ERROR: 'The Phone Calls were Fake'

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[The most recent 'Error' page in a series which documents errors in the 9/11 literature. One of the goals of 911review.com is to highlight these errors and improve the quality of analysis in the community of skeptics.]

ERROR: 'The Phone Calls were Fake'

The idea that phone calls from passengers on the targeted flights were fake and actually created with voice-morphing technology has been promoted by several "no Boeing" advocates and in particular detail by author David Ray Griffin in his numerous books, talks, interviews, and essays.

The case for the 'fake phone calls theory' as articulated by Griffin has become ever more nuanced and complex as government and airline disclosures have undermined the simplicity of the original set of claims surrounding the calls, and other researchers have pointed out flaws in that case. However, the theory remains rooted in the premise, seemingly calculated to be offensive attack survivors, that the last voices heard from victims on the planes were faked.

Origins

The original form of the fake phone calls theory as promoted by A.K. Dewdney in his 2002 article Ghostriders in the Sky focused on Flight 93, from which passengers reportedly made a score of cell phone calls. It had two major tenets:

1. Cell phones in aircraft at altitude can't communicate with ground stations, where most of the reported calls would have been at altitude.
2. Statements reportedly made by passengers had peculiarities suggesting that they weren't genuine.

Dewdney, Mathematical Recreations columnist for Scientific American from 1984 to 1993, gave these arguments a veneer of credibility with his vivid style of writing, and publication of experiments showing limitations of cell phone reception from a light plane in Canada. However, rational examination of both tenets show that they are based on multiple fallacies, foremost being the presentation of a theory as the only explanation for alleged anomalies that in fact have many possible explanations.

For years, "no Boeing" advocates such as A.K. Dewdney, Eric Hufschmid, David Griffin, Jim Fetzer, and the Loose Change filmmakers have used victim Mark Bingham as poster child for the fake calls claims by highlighting his use of his full name in addressing his mother. During his one call from Flight 93 to his mother, Bingham reportedly says "Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham". Frequently overlooked in these accounts are the facts that Mark Bingham's mother has a different last name, that she herself relayed the excerpt, and that she has no doubt that the caller was her son. Furthermore, adducing as evidence of fakery perceived anomalies in the reported behavior of people in highly stressful life-threatening circumstances is unscientific at best.

The first tenet appeals to a claim that a key element of the official story was physically impossible. However, even after years of debate, the parameters of cell phone function on the 9/11/2001 flights remain unclear, Dewdney's experiment in Canada notwithstanding.

But even supposing that cell phone calls from cruising altitude were impossible that day, and that there was no other way for the calls to have been legitimate -- such as their having been from airphones rather than cell phones -- there is a logical fallacy in the first tenet that is exposed by a simple thought experiment.

Continued here.

Show "Okay, let me get this straight. . ." by NYCGuy

Errors in comment about essay on phone fakery error

** The phone calls were real. Mark Bingham said, "Hello, Mother? This is Mark Bingham."

Yes.

** Barbara Olsen correctly reported that red bandana wearing hijackers took over the plane.

Her name is Olson, not Olsen, and she didn't mention anything about red bandanas, as far as I know. However, red bandanas were later found at the crash site. You would likely have it both ways: if she mentioned them you wouldn't believe it, and if she didn't, you'd find it suspicious.

** Although there is no record of this call.

False. Barbara Olson made collect calls and a (seemingly, probably with help from an operator) direct call from a seat-back phone, phones which were in fact installed on AA 77. While these calls are listed as coming from an "unknown" source, that is because a collect call where an operator is asked to make an emergency connection does not provide for caller identification: the seat-back phone wasn't Barbara Olson's property.

** And that when the FBI said that her call lasted one second. . . uh.. . they were wrong.

They said it lasted zero seconds, and they were referring to a failed cellphone call. As expected.

** Am I getting this now?

Apparently not.

