FBI, the mob, and 9/11

[Jack White]

There is little difference in the noise decibel level between a 747 and 767, according to

the FAA, which governs allowable noise levels:

"Engine Noise - the decibel level measured 394 feet from the source (FAA standard). Values for some "quiet" Stage 3 airliners: 747, 106 db; DC-10, 102 db; 767, 94 db; A300, 94 db."

So at 394 feet, the 747 is only 12 decibels louder.

For comparison, the front row of a rock band concert runs about 110 decibels.

Jack

Edited April 29, 2009 by Jack White

[Jack White]

Ted Olson's Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials

by David Ray Griffin

Global Research, April 1, 2008

Late in the day on 9/11, CNN put out a story that began: “Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney, alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN.” According to this story, Olson reported that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,” saying that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters.”2

Ted Olson’s report was very important. It provided the only evidence that American 77, which was said to have struck the Pentagon, had still been aloft after it had disappeared from FAA radar around 9:00 AM (there had been reports, after this disappearance, that an airliner had crashed on the Ohio-Kentucky border). Also, Barbara Olson had been a very well-known commentator on CNN. The report that she died in a plane that had been hijacked by Arab Muslims was an important factor in getting the nation’s support for the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Ted Olson’s report was important in still another way, being the sole source of the widely accepted idea that the hijackers had box cutters.3

However, although Ted Olson’s report of phone calls from his wife has been a central pillar of the official account of 9/11, this report has been completely undermined.

Olson’s Self-Contradictions

Olson began this process of undermining by means of self-contradictions. He first told CNN, as we have seen, that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone.” But he contradicted this claim on September 14, telling Hannity and Colmes that she had reached him by calling the Department of Justice collect. Therefore, she must have been using the “airplane phone,” he surmised, because “she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards.”4 However, this version of Olson’s story, besides contradicting his first version, was even self-contradictory, because a credit card is needed to activate a passenger-seat phone.

Later that same day, moreover, Olson told Larry King Live that the second call from his wife suddenly went dead because “the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well.”5 After that return to his first version, he finally settled on the second version, saying that his wife had called collect and hence must have used “the phone in the passengers’ seats” because she did not have her purse.6

By finally settling on this story, Olson avoided a technological pitfall. Given the cell phone system employed in 2001, high-altitude cell phone calls from airliners were impossible, or at least virtually so (Olson’s statement that “the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well” was a considerable understatement). The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004.7

However, Olson’s second story, besides being self-contradictory, was contradicted by American Airlines.

American Airlines Contradicts Olson’s Second Version

A 9/11 researcher, knowing that AA Flight 77 was a Boeing 757, noticed that AA’s website indicated that its 757s do not have passenger-seat phones. After he wrote to ask if that had been the case on September 11, 2001, an AA customer service representative replied: “That is correct; we do not have phones on our Boeing 757. The passengers on flight 77 used their own personal cellular phones to make out calls during the terrorist attack.”8

In response to this revelation, defenders of the official story might reply that Ted Olson was evidently right the first time: she had used her cell phone. However, besides the fact that this scenario is rendered unlikely by the cell phone technology employed in 2001, it has also been contradicted by the FBI.

Olson’s Story Contradicted by the FBI

The most serious official contradiction of Ted Olson’s story came in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The evidence presented to this trial by the FBI included a report on phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. In its report on American Flight 77, the FBI report attributed only one call to Barbara Olson and it was an “unconnected call,” which (of course) lasted “0 seconds.”9 According to the FBI, therefore, Ted Olson did not receive a single call from his wife using either a cell phone or an onboard phone.

Back on 9/11, the FBI itself had interviewed Olson. A report of that interview indicates that Olson told the FBI agents that his wife had called him twice from Flight 77.10 And yet the FBI’s report on calls from Flight 77, presented in 2006, indicated that no such calls occurred.

This was an amazing development: The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, and yet its report undermined the well-publicized claim of the DOJ’s former solicitor general that he had received two calls from his wife on 9/11.

Olson’s Story Also Rejected by Pentagon Historians

Ted Olson’s story has also been quietly rejected by the historians who wrote Pentagon 9/11, a treatment of the Pentagon attack put out by the Department of Defense.11

According to Olson, his wife had said that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers.”12 This is an inherently implausible scenario. We are supposed to believe that 60-some people, including the two pilots, were held at bay by three or four men (one or two of the hijackers would have been in the cockpit) with knives and boxcutters. This scenario becomes even more absurd when we realize that the alleged hijackers were all small, unathletic men (the 9/11 Commission pointed out that even “[t]he so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically imposing, as the majority of them were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height and slender in build”13), and that the pilot, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was a weightlifter and a boxer, who was described as “really tough” by one of his erstwhile opponents.14 Also, the idea that Burlingame would have turned over the plane to hijackers was rejected by his brother, who said: “I don't know what happened in that cockpit, but I'm sure that they would have had to incapacitate him or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane.”15

The Pentagon historians, in any case, did not accept the Olson story, according to which Burlingame and his co-pilot did give up their plane and were in the back with the passengers and other crew members. They instead wrote that “the attackers either incapacitated or murdered the two pilots.”16

Conclusion

This rejection of Ted Olson’s story by American Airlines, the Pentagon, and especially the FBI is a development of utmost importance. Without the alleged calls from Barbara Olson, there is no evidence that Flight 77 returned to Washington. Also, if Ted Olson’s claim was false, then there are only two possibilities: Either he lied or he was duped by someone using voice-morphing technology to pretend to be his wife.17 In either case, the official story about the calls from Barbara Olson was based on deception. And if that part of the official account of 9/11 was based on deception, should we not suspect that other parts were as well?

