September 11 Report

[Lon More]

Disturbing videotape on BBC News this lunchtime.

The five alledged to have hi-jacked the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon were all "picked out" at the security gate and subjected to further search but nothing was detected.

[BigHitDH]

I see they were subjected to a "handheld wand" search - how reliable are these?

[Wino]

All weapons used were considered legal at the time. You could have bought them or something similar inside security at the Duty free at Heathrow for that matter.

Worse, most luggage was held for further screening as well (that is how we got atta's will) as virtually all the terrorists were picked out by a profiling program called CAPPS that the ACLU had successfully sued to limit the use of because it was considered discriminatory. Therefore the program could only be used to screen bags not people.

But if you want to know why your clippers are being taken from you at security and why somethings seam obsurd to you, all you need to do is reference the report and realize that everyone involved atleast suspected the people were trouble but lacked the legal authority to do anything about it.

What is even more disturbing is that Richard Reid was carried by AA after being picked off by security under threat of losing their common carrier priveledges in France.

It wasn't 9/11 that really hightened the precautions and gave more power to the airlines to search people and deny them transit. It was Richard Reid.



Cheers
Wino

[Airbubba]

Here's an excerpt from the 9-11 Commission Report concerning the passenger screening at IAD featured in the news reports today:

________________________


...Washington Dulles: American 77.

Hundreds of miles southwest of Boston, at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., five more men were preparing to take their early morning flight. At 7:15, a pair of them, Khalid al Mihdhar and Majed Moqed, checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter for Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles. Within the next 20 minutes, they would be followed by Hani Hanjour and two brothers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi.

Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed were flagged by CAPPS. The Hazmi brothers were also selected for extra scrutiny by the airline’s customer service representative at the check-in counter. He did so because one of the brothers did not have photo identification nor could he understand English, and because the agent found both of the passengers to be suspicious. The only consequence of their selection was that their checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that they had boarded the aircraft.

All five hijackers passed through the Main Terminal’s west security screening checkpoint; United Airlines, which was the responsible air carrier, had contracted out the work to Argenbright Security. The checkpoint featured closed-circuit television that recorded all passengers, including the hijackers, as they were screened. At 7:18, Mihdhar and Moqed entered the security checkpoint.

Mihdhar and Moqed placed their carry-on bags on the belt of the X-ray machine and proceeded through the first metal detector. Both set off the alarm, and they were directed to a second metal detector. Mihdhar did not trigger the alarm and was permitted through the checkpoint. After Moqed set it off, a screener wanded him. He passed this inspection.

About 20 minutes later, at 7:35, another passenger for Flight 77, Hani Hanjour, placed two carry-on bags on the X-ray belt in the Main Terminal’s west checkpoint, and proceeded, without alarm,through the metal detector. A short time later,Nawaf and Salem al Hazmi entered the same checkpoint. Salem al Hazmi cleared the metal detector and was permitted through; Nawaf al Hazmi set off the alarms for both the first and second metal detectors and was then hand-wanded before being passed. In addition, his over-the-shoulder carry-on bag was swiped by an explosive trace detector and then passed. The video footage indicates that he was carrying an unidentified item in his back pocket, clipped to its rim.

When the local civil aviation security office of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later investigated these security screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary. They could not recall that any of the passengers they screened were CAPPS selectees. We asked a screening expert to review the videotape of the hand-wanding, and he found the quality of the screener’s work to have been “marginal at best.” The screener should have “resolved” what set off the alarm; and in the case of both Moqed and Hazmi, it was clear that he did not...

[PeePeerune]

hi there,

go to http://www.9-11commission.gov/ and right click save as on report. there you have the whole article. v interesting read!!

[rotornut]

The Washington Post

Friday, July 23, 2004

Panel: No Cockpit Struggle on Flight 93

By TED BRIDIS

WASHINGTON - Passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers but never actually made it into the cockpit, the Sept. 11 commission concluded.

The assertion, included in the panel's dramatic summary of the harrowing flight, contradicts the firmly held belief by some victims' families that passengers breached the cockpit and fought with hijackers inside during their final moments.

In phone calls from the plane, four passengers said they and others planned to fight the hijackers after learning of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York earlier that morning.

Todd Beamer: "Let's Roll"

With the words "Let's roll," passengers rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers.

Relying on the cockpit recorder and flight data, the commission said terrorist-pilot Ziad Jarrah violently rocked the jet's wings and told another hijacker to block the door. With the sounds of fighting outside the cockpit, Jarrah asked, "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?"

Another hijacker, who wasn't identified, replied, "No, not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."

Jarrah then began pitching the nose of the plane up and down to throw passengers off balance.

Seconds later, a passenger who wasn't identified yelled, "In the cockpit! If we don't, we die!" And 16 seconds afterward, another passenger yelled, "Roll it!" Investigators previously have said they believe passengers tried to use a food cart to break the cockpit door.

Jarrah said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!", and he asked his fellow hijacker, "Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?"

The other hijacker answered, "Yes, put it in, and pull it down."

