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Home Front: WoT
9/11: Reflecting on 22 Years Since the Darkest Day in Modern U.S. History
2023-09-11
Seen on one of the Afghan news sites, which seems interesting today.
[KhaamaPress] On September 11, 2001, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks by the hard boy group al-Qaeda changed the course of global history. On the 22nd anniversary of this tragic incident, it’s essential to reflect on the events of that fateful day, its implications, and how it shaped global counterterrorism strategies and geopolitics.

On the morning of 9/11, 19 al-Qaeda gunnies hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Within hours, the mighty Twin Towers collapsed, turning downtown Manhattan into a smoke-filled ruin.

Meanwhile,
...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter wished he had a cup of coffee. Even instant would do...
 American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon, the Department of Defense’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was headed towards either the U.S. Capitol or the White House but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to overcome the hijackers.

By the day’s end, almost 3,000 people from over 90 countries had bit the dust, marking the single deadliest terrorist act in world history.

Al-Qaeda, under the leadership of the late Osama bin Laden
...... who used to be alive but now he's not......
, quickly became the prime suspect. While the hard boy group orchestrated the attacks, they found sanctuary with the Taliban
...Arabic for students...
 in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s refusal to extradite bin Laden and dismantle terrorist camps eventually led to the U.S. launching the War on Terror.

Operation Enduring Freedom was initiated on October 7, 2001, to dismantle al-Qaeda and unseat the Taliban. Though the Taliban regime collapsed within months, the conflict continued for two decades. The U.S., during this period, established the Department of Homeland Security and enacted the USA PATRIOT Act, granting expanded surveillance powers to intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

The War on Terror also played a role in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, propelled by the belief that Saddam Hussein might produce weapons of mass destruction and potentially ally with hard boy groups.

Nearly a decade post-9/11, in May 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs located and eliminated Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad
... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden....
, Pakistain. But al-Qaeda’s threat wasn’t entirely neutralized. Last year, another prominent al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri
...Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodox al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra...
, met his end in Kabul, the result of a U.S. dronezap as detailed on the U.S. Department of Defense website.

However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
 despite these successes, Afghanistan’s political landscape remained volatile. As U.S. military presence diminished, the Taliban regained control, culminating in their capture of Kabul in August 2021.

22 years post-9/11, the globe faces a different landscape. The attacks reshaped geopolitics, influenced security policies, and altered perceptions of freedom and safety.

With the rise of other hard boy factions like ISIS post-Al-Qaeda’s decline, counterterrorism remains crucial. To ensure lasting peace, nations must address extremism’s root causes, from socio-economic issues to political disenfranchisement.

Commemorating 9/11’s 22nd anniversary reminds us of the innocent lives lost, the heroes of that day, and the unyielding human spirit. The lessons from 9/11 and its aftermath are enduring, continuously influencing global decisions.
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Home Front: Politix
Florida man charged with threatening to kill President-elect Trump at his inauguration on Twitter was a close family friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton
2017-01-19
- Dominic Puopolo, 51, is being held without bail on charges of threatening harm against a public servant

- Hillary Clinton was especially close to Puopolo's sister Sonia and mother, also named Sonia

- Puopolo once gave $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee, DailyMail.com has learned

- His mother was among 92 people on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001, when it crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower

- Puopolo posted a video on his Twitter account that said, 'This is the 16th of January 2017, I will be at the review/inauguration and I will kill President Trump'

He was arrested a short time later at a Miami Beach Subway restaurant and admitted to officers he had posted the threatening video.
Link


Home Front: WoT
NY developer: Airline reneging on 9/11 promise
2013-02-21
A World Trade Center developer asked a judge Wednesday to disqualify American Airlines from using an "act of war" defense to dodge property liability resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lawyers for the developer, Larry Silverstein, filed papers in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to urge rejection of American Airlines' claim that the 2001 terrorist attack was an act of war that should shield the airline from liability. They called the claims proof of "breathtaking cynicism."

The lawyers said the airline and its insurance carriers promised Congress, regulators and the American people after the attacks that the defense would not be used. In return, the lawyers said, the aviation industry got a massive federal bailout that protected their businesses after the attacks.

"Defendants now renege on those promises and press an act of war defense," the lawyers wrote.

American Airlines spokesman Sean Collins said Silverstein's claims have "no factual or legal support."

"American Airlines has defended itself with all defenses available at law against the baseless attempt by the Silverstein entities to hold American responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11," he said.

