Passengers defeated the well-trained hijacker assigned to Flight 93

Newsweek's day-by-day retrospective marks August 17, 2001, when Ziad Jarrah took a check ride at a Fort Lauderdale flight school, part of preparations for what became the hijacking of United Flight 93.

The piece traces Jarrah's path from secular Lebanese upbringing through Hamburg radicalization to eleven solo flight rentals in Florida before the attack, and notes his frequent calls home to his wife in Germany that went unmonitored.

It also revisits the operational accident of history: Flight 93's 40-minute ground delay in Newark meant passengers had time to learn of the other attacks by phone and act before Jarrah could reach Washington.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.