Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11

Bob was asking a lot, and he knew it. Along with raising their children—two from her first marriage, three from Bob’s—Andrea’s Oyster River Veterinary Hospital had been her life’s work. Nearly fourteen years his junior, Andrea would have to choose between spending the bulk of her time with her four-legged patients or with her best friend. As they drove, Bob’s question hung in the air long enough for Andrea to consider the man she loved and the life they shared.

Born in 1930, Bob grew up in the French Canadian neighborhood of Nashua, New Hampshire, at the time a spent mill city. A restless boy, he often rode his bicycle downtown to see trains pull in from Montreal. Bob grew fascinated by why people lived where they lived, and how their physical world shaped their culture, from language to music, religion to livelihood, relationships to diet.

After high school, Bob enlisted in the Air Force. After a flirtation with geology at the University of New Hampshire, he earned a doctorate in cultural geography from the University of Minnesota. Then Bob returned to UNH as a professor and remained there for thirty-five years, until he retired in 1999. Along the way, he developed a reputation as a gifted teacher, frugal toward himself and generous toward others; a master cook who loved candlelit dinners; and a passionate traveler whose been-almost-everywhere map included Nepal, Bhutan, China, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Burma.

On a 1999 trip to Java, Bob led Andrea to the world’s largest Buddhist temple, called Borobudur. While he explored, Andrea set off in search of a rare bas-relief panel that depicted the Buddha among animals. Ten Muslim teenagers followed her, inching closer in the hope of practicing their English. Eager to return to quiet contemplation and her search for the sculpture, she made a suggestion.

“Go look for a man with a white beard,” Andrea told them. “That’s my husband. He’d love to talk with you.”

Forty minutes later, as she neared an exit, she heard gales of laughter: Bob was leading an impromptu class, asking questions, drawing his new friends into his sphere. Andrea snapped a photograph of the Muslim teens squeezed against a smiling Bob.

Two years earlier, in Chiapas, Mexico, they had watched as leftist Zapatista revolutionaries marched through the streets. Andrea asked Bob what drove the young men to take up arms. “When people aren’t heard long enough,” he said, “they’ll resort to violence.”

During their just-completed weekend in Rochester, Andrea and her daughter Nissa had wandered around a craft fair. Andrea said: “It’s just so strange. I cannot even imagine being any happier.”

“That is so weird,” Nissa said, stopping in her tracks. “Dad said the same thing to me last night.”

In the car, drawing closer to home, Bob waited as Andrea weighed his question about their future travels together. Reflecting on the man behind the wheel, Andrea felt that he had given her so much, asking relatively little in return. She turned to Bob with her answer: “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Bob woke before dawn to catch United Flight 175. As he left their bedroom, he promised Andrea that he’d call her that night. He put a copy of his California itinerary on the refrigerator, alongside newspaper clippings of recipes he intended to try. As he moved through the house, Bob looked sharp, his thick white hair freshly cut by Andrea the night before. On his desk were plans for no fewer than five trips, starting in ten days with leading a group of older travelers to Argentina, followed by jaunts to India and Norway.

Waiting outside at 5 a.m. to drive him to Logan Airport was Bob’s daughter Carolyn. On the way, they became so lost in conversation they almost missed the exit. Bob loved airports the way some children love construction sites. Happy, he bounded into Terminal C, holding a boarding pass for seat 16G.

ON THE OTHER side of the aisle, the self-described warrior in 15A was named Brian David “Moose” Sweeney (no relation to Flight 11 flight attendant Amy Sweeney).

Brian grew up in the little Massachusetts town of Spencer, where nothing much had happened since Elias Howe perfected the sewing machine there in 1846. He earned a football scholarship to Boston University, where opposing players noticed his bright blue eyes just before they saw stars. Known as Sweenz to his friends, Brian and a fellow lineman shared another nickname: the Twin Towers.

After college, Brian searched fruitlessly for a challenge, until he saw an air show display by F-14 fighter jets. He enlisted in the Navy and graduated at the top of his class to become a naval aviator. Brian served in the Persian Gulf War, enforcing the “no-fly zones” in Iraq, then taught at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known by its movie title name, Top Gun. He convinced himself that generations earlier, Norse warrior blood had mixed with his Irish heritage, so he fashioned a two-bladed battle-ax and a Viking helmet, complete with horns. He wore it on Halloween and whenever the mood struck.

