Saturday, June 9, 2007

Why didn't these firefighters see or hear a plane?

This is just a start and is not comprehensive.

I realize there are some firefighters that say they saw a plane. An example is Chief of Department Daniel Nigro, who says he was on West Street, heard the load roar of a plane, looked up, and saw a plane hit the South Tower.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110154.PDF

Lieutenant William Walsh says he was on Church near Canal Street fixing a gas leak, heard a plane, looked up, saw an American Airlines plane flying over Manhattan, and saw it fly into the North Tower.

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110442.PDF

Questions have been raised about Walsh by Ray Ubinger.

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x61794#67986

Walsh's recollection is obviously influenced by information learned later because it is implausible he could see that it was an American Airlines plane, but Walsh's statement has been published so I will acknowledge it here.

What I want to begin looking at is firefighters that appear to have been in a position to hear and see planes, and did not report that.

This guy was riding his bicycle across the Brooklyn Bridge when the South Tower exploded. He did not know a plane had hit the North Tower, and had just seen that it was on fire on television. As an off-duty firefighter, he left his home in Brooklyn and headed for Manhattan on his bicycle to assist. Even if he did not look up until he heard the explosion, wouldn't he have heard a plane and looked up?

This is the same guy that made me ask a hypothetical about a bicyclist on the Brooklyn Bridge a while back:

http://www.911researchers.com/node/311#comment-2103

You can see views of the South Tower from the Brooklyn Bridge linked from that comment.

FIREFIGHTER JOHN CERIELLO

Transcript

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110366.PDF

I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge. When I was roughly in the middle of the span, there was a massive explosion on the south tower . . . Again I didn't see a plane or anything, so I didn't know it was a plane that hit the tower. I think in my mind I just thought there was a massive explosion on one of the upper floors and now you had a real bad fire.

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EMT ROBERT COOK

Transcript

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110165.PDF

A bunch of firemen came out of the firehouse, went to the corner. You could see the first tower on fire. So then we were available, they assigned us to the call, they said to switch over to Citywide. We proceeded over the bridge. Once we got over the bridge, the second plane hit. There was an explosion. We didn't know it was a second plane. We thought it was just exploding from the first plane. Then over Citywide we heard people saying it was a second plane and it was deliberate.

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This guy did not look up until he heard an explosion, and saw a fireball. They were within a few blocks of the South Tower. Even with the noise of the city and their sirens, how could none of them have heard a plane?

FIREFIGHTER CHRISTOPHER PATRICK MURRAY

Transcript

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110327.PDF

We went over the Brooklyn Bridge, came down I believe it was Broadway and stopped the rig on Broadway and Liberty. At the same time, the second plane hit. So when we were stepping off the rig, we heard the explosion and we looked up and we what everybody else saw, a big ball of fire, smoke, flame debris, building debris.

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This guy says a fellow firefighter on his rig saw the explosion - no word of a plane. They were still in Brooklyn.

FIREFIGHTER KEVIN DUGGAN

Transcript

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110345.PDF


So we went around and passed the bridge and were heading towards the tunnel when the fellow sitting on the other side of the rig saw the south tower explode. He saw an explosion. He told us the building just exploded. We looked over and we saw the south tower, a lot of orange and a lot of smoke. So we continued towards the Battery Tunnel. There was a lot of traffic. Took us awhile to get there.

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This guy is near the towers, yet does not report hearing a plane and only saw an explosion. It's hard to say where he was, because Chambers and Liberty are parallel and not intersecting. He may be saying they stopped at Chambers, then at Liberty, and is describing what he saw at Liberty, directly under the impact side of the South Tower. Or maybe he was stopped at Chambers and confused the cross street. Even from Chambers, on the far side of the towers, the plane should have been audible.

FIREFIGHTER PAUL HYLAND

Transcript

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110374.PDF

We were actually looking -- we were trying to figure out exactly the position of where we had to put the rig because they wanted us down, I guess, it was really on West Street and Vesey, and it turned out we had stopped at Chambers and Liberty and we were waiting there because there were thousands of people and everybody was filming and just couldn't get across and we're trying to figure out, and then there was a gigantic explosion. I had the OB and I looked up and I just saw the top of World Trade Center go up like a lit candle. It just everything just lit up and I thought it was maybe a secondary explosion, because if you looked from where we were, they're twins, so you're going to picture the second -- I didn't see the plane go in and I thought it was just a secondary explosion in the same tower, and everything just came down on the street. It was just raining steel.

=======================================================================

This guy was in a car at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. He saw and heard the explosion, but did not see or hear a plane. He was alone and driving, had sirens on and perhaps windows up, so one could argue he would not have heard a plane and didn't look up until after a plane had hit.

