TMZ's "The Fifth Plane" Documentary on Fox

[Allen773]

If this is all true, just more evidence that senior officials across the US government spectacularly failed the American people, and covered their asses later. Rinse, repeat with Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, COVID, January 6th...

They don't have enough room in the prison system at this point.

 

[beachnut]

TMZ? lol

Women have hair...

 

[Axxman300]

Seriously, it doesn't take a speaker of Arabic to look at the flight manifest of Flight 23 and check a few things:

Who was seated in first class or business class? In all four of the hijacked flights no hijacker was seated in economy. On UA 175, they occupied 5 of the front 40 seats, but because the plane was not even close to full they were 5 of the first 20 passengers. How hard is it to scan a flight manifest for the first 20 passengers and see if there are a few Arab-sounding names? When you look at the flight manifests of the other flights it's really easy.

BTW, I will correct myself on one point I made earlier. Hanjour and Jarrah were in the front seat closest to the cockpit, while Al-Shehhi and Atta chose to sit a few rows back, with muscle hijackers both behind and in front of them.

Can we match any of those names with pilots? All four of the pilot hijackers had commercial pilot licenses.

If I were the FBI, I'd have done that check for quite a few flights, certainly any that had been reported as having suspicious passengers.

They did check them out. Nothing seemed to come out of it. And the FBI investigated all of the claims in this documentary. They moved on, and left people hanging. That has been a problem with the Bureau that continues to this day.

 

[bknight]

They did check them out. Nothing seemed to come out of it. And the FBI investigated all of the claims in this documentary. They moved on, and left people hanging. That has been a problem with the Bureau that continues to this day.

Too political?

 

[Oystein]

While the idea is plausible that further hijack teams may have existed and aborted their missions, I don't think the evidence here surrounding flight UA23 adds up to a likely case.

It appears that the four known hijack teams were organized and executed accordiung to a uniform plan. The several and distinct dots of evidence cited for UA23 add several details not know for the other four, and they seem to be entirely superfluous and even detrimental to the chance of success:

• The idea that box cutters were placed in the cabin ahead of time by a different team of co-conspiracists adds an element of risk that the plot is discovered even before any of the planes leave gates - an unnecessary risk when you can carry on a box cutter perfectly legally
• The idea that co-conspirators, in some uniform even, would illegally enter the plane after it has been evactuated and closed, for whatever reason, runs the rik of those otherwise unrecorded terrorists being discovered and arrested - for no discernible benefit whatsoever. So what if police later finds incriminating evidence? At that time, the hijack team already had a chance to get away. And anyway, why should it be a problem if a fifth team is later discovered and arrested?
• Why involve a child in the operation? There is no discernible benefit, except as an excuse to have a look at the cockpit - but the other four hijack teams needed no child to know their way around an airiner. However, having a child adds an element of unpreditability, and also possible of emotional problems for the hijackers to carry through
• Why disguise a man as a woman? Once again, there is no discernible benefit, an unnecessary (if small) risk to raise suspicion before take-off, and no known precedent from the other four teams
• Why would hijackers cause a ruckus over the inflight meals when they had no intention to ever again eat anything at all till they die anyway? If the purser approached me with the bad news that my special diet meal has not been prepared, I'd quietly thank them and say it's alright, I am fine with the regular meal choice, carry on. Would the purser then really hold up the plane, stop the world, until she has fetched my vegetarian meal? Sounds far-fetched

So the story consists of really nothing more than a few dots, several of which don't fit the picture painted by the four successful hijackings.

Should I connect the dots? Well, not until I have more than weak, circumstantial evidence that the dots actually require connecting.

 

[Allen773]

Perhaps this was a hastily put-together and poorly trained add-on to the plot?

Keep in mind, there were a lot of times when the 9/11 plot came close to falling apart, especially in the months leading up to the attacks. Ziad Jarrah briefly backed out until Atta or Binalshibh convinced him to “stay the course”. Khalid al-Midhar left the US for a full year—KSM was so angry about this that he was determined to keep al-Midhar out of the plot until bin Laden overruled him and he came back to the US two months before the attacks (if they had only known the CIA knew about him and Nawaf al-Hazmi…). Mohammed al-Qahtani didn’t make it past Customs at Orlando International Airport (IIRC). A bunch of other “candidate hijackers” didn’t make it past Dubai, Riyadh, or Jeddah in getting US visas even as others (most of the muscle hijackers on 9/11) did. Even KSM along with one of his nephews (not Ramzi Yousef, obviously) who was one of the financial facilitators for the hijackers tried to get US visas. All this as the date of the attacks kept getting postponed, much to bin Laden’s frustration.

