Fog, Fiction and the Flight 11 Phone Calls

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 21

What is this comment?

Betty - maintain.

Why has Woodward written "Betty - maintain" at the end of the first page of his notes?

It's not really proper information is it. Betty - maintain. It's hard to imagine this is something Sweeney is trying to convey to him. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that Woodward just made these two words up and wrote them down.

What's left? Woodward has overheard the words "Betty", and "maintain", and for some reason, he has scribbled them down. Did Amy Sweeney tell Betty to "maintain" something perhaps? Or did someone else tell Betty to maintain something, and somehow Woodward overheard?

It's a slightly unusual word to use in normal conversation, maintain. Just sayin'.

So, anyway, I went searching to see if I could locate any use of the word "maintain" in the context of "Betty" in any of these conversations.

I found it. But it is in a surprising location. Recall the scenario: Ong and Sweeney are supposedly sitting next to each other, in jump seats. At 8:32am, Ong is on an airphone call to Winston Sadler and Nydia Gonzalez, who is another line with Craig Marquis. This is the time that Amy Sweeney is about to make her second call, to be answered by Jim Sayer.

Right about that time, 8:33am, the following exchange can be found on the transcript of the Nydia Gonzalez- Craig Marquis conversation. (Note: the timing written on the left margin of the transcript begins from around 8:21:30am approximately. The exchange of interest below happens between the 10:00 and 11:00 minute marks, which is therefore around 8:32 or 8:33am)



There it is. There's the word "maintain". Gonzalez happened to use the word "maintain" when speaking to Betty Ong, right around the moment when Amy Sweeney phoned in the second time.

Is it possible that, somehow, when Woodward scribbled down "Betty - maintain" it was because he was overhearing Gonzalez telling Betty they were going to maintain the line open?

This seems very odd for two reasons: this exchange took place on the other phone conversation, the one between Gonzalez and Ong, not the one between Sweeney and Woodward. How could Woodward have heard what Gonzalez was saying to Ong?

And of course, there is the more severe problem of how Woodward could have overheard Gonzalez talking at 8:33am, when he was down at Gate 32 at the time, and still several minutes away from taking the phone call over from Jim Sayer.

So how do the words "Betty - maintain" turn up on Woodward's notes, supposedly made at least several minutes later?

It seems as if someone has got their wires crossed.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 22

In this post, I want to step back a bit, and make some more general observations. It's been fascinating to me doing the reading for this thread, getting to the point where I come to know these conversations almost by memory, and comparing them to what has been written about them over the years. Watching people struggle to reconcile the contents of the phone calls with the supposed narrative of what happened on the plane, shows how strongly we see what we are told to see, not what we actually see.

I've been thinking about this lately as I've been watching episodes of Fool Us, the tv show with Penn & Teller, in which magicians attempt to perform a trick that the great magicians cannot figure out how they did it. It's a lot of fun. Sometimes we go back and replay, in slo-mo, the transition moments. Sometimes you can spot the sleight of hand, the misdirection, the feint, but many times it's invisible, seamless.

More and more I come to see flight 11 as a magic trick, but just like the best acts on Fool Us, I still can't quite figure out how they did it.

What is finally becoming clear is that what we are told about the flight, and what the phone calls tell us are two very different things.

But it's not only the mainstream narrative which has glossed over the inconsistencies in the stories, and found a way to shoehorn the Ong and Sweeney accounts into an endorsement of the official version of events. It's also the Inside Job crowd, who had it all wrong for many years, including (*cough*) me.

Remember those early years? Supposedly, the hijackers names were not on the flight manifests. And cell phone calls were impossible from planes therefore the calls were fake.

Neither of those ideas turned out to be useful. Firstly, the hijackers names were indeed on the flight manifests, and those lists of passengers issued by the airlines in the early days had the hijackers names removed because they were so easy to ID, on which more to say below. As for the cell phones on planes: for the purpose of this thread, in which we are only looking at Flight 11, it's besides the point. The calls were made from the plane's own airphone system.

So, it was easy enough to say in those early years, that there simply were no hijackers. And I used to say it. Many times. It may turn out to be correct, and it is correct, but not for the reasons that would have given ten years ago.

Now, in light of this thread, we can go back again and look at the whole issue of the hijackers. There are a couple of critical observations that can be made.

The first is that, contrary to most of what has been written about the phone calls of Ong and Sweeney, they absolutely do not endorse the official narrative of five hijackers, and they differ on almost all points with what the government describes.

Ong says there were two hijackers, specifically denies that they were the men sitting in 2A and 2B, and only gives one seat number, 10B, which co-incides with the government account. Sweeney, described in many accounts, including by her husband, of identifying four of the hijackers, does no such thing. She again describes two hijackers as having entered the cockpit, and gives three seat numbers, 10B again, and two seats which are described differently by different participants, but which either do not exist, or, were empty seats, according to the seating plan.

In no instance did either of them mention anything to do with row 8 in regards to anything, yet the government has two hijackers sitting here.

I mean, let's just really run back and forth over this a few times, because we are at the crux of the entire problem right here.

Betty Ong first said that the two men in seats 2A and 2B had invaded the cockpit, but later she specifically retracted this. It's true she mixed up the numbers and called them 9A and 9B the second time, but from the context, and certainly in the understanding of Gonzalez and Marquis, she was talking about her initial ID.

Now let's just consider what must have happened here, if this was real world. In the initial confusion, 2A and 2B are identified as the hijackers. But then, first class is evacuated into coach. Without any doubt, the first thing that is going to happen is a simple roll call of the passengers. That's all that had to happen to get a positive ID on the hijackers: simply check them off the passenger list.

If Betty Ong told Gonzalez that 2A and 2B were not the men she had earlier identified as storming the cabin, this can only be because they had been identified in coach as part of the simple roll call check.

There can be no other possibility, again, if this is real world. If it's a script then that's a different matter. But in realworld, the roll call would certainly have been made. If 2A and 2B were missing, then, they were the hijackers. If they were present, they were not. No alternatives. Ong reported that they were not the hijackers. This means that they must have been present in coach.

Remember, the other 7 passengers (not 5, I got it incorrect the other day) in first class must have seen what happened in first class. So there can be no question of any confusion on board.

Betty Ong specifically rules out 2A and 2B as hijackers, and Amy Sweeney never mentions them.

2A and 2B are of course Waleed Alshehri (Seat 2B), Wail Alshehri (Seat 2A). Both were reported to be alive after 9/11, though admittedly these stories are murky.

So what do we have: their names were on the passenger manifest. However, neither of the two phone calls ID the men in those seats as hijackers, and one actually rules it out.

The take-home point here is that the government had identified all 19 hijackers by 11am that morning, as claimed by

Quote:

Is this just our speculation? No, not at all. Robert Bonner, head of Customs and Border Protection, explained that they had identified the likely hijackers by 11am on 9/11:
“We ran passenger manifests through the system used by Customs-two were hits on our watch list of August 2001,” Mr. Bonner testified. “And by looking at the Arab names and their seat locations, ticket purchases and other passenger information, it didn’t take a lot to do a rudimentary link analysis. Customs officers were able to ID 19 probable hijackers within 45 minutes.”
He meant 45 minutes after four planes had been hijacked and turned into missiles. “I saw the sheet by 11 a.m.,” he said, adding proudly, “And that analysis did indeed correctly identify the terrorists.”
https://archive.li/o/Kig4q/www.obser...anscripts-show
https://archive.li/o/Kig4q/www.911my..._the_Hijackers

They did not do this based on the phone calls! They did it simply by looking at the passenger manifests supplied by the airlines. They took one look, at flight 11 in this case, and immediately saw five glaringly obvious terrorist arab hijackers names sitting in first class. As I said earlier, case closed, and it was still only 11am.

So perhaps now we are in a position to take a clearer view of what happened.

The hijackers existed as names on the passenger manifest. Sure, they had backstories, and immigration cards, and credit cards, and addresses and a whole thing going.

But they weren't on the plane. There was no plane. Or rather, the "plane" split into several components in the magic trick. The physical plane itself never moved, as proved by the NTSB data and Elizabeth Williams FBI interview. The passengers were taken to some other location where some kind of exercise or drill or simulation took place. Another object took off and was tracked on radar. This may or may not have been the same object which crashed into the WTC north tower at 8:46am, but in any case, there was an object on radar being tracked as flight 11 even after this.

The flight attendant who supervised the boarding did not recall any men of middle eastern descent. Just sayin'.

So when I used to say, there were no hijackers, because their names weren't on the manifest and cell phone calls were impossible, I was completely wrong I can now see and admit.

Now I would say instead: there were no hijackers, because their names were on the manifest, which is how they were "IDed" so quickly, yet the phone calls, made on inflight phones, and which do describe the events the passengers witnessed, flatly contradict the accounts of the hijacking that the government created. The phone calls were real, but the events they were describing were an exercise, an illusion, a piece of theatre. The key here is that the phone calls played no role whatsoever in identifying the hijackers. Instead, it has taken huge effort over the years to attempt to reconcile the phone calls with the official version.

Huge effort on both sides: for the official story and its supporters, the effort has been to re-interpret Ong and Sweeney's comments to back up the hijacking narrative. For the conspiracy crowd, the insidejob crowd, people like (*cough*) me, much effort went into discounting the phone calls as genuine.

It is kind of tragic to watch the families of Ong and Sweeney struggle to do justice to their memories and try to make their accounts match up with the official narrative. It's not because they've been bought off. They don't need to be. It's human nature to defend one's family in such circumstances. But in this thread, for the first time maybe, we've really properly defended Ong and Sweeney as having giving accurate accounts of what they were witnessing. We've taken their words at face value, and paid attention to what they are telling us, and what they describe is a scenario which is impossible to reconcile with the government account.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 23

Quote:

Problem is how to get the mainstream media and the general public now to see that these accounts given by Ong and Sweeney are not real world.

Actually, the problem is that the mainstream media is the problem.

Perfect moment to cross post this information below from the Daniel Lewin thread:

Sweeney spoke to Michael Woodward. This guy:



He took notes and relayed comments to Nancy Wyatt, who was on another phone line to Ray Howland, at Dallas Fort Worth American Airlines SOC. Here's the part where Nancy is reading out Woodward's notes, and she gets to the reference to a slashed throat, so she checks for confirmation with Woodward, who is still at this point on the phone with Amy Sweeney. Here's the exchange.

NANCY WYATT (BOS FLIGHT SERVICE) TO RAY ROWLAND

NANCY WYATT: Okay, they're ... we're not sure ... okay, it looks like there is
severe bleeding.....That he's keeping them ... keeping her on the line. There is
severe bleeding. There is a slashed throat.

(checking now with Michael Woodward Michael is that severe ...is that slashed throat a flight
attendant?

MICHAEL WOODWARD: No, a passenger. Karen Martin's been stabbed. The
first on your list. And this is a business class passenger
whose throat ...

NANCY WYATT: Okay two flight attendants have been stabbed.
MICHAEL WOODWARD: Which two? Do you know?
NANCY WYATT: pardon?
RAY HOWL AND: Which two?

There is no doubt that it is Daniel Lewin that Woodward is referring to as the passenger in business class who has a slashed throat. In this case he is said to be injured a few lines later, and not dead. But there's no doubt it's Daniel Lewin who had his throat slashed, according to Amy Sweeney telling Michael Woodward on the airphone, who in turn was relaying it to Nancy Wyatt, who was repeating it on the telephone to Ray Howland. Daniel Lewin.

Now, let's take a look at this part of the tape as released on the recent Lost Tapes of 9/11 documentary. It seems that for the purposes of the official tenth anniversary tape/transcript release, they have decided to released the Wyatt-Rowland phone call in two extended partial segments, rather than the complete call.

