Government Dramatically Changes Tom Burnett Phone Call Story from Flight 93

I only now found out that the official government position, from evidence presented at the Moussaoui trial, was that only two calls, of the multiple calls made from flight 93, were made by cell phone: CeeCee Lyles and Ed Felt, both from flight 93. I will discuss the Felt and Lyles calls in a future post. For now I want to mention the remarkable finding that the government says Tom Burnett never used a cell phone to call his wife. Further, they say he made only three calls to his wife, when previously it was well reported that he made FOUR phone calls to his wife.

The following info is according to Jere Longman's book "Among the Heroes", published in 2002 (this book is the most comprehensive source of official flight 93 information, culled from witness interviews and news reports):

Tom Burnett was sitting in first class. He called his wife four times during the course of the hijacking, at 9:27am, 9:34 am, 9:45am and 9:54am. Each time he got through and spoke to her.

At 9:27am, he tells his wife there are hijackers, they have knifed a passenger and one of the hijackers has a gun. (None of the other flight 93 passengers notes that the hijackers have a gun). Burnett also says the hijackers say they have a bomb on board.

At 9:34am, he tells his wife "they're in the cockpit", and his wife gives Burnett info about the WTC attacks.

At 9:45am, according to Longman: "The hijackers, Tom said, were talking about crashing the plane into the ground. 'We have to do something'"

At 9:54am, he calls his wife and describes the passenger's plan to take control of the plane. Says "We're going to do something".

Further, according to Longman, the first and third calls WERE cell phone calls, while the second was from an "Airphone". The source of the fourth call was not specified. Nonetheless, for each call, we have a defined message, consistent with four different calls.

Here is Paul Thompson's 9/11 timeline which supports the four calls story.


Here is the government's version of Tom Burnett's calls:

call 1-- 9:30am, 28 second length call to home
call 2-- 9:37am, 62 second length call to home
call 3-- 9:44am, 54 second length call to home


As you can see, the times of the calls are also quite a bit off between the two versions, and the times are not even off in any consistent way. The government has no 1st call at 9:27am, but there is a 9:30 call. The original 9:34 am call could then be the govt's 9:37 am call, if we assume a three minute difference. But that doesn't explain the 9:44 am call, nor does it explain the missing fourth call.

So -- this is really strange, particularly as explained by Longman, Burnett's wife is SURE he used a cell phone.

What one CAN conclude is that this funny business with the phone calls (and there is much more to talk about here but I will save for later), is that this supports the idea that the 9/11 passenger phone calls were fabrications-- at least at some level we do not completely understand.

I know a debunker would say that the last, fourth call, simply didn't happen, and that Burnett's wife was wrong about the times and about the cell phone use. BUT-- according to one article, the FBI was monitoring the second, third and fourth calls!!!. Further, it is hard to believe that his wife made a mistake about the cell phone, as according to Longman, Burnett told his wife he was using the cell phone surreptitiously in his seat via an earpiece, and his wife also noted that she recognized his cell number on her speed dial. Finally, Tom Burnett's wife said Burnett seemed to be walking around (Longman, page 111), which is clearly impossible if he was using an Airphone.

To summarize: we have a real problem with the official government version of the Burnett story.


Now for some reason, the ScrewLooseChange people think that Burnett's wife is the mistaken, which is such a ridiculously biased and over-simplified view. Their slanted view is all the more apparent when you see that they also think Ted Olson was telling the truth about his wife's calls from flight 77! The fact is, Olson initially said his wife Barbara used a cell phone to call him, even though the government now says there were no cell phone calls from Barbara Olson, and not even any connected calls to Olson's office from her! As well, Ted Olson has said in court that it is OK for the government to lie under the right circumstances. So, really, Olson is far from the most trustworthy source here, and yet the SLCers have no problem with his story!

Talk about ignoring evidence that doesn't fit a certain point of view (which is what official story supporters like to say about CTists)!

UPDATE: Deena Burnett's transcripts of the FOUR calls. Amazing how calm Burnett seems.