AP News -- Passengers May Have Thwarted Hijackers (VERY detailed !)
September 13, 2001
Passengers May Have Thwarted Hijackers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:14 a.m. ET
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- Just before United Flight 93 crashed, some of the
passengers learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center and may have tried
to overpower their hijackers and keep the jetliner from hitting another landmark.
Authorities have not disclosed whether there was a struggle aboard the plane, and
have not said what caused the airliner carrying 45 people to plunge into a
Pennsylvania field.
But some of the victims telephoned relatives from the plane and said that they had
resolved to wrest control of the flight back from their captors.
Passenger Jeremy Glick, 31, telephoned his wife, Liz, after terrorists took over,
Glick's uncle Tom Crowley said Wednesday. She conferenced the call to a 911
dispatcher, who told Glick about the New York attacks.
``Jeremy and the people around them found out about the flights into the World
Trade Center and decided that if their fate was to die, they should fight,''
Crowley said.
``At some point, Jeremy put the phone down and simply went and did what he
could do'' with the help of an unspecified number of other passengers.
Among them was Thomas Burnett, a 38-year-old business executive from
California. In a series of four cellular phone calls, Burnett had his wife, Deena,
conference in the FBI and calmly gathered information about the other hijacked
flights.
Burnett said ``a group of us are going to do something,'' his wife said, and he
gave every indication that sacrificing the passengers wasn't part of their plan.
``He was coming home. He wasn't leaving. He was going to solve this problem
and come back to us,'' she said at her home in San Ramon, Calif.
CNN reported obtaining a partial transcript of chatter from the plane recorded by
air traffic controllers as the jetliner approached Cleveland. The network said
tower workers heard someone in the cockpit shout, ``Get out of here,'' through
an open microphone.
A second transmission from the plane is heard amid sounds of scuffling with
someone again yelling, ``Get out of here.''
Next to be heard is a voice saying:
``There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat.
There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We
are returning to the airport.''
CNN said an unidentified source who heard the tape claimed that transmission
was of a voice speaking in broken English. The microphone then went dead,
CNN reported.
United spokeswoman Liz Meagher had no comment on the transcript.
The three other hijacked planes in Tuesday's attacks destroyed New York's twin
towers and severely damaged the Pentagon.
U.S. officials have said the Secret Service feared the target of the United flight
was Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland about 85 miles from the
crash site. Others speculated that the White House or Pentagon could have been
targets.
``It sure wasn't going to go down in rural Pennsylvania. This wasn't the target;
the target was Washington, D.C.,'' said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. ``Somebody
made a heroic effort to keep the plane from hitting a populated area.''
He added: ``I would conclude there was a struggle and a heroic individual decided
`I'm going to die anyway, I might as well bring the plane down here.'''
During the flight, other passengers screamed and shouted through cell phones to
share final words with their loved ones. Not Burnett, who seemed unshakable
from his first call.
``He said, `I'm on the airplane, the airplane that's been hijacked, and they've
already knifed a guy. They're saying they have a bomb. Please call the
authorities,''' his wife said.
She called 911, who patched her through to the FBI. She was on the phone with
agents when his second call came.
``I told him in the second call about the World Trade Center and he was very
curious about that and started asking questions. He wanted any information that I
had to help him,'' she said.
By the third phone call, ``I could tell that he was formulating a plan and trying to
figure out what to do next,'' she said. ``You could tell that he was gathering
information and trying to put the puzzle together.''
In his last call, Burnett said he and some other passengers had decided to make a
move. ``I told him to please sit down and not draw attention to himself and he
said no. He said no,'' Deena Burnett said, shaking her head with a half-smile.
In Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said each of the planes was
seized by three to six hijackers armed with knives and box cutters.
Crowley said Glick described the terrorists as ``looking and speaking Arabic,''
and reported that they were armed with knives and had a ``large red box'' they
said contained a bomb.
The plane had left Newark, N.J., at about 8 a.m. for San Francisco. But it
banked sharply as it approached Cleveland and headed back over Pennsylvania,
losing altitude and flying erratically.
It slammed nose-first into a field about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh at 10
a.m. -- an hour after the Trade Center crashes and about 20 minutes after the
Pentagon attack. Hundred of investigators were at the scene Wednesday, hoping
to recover the plane's cockpit voice recorder and other clues.
Deena Burnett is sure her husband had something to do with the fact that with
this plane, at least, no one on the ground was hurt.
``We may never know exactly how many helped him or exactly what they did,
but I have no doubt that airplane was bound for some landmark and that
whatever Tom did and whatever the guys who helped him did they saved many
more lives,'' she said.
``And I'm so proud of him and so grateful,'' she said, breaking off to choke back
a sob.
^------
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press Writer Michelle Locke in Berkeley, Calif.,
and D. Ian Hopper in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press |
