Families Critical Of Cockpit Voice Analysis

They're considered heroes, the 44 passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93. Conventional wisdom since the jetliner went down in a Pennsylvania meadow that day is that the passengers prevented hijackers from using the aircraft as a guided weapon aimed at Washington by storming the cockpit and forcing the plane down.

Last week, the FBI indicated such may not have been the case. A new, extensive analysis of the cockpit voice recorder indicates that one of the hijackers up front told another to crash the airplane rather than allow passengers to take control.

That doesn't sit at all well with the families of the passengers. "Without a doubt, the passengers breached the cockpit," said Randall Greene of New York, whose brother Donald, a pilot of smaller aircraft, was onboard. "I'm surprised by the theory attributed to the FBI director that the passengers did not take control of the aircraft."

A statement from all the families of the Flight 93 victims said, "Until someone can produce specific translations of these tapes that are more than theory then it appears there is sufficient evidence to support the heroic acts of the passengers and crew in bringing Flight 93 down."

"I don't think the FBI got it right, what happened," said Tom Crowley of Atlanta (GA), whose niece's husband, Jeremy Glick, died aboard the flight. He said his niece, Lyzbeth, was among family members permitted last year to listen to the cockpit recording and she believes she heard Glick delivering a judo strike to one hijacker. "No question, any family member who listened to the tape will tell you the same thing, that they (passengers) were in the cockpit," said Crowley, who urged the government to make the recording public.

Ms. Glick heard the tape in April, 2002. So far, the government has only provided a transcript riddled with garbled speech and thick accents. "In the cockpit! In the cockpit!" the passengers were heard yelling, according to Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos (CA), who listened to the recording. Her son, Mark Bingham, died in the crash. She said the recording and a transcript the FBI provided to her and other families "doesn't leave very much doubt at all that passengers were able to get that cockpit door open."

Ms. Hoglan said the FBI's transcript quotes one hijacker after fighting breaks out in the cabin, who asks another hijacker in Arabic, "Finish her/it now?" She said she believed they were discussing whether to crash the plane. The response from the second hijacker, she remembered, was either "wait" or "not now."

After hearing the tape, some family members said they were believed passengers used a food cart as a shield as they broke into the cockpit. Ms. Hoglan said the hijackers inside the cockpit are heard yelling "No!" at the sound of breaking glass -- presumably from the food cart -- and that the final spoken words on the recorder seemed to be an inexplicably calm voice in English instructing, "Pull it up." She said the English voice toward the end of the recording was so distinct that she believes it's evident the speaker was inside the cockpit.

Moot Point?

The chief executive of a foundation named for the passenger from New Jersey who said "Let's roll" just before the passengers staged their revolt, said the FBI analysis doesn't diminish the heroism of the passengers. He said he had not spoken to Beamer's widow, Lisa, about the analysis, but said family members know "their loved ones on board did not sit idly by. There was a consensus to act."

"The result is that the terrorists failed in their attempt, and I truly believe the passengers had some role in that," said Douglas A. MacMillan, head of the Todd Beamer Foundation.

FMI: www.fbi.gov