Now, obviously there’s something that I’m sure most of us would quite like to do should we wake up and suddenly discover ourselves transported back in time to Sept 10, 2001.
But how exactly could you do it? Ring the FBI - “Hey guys, tomorrow, just before 9am some wacko terrorists are going to fly planes into the World Trade Centre!”
I envision two responses, one being along the lines of “yeah, right buddy” and the other “so, how do you know?” and would result in you being locked up indeterminatly because the govt thinks you are a terrorist.
So, how do you warn the unsuspecting pupulation of the impending tragedy. Maybe I’m just being a little slow, but I can’t think of anything that would be very effective.
I would risk incarceration in order to save the people in the two towers. I’d just call up the police, tell them about the 4 airplanes and Osama, if needs be I’d tell them I was a psychic.
I’d do that or write down as many names as I could remember, write down the plan for the 11 (as best I could remember) and then I’d send it to every police station/newspaper I could think of. That would get some attention I suppose.
I would definitely call the World Trade Center and the Port Authority Police Force at 7:45 that morning and tell them I’ve planted bombs in both the Towers. Ditto the Pentagon. At least thebuildings would be evacuated, saving thousands of lifes.
The airplanes are trickier. Calling about the hijacking is going to get a “Yeah, right” response. Even if those planes don’t fly that day, the plan would be carried out later. I can’t think of anything I could do to save the innocent passengers and crew.
I’m not sure what could be done to prevent it happening - aside from maybe causing a disturbance at the airport/s to prevent the planes from taking off. And wouldn’t that just delay it? I can’t imagine the hijackers just hanging their heads and heading home because they were foiled once.
That really is a tremendous dilemma, isn’t it? However, there’s really only one way that won’t get you dismissed as a wacko: refuse to give your sources, but give an enormous amount of detail. It would indeed cast the finger of suspicion at yourself. You may get banged up (though of course the PATRIOT Act would not have been passed yet), but it would be worth the personal sacrifice.
I’ve thought about this. I decided I would call the NYPD, PAPD, and FBI anonymously, and tell them that I had been in Florida on vacation, and heard the hijackers talking about it in a restaurant. I would tell them I am fluent in Arabic, but not an Arab, which is why they wouldn’t be suspicious of someone overhearing.
If this didn’t work, I would call in bomb threats to the WTC, the Pentagon, Logan Airport, Newark Airport, and both DC airports, since I can’t remember which one the hjacked plane flew out of. It would probably cause chaos, but it would probably also step up security enough that the attacks would be prevented.
If you could name names to the airlines, and the FBI, then you might have a shot.
The problem inherently lies in your credibility with them. Why should they believe you would know anything?
But getting names for people on different flights would give you credibility, and I would believe the FBI would find out enough about the hijackers quickly to stop them. I know the FBI got bad PR, but I feel they are capable in sorting through a tip with incredible consistencies: who they are…the flight #'s, their link with OBL, etc, etc.
As backup, calling in threats to the buildings sounds like a good idea if the FBI isn’t as reactive as you would hope.
Kyla has the right idea, though the FBI would certainly see that I was not indeed fluent or even conversant in Arabic. Calling in bomb threats may defuse September 11, but that might only make the terrorists regroup and try for an alternate day. I’d go to Logan and buy a ticket for Mohammed Atta’s flight and pick a fight with him at the gate before boarding. So we both get thrown in jail- a small price to pay.
Kyla has the right idea, though the FBI would certainly see that I was not indeed fluent or even conversant in Arabic. Calling in bomb threats may defuse September 11, but that might only make the terrorists regroup and try for an alternate day. I’d go to Logan and buy a ticket for Mohammed Atta’s flight and pick a fight with him at the gate before boarding. So we both get thrown in jail- a small price to pay.
I’ve thought about this too. My scenario though involves you getting 20 minutes warning so that you could gather information.
The problem with warning the FBI and CIA is that they’d wonder how you got the info too and may lock you up.
What I would do is recruit someone else once I got back to Sept. 10. I’d go to that Wal-Mart or ATM that Atta and the other guy went to. I’d send someone down to that strip bar in Florida. I’d then approach the hijackers with the full details of what was going on with the hopes that they would think it was detected and call it off. I’d then search for an anonymous tip line tot he FBI and give them the full details on flight school training, etc. I know that it may only prevent two of the attacks. I dont’ know if communication was already cut off between the 4 groups of hijackers.
Maybe phone in a bomb scare at the other two airports and hope for the best.
I think the bomb threat would be the only way. The people on the planes would still be dead, but the people in the buildings would survive. I think any other way, you risk being at best ignored and at worst arrested.