Roughly 90 seconds later, the jet rolled onto its back and crashed into a Pennsylvania field at more than 580 mph, killing everyone aboard.
The commission concluded that the hijackers remained at the controls of the plane, "but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."

The commission said the hijackers' destination was Washington. It praised the courage of the passengers and said their struggle "saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved either the Capitol or the White House from destruction."

The Associated Press reported last year that the government's theory about Flight 93 - described by FBI Director Robert Mueller to congressional investigators in closed testimony - also concluded that passengers grappled with terrorists but never actually got into the cockpit.

[Dani]

Actually, it doesn't matter if they fought in ithe cockpit or close to. Fact is, that the passengers of Flight UA 93 safed hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives.
Maybe its even comforting for us, that those brave heros didn't see what would happen in front of the door within the next seconds. They kept their hope until the last moment.

[WestWind1950]

Another myth destroyed: No Cockpit Struggle on Flight 93
does it really matter? the result would have been the same..... God bless those braves souls :(

Westy

[Wino]

The Myth isn't destoyed at all.

The facts have just been proven.

The passengers fought back instead of sitting in their seats like sheep (as previous basic strategy had instructed crews to do) and as a result the aircraft crashed in a field instead of the middle of a city. As the flight crew was dead already it is unlikely that there could have been any other out come, no matter where the struggle was.

Well done to the people of 93. RIP.

Rotornut, you could have chosen your thread topic a lot better rather than disrespecting all the people on the aircraft so calously.

Cheers
Wino

[maxalt]

The only surprise is that it wasn't admitted that the aircraft was in fact shot down by the USAF.

[Nick Figaretto]

in fact

???

[normal_nigel]

Weren't the USAF all still on the ground?

[justanotherflyer]

The only surprise is that it wasn't admitted that the aircraft was in fact shot down by the USAF.

If that had actually happened, they would be the first to admit it. But it didn't happen.

[Fred4000]

Had there not been phones for the passengers to use on that flight it would have hit its target in Washington.

[Avman]

To me it indicates what a bunch of goons the terrorists were! If they had had an iota of intelligence they would have at least picked a nearby target for maximum effect. Well done to the pax. They fully deserve their hero status. May their act of bravery never be forgotten.

[TATprobe]

Nothing very new in this thread. The passengers still forced the plane down, but it is very interesting that the hijackers just decided to give up and put the aircraft into the ground. So much for their maniacal resolve.

More to the point would be to know exatly how they gained access to the cockpit in the first place. Has this information been posted anywhere?

Also, as has been pointed out, if the pax had all obeyed the silly rules about mobile phones, they would presumably not have known what was going on. Heroes all!!

[Wino]

The aircraft involved had airphones installed

They got access to the cockpit because we used to cooperate with hijackers. But as they say in Israel....

NEVER AGAIN

Cheers
Wino

[DCS99]

The report is excellent.

My heart still bleeds for what happened to the crews and passengers on that day.

For the techies there's reference to CVR and FDR data that I wasn't aware of before e.g. the last machine was flipped on its back by those b'stards.

The US gets a lot of stick for misguided post-911 security measures on pprune and elsewhere, but they deserve a lot of credit for having the 911 hearings in open and producing such a report. I think that's a sign of a democratic free society - isn't it?

Meanwhile I was reading that Mohammed Atta's dad thinks his son was kidnapped and forced to fly the plane by Israeli Mossad agents. Oh dear. There's still a lot of idiots out there....

[SaturnV]

The 9-11 Commission's report on the plane hijackings can be read at:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf

(You will need Adobe Acrobat.) There are extensive footnotes; these are in a later section of the report.

As the Commission notes, NORAD's scramble of fighter interceptors from Langley Air Force base (near Norfolk Virginia) was an error-prone endeavor. The fighters, instead of heading northwest toward Baltimore, Maryland, flew east out over the Atlantic. They were never in a position to shoot down either the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, or the one that was crashed into a Pennsylvania field. The Department of Defense was unaware that United flight 93 had even been hijacked until after it had crashed.

Fighter interceptors were also scrambled from Otis Air National Guard base in Massachusetts early on in the hijackings. (They were airborne within 25 minutes after the FAA had determined that American 11 had been hijacked. This plane struck the North tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM.) The fighters were airborne seven minutes after the North tower was hit, and from 9:09 AM to 9:13AM they remained in a holding pattern in military airspace off Long Island, as they had no 'targets'. The FAA basically did not determine that UA 175 had been hijacked until about 9 AM, or three minutes before it hit the South tower. (The Commission's report details that senior FAA managers rebuffed controller notifications about the possible hijacking of UA 175 as they were too busy discussing the hijacking of AA 11.)

At 9:13 AM, the fighters from Otis were directed to fly combat air patrol over Manhattan. They arrived at 9:25 AM. At the time that AA 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 AM, the fighters from Langley were in the air, but 150 miles away.

The same unarmed Air National Guard C-130 observed the plane that hit the Pentagon, and, subsequently, smoke from United 93 two minutes after it crashed.

