FDNY Whistleblower: Media Nixed News of Race Changes to 9/11 Flag Statue

Retired New York City firefighter Kevin O'Kane says that reporters from all the major news organizations were present when a clay sculpture of three of his FDNY brethren raising the American flag over Ground Zero was unveiled on Dec. 20 in Brooklyn.

But only one reporter bothered to mention that the racial make-up of the trio had been altered, he told NewsMax.com in an email complaining about the cover-up on Monday.

For the next three weeks the mainstream press breathed not a word of the fraudulent tribute, even as firefighter O'Kane struggled in vain to get coverage of what he and many of his brethren felt was a politically correct travesty that cheated three rightful FDNY heroes out of their due.

"I called one newspaper after another," O'Kane told NewsMax.com Friday. "Nobody wanted to cover this story."

On Tuesday NewsMax.com broke the story of the hero firefighter's complaint; how he and his brethren were livid that higher-ups in the FDNY had decided to tamper with reality to reflect - not the world famous photograph of the three Caucasian fireman who actually performed the deed - but a more politically correct version that replaced two of the white firemen with an African-American and a Hispanic. (See: Racial Changes Made in Ground Zero Firefighter Tribute)

After the NewsMax report, the story caught fire on talk radio in venues like Al Rantel's KABC broadcast in Los Angeles. By Thursday the Weekly Standard had its own version of the story on its web site, where it was picked up by Fox News Channel's Brit Hume.

But it took till Friday for the story to explode, when WABC radio's Sean Hannity featured a full hour interview with firefighter O'Kane and civil rights activist Lawrence Guyot, who argued that replacing the white firefighters was a good idea. (O'Kane and Guyot will continue the debate on Fox News Channel's cablecast "Hannity & Colmes" Friday night.)

Minutes after Hannity's interview ended, the Associated Press picked up the news that NewsMax.com reported three days earlier, sending the story richocheting around newsrooms all across the country.

"Given that those who died were of all races and all ethnicities and that the statue was to be symbolic of those sacrifices, ultimately a decision was made to honor no one in particular," Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon told the AP.

But the three firefighters who actually raised the flag - Dan McWilliams, George Johnson and Billy Eisengrein said through their lawyer that they were "disappointed."

"It's become something political as opposed to historical," attorney Bill Kelly told the AP.

The bogus sculpture unveiled in December will be cast in bronze in April and put on permanent display at FDNY headquarters unless enough public pressure is brought to bear, O'Kane told NewsMax.

"My fear is that the word won't get out and that this fraud will be erected and future generations will come to regard this politically correct sculpture as a historic fact."

You are wrong.

Here is the entire article, straight off their web site.

'Flag-Raising' Statue Unveiled / Model inspired by Sept. 11 photo PUBLICATION: Newsday BY: Joshua Robin. STAFF WRITER EDITION: QUEENS SECTION: News DATE: 12-22-2001 A06
A clay sculpture depicting three firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 was unveiled Friday in front of the department's Brooklyn headquarters.
"Flag-Raising at Ground Zero," based on a photograph taken the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, will be bronzed at an upstate foundry before official dedication ceremonies in April in front of 9 MetroTech Center.
The $180,000 statue is the first memorial to the 343 firefighters and emergency medical personnel killed Sept. 11. Bruce Ratner, president and chief executive of Forest City Ratner Companies, which developed MetroTech, is underwriting the memorial.
Though it is inspired by the picture taken by Thomas Franklin, a photographer for The Record in Bergen, N.J., artists from the Brooklyn studio who crafted the 18-foot-high sculpture made subtle changes.
For one, the firefighters in the photo, who were all white, were replaced in the sculpture with three unidentified Fire Department staffers of three different races, artists said Friday. The clay firefighters' arms also appear more sinewy and their postures more upright.
The modifications came at the behest of Fire Department officials, said artists with Studio EIS, located on York Street in the Dumbo section.
Neither Franklin nor the three firefighters in the photo came to Friday's ceremony, to which they had been invited.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the Sept. 11 flag-raising proved the terrorists did not achieve their ultimate goal of breaking the nation's spirit.
Calling the photograph "one of the most inspirational that I have ever seen," Giuliani said it showed that "the spirit of America ... was soaring above the evil deeds that were done to us."
Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen cried during the ceremony. He has announced he will retire after Giuliani's term ends with the Jan. 1 swearing-in of Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg.
The eyes of Capt. James Graham of Rockville Centre, who works at Ladder Co. 102 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, also welled with tears during the service, which he attended after a morning off-duty spent combing the rubble of Ground Zero.
"It wasn't a fire," Graham said of Sept. 11. "It was an act of war."
Plans for a memorial in lower Manhattan remain under discussion.
After the ceremony, Giuliani said the city should build a temporary memorial in lower Manhattan before a permanent structure is built.
Of Ground Zero, Giuliani said: "We should not ... give the impression that the most important thing to us there is economic development, because it's not. The most important thing to us should be appropriately remembering, memorializing the lives of people that were lost there."
As of Friday, an Associated Press list of victims of the attacks on New York and Washington numbered 3,187 people. Of those, 2,954 were killed or lost in the Trade Center attacks, including the passengers and crew of the two hijacked jets that slammed into the Twin Towers.
Staff writer Dan Janison and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
© Copyright 2001, Newsday Inc.
Joshua Robin. STAFF WRITER, 'Flag-Raising' Statue Unveiled / Model inspired by Sept. 11 photo, 12-22-2001, pp A06.

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.