>> thank you. >> the 2015 c-span student camp video competition is under way open to all middle and high school students to create a 5 to 7 minute documentary on the theme the three branches that you, showing policy, action or law by the gesture did -- executive or judicial branch of the federal government has affected you or your community. 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling one hundred thousand dollars. for the list of rules and how to get started go to studentcam.org. ..

>> next, tom mcmillan, vice president of communications for the pittsburgh penguins hockey team. he provides a detailed account of united flight 93 that crashed on 9/11 in pennsylvania. he spoke at barnes & noble. >> thank you, susan, for making me do a great presentation. it's interesting being here at the cranberry barnes & noble, because this is my hometown bookstore. i'm usually browsing for books. i want to thank susie and dave and kim for making this possible and also for c-span2 and

booktv for covering. we will do a q&a afterwards. i'm going to start with a question for myself, if that's okay, which is concern i get a lot -- why would a sports guy write a book about flight 93. it's because no one else did, and apparently no one was going to for a while, and i thought the story needed to be told. i'm a history buff, and i go to gettysburg all the time. i had been out to the temporary memorial ten times, maybe more than that. it's only 90 miles from pittsburgh where the flight crashed, and i wanted to read more and learn more and was frustrated that i couldn't do it. there's amazingly little amounted about flight 93. there was one book written less than a year after the crash. the author did a great job, but there just wasn't much known back then, and in all the time since then, so much more has

come out. and i just thought the story deserved a narrative, a full narrative from beginning to end. not just the flight. the movie, united 93 -- which is great -- it's just the flight. documentary, it's just the flight. my books in 1996 when -- my book starts in 19 t 6, and it goes through the tenth anniversary in 2011 when the national memorial was dedicated. the flight, the two chapters on the night are actually in the middle of the book. the after story in somerset county also really fascinates me. i also thought that the story's being forgotten a little bit. if you look in the media now and you hear september 11th, you see the plane hitting the tower, you see the pentagon, you might see a few seconds of an empty field with a hole. it's nobody as the attacks on -- it's known as the attacks on new york city and washington. i also volunteer out at the site, and the spring tours are middle school students.

they have little or no recollection. there's already a half generation that doesn't remember this day the way we do. the bewilderment and terror that we felt that day. so that was all part of the reason for doing this. now, you can do the story, obviously, on all the details, but it gets down to people. to me, it's people. if you had been at the newark international airport the morning of vefth, 2001, about 7:30 and you walked past gate 17, you would have seen 33 regular passengers and seven crew getting ready for what they thought was a regular flight for san francisco, 8 a.m. takeoff. there were businessmen and grandparents and college students flying to go to a conference, to go on vacation, to go home. one lady had been east to attend

her mother's funeral, the reasons we all travel, regular people. some of the names have been known to history, tom beemer is the singular name most people recognize. he made a call and said "let's roll," but there's some others who i'd like to introduce to you right now whose names aren't remembered but are on that flight. it gives a you and me element to this. deirdre was 20 years old, he was the youngest person on the flight. she was about to enter her junior year at santa clara. she had been east in new jersey, and her mother was ticketed for a later flight, she got up and said maybe i can go standby. she got on the flight and probably was very excited that happened. hilda marson was the exact opposite. she was 79 years old, he was the oldest person on flight 93.

went through ellis island, didn't speak a word 06 english. married a policeman, raised two daughter, became a bookkeeper. she was feisty. family legend has it that a mugger once approached her at a bus stop to, she hit him over the head with an umbrella. she was moving. this is a new part of life for her. she was moving to san francisco to live with her adult daughter and her daughter's husband. her daughter was so excited thinking about going to the airport for this new phase of her life. john manning was also in his 70s. he was a world war ii veteran. he was a retired bartender at the palm restaurant in new york, so he could spin a yarn. but he was traveling with a heavy heart because his stepson had recently been married, had gone to california on a honeymoon, stepson had died in a

car accident, and so john was going to the funeral and to collect the remains. wanda was one of five flight attendants onboard, one of three african-americans on the flight crew. she was a 29-year veteran of united airlines. she had the dream of opening her own real estate office. she was scheduled to fly on september 13th, but she might have a house closing that day, so she asked her boss for a change in schedule and ended up flying on september 11th. they all, they all boarded the plane in a timely fashion, obviously, the crew first, the passengers got on. the plane pulled back from the gate at 8:01. and then it sat there. flight 93 did not take off until be 8:42, and that delay is crucial in the story. the first line of the book is flight 93 was late. if it had taken off 15 or 20 minutes earlier, our view of

this day might have been a lot different, because there were four other men -- sorry about that -- four other men on the flight who knew they weren't coming home. they were part -- this is the story that's well known. they were part of a 19-man terrorist team sent by al-qaeda to hijack four planes that morning, fly them into buildings that symbolized american dominance. but their plan was based on absolute precision. naturally, west coast flight with lots of fuel. there was a takeoff, the first at 7:45, the last one at 8:10. the idea being that these things would happen so fast that no one, not the faa, not the military, not the passengers on the planes could do anything about it. the issue with flight 93, though, you'll notice that we talk about 19 hijackers, not 20. al-qaeda wanted 20. they couldn't get the 20th

