Its more dangerous to travel with u. S. Troops wear by their tribal code its totally morally acceptable to blow up a reporter with an ie d. If he or she is traveling with u. S. Troops. They might still do it but its wrong to do it. So that increases your chances. I think when you stay with local families you are under their protection and many times those people have risked their lives for me or he just because i was paying for a room for the night because thats the code. You are my guess, i take you in and i will die for you until tomorrow morning when you leave in which case you are on your own but hey hotel six dozen give you that. With that excellent question to close up i want to thank everyone for coming. Lets give it up for ted rall ladies and gentlemen. [applause] we will be up here signing boo books. Thank you so much for coming. If you would please fold up the chairs. Please come back and buy books from these wonderful authors and support your local independent bookstores. [applause] [inaudible conversations] on one hand multiculturalism certainly presets the boundaries of civility which i think is a lot of stuff we were arguing as students in the 80s when we were like the first group of 80s and 90s the first group of kids coming onto campuses that were a part of in some instances a majority minority class. I was part of the firstclass majority minority which who knows what majority minority means and we welcome back to that im sure. We at that time were like i dont want to be on campus having to deal with all these racial microaggressions. It being called slurs on the street in being made to feel like you implied in the classroom all these different types of things happening during the 80s and it resets the boundaries of civility. Now the language that reactionaries need to use has to be couched in multicultural terms. Pat buchanan has this amazing piece in his book about will america survive 22025. He talks about how everybody can enjoy ethnic foods. We all like to go out and have thai food in ethiopian food. Lets just keep it at that though. And youre just sort of like wow thats really interesting. And so multiculturalism has reset the boundaries of civility that we are still at the point where we can have conversations about the inequities and inequalities that persist and that are actually rising. This is again our huge blind spot. The book is really trying to get at that. On the one hand you have folks working in the culture to promote these new visions of what the u. S. Can look like but for us to get to that particular point we have to deal with these inequalities. There was a poll that came out after ferguson and two questions were asked. They were interviewing black senator bean whites. The first question was does this raise, to the events of ferguson raise issues that ought to be discussed around rays . The second question was, do the events and ferguson draws too much focus and attention to the issue of rays . Theres a big split. Africanamericans say overwhelmingly this raises issues we ought to be talking about and for whites theres an economic majority but still this feeling of where paying too much attention to race right now. One set of folks invitations have a conversation is another set of folks his cue to leave the room. Next tom mcmillan Vice President of communications for the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey Team Provides a detailed account of what happened to Americans Airlines flight 93. He spoke at barnes noble booksellers in cranberry pennsylvania. Thank you suzie for making me do a great presentation. It is interesting being here at the cranberry barnes noble because this is my hometown bookstore. Im usually browsing through the aisles looking for books. I want to thank susie and whitney and dave of barnes noble for making this possible into cspan2 an booktv for covering. We will do a q a afterwards so ask the questions because you might be on television. Im going to start with a question from myself but thats okay which is why would a sports guy write a book about flight 93 . Some of you may know that i work for the Pittsburgh Penguins is because no one else did. Apparently no one was going to for a while and i thought the story needed to be told. Im a history buff. I have been out to the temporary memorial probably 10 times in the first 10 years may be more than that. It is only 90 miles from pittsburgh where the flight crashed. I wanted to read more and learn more and was frustrated that i couldnt do that. There is an amazing little amount in book form written about september 11 specifically about flight 93. There was one book about 93 written after the crash. Jerry long would did a great job at there wasnt that much known about it and since then so much more has come out. I thought the story deserved a full narrative from beginning to end, not just the flight. United 93 was just a flight. My book starts in 1996 when the plot was proposed by osama bin ladin it by osama bin ladin that goes through the tenth anniversary in 2011 when they 93 National Memorial was dedicated. A two on the fighter in the middle of the book in the after story really fascinated me. I also thought the story has been forgotten a little bit. If you look in the media and september let me see the plane leaving the tower and the pentagon. You might see a few seconds of an empty field in Somerset County with a whole. I think over time this great story has faded. I also volunteer at the site and the tours are middle school students. They have little or no recognition. Some of you guys did not know the bill will limit in terror we felt that day. I was part of the reason for doing this. You can do the story obviously on all the details but it gets down to people. To me its people. If you have had been at the Newark International airport and walked past gate 17 you would have would have seen 33 regular passengers getting ready for what they felt was a routine flight to San Francisco. 