THE FIRST FLIGHT 77 STORY

On Flight 77: 'Our Plane Is Being Hijacked'

By Marc Fisher and

Don Phillips 

September 12, 2001

There was not even the grace of instant death. Instead, there was time to call from the sky over Virginia, fingers pumping cell phones, terrified passengers talking to loved ones for one final time. Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a Senate staffer, three D.C. schoolchildren and three teachers on an educational field trip and a University Park family of four headed to Australia for a two-month adventure -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die.

About an hour after takeoff from Dulles International Airport yesterday morning, Flight 77, a Boeing 757 headed for Los Angeles with 64 people aboard, became a massive missile aimed at the White House. The target would change suddenly, but the symbolism was equally devastating. By about 9:40 a.m., when the diving plane carved out a massive chunk of the Pentagon, its passengers had experienced unspeakable terror, hundreds died, and the nation's greatest symbol of security lay shattered, thick plumes of smoke camouflaging a gaping hole in its heart.

Barbara K. Olson, the former federal prosecutor who became a prominent TV commentator during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, called her husband twice in the final minutes. Her last words to him were, "What do I tell the pilot to do?" "She called from the plane while it was being hijacked," Theodore Olson said. "I wish it wasn't so, but it is." The two conversations each lasted about a minute, said Tim O'Brien, a CNN reporter and friend of the Olsons. In the first call, Barbara Olson told her husband, "Our plane is being hijacked." She described how hijackers forced passengers and the flight's pilot to the rear of the aircraft. She said nothing about the number of hijackers or their nationality.

Olson's first call was cut off, and her husband immediately called the Justice Department's command center, where he was told officials knew nothing about the Flight 77 hijacking. Moments later, his wife called again. And again, she wanted to know, "What should I tell the pilot?" "She was composed, as composed as you can be under the circumstances," O'Brien said. But her second call was cut off, too.

"Incidentally, she wasn't even supposed to be on this flight," O'Brien added on CNN. "She was booked on a flight yesterday, but today is Ted's birthday, so she wanted to be here this morning to have breakfast with him before she left." On the ground, air traffic controllers watching Flight 77's progress westward suddenly lost touch with the plane, which disappeared from radar screens and cut off radio contact. Someone on board Flight 77 had flipped off the transponder, the device that sends a plane's airline identification, flight number, speed and altitude to controllers' radar screens.

But soon after losing contact, Dulles controllers spotted an unidentified aircraft speeding directly toward the restricted airspace that surrounds the White House. Federal aviation sources said Dulles controllers noticed the fast-moving craft east-southeast of Dulles and called controllers at Reagan National Airport to report that an unauthorized plane was coming their way.

Controllers had time to warn the White House that the jet was aimed directly at the president's mansion and was traveling at a gut-wrenching speed -- full throttle. 

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But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.

Less than an hour after two other jets demolished the World Trade Center in Manhattan, Flight 77 carved a hole in the nation's defense headquarters, a hole five stories high and 200 feet wide. 

Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious.

Details about who was on Flight 77, when it took off and what happened on board were tightly held by airline, airport and security officials last night. All said that the FBI had asked them not to divulge details. "Because of the heightened security due to the nature of today's events," American Airlines said in a statement, the airline "is working closely with U.S. government authorities and will not release more information at this time."

But some passengers on the flight were identified by friends and family. Flight attendant Michelle Heidenberger had been trained to handle a hijacking. She knew not to let anyone in the cockpit. She knew to tell the hijacker that she didn't have a key and would have to call the pilots.

None of her training mattered. "I'm just so heartbroken," said Ruby Ramer, Heidenberger's neighbor in Chevy Chase, where she lived with her husband, Tom, a pilot for US Airways, and their 11-year-old son and college-age daughter. "I just can't believe she won't be one of our neighbors."

Flight 77 was to be the first leg of a long, happy journey for Leslie A. Whittington and Charles S. Falkenberg, both 45, and their two young girls. The University Park family was on its way to Australia, where Whittington, a Georgetown University professor of public policy, was to work as a visiting fellow at Australian National University. Her husband, a software engineer and nature buff, was looking forward to exploring and encountering the wildlife -- kangaroos, koala bears, scorpions and snakes -- said James Gekas, a neighbor who hosted a farewell dinner for the family Sunday night.

Three District schoolchildren and three teachers were on Flight 77, headed to Santa Barbara, Calif., for an ecology conference sponsored by National Geographic. School board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said the students and educators, whose names were not released, were from elementary and middle schools. In the hazy hours that followed the attack, it was unclear which of four hijacked planes ended up where. But witnesses soon identified the aircraft that smashed into the Pentagon as an American flight, and then as Flight 77, which was unusually light on passengers this day.

