Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. He was reportedly murdered by Satam al Suqami, one of the alleged hijackers, while the terrorists were taking over his plane.
Even before September 11, though, Lewin had secured his place in history. He was unusually intelligent and talented, and had excelled as a soldier, a student, and a businessman. Examination of his story, however, reveals many anomalies, contradictions, and odd coincidences that deserve scrutiny.
The official story of how he was killed is certainly suspicious. Lewin was very strong and had served in the Israeli military as a member of an elite counterterrorism unit. Al Suqami, in contrast, was short and thin, and had no military experience. And yet he supposedly took Lewin down with just a knife. Furthermore, Lewin was supposedly not originally going to be on Flight 11 on September 11. He was reportedly meant to fly to Los Angeles a day earlier but changed his plans so he could help take care of some issues at his company's headquarters.
It also seems odd that the first person to die in the 9/11 attacks--perhaps the most significant event of the 21st century--was an important figure in his own right, even before he became a key player in the events of September 11. Although he was little known among the general public, Lewin was a highly successful Internet entrepreneur. In 1998, he co-founded the pioneering technology company Akamai. Akamai's product utilized algorithms that Lewin helped devise, which could manage Web traffic in a way that was significantly faster and more efficient than existing methods.
He helped build the company from scratch to one that, by 9/11, employed about 1,500 people. Its success meant Lewin was, for a time, a billionaire and the technology he helped develop revolutionized how content was delivered over the Internet.
It has been suggested that, had he not been killed on September 11, Lewin could have become a household name, someone like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Some people even believed he would have gone into politics and could have become prime minister of Israel.
Certain aspects of Lewin's life seem unusual in light of the fact that Lewin was the first person killed in the 9/11 attacks. For example, while he was in the military, Lewin reportedly became committed to the cause of "wiping out terrorism." This means the first victim of America's worst terrorist attack, who may have died while trying to stop the hijackers on his plane, happened to be a man who was dedicated to stopping terrorists.
Furthermore, in the years before he died, Lewin acted as if he foresaw the 9/11 attacks or at least something on the scale of 9/11. He told people that a "cataclysmic event" would occur, during which people would turn to the Internet for information.
Of particular note, considering that Lewin died in a terrorist attack, is that just two months before 9/11, his company was visited out of the blue by the White House chief of counterterrorism. Richard Clarke went to Akamai to employ it to protect the White House website from an imminent attack by a computer virus.
And yet, while Lewin was the first person to be killed in the 9/11 attacks and an exceptional individual, surprisingly little attention has been paid to his story. Author Molly Knight Raskin explained how this lack of attention compelled her to write a book about him. "The more I heard about Danny," she said, "the more I wondered, 'Why hasn't this story ever been told before?'" She commented that "in all of those stories of September 11th, 2001," she had "never heard anything about him." [1]
Lewin's story is certainly remarkable. But parts of it indicate that there may be more to what happened on September 11 than we have been led to believe and so it requires close scrutiny.
LEWIN WAS KILLED WHILE FLIGHT 11 WAS BEING HIJACKED
Daniel Lewin, according to the official narrative of 9/11, was killed on the morning of September 11, 2001, when five Middle Eastern men armed with knives attempted to take control of Flight 11. He had his throat slashed by Satam al Suqami, one of the hijackers. [2]
Lewin was traveling on the 7:45 a.m. flight from Boston to Los Angeles--a trip he had frequently taken over the past year--on behalf of Akamai. He was going to California to sign a major business deal that he hoped would save his company, which was at the time struggling as a result of the previous year's dot-com crash. He was also set to attend the Credit Suisse First Boston Software Conference while he was in California. [3]
He was in seat 9B, in the business class section near the front of the plane. [4] Two of the alleged hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, were in the row of seats in front of his while al Suqami was in seat 10B, directly behind him. [5]
At 8:14 a.m. or shortly after, it is believed, the five hijackers on Flight 11 rose from their seats and began their takeover of the plane. In the course of doing this, al Suqami killed Lewin. Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Everyone on board and many people in the tower were killed in the crash. [6]
FLIGHT ATTENDANT SAID LEWIN HAD HIS THROAT SLASHED
Details of what supposedly happened to Lewin were described by two flight attendants, Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney, in phone calls they made from the rear of Flight 11 to authorities on the ground.
Ong reached the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office in Cary, North Carolina, at 8:18 a.m. and, apparently describing what had happened to Lewin, reported, "Somebody's stabbed in business class." [7] Later during the call she said other flight attendants had told her "that a passenger by the name of Daniel Lewin may have been fatally wounded." [8]
Sweeney relayed details of the hijacking to personnel at the American Airlines flight services office at Logan International Airport in Boston in a series of calls beginning at 8:25 a.m. Presumably describing what happened to Lewin, she reported that "a passenger in row 9 ... had their throat cut by a passenger in seat 10B." She said the passenger whose throat had been cut was "bleeding severely" and was "not going to make it." [9]
Ong and Sweeney never mentioned whether Lewin was wounded in the course of trying to stop the hijacking. The 9/11 Commission, created by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks, tentatively concluded that he "may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that another was sitting behind him." [10]
But friends and relatives of his were certain that he would have tried to stop the hijackers. Many of them who were interviewed by Molly Knight Raskin for the book she wrote about him said that in light of his "physical strength, counterterrorism training, and fighting spirit," there was "no way Lewin could have sat idly by and watched terrorists hurt flight attendants and attempt to hijack the plane."
"Knowing his character and his training, we know that he got up and tried to do something," Marco Greenberg, one of Lewin's closest friends, commented. [11] "He wasn't one to sit passively by and see something bad happening and not try to get up and do something about it. It was in his nature to be a hero," one of his brothers said. [12]
LEWIN WAS HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL
While Lewin may be remembered simply as the first victim of the 9/11 attacks, even before September 11 his life was remarkable. The son of a psychiatrist and a pediatrician, he was born in Denver, Colorado, in May 1970 and grew up in a large house there. [13] When he was 14, though, he moved with his family to Israel.