And then there was the arrest of Zacarias Moussaui in August—which perhaps unfortunately, neither KSM nor bin Laden or the other al-Qaeda leaders were aware of, for it probably would have at least delayed the plot significantly, and possibly strengthened the position of those on the al-Qaeda shura who were virulently opposed to the “Planes Operation.”

Remember, this was the “summer of threat” within the US intelligence community. There are references in the 9/11 Commission Report to several jihadi plots in the Middle East and Europe being broken up by various countries’ intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies in the months leading up to 9/11. Did bin Laden, KSM, and/or the few others fully read into the Planes Operation believe that things were about to unravel for them? Was United 23 possibly some sort of Hail Mary pass “just in case?”

Really hard to say.

 

[Axxman300]

Too political?

The FBI is big on function, big lousy at form. Their PR quality is lacking. They're one of many US Government agencies who tell reporters, 'We'll get back to you on that", and rarely do. This indifference to public curiosity plays a big part in how CTs are formed. The FBI's laziness in public relations is often used by CTists as "proof" of a cover-up. How many threads do we have on this entire board that feature the Bureau showing up on a case, only to drag their feet as time goes on, without an update on the status of the investigation? That fuels nonsense like this story.

All the FBI had to do was call United and say, "We've cleared the passengers in question, and the box-cutter thing was just a rumor."

I understand the entire FBI was overwhelmed after 9/11. Things got cleared and filed away by the semi-truck load.

I've watched the show twice. What I see is a ghost story. Short-tempered, self-entitled Arabs in First Class has always been a thing. A guy sweating before take-off? People have fear of flying, and respond by puking, fidgeting, and sweating. My second girlfriend was 6'2", and had hairy hands.

Had all these things happened the week prior they would have been forgotten by the next day. But because it was 9/11 every Arab and Middle-Easterner suddenly became suspicious to anyone working in commercial aviation and law enforcement. This is a compelling case underlining how people will jump to conclusions under sudden, extreme situations. In the minds of the fight attendants and the pilot, they must have been on a targeted plane.

The word for this is, Hysteria.

Nobody interviewed saw the box-cutters. They were told by co-workers they had been found, but this sounds more like a rumor. There are so many false reports on 9/11 between the time the second plane struck the south tower, and the time the President addressed the nation on TV. Many of those false reports would fuel 9/11 CTs for the next decade. The mystery people onboard the locked aircraft? That is strange, but it's JFK, and ground crews had things they had to get done. I think it was miscommunication.

Why I find this documentary interesting is this is a situation where veteran flight attendants and their pilot have allowed themselves to believe that something happened that in truth, did not. This was an incident which happened on the worst day in US history, and the worst day in Commercial Aviation history. Personally I think this was the crew's way of coping. The part of the documentary discusses how those flight attendants fought to get disability for PTSD, and while I understand why many might have quit after 9/11, I think this story of being the "Fifth Plane" is their way of justifying their cases for coverage by insurance. It's a ghost story.

 

[Allen773]

The FBI is big on function, big lousy at form. Their PR quality is lacking. They're one of many US Government agencies who tell reporters, 'We'll get back to you on that", and rarely do. This indifference to public curiosity plays a big part in how CTs are formed. The FBI's laziness in public relations is often used by CTists as "proof" of a cover-up. How many threads do we have on this entire board that feature the Bureau showing up on a case, only to drag their feet as time goes on, without an update on the status of the investigation? That fuels nonsense like this story.

All the FBI had to do was call United and say, "We've cleared the passengers in question, and the box-cutter thing was just a rumor."

I understand the entire FBI was overwhelmed after 9/11. Things got cleared and filed away by the semi-truck load.

I've watched the show twice. What I see is a ghost story. Short-tempered, self-entitled Arabs in First Class has always been a thing. A guy sweating before take-off? People have fear of flying, and respond by puking, fidgeting, and sweating. My second girlfriend was 6'2", and had hairy hands.