[simfly]

There has been a lot in the press in the last few months about the lack (or lateness) of military involvment in those terrible couple of hours, however, we knew later in the day what had happened and could still barely believe it.... At the time I believe that those realising the initial situation (ATC etc) would have been hard pushed to believe that one aircraft had been flown into the WTC, but it would still have been fantasy to them to think that there were 3 more out there. My point is that there is too much speculation about what could have been done, but in reality, the situation was unbelievable, unpredictable (saying that, I have just returned after seein farenheit 911!!) and unexpected, nobody knew what to do until it was too late, and important decisions would have been even harder to make. Here's hoping that something even remotely on this scale never happens again.

[SaturnV]

Simfly, in the notes section of the Commission report, there is reference to the concurrent successful hijackings of a PanAm 747, a TWA 707, and a Swissair DC-9, and the failed hijacking of an El-Al plane, on the same day in 1970. The notes section also describes a scenario exercise done in 1998 under Richard Clarke's (a now famous senior staffer in Clinton's White House) auspices in which terrorists would fly an explosive-laden Learjet into a Washington building.

From reading the hijacking chapter and the accompanying notes, one gets a sense that the Boston ATC seemed to react with greater initiative and speed to the unfolding situation than did other regional centers, or the FAA's national command center in Herndon, Virginia.

[satis 5]

the world will never be the same again.
lets learn before incidents, not just after.

a few weeks before 9/11, a letter in flt. int. posed the question,
would flight crew be able to keep a security door closed as passengers and cabin crew are subject to acts of violence?

i think we know the answer now.
lets hope no one ever has to find out.

a few un-addressed points about 9/11 hijackings,
the assailants were trained in martial arts, no doubt potentialy leathal.
there is no way of detecting this, but there clearly is a need for a defence, incase we dont have a cabin of spirited people aware of the gravity of any situation.

[fireflybob]

As the time between 9/11 and the present becomes greater I find the events that took place on that day even more unbelievable and offensive.

As a professional aviator to see our flying machines used in such a fashion is something which I have great diificulty coming to terms with since all our working lives are spent minimising risk and working hard to get our passengers and fellow crew members safely to their destinations. The loss of one life is a tragedy for all that know that person but so many to go at the same time in such a bizarre manner is a catastrophe beyond all imagination.

[boofhead]

Wino summed it up. The only action we need to stop another 9/11 is to keep the door closed and deny access to the flight deck. If an alert is signalled by the cabin, cut off communication with them totally, do not acept any incoming calls, to avoid being pressured, declare an emergency and land at the nearest airport. Simple. If the pilots had been warned of what was known about El Quaida's intentions prior to 9/11 this terrible attack would not have succeeded.

The rest of it is designed just to keep the unwashed public in a state of fear and compliant. There has never been an occasion when airport security caught a terrorist and never will, since they are smart enough to know how to avoid the traps. There have been many successful hijacks by persons who did not have any weapons at all, but were able to impose their will by threat or bluff. So long as bottles are allowed on board, the whole thing remains a sick joke.

Only by putting air marshalls on every flight would that plan work.

Anti-congregation, Presidential TFRs (a president and his deputies, wives and so on terrified of their subjects. Why?), enhanced security levels and the like are all stupid ideas.

Flight deck doors do not need to be bullet proof, just closed and barred. Arming the pilots would help but is not essential. CAPPS and the like is never going to work, and will just hassle the innocent.

Of course that leaves airplanes without flight deck doors vulnerable, as they have always been. Let's hope that their passengers have the same bravery as those of Flight 93.

[Brookmans Park]

As a pilot , the most important part of this report, is the fact that the passengers where willing to to stand up and FIGHT !

Hopefully I now have passengers who will not hesitate to respond with an eqal level of heroism
at the appropriate moment
this might well be the key factor in preventing anymore such situations

[PaperTiger]

concurrent successful hijackings of a PanAm 747, a TWA 707, and a Swissair DC-9, and the failed hijacking of an El-Al plane, on the same day in 1970

6 September. The Swissair was a DC-8 and there was also a BOAC VC-10 taken. All except the El Al were blown up without loss of hostages, one at Cairo the rest at Zerqa, Jordan aka Dawson's Field. I hope this is not indicative of the accuracy of the report as a whole :(

I'm also not sure of the relevance to 9/11. The hijackers on that day did not pilot the planes, did not harm anybody on board (except during the Israeli storming of the LY 707) nor were they intent on suicide. It was an operation to free PFLP terrorist held in the countries targetted.

[kaikohe76]

God Bless to all those innocent men, women and children who lost their lives that terrible day in September.

However, what is the UK's approach to Hijackers, we offer them assylum (Afghan 727), for at least deporting them home, or placing them on trial, we are informed, would be a `threat to their civil liberties`

Thought BALPA would have been more openly vocal on this position, if they have I apologise, but at present I have seen very little to come from 81 New Road on this particular ruling. My opinion only folks, but I think this is a rather poor show to say the least.

Let's never forget all those who perished.