hijacker in. they wanted four five-man teams, one pilot, an al-qaeda member who'd been here for about a year training on small planes, then they trained on simulators. they never flew the big planes, but they did simulators, 757s, 767s because they weren't going to have to takeoff and land, so they thought they could get by with that, and they did. one pilot and four muscle hijackers. two to attack the cockpit and take care of the pilot and copilot, kill or disable them and two to herd the passengers and crew to the back of the plane. five-man team. flight 93 had four. they only had three muscle hijackers. did that play a role in what happened later? it very well could have. it also probably played a role in the other delay which was important a which was that this crew took the longest to hijack the plane. al-qaeda's plan was they would take over the plane in 15 minutes. we know that because two of the

plotters are in guantanamo bay, and their stories have been consistent. that ended up being probably unrealistic, but the other three planes did it in 30 minutes. the hijackers on flight 93 took 46 minutes. why? we don't know. those are things that are mysteries we'll never know. the hijacker pilot had a girlfriend, he was the only one who had a girlfriend. he was wavering. did he lose his nerve for a while? only speculation. but it took them longer. so the combination of the delay in taking off and the delay in the hijack plan created an opportunity that didn't exist on the other flights which is that these people can make telephone calls, a lot of phone calls. we hear a lot of todd beemer's calls. there were 37 calls made from flight 93. the early reporting was they were cell phone calls. the media was wrong on that. no criticism of the media, you do what you can in crisis. the early reporting is awful long. people were saying cell phone

calls from 35,000 feet, of the 37 calls, there were two that were cell phones. most of the calls were from seatback phones, air phones. remember those? there was a white phone on the back of the seat, you can pull it out, slide your credit card through, and it was just kind of for silly cars. hey, i'm in the air, i'll be there in an hour. but these people used them effectively. they made -- 12 people made 35 calls on air phones. the technology was still spotty. 20 of those calls disconnected in a matter of seconds, there were no conversation, no impact at all. but 15 got through. that's how we know a lot of what happened on the flight because they told their loved ones what was going on. but the unintended consequence was that the loved ones watching television told them what was going on. the fist flight hit -- first flight hit the trade center at 8:46. we all thought that was an accident, the second flight hit

the tower at 9:03. flight 93 doesn't get hijacked until 9:28. so their loved ones are watching it's. when the calls come in, they're telling them that two planes hit the world trade center. imagine hearing that. you're on a plane, somebody's been stabs, you don't know who's flying the plane, now you're hearing two planes at the world trade center, and our memory will always be the visual. they didn't have the visual. just try to put yourself, if it's possible -- it's really not -- but in their mind hearing that. what would that mean? they're bewildered, they're trying to figure out what to do. then at about a quarter to ten, a couple of them start hearing from their wives that the pentagon's been hit. the pentagon was hit at 9:37. so by the time it's reported, it's probably 9:40, 9:45 that these guys get that information. that changed everything. that galvanized them. they knew they had to do something. if they didn't, a horrendous death was going to beckon.

they were going to hit a building somewhere. so they decided to get together and try to take over the plane. there were, for a small group of passengers, there were an amazing number of large, athletic men on board. i've never studied any other ones. maybe if you're on a flight now, you'll look around. jeremy glick was a black belt in judo. he was 6-1, 220. mark bingaman was 6-4, 225, he was a national collegiate rugby champion. tom burnett, high school quarterback, coo of a company. todd beemer played college basketball and baseball, two other men were weight lifters. there were some serious athletic guys here. and a great cross-section of americana. amazing amount of women, emts, smart, leaders, many of them had been athletes. it was a group that some people like to say they were put there, there was a destiny there that they were able to do it.

i don't know if you could ever say that, but what they did, what they did was amazing. the counterattack started at 9:57. we know that for two reasons. three ladies were still on the plane at that point, two flight attendants and one passenger, and they all said something to the effect of, i've gotta go, everybody's running to the cockpit. three different people reported that. the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder -- and it was recovered from flight 93, the only one of the four flights. only the families a and a jury have heard the tape, but i was able to obtain a very detailed transcript, and you can figure out what's going op. they talk about where the sounds are coming from, arabic vows, english voice, male voice, female voice. at 9:57 the pilot say toss the other hijacker, what's that, a fight? there's sounds of screams in arabic. so the first thing they a did was take down the two muscle

hijackers. the pilot realizes something's going on, so he starts waving the wings to try to throw them off balance. imagine that happening. they're trying to charge the cockpit, the plane's now going this way with a guy who doesn't know how to fly the plane. there's an animation that the ntsb did of the haunting, and you can see this start to happen. and then he starts going up and down. so it stops them for a while. but he can't do that forever. so that stops, they regain their momentum. a little bit of a 10:00 the transcript describes a native english speaking voice as saying in the cockpit, if we don't, we'll die. and be that's where i just want to say, we americans have a thing for taking heroic stories and having them made-to-add myths on top of. that how many of you heard the passengers and crew of flight 93 sacrifices their lives to save