Had all these things happened the week prior they would have been forgotten by the next day. But because it was 9/11 every Arab and Middle-Easterner suddenly became suspicious to anyone working in commercial aviation and law enforcement. This is a compelling case underlining how people will jump to conclusions under sudden, extreme situations. In the minds of the fight attendants and the pilot, they must have been on a targeted plane.

The word for this is, Hysteria.

Nobody interviewed saw the box-cutters. They were told by co-workers they had been found, but this sounds more like a rumor. There are so many false reports on 9/11 between the time the second plane struck the south tower, and the time the President addressed the nation on TV. Many of those false reports would fuel 9/11 CTs for the next decade. The mystery people onboard the locked aircraft? That is strange, but it's JFK, and ground crews had things they had to get done. I think it was miscommunication.

Why I find this documentary interesting is this is a situation where veteran flight attendants and their pilot have allowed themselves to believe that something happened that in truth, did not. This was an incident which happened on the worst day in US history, and the worst day in Commercial Aviation history. Personally I think this was the crew's way of coping. The part of the documentary discusses how those flight attendants fought to get disability for PTSD, and while I understand why many might have quit after 9/11, I think this story of being the "Fifth Plane" is their way of justifying their cases for coverage by insurance. It's a ghost story.

This makes a lot of sense, thanks.

 

[Allen773]

And the FBI dragging their feet on investigations and their status (let alone, informing the public) is absolutely a feature, not a bug. It’s no surprise to anyone who has had had to deal with large bureaucracies, or government in general and law enforcement agencies at any level. Guess what, the FBI is all of those that things, and it’s specifically a massive federal government bureaucracy that handles a lot of highly classified national security information.

I mean, how many cold cases, unprocessed rape kits and backlogs of other criminal evidence are there at police departments around the country? And good look getting the cops to care about domestic violence or stalking—hell, good luck getting a proactive and competent LE investigation into any crime. Why would the FBI be immune from similar issues institutionally and culturally? If anything, I’d it imagine it would be even worse in such a complex and large federal bureaucracy.

In practice, a lot of the government, very much including law enforcement, operates much more like the DMV than how it’s portrayed in movies and TV—or in the imaginations of conspiracy theorists…

 

[bknight]

And the FBI dragging their feet on investigations and their status (let alone, informing the public) is absolutely a feature, not a bug. It’s no surprise to anyone who has had had to deal with large bureaucracies, or government in general and law enforcement agencies at any level. Guess what, the FBI is all of those that things, and it’s specifically a massive federal government bureaucracy that handles a lot of highly classified national security information.

I mean, how many cold cases, unprocessed rape kits and backlogs of other criminal evidence are there at police departments around the country? And good look getting the cops to care about domestic violence or stalking—hell, good luck getting a proactive and competent LE investigation into any crime. Why would the FBI be immune from similar issues institutionally and culturally? If anything, I’d it imagine it would be even worse in such a complex and large federal bureaucracy.

In practice, a lot of the government, very much including law enforcement, operates much more like the DMV than how it’s portrayed in movies and TV—or in the imaginations of conspiracy theorists…

For the FBI to not reveal much until arrest are made, is a necessary attribute, although as Axe indicates it fuels CTs. I would say their behavior after an incident is ok, the behavior prior to an incident is deplorable. They and the CIA which is also to blame prior to the incident was turf wars (political). Instead they should have shared information instead of pigeon holing. But that is just my opinion.

 

[Shrinker]

• Why would hijackers cause a ruckus over the inflight meals when they had no intention to ever again eat anything at all till they die anyway? If the purser approached me with the bad news that my special diet meal has not been prepared, I'd quietly thank them and say it's alright, I am fine with the regular meal choice, carry on. Would the purser then really hold up the plane, stop the world, until she has fetched my vegetarian meal? Sounds far-fetched

Maybe there was a fourth set of boxcutters hidden in the vegetarian meals.

 

[smartcooky]

While the idea is plausible that further hijack teams may have existed and aborted their missions, I don't think the evidence here surrounding flight UA23 adds up to a likely case.

