It is very difficult to get true "as it happened" news tapes. I have a backlog of such tapes - the berlin wall, chernoybl, the stock crash, etc. My VCR was out that day, which kills me.
The reason you can't find unedited "as it happened" IMO is 1)cost and 2)I have found that news people, for all the standards they hold Bush up to, are CONSTANTLY wrong.
They call almost everything wrong! They start with the world is ending, make assumptions that turn out to be totally looney, and usually make totally inept and wrong statements they don't want to be held to.
They don't want you to hear CNN saying dumb stuff like, "Maybe there is a problem in the control tower" on 9/11, or them calling states for Democrats that end up in the Republican column two days later.
Yeah I wish I would have thought to tape it. I just was so totally taken back by it all, I didn't think about taping it until that night around 7 PM. I started watching a few minutes before the second plane hit. I wish I'd of had enough of my brain still engaged that I would have popped a blank tape in and started taping.
Absolutely right.My wife was home that day and taped some of it ...I recall CNN describing it as a "control tower/computer problem " after the 2nd plane hit. Even after the bombing in '93 the thought of terrorism never entered this dimwit's mind.No reason to archive that.
I didn't start watching until the about 10 mins before the second plane and don't remember exactly what Fox said but within seconds of the first plane, David Asman (I think) said that it had to be bin Laden.