- Evidence debunking the official explanation for the collapse
of the World Trade Center is being kept secret by the U.S. Dept. of Justice
on a flimsy pretext.
-
- The U.S. Dept of Justice has ordered secrecy measures
to keep the contents of a 'lost tape' of firefighters' voices at the World
Trade Center from being made public. The reason for the secrecy surrounding
the 78-minute audiotape is because it evidently debunks the accepted explanation
that intense jet fuel fires melted the towersí steel beams and caused
the collapses.
-
- The New York Times recently revealed the existence of
the tape of radio transmissions between firefighters of the New York Fire
Department (NYFD), which proves that ìat least two menî had
reached the 78th floor Sky Lobby of the South Tower. The firefighters
had reported about the fires and casualties they encountered and begun
evacuating the survivors.
-
- The article said that firefighters ìreached the
crash zone on the 78th floor, where they went to the aid of grievously
injured people trapped in a sprawl of destruction.î While the Times
article raises as many questions as it answers, it points to a reason for
the secrecy: "Once they got there," the article says, "they
had a coherent plan for putting out the fires they could see and helping
victims who survived."
-
- The report names two of the firefighters who were at
the crash site: Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer, who was organizing the
evacuation of injured people, and Fire Marshal Ronald P. Bucca. Both men
died in the collapse. 343 NYFD firefighters perished on 911.
-
- 'TWO POCKETS OF FIRE'
-
- The voices of the firefighters "showed no panic,
no sense that events were racing beyond their control," the Times
wrote. "At that point, the building would be standing for just a few
more minutes, as the fire was weakening the structure on the floors above
him. Even so, Chief Palmer could see only two pockets of fire, and called
for a pair of engine companies to fight them."
-
- "I didn't hear fear, I didn't hear panic,"
Palmer's widow said. "When the tape is made public to the world, people
will hear that they all went about their jobs without fear, and selflessly."
-
- The fact that veteran firefighters had 'a coherent plan
for putting out' the 'two pockets of fire' indicates they judged the blazes
to be manageable. These reports from the scene of the crash provide crucial
evidence debunking the government's unfounded claim that a raging steel-melting
inferno led to the tower's collapse. As the FEMA 'Building Performance
Assessment' report says, "Temperatures may have been as high as 900
- 1,100 C. (1,700 - 2,000 F.) in some areas."
-
- "If FEMA's temperature estimates are correct, the
interiors of the towers were furnaces capable of casting aluminum and glazing
pottery," Eric Hufschmid, author of the book 'Time for Painful Questions'
writes. Yet the voices on the tape prove that several firefighters were
able to work 'without fear' for an extended period at the point of the
crash, and that the fires they encountered there were neither intense nor
large.
-
- Incredibly, the South Tower literally disintegrated in
less than an hour after being hit by a plane, which impacted between its
78th and 84th floors. "Fire has never caused a steel building to collapse,"
Hufschmid writes, "so, how did a 56-minute fire bring down a steel
building as strong as the South Tower?"
-
- Hufschmid's forthcoming book presents compelling evidence
that explosives caused the towers to collapse.
-
- Pointing to the Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia in
1991, Hufschmid writes, "The Meridian Plaza fire was extreme, but
it did not cause the building to collapse. The fire in the South Tower
seems insignificant by comparison to both the Meridian Plaza fire and the
fire in the North Tower. How could the tiny fire in the South Tower cause
the entire structure to shatter into dust after 56 minutes while much more
extreme fires did not cause the Meridian Plaza building to even crack into
two pieces?"
-
- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA), the
bi-state authority and owner of the World Trade Center, retrieved the 'lost
tape'. A spokesman for the authority, Greg Trevor, told AFP that the tape
was found in PA police offices at 5 WTC, 'two or three weeks' after 911.
The PA police monitored radio transmissions from the WTC.
-
- Because of an unexplained delay in producing the tape
it was believed ìfor monthsî that firefighters had gone no
higher than about the 50th floor in each tower. The delay, Trevor said,
was due to the time required to transfer the voice data to 'encrypted CDs'.
-
- In January or February, the PA offered a copy of the
tape to NYFD officials, who reportedly declined the offer because they
did not want to sign the confidentiality agreement as demanded by the PA.
The Independent (UK) added that the PA 'held back from sharing it with
police and only relinquished it on condition that a confidentiality agreement
was signed.'
-
- "That's not correct," Trevor told AFP regarding
the allegation that the PA had withheld the tape from the police. The PA
had only handled the tape "under the instruction of the U.S. Attorney's
office," he said.
-
- A spokesman for the NYPD expressed surprise when AFP
asked if the police had conducted a criminal investigation into the events
at the WTC. Spokesman Bernard Gifford said NYPD had not pursued a criminal
investigation of 911 having 'turned it over' to the FBI. Gifford wouldnít
say when this occurred, although Joe Valiquette of the New York office
of the FBI told AFP that the federal bureau had run the investigation 'from
the moment it happened.'
-
- On August 2, the relatives of the 16 firefighters whose
voices were identified on the tape were allowed to hear their last words
in a New York City hotel. The families were first required to sign a statement
prepared by lawyers they would not disclose what was said on the tape.
-
- BECOMING PUBLIC?
-
- Despite the fact that the contents of the tape are being
kept secret, the Times article says, "Only now, nearly a year after
the attacks, are the efforts of Chief Palmer, Mr. Bucca and others becoming
public. City fire officials simply delayed listening to a 78-minute tape
that is the only known recording of firefighters inside the towers."
-
- While Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he had
not known the tape existed until 'very recently', both the Times and CNN
err in claiming that the NYFD is the agency behind the extreme secrecy.
"The Fire Department has forbidden anyone to discuss the contents
publicly on the ground that the tape might be evidence in the trial of
Zacarias Moussaoui, the man accused of plotting with the hijackers,"
the Times said.
-
- When AFP asked the NYFD why the only conversations between
firefighters engaged at the scene of the crash had to be kept secret because
of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was in prison in Minnesota at the time, the
spokesman replied, "Take it up with the Dept. of Justice."
-
- WHAT EXPLOSIONS?
-
- Asked about the numerous reports by eyewitnesses, including
firefighters, of explosions inside the towers before they collapsed, Mike
Logrin, spokesman for the NYFD, said, "We're pretty sure there weren't
bombs in the building." Logrin said there was "no evidenceî
of explosions, and for ìscientific evidence" about the collapse
recommended viewing a television program. "Didn't you see the NOVA
[PBS] special on the collapse?" he asked.
-
- On September 1,1 the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC)
interviewed one of its New York-based reporters, Steve Evans, who was in
the second tower when it was hit.
-
- Evans reported: "I was at the base of the 2nd tower,
the second tower that was hit. There was an explosion - I didn't think
it was an explosion - but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake
- then when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there
was a series of explosions. We can only wonder at the kind of damage --
the kind of human damage -- which was caused by those explosions - those
series of explosions," he said.
-
- Evans is a professional journalist and although his observations
of explosions in the second tower should be taken into account, they are
not. Numerous eyewitnesses reported seeing or hearing explosions, but these
reports have been avoided by the agencies supposedly leading the investigation.
-
- Valiquette of the FBI told AFP that he had not "heard
anything" about reports of explosions in the building and that he
had "never heard any discussion of it" in the FBI's New York
office.
|