Silverstein has been aggressive in the courts to try to collect as much money as possible to rebuild the trade center after the Sept. 11 attacks demolished two 110-story towers. He included the airline in his claims for damages after American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles struck the north tower of the trade center, killing 86 passengers and crew members, along with the hijackers.

He originally filed separate claims for $7 billion, or two full payouts under the $3.5 billion worth of insurance coverage he took out on the trade center complex, arguing that the towers were destroyed by separate attacks by planes hijacked by terrorists.

In two civil trials, it was determined he was eligible for more than $4 billion in insurance payouts
Link


Britain
London-based oil executive linked to 9/11 hijackers
2012-02-18
A Soddy Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country's state oil company.

Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Soddy Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.

Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the
19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.

All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.

A US counter-terrorist agent told The Daily Telegraph: “The registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia community’s north gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers, and another Saudi suspect still on the lam, had visited 4224 Escondito Circle.”

The suspect was Adnan Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda operative who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.A decade after the world’s worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, Mr al-Hijji is resident in London, working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Soddy Arabia’s state oil company. Described as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited and lives in an expensive flat in central London.

In email correspondence with the Telegraph, Mr al-Hijji strongly denied
No, no! Certainly not!
 any involvement in the plot, writing: “I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind and I’m very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations.

“I love the USA. My kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good portion of my life there and I love it.”

Mr al-Hijji’s account is supported by the FBI, which has stated: “At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers … and there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot.’’

Bob Graham, a former US senator who, in addition to co-chairing the congressional inquiry into 9/11, was chairman of the US senate intelligence committee at the time, disputes the FBI denials. He has long believed that there was Saudi support for the 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were subjects of the kingdom. He cites two secret documents to which he has recently had access.

The first document, Graham says, is “not consistent with the public statements of the FBI that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudis at the Sarasota home. Both documents indicate that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI.”

Mr al-Hijji, 38, moved with his family to Britannia in 2003, setting up home in a rented four-bedroom detached house in the Southampton suburb of Totton. His stay there appears to have been uneventful.

The al-Hijjis’ abrupt departure from Sarasota aroused the suspicion of their next-door neighbour, Patrick Gallagher. He emailed the FBI within two days of 9/11 to report the disappearance of the couple and their young children.

Reports released recently by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement refer to the “suspicious manner and timing” of the family’s departure.

One document states: “In mid-August 2001 the above subjects purchased a new vehicle and renewed the registration on several other vehicles. On Aug 27 2001 a moving truck appeared and moved the subjects out of the house. Left behind were the vehicles and numerous personal belongings, including food, medicine, bills, baby clothing etc.”

The document goes on to state that Mr al-Hijji and Esam Ghazzawi, his father-in-law and the owner of the Escondito Circle house, had been “on the FBI watch list” prior to 9/11.

Mr al-Hijji described the allegations against him as “just cheap talk” and denied having abandoned his home in undue haste, explaining: “No, no, no. Absolutely not true. We were trying to secure the [Aramco] job. It was a good opportunity.”
He said his wife and children followed him out to Soddy Arabia a few weeks after he left. She and his American-born mother-in-law had been questioned by the FBI when they returned to the United States to settle the family’s affairs.

But he was not questioned when he returned to America for a two-month period in 2005.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Mystery surrounds the ritzy Florida home linked to 9/11 terrorists
2011-09-10
It's a sprawling piece of real estate with a dark secret: It may have been a haven for bloodthirsty terrorists. The sudden disappearance of the home's Saudi residents before September 11 prompted calls to authorities, who found links to those who orchestrated the horrific attacks of that morning. Days before the tenth anniversary of the worst terror strike on American soil, new light is being shed on the home, and its ties to the tragedy.

The Miami Herald reported the home was owned at the time by Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, his wife Deborah, Ghazzawi's daughter Anoud, and her husband Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii. Days before September 11, 2001, the Saudi family and their small children hurriedly vacated in a white van, leaving brand new cars in the garage, a fridge full of food and closets filled with clothes.

Their sudden departure irked Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community, who reported the exodus. Ironically, Mr Berberich, an advisor to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, was with the group that received President Bush during his visit to the school where he was famously told of the terror attacks on the morning of September 11.

That same morning, neighbour Patrick Gallagher emailed the FBI to report what he felt was suspicious behaviour by the family. In an investigation that began weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI reportedly found several links to the hijackers who carried them out.

When authorities pulled the records of phone calls to and from the home, they discovered the numbers belonged to more than a dozen suspected terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers. A check on the logs of those entering the gated community prior to the attacks found a car belonging to Mohammed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.

