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Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 09:57:32 -0400

To: "" <mkara@9-11commission.gov>^

Subject: 93
(liles-i
Right after the families that lost loved ones on Flight 13 were allowed to
hear the flight tape-, we were told by some of them that the tape ended
suddenly-i and no crash sounds were heard - just a whooshing sound- The
families that we spoke to thought-, at the time-, that this was quite odd. I
wondered back then-i what whomever altered the tape thought they would
accomplish by cutting the tape off by three minutes and telling the people
not to discuss what they'd heard. I think things might be getting a little
clearer now-
This article confirms that story. Here it says that the seismologists agree
that the flight crashed at lO'-Ob-. NOT at 10:03-. as NORAD says-
Can you get the Seismic records from 1/11/01 to establish the actual crash
time of flight 13?
Lorie
.. — Post
ed on Mon-t Sep. lt>i 2003
Three-minute discrepancy in tape
Cockpit voice recording ends before Flight 13's official time of impact
By WILLIAM BUNCH
bunchwSphillyneus-com

THE FINAL three minutes of hijacked United Flight 13 are still a mystery
more than a year after it crashed in western Pennsylvania - even to grieving
relatives who sought comfort in listening to its cockpit tapes in April-
A Daily News investigation has found a roughly three-minute gap between the
time the tape goes silent - according to government-prepared transcripts -
and the time that top scientists have pinpointed for the crash.
Several leading seismologists agree that Flight 13 crashed last Sept. 11 at
lQ:Ob:Q5 a-m.-. give or take a couple of seconds- Family members allowed to
hear the cockpit voice recorder in Princeton-, N - J - 1 last spring were told it
stopped just after 10:03.
The FBI and other agencies refused repeated requests to explain the
discrepancy-
The cockpit voice recorder a roughly 30-minute tape loop-, is supposed to
record the sounds inside the cockpit right up until the moment of impact and
usually does*
Aviation experts said there could be several explanations for the gap-
They said it could mean that the FBI and other government agencies either

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\: INBOX: 93
failed to properly synchronize the timesi or there were other problems in
the retrieving or handling of the tape from the so-called "black box"
recovered from the wreckage at Shanksville-i Pa-
Ori experts speculated-! it could mean there was a major on-board electrical
failure on the plane three minutes before Flight 13 crashed-! causing the
recorder to quit working.
What's not told
The broader significance is that the three-minute gap points to how little
is really known about how and why Flight 13 crashed - even as the saga of
the doomed jetliner and cell-phone calls from some of the ID passengers and
crew continue to captivate the nation.
"That's part of the whole war aspect - we don't want to tell about what we
did and didn't do-i" said Vernon Grose-, a former National Transportation
Safety Board member who says he still has questions about the Flight 13
crash- He said he doubts there will ever be "a nice-i open public hearing
with eyewitnesses telling what they saw."
However-i in recent weeksi two books about Flight 13 have topped the
best-seller lists-i while President Bush and other top government officials
continue to invoke the story - based largely on the cell-phone calls - of
fighting between the passengers and the hijackers as a "Let's roll" rallying
cry to continue the war against global terrorism-
But the FBI has clamped a tight lid of secrecy on the flight data recorder -
which could best show how Flight 13 actually crashed - and on the cockpit
voice recorder-
"tile have no comment at all on the tape issue-i" said Sam Dibbleyi spokeswoman
for the U - S - Attorney's office in northern Virginia that presented the tape
to families-
An FBI spokesman-. Steven Berry-i said the bureau continues to officially list
the time of the Flight 13 crash as 10:03 a - m - The NTSB referred all
questions to the FBI-
But the relatives of Flight 13 passengers who heard the cockpit tape April
16 at a Princeton hotel said government officials laid out a timetable for
the crash in a briefing and in a transcript that accompanied the recording.
Relatives later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning
at 1:5fl a - m - i but there was a final "rushing sound" at lQ:03i and the tape
fell silent.
Uhat can be heard

"There is no sound of the impact-i" said Kenneth Nackei whose brother-! Lou
Nacke Jr.-. is one of the passengers believed to have fought with the
hijackers- Nacke confirmed that the government said the tape ended at 10:03
a-m-
He added: "The quality of the sound is really poor-"
Vaughn Hoglan-i the uncle of passenger Mark Bingham-i said by phone from
California that near the end there are shouts of "pull up-i pull up-i" but the
end of the tape "is inferred - there's no impact-"
New York Times reporter Jere Longman-i who spoke with relatives of all but
one of the 4D Flight 13 victims-, writes in the epilogue to bestseller "Among
the Heroes" that "at about three minutes after ten-i the tape went silent-"
Lisa Beameri the wife of passenger Todd Beamer-i who heard the tape while
working on her No- 1 best-seller "Let's Rolli" also gives 1Q:03 as the end

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 5il:: INBOX: 93 Page 3 of 5

of the flight.

