Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  “I don’t care how many windows you break!” Nasypany yelled at 9:36 a.m.

  A minute later, a NEADS tracking technician announced that he believed he’d spotted the hijacked plane on radar: “I got him! I got him!” the technician yelled. That meant NEADS might have coordinates to give to the fighters. But just as quickly, NEADS lost track of the plane. It didn’t matter—notice of the threat had come too late. Even if the fighter pilots had broken every window in every building en route to Washington, they wouldn’t have arrived in time.

  American Flight 11 was long gone. And time had nearly run out for American Flight 77.

  At that moment, Father Stephen McGraw62 was running late for a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, just outside Washington, D.C. Stressed, trying to make up for lost time, the slightly built Catholic priest had made matters worse by taking a wrong turn off the highway into a traffic jam. McGraw stewed in the motionless left lane of Route 27, alongside an expanse of lawn outside the Pentagon. He pressed both hands to his head and moaned aloud: “Oh God, I’m going to miss the graveside service.”63

  Still nagging at McGraw’s conscience was an experience from earlier in the summer. Returning to his Virginia parish on a day off, flustered after missing a turn, he drove by without stopping as ambulance workers tended to a man with a bandaged head who’d been injured in a car crash. McGraw had been ordained only three months earlier, at age thirty-five, after giving up a career as a Justice Department lawyer to follow his calling. Immediately after passing the accident, he felt as though he’d failed to live up to his priestly duties to comfort the injured man. Afterward, in his room in the church rectory, McGraw had dropped to his knees, prayed for the man, and resolved before God to never again bypass someone in need.

  Now, as he fretted in his car about missing the cemetery service, McGraw knew nothing of the hijackings or the attacks in New York. Suddenly, the air filled with a whirring, whooshing noise, as though he’d been dropped inside a blender. McGraw looked out the passenger window to see an airplane flash by, so low it clipped a light pole as it approached the Pentagon. From the passenger seat, he grabbed his purple satin stole, his green book of prayers for the sick and dying, and a vial of olive oil blessed by his bishop. McGraw jumped out and ran toward the Pentagon, abandoning his car in the traffic jam to fulfill his promise.

  After steering American Flight 77 in a looping 330-degree turn, Hani Hanjour or another hijacker in the cockpit put the jet on a collision course with a five-sided, five-story, fortress-like symbol of American military power. He pushed the throttle to maximum power64 and reached a speed of roughly 530 miles per hour. He pointed the jet’s nose downward. Moving at about 780 feet per second, the Boeing 757 flew only a few feet above the ground, its wings momentarily level over a grassy field. A hundred feet from the building, its right wing struck a portable generator, triggering a small explosion of diesel fuel, and the right engine wiped out a chain-link fence and posts around the generator. The right wing rose, the left wing dipped. The left engine struck the ground almost simultaneously with the plane’s nose touching the Pentagon’s limestone-faced west wall just below the second floor.65

  At 9:37:46 a.m., the Boeing 757 that was American Airlines Flight 77, originally bound for Los Angeles from Dulles International Airport, exploded in an orange fireball and a plume of dense black smoke that rose some three hundred feet into the sky. The immediate toll of the impact with the west wall of the Pentagon was fifty-three passengers and six crew members, along with five murderous al-Qaeda hijackers.

  Two passengers, Navy physicist William Caswell and Defense Department economist Bryan Jack, died in the building where they worked. Pilot Chic Burlingame had worked for years at the Pentagon as a Navy reserve officer, but his family would feel certain he didn’t die there. The Chic they knew would have fought to the death in the cockpit to save his passengers and crew before giving up the controls.66

  The terrorists extinguished the life and potential of eleven-year-old “Little” Bernard C. Brown II by crashing the first plane he’d ever boarded. On almost any other weekday, Navy Chief Petty Officer Bernard Brown Sr. would have been inside the Pentagon’s newly renovated Wedge One. But “Big Bernard” had taken the day off, so he wasn’t there when Flight 77 carried his bright, charismatic son to his death.

  The terrorists silenced Barbara Olson’s fervent voice, robbing Ted Olson of her companionship and denying her followers her insights.

