911: Stewardess ID'd Hijackers Early, Transcripts Show

posted by admin on Wednesday February 11, @04:14PM

by Gail Sheehy

"My wife’s call was the first specific information the airline and the government got that day," said Mike Sweeney, the widowed husband of Amy Sweeney, who went face to face with the hijackers on Flight 11. She gave seat locations and physical descriptions of the hijackers, which allowed officials to identify them as Middle Eastern men—by name—even before the first crash. She gave officials key clues to the fact that this was not a traditional hijacking. And she gave the first and only eyewitness account of a bomb on board.

"How do you know it’s a bomb?" asked her phone contact.

"Because the hijackers showed me a bomb," Sweeney said, describing its yellow and red wires.

...

Amy Sweeney’s account alerted the airline that something extraordinary was occurring. She told Mr. Woodward she didn’t believe the pilots were flying the plane any longer. She couldn’t contact the cockpit. Sweeney may have ventured forward to business class, because she relayed the alarming news to Betty Ong, who was sitting in the rear jump-seat. In professional lingo, she said: "Our No. 1 has been stabbed," referring to a violent attack on the plane’s purser, "also No. 5," another flight attendant. She also reported that the passenger in 9B had had his throat slit by the hijacker sitting behind him and appeared to be dead. Betty Ong relayed this information to Nydia Gonzalez, a reservations manager in North Carolina, who simultaneously held another phone to her ear with an open line to American Airlines official Craig Marquis at the company’s Dallas headquarters.

The fact that the hijackers initiated their takeover by killing a passenger and stabbing two crew members had to be the first tip-off that this was anything but a standard hijacking. "I don’t recall any flight crew or passenger being harmed during a hijacking in the course of my career," said Peg Ogonowski, a senior flight attendant who has flown with American for 28 years.

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UK Guardian: This war is not yet over

posted by admin on Wednesday February 11, @02:40AM

It's the Alan Clark manoeuvre. When the old Tory reptile found himself assailed by a tricky argument, he would fire back with his most lethal weapon. "This is boring," he would say airily. "You are being the most frightful bore." Clark used the word often, keenly aware of its peculiarly English power to devastate. Now the government is deploying the Clark manoeuvre. Those who still insist on banging on about Iraq and its missing weapons of mass destruction are anoraks, they say, trainspotters on the fast track to Dullsville. Ministers declare that the rest of the country lost interest in this media fixation long ago. Only journalists, with their stained coats and plastic carrier bags, still care.

It is beginning to work. Plenty of those whose blood was up in the immediate aftermath of the Hutton report - the backlash against the whitewash - suspect they ought to drop it now. Better to change the subject than be a bore.

They should think again. For this is more than another political story de jour, one that looms enormous at the time but is soon forgotten. This is not the fuel protest or the Hinduja affair. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the Iraq war is about as serious a question as you could imagine; its answer could determine the way our world is ordered in the 21st century. And this is not abstract, chin-stroking stuff for the seminar room. It has direct political consequences; it could even break the governments of both Britain and the United States.

The Bush administration makes no secret that it sees the Iraq war as the prototype for future conflicts; indeed, it has enshrined the idea in its official national security strategy document. Pre-emption remains the Bush doctrine. Witness Donald Rumsfeld's revealing remarks in Munich last week. Asked whether America is bound by any international system, legal framework or code of conduct, the US defence secretary replied: "I honestly believe that every country ought to do what it wants to do ... It either is proud of itself afterwards, or it is less proud of itself." Translation: the US can do what it likes - including making war on countries that have made no attack on it.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk

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911: 9-11 Panel Presses Bush on Briefing Notes

posted by admin on Tuesday February 10, @09:35AM

UPDATE: Sept. 11 panel backs down on fight for Bush briefings
The Washington Post

AP - The federal commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks is pressing the Bush administration to turn over notes taken on classified presidential briefing papers or face a subpoena. Full Coverage

Source...
http://story.news.yahoo.com

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