On the morning of September 11, 2001, 46 minutes from United Airlines Flight 93, a non-stop flight between Newark, New Jersey and San Francisco, four hijackers took control of the Boeing 757-222. It was around 9:30 a.m., and already that morning, two hijacked planes had shockingly crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. In less than 10 minutes, another plane would crash into the Pentagon in Washington, DC
But what about flight 93? What do we know about his target?
What is certain is that at 9:55 a.m., one of its hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, a trained pilot, reset the plane’s autopilot, turning around to return to the is in the direction of Washington. Already informed of what had happened with the other three hijacked planes by phone calls with family members, several passengers and crew tried to storm the cockpit occupied by the terrorists. At 10:03 a.m., after a vigorous struggle, the plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa., Killing all 44 people on board. When the plane struck the ground at 580 miles per hour, it was about a 20-minute flight from Washington.
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Of the four planes hijacked on September 11, United Airlines Flight 93 was the only one that failed to hit its target. In the most comprehensive study of terrorist attacks, the 9/11 Commission Report concluded that the plane’s target was Washington, where the Senate and House were in session in the Capitol building. “Jarrah’s goal was to crash her airliner into symbols of the United States Republic, the Capitol or the White House,” the 9/11 report said. “He was defeated by the alert and unarmed passengers of United 93.”
Yet despite the report’s claims, the ultimate target of Flight 93 remains unknown. The statements made by the conspirators of the 9/11 conspiracy after the attacks offer the most solid clues.
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A temporary memorial at the site of the Flight 93 crash on September 11, 2010.
Jim Watson / Getty Images
READ MORE: How passengers on United Flight 93 fought on September 11
Al Qaeda leaders disagree on goals
In early 1999, according to the 9/11 report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an al Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, obtained approval from Osama bin Laden to use planes as weapons in an attack. against the United States. According to Lawrence Wright, author of The impending tower: Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 road, Al Qaeda placed the United States on its target list in 1998 after commissioning a study finding Jews in control of the country.
At a meeting in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the spring of 1999, Sheikh Mohammed met with Bin Laden and Mohammed Atef, another Al Qaeda leader, to create a list of American targets, which included the White House, the Pentagon , the Capitol and the World Shopping Center. These sites were among the most important monuments in the United States, political symbols. military and financial power that Al-Qaeda wanted to attack.
READ MORE: Behind White House 9/11 order to shoot down US airliners: ‘It had to be done’
In 2003, Sheikh Mohammed was arrested during a raid in Pakistan. When questioned by American agents, he said that if Bin Laden wanted to destroy the White House and the Pentagon, and strike the World Trade Center, all of his co-conspirators wanted to strike the Capitol. “Everyone agreed on Capitol Hill… while Bin Laden was in favor of the Pentagon and the White House,” Mohammed said.
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni citizen and conspirator in the plot, is considered by US intelligence officials to be the 20th hijacker, but he was never given a visa to enter the United States. (Flight 93 only had four terrorists, compared to the other three planes, which had five.) After his arrest in 2002, bin al-Shibh provided interrogators with an organizational structure of the plot, including Mohamed’s thought. Atta, the Egyptian by birth. and the leader of the conspiracy that took control of American Airlines Flight 11 and smashed it against the North Tower of the Trade Center. Each terrorist pilot has been assigned a location to crash their planes. According to bin al-Shibh, Jarrah, who was on Flight 93, was assigned to the Capitol building in Washington. Atta told bin al-Shibh that if the pilots couldn’t hit their targets, they would have to crash their plane.
Before being captured and arrested, Sheikh Mohammed and bin al-Shibh told an Al Jazeera reporter that Flight 93 was heading for the Capitol before the passengers attempted to overtake the plane.
READ MORE: On September 11, Heather Penney tried to bring down Flight 93 in a kamikaze mission
WATCH: To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, The HISTORY® Channel will air three documentary specials starting September 10. Watch a preview of the three specials now.
The Capitol on September 11
At 10:15 a.m. on September 11, 2001, authorities ordered the evacuation of the Capitol building. By that time, four hijacked planes had crashed, two in the World Trade Center, one in the Pentagon and one in an empty field in Pennsylvania. In The only plane in the sky: an oral history of September 11 by Garrett Graff, then Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert remembers being taken that morning by his security guards. “I said, ‘What’s going on? They said, “We think there’s a fourth plane, and we think it’s headed for the Capitol.”
Later that day, some 150 members of the Senate and House, both Republicans and Democrats, stood on the steps of the Capitol and sang “God Bless America”.
READ MORE: A History of Attacks on the United States Capitol
