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SOMERSET, Pa. -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the U.S. government will not use eminent domain to seize people's land for a permanent Flight 93 memorial and instead will renew negotiations with landowners near the terrorist crash site in Somerset County. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Salazar met with families of victims and landowners on Friday in Shanksville to discuss issues surrounding the planned national memorial for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, fatal hijacking. Specter's office said Friday's meeting also focused on what still needs to be done for the memorial to be complete in time for the...

Two Pennsylvanian’s quit the Flight 93 Memorial Commission last week, protesting Park Service plans to condemn five crash-site properties that it never negotiated for in good faith. Consider the case of the Lambert family, who have been on their land for three generations: "It's absolutely a surprise. I'm shocked by it. I'm disappointed by it," said Tim Lambert, who owns nearly 164 acres that his grandfather bought in the 1930s. The park service plans to condemn two parcels totaling about five acres — land, he said, he had always intended to donate for the memorial. "To the best of my...

Almost anyone who reads this remembers the brave passengers of flight 93, who, on 9/11, overpowered the hijackers on their flight and caused the airplane to crash in a Pennsylvania field instead of the White House or Capital. Certainly we would all agree that those brave souls should be memorialized. But do you imagine any of them would want their memorial for selfless sacrifice to come at the price of their fellow American’s property? Can anyone explain why a memorial to these brave Americans must be 2,200 acres in size and force property owners in the area where the airplane...

PITTSBURGH – The government will begin taking land from seven property owners so that the Flight 93 memorial can be built in time for the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the National Park Service said.

As details of the Maersk Alabama episode emerge, one clear lesson surfaces: The Spirit of United Flight 93 lives on. The ending of the hostage story at sea will soon be followed by the requisite second guessing and questions. Not to mention the inevitable criticism of the killing (someone will call it execution without due process) of three pirates. Then, if the fourth pirate is brought to the U.S. for trial, that promises to become a legal mini-series. But all of that will pale in importance in the face of what happened this Easter Sunday at sea.

For two years, Tom Burnett Sr. has been speaking out against the crescent-shaped memorial to Flight 93. This week Beverly Burnett (mother of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Jr.) stepped into the public eye to support her husband, and to make her own appeal for a full investigation: Today, I am adding my voice for a full and transparent review of the National Park Service and Flight 93 design selection process that produced Crescent of Embrace. Does it have Islamic symbols or doesn’t it? Let's settle this once and for all. Why do you think Tom Sr. opposed this design?...

The "war on terror" went away with George W. Bush, but there's still a postscript here and there to be attended to. If you're one of the dwindling band of Americans interested in the Flight 93 memorial, this exchange with the presiding honchos of the "Circle of Embrace" (formerly the "Crescent of Embrace") makes for glum reading: “In your depiction, who is breaking the circle?”“The passengers and crew,” said [Memorial Project Manager] Reinbold.“But the circle is a symbol of peace,” Rawls continued. “Who broke the peace? It was the TERRORISTS who broke the peace on 9/11.”Reinbold countered that that the...

The official explanation for the Crescent of Embrace design is that the path of Flight 93 breaks the circle, turning it into the giant crescent. They call it the Circle of Embrace now, but the Memorial Project’s own website acknowledges that the circle is still broken: In summary, the memorial is shaped in a circular fashion, and the circle is symbolically "broken" or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site... The fact that the Circle of Embrace is really a broken circle means two things. First, it means that the giant...

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Posted By:Catherine MoyPermalink9/11 Victims Families: Obama Must Visit Gitmo and Reverse Dangerous Order Debra Burlingame’s brother, Charles “Chick” Burlingame, died as he piloted the plane that was hijacked by terrorists on 9/11. She opposes the closure of Gitmo. Families of those killed on 9/11, a Gold Star mother, and Sen. James Inhofe, sent a strong message today at Move America Forward’s press conference at the National Press conference in Washington DC: Keep Gitmo open for the sake of Americans who will be endangered by President Obama’s order to close the facility for terrorists. MAF has the...

