Flight 93's Final Moments Remain Mystery

According to news reports last month, government investigators now believe that United Flight 93 was deliberately crashed by hijackers after passengers began an attempt to storm the cockpit.

Without discounting the considerable heroism of the passengers, the known facts don't support the theory that the plane crashed after they overtook the hijackers and wrestled for the controls.

The Todd Beamer Foundation, named for a passenger, responded to the report:

Regardless of who was in control of the plane when it crashed, the fact remains their uprising changed the course of history. ... We will never know what really happened in the last moments aboard Flight 93, but we can rest assured that those 40 people did everything they could to make sure the plane would never be used in an act of terrorism -- and succeeded.

Slate covers some other popularly held beliefs about Sept. 11 that may not be true.

911 · Terrorism · 2003/09/11 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

I just love revisionism. I quote from your comment: "According to news reports last month, government investigators now believe that United Flight 93 was deliberately crashed by hijackers after passengers began an attempt to storm the cockpit" rather than " ...the plane crashed after they overtook the hijackers and wrestled for the controls". May I ask, What the hell's the difference?

Further evidence that liberals that fancy themselves "intellectuals" ought to leave rational thinking to those that can, and the heavy lifting of action to heroes like those on that flight, who gave their lives that other countless hundreds could live.

#1 · Tom Runyon · 2003/09/12

While I agree with the article's contention that there may have been warnings about the attacks, I disagree with their contention that the Bush people "lied" by stating the attacks were "inconcievable."

Think about it for a moment, then read the quotes in the article from Fleitcher and Rice. Could you have imagined, prior to that day, what actually happened that morning? Even if you take away the Pentagon and Pennsylvania events, does the concept of two planes being purposely flown into those towers, then having them collapse, seem like something that could ever happen in our country? Like most people, I sure didn't. In fact, I watched an HBO special from last year about the WTC attacks on Thursday night. The program showed a variety of professional and amatuer video clips of the entire day. I still find it difficult to believe that it ever happened. Hell, I've been down to Ground Zero twice since then while visiting my old home in NY. My wife and I saw it Thanksgiving week in 2001 prior to the cleanup, and I was there in January while attending the LinuxWorld conferennce up the street. In both cases, it didn't seem real to me. I have dozens of friends who live within blocks of the area, including one who's apartment window looked right out at both towers. The idea of them being gone, and more importantly, how they were destroyed, seems to me to fall into the realm of the unimagineable.

I believe the Rice and Fleitcher express their true feelings, which reveals a level of complacency we all had in the US prior to that day. So, perhaps we were all being less than honest with ourselves as a nation.

On top of that, do you think the man who wrote the book from which these contentions are made doesn't have an agenda himself? The Lies of Geroge W. Bush...? Do you think if Clinton or Gore were president, we'd be seeing a book with that title if the same thing happened? The author would probably find a way to blame it on Reagan or Nixon.

Oh, and I agree with Tom 100%.

#2 · Joe · 2003/09/13

You're both misreading my post. As I wrote, the FBI report regarding United Flight 93 doesn't take anything away from the considerable heroism of the passengers.

As to whether it makes a difference, it ought to. We shouldn't be so caught up in the mythology of the event that we stop trying to figure out exactly what happened on those planes.

The attacks of Sept. 11 are as inconceivable to me today as they were the day before they happened. I have trouble getting my mind around the concept that such a thing is even possible, much less that it really took place and left thousands of people murdered without even a trace of their bodies to identify them.

#3 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2003/09/14