And wouldn't you know it, one of the two segments cuts off right in the middle of the passage above, in fact, right at the crucial point in the passage. Have a listen for yourself, from 8:26 onwards:

9/11 The Lost Tapes (Part 1 HD) – YouTube

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P4Tj4XN6U_w

Then, when it gets to 9:32, you can hear the two lines in the above quote which are in bold. Here is the screen grab, with the transcription as shown in the documentary:



Quote:

Michael is that severe ...is that slashed throat a flight
attendant?

MICHAEL WOODWARD: No, a passenger.

The tape is cut off half way through that word "passenger", and instead of transcribing it as "passenger", they have transcribed it as "captain"!

Surely this must be a mistake on the part of the documentary makers, right?

No, it's not. Here it is in the official transcript releases from September 2011:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...io-transcript/

Quote:

Wyatt: Ok. Don’t, OK got it. Ok there, ah, we’re not sure. Ah, ok, looks like there’s severe bleeding, that ah, he’s keeping her on the line, there’s severe bleeding, there’s a slashed throat

Wyatt: Michael, is that severe, is that slashed throat a flight attendant?

[Background] Michael: No, the Cap—

Isn't that cute. They cut it off halfway through the word. Gee, what could it be I wonder? Anyone? What a darned pity the tape cuts off half way through the word. Except it doesn't, as the original transcripts on scribd show. They have this whole call complete on tape. They have chosen to cut the tape half way through the word passenger and make it seem like he says Captain.

There are no reports of the captain having his throat slashed, or being stabbed, or anything at all about him in the original transcripts from Ong and Sweeney. But it seems like it suits the evolving narrative to add in this fake squeamish detail of the captains throat being cut, and to quietly take out of the spotlight and drop down the memory hole the supposed slashing of the throat of Daniel Lewin.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 24

Here's a clip from the 9/11 Commission Report here -



So that's clear cut. Every crew member had a key to the cockpit.

So. They had the key to the cockpit. All it took was someone with balls to walk through a few wisps of mace, open the cockpit door, and save America.

What, was there no one on the plane up to the task?

Thinking about this for a moment, I suddenly realised why Daniel Lewin has to "die" in the script that was being relayed to us by Ong and Sweeney.

Imagine if Daniel Lewin had not been killed at the beginning of the attack. He is the superhero Israeli highly-trained anti-hijacking commando. If he wasn't dead, then he would be the first person you would suppose would be leading the on-board rescue effort. If he hadn't been "killed", then it would be an obvious question as to why he didn't play the hero and do what he was trained to do.

When you think about it like that, it's a very neat touch. For whatever reason, Daniel Lewin is present, and is part of the exercise, a player, maybe Director of Operations. But someone is thinking. Someone is following through on the plotlines, and realises that it won't look good if Lewin is on the plane, and it gets hijacked, and two, three, or five hijackers lock themselves in the cockpit, and every flight attendant has a key, and all it needs is someone with balls to walk up front, unlock the cockpit door and kick ass. Won't look good at all.

So they write into the script that he goes down right at the beginning. A hero, no doubt, trying to prevent the hijackers storming the cockpit.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 25

So far in this thread, the emphasis has been on the Flight 11 phone calls themselves. We've looked at the reactions to the phone calls from a long list of American Airlines personnel who were directly or indirectly involved in receiving the calls. These included, for the Betty Ong Call: Vanessa Minter, Winston Sadler, Nydia Gonzalez, and Craig Marquis; and for the Amy Sweeney call Evie Nunez, Jim Sayer, Michael Woodward, Nancy Wyatt and Ray Howland.

In the next series of posts I want to focus on the involvement of someone who has so far appeared in the story only in passing. His name is Larry Wansley, and he was Managing Director of Corporate Security for American Airlines.



Recall that it was during a telephone conversation between Larry Wansley and Nydia Gonzalez, (supervisor at the American Airlines Raleigh Reservations Center), around noon on September 11, 2001, that the tape of the Betty Ong phone call was played (twice, on a loop, starting from part way in), and a transcript made, which differs significantly from the official transcript released the next day.

Other than this reference however, Wansley's name has been absent from the story, as I've recounted it here so far, because he didn't appear to be directly involved. Frankly, I hadn't googled him.

So I want to thank mrmysteryman for bringing to my attention Wansley's interview with the 9/11 commission in 2004 recently, available online here.

You keep thinking that there can't be any major surprises left in all of this material. It's 2014.

Larry Wansley's testimony to the 9/11 commission about his actions, his timeline, and when he first heard about the hijacking of flight 11 on that morning is jaw-dropping. In light of the recreation that's been put together here, it's possible to see in close-up slow-motion that Wansley's account of that morning cannot possibly be true.

In order to see this clearly, we need to gather up the web footprint of Larry Wansley. It's crucial to see his career, both before and after 9/11, to put his actions on that day in context. It's also some pretty exciting stuff. This guy has lived an incredible life, that is for sure. So first, let's review the made-for-the-movies life of Larry Wansley. Then we will move on to look closely at his account of his movements that morning, and compare it to the other timelines in the public record by the rest of the American Airlines staff.

The first thing I think that all online interviews, bios, accounts of his life will make you aware of is that Larry Wansley was an undercover FBI agent. And not just any undercover agent. He was really a pioneer of the deep undercover FBI agent. You could almost say he wrote the book on being an undercover FBI agent. Actually, he did, he did write that book:



FBI Undercover: The True Story of Special Agent Mandrake by Larry Wansley and Carlton Stowers.

Quote:

A former detective bureau commander, Wansley became a high-living agent in Operation Tarpit where he netted 300 phony stock and bond dealers, truck hijackers, gun runners and more. Here is his fascinating and terrifying story, revealing the world of undercover agents as never before.

Here's a pic of him, on the streets, back in the day.


Now there's lots more, and we will come to that, but as you may have noticed, I find myself fascinated by the seemingly insignificant details, and so before we launch into the full career of Larry Wansley, let's just talk about that nickname for a moment: Mandrake.

Who was Mandrake again?



Quote:

Mandrake is a magician whose work is based on an unusually fast hypnotic technique. As noted in captions, when Mandrake "gestures hypnotically", his subjects see illusions, and Mandrake has used this technique against a variety of villains including gangsters, mad scientists, extraterrestrials, and characters from other dimensions. Mandrake also possesses psychic and telekinetic powers, can turn invisible, shape shift, and teleport periodically.

OK, we have our bearings. Let's continue.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 26



Quote:

For a man whose adult life has played out like a made-for-television movie--filled with adventurous escapades from his detective days with the*Compton*(California) Police Department, a decade of undercover work as an FBI agent, player counselor and security director for the*Dallas Cowboys*and manager of security for pop-music diva*Whitney Houston's 1988 world tour--September 11, 2001, will forever be the day burned most indelibly into his memory
...

Before that infamous day, the journey of Larry Wansley, 60, to the American Airlines corporate headquarters had been one serendipitous adrenaline rush after another. The energetic and personable man from Festus, Missouri, who once dreamed of being an engineer, shakes his head as he admits that he arrived at his life's work by accident.

"I'd just gotten out of the*Marines," he says, "and was delivering mail for the Los Angeles Postal Service while taking night courses at*L.A. City College. One afternoon after work I ran into an old service buddy and suggested we catch up over a couple of beers. He explained that he was on his way to the civic center where he was going to take an exam, never bothering to mention what it was for. With nothing better to do, I tagged along."
Rather than wait outside, Wansley decided to also take the test--which, he learned only after entering the auditorium, was for admission to the*Compton Police Academy.

His friend flunked. Wansley passed. He reported to the academy in the summer of 1965 and soon became only the sixth black member sworn onto the Compton force.

For the next eight years he would help police some of the meanest streets in the country. The Compton homicide rate in those days was quite high; gangs terrorized the neighborhoods, the drug trade was rampant and a historic burn-and-loot riot in neighboring Watts, causing $200 million in damage, spilled into his jurisdiction. Deep-night gun battles were commonplace, visits to the coroner's office to witness autopsies routine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...s/rough-skies/

Quote:

When Wansley's job was with the FBI, he did a lot of dirty jobs. He worked on the ABSCAM investigation and the Patty Hearst case. He was shot at. He was kidnapped. He was threatened. "Mandrake" the FBI called him. "Sam Spade" the Cowboys call him.

Wansley's career does, in fact, read like a chapter from a Mickey Spillane novel. He did most of his FBI work undercover. His identity was known to no one, which wasn't always easy.

One night he knocked on a door, he says, and accidentally stumbled upon one of the largest drug caches in California. But when he crashed the door, his leg became stuck in the plywood. Here he was, caught like a bear in a trap, and bullets buzzing around his head.

His backup people finally arrived and convinced the drug dealers they were outnumbered. They surrendered. The task then became to get his stuck leg out of the door. But he couldn't budge and a Los Angeles rescue unit finally had to be called.

But by the time he was freed, a large crowd had gathered and "Mandrake" had to assume a new identity for a while.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...035653/?page=2

In 1983, it was reported that Mandrake had a new career:

Quote:

Poke 'G-man' says drugs not sole concern By JERRY WAGGONER Harte-tlanks News Service THOUSAND OAKS. Calif. - After working on cases such as Patty Hearst, the Judge John Wood slaying in San Antonio, ABSCAM and surviving the Watts riots, Larry Wansley should feel his new security officer position with the Dallas Cowboys is a paid vacation. Wansley, a 10-year FBI veteran and police officer who assumed five separate identities, worked with SWAT and spent more undercover time than a Los Angeles streetwalker, nevertheless, has a new challenge. In another first by the Cowboys, Wansley was hired from the FBI to become the team's new security officer. It is a misnomer, but some of the Cowboys already are calling him "Sam Spade." His hiring comes on the heels of the announcement that five Cowboys are under investigation, a pair who will testify at a drug trial, in connection with cocaine. There is an underlying resentment by the players, who feel the move is an invasion of their privacy. "It's the ones who have something to hide that resent the hiring of Larry," defensive backfield coach Gene Stallings said. "Those who have nothing to hide think it's a great idea." As for Wansley, though, he thinks their idea of his job is misconstrued considerably. "My primary interest is drugs," he said, "but that's just a tip of the iceberg. The job will be all-encompassing. I'll be an advisor, father confessor as well as working to help in any other areas possible. "For instance, have any of the Cowboys or their families ever been advised what to do in case of a fire in one of these high rise hotels they stay in? What should the wives do in case of attempted rape? The possibility of kidnapping? The things which might help are endless.

Newspaper:*The Paris News*›*1983*›*July*›*25 July 1983*› Page 6

Even then, there were other irons in the fire:

Quote:

"One of my undercover roles," Wansley said, "was as a newspaper publisher. I really enjoyed that job because I learned a lot and I enjoyed laying out adds from my interest in painting." He paints, writes poetry and loves music. His first interest was to become an entertainer.*

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/10163828/

In 1992, he went to work for American Airlines. There was still plenty of excitement.

Quote:

One of the United States' leading airlines faced a blow to its image yesterday after almost 60 people were picked up in a cocaine sting, the second time in five days that the carrier has been linked to drug smuggling.

As many as 42 of those arrested in dawn raids in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas of Florida or in New York were American Airlines ground staff.

Thirteen more worked for the Sky Chefs catering company, two others were members of the immigration and naturalisation service and one came from the department of agriculture.
About 300kg (660lb) of fake cocaine was used and more than $300,000 (£18,750) paid to suspects as part of the undercover operation, which cost an estimated $1m.

"We didn't run out of defendants, we ran out of money," said one source.
Tom Cash, former director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said: "Because of the glorious opportunity you have to fly without controls, these airlines become targets for organised crime.
"Airports are becoming like supermarkets. Only 15% of people today even know who's working for them by conducting background checks."

But Larry Wansley, a spokesman for American Airlines, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, said: "This is a company with zero tolerance for illegal drugs. While we are disturbed that a small group of employees were part of a smuggling ring, their activity has been under federal government and company surveillance for quite some time.

