FAA Destroyed Sept. 11 Air-Traffic-Control Tapes

Fox News ^ | May 7, 2004

[Middle Man]

WASHINGTON — Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center but a supervisor destroyed the tape, government investigators said Thursday.

A report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead said the manager for the New York-area air traffic control center asked the controllers to make the recordings a few hours after the crashes in belief they would be important for law enforcement.

[Middle Man]

Hmmmmmm. That paragraph bears repeating:

"Sometime between December 2001 and February 2002, an unidentified Federal Aviation Administration quality assurance manager crushed the cassette case in his hand, cut the tape into small pieces and threw them away in multiple trash cans, the report said."

[Mo1]

What the???

[krb]

Why do people do things like this?

[Sundog]

certain military exercises near some of the hijacked planes would confict with stories about hijackees with coffee pots...

[mvpel]

The conspiracy theorists will say it's because the Pennsylvania flight was shot down by the Air Force after the passengers had already succeeded in regaining control of the aircraft.

[LasVegasMac]

You might want to check out both posts from yesterday - lots of replies to each.

LVM

[cajungirl]

You can't keep something like that a secret for goodness sakes.

[Middle Man]

"Why do people do things like this?"

Keep the masses from knowing the whole truth?

No, wait: "...for our own good".

[Unknown Freeper]

This is not breaking news. There were threads on this yesterday.

[maquiladora]

I don't like the sound of that. I don't like the sound of that at all.

[blanknoone]

Wow. I am interested in how the FAA answers that allegation. I could potentially understand them not having the tapes...I could even see someone claiming to have accidentally destroyed the tapes. (I've taped over things I meant to keep). But to purposefully and deliberately destroy it.....that is begging for a conspiracy theory if they cannot come up with an explination.

[snopercod]

There was an earlier thread on this. IIRC, the destroyed tapes were "unofficial".

[Middle Man]

Did a search but found nothing before posting. Story on Fox was also dated today, May 7.

[antivenom]

Because Dashle and his wife were told by Gorelick THAT would be a "smart" thing to do...I see Gorelick fingers all over this...

[Middle Man]

I see the earlier post now, but this one reveals the fact that the still-protected FAA bureaucrat went to great lengths to make sure the tape was never heard of (or from) again. Suggests -- unlike yesterday's post -- that he knew what was on the tapes after all and made d*mned sure it would never be heard.

[RightWhale]

Why do people do things like this?

This type of action is often followed by departure of the person for greener pastures.

[AntiGuv]

No, I doubt that's the kind of thing that you could conceal just by destroying the tapes. If the flight controllers had reason to believe Flight 93 was shot down, they would've already said as much a long time ago.

The kind of thing you could obscure by destroying such tapes would be, say, when precisely the flight controllers notified NORAD of the hijackings and what exactly they conveyed to NORAD about the situation.

That's been in significant dispute ever since a day or so after 9/11. There are other things too; I'm just speculating one distinct possibility.

[hermgem]

Obviously there were some controller failures, neglegt/ late or missed actions on these tapes.
Later analysis would possibly have revealed controller or supervisor failures in this unionized environment.
We never will know.

[Dawgreg]

And to bring the conspiracy theorists out of the wood work. We'll be hearing about this one for years. Personally, I don't think this person had any business destroying anything to do with 911 and they should be reprimanded.

[Middle Man]

This story is dated today, Friday, May 7, and offers more details (deliberate destruction of the tapes) that aren't in the stories posted yesterday.