** So, 19 Arab hijackers actually took the planes, crashed them into the WTC, and crashed at Shanksville, all lead by Bin Laden.

False dilemma fallacy.

** Sorry. I see no evidence to support this. Or that the phone calls were real. The phone calls were fake.

There was no "voice morphing" on 9/11, rather, you are misinformed, your standards of evidence are poor and your ability to comprehend complex topics appears to be limited. You dramatically get your all facts wrong, then issue a harsh, yet baseless declaration.

** ps - Here is the statement of an experienced airline pilot: "The idea of being able to use a cellphone while flying is completely impractical. Once through about 10,000 feet, the thing is useless, since you are too high and moving too fast (and thus changing cells too rapidly) for the phone to provide a signal."

Although airline pilots know absolutely nothing about the technical intricacies of cellphone tower switching compared to an actual cellphone expert, this is correct, and that is why only two phone calls on 9/11 were reported by the FBI to have been made via cellphone.

Voice morphing, although reported in the Washington Post as feasible, really isn't:

David Ray Griffin's voice morphing theory is false and misleading, as explained in excruciating detail in Erik Larson's essay.

Making sustained cellphone calls from a commercial airliner at cruise speed and altitude is indeed improbable. 9/11 proves that, as according to the FBI, only Ed Felt and CeeCee Lyles were able to connect successfully, and at a moment when UA 93 had descended to a lower altitude increasing the probability of success.

We have audio recordings of the Betty Ong and CeeCee Lyles calls; I suggest you perform a mathematical audio analysis on both to prove your fakery claims. Until then, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Cell Phone Repeaters

I assume that there would need to be one per cell phone if that was the case, correct?

or

Can one cell-phone repeater be used for more than one cell phone at once?

The technology has evolved

But I think it would be possible, yeah. This is where we're at now, but they can do better.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/09/21/how-stingray-devices-work/

Back in 2001, such devices certainly existed, (Just Google fake cellphone base station, specifying the appropriate date range) although they may have been/were probably more primitive. One example is the IMSI-catcher, which has limitations. However, I see no technical impediments for the NSA in 2001 to build such a multi-homed fake mobile phone base station functioning as a man-in-the-middle (MITM). Yet, only two passengers made successful cellphone calls. So while the cellphone repeater hypothesis is instructive, it only shows what could have happened, not what did happen. I think the passengers simply used airfones. For some this may be a bitter pill to swallow, since genuine phone calls from the passengers would confirm large parts of the "official story". When disproving the official story and telling the truth become divergent activities, I choose the latter.

Some relatives said they were sure they saw the mobile phone caller id from the person who called them. They were mistaken, just like Lagasse was mistaken when he thought (in fact he said he'd bet his life on it) he saw AA 77 fly north of the Citgo gas station. The literature on witness testimony explains that witness "certainty" and "confidence" is no metric for witness accuracy. In other words, a pitfall to avoid. Again, if the phone calls were truly fake, then a mathematical audio analysis should be performed on the recordings of the Betty Ong and CeeCee Lyles phone calls to prove it. And if the relatives of the people who died on those planes insist they saw their loved one's caller id on their phone when they got the call, let them confront the FBI and sort it out. Let them say the FBI is lying. That's something I can accept and work with. Not with the stoic speculations of Dr. David Ray Griffin, whose research assistant Tod Fletcher I don't trust at all. (He was caught saying he had dealt "some solid body blows" to 911blogger after the end of his radio show when he thought the mic was off)

(Edit: typo)

Show "So, what you're saying it. . . " by NYCGuy

you've presented no evidence the calls were fake

so why are you making statements like the one in your first comment; "The phone calls were fake"?

