In Chapter 17 of David Ray Griffin’s latest book, 9/11 Contradictions , the author asks, “Were Hijackers Reported on Cell Phone Calls?” Griffin’s approach to the question can be summarized by a sentence in the last paragraph of the chapter:

“The central questions, however, involve the reported cell phone calls, which played a central role in establishing that the planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda operatives.” (p. 182)

Those of us who have studied the phone calls, however, have learned that none of the evidence reported in the calls implicates al-Qaeda, or any other other Arab group. While many of the passengers did indeed report hijackers who were “Middle Eastern looking,” that in no way implicates the alleged hijackers reported by the authorities, since the real hijackers may very likely have been posing as Arabs while carrying out the hijackings for the purpose of framing Arabs for the attacks. In such a scenario, the phone calls were desired by the conspirators, so that passengers on the planes would pass on their mistaken impression of an “Arab” hijacking to their loved ones in gripping and emotional phone calls. In addition, we have learned that the calls as a whole contain much information damning to the official story, such as Tom Burnett’s report of guns in the possession of the hijackers, and evidence that Betty Ong made a similar claim in her call– a call in which she also gave seat numbers of hijackers .

Why does Griffin want to turn away from this evidence by imagining that the calls were cell phone calls, and therefore presumably faked, when it is perfectly plausible that the calls were real, made on airphones, and draw a very different picture than the one promoted by the government?

Did the 9/11 Commission Claim Cell Phone Calls?

Griffin seeks to demonstrate a “contradiction” between the familiar story of the calls being made on cell phones, and the reality that most of the calls were actually made on GTE seatback airphones installed in the planes.

“A central element in the story of the hijackings of the four airliners, as it unfolded in the press and was then told in the 9/11 Commission Report, was that passengers had reported the presence of Middle Eastern hijackers on the planes by means of cell phone calls to family members and authorities.” (p. 170)

The reality, however, is that the 9/11 Commission Report made no such claims. Regarding cell phone calls from the planes, the report has only this to say:

“Shortly thereafter, the passengers and flight crew began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones.” (9/11 Commission Report)

Strictly speaking, this statement is correct if even only one cell phone call was successfully completed. While cell phone calls have been shown to be difficult from planes in 2001, they were not impossible. Calls made from Renee May on AAL77 and Cee Cee Lyles on UAL93 were portrayed as being cell phone calls, and that event is even more likely since the respective planes were at lower altitudes and speeds at the times those calls were completed.

So Griffin is wrong to characterize the 9/11 Commission as claiming cell phone calls; he seems to admit as much a few paragraphs later complaining that the Commission “did not contradict press reports saying that they were.” Has it occurred to Griffin that the Commission, or those who controlled it, had an interest in allowing the cell phone myth to mushroom throughout the 9/11 skeptic community, so that we would reject all the phone calls and the crucial evidence they contain?

Media Reports of Cell Phone Calls

Griffin next presents a lengthy jumble of media reports claiming cell phone calls. It’s hard to believe that a major figure in the truth movement would base his argument on stories appearing in The Washington Post, Newsweek, The National Review, and other pillars of the controlled media. Nonetheless, it is instructive to survey some of the footnotes he provides to see for ourselves just how weak the argument is. For example:

Griffin writes that “an Associated Press story, reporting this call [from Peter Hanson on UAL175 to his father] on 9/11 itself, said ‘a minister confirmed the cell phone call to [Peter Hanson’s father], Lee Hanson.’” Here is a longer quote from the story:

“The man was identified as former Easton, Conn., resident Peter Hanson. A minister confirmed the cell phone call to his father, Lee Hanson, an official in Easton, a small town near Bridgeport.”

Can we really conclude the minister is verifying that the call was made on a cell phone, and not on an airphone? Isn’t it more likely he is simply confirming that the call was made? Furthermore, keeping in mind that this story was filed on the night of 9/11, shouldn’t we also consider that in 2001, in the minds of many ordinary people, cell phones and airphones were thought of as basically the same thing.

With regards to this call, Griffin also cites a letter written by Hanson’s sister:

“Peter, Sue and Christine were on the United flight (175) that struck the south tower. Peter called daddy twice from this cell phone. He said, don’t worry Dad, it will be over fast.”

Can we really consider this evidence the call was made on a cell phone, when the author herself didn’t even receive the call? Again, might she have considered cell phones and seatback airphones one and the same?

In the case of the all important calls made from Tom Burnett on UAL93 to his wife Deena, Griffin writes that

“Deena Burnett explicitly and repeatedly stated that these calls were made from Tom Burnett’s cell phone. She knew this, she said, because the caller ID identified his cell phone as the source.” (p. 911)

But did she? I have examined numerous media reports in the immediate years after the attacks, and have heard her state no such thing, explicitly or otherwise. Griffin cites an article from the Sacramento Bee:

“They were interrupted by another call. Deena's caller ID told her it was Tom. This time, he told her the terrorists were in the cockpit. "The guy they knifed is dead," he said.”