other lives. they took down the plane to save the capitol. that's what happened, but that's not what they intended. they were trying to take back the plane and save themselves. they thought they could save themselves. that, obviously, would save lives and save the capitol, but that was their intention. there was a licensed pilot onboard. donald drain could fly small planes. he wasn't licensed to fly a 757 which invest, but he had knowledge of aviation. another man onboard had worked air traffic control for the california air national guard. so it wasn't you and me. these were guys who might have had a chance. it still would have been a huge long shot probably, but on a clear day with instruction every step of the way from air traffic control on the ground, they might have had a fighting chance. it certainly was worth it. in the cockpit, if we don't, we'll die. they thought there was an option that they might not die. the battle continued. it got to the cockpit door. did they get in? we'll never know. the fbi didn't conclude that

they did. it was inconclusive. the sounds, according to the transcript, are really loud. i think they probably did. the sounds on the transcript get really loud and think it must have meant the door was open. there was a point very late in the flight -- it ended up crashing at 10:03 -- there's a very loud shout from an english-speaking male that says, turn it up! right after that there's a shout in arabic that yells put it, pull it down! turn it up, pull it down. is that a battle for control? might be. i think we can say it might be. we'll never know for sure. at the very end just after 10:03, a few seconds after 10:03, you can see the yoke of the wheel turns very hard to the right, and the plane turns upside down. we don't know what caused that. did the hijacker pilot realize he was going to be taken over and just ditch the plane? they were told to do that.

mohamed atta was their leader, said if you can't hit your target, crash the plane. he told his compatriots that he would crash his plane into the streets of new york city if he couldn't hit the world trade center. so that was something they were assigned. but it also could have turned because they were fighting for control. again, we'll never know, but it was because of the efforts of the peaks and crew -- passengers and crew, whatever reason, they caused that. the plane goes upside down, goes into a death plunge. it crashes at 563 miles an hour, 40 degree angle. imagine the devastation of a plane hitting that quickly. and it was into another unique quirk of the story. it didn't just land in an open story, it landed in a reclaimed strip mine. this was an area where the dirt had been dug out. over the years they stripped the coal, and then they put the dirt back in. so it wasn't soft if you walked on it, but it wasn't as consolidated as regular, dense earth.

and that's right where the plane hit. what investigators believe happened is that with the force of the impact, the front part of the plane, including the cockpit, snapped off, shattered and flew into a grove of hemlock trees. a lot of plane debris was found, a lot of hijacker information was found, passports, things like that. there was an immediate fireball 75 feet in the air, but it didn't burn long because there was not much to burn. the last two-thirds of the plane went into the ground, plowed into the ground accordion deep. the cockpit voice reporter was located in the back of the plane, they found it 25 feet in the ground. they found items 35 feet in the ground. how hard did that plane hit? the fbi dug 40 feet to make sure they couldn't find anything else. one of the amazing things that happened here, this point so different from new york city and d.c. because it landed in small

town america. the state police didn't get there first, the fbi didn't get there first, the citizens of somerset county got there first. some of them saw the plane, they heard the plane, they felt their houses shake, and they knew the coal roads, so they got back there, and then the local fire department. they were there before the authorities. the fbi certainly came in, took over the site in two weeks, they say they gathered 95 % of the plane. small pieces. one of the things happened, conspiracy theories started. there's still people out there that say a plane didn't crash in shanksville. the early witnesses said there was nothing there, we didn't see anything. they were looking for big plane parts. they expected to see pieces of fuselage, pieces of wigs. the biggest piece they found was the size of a hood of a car, a piece of the fuselage. the heaviest piece was a 1,000-pound part of an engine fan.

everything else was shattered into debris. that's what stunned those people, that that had happened. as for people, they were also looking for first survivors or any of those, bodies, there weren't any of those. talked to the county coroner who, again, was a local funeral home director, all of a sudden a national tragedy happens on his ground, he and the investigators conclude ared there were about 8% of the human remains were found. the rest they believe were just vaporized. small remains, nothing more than a had or a foot. -- hand or a foot. that's all they found. wally and local firemen combed the land, before he allowed any family members down there, he didn't want anyone to see a piece of human remains, so they got about 650 pounds, but that was it. the fbi was there for about two weeks, made their conclusions. it was maybe the most important investigative site because this plane didn't hit a building. there was more evidence here

because of that. because it hit the ground. than there were at the other sites. but after two weeks they left, it was turned over to the jurisdiction of the coroner, wally miller, and then the people of somerset county started over. they started their own temporary memorial. there was no coordination, they had no curism. so they had to make -- no tourism. they had to make it up. they paved a small area, created the temporary memorial. people volunteered to tell as much of the story as they could. and eventually the national park service started funding, and they were going to open a national memorial hopefully on the tenth anniversary. those things are never easy. they had a design competition. a thousand people were involved. they picked a beautiful design, and for about six months they had to deal with bloggers saying that the design was actually a tribute to the terrorists. it wasn't. they had to deal with that. it was land acquisition. eight different people owned the land. they wanted 2200 acres for the

entire project. eight different homeowners, two companies and six individuals. it took a while to negotiate. the federal government had to get involved, a couple places had to threaten eminent domain, but in 2009 the secretary of the interior came, and they got it done, and they broke ground for the national memorial. it was dedicated on the weekend of the tenth anniversary. obviously, the tenth anniversary, that was a sunday. the day before, saturday, september 10th, they dedicated this memorial, unveiled the wall of names. i drove out there that day. there were about 4,000 people. there were two presidents on stage, george bush, george w. bush and bill clinton were there. tell you, it doesn't matter your politics, you see two presidents sitting on stage, it's pretty powerful. and they both gave great speeches. they were joined by the sitting vice president, joe biden. i thought the speeches were great. he gave the most eloquent talk, and it may have been because it

