'Flight 93 on Sept 11 crashed following uprising in cabin'

The theory described by FBI Director Robert Mueller, based on the government's analysis of cockpit recordings, discounts the popular perception of insurgent passengers grappling with terrorists inside the cockpit, trying to seize the plane's controls, immediately before the crash.

The government's findings - laid out deep within the July 24 congressional report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - aim to resolve one of the enduring mysteries of the deadliest terror attacks in US history: What happened in the final minutes aboard Flight 93? The newly published excerpts from Mueller's testimony appear at odds with what families of some passengers have come to believe happened.

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The FBI strenuously maintains that its analysis does not diminish the heroism of passengers who, with the words "Let's roll," apparently rushed down the airliner's narrow aisle to try to overwhelm the hijackers. In phone calls from the plane, four passengers said they and others decided to fight the hijackers after learning of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York that morning.

"In the cockpit! In the cockpit!" the passengers are heard yelling, according to Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos, Calif., who was among family members permitted to listen to the cockpit recording. Her son, Mark Bingham, died in the crash. She said the recording and a transcript the FBI provided to her and other families "doesn't leave very much doubt at all that passengers were able to get that cockpit door open."