ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE

Laura Brown’s 2003 memo, therefore, reflects information that was available immediately after 9/11.
What did the 9/11 Commission do about Brown’s memo which was, in fact, presented to them directly? Richard
Ben-Veniste, after reading it into the record, even said: “So now we have in question whether there was an
informal real-time communication of the situation, including Flight 77’s situation, to personnel at NORAD.” 1 The
Commission knew, therefore, that this was the FAA’s position, and it offered no rebuttal. When The 9/11
Commission Report appeared, however, it contained no mention of this memo or its account. The Commission
implicitly claimed, in fact, that the memo’s account could not be true by claiming that the FAA initiated conference
(which according to Brown’s memo had begun about 8:50) did not begin until 9:20. 2 As usual, inconvenient facts
were simply eliminated by the 911 Commission.
If we, however, refuse to ignore all these facts, we have good reason to consider the Commission’s tapes-based
account of AA 77 false--which would imply that the tapes are inauthentic. An examination of the Commission’s
account of UA 93 will provide additional support for this conclusion.
Flight 93:
According to the 911 Comm/Tape based Account:
9:28am - FAA controller hears “sounds of possible screaming” - 93 descends 700 feet. No one notified
9:32am - A voice is heard saying, “We have a bomb on board.” - Notified his supervisor
9:36am - Various debate occurs, no direct action
9:49am - Conversation between Command Center and FAA headquarters occurs, but no decisions are made
10:03am - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania, no active action taken by NEADS/NORAD 3
This account involves yet more apparent amazing incompetence by FAA officials. To accept this account, we must
believe that the decision to call the military is a momentous, extraordinary one, not a routine one, made over a
hundred times a year. We must also believe that, on a day on which hijacked airliners had already caused much
death and destruction, officials at FAA headquarters had to debate whether a hijacked airliner with a bomb on
board was important enough to disturb the military. We must believe, moreover, that they were still debating this
13 minutes later at 9:49, when the following conversation between Herndon VA and FAA headquarters occurred:
Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?
FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don’t know.
Command Center: Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.
The decision, moreover, was obviously that the military should not be disturbed, because 14 minutes later, at
10:03, when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, “no one from FAA headquarters [had yet] requested military
assistance regarding United 93.” 4 To believe the Commission’s tapes-based report, in other words, we must
believe that FAA officials acted in a manner beyond incompetent.
Besides the fact that the Tape based / 911 Commission’s new story about UA 93 is highly implausible, it is
challenged by some inconvenient facts. One fact is the existence of the teleconference mentioned in Laura
Brown’s memo. The Commission claims that this FAA-initiated teleconference did not start until 9:20
(instead of about 8:50, as her memo indicated), but this claim provides no help with regard to UA 93, which did
not crash until 10:03 AM, so that the time between 9:30 and 10:00 was the crucial period. Her memo said, as we
saw, that “[t]he FAA shared real-time information...about...all the flights of interest,” and the Commission itself
agrees that by 9:34, FAA headquarters knew about the hijacking of Flight 93 so that it was a “flight of interest.”
Accordingly, the Commission’s tapes-based claim (that the military was not told about the hijacking of UA 93 until
it crashed) is flatly contradicted by Laura Brown’s memo, which, although it was ignored in the Commission’s final
report, had, again, been read into the Commission’s record by Richard Ben-Veniste.
Another inconvenient fact was a video conference being run from the White House that morning by Richard
Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, who described this video conference in his
best-selling book, “Against All Enemies”--which came out in 2004 while the hearings were still going on. (cont.)
1 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, May 23, 2003
(http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm). In introducing the memo,
Ben-Veniste said he was told it had been authored by two “high level individuals at FAA, Mr. Asmus and Ms. Schuessler.” That
it was in reality written by Laura Brown, however, was confirmed during a telephone conversation I had with her on Sunday,
August 15, 2004.
2 911 Commission Report, p.27
3 911 Commission Report, p.28-29
4 911 Commission Report, p.29-30