3. Conveniences
These
69 circumstances that made the filming of the first 9/11 plane a lot
easier than it might otherwise have been if possible at all strongly
suggest that they did not occur by chance, but were in fact the result of
deliberate planning, which means foreknowledge.
The point should
be made that the film is often described as "accidental," but Naudet was
consciously trying to capture the plane when he filmed it he wasn't
filming something else when the plane first appeared on screen. The
"accident" is in why he was there at that time, and that was actually a
whole series of coinciding simultaneous accidents if they were accidents
at all the ones listed below.
Even something as simple as No. 1,
hardly conclusive on its own, shows that Naudet was in a small minority:
it reduces the chances of his being in this situation by accident. There
may not necessarily be anything suspect about being out on the street, not
going anywhere in a hurry, on a Tuesday morning in New York, but that is
not what the overwhelming majority of the city's people were doing, for
perfectly good reasons. But this is not just about minorities of
minorities of minorities, ad infinitum: it is about factors that are
convenient to filming the plane and its impact. He was outside, for
example, because the people who knew this was going to happen knew he
would have to be outside to film it, and every other one of the 69 is a
similar demonstration of a planned, staged event: every potential problem
anticipated and dealt with, in the same way a fictional film is made
except that this is supposed to be a documentary.
All 69 could
have been different, but all 69 happened the way they did because they
were designed to happen that way. For example, Nos. 13, 16, 17 and 47 show
that whoever organised this knew how, where and when the plane would be
flying. This does not involve all that much information: flight path
straight towards floor 95, north face, North Tower, arriving about
8:46:30. What more would you need? With those details known in advance,
the rest of the filming plan could be worked out, and rehearsed (without
the actual plane, of course) with these results...
1. The
photographer is outside, not like most people in Manhattan at any given
time in a building (like the firehouse he was in 15 minutes before) or a
vehicle (like the car he was in 5 minutes before), where filming a plane
would be far more difficult.
2. He is standing in Lispenard Street, not on a
pavement, where he would risk pedestrians walking in front of him, bumping
into him, running past him, etc.
3. He is looking down a north-south
street, giving a view of the Twin Towers not, for example, further west
along Lispenard, with the 430-foot AT&T Building in front of him,
blocking the south view which even the 50-foot building on the east side
of the street would do, as demonstrated in the pictures in Appendix 4,
which do not even show its full 5-floor height.
4. He is at a
crossroads, which puts the full width of an east-west street (Lispenard)
between him, at the north-east corner, and the traffic, blocking the south
end of the intersection. If he had been at the south-east corner, or if
the roadblock had been in a north-south street, but not at an
intersection, the stalled traffic might not have completely obscured his
view of the tower, but he could have been standing too near it, and might
have had to film the impact above the top of a 7-foot mail van or fire
truck, which would look too convenient. Using an intersection provides an
excuse for getting him right back from the traffic and filming from the
other, north side of the street. And if the cameraman has to be at the
north-east, so does the gas leak. Why at this particular intersection, and
not, for example, the next one down, Church and Walker? Because this one
has the huge, and hugely convenient, AT&T Building see No. 38. [Coincidentally, Lewis Rudin, co-chairman of
Rudin Management, who bought the building ("The Hub") from AT&T in
1999, died nine days after 9/11.]
5. He is in one of the few
streets in Manhattan, if not the only one, where he could photograph a
building (a pair of buildings, in this case) in the street next door,
three quarters of a mile away, in the middle of his picture and
equidistant from buildings on the sides of the street he is in, with only
fresh air between them and above them and no other buildings from next
door visible. You didn't get this view from West Broadway next door to the
west, and Broadway on the east side had no view at all of the Trade Center
at this distance from it. Anyone who worked around Church and Lispenard
would know about this amazing view, but what are the chances of someone
accidentally having it as a backdrop the day a plane flew into that
building next door?
