FAA cover up of shooting aboard flight 11
DAY OF INFAMY 2001
FAA covering up 9-11 gun,
whistleblower agent says
Claims feds, American Airlines fear lawsuits;
Flight 11 victims' families want Hill probe
Posted: February 28, 2002
2:04 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry
� 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON � An internal Federal Aviation
Administration memo detailing a shooting aboard
hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 is not likely a
mistake, as claimed, and the government and the airline
may be denying the existence of a gun aboard the plane
out of fear of being sued by Sept. 11 victims' families,
charges a former veteran FAA special agent familiar with
the memo and its source.
As it happens, a nonprofit group representing Sept. 11
victims and their families has already reviewed the memo,
a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily.com.
And yesterday it demanded that Congress examine what
it sees as possible evidence that terrorists used a gun � a
banned FAA item, unlike box cutters at the time � to
hijack at least one of the four planes that crashed that
day.
Citing complaints lodged Monday by whisteblower
Bogdan Dzakovic [JOCK-o-vich], a leader of the FAA's
Red Team of undercover airport-security inspectors, the
group � called Families of September 11 � says the FAA
has a history of suppressing information about security
problems and therefore does not trust it to police itself in
this case.
"These matters are too important to be left to an internal
Department of Transportation investigation," said
Families of September 11 President Carie Lemack,
whose mother, Judy Larocque, died on Flight 11, which
hit the first World Trade Center tower not long after
departing Boston. Larocque, 50, was founder and CEO
of Market Perspectives in Framingham, Mass.
The FAA memo, as first reported yesterday by
WorldNetDaily, reports in detail a shooting incident
aboard Flight 11 in which one of the hijackers allegedly
killed a passenger seated in business class with a single
bullet. The document was written on Sept. 11 and sent to
top FAA officials.
The FAA has told WorldNetDaily.com that the initial
account of a gun aboard the plane was wrong, and was
corrected in a subsequent draft.
But Steve Elson, a former FAA airport-security inspector
and Red Team member, doubts it was written in error.
He says the memo was generated late afternoon on Sept.
11 by the FAA Emergency Operations Center and
"hand-delivered" to FAA Administrator Jane Garvey. He
claims to know the author, and trusts its accuracy.
"The specificity of the wording � passenger seat numbers,
who shot whom and the firing of a single bullet � makes
an error unlikely," he said in an interview with
WorldNetDaily.com.
Elson � who quit the FAA in frustration in 1999, after he
says management here repeatedly ignored his and other
agents' airport-security warnings � says Washington may
be continuing a "cover-up of the known lack of security"
in denying the gun report.
American Airlines also denies the report, telling
WorldNetDaily.com it never relayed information to the
FAA about a gun on Flight 11.
Why would both lie? "Lawsuits," Elson said.
"Immediately after the hijacking, the issue of the box
cutters surfaced," he explained. "Per the regulations, there
was nothing illegal about short-bladed knives being
carried aboard. So both the FAA and the airlines said
that there was no violation and that neither the FAA nor
the airlines had done anything wrong. From a strict legal
perspective, that is true."
"However, a gun aboard aircaft is very explicitly
prohibited," said Elson, a former Navy Seal. "Thus, a gun
aboard the plane would mean an airline failure, and open
that airline up to huge lawsuits."
Such a lawsuit "could mean the end of American
Airlines," he contended, giving American motive to "lie
about this issue."
American spokesman John Hotard angrily denied any
truth to the gun account in the memo, saying he has no
idea where the FAA got the information. He also noted
that other things in the Flight 11 summary, such as times,
are wildly inaccurate.
Families of September 11 also wants Congress to
investigate reports that another FAA-banned item mace,
or � pepper spray � was used on Flight 11.
"The U.S. government conspiracy indictment against
Zacarias Moussaoui says that Mohamed Atta, the
hijacker believed to have flown Flight 11 into the World
Trade Center, had pepper spray in his possession on
Sept. 11," said Stephen Push, a group spokesman.
WorldNetDaily has reported that hijackers used pepper
spray to subdue passengers on Flight 11.