Relatives Can Hear Flight 93 Tapes

Relatives of the 40 passengers and crew killed Sept. 11 aboard hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania, will be allowed to hear the cockpit recordings during a single, private listening session next month, the FBI says.

The highly unusual decision was approved personally by FBI Director Robert Mueller, an FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Monday. Families have been asking the FBI to let them hear what transpired in the cockpit after some passengers apparently rushed the hijackers with the cry, "Let's roll!"

Attorney General John Ashcroft has praised the Flight 93 passengers as heroes "who sacrificed themselves in a field in Pennsylvania so terrorists would not succeed in striking Washington a second time on September 11." He called their actions "the most dramatic of the heroic acts" of Sept. 11 and its aftermath.

The FBI official confirmed that families of the crash victims will be allowed to listen to the audio recordings in Princeton, N.J., on April 18. Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco was one of four jets hijacked on Sept. 11. While two were sent crashing into New York's World Trade Center and a third slammed into the Pentagon, flight 93 crashed in a rural Shanksville Pennsylvania field, apparently after passengers fought back against the hijackers.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents, has never allowed relatives to listen to the cockpit tapes, spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said. Under federal law, the safety board can't release the tapes and can only give out transcripts during a public hearing or when a majority of factual reports on the crash are completed, Lopatkiewicz said.

Family members told the San Francisco Chronicle Saturday they were hoping to get a clearer picture of what occurred on the aircraft during its final minutes.

Patrick Welsh, 44, of New York, whose wife, Deborah, was a Flight 93 flight attendant, had mixed emotions about hearing the tape but said that wouldn't deter him.

"It's going to be a horrific thing to listen to," said Welsh, who was notified by the FBI on Monday. "In some ways, it may appear almost masochistic, after what all of us have been through. But you're trying to find a truth, trying to get some more information about the events."

Deborah Jacobs Welsh, 49, was the lead flight attendant on the Newark-to-San Francisco jet. She was stabbed by the hijackers, a United Airlines representative told Welsh.

"I know she went down scratching and tearing and screaming," he said. "She went down resisting, and it cost her her life.

"As gruesome as that is - and I've thought about it, 'God, I don't want to hear that tape' - I think future generations owe a tremendous amount to the flight crews of the airlines because they are heroic Americans."

The San Francisco Chronicle first reported the FBI's offer in this weekend's editions.

"It will be excruciating," said Alice Hoglan, mother of Mark Bingham, 31, a San Francisco businessman who died in the crash.

Hoglan told the Chronicle, "I think (FBI Director) Mueller is correct when he says we won't be consoled by it. It is awful. But it is like something you have to do - I need to get clarity and perhaps hear my son's voice." she said.

Deena Burnett, whose husband Tom Burnett, 38, called her from the airplane and said he and some other passengers were going to try to take back control of the jet, told the newspaper she was told she would be able to listen to the recording, ask questions, and then the FBI would play it a second time.

FBI San Francisco spokesman Andrew Black told the Chronicle the agency was "trying to work with the families to satisfy their needs and interests" while avoiding widespread release of the tape which might jeopardize any future prosecutions in connection with the case.

So far the only charge in the case has been brought against Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent, who has been accused of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism in connection with the Sept. 11 hijackings. That case is being prosecuted in Alexandria, Virginia.