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Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

A Saudi family who “fled” their Sarasota area home weeks before 9/11 had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001,” according to newly released FBI records. One partially declassified document, marked “secret,” lists three of those individuals and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Accomplice Ziad Jarrah took flying lessons at another school a block away. Atta and al-Shehhi were at the controls of the jetliners that slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. Jarrah was the...

This is a special broadcast dedicated to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the first hour, we will be interviewing Tom Burnett, Sr., father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett, Jr., who was one of the passengers who co-ordinated and executed the assault on the cockpit in an effort to regain control of the aircraft.In the second hour, we will be interviewing Alec Rawls, author or "Crescent of Betrayal" about the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA which is for all and intents and purposes the world's largest mosque. Hold on to your hat and have your blood pressure...

AVONDALE, La. — The USS Somerset — the last of three Navy ships named for 9/11 attack sites — was christened Saturday in honor of the passengers and crew of the plane that crashed before terrorists could reach their intended target. Passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 stormed the cockpit and thwarted an attack on Washington, but the plane crashed in Somerset County, Pa., killing all 40 passengers and crew members. “The men and women of Flight 93 ... thought they were going to San Francisco to work, to play, to learn; to live their lives in peace while others...

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A former FBI employee who retired due to post-traumatic stress disorder linked to time spent as a liaison between law enforcement and families of United Airlines Flight 93 victims has written a book about seeing legions of angels guarding the site after the hijacked airliner crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. Lillie Leonardi was a Pittsburgh-area police officer before working for the FBI.

Sandy Dahl, widow to United Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl, whose plane went down in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11, passed away from natural causes at the age of 52 The Denver Post reports that Dahl passed away in her sleep on Friday night, according to family friend David Dosch. She was best known for channeling the tragedy of her husband’s death on September 11, 2001 into a campaign, which honored his memory and also instigated the Captain Jason M. Dahl Scholarship Fund for new pilots.

Alec Rawls, who has been working with Tom Burnett Sr. to stop the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93, explains the circumstances (related by Mr. Burnett in 2008, but not published until now). Mr. Burnett had been telling his fellow design competition jurors that the crescent is a well known Islamic symbol. In addition to the giant central crescent (now called a broken circle) Tom also objected to the minaret-like Tower of Voices. "I made a point at that meeting," says Mr. Burnett, "to tell people that we have an Islamist design here that can't go forward, please, stay...

GW Bush at Flight 93 Memorial: "Evil Is Real, So Is Courage" The best speech W has ever given in MHO. Watch here.

You may remember that there was considerable controversy when the design for the Flight 93 memorial was unveiled. It was called “Crescent of Embrace.” The crescent is, of course, the central symbol of Islam, and the design apparently was intended to symbolize some sort of rapprochement with that religion. The winning design was chosen by a jury, and some members of the jury, including Thomas Burnett, whose son was one of the heroes who brought down the airplane, vigorously opposed it. As I understand it, no one on the jury questioned the Muslim reference inherent in the crescent, but a...

Lest we forget....the heroes of flight 93. RIP, courageous travelers.

<p>Waiting to be interviewed on the radio the other day, I found myself on hold listening to a public-service message exhorting listeners to go to 911day.org and tell their fellow citizens how they would be observing the tenth anniversary of the, ah, “tragic events.” There followed a sound bite of a lady explaining that she would be paying tribute by going and cleaning up an area of the beach.</p>

Donors have contributed $52 million to build the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., but $10 million is still needed. Former President Bill Clinton declared Saturday that he and Speaker of the House John Boehner are going to do something about that. “Since I am no longer in office, I can do unpopular things,” Clinton declared at the end of his remarks at Saturday’s dedication ceremony.

George W. Bush spoke this afternoon at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful speech. One of his best. From his speech today: On 9-11, “The most lives lost on American soil on a single day since the Battle of Antietam.” “One of the lessons of 9-11 is that evil is real and so is courage.” “At the moment American democracy was under attack our citizens defied their captors by holding a vote. The choice they made would cost them their lives. And they knew it. Many passengers called their loved ones to say good-bye. Then...

On September 10, 2011 at 12:30 p.m. EST, almost ten years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Flight 93 National Memorial will be dedicated. Following a decade of healing, the promise of this sacred ground will finally be realized. The Memorial Plaza and Field of Honor will be the first features of the memorial to be completed for dedication, and will be permanently open to the public after the September 10 ceremony. Be a part of this remarkable moment. Coverage will begin at 12:30 p.m. EST – watch the dedication ceremony LIVE at History.com.

Phone interview [11:30am] between Neil Cavuto of FNC and retired US Army General Tommy Franks about the Shanksville Flight 93 Memorial.

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it. The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to...

Your must-read of the day. We already knew, of course, that Bush had given the order to shoot down the plane if necessary, before it could crash into another building. I remember vividly walking home to Queens from Manhattan on 9/11 and hearing a fighter jet overhead, the only time I’ve ever heard that sound in 30 years of living in NYC. It was obvious even in the chaos of that moment what they were up there looking for and what they were prepared to do if circumstances warranted. What wasn’t obvious — what we didn’t know until today, I...

The pilgrimages here started soon after the attacks. Local resident Donna Glessner remembers seeing visitors navigating Somerset County's rural roads with maps spread out on their dashboards. Many ended up taking pictures of the wrong place. The visitors bold enough to flag down a local always asked two questions: Where did the plane go down and how close can I get? "It just felt wrong for us in the community not to be helpful," Glessner said. In January 2002, four months after the deadliest attacks in history on U.S. soil, a group of local volunteers started staffing the site of...

Major Heather Penney recounts the drama in the skies after District of Columbia Air National Guard pilots scrambled to intercept incoming hostile planes. She describes why F-16’s initially took off from Andrews Air Force Base unarmed – and what she was prepared to do to bring down a plane piloted by terrorists.

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — The western Pennsylvania site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers confronted hijacking terrorists during the Sept. 11 attacks almost a decade ago is being marked by a gigantic boulder.