The fact that Ted Olson’s report has been contradicted by other defenders of the official story about 9/11 provides grounds for demanding a new investigation of 9/11. This internal contradiction is, moreover, only one of 25 such contradictions discussed in my most recent book, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press.

NOTES

1 This essay is based on Chapter 8 (“Did Ted Olson Receive Calls from Barbara Olson?”) of David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).

2 Tim O’Brien, “Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane,” CNN, September 11, 2001 (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson).

3 This was pointed out in The 9/11 Commission Report, 8.

4 Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, September 14, 2001 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/foxnews091401.html).

5 “America’s New War: Recovering from Tragedy,” Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001 (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html).

6 In his “Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture,” delivered November 16, 2001

(http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.63/default.asp),

Olson said that she “somehow managed . . . to use a telephone in the airplane to call.” He laid out this version of his story more fully in an interview reported in Toby Harnden, “She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane,” Daily Telegraph, March 5, 2002 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/telegraph030502.html).

7 I discussed the technical difficulties of making cell phone calls from airliners in 2001 in Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007), 87-88, 292-97.

8 See the submission of 17 February 2006 by “the Paradroid” on the Politik Forum (http://forum.politik.de/forum/archive/index.php/t-133356-p-24.html). It is quoted in David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 75.

9 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit Number P200054 (http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/flights/P200054.html). These documents can be more easily viewed in “Detailed Account of Phone Calls from September 11th Flights”

(http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html).

10 FBI, “Interview with Theodore Olsen [sic],” “9/11 Commission, FBI Source Documents, Chronological, September 11,” 2001Intelfiles.com, March 14, 2008,

(http://intelfiles.egoplex.com:80/2008/03/911-commission-fbi-source-documents.html).

11 Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2007).

12 O’Brien, “Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane.”

13 9/11 Commission Staff Statement 16

(http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_16.pdf).

14 Shoestring, “The Flight 77 Murder Mystery: Who Really Killed Charles Burlingame?” Shoestring911, February 2, 2008 (http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2008/02/flight-77-murder-mystery-who-really.html).

15 “In Memoriam: Charles ‘Chic’ Burlingame, 1949-2001,” USS Saratoga Museum foundation (available at http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/a...emembered.html).

16 Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2007), 12.

17 Of these two possibilities, the idea that Ted Olson was duped should be seriously entertained only if there are records proving that the Department of Justice received two collect calls, ostensibly from Barbara Olson, that morning. Evidently no such records have been produced.

This article is based on Chapter 8 of Dr. Griffin's new book, "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).

This book reframes the central events of 9/11 as a series of 25 internal contradictions. The only way that its readers will be able to continue to accept the official story is to accept mutually contradictory accounts.

"9/11 Contradictions" may have the best chance of any of DRG's books (or indeed any book) of opening up a new investigation into 9/11.

David Ray Griffin is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by David Ray Griffin

[Guest Tom Scully]

Thank you, Jack !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...,671089,00.html

..."There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information," the solicitor general, Theodore Olson, told the supreme court this week. ........

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/65803

Ted Olson is a real "piece of work":

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...st&p=166535

I downloaded the 27 mb .zip file that contains the flash presentation presented by the DOJ to the Zacarias Moussaoui jury, and extracted a 5 mb .swf file that shows the evidence presented in that case by the government was that the justice department "received" one call from Barbara Olson at 9:18 am on 9/11 of "0 seconds" duration, i.e., the only call that they showed evidence of, did not connect!

The government does not make it easy, but if you download and extract the zip file with the "evidence" presented in federal criminal court, you can verify that there is no proof of Barbara Olson's "four calls" on 9/11

28 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit Number P200054 ( http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/...rosecution.html ). If unable to download this document, see “Detailed Account of Phone Calls From September 11th Flights” ( http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidenc...etail.html#ref1 ).

....good ole "fixer Ted", supplied us with all of this:

"Her husband said she called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77, which was en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles.

Ted Olson told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters." http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pent...lson/index.html

"The little white lie was about Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator for CNN and wife of US Solicitor General Ted Olson. Now deceased, Mrs Olson is alleged to have twice called her husband from an American Airlines Flight 77 seat-telephone, before the aircraft slammed into the Pentagon. This unsubstantiated claim, reported by CNN remarkably quickly at 2.06 am EDT [0606 GMT] on September 12, was the solitary foundation on which the spurious “Hijacker” story was built.

Without the “eminent” Barbara Olson and her alleged emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof that humans played a role in the hijack and destruction of the four aircraft that day. Lookalike claims surfaced several days later on September 16 about passenger Todd Beamer and others, but it is critically important to remember here that the Barbara Olson story was the only one on September 11 and. 12. It was beyond question the artificial “seed” that started the media snowball rolling down the hill."

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/lies911/lies.htm or, here: http://web.archive.org/web/20070912173020/...ies911/lies.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20020610082114/...ture-111601.htm

Ted Olsen Discussed Barbara and WOT - 11/16/01

Federalist Society | November 16, 2001 | Ted Olsen

Posted on Monday, September 22, 2003 09:50:13 by Peach

A friend and neighbor worked with Ted Olsen in the Reagan Justice Department and sent this via e-mail.

Although it is nearly two years old, the speech highlights excellent analysis regarding the war on terror and why the terrorists want to destroy America.

Ted Olson, 11/16/01:

As you have been told, the Federalist Society envisions that the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture each year will address the ideals and principles that the Federalist Society holds dear and that Barbara cherished: limited government, liberty and freedom.

