Suspects 'caught crashes on camera'

September 16, 2001 4:06 AM

Suspects 'caught crashes on camera' Five men suspected of being involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre set up cameras to record the atrocity.
posted by mb01 (10 comments total)

Another one of the clues in this case that just sounds too obvious. Like they thought they would need video copy of this? Could they really not think it would be on TV? It reflects an intense ignorance, or more likely stupidity on the hands of low-level operatives mind-fucked into thinking killing civillians was going to help anyone. I guess it's pretty obvious that you don't send your finest men on suicide missions

I don't know, it just seems a bit off, like the flight manuals in cars, or the story that a passport, presumably on the body of one of the hijackhers, survives the blast and is found. It seems amazing that a passport could survive an impact that sounds like it will require DNA to identify nearly every body. Then again, maybe the guy's passport was just encased in 'black box' material.
posted by chaz at 4:22 AM on September 16, 2001

This one does seem more than a little bit "off". On the one hand, they report that these guys had set up video cameras to capture the collision on film and were in the process of celebrating when found. Then on the other hand, police are unsure whether they are still in custody. I would think that, if there were any truth to this, there would be seven arrests of material witnesses vice two.

The passport thing has a bit more credibility to it. Due to the force of the explosion upon collision, the passport could have been blown right off of the tower during the original explosion. I'm assuming that the authorities have been compiling a mountain of assorted documents that were strewn all over lower Manhattan.
posted by MAYORBOB at 5:49 AM on September 16, 2001

If "investigators believe each team of hijackers acted independently from each other but under orders from a supreme commander," why were these members of the Newark team (Pennsylvania crash) filming the WTC? Point to ponder.
posted by cardboard at 7:11 AM on September 16, 2001

It's a little early to be going all X-Files on this. The information that is being presented to you in the news is still a bunch of speculation and hearsay.

It makes total sense to videotape the incidents. What are the odds that the first plane was going to be caught on tape by jaded New Yorkers? An maybe the planes were planned to arrive at the same time. You can't assume that there will be news crews video taping the building at that moment.

What do you know? Pretty much nothing at this point.
posted by hotdoughnutsnow at 11:04 AM on September 16, 2001

Something like half the CIA budget is on counter-intel. A lot of things going around right now could be just that. MeFi people aren't the first people to realize some things are really fishy. If anything the CIA knows a whole hell of a lot more then we do, for obvious reasons they can't say.
posted by geoff. at 11:42 AM on September 16, 2001

I guess it's pretty obvious that you don't send your finest men on suicide missions

LOL! :)
posted by donkeyschlong at 12:26 PM on September 16, 2001

I agree completely with hotdoughnutsnow. Logic would tell you that they were attempting to have everything happen simultaneously. If everything happens simultaneously, who's gonna catch it? Even if it was supposed to be slightly staggered, I would imagine that the terrorists would find it highly unlikely that there were already cameras on the ground who were quick enough to catch the first plane. I've only seen one video clip of the first plane and it looked to be a complete stroke of luck(?) as they were filming something else and just caught it a second before impact.

It seems amazing that a passport could survive an impact that sounds like it will require DNA to identify nearly every body.

Actually they've already identified hundreds of bodies from WTC with any use of DNA.
posted by fooljay at 2:09 PM on September 16, 2001

Given that this story was attributed to the NY Times, I thought it prudent to locate the original. There's been no follow-up on this story since Thursday, so far as I can tell, other than this Friday story indicating they are "deportable Israeli citizens" and are being held by the INS solely on those grounds.
posted by dhartung at 4:11 PM on September 16, 2001

btw, I didn't know there was video of the first tower hit until this weekend, as fooljay noted (though apparently it was running on some channels Tuesday evening). ABC has it.
posted by dhartung at 4:21 PM on September 16, 2001

Anyone else annoyed by the 1/3 screen-wide newsticker and caption banner that is running on many channels? Most interviews are only a head and a pair or eyes moving around. Can't see mouths at all. And then when they show scenes of cleanup, often the reporters are talking about things that are completely obscured from view by these little buggers. The video of the first crash brought that to mind.

Isn't there someone in the control room with their finger on the button to toggle that thing on/off?
posted by fooljay at 8:00 PM on September 16, 2001