How Was the Myth of Beamer's Call Created?

Following up on this post from last night, it seems likely that Todd Beamer's "Let's roll" call from flight 93 was mostly a bold fabrication.

Interestingly and oddly, the first article to mention Beamer's call in the media has no sourcing except apparently Lisa Beamer (Todd's wife). Lisa Jefferson (the GTE operator) did not comment for the article. This article came out on Sunday, September 16th, and this was after Lisa Jefferson talked to Lisa Beamer to tell her about the call. I think it is rather plausible that Lisa Beamer essentially created many of the details of the call herself. Whether she did this in collaboration with the FBI or some other agency, or she did it all by herself, is hard to know. I would guess there was some minimal call from Beamer that was very different from what came out in the media, and that Lisa Beamer (perhaps with FBI guidance) created a nice set of details to mythologize the call. I would guess that 90% of what has been reported of the call is made up. The problem is that Lisa Beamer and Lisa Jefferson never got their story entirely straight, and this is why the accounts of the call differ so much. But clearly, someone in the government/media-industrial complex saw the large propaganda appeal of the call with the "Let's roll" catch phrase, and so they pushed the story hard to a grieving nation. Tellingly, this first article has a somewhat strange feel-- it reads more like a human interest story than a hard news story. After this article came out, the story took off, the call became a national sensation-- and "Let's roll" became a war-cry.

UPDATE: I found reporter Jim McKinnon's story behind the Todd Beamer story here (see page 3). Indeed, Lisa Beamer was the main source for the story, and she was eager to tell it.

I was on duty the Saturday after the attacks, when a reporter from the paper in East Brunswick, N.J., called. He asked Tom Birdsong if we had new information from the Somerset crash site. In exchange, he offered the name of Lisa Beamer, who had gotten word from GTE that her husband had left a message and appeared to have been a hero on board Flight 93. The reporter refused to give us access to Beamer when it turned out that we weren’t offering him much from Somerset. And that was almost that, considering there was nothing local about the New Jersey guy’s pitch. Then Birdsong asked me to call Lisa Beamer. I relied on news assistant Alyson Hudson, who dug up not only the Beamers’ number, but their former neighbors’ as well. I got Beamer on the first try. After I offered condolences, I launched into the interview. I didn’t have to ask her more than a half-dozen questions. She was eager to tell her story. I thought it best not to interrupt unless there was a pause. I typed as fast as I could. When she got to that now famous phrase, I was nearly floored. I asked her to repeat it: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”
(snip)
While I was writing, Alyson found a number for Lisa Jefferson, the GTE supervisor who took Todd Beamer’s call. While she was gracious on the phone, and I used every sweet-talking tactic I knew, she didn’t want to be interviewed.

There are a few other details about McKinnon writing the story, but basically, the important info is Lisa Beamer was the eager source and Lisa Jefferson didn't want to be interviewed.