Stewardess ID'd Hijackers Early, Transcripts Show - NY Observer

[WillyT]

<snip>

Emotional catharsis, yes. There was scarcely a dry eye in the Senate hearing room where 10 commissioners are probing the myriad failures of our nation’s defenses and response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But answers? Not many. The most shocking evidence remains hidden in plain sight.

The politically divided 9/11 commission was able to agree on a public airing of four and a half minutes from the Betty Ong tape, which the American public and most of the victims’ families heard for the first time on the evening news of Jan. 27. But commissioners were unaware of the crucial information given in an even more revealing phone call, made by another heroic flight attendant on the same plane, Madeline (Amy) Sweeney. They were unaware because their chief of staff, Philip Zelikow, chooses which evidence and witnesses to bring to their attention. Mr. Zelikow, as a former adviser to the pre-9/11 Bush administration, has a blatant conflict.

"My wife’s call was the first specific information the airline and the government got that day," said Mike Sweeney, the widowed husband of Amy Sweeney, who went face to face with the hijackers on Flight 11. She gave seat locations and physical descriptions of the hijackers, which allowed officials to identify them as Middle Eastern men—by name—even before the first crash. She gave officials key clues to the fact that this was not a traditional hijacking. And she gave the first and only eyewitness account of a bomb on board.

"How do you know it’s a bomb?" asked her phone contact. "Because the hijackers showed me a bomb," Sweeney said, describing its yellow and red wires.

<snip>

Link: http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage1.asp

................

Shit............

[BeHereNow]

1. And so the question is...

who ordered the stand down to the fighter jets
that should have apprehended the hijacked flight?
Hmmm?
BHN
L.I.H.O.P.!!!!

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[Chico Man]

9. The buck stops where?

I want a president that takes responsibility!!!!!!!!!!

Heads should have rolled over 9/11!!!!!

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ediacara]

22. Well as long as you're still around...

Bush slashed the anti-terrorism budget when he came into office.

Clinton and Gore were called paranoid fanatics for wanting to increase the anti-terrorism budget.

This is all public record, you shouldn't show off your foolishness so much.

And btw.... the Air Force was aparently ordered to stand down on Sept 11th for some reason. There was ample time to scramble jets and shoot down the airliners, yet no military planes even escorted them.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but man.... this is also public record, and it is pretty fishy.

[dk91ls]

25. Stand down

Where can I get the info?

As for the cutting of the budget on entry, yes, that was a bad mistake. I just cannot believe that in th few MONTHS that Bush was in office, it his his fault and that is that. You have GOT to see that after, again, EIGHT years of cutting and reverting funds, he cannot be a big facter on the loss of intelligence. He was NOT as good as you would like to think.

[TOhioLiberal]

36. Re: 'Stand down'

<snip>
As for the cutting of the budget on entry, yes, that was a bad mistake. I just cannot believe that in th few MONTHS that Bush was in office, it his his fault and that is that.
<snip>

Ok, The first WTC attack happened in 1993, a few months after Clinton took office. Why are you blaming him for it?
Trekkerlass

[lostnfound]

45. Don't you think a Bush-BinLaden connection for 25+ years is a bit odd?

Who knows what happened? I sure don't. But I do know that many people are complaining about being stopped in their investigations. I do know that most or all of the people on the 9-11 commission have conflicts of interest..connections to the Saudis and in some cases to family members of the BinLadens.

Who cares about Clinton now? The guy in office NOW has fought against a thorough investigation into 9-11 right from the beginning. I can't believe the American people are standing for that.

[SammyWinstonJack]

50. According to you, Clinton is to blame for the '93 WTC

bombing, but Bush* bears no responsibility for Sept. 11th? Nice try! Clinton was only in office what? 8 weeks when the first attack on the WTC center happened and yet you think he is more to blame for that and Bush who had plenty of warnings weeks/months leading up to Sept. 11th, which he CHOSE to ignore, has nothing to answer for? Typical of a Clinton hater.

'nuff said.

