Excerpt from Facts Talk but the Guilty Walk by Dean T. Hartwell
The public saw the images of planes hitting the buildings. Off screen, discussion between air traffic controllers and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took place about a possible connection between a plane no longer shown on screen and a burning building in New York. Word then got out to the media that American 11 hit the north tower. The source was the FAA.
There may not have been deception in the release of this information. But the conclusion of Flight 11 (a commercial flight on a Boeing 767) was based on the premise that the plane that smashed into the tower had necessarily been shown on screens that the controllers followed. The controllers and the FAA reasoned that since controllers had been following a blip on the screen they believed to be Flight 11 and because that blip disappeared right around the time of the crash at the World Trade Center, then the crashing plane must have been Flight 11.