JULES NAUDET'S FIRST PLANE SHOT WAS STAGED
A Clue to the Truth about 9/11 ?




Appendix 4 : Evidence from the film

Some of these shots from "9/11" are evidence of foreknowledge, and some of fraud and dishonesty, on the part of both the film-makers — not just the Naudets and James Hanlon — and some of the firemen in the film, not all of them. When we see, for example, firemen from Duane Street looking west from their firehouse as if they can see No. 7 WTC collapsing, we have to ask why ordinary New York firemen would take part in a charade like this. Anyone familiar with Manhattan — or who bothered to look at a map — would know it was impossible to see any of the WTC buildings by looking west down a street seven blocks north of them. What kind of genuine, authentic documentary film would insult its audience like this ? This is not some experimental film study put together by amateurs : the film was edited and produced by CBS and released by Paramount, two of the biggest media organisations in the world, and scenes like these do not belong in a film marketed as documentary history. Why would the aide to a Battalion Chief who until recently was the most senior uniformed fireman in New York appear in this film pretending to be an ordinary fireman from Brooklyn or Queens who couldn't tell which of the Twin Towers he was in ? Why would he do it when he has one of the most distinctive faces in the film, and any observant viewer would be easily able to identify him as the man running the command post earlier in the film ? The film assumes an audience of unthinking morons with an attention span of five seconds, who are going to simply accept what gets put in front of them, and never ask questions about glaring anomalies, anachronisms and fakery they wouldn't even notice in the first place — because they accept the film for what it claims to be, just as most of them probably accept the official story of what happened on 9/11 as fact, when it has never yet been proved as that in a court.

The Naudet film is not what it claims to be. When it includes more than 1,400 edits, and anything false or incriminating could easily have been removed before public release, the inclusion of these scenes has to be deliberate. These people are not only liars and frauds — and accessories to mass murder — they are positively advertising the fact, knowing that most of us can't see them doing it — or why would they still be walking the streets six years later ? Hard as it may be to take the proposition that the guilty parties would make a film advertising their guilt, isn't that just what we were told Bin Laden did ? If the fake perpetrator can boast about it on camera, why wouldn't the real ones ? Except that, not being allegedly in hiding somewhere in Central Asia, the real ones, living openly in the USA and elsewhere, would have to tone down the confession somewhat, in case we weren't all the mindless zombies and amnesiacs they take us for. I think that is the explanation for these shots : the kind of folk who just could not resist a deception like 9/11, or the deception of having someone film the first plane impact as part of the product's film spinoff, would be equally unable to resist advertising their participation in the crime — with subtlety, but stretching it to the limit in some of these examples. The point sometimes seems to be seeing just how far they can push it without making it obvious to too many for comfort. The word is audacity — a word often used to describe 9/11 (as well as individuals like Bill Donovan, creator of the OSS, and Bill Casey, director of its successor). If anyone thinks they have a better explanation of what the pictures show, I want to hear it. If there's an innocent reason for New York firemen being filmed looking down a street at something they know isn't there, and never was, or pretending to be strangers, when the film proves they're not, I want to hear it. If there's an innocent reason why CBS editors would have us watching a man — not a "boy" — appear to talk about something we know didn't happen until seven minutes later, I want to hear it. If it's a simple editing error, I want the error acknowledged and corrected. Blunders, anomalies, acting and dishonesty do not belong in an authentic, innocent, professionally-produced documentary film, so I want reasons why they appear in this one; or my claim stands that it is neither authentic nor innocent. It is the exact opposite — fraudulent and criminal.


 

1a. The first of four frames from the "Looking for a gas leak" scene (Film Edit 26) : Jules Naudet, kneeling, captures the WTC's South Tower, barely visible in the distance under the pointing fireman's sleeve, next to Pfeifer's FDNY arm badge.


 

1b. Naudet begins to adjust his camera picture, changing the exposure and shifting the focus to infinity — apparently the point of the exercise: both towers begin to look clearer.


 

1c.Towers even clearer and more defined, colours of sky and AT&T Building (on right) darker. Note how Pfeifer acts nonchalant to suggest this "emergency" is the extremely rare (and just as suicidal) hand-in-pocket type — unlike the Fathers' Day catastrophe, three months earlier. Note also that he isn't asking Naudet what the hell he's doing, when it obviously has nothing to do with filming the firemen at work — the whole reason for his being there. Perhaps the brothers' deal with the Department was that the firemen would keep out of the film-makers' way, and let them get on with their very important job ? But then, why would Naudet later feel the need to ask Pfeifer permission to go into the North Tower with him ? Why is Pfeifer so uncurious about his guest kneeling in the street, facing the wrong way, filming the wrong subject, when the gas leak and the firemen are behind him ? "Take pictures of the Trade Center some other time — this is an emergency, and this is what you're here to film, while you're my responsibility !" Why isn't he saying that ?


 

1d.All firemen — Naudet's supposed subject — now completely out of shot, apart from Dennis Tardio to the left of the man at the lights (possibly the one who later joins the firemen); sky and AT&T facade darker still, focus now set to infinity — ready for a plane yet to turn up. Compare colour and focus to Picture 2: all four frames have exactly the same settings in the original DVD source — the changes are not mine.(Compare also the cafe sign with pictures 3b and 3c: although this shot was taken slightly further west, and kneeling, he may already be judging where to stop panning, using the sign. The towers are not quite in the centre here, but very nearly — the "&" in the sign, from the right spot, centres them exactly).


 

2.Tony Benetatos, manning Duane Street on his own, supposedly filmed live by Gιdιon Naudet, having just said "The Pentagon... The Pentagon's on f***ing fire... War. This is war." But the Pentagon was not on fire at the time shown on the clock next to the TV ; Flight 77 did not hit the building until 9:37. The clock must be at least 7 minutes slow — or Benetatos did not say those words at the time (we hear them over a close-up of TV and clock) — or the whole scene is a reconstruction — or Benetatos was talking about something that had not happened yet because he knew it was going to, and the evidence was deliberately left in the film, like so many other scenes, as a combined insult and provocation.

3a.Towards the end of Jules Naudet's 90 degree pan past the AT&T Building on the right, as he presumes — correctly, as it turned out — that the plane seen disappearing behind its north end would re-emerge here, at the south ; presuming also that, if it did, it would not fly off to the right or left, or upwards — or downwards, in flames. The vertical line added to this still and the next two marks the exact centre of the picture in the DVD (and presumably in the original videotape).


 

3b.This is luck ? This is an accident ? This is serendipity ? As Naudet's leftward pan stops, with the towers already centred, just before the impact of the plane — note the absence of the double image in 3a (only seen in some DVD capture systems) — the Trade Center towers are exactly separated by the centre line. One might almost think Naudet had marked an X on the road showing him just where to stand — if he stopped panning at the right point — to get the towers exactly in the middle of the picture, and equidistant from the sides of Church Street — the south wall of the AT&T on the right and the roofs on the left — keeping them well clear of both, just in case. But it would need either very precise judgment or something vertical, selected beforehand, marking where to stop the pan — and the "&" before the words "Coffee Shop" on the corner sign at the left would serve that purpose perfectly. For a rough height cue — less important — he might have used the top of the traffic. What are the chances of the only known film of the first Trade Center crash having the towers so perfectly positioned that the horizontal centre of this one-off, unrepeatable shot passes right between them ?* And why was it so important to get them in the centre ? Because thought had obviously been given - as with where to hit the towers - to the question of where to have the subject in the impact shot, and the simplest answer was in the centre, to make sure of capturing it. The further away from the centre, the more risk there would be of possibly missing it (although the shot's credibility would increase), so why not just right in the centre ? They could have placed the actual impact right in the centre, or off centre, or at the edge of the picture, but the easiest, least suspect, least risky option was to have both towers in the middle, split by the centre line : having North centred would be too perfect. That was the decision, and that's what we have, and why.*


 

3c. After impact, the smoke cloud shows the position and angle of the plane's penetration. It should be noted that there are small adjustments to the camera's position before, during and after the impact — mostly downwards (note the front of the white mail van and the emergency lights on the roof of Pfeifer's car, not visible in 3b) — but even these have only a minor effect on the position of the centre line : still right between the towers. The adjustments may well be Naudet's attempts to find his "&" marker on the left and keep the picture above the traffic at the bottom. The towers may not be absolutely perfectly vertical, but this has to be truly amazing precision for a human cameraman, not least one reacting spontaneously to an event like this — if you believe the Naudet story. But not quite as amazing if foreknowledge is involved, and this photographer is simply practising a well-rehearsed camera motion, and what he's aiming for is not a plane (not required if you know what its target is) — not even a skyscraper — but an ampersand on a cafe sign. That on the left + car roofs along the bottom + location mark on street = one photographic miracle. Easy when you know how — and what, and why, and when, and how many.