The person who's done the most to develop and promote the fake calls theory is David Ray Griffin, but he has not presented any credible evidence the calls were faked. His case consists of arguing the most/only reasonable explanation of some anomalies means the calls were fake though there are other/more reasonable explanations, and asserting that it would have been possible to voice morph passengers in 2001, a very dubious claim. I examined his case in this essay: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-02-10/critique-david-ray-griffin-s-911-fake-calls-theory, which you left a comment on, NYCGuy: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-02-10/critique-david-ray-griffin-s-911-fake-calls-theory#comment-245872

Griffin has claimed in his most recent book that cell phone repeaters = faked calls (citing my essay), but this also means real passengers. I don't have the book and haven't read the whole chapter; at some point I may get it and review it. In any case, I never claimed repeaters were used, only that it was a possible explanation for connected cell phone calls, if more than 2 cell phone calls occurred, and I presented other evidence indicating that reports of cell phone calls may have been erroneous.

Making claims for which there's no credible evidence discredits the person making the claims.

What COULD have been

Someone COULD have been holding a gun to the caller's head. Exit voice morphing.

Falsification-speculation means you claim you've proven an explanation false, and then you provide an alternative explanation you think is exclusive, usually a cherished fantasy; some exciting, high-tech Mission Impossible-type story. Something that will sell books.

Normal logical discourse involves a tri-state set of options: true, false and unknown (and perhaps a fourth: unknowable). If you disbelieve the normal explanation for those phone calls, the appropriate position for you to take is one of agnosticism, but certainly not to start pacing about claiming to have discovered a sensational government conspiracy.

Voice morphing, as a theory, already fails at the first step: falsification (disproving). However, as shown in the first sentence of this comment, it would fail again in the next, if presented as exclusive, because there are alternative explanations that could be fantasized and without direct evidence it would be speculation to begin with.

Nowhere has falsification-speculation been so damaging to the 9/11 Truth Movement as with the topic of voice morphing, save, perhaps, Pentagon plane crash denial.

Fake phone calls? STILL?

The conspiracy theorists obtusely gripping onto the fake phone call conspiracy theory would be a profound source of comedy were it not such a tragedy of logic. What a slap in the face to the victims family members.

By and large, this and shit just like this is the reason that the general public refuse to take 9/11 truthers seriously. Media bias can only be taken so far before you have to take a look in the mirror. Yes, the government and the media work hand in hand to keep social movements down, but you're kidding yourself if you think this doesn't have the same effect.

Show "There Is Sufficient Cause To Question Plane Call Authenticity" by Aidan Monaghan

What about...

The family members who received the calls and verify their authenticity even today don't count?

And the recordings?

How Was Call Authenticity Verified By Families?

As for Betty Ong, her very calm alleged-to-be descriptions of the the violent murders of her friends and collegues is very unusual. And the violence allegedely reported by Ong stands in sharp contrast to Atta allegedly trying to advise passengers that "everything will be OK."

Any reasonable airline passenger would know that "everything is not going to be OK" while violent murders are occurring onboard! This contradiction reasonably calls into question the authenticity of the alleged statements of both Ong and Atta.

Ong's alleged account of cabin activity also seems problematic. While reporting alleged details of events happening at the front of the plane, she also reportedly claims that the front of the plane is uninhabitable. How can she report what she apparently can't be present to see?

The fact is, there is substantial evidence that digital reporductions of human voices were possible circa 2001. Also, advance booking by 9/11 flight passengers could allow for the surveillance of and recording of, 9/11 flight passenger voice samples. The FBI are already known to have hacked into the cell phone transmissions of criminal suspects to record their voices.

Tangible 9/11 passenger cell phone network data would settle this matter, but the FBI (if they have it) won't release it.

assuming and omitting

you're assuming you know how Ong would react in this situation. You're assuming that the masterful perps who arranged remote-control (in your opinion; something else you have no actual evidence for) and controlled demolition actually wrote a script for their Ong-actor or voice morpher that was so flawed Aidan Monaghan would be able to use it to prove 9/11 was an inside job. Both assumptions are dubious, and aren't evidence.