At the age of 18, he joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but after serving in the military for about four years, he left to study for degrees in math and engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology--better known as the Technion--in Haifa. [14]
After graduating, he successfully applied to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He consequently moved back to the U.S. in fall 1996 to study for a Ph.D. in applied math. [15]
He quickly established himself as a top student at MIT, and co-authored several papers on algorithms and complexity theory while he was there. [16] Significantly, Lewin and his professor, Tom Leighton, devised a way to handle Internet congestion that would speed up the delivery of content and make websites feel faster. [17] The algorithms they came up with became the foundation of Akamai, the company the two men set up in August 1998. [18]
Akamai established a network of servers around the world. This network could rewrite the addresses of its customers' Web pages and ensure fast access to them by providing the information requested by Internet users via any of the company's servers that were available, instead of via congested servers. [19] Its product, called FreeFlow, thereby enabled customers' Web pages and online applications to load faster and more reliably. [20]
FreeFlow was marketed as the "world's largest fault-tolerant network for distributing Web content." [21] Alan Edelman, an associate professor of applied mathematics at MIT, described it as "something like a limousine service that guarantees a short ride no matter what the traffic conditions." [22]
Akamai became a great success in the late 1990s Internet boom. It quickly signed up a healthy number of clients, thereby ensuring it millions of dollars in revenue, and Lewin and Leighton soon became wealthy men. [23] Wired magazine commented in August 1999 that "in less than a year, the little-known company is well on its way toward global domination." [24]
STORY OF HOW LEWIN DIED IS SUSPICIOUS
Lewin's story, however, includes many anomalies. The official account of how Lewin died on Flight 11 is especially hard to believe.
To begin with, Lewin would have been a tough adversary for anyone who took him on. He was, in the words of Lior Netzer, who served with him in the IDF, "a very strong guy." [25] He was 5 feet 10 inches tall and, according to Molly Knight Raskin, "built like a bull--burly and broad-shouldered, sheer muscle from head to toe." [26]
As a teenager, he regularly went to a gym in Jerusalem where he trained intensely. His strength increased so much that by the age of 16 he could bench-press more than 300 pounds. He was even crowned "Mr. Teenage Israel" after winning a coveted bodybuilding competition. [27]
LEWIN SERVED IN 'THE MOST EFFECTIVE COUNTERTERRORISM FORCE IN THE WORLD'
Lewin then gained around four years of military experience after joining the Israel Defense Forces when he was 18. [28] Notably, considering that he was supposedly killed by a terrorist, he served in the IDF's elite Sayeret Matkal. This unit was described by Vanity Fair as "the most effective counterterrorism force in the world." Its members have "almost unmatched counterterrorism skills," according to Raskin.
Lewin must have been highly regarded to be accepted into it. The Sayeret Matkal includes only about 200 full-time commandos and so getting in is rare, even for the best soldiers. Out of the thousands who apply at any one time, following two grueling test camps, only 20 to 40 men are selected. The fact that Lewin made it into the unit was particularly impressive considering that, according to Raskin, "for soldiers who were not Israeli-born, recruitment to Sayeret Matkal was almost unheard of."
Those who make it into the unit undergo nearly two years of intense training. This includes a course in counterterrorism in which they learn to storm planes and rescue hostages, and lessons in hand-to-hand combat. [29] Such training would surely have given Lewin a significant advantage against the hijackers on Flight 11. Indeed, it was reported that he had the skills to kill a terrorist "with a pen or a credit card, or just his bare hands." [30]
As well as having advanced combat skills, Lewin spoke some Arabic. He may consequently have picked up on the hijackers' intentions if he heard them discussing their plans to hijack Flight 11 in this language and might therefore have been able to come up with a strategy for stopping them when they attempted to take over the plane. [31]
Lewin appears to have excelled in the Sayeret Matkal since, after three years in the unit, he was promoted to the rank of captain. [32] Brad Rephen, who knew him as a teenager, commented on his success, saying: "About 2,500 guys try out for the unit he was in. Twenty-five make it and one gets chosen as an officer. It was him." [33]
LEWIN'S ALLEGED KILLER WAS SHORT AND SKINNY
Incredibly, considering his strength and military experience, Lewin was supposedly killed by a man who appears to have been quite feeble, someone he should have taken down with ease.
Satam al Suqami, a 25-year-old from Saudi Arabia, was just 5 feet 7 inches tall. [34] Like the other terrorists tasked with storming the cockpits and controlling the passengers rather than flying the hijacked planes on September 11--ironically referred to as the "muscle hijackers"--he was "slender in build" and "not physically imposing," according to the 9/11 Commission. [35]
A CIA report on the alleged 9/11 hijackers portrayed him as an unimpressive man. He came from a broken family, the report stated, and had little education. He had worked as a security guard for a hospital and only got involved with extremists two years before 9/11, in 1999. He was also unconcerned with religion, according to members of his family, was known to drink alcohol, possibly having a drinking problem, and may have taken drugs. [36]
However, London's Sunday Times reported that an investigation of the backgrounds of the alleged 9/11 hijackers found him to be a very different man. The investigation found that al Suqami came from a wealthy family, was intelligent and educated, and graduated in law at King Saud University in Riyadh. [37]
While these accounts appear to be describing two different men, neither of them described someone who would likely have made a particularly dangerous terrorist. However, a CIA report about al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan claimed that al Suqami received some training that would have helped prepare him for the events of September 11. It stated that he attended Khaldan, a large facility near Kabul, where he received basic training in fields such as firearms, heavy weapons, explosives, and topography. It also claimed that the "muscle hijackers," which included al Suqami, "engaged in months-long, daily, intensive instruction, which included martial arts."