8 00 a. M. Takeoff flight 93. There were a businessman and grandparents and College Students flying for all the usual reasons to go to conference to go vacation to go home. One lady heading east to attend a birthday party. Some of the names have been known to history. Todd beamer is a singular name that most people recognize who made the call and said lets roll. There are some others who i would like an enchanted his tea right now is names are remembered on that flight. It gives us a uma element to this. She was the youngest person on flight 93. She was from san diego. She was about to enter her junior year. She had been eased visiting friends in new jersey and connecticut and her mother told me she was ticketed for a later flight. She got on the fighter must probably excited that happen. Helga larson was the exact opposite. She was 79 years old. She was the oldest person on flight 93. She was born in germany and came to the country when she was six years old with her parents. She became as american as you could be raised two daughters was a bookkeeper and a teachers aide. She was feisty. Family legend has it that she hit him on the head with an umbrella. This was a new part of life for her. She was moving to San Francisco to live with her daughter and her daughters husband. She packed for suitcases. Herb daughter told me she was so excited to pick mother at the airport for this new phase of her life. He was a world war ii veteran. He was a retired bartender at the palm restaurant in new york. He was traveling with a heavy heart. His stepson had recently been married had gone to california on his honeymoon pick his stepson had died in a car accident that john was going to the funeral to corrupt collect the remains. Wanda green was one of five Flight Attendants on board. There were three africanamericans on the flight crew. She was a 29 year veteran of united airlines. She wanted to work in real estate. She was scheduled to fly on september 13 but she thought she would have a house closing that day so she asked her boss for a change in schedule and ended up flying on september 11. Theyll boarded the plane in a timely fashion. The passengers got on in the plane pulled back from the gate at 801 and that is out there. Flight 93 did not take off until a 42 00 and that delay is crucial in the story. The first line in the book is flight 93. If it taken off 15 or 20 minutes earlier our view of this day mightve been a lot different. Because there were four other men on the flight who knew they were coming home. This is the story of the 12. They are part of a terrorist team sent by al qaeda to hijack four planes that morning fly them into buildings that symbolized american dominance but their plan was based on precision. Actually the west coast flights with lots of fuel but there is a take off in a 25 minute time perry. The first 17 45 in the last 18 10. The idea being that these things would happen so fast that no one not the faa not the military or the passengers on the planes could do anything about it. The issue with flight 93 you will notice we talk about 19 hijackers, not 20. They couldnt get the 20th hijacker and they wanted four or five teams. They would be one pilot and al qaeda number al qaeda member who had been training for year and then they trained on simulators. They never flew the planes that they had simulator 757s and 760 sevens. They were just going to have to steer the plane to the building so they thought they could get by without it and they did. One pilot and for muscle hijackers. Two to attack the cockpit and take care of the pilot and the copilot and two to herd the passengers to the back of the plane. Five man team. Flight 93 had four. They only had three muscle hijackers. Did hijackers. Hijackers. It that play a role in what happened later . It very well could have. It also probably played a role in the other delay which was the screws took the longest to hijack a plane. I qaedas plan was that they would take over the plane in 15 minutes. Thateing probably and realistic because the other three planes did it in 30 minutes. The hijackers took 36 minutes. Why, we dont know. Those are mysteries we can never know. The hijacker pilot had a girlfriend. He was wavering and did he lose his nerve for while . Its only speculation. The combination of the delay in taking off in the delay in the hijacked plane created an opportunity that didnt exist on the other flights which is these people could make telephone calls, a lot of phonecalls. We hear a lot of todd beamers calls. There were 37 calls made from flight 93. The early reporting was that they were cell phonecalls and no criticism to the media. The early reporting is often wrong but the cell phonecalls to were on cell phones. Most of the calls were from seatback air phones. Remember those air phones . There was a a white fun in the back of the seat. You could swipe your credit card through and it was for silly calls. I will be there an hour. These people use them effectively. They made 12 people made 35 calls. The technology was still spotty. 20 of those calls disconnected in a matter of seconds. There was no conversation. But 15 got through. Thats all we know. A lot of what happened on the flight because they told their loved ones what was going on but the unintended consequences was that the loved ones watching television told them all was going on. The first flight hit the trade center at 8 46. The second flight hit the trade center tower the other tower at 9 53. Flight 93 doesnt get hijacked until 9 28. These people are watching television when the calls come in and they are telling them what happened. The two planes hit the World Trade Center. Imagine hearing that. Youre on a plane that is hijacked. Somebody has been stabbed and you dont know who is flying the plane. Then you hear two planes hit the World Trade Center. Our our memory was official but they didnt have that visual. Hearing that, what would that mean . They were trying to figure out what to do. At about a quarter to 10 they start hearing from their wives that the pentagon has been hit. The pentagon had was the pentagon was hit at 9 36. That changed everything. They knew they had to do something. If they didnt a horrendous death would impact them and they have hit a building somewhere. They decided to take over the plane. There were for small group of passengers a large number of athletic man on the flight. Jeremy glick wasnt lap belt in judo. Mark bingaman was 6 