The government concluded its portion of the penalty phase of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial today by playing, in full, the recording from the cockpit voice recorder of United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11th.
It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe clenched fists. The sounds were muffled but unmistakable, one body blow after another, ending with a squishy thud.
“No, no, no, no, no. No,” came the high-pitched voice of a crew member or flight attendant being subdued. ” . . . Please, please don’t hurt me,” the person said later. ” . . . I don’t want to die.” The desperate plea, captured by the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was played to a transfixed jury yesterday at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.
A foreign-accented voice, increasingly agitated, screamed: “Down. Down. Down!” as the whacking sound continued. Then there was silence. “That’s it. Go back,” a hijacker said calmly. “Everything is fine. I finished.”
And with that, Flight 93 from Newark banked left toward Washington. But the terrorists would not strike their target that day because they were beaten — as the voice recorder made clear — by the passengers, who fought back. The 32-minute tape recounts an epic struggle as passengers surged forward to retake the plane using whatever low-tech weapons they could find.
“Let’s get them!” one passenger yelled as dishes crashed to the floor. “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die,” screamed another amid more thumping and crashing and breaking of glass.
In the end, of course, they died anyway, but not before making the ultimate sacrifice for their country. And, if nothing else, the recording makes clear, just what the passengers of Flight 93 accomplished.
The recording made clear that a group of men and women, who knew the World Trade Center had been attacked, recognized that this was no conventional hijacking — these terrorists were crashing planes into buildings — and resolved to take control of their fate.
“There is absolutely no doubt that through their heroic actions still more carnage and catastrophe was prevented,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. The commission concluded that the passengers of Flight 93 stopped an attack that was aimed at Washington, most likely the Capitol or White House.
(…)
D. Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, president of Families of Flight 93, said the public airing of the recording should put to rest any lingering questions about what happened aboard the Boeing 757. “The paramount issue was, Did the passengers and crew thwart the plane from its intended target? And that question has clearly been answered,” said Peterson, whose father, Donald A. Peterson, and stepmother, Jean H. Peterson, died on the plane. “Whether or not they were actually into the cockpit or tearing the door off the hinges at the time it was scuttled is something history will have to answer.”
And, ultimately, history will probably never be able to find a definitive answer. But, nonetheless, it’s clear that the passengers of Flight 93 are heroes worthy of standing in line with the pantheon of heroes stretching back to the American Revolution.
If nothing else, the release of this transcript makes me more interested in the upcoming release of United 93.