How the CIA determined this and how reliable the claims are is unclear. The report stated that the information came from "a variety of intelligence reporting" but provided no further details. [38]
In fact, the young Saudi's behavior after he arrived in the U.S. in April 2001 seems inconsistent with the actions of a trained warrior preparing for the most important battle of his life. Al Suqami checked in at the Body Perfect Fitness Center, a gym in Lake Worth, Florida, on a number of occasions in June and July of 2001, and then purchased a one-month membership for the World Gym in Boynton Beach, Florida. He and other hijackers who joined gyms around this time "may have been told to go get as strong as they could get in case of body conflict or a fight," Jim Woolard, who owned the World Gym in Boynton Beach, surmised. [39]
However, trainers observed that al Suqami and two other alleged hijackers who attended the World Gym with him "did not appear to know how to use the equipment" there. They "simply clustered around the machines, never pushing any weights," according to the New York Times. "They would just stand around and watch," trainer Joe Farnoly recalled. [40]
Would such an unremarkable man as Satam al Suqami really have been capable of killing Daniel Lewin? Certainly, people who knew Lewin appeared to be highly skeptical of the official story of how the entrepreneur was killed. "Those of us who knew him well can't figure out how only five terrorists managed to overpower him," Tom Leighton commented. [41]
"With his training, he would have killed [the hijackers] with his bare hands," Brad Rephen said. Lewin "knew how to fight with knives and take knives away from people," he explained, and "would have taken [the hijackers'] knives or their box cutters away and used them against them." [42] "I'd be surprised if he didn't kill one or two of the terrorists before he went down," Marco Greenberg remarked. [43]
FLIGHT ATTENDANTS WHO DESCRIBED LEWIN'S DEATH GAVE CONFLICTING INFORMATION
There are other oddities in the evidence relating to Lewin's death, in addition to the reports that such a tough man as Lewin was killed by a short, skinny hijacker armed only with a knife.
For example, the two flight attendants who described what had happened to Lewin contradicted each other over a notable detail during their phone calls to authorities on the ground. Amy Sweeney mentioned that Lewin was being cared for by a doctor and a nurse. [44] But when Betty Ong was asked, "Is there a doctor on board ... that's assisting you guys?" she said there were no doctors on Flight 11.
Furthermore, both flight attendants, independently of each other, initially said incorrectly that they were on "Flight 12" in their calls. When Ong reached the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office, Winston Sadler, the resolution agent there, asked her, "Which flight are you on?" and she replied, "Flight 12." She gave the correct information, though, about a minute later. When Sadler asked, "What is your name?" she replied: "My name is Betty Ong. I'm number three [flight attendant] on Flight 11." She also immediately corrected Sadler when he subsequently told a supervisor that Ong was on Flight 12. "No, we're on Flight 11 right now; this is Flight 11," she said. [45]
And when Sweeney made her first successful call to the American Airlines flight services office at Logan International Airport, she told the employee who answered that two flight attendants had been stabbed on Flight 12. American Airlines Flight 12 was in fact a flight from Los Angeles to Boston that had not yet taken off. [46]
EVIDENCE SUGGESTED LEWIN HAD BEEN SHOT
Another anomaly is that some evidence indicated Lewin was shot, although investigations found that this scenario was highly improbable and he was most likely killed with a knife.
The first indication of a shooting on Lewin's plane was received by the operations center at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) headquarters in Washington, DC, at 8:44 a.m. on September 11. In a conference call with the FAA's New England Regional Operations Center, it heard that a passenger on Flight 11 had been shot. [47]
Another indication of a shooting occurred about 35 minutes later. At that time, Janet Riffe, the FAA's principal security inspector for American Airlines, was reportedly told by Suzanne Clark, a manager of corporate security at American Airlines, that a passenger on Flight 11 had been shot dead. [48]
Riffe, who was working at FAA headquarters and had been receiving information about the hijacking of Flight 11, called American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, at 9:20 a.m. for a status update. [49] Her usual point of contact at the airline was a manager of corporate security called Chris Bidwell, but he was away from his office and so her call was passed on to Clark. [50]
During the call, according to Riffe, Clark said one of the flight attendants on Flight 11 had contacted the American Airlines System Operations Control center and reported that the passenger in seat 10B--i.e. Satam al Suqami--had shot and killed the passenger in seat 9B--i.e. Daniel Lewin. Just one bullet had been fired, she reportedly said. [51]
Following the call, Riffe filled out an event sheet, describing what Clark had told her. The details she wrote down were subsequently entered into a log and the information in the log was included in a memo prepared by FAA headquarters personnel early that evening. [52]
INVESTIGATIONS REFUTED THE CLAIM THAT LEWIN WAS SHOT
Various agencies, though, later determined that it was highly unlikely that Lewin was shot. When the memo that described the alleged shooting was leaked to the press in 2002, FAA and FBI officials said the report of a gun being used on Flight 11 was a mistake. The FAA said the memo was just a first draft. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the erroneous information in it was the result of "a miscommunication" and the error was corrected later in the evening of September 11. [53]
When the General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted a comprehensive investigation of the alleged shooting, the American Airlines personnel it interviewed all denied reporting to anyone that a shooting had occurred on any of the aircraft hijacked on September 11. The GAO concluded that there was "no information to corroborate a shooting on American Airlines Flight 11." [54]
The 9/11 Commission also investigated whether a shooting occurred on Flight 11 and came to the same conclusion. It pointed out that the only possible sources of authoritative reports that a gun was fired on Flight 11 were the phone calls made from the plane by Amy Sweeney and Betty Ong. But, it noted, there were no mentions of a gun or a shooting in the tape recordings of these calls or the accounts of participants and witnesses to the calls. It also pointed out that while investigators found evidence of the alleged hijackers purchasing numerous knives in the period before September 11, "there was no evidence that they purchased or possessed firearms." [55]
Strangely, Clark denied that the alleged phone call in which she supposedly told Riffe about the shooting took place. When she was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, she "unequivocally stated that she never made a report about a gun being used on Flight 11 on 9/11 or subsequently because she never had such information." She said she didn't remember talking with Riffe on September 11. She also said she didn't recall receiving any information about the weapons or tactics used on Flight 11 and only learned the seat numbers of the hijackers on the day after 9/11, thereby implying that she would have been unable to provide the information she supposedly gave to Riffe. [56]
LEWIN WAS ORIGINALLY GOING TO FLY TO LOS ANGELES ON THE DAY BEFORE 9/11
There are other anomalies in the story of Daniel Lewin besides those relating to the hijacking of Flight 11 and his death. To begin with, Lewin was reportedly not originally meant to be flying to Los Angeles on September 11. George Conrades, Akamai's CEO, Tim Weller, the company's chief financial officer, and Steven Wolfe Pereira, the director of corporate strategy, flew from Boston to Los Angeles on September 10, 2001, to give a presentation at the Credit Suisse First Boston Software Conference on the morning of September 11. "Danny Lewin was supposed to be on our flight," Pereira claimed.