was most personal for him. this plane was almost surely headed toward the capitol. there was a joint session of congress that day. he probably was thinking if these guys, the passengers and crew don't do what they did, i might not be here. he went back to honor them. he went all the way back to the beginning of the history of the country, lexington and concord, and he used a line from cap doing john parker who said if they mean to start a war, let it begin here. and the passengers and crew of flight 93 had no idea there was going to be a war on terror, but they fought the first battle in the skies over somerset county, and that's why we have to honor them and tell the story. thank you, and i'm open to questions. >> [inaudible] >> that'll be the first question. it was not shot down. and, you know, throughout history, i'm a history buff, we should always be skeptical, we should ask for stories, ask for

explanations. i certainly followed the jfk assassination conspiracy for many years. and conspiracy theories are often very interesting, we want to believe them. but in this case i can attack this in several different ways. first of all, there's no evidence -- there has to be evidence somewhere. you can't just say it might have been, or there was enough time or certainly the military would have -- that's a lot of the thing. no evidence that it happened. multiple people saw flight 93 intact in its final moments. this plane was very low. many people saw it as it flew over those little somerset county towns. there was a man when actually saw it go into the ground. he was working in a scrap yard. nobody saw a plane trailing it, nobody saw anybody fire anything, nobody saw a missile, nobody saw an explosion. the fbi, though, was aware of this potential possibility in the early moments.

thetassinged the pennsylvania state -- tasked the pennsylvania state police to fly along the flight path. if somebody had shot it, something would have fallen out of the plane. there was nothing. they took hundreds of state police officers. and the coroner, wally miller, said, you know, this isn't a city. this is hunters' haven out here. hunting season started in a couple of weeks. for a city boy like me, this was farmland. you wouldn't have been able to hide anything. so nothing has come back. the other thing is there was the norad tapes are available. there's a story in "vanity fair" magazine, they're accessible online. this is not a criticism of the military. everybody was so confused that morning. this had never happened before. it's easy to look at history in 20/20 hindsight, with 20/20 clarity. there was no protocol for shooting down a commercial

jetliner. and there were four armed f-16s on the east coast, two of them over new york and two from happeningly were assigned to -- langley were assigned to go to, actually, first baltimore because they thought washington was going to get hit. if you see the movie united 93, the guy is screaming why are they over the ocean? that's the way they were trained. they were trained against foreign threats. they weren't trained to go against a commercial airliner with american citizens onboard. the other thing is you have to remember the timing. it wasn't until the second flight hit the tower that any of us realized we were under attack. that's 9:03. flight 93 crashed at 10:03. that's an hour. imagine synthesizing and processing that. also the 9/11 commission really looked into a shootdown odder. the president and vice president did a shootdown order, but not until after the flight had crashed. they were not notified flight 93 had been hijacked until four m.s

after it -- can minutes after it had crashed. if it happened again, we would have been ready. the military folks told the 9/11 commission that this were convinced that there were two fighters over washington, d.c. to protect -- by 10:00 in the morning, that they were convinced if the flight had gone farther and threatened washington, d.c., they would have shot it down. the 9/11 commission still wasn't sure. they were skeptical of that. but they were in position. but i think just to think of it that there would have been f-16s flying over the country -- there were 4500 planes in the air at that point. they all -- there was a ground stop, and they were all told to land, but it took two hours to land them. 4500 planes all going to different airports. so that's a wide ranging answer to that, but i think every step of the way there has to be -- it's intriguing to talk about it and the 9/11 truthers are out there, and everybody's entitled

to their opinion. you respect people's opinion. that's my opinion, and i think you have to go on evidence, and there wasn't any, but thanks for making that the first question. >> [inaudible] how many terrorists were there? >> 19. khalid sheikh mohammed who was the mastermind originally wanted 26 or 27. they underestimated how difficult it was to get some of these guys into the united states. first of all, you had to be willing to martyr yourself, right? you had to be able to get in. they got 19. they wanted 20, they wanted four five-man teams. there were at least nine men that investigators identified as a potential 20th hijacker. none of them were able to get in. one almost made it. one flew -- this was, one time where the um gration service -- immigration service kept one of the hijackers out. because these guys had clean passports. they were able to get in. the saudis in particular, or 15 of the 19 were saudis, easy for

them to get into the country at that time. one was in orlando in early august who's now in guantanamo bay. and a very alert immigration official started questioning him, and he was very belligerent. he only had a one-way ticket, he didn't have any money, and he didn't know who he was meeting. they sent him back on the plane. as it turned out, investigators found out that mohamed atta, his car was in the garage at the orlando airport that night. so he was there to pick him up. so he, in all likelihood, would have been the fifth hijacker on flight 93. it would have given them five. they had four. again, we can't speculate how much having only four instead of the five affected flight 93, but it might have had something to do with it. it might have had something with that delay in taking it over. but they underestimated -- their planning was, i'd say, evilly brilliant, but they underestimated how difficult it was to get some of those people