Another car entering was linked to Ziad Samir Jarrah, a hijacker of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed just outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Jarrah received flight training about a block away from the house at the Florida Flight Training, the Herald reported.

Another phone number linked to the home was that of Adnan Shukrijumah, who is believed to have been with Atta in the spring of 2001. Shukrijumah, who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list, remains on the loose.

The FBI was able to trace Ghazzawi's route back to Riyadh, with a stopover at a property he owned in Arlington, Virginia,
...to pick up the Krugerrands...
before boarding a flight to Heathrow Airport on the way to Soddy Arabia. An unnamed counterterrorism agent told the paper that Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii were on an FBI watch list and a U.S. agency tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, said he was surprised he wasn't told about the probe of the Escondito Circle home at the time - even though he was especially alert to information pertaining to Florida. Despite that, the inquiry was able to gather a massive file on the hijackers in the United States, and it was turned it over to the 9/11 Commission. But Sen Graham said the Commission 'did very little with it, and their reference to Soddy Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes. I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.'

The opulent house was sold in 2003.
Link


Home Front: WoT
"Able Danger" - Report Suggest Cover-Up of 9/11 Findings
2010-10-05
A document obtained and witnesses interviewed by Fox News raise new questions over whether there was an effort by the Defense Department to cover up a pre-9/11 military intelligence program known as "Able Danger."

At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11.

Atta is believed to have been the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center. Claims about how early Atta first tripped the radar of the Department of Defense date back to 2005, but those claims never made it into the Inspector General's report. The report was completed in 2006 and, until now, has been available only in a version with the names of virtually all of the witnesses blacked out.
Don't pay any attention to the terrorist behind the turban.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Pentagon Attempts to Block Book on Afghan War
2010-09-10
On the eve of Sept. 11, Fox News has learned the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has attempted to block a book about the tipping point in Afghanistan and a controversial pre-9/11 data mining project called "Able Danger."

In a letter obtained by Fox News, the DIA says national security could be breached if "Operation Dark Heart" is published in its current form. The agency also attempted to block key portions of the book that claim "Able Danger" successfully identified hijacker Mohammed Atta as a threat to the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Click here to read the full DIA letter (pdf)

Specifically, the DIA wanted references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book's author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Shaffer alleges the commission was told about "Able Danger" and the identification of Atta before the attacks. No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 report.

In a highly unusual move, the DIA is now negotiating with the publisher, St. Martin's Press, to buy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of the book to keep it off shelves -- even after the U.S. Army had cleared the book for release.
Atta was the alleged ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers and piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center.

Shaffer spoke to Fox News before he was asked by the military not to discuss the book. He confirmed efforts to block the book and other details.

The documents and exclusive interviews, including an Army data collector on the Able Danger Project, are part of an ongoing investigation by the documentary unit "Fox News Reporting" which uncovered new details about American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and efforts by the FBI to track and recruit him for intelligence purposes after 9/11.
Link


Home Front: Politix
Democrats Again Show Extremely Crude Tactlessness
2007-09-09
The decision to exclude the brother of a pilot killed in the Sept. 11 attacks from ceremonies marking its anniversary has set off a political firestorm in Massachusetts.

Jim Ogonowski, who is a Republican candidate for Congress in the heavily-Democratic state, was not asked to speak, as he had for the past four years. Ogonowski's brother John was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, one of two planes that was flown into the World Trade Center.

While Jim Ogonowski was not invited, speaking will be ex-Congressman Martin Meehan, whose wife is chairing Democrat Niki Tsongas' campaign against Ogonowski.

"I never really thought about this as a political situation," Ted Livingston, executive director of the Massachusetts 9/11 Fund, told The Boston Globe. "We didn't seek to include or exclude anyone because of party lines." However, in the past, Ogonowski was asked by then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, to be part of the ceremony. Current Gov. Deval Patrick's chief of staff was a formerly a political consultant for Tsongas.

Ogonowski still plans to attend the ceremony. "He has been honored to speak in the past, and would have been honored to have been asked this year," campaign manager Dustin Olson told the newspaper.

