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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (195677)	10/25/2001 9:19:42 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

Off course this is only first person testimony and not contrived and made up stupid charges of the lefty loons like yourself and your other friends. Air Controller Shocker: Hijackers Aimed Directly for White House Hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Penatgon on Sept. 11, was initially headed directly for the White House at a breakneck speed, the Dulles Airport air traffic controller handling the flight revealed publicly for the first time Wednesday. In a gripping account to ABC's "20/20," air traffic controller Danielle O'Brien recounted the harrowing series of events that began at 8:25 a.m. that morning, when she monitored the routine takeoff of Flight 77. For O'Brien, the trauma of Sept. 11 began a little over 40 minutes later, just after she learned that two hijacked airplanes had hit New York's World Trade Center. "We started moving the planes as quickly as we could," she told ABC's Brian Ross. "Then I noticed the aircraft. It was an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed. … I had literally a blip (on my radar screen) and nothing more." O'Brien brought the unidenitified blip to the attention of her Dulles colleague, Tom Howell. He recalled the moment for ABC News. "Oh my God, it looks like he's headed to the White House," Howells remembers yelling. "We've got a target headed right for the White House!" At 500 miles per hour, Flight 77 was rocketing toward what is known as P-56, protected air space 56, which covers the White House and the Capitol. "The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," O'Brien said. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe." As Flight 77 approached within 12 miles of the White House, the stunned air traffic controllers began a chilling countdown -- "eleven miles west, ten miles, nine ..." "Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the information [that] we have an unidentified, very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, 8 miles west," O'Brien said. With just minutes before expected impact, Vice President Cheney was rushed to a special White House basement bunker, while building staff were told to evacuate the premisies and run as far and as fast as they could away from White House grounds. "And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away," O'Brien told Ross. "In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second," says O'Brien. With the plane's turn, O'Brien and her colleagues lost track of Flight 77. They didn't learn that it wasn't a military plane until a traffic controller from Reagan National Airport called to say, "Dulles, hold all of our inbound traffic. The Pentagon's been hit." newsmax.com tom watson tosiwmee