in. and yet, you know, people often ask me did you learn anything or what most shocked you? i knew it a little bit, but until you really investigate it, the brazen way they lived in our country umped their own names -- under their own names. they didn't try to use aliases, they used their own identification. there was a cockiness there that they didn't think they were going to get found out. and osama bin laden, we know, was pressuring them early that summer to get it going, get it going, get it going. he was afraid the u.s. authorities would find it out. mohamed atta kept saying he needed more time. and, you know, we go back and forth whether the capitol really was the target. certainly flight 93 was going to washington, d.c., we know that. debate whether it was the capitol or the white house. most -- the guys at guantanamo bay all say the capitol. the capitol's the one that made sense because the white house, you know, al-qaeda documents

say this, they thought it would be harder to identify from the sky. which is probably true. the capitol is very identifiable. but also september 11th, that was the first week of a joint session of congress. so if you were trying to disrupt the government, to hit the capitol on a day where a joint session of congress, potentially decapitate the legislative branch of the government -- again, many of these mysteries we can never solve because all those guys are gone. and they didn't write anything about that. but i the two plotters who were still in guantanamo say the capitol, and all the reasonable speculation points to that's what it was. >> what was the relationship between wally miller and the families of the, those who crashed on the plane? >> it was, it was amazing. it's one of the most fascinating after stories that i found. and it really -- that's the difference of, i think, small town america.

granted, especially in new york there were so many more victims in new york. not only were there more people in the plane, but all those people in the towers. almost 3,000 people died in new york. and the pentagon had more than 100. but here with these 40 in little somerset county with a guy who was just a funeral home director and who had said to his dad that morning, his dad started the family business and was the previous coroner of somerset county, and they're watching the action in new york in the crash, and wally says to his dad imagine being the coroner in new york city today. and literally an hour later, a plane crashed in his jurisdiction. he also said -- this is very interesting. the one thing especially for kids, people don't understand why there aren't more photos. it's not that long ago. we didn't have -- people didn't have cameras in their cell phones back then. there wasn't social media.

imagine how an event like 9/11 would be different today, how it'd be reported, how information would have gotten out. everybody would have been talking photos. it was different. wally miller told me from the beginning until the fbi showed up, and think if i remember correctly noon or a little bit afterwards because it took a while to get there, and you had to drive, they didn't make any connection with what was going on in new york city. they were dealing with a crash, a plane had crashed in a field in somerset county, and they just didn't make the connection. they were bewildered by it. it wasn't until the fbi came in that they realized -- again, they're not watching tv. they were, they were away -- the people who went out there were away from television, away from radios. you couldn't check your smartphone. you know, just the communication back then -- it is one of our challenges that the memorial, and i'm sure the one in new york too, explaining that to kid now. because all they know is constant social media, constant

photo taking, and there really is only one still photo of the aftermath of flight 93. a lady living about a mile and a half away in india lake heard the plane, felt the tremors, felt the crash, and her camera was on her kitchen table, and she reached out and took a photo. what it is is of a big, black smoke cloud raising over the barns and the trees. she was a mile and a half away. but that's the only -- and that cloud dissipated very quickly. that's the one photo that we have, and as you go to the -- if you go to the national memorial now, that's the first photo that you see when you show up, and it's quite striking. she named the photo "and the serenity" because she thought it was appropriate and still lives out there, and there are two parents you can see -- two barns you can see that frame that. and she says i look out every day and think in a blink of an eye, i might not have been here. people there are affected.

and yet this is a trait of small town america. you talk to some of the people from somerset county, wally miller, the assistant fire chief, they don't think they did anything great. their response was just phenomenal. they don't think that. rick king told me any -- people from any small town would have done that. maybe so. maybe not. you don't know. i told him, we were sitting in the shanksville fire hall, and i said, but you did. a point that's in the book, i think we all ask what would we do in a situation like that, if we were under pressure? how would we react? tom burnett who was one of the men who led the counterattack was a history buff. he was once talking to his wife about gettysburg, and he said i wonder if i would have that courage to do that. and, obviously, he kid. but i think -- he did. but i think all of us ask that question, and you don't know. i wrote about the other three flights because i don't think in

any way the people on the other three flights were any less brave. they didn't have the information. they didn't have the time. it happened so quickly. the people on flight 93 did have the time and the knowledge. nonetheless, they had to do what they did, and it's awe inspiring and incredible and bewildering that they came to that conclusion to do what they did. and, you know, had they started a little bit earlier when the plane was a little bit higher, they might have had a chance. it was too low. when they started the struggle, if it was a struggle, it was just going to be too quick, and they weren't going to be able to save the plane. but i tell you, it is chilling to read that line in the cockpit, "if we don't, we'll die." to me, that was the one that underscored they weren't trying to take the plane down which was the original speculation. they were trying to, they were trying to save it. >> most of the stories that you read about these tragedies are just factual stories.

