Black
Boxes: found at the Pentagon, WTC and Pennsylvania
their data would
be MUCH more interesting than the videos of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon
- they would refute or confirm the remote control
theory
note: in mid-2007 a website called "Pilots for 9/11 Truth" claimed to analyze the raw data of the Flight 77 black box and "prove" that the data showed the plane could not possibly have hit the Pentagon. The press release promoting this alleged determination was floated to the media (and internet websites) by a conspiracy theorist who also claims the moon landings were faked and gives serious credence to debates about nuclear weapons destroying the World Trade Center. Since the evidence that the plane realy hit the Pentagon is overwhelming -- the physical evidence and eyewitnesses debunk the various "no plane" and "other plane" claims -- this press release is not actually usable evidence. It would be helpful to have a serious effort independently analyze all four black boxes, but the odds that the data integrity has not been tampered with since 2001 is extremely low.
'Black Boxes' Found at Pentagon Crash Site By Rudi Williams American
Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2001 -- Searchers found the flight data and
cockpit voice recorders about 4 a.m. today in the wreckage of the hijacked
plane that slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Defense Department
officials said. The two "black boxes" will help investigators
put together the puzzle of what happened during the doomed flight, said
DoD spokesman Army Lt. Col. George H. Rhynedance. "The voice recorder
will tell what was going on in the cockpit," he said. The data
box, he said, will tell what was happening with the aircraft as it headed
toward the Pentagon, such as its rate of turn. Information from the
two boxes will help determine what actually happened during the flight,
he said. The recorders were turned over the FBI. The recorders are now
at the National Transportation Safety Board laboratory in Washington,
where technicians are working to recover data on the recorders.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3069699
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Web Exclusive: Washington Heroes
On the ground at the Pentagon on Sept. 11
Sept. 28 (2001)
Early Friday morning, shortly before 4 a.m., Burkhammer and another
firefighter, Brian Moravitz, were combing through debris near the impact
site. Peering at the wreckage with their helmet lights, the two spotted
an intact seat from the plane’s cockpit with a chunk of the floor
still attached. Then they saw two odd-shaped dark boxes, about 1.5 by
2 feet long. They’d been told the plane’s “black boxes”
would in fact be bright orange, but these were charred black. The boxes
had handles on one end and one was torn open. They cordoned off the
area and called for an FBI agent, who in turn called for someone from
the National Transportation Safety Board who confirmed the find: the
black boxes from American Airlines Flight 77. “We wanted to find
live victims,” says Burkhammer. But this was a consolation prize.
“Finding the black box gave us a little boost,” he says.
-- Debra Rosenberg
Black Boxes
Contents of Flight Data and Cockpit Voice Recorders Are Missing
All jetliners are equipped with flight data recorders (FDRs) and cockpit
voice recorders (CVRs) contained in "black boxes" designed
to survive the most severe crashes. To date, none of the contents of
any of the black boxes have been released to the public. Authorities
have claimed that all but the recorders on Flight 93 were either not
recovered or too damaged to yield data. The black boxes of Flight 77
were allegedly found on September 14th, but yielded "nothing useful"
according to FBI director Robert Mueller. 1 2
This book, written by Gail Swanson, and published in 2003, includes
accounts of firefighters Mike Bellone, Robert Barrat, and Nicholas DeMasi.
According to the federal authorities controlling Ground Zero, the black
boxes from the two crashed 767s, Flight 11 and Flight 175, failed to
turn up in the rubble taken from the site. 3 However, two men who worked
in the cleanup operation at Ground Zero claim that they helped authorities
find three of the four black boxes in October of 2001. One of the workers,
New York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi, has self-published a book
with other Ground Zero workers in which he describes the recovery of
the devices. 4 The book, Behind the Scenes: GROUND ZERO, A Collection
of Personal Accounts, can be ordered through SummerOfTruth.org.
The account of the Ground Zero workers contradicts the 9/11 Commission
Report which states: "The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United
175 were not found."