While teaching at the Top Gun school, Brian twisted his neck during a flight maneuver and shattered two cervical disks, leaving him partially paralyzed while in midair. The military crash-and-burn team rushed out, but it left empty-handed when Brian somehow landed safely. Brian loved the Navy, but after surgery he faced an agonizing choice between a desk job and an honorable discharge. His commanding officer told him: “You have the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. You’ve proven your mettle as a warrior, now go find your spirit.” Brian stayed close to military service by working as an aeronautical systems consultant for defense contracting companies.

In 1998, Brian strolled into a snooty Philadelphia bar crawling with Wall Street types in custom suits. At six feet three and a rugged 225 pounds, wearing jeans, a denim shirt, hiking boots, and a baseball cap, Brian stood out like a linebacker among jockeys. A fit, pretty young woman named Julie spotted him from across the bar. She told her friend: “That’s the kind of guy that I can marry and sit in front of a fireplace in the Poconos with, and be happy.” The attraction was mutual.

Brian handed her a business card that read LT. BRIAN “MOOSE” SWEENEY—INSTRUCTOR, TOP GUN FIGHTER WEAPONS SCHOOL, MIRAMAR, CALIF. Julie thought it was a gag he used to impress women in bars. It was real, if somewhat dated. Julie was, in fact, impressed, and seven months later she became Mrs. Brian Sweeney.

By the summer of 2001, Brian and Julie had bought a house in Barnstable on Cape Cod, where she’d been hired as a high school health teacher. They had two dogs, and their talks about parenthood had grown more frequent. More than two years into their marriage, the twenty-nine-year-old Julie remained awestruck by her thirty-eight-year-old husband. She admired his self-confidence; she loved how this large and powerful man had a gentle voice that calmed her; she treasured the way he made her feel safe; she marveled at the practical intelligence that enabled him to build a house, while his spiritual side gave him peaceful assurance about an afterlife.

During the weeks before September 11, they’d talked about death. Brian told Julie that if he died, she should throw a party. “You celebrate life,” he said. “You invite all my friends and you drink Captain Morgan and you live. And if you find somebody, you remarry. I won’t be angry or jealous or whatever.”

Julie looked straight back at him and said: “Well, listen, if I ever die, you are not to do any of that. You are not to find anybody else.”

Brian laughed. “Someday you’ll figure that out.”

Brian traveled to California for work one week per month, regularly aboard United Flight 175. He’d normally be gone Monday through Friday, but he’d decided to extend his summer weekend and instead leave on Tuesday, September 11.

The night before the flight, they ate Chinese food, then Brian gave himself a haircut before starting to pack. Several weeks earlier, Brian found a photograph of Julie when she was five years old, with wet hair and a goofy smile. “This is the sweetest picture I’ve ever seen of you,” Brian told her when he discovered it. While Brian packed, Julie sneaked the photo into his suitcase, so he’d find it again when he reached California.

The morning of September 11, Julie drove Brian to the Cape Cod airport in Hyannis for a connecting flight to Boston. He was dressed in the same “Sweeney uniform” of jeans, denim shirt, work boots, and baseball cap he’d worn when they met. Brian kissed Julie, then surprised her with news that he’d be back a day early, so they could spend the last summer weekend together.

AMID THE FAMILIES, business travelers, and tourists were five Middle Eastern men who fit none of those categories. They selected seats almost exactly in the pattern Mohamed Atta and his four collaborators used aboard American Flight 11. Once again, the tactical arrangement placed members of their group close to the cockpit, while others could cover both aisles if anyone came forward to challenge them from the rear of the plane.

The first two to board United Flight 175 were Fayez Banihammad, of the United Arab Emirates, and Mohand al-Shehri, from Saudi Arabia, who sat in first-class seats 2A and 2B. Four weeks earlier, Banihammad had bought a multitool with a short blade, called a Stanley Two-Piece Snap-Knife Set.

