0275994317 The 9 11 Encyclopedia

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.Around 8:14, they did so, killingtwo attendants and a passenger, Daniel Lewin, immediately.Lewin, formerly anofficer in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli military, was seen as a threat.The hijackers, who had apparently identified him as a potential air marshal, killedhim as soon as possible.To allay suspicions, the hijackers lulled the passengers andcrew into a false sense of hope by giving the impression that the plane would landsafely and that the passengers would be used as hostages, a successful tactic ofhijackers in the past.Air traffic controllers received information from the cockpit via Ogonowski sradio, over which they heard a conversation between the pilot and a hijacker in thecockpit that made it evident that a hijacking was in progress.More ominously, theyalso learned from a hijacker s comment about plans to seize control of otheraircraft.This information was the first indication of a plot to hijack numerousaircraft in flight.The first concrete information about the hijacking came from Betty Ong, astewardess on Fight 11, who contacted the American Airlines Flight Center inFort Worth, Texas, and related that two flight attendants had been stabbed andthat another was on oxygen.A passenger, she said, had been killed, and the hijack-ers had gained access to the cockpit, using some type of mace-like spray to neu-tralize the crew.Once the hijackers gained control of the aircraft, they took precautions to con-trol the passengers, securing the first class section by intimidation, mace and pep-per spray, and threats to detonate a bomb.The rest of the passengers, in coach,were led to believe a medical emergency had occurred in the first class section.Thehijackers also told the passengers that the aircraft was returning to the airport.Another attendant, Madeleine Sweeney, contacted authorities and confirmedOng s earlier message to the American Flight Services Office in Boston.Shereestablished communication and was in fact on the line when the aircraftapproached the North Tower of the World Trade Center.By the time the passen-gers realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything about it.Many16 American Airlines Flight 77hurriedly called their loved ones and said goodbye either by talking with them orby leaving messages.The aircraft crashed at about 378 miles per hour between the ninety-fourth andninety-eighth floors of the North Tower.The crew, passengers, and hijackers alldied instantly from the force of the explosion and the fire that accompanied it.Theforce of the explosion alone shattered the aluminum wings and fuselage of the air-craft into pieces the size of a human fist.The impact of the crash and the prolonged burning of aviation fuel weakenedthe structure of the North Tower, trapping those people above the ninety-eighthfloor, who had no chance of escape.Those threatened by fire and smoke began tojump from the building.The North Tower collapsed on itself shortly after theSouth Tower fell.See AlsoAtta, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed; Lewin, Daniel M.; Ogonowski, John; Ong, BettyAnn; World Trade Center, September 11Suggested ReadingStefan Aust et al., Inside 9 11: What Really Happened (New York: St.Martin s Press, 2001);Richard Bernstein, Out of the Blue: The Story of September 11, 2001, from Jihad to GroundZero (New York: Times Books, 2002); Olga Craig, At 8:46 AM, the World Changed in aMoment, Sunday Telegraph [London] (September 16, 2001), p.14; 9/11 Commission,The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist AttacksUpon the United States (New York: Norton, 2004); Susan B.Trento and Joseph J.Trento,Unsafe at Any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating 9/11, and the ShockingTruth About Aviation Security Today (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2006).American Airlines Flight 77American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757-223, was the third aircraft seized byhijackers on September 11, 2001.It left Dulles International Airport, nearWashington, D.C., at 8:20 a.m., bound for Los Angeles International Airport withfifty-eight passengers and a crew of six.The pilot was Charles Burlingame and theFirst Officer David Charlebois.Because of problems at the security gate, the flightwas ten minutes late taking off.The security checkpoint at Dulles InternationalAirport was operated by Argenbright Security under a contract with UnitedAirlines.Passenger screeners at Dulles International Airport were 87 percentforeign-born and mostly Muslim.Three of the hijackers failed the metal detectortest, but, after passing hand-wand screening, were permitted to enter the aircraft.There was no indication that any of them were carrying prohibited weapons.The five-person terrorist team was led by Hani Hanjour, who was also theteam s designated pilot.Other members of his team were Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salemal-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Majed Moqued, who had all bought first-classtickets to gain better access to the aircraft s cockpit.The hijackers used knives andbox-cutters to gain control of the cockpit sometime between 8:51 and 8:54 a.m.,after which Hanjour, the designated pilot, turned the aircraft around and headedfor Washington, D.C.Like the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, thehijackers of Flight 77 calmed passengers by convincing them that the plane wouldland, after which they would be used as hostages.Although by this time it was known that other aircraft had been seized andturned into flying bombs, authorities in Washington, D.C., were slow to respond.American Airlines Flight 77 17Two passengers, Renee May and Barbara K.Olson, the wife of the United StatesSolicitor General, Theodore Olson, made phone calls reporting the hijacking.Olson made two calls to her husband, giving him details of the hijacking.He toldher the news of the two aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center.By this time the Dulles air controllers were aware of an approaching unautho-rized aircraft coming at high speed toward Washington, D.C [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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