While Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he had not known the tape existed until “very recently,” both the Times and CNN err in claiming that the NYFD is the agency behind the extreme secrecy.
“The Fire Department has forbidden anyone to discuss the contents publicly on the ground that the tape might be evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man accused of plotting with the hijackers,” the Times said.
When AFP asked the NYFD why the only conversations between firefighters engaged at the scene of the crash had to be kept secret because of Moussaoui, who was in prison in Minnesota at the time, the spokesman replied, “Take it up with the Department of Justice.”
Asked about the numerous reports by eyewitnesses, including firefighters, of explosions inside the towers before they collapsed, Mike Logrin, spokesman for the NYFD, said, “We’re pretty sure there weren’t bombs in the building.”
On Sept. 11 the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) interviewed one of its New York-based reporters, Steve Evans, who was in the second tower when it was hit.
“I was at the base of the second tower, the second tower that was hit,” Evans said. “There was an explosion-I didn’t think it was an explosion-but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake . . . then when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions. . . . We can only wonder at the kind of damage-the kind of human damage-which was caused by those explosions-those series of explosions,” he said.
Evans is a professional journalist and although his observations of explosions in the second tower should be taken into account, they are not. Numerous eyewitnesses reported also seeing or hearing explosions.
Valiquette of the FBI told AFP that he had not “heard anything” about reports of explosions in the building and that he had “never heard any discussion of it” in the FBI’s New York office.
END
From the site: www.americanfreepress.com
'The Last Man Down' - by Chief Picciotto
P45 - 5th p/gph:
'To my left, I heard one fireman remark to another, or possibly to the group at large, 'The tower couldn't come down. This is the World Trade Centre. Nothing can bring these buildings down.' ... there had to have been hundreds of firemen in there. People I knew. People I loved. Hundreds of them easy. Hundreds and hundreds of other people too, maybe thousands, but my first thought was for the firemen. They'd been sprinkled all over that building, same as we were sprinkled all over this one. And while this thought was registering, there came a few more.
We'd been hearing all morning that there was a third plane coming, so I started thinking that it was some follow-up attack that had brought the building down. We were also hearing reports of missiles being fired from other high-rise buildings in the area, possibly at these towers. And there was always the prospect of some kind of bomb. We didn't know what to think ... Then I opened my eyes to a new thought: if the South Tower could come down, I realised, the North Tower could too. And I knew we had to get out of there ...'
P 108 :
'Remember, we still didn't know what had caused this second tower to come down, had only a half-hour earlier embraced as a possible explanation for the first collapse a bomb of some kind, or another plane. Like most everyone else, I'd long thioght these buildings were impervious to most conceivable crashes, or bombings, or natural disasters, or even to isolated fires. Hell, I'd been here in 1993, when that thousand-pounds-plus bomb took out seven mostly sub-level floors, but the building hadn't come close to toppling. Here, though, who knew what we were facing.'
P 139:
'Same voice as before. David Lim, the Port Authority cop, moved now from comcern for his dog to the conviction that he was soaked in jet fuel . His cries pierced through my fading conciousness and shook me alert ...I guessed there had to have been thousands of gallons of fuel pumped somewhere into that building when the plane hit. Maybe it was dripping on him. He was about a flight above me, so I couldn't tell what he was experiencing. I didn't smell anything, though. I've got a fairly honed sense of smell. My nose can distinguish between a wood-burning fire, or an electrical fire, or burning plastic or garbage. There are a lot of smells to smoke, a lot of different smells to fuel, and here I didn't smell a thing ...'
P165:
'From where we were, looking down from our perch several storeys above that particular piece of rubble field, we could see he [Jerry] was in a tough spot. The buildings just behind him and to his left were looking like they too might collapse at any time, and there were whole chunks of concrete falling to both sides. Flames dancing everywhere. The small arms detonations were kicking up a notch or two, and it sounded like this poor guy was being fired at, by snipers or some inseen terrorists, at close range.'
P167:
'We knew it'd be tough going, but we had no idea how tough. The fires, the precarious footing, the intense, all-over fatigue. The bombs bursting in the air - meaning those weirdly disturbing small-arms detonations. And the smoke! I never oculd determine what it was about that smoke we were breathing on the way down but, as I've written, I had a pretty good nose for virtually every type of smoke. Here, though, there was something especially irritating and sharp in the air we were made to breathe, and I couldn't place it. For days afterwards, I couldn't think what it was, until someone suggested there might have been different types of tear-gas bombs going off in that Secret Service bunker. That would have certainly accounted for the difficulty I was having drawing breath, and the pain I was feeling in my eyes. There were times it seemed as if |I'd be blinded by all that smoke, by the burns and abrasions to my eyes, but I managed the pain to where I could still see, in fits and starts.'