6. Any building
visible from the street next door, from that distance, would have to be at
least 800 feet tall, which excludes all but a dozen in the whole of New
York. The only reason these buildings are visible at all is because they
are the tallest in the whole city, and this picture is not the normal
Manhattan street scene it is made out to be. In a million pictures of New
York taken at random from street level, how many would accidentally show
the tallest buildings in the city three quarters of a mile away in the
middle of the picture equidistant from the buildings on either side
with empty space to left, right and above from a street next door to
them with skyscrapers of its own? I would suggest with emphasis on
the words "random" and "accidentally" not a single one. But if not
random, and deliberately composed that way as many as you
like.
7. If he was in West Broadway, he would only be able to see
the north face, and his film of the plane would look too convenient, but
from even one street away, with the towers' corners visible and only
their top quarter it is impossible to tell how close he is to them: he
could be on the other side of the city. Even New York inhabitants might
not be familiar with the view from Church Street, or realise that this is
only one street away from the towers and the film does not mention the
fact.
8. The picture has also been composed vertically: 1. the
street traffic, 2. the Tribeca Hotel and the building beyond it, further
down Church Street, 3. the Twin Towers. There might have been no middle
layer in this sandwich he could have filmed the plane immediately above
the top of Chief Pfeifers SUV but having other buildings in between
increases the distance between the target and any possible distractions at
ground level.
9. He has a camcorder with him, unlike most people
even professional photographers don't always have their equipment with
them, and the film emphasises that it was unusual for Jules to be the
cameraman it would normally have been Gιdιon.
10. He is already
filming with it when the plane appears, when he might still have had to
switch it on, load a tape, change the battery, etc.
11. The group
members are all standing still, unlike most New York pedestrians or
firemen who tend to be going somewhere.
12. The gas leak has
ostensibly just been dealt with in some mysterious unspecified way
seconds before the plane appears, and nothing of any great importance
happens in the interim, which allows the photographer to immediately
switch to filming the new subject.
13. The plane flies alongside
the next street west, when it could have been 20 blocks away but would
they have heard it?
14. The cameraman is already filming westwards
almost towards the plane's closest approach to him, about 250 yards away
just before it arrives. This makes it easier to capture on film when it
does arrive, by simply waiting for it to pass its closest point and
disappear behind the AT&T Building before panning left. It could have
turned up behind him, or at an awkward angle, instead of passing straight
in front, from right to left, north to south.
15. The plane's
closest point is where it is most difficult to film: the cameraman does
not attempt to film its flight until it passes that point, and is flying
away from him much easier to film than towards him, at that speed, that
close yet he must have been able to see the plane arriving, beyond the
Post Office building to the north-west, at least three seconds before he
started attempting to capture it.
16. The plane is flying
horizontally, in a straight line, making its direction easier to follow,
when it could have been turning, or flying in circles, or climbing, or
falling.
17. The gas leak call is at 8.30, putting the group on
location at the right time, when it might have been ten minutes earlier,
and by 8.45 they would have been back down in Duane Street, having dealt
with it or ten minutes later, and they would still have been driving up
Church Street when the plane passed, heading in the opposite direction,
impossible to film. (In a Fire Department (WTC Task Force) interview, 23
October 2001, Pfeifer claimed the call was "sometime about 8.15 or so and
that "We were there for a while." Half an hour for a gas leak?)
18.
The call (which was not filmed, despite the cameraman being at the
firehouse when it came in) is about a gas leak, when it might have been
about a fire but would the cameraman have been able to film the plane if
he was filming a fire, with associated noise, smoke and danger?
19. How many other cameramen could have been "in the right place,
at the right time" if, like Naudet, they had been conveniently filming one
of the emergency services, whose job involves being in any place,
at any time, allowing an instant pretext to be contrived?
20. The cameraman is not troubled by traffic obstructing his
view, any more than pedestrians: the junction has been blocked with fire
vehicles although, since the gas leak is at the north-east corner, they
could have been parked up the east end of Lispenard but that would not
be convenient, when it would leave northwards traffic, like the white mail
van parked at the lights, or one that might be heading up to the Post
Office for a collection.