 

3d. This version of picture 3c demonstrates (a) just how much of the Trade Center towers is hidden behind the buildings on the west side of Church Street — almost a full two thirds of their height; and (b) the fact that, just as the towers are exactly in the horizontal centre of the frame, the plane impact is almost exactly in the vertical centre of the only part of Tower One Naudet can properly see, on the only side he can properly see, the north face (see Convenience 32). The top third of the tower stretched from around Floor 73 to Floor 110, with midpoint at about Floor 92 ; the plane cut through Floors 93 to 99, just above that midpoint. If Naudet had been in collusion with whoever was flying that plane, and had told them exactly where he wanted them to hit the building — about half-way down the top third sector of the north face — the result could hardly have been more perfect. Impact smack in the centre of the visible part of the tower, towers smack in the centre of the picture : this is an accident ? The plane could have hit the north face at any point in about the top 60% of its height (avoiding the 570-foot No. 7 building), but anything below the top 33% would have been out of view, and it actually hit about 13% from the top, less than a quarter as far down as it could have gone — and it could have hit much lower than 60% down on any of the other three sides, none of those areas visible. But it didn't — it hit exactly where it was most convenient to Naudet. This is luck ?
*


 

4a.From a film clip (starting at 34:42 into the DVD) presumably not shot by the Naudets, this southward view (the north face of the North Tower nearest us, with its distinctive impact wound) shows the Verrazano-Narrows suspension bridge, six miles away, beginning to emerge from behind the South Tower : what happens after this is completely bizarre, as the next picture shows.


 

4b.As the camera pulls back and apparently to the left, the bridge tower (690 feet tall) moves left towards the edge of the picture — but the Trade Center towers, although closer to us, stay more or less static. The ratio of the apparent width of the North Tower's west face compared to its north face is about 1:3.45 in Picture 4a, but has now widened to 1:3.75 in this shot, proving that the camera has indeed moved to the left, showing less of the west face — but not nearly enough to account for the huge change in the bridge's position, which, being much further away, should move less than buildings nearer the viewer, not hugely more than; even if absolutely horizontal, which it is not, it is six miles away : how could it move that far left ? Either this is the world's only suspension bridge capable of moving of its own volition, or someone has manufactured this piece of film — in plain English, faked it. Where did it come from ? Who produced it, and why ? Who thought burning skyscrapers weren't dramatic enough — that we needed bridges performing impossible stunts to bludgeon us into submission, and/or prove our gullibility ? What liar cooked up these pictures ?


 

4c. Four more pictures, neither shot by the Naudets nor included in their film. Top left, a view of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Manhattan, showing how surprisingly large the bridge is at that distance. Top right (from "In Memoriam : New York City"), both towers have now been hit : the bridge is not visible, but this shot is taken from the wrong angle to show it. The bottom left picture (from "9/11 : A Tale of Two Towers") is just after the South Tower collapses. Bottom right (from "In Memoriam" again), the dust cloud gets even more enormous and spreads all over South Manhattan. The lower two pictures seem to have been shot by the same NBC helicopter cameraman, and there is no evidence in his apparently authentic footage of the reality-defying motion in the scene from the Naudet film : as the camera closes in and moves rightwards, the bridge does move left, relative to the large dark building in front of it, but no more than would be expected — not across half the width of the picture. Not even the fact that 4a and 4b are much closer to the North Tower accounts for that kind of motion. *


 

5.This still (at 54:08 ; another two clips can be found just after 1:30:51 into the DVD, showing the South Tower collapsing), appears to have been shot by the same static camera, from almost the same place on the Brooklyn side of the East River, as the pictures taken by Wolfgang Staehle's webcams. The picture margins may be different, but compare the shoreline features along the base of this picture with the same features along the base of the top right section of the Staehle picture (Appendix 1) : allowing for the slight tilt to the left visible above, and the flatter buildings, they are nearly identical. Yet (a) this is a still from moving footage, while Staehle's pictures were supposedly only single frames every four seconds, and (b) if this footage was shot by Staehle, and it appears in the Naudet film (although his name is not in the credits), they would surely have been aware that his camera had captured Flight 11 — so why would they ever claim Jules Naudet's shot was the only one ? Who produced this piece of film ? Was it Wolfgang Staehle ? If he shot moving footage that morning, did he capture more than one static frame of the plane in flight ? Did he, as seems a reasonable assumption, film the second plane as well ? Why have we not been told that ? When did he stop filming ? When did this artwork of his end ? Why were we not told six years ago that three European immigrants to the USA — and only those three people (as far as we know to date) — recorded moving film of the first 9/11 plane, and that two of them and the other one's brother also filmed the second one ? Why does it take five years for that to emerge ? Finally — or not — would someone care to explain that triangular smoke cloud rising in the distance at the left of the picture, which obviously has nothing to do with the smoke coming from the Trade Center ? A major fire, perhaps, consigned to oblivion by something more important ? Or a part of the 9/11 story we haven't been told yet ? Somebody must know what it is.


 

6a. "It was just before 10 o'clock," James Hanlon's commentary explains, "a little over an hour since the first plane hit. Firefighters from all over the city were in those towers — hundreds of them." In this scene from the lobby of Tower One, we first see Pfeifer (50:46), after a rightward pan by Jules, walking away with his back to the camera and his face hidden, trying and failing to get his radio working. And does he still look like that just seconds later, as the first rumblings of Tower Two collapsing are heard ?


 

6b. Of course not : he's turned around, facing the camera, filmed in close-up, so that we can see his reaction (50:54). By pure chance — yet again.


 

7a. "I remember tilting the camera back and forth between the people ..." — Gιdιon, just before "tilting" upwards (33:49).


 

7b. "... and the tower [sic] in front of me." The professional photographer shows us (33:53) how to film what's going on at the top of the burning North Tower (singular) by (a) not using his zoom lens for a close-up of the north face, where the plane hit, and (b) filling half his picture with the South Tower — not on fire. Why ? Does the next picture answer the question ? [Another question the shot raises : since both brothers obviously have a camcorder, what did non-photographer Jules normally use his for ? And another one : why is Gιdιon not closer to, or inside, the building on the right, if he thinks that's where his brother was, and that's why he went to the Trade Center in the first place, not to film the crowds ?]


 

7c. Gιdιon just captures (from slightly south of the Church/Vesey intersection) United Airlines Flight 175 about to hit Tower Two (33:55) — because his "tilt" helpfully left the line marking the lowest third of each tower at the bottom of his picture, and the plane appeared just above it, hitting the tower just above the line marking the top third (between floors 77 and 85) — which he could have had at the bottom of his picture, but didn't. If he had, he would have captured the impact — just — but not the plane. Just after impact, he pans back down to the crowd at the foot of the towers ...


 

7d. ... but the picture immediately dissolves from that into a view back up to Tower Two as its fireball erupts (33:56), followed by more cuts in rapid succession, to create the effect of total chaos — as if that were either (a) remotely necessary or (b) standard documentary technique. It should also be noted that the shot from 33:58 to 34:06 appears to have been at least partly filmed from a moving vehicle : so where did Gιdιon's transport come from ? [A similar motion can be seen at 25:04 after his brother captures the North Tower impact.]


 

8a. "And then we heard a plane come over, and in Manhattan you don't hear planes too often, el- ... especially loud ones." Chief Pfeifer (extreme right) shows how fascinated he is by the highly unusual noise of a plane roaring over Manhattan (24:44) : the two men behind him are obviously aware of it, but Pfeifer has just turned away from them and the plane, towards the camera, and seems strangely oblivious for a couple of seconds ...


 

8b. ... until he finally notices the sound (24:44), or someone draws his attention to it, and he looks up in almost the right direction : why the delayed reaction ? "You don't hear planes too often" — and he apparently didn't hear this one.


 

9a. James Hanlon in the doorway of the dining room at Ladder One, Duane Street, Monday night, 10 September 2001 (21:25) — his last appearance in the film for almost an hour, until ...


 

9b. ... he walks into Duane Street with Jules Naudet the next day, after both Trade Center towers have been destroyed (1:20:41), a picture that raises a whole host of questions. Why is nothing said in the commentary about Hanlon's presence ? How and where did he meet Naudet ? What is the significance of the hand gesture Naudet makes to the brother presumably filming him ? Why isn't Naudet himself filming his return ? Where is his camcorder ? (The only thing he has in his hands is a soft drinks can). Why is Hanlon looking down at his feet, instead of watching — or taking part in — an emotional reunion between his "old friends" the Naudets ?


 

9c. One of the most bizarre comments in the whole film (1:20:50), from one of the most bizarre scenes. Gιdιon Naudet : "I turn over and Jules was there in the firehouse — I didn't even see him coming in. And it was like meeting for the first time." Meaning what, precisely ? When do brothers meet for the first time ? In a maternity hospital ? Or does he mean that Jules was acting like a stranger to him ? Why would that be ? After all the previous comments about each brother spending all morning after their separation being afraid the other one was dead, what kind of reunion is this, standing apart, with one of them calmly smoking a cigarette and the other in a stunned stupor ? They then embrace each other, but only after someone off screen seemingly gives Gιdιon a cue to do it : was that someone the photographer, presumably Hanlon ? Is Jules affected by the reunion, by the scenes at the Trade Center, or is there something else troubling him ?


 

10a. (33:12) Hanlon : "Gideon [sic] took his camera and started walking ... down towards the Trade Center. He was sure his brother was inside, and he wanted to get to him." Gιdιon : "I remember slowly walking down to the World Trade Center." Why "slowly," down seven blocks, if he was so worried about his brother ? And was he still looking for him when (37 seconds later in the film — see picture 7a above) he captured Flight 175 hitting the South Tower — or had he forgotten about him by that time ?


 

10b. Gιdιon (41:44) : "So I decided that the smartest thing to do was to slowly walk back to the firehouse, and find a way to go to Jools [sic !]" Again with the "slowly," and again with the mysterious reasoning : what could he possibly do at the firehouse that he couldn't at the Trade Center, where he thought "Jools" was ?


