Posted on 03/07/2011 10:25:32 AM PST by SonsOfLibertyII
Why did it take a freedom of information act request for us to see one of the main video sources of 911? Why didn't the people on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, tell us about it or at least identify it as a significant source?
Maybe the then Director of Central Intelligence. But would need time and money to give a fair hearing of both sides. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet#cite_note-navy-17 CCC – Intelligence Failure and 9/11 At the least he should have resigned. If your a guard and the enemy gets through the gate, then just out of an abundance of caution lets have another guard have a go at it, no? Also, look into the head of the then INS or its sub agencies who are responsible for identifying and capturing foreigners with expired visas, like auntie Zeituni Onyango.
Even Admiral Kimmel was punished for Pearl Harbor which he had less control over the circumstances and foreseeability then did the CIA in the situation with 911.
See wiki On the other hand, Kimmel’s critics point out that he had been ordered (on November 27, 1941, ten days prior to the attack) to initiate a “defensive deployment” of the fleet. Kimmel understood this to mean defense against sabotage, and so made the necessary arrangements. Because of this misinterpretation ships were kept in port and the fleet was not placed on alert. Moreover, after his intelligence unit lost track of Japan’s aircraft carriers, Kimmel did not order any long-range air or naval patrols to assess their positions,[5] in part for lack of serviceable PBYs, in part because he also had a training schedule to maintain, and in part because the Army Air Corps had the responsibility for long-range patrol (but even less capability in Hawaii than he did, since the Philippines had higher priority).
On August 23, Atta’s driver license was revoked in absentia after he failed to show up in traffic court to answer the earlier citation for driving without a license.[77] On the same day, Israeli Mossad reportedly gave his name to the CIA as part of a list of 19 names they said were planning an attack in the near future. Only four of the names are known for certain including Atta; Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.[78] On August 30 he was recorded purchasing a utility knife from a Wal-Mart store near the hotel where he stayed prior to 9/11.
I probably would agree with you on Tenant; that given circumstances he probably should have resigned; if only in recognition that he either failed to promote the policies and actions that more likely (more than the efforts that were in place) MIGHT have “seen” the 9/11 attack coming (in some specific, actionable intelligence manner) or that he had failed, politically, to convince either Clinton or Bush to take the necessary steps.
I have not seen this next idea, but here it is: That we may yet find out he had tried to resign but GWB (as he did with Rummy) refused to accept it.
As far as everything you had to say about Atta; none of it amounted to specific actionable intelligence, beyond the intelligence community continuing to be “on the look out” for Atta’s name to show up - IN THE INTELLIGENCE STREAM, along with a few hundred other guys; with “actionable intelligence” being something that is directed to some specific action of the terrorists to be extremely concerned about and some specific action some agency should and can make.
But, it - Atta’s name - wasn’t COMPLETELY in the intelligence stream because of the institutional disconnect between the “U.S. intelligence community” and other law enforcement agencies, at many levels. THAT was not the particular fault of the incumbent leaders and workers in intelligence and law enforcement. Years of executive and legislative action had set the standards they operated by.
While it is sometimes easy to see possible “actions that could have been taken” (if only ALL information was ‘connected’), it is often more difficult to correctly and with certainty fault individuals for actions not taken.
40 billion reasons 3,000 people should not have died.
Your explanations are not execuses.
Explain the acceptable nature of the failures to the parents of murdered 2 year old Christine Lee Hanson.
CIA-40 billion dollar budget
CIA-15,000? employees
INS-1 billion dollar budget
INS-18,000 employees
FBI-5? billion dollar budge
FBI-30,000? employees
Not the first time al-Qaeda attacked the US, won’t be the last.
Wake up.
Looks more like they turned the camera off or paused it.
he says holy crap again at 4;16 and again at 4:38
It is a cop who knows that his tape will be reviewed.
later he does say holy GD .. but he says it as if he is trying to suppress it in his surprise.
They were doing work and the camera was paused. Nothing more.
Maybe the guy with the camera had to change cassettes.
There is no “voice-over” that sounds any different than it did the first time I heard it. You’d have to ask the cop why he wasn’t as profane as you thought he should have been.
“Not the first time al-Qaeda attacked the US, won’t be the last. Wake up.”
Your preaching to the choir; you just don’t know it, because you still think your questions mean that someone CAN WITH CERTAINTY point to some individual to definitely hold responsible. But all your questions ARE NOT EVIDENCE of WHO, with certainty, such individuals are.
As you and I both agreed, Tenant is one person who could have shouldered the public responsibility for the intelligence errors. Besides Tenant, and possibly Jamie Gorelick (extension of the intelligence vs law enforcement disconnect) I don’t know of any smoking guns with definite individuals names engraved on them.
[Sometime in the 1990s, my local dentist was struggling with a difficult root canal job on one of my teeth. The canal itself had a bend in it. He had been attempting to complete the procedure with at least three changes of the drill bit he was using. He was being very careful and diligent and seeking the best result for me. At one point he said: Whoops, and stopped the procedure. I asked, with my numb mouth, what was the problem. He said the drill bit had broken off inside the canal. In order to retrieve it, and save the tooth, it would require oral surgery; that would have to be done elsewhere and by someone else. He left the decision to me. I thought the tooth was not in good enough shape to save; more than a simple filling would be needed to make it whole again. As I told this tale to friends and associates shortly after it happened, many wanted me to sue the dentist, on a claim of either negligence or some form of malpractice, for “costing” me the loss of the tooth. I never had and never accepted such a thought. I was there. I know what happened and sometimes its no ones “fault”; shit happens.]