Survivability Requirements
Events that would damage the recorders sufficiently to make them unreadable
are extremely rare. The recorders are designed to survive the kinds
of impacts that happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FAA has placed durability requirements on the recorders and their
casings to survive severe impact and fire
The storage medium of each recorder is located in a protective capsule,
which must be able to withstand an impact of 3,400 Gs (3,400 times the
force of gravity). Additionally, each must also survive flames at 2,000
F for up to 30 minutes, and submersion in 20,000 feet of saltwater for
30 days. Typically, to increase their chances of survival, the recorders
are located in the tail section of the aircraft, which usually sustains
the least impact in a crash. 5
References
1. Flight Data and Voice Recorders Found at Pentagon, PBS, 9/14/01 [cached]
2. Feds Would Have Shot Down Pa. Jet, CBSNEWS.com, 9/16/01
3. Speed Likely Factor In WTC Collapse, CBSNEWS.com, 2/23/02 [cached]
4. 9/11 'black box' cover-up at Ground Zero?, Philadelphia Daily News,
10/26/04
5. And I alone survived, MeMagazine.org, [cached]
Firefighter Said Black Boxes
Were Found at Ground Zero
By Bryan Sacks and Nicholas Levis
Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004
Pulitzer Prize winner William Bunch uses an account from the book to
the left, "Behind-the-Scenes: Ground Zero," as one source
for the claim that three black boxes from the aircraft that crashed
into the World Trade Center were discovered by authorities during the
recovery efforts in 2001-2002. This is contrary to the official story.
(Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, 10/28/04 - a longer version was
published on his "Campaign Extra" weblog.)
We hope other newspapers - and broadcasters - will follow this important
lead and endeavor to investigate other potential cover-ups relevant
to the 9/11 investigation.
Therefore we are offering a limited number of copies of the book gratis
to print and broadcast journalists, and to the general public at cover
price with free shipping. (For ordering information, see left.)
Update, Oct. 29: This breakthrough story has been picked up at OpEd
News, Scoop Media, Yahoo PR Newswire and many other outlets.
Amid the enormous detail of loss, sorrow and recovery conveyed in "Behind-the-Scenes:
Ground Zero," a New York City firefighter reveals that at least
three of the four black boxes from Flights 11 and 175 were found by
"Federal Agents" at the former World Trade Center site, during
the clean-up efforts from September 2001 to March 2002.
At the time of the disaster, Nicholas DeMasi was a firefighter at Engine
Company 261 in Queens. (The firehouse was shut down in 2003, after a
century of operation.)
In the weeks that followed 9/11, he joined an all-terrain vehicle crew
(ATV Unit) at Ground Zero. In "Behind-the-Scenes," he describes
his experience as follows: "If you needed anything, go ask the
ATV Guy, they're the gopher guys."
On page 108 comes the revelation:
"At one point I was assigned to take Federal Agents around the
site to search for the black boxes from the planes. We were getting
ready to go out. My ATV was parked at the top of the stairs at the Brooks
Brothers entrance area. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of
equipment and strapped it into the ATV. When we got into the ATV to
take off, the agent accidentally pushed me forward. The ATV was already
in reverse, and my foot went down on the gas pedal. We went down the
stairs in reverse. Fortunately, everything was okay. There were a total
of four black boxes. We found three."
DeMasi's statement was committed to print in August 2003 and concerns
an event that likely happened before January 2002. It has gone unnoticed
by the media until now, and is flatly contradicted by the Kean Commission's
supposedly exhaustive findings.
The only statement on the status of the Ground Zero black boxes in the
9/11 Commission Report is buried in footnote 76 to Chapter 1, but it
is definitive: "The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175
were not found..." As if to leave no doubt about what is meant
- that not even a trace of the total of four cockpit voice recorders
and flight data recorders from the two aircraft remained - the same
sentence adds: "...and the CVR from American Flight 77 was badly
burned and not recoverable."
DeMasi did not return phone messages to a number of investigators who
reached out to him, and has not spoken out beyond his comments in "Behind-the-Scenes."
He is obviously not seeking attention - why else drop his bombshell
in this off-hand way, in a passage that almost no one has noticed? -
and we have no interest in putting him on the spot. Given his commitment
to the recovery effort at Ground Zero and the detail he provides, his
account has an immediate, prima facie credibility.
The collapses of the Twin Towers on 9/11 were devastating, but black
boxes almost always withstand explosions, high-speed crashes into mountainsides,
even missile strikes; they have been retrieved in working condition
from the bottom of the ocean floor and from sites where planes were
almost completely destroyed (as in the case of Flight 93 at Shanksville).
Consider this CBS News story from February 2002:
The effort to better understand the events of the day isn’t being
made easier by the fact that the voice and data recorders aboard the
two hijacked jetliners that hit the twin towers haven't been recovered.
