September 12, 2001

11:47 AM

News from here in Boston, the police have arrested people (Boston Globe says 3, other local sources say 1) in Coply Square Hotel, and are investigating passengers on an Amtrak train bound for Providence.

Also, word has it that the Pennsylvania Plane was heading for the White House. There's numerous reports of civilians overtaking the plane and crashing it. If this is true, they saved a lot of lives.
posted by christian (9 comments total)

MSNBC speculating that the plane that hit the Pentagon was the one actually meant for the White House. It apparently circled around the Pentagon before crashing.
posted by mkn at 11:51 AM on September 12, 2001

word has it that the Pennsylvania Plane was heading for the White House

I really don't know how they could know that. As tempting a target the Whitehouse may appear to be, it's protected by Patriot missiles. A more feasible plan would have targeted the Capitol--or even Camp David, which is known throughout the world as a symbol of the effort to bring peace to the Middle East.
posted by jpoulos at 12:18 PM on September 12, 2001

There are rumors of police chasing a bomb suspect around Providence .... and apparently the police have surrounded the Amtrak station in Providence and are attempting to locate some people to interview regarding the evidence they recovered during the downtown hotel raid. Boston.com is being very unreliable today, probably because of huge traffic.
posted by Johannahh at 12:47 PM on September 12, 2001

jpoulos: The White House target theory is on the cover of washingtonpost.com right now.
posted by Johannahh at 12:53 PM on September 12, 2001

More on the Providence raid: Police take man into custody at Providence rail station
posted by Johannahh at 12:54 PM on September 12, 2001

jpoulos: how certain are you of the Patriot missiles at the White House?
posted by Sinner at 3:24 PM on September 12, 2001

Good question. :-)

I don't have a link, but I recall that during the Clinton administration (either when that single-engine plane crashed or when the wacko shot at the the white house with the assault rifle), I heard mention that they put them in (somewhere in the vicinity, they won't say where).

Also, my family is a "Raytheon" family. I'm the first generation not to work there. (Raytheon manufactures the Patriot). They swear it's true.

Not exactly concrete proof, I realize, but it's tough to find a link. Try doing a Google search on "White House" and "Patriot Missile" and you get about 1200 results about selling them to Taiwan.

Personally, I think the Pentagon was the target all along. Ari Fleischer's BS about Air Force One and the WH being targets is an attempt to defend their decision to keep the Pres out of Washington at first.
posted by jpoulos at 5:04 PM on September 12, 2001

Let's say that the PA plane was going to target the White House. Was there enough time between the other attacks and the PA plane to get defenses into place in time?
posted by Pinwiz at 11:31 PM on September 12, 2001

Was there enough time between the other attacks and the PA plane to get defenses into place in time?

Absolutely. The first tower was attacked at 8:45 am. The PA plane didn't go down until 10:10. That's nearly an hour and a half.

OK. Let's examine this. The plane hit the ground at full speed, in an apparent full nose dive. How does something like that happen? It's safe to assume that either:

A. Somebody at the controls was forcing the plane directly toward the ground, in an apparent suicide dive. Or
B. The plane had been shot down and was falling to the ground.

We can also assume that either:

A. The passengers/crew had managed to overpower the hijackers. Or
B. They didn't.

If the passengers weren't able to overcome the hijackers, how on earth did one of them gain control of the airplane long enough to take it from extreme altitude to the ground? It takes time to get to the ground from 35,000 feet. That's 6 and a half MILES in the sky. Even at speeds of 200 miles an hour (which I don't think they can achieve), it would take a full 2 minutes to reach the ground.

Now, if the passengers overpowered the hijackers, why make the suicide dive? Why not try to land the plane? It's valiant to sacrifice oneself to save a potential government target, but if they had taken out the terrorists, there was no need to ensure the death of everyone on board.

The most likely scenario, it seems to me, is that the plane was shot down at high altitude.
posted by jpoulos at 7:58 AM on September 13, 2001