It appears that the four known hijack teams were organized and executed accordiung to a uniform plan. The several and distinct dots of evidence cited for UA23 add several details not know for the other four, and they seem to be entirely superfluous and even detrimental to the chance of success:

• Why would hijackers cause a ruckus over the inflight meals when they had no intention to ever again eat anything at all till they die anyway? If the purser approached me with the bad news that my special diet meal has not been prepared, I'd quietly thank them and say it's alright, I am fine with the regular meal choice, carry on. Would the purser then really hold up the plane, stop the world, until she has fetched my vegetarian meal? Sounds far-fetched

The "ruckus" wasn't about the inflight meals - they were the reason for the delays, and it was the delays that were causing them to get agitated.

 

[Oystein]

The "ruckus" wasn't about the inflight meals - they were the reason for the delays, and it was the delays that were causing them to get agitated.

The show is uploaded to YouTube - two copies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSnL9NsAbtQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKVlg73Wh6Q

At 11:33, two of the flight attendants recall how the purser "tried to discuss" with the alleged suspects in 1st class the issue of the missing in-flight meals, where the problem was, specifically, that "nothing on our menu in 1st class would gonna let them eat because, she says, everything has meat on it". So the problem was that the passengers required a vegetarian meal. That was the root cause of the ruckus, and they could have solved it easily without a ruckus by indicating right away that not having a veggie meal would be fine, thank you.
I just don't see how this sort of discussion would have registered at all with the attendants not assigned to 1st class unless the passengers actually did raise a ruckus initially over the unavailability of their prefered diet.

I notice that the most dramatic account of this interaction comes from Sandy Thorngren, the dark-haired attendant, who was assigned to business class. It is revealed later in the show that she fought long and hard litigations to get the trauma and related illness recognized by her employer, over which she was essentially forced into retirement, so she seems particularly deeply, and negatively, involved emotionally. One might argue that, to give sense to years of ordeal, she desperately needs to convince herself she dealt with actual terrorists.
So while I generally do not give much to eyewitnesses decades after the fact, this one, and the dramatization, come across to me as particularly unreliable.

The purser herself, "Deborah", is quoted as saying far less (at 7:00 min):
"I had four people board the aircraft in first class. I knew that the people did not eat meat [how? because the people either had this recorded as an extra with their booking, or they told her. /Oy], so I spent a great deal of time trying to get these four people fruit plates."
And then at 11:15 min to 11:33 min:
"In 1st class, we had a choice of meals, but usually only two fruit plates. So, I was trying to get catering to bring more fruit plates. Trying to do that while people are boarding and getting settled was just a mess. "

Then they cut to the third, economy class, attendant, to fill in for the purser:
"As the purser was trying to discuss this with the gentleman in the tan suit, he finally said 'it doesn't really matter'"
And then the business class attendant, paraphrases the purser (11:50 min):
"Our purser was determined that they get food ... they were arguing with her that they didn't wanna eat, they wanted to take off".

The point here is that this story of the purser being agitatedly pressured by the passengers to not delay take-off is NOT told by the purser herself, despite her being interviewed and touching upon the issue of missing some veggie food - it is related, 2nd-hand, by her colleagues. Why would they not tell the purser's own take on that situation?

My take-away is that TMZ simply went with the most dramatic account, but that has a high likelihood of being exaggerated at best, and possibly entirely a false memory, generated at some point well after the incident.

 

[smartcooky]

The show is uploaded to YouTube - two copies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSnL9NsAbtQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKVlg73Wh6Q

At 11:33, two of the flight attendants recall how the purser "tried to discuss" with the alleged suspects in 1st class the issue of the missing in-flight meals, where the problem was, specifically, that "nothing on our menu in 1st class would gonna let them eat because, she says, everything has meat on it". So the problem was that the passengers required a vegetarian meal. That was the root cause of the ruckus, and they could have solved it easily without a ruckus by indicating right away that not having a veggie meal would be fine, thank you.
I just don't see how this sort of discussion would have registered at all with the attendants not assigned to 1st class unless the passengers actually did raise a ruckus initially over the unavailability of their prefered diet.