I felt that it would be fitting to inaugurate this series with some words about Barbara, why she died, and how much of her life and death were interwoven with those very principles that will animate the lecture series in her name.

On September 11, 2001, Barbara Olson and thousands of other Americans were murdered.

There were victims from other nations that day as well, but they were accidental casualties. Barbara and her fellow Americans were the targets; selected at random to be slaughtered that day precisely because they were Americans.

And the places of their deaths were carefully chosen for what they meant to America, and to the world about Americans, and because they were unique symbols of America's vitality, prosperity and strength.

The World Trade Center Towers were an emblem of America's largest and most prosperous city and an internationally recognized symbol of America's leadership in commerce, free enterprise and international trade.

The Pentagon was an even more fitting target for the perverted minds that planned this day of terror. Construction on it had begun precisely 60 years earlier, on September 11, 1941, as America was awakening to the nightmare of Adolph Hitler and Nazi terror in Europe. Since its construction, the Pentagon has stood for the power, strength and seeming invincibility of a free people. It has been the place from which America, again and again, sent its men and women to fight and die to save not only our own citizens, but millions of others as well, from tyranny, oppression, brutality and murder.

One additional symbol of America, the Capitol I believe, was spared that day only because the brave Americans on that fourth aircraft did what Americans instinctively do when their lives and their country are threatened. They fought. They died, but they saved the lives of countless others and averted an even greater and barely imaginable tragedy.

Barbara Olson had less time, and maybe not as many resources, as the heroes on United Flight 93 that was brought down in Pennsylvania short of its target. But the moment her flight was hijacked, she began to try to save herself and her fellow passengers. She somehow managed (I think she was the only one on that flight to do so) to use a telephone in the airplane to call, not only for help from the outside, but for guidance for herself and the flight crew in the battle that she was already undertaking in her mind. She learned during those two telephone conversations that two passenger jumbo jets had already that morning been turned into instruments of mass murder at the World Trade Center. So she knew the unspeakable horror that she was facing -- and I know without the slightest doubt that she died fighting -- with her body, her brain and her heart -- and not for a moment entertaining the notion that she would not prevail. Barbara died therefore not only because she was an American, but as one more American who refused to surrender to the monstrous evil into whose eyes she and her fellow countrymen stared during those last hideous moments.

September 11, 2001 was unprecedented in our nation's history. Our country has been attacked before. Our soldiers and innocent citizens have been the victims of terrorism before. But never before in our history have so many civilian citizens, engaged in the routines of their daily lives, who neither individually nor collectively had done anything to provoke the savage attack that they were to experience that day, been brutally murdered for the simple reason that they were Americans, and because they stood, in their countless individual lives, for all the things that America symbolizes.

As President Bush immediately recognized, September 11 was an act of war. But, as he has also explained, it was much more than that. It was also a crime, an act of pure hatred and unmitigated evil. It was a ruthless, brutal, intentionally malignant attack on thousands of innocent persons.

Think of the sick calculation that gave birth to these acts. The victims were persons of all races, backgrounds, religions, ages and qualities. They had one thing in common. They were Americans, Americans who believed in the values that their country stands for: liberty, democracy, freedom and equality. Their lives were cruelly extinguished because they were the living embodiment of the aspirations of most of the world's peoples. The people who killed them, and who planned their death, hate America and Americans for that very reason. They despise America and the beacon that America holds out to people who are impoverished, enslaved, persecuted and subjugated everywhere in the world. The men who planned the savage acts of September 11 cannot prevail, they cannot even long exist, as long as American ideals continue to inspire the very people they hope to tyrannize and enslave. Hence they have declared war, in fact they have declared hatred, on this country and the values that we hold dearest.

It is a cynical lie that the animals that killed our loved ones two months ago were motivated by Islam, or because this nation of ours is anti-Islamic. Among our most cherished values, enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution, is freedom of conscience, liberty of expression and the free exercise of religion. This continent was populated by people who surrendered their homes and crossed a terrifying ocean to reach a rugged and inhospitable frontier in order to escape religious persecution and to seek religious freedom.

From its birth, this nation and the American people have offered sanctuary and shelter to persons of all faiths. Our Constitution -- always with the support of our people -- has again and again extended its embrace to the unpopular, the unusual, the unconventional and the unorthodox. We protect not only those who will not salute our flag, but those who would spit upon it or burn it. We regularly pledge our allegiance to a constitution that shelters those who refuse to pledge their allegiance to it.

Far from tyrannizing those who worship a particular God or embrace a particular religion, we protect those who worship any God - or no God. Indeed, Americans have defended with their lives persons whose religious convictions preclude them from taking up arms to defend the same Constitution that gives them the right to refrain from defending it.

It is true, I suppose, that there are many in the Middle East who hate this country for its support of Israel. But how tragic and misguided to despise us for extending comfort and defense to a people who have so long, and so recently, been the victims of indescribable ethnic persecution. Nor has America's support for Israel ever been rooted in or manifested by hostility to the Muslim faith or those who practice it. The terrorists and their apologists have lied about these things, but what is another lie when their goals and tactics are so vastly more evil?

So, while the terrorists of September 11 invoke the name of Islam, that is simply a mask for their hate, envy and despicable ambitions. The terrorists who seek to destroy us do so because America and Americans are everything that their hatred and motives prevent them from being. They are tyrants, and so they hate democracy. They are bigots and religious zealots who persecute Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and women. So they must hate America because America stands for tolerance and freedom and respect for all races, all religions, and all peoples, regardless of their sex, color, national origin or accent. They are despots who will not permit children to go to school. So they must hate the nation that commits vast resources to the education of its children, and whose Supreme Court has said that free public education cannot even be withheld from those who are in this country illegally.