But according to Pereira, "There was something going on back at the office and--typical Danny--he said he would help take care of it." Lewin told his colleagues to "just go" and said he would meet them in Los Angeles. [57] If he had stuck with his original plans, therefore, he would have avoided being on Flight 11 and still been alive on September 12.
Lewin even rejected the request of some of his colleagues to cancel his trip so he could help them deal with the effects of the previous year's dot-com crash. Akamai was at the time faced with the difficult task of laying off hundreds of its workers. Consequently, on September 10, he called a meeting for some of his employees in which he proposed a new vision for the company.
At the end of the meeting, the attendees tried to convince him to cancel his trip to Los Angeles the following day, and stay with them to help with the layoffs and restructuring of the firm. Lewin appeared to be considering their suggestion but decided to stick to his schedule. "You guys will be fine," he said. [58]
LEWIN PREDICTED A 'CATACLYSMIC EVENT'
Curiously, in the years before 9/11, Lewin repeatedly talked about some kind of major catastrophe occurring in the future. It was as if he foresaw the event in which he would die.
He "talked about a time when there would be some cataclysmic event that would cause people to turn to the Internet for information," Molly Knight Raskin said. This event would "cause phone lines to go down" and "interrupt what then were more commonly used forms of communication." [59] Since 1998, he "had called attention to the unpredictable nature of news, foreseeing a time when technology rooted in his algorithms would have the power to keep the Internet alive under an extraordinary crush of traffic," Raskin wrote. [60]
When he visited CNN to try and gain the television network as a customer, he attempted to sell it Akamai's services with the argument that "CNN could one day see a news event so huge that no amount of servers or bandwidth could handle it." Internet users "would turn to CNN, which billed itself 'the most trusted name in news,' only to find blank or skeletal Web pages." [61]
The day when the "cataclysmic event" Lewin talked of occurred "really was September 11th," Raskin commented. [62] That day, like in the scenario Lewin warned of, CNN's website experienced trouble because so many people visited it for information and the increase in traffic actually forced it offline between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. CNN eventually had to contact Akamai and employ it to help keep the site running. [63]
COUNTERTERRORISM CHIEF VISITED AKAMAI SHORTLY BEFORE 9/11
An especially notable oddity considering that Lewin was killed in America's worst terrorist attack is that, just two months before 9/11, his company was unexpectedly visited by the White House chief of counterterrorism. Richard Clarke approached Akamai to request its help in protecting the White House website from a predicted attack by a computer virus called Code Red.
Code Red was created to conduct a "distributed denial of service" attack. This kind of attack involves thousands of compromised computers targeting a website or server at the same time, thus causing it to overload and become unavailable. [64] The virus was designed to specifically target the White House infrastructure on the Internet by bombarding the White House Web server with data, thereby shutting it down for hours or even days. [65]
Clarke became concerned when, in July 2001, he learned that 300,000 computers infected with Code Red were about to attack the White House's website. [66] To address the threat, he approached Akamai for help, even though he had never dealt with the company before and it had no previous experience of doing cybersecurity work. He turned up at its headquarters in Cambridge and, Tom Leighton recalled, said that "there was going to be a massive attack on the White House Internet infrastructure ... and he believed that [Akamai] could help him." [67]
Akamai agreed to provide the support that Clarke requested and when the Code Red virus struck on July 19, it was able to stop the attack by deflecting the requests that threatened to overload the White House website's server to Akamai servers around the world. [68]
Clarke presumably talked to Lewin when he visited Akamai since, as its chief technology officer, Lewin "effectively ran the company," according to Lior Netzer, who worked at Akamai at the time. [69] Ironically, just weeks later, the two men were key figures in the events of September 11. While Lewin was the first victim of the hijackings, Clarke was in the White House Situation Room when America was under attack and played a major role in coordinating the government's response to the crisis.
LEWIN WAS ESPECIALLY TALENTED
It is also curious that the first person killed in such a major historical event as 9/11 was an important historical figure, albeit little known for what he had achieved. Daniel Lewin was in fact an unusually talented and successful man.
"In purely objective terms, Danny was an extraordinary human being," Marco Greenberg commented. [70] The entrepreneur was "exceptionally smart," according to Leighton. [71] Todd Dagres, who met Lewin when he was studying at MIT, described him as "intellectually brilliant" and "creatively brilliant." [72]
Even as a child, Lewin had "seemingly limitless talents," Molly Knight Raskin noted. He had such a beautiful singing voice that he was given leading roles in the musicals staged at his synagogue and he was also an extremely gifted violinist. At school, he excelled academically and in athletics. [73] He could "outrun and outplay all of his classmates on the sports field," according to Raskin. [74] Micah Lakin Avni, who was friends with him as a teenager, described Lewin as "smarter, stronger, more driven, more charismatic, and more energetic than anyone that I have ever met." [75]
LEWIN EXCELLED AT UNIVERSITY
As previously mentioned, Lewin excelled in the Israel Defense Forces, becoming one of only a small number of recruits to be accepted into the Sayeret Matkal and then being promoted to the rank of captain in the elite unit.