you had a unique opportunity and access to the families to get a whole different perspective, how was that? >> it was. and my goal in this book was not to speak to every family because the first book in 2002, that was the core of his book. so i didn't want to just rewrite his book. he did such a great job. and one thing i've learned in studying history and the civil war is the contemporary accounts for the most accurate because as time goes on, in gettysburg, 1863 battle reports are more accurate than what they wrote in 1888 when they realized how history was judging them. and they kind of tweaked the story a little bit. it's just human nature. a lot of the stuff about the flight i tried to use their contrary accounts. and they had done some oral histories only a few years after flight. i was more interested in talking to the family members, the ones who were involved in the memorial and the aftermath. because i really did think, you know, when i told some people

that the book didn't end with the flight, they were surprised by this. no, there are eight chapters after that. the after story fascinated me, and they were involved in it. first of all, their reaction -- imagine finding out that information about your loved ones, how they found out. how they all got there in a matter of days. and, you know, some remained very involved out there. some come every few years. some have moved on. everybody handles death differently. we all would. but i was especially interested in talking to the ones who were still involved because he were part of that, it was a battle. you'd like to think it would have been easier to do the memorial, especially there, but one of their challenges was that it wasn't new york and d.c. and at the trade center, most of the people who died there were from new york. at the pentagon most of the people who died there were either from d.c. or living in d.c. nobody from western pennsylvania died in flight 93, so there was no local core. these were 40 families scattered

across the country and the world. and for the people who did it, and it's a tribute actually back to the coroner, wally miller, because he was the one who called them together. there was no organizing factor. he was the one who called them together about six months after the night and really give them a tutorial on what had happened because he thought they really hadn't been told by anybody. and he suggested they form an organization. and he was really concerned that if they didn't get involved, that there wouldn't be a proper memorial, and he was terrified that there would be relic hunters out there. it was rural america, and he wanted somebody to oversee the site. so they give him a lot of credit for being the catalyst. and like rick king and the others, he wants no credit at all. but he really was. and he, i was just out at the anniversary this september 11th, and the service the first one you could show up for a while. you could see the families react to him. it was different.

it was personal. and the families here now that their experience was different. so the whole somerset county, rural pennsylvania, i think, is a very important part of this story. >> the story about tom ridge, a speech he made where he turned to the crowd? >> yeah, i was -- a few other things. i was writing about my own experience. that was on the tenth anniversary, tom ridge was the featured speaker. because the presidents at that point went to new york for that day. so he was the featured speaker. he was the governor of pennsylvania at the time, and he was on the site a few hours after the crash happened and then a few weeks later he was asked by president bush to be the first secretary of homeland security, so he was very much involved in the story and raised a lot of money. but he was giving a speech that day, and he looked out, and the families had gotten there early. there were probably 900 family members in chairs. the rest of the people were just standing around in the mud.

it rained all week, it was really muddy. and i think he wanted the families to know how many people were there. and he said and i think your presence here is almost as important to the families as the memorial. and the families stood up, and you could tell they were shocked. and they gave the people who showed up a standing ovation. i don't cry much, by started -- i had some tears in my eyes because you were just bewildered. but you could see how they appreciated -- they hadn't seen, i talked to him, and he said he just, he thought that would be their reaction, and he bammed to do that. concern he wanted to do that. he went right back to his speech because it obviously tugged -- >> so the people were behind the families -- >> right. the families were sitting in front of the stage. there was seating only for the families. the rest of us were just standing around on the hillside in the mud. did i mention the mud? [laughter] they hustled to get it, obviously, they really hustled

to get it open. the other thing that happened was i mentioned the two days that, saturday was the dedication, sunday the anniversary, the tenth anniversary. monday morning they closed the memorial two days after it was open because they wanted to have a funeral service. each of the families ten years earlier had held their own services in different places around the country and the world, but wally miller thought it was important to have a burial site there. and they had three caskets of intermingled and unidentified remains. and he talked to the families, and the families decided they wanted it buried right at the impact site. it wasn't open to the public, not a lot of people until i wrote it here know that's the case, but there are three caskets out there. and he had an actual ec can cumin call service with the military honor guard. and that meant a lot to the families. and it was their kind of final formal act together. and that was wally's final act. he said it's probably the only

cemetery in the world where there'll be one burial, and that was it. eventually i think you can't go out there now, you can get to about 75 yards from the impact site, but that's now the sacred ground. only the families can go out there, which i think is very appropriate. but i also think that in time -- i don't know how long time would be, 50, 75 years -- it'll end up being like the civil war battlefields. my guess is as long as this generation of family mens, the people who experienced it, are there, that's their sacred ground. i think maybe we'll be able, you'll be able to go out there, i don't know. i was fortunate enough twice to be taken out there and go -- part of investigation and research for the book and to go into the woods and to have wally tell me where they found certain stuff. it's pretty eerie. it really opens up your eyes. >> is there any stone or anything there that -- >> yeah. i'm sorry, there's a large

sandstone boulder which was not right there, but it was in the field somewhere. they moved it over. because, again, 75 yards away, first question is where did it hit? that's the first question people have. so the sandstone boulder marks where it hit, and the caskets are right in front of that. and so that's kind of, you know, you see it from a distance, it's a very solemn and humbling place. as one who volunteers there, people are different when they leave. you see people come in laughing and chattering, and they're different when they leave. it's that, it's that kind of memorial -- it's not a monument. they did not want that. they wanted it to be a landscape memorial. they wanted it to not look like it would look in new york city or washington d.c. they wanted it to look like the rural field in so manier set county where the -- somerset county where the plane crashed. there's a wall with names, each one of the passenger and crew's name, 40 of those, and that marks the flight path. and in next anniversary finally