As far as the info from Ong, she was receiving reports from people around her, and even if they couldn't walk to the front due to pepper spray/mace, they would still be able to see up there from a certain distance away.

You're omitting the fact that a number of passengers reported to have made calls booked their flights the day before 9/11. And, just as you have no evidence that creating real-time conversations real enough to convince family members was possible w/ 2001 technology, you have no evidence the passengers were threatened/bribed/blackmailed/part of the conspiracy, etc. or that this part of the OCT did not happen as it has been presented.

A real investigation might get to the truth and justice. This armchair speculation is not solving anything, but it is discrediting you and everyone else that engages in it, and scumbag piece of shit blogs like Screw Loose love this stuff cuz - besides the fact that you have no actual evidence for it - it's extremely offensive to the families and the general public; people who aren't prone to automatically believe a fantastic conspiracy theory w/o any evidence for it.

Assuming And Omitting? Who? You?

"You're assuming that the masterful perps who arranged remote-control (in your opinion; something else you have no actual evidence for)"

The same perps who installed proto-type cell phone repeaters onto the 9/11 planes to faciltate the passenger calls that Erik Larsen et al. can't even proved happened? At least the auto-pilot hypothesis is supported by calculations and evidence. Your repeater theory is simply an unsupported allegation apparently contrived to fit your LIHOP conspiracy theory.

"A real investigation might get to the truth and justice. This armchair speculation is not solving anything, but it is discrediting you and everyone else that engages in it."

This would include your unproven repeaters theory, correct?

"it's extremely offensive to the families and the general public."

So too is discussion of WTC demolition, so why don't you lecture supporters of that point of view also?

While we all appreciate that you and others want to save the 9/11 Truth movement from itself because you believe you know what is best for it, we seem to be doing fine without your help.

Fortunately, most do not subscribe to the unproven LIHOP world view espoused by you and others.

Why most still subsribe to the official story.

Why do most still subscribe to the official story? In some polls the 9/11 Truth Movement was doing quite well, and we might have been doing better if some self-anointed 9/11 Truth 'leaders' hadn't promulgated nonsense and promoted speculation as fact.

Erik Larson isn't the author of the cellphone repeater hypothesis. Why are are you calling it his theory?

It always amazes me how many outrageous blunders and errors 9/11 researchers are allowed to make before jumping onto the next fad. I want to hold people spreading nonsense to account. I want to compile a dossier of the falsehoods, omissions and blatant lies 9/11 'researchers' engage in, to confront them with when they open their big mouth. The time of simply raining down 50 anomalies with great chutzpah and pretend not to have noticed when 49 get debunked, is over. There needs to be a reckoning. There needs to be some severe and attitude-adjusting credibility damage when a 'researcher' engages in lies, distortions, exaggerations, violations of research decorum, cognitive biases and flawed logic long after such problems have been pointed out to a person. This should act as a deterrent to engage in such behavior again. Because to still promote voice morphing in 2011, knowing what we know now, is beginning to smell like con, rather than mistake.

9/11 research isn't a shooting gallery. You are or ought to be held to account for your misses. David Ray Griffin has a whole lot to atone for, but he doesn't. The only thing he's done is promote a 'consensus approach' to the Pentagon, while ramping up the no plane rhetoric at the same time. Voice morphing on the other hand? Not even a hint of remorse.

You are still saying Betty Ong's phone call is fake, based on falsification-speculation. Falsification-speculation, or the "conspiracy theory method" defies logic and common sense. I have explained this dozens of times and have never been rebuked about my critique of such reasoning. That's because it's an accurate description of the cognitive flaw at work here. Again, even though your reasoning hasn't even progressed past this basic cognitive error, I invite you, DRG, Dewdney, or whoever wants to do so to do a mathematical audio analysis of the Betty Ong recording before further advancing this nonsense. That is the very least you can do.

Until this movement overcomes the predominance of weak thinkers and researchers positioning themselves as leaders, leading others astray, we are never going to gain the majority in the poll average.