Next came Marwan al-Shehhi, the native of the United Arab Emirates who’d met Atta and Jarrah in Hamburg and traveled with them to the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and then to Florida for flight training. Nine months earlier, Shehhi had received his FAA commercial pilot certificate at the same flight school, on the same day, as Atta, who sometimes referred to Shehhi as his “cousin.” On the same day as Banihammad’s knife purchase, in the same city, Shehhi had bought two short-bladed knives, one called a Cliphanger Viper and the other called an Imperial Tradesman Dual Edge.

Shehhi seemed the most likely person to have made the 6:52 a.m. call to Atta’s cellphone. The call was made from Logan’s Terminal C, from a pay phone located between the security screening checkpoint and the departure gate for Flight 175. Based on location and timing, the three-minute call to Atta might have been a final confirmation that they were ready to move forward with their plan.

When he reached the plane, Shehhi sat in the middle of business class, in seat 6C, just as Atta had chosen a seat in the middle of business class on Flight 11.

The last two to board Flight 175, Ahmed al-Ghamdi and Hamza al-Ghamdi, possibly cousins, came from the same small town in Saudi Arabia. Hamza al-Ghamdi had purchased a Leatherman Wave multitool the same day and in the same city where Banihammad and Shehhi had purchased their knives. Whether they carried those particular knives aboard Flight 175 isn’t known.

Hamza al-Ghamdi apparently took to heart the instruction in the handwritten Arabic letter to “wear cologne.” Earlier that morning, his overbearing fragrance had made a lasting, unpleasant impression on the desk clerk when he checked out of the off-brand Days Hotel, a few miles from the airport. He made no better impression on the cabdriver who drove them to the airport when he left a fifteen-cent tip.

Upon their arrival at Logan’s United Airlines ticket counter shortly before 7 a.m., the Ghamdis had seemed confused. One told a customer service agent that he thought he needed to buy a ticket for the flight, not realizing that he already had one. Both had limited English skills, so they had difficulty answering standard security questions about unattended bags and dangerous items. The customer service agent repeated the questions slowly, and the Ghamdis eventually gave acceptable answers. Aboard Flight 175, the Ghamdis sat together in the last row of business class, in the center two seats, 9C and 9D.

None of the five men or their luggage was chosen by the computerized system or by airport workers for additional security screenings.

CHAPTER 4

“I THINK WE’RE BEING HIJACKED”

American Airlines Flight 11

WHEN AMERICAN FLIGHT 11 TOOK OFF, FLIGHT ATTENDANT BETTY “Bee” Ong sat buckled into a jump seat in the tail section, on the left side of the plane, ready to begin her onboard routine. From that vantage point, she had a direct view up an aisle through coach and business into first class.

Less than twenty minutes after takeoff, just as she normally would have begun serving passengers breakfast, Betty witnessed the reason why Flight 11 changed direction without authorization, why someone switched off the transponder, why the cockpit stopped communicating with air traffic controller Peter Zalewski at the FAA’s Boston Center, and why it didn’t answer calls from other planes.

At 8:19 a.m., six minutes after Flight 11 pilots John Ogonowski and Tom McGuinness stopped responding to Zalewski’s calls, Betty grabbed an AT&T telephone called an Airfone, built into the 767. Airfones were common on cross-country flights in 2001, and many planes had an Airfone, for use by passengers with credit cards, on the back of every middle seat in coach. Betty dialed a toll-free reservations number for American Airlines, a number she often used to help passengers make connecting flights. The call went through to the airline’s Southeastern Reservations Office in central North Carolina, where a reservations agent named Vanessa Minter answered.

“I think we’re being hijacked,” Betty said, her voice calm but fearful.

Vanessa Minter asked Betty to hold. She searched for an emergency button on her phone but couldn’t find one. Instead, she speed-dialed the American Airlines international resolution desk on the other side of her office and told agent Winston Sadler what Betty had said. Sadler jumped onto the call and pressed an emergency button on his phone. That allowed the airline’s call system to record about four minutes of what would be a more than twenty-five-minute call from Betty that would provide crucial information about what occurred and who was responsible. Sadler also sent an alarm that notified Nydia Gonzalez, the reservations office supervisor, who also joined the call.

“Um, the cockpit’s not answering,” Betty said. “Somebody’s stabbed in business class, and, um, I think there is Mace—that we can’t breathe. I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.”

