Simon
Re: Passenger list questions
Mon Oct 15 19:18:26 2001


Hi there

While i commend you on writing your "exposé" regarding the discrepancies
over the reported number of passengers on board each flight, and the
list of names released, i fail to see it as anything perplexing

If you go to
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/main.html , it
clearly says

"authorities from American Airlines, United Airlines, the Department of
Defense, the New York City Medical Examiners Office and the New York
City Fire Department, have released partial lists. They are linked
below"

And ofcourse below that are listed the links that you referanced to the
passenger lists of the four flights. It was clearly stated that these
are "partial lists". Although yeah, it is strange that they couldnt
release a full list of passengers onboard the aircraft...

However this list was reported to be "victims". The fact that they dont
list the hijackers as "victims" isn't really surprising to me... and i
think it's a little bit eager of you to go on to make assumptions that
the hijackers must have gotten on the plane by other means...

Seems to me the passenger list was simply the passengers MINUS the
suspected hijackers...

However this still doesnt account for EVERYONE...

If you take flight 77, and using your links, there were 64 people
aboard, and only 56 people in the list of "victims". There were 5 people
listed as "hijackers" on the FBI release at ajc.com... so going by my
"why would you list hijackers with victims" theory the 5 hijackers plus
the 56 passengers and crew make 61 people account for on the plane... so
where are the other three people??

It would seem to me that the FBI would have just taken EVERYONE with a
remotely sounded arab name as passible suspects... you said yourself
there were no arab names on the list of victims... so I personally think
there were 8 people aboard flight 77 with arab sounding names that the
FBI were looking at... CNN then left those 8 off the list of passenger
victims... and released their victims list. Its unfortunate that the CNN
article doesnt have a date at all... but the FBI hijaker list was
released 27/09/01 (er, thats 09/27/01 if you're an american :). My
theory is that FBI list was released well after the CNN victims list,
after the FBI had cut back their list of suspects from 8 to 5 after
investigating the names further. If CNN were to update their victims
list you might find three extra names there... all arab sounding.

Or perhaps simly the relatives of three of the victims didnt agree to
releasing their names?! I know here in new zealand our privacy laws are
alot tougher than those of the united states... but things like victims
lists would have to get the consent of the family before being released.

So yeah, it was always claimed as a "partial list" and in my mind the
discrepancies are easy to explain.

PS i dont work for CNN or the FBI :)

Cheers,


Simon

Simon Anderson - simon@linuxnet.co.nz