Announcer: … FDR is in the White House. An ice cream cone costs a nickel, and a hot new tune by Benny Goodman is hitting the charts. The year is 1939. [Benny Goodman’s hot new tune plays]
Homer: Nineteen … 1939! Oh, my God, I’ve gone back in time! I’ve got to warn everybody about Hitler – and get to the ice cream store!
[Lenny and Carl walk into Homer’s work area]
Lenny: Hey, Homer, what’s all the hubbub?
Carl: Let me guess. You travel back in time again?
Incomplete thoughts about some how stopping the hijackers before they get to the airport cross my mind, but since they are in seperate groups, from seperate airports, it would be impossible.
If I could stop the second plane from hitting the WTC, who knows how many would have survived.
Or perhaps I would get on the plane that ended up crashing in Pennsylvania. But, due to rather lax security, I might smuggle some kind of weapons on board that I could give to other passengers to help subdue those bastards. All I can think of is right now, tear gas, and that would probably be caught as well.
I would call **Eve ** and tell her to pack a second pair of panty hose with her for work in NYC for Tuesday.
We’re all assuming that we wake up on NYC. Unless of course all of the above live in NYC. But me I live in Cincinnati. I can’t make it to NYC in under 4 hours unless I fly even then if I took the first flight out of Cincinnati I couldn’t board until 7:00 I’d get to NYC by 8:00 off the plane by 8:30. I don’t know NYC but I bet it would take more time than I could spare to get from Newark or JFK to the twin towers and get them evacuated somehow.
The reality is I’d be reduced to calling someone and everyone to try and tell them. Hell I’d pretend to be in on the whole thing and have had a change of heart. Even that wouldn’t likely work. Buy the time anyone could be convinced it’d likely be to late. Then I’d be stuck in an even worse position of watching it happen again and knowing I couldn’t to stop it.
I wonder if there would be any way to warn the pilots of the jets. If they were forewarned, perhaps they would not have been overpowered by the terrorists.
You get on one of the about-to-be-hijacked planes. Wait for the hijackers to make their move, so the other passengers see what they’re attempting to do. Rally your fellow passengers and overcome them (they had box cutters, not much of a weapon against 70-some people who surely have some pocket knives among them). This gets around all the getting ignored/getting locked up/merely delaying the attacks problems.
It does not get around there being more than one plane involved. If you can’t recruit accomplices to board the other planes, get on the one that first would hit the WTC. After the above scenario, you might have enough credibility to get the feds to go after the other planes before they do their damage.
I’ve thought about this since I first read the OP - it’s popped into my head at odd times, and I don’t think there’s a straight answer.
Yes, there’s the idea that there was knowledge of possible attacks, but that the agencies weren’t communicating with each other. Well…that’s tough to change in one day, really.
One thought I had was to call in a bomb threat for the four jets involved - but that just delays the events, not prevent them. A threat for the WTC does the same thing - it evacuates the towers, but the attacks can still occur - though with a much lower loss of life because of the evacuation of the towers.
Reporting the information to the Feds assumes that I know the flight numbers and airlines. I don’t (well I know one of them). I only know the name of Atta, and that he and another left from Portland Maine the morning of the 11th. And stopping one set doesn’t stop the others.
I think a combination - call in a threat to the towers for the 11th (and call it in as many places as possible - radio, newspapers and TV stations), then tell the Feds as much as I know, to try to convince them that this is going to happen. Hopefully I’d at least manage to get the towers (and if lucky, the Pentagon) evacuated. Yes, I’d be looked at very closely, interrogated and probably assumed to be part of the plot, but I hope it’d be worth it.
Would it be freakish to admit I have actually thought about this previously? I think Kyla’s idea is a good one, although I’d have to think of a better angle than speaking Arabic because that would fall apart pretty fast as soon as someone quized me on it. I also thought about calling in bomb threats – the airports might be easier because I would be able to provide information about the specific flights and passengers’ names, so I wouldn’t be just a generic kook.
The bomb threats phoned into the WTC and Pentagon might be harder, I’m not sure who makes the call to evacuate nor what the tolerence level is for threats. I work at a school, and we are required to evacuate whenever there is a phoned-in bomb threat (it used to happen about once per year during final exams, and more frequently during the Unibomber years, although it hasn’t since 9/11) but if the threat is fairly hoax-like and nothing is turned up on a first pass through the building, people are allowed back inside rather quickly, all things considered. With the WTC and the Pentagon, they wouldn’t find anything in the buildings, so you’d have to time it carefully to make certain everyone had time to get out, but then not enough time to get back in. Also, even if the bomb threat worked, I would feel hideously guilty about the fact that the bomb squad people would then be in the buildings at the time of the crashes (if the airport thing didn’t work out, or was only able to prevent some of the planes from taking off).
The terrible thing, of course, is that whatever I picked, I would always be worried that I was somehow causing a worse scenario to play out somewhere along the line in the future.