His achievements continued after he left the military. The first university he attended--the Technion--is Israel's premier technology university. And in 1995, it named him the year's outstanding student in computer engineering. [76] While he was studying there, he also worked at IBM's research laboratory in Haifa and helped develop the Genesys system, a processor verification tool that was used widely at IBM and other companies. He graduated from the Technion with highest honors. [77]
Then, in 1996, he applied to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on one of the top 10 computer science programs in the United States. [78] That year, only 100 out of over 2,000 applicants were accepted into the elite Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT and only five of these joined the theory group run by Tom Leighton, a professor of applied mathematics who was one of the world's leading authorities on algorithms for computing. Lewin was one of these five people. [79]
Leighton noted that, upon commencing his studies at MIT, Lewin soon stood out for his intellectual brilliance and his uninhibited personality. [80] In 1998, he was one of just a few MIT students to be awarded the Morris Joseph Levin Award for the Best MasterWorks Oral Thesis Presentation, for a paper he delivered in May that year. [81]
LEWIN BECAME A BILLIONAIRE
His biggest achievements, though, were with Akamai. With his work at the company, Lewin established himself as "one of the Internet generation's chief innovators," according to the Jerusalem Post, and by 2001, Leighton noted, he "was widely recognized as one of the most influential technologists of his generation." [82]
Akamai's rise to success was rapid and the company quickly gained some major customers. By June 1999, less than a year after it was established, these included 20 of the most popular websites, such as CNN Interactive, the New York Times, and Yahoo! [83] Earlier that year, Akamai was even contacted by Steve Jobs, the renowned co-founder of Apple Computers, who said he wanted to buy the company. (It declined his offer.) [84] And by the time Lewin died, just three years after it was established, Akamai employed 1,500 people. [85]
The company's initial public offering in October 1999 was particularly successful. On the first day of trading, Akamai shares increased in value by 458 percent, the fourth biggest climb ever for an IPO. Lewin was then, on paper, worth more than $1.8 billion. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him "one of the richest Israelis in the world." [86]
Lewin received recognition for his success at Akamai. In April 2001, Forbes magazine placed him at number 72 in its annual list of "100 Highest Rollers," which comprised the highest earners working in information technology. [87] And in July 2001, Enterprise Systems magazine placed him seventh in its "Power 100" list of leaders in information technology. [88]
Akamai's success continued after Lewin died. By 2013, the company regularly controlled between 15 and 30 percent of the world's Internet traffic, and delivered content for such well-known companies as Facebook, Twitter, and Apple's iTunes. It had offices around the world and over 3,500 employees. But its core technology still relied on the algorithms created by Lewin and Leighton. [89] The impact of Lewin's work, Leighton commented in 2002, "will be felt throughout the high-tech industry for many years to come." [90]
LEWIN WAS CONSIDERED A POTENTIAL FUTURE ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER
In light of how much he achieved by the age of 31, people have wondered what else Lewin would have accomplished if he had not died on September 11. CNN suggested that "he could have become a high-tech household name, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs." [91] Others concurred. "There was talk that he would be Bill Gates' successor," Gil Rudawsky, a childhood friends of Lewin's, wrote. [92] Writer and content strategist Craig Playstead, who worked for Akamai from 1999 to 2001, commented: "There's no doubt in my mind that Danny Lewin would have gone down in the same breath as the tech titans of today if he were still around. [Mark] Zuckerberg, the Google twins [Larry Page and Sergey Brin], [Bill] Gates, the list goes on. He was in that league." [93]
Some people said he would have moved on to a career in politics. "Danny always thought that he might like to come back [to Israel] and enter Israeli politics, and influence the political situation," his brother Jonathan commented. [94] It has even been suggested that he was a possible future prime minister.
Indeed, one of his dreams was to become prime minister of Israel. When his friend Micah Lakin Avni visited him in 2000, Lewin said that "eventually he would return to Israel, we would set up a political party, and he would become prime minister." He said he would "spend hundreds of millions of dollars of [his] own money on the election campaign" and would "win an absolute majority in [the] Knesset." Avni believed Lewin could have achieved his goal. "I have no doubt that if he had not been murdered on 9/11, Danny would have eventually returned to Israel and he would have become prime minister," he opined. [95]
STORY OF LEWIN'S DEATH INCLUDES CONTRADICTIONS
It is curious that the first person to die in such an unprecedented event as 9/11 was a man with such a unique and remarkable life story. There are aspects of this story, however, that need to be investigated.
Certainly, the official story of how Daniel Lewin was murdered seems highly unlikely and ought to be examined more closely than has so far been the case. Could Satam al Suqami really have killed Lewin? Lewin should have easily fought him off. He was bigger and surely far stronger than the young Saudi, and must have had vastly superior fighting skills.
But if the official story of what happened to Lewin on Flight 11 is false, what really happened to the young entrepreneur? How did evidence revealing an incorrect story about his death come about and how was it possible for this story to be accepted as true?
Specific anomalies ought to be probed. These include the apparently false evidence that Lewin was shot rather than killed with a knife. The 9/11 Commission commented that it found it "troubling" that FAA security inspector Janet Riffe said American Airlines manager Suzanne Clark told her Lewin had been shot but Clark denied doing so. "This discrepancy is a problem that we should at least try to resolve if we can," it stated. However, it is unclear whether the 9/11 Commission ever got to the bottom of the issue. [96]
Additionally, why did Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney initially state incorrectly that they were on "Flight 12," not Flight 11, in their calls from the hijacked plane? Would two experienced flight attendants both make an error over such a rudimentary detail?
And why did Ong and Sweeney contradict each other over whether Lewin was being treated by a doctor, with Sweeney saying he was being cared for by a doctor and a nurse while Ong said there were no doctors on the plane? Sweeney said she was sitting next to Ong when she was making her calls and so the two women should have been receiving details of what was happening on the plane from the same sources. [97] How then could they have given authorities on the ground conflicting information about this issue?