"We will continue with our cooperative efforts with law enforcement officials to stem the flow of illegal drugs."

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...ationalcrime32

Then came 9/11, which we will come to.

Then he left American Airlines in 2004. Things have turned out pretty well since then.

Quote:

Larry Wansley
Director of Security, Dallas Cowboys Football Club
CSO/Member Board of Directors of Resilient Integrated Systems
Larry is an internationally recognized Security, Risk Management and Asset Protection Consultant.* He is a former U.S. Marine and FBI Agent with extensive Security experience in Mass Transportation, Assets Protection, Critical Infrastructure, Crisis Management, Emergency Planning and Business Continuity.*

Larry is the former Managing Director of Corporate Security for American Airlines and its parent AMR Corporation. *During his tenure at American Airlines, he received the FBI Director’s Award for his team leadership in supporting the 9/11 Terrorist investigations. *As the head of global security, he directed American/American Eagle and Trans World Airlines’, security operations, compliance and asset protection programs.* His responsibilities included over 5000 daily flights, and asset protection in 65 countries, including over 2000 security staff members.* Prior to joining American and subsequent to his FBI career, Larry served as the Dallas Cowboys Operations Director, Director of Player Counseling Services, and Director of Security for the NFL’s World League which later became NFL Europe. During the initial Cowboys period, he took a leave of absence to serve as Security Director for Pop Singer Whitney Houston’s first World Tour.* That mission included security assessments and planning in dozens of countries, cities and facilities.


He retired from American in 2004 and established his consulting practice.* Football also beckoned and he returned to the Dallas Cowboys as Director of Security as well. *

While at American, all programs relating to security, including regulatory compliance were under his direction, which included multiple subsidiaries. *He served as a Corporate Restructuring Team Leader and was personally responsible for evaluations of the American Flight Department.* Those efforts resulted in annual department savings of $10 Million.* He directed emergency security operations for many global crisis events including, plane crashes, terrorist bombings, kidnappings, attacks and crimes against company facilities and personnel, a worldwide Flight Attendants’ strike which included protection of replacement crew members and company facilities to ensure business continuity.* In Pakistan, he directed a logistics, security and safety program for a team of 36 American Specialists in restructuring Pakistan International Airlines.* His emergency planning facilitated their safe evacuation after military coups.*

In 1997, Larry initiated a proposed Federal Aviation Security Program (Federal Security Screening Agency) to government and industry.* That program was later used in establishing the TSA after the 9/11 attacks.* Shortly after 9/11, He served as a member of the Silicon Valley Congressional Blue Ribbon Technology Panel for Aviation Security in developing technology resources.* He also served as the Chairman of the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Security Committee, representing over 300 global airlines.

He is the author of “FBI Undercover” which chronicled his 10 year period as one of the FBI’s first long term deep undercover agents.* His varied background also includes serving as a member of the LAPD Rampart Division, Independent Review Panel which conducted a major police corruption investigation.
His security consulting experience includes projects in Australia, Abu Dhabi (UAE), Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Mexico and many others in the US, including training programs for various airlines.**
He has provided expert witness litigation support in various matters relating to security and safety.* He later joined Resilient Integrated Systems (An Emergency Power and Communications Safety and Security System) where he serves as Chief Security Officer and Member of the Board of Directors.* Through his concurrent roles in multiple disciplines, the needs of Safety, Security, Operations and Compliance are interconnected and are effectively served by his experience.**

That experience includes Emergency and Disaster Response Planning and Operations in global events including NFL Super bowls.**

Larry is a member of numerous international government and industry bodies, including the US State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council, American Society of Industrial Security, NFL Commissioner’s Security Advisory Committee, Former FBI Agents Society, and others. *His awards include the Immigration and Naturalization Director’s Award, U.S. State Department Award, U.S. Customs Commissioner’s Award, Los Angeles City Council Commendation, National Eagle Leadership-Career Focus Magazine Award, Missouri House of Representatives Resolution as the State’s “Outstanding Missourian” and was named Dallas Father of the Year in 2008.*

He is a frequent TV and radio network Commentator on matters of Aviation Security.* He is a graduate of California State University in Police Science and Administration with graduate studies at University of Southern California and California Lutheran University.

http://contingencyplanning.com/events/cpm-west-2012/speakers/speaker-window.aspx?speakerid={7b3bbf98-3691-435f-ba2a-a9996986dca5}&id={880afb57-a801-4aa1-9b6c-5f36023a06ec}&m=1

Holds a number of varied positions:

Quote:

About Larry Wansley*

Chief Security Officer & Head of Infrastructure Security

Focus: The basic physical structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise such as Transportation (Maritime, Air, Rail, etc.)

Mr. Wansley is the former Managing Director of Corporate Security for American Airlines worldwide. His experience also includes many years as CEO of Infinite Security.* He directed specialized security programs and initiatives, emergency/disaster response planning and business continuity in the US, Asia, Australia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.* Prior to that, Mr. Wansley retired from American Airlines where he was responsible for worldwide asset protection for American Airlines, American Eagle Airlines, Trans World Airlines (TWA), AMR Corporation (Parent Company) and it’s multiple global corporate subsidiaries.* He had security management oversight of corporate interests and facilities in over 65 countries, over 5000 daily flights, over 130,000 worldwide employees and security regulatory compliance with each government. **Larry was also a member of the Global Corporate Crisis Management and Emergency/Disaster Response Executive Team.

Larry’s early experience is founded in law enforcement which included many years as one of the FBI’s first deep Undercover Agents.* Those years are detailed in his book, “FBI Undercover, The True Story of Special Agent Mandrake.” Larry’s background also includes extensive management, operations, security Player Counseling and development programs and related duties with the Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Texas Stadium and the World League of American Football, a division of the National Football League (NFL).*

Larry serves on the following Boards and Commissions:*U.S. US Congressional Homeland Security, US State Department and the NFL Commissioner’s Security Advisory Council.* He previously served on the cities of Los Angeles Police Commission’s Investigative Board and the Dallas Police Review Board.* Larry is the former Chairman of the International Air Transport Association Security Executive Committee which represents nearly all of the world’s airlines.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...1-wansley.html

His LinkedIn lists his skillset:

Quote:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/larry-wansley/11/786/76

Larry Wansley's Overview
Current
CSO-Member Board of Directors*at*Resilient Integrated Systems
Director of Security*at*Dallas Cowboys Football Club
CEO*at*Infinite Security
Past
Managing Director of Corporate Security*at*American Airlines
Connections
500+*connections
Larry Wansley's Experience
CSO-Member Board of Directors
Resilient Integrated Systems
Public Safety industry
January 2007*–*Present*(7 years 1 month)
CSO
Director of Security
Dallas Cowboys Football Club
Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Sports industry
2005*–*Present*(9 years)
CEO
Infinite Security
2004*–*Present*(10 years)
Transportation Industry Security Consulting, Crisis Management, Security and Investigations
Managing Director of Corporate Security
American Airlines
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; AMR; Airlines/Aviation industry
1992*–*2004*(12 years)
Global asset protection management and regulatory compliance
Larry Wansley's Skills & Expertise
1. Physical Security*
2. Security Operations*
3. Crisis Management*
4. Customer Service
5. Private Investigations*
6. Emergency Management*
7. Aviation*
8. Airports*
9. Flights
10. Training*
11. Aircraft*
12. Team Leadership*
13. Military*
14. Commercial Aviation
15. Piloting*
16. Supervisory Skills*
17. Security*
18. Process Scheduler
19. Homeland Security*
20. Contract Management

With that in mind, let's now look at Larry Wansley's account of his movements on the morning of 9/11.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 27

On January 8 2004, Larry Wansley visitted the 9/11 commission, and sat down for an interview. It's well worth reading the full document, available online here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...-Interview.pdf

There are three pages of background chitchat before they get to the events of 9/11. Then, the following:

Quote:

Each morning, at 7:45 am (central time) AAL conducted an operational conference call to discuss what happened with the airline in the past 24 hours and what they expected to happen in the coming day. After the call Wansley, Ahem, Tommy McFall (managing director of safety) and Mr. Hotard (corporate communication) would remain in Vice Chairman Bob Baker's office to discuss any follow-up items.

9-11
On 9-11 Wansley was walking into Baker's office for the morning phone call (7:45 am) and the secretary told Wansley that "we have a hijacking."

In this post, the question we are going to focus on is: when did Larry Wansley first learn of the hijacking of flight 11?

From his account above to the 9/11 commission, the answer seems clear: it was when he arrived for the daily 7:45am phone call, and he was informed by a secretary as he walked in.

Before we go any further, let's get our bearings with this time of 7:45am, when the daily meeting took place, at American Airlines headquarters in Dallas/Fort Worth. Here's a picture:



This is of course 7:45amCDT, the time in Dallas, which is equivalent to 8:45am in New York.

The first impact event at the North Tower is at 8:46am, so it will happen one minute after the regular daily meeting is scheduled to begin.

The meeting wasn't always held at 7:45am. In fact, it had only recently, in the previous 18 months or so, been moved to this schedule. Previously, the daily meeting had been held at 7:15am. Vice President Bob Baker had been interviewed the previous year, and this is what he said:

Quote:

"Every day at 7:15 a.m., I have a conference call with all the operating groups in the company to review what happened to us yesterday and what we think is going to happen today," Baker explains. "We may discuss today’s plan -- if there’s weather coming into New England, for example, and what we’re going to do about it. Are we going to cut the schedule? Are we going to thin it out? We may talk about a volcano that blew up in South America overnight, a terrorist incident, or whatever’s going on in the world."

http://www.trincoll.edu/pub/Mosaic/4.00/succeeding.htm

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in April, 2000.

So, for some reason, the daily meeting had been moved, and on September 11, 2001, the normal schedule was for 7:45am. Recall that the "hijacking" had commenced at 7:13amCST, and Betty Ong's first call had come in at 7:18am, so that by 7:45am, some 27 minutes had elapsed since first notification from the planes had been received that something was going on. And first impact was one minute away.

We will soon look closely at the flow of information from the phone calls into the rest of the American Airlines organisation, and show that there is a problem with Wansley's account to the 9/11 commission.

But in fact, we don't even need to go that far to find a glaring contradiction with his account. All we need to do is compare it to the only other public account that he appears to have given of the events of that morning.

It appeared in an interview published in late 2002. The interviewer was Carlton Stowers, who was Wansley's co-author on the book FBI Undercover!



Quote:

Author/journalist Carlton Stowers' books include bestsellers TO THE LAST BREATH and CARELESS WHISPERS, both winners of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allen Poe Award as the Best Fact Crime Book of the Year, INNOCENCE LOST, which was nominated for a Pulitzer, and his autobiographical SINS OF THE SON.

Stowers' books have been selections of the Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, Doubleday Book Club, True Crime Book Club, Preferred Choice Book Club, Playboy Book Club and Guideposts Book Club, and five have been optioned by motion picture production companies. CARELESS WHISPERS inspired the CBS Movie of the Week, Sworn to Vengeance, and OPEN SECRETS was the basis for the ABC mini-series, Telling Secrets. TO THE LAST BREATH was included in Readers' Digest’s prestigious Today's Best Non-Fiction collection. His writings have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Russian.

Additionally, he has authored a number of books on sports, ranging from MARCUS, the autobiography of NFL great Marcus Allen which spent six weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list, to DALLAS COWBOYS: THE FIRST 25 YEARS, a coffee table-sized history of the high profile organization, which climbed to No. 1 on the Dallas Morning News bestseller list.

As a collaborator, he has worked with western movie icons Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on their HAPPY TRAILS, Olympic pole vaulter Billy Olson on his REACHING HIGHER, former FBI Special Agent Larry Wansley on his FBI UNDERCOVER and private investigator William Dear on his PLEASE... DON'T KILL ME.