21. At a junction of two one-way streets
(Church northwards, Lispenard eastwards), where Church has been blocked,
he only has to worry about traffic coming from one direction the one he
is filming towards west.
22. There would not be much through
traffic from that direction in any case, since from this junction
eastwards, Lispenard Street is virtually a one-way cul de sac, stretching
only one more block before ending where Broadway meets Canal Street.
(Another reason the area is relatively quiet for Manhattan is that the
subway and bus routes up Church Street turn off to the north-west up
Avenue of the Americas, three blocks south of Lispenard). But he needs to
be able to guarantee no traffic.
23. The photographer could
quite easily have been filming the firemen towards the east, but the
film's only, and very brief, view in that direction is just after the
photographer gets out of the car (Edit 24 in the film sequence list).
After that we get south (Edits 25 and 26), north (27) and west (30), but
never again east. Why? Because the less time he has until the plane's
arrival, the more he wants to avoid having his back to it, and east is the
worst direction to be facing, with the plane behind him.
24. It
cannot be to avoid being dazzled by the sun, because, as the film clearly
shows, he cannot even see it he and the entire width (and length) of
Church Street are in the shade, while the Trade Center towers are well
sunlit.
25. The cameraman is with a group of firemen, of all
people, just as one of the most disastrous fires in US history breaks out,
when he could have been with, for example, a group of office workers in,
for example, the World Trade Center.
26. He manages to record a
plane actually crashing incredibly rare, if not unique when no-one
captured either Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon or Flight 93 crashing in
Pennsylvania later that morning, or for example the crash in Queens
two months after 9/11, or the crash of a DC-8 in Brooklyn in 1960. There
are reasons why people don't film plane crashes, unless a plane's obvious
distress gives photographers if any prior warning: if "normal" ones
with no warning are unusual enough, why would anyone capture one as
bizarre as this?
27. He isn't as shown earlier in the film (edit
26 in film sequence list) kneeling in the street filming firemen hiding
the Twin Towers when the plane passes, or they would have blocked the
view.
28. He isn't also as shown earlier in the film (edit 28)
filming towards the ground when the plane passes, or capturing the plane
would have been far more difficult.
29. He is standing, stationary,
undistracted and facing the subject when the plane passes, when he could
have been kneeling, walking, concentrating on filming something important
or with his back to the subject.
30. The men in front of him when
the plane arrives behind them are all standing in silence, and apparently
only pretending to be busy, and it is never established whether there
actually was a leak, or if so, how to handle it: the commentary
tells us nothing. Chief Pfeifer fiddles with his gas meter and sticks his
hand in his pocket, and his fireman colleague leans over the grating, as
if, like the bystander beside them, looking for the world's first visible
gas leak. If they had been genuinely occupied, it would have been a
distraction from the plane which, unlike the photographer's alleged
subjects, could hardly be called aimless. (In a 2002 interview, Pfeifer
claimed that "they" not "I," not "we" phoned Con Ed, the utility
company, but there is no evidence in the film of him or anyone else making
that call before the plane arrives, and after it the gas leak seems to be
forgotten about having served its function as an invented excuse. In
January 2002, firefighter Tom Spinard (Engine 7, Duane Street) told a WTC
Task Force interviewer the call "turned out to be a false alarm." So when
did that become apparent one second before the plane turned up?)
31. No-one in the film distracts his attention by talking to him, and the
cameraman's own voice is never heard until after the impact; voices
close to the camcorder microphone could even have drowned out the plane.
The firemen might have noticed it, but would the cameraman?
32. He has no view of the south or west sides of the North Tower
and only a distorted view of the top third of the east side; the only
part of the building he has a clear, direct view of is the top third of
the north face less than 10% of the tower's four sides the very part
the plane hits. When its impact could have been on any side of the
building, down to at least the 50th floor more than 50% of the
tower's exterior surface most of it hidden from the cameraman how
convenient it should be in the middle of the only 10% he has a clear view
of, on the face closest to him. (See Appendix 4,
Picture 3d).
