Phone Call Made To Wife, Mother
Passengers on one of the planes terrorists crashed into the
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, planned to resist the
hijackers, according to the widow of one of the passengers who was
interviewed by CNN. About three-and-a-half minutes before the
doomed United Airlines Flight 175 struck the trade center's south
tower, Brian David Sweeney, a 38-year-old former U.S. Navy pilot
from Barnstable, Mass., made two phone calls. Sweeney left a
message for his wife, Julie, on his home answering machine, then he
called his mom.
"We assume he was calling from the back of the plane, because he
said, 'They might come back here. I might have to go. We are going
to try to do something about this,' " Julie recalled.
The calls came to light in a January statement from the
independent commission investigating the attacks. Louise Sweeney
confirmed that her son called, but said the details were too
personal for her to discuss. Julie Sweeney, who has since
remarried, was willing to describe the call Brian Sweeney made to
his mom.
"Whether he was doing something or whether they [the hijackers]
were coming back, I don't know that," she said. "It was more
speculative than fact as far as why he hung up the phone quickly --
whether it's because they were charging the cockpit or whether they
were coming back to where he was and he didn't want to be seen on a
phone.
She said he then told his mother he loved her and hung up the
phone. His mother switched on her television to see live pictures
of her son's plane crashing, Julie Sweeney said.
"Do I believe Brian went down swinging?" she said. "Absolutely.
Do I believe it was too late? Absolutely. Regardless of 'what if,
what if, what if,' it won't change the outcome."
The message Brian Sweeney left his wife on their answering
machine was a farewell, she said. "If things don't go well, and
it's not looking good, I want you to know I absolutely love you,"
Julie Sweeney recalled him saying.
Julie Sweeney said she thinks the main reason Brian made the
calls was to "let us know where he was, what was happening, and to
give us his final love and wishes for our lives, because he knew he
was on a doomed flight," she said
The Sweeneys described the two phone calls to FBI agents who
visited them the day of the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon.
Brian Sweeney's flight, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Los
Angeles, California, crashed about 15 minutes after hijackers
crashed American Airlines Flight 11, with 87 passengers and crew,
into the trade center's north tower. Sweeney, who flew an F-14 in
the Persian Gulf War and was a U.S. Navy flight instructor for the
Navy in Miramar, California, was working for a Defense Department
contractor, Brandes Associates.
United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the ground in
rural Pennsylvania, was believed to be the only September 11 flight
in which passengers were able to battle the hijackers. Informed of
the earlier crashes, several passengers aboard rose to the rallying
cry "Let's Roll," the final known words uttered by Todd Beamer, and
tried to overtake the hijackers. The plane, which was headed to the
nation's capital, most likely aiming for the White House or U.S.
Capitol, crashed in an empty coal field in Shanksville.
The independent commission investigating the September 11
attacks disclosed in a January staff statement that Sweeney was one
of three people aboard Flight 175 who made phone calls. Fellow
passenger Peter Burton Hanson and flight attendant Robert Fangman
were the others.
"Reports from Flight 175 included one passenger predicting the
hijackers intended to fly an aircraft into a building," the
commission staff statement said. "Another said the passengers were
considering storming the cockpit." The statement did not indicate
who made the calls. There is no mention of such calls in Congress'
report of its investigation into the attacks.
Telephone calls from two flight attendants from Flight 11 and
one passenger and one flight attendant from American Airlines
Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, have also been reported
to investigators, according to the commission.