Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Home – Virginia Politics & News – Remembering United Airlines Flight 93: A Story of Courage and Resilience

Remembering United Airlines Flight 93: A Story of Courage and Resilience

It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in this field in Western Pennsylvania, drawn here by the story of citizens rising up against tyranny. I’ll be in in a small space confined to the aisle of a Boeing 757, known in history now as United Airlines Flight 93.

In 2006, I had been working in news radio for only a few months. My instincts told me that, of all the stories to cover on that fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, most people would be going to New York City and the Pentagon, but I felt compelled to cover the story that few covered, because it is mired in controversy.

Within weeks of the terror attacks in 2001, we knew that President George W. Bush had been briefed on what he needed to do, and when he needed to do it, in order to scramble pilots into their fighter jets to bring down any airplanes that we couldn’t account for. This fueled the opinion that Flight 93 must have been shot down by an F-16 that no one in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, saw.

I say that with confidence because, on that fifth anniversary, I talked to as many people in Somerset, Pennsylvania, as I could. Many of them remembered, viscerally, that morning, and the only sound they heard was the one airplane and then one crash. I know the internet doesn’t buy it, but that human intel is good enough for me. That’s a lesson that I would be drawn back to in August 2017, when people who had never been to Charlottesville, Virginia, told me that I was wrong about events I personally witnessed.

So, we arrived on this Thursday morning preparing for a couple of days of coverage of the 25th anniversary, having only seen photographs and artist renderings of the memorial that had been built here. I told Flight 93 National Memorial superintendent Stephen Clark that the visuals I had seen invoke the........

© The Daily Signal