How The 9/11 Commission Rewrote The Time United 93 Crashed

An Independent Investigation

Introduction

Disclaimer: Just to add, I do not believe United 93 crashed into this crater.

Preface

If the official seismic data impact time of 10:06 a.m. shows a 3 minute discrepancy in the official crash time narrative of 10:03 a.m., then the veracity of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) are called into serious question regarding their authenticity.

How the 9/11 Commission rewrote the time United 93 crashed

The 9/11 Commission's fudging of the timeline of United 93's crash is just the tip of iceberg of the Commission's dishonesty. Based on seismic records, the crash is inferred to have occurred at 14:06:05 ±5 UTC (10:06:05 EDT).

Although, seismic signals across the network are not as strong and clear as the WTC case (see Kim et al., 2001), three component records at station SSPA (Δ = 107.6 km) shown in Figure 6 are quite clear. The three-component records at SSPA are dominated by strong Lg arrivals, whereas the Pg waves are difficult to discern and have amplitudes comparable to the noise level. This is typical for seismic waves generated by airplane impacts and crashes. Hence, we infer that the Flight 93 crashed around 14:06:05 ±5 (UTC) (10:06:05 EDT). The uncertainty is only due to seismic velocity at the uppermost crust near the surface in which the Lg waves propagated. [1]

Figure 6

The seismic records were consolidated from four stations in the region, and originally set the impact time at 10:06 a.m., which immediately became the acknowledged time of the crash and was widely published. It was only later that NORAD and the 9/11 Commission got their story straight and decreed the correct impact time to have been three minutes earlier at 10:03 a.m.

Early news reports put the crash time at 10:06 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said yesterday, it turned over to the FBI a radar record of United Airlines Flight 93’s route. The data traced the Boeing 757-200 from its takeoff from Newark, NJ., to its violent end at 10:06 AM, just outside Shanksville. [2]

The time was also given by other Pennsylvania newspapers. One of these reported that “people in Shanksville and surrounding farms fields saw or heard the jetliner go down at roughly 10:06.” [3]

Another newspaper reported that Cleveland Air Traffic Control reported losing track of Flight 93 at 10:06. [4]

Besides the fact that the 10:06 time was given by the FAA, US Army-authorised study by seismologists Won-Young Kim of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Gerald R. Baum of Maryland Geological Survey. Their report put the exact time of the crash at 10:06:05 a.m. [5]

Although this report should have settled the issue, the 9/11 Commission disputed it, saying:

The 10:03:11 impact time is supported by previous National Transportation Safety Board Analysis and by evidence from the Commission staff’s analysis of radar, the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, infrared satellite data, and air traffic control transmissions. [6]

The Commission gave no reference for the alleged “National Transportation Safety Board analysis”. Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the Transportation Department, said “We don’t have an NTSB investigation here.” [7]. Moreover, all the other alleged evidence is based on “the Commission’s staff’s analysis”, and as we know, this was directed by Philip Zelikow.

Philip Zelikow

Zelikow, is widely recognised as an expert on the creation and maintenance of public myths.

The Commission, argued that the Kim-Braum seismic study was not reliable

[T]he seismic data on which [the two authors of the seismic study] based this estimate are far too weak in signal-to-noise ratio and far too speculative in terms of signal source to be used as a means of contradicting the impact time established by the very accurate combination of FDR, CVR, ATC radar and impact site data sets. These data sets constrain United 93’s impact time to within 1 second, are airplane and crash-site specific and are based on time codes automatically recorded in the ATC audiotapes for FAA centers and correlated with each data set in a process internationally accepted within the aviation accident investigation community. [8]

When we look at the actual seismic study, it seems far less “speculative” than the Commission suggests. Kim and Baum, who were asked to do the studies for all the four crashes, said that the ONLY signal from the crash at the Pentagon was too weak for definitive time to be determined. For the crash of United 93 they examined the seismic records from four stations near the crash site. Whereas the signal-to-noise ratio for the two of these was very low (about 1:1), it was about 2.5:1 at one of the stations (SSPA). Kim and Baum concluded.

Although seismic signals across the network are not as strong and clear as the WTC case…, three component records at station SSPA… are quite clear… [From these records] we infer that Flight 93 crashed around 14:06:05 (UTC) (10:06:05 EDT). [9]

It appears, therefore that the Commission was engaging in wishful reading to play-down the official seismic records and findings.