His PARTNERS IN BLUE, a 100-year history of the Dallas Police Department, received a citation from the Dallas Police Association. He has written two non-fiction children’s books, A HERO NAMED GEORGE and HARD LESSONS, which are used by numerous elementary schools as part of their anti-drug and anti-gang programs.

A former Dallas Morning News reporter, Stowers has written articles for numerous publications, among them Sports Illustrated, Time, People, Good Housekeeping, TV Guide, Money, and Paris Match.
http://www.truecrime.net/carltonstowers/

Here is the relevant passage:

Quote:

It began as a bright, promising September morning on the sixth floor of the Dallas-based American Airlines headquarters. Staff members were sipping coffee and mingling as they anticipated the morning's operational meeting. Soon they would be discussing routine items such as flight schedules, maintenance updates and weather conditions at airports around the world from which more than 700 of their planes would be flying.

Larry Wansley, managing director of corporate security, had arrived early, pleased that on that day he would not be jetting off to San Francisco or London or Rome to address some new crisis. In his ninth year with the world's largest commercial airline, overseeing a staff that had grown to 75, he welcomed those rare days when he was not required to travel.

At 7:45 a.m., however, the leisurely atmosphere changed dramatically. From the airline's nearby command center came an urgent call. American Flight 11, carrying 92 passengers from Boston's Logan Airport, Wansley was told, had been hijacked. Betty Ong, a 45-year-old flight attendant on board, had managed to phone her company supervisor, reporting at least three hijackers with weapons and several passengers injured.

There are some significant changes to the story here. Larry has arrived "early" for the meeting, so it is presumably several minutes, or more, before 7:45am.

Up until 7:45am, there was no news of any hijacking, and instead there was "coffee sipping and mingling". Only at 7:45am, as the meeting was due to start, did a call come through from the "nearby command center", informing Larry Wansley, Managing Director of Corporate Security, and the other high ranking management team, that flight 11 had been hijacked, people stabbed, etc etc.

This was in 2002. By 2004, the story had changed. Now Wansley is informed as he arrives, by the secretary, sometime before 7:45am. See what he's doing? In 2004 he his saying that the command center had already made contact, at an earlier unspecified time, and that Wansley had been briskly informed, on arrival, literally as he arrived at work for the day, very first thing. No mention to the Commission that they had been sipping coffee, shooting the breeze, completely oblivious to what was unfolding at the highest levels of the company, while Americans were fighting for thier lives in the skies above, until one minute before impact.

So what he told the commission in private in 2004 is completely different from what he told his old friend Carlton Stowers in public in 2002....

When were senior management informed that there was an incident with flight 11? When was Corporate Security informed? Was it really as late as 7:45am, as Larry claimed in 2002, that the incident was escalated to senior management for the first time, and that up until then they had been standing around sipping coffee? Or was he informed, by the secretary, on arrival for the meeting?

In order to answer these questions, we need to piece together from the other accounts of the morning the flow of events by which notifications were sent around the company. So let's do that.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 28

On October 15 2001, the Wall Street Journal published an article called "American, United Watched and Worked In Horror as Sept. 11 Hijackings Unfolded", available online here:

It contains these paragraphs:

Quote:

Even as the line to Flight 11 was still open, American's executives were rushing to the operations center to deal with the crisis. Gerard Arpey, American's executive vice president of operations, had been in Boston the day before for his grandmother's funeral, and had arrived at his desk in Fort Worth at 7:15 a.m. CDT to work through a pile of issues that needed attention. The 43-year-old executive called American's operations center to say he couldn't participate in the daily 7:45 a.m. system-wide operations call.

Joe Bertapelle, the manager at American's operations center, told him of Ms. Ong's phone call that had just come in. Mr. Arpey slumped back in his chair and sat stunned for 30 seconds. "Something inside me said this had the ring of truth to it," Mr. Arpey recalls. He called the office of Mr. Carty, who was at home answering e-mails, and left word of a possible hijacking, then hurried to the operations center a few miles west.

As he walked in, he was met immediately by Mr. Bertapelle and Craig Parfitt, manager of American's dispatch operations, a 29-year American veteran nicknamed "Ice Man" for his even keel. Mr. Marquis had confirmed the hijacking, they told Mr. Arpey, and they had to open American's crisis command center, a room perched one floor up in the operations center. The facility is used in the event of crashes, military troop movements and other emergencies.

A page went out to American's top executives and operations personnel: "Confirmed hijacking Flight 11.'' The regular 7:45 CDT conference call started, but was almost immediately interrupted: "Gentlemen, I have some information here I need to relay,'' Mr. Bertapelle announced.

Compared to Larry Wansley's published interview in 2002, this paints an entirely different picture of the morning, doesn't it. They weren't standing around sipping coffee and mingling up until 7:45am. The word was rapidly spreading through senior management. Things were moving. A page was sent out to top executives. Clearly, by the time the conference call began the key personnel all knew that a hijacking was in progress. The announcement by Joe Bertapelle was not breaking the news, but giving them an update.

Joe Bertapelle was also interviewed by the 9/11 commission, with Craig Marquis and others from American Airlines. The transcript is available online here:
https://archive.li/o/ywgSr/intelfile...Interviews.pdf

Let's just jump right into the middle, where Craig Marquis, on the phone to Nydia Gonzalez and Betty Ong, decides to contact Joe Bertapelle:

Quote:

Marquis also attempted to reach Joe Bertapelle who was preparing to conduct the usual 7:45 a.m. Central Time conference call with AA senior leadership.

Joe Bertapelle was in process of preparing the conference call. He was in the VP Bob Baker's office on the fifth floor.

The collection of phone transcripts online that we've been referring to throughout this thread actually includes the calls in which Ray Howland, on behalf of Marquis is reaching out to Bertapelle.

Here is the excerpt from the transcript of the Marquis-Gonzalez call, of the moment when Marquis asks Howland to place the call:



The time is noted in the margin as 4:42, which means 4 minutes 42 seconds after the beginning of the Marquis-Gonzalez tape.

This is the moment when Craig Marquis escalated the flight 11 situation to the senior management of American Airlines. It would be interesting to know exactly what time this is. To do this, we would need to know exactly when the tape began, or have some means of syncing it to the Betty Ong recording.

In fact, someone has already been down this path and made this possible. This is the reason that the 4:42 is noted at this exact moment! Because earlier in the same transcript, there is a line that Nydia Gonzalez speaks which appears both in this phone call and also in the transcript of the Ong phone call. In both transcripts the exact time of the line is noted: 1:11 in the Marquis-Gonzalez transcript, and 3:35 in the Ong transcript.




The Ong recording began at 7:20:26, so the 3:35 remark occurs at 7:24:01.

This corresponds to the 1:11 mark of the Marquis-Gonzalez transcript, which means that the 4:42 remark must have taken place 3 minutes 31 seconds later at: 7:27:32.

If I did that correctly, it was 7:27am when Craig Marquis put out the request to Ray Howland to get in touch with Joe Bertapelle.

There are transcripts of the phone calls from Howland to the VP's office, and the returns. Here they are:







This tells us that from 7:27am, or very soon after, it was known in the fifth floor VP Bob Baker's office, where they were preparing for the 7:45am conference call, that there was a situation with flight 11.

Notice again from the quote at the beginning of this post:

Quote:

The 43-year-old executive called American's operations center to say he couldn't participate in the daily 7:45 a.m. system-wide operations call.

Joe Bertapelle, the manager at American's operations center, told him of Ms. Ong's phone call that had just come in.

So if Larry Wansley arrived at Bob Baker's office before he received the page, then certainly, they knew what was happening there by soon after 7:27am, and it makes sense that he would be informed on arrival by the secretary, if he arrived before the page was sent out. It's a much better story than sipping coffee and mingling, that's for sure. In the next post, we will return to Wansley's 9/11 commission testimony, and pick up the story of what he did next.

But there is one tantalising loose end left dangling here. Let's just take another look at that moment when Craig Marquis decides he needs to get in touch with Joe Bertapelle:



There's actually a second person in there that he wants to contact. Unfortunately, the transcriber didn't quite catch the name, and it has been recorded as (XXX). Or perhaps it has been redacted? No way to tell, so all we can do is speculate.

Is it possible that the other person that Craig Marquis decided at 7:27am ought to be notified as soon as possible was the head of Corporate Security, Larry Wansley?

Look what Nydia Gonzalez says to Betty Ong immediately after Craig Marquis has instructed Ray Howland to get in touch with Joe Bert and XXX:

Quote:

Security is on the line and they are trying to contact the cabin, the pilots

How could "security be on the line" if the head of security had not been notified for another half an hour?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 29

There are still a few more timing clues to pick up from the Marquis-Gonzalez transcript, and then we can put a complete timeline together.

Whether or not the (XXX) stood for Larry Wansley when Craig Marquis asked Ray Howland to call "Joe Bert and (XXX)" at 7:27am, it was only a few minutes later when the following line occurs in the transcript:



This 8:00 time on the transcript corresponds to 7:30:50.

So at 7:31am, corporate security were contacted.

The moment when the page that was sent to all senior personnel was ordered can also be located in the transcript. These paging messages are known as the SOCC system. (This can be confirmed by reading the 9/11 commission interview with Craig Marquis, in the second clip below.)





The transcript shows the timestamp of 0:25. This corresponds to 7:43:54. (The transcript timing runs to 20:39, then for some reason the tape stopped, and was started again immediately, resetting the timer back to zero.)

So now we an put together the full timeline of when the information about flight 11 went out to American Airlines senior staff. Rounding all times to the nearest minute:

7:20 recording begins of Ong phone call

7:27 Craig Marquis requests Joe Bert and XXX be contacted

7:31 Craig Marquis requests that Corporate Security be contacted

7:44 SOCKS page sent out to senior American Airlines personnel.

So, again, when did Larry Wansley first hear about it?

Neither of his two versions stack up. In the 2002 version, the first he heard was at 7:45 when the Operations Centre phoned the news through. This would mean that he didnt hear it from anyone in the room preparing for the conference call after 7:27, wasn't told when Corporate Security were contacted at 7:31, and missed the page at 7:44.

By his own 2002 account, Larry Wansley was completely out-of-the-loop.

If we run the above timeline against his 2004 version of events to the 9/11 commission, things don't get any better. He said he was informed by the secretary when he arrived, but doesn't mention any other information coming through. In fact he specifically mentions how little information was available and being provided. Let's now move on from the question of the time at which he found out, and take a closer look at what Larry Wansley did after he learned that flight 11 had been hijacked.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 30

Now that we have a clear handle on the timeline of events, let's go back and have the beginning of that 2002 interview with Larry Wansley again, the one conducted by journalist Carlton Stowers. We've already got to the point where at 7:45am (when the conference call was scheduled to begin), according to Wansley, the news about flight 11 is first received in the fifth floor office. Let's see what happened next (in bold below):

Quote:

It began as a bright, promising September morning on the sixth floor of the Dallas-basedAmerican Airlines*headquarters. Staff members were sipping coffee and mingling as they anticipated the morning's operational meeting. Soon they would be discussing routine items such as flight schedules, maintenance updates and weather conditions at airports around the world from which more than 700 of their planes would be flying.

Larry Wansley, managing director of corporate security, had arrived early, pleased that on that day he would not be jetting off to*San Francisco*or London or*Rome*to address some new crisis. In his ninth year with the world's largest commercial airline, overseeing a staff that had grown to 75, he welcomed those rare days when he was not required to travel.

At 7:45 a.m., however, the leisurely atmosphere changed dramatically. From the airline's nearby command center came an urgent call. American Flight 11, carrying 92 passengers from Boston's*Logan Airport, Wansley was told, had been hijacked. Betty Ong, a 45-year-old flight attendant on board, had managed to phone her company supervisor, reporting at least three hijackers with weapons and several passengers injured.