[alittlelark]

33. My dad was an AF Colonel

He retired not too long after 9-11. Many High ranking people did. He knew that something was WRONG. It could not have happened the way it did. He had to swallow the red pill and realize - after discussions with friends at other bases that there was a stand-down order. It made him re-think his life.

[RainDog]

49. military oath

your ancedote is chilling. but unfortunately, ancedotes won't stop what is happening to this country because of the soft coup of 2000 and beyond.

military take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign AND domestic.

I wish those military men and women who have retired because of Bush would speak the truth about their concerns.

Lt Col. Karen K., in The American Conservative, has written about the abuses to the Constitution by this regime in the lead up to the Iraq invasion.

If there are military personnel who know things which make them question the media spin, we, the American people, need their protection now more than ever, because I truly believe that the Bush junta is the most dangerous threat to our nation that we have faced since The Civil War.

As the War College has noted, war without end is not the way to deal with terrorism and sets up a population for abuses of power by our so-called elected officials.

Terrorism must be addressed in the nations in which it arose, in their nations' abuses of power and our complicity in the same.

War is a racket, as Gen. Smedley Butler noted, waged for the benefit of corporations with the blood of everyday Americans.

Defense of our nation is essential. Overthrowing other govts is simply wrong.

Allowing an attack on this nation to justify aims of global empire is a slap in the face to our founders and the Constitution which they gave us as a guide to maintaining a govt of, by, and for the people.

[Fovea]

I do not liked to be looked in the face and lied to!

I guess that means no Bush press conferences for you.

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RainDog]

41. Nat'l Guard pays if you don't show up

so why don't you go sign up for Bush's world war?

this information is available from numerous guardsmen.

frankly, I don't care if Bush was there or not, because the truth is that he, like democrat Lloyd Bentson's kid, like Dan Quayle, like so many other repuke chickenhawks, made sure they were not put in harm's way.

I think the Vietnam War was a sickening moment, a shameful moment in our politician's history. they put soldiers in harms way based upon lies. that's disgusting then and it's disgusting now that Bush is doing it.

Before the invasion of Iraq, six generals and numerous intel agents warned that the invasion would make America less safe, rather than more.

I certainly don't feel safer knowing the National Guard is overseas instead of here if something were to happen here.

I don't feel safer knowing that women are now losing their rights as a religious faction takes more and more power (which was ALSO foretold by experts.)

I don't feel safer knowing that the OSP (Cheney, Feith, Libby, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Perle) were falsifying evidence before the war which was NOT the intel the CIA knew to be true (and which was the evidence Bush used to lie to congress and America, and which was NOT part of the evidence or speculation Clinton had).

Scott Ritter told the truth before the war. Six generals told the truth before the war. General Zinni was called a traitor, according to a LT. Col. who was stationed at the Pentagon as reported in American Conservative magazine, because he would not support the OSP lies.

You republicans make me sick because you talk about personal responsibility, then never take any for yourself. CLINTON'S PENIS DID EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG IN THE WORLD TODAY!

You think you earn the right to money you never worked for in your life just because you happen to have the good fortune to be the spawn of someone who made money...and since the history of big money in America is a history of trading with the enemy via war material...

You think that because the law already favors the rich, you should have tax cuts so that the poor shouldn't even have basic needs, then claim that you're such humanitiarians for invading a country and, so far, liberating at least eight thousand of its people from life on earth.

You have scum like Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh as spokespersons and think you are such good people.

You think you should be allowed to cram your religion down every one else's throat, then whine religious persecution when you are expected to respect others beliefs.

You honor a man, Reagan, who approved of genocide in Central America, who supported a Nazi, Klaus Barbie, in Bolivia when he went there to train what he called "a new SS." He had more crooks and felons in his administration than ever in the history of this nation, and only Bush breaks that record.

Then you try to claim the mantle of "goodness" because it's okay to kill people...but only after they're born, according to your calculation...and it's also okay for them to die homeless on the street because it's there fault they have mental problems.