On a Metro train to National Airport, Allen Cleveland looked out the window to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " he said. Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics." At the Dulles Airport Marriott, which American Airlines used last night as a bereavement center, families of passengers began arriving about 11 a.m.

Paul Sharp, a hotel manager, said three or four families, totaling about 10 people, were meeting with grief counselors and clergy in private suites. In the lobby, dozens of anxious travelers whose flights had been diverted watched news programs solemnly.

Kathy Foley, 49, a United Airlines flight attendant from Chicago, was stranded in the hotel lobby after mechanical problems delayed her 9 a.m. flight. "Everything was perfect at 8 o'clock this morning," she said. "Nobody had any idea anything was happening. This is not what our country was about. As horrible as it is to say it, I want revenge. "Shaken Pentagon worker Tracy Williams watches the flames. Employees evacuate the Pentagon after American Airlines Flight 77's crash tore a hole in the building's west side.

HOLLOWAY'S COMMENTARY:

There are two Flight 77 stories. They are at odds with one another. There is the Washington Post account you read here and there is the NTSB account. The Washington Post account has the plane flying south past the White House, forcing the Secret Service to rush Vice President Cheney to the PEOC, then with the engines full throttle pulling a 270 degree turn crashing through the windows 1E462 and 1E466 at over the speed of sound greater than 761 mph at sea level. Eyewitnesses on the ground heard a sonic boom as the plane passed over them [1]. Air Traffic Controllers thought Flight 77 was a military plane the way it flew that day. 

The second story is Flight 77 flying from the west pulled a 330 degree turn before crashing through the windows 1E462 and 1E466 doing 530 mph and taking out the NOC/DIA offices at the Pentagon. The two most important offices for the American Empire in the management of world trade. 

These two accounts are contradictory. They have Flight 77 flying at headings perpendicular to one another. In the NTSB account the plane is not flying supersonic. The initial account has it flying well over Mach-1. Which makes sense given the amount of damage done to the West wing. 

So, what did the government do to cover this up? They created the "missile hit the Pentagon distraction." And, created the cover story that Barbara Olson was talking to her husband on her cell phone as Flight 77 careened into DIA-NOC offices at the Pentagon.  

The main thing that was covered up was the planes were electronically hijacked. 

Evasive Maneuvers

Flight 77 took evasive maneuvers in order to avoid the Pentagon's air defenses.  It went into a steep dive and then executed a corkscrew descent going Mach 2.2 before the whole fuselage of the plane was stuffed through a window of the newly fortified wedge of the Pentagon. Which accounts for the sparse debris field on the Pentagon's lawn [5]. The 767 has the horsepower [2] and the aluminum [4] used to make the plane can handle the stress for a short period of time. A diving dash into the Pentagon. The computer flying the plane does not panic when stretching the envelope of the planes capabilities.  

 NOTES:

Boeing 707 Barrel Roll - Pilot Tex Johnston Performs Roll In Dash-80 Prototype Aircraft In 1955

1. 

Sucherman, Joel

USAToday.com

Multimedia Editor, saw it all: an American Airlines jetliner fly left to right across his field of vision as he commuted to work Tuesday morning.

It was highly unusual. The large plane was 20 feet off the ground and a mere 50 to 75 yards from his windshield. . . .

"My first thought was he's not going to make it across the river to [Reagan]National Airport. But whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction," Sucherman said. "It was coming in at a high rate of speed, but not at a steep angle -- almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked onto its target and staying dead on course."

"

Journalist Witnesses Pentagon Crash

," by John Dodge,

eweek.com

, 9/13/01

. . . There was a sonic boom and looking straight ahead there was a jet, what looked to be an American Airlines jet, probably a 757. And it came screaming across the highway, it was Route 110, on the west side of the Pentagon. The plane went west to east, hit the west side of the Pentagon. Immediately flames were strewing up into the air. There was white smoke. And then within seconds, thick black smoke. Everybody got out of their cars. People were shocked.

Then there was another plane that was off to the southwest and that made a beeline straight up into the sky and then angled off and we weren't sure if that was going to come around and make another hit or if it was just trying to get out of the way. That disappeared and we didn't see it again.

2. 

The 757-200 has the horsepower needed to go over 1500 Mph at sea level. Maximum Horsepower of a 757 is 1,675,665 for 127.5 tons. 200,000 horsepower is needed to move 25 tons 1500 Mph at sea level. The 757 weighs 5.1 times 25 tons. Therefore the 757 needs 1,020,000 horsepower to fly 1500 mph or 1.97 Mach at sea level. So it is conceivable that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon travelling over Mach 2. This is another reason why the footage of the crash is still secret. If Flight 77 was going Mach 2 or more at the time of impact into this would account for the multiring breach at the Pentagon. But, this also breaks with the official story. It is impossible for them to explain. So the "it was a missile" diversion was created. It is a lot easier to throw up a lot of chaff rather than deal with explaining what really happened, especially if what really happened involves hacking the Honeywell avionics suite. 