Ogonowski and Tsongas are in the midst of a hotly contested race for Massachusetts' Fifth Congressional District, a race that Republicans see as their best chance in years to win.
Link


Terror Networks
Ammar al Baluchi Denies Role in 9/11 Attacks
2007-04-14
An accused terrorist accomplice held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied any involvement with al Qaeda, as well as possessing knowledge that money he had wired from overseas to the United States was used to finance the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a transcript from his March 30 tribunal hearing. Ammar al Baluchi is the nephew of confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who is also being detained at Guantanamo. Baluchi denied under questioning during the hour-and-a-half tribunal that his uncle had introduced him to al Qaeda operatives prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. “When he introduce a person, he would never say he is from al Qaeda,” Baluchi responded through a translator. “He would introduce him and mention what kind of business he want. And the business is normal, very normal trading business.”

The tribunal was held to determine if Baluchi could be designated as an enemy combatant. The U.S. government believes Baluchi was an al Qaeda intermediary, who, during the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, had wired thousands of dollars from the Middle East to terrorists in the United States. Evidence supporting one of several government charges cites Baluchi as the recipient of 16 phone calls made between June 28 and 30, 2000, from Sept. 11 attack team leader Mohammed Atta, who perished along with his accomplices and the air crew and passengers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first terrorist-hijacked plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Baluchi was arrested on April 29, 2003, in Karachi, Pakistan. He was carrying a compact disk that contained photo images of the World Trade Center when United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane involved during the New York attacks, crashed into the south tower, and a letter addressed to al Qaeda chieftain Osama bin Laden. Baluchi also carried a small vial containing a low dose of cyanide chemical when he was captured.

Baluchi testified that the chemical he carried was used in Pakistan as a bleach to remove coloring from clothes, while the large amount of money he’d wired was just part of his role as a businessman. Government evidence also links Baluchi to a series of money-wire transfers totaling $150,000 from the United Arab Emirates to the United States, including locations in Florida where some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had undergone pilot training. “That, for me, is a very small amount,” Baluchi said of the thousands of U.S. dollars he sent stateside. He recalled the actions of a wealthy, fellow Middle Eastern friend who was going to America to study English for six months. “He took money to buy a Ferrari car in America. So, you can imagine (a) Ferrari is 300,000 (dollars),” Baluchi said during the hearing. In comparison, he said, his transfer of more than $100,000 in U.S. currency was “not that big (of a) question.”

Baluchi also testified through an interpreter that he’d never known that his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or any other people he’d met or contacted, were al Qaeda operatives.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Remains identified of September 11 flight victims
2006-11-03
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Remains of a flight attendant and passenger on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on September 11 have been identified in New York, as families of attack victims rallied for a thorough new Ground Zero search.

The New York medical examiner's office said in a statement that it had identified remains of Karen Ann Martin, the 40-year-old head flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, which slammed into the trade center's north tower.

Remains of Douglas Joel Stone, 54, who was a passenger on the same flight as Martin, were also identified. The remains of a third male victim were identified, but his family requested that his name be withheld and an official declined to say whether he was on one of the two planes that struck the Twin Towers.

More than 100 people, including some families of the 2,749 people killed in the attack, gathered at Ground Zero on Thursday to demand a search by forensic experts after workers clearing manholes found bones two weeks ago. Since then more than 200 body parts, ranging from 1 inch to 12 inches in length, have been found.

The newly identified remains of three people were not from any remains found in the latest search. "Enough of this haphazard discovery of human remains," said Diane Horning, president of WTC Families for Proper Burial, who lost her 26-year-old son Matthew on September 11. Only a small piece of him was recovered in the year after the attack. "How many more times should we wake up in the morning, open our newspaper and read that recognizable body parts and personal items have been literally right under our feet every September 11 since our loved ones have been massacred?"

The families want the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which is in charge of recovering Americans missing as a result of the country's past conflicts, to search the site.

Some 1,148 of the 2,749 victims of the Twin Towers attack are yet to be recovered or identified. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said more than 20,800 remains had been recovered and nearly 11,000 of those had been identified.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the site cleanup, although he said he was at a loss to explain why the bones discovered during the past two weeks had not been recovered sooner.

The manholes where the bones were first discovered on October 19 had been covered by a temporary road built after the attacks to allow in cranes to start removing debris. On October 27 Bloomberg agreed to expand the search underground, on rooftops and in some of the buildings surrounding Ground Zero.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Moussaoui verdict doesn't end anger
2006-05-04
Lee Ielpi didn't hide his disappointment Wednesday after the federal jury verdict that put Zacarias Moussaoui in prison for life for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I felt all along he should get the death penalty, but if it's life in prison with no possibility of parole, then he'll rot in prison where he belongs," said Ielpi, whose firefighter son, Jonathan Ielpi, 29, died in the south tower of the World Trade Center.

