On the morning of 9-11, for example, the Associated Press reported that United 93 made an emergency landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. According to the official version, however, Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, shortly after 10 a.m.
The AP story clearly reported that United had identified the plane that landed at Cleveland as Flight 93. Cleveland's Mayor Michael R. White reportedly said the plane had landed due to suspicion that it had a bomb aboard.
The most obvious problem with the official version that Flight 93 crashed at the site near Shanksville is that the photographs and eyewitness accounts describe a crater too small for a such a large plane to have crashed into. The crater at the reclaimed mine was less than 20 feet across and about 6 feet deep. Yet the official version claims that into this crater a Boeing 757 airliner supposedly buried itself, the passengers, the cargo, and thousands of gallons of jet fuel.
Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, said she was the first person to reach the crater. Lensbouer said that the crater was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described the sound as "an explosion, like an atomic bomb" â?" not a crash.
Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller, who was one of the first people to arrive at the crash site, said it looked as if someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch and dumped trash into it. Miller said there was nothing visible of human remains and that it was as if the plane had "stopped and let the passengers off before it crashed." He said that the most eerie thing about the site was that he hadn't seen a "single drop of blood."
Miller said he was stunned at how small the crater was. "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes," Miller said, "because there were no bodies there."
Asked how Flight 93 disappeared into the crater without leaving a trace, Bob Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard and correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, told AFP at the newspaper's office, "It [the ground] liquefied." However, one of the massive engines, Leverknight said, inexplicably bounced off the ground and was found at a considerable distance in the woods.
A second plane, identified as Delta 1989, was also reported to have landed at the Cleveland airport due to fears of sabotage. At a news conference, Mayor White identified the plane as a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles. It may be more than coincidence that both of the flights that allegedly struck the World Trade Center also originated at Boston's Logan Airport.
The Akron Beacon Journal reported that the mayor had stated that 200 passengers had been released from the plane at 11:15 a.m. The airport in Cleveland had been evacuated at 10 a.m. "Airline passengers and crew members were walking onto the highway to find their rides as no cars were allowed into the passenger drop off and pick up areas," the Journal reported.
The following day, Sept. 12, the Journal reported that an eyewitness had watched the Delta plane sitting near the I-X Center, which is a facility at the southeast edge of the airfield. It also reported that 78 passengers "were taken to NASA Glenn Research Center to be interviewed by FBI agents." The NASA facility is at the extreme northwest end of the airfield.
American Free Press called the former mayor at his 45-acre alpaca ranch, Seven Pines Alpacas in Newcomerstown, Ohio, to inquire about the events at the Cleveland airport on 9-11. White, however, was unwilling to discuss anything and cut the conversation short saying, "I'm out of the interview business."