 

11. (1:57:41) Jules : "Every now and then still I wonder, is it, is it really true, you know ? I know it happened but ... I don't know — how, how do you deal with something like this ? It's the 11th every day for me when I wake up." In the still, he asks his brother and Hanlon "So did you want the new tape ?" Hanlon : "As for Jools and Gideon [sic], it's strange how things work out. In the beginning, they came to me and they said "Let's make a documentary about a boy becoming a man." During his 9-month probationary period, turns out Tony became a man in about 9 hours, trying to help out on 9/11." And I'm sure Tony's adulthood is a comfort to the relatives of the 3,000. "Strange how things work out" : one minute there are folk in the US Government who would love a "New Pearl Harbor" as an excuse to carry out their empire-expanding agenda, the next minute, what do you think turns up, completely out of the blue ? Oh, isn't life ironic ?


 

12a. Caption 1 (32:35), spoken by Hanlon : this was apparently filmed, through the window of the downstairs firehouse office, while Gιdιon was still at Duane Street, just before he left (see picture 10a above) for the Trade Center, i.e. between 8:46 and 9:03. The image, like others in the film, is real but at the same time completely fake : what Benetatos is doing makes no sense, and you have to be as stunned as he looks not to see why. What is he looking at ? The previous shot is a view of the North Tower on fire ; cutting to this makes it look as though he is watching the tower burning through the firehouse window — but this is not visible in the reflection, and it would be impossible if it was, since the North Tower was seven blocks south of this north-facing firehouse. Ten minutes later in the film — see below — we discover he is watching the news about the Trade Center on the firehouse TV. But he is not looking at that in this shot, either, because the TV is up in the corner of the office, and these eyes are not pointing in that direction, at something at least two feet above him. What is fascinating him through this window ? The firehouse wall ?


 

12b. Caption 2 (42:44), spoken by Gιdιon, now apparently back at Duane Street — the edit immediately before this one shows the clock at 9:30 (as in picture 2) — where he films Tony, still stunned half an hour later, through the same window, looking at the same thing (whatever it is), with exactly the same expression, from exactly the same angle. No he does not : it's the same piece of film, repeated. In December 2006, I wrote to ask Jason Schmidt, one of the editors of the film, about examples of apparent dishonesty in it, and he told me "I do know that none of the footage is reconstructed or anything like that." Inserting the same piece of film allegedly shot at two different times, when it might have been shot at neither — we have no way of knowing when it was shot — is fakery, and Schmidt's claim is false. Reconstruction and using repeated film cuts are techniques used in fictionalisations of reality, not in documentary.


 

12c. Caption 3 (43:21), spoken by Gιdιon again, after he has supposedly just filmed Tony, frustrated by being stuck on "house watch" at Duane Street, getting ready to leave and head for the Trade Center, the clock in the cut immediately previous to this one saying 9:42. Again he manages to capture a stunned Tony, with the same expression, from the same angle, etc. Wrong — it's the same piece of film again, for the third time. Fakery is now in serious danger of turning into farce. [Another piece of fakery : at 48:34, when the commentary tells us "Back at the firehouse, off-duty guys were starting to show up," note the time on the clock behind Benetatos as he comes out of the office — still 9.42. This scene must have been shot immediately after the one in the picture above — meaning that it must be pure coincidence the off-duty firemen started coming in just after Benetatos was about to leave, and that if he had left, he would never have met Chief Byrnes, who turned up about 9.45, and allegedly spent the next several hours with him. Isn't that — yet again — incredibly fortunate timing ?]


 

13a. Another example of film deception : one second (23:35) the cameraman is inside Duane Street firehouse, at the front doorway, filming the fire truck pulling out after the gas leak call ...


 

13b. ... while a fraction of a second later (23:35), the same cameraman is outside and across the street, filming the same subject. Did he squeeze past the side of the truck and belt across the street before it ran him over ? Or maybe he got the truck to pull out twice, for his convenience, once inside, once outside — although one presumes they wouldn't want to do that in an emergency. So probably there were two cameramen, one inside, one out : who were they ? Jules inside, Gιdιon across the street, or vice-versa ? Was the scene even filmed on 9/11 ?


 

14. And another one (23:55) : this shot supposedly shows Chief Pfeifer's SUV heading for the gas leak, with Jules in the back seat. But if the only photographer travelling with Pfeifer was inside the car, how did he manage to film this exterior view of it ? Perhaps he nailed his camcorder to the hood of Chief Pfeifer's beautiful new vehicle ? Or maybe — again — we have a second cameraman. Or maybe — again — this is a reconstruction, and Jason Schmidt's claim is doubly false. If Jules Naudet was in this car, he could not have filmed it from this angle, live, between about 8.30 and 8.46 on the morning of 11 September — which is what the commentary invites us to believe. This is not documentary film : it's fakery. It may not by itself prove complicity in 9/11, but it does raise doubts about the film's authenticity.


 

15a. (31:13) Jules : "I had seen Chief Prunty — great guy ... white hair, moustache, the perfect grandfather that you'd like to have." Apart from Pfeifer, the only four firemen Jules Naudet identifies by name, from the hundreds in the lobby of the North Tower, between first arriving at about 9 am and evacuating an hour later, are Richard Prunty (57), Chief of Battalion 2 (15a), Lieutenant Michael N. Fodor (53) of Ladder 21 (15b), Pfeifer's brother Kevin (42), a Lieutenant with Engine 33 (15c) and Father Mychal F. Judge (68), the Fire Department Chaplain (15d) — all four of them killed that morning. Furthermore, Naudet gives us sudden close-ups on three of the four : the inset on the right here shows how Prunty looked (towards the camera, as if cued to start looking busy) just before the close-up to the larger picture. The four could have been picked out later, in the editing process, and the commentary was obviously added afterwards — but the three close-ups certainly seem to be live, filmed on the day. He may have filmed other firemen who were killed, some possibly with close-ups, but only these four are named : why ? It looks as though he somehow knew all four were going to die, but how can that be possible ?


 

15b. (31:19) Jules : "I remember seeing Lieutenant Fody, who was working with 9 Engine. He said hello and then started going up." As in 15a, the full-height inset on the right of the frame shows the subject just before close-up, but this one has an extra mystery. The subtitled version of Naudet's commentary gives the man's surname as "Fodor," and the monochrome inset at the bottom left corner is the official Fire Department portrait of the late Michael N. Fodor, of Ladder 21 — except that he looks nothing like this man in the Trade Center, apart from being moustached (not unusual, for New York firemen). Nor does the man in the inset next to Fodor : moustached, but fair-haired, Lieutenant Jim Fody, pictured in 2000 when he was with Engine 7 — Duane Street — presumably how Naudet knew him ; by 2002 he was a Captain with Engine 6 at Beekman Street — but on 9/11 he was indeed temporarily assigned to Engine 9 in Canal Street, on overtime. How did Naudet know that, and is the man in the main picture Fody or Fodor — or neither of them ?


 

15c. (31:50) Hanlon : "Another of the men who went up was Lieutenant Kevin Pfeifer. He was in charge of Engine 33 ... and he was the Chief's brother." Chief Pfeifer : "I just remember we both looked at each other, said a few words, and ... but it was more the look of real concern that this was going to be something tough." Kevin Pfeifer is the moustached fireman on the left, with the yellow satchel, looking round to his right, just before leading his detachment off upstairs (he was one of seven fatalities from his house). He is the only one of the four not to be given a close-up : in fact, this shot itself appears to be an enlargement from the original footage, judging by the quality of the picture. Presumably if the other three close-ups were the product of enlargements at the editing stage, rather than the way they were filmed at the time, they too would look like this. Naudet may actually have filmed a close-up in this case — or even the encounter between the Pfeifer brothers — but decided not to include it, to save the Chief's feelings. I see no contradiction between my contention that Joseph Pfeifer had foreknowledge of 9/11 and the fact that his brother was one of the victims : he may have been assured they would both survive by someone who was not in a position to make that promise.


 

15d. (47:43) (Left inset showing size before close-up.) Jules : "It was the first time I had seen Father Judge — the chaplain, as he's called." Chief Pfeifer : "He was in the lobby with us, and I could tell that he was praying. You know, Father Judd [sic], he would at least make eye contact with you and kind of give you a reassuring look. That wasn't occurring, almost like he knew that this was not good." Flying a plane into a skyscraper is "not good" ? Isn't that a bit fundamentalist for a Chaplain ? [Judd — sorry, Judge — was not "the" FDNY chaplain : appointed in 1992, he was one of six, including a rabbi; the Department had no imam at the time.]


