ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The tape begins with a hijacker saying in broken English: "Please sit down. Keep remaining seating. We have a bomb on board. So sit." A half-hour of chaos ensues before a final utterance: "Allah is greatest." Then nothing but the roar of static.
Jurors and a couple of hundred courtroom spectators got a glimpse Wednesday into one of the remaining mysteries of Sept. 11, 2001: the harrowing final moments of United Flight 93, when passengers tried to retake the plane from al-Qaida hijackers.
They heard a murky 30-minute cockpit recording. It sounded like passengers tried twice to ram their way into the cockpit with a drink cart. Prosecutors thought it would help convince jurors that Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui deserves to be executed.
At least these people may now know why investigators and victims' relatives who have heard the recording before came to varied conclusions about what happened.
"Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?" one hijacker asked in Arabic two minutes before the 757 jetliner slammed into a Pennsylvania field with 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers. "Yes, put it in it, and pull it down," another replied in Arabic.
In those remaining two minutes, more voices are heard than earlier, including some saying in English:
"Go. Go."
"Move. Move."
"Push, push, push, push, push."
Then in Arabic: "Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me."
Finally in Arabic: "Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest."
The government rested its case shortly after the first public playing — other than for investigators and victims' relatives — of the only audible cockpit recording recovered from the four jetliners hijacked by al-Qaida in the nation's most deadly terrorist attack.
On Thursday, court-appointed defense lawyers will begin arguing that the 37-year-old Frenchman, who was in jail in Minnesota on 9/11, played so small a role and had such mental problems that he deserves life in prison instead of execution.
The 17 jurors and alternates couldn't take their eyes off the video screens — even during long silent periods — as prosecutors used a multimedia presentation to try to put them inside the Flight 93 cockpit.
Slumped in his chair and impassive, Moussaoui too watched intently.
A transcript, which translated Arabic into English and converted many nearly inaudible sounds into text, scrolled up the side of the screen. Synchronized with the text and drawn from the recovered flight data recorder, dials showed the plane's speed, altitude and wing attitude compared with the horizon. Other indicators showed the autopilot, the steering yoke position and the plane's position in the air and trajectory.
Despite the detail and because the cockpit ceiling microphone can pick up sounds from the passenger cabin, particularly if the cockpit door is open, there were multiple interpretations of those final seconds.
Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died on the plane, said hearing an enhanced tape earlier convinced him passengers killed a hijacker guarding the cockpit. "It's an example of ordinary citizens on a moment's notice stepping up and protecting the U.S. Capitol from a terrorist attack," he said outside the courthouse afterward. Captured 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has said the Capitol was the plane's target.
Some thought they heard the passengers struggling with hijackers for control of the steering yoke inside the cockpit during the final seconds. The Sept. 11 Commission's study reached no conclusion on whether any hijacker was killed in the struggle with passengers and said the hijackers remained at the controls "but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."
After the hijacker warns passengers a bomb is on board and to remain seated, there follows several minutes of commands such as: "Don't move." "Shut up." "Down, down, down, sit down."
Nearly six minutes in, a voice in English tells the passengers, "We are going back to the airport and we have our demands. So please remain quiet." The San Francisco-bound plane then turns over western Pennsylvania back toward the East Coast.
During a period of quiet, apparently unbeknownst to the hijackers, passengers with cell phones learn that jets have crashed into the World Trade Center. But the hijackers detect something. One says in Arabic: "The guys will go in, lift up the . . . unintelligible . . . and they put the ax in it. So, everyone will be scared."
The transcript gives no further clues about the "unintelligible" object. But the Sept. 11 Commission says the hijackers may have killed or silenced a flight attendant by this point.
Four minutes later, the hijackers notice a fight in the cabin. One says in Arabic: "Let's go, guys. Allah is greatest." After grunts and shouting, another says in Arabic: "They want to get in here. Hold, hold from the inside." The hijacker pilot begins wagging the wings up and down, apparently to knock the passengers off balance.
Another minute of shouts in English: Hold the door. Stop him. Sit down. Many unintelligible noises.
Then 30 seconds past 9:59 a.m., an enormous crash: metal against metal, glass breaking, plastic cracking. The Sept. 11 Commission theorized passengers used a drink cart to ram the cockpit door. More unintelligible shouting.
Seven seconds after 10 a.m., in Arabic: "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?"
Another hijacker, also in Arabic: "When they all come, we finish it off."
Six seconds later in English: "I'm injured."
Ten seconds later in English: "In the cockpit. If we don't, we'll die." Followed quickly by a second loud crash of metal, glass and plastic rammed together hard.
The hijacker pilot is pushing the steering yoke forward and back, perhaps to throw the attacking passengers to the floor. The tail sags, sounding the stall alarm. Then the nose comes back down, silencing it.
Then 123 seconds before the crash, one hijacker asks again in Arabic, "Is that it?" That's when another hijacker tells him to pull it down and the cacophony of new voices joins the shouting over the next two minutes. The plane rolls belly up and noses over, then the crash.
Prosecutors also called Lorne Lyles, a Fort Myers, Fla., policeman whose wife, Cee Cee, was a flight attendant on 93, and played a voice mail message she left him from the plane on 9/11. She told him her plane had been hijacked and she knew a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. "Please tell my children that I love them very much.. . . I hope to be able to see your smiling face again," she said, crying.
Later, the judge rejected prosecutors' request to display a running presentation of the names and photos of nearly all the 2,972 victims of Sept. 11. Prosecutors were instead allowed to show one large poster with the pictures of all but 92 of the victims.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. A week ago, the jurors ruled him eligible for the death penalty. They decided that lies he told federal agents a month before the attacks led directly to at least one death that day by keeping agents from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers. Now they must decide whether he deserves execution or life in prison.
Contributing: Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat and Pete Yost.