From the vice chairman's office, Wansley phoned Danny Defenbaugh, special agent-in-charge of the Dallas FBI office. It was the first step in the well-researched, secret hijack-response plan all commercial airlines have in place.

What did Larry Wansley do?

He phoned the FBI office. As per the "secret hijack-response plan".

Let's see now what he told the 9/11 commission in 2004. Recall in this version he is told of the hijacking of flight 11 on arrival by the secretary. He doesn't give a specific time, but presumably, in this version of events, it is several minutes before 7:45am, at least. What happens next?

Quote:

On 9-11 Wansley was walking into Baker's office for the morning phone call (7:45am) and the secretary told Wansley that "we have a hijacking." He called the SOC but they didn't have much information.

Wansley then called Danny Defenbaugh who was the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Dallas Field Office. Wansley informed Defenbaugh about the hijacking with the little information that he had which was that Flight 11 had been hijacked. Defenbaugh did not know anything about it. Defenbaugh told Wansley to hold and got a couple of other people together which Wansley said
"started the ball rolling."

In this 2004 version, he adds the detail of placing a quick, unhelpful phone call to SOC, before going ahead and dialling Danny Defenbaugh at the Dallas FBI. No mention of this being part of a "secret hijack-response plan" to the Commission. Then: what happens next, after Larry has phoned the FBI with no real information to go on.

"Defenbaugh told Wansley to hold".

Told him to hold? Who does Wansley report to? FBI or American Airlines?

In any case, Larry Wansley has been put on hold by the FBI, and is just hanging around now, waiting for something to happen, when....

Let's hear it first from Carlton Stowers:

Quote:

As he began relaying the information, Wansley heard a sudden chorus of muted screams from an adjacent conference room. Several female employees, eyes fixed on a television, had just watched a plane fly into the North Tower of New York's World Trade Center.

Phone still in hand, the security director emerged in time to see a cloud of black smoke billowing from the building.

Say what?

"Had just watched a plane fly into the North Tower"????

If we are going to take his words at face value here, the words of the head of Corporate Security for American Airlines, they had a live feed going of the first impact in the conference room in the VP's office on the fifth floor!

That's gotta be a mistake, right?

Let's see what he told the 9/11 commission in 2004. He's had a couple of years to think about it.

Quote:

While he was on the call with Defenbaugh in Baker's office, he heard the shriek of someone who was in the conference room and saw the footage of the plane going in to the WTC. He remembers the commentator said that it was a small airplane. He told Defenbaugh to tum on the TV to see what was going on. Wansley said he did not connect the hijacking with the incident at WTC because the commentator said that it was a small airplane.

While they were watching the WTC story on TV, Defenbaugh told Wansley that he was sending a team of agents to AAL headquarters. As they were talking on the phone and watching the events related to the WTC on TV, they watched the second jet hit the WTC. Wansley said that his knees got weak and he immediately felt that the first one was probably American #11. Defenbaugh told him "the game has just changed."

Wansley said he was on the phone with Defenbaugh for nearly one hour.

Yes, on reflection, he did change his story slightly: he only heard one shriek, not necessarily several shrieks, of the people who were watching a live broadcast of the first plane hitting the North Tower being shown on monitor screens in the conference room of Bob Baker's office.

There was no public live broadcast of the first plane hitting the North Tower.

Someone else however claimed to have also been watching a live feed of the first impact.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BUXglJU2w6U

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 31

When George Bush described watching a live feed of the first impact, everybody just shrugged and went, oh well, he's an idiot. No one else was backing him up. We all figured he just had some kind of brainfade and no one really took it seriously.

But with Larry Wansley, it's a little different. He is obviously a very smart guy. This is his "where-were-you-when-you-first-heard-about-911-story", which everybody has polished up and loves to tell.

Notice also, that no one listening to Larry Wansley, either in 2002 or 2004, pulls him up on it. You would think the sensible-looking Carlton Stowers, while he was interviewing his old friend and co-author, would have stopped Larry mid-sentence, and said something helpful like: "Larry, are you hallucinating? There was no televised first impact! Dude, come on, focus!"

Or in 2004, at the 9/11 Commission interview, when in attendance were a veritable boarding party of heavyweight counsel and lawyers and people way smarter than you or me. No one said a word. None of Larry's legal team leaned forward and whispered in his ear: "Larry, stay on message, of course there was no expletive-deleted televised first impact, get a grip or we are all going down."

Nope, no one noticed while Larry Wansley, head of Corporate Security at American Airlines, deep undercover FBI agent and frustrated entertainer, described, two times, being in the next room to a live televised feed of the first impact at the North Tower on 9/11.

What is going on here?

Were George Bush and Larry Wansley so out of touch with what the rest of us experienced that day that it never even crossed their minds to keep quiet about the private live feed of the first impact?

Or was it a meta-clever ploy to throw us all completely off our guard?

All we can say for sure is that Larry twice describes the live feed in the next room, and it never happened.

Why are Larry Wansley's accounts of his movements that morning completely incompatible with each other, and with the reality of what happened?

Was he even at the meeting on the fifth floor? And where had he been for the previous half an hour while the events on flight 11 were unfolding?

There's a possible clue from earlier in this thread which might be relevant here. Remember Vanessa Minter, who first answered the call from Betty Ong in the Raleigh Reservation Center? Remember that one of the things she said was that the FBI arrived on scene within five minutes of the start of the call......

The video interview is here:
https://www.wral.com/news/local/video/10111135/

Just after the 2:00 minute mark, she says:

When I was relieved from the phone..by that time the FBI had been brought onto the scene...now we're talking..this happened in minutes...I don't know how the FBI got there so fast...they were there within about five minutes and they pulled me off the phone.

The call began at around 7:18am CDT. So Minter is telling us that the FBI arrived by 7:23. Of course, this is way too early. There is no way that the FBI could have known that early that this was a situation. Either Minter is mistaken, or mis-remembering the time; or somehow the FBI knew right from the beginning exactly what was happening.

How could they have found out so quickly?

Did they have someone on deep undercover assignment who was in a position to know?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 32

We've now looked at Larry Wansley's two accounts of his movements on the morning of September 11 2001, and tracked them against the details pieced together from other sources. We've seen that the two accounts are inconsistent both with each other and the events of the morning as described by other participants.

In this next post, I would like to look at it the other way around. Let's start this time from the timeline that we've assembled, based on the other accounts of American Airlines personnel, and then work from there to see why Larry might be presenting such easily dismantled stories.

So let's just zero in now on the key, crucial moment: at 7:31am Craig Marquis is shown on the transcript as ordering for Corporate Security to be contacted. Within a very short time after this, we can be certain that Larry Wansley was notified. It is unthinkable that he could be out of the loop.

Why then does he make no mention of receiving any such notification as a result of this call? We know when it must have taken place, within a minute or so after 7:31am. So it cannot be the time that Larry doesn't want to talk about. It must be the location.

In both versions of his movements that morning, Larry makes no mention of where he was before he arrived. And there are no times that he gives for any of his movements before 7:45am.

It seems that he is reluctant to concede to being contacted soon after 7:31am because he doesn't want to discuss publically his movements before arriving at the fifth floor office shortly before 7:45am.

Remember in the first version he subsitutes whatever he was really doing for sipping coffee and mingling, something which certainly was not happening in that fifth floor office at that time. So he's really working hard to stay below the radar before that 7:45am conference call is scheduled to begin, one minute before impact.

But the more you think about that scene that Larry describes, the coffee sipping and mingling in the fifth floor office, the stranger it seems. He is implying that no one in the VPs office was informed prior to 7:45am but that is simply not true. If Larry had actually been present in that room at that time, it is hard to understand why he would have chosen to describe it that way. Is it possible that he was not actually in the fifth floor office at the time?

This would make sense of some of the other oddities in his stories. For example, the live-feed showing in the conference room. Frankly, I find it very hard to believe that Bob Baker was brazenly hosting a live-feed of the first impact in his office that morning. There would be no reason to do so, and extremely good reasons not to do so. So let's say it didn't happen. Then how could Larry Wansley have described the screaming and shrieking of people watching the first plane crash into the north tower? How about: he was making it up.

Another oddity: he claims he phoned Danny Defenbaugh at the Dallas FBI just prior to the first impact at 7:46am. He also claimed that he tried to get more information, but no one seemed to have anything. However: that 7:45am conference call went ahead as planned, but as soon as it began, Joe Bertapelle interrupted to advise everybody that there was updated information.

So, now, question: why wasn't Larry Wansley participating in this phone call?

He is the Managing Director of Corporate Security. There is a security emergency. He is needed. He needs information. He needs to be taking part in that call. Why isn't he?

He's on the phone to Danny Defenbaugh at the FBI. Larry doesn't have any information to share with Danny. Danny doesn't have any information to share with Larry. So what should happen here is that Larry should get off the phone with Danny, pick up the conference call line, get in-the-loop, at last, find out what is going on, and start executing action plans.

Instead, Danny tells him to hold. So Larry holds.

This doesn't really ring true, does it. There was no coffee sipping. There was no pleasant mingling. There was no lack of information. There was no live-feed. There was no need to miss the conference call. And there was no need to phone Danny Defenbaugh with no information except turn on your tv.

Danny Defenbaugh. Who is he?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 33

Meet Danny Defenbaugh.



Quote:

Danny was employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for almost 33 years. His primary investigative responsibilities centered on violent crimes, i.e., kidnapping, extortion, hijacking, and terrorist/bombing matters. He served as a Special Agent in Chicago, IL, and as a Supervisor in Miami, FL; in the Explosives Unit of the Laboratory Division at FBI Headquarters; in the Inspection Division; and in the Office of Professional Responsibility. Danny later served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Field Office in Mobile, AL.

Danny was a FBI-certified bomb technician for most of his FBI career and traveled to over 25 foreign countries in furtherance of the FBI's interest in thwarting international terrorism. He personally supervised over 150 bombing investigations, to include all the Puerto Rican terrorist group, FALN bombings in Chicago and the bombing investigations of the three terrorist attacks against American installations in Beirut, Lebanon. Danny has testified as either an expert witness or investigator over 100 times in federal, state, and local courts, to include the U.S. Congress and Military Tribunals. While assigned to the FBI Miami Field Office, he supervised the Major Case Squad encompassing all major violent crimes, international and domestic terrorism and all bombing matters. In addition, he was the Supervisor for the South Florida Violent Crimes/Fugitive Task Force.

In 1995, Danny was promoted to Inspector and named Inspector in Charge of the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. From 1998 until his retirement, Danny was the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Field Office of the FBI. FBI Dallas was designated one of the ten core offices leading the September 11, 2001 investigation of the Pentagon/Twin Towers terrorist attacks.
http://www.dannydefenbaugh.com/aboutDanny.html

Quote:

FBI honors American Airlines workers
Posted:*Saturday, April 06, 2002

FORT WORTH (AP) - The FBI honored seven American Airlines employees Friday for their help in analyzing information about the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The employees helped identify the terrorists and were able to track their purchase of tickets to specific phone numbers and locations, including Internet cafes in Europe, said Danny Defenbaugh, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas office.

At a brief ceremony at the carrier's Fort Worth headquarters, Defenbaugh gave the employees bound certificates signed by FBI Director Robert Mueller. One of those honored was American's security chief, Larry Wansley. He called the investigation one of the most complex he had ever seen.

American Airlines requested that the other six employees not be identified. Two work in corporate security, two in reservations and two in information technology.

The Dallas office of the FBI has similarly recognized employees at travel-reservation companies who helped in the Sept. 11 investigation. Defenbaugh said he could not discuss details of what the workers did because the investigation is continuing.

Two American jets - along with two United Airlines jets - were hijacked on Sept. 11, and many employees in Fort Worth knew some of the crew members who died in the attacks.