 

15e. The common factor between the above four cases might be that Naudet is picking out firemen he knows personally, although this would hardly seem the time or place to do that, in a major emergency. Another problem is the above close-up (45:16) : who is he ? *Naudet does not identify him, but he must know his name : Deputy Chief Peter E. Hayden, Commander of South Manhattan's Division 1 (in June 2004 he was promoted to Chief of Department, the highest uniformed officer and effectively head of operations, before retiring two years later; on 9/11, Chief Pfeifer's immediate superior was the Battalion 1 Commander, Chief Billy Blaich, whose immediate superior was Hayden).* Nor does he mention, or give us a close-up of, the head of the entire Department, then-Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, who is seen walking in the lobby, his name on the back of his jacket (30:50) — yet the Naudets must surely have met the Fire Commissioner when they first made arrangements with the Department to film at Duane Street (a part of the story never shown in the film — but when Naudet is later challenged by a policeman near Ground Zero (1:15:24), he tells him "I have a letter from the Commissioner."). Are Hayden and Von Essen unmentioned because they both survived 9/11, unlike the four above ? The close-ups seem to be for the purpose of telling us that Naudet lost personal friends on 9/11 — but nobody from Duane Street died, and he could only have known these ones for three months at most. He also — ostensibly — could not have known they were going to die, so how do we explain the close-ups ? Is it the old Naudet ESP at work again ? Or is there a less supernatural explanation for his amazing prescience ? And why are we only told about two of the deaths — Pfeifer's and Judge's ? Perhaps because if we were told all four were to die later, more of us might question the convenient close-ups — their relatives' last view of them.


 

16a. Jules (1:07:06) : "Strangely enough, I kept ... the only thing that was — that was my preoccupation was to, to, to clean my lens. I don't know if it was a way for me to try to focus on something so I can stay away from the horror of the reality, but it was just my obsession — my lens needs to be cleaned." Or perhaps it was, yet again, foreknowledge of what was about to happen in the very near future — including the next six stills — which would have to be filmed with a clean lens for best results.


 

16b. Hanlon : "Basically, everybody was standing right in the shadow of Tower One. It was 10:28 in the morning." Jules : "And then comes that — that sound again." Given Tower One's height and the time of day, "right in the shadow" could mean anything up to half a mile away or more, although it would be interesting to know exactly how far away Naudet was when he filmed this (1:08:29).


 

16c. Jules : "And I don't even have time to think at that point — I just run." No sign of him running in this shot (1:08:36), seven seconds after the start of the familiar ominous rumbling noise mentioned above — even allowing for the insertion of 3 seconds of stock film of the top of the tower beginning to fall.


 

16d. Still not running : instead he pans left and up towards Tower One (1:08:38), ironically giving us exactly the kind of lens flare you would want to avoid filming the first plane hitting this very building. He then lowers the camera to catch firemen beginning to run ...


 

16e. ... and then pans back again for a second look at the tower (1:08:40), then down again ...


 

16f. ... then left again, catching Chief Pfeifer coming towards him (1:08:40), as our intrepid (or suicidally stupid, or totally fraudulent) cameraman goes back for his third shot of the collapsing tower, still not running very fast. He then swings right to running firemen alongside him and ahead of him, then, unbelievably, back yet again ...


 

16g. ... for another shot of Pfeifer, still running behind him (1:08:43), with the tower in the background — fourth shot. Only now, after this view, 11 seconds minimum after "that sound again" — in the Naudet version of history — does he finally give up filming backwards, towards a collapsing skyscraper from which he is allegedly running for his life. "I don't even have time to think" : a mere 11 seconds, it seems, maybe more. The building collapsed quicker than that : how did he survive it ? Possibly by being rather further away than the words "right in the shadow" would imply. The miraculous escape story is pure fiction, and his own film evidence proves it. On a day when 3,000 were murdered, incorporating a fake, fabricated survival story into a supposed documentary plumbs new depths of tastelessness : the word "revolting" doesn't even begin to cover it.


 

17a. This picture (25:38; Film Edit 35) shows Pfeifer (right), just after allegedly witnessing the plane impact, looking straight at the smoking North Tower through the front window of his SUV, as his chauffeur turns left at the top of West Broadway heading to the Trade Center. With five years' experience in Division I, called out to the Trade Center about four times a week, Pfeifer should be easily able to estimate how far down the tower the impact area is : he should know both towers are roughly 200 feet square (and about 7 times as tall, and 110 floors), so since the left end of the gash is about as far down the tower as its width, that translates as 200 feet, which translates to about 16 floors. That is in fact almost the exact figure : the left end was at Floor 93. If he doesn't know the width is 200 feet, he knows the distance from the top is about the same as the width, and any senior employee of the Trade Center or the Port Authority he meets in the North Tower should know the building's dimensions. (Note that this picture is also similar to the view Naudet would have had if he had tried filming the plane from West Broadway — except that, shot from the north side of Canal Street, we can see much more of the Twin Towers (about the top 400 feet) than the height visible from the junction with Lispenard (only about 350). Note also the street furniture causing problems — and the beam of the suspended traffic lights at the Lispenard turnoff to the left, under the red arrow, which is right in front of the North Tower impact area shortly after this frame. Note further that when Pfeifer radioed the first report to Manhattan Dispatch — a section of dialogue not included in the film — he said "Battalion 1 to Manhattan ... we just had a — a plane crashed into an upper floor of the World Trade Center. Transmit a second alarm and start relocating companies into the area ... Battalion 1 is also sending the whole assignment on this box to that area, (O)K ?" He does not identify which tower, or attempt to estimate which floor. Immediately after this, Engine 6 came on the air : "The World Trade Center Tower No. 1 is on fire." Then an unknown unit, then Engine 10, then Ladder 3, before the first message from Pfeifer actually shown in the film. Why are his first words missing ? If he was so convinced it was deliberate (unlikely, given how short its visible flight was — two seconds), why wasn't that in his first message, and why didn't he say which tower was on fire ?)


 

17b. And who does he meet entering the North Tower (28:02) ? "Right away a guy from the Port Authority told him the damage was somewhere above the 78th floor." Does Pfeifer offer him a more accurate figure, having just seen where the damage was from three quarters of a mile away ? Does he point out that it was roughly as far from the roof as the width of the tower, and ask what that width is ? No he doesn't. From his Task Force interview, 23 October 2001 : "I went into the lobby and tried to gather information, where the plane hit, what floor, and the best we could get is somewhere around 80." Chief Hayden's Firehouse interview, April 2002 : "The plane supposedly hit the 80th floor." Hayden got to the Trade Center, just after Pfeifer, via Canal Street and West Street : with Division I since 1990, he should have been even more familiar with the Trade Center than Pfeifer, and must have seen where the gash in the building was on his way there. Are we to believe they were dependent on reports from inside the building, or that when they saw it from outside, they were trying to count the floors up the way ? Their claim not to know where the plane hit the building is totally false, and both are lying. And so is the Port Authority official who told Pfeifer "78." They would have us believe they were trapped in the building and had no idea what was going on outside, because of faulty radios and falling bodies and debris : how did they get into the building in the first place ? How were thousands evacuated out from the 92 floors below the impact, and how did hundreds of firemen get into the tower, if everyone inside was trapped ? The only people trapped were the ones on the top 17 floors, above the fire. Every fireman who came in could have brought information on what was happening outside, or on exactly where the plane hit, either from seeing it themselves — like Pfeifer, Hayden and the others — or, like Tony Benetatos, by seeing it on their firehouse TVs. Casaliggi is filmed telling them about the second plane hitting the South Tower — they knew about that; they could have sent him further out to estimate where both impacts were. If there was confusion in the North Tower lobby, it was being deliberately created by liars like these.
*

17c. Jules (44:08) : "For us, we didn't have a clue of what was going on outside our lobby." So none of the hundreds of firemen somehow managing to get into Naudet's hermetically sealed world ever said one word to him, or if they did, he was too busy filming to listen to them — and of course, he and Pfeifer and the rest must already have been in the tower when the plane hit, so they had never been outside themselves. So Naudet's film of the plane hitting the tower, and the trip down West Broadway, must be figments of our imagination : if they had seen the tower from outside before the plane hit, and on their way into it, and if all these firemen were arriving from all across the city over the next hour, what Naudet is saying would have to be a complete lie. Does that face look like it's telling the truth ?*


 