33. He judges the
point where the plane reappears so precisely panning left and up
simultaneously rather than left and then up, wasting time that only
very minor adjustment is required at the end of the pan, when he might
have overshot, undershot, or had to considerably raise or lower the
camera, blurring his picture of the impact unless he had pre-set the
focus.
34. He judges the plane's speed (and the length of the
building) so precisely he catches it just as it comes back into sight:
neither too early which would look premature nor too late to capture
the impact.
35. He captures the point of impact almost in the
centre of the picture, when it could easily and far more credibly have
been off-centre, towards the edge, or barely in the picture.
36. In
a TV interview in 2002, he claimed to have been so close (but still
managing to avoid mentioning he was in the next street, as if he could
fail to be aware of it, having lived in New York for 12 years) he could
read the plane's markings, making the accuracy of his judgment even more
astonishing, if he was looking up at the plane one second, and down at his
camcorder's viewfinder the next, to pan left.
37. He films a plane
flying at 450 m.p.h. with a stationary camera, when most photographers
would have to move the camera and/or themselves to track a plane in
motion; in this film, the camera motion stops when the plane motion
starts when it first appears, that is when most film of planes has
both together.
38. He manages this feat by having a 430-foot
building hiding the plane until it is far enough away to film from almost
straight behind it, with plane and target so close together it disguises
the fact that the focus of the film is the target, not the plane about to
hit it.
39. He is at the north end of this building, which hides
the plane for most of its remaining flight until the last couple of
seconds when if he had been further south, it would have appeared
earlier, which might involve trying to follow it with the camera; further
north, and neither plane nor target might be visible at all.
40. He
condenses a plane flying 500 yards into an angle of 20 degrees, between
its reappearance at the south-east corner of the AT&T Building and the
impact point on the North Tower the last two seconds of a 46-minute
flight, compacted to an eighteenth of a full circle, before the plane hits
the only twelfth of the building clearly visible to the only cameraman in
Manhattan to film it happening: truly, photographic minimalism at its
most minimal with total concentration on what is known, in a different
branch of the film industry, as the Money Shot.
41. He could have
been at the Duane Street firehouse, but filming the plane would have been
far more difficult, with only three seconds' warning, and, being much
closer to the tower, having to swing the camera right up to the top 20
floors even if the firehouse faced south, which it doesn't, meaning he
would have had to run outside and across the street.
42. He could
have been in West Broadway, but the plane would have been just about
overhead, with no AT&T Building providing an excuse for not even
attempting to track it in motion.
43. He could have attempted to
zoom in on the plane before it hit its target, but might have lost it with
the tiniest camera motion magnified, and missed the impact shot, or
blurred it.
44. At the plane's speed, it would have been a mile
away within eight seconds; if he was so curious about the plane, having
lost his chance to capture a close-up and seen it disappearing behind a
huge building, how much was he hoping to be able to see by the time it
reappeared? What made him carry on trying to film it when it was already
tiny and getting tinier by the second?
45. He is standing on the
same spot when the plane hits the building, three quarters of a mile away,
as when it almost flew over his head six seconds before, when he might
have had to walk, or at least lean more than just pan 90 degrees to
capture an object that had moved that distance at that speed.
46.
Between the sound warning and the impact, he has a convenient six seconds
to capture the event, when it might only have been two or gone on for
sixty, if, for example, the plane had flown around the target and come
back for the collision as the Pentagon plane did later. Six seconds is
just about perfect neither too short nor too long.
47. The
plane's flight is horizontal, and low enough to allow the engine noise to
be heard on the ground, when it could have dive-bombed the tower
diagonally downwards, and not been audible until the last couple of
seconds.
48. He has a completely unobstructed view of the small
part of the tower he could see, when there might have been other buildings
or street furniture in the way like the traffic lights at the south-east
corner, or not shown in the film the suspended lights at the
north-east corner.
