9/11 documentary

[Winston]

If you ever watch ANY documentary about 9/11, watch this one. It's vastly better than any others I've seen and has convincing content unlike any other. And, NO, this isn't some nutty 9/11 truther conspiracy film.

It's a documentary about the efforts of 9/11 victim families who had to FIGHT to create an independent 9/11 Commission, who then had to fight to get its budget raised from its initially outrageously small amount, who then found that the final report was grossly incomplete with only about 30% of their questions answered.

What this film clearly exposes is the huge failure of our government in not preventing this event based upon the large amount of information known prior to it (with what was most certainly known compiled entirely from publicly available mainstream media news stories!) and how they tried so very hard to hide that fact. Also covered is some possible Pakistani involvement. Considering where OBL was finally found, living less than a mile from Pakistan's military academy...

I was in the past an occasional email correspondent with a columnist whose wife was involved in the creation of this excellent documentary although I didn't know that until I just happened to mention this film to him and made the point that they should NOT have used "Truth" anywhere in the film title to avoid association with truther nuts. He then told me that his wife had fought that very thing, but failed because those funding the film wanted that incorrect impression, most likely to boost sales.


[video=youtube;RmHPfXemf10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmHPfXemf10[/video]

"I don't think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon..." - Condoleezza Rice during press conference

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Project Bojinka Phase III: CIA plane crash plot (known to the US in 1995 and covered in this documentary)

Abdul Hakim Murad's confession detailed Phase III in his interrogation by the Manila police after his capture. Phase three would have involved Murad either renting, buying, or hijacking a small airplane, preferably a Cessna. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in the Langley area in Fairfax County, Virginia. Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.

There were alternate plans to hijack a 12th commercial airliner and use that instead of the small aircraft, probably due to the Manila cell's growing frustration with explosives. Testing explosives in a house or apartment is dangerous, and it can easily give away a terrorist plot. Khalid Sheik Mohammed probably made the alternate plan.

A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995 stated, "What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters."

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Samuel Byck (from 1974 and not even touched upon in this documentary)

Samuel Joseph Byck was a hijacker and attempted assassin. On February 22, 1974 he attempted to hijack a plane flying out of Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport. He intended to crash into the White House in the hopes of killing U.S. President Richard Nixon.

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Debt of Honor (published in 1994 and not even touched upon in this documentary)
by Tom Clancy

"... an embittered Japan Air Lines pilot—driven mad by the deaths of his son and brother during the [US/Japan] conflict—flies his Boeing 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol during a special joint session of Congress."

 

[Winston]

DOD air defense response confusion and uncertainty about the hijacked aircraft was due to this:

United States government operations and exercises on September 11, 2001

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite...perations_and_exercises_on_September_11,_2001

The WTC towers were designed to withstand accidental 707-sized impacts, the main commercial aircraft size at the time, and nothing larger. Massive amount of jet fuel on fire caused great weakening and bending/slumping of girders which then failed and caused the upper floors to pancake onto the lower.

Plus, there's this:

"In 1971, New York City banned the use of asbestos in spray fireproofing. At that time, asbestos insulating material had only been sprayed up to the 64th floor of the World Trade Center towers.

Other materials were substituted for asbestos. Though the substitute sprays passed Underwriters Laboratories’ tests, not everyone was convinced they would work as well.

One skeptic was the late-Herbert Levine who invented spray fireproofing with wet asbestos in the late-1940s. Levine’s invention involved a combination of asbestos with mineral wool and made commonplace the construction of large steel framed buildings.

Previously, buildings such as the Empire State Building had to have their steel framework insulated with concrete, a much more expensive insulator that was more difficult to use.

Levine’s company, Asbestospray, was familiar with the World Trade Center construction, but failed to get the contract for spraying insulation in the World Trade Center. Levine frequently would say that "if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down."

That appears to be what happened Tuesday, according to Richard Wilson, a risk expert and physics professor at Harvard University.

The two hijacked airliners crashed into floors 96 to 103 of One World Trade Center and floors 87 to 93 of Two World Trade Center. Instead of the steel girders of the towers lasting up to four hours before melting, the steel frames of One World Trade Center lasted only one hour and forty minutes, while the steel frames of Two World Trade Center lasted just 56 minutes before collapsing."


EDIT: of course, as detailed in the excellent PBS documentary "Why the Towers Fell," they theorize that much insulation was blown off the girders by the impact anyway, so it wouldn't have much mattered what insulation was used.

 

[tightwad]

I have it dvr'd. Looking forward to seeing it. Thanks for your post, Winston.

 

[tmacklin]

I just finished watching this entire film which was quite illuminating. Thanks for posting this important documentary. Here's more:

https://www.ipsnews.net/2004/03/iraq-war-launched-to-protect-israel-bush-adviser/

 

[georgegassaway]

FWIW, the best documentary about what happened that day at ground level, is the one that two brothers from France shot what was supposed to be a documentary about becoming a New York City firefighter, spending weeks at a specific firehouse. So, they were out filming the day of the attacks, and were the only ones to get footage of the first plane impact on the north Tower. They followed the crew and even were INSIDE the North Tower when the South tower fell.

The documentary they made was shown on CBS a few months later. It was (and is) incredible. Anyone who has not seen it, should see it.

Below is a very short clip showing the first plane, the moment their firehouse documentary became something far different.

[video=youtube;Ys41jnL2Elk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys41jnL2Elk[/video]

Anyway, CNN bought the rights to it, with some updating, and it will be shown Sunday night at 8 PM Eastern time on CNN.

https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/powerful-9-11-film-returns-time-cnn-article-1.2785490

Powerful 9/11 film returns, this time on CNN
BY
DON KAPLAN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, September 10, 2016, 6:00 AM

They were trying to make a movie about New York’s Bravest — and they ended up with some of the most chilling images of all time.

In 2001 two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, and firefighter/filmmaker James Hanlon were making a film about becoming a New York City firefighter. On the morning of Sept. 11, they ended up riding a firetruck straight into hell, walking away with perhaps the most chilling record of the mind-numbing, world-changing terrorist attack.

That footage became the documentary “9/11,” which drew a whopping 35 million viewers when it debuted on CBS — and which will air Sunday night at 8 p.m. in an updated edition.

There have been dozens of films, TV shows and documentaries about 9/11, but what sets this one apart is the unique images and access the filmmakers wound up with.

What they captured was the only known film of the first plane hitting the North Tower, footage from inside the lobby of the Twin Towers as they burned, and the faces of the doomed firefighters as they raced to save people’s lives inside a pair of iconic buildings that would soon collapse into chaotic, hellish churning meat grinders.

They also recorded the sights and sounds of people leaping from the burning towers and slamming into the ground far below.

The updated film has been retitled “9/11 Fifteen Years Later” and features Denis Leary reflecting on the bravery of the firefighters who lost their lives that day.

All these years later, the tragedy is still raw and the documentary remains a masterpiece.All the more striking, then, that its creation was a coincidence.

The filmmakers had been working on a movie that would follow a young firefighter, known as a “probie,” as he worked his way up through the ranks at the Duane Street firehouse.

On that fateful day, they ended up following the men of Engine 7, Ladder 1, who were among the first responders to the World Trade Center after Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into the buildings.

Almost two decades later, the film hasn’t lost its power. If anything, it’s even more important, more impactful and more heartbreaking than ever.