The Flight 93 Phone Calls-- Part VIII, Ed Felt

This call is probably the most interesting yet strange ones made from flight 93. In order to do it justice, I am basically going to copy this excellent post by John Doe II at Democratic Underground on Ed Felt's call. I am removing the links-- you can get the sources from the DU article if you're interested. I have made some minor adjustments to the language and the emphases are added by me.

Edward Felt's phone call from Flight 93 was one of the first to be reported and alredy in the news on 911.

"We got the call about 9:58 this morning from a male passenger stating that he was locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93 traveling from Newark to San Francisco, and they were being hijacked," said Glenn Cramer, a 911 supervisor.
"We confirmed that with him several times and we asked him to repeat what he said. He was very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down. He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't know where.

"And then we lost contact with him."

There are three reasons why this phone call is very special, different from all other call from Flight 93 and highly important: Before it has to be pointed out that Glenn Cramer who made all the statements right after 911 was the 911 supervisor but it was John Shaw who was the dispatcher and actually took the call of Edward Felt. Cramer “monitored the call after Shaw alerted him that it was about a hijacking in progress.”

1.) Edward Felt mentions an explosion. This was widely reported right after 911 based on direct quotes from Glenn Cramer.
But later the mentioning of smoke and an explosion was denied: e. g. “A male passenger, Edward Felt, did call from the bathroom of the plane, but never mentioned an explosion or puff of smoke, said John Shaw, the dispatcher who took the call. “Didn't happen,” he said. Felt's wife, who heard a tape of the call, corroborated Shaw's story.”

2.) This 911 dispatch tape is sized by (FBI) Agents on the day of 911. The phone call only lasted 78 seconds. “The supervisor who took the call has been gagged by the FBI.”

The call lasted only 78 seconds so what else can possibly be on this tape that explains the seizing of it?

Jere Longman who denied the existence of the explosion claim gives some further details of the call which only helps to make the call even more strange: “Following procedure, Shaw asked for the passenger's name and cell phone number. The passenger identified himself as Edward Felt.”

But still on December 6, 2001 the caller is not identified:
“The passenger, whose name is not being released”.

Another detail given by Longman:
“Once he seemed to grow impatient with the dispatcher, but he kept his cool under the circumstances. “We're going down, we're going down”. (This detail is contained in other newspaper accounts, too). But the Commission Report doesn't mention any loss of height for Flight 93 at that time of his call.

“Ed seemed at one moment to be peering out of the bathroom, as if checking to see what was going on. (...) many voices were audible, but none that could be picked out”.

Not only do all the details of the phone call make a duration of only 78 seconds unlikely but especially striking is that neither Edward Felt mentions the ongoing counterattack of the passengers nor is it to be heard when he is supposed to peer out of the bathroom.

In one of the rare interviews of John Shaw he states:
“He told me he locked himself in the bathroom, he gave me the flight number and the tail number, everything he possibly could, and that the plane had been hijacked”

How did Felt know the tail number of Flight 93?

3.) Let's talk about Felt's behaviour
With an ongoing hijacking and a terrorist surveilling the passengers with a bomb around his waist etc it seems to be an understandable and even clever behaviour to look for a moment and sneak into the bathroom in order to alert the FBI. That might be also the reason why Felt's behaviour never strikes out as highly bizarre.
But it is very bizarre. Especially if one compares it to the behaviour of other passengers. But it's not about judging Felt as a hero or a coward. There are several reasons why his behaviour in the concrete situation of 9:58 on Flight 93 appears very, very, very strange:

There is no hijacker surveilling him. Since one minute the counterattack of the passengers is already underway. So why does Felt go into a bathroom to phone? And even more why the need to lock himself? The call was disconnected because he used his cellphone. Why didn't he use the available airfone like so many other passengers?

And as his call was disconnected at 9:59 why didn't he try then an airfone?

It makes very much sense to alert the FBI. But basically EVERY passenger has done this already. Why now? And why didn't he phone before as basically EVERY passenger? Why doesn't he say a word about the ongoing counterattack? If for whatever reasons he decided not to participate in the attack why doesn't he want to see if the others are successful?

He was sitting 2D next to three hijackers. Why didn't he mention and describe them?

How can he see the smoke outside the airplane? Does a bathroom have a window?