This article documents in detail FAA's complicity in Flight 93 cover-up. FAA ordered ATCs evacuated so that Flight 93 could not be tracked on radar and at the same time told FAA Headquarters that controllers "lost track" of Flight 93 near Pittsburgh.

www.gpoaccess.gov (see page 29)

So let's summarize the events depicted by the 9/11 Commission:

1) By 9:02 am FAA and NEADS are aware that hijacked airplanes have hit WTC1 and WTC2.

2) At 9:42 am, FAA is aware that hijacked plane has hit Pentagon

3) At 9:46 am Ben Sliney at FAA Command Center is aware that Flight 93 is hijacked, and is only 29 minutes outside of Washington.

4) At 9:49, 13 minutes after Cleveland asks about getting military assistance, Sliney finally asks FAA headquarters about scrambing some jets. At this point Flight 93 is only 26 minutes outside of Washington.

5) FAA Headquarters tells Sliney everybody left the room and there is nobody there to make decision re intercepting Flight 93.

The story gets more incredulous... from the 9/11 Commission Report:

quote: 9/11 Commission Report, page 29

At 9:53, FAA headquarters informed the Command Center (Sliney) that the deputy director for air traffic services was talking to Monte Belger about scrambling aircraft.

Then the Command Center informed headquarters that controllers had lost track of United 93 over the Pittsburgh area.

This is THE "smoking gun" of the entire operation. I hate to use the term "smoking gun" because it's so overused, but if there is a "smoking gun" this is it.

Why?

Because it was Ben Sliney at Command Center that informed FAA headquarters that controllers "lost track" of Flight 93 over Pittsburgh. The freakin' controllers didn't "lose track" of Flight 93. They were ordered to evacuate the control tower at 9:49, presumably by FAA Command Center (who else?).

Here's a link to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story from Sept. 23. Read down about 2/3 of the way:

www.post-gazette.com

quote: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 23, 2001

Full (Bob Full, head of Allegheny County emergency operations) learned about the errant plane at 9:53 a.m. That's when he got a call alerting him that the control tower at Pittsburgh International Airport had been evacuated. Thirteen minutes earlier, he had talked to an airport official who had no indication of any threat.

Between those two conversations, the Pittsburgh tower had received a call from the Cleveland air traffic control tower, saying a plane was heading toward Pittsburgh and refusing to communicate with controllers. The FAA ordered the Pittsburgh control tower evacuated at 9:49 a.m.

So now, let's start piecing this together.

1) Everybody knows that 3 hijacked planes hit the WTC and Pentagon by 9:49 am.

2) At 9:42 Sliney orders FAA to instruct "all aircraft" (4,500 total) to land at the nearest airports immediately. This was un unprecedented order, and an order that would have immediately overwhelmed ATC all across the country, including the ATCs in Pittsburgh.

3) 7 minutes after ordering all aircraft to land, the FAA orders the Pittsburgh control tower evacuated. Simultaneously, the FAA Command Center is pondering sending fighters to shoot down Flight 93, but guess what? THEY LOST TRACK OF FLIGHT 93 BECAUSE THE CONTROL TOWER IN PITTSBURGH WAS EVACUATED!!

So now you may be wondering how they "found" Flight 93 since there were no ATCs in the radar tower in Pittsburgh (or Cleveland). Simple, the 9/11 Commission "answers" that for us:

quote: 9/11 Commission Report, page 30

Within seconds,the Command Center received a visual report from another aircraft, and informed head-quarters that the aircraft was 20 miles northwest of Johnstown. United 93 was spotted by another aircraft, and, at 10:01, the Command Center advised FAA headquarters that one of the aircraft had seen United 93 “waving his wings.”

So "within seconds" after ordering the controllers from the Pittsburgh ATC tower, the FAA received a visual report from an aircraft that spotted Flight 93.

If this were a court case, this is where the defense attorney would object because the "chain of evidence" was broken. Flight 93 was being tracked on radar, then the controllers were ordered out of the ATC tower.

Next, Sliney tells FAA Headquarters that another pilot saw Flight 93. So here's the question: How did Sliney, or the pilot, know it was Flight 93????

Even if we stipulate that there even WAS another pilot who somehow managed to radio to air traffic controllers that he saw Flight 93... BUT WAIT... who did this pilot talk to on the radio if the controllers were already evacuated from the control towers in Cleveland, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh?

And of course the end of this story is equally unbelievable. With all ATCs who could have seen the last 12 minutes of Flight 93 on radar already out of the control towers, the next person to identify Flight 93 was Steve O'Brien, the C-130H pilot who also visually identified Flight 77 just before it hit the Pentagon.

So according to the 9/11 Commission Report, there is no way to verify what happened to Flight 93 between 9:49 and 10:03 am. (BTW, orignal crash time was reported as 10:06 am)