3. 

Stinger (FIM-92A/B/C/D): The Stinger is similar in capabilities to the Russian Igla series. More recent versions are equipped with a cooled two-color, infrared-ultraviolet detector that discriminates between flares and the target. Stingers are able to effectively engage targets head-on, from behind and from the side. The missile's maximum range is 4800 meters, which is comparable to the Igla, but it has a much shorter minimum range (200 meters versus the Igla's 800 meter minimum). It is one of the fastest MANPADS missiles, traveling at Mach 2.2.

https://fas.org/asmp/campaigns/MANPADS/MANPADS.html#mit

4. 

One problem with sustained supersonic flight is the generation of heat in flight. At high speeds aerodynamic heating can occur, so an aircraft must be designed to operate and function under very high temperatures. Duralumin, a material traditionally used in aircraft manufacturing, starts to lose strength and deform at relatively low temperatures, and is unsuitable for continuous use at speeds above Mach 2.2 to 2.4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_speed

5.

https://rense.com/general20/hunt.htm

6.

A lieutenant from the U.S. Navy, who was inside the west side of the Pentagon when the plane hit and helped get some people out that morning, advised us that there was the possibility of survivors in a communications bunker on the fourth floor of the E ring. Because the bunker is where workers were informed to retreat in the case of an attack on the building, the lieutenant requested that an attempt be made to locate the bunker. Because he felt a need to help save his brothers and sisters and because he knew the layout of the Pentagon better than any of us, he donned firefighting clothes and the breathing apparatus of an injured firefighter (a piece of debris was lodged in his eye). We re-entered the Pentagon and, following his lead, attempted to reach the fourth floor. Unfortunately the bunker had not survived the initial impact of Flight 77.

https://pentagon.spacelist.org/

7. 

James S. Robbins, from his west-facing office window, one and a half miles east of the Pentagon, saw "the 757" as it was "diving in at an unrecoverable angle." "I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building."

https://web.archive.org/web/20040808055424/http://www.bedoper.com/eastman/witnesses/index.html

CHOMSKY 911 PROPAGANDIST : PAGES 76-78 OF 911 NOAM CHOMSKY (2002)

PAGES 76-78 OF 9-11 Noam Chomsky (2002) 

Could you imagine how the situation would be if the terrorist's attack in the U.S.A. had happened during the night, when very few people would be in the WTC? In other words, if there were very few victims, would the American government react in the same way? Up to what point is it influenced by the symbolism of this disaster, the fact that it was the Pentagon and the Twin Towers that were hit? 

I doubt that it would have made any difference. It would have been a terrible crime even if the toll had been much smaller. The Pentagon is more than a "symbol," for reasons that need no comment. As for the World Trade Center, we scarcely know what the terrorists had in mind when they bombed it in 1993 and destroyed it on September 11. But we can be quite confident that it had little to do with such matters as "globalization," or "economic imperialism," or "cultural values," matters that are utterly unfamiliar to bin Laden and his associates, or other radical Islamists like those convicted for the 1993 bombings, and of no concern that their atrocities over the years have caused great harm to poor and oppressed people in the Muslim world and elsewhere, again on September 11. Among the immediate victims are Palestinians under military occupation, as the perpetrators surely must have known. Their concerns are different, and bin Laden, at least, has been eloquent enough in expressing them in many interviews: to overthrow the corrupt and repressive regimes of the Arab world and replace them with properly "Islamic" regimes, to support Muslims in their struggles against "infidels" in Saudi Arabia (which he regards as under U.S. occupation), Chechnya, Bosnia, western China, North Africa, and Southeast Asia; maybe elsewhere. It is convenient for Western intellectuals to speak of "deeper causes" such as hatred of Western values and progress. That is a useful way to avoid questions about the origin of the bin Laden network itself, and about the practices that lead to anger, fear, and desperation throughout the region, and provide a reservoir from which radical Islamic terrorist cells can sometimes draw. Since the answers to these questions are rather clear, and are inconsistent with preferred doctrine, it is better to dismiss the questions as "superficial" and "insignificant," and to turn to "deeper causes" that are in fact more superficial, even insofar as they are relevant.

COMMENTARY

The evasive maneuver taken to avoid the Pentagon's Anti Aircraft defenses. 

The plane's fuselage was angled to hit both the Navy Operations Center and the Defense Intelligence Agency Offices. Both offices cannot be hit any other way. A perpendicular strike would only takeout one office not both offices. 

Americans have been told to believe the unbelievable. The hit on the Pentagon was no accident. It was revenge for the sinking of the Kursk by the USS Memphis and the USS Toledo. This diagram shows that the plane was targeting one office the CNO-IP. Which makes the hit super precise.  

