Humint Events Online: Videotaping the Second Hit

Monday, March 06, 2006

Videotaping the Second Hit

In retrospect, it seems obvious LOTS of people would video the second hit. Heck, who wouldn't want to get video of one of the most famous scenes in all of history?

There are somewhere between 15 and 20 views of the second hit, from various angles and distances with greatly variable degrees of clarity.

But of course ONLY ONE video of the first hit.

There are of course MILLIONS of people living around new York, and the WTC was clearly an icon, visible to everyone living in the area.

But here's the thing. 8:46am Tuesday morning, 9/11/01, something flies in the north tower. A few hundred people probably witnessed this directly, but only one person was lucky enough to get film of it.

Thousands of people must have seen the north tower burning, casting a huge smoke cloud, by about 8:48am or so.

By about 8:50am, the story is going to be on the news, so many people will look up to the tower and see it burning. Millions more will know of it, by now.

But basically, at this point, it is an odd story of an airplane hitting the north tower and causing a fire.

In retrospect, it seems natural that people would get a video camera and start filming the burning tower, and thus capture the second hit. But in reality, was a large fire at the top of the WTC something that people would think they HAD to capture on videotape?

I think not.

Most people would think the fire is weird and go on their way (remember this is NYC!). It wasn't until the second tower was hit that people really knew this was an extraordinary event. Before the second tower was hit, there was much less urgency to the situation.

Now, this is rush hour, people going to work. Many people simply can't go and get a video camera, anyway. The majority of random citizens who might grab a camera and film the second hit live far away in New Jersey (to the west) or in Brooklyn (to the east) or in midtown Manhattan (to the north).

Another point is that the second hit occurred at 9:03am. The vast majority of people weren't aware of what was going on in the north tower until 8:50am or so. This leaves a very narrow window of time to grab a camera and be in position to film the second hit, even assuming you were inclined to film the north tower burning.

Now here's an extremely important point: the first hit was on the north face of the north tower. MOST cameras were going to focus ON THIS face, and would not capture the second hit at all since the south tower was hit from the south. These cameras cameras focused on the north tower's north face would only capture the south tower fireball at best. And there are videos that only show the north tower's burning north face and then have a quick pan to the south tower to view the fireball there-- and they never capture the plane at all.

Finally, even if you were on the south side of the WTC and you had a camera and you were filming the south tower at exactly 9:03am, you still might not have a good shot because there are so many large buildings in lower manhattan that could obstruct your total view of the tower as well as the approach path.

To sum, I think it is highly unlikely that random citizens and random newspeople would capture clear video of the second hit, and capture the plane.

Thus, I think almost all, if not ALL, videos (and photos*) of the second plane are potential fakes. In fact, in very few cases do we know where these videos came from, who was the cameraperson, and so forth. I therefore consider EVERY second hit video as supect. In the few cases where we know the cameraman, there are reasons to be supicious. Evan Fairbanks got an amazing video right below the second hit, showing the plane gliding in-- but his camera was handed to him by "someone" and Fairbanks had his original footage confiscated by the FBI! Scott Myers also got close-up footage of the second hit, and he works in computer graphics and for NIST (this is research from Nico Haupt and I don't have a good link).

IN FACT-- I think the angle of attack of the second hit was carefully designed precisely so it would be AWAY from where the first "plane" hit. Thus, news cameras and random citizens not in on the plot would primarily by focused on the north face of the north tower, where the first hit was. Most media in Manhattan is in mid-town, north of the WTC. The second plane officially came from the south, so there was minimal chance of random cameras taping it. Only people "in the know" would be set-up to view the south approaching hit.

Thus, I think currently there is no convincing reason to think a real plane hit the south tower.

*Most photos of the plane look as though they came from known videos. On this point, there is a clear lie going on here about the picture taken by Carmen Taylor, if you look here (2nd page) and here (scroll down).

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