"It's time for the FBI to thank them," Defenbaugh said. "Even at the height of their tragedy, they recognized the ability for their information to help the investigation."

So on April 6 there was the ceremony. But then less than two weeks later, Defenbaugh announced his retirement from the FBI:

Quote:

Dallas agent in charge Defenbaugh to retire

By SUSAN PARROTT
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) - Danny Defenbaugh, the special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI office who was heavily criticized in a report last month for withholding information in the Timothy McVeigh trial, announced his retirement Wednesday.

The 32-year FBI veteran said he would step down at the end of April.

"It's been a long time," he said, declining to comment further.

Defenbaugh, 51, was named head of the Dallas FBI office in 1998, after leading the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

In an e-mail Tuesday night to colleagues, Defenbaugh wrote: "I have been so fortunate to live a dream beyond my dreams. I plan on staying in the area and begin my search for a new and challenging career."

In a March 19 report, the Justice Department recommended Defenbaugh and three other agents be disciplined for the FBI's failure to turn over thousands of pages of documents to McVeigh's lawyers until days before his scheduled execution.

http://www.texnews.com/1998/2002/texas/dallas0418.html

Warning rabbit hole ahead:

Quote:

Posted on 3/20/2002 3:38:38 AM by OKCSubmariner

The head of the Dallas FBI office Danny Defenbaugh was the FBI Inspector of the OKC Bomb Task Force. Today Defenbaugh accepted criticism in his role as inspector as reported in this article posted on FreeRepublic today:

Agent in charge (of McVeigh investigation) accepts criticism

“DALLAS, Mar 19, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The FBI agent in charge of the Oklahoma City bombing investigation Tuesday accepted criticism in an inspector general's report for mishandling documents in the case that delayed Timothy McVeigh's execution.”

Defenbaugh was responding to recommendations that supervisors in the FBI be reprimanded for their handling of documents associated with the OKC Bombing case as reported in this article posted today on FreeRepublic.com:

Then more on the same freerepublic page:

Quote:

UPDATE: Did Former FBI Inspector Preside Over FBI Cover-up of OKC Bombing?

Published: May 19, 2001 Author: Patrick B. Briley

Posted on 05/19/2001 20:49:39 PDT by OKCSubmariner

....(snip: various material on Danny Defenbauch OKC bombing investigation role. read full quote at link below...)

Many of the Arab suspects in the OKC bombing and identified by KFORTV reporters in OKC were believed to have been operating out of Dallas and known to the Defenbaugh and to the FBI at least right after the bombing if not before. Also Defenbaugh’s FBI agents in OKC and in Dallas and US Prosecutors refused to accept the KFORTV reporter's evidence by claiming that to do so would help the defense (even though bombing suspects were involved who the FBI should have gone after).

In February 1999, the FBI in OKC acknowledged to an attorney representing a former reporter, that Middle Eastern suspects implicated in the OKC bombing were known to be operating out of a terrorist cell in Dallas. FBI director, Louis Freeh testified to Congress in May 1995 that the FBI had infiltrated a Middle Eastern terrorist cell in Dallas.

The post at freerepublic continues, and this is the bit of direct interest here:

Quote:

Bin Laden’s secretary, El Hage, was arrested in Dallas and indicted for helping the FBI operative Ali Mohamed for over six years set up Bin Laden cells in Dallas and the US as well as for the bombings of the World Trade Center and the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Defenbaugh got in trouble two years ago for using Dallas police officers to track Bin Laden terrorists in Dallas and around the world without informing the Dallas police chief or compensating Dallas taxpayers for the police officers services.

Defenbaugh started in 1998 (BEFORE the 9/11/2001 terror attacks) directing the FBI and Dallas police officers to follow and track known Middle Eastern terrorists associated with AlQaeda and Bin Laden (el Hage and Ali Mohammed) and the Dallas terrorist cells believed associated with the OKC bombing and the 9/11/2002 terror attacks on the Pentagon and WTC. In 1999 Defenbaugh had a public confrontation with the Dallas police chief, widely reported in Dallas media , over Defenbaugh using the police officers and Dallas taxpayers dollars without the chief’s permission and without telling the chief of the findings of his own police officers.

Defenbaugh’s technique of heavily using police officers for FBI investigations was employed by him in OKC with OKC police officers who were “deputized” by Defenbaugh to be part of his OKC Bombing Task Force. This is a clear example of the Federalization of local police forces. I know for certain about this because the relationship between the FBI and the OKC police criminal intelligence unit was described to me in my home on January 8, 1996 by Defenbaugh’s FBI agent, James Carlyle, and a member of the OKC police criminal intelligence unit. These men came to my house to threaten me and my wife over what we had learned of FBI foreknowledge and cover-up of the OKC bombing.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/649720/posts

Now, what was it he said again to Larry on the phone as they watched the second impact:

Quote:
There was a brief, stunned silence on the other end of the line as the second plane disappeared into a mountainous fireball. Finally, Defenbaugh spoke, his usually booming voice barely a whisper. "The ball game just changed."

"The ball game just changed."

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 34

"The ball game just changed"

What do you suppose that means?

Fortunately, Larry Wansley knew exactly what Danny Defenbaugh meant, and he helpfully spelled it out for Carlton Stowers in their November 21 2002 interview here:

Quote:

"Historically," Wansley says while in his office near D-FW International Airport, "our entire security system as it related to hijackings was based on the predictable experiences of the past. A hijacker always wanted one of three things: to be taken someplace by the plane he'd taken over, money or the release of someone being held prisoner. And always--always--he wanted to safely get away with what he was attempting.

"Suicidal terrorism was something that might happen in other parts of the world, but never in the United States."

That, he notes, is what Special Agent Defenbaugh had meant when he suggested that "the ball game had just changed." A new form of enemy, one not properly prepared for, had invaded.

A new form of enemy, one not properly prepared for, had invaded.

Just never saw it coming.


This is the same Danny Defenbaugh who had been following and monitoring and studying a cell of Al Qaeda terrorists in Dallas since the late 1990s.

Quote:

Bin Laden’s secretary, El Hage, was arrested in Dallas and indicted for helping the FBI operative Ali Mohamed for over six years set up Bin Laden cells in Dallas and the US as well as for the bombings of the World Trade Center and the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Defenbaugh got in trouble two years ago for using Dallas police officers to track Bin Laden terrorists in Dallas and around the world without informing the Dallas police chief or compensating Dallas taxpayers for the police officers services.

Defenbaugh started in 1998 (BEFORE the 9/11/2001 terror attacks) directing the FBI and Dallas police officers to follow and track known Middle Eastern terrorists associated with AlQaeda and Bin Laden (el Hage and Ali Mohammed) and the Dallas terrorist cells believed associated with the OKC bombing and the 9/11/2002 terror attacks on the Pentagon and WTC. In 1999 Defenbaugh had a public confrontation with the Dallas police chief, widely reported in Dallas media , over Defenbaugh using the police officers and Dallas taxpayers dollars without the chief’s permission and without telling the chief of the findings of his own police officers.

So was Danny Defenbaugh really confronting a possibility that had never occurred to him before, for which he had never spent any time preparing?


Larry is just taking Carlton, and us, for a spin.

Here's more. I've only just noticed this quote, in the same interview, in the very next line after the "game just changed" exchange.

Quote:

Such were Wansley's thoughts that morning as he made a hurried drive from corporate headquarters to the airline's command center. Already, a flurry of pre-planned activity was in motion when he arrived. The FBI was setting up its own command post, reviewing the passenger manifest of Flight 11 and replaying the recording of the heroic flight attendant's warning call. In an adjacent room, the airline's Care Team was putting its own training into action, checking flight manifests and making preparations for contacting family members of those lost in the crash.

A hurried drive? From corporate headquarters to the airline's command center?

The room where the conference call was taking place, the office of Bob Baker VP of American Airlines was in the same building as the command center. It's the headquarters of American Airlines.

The address, then and now, 4333 Amon Carter Blvd, Fort Worth, TX 76155

Baker's office was on the fifth floor, I believe, though perhaps it was the sixth. It's in the quotes. What is certain is that it was upstairs from the command center. You can see this from the phone calls Ray Howland makes to contact Joe Bertapelle, who is preparing for the conference call. They talk about him needing to come downstairs.

Here are some pictures of the building we are talking about here:














Unless I am confused here, and hey, wouldn't be the first time, but I don't think so this time, the office where they were preparing for the conference call, where Larry Wansley claimed to be when he first heard about the hijacking, where he claimed to have overheard the live feed of the first impact, the office from which he placed a call to Danny Defenbaugh, that office was upstairs from, and in the same building, as the command center.

There was no need to drive.

It was not possible to drive, from the fifth floor, to the floors below. You had to take the lift. Or the stairs.

Quote:

Such were Wansley's thoughts that morning as he made a hurried drive from corporate headquarters to the airline's command center.

Just a wild guess, but it seems like Larry is trying to establish a section of time where he was absent from both the upstairs office and the downstairs command center. Out driving.

Wonder what time that was exactly. He says in the 9/11 commission interview that he remained on the phone to Danny Defenbaugh for an hour. He phoned at 7:45am. So one hour later, hangs up, it's 8:45am now. 9:45am in New York. North tower is about to come down in 15 minutes, south tower another half an hour after that. It's that high stakes hour in between the impacts and the collapses.

By the public accounts of Larry Wansley, this is the time that he left the American Airlines building, went for a drive, and then came back to the building.

This entire story is nuts.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 35

In this post, I want to look again at the phone call between Larry Wansley and Nydia Gonzalez which took place around noon on September 11, 2001. This is the call in which the tape of the Betty Ong phone call was played, on a loop.

Earlier in the thread, we saw how the transcript of the Betty Ong call released the next day differs significantly from the transcript of the call as it is played during the Wansley-Gonzalez conversation.

Now that we have explored Larry Wansley's movements that morning, it brings some context.

To briefly recap: Wansley gives two versions of when he first heard about the situation with flight 11. In the first, in 2002, he claimed to have been sipping coffee and mingling until news was phoned through to the VP's office, at 7:45am. He then phoned Danny Defenbaugh.

In the second version, told to the 911 commission in 2004, he is told of the situation on arrival at the meeting, by the secretary, and he makes a quick call to the Command Center, before then phoning Defenbaugh.

Both versions then track: at 7:46am, he heard reaction in the next room to live broadcast of the first impact. He then stayed on the phone with Defenbaugh for one hour, which would make the time 8:45am. He then leaves to go from the VP's office on the fifth floor, down to the Command Center, which is being set up, on the second floor below.

According to his testimony to the 9/11 commission, he makes an intervening stop: a quick visit back to his office. The office is "downstairs", but he described to Carlton Stowers that he made a quick drive to get to the Command Center. Here's the relevant section from his 2004 testimony to the 911 commission:



So he arrives at SOCC around 9am, and soon after, spends the next "couple of hours" interviewing Craig Marquis and Nydia Gonzalez. Which brings us to 12:28pm Central Time, when Larry introduces himself, and gives the time and date, on the transcript of the phone conversation with Nydia Gonzalez.

So now, with that in mind, I want to return to the whole curious business of the looped Betty Ong tape. Recall from earlier in this thread, where the details are laid out. The tape of the Betty Ong call which Gonzalez plays to Wansley begins about 1/3 of the way through, plays to the end, seamlessly loops back to the "beginning", then continues to play through the full four minutes to the end, where it ends.

I put "beginning" in quotation marks, because the "beginning" of the four-minutes of tape as it it appears in the middle of the Wansley-Gonzalez call transcript, differs dramatically from the "beginning" as it appears in the transcript released next day, which remains to this day as the official version.

The conclusion is inescapable that the transcript released on the second day is doctored.

I now want to consider how this could have come about.