The calls made by Ong and Sweeney were the only sources for the official story of Lewin's death, and so it is concerning that they contain these blatant anomalies. Was there more to them than the official story of 9/11 suggests? If there was, can the account of what happened to Lewin provided by the two flight attendants be believed?
LEWIN WAS COMMITTED TO 'WIPING OUT TERRORISM'
There are other parts of Lewin's story, in addition to the details of what happened to Lewin on Flight 11, that are curious. Whether these are significant in relation to the events of September 11 is unknown. All the same, they could be worth investigating, in case scrutiny of them reveals them to indeed be relevant.
Lewin's membership in Israel's Sayeret Matkal is surely notable. It seems an incredible coincidence that the man who was reportedly the first victim of America's worst terrorist attack had served in "the most effective counterterrorism force in the world," whose members have "almost unmatched counterterrorism skills."
Was it also just a coincidence that a man who is believed to have died while trying to protect the people on Flight 11 against terrorists had previously dedicated himself to the cause of "wiping out terrorism"? "As a soldier he believed that it was his job to risk his life to fight against people who were trying to do evil in the world," Lewin's brother, Jonathan, said. Jonathan Lewin added that Daniel Lewin believed that "the way to address terrorism was not to sit idly by and let innocent people be killed, but to actively go out and cut the head off the stick." [98]
And was there any particular reason why Lewin told people that a "cataclysmic event that would cause people to turn to the Internet for information" would occur? Was his prediction of a catastrophic event, which turned out to be accurate, simply the result of good judgment or did he have at least some degree of foreknowledge of 9/11, or a disaster on the scale of it?
COUNTERTERRORISM CHIEF LIKELY MET LEWIN BEFORE 9/11
An incident that should certainly be looked into is the visit made by White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to Akamai in July 2001. Clarke's decision to request the company's help with protecting the White House website from the Code Red virus seems an odd choice. Tom Leighton suggested that his reason for approaching Akamai was that he had "figured out that we had a large edge network with a large number of servers close to where the users were and where the attacking bots were," and he "felt that if the traffic was directed through us, that the network had enough capacity to filter out the attack and protect the core." [99]
However, Clarke surely ought to have sought help from a company with extensive experience in cybersecurity when the White House faced such a major threat. Indeed, the distributed denial of service attack that was subsequently caused by Code Red was "of such proportions that some feared parts of the Internet would shut down, unable to cope with the unprecedented flood of data," according to CNET News. Before it began on July 19, 2001, "Many thought the massive influx of data could slow parts of the Internet to a crawl." [100] Why then did Clarke approach a company with no experience in cybersecurity work?
His decision to go to Akamai for assistance was also strange since he'd reportedly had no previous contact with the company. "We did not know him, but he somehow knew us," Leighton commented. [101] Surely, considering the seriousness of the threat, he should have gone to a company he had dealt with before and so knew from his own experience was reliable?
If Lewin talked to Clarke when the counterterrorism chief visited Akamai, as seems likely, it would mean two men who played key roles when America was attacked on September 11 met each other, apparently for the first time, just two months before the attacks occurred. For this to happen due to chance would have been an incredible coincidence.
It is therefore worth considering if there was an ulterior motive behind Clarke's visit to Akamai. Were there reasons, besides the threat of the Code Red virus, for it? And was this really the first time Clarke contacted Akamai or had he met at least some of its executives--perhaps including Lewin--before?
LEWIN'S STORY RECEIVED LITTLE ATTENTION
It is curious that the first person to die during such an important and historical event as 9/11 happened to be unusually talented and successful. Was this a coincidence or is there more to it?
There are probably numerous possible nefarious reasons why such a scenario could have occurred. As just one example, people involved with planning 9/11 may have wanted the first victim of the attacks to be a particularly well-regarded person so as to increase the amount of outrage the attacks would cause. They selected Lewin for this unfortunate role because they determined he was someone who stood out from the crowd and would therefore be particularly missed. (Indeed, a memorial service for him at MIT was attended by over 1,000 people. [102]) They then found a way to ensure he would take Flight 11 on September 11.
Something that may support this possibility is the claim that Lewin was only on the doomed flight because of a change of schedule. As previously mentioned, he was originally meant to fly to Los Angeles with some other Akamai executives on September 10, according to one of his colleagues. [103] Although he supposedly took a later flight so he could deal with some issues at Akamai headquarters, it is surely possible that there was a different as yet unknown reason for his change of plans.
But while Lewin was an exceptional man, relatively little attention has been paid to his extraordinary and fascinating life story, including his key role in the events of September 11. Molly Knight Raskin said she was astonished that many years after 9/11 she had been unaware of the story of the first victim of the attacks. "I lived in New York City on September 11th, 2001 ... and I was just really surprised that in all of the stories that came out of that day, I had never heard his," she commented.
She was also surprised that Lewin had achieved so much in his short life. "When I heard Danny's story, my first response was: 'This can't be true. This person cannot possibly have accomplished all this by such a young age,'" she recalled. [104] She remarked that as a journalist she knew from experience that Lewin's story was something that was "begging to be told" and so ought to have been reported extensively. [105]
Might the lack of attention have come about because authorities feared that awareness of suspicious aspects of it could have caused people to start wondering whether there was more to the events of September 11 than the official narrative of 9/11 suggests? In particular, greater attention to Lewin's story could have led people to question the dubious official account of how Lewin was murdered.
Daniel Lewin's story should surely receive more attention. While Lewin deserves recognition for his considerable achievements, investigation of aspects of his life might reveal important new details about 9/11, which could increase our knowledge of what really happened on September 11 and who was responsible for the terrorist attacks that day.
NOTES
[1] "Molly Knight Raskin." Costa Report, Genesis Communications Network, May 5, 2014.
[2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 4-6; Staff Report: The Four Flights. 9/11 Commission, August 26, 2004, p. 8.
[3] Anne E. Lewin, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 18, 2001; Steven Wolfe Pereira, "The Day After." Medium, September 12, 2016; Mitchell Zuckoff, Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11. New York: HarperCollins, 2019, pp. 38-39.