By the way, I'm LIHOP. MIHOP is code for "no hijackers". I reject no hijacker theory, whereas you need this voice morphing crap to maintain it.

With respect,

Aidan, you stated:

And the violence allegedely reported by Ong stands in sharp contrast to Atta allegedly trying to advise passengers that "everything will be OK."

Not really. We could imagine that if you are trying to take command of a plane you would not tell people "you've got nothing to lose."

Any reasonable airline passenger would know that "everything is not going to be OK" while violent murders are occurring onboard! This contradiction reasonably calls into question the authenticity of the alleged statements of both Ong and Atta.

Again, not neccesarily. Keeping the passengers as calm and in control as possible would be the mission of the hijackers. Statements such as "everything will be OK" would be tactical in such situations, would it not?

Ong's alleged account of cabin activity also seems problematic. While reporting alleged details of events happening at the front of the plane, she also reportedly claims that the front of the plane is uninhabitable. How can she report what she apparently can't be present to see?

Betty Ong: “And the cockpit is not answering their phone. And there’s somebody stabbed in business class. And there’s… we can’t breathe in business class. Somebody’s got mace or something… I’m sitting in the back. Somebody’s coming back from business. If you can hold on for one second, they’re coming back.” As this quote shows, other flight attendants relay information from the front of the airplane to Ong sitting in the back, and she periodically waits for updates. She goes on, “I think the guys are up there [in the cockpit]. They might have gone there—jammed the way up there, or something. Nobody can call the cockpit. We can’t even get inside.”

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a821bettyong#a821bettyong

Also, advance booking by 9/11 flight passengers could allow for the surveillance of and recording of, 9/11 flight passenger voice samples. The FBI are already known to have hacked into the cell phone transmissions of criminal suspects to record their voices.

Many of those who made calls from 93 booked their flights on or just before 9/11:

Of the 33 passengers (excluding the four hijackers) who are on board Flight 93 on September 11, at least 16 are not originally booked on this flight, but arrange to be on it very shortly before 9/11, or—in some cases—on the morning of 9/11 itself: Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett etc.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091101unscheduledpassengers#a091101unscheduledpassengers

NCT: Your Points Are Noteworthy

However, there appears to be opportunities for voice sample and information collection, even within seemingly small windows of opportunity. Travel plan changes can result in phone calls by travelers to others. Voice sample collection, transfer and utilization may just require seconds, as with other data transfers and utilizations.

As for Atta's alleged commentary, it could have been tactical as you say. But it could also be evidence of out of synch "scripts" with others. This view is not without precedent. Other pre-9/11 federal anti-terror aviation excercises relied on fictitious characters and scripts.

In any event, the alleged Atta AA 11 transmission was officially admitted as originating from an unknown source.

In light of the unproven and suspect allegations regarding on-board flight events, the questions raised are not unreasonable.

What?

How about an apology for another utter failure to soundly address valid, source-backed argumentation?

Instead you default to your familiar refrain: "unproven allegations".

Voice morphing is an unproven allegation. Why are you ignoring my request to do a mathematical audio analysis of the Betty Ong and CeeCee Lyles audio?

And this:

"Voice sample collection, transfer and utilization may just require seconds, as with other data transfers and utilizations.

....Is outrageous, speculative, and just made up on the spot. In intelligent, rational, logical, fact- and evidence based discourse, there are rules. You can't just start making shit up. Are you not ashamed?

Show "Larsen Embraces & Incorporates Unproven Repeater Theory " by Aidan Monaghan

911 Kook vs. 911 Truth

Aidan Monaghan said..."Tangible 9/11 passenger cell phone network data would settle this matter, but the FBI (if they have it) won't release it."

Which is "evidence" that voice morphing was used by unknown mysterious members of the New World Order, in order to frame nice innocent Muslims who were evidently undercover secret agents since they made videos explaining why they wanted to be Martyrs which means of course those videos are fake. Meanwhile, the FBI not releasing MORE pentagon videos is "evidence" of a flyover that no one saw.