The article does mention Tom’s cell phone, but not that Deena said it was such. We are to presume that since the caller ID told her it was Tom, that she saw his cell phone number on it. But does that logically follow? Perhaps she saw the same information as from earlier calls on an airphone, and therefore knew it was Tom. It is true that in a 2006 book, written by Deena Burnett and someone named Tom Giombetti, the following statement is attributed to Deena,

“I didn't understand how he could be calling me on his cell phone from the air.”

(Fighting Back: Living Life Beyond Ourselves, by Deena Burnett with Tom Giombetti, p.61)

This is the only example I could find of her “repeatedly and explicitly” claiming the call was from a cell phone. Did she actually write it? Are we to believe that someone faked these calls to her, but was so stupid as to make them appear to come from a cell phone, instead of a far more believable airphone? In any event, this single statement, coming in a ghostwritten book published five years after the event, is meager evidence that the call was indeed from a cell phone, especially when we keep in mind the obvious incentive of defenders of the official story to throw us off the trail of evidence by perpetrating the cell phone myth.

The FBI

Griffin illustrates another contradiction, between the FBI’s 2006 report on phone calls from the flights, which was released for the Moussaoui trial, and the popular impression that most of the calls were made on cell phones. The FBI report correctly shows that most of the calls were made on airphones. Griffin writes:

“However, although the FBI’s report at the Moussaoui trial avoided that problem, it created a new one: It implied that one of the chief elements in the story about 9/11 told by authorities and the press from the outset– that the presence of hijackers on the flights had been reported by means of cell phone calls from those flights– was untrue.” (p. 178)

As we have seen, however, no “authorities” ever stated that airphone calls were made by cell phones. That was done strictly by our controlled media. The FBI never made such claims. Griffin complains that:

“....the FBI, while knowing that its evidence did not support the belief that Tom Burnett or any of the others– except for CeeCee Lyles and Edward Felt– had made cell phone calls, it allowed the mass media to continue painting a false picture of what happened on United 93, when it could have set the record straight by simply issuing a press release. The FBI needs to be asked why it did not do this.” (p. 181)

It’s easy to predict how an FBI agent would respond if asked such a question. He would reply that it isn’t the job of the FBI to correct false reports in the media. Moreover, the FBI is a hierarchical organization, taking their orders directly from the Justice Department and the Bush administration officials who run it. On legal grounds, the FBI had to remain silent on the phone call report because it was considered evidence in the ongoing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Was it an accident that that trial was delayed for years upon years, while the FBI was compelled to sit on the phone call evidence? Those of us with suspicious minds can speculate that some in the Bush administration with control over the trial and over the FBI on this matter– specifically Michael Chertoff, who ran the 9/11 investigation from his office in the Justice Department before becoming head of Homeland Security– wanted to keep the phone call report under wraps as long as possible, so that the cell phone myth could be propagated among the 9/11 truth community, who would be persuaded to reject all the phone call evidence, including that which is so damning to the official story. If that was the strategy, it has worked magnificently.

Cell Phone Calls and Loose Change

We have seen that the cell phone myth was propagated mostly by our controlled media, with only the passive acquiescence of the authorities. But another party contributed mightily to the myth– and, sad to say, that party is the 9/11 truth movement itself. The majority of truthers were introduced to 9/11 skepticism by the film Loose Change 2nd Edition . At the 1:07 mark of that film, Dylan Avery asks,

“next, what about the cell phone calls...?”

Avery didn’t seem to have even considered the possibility that some or most of the calls were made on airphones, which is peculiar since, a few minutes later in the film, while describing Mark Bingham’s call to his mother from UAL93, he specifically mentions that Bingham twice told his mom that he was calling from an airphone. The damage to the truth movement by this oversight is incalculable. Was it truly an oversight, or something worse? Whatever it was, millions of 9/11 skeptics were induced from the beginning to reject all the phone call evidence, and the valuable information it contains regarding what happened on the planes. Avery seems to have tacitly admitted his assumption was wrong: Loose Change Final Cut contains no references to phone calls whatsoever. Why has Griffin decided to carry on such a dubious notion?

Conclusions

David Ray Griffin wants us to confront FBI officials, and ask them why the evidence they collected contradicts the “official” story of phone calls being made on cell phones as portrayed in the mass media and several Hollywood films. But we really ought to be asking questions of ourselves. Why have we allowed ourselves to be duped into rejecting such important evidence that comes to us first hand from honest people who talked to their loved ones on the flights? Why were we so willing to believe the initial suggestion that the phone call evidence supports the official story? Why did we assume that “Middle Eastern” men had to be al-Qaeda Arabs, and that the phone calls therefore had to be faked? Why have so few truthers studied the phone call evidence independently, and in depth? Why has it never occurred to us that the reports that the calls were made on cell phones could be part of a disinformation campaign to lead us away from the truth?

If we could confront these questions we could start building a more credible theory of what actually happened on the planes, based on credible first hand accounts that the planes were indeed hijacked by real people. If we could do that, we finally present to the masses a credible scenario based on the facts that explains how the planes were commandeered– by someone other than al-Qaeda Arabs. Such an understanding might lead to the big breakthrough in the movement we’ve all been waiting for.