These terrorists can succeed only through corruption, cruelty and brutality. Thus they hate and must tear down America and its system of laws which shields its people from those malevolent acts. And these terrorists can enslave the people they wish to subjugate only by keeping them poor and destitute, so they must undermine and discredit the one place in all the world that stands the most for the rule of law and individual liberty and that allows its people - and the people who flock here daily by the thousands -- the opportunity to rise above all those conditions.

Abraham Lincoln was paraphrasing our declaration of independence when he characterized our nation as having been "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That revolutionary document set down our collective belief in unalienable human rights to liberty, freedom and equality, the proposition that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, the principle that tyrants who would oppress their people are unfit to be rulers of a free people, and the right to the pursuit of happiness. How can these terrorists ever prevail if these American ideals are not only allowed to be expressed, but to succeed so dramatically, and to inspire so many people throughout the world for so many centuries?

The answer is simple, the terrorists of September 11 cannot prevail in a world occupied by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the White House. They cannot co-exist with these ideals, these principles, these institutions and these symbols. So they cannot survive, much less prevail, in the same world as America and its people. So they must try to destroy America, and the principles for which it stands.

We do not claim that America has been or is today without imperfections and shortcomings. Our constitution was undeniably flawed at its origin. Implementation of our lofty ideals has never been without error, and some of our mistakes have been shameful. But the course of our history has been constant, if occasionally erratic, progress from the articulation of those lofty ideals to the extension of their reality to all our people - those who were born here and those, from hundreds of diverse cultures, who flock to the American soil because of those principles and the opportunities they promise.

Reflect on the fact that there is no segment or class of the world's peoples who have exclusive claim on the term "American," and no segment of the world's population to whom that claim has been denied. We welcome 100,000 refugees per year into this country. Over 650,000 people immigrated legally to America in the most recent year for which we have reliable statistics. Over 5,000,000 people are in this country today who were so desperate to come here that they did so illegally.

There are more Jews in New York city than in Israel. More Poles in Chicago then any city in the world except Warsaw. America is home to 39 million Irish-Americans, 58 million German-Americans, 39 million Hispanic-Americans and nearly a million Japanese-Americans. And there are seven million Muslims in America, nearly the population of New York City.

How tragic it is that the agents of the September 11th terrorist acts were people whom we welcomed to this country, and to whom we extended all of our freedoms, the protections of all of our laws, and the opportunities this country affords to everyone to travel, work and live. But, we welcome immigrants because nearly all of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who came here to enjoy America's freedoms, rights, liberties, and the opportunity, denied elsewhere, to pursue happiness and prosperity. People from all places on the globe give our country its identity, its diversity and its strength.

Ronald Reagan often said that "every once in a while, each of us native born Americans should make it a point to have a conversation with someone who is an American by choice." "A few years back," he said, "a woman who had fled Poland wrote a letter and said: 'I love America because people accept me for what I am. They don't question my ancestry, my faith, my political beliefs . . . . I love America because America trusts me.'"

President Reagan was also fond of quoting from a letter he had received from a man who wrote, "You can go to live in Turkey, but you can't become a Turk. You can't go to live in Japan and become Japanese, [and so on for Germany, France, etc.] But . . . Anyone from any corner of the world can come to America and be an American."

So it is particularly sad and a bitter irony that the 19 savages who took the lives of thousands of Americans on September 11 were able to come here because we welcomed them, and trusted them, and allowed them to learn to fly our airplanes and the freedom to travel. And they took these precious gifts and turned them into instruments of hatred and death. How perverse and twisted. How incredibly sick they must have been - that not one of them had a moment of conscience after all that time in this beautiful and free country. Everywhere they looked they saw Americans and immigrants to America, at work and at play exercising the freedoms and opportunities that this country offers unstintingly to everyone, including them. But their hatred was so intense, their malignancy so advanced, that they never, as far as we know, even for a moment, paused to reconsider the despicable, unconscionable and evil acts they planned to inflict on the people they were walking, working and living amongst.

It has, I suppose, always caused some resentment that we believe so passionately and so unquestioningly that freedom, equality, liberty, democracy and the rule of law are concepts and rights that should belong to all people. But how can that be seen as arrogance, as some have called it? I simply cannot accept that. What can possibly be wrong with the aspiration that moved the founders of this country to believe that people are entitled to self-determination, the right to chose their system of government, the right to freedom within an orderly and secure society, and the maximum liberty to pursue happiness and fulfillment? We know that these are enduring values. We can debate nearly everything else, but we don't need to debate that. We know that these principles lift everyone up. And we know that these principles are only questioned by those who would seek to advance their own twisted agendas by withholding freedom, liberty and prosperity from others.

We have now been reminded, in the most horrible way, that there are those who not only hate our principles, but who would dedicate their lives - and surrender their lives - to banish those ideals and the incentives they provide for tyrannized and impoverished people everywhere to do what Americans did in 1776.

We have tragically learned again, in the most unthinkable fashion, that our values and our principles are neither self-executing nor self-sustaining, and that we must sacrifice and fight to maintain what our forebears sacrificed and fought to bequeath to us.

And now the rest of the world is learning again that Americans will not flinch from that fight or tire of it. Americans will fight, they will sacrifice, and they will not give up or leave the job unfinished. This war is for all living Americans. It is for the parents, grandparents and great grandparents that fought and sacrificed to come here. And it is for our children and generations to come. And it is for those who choose to become Americans in the future.