  The Falkenberg-Whittington family would never reach Australia. Newlyweds Zandra and Robert Riis Ploger III wouldn’t honeymoon in Hawaii. Yugang Zheng and Shuying Yang wouldn’t see their daughter become a doctor. Bud and Dee Flagg wouldn’t return to their cattle farm or watch their grandchildren grow. Dr. Yeneneh Betru wouldn’t build the first public kidney dialysis center in his homeland. Eddie Dillard wouldn’t return home soon to his wife, Rosemary. Mari-Rae Sopper wouldn’t save the women’s gymnastics team at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Renée May would never surprise her parents with news of her pregnancy.

  From above, Gofer 06 pilot Steve O’Brien saw the scene through a haze of smoke and the memory of having witnessed a flight school classmate’s fatal crash. He provided the first confirmation to Reagan National Airport controllers about the plane he’d been asked to follow: “Looks like that aircraft crashed67 into the Pentagon, sir.”

  Major Kevin Nasypany learned about American Flight 77’s fate from CNN, almost ten minutes68 after it happened. Watching the carnage on television, Nasypany cursed the confusion that had kept the Langley F-16s on the ground longer than he’d wanted and then sent them to a military airspace far from the action.

  Nasypany and others could only speculate about what might have been different had the Langley fighters been launched when he first asked for them, at 9:07 a.m., fully a half hour before Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Some top NEADS officers69 firmly believed that the fighters, if they had taken flight sooner and been given the correct coordinates, might have been able to intercept American Flight 77. They didn’t have authority to use weapons against the passenger plane, but if they couldn’t shoot it down, the NEADS officers believed, the fighters might have forced the plane to the ground.

  When he learned of Flight 77’s loss and the damage at the Pentagon, Nasypany erupted in anger. “Goddammit!70 I can’t even protect my NCA!” he said, using a military acronym for the National Capital Area.

  Nasypany turned back to the work at hand, directing the Langley F-16s to create a protective cover over Washington. “Talk to me71 about my Langley guys,” Nasypany ordered. “I want them over the NCA—now!” He planned to have the F-16s establish a combat air patrol, or CAP, over Washington, ready to intercept any potentially hostile plane, even though it still remained unknown whether they would have the authority to shoot down a hijacked civilian jet with hostages aboard.

  As the Langley fighters belatedly moved toward Washington, unconfirmed reports of other hijacked planes continued to reach NEADS. One report involved another big Boeing 767, Delta Flight 1989, which had taken off from Boston destined for Las Vegas. Another concerned a plane from Canada supposedly headed directly toward Washington.

  President Bush learned about the attack on the Pentagon on his ride to the airport,72 shortly after leaving the Emma E. Booker Elementary School. By 9:45 a.m., Bush was aboard Air Force One, where he asked the Secret Service about his family’s safety. Then he called Vice President Cheney, who several minutes earlier73 had reached a bench in the underground tunnel to the White House bunker where he could speak on a secure telephone.

  “Sounds like we have a minor war74 going on here,” Bush told his vice president, according to notes an aide made of the call. “I heard about the Pentagon. We’re at war. . . . Somebody’s going to pay.”

  The attack on the Pentagon scuttled Bush’s initial plan to return to Washington, especially with reports of more hijacked planes headed toward the capital. While Bush and Cheney spoke by phone about where the pres
ident should go, Air Force One took off at 9:55 a.m. with no set destination.75 The pilot pointed the nose skyward, determined to get the plane as high as possible as fast as possible.

  No one outside al-Qaeda knew how many more planes and targets might be part of the terrorists’ plot, and no one other than the plotters yet knew who was responsible, although speculation focused almost immediately on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. If there were more planes, Bush and Cheney had yet to discuss how far the military should go to stop them. Meanwhile, the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who normally would receive orders regarding the use of force from the president and then pass them down the chain of command, hadn’t yet spoken with Bush or Cheney.

  Instead, Rumsfeld had rushed to the parking lot of the Pentagon76 to help with rescue efforts.