18. This one deserves lengthy attention. On the left of the triptych, included in 9/11 (1:02:24), but not shot by the Naudets or Hanlon, and not in this form (it dissolves from a previous picture), Father Judge being carried away from the North Tower (presumably shortly before it, too, collapsed — yet another piece of perfect timing) : one of the great pieces of 9/11 iconography, the "American Pietΰ," as some genius started calling it, compared to a non-American example (centre) by Andrea del Sarto; and on the right, another 9/11 shot with slightly different personnel. For those who like their national disasters with a religious flavour — people who, in short, aren't too fond of the rational explanation, preferring blind faith in The Lord, or the occupant of the White House — people who think the Virgin Mary has nothing better to do with her time than make her face appear on a giant pizza, or that Christ would want to show up for 9/11, in the form of (a) an Irish-American priest, and (b) the Good News about 3,000 murders — people not terribly interested in asking why on earth it would be easier for this man to be carried sitting in a plastic chair. It's not, of course : he's in a chair because the Christ of the Pietΰ is never shown being carried, but in a sitting or reclining position. Not in a plastic chair, necessarily, but maybe this was the best they could find : they could only get him in the right position to echo the religious icon by sitting him up in a chair; the picture is literally posed. How likely is it that the posing could have been spontaneous ? The chair suggests spontaneity, but the pose doesn't, and the story of his discovery and removal (and how he ended up at St Peter's Church) is contrived and contradictory : this was planned — not very well, obviously — long before the pictures were taken (four, in all). And why are these "rescuers" — five of them in the left picture, at least as many in the other — expending so much energy shifting a corpse in the first place, when there might be people trapped in that rubble around them they could actually do something for, unlike this one, who will be having no Resurrection ? Because Judge weighed a ton, we're told — hard to believe, from his pictures; or because the ground was shifting under them, with all the debris — so why does most of it look like paper or dust ? Maybe they were moving him because if they didn't, his body would be lost for ever when the building collapsed — except they allegedly didn't know it was about to collapse. So why didn't they just leave the body where it was, until they found their way out, and then go back and retrieve it later ? Wouldn't that be the logical thing to do ?
The story makes no sense, the pictures are as fake and as staged as Naudet's shot of Flight 11, and I say the man who took them, Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton, is a liar and fraud. And so, probably, concentrating on the left picture, are at least some of its subjects — the breathing ones, unlike "Father Mike," the "Fireman's Friar," etc — left to right : the man also on the left in pictures 15a and b and the subject of 22a-d and 23, Chief Hayden's aide, ex-US Navy Ladder 5* firefighter Chris (short for Christian) Waugh — what a name for a picture like this, and the start of what Bush brilliantly called a "Crusade"; NYPD Lieutenant Bill Cosgrove; Engine 21 firefighter (on loan to Engine 7 — Duane St, would you believe) Zachary Vause; John Maguire of Goldman Sachs (and US Army); and Kevin Allen of Rudy Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management** — the office half way up 7 World Trade Center, that managed to be destroyed by an emergency (or maybe a perfectly well-managed demolition).
* based at 227 6th Avenue, HQ of the Chief of Division I, Chief Hayden, and shared with Engine 24, which, according to Bill Walsh at least, was among the units attending the Church/Lispenard gas leak.
** The OEM was headed by Commissioner Richard J. Sheirer, the large man with glasses seen in the film stalking the North Tower lobby barking orders into his radio (see Picture 22b), before disappearing from the building, later to be seen parading through the streets with his legal associate, Mayor Giuliani (58:43). Sheirer told the Kean Commission in 2004 : "Then we heard planes overhead – looking up I realised they were ours – the first American military jets had arrived. They gave us a sense of reassurance, and reminded us that we were not alone." In 1983, after Grenada, Reagan told the American people "We got there just in time." It was a ludicrous line, capping a ludicrous, lying speech about the preposterous idea that a tiny Caribbean island a third the size of its namesake county in Mississippi was a threat to the entire USA, but ... in 2001, they totally failed to get there until it was too late, but instead of being outraged by their uselessness, like the many people who felt they certainly were alone while the buildings were burning, Sheirer gives them a round of patriotic applause, on behalf of "us." What a hero.
And what about that angry gesture on the right ? Strangely reminiscent of the pointing figure in the Florentine masterpiece, but Waugh was allegedly just unhappy about having his picture taken, while engaged on his important mission of moving a dead body from A to B. I think his displeasure was probably real enough, but caused by Stapleton taking his picture before he was ready for it — and especially when Judge's face was hidden behind him. There are no known Pietΰs with only Christ's legs visible : it's most important to show the face.
This is what Cosgrove told Neil Graves of the New York Post in 2002 : "The Rev. Mychal Judge wound up on the altar of St. Peter's, carried by a posse of firefighters. Cosgrove wanted to make sure to set the record straight. 'Some people thought we brought him there,' said Cosgrove, who started a new position with the public school's investigative arm last month. 'We didn't take him there. We left him next to the ambulance. That was the last time I saw him.'" Another version has Cosgrove not only taking him there, but giving him the last rites, in the absence of any priests at the church. Then we have the version repeated in Wikipedia, among many others : "It was while giving the holy sacrament to firefighter Daniel Suhr that Father Mychal removed his helmet and was struck by falling debris. He continued administering last rites even while injured. Father Mychal then entered the lobby of the World Trade Center north tower, where an emergency services command post was organised. The south tower collapsed and debris filled the north tower lobby, killing many inside, including Father Mychal." Joseph Pfeifer, asked by his Task Force interviewer where Judge had been before he died : "He was with us in the lobby all the time." Can we have the names, six years later, of any witnesses who actually saw Judge ministering to Suhr or anyone else, or is this yet another 9/11 myth, fabricated by liars ? It can reasonably be assumed that Stapleton's photo was not posed spontaneously, unless he — yet again — just happened to be there, so Judge's death must have been anticipated, if only by minutes. No death, no American Pietΰ, no 9/11 icon, no "St. Mychal." Since no two stories tally, when do we get the truth about how Father Judge died, and the truth about this ludicrous photograph ?


 

19. (1:19:48) *"Come back" from what ? From seeing the two tallest buildings in New York devastated, with several thousand deaths ?* So why are these firemen smiling ? Glad to be alive ? This shot was apparently taken at about 12 on the morning of 9/11 — by which time, of course, it was all over : the first plane hit 8.46, the second plane 9.03, the Pentagon hit 9.37 and partial collapse 9.57, WTC 2 down 9.59, Flight 93 crash 10.03, WTC 1 down 10.28. How did these firemen, less than two hours after that last time, know it was all over ? How many other New York firemen went back to their houses by lunchtime and stood and swapped stories, in the past tense, about what had just happened, while most of the city's ordinary people were totally stunned and speechless, with no idea what to expect next, not just for that day, but for the indefinite future ? Who told Ladder 1 and Engine 7 there would be no more planes and no more collapsing skyscrapers ? Who told them they were safe at Duane Street, or anywhere else ? Who gave them their 9/11 "all clear" ? Who told them it was time to start smiling again, after escaping from Hell ?


 

20a. This shot (1:28:38) may not establish the Naudet brothers were complicit in murder, but it does establish the crass, blatant dishonesty of their film and some of its firemen subjects. This is, for a fact — one of the few we can be sure of in a picture like this — the view across the road from Ladder 1/Engine 7, and these firemen are looking west down Duane Street. What are they looking at ? Seven WTC has apparently, as the caption tells us, just collapsed — which we know happened at about 5.20 in the afternoon of 9/11 — and these men seem to be trying to catch it happening, or at least see some evidence of it, like the dust cloud rising. Have a look at Map 3 in this essay, find the buildings marked L (Duane Street firehouse) and M (Seven WTC) and ask yourself how it would be possible to see M collapsing by looking west down Duane Street from L. In short, that would not be possible, and the picture is totally fraudulent. This deliberately misleading stupidity has no place in any film purporting to be a documentary, and I want to know why the film-makers — the Naudets and the rest of them — are insulting our intelligence like this, and why these firemen seem to be taking part in the insult. They must know perfectly well you never could see any of the Trade Center buildings by looking down Duane Street ; the only way to see them was to do what Hanlon and Benetatos do in their rooftop scene — get in an aerial platform and get 40 feet above the firehouse. No wonder some people think the Trade Center was right next door to Duane Street, or you could at least see it from there : that's what this picture tells them, and it's a complete lie. This isn't innocent dramatic licence — in a documentary ? — or a little white lie that does no-one any harm. No, the picture doesn't do physical damage, but when you're selling a film as a record of history — of reality — you don't do stuff like this : you don't tell people things that aren't true; you don't rearrange the geography of New York City to suit some convenient fiction; you don't ask folk to pretend to be looking at something they know isn't there, and if they have any decency, they don't do it. That is for the world of theatre : this is live history, or it's supposed to be. Why are these men acting ? Are they all Hanlons ? Is Hanlon a Hanlon, or are the whole crew of them all just fakes and liars ? The ones in this picture certainly are.


 

20b.* Another example of the same kind of absurdity. Captain Dennis Tardio (1:35:29), showing where the Twin Towers used to be, down at the end of Church Street. Not so hard to believe they're not there, however, when they never actually were : that would explain it. The inset picture, from the earlier scene where Gιdιon and three firemen drive the wrong way down Church Street — shot from almost the same place as the main picture — shows where the North Tower used to be, well over on the right side, above the distinctive peak-roofed building, seen to the left of the fireman in the inset : the tower would only just make it over the right edge of the main picture. The South Tower would be to the left of North, but still far to the right of the shot, and nowhere near where Tardio is indicating. The towers were to the right of the end of West Broadway, not the end of Church Street : check Map 3. Tardio is in the same street Naudet was in when he shot the first plane flying into the North Tower : see Picture 17a for the view from the Canal end of Church, and compare it to this, taken from a street more than 100 yards further east.
Immediately after this shot, we see the core of the apple Tardio has been eating thrown down the middle of the street. If it was thrown by Tardio, and his gesture is to emphasise the direction of the towers, what it emphasises instead is the falsehood of the gesture : he should have thrown it over towards the right side of the street. Is his memory going already, or are we just being manipulated again, and invited to believe any old nonsense presented to us on the screen ? Does it really matter if they were a bit further to the right ? Yes it does — because he should know that — and it's far more than just "a bit." He is quite clearly claiming the towers were at the end of Church Street — in the centre, if not actually on the left — and the claim is nonsense. A photograph truthfully demonstrating where the towers used to be would look right across Church to the south-west, with the peaked building well to the left of the picture — further left than in the inset — and certainly not over on its right edge.
It's the same question 20a raises : why is he doing it ? Why is he asking us to believe something he must know isn't true ? If we're prepared to take Tardio's word that the Twin Towers were in Church Street, that's entirely typical of the abdication from reality required to accept most of the rest of the 9/11 story. This picture represents 9/11 in miniature : don't ask questions — don't look at maps — if I say the towers were at the end of this street, that's where they were. If I say you could see the Trade Center by looking west from Duane Street firehouse, you could see it, clear as day. If I say there's an enormous bridge just south of the Trade Center that can move by itself, the bridge is there, and it moves. If I say it makes sense that the man who was President when this lunacy happened should be re-elected on his reputation for protecting the country, it makes sense. This picture represents the kind of mentality — the kind of hysterical brainlessness — that got George W. Bush and his gang kept in office for a second term. If you believe the towers were where Tardio says they were, you can buy Bush as a Protector. I prefer facts, rationality and scepticism.
How, incidentally, do I know this is Church Street ? See next picture.