For employees of a call center who normally helped stranded travelers find new flights, Betty’s call was beyond shocking. After some confusion about who Betty was and what flight she was on, during which the airline employees asked Betty to repeat herself several times, eventually they understood that Betty was the Number Three flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11. Once that was established, Betty stammered at times as she did her best to describe a bloody, chaotic scene.

“Our, our Number One got stabbed. Our purser is stabbed. Ah, nobody knows who stabbed who and we can’t even get up to business class right now because nobody can breathe. Our Number One is, is stabbed right now. And our Number Five. Our first-class passenger that, ah, first, ah, class galley flight attendant and our purser has been stabbed and we can’t get to the cockpit, the door won’t open. Hello?”

She remained polite and self-possessed, even as her throat tightened with fear. Betty repeated herself several more times in response to the questions of reservation office employees.

Supervisor Nydia Gonzalez asked if Betty heard any announcements from the cockpit, and Betty said there had been none.

Two minutes into Betty’s call, at 8:21 a.m., Gonzalez called Craig Marquis, the manager on duty at American Airlines’ operations control headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, to report an emergency aboard Flight 11, with stabbings and an unresponsive cockpit.

Meanwhile, Betty turned to other flight attendants clustered around her at the back of the plane: “Can anybody get up to the cockpit? Can anybody get up to the cockpit?” Then she returned to the call: “We can’t even get into the cockpit. We don’t know who’s up there.”

At that point, reservations agent Winston Sadler displayed the widely held but tragically mistaken belief that only the airline’s pilots could fly a Boeing 767. “Well,” Sadler told Betty, “if they were shrewd”—meaning the original crew—“they would keep the door closed and …”

Betty: “I’m sorry?”

Sadler: “Well, would they not maintain a sterile cockpit?”

Betty: “I think the guys [hijackers] are up there. They might have gone there, jammed their way up there, or something. Nobody can call the cockpit. We can’t even get inside.”

Sadler went silent.

Betty: “Is anybody still there?”

Sadler: “Yes, we’re still here.”

Betty: “Okay. I’m staying on the line as well.”

Sadler: “Okay.”

Nydia Gonzalez returned to the call. After asking Betty to repeat herself several times, Gonzalez asked: “Have you guys called anyone else?”

“No,” Betty answered. “Somebody’s calling medical and we can’t get a doc—”

The tape ended, but the call continued for more than twenty minutes as Nydia Gonzalez and Vanessa Minter took notes and relayed information from Betty to Craig Marquis at the airline’s control headquarters in Fort Worth. Throughout, Gonzalez reassured Betty, urging her to stay calm and telling her she was doing a wonderful job.

“Betty, how are you holding up, honey?” Gonzalez asked. “Okay. You’re gonna be fine… . Relax, honey. Betty, Betty.”

Several times Betty reported that the plane was flying erratically, almost turning sideways.

“Please pray for us,” Betty asked. “Oh God … oh God.”

EVEN AS HIS anxiety rose about American Flight 11, Boston Center air traffic controller Peter Zalewski knew nothing about Betty Ong’s anguished, ongoing call. No one from American Airlines’ Fort Worth operations control headquarters relayed information to the FAA’s Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, to FAA headquarters in Washington, or to anyone else. As minutes passed and commandeered Flight 11 flew west across Massachusetts and over New York, communications among the airline, the FAA, and U.S. military officials were sporadic at best, incomplete or nonexistent at worst.

Adding to the stress, Zalewski couldn’t devote his entire attention to the troubled American Airlines flight. Other planes continued to take off from Logan Airport and enter Zalewski’s assigned geographic sector. One of those flights was United Airlines Flight 175. For eleven minutes, an unusually long time, Zalewski had no contact with Flight 11.

Then, at 8:24 a.m., five minutes after the start of Betty Ong’s ongoing call to American Airlines’ reservations center, Zalewski heard three strange clicks on the radio frequency assigned to Flight 11 and numerous other flights in his sector.

“Is that American Eleven, trying to call?” Zalewski asked.

Five seconds passed. Then Zalewski heard an unknown male voice with a vaguely Middle Eastern accent. Zalewski handled a great deal of international air traffic, so an Arab pilot’s voice wasn’t entirely unexpected. The unknown man’s radio message wasn’t clear, and Zalewski didn’t comprehend it.