  At 9:42 a.m., five minutes after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, FAA national operations manager Ben Sliney had seen enough. Determined to prevent any potential hijacking plots not yet hatched, he issued a second unprecedented, nationwide edict.

  “That’s it!” he cried. “I’m landing everyone!”77

  Sliney ordered all FAA facilities nationwide to instruct every aircraft flying over the United States to land as quickly as possible at the nearest airport. He marched through the FAA command center and fielded questions from the forty-plus people on his staff, some of whom wondered if their building might be a target and whether the country was at war. Sliney had a direct answer: we’re safe, so let’s get to work.

  “Regardless of destination!”78 Sliney shouted. “Let’s get them on the ground!”

  Sliney’s emergency order to empty the skies would require compliance from 4,546 planes.79 It would take hours of effort and precise coordination on the ground and in the air. Ultimately, Sliney’s demand would be met by 4,545 of those planes.

  All but one.

  Chapter 9

  “Make Him Brave”

  United Airlines Flight 93

  History repeated itself for a fourth time more than an hour after the hijacking of American Flight 11. Forty-six minutes after United Flight 93 took off, as it cruised at 35,000 feet over eastern Ohio, the plane abruptly dropped1 685 feet. Eleven seconds into the descent, at 9:28 a.m., Captain Jason Dahl or First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr. screamed into the cockpit radio: “Mayday!2 . . . Mayday! . . . Mayday!”

  A second raspy shout from one of the pilots revealed that the source of the emergency wasn’t mechanical or electrical, but human: “Hey—get out of here!”

  Barely five minutes had passed since United dispatcher Ed Ballinger had warned the pilots of Flight 93 to beware of a cockpit intrusion, followed by Jason Dahl’s unanswered ACARS response that asked Ballinger to “cofirm latest mssg plz.” The narrow window of opportunity to guard the cockpit against a hijacking had closed.

  As the terrorists fought to displace Jason and LeRoy, one or both pilots must have kept his hand pressed on the talk button of the radio microphone: sounds of the struggle in the cockpit were heard by FAA ground controllers and by pilots of planes on the same radio frequency. Thirty-five seconds after the Mayday distress calls, LeRoy or Jason again screamed: “Hey, get out of here—get out of here!”

  The messages reached Flight 93’s ground controller, John Werth in the FAA’s Cleveland Center. Already he was balancing an almost unimaginable burden, far beyond the sixteen flights on his radar screen. He’d heard about the first two hijackings and was calling pilots3 as they flew through his airspace, asking if they’d seen any trace of a missing plane: American Flight 77.

  Some of those pilots had picked up bits and pieces about the World Trade Center and quizzed Werth for more details. Werth had spent three decades guiding planes through the skies over Ohio, but he struggled with what to say, worried that he might panic them.4 He told the pilots to call their airlines, and purposely never said the words “hijack” or “trip.” All the while, Werth kept searching for American Flight 77 on radar and keeping close watch on Delta Flight 1989, which he’d been told was another suspected hijacking. The Delta flight took off from Boston, bound for Las Vegas, around the same time as American Flight 11 and United Flight 175.

  Amid the chaos, Werth didn’t immediately know the source of the Mayday call he heard, and he could only make out what he thought were “guttural sounds.”5 He responded into his mic: “Somebody call Cleveland?”6 Then he noticed Flight 93’s rapid descent and heard the second panicked call: “Get out of here!” In his headset, Werth heard screams from the cockpit.

  “I think we’ve got one!”7 Werth called to his supervisor, Mark Barnik, a former police officer.

  To be certain which of his flights was the latest hijack, Werth called every plane on the frequency, and he heard back from all but Flight 93. He hailed Jason and LeRoy seven times in less than two minutes with no reply. Aware of the New York crashes, Werth instantly concluded that it was a suicide hijacking. He thought the terrorists’ target might be a nuclear plant forty miles from the plane’s current position. As other controllers moved nearby flights out of the way, Werth instructed Barnik: “Tell Washington.”8

  Instead, Barnik alerted the United Airlines headquarters in Chicago, where a staffer on the operations desk spoke for everyone: “Oh God, not another one.”9

  Although the hijackers on Flight 93 had one fewer man and waited longer to act, they followed nearly the same script as the hijackers of Flights 11, 175, and 77. As some stormed the cockpit and attacked Jason Dahl and LeRoy Homer Jr., others moved the passengers10 to the rear of the plane. The hijackers tied red bandannas around their heads, claimed they had a bomb, and stabbed at least one person other than the pilots.