[4] David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death." Jerusalem Post, September 8, 2011; Anthony Summers, "The Eleventh Day." New York Post, September 11, 2011.
[5] Staff Report: The Four Flights, pp. 6, 8; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2013, p. 203; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11." Psychology Today, September 2, 2013.
[6] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 4-5, 7; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 202-203.
[7] "Transcripts of 9/11 Telephone Calls: Betty Ong to Vanessa Minter, Winston Sadler, and Nydia Gonzalez (AA Raleigh Reservations Office)." American Airlines, September 11, 2001; Staff Report: The Four Flights, p. 8.
[8] Nydia E. Gonzalez, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 12, 2001; Staff Report: The Four Flights, p. 12.
[9] Evelyn Nunez, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001; Michael Woodward, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001; Staff Report: The Four Flights, pp. 10-11.
[10] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 5.
[11] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 218-219.
[12] David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[13] Anne E. Lewin, interview by the FBI; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 4, 25.
[14] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 4; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11"; Todd Leopold, "The Legacy of Danny Lewin, the First Man to Die on 9/11." CNN, September 11, 2013; Liel Leibovitz, "Remembering Tech Titan Danny Lewin, the Fighting Genius on Flight 11." Tablet, September 11, 2013.
[15] David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death"; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[16] Tom Leighton, "Remarks Made by Tom Leighton to Commemorate the Naming of the STOC Best Student Paper Award in Honor of the Late Daniel Lewin." Speech, Montreal, Canada, May 19, 2002. ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory.
[17] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 113-114; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11"; Peter High, "Akamai CEO on the Company's Push Toward Cybersecurity." Forbes, March 25, 2019.
[18] Jack Schofield, "Daniel Lewin." The Guardian, September 15, 2001; David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death"; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[19] Ronny Lifschitz, "Daniel Lewin--Akamai: Outstanding Student." Israel's Business Arena, December 22, 1999.
[20] Bridget Finn, "A Star is Reborn." Business 2.0, July 2005.
[21] "MIT and Akamai Plan a Faster Way to Distribute Content Over the Web." Gilbane Advisor, January 13, 1999.
[22] Alan Edelman, "Akamai Technologies: A Mathematical Success Story." SIAM News, December 1999.
[23] Regina Joseph, "Aloha Akamai." Forbes, June 18, 1999; Akamai, "Akamai Doubles Customer Base to 200 in Six Weeks." News release, January 5, 2000; David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[24] Paul Spinrad, "The New Cool." Wired, August 1999.
[25] Judy Maltz, "He Went Down Fighting." Haaretz, November 11, 2001.
[26] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 5.
[27] Ibid. pp. 30-31; Liel Leibovitz, "Remembering Tech Titan Danny Lewin, the Fighting Genius on Flight 11."
[28] "Lewin." Chicago Tribune, September 17, 2001; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 4.
[29] Rich Cohen, "Stealth Warriors." Vanity Fair, December 2001; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 34-36, 38.
[30] Paul Sperry, "Lewin: Flight 11's Unsung Hero?" WorldNetDaily, March 27, 2002.
[31] Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11"; Todd Leopold, "The Legacy of Danny Lewin, the First Man to Die on 9/11."
[32] Judy Maltz, "He Went Down Fighting"; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 37.
[33] Paul Sperry, "Lewin: Flight 11's Unsung Hero?"
[34] 11 September: The Plot and the Plotters. Central Intelligence Agency, June 1, 2003, p. 36.
[35] "Staff Statement No. 16: Outline of the 9/11 Plot." 9/11 Commission, June 16, 2004.
[36] 11 September: The Plot and the Plotters, pp. 28, 36; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 232.
[37] "Hijackers Were From Wealthy Saudi Families." Sunday Times, October 28, 2001.
[38] Afghanistan Camps Central to 11 September Plot: Can Al-Qa'ida Train on the Run? Central Intelligence Agency, June 20, 2003, pp. 2-3; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 234.
[39] Richard A. Serrano and John-Thor Dahlburg, "Officials Told of 'Major Assault' Plans." Los Angeles Times, September 20, 2001; "Hijackers Timeline (Redacted), Part 2." Federal Bureau of Investigation, November 14, 2003.
[40] Tim Golden and Michael Moss, "Unpolished Secret Agents Were Able to Hide in Plain Sight." New York Times, September 23, 2001; Michael D. Sallah, "Terror Sprouts in Florida Sun." Toledo Blade, September 30, 2001.
[41] Tom Leighton, "Remarks Made by Tom Leighton to Commemorate the Naming of the STOC Best Student Paper Award in Honor of the Late Daniel Lewin"; David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[42] Paul Sperry, "Lewin: Flight 11's Unsung Hero?"
[43] Judy Maltz, "He Went Down Fighting."
[44] James Sayer, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001; Michael Woodward, interview by the FBI.
[45] "Transcripts of 9/11 Telephone Calls: Betty Ong to Vanessa Minter, Winston Sadler, and Nydia Gonzalez (AA Raleigh Reservations Office)"; Vanessa Dias Minter, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 12, 2001.
[46] Evelyn Nunez, interview by the FBI; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Michael Woodward, American Airlines Flight Service Manager on September 11, 2001." 9/11 Commission, January 25, 2004; Staff Report: The Four Flights, p. 10.
[47] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 2001; "Briefing Flight AA 11." United States General Accounting Office, August 30, 2002.
[48] "Executive Summary: September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001; "Briefing Flight AA 11"; Team 7, "Facts vs. Fiction." E-mail to Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[49] "Briefing Flight AA 11"; "Memorandum for the Record: Phone Call With Janet Riffe, FAA's Principal Security Inspector Assigned to American Airlines on 9/11." 9/11 Commission, September 11, 2003; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Janet Riffe, FAA Principal Security Inspector for American Airlines." 9/11 Commission, February 26, 2004.