I notice that the most dramatic account of this interaction comes from Sandy Thorngren, the dark-haired attendant, who was assigned to business class. It is revealed later in the show that she fought long and hard litigations to get the trauma and related illness recognized by her employer, over which she was essentially forced into retirement, so she seems particularly deeply, and negatively, involved emotionally. One might argue that, to give sense to years of ordeal, she desperately needs to convince herself she dealt with actual terrorists.
So while I generally do not give much to eyewitnesses decades after the fact, this one, and the dramatization, come across to me as particularly unreliable.

The purser herself, "Deborah", is quoted as saying far less (at 7:00 min):
"I had four people board the aircraft in first class. I knew that the people did not eat meat [how? because the people either had this recorded as an extra with their booking, or they told her. /Oy], so I spent a great deal of time trying to get these four people fruit plates."
And then at 11:15 min to 11:33 min:
"In 1st class, we had a choice of meals, but usually only two fruit plates. So, I was trying to get catering to bring more fruit plates. Trying to do that while people are boarding and getting settled was just a mess. "

Then they cut to the third, economy class, attendant, to fill in for the purser:
"As the purser was trying to discuss this with the gentleman in the tan suit, he finally said 'it doesn't really matter'"
And then the business class attendant, paraphrases the purser (11:50 min):
"Our purser was determined that they get food ... they were arguing with her that they didn't wanna eat, they wanted to take off".

The point here is that this story of the purser being agitatedly pressured by the passengers to not delay take-off is NOT told by the purser herself, despite her being interviewed and touching upon the issue of missing some veggie food - it is related, 2nd-hand, by her colleagues. Why would they not tell the purser's own take on that situation?

My take-away is that TMZ simply went with the most dramatic account, but that has a high likelihood of being exaggerated at best, and possibly entirely a false memory, generated at some point well after the incident.

Your interpretation of this is pretty much the exact opposite of mine.

It is 100% clear and obvious to me that the Arabs' agitation was because there were delays in getting airborne. The cause for the delay may have been the inflight meals, but it would not have mattered what the cause was (a late passenger, a technical issue) it was the delay that was causing the agitation.

 

[Oystein]

Your interpretation of this is pretty much the exact opposite of mine.

It is 100% clear and obvious to me that the Arabs' agitation was because there were delays in getting airborne. The cause for the delay may have been the inflight meals, but it would not have mattered what the cause was (a late passenger, a technical issue) it was the delay that was causing the agitation.

What do you say about my observation that the purser, who actually was involved in the alleged agitation, is not quoted as talking about any agitation whatsoever? That that is almost hearsay?

Here is my take:

• Passengers in 1st class required four meat-free meals
• UA messed up by not having enough meat-free meals ready
• This caused the purser some stress
• She talked with the passengers about the situation
• At the time, there was nothing peculiar about that situation. **** happens
• In retrospect, after evacuation and when they heard about what happened on the other planes, the other attendants wondered about the passengers, and assigned small "anomalies" undue importance
• Decades later, the story had grown considerable legs

Now even IF there was agitation about an impending delay: How is that not perfectly normal for perfectly innocent passengers? Aren't passengers generally happier about flights travelling on time vs departing late? There is totally nothing suspicious about this.

I don't believe in hunting subjective "anomalies". I don't believe in connecting dots. That's how I have not become a conspiracy theorist.

 

[MRC_Hans]

What do you say about my observation that the purser, who actually was involved in the alleged agitation, is not quoted as talking about any agitation whatsoever? That that is almost hearsay?

Here is my take:

• Passengers in 1st class required four meat-free meals
• UA messed up by not having enough meat-free meals ready
• This caused the purser some stress
• She talked with the passengers about the situation
• At the time, there was nothing peculiar about that situation. **** happens
• In retrospect, after evacuation and when they heard about what happened on the other planes, the other attendants wondered about the passengers, and assigned small "anomalies" undue importance
• Decades later, the story had grown considerable legs

Now even IF there was agitation about an impending delay: How is that not perfectly normal for perfectly innocent passengers? Aren't passengers generally happier about flights travelling on time vs departing late? There is totally nothing suspicious about this.
I don't believe in hunting subjective "anomalies". I don't believe in connecting dots. That's how I have not become a conspiracy theorist.

Agreed. I have personally been part of a group that raised hell about a delay. In China. Because we didn't want to miss our connecting flight to CPH. (We made it, barely.)

Hans