How Embarrassing!

Any "researcher" who spends years looking at 9-11 and can't figure out that planes flew into buildings and AIR PHONES tend to work on airplanes is not really a researcher. They are a participate in a 9-11 kook movement. Will I be banned for that? Being banned from a kook movement is more of a compliment than an insult.

And no, I'm not a LIHOPER, I'm an IHOPER. That's right, the International House of Pancakes was behind it all, those globalist (International) elitists are the ones who have something to gain from the "pancake theory" (House of Pancakes).

See? I can play 9-11 kook freak too. No one has ever "debunked" my Pentagon "Fly Under" theory. It's easy being a 9-11 Kook. And fun for the whole family. Easier than real research and objectively seeking the truth. And serves a good purpose as well, like COVERING UP and DISTRACTING from REAL issues, while at the same time DESTROYING credibility.

airphones

I have not paid much attention to the fake phone calls claim and don't intend to do so. The reason for regarding it as not particularly important is that, regardless of whether the calls were fake or real, the plane hit the Pentagon. No argument raised by either side provides proof that the plane did not hit the Pentagon.

Of course if it could be proved that the calls were faked it would be one more piece of evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, but that is proved absolutely already by a study of the easily proved controlled demolitions and other types of evidence.

There is however a bit of evidence which might be helpful. DRG says that Captain Ralph Kolstad should be a good observer. Regarding the seat back airphones, Kolstad stated: "They were still physically installed in the aircraft, but they were not operational." How simple it would have been to reconnect them.

I don't believe the argument about the phone calls is getting in the way of our educating the public about 9/11, inside job, but the argument about whether the plane hit the Pentagon is doing so. I think DRG's idea that we should find consensus about the Pentagon by agreeing that al Qaeda could not have been in control of the attack is helpful as a means of cooling the arguments. We should support it while we work on providing the scientific proof that the plane hit the Pentagon. Getting this message across will be far more powerful in the end.

Argument from authority

Misleading authority, to be exact.

Pilots for 9/11 Truth were too incompetent to find the last seconds of flight data in AA 77's FDR. The person who found that data, Warren Stutt, was abused by that buffoon Balsamo until banned. P4T used to think, together with CIT, that AA 77's FDR proved AA 77 flew over the Pentagon, even though the FDR was found at the scene.

Balsamo is an awful character with a history of lies, blunders, personal attacks, and staggering incompetence in his own field. The fact that the man is a flight instructor should be a grave matter of concern for the FAA.

Moreover, many of the pilots signed on to his website are proven equally if not more incompetent and excel only in name calling. Balsamo himself once said he "leaned towards" planes hitting the WTC.

Leaned towards.

Here's what happened when Balsamo bumped into mathematician W.D. Clinger, while harassing a classical guitar mailing list.
http://www.cesura17.net/~will/Ephemera/Sept11/Balsamo/balsamo.html
http://www.cesura17.net/~will/Ephemera/Sept11/Balsamo/balsamo2.html

If you're at a stage in your life where you still blindly worship "experts", then you go right ahead and stand with Pilots for 9/11 Truth.

If you've watched the result when Balsamo joins a real pilot forum and starts maniacally kicking, punching and screaming to get a thread criticizing his ridiculous no plane malarkey shutdown as quickly as possible, then you know better. Pilots for 9/11 Truth is a ongoing fiasco.

Balsamo's rap sheet means he no longer is an authority of any kind, and neither are his members. He and his members (who are disciplined and clobbered into line by Balsamo in a dictatorial manner) cannot be trusted, at all.

LOL

Ok, you do that! That group is a laughing stock, you'll be in good company

;)

How cell phone calls were made

I think these phone company records provide evidence of how cell phone calls were made from 9/11 planes.

http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Barbara_Olson_calls

These are calls that went through the "Claircom box" on AA77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. This is the box that handles seatback phones, but calls did not originate from seatback handsets. It appears they came from something plugged into external port #4.

