The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [228]
7 partial record: The authors have drawn on the transcript as released in 2009;
8 Welsh: CR, 455n62, NYT, 3/27/02, www.unitedheroes.com;
9 Green: CR, 455n62.
10 cockpit key/coded knock: Longman, 6. Accounts vary as to whether United attendants carried keys. The FBI was told that “some flight attendants used to carry the cockpit key on their security badge neck chains.” Jere Longman, a New York Times reporter who has written an excellent book on the Flight 93 hijacking, suggests that attendants did not carry keys (FBI 302 of [name redacted], 12/19/01, “FBI 302s Arestegui,” B10, T7, CF, Longman, 6).
11 forty-nine/tough, etc.: ibid., 25–, www.flightattendants.org, Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh), 10/28/01;
12 Green doubled: ibid.;
13 Basmala: “An Exegesis of the Basmala,” http://muslimmatters.org, “Bismillah,” defined at http://wahiduddin.net.
14 voice not heard again: The 9/11 Commission concluded that the voice recorder data indicated that a flight attendant was “killed or otherwise silenced.” United Airlines officials would later tell Deborah Welsh’s husband, Patrick, that an attendant was stabbed early in the hijacking, implying that the victim was his wife (CR, 12, NYT, 3/27/02).
15 “We are going back”: As before, the terrorist’s words were heard not as intended by the passengers but by ground control and by other aircraft.
16 Bradshaw/Starfix: MFR re Richard Belme, 11/21/03, “DOJ Doc. Request 35,” B12, T7, CF, MFR 04020029, 5/13/04, MFR 04017218, 11/21/03, “Ref. Lead Control No. SFA62,” FBI int. of [name redacted], 9/11/01, INTELWIRE, FBI 302s of Richard Belme, Ray Kime, & Andrew Lubkemann, 9/11/01, “Key 302s,” B19, T7, CF. Starfix was the same United facility that had earlier taken a call from an attendant on hijacked Flight 175—see p. 28.
17 “knives were”: Timeline compiled by Joe Vickers, “Timelines 9-11, 2 of 2,” B20, T7, CF.
18 “lying on the floor”: This information derives from accounts of the phone call made from the plane by passenger Todd Beamer, who from 9:43 used a seatback phone to hold a long conversation with Verizon supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Jefferson said afterward that Beamer was being passed information by a flight attendant whose voice sounded “African-American.” Of the two African-American flight attendants on Flight 93, Wanda Green and CeeCee Lyles, the attendant who spoke to Beamer is more likely to have been Lyles—who worked to the rear of the plane (MFR 04020031, 5/11/04, FBI 302 of [name redacted], 9/22/01, INTELWIRE, Lisa Jefferson and Felicia Middlebrooks, Called, Chicago: Northfield, 2006, 36, recording of conversation, 5/10/04, “Flight #93 Calls—Todd Beamer,” B12, T7, CF).
19 Sliney first day: USA Today, 8/12/02;
20 Delta flight: Spencer, 167, MFR 04017314m, 10/2/03, CR, 10, 455n68, 28;
21 bomb/“ground stop”: CR, 25, 28.
22 “Order everyone”: USA Today, 8/12/02. There has been controversy over the origin of this order. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, testifying later to a congressional committee, said he “immediately called the FAA, told them to bring all the planes down.… [It] was the right thing to do.” Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, writing in The Washington Post, attributed the decision to land all planes to Mineta. The book Out of the Blue, by The New York Times’s Richard Bernstein, states that the order was issued by FAA administrator Jane Garvey. Joshua Green, for Slate, reported that the decision was in fact taken by the FAA’s acting deputy administrator, Monte Belger. The 9/11 Commission credited Sliney, citing the Command Center traffic transcript. In an interview with the authors, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown emphasized that the decision was collaborative—taken not only by Ben Sliney but also by facility manager Linda Schuessler