Let's go back and look at the end of the four minutes of the Betty Ong tape, as it was released on the following day, September 12, 2001.



Up to now, I've suggested that the reason the tape was cut off at that four minute mark was because of the comment about calling medical. And perhaps it was. But now, lets take a look at the moment on the Marquis-Gonzalez phone call, where the four-minutes of Betty Ong being recorded, (on the other line) ends.



No confusion there. The end of the call is clearly marked in the margin.

I want to draw attention now to the very next lines that Gonzalez says to Ong after the four-minute recording supposedly ends:

Quote:

OK, you guys are airborne right now?

OK, Betty, I've got security on the line.

Now, it is perfectly clear that by "security", Gonzalez means that she is on the phone to Craig Marquis at SOC. She uses the term several times more in the conversation.

But is it possible that it is what Gonzalez said next, and not what Ong was in the middle of saying, that was the reason for the tape being cut off?

Could it be that the information that someone did not want released was that "security" were on the line from as early as 7:24am?

That's an interesting thought isn't it. It does appear from his contradictory interviews that Larry Wansley is trying to fudge when he first heard about the flight 11 situation, and doesn't want to discuss where he was or what he was doing prior to arriving at the VPs office for the 7:45am meeting. So perhaps he was sensitive about the Ong tape and transcript showing so clearly that security were involved so early.

That is pure speculation, of course. But there is funny business going on with that four minutes of tape, as has been proved in this thread. So let's keep going now, and see where that line of speculation takes us. Suppose Larry had listened to the Ong tape, and decided that it had to be cut at the beginning, and also just before the "security" comment.

So he comes up with the idea of the system "upgrade" automatically shutting down the recording of emergency phone calls after four minutes (something which apparently neither Gonzalez nor Sadler were aware of...). He arranges for someone (Troy Wregglesworth?) to splice the tape, removing the beginning and ending, to leave just the desired four minute segment.

The tape was looped, and spliced. Someone arranged it. Unless it was a pure accident. Was it an accident? Did the tape of the Betty Ong call simply become tangled in the chaos of the morning?

In the next post, we'll look again at this business of the splicing of the tape.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 36

This business of the looped tape really has me scratching my head, I have to say. I'm not an audio engineer so I'm not familiar with the technical steps that would have been required to splice and loop the taped recording of the Ong call, but I find it very hard to see how such a mix-up, if that's what it was, could have happened.

Let's step through what must have happened if Larry Wansley had indeed made all these interventions:

• the tape of the complete Ong conversation was played to him
  
• he listened to it, and decided that he only wanted a relatively short segment at the beginning released, because of the "I'm on the line to security" reference, and remarks.
  
• he gets a technical person involved, someone who is up-to-speed with the Rockwell system and the recording function
  
• he explains what he wants to achieve ("national security") and has the technician play two segments for him a few times.....the moment around when Winston Sadler first comes on, and the moment just before Gonzalez mentions security being on the line.
  
• he listens to these segments a few times, and works out the approximate places where he is happy for the tape to "begin" and "end".
  
• they are approximately 4 minutes apart, so together they choose a pair of moments exactly 4 minutes apart at which to make the splices.....and they come up with the story about the "upgrade" only recording for 4 minutes before automatically shutting off.
  
• the technician then goes ahead and makes a final edit out of the changes that have been requested.
  
• then Larry sets up the phone call with Gonzalez. Explains to her what is going to happen. Only four minutes was taped. They are going to play it over the line in another recorded conversation to have it on the record.
  
• the technician gets the editted tape ready.
  
• at 12:28pm, the call is placed. Wansley to Gonzalez.
  
• they play the editted tape, but somehow, the technician has cued it up incorrectly, not to the "beginning" as planned, but earlier on the mix-tape that he has made...before the "correct" four-minute splice with "beginning" and "ending".
  
• the tape plays through to the splice, and keeps playing, to the "end".
  
• no one notices.

It's all pretty hair-raising to imagine all of that really happened.

To get things back on track though: if the tape truly was four-minutes long, and no funny business, then the tape of it that Gonzalez played to Wansley would have started at the beginning, gone to the end, and finished. One time through. And the transcript released next day would not show indisputable evidence of tampering at the beginning. So someone was messing with the tape.

In order to try to crack the puzzle, I had the idea of comparing carefully the two versions of the end-of-the-four-minutes Ong recording in the Wansley-Gonzalez transcript, to see if there were any differences between them. Well, they differ by one word at the very end, but it is well within the acceptable error in transcribing.

I also compared these to the end of the four-minutes as it shows up on the Marquis-Gonzalex transcript (shown above), but again, there's no differences between the versions.

My aim here was to check all of the different versions of that ending of the four-minute Ong recording/transcript, to see if in one of the versions there might be a tell-tale difference, something that would indicate that it was a manufactured edit.

I'm not sure it completely cracks the puzzle, but I did find something. There are two clues to be found on this youtube video. On this are played, back-to-back, the four minutes of the Ong call, and then the four minutes of editted audio that the government have released of the Marquis-Gonzalez call. So here they are, 8 minutes in total of audio from the two calls.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=q-Tr0u35Tek

The transcript rolls along with the audio. At 4:08 comes the end of the four minutes. When it does come, there is a bell tone. The screen shot says:

"The beep at the end is the change of conversation".

Not sure what this really is intended to mean, but what is clear is that the beep is part of the recording, as played. It is as though the beep marks the end of the recording, the shutting down of the four-minute recording period.

Was the beep there during the first time it is played through on the loop in the Wansley-Gonzalez call ? It's not mentioned in the transcript, and there is no recording. It would be very interesting to hear it.

Was it there when that moment occurs during the Marquis-Gonzalez call? The government released an edited four-minute version of the sixteen minutes total of this call. This is what is on the youtube above, from the four minute mark of the video. The recording starts when Gonzalez connects to Marquis, and continues to the point marked 5:30 on the video, where the first edit jump cut appears, as can be verified by the transcripts.

And wouldn't you know: the exact point at which that first edit occurs is exactly right before the point where the Ong four-minutes recording ends. They really don't want us to be able to listen to that ending.

It seems to me that someone who knows about editing digital tape recordings may be able to see through all this and figure out exactly what was being attempted, and why the tape came out looped.

There's one final observation to make about that Wansley-Gonzalez phone call. Right at the end, he asks her

Quote:

Wansley: Did I assume she was on a cell phone, is that correct?

Gonzalez: ah, i don't know, we didn't clarify that

Wansley: OK, I wanted to clarify that if you had that information

Seems like the Managing Director of Corporate Security was puzzled how the call could have been made. Was he aware that the jump phone seats were not able to dial out of the plane? Why did he assume it must have been a cell?

In any case, it's time now to move on from the fine detail of Larry Wansley's morning on 9/11.

In the next post, I'd like to look at some of his career highlights before 9/11.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 37

If you've read this series of posts on Larry Wansley, there are two questions that will have occurred to you. The first is this:

Question One: Was Larry Wansley still working for the FBI, in some sense, when he was MD of Corporate Security at American Airlines, 1992-2004?

Answer to Question One: Yes he was. Listen to his own words, as told to Carlton Stowers, describing how he reacted professionally to the flight 11 situation:

Quote:

"One of the things I found myself doing," Wansley says, "was thinking like an FBI agent again, trying to determine what kind of information they needed and where we might help them get it."

In a sense, the security director reverted to the role of investigator.

So, yes, in a sense, Larry Wansley reverted to his role as an FBI investigator.

So now the second question follows from the first. If you are familiar with LetsRoll research, you will be aware of many indications that appear to show pieces of the 9/11 puzzle being assembled years in advance. In particular, it seems that people were being placed into particular roles, and into particular positions in particular organisations, so that when the Big Day came, they would be in position to accomplish certain key essential tasks.

So, Question Two: was Larry Wansley placed into his position at American Airlines, years in advance, in order to ensure that the FBI had a man on-the-spot, within American Airlines, taking care of business, on 9/11?

We've already had the hilarious scene earlier in the thread where Larry gets his foot stuck in the plywood wall. But there's more comedy gold from the early years in that Carlton Stowers article. Before we get onto the exciting stuff, let's enjoy some more of what will make for absolutely classic scenes when the movie is finally made:

Quote:

For almost a decade, FBI Special Agent Wansley used so many false identities that at times he found it difficult to remember who he really was.

During his career as an undercover agent he was involved in such highly publicized cases as the search for kidnapped publishing heiress Patty Hearst and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army and the investigation of the murder of San Antonio federal Judge John Wood. Posing at various times as an executive of a shady Hollywood-based investment firm, a militant street hustler, the president of a trucking company, a nightclub owner, a newspaper publisher, even an operator of a massage parlor, Wansley found himself in the company of high-rolling members of the New York Mafia, Southern redneck crime figures, law enforcement officials involved in illegal activity, pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, stone killers and con artists of every ilk. Briefly, he even played the role of a Baylor football player in an effort to identify gamblers who were allegedly approaching team members for information.

When the FBI broke new investigative ground in the late '70s with an elaborate and highly successful reverse sting operation called Operation Tarpit, Wansley served as the point man, posing as a West Hollywood businessman in the market for stolen goods. For two years burglars and hijackers came to him with truckloads of stolen merchandise--guns, jewelry, clothing, cigarettes, liquor, automobiles, counterfeit bonds and money orders, fake IDs and credit cards--which, in time, resulted in more than 300 arrests and recovery of a record $42 million worth of stolen property.

The culmination of the operation, Wansley says, was an elaborate party to which all of his "customers" were invited. "We rented this huge hall where there would be music, food, champagne, the works, and sent out invitations telling of free cruises and gifts that would be given away." The bad guys came running. Once the guests had all arrived and the exits were manned by fellow agents and Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, the arrests began.

Come to think of it, I'm sure I've already seen that scene in a movie before. Something by Scorcese? I forget. In any case, it's clear that Larry had a very special talent for becoming anyone that he wanted to be, very convincingly.

You wouldn't imagine that the FBI would just let such a man go, but in 1983, Larry does indeed "leave" the FBI to join the Dallas Cowboys as head of security. During the next ten years, there are two fascinating sidebars to his time in the NFL. In 1988/89, he takes the role as head of security for Whitney Houston's world tour. Then in the early years of the 1990, he takes on a role as head of security for a fledgling attempt by the NFL to crack into the European market.

At this point, I want to introduce a new document into the thread. It's Larry Wansley's CV, posted online and freely available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140708...ry_Wansley.pdf



Here's two clips from the cv detailing the Whitney Houston and NFL Europe gigs:





It is interesting that he used the Whitney Houston tour to promote the upcoming NFL international program. It seems like Larry Wansley was able to move seamlessly between these different worlds: football, entertainment, law enforcement, international relations.

And certainly all of these skills, and more, were going to be required for the next segment of his career. In 1992 he left the world of NFL and joined American Airlines. Later in that decade, his CV describes a fascinating project in which he took a lead role:



His CV does not mention any dates, but it must be the 1999 coup in Pakistan that he is referring to. So from 1997 to 1999, approximately, Larry was working on the restructuring of Pakistan Airlines, or PIA. With 36 "American expatriates".

Who do you suppose they might have been? We can only make wild, unsubstantiated guesses, *cough* CIA *cough*, and that wouldn't be any help.

Pakistan Airlines has a long and proud if sometimes chequered history. The long and the short of it is that by the mid 1990s, they had a few problems. Wikipedia puts it clearly, if with a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase perhaps:

Quote:

In 1995, 1996 Farooq Umar handed over PIA to another MD March 1996 closing his tenure with great success and leaving PIA profitable with last 6 months profit of more than 55 million PKR. after his departure PIA started to nose dive.