49. The plane hits the first building visible
ahead of it after it first appears on film, when it could have hit the
second one (the South Tower), a third one not visible in the film, etc
or none at all. Again, nothing extraneous it appears on screen, hits the
first obstruction in front of it, period. No frills, no decorations, no
detours, no sidetracks, no mess the camera doesn't even move after the
plane appears. The contract said "Capture plane hitting tower," and that's
what we get, concentrated into one two-second static burst as if there
had been only one shot in Dealey Plaza, and Zapruder had captured the
exploding head in the centre of his frame, as the car passed between two
lampposts purely by chance except that Zapruder knew he would
be filming a passing car, and where the lampposts were. This photographer
had not the foggiest what he was about to film allegedly.
50. The
North Tower is hit first, when it could have been the South Tower but
filming a head-on view of that from the same distance, without using zoom,
would put the photographer in the Hudson River. None of the actual views
of the South Tower impact were from that angle or distance and that's
why.
51. He and the firemen and the alleged gas leak could have
been on the west side of Church Street, but the towers would have been
completely hidden behind the AT&T Building, making capturing the plane
virtually impossible (see Map 3).
52. The gas leak could have been
most are inside a building, but was allegedly out on the
street.
53. The pan is only 90 degrees, when it might have been 180
or more if, for example, he had been facing east and swung round
anti-clockwise, towards the firemen, increasing the risk of blurring the
picture.
54. All the firemen are standing in front of him or on his
right when the plane passes, when they, or just one of them, could have
been on his left, blocking his view of the impact. There were twelve from
Duane Street alone, yet no more than five firemen, from any house, are
ever on screen at any one time: where are the rest of them, where are the
men from the two other houses who answered the call, and how could every
single one of these 20-plus firemen manage to avoid accidentally getting
into the impact picture? When the plane hits the tower, not one fireman
is in shot, yet this junction is supposedly swarming with them.
55.
The phone call was not, like many of those received by FDNY, a hoax call,
or the firemen would have left the scene before the plane
arrived.
56. The gas leak is apparently dealt with before the plane
turns up; if the plane had turned up just as they arrived at the junction,
it would look premature, and suspiciously convenient even more so than
having Subject A dealt with first, before Subject B. In real life, Subject
B would be more likely to interrupt than wait for an earlier subject to
end.
57. He could have recorded (on film or audio) ten seconds of
the flight, but not the last ten seconds; he could have recorded the ten
seconds before the last ten but then lost view of the tower, and/or the
plane; that did not happen. He is only interested in capturing the
flight's end the rest of it is totally irrelevant to him and he knows
where its end is going to be, so he only has to make sure of having a view
of the tower.
58. If you wanted to arrange film of the impact,
followed by a close-up of the gash in the building, a photographer north
of the tower would be needed; this photographer is to the north, only 12
degrees east of the plane's flight path, measured from the
target.
59. He would have to be not too close, to get a proper view
of the top of the tower and to avoid danger but not so far away he had
no view at all; this photographer is at a reasonable distance roughly
1,300 yards six seconds of flying time. He could have been one second
away, or twenty seconds both totally useless for filming the plane. He
might have been so close he couldn't fit the tower into his picture, or
focus on it properly: sudden unexpected events often are either too close,
too far away, too small or too big, to capture on film but the
dimensions and the focus of this one were just right, somehow. Not
everybody could get a decent picture of a Boeing 767 with wings 150 feet
wide and a tail 50 feet tall smashing into the top floors of a giant
skyscraper 1,200 feet off the ground, at 450 miles an hour not your
average holiday snap even if they knew, hours in advance, it was
going to happen: how on earth could you possibly take a picture of that?
And if you knew, how could you take the picture so as to disguise the
incriminating evidence? How could you make it look accidental? Could it,
in fact, credibly be accidental? But thats the central issue of
this whole essay.
60. He would have to be close enough to the plane
to hear the engine noise above sounds closer to him music, traffic, etc;
this photographer was one street away, at a crossroads with no moving
traffic but two parked fire trucks, more than capable of burying plane
noise, if close enough to the cameraman, and if their engines weren't
switched off.
