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CNN Live Event/Special

America Under Attack: FBI Holds Press Conference in Pennsylvania

Aired September 13, 2001 - 10:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to take our viewers to Pennsylvania, this is an FBI news conference, the latest on United Airlines Flight 93.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As we talked about yesterday and will continue to talk about it until it's resolved, the other priority that we're working on is the black box, the voice recorder, where as of right now, we have -- it has not been located. We're confident that we are going to keep working on it and we will account for it. And that -- as I said, that's the other investigative -- that's the investigative priority right now, is to locate that.

We are still doing the grid searches. We are working on covering the entire crime scene. And we will go where evidence the evidence leads us.

There has been a lot of questions regarding the flight path. There's an awful lot of information out there. And we have determined that the flight was heading in an eastern direction, and that's coming from the NTSB. Beyond that, anything else is -- would be speculative on our part and we really don't want to go any further than that, but we will confirm that the plane was headed in an easterly direction; that's coming from NTSB.

The -- to give you a little bit of an idea of how we're operating up there, one of the questions to us has been: How many agencies are up there and who are they? One of the things -- we have tremendous amount of agencies that are up there with personnel and it fluctuates on a daily basis depending on the needs of that day.

What we've been doing is, whoever is up there, they have their own meetings and their own objectives, whatever the organization is, whether it be the Red Cross trying to get enough food for the workers and for you all the way to any leads that are being generated from the state police or the FBI or any other federal law enforcement. All the different agencies are up there trying to work and do the job that what they are here for.

They're meeting -- all the heads of the different agencies that are up for that particular day meet twice. They meet at 9:00 a.m., and they meet at 2:00 p.m. And basically, they go around the room and everybody talks about what it is that they have accomplished and what it is that they are working on. And then at that point, the people who need to know have a good idea of how things are working, how things are funneling, so we have a clue of what's going on and people know what's happening here on this site.

Now, that's only for this site. As you're well aware, the FBI alone has over four thousand agents working not only nationwide, but worldwide trying to track down any leads. It's an awful lot of information. Anything of an investigative nature, that will be released, will be released out of Washington D.C., most likely from the attorney general or the president or the director of the FBI.

We're focused here on what's going on here on a day-to-day basis. That's what we hope to convey to you with our press conferences that we're going to have twice daily. And that's what we're focusing on.

There's been a lot of questions regarding the crater itself. According to people who have been involved in these investigation, such as the NTSB and the state police, when the plane goes in on the ground there's a tendency, obviously, for an awful lot of dirt to be moved and dust, as you can tell from the roads around here...

KAGAN: We've been listening in on an FBI news conference, the latest on the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, that's the one that was on its way from Newark to San Francisco when it crashed on Tuesday morning.

Still have not recovered the black box. Yet, they're still hopeful they will find it. The grid process goes on. And they also had more information that the NTSB saying that they do know at this point that that plane was headed in an easterly direction when it crashed.

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