 

20c. Because the previous shot (1:35:19) helpfully shows us the street sign; and just in case we fail to spot it, Tardio is — even more helpfully — actually looking at it. Beat that for brass neck. "See the sign, stupid ? For the ones who can read — and, even better, read maps — I am in Church Street, so what I am about to say and do in the next scene is a complete and utter lie." He doesn't actually say those words in the film, but that's the message. "Not only are we lying, here's the proof right in front of you, you morons. Have any of you the wits to see what we're rubbing in your faces ?" Yet another of the film's many examples of adding insult to injury.*


 

21. (1:25:09) Presumably the epithet is not directed at the man on the screen — George W. Bush, in a lunchtime televised statement on 9/11, recorded at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, at 12.36 p.m. The problem with this picture is the question of when the tape was actually broadcast, on which sources disagree : 1.03, 1.04, 1.22 (Federal News Service); "The tape of Bush from Louisiana hit cable news channels at around 1:20 p.m., but it got garbled on each one and had to be rewound and fixed" — Jake Tapper of Salon.com; etc. But the clock in the picture (the same one as in Picture 2) quite clearly gives a time of about 1.08 p.m., so if the later times are accurate, this may be another impossible image comparable to Benetatos and his premature knowledge of the Pentagon. The clock may be wrong, again, but a wrong clock in a firehouse seems unlikely. Why are TV and clock next to each other ? Quite possibly, the positioning is another deliberate insult, to supply the proof that what is being discussed or shown on the screen is incompatible with the apparent time — and the proof that, by failing to appreciate, or even notice, their free gift, most of us are dead from the neck up.


 

22a. Picture 8 in this montage, bottom right, is the one with the biggest question mark : the fireman on the left is asking Pfeifer on the right "This is Tower 1 ?" Pfeifer says "Tower 1. Put a big "1" there"; his commentary then explains "Some of the outlying companies didn't know what Tower 1 was and Tower 2. So we were just trying to help them out by writing it on the desk, to make it obvious to people." In his Firehouse interview, Pfeifer recalls "People confused which was Tower 1 and Tower 2. At one point, I actually wrote it on the desk." Which is curious in four ways : (a) because the film shows it was actually the fireman who wrote it; (b) because in his Task Force interview, Pfeifer says "I'm not sure, like I said before. I get mixed up with south and north and two and one" — who's confused, again ?; (c) because in the same interview, he says "We weren't getting any more companies in at that point. At that stage, the other command post was being set up" : this is just after the mysterious emptying of the lobby; and (d) if the only fireman wondering which tower — of two — he's in is so stupid he has to have it written down in front of him, maybe the FDNY needs to review its recruitment policies. Then we have the slight problem that the fireman on the left is not even, as implied by the commentary, someone from out of Manhattan who has just come into the building, and doesn't know which tower is which (he is standing at the desk in the previous scene, with pen ready for writing, before Pfeifer even tells him to write anything, and still there later, when the South Tower comes down) : he is Hayden's aide Chris Waugh, he has been in the building all along and we are presumably supposed not to recognise him from the walrus moustache (and the ring on the little finger of his right hand), not to mention the fact that he is seen umpteen times earlier in the film — including all seven of the other pictures above — helping to run the command post, and noting which companies have been sent where (or whatever else he is recording, or reading). Why is he pretending he doesn't know where he is ? Note further that the eight pictures are in the order they appear in the film : top left, top right, 2nd row left, 2nd row right, etc. (29:48, 30:56, 31:26, 39:36, 43:36, 44:46, 45:28, 50:13). So if they were shot in that order chronologically, Waugh must have been constantly putting on his jacket and helmet and taking them off again (and his glasses, a fiendishly cunning disguise). Alternatively, and more credibly, this is not the order they were shot in, and the editors either made a complete shambles of the film sequence, and/or think that playing around with sequence is acceptable practice in a documentary film — which, unless you make the fact explicit, it certainly is not. Note yet further that Waugh is not the only one play-acting in this scene : Pfeifer is pretending he doesn't recognise Waugh. But this is not credible, as the next pair of pictures proves.


 

22b. As usual, one picture of Waugh in his blue FDNY T-shirt, and one in jacket and helmet : on the left (35:04), he and Pfeifer are standing next to each other at the command post, on the right (39:08) facing each other, Waugh (arrowed) behind the OEM's Richard Sheirer on his radio (whose colleague Calvin Drayton is on the extreme right), Pfeifer just to the right of the "Command Post" sign. There is no way Pfeifer would not know who Waugh was when he asked "This is Tower 1 ?" And, just to establish that this is without doubt the same Chris Waugh, see the next two pictures, from earlier in the film.


 

22c. The main picture (50:24) is from the "Where am I ?" (and "Who am I ?" — and "What the hell do I think I'm playing at ?") scene, the inset from the same scene as Picture 15b (31:26).


 

22d. The main picture (50:25) from the close-up after Waugh writes "TOWER-1" on the desk, showing his ring, the inset showing the same ring, again from the 15b scene (31:21).


 

22e. Six more pictures demonstrating that the "TOWER-1" scene is a complete lie : any fireman — if there were any companies still arriving, which there weren't — needing to know which building they were in would not need to hunt for Chris Waugh's little scribble on the desk (top left, in the red oval)(50:26); the front entrance has a giant 15-foot sign next to it saying "1 World Trade Center," in letters far bigger than Waugh's writing. All Pfeifer needs to do is tell him to go over to the window to his left, and see what the huge sign says. The top right photo (by Tim Keller) shows the sign as it looked in 1998, with Engine 7 from Duane Street parked outside. Picture 3 (1:21) shows the new sign as it was three years later, with Picture 4 (1:22) giving a large close-up. Picture 5 (34:57, the scene where Joe Casaliggi announces he has just seen the second plane crash (Richard Sheirer is again visible on the left), is one of many that prove the sign was clearly visible from inside the lobby, for any firemen who missed it on the way in. Picture 6 (1:23) : although he isn't looking at it, should this fireman have any problem identifying which of the two towers he is walking into ? Not unless he's blind. Which answers the question of why they had to use Waugh for the scene — because they knew they wouldn't be able to find a single fireman too dense not to know which tower he was in. Why would anyone need to ask if it was Tower 1 ? Of all the hundreds of firemen coming into this building, this is the only one we ever see who asks where he is. Why would Pfeifer tell them to write it on the desk, when there's a sign outside ? Why is it so important that Pfeifer leans over to read it, upside down, and the camera zooms in for a full-screen close-up ? Why are we being told — and in such a ludicrously contrived and dishonest way — "This is Tower 1" ? What's the significance, if it's not what we're being told ?
Here's a suggestion, based on the fact that the scene is the last one shot in the lobby of "TOWER-1" before the collapse of Tower Two. The next time we hear "Tower 1" mentioned is by Hanlon, just before it collapses (1:08:19), 17 minutes later; between the two collapses, we are told the South Tower has gone, and we get references to "the Trade Center," "the tower," "the other tower," etc — but, strangely enough, never "Tower 1" or "Tower 2"; even after the first tower (not the same as Tower 1) falls, the firemen from "the other one" claim not to know about it. The point of Waugh's gesture is not to clarify, but to confuse. His sign is not for Pfeifer's benefit, not for his own, and not for firemen who have stopped coming in, by Pfeifer's own admission. It is for us; he is establishing where these firemen are, but without any further references to "Tower 1" for the next 17 minutes, we don't know which tower that refers to. Are South and "Tower 1" the same building ? If they are, and we know South has fallen, but Pfeifer and his group are obviously still alive, did they miraculously escape ? Are they in North or South, or some other building ? This is the only possible interpretation : the creation of confusion — and suspense, for dramatic effect. The scene is completely nonsensical otherwise. Telling us they're in "TOWER-1" seems informative, but for the next 17 minutes, without ever hearing it again, it's the exact opposite, and that was the intention. It might also, however, be evidence that, given the timing just before the first collapse, Waugh knew some confusion was required, and knew what was about to happen — a proposition supported by his leading part in the Stapleton "Pietΰ" pictures.
*


 

23. And one more nail in the coffin of the "Tower 1" charade : not only were there signs outside the Twin Towers identifying which building was which, this shot, taken from "The Man Who Predicted 9/11" (see Appendix 2), shows a plaque inside one of the towers, next to the revolving doors in the lobby, clearly identifying it as "2 World Trade Center." One presumes there were similar plaques in the North Tower. With large, easily legible signs inside and outside the building, and with enough intelligence to get through Fire Academy, how could any employee of the Fire Department, however far away from the Trade Center he normally worked, possibly be such a halfwit he would need to write down "Tower 1" in front of him, to remember where he was ? And what kind of halfwits do these folk take us for, that we are expected to believe this insulting baloney ?*


 

24. Four pictures showing a repeated theme in "9/11" — the Cleansing of the Lens (and these are not the only examples). The question of why two graduates of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University should behave like a pair of 12-year-olds who just got their first camcorder last week is emphasised by the fact that the two lower examples, showing the state of the lens just before cleaning, appear to be totally unnecessary, unlike the two above; but why were any of the four left in a film as heavily edited as this ? Top left (1:06:54) is the state of Jules' picture just before the collapse of Tower 1; top right (1:12:55), the even worse state of Gιdιon's after the collapse. Below left (32:04), Jules is just about to take a piece of cloth and wipe a perfectly clean lens; below right (1:44:10), Gιdιon, easily identifiable because of an equally perfect picture, is about to blow non-existent dust off his camera. Why ? One explanation is that they feel the need to keep telling us they're just a pair of innocent beginners, like Benetatos the proby. But their previous film won awards, without any lens-cleaning or any other amateurish gestures anywhere in its entire length : why are they doing it — overdoing it — in this one ? Or is it perhaps a metaphorical joke : are they saying "Are we making it CLEAR enough for you ? Can you SEE it yet ? Does THIS help ?" Sarcasm may not be criminal, but it's not going to win them many friends in the courtroom, or on the jury.