"Because he's not getting the death penalty, he may not be as big a martyr as he wanted to be," said Ielpi, a retired firefighter who is vice president of the September 11th Families' Assn. "But there are people who will use him as a martyr anyway."

Jonathan Ielpi's mother, Anne, said she wanted prison authorities to make Moussaoui's days miserable. When "he's allowed out of his cell, I want them to put him in the regular cellblock with all the other prisoners and let them take care of him," she said.

Not every survivor of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks thought the jury was wrong to reject the death penalty.

"Life in prison is the verdict I would have preferred. I don't believe in capital punishment. I'm not a vengeful person," said Karen Tartaro of Bridgewater, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, 39, died on the 93rd floor of the north tower. "I don't think we should make him into a martyr. Doing that would not make the world a better place. Probably, under the circumstances, this is the best."

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles "Chick" Burlingame III, 51, of Virginia was the pilot on the flight that hit the Pentagon, said she was disappointed. "But I accept the verdict as a fair one reasonably arrived at," she said.

She was concerned, however, when she learned that at least three of the jurors thought that Moussaoui should not be executed because he knew little about the attacks. She said most of the hijackers had limited advance knowledge, adding that the little Moussaoui knew would have been enough, had he told authorities, to prevent the attacks.

Lee Ielpi said he was satisfied that the justice system worked, despite the verdict.

"We've sent the message that we're going to find these people and put them through the process, and we're going to eliminate terrorism," he said. "We're a very tough nation. We will persevere and we will prevail."

During the trial, Abraham Scott, whose wife, Janice, died in the Pentagon, thought Moussaoui deserved to die. But when the verdict came, he told the Associated Press that the jury "made the right decision."

"I didn't change my mind," he said. "I still support the death penalty, but on the other hand I wholeheartedly support the decision of the jury."

Alexander Santora's position shifted the other way. His son Christopher was a firefighter who died in the New York attacks. Santora said he had wanted Moussaoui sentenced to life imprisonment, but changed his mind when the Al Qaeda conspirator showed no remorse in court.

Santora said Moussaoui was guilty. "A bullet in his brain would have been a just reward."

Patricia Reilly lost her sister, Lorraine Lee, when the planes were flown into the World Trade Center. She was angered by the jury's decision to spare Moussaoui.

"I feel very much let down by this country," Reilly said. "I guess in this country you can kill 3,000 people and not pay with your life. I believe he's going to go to jail and start converting other people to his distorted view of Islam."

Christie Coombs of Abington, Mass., said she did not think a death sentence would have changed anything. Her husband, Jeff, died on American Airlines Flight 11 in New York.

"It wasn't going to bring my husband back," Coombs said. "It wasn't going to make any of these people that died walk through their doors and make their families happy."
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
John Podoretz reviews United 93
2006-04-27
Weekly Standard EFL'd just a bit

ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, ABC News president David Westin decided that his network would no longer air footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center only a week before. The constant repetition of the images of the planes crashing into the buildings had become "gratuitous," a spokesman said.

Almost immediately, all other networks and news channels adopted the same policy, and ever since, it is only on rare occasions that Americans have been exposed to those indelible images. . . . One gets the impression that the video footage is kept largely under wraps because of the emotions it might provoke. Someone is trying to protect us from the neurochemical cocktail of grief and rage, sorrow and anger, trauma and vengefulness that even a few minutes' conversation about 9/11 can cause.

Or, perhaps, some in
the media might feel as though the imagery is almost too politicized. Perhaps because George W. Bush invokes the attacks and their meaning so frequently, leading figures in the media believe the imagery will tend to buttress Bush's arguments, and serve as unpaid advertising for the president's policies.

Thus, while the events of 9/11 remain the most important and devastating in recent American history, they have achieved a peculiar invisibility. In New York, where I live, there are ferocious arguments about the way the rebuilding at Ground Zero has been mishandled--about the designs of the buildings and the street grid and the look, placement, and size of the memorials. Somehow, these discussions have become weirdly divorced from the reason that Ground Zero even exists. . . .

The masterful new film United 93, the first major Hollywood release about September 11, is reticent as well when it comes to the depictions of the attacks in New York. American Airlines Flight 11 is shown only as a computerized glyph on an air-traffic controller's screen. The controller knows the plane has been hijacked and is tracking it as it enters the airspace over New York. Suddenly, the glyph just vanishes from his screen.

"It's gone," the controller says. "It was there and then it's just gone." Flight 11 has just crashed into the North Tower.

