Whom did he kill? He was an accessory to murder-- that's why he is facing the death penalty.
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At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality
By Jerry Markon and Timothy Dwyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 13, 2006; A01
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.
Yesterday, the myth of Flight 93 became real. The 33 passengers and seven crew members have been lionized in book and film for their struggle to retake the doomed jet, one of four planes hijacked during the deadliest terrorist strike in U.S. history. Until now, the recording that documented their courage had been played only for federal investigators and a limited number of relatives of those aboard.
But in court, Americans were taken inside a hijacking drama that saw in a space of time shorter than the average Washington commute terrorists seize a cockpit by brutal force, repulse an initial attack by passengers and then crash a jetliner in a Pennsylvania field as their captives, throwing plates or anything else at their disposal, thwarted their plans.
Much of the tape is unintelligible. There was loud static, and the voices, some speaking English and others Arabic, were often inaudible. It cannot be determined whether the passengers entered the cockpit, although it is certain they came close and forced the hijackers to abandon their attack on Washington.
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.
The hijackers, as shown on a computer simulation played on monitors throughout the courtroom, jerked the plane violently to the left and right during the struggle. They tried to cut off the oxygen as passengers banged on the cockpit door. In the end, as the passengers were either in the cockpit or moments from entering it, the hijackers turned the plane upside down -- and crashed it.
"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed nine times as the plane went down. The recording then went dead. The courtroom was silent.
The trial seemed an afterthought yesterday amid the drama of the recording. Prosecutors rested their case for the execution of Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the attacks on the trade center and the Pentagon. The defense will now begin its case, and Moussaoui is expected to take the stand again as early as today.
In the trial's first phase, Moussaoui testified that he had planned to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House on Sept. 11 with a crew that included shoe bomber Richard Reid. The jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty and will decide whether he should be executed or spend his life in prison. Reid could testify before the jury gets the case.
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."
Prosecutors played the voice recorder tape as part of their effort to show the jury the extensive damage caused by Sept. 11 and the suffering and loss of the victims. More than 35 survivors and family members testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, including Lorne Lyles, whose wife, CeeCee, was a flight attendant on Flight 93. He brought several jurors to the brink of tears with his testimony yesterday about his wife's two calls from the plane.
The first time the phone rang, Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., police officer who had worked the overnight shift, rolled over and went back to sleep. He did speak to his wife briefly when she called again. But only a week later did he hear the message she had left on his voice mail.
"Hi, baby," CeeCee Lyles said in the call, a tape of which was played in court yesterday. "Baby, you have to listen to me very carefully. I'm on a plane that's been hijacked. . . . I'm trying to be calm."
Saying she knew that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, Lyles tried to keep her composure, but her voice broke as she ended the call. "I hope to be able to see your face again, baby," she said. "I love you, baby."
Lyles said he has been in and out of counseling for the past five years. "I'm just now being able to appreciate a full night's sleep," he testified. "They say closure, but there's never any closure. It takes a piece of you."
Moussaoui looked bored, as he did when the cockpit voice recorder was played. Jurors leaned forward in their seats.
A large screen showed the path of Flight 93 and instrument readings of speed and altitude as Ziad Jarrah, believed to be the hijacking team's pilot, started the recording by announcing: "Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit down keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit."
It was nearly 9:32 a.m., four minutes after investigators say the four hijackers started their attack. The plane had taken off from Newark Liberty International Airport, bound for San Francisco, at 8:42 a.m.
The sounds of a struggle in the cockpit were immediately heard, but it was unclear whether the pleading voice was male or female. The Sept. 11 commission concluded that a flight attendant, most likely a woman, struggled with hijackers in the cockpit and was killed or otherwise silenced. Hijackers on the four planes were armed with small knives and box cutters.
When the plane turned around and started heading south through Pennsylvania, there were several minutes of silence. At 9:43 a.m., it started descending rapidly, leveled off, then descended again. The first sign of a struggle came at 9:57 a.m., when a hijacker said: "Is there something? A fight?"
Passengers, who had made cellphone calls and learned of the earlier trade center attack, then rushed the cockpit. "They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside," a hijacker said.
"Shall we finish it off?" one hijacker asked.
"No, not yet," responded another. "When they all come, we finish it off."
Within seconds, there was bedlam -- the sounds of a violent, almost animalistic struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 commissioners say was probably the passengers hurling objects at the cockpit door or ramming it with a beverage cart.
"Down, down. Pull it down, pull it down," a hijacker said just before his colleague praised Allah and crashed the plane.
In the background, a single voice could be heard screaming "No!"