The four devices - and all the clues they would hold - have failed to
turn up in the 1.25 million tons of steel, concrete and other material
taken from ground zero.
"It's extremely rare that we don't get the recorders back. I can't
recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders,"
said Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety
Board.
The sense of surprise conveyed by an NTSB spokesperson makes clear
that the government's claim, that the devices where not recovered, is
the one which needs further explanation, and which deserves scrutiny.
If DeMasi's story is true, then there will be others at Ground Zero
who heard about or may have even witnessed the recovery of the black
boxes, such as the "Federal Agents" he mentions.
As DeMasi describes it, the search for the black boxes was not undertaken
in secret; presumably word of the discovery spread quickly among the
rescue workers on the site, and the news was only later suppressed.
A trail demonstrating the truth of his statements would almost certainly
exist. There may even be pictures or video of the successful recovery
of the boxes, and documents confirming it. Recall that FEMA and OSHA
continuously monitored the entire site with fixed and mobile video cameras,
and that firefighters at Ground Zero were often in real-time radio contact
with their headquarters to provide continuing updates of the recovery
effort. Were these conversations recorded or transcribed?
It is also possible, of course, that someone may have taken footage
of the recovery with their own minicam.
The 9/11 Commission had a staff of more than 60 persons, a budget of
$15 million, and 20 months in which to explore every possible avenue
of research into the events and aftermath of September 11. "Behind-the-Scenes"
is one of a handful of books containing first-hand accounts by Ground
Zero rescue workers. Yet the Commission seems to have entirely missed
DeMasi's revelation.
Since September 11 the government has extended its power to suppress
information it believes may jeopardize national security. The Administration
has claimed great latitude in the use of this power, as in the case
of its bizarre "retroactive classification" of facts that
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds had already revealed (and after her
most serious charges had received independent confirmation). Now as
well, we can find no plausible argument that merely revealing the discovery
of black boxes at Ground Zero could present a security threat worthy
of classification and providing false accounts to the public.
For the moment, then, we are left with questions:
Will enough journalists and public officials be willing to pursue this
story, wherever it leads, until the full truth is revealed?
If the black boxes were recovered, was this information made available
to the 9/11 Commission? Was the data on the black boxes retrieved?
In his defense of the end of the pretense of constitutional rule,
Dick Cheney says "you know, it's not an accident that we haven't
been hit in four years." Of course he's right. And since Cheney
warned Americans last year that a vote for Kerry was inviting another
9/11, maybe that's how he means it to be heard this time, too: the veiled
threat of a protection artist.
Remember the claims
of Ground Zero firefighters, contradicting the official account, that
they had actually recovered the black boxes of Flights 11 and 175? Mike
Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi said the boxes were seized by federal agents,
who then told them to keep quiet about it. They didn't, though their
story never even rippled the mainstream's consensus fabrication. (But
I wonder what the world would sound like if everyone bullied into silence
by one method or another found their voice at the same time.)
Now comes corroboration
from Dave Lindorff, a Counterpunch fixture who has perhaps the best
insight over there on the darkness and the weirdness of America's present
condition. (Alexander Cockburn, Whiteout aside, has a awful
Chomskyite blindspot when it comes to deep politics, let alone high
weirdness.)
Lindorff writes:
A source at the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency
that has the task of deciphering the date from the black boxes retrieved
from crash sites-including those that are being handled as crimes
and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI-says the boxes were in
fact recovered and were analyzed by the NTSB.
"Off the record, we had the boxes," the source says. "You'd
have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but
we worked on them here."
That federal authorities, across agencies, perpetuate a lie regarding
the recovery of the World Trade Center black boxes strongly suggests
that both the voice and the flight data recorders contained information
that would seriously damage, if not outright deflate, the Great Myth
to Make War By. (I say "contained" because I expect they were
effectively destroyed shortly after falling into federal hands.) As
Lindorff writes, the data could prove "whether [the hijackers]
were getting outside help in guiding them to their targets."
Will we ever know what was on the recorders? Probably not. But as I've
said before, we already know enough. We haven't answered the how, and
likely never will, but I think we have the who and the why.
Ironically, tragically, it's the how - the popular mechanics of the
stage magician's craft - that consumes most of the fuel of the "9/11
movement." As it was meant to, so the perpetrators could grandfather
their innocence with the passage of time and opportunity for justice.
