Did American Airline officials lie on Amy Sweeney 's phone call?

[Woody Box]

I'm very surprised to learn that Amy Sweeney's phone call was recorded on tape. I thought there were just notes - and I'm not the only one:

http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage2.asp

And that is what we are told before:

http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/attack/abc_calmbefore.html

Sweeney's phone call was not recorded, but Woodward took notes that would later become crucial to the FBI's investigation.


Hmm.

http://www.newsday.com/ny-uscell212376910sep21,0,3149880.story

FBI officials in Dallas, where American Airlines is based, were able, on the day of the terrorist attacks, to piece together a partial transcript and an account of the phone call. American Airlines officials said such calls are not typically recorded, suggesting that the FBI may have reconstructed the conversation from interviews.

Hmmmmmmm.


http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28012

He says Shiavo plans to ask for Woodward's original notes of his conversation with Sweeney, which apparently was not recorded, as part of discovery in the case.

American spokesman John Hotard says he does not know where the original notes are.

"I've never seen them. I don't know if they went to the FBI, or if a copy went to the FBI," he said in a recent WorldNetDaily interview. "But the FBI got a hold of them very quickly, and wrote a summary."

Please, someone tell me, I've forgotten - is it still possible for victim family members to sue the airlines?

[dinyc]

1. Depends

on whether they took the settlement or not. I believe most of them have. This is Gale Sheehy's 2nd really good article on the 9-11 aircraft. She rocks.

Was Sweeney's call actually recorded? It sounds like info was passed on...this was puzzling to me because if she called Boston why not get the FBI in Boston who are already dealing with the hijackings to get involved since they are questioning Woodward. Other articles say the FBI in Dallas/Ft. Worth are the ones who put together the statement.

Since there was no tape machine in his office, Woodward began repeating the flight attendant’s alarming account to a colleague, Nancy Wyatt, the supervisor of pursers at Logan. On another phone, Ms. Wyatt was simultaneously transmitting Ms. Sweeney’s words to the airline’s Fort Worth headquarters. It was that relayed account that was played for the families.

In light of this rather convoluted chain of evidence how do those reports of a gun and a shot passenger factor into this?

Interesting that Mark Bingham's mom has been employed by the airlines for almost 30 years.

Hey Woody have you seen this?

In the FAA's command center in Herndon, Ben Sliney learns of the radio transmission. The words will haunt him all morning. "We have some planes."

"Order everyone to land": Sept. 11 was Ben Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager at the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va. Hours after starting, Sliney ordered the airspace over the United States cleared-the first time in history such an order had been given.

Sept. 11 is Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager, the chess master of the air traffic system. The New Yorker, a lawyer who once sued the FAA on behalf of air traffic controllers, now walks the floor of the center — a room that resembles NASA's Mission Control.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2002/2002-08-12-clear-skies.htm

Not a great day to be a newbie huh? But at least he wasn't the only one.


Leidig said "On 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U.S. Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations, NMCC, on the following day.   I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001."
Winfield had requested Leidig to assume his watch at what turned out to be the very outset of the September 11 attacks--but even after American Flight 11 had already been determined to be hijacked just minutes before Winfield handed over his watch to Leidig.

http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=65&mode=&order=0&thold=0

[dinyc]

2. Depends

on whether they took the settlement or not. I believe most of them have. This is Gale Sheehy's 2nd really good article on the 9-11 aircraft. She rocks.

Was Sweeney's call actually recorded? It sounds like info was passed on...this was puzzling to me because if she called Boston why not get the FBI in Boston who are already dealing with the hijackings to get involved since they are questioning Woodward. Other articles say the FBI in Dallas/Ft. Worth are the ones who put together the statement.

Since there was no tape machine in his office, Woodward began repeating the flight attendant’s alarming account to a colleague, Nancy Wyatt, the supervisor of pursers at Logan. On another phone, Ms. Wyatt was simultaneously transmitting Ms. Sweeney’s words to the airline’s Fort Worth headquarters. It was that relayed account that was played for the families.

