Free A Pretext for War by James Bamford

away in Fort Meade and asked her to locate their children.
    Shortly after the Pentagon attack, Hayden ordered the counterterrorism unit to focus their attention on Middle Eastern intercepts and to translate and analyze them immediately as they were received, rather than starting with the oldest in the stack first, as was normally the case. At 9:53 A.M. , less than fifteen minutes after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, analysts picked up a phone call from a bin Laden operative in Afghanistan to a phone number in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The person in Afghanistan said that he had “heard good news,” and indicated that a fourth target was yet to be hit—a possible reference to United Flight 93 that would crash in Pennsylvania before reaching its intended target in Washington. “I got in touch with George Tenet,” said Hayden. “He said, ‘What do you have?’ and I passed on whatever information we had.” Hayden then called his wife back, said he was okay, and found out that his children had been located and were safe.
     
     
    As rescue workers began racing to the Pentagon, it was quickly becoming clear to air traffic controllers in Cleveland that still another passenger jet—the fourth—was in the process of being hijacked. This time it was United Flight 93, which had taken off at 8:42 that morning from Newark International Airport en route to San Francisco. At the controls was Capt. Jason Dahl, a NASCAR fan from Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after nine, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, he had heard a brief
ping
on his company computer. It was an electronic alert notifying him of a message from United’s operations center near Chicago. In green letters on a black background came a warning to be careful of someone trying to break into the flight deck. “Beware, cockpit intrusion,” it said. “Confirmed,” typed one of the pilots, acknowledging the message.
    At about 9:28, as the plane was flying near downtown Cleveland, Captain Dahl radioed Cleveland Control a cheerful greeting. “Good morning, Cleveland,” he said. “United 93 with you at 3-5-0 [35,000 feet]. Intermittent flight chop.”
    But back in the main cabin there was pandemonium. Three men who had tied red bandannas around their heads were taking over and herding the passengers to the back of the plane, near the galley. Seconds later, the Cleveland controller heard the frightening sound of screaming in the cockpit. “Somebody call Cleveland?” he asked. There was no answer, just the muffled sounds of a struggle, followed by silence for about forty seconds. Then the Cleveland controller heard more struggling, followed by someone frantically shouting, “Get out of here! Get out of here!” Finally, the microphone once again went dead.
    Unsure of what he actually heard, the controller called another nearby United flight to see if they might have picked up the broadcast. “United 1523,” he said, “did you hear your company, did you hear some interference on the frequency here a couple of minutes ago, screaming?” “Yes I did,” said a crewmember of the United flight. “And we couldn’t tell what it was either.” The pilot of a small executive jet also heard the commotion. “We did hear that yelling, too,” he told the Cleveland controller.
    “Any airline pilot with any experience, and I’ve had quite a bit,” said veteran commercial pilot John Nance, “who sits up there strapped into a seat knows what happened here: two of my brethren being slashed to death. In the cockpit, I think what happened is the pilots had been subdued. I think their necks had been slashed. And they’re strapped in, they’ve got no way of defending themselves. You can’t turn around and fight. They’re just sitting ducks.”
    Suddenly, the microphone aboard United Flight 93 came to life again, but this time with a foreign-sounding voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, here it’s the captain, please sit down. Keep remaining sitting. We have