Unknown at that point to anyone at Boston Center, the foreign-sounding man, almost spitting his words directly into the microphone, had said: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and we’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.”

The comment apparently wasn’t intended for Zalewski or other FAA ground controllers. Rather, it sounded like a message from the cockpit intended to pacify Flight 11’s passengers and crew, none of whom heard it. The person in the pilot’s seat—almost certainly Mohamed Atta—keyed the mic in a way that transmitted the message to air traffic control on the ground, as well as to other planes using the same radio frequency, and not to passengers and crew in the cabin behind him. To have been heard inside the plane, the hijacker-pilot would have needed to flip a switch on the cockpit radio panel.

At a time when every piece of information counted, and every minute was crucial, the fact that Zalewski couldn’t quite hear that chilling message marked a major misfortune on a day filled with them. The first sentence of the hijackers’ first cockpit transmission at 8:24:38 a.m. not only announced the terror aboard American Flight 11, it included a seemingly unintentional warning about an unknown number of similar, related plots already in motion, but not yet activated, on other early-morning transcontinental flights. Whoever was flying Flight 11 didn’t simply say that he and his fellow hijackers had seized control of that plane. He said: “We have some planes.”

If the message had been caught immediately, the plural use of “planes” conceivably might have prompted Zalewski and other air traffic controllers to warn other pilots to enforce heightened cockpit security. Those pilots, in turn, might have told flight attendants to be on guard for trouble. But that’s a best-case scenario. It’s also possible that the comment would have been overlooked or dismissed as an empty boast or downplayed as a misstatement by a hijacker with limited English skills. There was no way to know, because Zalewski couldn’t catch it.

Zalewski answered: “And, uh, who’s trying to call me here? … American Eleven, are you trying to call?”

Seconds later, Zalewski heard another communication from the cockpit, also apparently intended for the passengers and crew of Flight 11: “Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you will injure yourselves and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

Zalewski heard that message loud and clear. He screamed for his supervisor, Jon Schippani: “Jon, get over here right now!”

Zalewski announced to the room of flight controllers that Flight 11 had been hijacked. Feeling ignored, as though not everyone at Boston Center appreciated the urgency, Zalewski flipped a switch to allow all the air traffic controllers around him to hear all radio communications with Flight 11. He handed off his other flights to fellow controllers. All the while, Zalewski wondered what essential information he might have missed in the first radio transmission. On the verge of panic, Zalewski turned to another Boston Center employee, a quality assurance supervisor named Bob Jones.

“Someone has to pull these fucking tapes—right now!” Zalewski told Jones.

Jones rushed to the basement to find the recording on the center’s old-fashioned reel-to-reel recording machines so he could decipher the hijacker’s first message.

Zalewski’s first thought was that the hijackers of Flight 11 might make a U-turn and return to Logan Airport, putting the plane dangerously in the path of departing westbound flights. But the radicals in the cockpit had another destination in mind.

The Boeing 767 turned sharply south over Albany, New York. Its flight path followed the Hudson River Valley in the general direction of New York City at a speed of perhaps 600 miles per hour. Even if the plane slowed somewhat, it could fly from Albany to Manhattan in as little as twenty minutes.

Between 8:25 and 8:32 a.m., Boston Center managers alerted their superiors within the FAA that American Flight 11 had been hijacked and was heading toward New York City. Zalewski felt what he could only describe as terror.

Yet just as American Airlines employees failed to immediately pass along information from Betty Ong’s call, more than twelve minutes passed before anyone at Boston Center or the FAA called the U.S. military for help.

One explanation for the delay was a hardwired belief among airline, government, and many military officials that hijackings followed a set pattern, in which military reaction time wasn’t the most important factor. The established playbook for hijackings went something like this: Driven by financial or political motives, such as seeking asylum, ransom, or the release of prisoners, hijackers took control of a passenger plane. Once in command, they used the radio to announce their intentions to government officials or media on the ground. They ordered the airline’s pilots to fly toward a new destination, using threats to passengers and crews as leverage. Eventually the hijackers ordered the pilots to land so they could refuel, escape, arrange for their demands to be met, or some combination. Under those circumstances, the appropriate, measured response from ground-based authorities was to clear other planes from the hijacked plane’s path and to seek a peaceful resolution that would protect innocent victims.