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If the Mossad was known to be trailing the hijackers, then where is your evidence?

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According to German newspapers, the Mossad gives the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US and say that they appear to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. It is unknown if these are the 19 9/11 hijackers or if the number is a coincidence. However, four names on the list are known, and these four will be 9/11 hijackers: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta.(Source)

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One of the aircraft had a group of passengers on it that decided not to conform to the usual advice that passengers should not resist hi-jackers. We are fortunate that they resisted; so instead of another destroyed or damaged building, all we got was a hole in the ground.

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"The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed." Source

The question is 'Why was there no fight going on'? Though this question might at first occur unreasonable, let's not forget the official version in the case of Flight 93: Passengers knew that they were on a suicide mission so they made the decision to strike back. Let's compare this with Flight 77.

At least ten of the 59 passengers had a military background and 21 of them were involved in government/defense related work, including Korea-, Vietnam-, and Gulf-war veterans. Which means that we can assume that they wouldn't go into death without resistance. ( compilation of infos about the passengers )

There were two cell-phone calls from flight 77. The first from flight attendant Renee May at 9:12, the second from Barbara Olsen at 9:16. This means they phoned AFTER the second plane hit the WTC.

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At 9:12, Renee May called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals who had moved them to the rear of the plane. She asked her mother to alert American Airlines. Nancy May and her husband promptly did so.
Commission Report

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"'Unlike the earlier flights, the Flight 77 hijackers were reported by a passenger to have box cutters. At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. She 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, and 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." Commission Report

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"Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die." Washington Post (09/12/01)

So the passengers of flight 77 were aware that they were not dealing with a normal hijacking. They were aware that they were going to die.

I think it's safe to say that every normal person would have fight for survival, and certainly the passengers (not to forget the crew!) with military background would have fought back! Many of them were confrontated with live-threating situations before! Against maximum FOUR hjackers with BOXCUTTERS!

Was there a fight going on?


We have a report that at least pilot Charles Burlingame resisted the hijackers:

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Senator John W. Warner (Va.), the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, helped spearhead the campaign on Burlingame's behalf, saying he was driven in part by evidence that the pilot died fighting the hijackers, not in the crash.

"I felt very strongly that this was a meritorious case," he said yesterday. "The final cog in the wheel was the examination of his remains, which indicated Captain Burlingame was in a struggle and died before the crash, doing his best to save lives on the aircraft and on the ground." (Source)

This would not only be reasonable to expect - which pilot would give up his plane to hijackers without resistance? - but was also expected from all people knowing him.

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"I can assure you that Capt. Burlingame was an extraordinary individual who led an exemplary life and died a hero. While we will never know for sure what happened on that flight, the people at American Airlines who knew Captain Burlingame the best have no doubt whatsoever that he died while vigorously defending his plane and his passengers. He was, by all accounts, a courageous individual.''
"They are not giving any consideration at all to the fact that he did 25 years of service to the Navy and that he died in an unprecedented fashion. Not passively, but in what had to be hand-to-hand confrontation with one or several knife-wielding terrorist," he said.
"He always had the answers, and he always would solve the problems, but this one was bigger than him," said Mark Burlingame, who said his older brother was intensely serious about his responsibilities as a commercial pilot. "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." (Source)

From 9/11-Timeline:

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People who knew Charles Burlingame, the pilot of Flight 77, will later contend that it would have required a difficult struggle for the hijackers to gain control of the plane from him. [Washington Post, 9/11/2002] Burlingame was a military man who’d flown Navy jets for eight years, served several tours at the Navy’s elite Top Gun school, and been in the Naval Reserve for 17 years. [Associated Press, 12/6/2001] His sister, Debra Burlingame, says, “This was a guy that’s been through SERE [Survival Evasion Resistance Escape] school in the Navy and had very tough psychological and physical preparation.” [Journal News (Westchester), 12/30/2003] Admiral Timothy Keating, who was a classmate of Burlingame’s from the Navy and a flight school friend, says, “I was in a plebe summer boxing match with Chick, and he pounded me.… Chick was really tough, and the terrorists had to perform some inhumane act to get him out of that cockpit, I guarantee you.” [CNN, 5/16/2006] (Source)

But remember when she was in the back of the plane, Barbara Olsen asked what she should tell the captain to do. But for the captain to be in the back of the plane, there had to be a fight in the first place, as he would not gave up the controls without a fight. At least if we trust those who knew him the best. Then how did he get there, or was Olsen just mistaken, and confused Burlingame with someone other? But as she was in the first class, she would have witnessed such fight.

Let's look closer into the moments before and as the -supposed- hijacking happened.



