Recording replays Flight 93's fight to the death

It began with a muted series of thumps from a sharp knife or maybe human 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 voice said later. " ... I don't want to die." The plea, captured by the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was played to a transfixed jury Wednesday at the death-penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court in Alexandria, Va.

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 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 captures 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 glass.

Wednesday, the myth of Flight 93 became real. The 33 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendants 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 the 32-minute hijacking drama in which terrorists seized the cockpit by brutal force, repulsed an initial attack by passengers and then crashed the jet into the ground as their captives, throwing dishes or anything else at their disposal, thwarted their plans.

Transcript released


09:39:11 — Ah. Here's the captain. I would like to tell you all to remain seated. We have a bomb aboard, and we are going back to the airport, and we have our demands. So, please remain quiet.

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 actually entered the cockpit, though it is certain they came very close and forced the hijackers to crash the plane into a Pennsylvania field, well before it reached Washington.

The recording made clear that a group of men and women, who already knew the World Trade Center had been attacked, recognized this was no conventional hijacking and resolved to take control of their fate.

The independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks 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, violently jerked the plane 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 infiltrating it, the hijackers turned the plane upside down — and crashed it.

"Allah is the greatest!" one screamed several times as the plane went down. The recording then went dead. The courtroom was silent.

The trial itself seemed an afterthought Wednesday amid the drama of the voice recorder. 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 if he should be executed or spend his life in prison. Reid could testify before the jury gets the case.

Prosecutors played the voice-recorder tape to show the jury the 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 Wednesday about how his wife called him twice 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. Only a week later did he hear the message on his voice mail. "Hi baby," CeeCee Lyles said on the call, a tape of which was played in court Wednesday. "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 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.

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 said the four hijackers started their attack. The plane had taken off from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, 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 is male or female. The Sept. 11 commission concluded 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 or box cutters.

When the plane turned around and started heading southwest through Pennsylvania, there was silence for several minutes. At 9:43 a.m., it started descending rapidly, leveled off and then descended again. The first sign of a struggle came at 9:57, when a hijacker said "Is there something? A fight?"

Passengers, who had received a blitz of cellphone calls alerting them to the earlier trade-center attacks, 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 struggle. People yelled and objects crashed, which Sept. 11 commissioners said was likely the passengers hurling objects at the cockpit door or ramming it with the 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 voice could be heard screaming "No!"