they've gotten enough money, and they will complete the memorial with a visitors and learning center. that's the one thing we don't have out there right now, and that will really enhance the experience especially for young people because it will be able to tell the story. now you don't have that, and we as volunteers are told to be reactive, not proactive. but i think that will -- >> up on the hill? >> yes, that's what they're building. and you'll actually come in, and you'll walk down the flight path. that was the architect's original intelligent. they just didn't -- intent. they just didn't have enough money at the beginning, and they wanted to get something open by the tenth anniversary, they thought that was important. it's not complete. won't be complete until next year. >> very similar to the vietnam wall. >> there are a lot of people who come, who draw that conclusion. >> in d.c. where they're placing things and -- >> yes. yes. >> those things that are being placed there and going back to the original when they just had the guards -- >> yes.

>> you remember the guardrails? >> yes. >> that's all going -- >> yeah. there was a fence out there. there wasn't much of an original temporary memorial. there was a fence, and people just wanted to lee things -- leave things. and every day they would leave things. and they had somebody from the somerset county historical society go and collect them and save them, and they have over 60,000 items that over the years people have left. now, they can't display all 60,000, they're going to rotate some of those items. i can tell you as a volunteer, that's the single -- other than where did the flight crash, it's where are those items? people who went earlier remember that fence. and some of them are mad that the fence isn't there. they thought it was a static fence. they took the stuff off all the time. it wasn't just one set of items. 60,000 items. but they did -- and there's still little nooks in the pathway now where people still leave things and, again with the names. you'll see flowers and notes from family members.

it's that kind of place. but a lot of people come up from d.c., and they draw the comparison with the -- i think it's very similar to the vietnam memorial. >> 24 stewardesses from united that were out there -- [inaudible] >> yeah. there's a result l bit of a pilgrimage there. i think as it should be, and it means something. i find it interesting out there when a pilot or a flight attendant is there. you can try to do the research into it, but you don't have that perspective. air traffic controller, you know, they really have -- it's like going to gettysburg with a military man. they understand it more than we ever can. >> tom, your decision to have the proceeds go to the memorial, how will that enhance the their ability to do the things you're talking about? >> i am donating my author's proceeds to the memorial. i didn't want to make money on this project. and i think a lot of it, there'll be one little piece of the brick and mortar that a they

still have to build, they're going to build a tower of voices way out at the entrance to honor the passengers and crew. but i think a lot of it now the money they're collecting will go to education. they want to start having more educational -- once they have a visitors center and learning center, they can do the kinds of programs they haven't been able to do because there hasn't been a place. and as time goes on and, again, it is striking when you see the middle school children who just have no recollection. you know, such an important day, memorable day in our lives, but everybody from now on isn't going to have that memory, so we've got to do a better job of teaching and not allow that to happen. so a lot of it is going to go into that kind of education, youth problems -- youth programs, getting people involved. the people that go are interested. it's 20 miles off the turnpike. i'm always impressed when people go there. you just don't stumble across the flight 93 national memorial. and i thought, though, it

underscored as i was doing this what i thought was a need for the back book. because even people who were interested enough to go out there, i found they really didn't know a lot of the story. i think, you know, after a few days after these big events, people go on with their lives, and a lot of this in here, it isn't, you know, each individually might be new, but nobody put it together. you'd have to go in a hundred different places. hopefully, you'll think i did that for you, and people can now find those things. one of the things that really got me going on this was when i heard they had done all these oral histories. the staff out there has done hundreds of oral histories with family members, first responders, local citizens, everybody affected. and i said to them it's great you did all this work, but somebody has to write this. it's great to do it and they're public, but, you know, people just don't know to be able to go out and ask, and, obviously, it takes a lot to read through all of those. hopefully, you know, if this

book serves a purpose other than telling a story, maybe it'll inspire somebody else to write a book. i can do more, i can do better. 150 years later we're still writing about gettysburg, so i think there still has to be more written about this day. and there is more information than we've had before, so maybe somebody else will try to do it too. >> when you interviewed the first responders, the people from somerset county, where did most of your interviewing take place when you met some of them? >> out there, on the phone, oral historyish. you know, there was no -- when you're doing a book and you have a full-time job, you do it whenever you can. a little bit out there. certainly, some of the people who now work or volunteer at the memorial were those people. they've been involved since the early days. so they have become my friends, and i felt more comfortable with talking to them sometimes just over the phone because i knew them. with somebody i didn't know i wanted to meet hem in person. --

them in person. but, you know, you do it as you can. and i've been involved in a couple sports books, but that's like doing a high school book report compared to doing this. you research -- i've heard people say this, but you're researching as you're going. you're learning things as you're going. i went back and rewrote some things because i found more information as i was going. and the book takes, you know, i looked at my original book proposal, and the chapters aren't the same. as you're writing, as you're researching, as you're feeling the story, you make changes too. and that's the other thing about somebody else maybe writing a book. i've probably read ten books about pickett's charge, every author's going to be hate l bit different. -- a little bit different. these are hinges, i tried to tell the whole story, but obviously these are things i'm interested in, the stories i thought were interesting and people should know. i end the book with a story about first graders at the shanksville stony creek school,

