It was a 22-story hotel.
Posted on 08/07/2002 1:01:11 AM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult
The FBI has an undercover tape that captures the chaos and terror of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Daily News has learned. The recording was secretly made by an informant wearing an FBI wire in a broad-ranging probe of city tax assessors.
It is believed to be the only known uninterrupted audio recording of the entire attack on the World Trade Center, from before the first plane hit to shortly after the impact of the second plane.
"That was an explosion," says Stephen McArdle, a tax consultant who, cooperating with the FBI, was taping a breakfast meeting with one of the assessors in the Marriott World Trade Center hotel.
Then comes a longer and much louder explosion. Officials believe the second blast is the sound of the flaming jet fuel from the plane coursing down through the tower to the lower floors.
"Let's get out of here!" he shouts, and both men begin to run.
The McArdle tape - obtained by the Daily News - captures the cacophony of sirens and disorder of Sept. 11, bringing back the lost voices of firefighters, cops and terrified strangers.
It begins with the mundane events of what seems to be an ordinary day.
At 7:36 a.m., in an FBI office blocks from the Trade Center, McArdle and Special Agent Rodney Miller turned on a device that transmitted voice recording for the FBI operation.
McArdle is then heard walking inside the concourse, buying a pack of Marlboros, with Muzak of a Rod Stewart song in the background, meeting the assessor and exchanging pleasantries as they walk to the hotel's Greenhouse Cafe - facing the plaza between the towers.
"I love this place," McArdle says. "Isn't it great?" the assessor replies.
Cries and sirens
The tape records the normal sounds of the restaurant - people laughing, glasses tinkling - as McArdle and the assessor casually discuss the nuts and bolts of bribery.
Suddenly there's a muffled boom from far off - followed by a second, much louder and closer explosion. It continues for 28 seconds, roiling and building in intensity.
The hotel alarm blares, and people scatter.
The men split up. McArdle breaks into a run, but it takes him more than two minutes to get out to West St.
"Oh my God," he says when he looks up at the north tower and sees for the first time what has happened.
Standing nearby, a woman cries hysterically. Fire engine sirens begin to fill the air. Something very large crashes nearby. The number of fire engines radically increases.
"Can you believe it? Somebody hit the building," a female passerby says to McArdle.
As he walks along, more passersby can be heard trying to make sense of what they're seeing. "What happened?" a woman asks.
"They blew up the World Trade Center," McArdle says.
"Why?" the woman asks, but he does not reply. Apparently, he and the others around him have discovered there are people jumping from the north tower.
A woman begins to scream, "Oh my God!"
"Ohhhh," says a man, distraught. "Those are people."
McArdle repeats over and over, "No no no no no."
A fire truck blares through, and a firefighter can be heard yelling, "Get out of the street!" McArdle again begins to walk. He encounters a woman and asks, "You saw it?"
"I saw it," the woman replies. "I saw it hit the building."
A low-level rumble fills the air, perhaps of something exploding inside the tower. More sirens blare a few feet away. It is 8:58 a.m., just 12 minutes after American Flight 11 struck the first building.
"People," someone in authority says. "You're going to have to move on."
'Everybody out'
McArdle walks along the street, and the chaos seems to drop into the background. It is relatively quiet, and then a husky roar - like a plane approaching - is heard in the background.
A huge explosion fills the air. All around McArdle, people scream hysterically. The sound of United Flight 175 crashing into the south tower is so loud the speakers distort. The time is 9:03 a.m.
"It's another one! It's another one! It's another one," a man repeats, uncontrollably.
"It's a second pilot!" McArdle shouts. "Holy ---."
"Everybody out," someone, possibly a cop, shouts. "Everybody out!"
A woman cries hysterically; a stranger says, "It's like a missile. It's like a ... missile."
A siren is heard. A woman, her voice quavering, says, "I was up the tower."
McArdle says, "Did you know what happened?"
"No."
Another woman begins to wail. A man comes to her side, muttering, "Jesus, Lord," and tries to console her.
"Please don't get upset," he says.
"That's my husband inside," she replies, weeping.
The tape runs out.
McArdle survived the morning physically unscathed. So did the tax assessor. The two FBI agents monitoring his tape had to run for their lives but also managed to escape.
On Feb. 25, Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey announced the arrests of 18 current and former city tax assessors in one of the biggest public corruption scandals to hit the city in years.
McArdle's name was never mentioned.
It was a 22-story hotel.
Such liars.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.