So it was in a "nose dive". There were financial issues, despite wikipedia's spin on it, and they also had a small problem with what were colloquially known in those days as "inadmissible passengers". Wikipedia hints at the problems that were brewing during Farooq Umar's tenure at the top:

Quote:

He also made major changes in routes and schedules and started non stop flights from Lahore and Islamabad to JFK and Canada along with many other to boost up PIA revenues while taking great care to thwart the menace of inadmissible passengers lurking the western world successfully.

"Inadmissible passengers" referred to islamic jihadists training at Al Qaeda camps in Afganistan and Pakistan using Pakistan Airlines to fly into the USA. This was a growing concern in the late 1990s in America and Pakistan.

This doesn't appear to be explicitly documented anywhere, not surprisingly, but it seems like in 1997 the CIA sent a team in to sort out PIA, Pakistan Airlines. It seems like Larry Wansley was the person selected to head up the security side of the restructuring program.

So if you like co-incidences, there are plenty piling up here. If you like action movies, we have a script worthy of a Jason Bourne film. Either way, Larry Wansley sure has been at the center of a lot of exciting moments in modern American history. Put it this way, if he wasn't deep undercover for the FBI through all of that, then they missed a great opportunity.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 38

I’d like to comment on the story of Sara Low and her involvement in phone calls from flight 11. I’m going to double-post this here in the Fog Fiction and the Flight 11 Phone calls thread as well as here, which I normally wouldn’t do, but in this case, well, I’m going to. In this thread, I limited myself to discussing the phone calls from flight 11 that were connected, but there are also four fascinating calls which were not connected. The following discussion therefore really needs to be here as well as there. So here goes.

Firstly, let’s just recap the complete list of Flight 11 phone calls, using the handy presentations made by the government for the Moussaoui trial. These show the beginning time and duration of each of the calls. There is one from Betty Ong, five from Amy Sweeney, and four from an unknown party. Here is the data:







In Fog Fiction and the Flight 11 Phone calls, I have exhaustively analysed the Ong and Sweeney calls, but have not addressed the question of these four unconnected calls from the unknown party. So let’s now do that.

The government have not publicly released the phone number to which these four calls were made, but Mike Low, Sara Low’s father, seems to have been told, and has discussed publicly, that the calls were made to the phone number of the Arkansas childhood home of the Low family.

Quote:

The reports online say that she was not originally scheduled to work on flight 11. After the hijacking began, she tried to call her parents, but she dialed the phone number they had when she was growing up instead of the current number. She didn’t reach them that morning, but she gave one of the other flight attendants her calling card. The card was used to place five calls out with warnings before it was over. The report said Sara’s father speculates that maybe because of the stress and fear…her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember.

https://archive.li/o/WgPzj/concernin...-sara-low.html

Quote:

Her father, Mike Low, later says he learned from FBI records that his daughter had given her childhood home phone number in Arkansas to another of the flight attendants, Amy Sweeney, for her to report the hijacking. Low speculates that the reason his daughter gave this particular number was that she had just moved home, and so, in the stress of the hijacking, her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember.

https://archive.li/o/WgPzj/www.histo...e_911_timeline

There is something very strange about all of this. It’s a little bit confusing the way Mike is quoted as describing it above, so let’s just get it straightened out.

There are four phone calls made that were no connected, and we are led to believe that these four phone calls were made to the childhood home of the Low family in Arkansas.

Then there are the five Sweeney calls, two of which failed to connect, followed by three that connected to American Airlines Flight Services at Boston Logan Airport. These calls were made with a calling card, which, it is said, Sara Low gave to Amy Sweeney to use.

The official records of the Sweeney calls show the number of the phone card. Here is one of them:



There’s the number of the calling card: 8707936486.

Punch this number into google and what do we find:

Mike Low
Mike Low is a man living in Batesville, Arkansas, United States.
Location – Batesville, AR, US
Address – 120 Triangle Ln
Phone – (870) 793-6486
http://www.salespider.com/ppl-3617068/mike-low

The calling card number that Amy Sweeney used to place her calls is the same as Mike Low’s current home number in Batesville. This is consistent with what’s been reported in various interviews. So, what must be happening here, is that Mike Low had a calling card which enabled calls to be made and charged to his home phone number, and he had given this card, or one of these cards, to Sara for her to use. And Sara, in the heat of the “hijacking” gave that card to Amy Sweeney to make her calls.
OK, so now we have the data all lined up, let’s take a closer look at it. Those four unconnected calls from the unknown caller can now be understood to be four calls placed by Sara Low to the number which was her Arkansas childhood home.

Separately, Amy Sweeney made five calls using the Low calling card with the current Batesville number of the Lows.

Notice that the third of the Sara Low calls, the one placed at 8:25:31 was made during the third Amy Sweeney call, which lasted from 8:25:20 to 8:27:07. This tells us that Mike is either being misquoted, or is speaking in error when he talks about Sara giving the Arkansas number to Amy above.

Quote:

Her father, Mike Low, later says he learned from FBI records that his daughter had given her childhood home phone number in Arkansas to another of the flight attendants, Amy Sweeney, for her to report the hijacking. Low speculates that the reason his daughter gave this particular number was that she had just moved home, and so, in the stress of the hijacking, her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember.

Amy definitely was the one who called AA Flight Services in Boston, and she used the card with the new Batesville number on it. And the third call of Amy was in progress when the third “unknown caller” call was made, so it could not have been Amy making the unknown caller calls. So it must have been Sara, calling Arkansas, and as I say Mike’s comments there have been garbled somehow. It would be good to find a better quote from Mike about these four calls….but for now, let’s take it that’s correct: the four calls which didn’t connect were made by Sara Low, to the Arkansas number, as stated clearly in the other account above by family friend.

With that sorted, now look again at what Mike Low says when he speculates as to why Sara phoned their old, obsolete Arkansas number:

Quote:

Low speculates that the reason his daughter gave this particular number was that she had just moved home, and so, in the stress of the hijacking, her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember.

But this doesn’t make any sense! There could not have been any problem “remembering” her parents current phone number, because it was written on the very calling card that she gave to Amy Sweeney! So Mike Low’s explanation doesn’t hold up.

So now, let’s go over it all again very slowly. The plane has been “hijacked” (*cough*) at 8:14. The very first phone call that was made from the plane was the first unconnected Sara Low(?) call to her parents old house in Arkansas at 8:16. Within two minutes of the hijacking! This is truly bizarre. Sara Low has a working phone card on her person, with her parents current home phone on it. It’s two minutes into the hijacking. There are many things she could do at this moment, but obviously the most useful in terms of helping the passengers, the crew, the other planes, America and the world (on the official story) would be to contact the authorities. Why on earth would she decide to phone mummy and daddy for a chat? Professional? Not so much. But, ok, there’s blood, there’s knives, there are bombs with yellow wires, there are five hijackers (*cough*), she needs to call someone:

But Sara Low makes the call. It doesn’t go through. Two minutes go by, and Betty Ong makes her call through to the American Airlines reservation number. Two more minutes go by. Sara Low decides to make another call. So she calls the same old Arkansas number again. Now let’s ask another question: how did she attempt to pay for that call? we don’t know, as the government has not released the electronic records of those unconnected calls. It’s probably in that thick black binder that Mike Low has but he’s not allowed tell us what’s in it, so that doesn’t help.

My question is: did she use the phone card to try to place these calls? If so, massive fail on Sara Low’s part, because here she is in that case calling the old wrong number, because, speculates her father, she was too stressed to remember that they didn’t live in Arkansas anymore and the number had changed, but she is using a phone card to make the call which has the NEW NUMBER WRITTEN RIGHT ON IT!

But that call doesn’t go through. So another two minutes go by, and now she decides to give the calling card to Amy Sweeney, who then goes down the back of the plane to call Boston Logan airport AA Flight Services. (Remember Sara Low is up front in business class).

So now Sara doesn’t have the card anymore, because Amy has got it. Amy makes two unsuccessful attempts to get through to AA Flight Services in Boston, then on the third attempt, at 8:25 she gets through. Eleven seconds later, Sara Low tries for the third time to call the old obsolete Arkansas number. What does she use to attempt to pay for the call? We don’t know, but certainly by this time Amy Sweeney has the calling card. Maybe Sara Low had memorised the details and didn’t need the card to place the call. Well, ok, but then she could hardly be remembering the current number to make the payment, but forgetting the current number to dial the old number, could she?



So if you assume that a real hijacking was taking place, with real conscientious flight attendants trying their level best to save ‘Merica, everything collapses into absurdity. Mike Low’s speculation that his daughter couldn’t remember her parents phone number doesn’t make sense. Sara Low making four calls to the old number doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

Unless it was not a real hijacking...

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 39

Quote:

[Mike Low – YouTube]

2:55 She was carrying information back from the front of the plane to Amy Sweeney, that identified the hijackers. We have been given in the last twelve months, the FBI records which shows the phone calls made from the plane, was charged to our home phone here. which could have only been Sara. If you called our home today you’d be calling the same number that the flights, the flight 11 calls were made from.

Ok, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that was a slip of the tongue where Mike just blurted out that the calls from flight 11 were made from his home phone...

I’m more interested in the part where he says that the calls were charged to his home number. He doesn’t mention any calling card, just that the calls were charged to the home number.

But that’s the only way you could charge an Airphone call to your home number, is if you had set up a call card first, so, ok, he must mean that.

Here he is on other website:

Quote:

“We had been notified by the FBI some years ago that the calls made from Flight 11 were charged to our phone calling card,” he said.

But Low filed a lawsuit tofind out the details, “which [were] very important to me,” he said. “The information was not made public, and some of it still can’t be made public. I will find a way.

“We knew about the calls, but we didn’t have any of the documentation, but we do now. That’s what we were fighting for.

https://archive.li/o/WgPzj/www.arkan...ghts-20110911/

Still looking for exact quotes from Mike saying that it was Sara phoning the Arkansas number.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

POST 40

OK this is actually getting curiouser and curiouser, because the only place so far online i can find it clearly stated that those four unconnected calls were made by Sara Low to her childhood home phone number in Arkansas is the one blog post quoted above. Here it is again, with more of the text preceding. It is from someone who obviously knew Sara.

Quote:

I read the timelines and remember the events of that morning on purpose every September 11th. After I do that, I try to remember everything I ever knew about Sara Low. She was two years older than me. My stepbrother had a crush on her his freshman year of high school. She was beautiful. She was so, SO kind. She had striking eyes that were sharp and almond shaped. She smiled a lot. I'm pretty sure she was in the band because I remember her in the marching band uniform. I think she played the flute. I'm not sure...it was a long time ago. She ran track (so did my brother) and she was a cheerleader and she was an honor student. That's all I can remember because we were children the last time I saw her...but I feel like the least I can do for her is remember her.

The reports online say that she was not originally scheduled to work on flight 11. After the hijacking began, she tried to call her parents, but she dialed the phone number they had when she was growing up instead of the current number. She didn't reach them that morning, but she gave one of the other flight attendants her calling card. The card was used to place five calls out with warnings before it was over. The report said Sara's father speculates that maybe because of the stress and fear...her childhood phone number was the only one she could remember. Every time I think about that, it makes my stomach knot. She was too good--in every way too good--to suffer that kind of fear. I hope she wasn't scared for a long time, and I hope someone was holding her hand.

Dated Posted 12th September 2010 by Mrs. Nix

Concerning Mrs. Nix Dispensing Advice to Save the World
https://archive.li/o/nMVG9/concernin...-sara-low.html

The author of the blog is "Mrs Nix"



About me
Quote:

Gender Female
Industry Military
Occupation Well-Kept Wife & Mother
Location Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Introduction I'm a conservative vegan hippie which--contrary to popular belief--is not contradictory in the slightest, thank you very much.
Interests reading, cooking, family, my beagle, animal welfare, and trying to understand the world around me.

https://www.blogger.com/profile/04037902722706986031

Still searching to find other instances of this claim. It's interesting now how Mike Low kind of garbles this.....more to follow....