Thursday, June 22, 2006
Phone Calls Were Genuine
MYTH |
This is one of the more sickening falsehoods promoted by various members of the "9/11 Truth Movement." A pilot called his wife from maybe 15,000 feet in 1996. People on other flights which were not hijacked talked on cell phones on 9/11 as well. Hero Tom Burnett's wife recognized the caller ID as Tom's. Many passengers and some flight attendants used seatback phones. Some older phones which work at twice the altitude of new ones may have been used. Oftentimes commuters use cellphones midflight. People have been successfully using cell phones at high altitude since before 2000. Combine all this data with the fact that the calls occurred as the events unfolded; e.g. Betty Ong had a 23 minute conversation, not something that can be faked. Many 9/11 conspiracists point to the fact that Mark Bingham used his last name when he called his mother, but his mother Alice Hoglan confirmed that this was a common practice of his which started when he was a public relations executive for the Bingham Group. The belief that the calls were impossible/faked is a grave insult to the 9/11 victims and is contrary to fact.
Update 6/14/2007:
The nutty Professor James Fetzer says the Mark Bingham (R.I.P.) phone call from Flight 93 was a fake{1}, and David Ray Griffin of New Pearl Harbor fame agrees{2}. The heroic passenger called his mom, Alice Hogan, and said, “Mom, this is Mark Bingham.” Hogan knows best; she’s his mother, and she explains that “Once in a while he would say that. He would call up, and … he was a young businessman, and used to … introduce himself … as Mark Bingham, and he was trying to be … strong and level-headed, and … strictly business: ‘Mom, this is Mark Bingham.’”{3} There isn’t a reason in the world to doubt her explanation.
David Ray Griffin needs to give Ted Olson a break. Griffin doubts the veracity of Ted Olson’s account{4} of his last conversations with his wife, Barbara Olson (R.I.P.), a passenger of Flight 77, which Hani Hanjour crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. Griffin commits a leap of logic; he would have it that we should distrust Olson a priori because of his closeness to the Bush administration. Griffin is also skeptical of Olson’s claims because he told the U.S. Supreme Court that “It’s easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might legitimately give out false information.” He testified in court because a lawyer alleged that the government lied to hide the fact that a CIA informant tortured and murdered her husband (R.I.P.). I’m not getting into an ethics debate at this time but the fact is that all nations provide “incomplete information and even misinformation” to protect e.g. intelligence operations; in this court case it was American intelligence operations in Guatemala. Now Olson was evidently not giving an excuse for lying about the murder of his wife and 2,995 other 9/11 victims.
I’m opting in favor of Ockham’s Razor and so I say that his account was somewhat vague and contradictory due to his profound grief and shock (that’s exactly what he told CNN three days after 9/11) and possibly due to a misquotation on the reporter’s part. Moreover, it’s not true that Barbara Olson made the only call from Flight 77; Renee May (R.I.P.) called her mother Nancy to inform her that six men were hijacking the flight and that she should alert American Airlines{5}.
Griffin’s final complaint is that Olson could not have called collect without a credit card. But this is false. UA Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer (R.I.P.) used a GTE Airfone to speak to an operator,{6} apparently for free,{7} and AA Flight 11 flight attendant Betty Ong (R.I.P.) contacted the operator for free by pressing 8 on a GTE Airfone.{8}
{1} thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4592
{2} 911truth.org/article.php?story=2006091418303369
{3} “The Flight That Fought Back” http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/flight/flight.html
{4} The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin, p. 28. I remember when I went into a book store and bought the last copy along time ago I told my friend, who owns the book store, that I was not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and just wanted to have the book for reference on my debunking blog.
{5} 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter One, “We Have Some Planes,” p. 9. n56. FBI report, “American Airlines Airphone Usage,” Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of
Ronald and Nancy May, Sept. 12, 2001. In truth, there were only five hijackers: Hani Saleh Hanjour, Nawaf Mohamed Salem Al Hazmi, Salem Mohamed Al Hazmi, Khalid Al Mihdhar, and Majed Mashaan Ghanem Moqed. May’s error is not a cause for concern and is to be attributed to the intensity of the frightening situation.
{6} http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010922gtenat4p4.asp
{7} http://www.s-t.com/daily/09-02/09-10-02/a02wn022.htm
{8} http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/planes_reconstruction.htm
Labels: Flight 77, Flight 93, Insanity, Jim Fetzer, Phone Calls
