The recording began at 9:31 a.m. with the hijackers' voice clearly stating, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain ... we have a bomb on board, so sit." For the next few minutes, passengers are repeatedly told, in English, "Don't move," "Shut up" "Sit," and "down, down, down."
As the tape proceeded, it was clear that passengers were gaining the upper hand.
A voice of a hijacker, presumably inside the cockpit, says, "They want to get in." The voice continues, "Hold from within." At 10 a.m., there is a voice that says, "I am injured." A hijacker asks in Arabic "Shall we finish it off?" The response come back: "No, not yet."
Then a voice is heard in English: "In the cockpit! If we don't, we die!"
At 10:01 a.m., a hijacker asks again: "Shall we put it down? The response: "Yes, put it down."
At that point, the plane appears to go out of control. There are sounds of the hijackers trying to shake off the passengers. The plane pitches back and forth.
A translation of the hijackers' Arabic words was provided to the jury. At one point a hijacker is heard to say "In the name of Allah, most merciful, most compassionate."
A voice in the cockpit says "Please don't hurt me. Oh God!" Then a few seconds later somebody says "I don't want to die!" three times.
In the last minute, voices could be heard in English saying "push up" and "pull down," as flight data showed the steering yoke moving wildly. Some interpreted that as a struggle for control in the cockpit between passengers and hijackers.
The hijackers for more than four minutes before that been swinging the plane wildly in an effort to throw the rebelling passengers off balance.
Then there are what sounds like groans in the cockpit. Amid sounds of a struggle, a hijacker asks, "There is something, a fight?" The response is, "Yeah." Then in Arabic a couple of minutes later, a voice of a hijacker says "Everything is fine. I finished." He said that around the time that the plane is turning back toward Washington.
As the jury heard the recording, prosecutors played a video presentation that simultaneously showed the flight path, speed and heading in a mockup similar to a flight simulator.
At 10:02 a.m., a hijacker says, "Give it to me. Give it to me." At 10:03 a.m. the plane dives amid crashing sounds and the tape stops. The last sound heard as the plane nears the ground: "Allah is the greatest."
The Flight 93 cockpit voice recording is the only such tape that investigators were able to hear from any of the four airplanes hijacked on Sept. 11.
The government rested its case just before 11:30 a.m. EDT after the judge rejected prosecutors' request to display a running presentation of the names and photos of all of the nearly 3,000 victims of Sept. 11. Prosecutors were instead allowed to show one large poster with the pictures of all but 92 of the victims.
There were three victim-impact witnesses who gave testimony following the broadcast of the Flight 93 tape in the courtroom.
The judge sent the jury home for the day and the defense will begin its case on Thursday. Just after that, Moussaoui shouted, "God curse you all!"
Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on Sept. 11.
Even though he was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, the jury ruled that lies told by Moussaoui to federal agents a month before the attacks kept them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.
Now they must decide whether Moussaoui deserves execution or life in prison.
Defense lawyers say the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence that he is mentally ill and because his execution would only play into his dream of martyrdom.
