Victims relatives gather to hear cockpit tape from Flight 93

Posted 11:56AM on Thursday 18th April 2002 ( 23 years ago )

PRINCETON, N.J. - Relatives of passengers and crew killed Sept. 11 aboard hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 met Thursday to listen to cockpit audio tapes from the final minutes of the doomed jetliner. Alice Hogland of Los Gatos, Calif., mother of passenger Mark Bingham, told reporters outside the hotel where relatives gathered that she knew the contents of the tape would be disturbing. "Still, I feel compelled to listen. I owe it to the memory of Mark to learn all I can," said Hogland, who wore an American flag pin on her blouse. She said she was told families would hear a woman pleading for her life, and the last five to seven minutes would be filled with violence and yelling in both Arabic and English. "We hope of course to hear Mark's voice, but I don't expect it," Hogland said, noting that the microphone was in the cockpit, not the passenger cabin. "We hope to gain more information about what happened on Flight 93," she added. Her son was one of four men who spoke by phone from the plane of taking on the hijackers before the airliner crashed into a field in rural western Pennsylvania. Two sessions were planned Thursday, one in the morning for families of the flight crew and one in the afternoon for Hogland and other passengers' relatives, said FBI Special Agent Sandra Carroll. No reporters were allowed, and a protective order restricted what officials could say about the roughly 30-minute recording, Carroll said. But relatives were free to discuss what they heard. The first session began between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Both were expected to last about four hours, giving federal officials time to brief family members about the tapes' content, allow discussion and questions, and interview them. Counselors were being made available as well. A state trooper stood guard at the hotel doorway as media gathered in the parking lot. FBI Director Robert Mueller approved the sessions at the request of family members. The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents, had never allowed relatives to listen to cockpit tapes. Federal law bars the agency from giving out transcripts until most factual reports are complete. Flight 93 became a source of pride for Americans after Sept. 11. Two hijacked planes pierced the World Trade Center and a third hit the Pentagon before Flight 93 crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field -- the only one of the four planes that did not kill anyone on the ground. In phone conversations from the plane, Bingham and three other men spoke of taking on the hijackers. The other men were Todd Beamer of Cranbury; Jeremy Glick of Hewlett; and Tom Burnett of San Ramon, Calif. Tom Crowley, Glick's uncle, said he knew two other Flight 93 passengers besides his nephew: Joseph Deluca of Ledgewood and Linda Gronlund of Greenwood Lake, N.Y. He is convinced they also fought back against the hijackers. "Knowing them as I do, I know they would have gone and gotten involved," said Crowley, who didn't plan to attend Thursday's session. "I know there are many other people who would have done the same thing. I think we have to think of all the people on Flight 93 as heroes."

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/4/202437