In light of this rather convoluted chain of evidence how do those reports of a gun and a shot passenger factor into this?

Interesting that Mark Bingham's mom has been employed by the airlines for almost 30 years.

Hey Woody have you seen this?

In the FAA's command center in Herndon, Ben Sliney learns of the radio transmission. The words will haunt him all morning. "We have some planes."

"Order everyone to land": Sept. 11 was Ben Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager at the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va. Hours after starting, Sliney ordered the airspace over the United States cleared-the first time in history such an order had been given.

Sept. 11 is Sliney's first day on the job as national operations manager, the chess master of the air traffic system. The New Yorker, a lawyer who once sued the FAA on behalf of air traffic controllers, now walks the floor of the center — a room that resembles NASA's Mission Control.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2002/2002-08-12-clear-skies.htm

Not a great day to be a newbie huh? But at least he wasn't the only one.


Leidig said "On 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U.S. Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations, NMCC, on the following day.   I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001."
Winfield had requested Leidig to assume his watch at what turned out to be the very outset of the September 11 attacks--but even after American Flight 11 had already been determined to be hijacked just minutes before Winfield handed over his watch to Leidig.

http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=65&mode=&order=0&thold=0

[seatnineb]

3. Boston H.Q

Dinyc asks........
"Why not get the FBI IN BOSTON who are already DEALING WITH THE HIJACKING to get involved since they are questioning Woodward."

Dinyc.......
Heres one of the reasons why the fairy tale (re)constructors are having to (re)write the BOSTON F.B.I out of the mainstream script......

Congress Probes (Boston)FBI's Alleged Threats To
Board
By J.M. Lawrence
Sunday, June 17, 2001

"Congressmen probing whether the Boston FBI tried to quash commutations for two innocent men want former Massachusetts parole board members to testify about alleged intimidation they faced after backing Peter J. Limone's bid for freedom in 1983, committee sources said."
http://www.laborers.org/Boston%20Herald_FBI_6-17-01.htm

Later that year those inquisitive congressmen even had to content with the President Of The United States himself......to get that all elusive information from the Boston F.B.I.......

"In December, BUSH INVOKED EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE FOR THE FIRST TIME in his administration TO BLOCK CONGRESS from seeing ``deliberative documents'' from the prosecutions. But negotiations between the committee and the Justice Department delivered an agreement by the end of the day."

Boston Herald via
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/637038/posts

And just for good measure........
Guess who was THE HEAD of the Boston F.B.I in the 1990's
Thats right......

CURRENT FBI director Robert Mueller....
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/text6-1-2002-19608.asp

Now which F.B.I branch pieced together that Sweeney phone call?

[Abe Linkman]

4. Bingo! seatnineb

Excellent work. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

[dinyc]

5. I didn't really ask that. I was ruminating as I was

reading the news item. The info you posted — 60 Minutes did a profile on it about 1-2 years ago. I don't think it's especially relevant to what I was saying and what Woody posted. You would be hard pressed to find a city in the US where the FBI has not engaged in similar tactics, especially with regards to organized crime. And of course once Mueller was head of the FBI he could pull strings where he wanted. (Although at the same there have been those who wonder if the Bulger Crime Organization might've had some shadowy links to the 9-11 story in general. )

I don't think Boston is being rewritten out of the script.

What was not believable was the original story where a guy takes some notes and nobody else knew what was going on and even though he is on the phone with this hijacked flight attendant he can't put it together that her plane is the one that impacts the WTC when it was obvious to many people by that point that Flight 11 had changed direction, was off course, was not communicating and was headed to the city.

