Flight 93 Tape Airs At Moussaoui Trial

Prosecution Rests After Jury Hears Desperate Final Half Hour In Plane

(CBS/AP)  Jurors in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial listened Wednesday to a recording of terrified shouts and cries in the cockpit as desperate passengers twice charged panicked hijackers during the final half hour of doomed United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?" one hijacker asked in Arabic 123 seconds 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 voice replied in Arabic.

In the remaining two minutes, more voices are heard than earlier, including some that say 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 in the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest."

Then only the roar of static.

The judge released a transcript instead of the tapes Wednesday, because some families objected to the tapes being played publicly.

The government rested its case for executing Sept. 11 conspirator Moussaoui shortly after 17 jurors and alternates and 150 audience members became the first people other than investigators and victims' relatives to hear the only audible cockpit recording recovered from the four jetliners hijacked by al Qaeda in the nation's most deadly terrorist attack.

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Read the cockpit flight record, as heard in court.

Watch Stewart's latest report on the trial.

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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 jurors 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, 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 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 the final seconds.

Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died on the plane, said hearing an enhanced tape earlier had persuaded 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."

CBS News correspondent James Stewart reports that the hijack crew was missing a man had only three enforcers to control 38 passengers and crew. The other hijacked planes that day were seized by five terrorists.