[50] "Memorandum for the Record: Phone Call With Janet Riffe, FAA's Principal Security Inspector Assigned to American Airlines on 9/11"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Suzanne Clark, American Airlines Employee." 9/11 Commission, November 18, 2003.
[51] "Executive Summary: September 11, 2001."
[52] "Memorandum for the Record: Phone Call With Janet Riffe, FAA's Principal Security Inspector Assigned to American Airlines on 9/11"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Frances Lozito." 9/11 Commission, May 11, 2004; Team 7, "Facts vs. Fiction."
[53] Blake Morrison, "9/11 Group Troubled by Gun Report." USA Today, February 27, 2002; Dan Eggen, "Airports Screened Nine of Sept. 11 Hijackers, Officials Say." Washington Post, March 2, 2002; "UPI Hears ..." United Press International, March 6, 2002.
[54] "Briefing Flight AA 11."
[55] Staff Report: The Four Flights, pp. 16-17.
[56] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Suzanne Clark, American Airlines Employee."
[57] Steven Wolfe Pereira, "The Day After."
[58] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 199-200.
[59] Brian McCullough, "The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies." Internet History Podcast, podcast audio, December 8, 2014.
[60] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 210.
[61] Ibid. p. 132.
[62] Brian McCullough, "The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies."
[63] "Internet, Telecom Networks Put to Test in Wake of Terrorist Strikes on U.S." Network World, September 17, 2001; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 211-212; Amy Newman Smith, "Scaling the Internet." Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2014.
[64] Carolyn Meinel, "Code Red: Worm Assault on the Web." Scientific American, October 28, 2002; Amit Roy Choudhury, "Internet's Gatekeeper." Business Times, September 24, 2016.
[65] Mark Reilly, "Code Red Wreaks Havoc." Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, August 26, 2001; Peter High, "Akamai CEO on the Company's Push Toward Cybersecurity."
[66] Andy Greenberg, "Weapons of Mass Disruption." Forbes, April 8, 2010.
[67] Peter High, "Akamai CEO on the Company's Push Toward Cybersecurity."
[68] Sarah Left, "Code Red Virus Traced to China." The Guardian, August 31, 2001; Andy Greenberg, "Akamai: Funneling Bits, Foiling Hackers." Forbes, July 1, 2010.
[69] Judy Maltz, "He Went Down Fighting."
[70] Marco Greenberg, "Finding the Next Danny." Haaretz, September 5, 2008.
[71] Todd Leopold, "The Legacy of Danny Lewin, the First Man to Die on 9/11."
[72] Richard Sisk and Monique El-Faizy, "First Victim Died a Hero on Flt. 11." New York Daily News, July 24, 2004.
[73] Gil Rudawsky, "At 29, a Billionaire; at 31, a Casualty." Rocky Mountain News, September 4, 2002; Judy Maltz, "He Went Down Fighting"; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 25.
[74] Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[75] Micah Lakin Avni, "9/11: The Day Israel Lost Her Future Prime Minister." Times of Israel, September 11, 2016.
[76] "Paid Notice: Deaths, Lewin, Daniel M." New York Times, September 17, 2001; Gil Rudawsky, "At 29, a Billionaire; at 31, a Casualty"; "Akamai Remembers Danny Lewin." Akamai, n.d.
[77] "Memorial Service for Daniel Lewin Scheduled for Thursday in Kresge." MIT News, September 14, 2001; "Paid Notice: Deaths, Lewin, Daniel M."; David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[78] Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[79] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 48.
[80] Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[81] "EECS Students Garner Honors." MIT News, June 3, 1998; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 83.
[82] Tom Leighton, "Remarks Made by Tom Leighton to Commemorate the Naming of the STOC Best Student Paper Award in Honor of the Late Daniel Lewin"; David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[83] Regina Joseph, "Aloha Akamai"; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 160.
[84] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 138; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[85] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, p. 200; Dave Hennessy, "Tiffany Mosher--Dataxu." Hennessy Report, podcast transcript, April 4, 2019.
[86] "Akamai Technologies Stock Surges on First Trading Day." Associated Press, October 30, 1999; Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 175-178; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[87] Clint Willis, "The 100 Highest Rollers." Forbes, April 2, 2001.
[88] "The Enterprise Systems Power 100: Our Picks for Today's Top IT Leaders." Enterprise Systems, July 2001.
[89] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 221-222; Molly Knight Raskin, "The Genius Who Perished on Flight 11."
[90] Tom Leighton, "Remarks Made by Tom Leighton to Commemorate the Naming of the STOC Best Student Paper Award in Honor of the Late Daniel Lewin."
[91] Todd Leopold, "The Legacy of Danny Lewin, the First Man to Die on 9/11."
[92] Gil Rudawsky, "At 29, a Billionaire; at 31, a Casualty."
[93] Craig Playstead, "Remembering 9/11: The Smartest Person I Ever Met." Medium, September 11, 2016.
[94] David Brinn, "A Model Life and a Heroic Death."
[95] Micah Lakin Avni, "9/11: The Day Israel Lost Her Future Prime Minister."
[96] Team 7, "Facts vs. Fiction."
[97] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Michael Woodward, American Airlines Flight Service Manager on September 11, 2001"; Staff Report: The Four Flights, p. 11.
[98] Molly Knight Raskin, No Better Time, pp. 37-38.
[99] Peter High, "Akamai CEO on the Company's Push Toward Cybersecurity."
[100] Robert Lemos, "Code Red for Security." CNET News, July 27, 2001.
[101] Peter High, "Akamai CEO on the Company's Push Toward Cybersecurity."
[102] Gil Rudawsky, "At 29, a Billionaire; at 31, a Casualty."
[103] Steven Wolfe Pereira, "The Day After."
[104] "No Better Time: The Story of Danny Lewin With Author Molly Knight Raskin." Dr. Pat Show, Transformation Talk Radio, February 25, 2014.
[105] "Q&A With Author Molly Knight Raskin." Book Q&As With Deborah Kalb, October 1, 2013.
