Another curious Sep 11 story, I do not either fully believe or fully disbelieve these stories, but I find them interesting nonetheless.
An FAA memo written on the evening of 9/11 suggests a man on Flight 11 was shot and killed by a gun before the plane crashed into the WTC. [See the leaked FAA memo]
The âExecutive Summary,â? based on information relayed by a flight attendant to the American Airlines Operation Center, stated âthat a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B at 9:20 A.Mâ?[since Flight 11 crashed at 8:46, the time must be a typo, probably meaning 8:20].
The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al Suqami. The FAA claims that the document is a âfirst draftâ? and declines to release the final draft, calling it âprotected information.â? A report in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on September 17 identifies Lewin as a former member of the Israel Defense Force Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s most successful special-operations unit [UPI, 3/6/02].
Sayeret Matkal is a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry. Sayeret Matkal is best known for the 1976 rescue of 106 passengers at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. [New Yorker 10/29/01] Officials later deny the gun story and suggest that Lewin was probably stabbed to death instead (which would still be very interesting). [UPI, 3/6/02, Washington Post, 3/2/02 (B)]
Lewin co-founded Akamai, a successful computer company, and his connections to Sayeret Mat’kal remained hidden until the gun story came to light. [Guardian, 9/15/01]