[In 2007 I was in a life-threatening accident, from a huge tree that decided to die at the instance I was the only person in the world in its path. Besides the concussion, the split in the top of the skull, the cervical disk and spinal injuries, as well as other physical injuries, I had to deal with neighbors (and a few friends) who thought I should sue my town (the tree was formerly standing between the sidewalk and the curb). Lawyer friends told me it was a nearly impossible “act of G-d” case (who coulda, shoulda, woulda known it was going to fall at that time). For myself, I would respond to my neighbors by telling them to just let me know by how much I should cause their taxes to go up, and I’d be happy to accommodate them. Shit happens.]
I will never be a rich man and may always have some debt from my accident, but I sleep well at night knowing I have not tried to make myself feel better by looking to find some specific “culprit” to blame my accident on. I have never even once had the anxiety of entertaining the question with any great seriousness. Life is too short.
Looking for blame is 99% trying to satisfy our emotions, not obtaining truly meaningful answers. This is evident from how relieved we are simply because a culprit is named, and how much more important that sense of relief is (a false sense of relief) than the truth or certainty of true evidence to convict the culprit.
Keep chasing that phantom if you need to. Most of us don’t. Most of us are quite satisfied with blaming the terrorists.
Seems to me that there isn’t anything new on this, other than yet another perspective.
There is some video that has never been released. A lady that used to do a radio talk show in Seattle was staying at a Hotel across the street from the plaza at the WTC that morning. They were in their room, maybe 20 or 30 floors up, when the whole thing began. They were in their room videotaping and narrating until after the second tower fell. Only then did they finally evacuate.
They have decided to never release their tape, even though they’ve been offered well into six figures for it. They provided it to the FBI and it was used in the trial of KSM. She also testified in the trial.
She said they’re keeping the tape private out of respect for the jumpers. They were so close that the faces were identifiable as people were jumping to their deaths. Something that affected them for years afterward. They were watching them... right there in the street in front of them. Not just a few, either. Hundreds. The sound they made when they hit something, was sickening. Dozens of them every minute. Eventually they stopped pointing the camera at them.
She did do an amazing radio show about their ordeal, for about three hours on one saturday. It was riveting. They played the audio of their recording, and added more commentary about all the other things going on at the time, and the decisions they made... like whether to and when to evacuate.
But their video isn’t going to be publicly available any time soon. Like she says... it’s a different perspective, a “front row seat” if you will, but it doesn’t add anything that we don’t already know.
So what? The guy had stopped the camera, and started recording again when he saw the second tower fall. What’s so mysterious about that?
I guess the camera could have been turned off. It just seems odd. What is even odder is that, absent my theory, there’s nothing new or noteworthy about this video. Why is it being touted now, as if there were some new revelation in it?
Because at 4:03 the tower is still there, and at 4:03 it is not. Clearly there was a section cut out.
At 4:03, they and the helicopter were still on the ground in that little park behind the world Financial Center buildings. Both towers were still up. I know this because the Marriot hotel beneath the towers was still perfectly intact at 4:03. That hotel was practically destroyed after the first tower collapsed onto it---literally cut to pieces---and then pounded into rubble half an hour later by the second collapse. Since the hotel is still there at 4:03, so is the South Tower. You just can't see it well because of the smoke and the angle.
At 4:04 the helicopter is back up in the air, not still on the ground, and the South Tower is gone. There is no footage of them getting back in the helicopter and taking off again--we don't even know how long it took. It doesn't mean anything was "cut out", it just means they weren't filming during the ascent---why would they be? It's not as if they knew when the towers were going to come down. The South tower obviously fell between the moment they got back into the helicopter and the moment they were circling above the site again. It only took about 20 seconds for it to fall, if I recall correctly. Anyway, it had obviously JUST happened in this video. The big dust cloud had barely begun to move. It covered a lot more territory before it finally began to dissipate.
Later, around 7 minutes in, one of the men says "we got out just at the right time". I think that was a statement about how close that park was to the World Trade Center. They'd have been under that cloud if they hadn't gotten back into the air when they did.
Absent your theory? What theory is that?
This whole thing was taken on a handheld video cam that somebody had with them on this flight. Of course, from time to time they stopped filming. When something interesting happened, they started filming again. I simply don't see the mystery.
Still, there's something not quite right about this video. Maybe I should watch it again, but it's really not that interesting.
Again, it was taken by NYPD. The department is so large that it would qualify as the 13th largest army in the world.
The bureaucracy there is pretty much unimaginable if you haven’t witnessed it.
I am betting that it is not so much that there is anything “new” or “revealing” in it as much as just another angle of view.
As for why it took so long to get out. Again
1. The bureaucracy
2. Fear that it would be used in lawsuits. (I bet that it sat in some lawyers office for years)
3. They don’t like operations or methods released to the public.
I am kind of surprised it was released at all.
No, it’s really not that interesting, except from the human-interest angle. The news-chopper footage was spectacular in comparison, because there were professional cameraman involved, instead of policemen.
The only really new stuff here is the footage from ground level. I have no idea why they landed the helicopter right here and right then. I know if it had been me, I would have landed because I had to be violently ill, but I would never have been able to get back into the helicopter. I also have no idea why they appear to be in New Jersey at the end. But it really doesn’t matter.
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