Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller confirmed Thursday that one of the black boxes from the passenger plane that smashed into the Pentagon last week is unreadable.
"There were two recorders found at the Pentagon site, the flight data recorder and the voice recorder, and unfortunately we're unable to obtain anything off the voice recorder because it was so badly burned in that crash," he said.
Mueller was speaking at the site of the crash of another of the four jets hijacked on September 11 in an operation that was to be the worst terrorist attack in US history.
Two of them plowed into New York's World Trade center, the third into the Pentagon in Washington and the fourth into a field here after passengers apparently tackled the hijackers and prevented the plane from hitting another planned target.
The FBI chief said the two black boxes retrieved from that plane, United Airlines flight 93, had been recovered and were being examined by the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
"We've recovered the flight data recorder here, as well as the voice recorder, and we and the NTSB are in the process of transcribing and, in certain cases, translating the dialogue, what little dialogue there is on that voice recorder."
But no flight recorders -- the so-called "black boxes" -- have yet been recovered from the two Bowing 767 jets that flew into the WTC twin towers, causing them to collapse, Mueller said.
Each commercial aircraft is equipped with a Cockpit Voice Recorder, which records exchanges between the pilots and the control tower, and with a Flight Data recorder that makes a record of commands given to the aircraft and how it reacted -- SHANKSVILLE, Pensylvania (AFP)
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