It is notable that the plane is angled so the maximum amount of the fuselage would pass through the windows and takeout the NOC and DIA offices. The line of the right wing and the line of the face of the Pentagon are parallel. The whole of the right wing hits the Pentagon before the left wing. The attackers must have had the blueprints of the Pentagon and an intimate knowledge of the materials used to construct it. Demonstrating a level of sophistication well beyond Bin Laden's capability.    

"The Pentagon is more than a "symbol," for reasons that need no comment (Chomsky 77)." This sentence is all Chomsky had to say in regards to the Pentagon and 911. In other words Chomsky had nothing to say about the precision strike on the Pentagon. The precision strike that took out two of the Pentagon's most important offices. Navy Operations Center (NOC) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). 

No two offices in the Pentagon are more important to the American Ruling Class's control of world trade than those two offices. The Navy keeps the sealanes secure and the DIA puppet's the countries American corporations offshored many of their factories and their mining interests. The DIA via the Special Forces kill off the union leaders and kills the foreign leaders who would want to nationalize American Ruling Class holdings overseas. 

Chomsky had to take the conversation away from what the symbolism of the attacks were because the symbolism of the attacks were not congruent with the Bin Laden narrative. Skirting the Pentagon issue was a brilliant propagandist move by Chomsky. He talks about something else entirely and avoids talking about the true psychological message of the attacks.

The message of the attacks is congruent with what old hardline Soviet hawks have been saying about America. America cannot be the center of world trade without it's military. Bin Laden made it clear in an interview the day after 911 he was not angry with the American people. His grievance was with the American government. 

The attackers on 911 were making a statement about American Ruling Class unipolar pretensions. It was not a defensive action to kick invaders out of the Holy Land. 911 showed that Russian Special Forces can bring down America with a commando raid. The strategic upper hand of America's space force is not as great as the people in the Pentagon thought it was prior to 911.   

Side Note

The propaganda line on 911 is that Bin Laden wanted to lure America into a quagmire and do to the USA, what the US did to the USSR in Afghanistan. The USSR lost in Afghanistan because of the American logistical support and the Chinese backed the American sponsored insurgency. China even sent special forces to fight alongside the Afghans. 

Assuming Bin Laden was capable of pulling off the attack, he wasn't.  Bin Laden had to have known that the attacks would bring the full weight of the American military down on him. And he did not have the logistical base to fight off an American occupation. The weapons and the training have to come from somewhere. Who was going to sell them to him? America's surveillance systems will pick up large weapons transfers and spot the training grounds. Why would Bin Laden lure America into a quagmire, if it was logistically impossible for him to fight off the coming American occupation? These attacks did nothing to further his cause. Blaming Bin Laden is farcical on its face. That's the reason why there was no trial. Bin Laden was a patsy. Plain and simple.  

 

CHOMSKY 911 PROPAGANDIST

This quote is of interest because be downplays "the scale and character," of the 911 attacks and diverts to talking about the geography of the attacks. Chomsky, the spook that he is, gave several interviews that culminated in a small book published in 2002. The brilliant thing about the book from a propaganda angle is this. He just assumes that Bin Laden did it. He does make some CYA caveats in the book and disclaimers.

Aside from those CYA moments the book just assumes that Bin Laden did it. He ignores Bin Laden's denials. On page 36 of the 911 book Chomsky refused to engage the question of how Bin Laden and the attackers evaded the ECHELON system. 19 hijackers and no one picked up a phone? The supercomputers and the HUMINT -spies in the mujahideen- did not pick up on this network of suicide hijackers? The 911 Commision Report does not even mention ECHELON. Chomsky avoided engaging with another point that shows the attacks were too sophisticated to have been sponsored by Bin Laden.    

Chomsky pushed the propaganda line that Bin Laden was responsible. When he knew full well that the "scale and character," of the attacks were beyond Bin Laden's capabilities. 911 was Russia's nuclear response (they nuked the WTC) to America's intervention in Chechnya. Russian General Vladimir Yakovlev warned in December of 1999 that nuclear retaliation to American actions in Chechnya was on the table. American spooks were using Chechnya as a base of terrorist operations to destabilize Russia. And the Russians struck back hard on 911. Bringing the US and Russia to the closest they have ever been to nuclear annihilation.  

Noam Chomsky On The Events Of 911

As Interviewed On Radio B92, Belgrade

27 September 2001

Q. "The world will never be the same after 11.09.01". Do you think so?

A. The horrendous terrorist attacks on Tuesday are something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the US, this is the first time since the War of 1812 that its national territory has been under attack, even threat. It's colonies have been attacked, but not the national territory itself. During these years the US virtually exterminated the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century p particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal.