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^"11
Date:
Sun,
25 May
2003 09:57:32 -0400
To:
""
<mkara@9-11commission.gov>^
Subject:
93
(liles-i
Right
after the families that lost loved
ones
on Flight
13
were allowed to
hear
the flight
tape-,
we
were
told by some of them that the tape ended
suddenly-i
and no
crash sounds were heard
-
just
a
whooshing sound-
The
families
that we spoke to
thought-,
at the
time-,
that this was quite
odd.
I
wondered
back
then-i
what whomever alteredthetape thought they would
accomplish
by cutting the tape off by three minutes and telling the people
not
to
discuss what they'd heard.
I
think things might
be
getting
a
littleclearer
now-
This article confirms that
story.
Here
it
says
that
the
seismologists agree
that
theflight crashedat
lO'-Ob-.
NOT at
10:03-.
as
NORAD
says-Can
you get the
Seismic
records
from
1/11/01
to
establish
the
actual crash
time
of
flight
13?
Lorie
..
—
Post
ed on
Mon-t
Sep.
lt>i
2003
Three-minute
discrepancy in tapeCockpit voice recording
ends before
Flight
13's
official time
of
impact
By
WILLIAM
BUNCH
bunchwSphillyneus-com
THE
FINAL
three minutes of hijacked United Flight
13
are still a mystery
more
thanayear afteritcrashedinwestern Pennsylvania-eventogrievingrelatives
who
sought
comfort
in
listening
to its
cockpit
tapes
in
April-
A
Daily
News investigation has found
a
roughly three-minute gap between the
time
the
tape goes silent
-
according
to
government-prepared transcripts
-
and
the time that top scientists have pinpointed for the
crash.
Several
leading seismologists agree that Flight
13
crashed
last
Sept.
11 at
lQ:Ob:Q5
a-m.-.
give or take a couple of
seconds-
Family members allowed to
hear the
cockpit voice recorder
in
Princeton-,
N-J-1
last spring
were
told
it
stopped
just after
10:03.
The FBI and other agencies refused repeated requests to explain the
discrepancy-
The
cockpit voice recorder a roughly
30-minute
tape
loop-,
is supposed to
record
the sounds inside the cockpit right up until the moment of impact and
usually
does*
Aviation
experts said there could be several explanations for the
gap-
They said it could mean that the FBI and other government agencies either
http://kinesis.swishmail.com/webmail/imp/message.php?Horde=34bb7fc8c...
5/24/2003
\:
INBOX:
93
failed
to
properly
synchronize
the
timesi
or
there were other problems
inthe
retrieving
orhandlingof thetape fromthe
so-called
"black box"
recovered
from
the
wreckage
at
Shanksville-i
Pa-
Ori
experts
speculated-!
it
could mean there
was
a
major on-board electrical
failure
on the
plane three minutes before Flight
13
crashed-!
causing
therecorder to
quit
working.
What's
not
told
The
broader significance
is
that
the
three-minute
gap
points
to how
little
is
really
known about how and why Flight 13 crashed - even as the saga of
the
doomed jetliner and cell-phone calls from some of theID
passengers
and
crew
continue
to
captivate
the
nation.
"That's
part of the whole war aspect - we
don't
want to tell about what we
did
and
didn't
do-i"
said Vernon
Grose-,
a
former National Transportation
Safety
Board member who
says
he still has questions about the Flight
13
crash-
Hesaidhe
doubts
there
will everbe
"a
nice-i
open
public
hearing
with
eyewitnesses telling what they
saw."
However-i
inrecentweeksi twobooks about Flight
13
have toppedthe
best-seller
lists-i
while President Bush
and
other
top
government officials
continue
to invoke the story - based largely on the cell-phone calls - of
fighting
between
the
passengers
and the
hijackers
as a
"Let's
roll"
rallying
cry
to
continue
the war
against global
terrorism-
But
the FBI has clamped a tight lid of secrecy on the
flight
data recorder -
which
could best show how
Flight
13 actually crashed - and on the cockpit
voice recorder-
"tile
have
no
comment
at all on the
tape
issue-i"
said
Sam
Dibbleyi
spokeswoman
for
the
U-S-
Attorney's office
in
northern Virginia that presented
the
tape
to
families-
An
FBI spokesman-.
Steven
Berry-i
said the bureau
continues
to officially list
the
time
of the
Flight
13 crash as
10:03
a-m-
The NTSB referred all
questions
to the
FBI-
But
the relatives of Flight 13 passengers who heard the cockpit tape
April
16
at a
Princeton hotel said government officials laid
out a
timetable
forthe
crash in a briefing and in a transcript that accompanied the recording.
Relatives
later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning
at
1:5fl
a-m-i
but
there
was a
final
"rushing sound"
at
lQ:03i
and the
tape
fell
silent.
Uhat
can be heard
"There
is no
sound
of the
impact-i"
said Kenneth
Nackei
whose
brother-! LouNacke
Jr.-.
is one of the
passengers
believed
to
have fought with
the
hijackers-
Nacke confirmed thatthegovernment saidthetape endedat10:03
a-m-
He
added:
"The
quality of the sound is really
poor-"
Vaughn
Hoglan-i
the
uncle
of
passenger
Mark
Bingham-i
said
by
phone from
California
that near
the end
there
are
shouts
of
"pull
up-i
pull
up-i"
but theend
of thetape"isinferred-
there's
no
impact-"
New
York Times reporter Jere
Longman-i
who
spoke with relatives
of all but
one of the 4D Flight 13
victims-,
writes in the epilogue to bestseller "Among
the
Heroes"that "at about three minutes after
ten-i
the tape went silent-"
Lisa
Beameri
the
wife
of
passenger Todd
Beamer-i
who
heard
the
tape while
working
on her
No-
1
best-seller
"Let's
Rolli"
also gives
1Q:03
as the end
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5/24/2003
5il::
INBOX:
93
Page
3 of 5
of
the flight.
Seismologists
- experts in the
earth's
vibrations - have almost exactly
pinpointed
the time of the
crash
of
Flight
13 at
10:0b:05-
"The seismic signalsareconsistent with impactat lQ:Qb:OS-,"plusorminus
two
seconds-i
said Terry
Wallace-,
who
heads
the
Southern Arizona Seismic
Observatory
and isconsideredtheleading experton theseismologyof
man-madeevents-
"I
don't know where
the
10:03
time
comes
from."
Likewise-,
a written study commissioned by the Department of Defense -
carried
out by seismologists from Columbia University and the Maryland
Geological
Survey - also determined impact was atlQ:Ob:Q5-
Normally-,
suchalarge discrepancy mightbeclearedup
when
theNational
Transportation
Safety Board
releases
a written transcript of the voice
recorder
- edited for sounds of suffering or profanity - right
before
holding
public
hearings on an air disaster- But
because
the Flight 13 crash
was
part
of a
criminal
act-,
no
NTSB hearings
are expected-The
Justice Department has
also
insisted that the cockpit tape
can't
be
released
because
it
will
be
played
to the
jury
at the
trial
of
admitted
al
<3aeda
terrorist Zacarias Moussaouii now set for January.
Although floussaoui
is often referred to in the
media
as "the
20th
hijacker-,"
there's beennoevidence thathe wasslatedto be onboard Flight
13
or the
three
other planes hijacked on
Sept*
11- Moussaoui's
court-appointed lawyers
sought
last week to block the use of the recording-
blhat
could've happenedLast
fall-,
as the saga of the Flight 13
passenger
uprising became widely
known-,
several relatives of the
crash
victims made an unusual
request:
They
wantedto
hear
the
actual tape.
The FBI
initially issued
a
cold
refusal-"While
we
empathize with
the
grieving
families-,
we do not
believe that
thehorror
captured on the cockpit
;
voice
recording will
console
them in any
way-."
FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said last December- But under
continuing
pressure-,
the bureau changed its mind and agreed to the unusual
April
gathering
at a
Princeton Harriott
hotel-
None of the
family
members interviewed
for
this story recalls
any
explanation
of a discrepancy between the times on the tape recording and the
actual
crash
at 10:Qb-They
were-,
according
to the
relatives
and
published
accounts-,
given
a
talk
by
one of floussaoui's prosecutors-, who
speculated that
the
passengers
mayhave
used a food cart to break into the
cockpit-
But
with government officials refusing
to beinterviewed-!
leading aviation
experts
interviewed for this story could only speculate about the tape
discrepancy.Possibilities
they
suggested:
D
The FBI could have bungled this part of the investigation by
failing
to
synchronize
the time stamp of clocks
onboard
Flight
13
- which could have
been
set wrong - with air traffic control tapes and other
tones
that make it
possible to
determine
the
exact-,
correct
times-
Such
a
mistake would mean
that
the
tape really
did run
until
the
impacti
but
that
all the
times given
to
the
relatives
on the
transcript were
off by
three minutes.
Investigators
typically
nail down
the
correct times very early
in a
probe-,
experts
said-
Todd
Curtis-,
who
runs
the Web
site AirSaf
-com-,
said
thethree-minute
gap
"does
notmake
sense-"
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