WASHINGTON D.C., May 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Detained Al-Qa’eda leader Abu Zubaydah told interrogators that the hijacked airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania September 11 was headed for the White House, NBC News reported late Wednesday, May 22.  

Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March, provided his interrogators with new information indicating that the White House was the target of the fourth plane, NBC News reported, citing unidentified sources. 

Zubaydah, described as the third-ranking leader in Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa’eda organization, has been held in an undisclosed location since his capture. 

Reports on September 11 had speculated that the plane was headed for Camp David in Maryland. However, that theory was dispelled and replaced with concerns that it was headed for the White House since Camp David acts a presidential retreat and was unoccupied at the time of the attacks.  

U.S. President George W. Bush was in Florida at the time of the attacks and was rushed off to a secret location immediately after delivering his first speech following the attacks from a Florida school auditorium. 

A total of four U.S. passenger planes were seized on that day by 19 suspected hijackers, according to law enforcement officials. 

Two of them were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and a third rammed the Pentagon building outside Washington.  

The fourth plane, however, crashed into in a rural Pennsylvania field, killing all 45 people on board, reportedly after its passengers put up resistance.  

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh at 10:10 A.M, less than two hours after the three other planes hit their targets.

According to news sources following the event, Flight 93 headed west from Newark, New Jersey towards San Francisco, California without incident until it was overtaken near Cleveland, Ohio.

At 9:37 a.m., the plane turned around and headed back east. According to news sources, four men “wearing red headbands and speaking with accents” killed a passenger, charged into the cockpit - injuring both pilots, and took over the plane.

The passengers were then split into two groups. Some were held in the first class compartment, while the majority were moved towards the back of the plane.

Allegedly, one of the hijackers had a small red box tied to his waste, which he said was a bomb, according to CNN, which reported that it had obtained a transcript of “cockpit chatter” and talked with a source that heard the tape.

The source declared that a man had said in broken English: "This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport."

Glenn Cramer, an emergency dispatcher in nearby Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania reported on September 11 that he received a cell phone call at 9:58 a.m. from a man who said he was a passenger locked in a bathroom aboard the doomed flight. According to Kramer, the passenger repeatedly asserted that the call was not a hoax and that the flight was in fact hijacked.

"We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!" Cramer said, quoting the transcript of the emergency phone call.

“[The plane] was going down. He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," Cramer told officials, The Jackson Sun reported.

Initial reports circulated that a total of eight planes had been hijacked. Those reports later proved to be false.