written soon after relatives of the passengers heard the supposedly unedited CVR from United 93 for the first time:
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=3990An FBI spokesman, Steven Berry, said the bureau continues to officially list the time of the Flight 93 crash as 10:03 a.m. The NTSB referred all questions to the FBI.
But the relatives of Flight 93 passengers who heard the cockpit tape April 18 at a Princeton hotel said government officials laid out a timetable for the crash in a briefing and in a transcript that accompanied the recording. Relatives later reported they heard sounds of an on-board struggle beginning at 9:58 a.m., but there was a final "rushing sound" at 10:03, and the tape fell silent.
What can be heard
"There is no sound of the impact," said Kenneth Nacke, whose brother, Lou Nacke Jr., is one of the passengers believed to have fought with the hijackers. Nacke confirmed that the government said the tape ended at 10:03 a.m.
He added: "The quality of the sound is really poor."
Vaughn Hoglan, the uncle of passenger Mark Bingham, said by phone from California that near the end there are shouts of "pull up, pull up," but the end of the tape "is inferred - there's no impact."
New York Times reporter Jere Longman, who spoke with relatives of all but one of the 40 Flight 93 victims, writes in the epilogue to bestseller "Among the Heroes" "at about three minutes after ten, the tape went silent."
Lisa Beamer, the wife of passenger Todd Beamer, who heard the tape while working on her No. 1 best seller "Let's Roll," also gives 10:03 as the end of the flight.
Seismologists - experts in the earth's vibrations - have almost exactly pinpointed the time of the crash of Flight 93 at 10:06:05.
"The seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10:06:05," plus or minus two seconds, said Terry Wallace, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of man-made events. "I don't know where the 10:03 time comes from."
Likewise, a written study commissioned by the Department of Defense - carried out by seismologists from Columbia University and the Maryland Geological Survey - also determined impact was at 10:06:05.
Normally, such a large discrepancy might be cleared up when the National Transportation Safety Board releases a written transcript of the voice recorder - edited for sounds of suffering or profanity - right before holding public hearings on an air disaster. But because the Flight 93 crash was part of a criminal act, no NTSB hearings are expected.
The Justice Department has also insisted that the cockpit tape can't be released because it will be played to the jury at the trial of admitted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, now set for January.
Note that Wallace, the "leading expert," is a third scientist looking at objective data from the seismic stations on his own, and coming to the same conclusion as Kim and Baum. Bunch happens to cite him in advance of Kim and Baum, even though the latter wrote the official report, because in reality, none of them are the definitive authorities here - the seismographs are.
We can talk about the number of sources claiming one time or the other forever. But different seismic measuring stations recorded a ground tremor consistent with a plane crash in Shanksville at 10:06 am. That doesn't come from a source. The tremor was a physical fact that delivered itself, and cannot be denied.
Furthermore, there wasn't a tremor at 10:03, although plane crashes cause ground tremors. The physical fact of the tremor -- and, almost as telling, the absence of such a physical fact at the government's preferred crash time -- elude press releases, compilations and spins. They just are.
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