You try to wrap yourself in the flag when the last three presidents you've had are notable for lying to Congress and illegally and unconstitutionally arming right wing murderers...but it's okay, cause they're your murderers, until they're not...as in Saddam.

btw, Uzbekistan is your next armed murderer, ala Saddam. The guy in Uzbekistan boils his opponents to death, but Bush likes him because he lets Bush use his land. So don't give me the bullshit about how we're not still making deals with dictators.

[RainDog]

40. Responsibility

If you want to look at who is responsible for this mess, you need to go back farther than Clinton. You need to go back to Khalid bin Mahfouz, brother-in-law of Osama, and financier of terrorism and Bush's Harken Energy.

Principle, also, in the crooked BCCI scandal, which allowed Bush Sr. and so many of the crooks who are now part of Junior's administration to sell nuclear components to Pakistan, to arm Saddam, to arm Iran (in return for an election for Reagan...called The October Surprise), and to fund terrorism.

Khalid bin Mahfouz has, unlike the lies you get in the republican media, maintained biz relationships with Osama via The Islamic Relief Fund and International Holding Co. whose offices are located in Oxford, UK.

Until three weeks before his appt to the 9-11 comissission, Thomas Kean was in biz with Mahfouz via Amareda Hess/Delta Oil, as Fortune magazine noted in "Six Degrees of Osama." (you can go google this, and all of the above, and read about it in Forbidden Truth, taken from things already reported, or via the many books about the BCCI scandal.)

So...three weeks before his appt to investigate the 9-11 attacks which were supposedly carried out by the brother-in-law of his biz partner, who also is the former biz partner of the current pResident...and there is no conflict of interest?

But Bush initially wanted Kissinger to head the committee, and Kissinger is now KNOWN to be a murderer by proxy in the assassination of Rene Schneider and Allende, the democratically-elected leader of another country.

If Bush has nothing to be responsible for here, why did he stonewall an investigation for a year, only budget 4 million, while the fucking stupid repuke congress witchhunt wasted 70 million tax dollars getting their porn at our expense?

Why is his fixer suppressing information?

What about the warnings from the outgoing administration about al-q being the biggest threat, and Cheney ignoring it to make sure his biz buddies got to carve up Iraq in the Energy Policy Task Force meetings in the war they were going to start in Iraq before 9-11 happened?

What about the warnings from the bipartisan Hart-Rudman report?

What about every time Clinton made a move militarily he was accused of wagging the dog by the Republican whores in Congress and in the media?

What about the nations who tried to warn the Bush administration of an attack...including Germany, France, Russia, Israel, Egypt?

I'm not saying Clinton was perfect, but if you think that Bush has done a good job handling this, then I'm so sorry you drank the kool-aid. They are manipulating the American public with their "alerts" and lying their asses off about what they knew and when they knew it.

[murielm99]

43. If you don't like to be looked in the face and lied to,

you must close your eyes every time shrub speaks for the cameras.

Holy fucking hypocrisy, Batman!

[Alpharetta]

47. Bush doesn't want us to know what he knew

He's suppressing as much info on 9/11 as he can control.

Why?

[maggrwaggr]

19. it happened on his watch

he needs to take responsibility for it.

He was warned and did nothing. He was too busy figuring out how to invade Iraq to actually defend the country.

[calimary]

21. Uh, just exactly WHOSE watch was this on? Clinton's, I suppose?

Dear friend, might I remind you, Clinton had left office in January of that year, after having his National Security staff brief dear darling CONdi about what was likely to be her biggest headache when she took on her new job. Briefings and warnings at which she promptly turned her nose up, and filed in the "round file."

Just in case you were having one of those Uncle Ronnie moments...

[dk91ls]

31. no Uncle Ronnie here

I cannot believe this. So if I understand this right, once you leave office, that was that. Nothing of what I did or didn't do matters? I cannot think that way sorry. Many things that Bush 1 did I'm sure can and is being used to show how "stupid" the Republicans are. As for Clinton, if that was that, forget and forgotten, what exactly is he going to have in his library? Cigars and dry cleaning?
As for the statement on given the intel. and round filling it....right. In that sense of sarcasm, can you prove they gave Condi everything?