and their teacher a few weeks after a wasn't sure if the first graders really understood what had happened. they talked about it, but she didn't know if they got it. and she looked out the window one day, and the boys were playing flight 93. and they were saving the plane and beating back the bad guys. and the plane never got taken down. and the reason i tell that story is i don't know why, that's the first oral history i read. i got a stack of oral histories, and it's joyce dunn, first grade teacher, and i thought, i'm going to read this one. i read that story -- this was two years ago -- and i said to myself, that's the ending of the book. as a writer, even for a newspaper story or book, you sometimes can think that, and it doesn't work. but it just -- i thought it worked beautifully. i thought it summed it up that, you know, of the legacy of that day moving on. and that was just, you know, one of the people asked me what sticks out. there are a thousand little stories like that that all kind

of stick out. >> like to see your book, you know, when it came out. it's not easy for someone who hasn't written a book to get a book published, is it? >> no. [laughter] it is, it's not. i mean, the accomplishment for anybody out there that wants to write a book, i would say try it because you never know. i had no credentials to write this other than i was a history buff, and i wanted to do it, and there was an opening, and nobody had done it. and i think if you try, you can do it. i hope more people do that. it's, you have to get a little bit lucky, and you have to find somebody who believes in you. i found an editor and a publishing company who believed and wanted to do it. and it's quite a process. and i can tell you, it's tough giving up the book at the end. you're making changes, making changes, making changes. about march, that was it, and i

said to my editor, any mistakes i've made are now memorialized for history. >> the cover of the book, i think, is fabulous. did you design that cover? >> no, no. >> how did you come up with -- >> i really like it. i know they have a designer who did it. obviously, they have the author involved. they don't give you final veto power, but they wanted me to like it. this is not an automatic cover for a story like this because there's no image, singular image of the flight 93 story. there is a singular image of the world trade center, of the pentagon. many things in history there are images you can think of. there really isn't on here. we looked at a full plane, and i didn't want like that, and then it was a field, but unless it was the actual field, and i thought their idea of just trying to have a sky and a little hint of a plane kind of was perfect. they did a little red, white and blue. the other interesting thing i learned is about book titles. i think a lot of us, you go through the bookstore and see a

lot of fancy titles, and i had some fancy titles out there. editor didn't like them. he asked me, what's the book about? we're at year end. what's the book about? flight 93. he said, that's the title then. which made a lot of sense. we can get all creative about what the title should be, september patriots or whatever, it's about flight 93, so get creative in the subtitle. that's what we did. there are things that, i've read a thousand history books. the things you just don't think of until you do this. you kind of think you know about the industry, but you really don't. i learned a lot. that was part of the process. hey, thank you, guys. appreciate you coming out. [applause] >> here are some programs to watch for on booktv this weekend. coverage of the sixth annual boston book festival which features author panels on

technology, local government and navigating the tingal world. on -- digital world. on ""after words,"" jeff chang. pulitzer prize-winning biologist edward o. wilson examines what makes us supremely different from other species. and book on abraham lincoln and the founding fathers, wrongful imprisonment and the targeting of journalists by governments around the world. for more information on this weekend's 48-hour television schedule, visit us online at booktv.org. >> you describe with wonderful popular science detail in here why dogs are so good at this. tell us what you think most people don't know about why, the kinds of things that dogs can do that machines can't do, that human beings can't do. >> they imprint scent in a much more complicated and layered way than humans do. so the example i've been using, and handlers use this too -- this is from my education from

them, but they call it a stew or a hamburger. what we recognize as stew, the dogs are smelling all of the ingredients, and they can pull them out. so this becomes important in searching for ied because the composition of a particular homemade explosive is never going to be exactly the same ever time. they're crude and easy to make in that way. so the good thing about a dog is that when they smell a particular amount of door, a particular odor -- and it it cae duct tape, but something they recognize as part of the stew, they'll alert on it. it doesn't need to be the complete scent, it just needs to be the individual ingreed yet. >> the mixture of nature and nurture in training cogs. are all of them able to do it? does the military have to find particularly good scenters? >> i think it's helpful in understanding dogs. as a species, they're uniquely talented in this way, but dogs are like people.

just because they're sort of born with this feasibility doesn't mean that they're the adept at using them or outside circumstances or different environments impede them or if they become frightened or uncomfortable, you know, even though they have the this ability within them, it's not always easy for them to put it to task. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> booktv covers hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long, and here's a look at some of the events we'll be attending this week. look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. on monday we're at the jewish community center of san francisco for former cia operative robert baer's talk on the history of political assassinations. the next evening at the university of pennsylvania be bookstore in philadelphia, stephen -- [inaudible] examines the life of josef stalin from the first of his

three-volume biography. on wednesday, james robins recounts the military career of general george custer in hudson, ohio. and on thursday in brooklyn, new york, mark leibovich, chief national correspondent for "the new york times" magazine, profiles several politicians and members of the media. that's a look of some of the author programs booktv will be covering this upcoming week. for more, go to our web site, booktv.org, and visit "upcoming programs." ..ly. >> host: michael korda, who