....shot down. The threat to Washington, DC was eliminated, and the whiz-kids at the CIA were able to make heroes out of the passengers and crew.
I have no doubt that the passengers tried to take back the plane from the hijackers, but I think there's a second part to this story.
http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7999
QUOTE:
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - Ernie Stuhl is the mayor of this tiny farming borough that was so brutally placed on America's psychic map on the morning of Sept. 11, when United Airlines Flight 93 slammed nose-down into the edge of a barren strip-mine moonscape a couple of miles outside of town.
A 77-year-old World War II veteran and retired Dodge dealer, he's certainly no conspiracy theorist.
And, when you ask Stuhl for his theory of what caused the jetliner to crash that morning, he will give you the prevailing theory - that a cockpit battle between the hijackers and burly, heroic passengers somehow caused the Boeing 757 to spiral out of control. "There's no doubt in my mind that they did put it down before it got to Washington and caused more damage," he said.
But press the mayor for details, and he will add something surprising.
"I know of two people - I will not mention names - that heard a missile," Stuhl said. "They both live very close, within a couple of hundred yards. . .This one fellow's served in Vietnam and he says he's heard them, and he heard one that day." The mayor adds that based on what he knows about that morning, military F-16 fighter jets were "very, very close."
....and....
What is surprising is this: Go to Shanksville and the surrounding farm fields where people actually saw or heard the jetliner go down at roughly 10:06 that morning and there are a number of people - including witnesses - who also think that Flight 93 was shot down, or at least aren't ruling it out.
Laura Temyer, who lives several miles north of the crash site in Hooversville, was hanging some clothes outside that morning when she heard an airplane pass overhead. That struck her as unusual since she'd just heard on TV that all flights were grounded.
"I heard like a boom and the engine sounded funny," she told the Daily News. "I heard two more booms - and then I did not hear anything."
....and....
* THE 911 CALL. At 9:58 a.m., roughly eight minutes before impact, a 911 emergency dispatcher in neighboring Westmoreland County took a call from a frantic passenger who said he was locked in the bathroom of Flight 93 and that the plane had been hijacked. The caller said there had been an explosion aboard the plane and there was white smoke. Authorities have never explained the report, and the 911 tape itself was immediately confiscated by the FBI.
* THE DEBRIS FIELD. The reclaimed mine where the plane crashed is composed of very soft soil, and searchers say much of the wreckage was found buried 20-25 feet below the large crater. But despite that, there was also widely scattered debris in the immediate vicinity and further afield. Considerable debris washed up more than two miles away at Indian Lake, and a canceled check and brokerage statement from the plane was found in a deep valley some eight miles away that week.
* THE MYSTERY PLANE. Many people in the Shanksville area, including some interviewed by the Daily News, saw a fast-moving, unmarked small jet fly overhead a very short time after Flight 93 crashed. Several days later, authorities said they believe the plane was a Falcon 20 private jet that was headed to nearby Johnstown but was asked to descend and survey the crash site. Yet officials have never identified the pilot nor explained why he was still airborne roughly 30 minutes after the government ordered all aircraft to land at the closest airport.
* THE ENGINE. While the FBI and other authorities have said the plane was mostly obliterated by the roughly 500 mph impact, they also said an engine - or at least a 1,000-pound piece of one - was found "a considerable distance" from the crater. Stuhl, the Shanksville mayor, said it was found in the woods just west of the crash. That information is intriguing to shoot-down theory proponents, since the heat-seeking, air-to-air Sidewinder missiles aboard an F-16 would likely target one of the Boeing 757's two large engines.
* LOCATION OF F-16S. From Day 1, the government has given conflicting accounts about the exact whereabouts of three North Dakota Air National Guard F-16s, assigned to national air defense, based at Langley Air Force base in Virginia and scrambled at the height of the attacks.
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