[WillyT]

35. Man, Did YOU Take A Left, When Ya Meant To Take A Right ???

:shrug::evilgrin::shrug:

[BeHereNow]

42. Welcome to DU dk911s

Your response is indicative of a newcomer who
has not read/researched the information surrounding this
topic. That is okay. We are glad you are here, and hope that
you are willing to spend some time learning about the topics
we discuss. Apologies for anyone who has attacked you
because of what you don't know yet.
Hang in there, because the problem we are facing
as a nation is not a democratic or republican issue.
It is not about Bush or Clinton, but rather,
"the men behind the curtain" they are the real power
behind the destructive direction our country is heading.
They are corporatists; members of a multi-national corporate
network of power. they do not care about you, and they do not
care about me. They care only about gaining power-
globally. WE, as the people of this nation are in this together.
Problem is, rather that gathering together in our common
problem, we squabble among ourselves.
Please visit the following web site with an open mind:
http://www.unansweredquestions.org
You will then know better what we are discussing and why.
Best to You and Yours-
BHN

[lostnfound]

46. I second that! And well put. Welcome to DU dk911s..

hope you stick around long enough to hear us out with an open mind.

We are ALL getting lied to by our politicians and we the people need to weed through the garbage that gets thrown out by the TV networks.

[DemoTex]

2. My friend on American Airlines Flight 77 probably had her throat cut

Her husband and I flew many trips together for another airline. God bless Michelle.

[pinto]

7. Sorry, DT. this thread and the other at GD is heartbreaking, those crews

tried so damn hard to let someone know. and did so professionally. all the way.

[kath]

11. Awwww, DemoTex, my sympathies. That article made my blood

boil, and I don't know anyone even remotely involved.

[RainDog]

37. DemoTex, that is too horrible to contemplate

I am so sorry for her and her family, and the families of everyone who lost people they love in these attacks.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Here are a couple of versions of this story, one is from 09/2001

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1556096.stm

The last moments of Flight 11

Ms Sweeney's account of the hijacking provides unique evidence of what took place but it also appears to conflict with previous information.

The FBI has named five hijackers on board Flight 11, whereas Ms Sweeney spotted only four.

Also, the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the hijackers' names.



http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/DailyNews/primetime_flightattendants_020718.html

July 18, 200?

Woodward said Sweeney spoke "very, very calmly... in a way which was quick but calm." She gave him the seat numbers for four of the five hijackers, allowing airline staff to pull up their names, phone numbers, addresses — and even credit card numbers — on the reservations computer. One of the names that came up was Mohamed Atta, the man the FBI would later identify as the leader of all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Sweeney told Woodward the hijackers seemed to be of Middle Eastern descent and said they had gone into the cockpit with a bomb with yellow wires attached.

She said they had stabbed the two first-class flight attendants, Barbara Arestegui and Karen Martin, whose station at the front of the plane likely made them the first crew members to confront the hijackers. She said they had also slashed the throat of a business class passenger, who was bleeding severely.


edit: fixed link

[barbaraann]

4. The ABC link doesn't work.

Has it been scrubbed?

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Fixed link

Sorry about that. Something got lost in the cut and paste.

[NashVegas]

13. "Hi. I'm a Known Terrorist"

"And I'm going to use my own credit card to buy airline seats with."

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. At this point, do we really know who the hijackers were, and...

...the countries from which they came?

FBI Admits: No Evidence Links 'Hijackers' to 9-11.
The possibility that 19 Muslim men accused of being the Sept. 11 hijackers were not, in fact, the hijackers, is not so extraordinary an idea as it might seem.
<http://www.americanfreepress.net/051302/FBI_Admits__No_Evidence_/fbi_admits__no_evidence_.html>


Pentagon Lied: Terrorists Trained at U. S. Bases
<http://www.madcowprod.com/issue06.html>

[evworldeditor]

10. It's the Unanswered Questions that are equally disturbing.

God bless the four widows, Gail Sheehy and the New York Observer for this continuing series. I think this is the third article in the series and its starting to ask some very embarassing questions... and you don't have to believe in a conspiracy to start to realize there are some very big holes --- like the seven minute discrepancy in the crash time of Flight 93, the jet at crashed in Pennsylvania -- in the official story line.