LIEUTENANT RICHARD SMIOUSKAS

Transcript

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/sept11_fdny_transcripts/9110210.PDF

I went, lights and sirens, over the Brooklyn Bridge. Just as I was reaching the end of the bridge, there was a loud explosion and I saw a fireball come across the sky, realizing that the south tower --
Q. Did you actually see the south tower?
A. Yes. I could see it from the bridge. I saw an explosion and fireball and thick black smoke just going across the sky. Then I realized we were being attacked. I didn't know if it was missiles coming in or another plane.

6 comments:

Rowan Berkeley said...

It's definitely true what they say about 911Blogger. On the strength of the one remark I made to you on the Steven Jones thread there today, I now cannot log in. Unless this is just computer glitches, it means that ALL comments regarding Silverstein (and Lowy, who is an even shadier character, actually) will earn instant and permanent banning. Most remarkable, really.

Rowan Berkeley said...

You're quite right, though, now I think about it : no planes strengthens the case against Silverstein and Lowy, because instead of needing collaborators in the air, and in the air control system, they only need collaborators in the TV networks.

This is assuming that we can treat Cheney as having run the pentagon operation separately, on the basis of a sort of loose pact (this is a hufschmid theory, which makes sense to me).

It's space beams I am really against, because they reduce the probable israeli factor to about zero, so I tend to assume anyone who even hangs out with space beams theorists is, to finally invoke the cliché, 'a zionist'.

Ningen said...

There's plenty of talk of Zionists at 911 Blogger, and Silverstein and Lowy specifically, so I'd be surprised if that got you banned.

http://911blogger.com/node/9205?page=3

I don't judge evidence by whether it leads to Israel or not. That's what I see people doing with remote control planes, because Dov Zakheim had some involvement in that. I'm just not convinced about exotic weapons, and think the media hoax is more dangerous.

There's still involvement in the air control system, if only to insert blips to deceive the FAA and NORAD technicians. I can't see this being done without internal knowledge and cooperation. The media hoax also strikes me as a military operation.

Rowan Berkeley said...

I completely understand that you do not allow preconceptions about who you or anyone else WANTS to think did it to colour your analyses.

I attach importance to the intellectual move that Hufshmid made (in his very eccentric video "Masquerade Party" if not before) of assuming that the perpetrators of the WTC events, on the one hand, and of the Pentagon events, on the other, could be different, but united by a vague (and potentially treacherous) 'pact'.

This assumption is of empirical value, because it allows us to consider questions of means and opportunity, in the two sets of events, separately.

Thus we could immediately say, the use of false alerts in the air traffic system is compatible with the general scenario associated with the Pentagon strike, but has no obvious relation to the WTC strike (since if that didn't involve real planes, then, as Holmgren argues, all the useful work done by TENC etc. is not relevant after all).

Rowan Berkeley said...

Whether the media hoax looks like a military operation or not depends on whether you analyse it according to the concepts explained in all those declassified Pentagon psywar texts. If you do, then it will, but this result is the reflection of your choice to plump for those documents as explanatory keys.

Ningen said...

I don't see any reason to preclude cooperation between the military and/or intelligence apparatuses of Israel and the United States. I can't see how Silverstein could get away with an attack on his buildings without the cooperation of the U.S. government. I also don't see any way he could not be involved in covering up the attack on his buildings. One could argue that even if was not involved, he had no financial interest in disclosing the true perpetrators even if he knew. If the building was wired for demolition, he must have known. No one, even the insurance companies that had to pay, the airlines being sued, and the courts involved in these cases, have wanted to consider the issue of how the buildings were destroyed.

It's possible the U.S. government was not involved and merely condoned an Israeli operation after the fact, because blaming it on "Al Qaeda" fit their agenda (and that of Saudi Arabia). I just can't see how those blips could be inserted in radar and how the media could be involved without the prior knowledge and cooperation of elements of the U.S. government.

TENC's work is still relevant in that it shows that the official story is implausible. Holmgren recognizes it was groundbreaking and courageous for its time, and is still relevant as long as the proviso is understood that it appears there were no planes. I think that the real reason there was no response is because interceptors were launched and could find no planes. I don't buy the cartoon image of Dick Cheney in the bunker ordering a standdown, based on the Mineta testimony. He would not be involved at the operational level.

Is it fair to assume you think TENC is Zionist propaganda? I like their work, having come to it when learning about Serbia, but it is clear that Jared Israel is very pro-Israel.

I don't believe that Israel is that powerful and in control of U.S. policy. I could be wrong.