Latest / The Red Solo Traveler Podcast / Washington Was Eighteen Minutes Away. They Put the Plane in a Field.

Transcript

Washington Was Eighteen Minutes Away. They Put the Plane in a Field. · The Red Solo Traveler Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Red Solar Traveler podcast. Today, our mission
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: is to ask you to sit with us, to really reflect.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We are analyzing a profound piece of writing by Louis
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: regarding the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Right. And it's an incredibly serious, heavily reflective subject. We
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: want you to look at this piece of history, you know,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: not as some distant headlines, but as a series of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: deliberate physical realities.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And to do that, I want to pull you
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: out of whatever your cultural memory is, like watching the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: news on a college TV or wherever you were. We
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: need to start physically on the tarmac at Newark.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Because that's where the entire physics of the event changed.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Flight 93 pushed back from gate 17 at
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: exactly 8.01 a.m. But the thing is, the wheels didn't
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: actually leave the runway then.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: That Boeing 737 just sat there in heavy routine morning traffic.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It didn't physically lift into the air until 8.42 a.m.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: And that delay, that mundane, frustrating 41-minute wait, it's everything.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Just four minutes after Flight 93 finally lifts off at 8.42 a.m.,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: American 11 hits the North Tower.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So they're just getting into the air. Right.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: And the passengers on Flight 93 are completely unaware. I mean,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: they're eating breakfast, settling in for a cross-country run to
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: San Francisco, 33 passengers, seven crew members, and four men
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: in first class who haven't made a single move yet.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: It's just a chilling causal link when you think about it.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: The stakes are set right there. No delay, no calls,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: no vote.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: That is the absolute crux of it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: If they had taken off on time, they would have
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: been over western Pennsylvania before the first plane ever hit
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the tower. They would have been completely in the dark.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: That 25-plus minute delay past schedule is the sole reason
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: anyone on board had a chance to alter history.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Because time was literally the only variable the hijackers couldn't control.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: They had a rigid plan. But the tarmac delay completely
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: ruined their synchronization.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: OK, let's unpack this. Because we have to move from
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that stagnant, frustrating delay on the ground to the unforgiving
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: minute-by-minute clock up in the sky. Right.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Once they're in the air, time is just this relentless countdown.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Dictating the fate of everyone on board.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So let's look at the morning clock. At 8.46 a.m.,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: the North Tower is hit. Then at 9.03 a.m., the
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: South Tower is hit.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Airspace is descending into chaos.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Total, absolute chaos. But Flight 93 is still just flying
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: its normal route. It isn't until 9.28 a.m. that things change.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Over eastern Ohio.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Right, over eastern Ohio. Cleveland Center hears the cockpit transmission.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: They hear someone shouting, Mayday! Hey, get out of here!
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Get out of here!
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Man, just hearing that timeline is heavy. And that's the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: moment the hijackers take control and the plane violently turns southeast.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Cord, Washington.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Yes. And we should just state this clearly. Just once,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the most likely target was the Capitol building. It's really
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the only building on the Mall that you can visually
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: spot from the air without complex navigation. Right.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And then just nine minutes after that cockpit transmission at
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: 937 a.m., the Pentagon is hit.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So three planes have hit buildings. The attack is fully realized.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: It is. But on Flight 93, the mechanism of resistance
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: is just starting to take shape. And it takes shape
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: entirely through the in-flight phones.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the phones. That is the crucial detail here. 13
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: people managed to make 37 calls.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Which is incredible when you think about the chaos in
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: that cabin.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, when a hijacking happens, the hijackers weaponize isolation.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: They try to create this complete information vacuum to make
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: themselves the only authority. But those phones acted like a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: tether to reality.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: They completely pierced that isolation.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they pulled the truth right up into the cabin.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how that information caused a total
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: paradigm shift. Up until that morning, you have to remember,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: the standard psychological protocol for a hijacking was compliance.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Just sit down and wait it out.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Right. It was always about leverage. You stay quiet, wait
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: to land somewhere like Cuba or Beirut, and let authorities negotiate.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Doing nothing was your best chance of survival.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: But because of those 37 calls, they learned the other
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: planes weren't traditional hostage situations.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: No, they learned they were weapons.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Which means sitting quietly meant certain death.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: That completely breaks the leverage model.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It forces an unthinkable choice.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So around 9.57 a.m., because of that gathered intelligence, they
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: hold a Democratic vote. They organize and they come up
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: the aisle.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: The psychological compression there is just staggering. To process your
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: own mortality and organize a counteroffensive in minutes.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: And I want to be really clear about something. Culturally,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the phrase, let's roll... Became famous. It was everywhere, right
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: on bumper stickers and used by politicians.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely everywhere.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But that phrase is not the thesis of what happened.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: The true thesis is that collective democratic vote based on
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the intelligence they gathered.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: It was pure collective agency. They didn't wait to be saved.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And the result is etched right into the timeline. At 10.03
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: and 11 seconds, the 757 goes inverted into a field.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Going approximately 563 miles an hour. And the thing is,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: there were 18 minutes of flying time remaining to Washington.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: 18 minutes.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Because of that vote, they stopped it.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the actual physical aftermath, the geography
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we really need to separate the borough from the graves.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: We do, because there's a huge public misconception about where
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: this happened.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: The whole country uses the name Shanksville. But Shanksville is
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: just a borough of a few hundred people, a mile
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and three quarters south of the impact. The plane did
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: not hit Main Street.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: No, it hit a reclaimed strip mine field in Stony
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Creek Township.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: And that location dictates the whole reality of the site today,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: which means we need to kill the crater myth.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: We absolutely have to. When visitors arrive, they are conditioned
