[Mb-civic] At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality

By Jerry Markon and Timothy Dwyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 13, 2006; A01

It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe 
clenched fists. The sounds were muffled but unmistakable, one body blow 
after another, ending with a squishy thud.

"No, no, no, no, no. No," came the high-pitched voice of a crew member 
or flight attendant being subdued. " . . . Please, please don't hurt 
me," the person said later. " . . . I don't want to die." The desperate 
plea, captured by the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 
93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was played to a transfixed jury yesterday at the 
death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

A foreign-accented voice, increasingly agitated, screamed: "Down. Down. 
Down!" as the whacking sound continued. Then there was silence. "That's 
it. Go back," a hijacker said calmly. "Everything is fine. I finished."

And with that, Flight 93 from Newark banked left toward Washington. But 
the terrorists would not strike their target that day because they were 
beaten -- as the voice recorder made clear -- by the passengers, who 
fought back. The 32-minute tape recounts an epic struggle as passengers 
surged forward to retake the plane using whatever low-tech weapons they 
could find.

"Let's get them!" one passenger yelled as dishes crashed to the floor. 
"In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die," screamed another amid more 
thumping and crashing and breaking of glass.

Yesterday, the myth of Flight 93 became real. The 33 passengers and 
seven crew members have been lionized in book and film for their 
struggle to retake the doomed jet, one of four planes hijacked during 
the deadliest terrorist strike in U.S. history. Until now, the recording 
that documented their courage had been played only for federal 
investigators and a limited number of relatives of those aboard.

But in court, Americans were taken inside a hijacking drama that saw in 
a space of time shorter than the average Washington commute terrorists 
seize a cockpit by brutal force, repulse an initial attack by passengers 
and then crash a jetliner in a Pennsylvania field as their captives, 
throwing plates or anything else at their disposal, thwarted their plans.

Much of the tape is unintelligible. There was loud static, and the 
voices, some speaking English and others Arabic, were often inaudible. 
It cannot be determined whether the passengers entered the cockpit, 
although it is certain they came close and forced the hijackers to 
abandon their attack on Washington.

The recording made clear that a group of men and women, who knew the 
World Trade Center had been attacked, recognized that this was no 
conventional hijacking -- these terrorists were crashing planes into 
buildings -- and resolved to take control of their fate.

"There is absolutely no doubt that through their heroic actions still 
more carnage and catastrophe was prevented," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a 
member of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 
attacks. The commission concluded that the passengers of Flight 93 
stopped an attack that was aimed at Washington, most likely the Capitol 
or White House.

The hijackers, as shown on a computer simulation played on monitors 
throughout the courtroom, jerked the plane violently to the left and 
right during the struggle. They tried to cut off the oxygen as 
passengers banged on the cockpit door. In the end, as the passengers 
were either in the cockpit or moments from entering it, the hijackers 
turned the plane upside down -- and crashed it.

"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed nine times as the plane went down. 
The recording then went dead. The courtroom was silent.

The trial seemed an afterthought yesterday amid the drama of the 
recording. Prosecutors rested their case for the execution of Moussaoui, 
the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the 
attacks on the trade center and the Pentagon. The defense will now begin 
its case, and Moussaoui is expected to take the stand again as early as 
today.

In the trial's first phase, Moussaoui testified that he had planned to 
hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House on Sept. 11 with 
a crew that included shoe bomber Richard Reid. The jury found Moussaoui 
eligible for the death penalty and will decide whether he should be 
executed or spend his life in prison. Reid could testify before the jury 
gets the case.

D. Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, president of Families of Flight 93, 
said the public airing of the recording should put to rest any lingering 
questions about what happened aboard the Boeing 757. "The paramount 
issue was, Did the passengers and crew thwart the plane from its 
intended target? And that question has clearly been answered," said 
Peterson, whose father, Donald A. Peterson, and stepmother, Jean H. 
Peterson, died on the plane. "Whether or not they were actually into the 
cockpit or tearing the door off the hinges at the time it was scuttled 
is something history will have to answer."

Prosecutors played the voice recorder tape as part of their effort to 
show the jury the extensive damage caused by Sept. 11 and the suffering 
and loss of the victims. More than 35 survivors and family members 
testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, including Lorne Lyles, 
whose wife, CeeCee, was a flight attendant on Flight 93. He brought 
several jurors to the brink of tears with his testimony yesterday about 
his wife's two calls from the plane.

The first time the phone rang, Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., police officer 
who had worked the overnight shift, rolled over and went back to sleep. 
He did speak to his wife briefly when she called again. But only a week 
later did he hear the message she had left on his voice mail.

"Hi, baby," CeeCee Lyles said in the call, a tape of which was played in 
court yesterday. "Baby, you have to listen to me very carefully. I'm on 
a plane that's been hijacked. . . . I'm trying to be calm."

Saying she knew that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, 
Lyles tried to keep her composure, but her voice broke as she ended the 
call. "I hope to be able to see your face again, baby," she said. "I 
love you, baby."

Lyles said he has been in and out of counseling for the past five years. 
"I'm just now being able to appreciate a full night's sleep," he 
testified. "They say closure, but there's never any closure. It takes a 
piece of you."

Moussaoui looked bored, as he did when the cockpit voice recorder was 
played. Jurors leaned forward in their seats.

A large screen showed the path of Flight 93 and instrument readings of 
speed and altitude as Ziad Jarrah, believed to be the hijacking team's 
pilot, started the recording by announcing: "Ladies and gentlemen: Here 
the captain, please sit down keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on 
board. So sit."

It was nearly 9:32 a.m., four minutes after investigators say the four 
hijackers started their attack. The plane had taken off from Newark 
Liberty International Airport, bound for San Francisco, at 8:42 a.m.

The sounds of a struggle in the cockpit were immediately heard, but it 
was unclear whether the pleading voice was male or female. The Sept. 11 
commission concluded that a flight attendant, most likely a woman, 
struggled with hijackers in the cockpit and was killed or otherwise 
silenced. Hijackers on the four planes were armed with small knives and 
box cutters.

When the plane turned around and started heading south through 
Pennsylvania, there were several minutes of silence. At 9:43 a.m., it 
started descending rapidly, leveled off, then descended again. The first 
sign of a struggle came at 9:57 a.m., when a hijacker said: "Is there 
something? A fight?"

Passengers, who had made cellphone calls and learned of the earlier 
trade center attack, then rushed the cockpit. "They want to get in 
there. Hold, hold from the inside," a hijacker said.

"Shall we finish it off?" one hijacker asked.

"No, not yet," responded another. "When they all come, we finish it off."

Within seconds, there was bedlam -- the sounds of a violent, almost 
animalistic struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 
commissioners say was probably the passengers hurling objects at the 
cockpit door or ramming it with a beverage cart.

"Down, down. Pull it down, pull it down," a hijacker said just before 
his colleague praised Allah and crashed the plane.

In the background, a single voice could be heard screaming "No!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041200538.html?referrer=email
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