The 9/11 Commission estimated that the flight was hijacked between 08:51 EDT and 08:54 EDT, just minutes after the first hijacked plane had struck the World Trade Center in Manhattan at 08:46 EDT. The last normal radio communications from the aircraft to air traffic control occurred at 08:50:51 EDT.

At 08:54 EDT, American Airlines Flight 77 began to deviate from its normal, assigned flight path and turned south. (Source)


This means the hijackers took over control within three minutes. The strange thing is, that there are no indications of a fight. First, unlike Flight 93 when it was hijacked, the FDR-data delivered no indications of a fight. There was no disruptive change in the flight path like drastic lost or gain of height, swinging to the left or right. Only the subsequent lost of transponder and change of course indicated a hijack, but not the plane's behaviour itself.

Watch this short clip based on the FDR-data provided by NTSB.


Another strange thing is that pilot Burlingame didn't manage to send a stress signal:

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And as far as hijacking the airplanes, once again getting back to the nature of pilots and airplanes, there is no way that a pilot would give up an airplane to hijackers. ...

I mean, hell, a guy doesn't give up a TV remote control much less a complicated 757. And so to think that pilots would allow a plane to be taken over by a couple of 5 foot 7, 150 pound guys with a one-inch blade boxcutter is ridiculous.

And also in all four planes, if you remember, none of the planes ever switched on their transponder to the hijack code. There's a very, very simple code that you put in if you suspect that your plane is being hijacked. It takes literally just a split-second for you to put your hand down on the center console and flip it over. And not one of the four planes ever transponded a hijack code, which is most, most unusual. ..(Source)

Muga mentioned an interesting point about the physical stature of the hijackers. Others, too:

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Yet the five alleged hijackers do not appear to have been the kinds of people that would be a particularly dangerous opponent. Pilot Hani Hanjour was skinny and barely over 5 feet tall. [Washington Post, 10/15/2001] And according to the 9/11 Commission, the “so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically imposing,” with the majority of them being between 5 feet 5 and 5 feet 7 in height, “and slender in build.” [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004]
(Source)

Should we believe that this tall man with fighting experience would overhand the controls to a 5 feet tall man, slendered build, because he's threatened by him with a box cutter? Indeed, the FDR data indicates that the overhanding of the controls was a smooth process rather than a wild fight.

Another point to mention is the possibility that Flight 77 received a hijack-warning before being hijacked.


According to the Guardian Boston flight control tower notifies several air traffic control centres at 8:25 that a hijack is taking place.

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Between 8:25 and 8:32, in accordance with the FAA protocol, Boston Center managers started notifying their chain of command that American 11 had been hijacked. (Source)

However, the notification was not nationwide broadcasted, and it is reported that Indianapolis flight controller monitoring Flight 77 did not know that Flight 11, and twenty minutes later Flight 175, had been hijacked.


But Indianapolis wasn't controlling Flight 77 all the time. From the Commission-report:

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American 77 began its takeoff roll from Dulles International Airport at 8:20. The flight was handed off routinely from Washington Center to Indianapolis Center at approximately 8:40. American 77 was acknowledged by the Indianapolis controller, who had fourteen other planes in his sector at the time. The controller instructed the aircraft to climb and, at 8:50, cleared it to its next navigational aid. American 77 acknowledged. This was the last transmission from American 77. (Source)

The hijack-warning was broadcasted about 15 minutes before Indianapolis handled Flight 77, and at that time Washington Center was responsible for Flight 77. This is remarkable when we look at this report by the New York Times:

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The controllers assigned to United Airlines Flight 175 on Tuesday suspected that it had been hijacked as it flew off its assigned route. But they did not learn that another plane had been hijacked and had hit the World Trade Center until a minute or two before Flight 175 struck the center, people involved in the air traffic system said.

In contrast, controllers at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center had much more warning that something was wrong. Those controllers, who handled American Airlines Flight 77, which dived into the Pentagon, knew about the hijacking of the first plane to crash, even before it hit the World Trade Center, those involved said. That was more than an hour before they watched another hijacked plane, United Flight 93, cross their radar screen on its way to the Pentagon. (Source)

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In addition, The New York Times this morning reports the controllers at Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center—who handled American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon—knew about the hijacking of American Flight 11 even before it crashed. But there apparently were no attempts at intercepting Flight 77.
(Source)

If the claims by the Commission and the NYT are true, then the controllers in Washington Centre knew of the first hijacking. So there's a high chance that also (like Flight 93 later) Flight 77 received a hijack warning, which if true, would make the official version of the hijacking even more implausible than it is already.

And let's not forget that Barbara Olsen was in the first class, but reported no fight, which she undoubtfully would have recognized if happened. Also flight attendant May reported no fight. So, were all the people knowing Burlingame wrong in their appraisment about his likely behaviour?