 

25. A companion shot (34:07) to Pictures 6a and b. In those, Naudet conveniently got Pfeifer's reaction, facing the camera in close-up, to the collapse of the South Tower. This picture shows his reaction — by implication — to that tower 56 minutes earlier being hit by the plane that allegedly caused the collapse. Note that, like 6a, just before this shot he has his back to the camera, but then helpfully turns around so that we can see his face. But what can he be looking at ? He is looking out the front of the building : the noise he is allegedly reacting to did not come from that direction, or the South Tower would be in front of the entrance to the North Tower. This in turn raises one of the central mysteries of the Naudet film : when Jules Naudet was in the lobby of the North Tower when South was hit, why does the film not include the sound as heard in that lobby or the reaction of the firemen inside it ? If Naudet filmed that event, what possible reason could he have for cutting it out of the film ? Why, instead, do we get this contrived shot of Pfeifer, which could have been filmed at any time ? The last previous footage from the North lobby before this shot was two minutes earlier, when we see Pfeifer's brother Kevin (Picture 15c), then one of the many lens-cleaning episodes (Picture 24, bottom left), then it cuts to an interlude to explain where Gιdιon had been, followed by his shot of the South Tower plane. While he was filming that plane, his brother should have been filming what happened in the North Tower, but that film is missing. Where is Jules' film shot between wiping his lens at 32:07, before the South plane, and the Pfeifer "reaction" shot at 34:07, after it ? Why does this film not include a live demonstration of the sound and all the visible effects of a plane hitting a skyscraper 200 yards away, from inside the building next door to it ? They must have heard it and felt it, like an earthquake, in the North lobby : where's the film ? Did his tape need changing ? Or did it happen while he was cleaning his lens, maybe — for no reason ? Is that the reason — an excuse for not filming one of the major events of the morning — he had a cloth covering his camera ?


 

26. Yet another staged shot (43:33) — Pfeifer on the left, his aide Ed Fahey on the right and in the centre, Mike Hurley, Director of Fire Safety at the WTC. This shows them allegedly reacting to the crash of someone hitting the ground outside the building after falling or jumping from the upper floors. But something like 200 people were killed that way at the North Tower between 8.46 and 10.28, an average of one every 30 seconds : are we really supposed to believe that this would be the reaction of people in the lobby every time they heard that sound ? That 200 times, they would instinctively jump and look around them, to see where the noise was coming from ? Note, too, that the three are looking in three totally different directions (compare Picture 8b, another fake reaction shot); and that, just before this picture, all three were looking elsewhere — Pfeifer down at his radio, Fahey down at some piece of equipment in front of him, and Hurley over to his left, at who knows what (in fact, the shot starts with a close-up of him doing it, then pulls out). The head movement is obviously deliberate and scripted : the crash is arranged, and so is their reaction, down to the different directions, designed to create artificial suspense. People standing that close to each other would all hear the sound coming from the same place, and look in the same direction; they would also all know, as the commentary tells us, what the sound was in the first place, unless this was the first time it had been heard. When they couldn't possibly see a body falling at that speed, or what was left of it on the ground, from inside the building, why would they look to see what or where the noise was ? When they knew what and where it was, the picture has to be contrived. This is not a photograph of a natural, logical, genuine reaction : it's another unnatural, scripted charade, and these three people are frauds.


 

27a. Yet another totally bizarre scene (36:29), as the laughing black man on the left shows how hilarious he apparently thinks it is to see a jet flying into the side of a massive building. The Asian man he is explaining this to seems to find behaviour like that absolutely normal : most people would be baffled and offended in equal measure. What on earth is going on here ?


 

27b. (36:35) Does this answer the mystery ? Is this what he finds amusing ? The man lurking behind the one on the right, holding up two fingers, to signify two planes, for the benefit of any Amazonian Indians in the viewing audience who have difficulty with numerical concepts above "one," or maybe just North American morons, of whom there is certainly no shortage. This entire scene appears to be another insult of a charade (like the firemen looking down Duane Street), spelling out every detail with all the subtlety of a police baton across the back of the head : and the black man, the Asian, the bearded man and Mr Anonymous Two Fingers appear to all be taking part in the insult, planted there for Gιdιon Naudet to film. Nobody else in the scene seems to want to know what happened as much as this Asian : apparently they all saw it themselves, and they are paying no attention to the black man's explanations (although they may themselves still be plants, playing the part of genuine bystanders). The Asian's function is to ask the questions that tell us what happened — not that we don't already know what happened, but so that we can see some folk don't. The Asian hasn't seen the shot of the South Tower plane filmed minutes ago by the man who is now filming him : so his questions must be genuine, then. If he knew about the two planes, why would he be asking stupid questions about them ? Because he's a fake, that's why. How many of us are so brainless it wouldn't dawn on us that this conversation is completely contrived, phoney and farcical ? As farcical as one of the alleged jet passengers, on the phone to his mother, announcing his surname to her. Unlike the black man, I don't find any of this idiocy at all amusing : it just makes me more determined to get the people responsible fired head-first into a jail, where they can rot for a few decades.


 

28. Another mysterious shot (1:17:45). The man on the left, returning to Duane Street after both WTC towers have collapsed, is carrying a fireman's coat with the name Kopytko on the back. The inset picture shows Scott Michael Kopytko, aged 32, of Ladder 15 (South Street), Battalion 1 (like Duane Street), who used to work in the South Tower as a commodities broker before joining the Fire Department. On 9/11 he was last heard from on Floor 71 of that building ; according to his parents, Joyce and Russell Mercer, his remains were never found ; he had a younger sister, Christine, but was an only son. Does the man in this picture, who is obviously not Scott Kopytko, coincidentally share his surname ? Two unrelated Kopytkos in the same battalion ? If not, and that is Scott Kopytko's coat, how does this man come to have it ? Did they know each other ? Was the coat given to the Mercers as a memento ?


 

29a. Damian Van Cleaf (30:18) : "I felt the mood that we were going to put the fire out. Everyone seemed to be confident — I know I was." Apparently nobody told him it had already been decided by the most senior officers running the operation that there would be no firefighting whatever. Chief Hayden, in video testimony to the National (Kean) Commission, 18 May 2004, repeating again what he had said all along : "So we determined, very early on, that this was going to be strictly a rescue mission. We were going to vacate the building, get everybody out, and then we were going to get out." None of his superiors envisaged any attempt to fight the fire in the North Tower, so who told Van Cleaf otherwise ? Why is he giving us this nonsense ?


 

29b. Dennis Tardio (30:38) : "You basically looked at it and said "OK, we got 10, 20 storeys of fire." You know, we'll deal with it — we'll get up there. You know, we'll get to it." Another one with the same delusion, or telling the same lie : where did Tardio get the idea he was going to be fighting a fire spread over ten floors, at the top of the joint tallest building in New York ? Who gave him that instruction ? Not Hayden, and presumably not Pfeifer. Would a Battalion Captain be allowed to make a decision like that on his own initiative ? I think not. The ones running the operation and making the decisions were all at the lobby Command Post, and they all ranked higher than Captain.


 

29c. Jules Naudet (32:01) : "They'll put it out. That's what they do." Because they're firemen - and firemen put out fires. Except when they don't, or can't : when they've decided it's a total waste of time even attempting to fight a fire, because it's far too big and far too dangerous and it's just not feasible — too high, no elevators, etc etc — they don't put it out — that's what they don't. Because they're not suicidal idiots, or peddling simplistic, sentimental myths, or just lies, like Naudet. Why did nobody tell him firefighting was never on the agenda, that months later he's still saying it was ? Naudet filmed Pfeifer and all the other chiefs who made the decision conferring with each other : how could he not know they had no intention of taking on the fire ?


 

30a. Gιdιon, just before this shot (1:06:27) of the still-burning North Tower : "But as a cameraman, yeah, there was something I could do, and it was to document what was happening. So the cameraman took over and just filmed." What "the cameraman" (presumably he means himself — or is he being literal ?) "just filmed" after this, we have no way of knowing, because the next scene filmed by Gιdιon (after a pan down from the above to stragglers evacuating the tower) is as follows.