61. He would need to avoid tracking the plane in
motion, so as to record the impact clearly; his pan left means he blurs
only the building, not the plane, and the entire filmed flight is
contained in just one stationary frame. (Or perhaps the reason for not
filming the plane from close to it might be to avoid clarity,
rather than blurring to hide the fact, for example, that it was not a
Boeing jet, or not a 767, or not American Airlines, or not Flight
11).
62. He would want to visually condense the flight to the
minimum, so as to avoid camera motion the best way being to get right
behind the plane; this film is shot from right behind the plane, with the
visible flight condensed to 20 degrees.
63. He would want to leave
out all of the flight but the last few seconds the rest of the flight
would be an irrelevance or a distraction, and only the impact needs to be
captured; he films only the last two seconds.
64. He would want to
leave out most of the tower, and only capture the area of the impact the
rest of the tower is irrelevant, nothing is happening there, and if
anything did, it could be a distraction, or an obstacle to filming; only
the top third of the north face is visible in the film, the rest of the
building being hidden behind others. The plane hits that very part of that
face. The partial view also misleads as to how close the photographer is
to tower and plane.
65. He would need to have some photographic
experience, when no amateur could capture a scene like this, with its
sudden, fast, perfectly-judged 90-degree pan. Jules and Gιdιon Naudet are
documentary film-makers, both listed as "Director, Producer, Cameraman and
Editor" in their only previous film, "Hope, Gloves and Redemption: The
Story of Mickey and Negra Rosario" (filmed in 1999, issued on DVD
(Echelon) in 2002, reissued (Pathfinder PH 90969) in 2004), raising
questions over Jules' claim to have almost no camera experience (Edits 19
and 22).
66. He would need a cover story as a pretext for being in
the right place at the right time to capture the plane; the documentary
film about the firemen and the gas leak at that junction provide a
plausible pretext on first appearances.
67. His film was about
firemen, when if he had been filming, as in his previous film, boxers,
they would not have been out in the street first thing in the morning,
they would not have had the right to block road traffic at a junction,
they would not be able to provide instant transport down to the tower
after the first impact or the authority to enter the building,
etc.
68. He already has a perfectly clear view of the target from
where he is standing, so he could have captured the impact without having
to pan the camera left at all, but it would look suspect if he was filming
the target just as the plane appeared in view; the camera motion suggests
lack of preparation although the perfect motion and the perfect view at
the end of it, having the towers in the middle of the frame, suggest
otherwise.
69. And this is a valid point on its own if just one
of these circumstances had not applied, this film might easily not exist.
How likely is it that every one applied, not one went wrong, and that not
one other person in Manhattan managed even one single piece of luck, to
produce even an off-centre, blurred, monochrome photograph of the event,
let alone perfect colour film of it? A unique film might be credible if
it had faults or, conversely, a perfect film, if we had others less
perfect to compare it with if not quite as imperfect as the Hlava film.
How likely is it that this photographer achieved both uniqueness
and perfection?
The word "perfection," is, of course,
relative: the film is "perfect" in the sense that it fulfils all the
requirements. It is slightly blurred but not nearly as much as it
might have been; and it captures the sound of the plane, its last two
seconds of flight and its impact, right in the centre of the picture,
followed by close-ups, with no editing the whole 44-second sequence is
uninterrupted; and it does it in a way that looks plausibly accidental.
The kind of perfection that involved showing us a clear, totally
undistorted close-up of the plane in flight, with its "American Airlines"
livery visible, would be the kind of perfection that destroyed any chance
of luck being believable as an explanation.
An exercise like this
involves weighing different factors against each other. You can never have
absolute perfection in every department sacrifices have to be made, and
the main sacrifice here was that the plane had to be filmed from a
considerable distance. It is still large enough to be clearly identifiable
as a plane, and that was the point of the exercise filming the damage
and what caused
it.