America will not lose this war because we cannot tolerate, we cannot contemplate, we cannot even consider that we will lose what centuries of Americans fought to create, improve and maintain. We cannot, and we will not, betray the people who gave us this glorious heritage. We cannot and will not, dishonor or wash away the memories of those who somehow clawed their way out of poverty, tyranny and persecution to come to this country because it was America, and because they were willing to risk death to become Americans, and to give their children and grandchildren the opportunity and freedom and inspiration that makes this place America. Americans could no longer call themselves Americans if they could walk away from that legacy.

People who write regularly for newspapers and who offer opinions on television, or who send advice to us from other parts of the world, sometimes say that America is too rich, lazy, complacent, frightened, soft and enervated to fight this fight. That we have no stamina, strength, will, patience, or steel. That we will collapse.

They are so wrong. We will prevail for the very reason that we have been attacked. Because we are Americans. Because the values that made us free, make us strong; because the principles that made us prosperous, make us creative, resourceful, innovative, determined and fiercely protective of our freedoms, our liberties and our rights to be individuals and to aspire to whatever we choose to be. Those values and those characteristics will lift us and will defeat the black forces who have assaulted our ideals, our country and our people.

The very qualities that bring immigrants and refugees to this country in the thousands every day, made us vulnerable to the attack of September 11, but those are also the qualities that will make us victorious and unvanquished in the end. These dreadful, despicable people have hurt us, but they can never conquer us.

So let me return to Barbara Olson. So many people loved and admired Barbara. But whether you loved and admired her values, her spunk, her energy, her passion, her courage, her unconquerable spirit, or her incredible warmth, whether you knew it or not, underneath it all, you admired and were captivated by Barbara because she was pretty darn close to being a quintessential American.

Barbara was a Texan, from a family whose ancestors came to this country from Germany. She went to the all-American University of Texas and also a Catholic college, St. Thomas in Houston. She became a professional ballet dancer in San Francisco and New York because of the beauty of dance, the rigor of its discipline, and because you have to be extraordinarily tough and ambitious to do it. And Barbara was extraordinarily tough and ambitious.

But she always wanted to be a lawyer and to be involved in politics. In order to afford law school, she invented a career out of whole cloth in Hollywood because that, she determined, was the fastest way to earn the money she needed. It did not matter in the slightest to Barbara that when she went to Hollywood she knew absolutely nothing about the motion picture and television industry. And, in fact, it really didn't matter because, as she later explained to the unwitting producer who gave her her first job, she was a fast-learner.

And, of course, she succeeded. She turned down the last job she was offered in Hollywood because she had finally earned enough money to go to law school, and they were offering her so much money she did not want to be so tempted to forego her dream to be a lawyer.

She went to Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University in New York, not necessarily the obvious choice for a blond Catholic girl from Texas. She was even told that she would never fit in, and that she would be miserable. But the people who told her that really did not know Barbara. She thrived at Cardozo as she had thrived at St. Thomas and in the ballet and in Hollywood. She loved the people, the classes, the professors, and she was a huge success, popping up for one reason or another with embarrassing frequency on the cover of Jewish Weekly.

Barbara created a Federalist Society chapter at Cardozo because she believed in the Society's principles - and it only served to goad her on that almost no one at Cardozo shared her political views. In her third year of law school, she somehow managed to finesse herself into an internship with the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice in Washington. And, as a very brassy and gusty intern, she managed to be the only employee of the government of the United States willing, feisty and fearless enough to personally serve the papers on the PLO mission to the United Nations in New York announcing that it was being expelled from this country -- because they were terrorists. How Barbara loved to tell that story to her friends at Cardozo!

She turned down jobs with the finest law firms in new York to come to Washington where, it seems, she was always destined ultimately to be. In rapid succession, she succeeded as a lawyer in private practice, as a hot and very successful federal prosecutor, as Deputy General Counsel to the House of Representatives, and as a top Congressional investigator, television personality and lobbyist.

It was typically Barbara that when Al Regnery suggested that she write a book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, she literally jumped at the chance. She told me at the time that she wasn't sure that she was a writer, but a friend of ours told her that she didn't have to be a writer to be an author. So, with her legendary energy and limitless self-confidence, she poured herself into the book, finished it in nine months and, against seemingly insurmountable odds, without any previous experience with serious writing, climbed onto the New York Times best seller list during the heaviest competitive time of the year, and stayed there for nine weeks. Ten days ago, her second book, written in about six months and finished just days before her death, opened at number two on the New York Times bestseller list, ahead of Bill O'Reilly, Jack Welch and Tiger Woods. Not bad.

Barbara was everywhere in Washington. A witness for Clarence Thomas at his confirmation, a co-founder of the Independent Women's Forum, hosting Federalist Society members from all over the country in her home, at the epi-center of the travel office and filegate investigations, and the China campaign contributions investigation, the second-most invited guest on "Larry King Live," appearing on MSNBC, FOX, "Meet the Press," "Cross-Fire," "Geraldo," "Politically Incorrect," you name it. Ready to talk about any subject, ready to face down any adversary. She always had an opinion. And she always had that smile.

I could tell you Barbara stories for hours, and I think that you would be glad to listen. But, in short, Barbara partook of everything life gave her. She saw no limits in the people around her and she accepted no limits on what she could accomplish. She could be charming, tough, indefatigable, ferocious and lovable. And all those things at once.

Barbara was Barbara because America, unlike anyplace in the world, gave her the space, freedom, oxygen, encouragement and inspiration to be whatever she wanted to be. Is there any other place on earth where someone could do all these things in forty-five years?

So, sadly, and ironically, Barbara may have been the perfect victim for these wretched, twisted, hateful people. Because she was so thoroughly and hugely an American. And such a symbol of America's values, ideals, and robust ambition. But she died as she lived. Fighting, believing in herself, and determined to succeed. And, if she was the perfect victim, she is also a perfect symbol of what we are fighting for now and for why we will prevail.

I know, and she knows, that her government and the people of America will win this war, however long it takes, whatever we have to do. We will never, ever forget or flinch. We will prevail for Barbara and all the other Americans we lost on September 11. And for the American spirit for which they stood and their lives embodied. And, most of all, we will defeat these terrorists because Barbara and those other American casualties of September 11, and our forebears, and our children, would never forgive us if we did not.

In case you read this post and react to it as if it somehow was in "bad taste" to question this man about his tragic loss, consider that the "loss" is negligible, or at most, debatable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_K._Olson

Barbara Olson (December 27, 1955–September 11, 2001) was a conservative American television commentator and lawyer who worked

for Fox News Channel, CNN and several other outlets. She was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 en route to a taping

of the television show Politically Incorrect when it was flown into the Pentagon in the September 11, 2001 attacks....

....In 1994, she left to work for the United States House of Representatives, becoming chief investigative counsel for the

House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. In that position, she led the

Travelgate and

Filegate investigations into the Clinton administration. ...

....She was a frequent critic of the Bill Clinton administration and wrote a book about then First Lady Hillary Clinton, Hell

to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999). Olson was working on her second book, The Final Days: The Last,

Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (published October 2001) at the time of her death.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/us/barba...ommentator.html

.....Mrs. Olson turned down jobs in New York after law school because she yearned to live in Washington. As chief counsel for

the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee's Republican majority from 1995 to 1996, Mrs. Olson led the investigation

into President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in firing longtime employees of the White House travel office.

She became a caustic and relentless critic of the Clintons.

Mrs. Olson wrote ''Hell to Pay'' (Regnery, 1999), a highly critical book about Mrs. Clinton, and recently finished a sequel,

''Final Days,'' about the Clintons' last weeks in the White House. Mr. Olson said it would be published by Regnery.,,,,

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/09/us/publi...o-denounce.html

PUBLIC LIVES; Mr. and Mrs. Anti-Clinton Are Pleased to Denounce . . .

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

Published: Saturday, December 9, 2000

FOR all his argumentative powers, Theodore B. Olson, the reigning constitutional litigator for this city's conservative

Republican establishment, falls quiet and openly admiring as his wife, Barbara K. Olson, combative partisan on the

shouting-heads television circuit, cuts loose with some updated odium toward her favorite target, the Clintons, president and

senator-elect.

''They look at politics as war, so there was no middle ground and it was us against them and they put that in our face,''

said Mrs. Olson, a lobbyist and former Congressional staff member who worked relentlessly on some of the House Republican

investigations of the Clinton White House.

''They created an atmosphere of entrenched warfare,'' she said.

Mr. Olson, a gifted appellate lawyer who argued before the United States Supreme Court for Gov. George W. Bush's claim on the

disputed presidency, gently smiles in yielding to the other lawyer in the family. ''She's the famous one,'' he says, offering

one of the few concessions to pass his lips lately in his continuing role as devisor of 11th-hour court stratagems for the

Bush campaign.

As the power couples of Washington come and go, the Olsons may have proven themselves in a class by themselves in the last

eight years, becoming the most celebrated and acutely dedicated pair of conservatives who, with great conviction, have

opposed and harried Clinton Democrats in the main capital arenas: the courts, the Congress and the media. They are passionate

leaders of the ''Clinton haters,'' in the description of passionate Clinton lovers, a denigration that both Olsons shrug

off.....

http://archive.salon.com/news/1998/04/27news.html

THEODORE OLSON, A CLOSE FRIEND OF KENNETH STARR'S AND A FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DAVID HALE, PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN EMBATTLED

MAGAZINE'S CRUCIAL INTERNAL INVESTIGATION.

BY JONATHAN BRODER

WASHINGTON -- While the independent counsel's office and the Justice Department wrangle over who is best qualified to probe

allegations of payments made to key Whitewater witness David Hale, another investigation into the matter is quietly

proceeding inside the American Spectator, the conservative magazine that is alleged to have facilitated those payments.

Helping to supervise the magazine's internal investigation is Theodore Olson, 57, the American Spectator's former

secretary-treasurer and a member of its board of directors. Olson, a close friend and former law partner of independent

counsel Kenneth Starr, has also represented Hale in the Whitewater affair.

In addition, Olson helped oversee the so-called Arkansas Project, a $2.4 million effort by the American Spectator to

investigate President Clinton, which was funded by right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. According to stories in

Salon and elsewhere, the alleged payments to Hale were made by operatives of the Arkansas Project.

These connections have prompted some observers to wonder if Olson's audit can remain free of potential conflicts of

interest.....

Edited April 29, 2009 by Tom Scully

[Guest Tom Scully]

oops! posted in....wrong thread....but, the first plane to hit the WTC flew a few hundred feet and just to the west

of my upper west side of Manhattan residence on the morning of 9/11 and I was home at the time but was not yet aware.

Everyone was on edge for awhile after that day, but I doubt the photo op flyover this week was a big of an intrustion or

controversy as it is being presented as.....

Bernie Kerik as NYPD police commissioner, promoted to that position without a background check, and then announced

as first director of the DHS...before vetting his background and finding he was unqualified and corupt.....that seemed a bit

more of a sequence insensitivity and incompetence than this near non-event....but politics are always a motivation to stir things up.....

Edited April 29, 2009 by Tom Scully

[Guest Tom Scully]

I downloaded, extracted and played the flash presentation available at the federal court link in footnote 9 in your post,

and I described what I saw, plus plenty more support for this thread's subject, here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...st&p=166545

[Guest Stephen Turner]

If nothing else, it certainly was stupid beyond belief.

[Evan Burton]

I agree in one area: this was an absolutely stupid thing to do.

What buffoon decided to restrict the information? Okay, all the major agencies were warned but what about the public? of course they are going to ask what that aircraft is doing. Joe Average is not that smart, so I don't expect that they would recognise an Air Force 1 aircraft, therefore they are bound to wonder about what was happening.

This was a blunder on a huge scale, and SOMEONE should be sacked over it. During the Hazard Risk Analysis, didn't anyone point out there might be some concern with an airliner-type aircraft flying over New York with a fighter escort... especially when the public had not been informed?

This will go down in history as a "Oh - I didn't think of that" moment.

[Evan Burton]

I'm going to combine the two threads on the same subject. All the comments should be seen together.

[Evan Burton]

Peter,

Can you you or Tom advise some details of the missing posts? When topics are merged, all posts should be included. If anything has been missed, we'll need to ensure it is restored.

[Len Colby]

Ted Olson's Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials

by David Ray Griffin

Olson's Story Contradicted by the FBI

The most serious official contradiction of Ted Olson's story came in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The evidence presented to this trial by the FBI included a report on phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. In its report on American Flight 77, the FBI report attributed only one call to Barbara Olson and it was an "unconnected call," which (of course) lasted "0 seconds."9 According to the FBI, therefore, Ted Olson did not receive a single call from his wife using either a cell phone or an onboard phone.

Griffin needs to take a closer look at the evidence from the Moussaoui trial, it indicated there were five calls to unkown numbers (the 9/11 Comm. said 4)

57. The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls). The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report,"American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.

Footnote 57 to Chapter 1, 9/11 Commission Report

As for Ted Olson's contradictory statements considering he lost his wife in such traumatic fashion it is NOT very surprising. Why would he lie about her death, by most accounts they were very close, if there was any evidence they weren't I'm sure the truthers would have dragged it up by now.

Peter what was the point of repeating Jack's post?

Tom I fail to see the relevance of the material in your post can you SUCCINTLY explain what you are driving at?

EDIT - Typos

Edited April 29, 2009 by Len Colby

[Pamela Brown]

At the very least the fake AF1 flyover Manhattan was really dumb. But is the AF/govt really that stupid? How did they possibly think they could carry off such a maneuver without terrifying the citizens of NYC? Especially, as it has been pointed out, as the plane was not only flying at low altitude but at a slower speed.

These actions certainly open the door to the question of whether or not, despite the 'photo-op' cover scenario, this event was used to test the reactions of the citizens of NYC. I hope I am mistaken, because to do so deliberately would be hideous. Nonetheless, it is possible to evaluate the public response and use it to some advantage in the future.

The differences between this event and 9/11 are, first, nobody was expecting planes to be flying into buildings prior to 9/11, and people were not on guard. Now they are.

Second, the 9/11 planes were apparently flying at full speed when they crashed into the WTC towers. This plane was flying at a slower speed. The engine sound would probably have been much more noticeable at a slower speed; not to mention that people could track the plane more easily.

Lastly, let's not forget the recent Miracle on the Hudson. New Yorkers have had their share of spooky and horrific plane events.

[Kevin M. West]

There is little difference in the noise decibel level between a 747 and 767, according to

the FAA, which governs allowable noise levels:

"Engine Noise - the decibel level measured 394 feet from the source (FAA standard). Values for some "quiet" Stage 3 airliners: 747, 106 db; DC-10, 102 db; 767, 94 db; A300, 94 db."

So at 394 feet, the 747 is only 12 decibels louder.

For comparison, the front row of a rock band concert runs about 110 decibels.

Jack

The decibel scale is logorithmic, 12 is a huge difference.

And don't forget the f16 escort, those are quite loud.

Edited April 29, 2009 by Kevin M. West

[Guest Tom Scully]

Ted Olson's Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials

by David Ray Griffin

Olson's Story Contradicted by the FBI

The most serious official contradiction of Ted Olson's story came in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The evidence presented to this trial by the FBI included a report on phone calls from all four 9/11 flights. In its report on American Flight 77, the FBI report attributed only one call to Barbara Olson and it was an "unconnected call," which (of course) lasted "0 seconds."9 According to the FBI, therefore, Ted Olson did not receive a single call from his wife using either a cell phone or an onboard phone.

Griffin needs to take a closer look at the evidence from the Moussaoui trial, it indicated there were five calls to unkown numbers (the 9/11 Comm. said 4)

57. The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls). The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report,"American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.

Footnote 57 to Chapter 1, 9/11 Commission Report

As for Ted Olson's contradictory statements considering he lost his wife in such traumatic fashion it is NOT very surprising. Why would he lie about her death, by most accounts they were very close, if there was any evidence they weren't I'm sure the truthers would have dragged it up by now.

Peter what was the point of repeating Jack's post?

Tom I fail to see the relevance of the material in your post can you SUCCINTLY explain what you are driving at?

