it at about 500ft. Eric Peterson saw the plane at ‘maybe 300ft’.

Lee Purbaugh, a scrap metal worker, was the closest. He told reporters:  ‘I heard this real loud noise coming over my head. I looked up and it was Flight 93, barely 50ft above me.

‘It was coming down at 45 degrees and rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly dipped and it just crashed into the ground. There was this big fireball and then a huge cloud of smoke.’

Purbaugh’s account was perhaps the nearest of all the witness testimony to the official version of the story. Except for one important element.

Not once did Purbaugh mention the plane being upside down, as the 9/11 Commission, the FBI and the Pentagon all maintained it was.

With such a huge airplane roaring over his head, he could hardly have failed to notice which way up it was.

To some, this cast doubt on the credibility of his reported evidence. To others, it was merely another piece of the Flight 93 jigsaw that failed to fit.

• ADAPTED from Flight 93: What Really Happened On The Heroic 9/11 ‘Let’s Roll’ Flight by Rowland Morgan, published by Constable & Robinson on August 24 at £7.99. © Rowland Morgan 2006 To order a copy (p&p free), call 0870 161 0870.