  Three minutes after Jason or LeRoy yelled his final “Get out of here!” controller John Werth heard a new male voice from Flight 93, with a halting command of English and a Middle Eastern accent. The man breathed heavily,11 apparently from exertion, perhaps from fighting with the pilots or from dragging them from the cockpit. The man said: “Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain.12 Please sit down, keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So, sit.”

  The voice almost certainly belonged to Ziad Jarrah, the only hijacker aboard Flight 93 with pilot training, who’d been in the first-class seat closest to the cockpit. He had practiced on simulators but had never before flown13 an actual 757. Like the other hijacker pilots, Jarrah’s apparent lack of experience with the cockpit radio resulted in a threat meant to be delivered over the public address system to passengers being conveyed instead to ground controllers. The cockpit’s voice recorder soon picked up the voice of a second hijacker,14 whom Jarrah would address as “Saeed,” making it evident that a fellow terrorist at the controls was Saeed al-Ghamdi.

  Listening from Cleveland Center, John Werth heard Jarrah say “a bomb.” At 9:32 a.m., a Cleveland Center staffer called the FAA’s Command Center in Virginia to report that United Flight 93 from Newark had become the morning’s fourth hijacked plane and that it might have a bomb on board.15

  Werth tried to keep the hijacker pilot talking: “Er, uh . . . calling Cleveland Center . . . You’re unreadable. Say again, slowly.”

  Jarrah16 didn’t answer. In the meantime, Werth asked other pilots in his sector to tail Flight 93, to keep eyes on the hijacked plane.

  Just as with the other hijacked flights, it’s unknown how the terrorists gained access to the cockpit. One possibility was that they used knives to force a first-class flight attendant, either Deborah Welsh or Wanda Green, to open the cockpit door using a key17 kept in a storage compartment near the front of the plane. Unlike the other flights, however, one of those flight attendants might have become a cockpit hostage.

  Over a thirty-one-minute period starting at 9:32 a.m., the plane’s cockpit voice recorder18 captured the statements of Jarrah and at least one other hijacker, likely Ghamdi. For part of that time, it also recorded comments and pleas by one or two other native English-speaking people who weren’t hijackers.

  The presence of a hostage or hostages in the
cockpit could be discerned at first from a stream of harsh commands Jarrah issued in English after his “Here the captain” announcement. One or two other voices later emerged, along with evidence of resistance, followed by violence. At times, it wasn’t clear from the recording who was speaking or what was happening, but the placement of microphones in the cockpit revealed that Jarrah did most of the talking and that the cockpit of Flight 93 became a scene of captors brutalizing a captive or captives.

  Immediately after Jarrah claimed to have a bomb on board, he turned his attention to a hostage who had evidently bravely refused to comply with the hijackers’ orders. Jarrah issued a stream of commands:

  “Don’t move. Shut up.”

  “Come on, come.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “Stop!”

  Next came the sounds of a seat being adjusted. Someone in the cockpit apparently continued to resist Jarrah’s orders. He resumed his tirade:

  “Sit, sit, sit down!”

  “Sit down!”

  Another hijacker, in the copilot’s seat, chimed in: “Stop!”

  “No more,” someone pleaded,19 as a hijacker simultaneously ordered, “Sit down!”

  In Arabic, a hijacker said, “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it,” then switched to English: “Down, down.”

  Jarrah shouted: “Shut up!”

  A radio call from air traffic controller John Werth interrupted the rant: “We just, ah, we didn’t get it clear. . . . Is that United Ninety-Three calling?”

  Seconds later, after several unexplained clicking noises, a hijacker spoke the words of the Basmala, an Arabic verse often recited by observant Muslims before they take an action: “In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.”

  After some mumbling in Arabic, someone said: “Finish. No more. No more!”