 

30b. James Hanlon (1:10:42) : "Less than a block away, Gideon [sic] was still in darkness." The North Tower has now collapsed, the cloud of dust and debris apparently flattening Gιdιon and everybody with him, and reducing his camera picture to abstract effects like this : not much of a "document." What would have been useful — "something I could do" — is if he had filmed the North Tower actually coming down, as his brother did, more or less (Pictures 16a-16g) : 30a shows he was certainly able to see the tower, and was filming it. This raises the same question as Picture 25 : what happened to the film Gιdιon shot between 30a and 30b, between the tower being up and the tower being down ? If he filmed what happened in the middle, a crucially important event, what possible reason could there be for cutting the footage out of the film ? If he wanted "to document what was happening," where's the document ?


 

31a. (49:07) On the left, the misspelt ex-Chief Byrnes : "I need a cup of coffee." I think the firemen's faces pretty succinctly sum up the odds of them getting him one this century. Not included as a cheap joke, but to demonstrate how fake the scene is : the idea that a retired fire chief can just turn up at his old workplace and start issuing orders — even to a proby like Benetatos, let alone these two — is ludicrous. Byrnes is playing a part from a Hollywood film of the 1940s, not a documentary from 60 years later — the feisty old-timer who wants to get back in there and give them hell, like the Good Old Days : it would be laughable, if the subject of the film wasn't mass murder. See 32a and b for two more examples of the same stupidity.


 

31b. As Byrnes leaves the firehouse, with Benetatos close behind (49:35), he is wearing his old white Battalion Chief's cap, but two seconds later ...


 

31c. (49:37) ... it has been replaced by a cloth cap. Where did the other cap go ? Stuffed up his jumper ? Given away to an invisible drunk ? Note the rest of the attire : just what folk trapped in a burning skyscraper want to see — a man in his 70s, wearing a cloth cap and trainers, with no visible equipment, coming to the rescue — on foot, from seven blocks away : how to answer the worst emergency in the city's history. Couldn't they have tried asking the owner of the car Byrnes is walking past to give them a run down, or let them borrow it ? Or is that a stupid question ? Who would recognise a man apparently dressed for a stroll in the park — or, in this case, a saunter to the burning South Tower — as a retired Fire Chief, who has just come from where he used to work ? Is this what he looked like when Pfeifer later met him at "Ten House," or had he slipped into something more uncomfortable — like a coat and helmet, and a pair of boots ?


 

31d. "Now where did they go ?" (49:48) Gιdιon runs after Byrnes and Benetatos, but too late — they've vanished, like the white cap. And that must be Gιdιon there on the right, looking for them ? But no ! How can it be ? Not unless he's suddenly acquired glasses, a woolly hat (apparently — or a yarmulka) and the ability to be simultaneously behind the camera and in front of it, reminding us of Picture 14, where his brother was simultaneously inside and outside the car. Could both these pictures — and 27b — be something to do with demonstrating suggestibility ? Sometimes dimwits like us need a little help getting the point, so for anyone who hasn't picked up that the man behind this picture is looking for his friends, because we can't see him any more than we can see them, we need someone in the picture obviously looking for somebody — even if, by the normal rules of logic, he can't also be the person behind the camera. Seems they couldn't get Marcel Marceau, but this guy can do the hand-above-the-eyes bit just as well, and was probably cheaper. Or maybe he was actually with Gιdιon, but he's just not important enough to mention ? Or maybe he has nothing to do with Gιdιon or this story at all, and just happened to be looking for somebody when Gιdιon snuck up behind him, coincidentally doing the same ? My money is on the suggestibility theory : the audience is presumed to be too moronic to figure out that the picture's premise, while subliminally effective, is totally absurd.


 

31e. Could this man wearing glasses, glimpsed briefly in the firehouse just after Picture 31c (49:39), be the one on the right of 31d ? He is wearing a dark top - like the man in 31d ; just after the above still, he moves over to the left (the camera moving too fast for an unblurred close-up), towards the front door, as if he is just leaving, with Gιdιon. If he is the one performing the "Where are they ?" mime, who is he, and what is his business inside the firehouse ? He is apparently not a fireman, and is not with firemen : he is the only person in the picture, and to my knowledge this short scene is his only appearance in the entire film. Is he one of the scriptwriters, or someone else making sure Gιdιon carries out his instructions properly ?


 

32a. More cinema cliches included in the Naudet film — this one (58:23) the saintly white-haired old granny who probably runs the corner shop next to the firehouse, coming in to ask about "her boys." All it needs is Bing Crosby as Father O'Blarney, the local priest, to leave not a dry eye (or seat) in the house (we do have Father Judge, of course, but his part in the film is already over). Who wrote the script for this, or is there some microscopic possibility it might be genuine ?


 

32b. And this beauty (54:59), with Damian Van Cleaf as a young version of The Duke. "That's what they do," as Jules Naudet would say — because a fireman does what a fireman's gotta do.


 

33. From the film credits (2:07:09), we discover that proby Benetatos is also — or was, at the time of filming — a member of a group : one with a highly appropriate name, given some of the bamboozling going on in the film. The group — Darien on vocals, Ralph on guitars, Dan on drums and Benetatos presumably on bass, like the Mike somebody who replaced him — broke up in 2002, citing Frank Zappa, Anthrax, Metallica and others as influences, but admitting that they "failed miserably." If Benetatos is enough of a musician to have the group included in the soundtrack (but where ?), why is it never mentioned in the film, any more than James Hanlon's having another career as an actor ?


 

34. Yet another Naudet coincidence : just as Gιdιon, in a truck with Steve Rogers, John McConnachie and Kirk Pritchard, pull out of Duane Street to drive the wrong way down Church Street to the North Tower (South having just collapsed), who do they almost drive into (58:43) but the City Mayor himself, Rudy Giuliani, centre, with extensive entourage — including to his left in the picture, with green hard hat, OEM Director Richard Sheirer. Perfect timing. One wonders why the policeman standing in Church Street in the shot before this bothered giving the fire truck the go-ahead to pull out when he must have seen the Giuliani circus coming up the road. Maybe it was to give Gιdιon the chance to get a slightly longer shot of the Hero of the Day, from the front as well as the side, as they sat there watching him go past, before they could drive on. And, of course, so that they could show all these Fake Heroes heroically scarpering northwards, while the Real Heroes of the FDNY head in the opposite direction, straight into the danger zone. You might almost think the scene was just as staged as all the film's other set-up situations — and you would probably be right, at that.


 

35. Top left, the claim made 20 seconds into the Naudet film ; the other three stills, from footage by Evan Fairbanks included in "In Memoriam : New York City," prove the Naudet claim completely untrue. Although the other film includes its own contentious claim (and misidentifies the Naudet impact shot as being a "View from Canal Street") : "The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was the most documented event in history." Not if we are still being told six years later — and we are — that Jules Naudet was the only person who shot film inside the North Tower : if we can't even get the facts about that subject documented properly, both claims are false. Not to mention the fact that the Naudet film has been so comprehensively chopped to bits and dismembered and shuffled about it would be impossible to establish the chronological sequence of events ; and the fact that all this alleged documentation has yet to lead to one single murder conviction. A ton of film of the crimes — but none of the criminals committing them — is a fat lot of use : except, of course, to propagandists and liars — like the ones behind both of these films, and the crimes "documented" in them.


 

36a. Tony Benetatos salutes (18:46) at the funeral procession of Firefighter Michael J. Gorumba of Staten Island's Engine 163. Note the distinctive shaving cut on the right side of his face.


 

36b. The cortθge passes (18:48), with four firemen on either side of a ladder truck and two riding at the back, with the coffin.


 

36c. Another close-up of Benetatos as the procession passes — except that this shot is NOT what appears in the film (18:50). This shot is what the camera actually filmed. I have cheated slightly by flipping the picture : in the DVD version — the false version — Benetatos' shaving cut has shifted to the left side of his face, and the firemen are looking to their right, as if the truck is just about to pass them. The above picture might make sense if there were firemen on both sides of the street, and these ones were on the truck's right side, but the film shows firemen on only one side, the truck's left. Why would a genuine documentary film reverse a picture ? This is just one more example of the Naudet penchant for fiddling about with images, to suit convenience or for some other dishonest purpose.


 

36d. Again we see that nothing in the Naudet film is quite what it seems : what should be a perfectly straightforward, honest piece of film of Benetatos attending the funeral of a fellow firefighter is thrown into question by this composite photograph (18:52-53) of the fire vehicle just after it passes him — in which I have again reversed the DVD picture to show what actually happened — in this case, a fire truck driving past to the left. Not only is it travelling in the wrong direction, the features on the front of this vehicle bear no resemblance whatever to the ones on the front of the vehicle in Picture 36b : different windscreen wipers, no twin headlights, no black shroud, no FDNY initials across the front — they are obviously two different vehicles. How many funeral cortθges did Gorumba have ? Why would the film show a different vehicle passing Benetatos from the one in the funeral procession, and why would they reverse the picture to show it passing in the appropriate direction ? Could it be that he was never actually at this event, and nor were the other men around him in his close-ups, and that these fake shots were inserted into genuine film of Gorumba's funeral ? Why the dishonesty ? Why are we being lied to ? Why would they go to lengths like these unless there was something suspect going on ?


 

36e. Perhaps the vehicle in 36d was from Duane Street ? But these pictures show Engine 7, a Mack truck, on the left, and Ladder 1 on the right : no match. These two, 36b and 36d are four different vehicles. The point remains that the film implies that the latter two are the same.*