[moof]

12. Vey informantive, it's a must read

Sorry to sound so uninformed but is the Observer
a widely distributed & respected newspaper?

[RainDog]

15. It's a weekly. Joe Conason writes for it

and Gail Sheehy is a well known writer (the person who has done this series of articles.)

It's well known around the country among people I know who do not get their news from CNN.

I've read it online for years.

[NashVegas]

16. No and Yes

Not widely distributed, but well respected. And Gail Sheehy is a respected journalist.

[Just Me]

14. The point is,...all "facts" were screened for purposes of manipulation!!!

This is a consistent thread with this administration,...screening "facts" to suit their purpose. I really don't give a damn WHY. I am really pissed off that they have screened "facts" to manipulate others to suit their personal, freakin' agenda. Isn't that evil enough for anyone?

[RainDog]

17. more damning censorship of the truth

"At least 20 minutes before the plane crashed, the airline had the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit cards of three of the five hijackers. ...The fact that the hijackers initiated their takeover by killing a passenger and stabbing two crew members had to be the first tip-off that this was anything but a standard hijacking. "I don’t recall any flight crew or passenger being harmed during a hijacking in the course of my career," said Peg Ogonowski, a senior flight attendant who has flown with American for 28 years.

...The captain of American’s Flight 11 stayed at the controls much of the diverted way from Boston to New York, sending surreptitious radio transmissions to authorities on the ground. Captain John Ogonowski was a strong and burly man with the instincts of a fighter pilot who had survived Vietnam. He gave extraordinary access to the drama inside his cockpit by triggering a "push-to-talk button" on the aircraft’s yoke (or wheel). "The button was being pushed intermittently most of the way to New York," an F.A.A. air-traffic controller told The Christian Science Monitor the day after the catastrophe. "He wanted us to know something was wrong. When he pushed the button and the terrorist spoke, we knew there was this voice that was threatening the pilot, and it was clearly threatening."

...more than one F.A.A. controller heard a transmission with an ominous statement by a terrorist in the background, saying, "We have more planes. We have other planes." During these transmissions, the pilot’s voice and the heavily accented voice of a hijacker were clearly audible, according to two controllers. All of it was recorded by a F.A.A. traffic-control center in Nashua, N.H. According to the reporter, Mark Clayton, the federal law-enforcement officers arrived at the F.A.A. facility shortly after the World Trade Center attack and took the tape.

To this writer’s knowledge, there has been no public mention of the pilot’s narrative since the news report on Sept. 12, 2001. Families of the flight crew have only heard about it, but when Peg Ogonowski asked American Airlines to let her hear it, she never heard back. Their F.A.A. superiors forbade the controllers to talk to anyone else."

[RainDog]

18. Christian Science Monitor article mentioned by Sheehy

here is a link via Paul's unansweredquestions.com site to the Christian Science Monitor article about the pilot pushing the talk button on the plane's steering.

http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/2001/csmonitor091301.html

[yo-yo-ma]

23. "That's one bad pilot"

What an asshole. What a moron.
How dumb and cruel.

[WillyT]

28. Bingo !!! --- Good Point Yo-Yo-Ma, And Welcome To The DU !!!

Lookin forward to hearing more from you.