The Commission’s final argument is to claim, citing an e-mail from Won-Young Kim to the Commission, that “one of the study’s principal authors now concedes that the ‘seismic data is not definitive for the impact of UA93.’” [10]

The Commission, however, does not disclose any content of the e-mail, so we do not know with what qualification Kim may have made this concession. Also, we do not know what kind of pressure may have been applied on Kim. Furthermore, even if the Commission was able to persuade Kim to state publicly that the seismic data was not definitive, it was evidently unable to obtain any such concession from the other principal author of the study, Dr. Gerald Baum. This failure is surely more significant than the concession from Kim – which in any case, fell short of endorsing the 10:03 time. And neither Kim nor Baum has disowned their study, so it remains the definitive report of the time that Flight 93 crashed.

Furthermore, the seismic report is endorsed by award winning seismologist Terry Wallace, who at the time directed the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and later had a leadership role for Los Alamos National Laboratory. [11]

According to journalist William Bunch, Wallace is considered the leading expert on seismology of man-made events, said Bunch:

“the seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10:06:05, plus or minus two seconds” he then added “I don’t know where the 10:03 time comes from. United” said the seismic expert, Terry Wallace. [12]

Wallace, studied records of ground vibrations triggered by the crash to reconstruct how the event unfolded. Based on the amount of seismic energy, Wallace could estimate how the plane came down: “The UA flight produced a significant signal, consistent with a fully-loaded jet that was intact, or nearly intact, on impact.” [13]

According to Wallace, a world leading seismologist, who studied the seismic readings, he said that there was a “significant signal”. This is hardly ambiguous as the 9/11 Commission claims.

Wallace’s “world leading seismologist” endorsement of Kim and Baum’s seismic study is a damming blow for the 9/11 Commission and the debunkers.


References & Sources

[1] Kim and Baum “Seismic Observation during September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack,”

[2] Johnathan D. Silver, “What Was the Danger to City? Doomed United Flight 93 Passed Just South of Pittsburgh” Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette 13 September 2001 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/analysis/flight93/postgazzette_20010913flightpath.html). The other story was Tom Gibb, James O’Tool, and Cindi Lash, “investigators Locate ‘Black Box’ from Flight 93; “Widen Search Area in Somerset Crash” Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette 13 September 2001 (http://post-gazzette.com/headlines/20010913somersetp3.asp).

[3] William Bunch, “We Know It Crashed, But Not Why,” Philadelphia Daily News 15 November 2001 (www.whatreallyhappened.com/flight_93_crash.html); Johnathan Silver, “Day of Terror: Outside Tiny Shanksville, a Fourth Deadly Stroke,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette 12 September 2001 (www.post-gazzette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2p2.asp); Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams, and Blake Morrison, “Terror Attacks Brought Drastic Decision: Clear the Skies” USA Today 12 August 2002 (www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001-08-12-clearskies_x.htm

[4] Dennis Roddy, “Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette 28 October 2001 (www.post-gazzette.com/headlines/20011002flt93mainstoryp7.asp).

[5] Kim and Baum “Seismic Observation During September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack,” cited in 9/11 Commission Report 461n168.

[6] 9/11 Commission Report 30.

[7] New York Observer 11 February 2004, quoted in Paul Thompson and Center for Cooperative Research, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute (New York: HarperCollins, 2004) 446. This lack of any independent investigation by the NTSB is supported by William Bunch, who wrote: “The NTSB referred all questions to the FBI” (Willaim Bunch, “Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape: Cockpit Voice Recording Ends Before Flight 93’s Official Time of Impact,” Philadelphia Daily News 16 September 2002 [available at www.propagandamatrix.com/three_minute_discrepancy_in_tape.htm]).

[8] 9/11 Commission Report 462n168.

[9] Kim and Baum “Seismic Observation during September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack.” (“UTC refers to Universal Coordinated Time, which has largely superseded GMT [Greenwich Mean Time].

[10] 9/11 Commission Report, 462n168, citing an e-mail from Wong-Young Kim, “Re: UA Flight 93,” 7 July 2004.

[11] “Wallace Named Strategic Research Directorate Leader,” Los Alamos National Laboratory, 4 March 2004 (www.lanl.gov/news/index.phh/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/2334).

[12] Quoted in Bunch, “Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape” ; also in Morgan, Flight 93 Revealed, 148, 149.

[13] https://www.discovermagazine.com/seismic-waves-the-ultimate-black-box-14924