Sixteen minutes elapse on screen between that moment and the one in which writer-director Paul Greengrass shows us the fate of United Airlines Flight 175, following precisely the span of time on the real September 11. Greengrass brings us into the control tower at Newark Airport, which has a direct view of South Manhattan ten miles to the East. The people working there are asked if they can see Flight 175 just as, in the distance, the jet sails without hesitation into the South Tower. The men in the control room react without reacting, expressionless, unable to process what they've just witnessed.

Greengrass's handling of these historic horrors is pitch-perfect, in part because we are so unused to seeing them close-up. By starting first with the little glyph and then moving on to the plane in the distance, he brings us back to that morning as most of us experienced it: a shocked phone call, a report on a car radio, worried whispers of a terrorist strike, a hurried move to a television, then the unimaginable news of a second plane hitting the second building, followed a few minutes later by a clear-as-day image of that seminal event.

Greengrass is presenting the events of that morning in documentary fashion, a cinematic version of what journalists call a "tick-tock"--a minute-by-minute re-creation in narrative form. Everything we see is staged, written by Greengrass and performed by actors. But among the actors are Ben Sliney, who was running the Federal Aviation Administration's operations room in Herndon, Va., on the morning of September 11, and Major James Fox, who was in charge of the Northeast Air Defense Sector at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.

As the movie jumps from Boston Air Traffic Control to the FAA to Newark Airport to Herndon to Otis, Greengrass achieves a staggering level of verisimilitude. The atmosphere is thick with confusion. Nobody has the same information at the same time, planes are routinely confused and misidentified, and key personnel are on vacation.

For the central story Greengrass is trying to tell, the reticence and confusion are both essential. For United 93 is about the plane that was brought down in a Pennsylvania field because the 33 passengers on board figured out that they were being taken on a suicide mission and chose to take matters into their own hands. The scenes on board United 93 are, of course, mostly speculative. All we know about the flight comes from the phone calls made by passengers and some bits of discussion in the cockpit that were either transmitted to an air-traffic control center in Cleveland or were recorded by the plane's black box.

We see the passengers, pilots, and flight crew board the plane, eat breakfast, make chit-chat. The plane is delayed on the ground for 47 minutes before takeoff, and we watch as lead hijacker Ziad Jarrah sits alone in seat 1A in first class while his compatriots sit behind him, waiting for him to act. It is Greengrass's speculation that a panicky Jarrah froze, which delayed the hijacking long enough for the passengers to discover from cellphone and AirFone calls that the Twin Towers had been hit and that there were other hijacked planes in the sky.

Because the flight was delayed, and the hijacking itself did not take place for another half-hour, Greengrass manages the near-impossible. He makes us hope. He makes us think that, perhaps, the hijacking we know happened will not, that the panicky Jarrah and his evil crew will fail, that the attempt to take over the plane and land it safely might succeed.

And because Greengrass chose circumspection in his portrayal of the Twin Tower attacks, the sudden and shocking violence of the hijacking of United 93 hits us hard. Four people were killed in the takeover of the plane, which would have seemed like small potatoes next to the devastation in New York. But because of Greengrass's brilliance, the horror of those murders is given its full weight.

In the film's final 32 minutes, the passengers and crew become, as Greengrass has said, "the first people to live in the post-9/11 world." They gather information quickly, including word that a third plane has struck the Pentagon. The men who choose to storm the cockpit don't give speeches about their intentions. They simply decide they must do something, and they know there is a pilot among the passengers who might be able to land the plane. They don't intend to die. They intend to win.

And in world-historical terms, they do win. . . .

Because the movie reminds us of this, and because it does not seek to wring tears but wants us to have some sense of what might have happened on that plane as it was happening in real time, Greengrass has succeeded in making a movie about September 11 that is both appropriately heartbreaking and quietly triumphant. United 93 is a masterpiece of a kind; but it's hard to say what kind of masterpiece it is, because there's never been a movie like it before, and there may never be one to compare to it again.

There's a lot of talk about whether Americans are "ready" to see a movie about 9/11. Some of that talk is doubtless due to the same attitude that says Americans can't possibly stomach seeing footage of the crashes, or the buildings falling. Such infantilization is an insult both to Americans, who are perfectly capable of handling such things, and to the memories of those who perished in the attacks, whose public murders are being treated as though they had been quiet and private deaths.

There's no reason to fear United 93. It is a riveting examination of an unbearable moment. Not only can we take it, we can also rise to the challenge it presents--both to us, and to those who would treat Americans as though they were hothouse flowers incapable of feeling the "right way" about September 11. . . .
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