I think it makes more sense that what is finally coming out now is closer to the actual truth of what happened. As Sweeney is talking to Woodward, Wyatt, who is sitting next to him, is relaying the info to AA HQ, who are already going into CYA mode. I believe the people who originally fielded the Ong call did the same thing--got someone further up the chain of command to handle what was becoming a very unmanageable situation. Even though no one can actually prevent the plane from impacting the target, they were kept up to speed on where it was and what the FA were saying. After it was all over, the FBI and the airlines got together to work out the story so it came out best for everyone. As long as everyone in that group believed that there were actually hijackers, the real focus is on them and not on whatever shortcomings in the system that actually helped facilitate the plot.

*But since I know Woody and others have been pursuing the "drill" angle, some of this could also conceivably be viewed through that prism as well.

[seatnineb]

6. Dinyc......

I would beg to defer........
When the President Of The United States tries to invoke an executive priviledge to block a congressional inquiry regarding the activities of a certain F.B.I branch.........it implies that the stakes are high.
It practically wreaks of the Nixon era.

As for the Sweeney story couretesy of this same F.B.I branch.

Sweeney's story is in a state of constant evolution.
The evolving myth is being expressed for multiple reasons.......

To consolidate the heroism of Sweeney.
And to accentuate the barbarity of the aggressors.


But most significantly
It is also being used to deflect attention away from the testimony of Betty Ong.......
And to suppress the contents of the initial "first draft" of this same Sweeney phone call........

Notice how the most recent accounts of Betty Ong never feature the seat numbers that she passed up "that chain of command".

What information(recieved from Ong) did a reservation agent and a security analyst of American Airlines have that so petrified the F.A.A,C.I.A and the F.B.I.........
And how did it tie in with that fabled passport that survived the WTC inferno.

Dinyc......
Do what Bolo and Mercutio have voluntarily failed to do and go find me those Ong seat numbers........
And everything else will fall into place.

[LoneStar]

7. Here's the seat numbers

From a November, 2001 article from the Boston Globe:

http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2001/bostonglobe112301.html

"Ong said the four hijackers had come from first-class seats: 2A, 2B, 9A, and 9B. She said the wounded passenger was in seat 10B."

[dinyc]

8. So, we differ.

I won't lose any zzzzzzzzzzzzzz over it.

When the President Of The United States tries to invoke an executive priviledge to block a congressional inquiry regarding the activities of a certain F.B.I branch.........it implies that the stakes are high.

You take the view that this move by Bush was motivated by what happened in Boston on 9-11. I don't agree. Other Presidents between Nixon and Bush have used this privilege and if Boston FBI HQ wants to bury or destroy evidence related to 9-11, I don't think Bush or Congress could do anything about it one way or another.

Sweeney's story is in a state of constant evolution.

No it isn't. The substance of what she said hasn't changed. What has changed is the number of people who knew about it, as it was happening, and their reactions to her information.

But most significantly
It is also being used to deflect attention away from the testimony of Betty Ong.......
And to suppress the contents of the initial "first draft" of this same Sweeney phone call........

Ong's message, the part that was recorded, was played at these hearings. If they wanted to deflect away from any role she had in 9-11, they certainly could've ignored her. They've ignored alot of other things.

Notice how the most recent accounts of Betty Ong never feature the seat numbers that she passed up "that chain of command".

I remember that most accounts since 9-11 didn't feature her providing seat numbers. She was the Flight Attendant who reported gas and people stabbed. If her and Sweeney gave the wrong seat numbers or didn't give all of them, that doesn't automatically mean there is something fishy going on. Considering the situation they could've made a mistake. It has been known since 9/01 that there were discrepancies between the seat numbers. Why are you making it sound like this is some kind of new deal?


What information(recieved from Ong) did a reservation agent and a security analyst of American Airlines have that so petrified the F.A.A,C.I.A and the F.B.I.........And how did it tie in with that fabled passport that survived the WTC inferno.

You have the seat numbers now.
If you have a scenario...spell it out.
Unless it's that one where Israeli Supercommando Daniel Lewin shoots the pilots, throws the passport out the window, fires a missile, and makes the plane disappear.