My hypothesis is someone put a picocell (cell phone base station) on the plane and plugged it into Claircom box in order to get a connection to ground stations. The implications are:

.. Someone other than hijackers was involved. The Claircom box was not accessible from the passenger compartment. The picocell must have been installed days beforehand.

.. Cell phone calls were legit. The calls seen here were operator assisted, but calls from United planes, which used a different seatback phone system, might have passed through normally so as to show the caller's cell phone's number on the recipient's CallerID.

I believe calls did not come from seatback phones because HandsetID shows ffff, computer code for -1, meaning unknown. I believe they came from port #4 because Originating # shows 9045550004. The 555 in the middle (NXX) indicates is not a working telephone number, but rather for internal use. Area code (NPA) 904 is in Jacksonville FL. They had to put some three digit number to fill the space. Perhaps software was developed in JAX. The last four digits (NNNN) contain the useful information. I think 0004 means external port #4.

Background: Claircom was an AT&T subsidiary that developed and initially operated the seatback phone system, marketing name Air One, on American Airlines. They sold it to Iridium in 1999. Iridium is known for its network of 66 low-orbit communication satellites, but the Claircom system did not talk through satellites. It used ground stations designed for airplane communication. Iridium's US operation center is in Tempe AZ, which is in Mountain Standard Time. That explains why timestamps on the records show 7:xx am, two hours earlier than they occurred in Eastern Standard Time.

American Airlines was in the process of uninstalling the Claircom system from its planes, but had not yet uninstalled it from this particular plane. The existence of these records proves that. There is a switch in the cockpit enabling the pilot to turn seatback phones off. It is likely that switch turns off handsets while leaving the Claircom box running.

United Airlines was using a system with marketing name Airphone, developed and operated by Verizon (formerly GTE). It would be interesting to see whether records from that system show calls coming through an external port rather than seatback handsets.

Cell Phones in the Toilet rules out Seatback Phones

Edward Felt 9.58 call reported in
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0911.html
and...
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_911_47.htm
and many other places

Todd Beamer's 15 minute call from the toilet...
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/USA/betrug-ENGL-fraud/fraud14_impossible-handy-telephone-calls.htm

Unnamed Spaniad also in toilet reported to Glen Cramer and the call lasted one minute
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/USA/betrug-ENGL-fraud/fraud14_impossible-handy-telephone-calls.htm

I'm sure I read somewhere that Olsen was also apparently in the toilet... anyway she was at the back of the plane...
http://www.zimbio.com/Ted+Olson/articles/6gELkGlBsd7/FBI+9+11+cell+phone+calls+jets+not+happen

Olson was in toilet - according to article on 12th Sept

Yes, Olson was reported to be "locked in the toilet" according to an article on 12th Sept 2001 reported in the Daily Telegraph...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1340339/Wife-phoned-from-hijack-airliner-as-it-hit-Pentagon.html

Quote: "Wife phoned from hijack airliner as it hit Pentagon

By Toby Harnden in Washington

12:00AM BST 12 Sep 2001

The wife of the US solicitor general was on board the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon and phoned her husband seconds before it crashed.

Barbara Olson, 46, was locked in the toilet when the passengers and crew were ordered to the back of the airliner. A spokesman for Mr Olson said: "She called and said she was locked in the toilet and the plane had been hijacked.

"She said they had knives. They had rounded up the passengers at the back of the plane. She referred to them as more than one. There was nothing she could do. She said to her husband: 'What do I do?'"

The call ended seconds before the crash."

Apparently she didn't note the banking, tight turn and descent of the 757 coming in towards the Pentagon... Perhaps someone should ask Toby Harnden where he got his story.

Hello. This is Mark Bingham.

You DO believe me mom, right?

What a joke.