The NORAD tapes from 9/11
I just read Michael Bronner's Vanity Fair special report, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." The report includes audio clips from previously unreleased NORAD dictaphone tapes which highlight the confusion on September 11. Bronner, an associate producer of the movie United 93, was interviewed yesterday on The Diane Rehm Show and today on Day to Day.
Among other things, the article and the interviews describe some of the inconsistencies in the military's testimony to the 9/11 Commission that led some commission members to believe that they were being deliberately mislead (see the UPDATE in yesterday's post).
Like so much else related to 9/11, listening to the tape excerpts left as much obscured as revealed. After reading the article and listening to the clips, as well as both interviews, tough questions about what happened that day still remain unanswered. How is it that there were only four fighters in the northeast U.S. that were available to intercept that day? Why were two of those four initially sent east over the ocean? Why the inconsistencies in what the government told us in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, not to mention their testimony to the 9/11 Commission? Why did it take so long to finally get approval to shoot down the hijacked planes (according to the tapes, this didn't occur until after the attack was over)?
A few weeks ago I read Dr. David Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11., which I wrote about here. One of the points raised in the book is that the amount of dust produced by the collapse of the WTC towers can't be explained if they came down simply as a result of gravity. In other words, if the towers fell solely due to their supporting beams being weakened by fire, there wasn't enough kinetic energy to pulverize the concrete in the buildings into the huge clouds of very fine dust that were produced.
I'm no structural engineer (and have never played one on TV :-) but I did find myself in a high-rise building in downtown SF recently. I was at the gym, and the concrete columns and ceiling were exposed. I sat there and tried to imagine the collapse of the building, and the thought that I couldn't escape was this: more happened on 9/11 than we know about. The government knows more than they told us. We already know this to be true, judging from the 9/11 Commission's decision to refer their concerns the inspectors general at the Defense and Transportation Departments.
I wonder if we will ever know what really transpired that day, which goes to the heart of Griffin's book: there are enough unanswered questions about the attacks of 9/11 to warrant a truly independent investigation, and that treating the official story as gospel serves certain parties very well, but not our nation as a whole.
And if you wonder why I keep writing about this, I can say only this: having the unanswered questions answered matters. It matters because the answers may support the official story, and then we can all sleep easy. But if the answers conflict with the official story, then we need to be very, very afraid...
Among other things, the article and the interviews describe some of the inconsistencies in the military's testimony to the 9/11 Commission that led some commission members to believe that they were being deliberately mislead (see the UPDATE in yesterday's post).
Like so much else related to 9/11, listening to the tape excerpts left as much obscured as revealed. After reading the article and listening to the clips, as well as both interviews, tough questions about what happened that day still remain unanswered. How is it that there were only four fighters in the northeast U.S. that were available to intercept that day? Why were two of those four initially sent east over the ocean? Why the inconsistencies in what the government told us in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, not to mention their testimony to the 9/11 Commission? Why did it take so long to finally get approval to shoot down the hijacked planes (according to the tapes, this didn't occur until after the attack was over)?
A few weeks ago I read Dr. David Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11., which I wrote about here. One of the points raised in the book is that the amount of dust produced by the collapse of the WTC towers can't be explained if they came down simply as a result of gravity. In other words, if the towers fell solely due to their supporting beams being weakened by fire, there wasn't enough kinetic energy to pulverize the concrete in the buildings into the huge clouds of very fine dust that were produced.
I'm no structural engineer (and have never played one on TV :-) but I did find myself in a high-rise building in downtown SF recently. I was at the gym, and the concrete columns and ceiling were exposed. I sat there and tried to imagine the collapse of the building, and the thought that I couldn't escape was this: more happened on 9/11 than we know about. The government knows more than they told us. We already know this to be true, judging from the 9/11 Commission's decision to refer their concerns the inspectors general at the Defense and Transportation Departments.
I wonder if we will ever know what really transpired that day, which goes to the heart of Griffin's book: there are enough unanswered questions about the attacks of 9/11 to warrant a truly independent investigation, and that treating the official story as gospel serves certain parties very well, but not our nation as a whole.
And if you wonder why I keep writing about this, I can say only this: having the unanswered questions answered matters. It matters because the answers may support the official story, and then we can all sleep easy. But if the answers conflict with the official story, then we need to be very, very afraid...
Labels: movies
posted by michael at 7:52 PM
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