Background For three years, the Flight 93 Memorial Project has been relentlessly dishonest, publicly denying damning facts like the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent while making excuses for these facts in private. Example: Before the 2007 Memorial Project meeting, Project Partner and Flight 93 family member Patrick White was asked by the press about claims that the giant Crescent of Embrace points to Mecca . He said that all of the claims about what is in the design had been thoroughly investigated and been found to be untrue and "preposterous." In private conversation at the meeting itself, White acknowledged...

It has been more than seven years since 20-year-old Deora Bodley and 39 other passengers and crew died in the fiery crash of United Airlines Flight 93, their hijacked plane disintegrating in a grove of hemlock trees outside Shanksville, Pa. Most of the remains from the tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, were never recovered, making the bowl-shaped crash site in the western Pennsylvania countryside an unofficial cemetery and, for surviving relatives, sacred ground. But efforts to buy property for a national Flight 93 memorial have bogged down in federal red tape and a protracted land dispute, angering family members and...

PHILADELPHIA – Relatives of those who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93 want the Bush Administration to seize the land needed for a memorial where the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa., in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Families of Flight 93 sent a letter earlier this month asking President George W. Bush to empower the Secretary of the Interior to take the land in dispute from a homeowner who had been in negotiations with the National Parks Service, said Patrick White, vice president of the families' organization. The group says ground must be broken early next year in time for...

If you have a fast connection, there is a high quality viewing option at the lower right of the viewing screen here. Part 1 focused on the blatant Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial, and on Tom Burnett's efforts to stop this desecration of his son's grave. Part 2 is about the terrorist memorializing features. On first examination, the Islamic symbol shapes in the Flight 93 memorial are found to be slightly imprecise: The giant crescent does not point quite exactly at Mecca . The Sacred Ground Plaza that sits roughly in the position of the star on a...

Defenders of the Flight 93 memorial repeatedly insist that the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent HAS to be a coincidence.

Powerful video of Tom Burnett Senior and Alec Rawls at the August 2nd Memorial project meeting. The clip below is Part 1 of Alec’s new video exposé, starting with Mr. Burnett 's appeal to the American people to please help him stop the Park Service from planting a giant Islamic shaped crescent atop his son's grave.

Lisa Beamer, whose husband died on Flight 93, is left with her sons, David, 3, (left) and Drew, 18 months, and a third baby on the way The Real Story of Flight 93 The terrorists had years to plan their hijacking. The passengers had just minutes to respond. But a band of patriots came together to defy death and save a symbol of freedom. What happened on that flight—and inside the cockpit Dec. 3 issue — In the first few days after September 11, Lisa Beamer could not sleep for more than an hour. Then she would wake up ...

The federal law authorizing the Flight 93 National Memorial has been changed to allow the federal government to use eminent domain proceedings to obtain the 275-acre Svonavec Inc. property. Patrick White, vice president of The Families of Flight 93 and buyers agent for the Families, said on Wednesday that the Justice Department would be the one to file for condemnation and will make the decision if and when to do so. It is not the Families of Flight 93’s decision, he said. “The time has come for the residents and citizens of Somerset County to understand what the law is...

(CNN) -- In a video marking the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, al Qaeda's top leader in Afghanistan vows more "large-scale" attacks against the United States and its allies. Mullah Omar, chief of the Taliban, is shown in this undated headshot photo. In another segment, the personal adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Omar says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well. Al Qaeda leaders featured on the video promise more violence against their enemies... Also on the video is a reading from the will of Saeed al Ghamdi, one of the 19 hijackers involved...

SHANKSVILLE — As the late morning sun began piercing steel-gray skies, U.S. Sen. John McCain thought back seven years. Directly above where the Republican presidential nominee was standing Thursday morning on a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, 40 heroes fought back against terrorism.

THE HEROES OF FLIGHT 93 AND HOW THEY HELPED FOIL AN ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL The terrorists used knives and box cutters to commandeer the three airplanes and then crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They also indicated that they had bombs. GTE Airphone calls from the hijacked aircraft indicated that the terrorists, who numbered between three and six on each aircraft, would take control of the aircraft by taking a stewardess or passenger and either threatening, or actually cutting or stabbing them, and then take control of the aircraft when the crew came out...