feet 4 inches, 225 and national collegiate. Tom Burnett High School quarterback. A lot of leadership skills. Todd beamer played basketball. To the men were weightlifters. There were some serious athletic guys. And a great crosssection of americana. Emts smart many of them had been athletes. It was a group that some people like to say there was a destiny there that they were able to do it. I dont know people ever said that for what they did was amazing. The counterattack started at 9 57. We know that for two reasons. Three ladies were still on the plane at that point. Two Flight Attendants and one passenger than they all said something to the effect of i have got to go over one is running to the cockpit. The transcript of the voice recorder and the cockpit voice recovered recorder was it covered. I was able to obtain a very detailed transcript for what was going on or figure out what was going on and where the sounds were coming from. Male voice, phenol voiceprint at 9 57 the pilot said to the other hijacker whats that, if that, if i . Diggity or something going on. There are sounds of screams in of screams in arabic so the first thing they did was take him to muscle hijackers. Gerard realize something was going on and so they start waving the wings to throw them off balance. They are trying to charge the cockpit and the plane is going this way. Theres an animation that the ntsb on the flight path is haunting and you can see this starting to happen. Then he starts going up and do down. So it stops them for a while but he can do that forever. They regain their momentum and a little bit after 10 00 the transcript describes in english native englishspeaking voices saying in the cockpit come if we dont we will die. That is where i want to say we americans and im a history buff we have a thing for taking your stories and having them made to add myths on top of that. How many of you heard the passengers and crew took down the plane to take the thats what happened but that is not what they intended. They were trying to take back the plane and save themselves. They thought they could save themselves. That obviously would save lives and save but that was their intention. There was a license pilot on board. He could fly small planes but not licensed to fly a 757 but he had knowledge of aviation. Another man on board had worked air Traffic Control for the California Air national guard. These were guys who might have had a chance. It would have been a huge longshot probably put on a clear day with instruction every step of the way from air Traffic Control on the ground they mightve had a fighting chance and it certainly was worth it. In the cockpit come if we dont well die. Very thought there was an option that they might not die. The battle continued. The fbi didnt conclude that they did it was a good business. According to the transcript the sounds are allowed. I think they probably did. The sounds of the transcript get loud. There is a point very late in the flight ended ended up crashing at 10 03. There was a very loud shout from an englishspeaking mail that says turn it up. Right after that theres a shout in arabic that yells pull it down. Turn it up, pull it down. Is that a battle for control . It might be. I think we can say it might be read a well never know for sure. At the very end just after 10 10 03 you can see on the flight path that they yoke of the wheel turns hard to the right in the plane turns upside down. We dont know what caused that. Did the hijacker pilot realized he was going to be taking over and just ditch the plane in . Mohamad atta who flew the first plane into the World Trade Center said if you cant hit the target crasher plane. That was something they had been assigned but it also couldve been a struggle. It could have turned because they were fighting for control. Again we will never know what it was because of the efforts of the passengers and crew whatever the reason they caused that. The plane turns upside down and goes into a death plunge. It crashes at 563 miles an hour and a 40degree angle. Imagine the devastation of the plane hitting that quickly. It was another unique work of the story. Didnt just land an open field. It landed in a reclaimed strip line. This was an area where the dirt had been dug up over the years. They stripped the cole and then they put the dirt backend. It wasnt soft if you walked on it but it wasnt as consolidated as regular downtoearth and that is right where the plane hit. When investigators believe happened with the force of impact the front part of the plane stopped off shattered influence grow. That is where a lot of debris was found and hijacker information was found passports and things like that. There was an immediate fireball 75 feet in the areas to me but it didnt burn along because there was not much to burn. The last twothirds of the plane went into the ground plowed into the ground. The cockpit voice recorder is located in the back of the plane. They founded 25 feet in the ground. They found items 35 feet into the ground, 3. 5 basketball hoops. The fbi dug 40 feet to make sure they couldnt find anything else. One of the Amazing Things have happened here, from this point on it so different from your city in d. C. Because it landed in smalltown america. The state police did not get there first. The fbi didnt get there first. The citizens of this shanksville got there first. Some of them saw the plane. They heard the plane, they felt their house a shake and they knew so they got back there and in the local fire department. They were there before the authorities. The fbi came in and took over the site. They gathered 95 of the plane. One of the things that happened. There are still people out there that say the plane didnt crash and shanksville. Some of that i think it is because the early witnesses said there was nothing there and we didnt see anything. They were looking for big plane parts and expected to see pieces of fuselage. The biggest piece they found was the size of the hood of the car piece of the fuselage. The heaviest piece found was a 1000pound part of an engine fan. Everything else was shattered. That is whats done those people that happened. As for people there were also looking for