:hi:

[RainDog]

32. Bush, incompetent, at best, as always

welcome to DU.

it makes me sick that the repukes have tried to spin the lie that Bush did not sit in that classroom for an additional 20 minutes.

then they tried to sell the photos of him looking out the AF1 window as though getting his walking orders from Cheney over the phone makes him look presidential.

sometimes, in my more cynical moments, I think the goal was to assassinate Bush (the two guys posing as reporters who supposedly tried to get to him like the Aghani opposition leader the week before.) and that one failed.

but if someone were "letting it happen" then maybe they wouldn't mind if Bush were out of the way. Could you imagine if Cheney had been made prez at that same time? :scared:

[Oilwellian]

24. This particular quote is VERY odd

Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I'm quite stunned by something Sheehy pointed out. Here it is:

In Bob Woodward’s book, Bush at War, the time of Mr. Cheney’s call was placed before 10 a.m. The Vice President explained to the President that a hijacked airliner was a weapon; even if the airliner was full of civilians, Mr. Cheney insisted, giving American fighter pilots the authority to fire on it was "the only practical answer."

The President responded, according to Mr. Woodward, "You bet."

First of all, why would Cheney be explaining to Bush at 10 AM that the planes were being used as a weapon? Jaysus H. Christ, 3 planes had already hit their targets by that time. WHY wouldn't Bush know this automatically??

Secondly, if you were finally agreeing (since it took some INSISTING) to shoot an airplane full of civilians out of the sky, would you answer with "you bet?" What kind of answer is that???

[NashVegas]

27. I Think Bush Just Plain Out Disassociated

You know? He hit the 'disconnect' button. Couldn't deal with it.

[iamjoy]

34. "You bet" = "Bring it on"

What kind of response is "you bet" (ordering a hijacked plane to be shot down)

The same kind as "Bring it on" to Iraqi insurgents.

[NashVegas]

26. Aw, Shit

Melody LeRoy later learned from a member of the Air Force who worked with her husband that "a couple of weeks before the incident, they were all sitting around and talking about the intelligence that was filtering through the military that something big was going to happen. For all of this to get ignored," she said as she swallowed a sob, "it’s difficult to excuse that."

Fuckers. Fuckers. Fuckers.

[Oilwellian]

29. I know what you mean

This article is chocked full of very telling things.

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[bleedingheart]

38. This makes me so mad! How many airforce bases are

in the NY area? How many planes could have been scrambled to avoid the disaster that did happen? I feel that it was inevitable that the planes would have crashed or been shot down...but Mr Sweeney is right to be angry that his wife's valiant efforts were in vain because no one did anything to prevent what happened.

Between those brave women's phone calls and radar...the US military should have been able to figure out what to do.

Christ what do we pay all those taxes for to the DOD????

[ngGale]

44. The US military is well trained and knew exactly what to do, but

they have a 'Commander In Chief' that gave the orders. STAND DOWN
Check NORAD for transcripts of 9/11. If they have not been scrubbed.

[fishnfla]

48. Oh my God, this is horrible!!

he sat there, reading that book about a goat.

This is the most heart-wrenching story I've read ever. Demo-Tex, I'm sorry.

This is sad....

[RainDog]

51. Bush sat on his ass for 20 min. when our nation was attacked

I remember that day so well.

Then I started reading bullshit from the republican propganda mill that denied what I had seen with my own eyes.

I did not intially think that the Bush junta LIHOP or anything else.

the one thing I remember thinking that horrible day is that Bush is the worst person we could have in office at this moment in American history.

And so far he's more than proved that to be true.

It was only later, after the first raw emotion wore off, that I started to question "facts" --and again, much of those questions started when I heard the lies about what a strong leader Bush was at that time.

Guiliani and Clinton were on the street at ground zero before Bush ever showed his sorry ass.

maybe he was running around trying to find his Alabama Nat'l Guard records during those two days when others were exposed to the hazardous air at ground zero...a fact that he also made sure the EPA lied about.

If there is karma, Bush deserves to be executed in Texas. If there is a just Christian God, Bush will have a special place in hell.

[WillyT]

52. Kick For Those Who May Have Missed This !!!

:kick:

[Nashyra]

53. Remember that in his departin g speech Clark

made a point of accusing Bush "of not doing all he could to protect America before 9-11" I don't recall others making the accusation, now that he's out he can go forth with these accusations with these testimonies to back him up

[RainDog]

54. I think this is more important than the awol story, so

:kick: