Some more info, FactFinder style :
'A horrendous decision'
On the Sept. 16, 2001, edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney, while not addressing Flight 93 specifically, spoke clearly to the administration's clear policy regarding shooting down hijacked jets.
Vice President Cheney: "Well, the -- I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft."
NBC's Tim Russert: "And you decided?"
Cheney: "We decided to do it. We'd, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city; F-16s with an AWACS, which is an airborne radar system, and tanker support so they could stay up a long time...
"It doesn't do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don't give them instructions to act, if, in fact, they feel it's appropriate."
Russert: "So if the United States government became aware that a hijacked commercial airline[r] was destined for the White House or the Capitol, we would take the plane down?"
Cheney: "Yes. The president made the decision ... that if the plane would not divert ... as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out. Now, people say, you know, that's a horrendous decision to make. Well, it is. You've got an airplane full of American citizens, civilians, captured by ... terrorists, headed and are you going to, in fact, shoot it down, obviously, and kill all those Americans on board?
"... It's a presidential-level decision, and the president made, I think, exactly the right call in this case, to say, I wished we'd had combat air patrol up over New York.'"
Flight 93:
Proof of 9/11 Lies by the US Government and Media
An article detailing Flight 93's last minutes was briefly available at dailynews.yahoo.com on 9/11/2001. It not fit the official story of the last moments of Flight 93 and rapidly disappeared from news websites, but it can still be found at the web archive:
Minutes before the 10 a.m. crash, an emergency dispatcher in Pennsylvania received a cell phone call from a man who said he was a passenger locked in a bathroom aboard United Flight 93. The man repeatedly said the call was not a hoax, said dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer in neighboring Westmoreland County. "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Cramer quoted the man from a transcript of the call. The man told dispatchers the plane "was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer said. [Yahoo News, Tuesday September 11 11:27 PM EDT]
Thanks to a reader a paper version of the story also emerged:
Click images for full size
It was reported that a missile was heard before the crash:
"I know of two people - I will not mention names - that heard a missile," [Mayor Ernie Stuhl] said. "They both live very close, within a couple of hundred yards. . .This one fellow's served in Vietnam and he says he's heard them, and he heard one that day." The mayor adds that based on what he knows about that morning, military F-16 fighter jets were "very, very close." [philly.com]
Debris fell from Flight 93 nearly six miles from the crash scene...
[I]nvestigators also are combing a second crime scene in nearby Indian Lake, where residents reported hearing the doomed jetliner flying over at a low altitude before "falling apart on their homes."
"People were calling in and reporting pieces of plane falling," a state trooper said. Jim Stop reported he had seen the hijacked Boeing 757 fly over him as he was fishing. He said he could see parts falling from the plane. [pittsburghlive.com]
...human remains were found miles from the crash scene...
Finding the flight data recorder had been the focus of investigators as they widened their search area today following the discoveries of more debris, including what appeared to be human remains, miles from the point of impact at a reclaimed coal mine. [Pittsburgh Post Gazette]
...light debris was found eight miles from the crash scene...
"Pennsylvania state police officials said on Thursday debris from the plane had been found up to 8 miles away [from the crash site] in a residential community where local media have quoted residents as speaking of a second plane in the area and burning debris falling from the sky." [Idaho Observer]
...and the following footage proves Flight 93 did not crash in a single piece but came apart in midair and scattered over a wide area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZekosYO ... r_embedded