Seismologists - experts in the earth's vibrations - have almost exactly

pinpointed the time of the crash of Flight 13 at 10:0b:05-
"The seismic signals are consistent with impact at lQ:Qb:OS-," plus or minus
two seconds-i said Terry Wallace-, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic
Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of
man-made events- "I don't know where the 10:03 time comes from."

Likewise-, a written study commissioned by the Department of Defense -

carried out by seismologists from Columbia University and the Maryland
Geological Survey - also determined impact was at lQ:Ob:Q5-
Normally-, such a large discrepancy might be cleared up when the National
Transportation Safety Board releases a written transcript of the voice
recorder - edited for sounds of suffering or profanity - right before
holding public hearings on an air disaster- But because the Flight 13 crash
was part of a criminal act-, no NTSB hearings are expected-
The Justice Department has also insisted that the cockpit tape can't be
released because it will be played to the jury at the trial of admitted al
<3aeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaouii now set for January.
Although floussaoui is often referred to in the media as "the 20th hijacker-,"
there's been no evidence that he was slated to be on board Flight 13 or the
three other planes hijacked on Sept* 11- Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers
sought last week to block the use of the recording-
blhat could've happened
Last fall-, as the saga of the Flight 13 passenger uprising became widely
known-, several relatives of the crash victims made an unusual request: They
wanted to hear the actual tape. The FBI initially issued a cold refusal-

"While we empathize with the grieving families-, we do not believe that the
horror captured on the cockpit ;voice recording will console them in any
way-." FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said last December- But under
continuing pressure-, the bureau changed its mind and agreed to the unusual
April gathering at a Princeton Harriott hotel-
None of the family members interviewed for this story recalls any
explanation of a discrepancy between the times on the tape recording and the
actual crash at 10:Qb-
They were-, according to the relatives and published accounts-, given a talk
by one of floussaoui's prosecutors-, who speculated that the passengers may
have used a food cart to break into the cockpit-
But with government officials refusing to be interviewed-! leading aviation
experts interviewed for this story could only speculate about the tape
discrepancy.
Possibilities they suggested:
D The FBI could have bungled this part of the investigation by failing to
synchronize the time stamp of clocks onboard Flight 13 - which could have
been set wrong - with air traffic control tapes and other tones that make it
possible to determine the exact-, correct times- Such a mistake would mean
that the tape really did run until the impacti but that all the times given
to the relatives on the transcript were off by three minutes.
Investigators typically nail down the correct times very early in a probe-,
experts said- Todd Curtis-, who runs the Web site AirSaf e-com-, said the
three-minute gap "does not make sense-"

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"From what I have heard about the flight's CVR Ccockpit voice recorder!-,
there was at least one transmission from the cockpit to air traffic control
that would have been captured by the ATC tapes-," Curtis said- "Those tapes
should also have some kind of time reference."
D At 10*03-1 the hijackers - or possibly passengers and crew who were
fighting to regain control of the plane - flipped a circuit breaker or
switch that cut off power to the cockpit voice recorder-
Experts said this would explain why the tape ends abruptly-, but they had no
idea why the terrorists would do such a thing-, especially so far along into
their hijacking. And they noted that the location of cockpit circuit
breakers makes it unlikely it was struck accidentally during a struggle*
"That would be a much tougher task than turning off the transponder-i" said
R. John Hansmani an aviation professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. "You would have to know exactly which circuit breaker to pull-"
D There was a major on-board electrical failure before the crash - although
it's not clear what could have triggered this- It has happened before. On
Swissair Flight 111-, which crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia in September
1118^ the cockpit fire that caused the crash also killed power to the
plane's two black boxes six full minutes before the crash.

New evidence that came out last week may support the electrical-failure
theory. A federal air traffic controller from Cleveland-. Stacey Taylor-i told
"Dateline NBC" that Flight 13's transponder•> initially shut off by the
hijackers-, came back on briefly only to give out - at 10:03 a - m -
D There was some unknown problem either in retrieving the cockpit tape from
the black box-, or in its handling by government officials and contractors
since last September-! or in the presentation that was given in Princeton-
No one has stepped forward with any evidence of that*
But the three-minute gap is certain to fuel ongoing debates on the Internet
over how Flight 13 really crashed-i and whether the plane could have been
shot down by military jet fighters that were sent aloft as the Sept. 11
hijackings unfolded* The government insists there was no shootdown*
Numerous witnesses in the Shanksville area have told the Daily News and
other publications since last September that a mysterious-i low-flying
unmarked white jet-, military in nature-, circled the area at the time of the
crash. The FBI has claimed this was a business jet that had been asked by
air-traffic controllers to inspect the Flight 13 crater.
The debate has also been driven by the wide debris field from Flight 13 -
including papers found eight miles away - and by conflicting accounts over
whether a 111 caller reported an explosion and white smoke on board*
Grose-, the former NTSB member-, said he doubts the entire story of Flight 13
will ever be told*
"I don't think so-," he said* "It's like David Crockett at the Alamo* Ue need
heroes*"
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