[LoneStar]

9. Partial (4 1/2 minute) transcript and audio of Ong's call

"Ong's message, the part that was recorded, was played at these hearings."

If anyone's interested, The Memory Hole has a link to the trancript and audio of Ongs call.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/911-ong-tape.htm

[DulceDecorum]

10. Seat 10B

Did passenger 9B kill passenger 10B?
Or did passenger 10B kill passenger 9B?
That is the question.

Here is the key excerpt, which is very specific (although the time is plainly wrong):
"The American Airlines FAA Principal Security Inspector (PSI) was notified by Suzanne Clark of American Airlines Corporate Headquarters, that an on board flight attendant contacted American Airlines Operations Center and informed that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B at 9:20 a.m.
"The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al Suqami. One bullet was reported to have been fired."
In fact, Flight 11 had already crashed well before 9:20 a.m. (assuming the FAA memo writer was referring to the Eastern time zone and not a later one). At 8:25 a.m. – nearly an hour earlier than stated in the memo – Flight 11 had turned sharply off its planned westbound path and headed south toward Manhattan. It then crashed into the north tower at 8:48 a.m.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26626

The FAA memo's summary of the Flight 11 shooting incident, real or not, is the most detailed and specific -- not to mention shocking -- of the four hijacking summaries. It says Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was "shot by passenger Satam al-Suqami," sitting behind him in seat 10B. (Both names match those on the manifest released by the airline.)
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26676

Sweeney called Michael Woodward, the flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: "a hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead." To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded.
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/dannylewin9_11terrorattack.html

Ong said the four hijackers had come from first-class seats: 2A, 2B, 9A, and 9B. She said the wounded passenger was in seat 10B.
http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2001/bostonglobe112301.html

The other suspects on the plane were Abdul Aziz Al-Omri (Abdulaziz Alomari), whose name was given as Abdul in the flight manifest and Sattam Al-Saqmi (Satam Al-Suqami) in seat 10B. Arab News' report about the presence of the Saudi pilot Abdul Rahman Al-Omri in Jeddah, safe and sound, made the FBI withdraw his photo and amend the name of the hijacker.
http://www.arabview.com/articles.asp?article=98

We will deal with the knife vs gun issue later,
10 minutes before we acknowledge the fact that
according the BTS,
this plane never ever even left the ground.

Bye the bye,
seatnineb's comments about the Boston FBI are most valid.

Did FAA get Flight 11 gun story from FBI?
American gave passenger manifest to agents before memo penned

Even some American Airlines officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, admit they are puzzled as to how such a detailed account, if indeed false, could have wended its way into a critical memo to FAA chief Jane Garvey. Did the gun story come from the FBI? Does federal law enforcement know something they don't?
The memo, written at 5:31 p.m. on Sept. 11, mentions information, such as the seat assignments of the alleged shooter and passenger, that could not have come from the press.
"They would not have had (passenger) manifest information at that point," said an American Airlines executive.
But the FBI did have such information then.
"We sent the location of the bad guys (on the plane), and the whole manifest to the FBI within hours after the plane ran into the building," the American executive told WorldNetDaily.com.
Indeed, the FAA's summary of Flight 11 events closes with: "At 11:26 a.m., a passenger manifest was obtained."
The FBI denies being the source of the memo.
"Nowhere in there is the FBI mentioned," FBI spokesman Steve Berry said today in a phone interview. "A lot of information was coming from a lot of different places that day."
The FBI leaked an account of a passenger stabbing, but not a shooting, on Flight 11 to the press in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26637

The Boston FBI is
Mueller's FBI.
which STILL has photos of LIVING people
up on their website
and they are blaming those LIVING people
for crashing planes
on September 11, 2001.

[seatnineb]

12. Sweeney and Ong substance.....

Way wrong answer Dinyc......
The substance of what Madeline Sweeney said HAS changed.

And it is not a question of what has been added (courtesy of the belated testimony of others).......
Rather it is a question of what has been taken away.......