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: by war photography to expect this gaving, permanent wound in
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: the earth.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But I've got to ask, by filling it in, aren't
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: we sort of sanitizing the violence? I mean, why is
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the reality of the site so different from what people expect?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to separate cinematic conflict from biological reality.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: When a plane hits reclaimed strip mine earth inverted at
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: 563 miles an hour, it doesn't just leave a crater.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: The earth physically takes the wreckage in.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So it's essentially swallowed.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Exactly. First responders found a smoking crater initially, and the
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: FBI dug that site for 13 days for the investigation.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: But by October 2001, the county coroner realized recovery was
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: virtually impossible.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: The physics of the crash just didn't allow for it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Right. So the coroner ordered the hole filled.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So when you stand at the Memorial Plaza today, you
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: do not see a crater. You see a restored meadow.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: A very intentional landscape.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You look out and there's a hemlock tree line. And
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: in that line, there's a visible gap. They call it
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the scar because over 80 damaged trees were removed from there.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: And right at the edge of the impact site is
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: that boulder.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, a 17.5-ton sandstone boulder set there in 2011, just
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: marking the exact spot.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: And it's crucial for you, listening to this, to understand
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: that this field is a cemetery. The remains are still
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: on the ground.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Sacred ground boundaries. The general public simply does not walk
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: this field.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Never. You are kept at a very deliberate distance.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: There is a ceremonial gate, but it only opens for
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the families to walk the hemlock grove once a year.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: On the morning of September 11.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So if the grave itself is closed off and restored,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: how do you design a memorial that actually conveys the.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Weight of it? It requires a profound architecture of absence
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and memory. And it took a lot of time. In 2002,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Congress designated it a national memorial.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: But they didn't really start opening the major elements until
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: much later.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Right. In 2011, the Wall of Names finally opened.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And I want to explicitly point out, there are 40
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: polished white marble slabs on that wall. 40, not 44.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: That's a huge point. The hijackers are entirely excluded from
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: the memorialization.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: It's purely a living count of the passengers and crew. Then,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: moving down the timeline, in 2015, the Visitor Center opens.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Which is an incredible piece of design.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. The Visitor Center sits
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: on a ridge, and the architects cut it so the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: actual flight path of the plane runs directly through the building.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: You're physically walking the final trajectory.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and before you see the field, you walk along
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: this black granite strip. And it marks the earlier impact times. 8.46, 9.03, 9.37.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So you're feeling time run out before you even step inside.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And then the architecture literally squeezes you. You're compressed
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: between two tall, stark walls that read as wings. You
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: feel this claustrophobia before it finally releases you to the
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: view of the field.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Louis wrote that the architecture does the work of adjectives there.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It really does. You feel it in your body.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And then there's the sound of the site. In 2018,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: They dedicated the Tower of Voices at the Gateway on
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: US 30.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: That's the 93-foot concrete tower, right?
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Right. And by 2020, the 40 individual aluminum chimes within
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: it were completed. These are massive, 5 to 10 feet long,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: tuned to separate notes.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Just reacting to the wind.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Specifically, built to sound in 12 to 15 mile-an-hour winds.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And on a working wind day, it is the only
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: sound the site wants you to hear.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Louis actually mentioned visiting the site in October during COVID,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and he talked about how quiet it was.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just this brief texture of what the site
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: feels like on a normal day.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Right, because September 11th is a vastly different, heavily populated
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: morning with all the ceremonies. But on a random Tuesday,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: it's just the wind and those chimes.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it really
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: highlights how different this memorial is from New York.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Right, Louis has that phrase, they put two voids where
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the tower stood.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Which... And we have to be careful not to rank
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: these sites. They are just different architectural languages of grief.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Totally. New York built two massive pools over footprints in
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a very bustling city.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: An urban void. But Shanksville kept the field. The design
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: refuses to pretend the passengers aren't still in it.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So New York is two voids, while this is 40
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: names above a rural field that you cannot walk.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It's just a completely different confrontation with loss.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? When we pull back,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: we've gone from a mundane 25-minute delay on a tarmac
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: in Newark to a frantic Democratic boat in the sky
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: in Based on 37 phone calls.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: To a permanent quiet grave in a Pennsylvania strip mine field.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Marked by 40 names and windblown chimes.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And that leaves us with a final thought. Something I
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: really want you to carry with you.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: The longer time passes, the easier it becomes to view
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: 911 strictly as historical video footage. Just something you watch
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: on a screen. But this site refuses to let you
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Because it's so physical.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you stand on that ridge looking at the 17.5
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: ton boulder. You are staring at the physical manifestation of
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: the absolute last decision 40 people made with the information
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: they had.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: An ultimate act of collective agency.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: An act that saved a capital they would never reach.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the real challenge for you, the listener.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: We live in a time where we're flooded with information
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and it often just paralyzes us, right? We can't even
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: agree on facts. But on that morning, 37 calls gave
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: strangers the most terrifying facts possible.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: And they didn't freeze.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: No. They processed the truth in minutes, organized a vote,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and acted collectively. It forces you to ask yourself if,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: faced with undeniable truth, we are still capable of that
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: kind of absolute unified clarity today.