EDIT - Typos

Len,

It seems to me that Griffin did take a "closer look", because he covered the calls you describe. The 9/11 Commission description you posted was not trial "evidence"....it was a part of a seperate proceeding, and seems irrelevant to a criminal court proceeding. If you were on that jury, how convincing would "unknown calls" seem....is there anything that offers evidence they were received in or routed to Olson's DOJ office? Is there any info detailing how many calls the DOJ received in that morning hour, or any morning? Is there any explanation as to why the calls could not be identified, or how the presented info was obtained? Is there any proof that any calls came from seatback phones on that 757?

Do you think the pilot allowed himself to be removed from the cockpit? The point about Ted Olson is that he is a rabidly partisan "fixer".....always there....since 1981, for the cause....to put out fires...and he told the SCOTUS that it is appropriate foe the government to officially lie to the people......

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/amrarticle.html

....As we mentioned earlier, the FBI report on phone calls from AA planes on 9/11 does not cite records from the DOJ showing that any calls from AA 77 were received that morning. Instead, the FBI report refers merely to four “connected calls to unknown numbers.” The 9/11 Commission, putting the best possible spin on this report, commented: “The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of [these four calls] represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband’s office.”27 That is, it must be said, a very strange conclusion: If Ted Olson reported receiving only two calls, why would the Commission conclude that the DOJ had received four connected calls from his wife?

That conclusion is, in any case, starkly contradicted by evidence about phone calls from Flight 77 presented by the US government at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006.28 Far from attributing all four of the “connected calls to unknown numbers” to Barbara Olson, as the 9/11 Commission suggested, the government’s evidence here attributes none of them to her, saying instead that each of them was from an “unknown caller.” The only call attributed to Barbara Olson, moreover, is an “unconnected call” to the Department of Justice, which was said to have been attempted at “9:18:58” and to have lasted “0 seconds.” According to the US government in 2006, in other words, Barbara Olson attempted a call to the DOJ, but it did not go through.29 The government itself has presented evidence in a court of law, therefore, that implies that unless its former solicitor general was the victim of two faked phone calls, he was lying....

http://www.debunk911myths.org/topics/Ameri...7_-_Phone_calls

Barbara Olson's phone call

At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. Ted Olson was at his desk in the Justice Department, when an aide rushed in to tell him that Barbara was on the phone.[3]

Barbara reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and box cutters. She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone call, and that they had put all the passengers in the back of the plane. About a minute into the conversation, the call was cut off. Solicitor General Olson tried unsuccessfully to reach Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Shortly after the first call, Barbara Olson reached her husband again. She reported that the pilot had announced that the flight had been hijacked. Barbara mentioned that all the passengers and the pilot and cabin crew members had been herded into the back of the plane.[3] She asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do. Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses. Another passenger told her they were traveling northeast. The Solicitor General then informed his wife of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic and did not indicate any awareness of an impending crash. At that point, the second call was cut off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/us/day-t...omed-plane.html

A DAY OF TERROR: FINAL MOMENTS; Solicitor General Got 2 Calls From Wife on Doomed Plane

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Flight 77 Pilot, "Chic" Burlingame:

...He was a 1971 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and an honor graduate of the Navy "Top Gun" school, in Miramar, California. He flew F-4 Phantoms for the Navy and served aboard the USS Saratoga. He continued military service as a reserve officer retiring at the rank of Captain in 1996...

...His family is certain that hijackers killed Chic on 9/11 before his plane crashed into the Pentagon, that there is no way he would have crashed the plane himself into that building -- even with knives at his throat.

"The Pentagon was hallowed ground to him," Brad said.

That's because Chic was a Navy man who had once worked at the Pentagon when he was in the Navy Reserves. ...

[Pamela Brown]

There is little difference in the noise decibel level between a 747 and 767, according to

the FAA, which governs allowable noise levels:

"Engine Noise - the decibel level measured 394 feet from the source (FAA standard). Values for some "quiet" Stage 3 airliners: 747, 106 db; DC-10, 102 db; 767, 94 db; A300, 94 db."

So at 394 feet, the 747 is only 12 decibels louder.

For comparison, the front row of a rock band concert runs about 110 decibels.

Jack

The decibel scale is logorithmic, 12 is a huge difference.

And don't forget the f16 escort, those are quite loud.

Good point. They are all flying low and at a slow speed. The sound must have been cacaphonous.

[Christopher Hall]

At the very least the fake AF1 flyover Manhattan was really dumb. But is the AF/govt really that stupid? How did they possibly think they could carry off such a maneuver without terrifying the citizens of NYC? Especially, as it has been pointed out, as the plane was not only flying at low altitude but at a slower speed.

These actions certainly open the door to the question of whether or not, despite the 'photo-op' cover scenario, this event was used to test the reactions of the citizens of NYC. I hope I am mistaken, because to do so deliberately would be hideous. Nonetheless, it is possible to evaluate the public response and use it to some advantage in the future.

The differences between this event and 9/11 are, first, nobody was expecting planes to be flying into buildings prior to 9/11, and people were not on guard. Now they are.

Second, the 9/11 planes were apparently flying at full speed when they crashed into the WTC towers. This plane was flying at a slower speed. The engine sound would probably have been much more noticeable at a slower speed; not to mention that people could track the plane more easily.

Lastly, let's not forget the recent Miracle on the Hudson. New Yorkers have had their share of spooky and horrific plane events.

These are good points.

You also have the former NY Yankees baseball player who flew his small plane into a building.

I was at Battery Park last week and seeing in person what I have seen in the articles about the incident would have scared me.