And to prove the point ..........
Find me a MAINSTREAM/MAJOR media news article(link) AFTER September 27TH ,2001 that DOES NOT CONTAIN the following statement BUT CONTAINS SOMETHING SIMILAR......

"Also, the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the hijackers' names. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1556096.stm

By the way the above BBC report was gleaned from the Los Angeles Times.

Happy surfing........

Oh.... and you can exclude the following article(November,2001) from your search.......

"In her conversation with Woodward, Sweeney, the flight attendant, relayed much the same information, including crew numbers, slightly different seat numbers"
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/planes_reconstruction.htm

As for the Ong testimony.........
What are you afraid of?
Name me the individuals that Ong identified....
You have the Flight 11 manifest........remember?
Let me hear it from the horses mouth....
Or do I have to add you and Lonestar to the list happily dominated by Mecutio ,Bolo and LARED......

And as for this........
"Israeli Supercommando Daniel Lewin shoots the pilots, throws the passport out the window, fires a missile, and makes the plane disappear. "

Gee......
Thats some imagination you have there.....
No wonder that you would probably believe the following.......

Hijacker extraordinaire Atta stabs counter-terrorist expert Lewin who is barring the cockpit door,then overcomes Oganowski and McGuiness in the cockpit BEFORE they have a chance to pump in the hijack code....
He then overcomes the 1:20 descent gradient for a 767 ,ploughing the plane into the North Tower.......
And much to Atta's posthumous bemusement..then have the passport of Lewins co-murderer(Al-Suquami) survive the subsequent inferno....

Yes?
No?

[LoneStar]

13. Speaking of seat numbers...

Regarding the seat numbers that were occupied by the hijackers -- I've only seen four seats mentioned-- 2A, 2B, 9A and 9B. There were supposedly five hijackers aboard Flight 11. Where was the fifth one seated?

I seem to recall reading some reports that speculated the fifth hijacker may have posed as a pilot for another airline and may have been riding jumpseat in the cockpit. If this were the case, would this be something that American Airlines would have kept a record of?

[LoneStar]

14. Another question about Betty Ong's call

This article originally ran in the New York Times, but it was reprinted in the Wichita Eagle. Because you have to register first to read New York Times articles, I'll post the link from the Wichita eagle.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/8463709.htm

"WASHINGTON - Earlier this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. In a calm voice, Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.

At first, however, Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, 'Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."

If you go back and read the 4 1/2 minute transcript of Betty Ong's call that I posted a link to in Reply #9, nowhere in the transcript does anyone question Ms. Ong as to whether this might be a case of air rage vs. an actual hijacking. So my question is -- where is Bob Kerrey getting this information? Is it from testimony that was given during the hearings, or has he heard a portion of the tape of Ms.Ong's call that hasn't been made public yet?

Aso, this is 4 1/2 minutes of a 23 minute call. Is this the first 4 1/2 minutes? The last 4 1/2 minutes? Sometime in between?

[paulthompson]

11. Sounds to me...

Sounds to me like the call wasn't recorded, but another call made at the same time of someone giving a close account of the call while it was happening WAS recorded. See the NY Observer:

On the American Airlines tape played at the meeting, a voice is heard relaying to the airline’s headquarters the blow-by-blow account by Ms. Sweeney of mayhem aboard Flight 11. The flight attendant had gone face to face with the hijackers, and reported they had shown her what appeared to be a bomb, with red and yellow wires. The young blond mother of two had secreted herself in the next-to-last passenger row and used an AirFone card, given to her by another flight attendant, Sara Low, to call the airline’s flight-services office at Boston’s Logan airport.

But what I'm intrigued about is this tidbit a little further blow in the same article, about the Sweeney info:

"In Fort Worth, two managers in S.O.C. were sitting beside each other and hearing it," says one former American Airlines employee who heard the tape. "They were both saying, ‘Do not pass this along. Let’s keep it right here. Keep it among the five of us.’"

---

What's THAT all about?