9/11, 2001

Not really a political topic but it seemed inappropriate to put in 'general banter', albeit if the mods think it should be moved then please do so.

Like many things these days, I have to double take at how long ago this event happened as I can remember it very well. It's often cited as one of those days when 'everybody remembers what they were doing'. Is that the case for those of you on here who were of an age old enough to understand what was going on?

For me, I was in a pub in Wheathampstead called The Wicked Lady. I'd taken voluntary redundancy a month prior as my long-planned year long trip to see the world was now only 2 months away (11/11).

As the years have gone by, more and more amateur footage has been made available and if you search on YouTube you'll get thousands to choose from. It's still as shocking for me when I see the planes hit the towers followed by the giant fireballs as it was when I first watched it on the news.

Of the many documentaries that have been made, one of the better ones is a 6 part series called 9/11: One Day in America

There's a YouTube channel that may be of interest where hundreds of amateur videos have been upscaled. This might come across as macabre to some, fascinating to others so only visit if seeing this kind of thing doesn't affect you (many show quite clearly people jumping from the buildings): https://www.youtube.com/@WTCFOIAVideos

One of the most incredible survivor stories from the day is that of a guy named Brian Clark who was above the impact zone in the south tower (the 2nd one to be hit, 1st to collapse) Very few made it out alive from his floor and higher. Amazingly despite the chaos of everything going on and NYC being locked down, he was back at home with his family that evening watching it on the news.

He tells his story here in this brilliant video. If you've a spare 45 minutes then I highly recommend watching this - he's a very good public speaker and comes across as a thoroughly decent guy:




This is a photo someone randomly captured of him escaping the tower just minutes before it collapsed:



Of course, lots of stories and theories have risen since regarding what really happened that day and who was responsible. Personally, my knowledge of construction is practically zero so I cannot confirm nor refute the official explanation or the more credible of the alternative views. I have always thought there is more doubt over the Pentagon hit as many current and former pilots of similar sized aircraft have said the manoeuvre required to hit the building at that speed almost level with the ground is nigh on impossible. Then there's the fact that one of the most surveilled buildings in the world failed to capture the hit other than on a two frame, very low res parking camera. But that's a discussion for another day.

What do you remember about 9/11? Does it still shock you? Did it ever shock you or has it now/always been in the 'meh' category?

 

I was away with Mrs K at an academic conference in Glasgow. As we were on the bus on the way back to the hotel, we caught glimpses of the news footage on TVs through shop and hotel windows. Somehow, this ‘borrowed view’ - we could hear no sound - added to the seeming unreality of it all.

 

I was working at a Jamaican computer training place in Gloucester teaching Word and Excel, or trying at least, to a group of students.

Someone came in with wild and crazy stories about what was happening and I thought they must be talking shyte. Exaggerating. Sometimes some Jamaican people can 'make a movie' from something small.

It wasn't until I got home that I found out it was true and that was about the time the first tower was collapsing. I sat and watched it for hours. It was incredible to see.

Top of my list of worries was:- please god don't let it have been Cubans or Cuba involved in any way!

 

You come across as a well-read chap, Clive - are you aware of Operation Northwoods?

Without derailing the thread too much, here's a fairly decent summary of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

 

Of course! I just wish more people knew of such things.

You will appreciate the irony that the USA has Cuba on the list of 'countries that sponsor terrorism'.

If you enjoy learning such things about the monster from the north then you will like this Penelope Cruz movie - the WASP Network about the 5 Cuban heroes who infiltrated the Miami gusano terrorists.

 

I was only aware of it because my brother is a history teacher and he told me about it some years back.

Yeah the American war machine certainly has a lot to answer for. But for 9/11, as usual it was the public who paid the price. Just normal folk, going about their day.

I'll add that movie to my list of things to watch, cheers.

The following video you might find interesting - Rick Rescorla, an English born, American citizen and Vietnam veteran who worked as a security guard in the WTC and saved thousands of lives before perishing in the collapse - effectively predicting 9/11 two years earlier with how America's obsession with being the world's "top cop" will come home to roost. The first 4 mins is his back story, followed by his critique of America's foreign policy:

 

Cheers - will also check it out.

 

I was somewhere on Rickmansworth municipal golf course. Having taken a week of work. I remember getting a birdie on the 18th
Had no clue about the TT until I got home.

 

I was working in Vilnius, and someone rushed into our lab shouting the "...someone's attacking America..." We ran to a PC to access the internet and discovered... it was down - I'll always remember 9/11 as the day the internet died.

I returned home screaming to my wife to turn on the radio (always tuned into the Vilnius FM re-broadcast of the BBC WS) and the TV.

My wife was, at the time, involved with producing an "Art" TV programme for LTV - as it was low down the pecking order they only got access to the editing facilities during the graveyard shift. LTV was running a rolling news programme on the event with a phone-in. The phone-lines were jammed and she was told the the show producers that over 90% of the callers were calling in with "...the Americans deserved it..." type rants.

As an aside one of my colleagues was involved with a very-long term experiment (I think it had been running for over 20 years) that was looking the energy of sunlight by measuring the evaporation of a, few, not very volatile waxes/oils. She maintained that there was an "..appreciable..." increase in the evaporation rates during the global no-fly period (it was about 5 days?) - and suggested that was evidence of just how much crap aeroplane engines dump in the skies...

 

It is strange to think that it has already been almost a month since Jermaine Jenus was sacked from the One Show. Does anyone remember what they were doing when they heard the news that he'd gone? I don't

 

I was working in Epsom at the time and we had a sister company office in New York, as well as other US Cities.

You couldn't get enough internet space to get updates and certainly not from America. It was before you could log into live American TV news, CBS, ABC etc, so what you were getting was 2nd hand speculative information.

The New York office was our only real source of information, either by slow email or a conference call mid way through the afternoon. Fortunately they were in a different part of the city, so weren't directly effected.

I remember that there was a ban on planes coming in across London, some had jets deployed to see them into Heathrow. A couple were diverted to the emergency runways at Stanstead and held there. Many companies in Canary Wharf sent their staff home in fear of a copy-cat attack.

It was the first big global terrorist attack, cardinally on that scale and no one really knew what to do.

It was the start of the 100ml limit of shampoo on planes, all liquids in clear bags, having to take your shoes, boots and belts off at security.

I don't think at the time any of us knew what the outcome and legacy of the day would bring.

 

I recall watching a documentary some years back, think it was called Global Dimming, where they referenced the key data they got from the period of zero planes in the sky.

It does shine a light on the hypocrisy of the 'elite' of the world regarding the restrictions they want to force on the average person in terms of emissions etc when they use air travel so much. I just read that Beckham attended Sven's funeral via private jet.

 

I was lying asleep in bed in my flat in the middle of the day as I’d just returned from the annual lads holiday I seemed to do for most of my late teens / early 20s (think this one was Majorca) when the phone rang - the land line ringing not being unusual in those days! It was my mum urging me to switch on the TV as “America is being attacked”! I did so and despite my hangover / jet lag, was left pretty dumbstruck as the towers started collapsing.

I guess looking back it feels like the 90s post Cold War “end of history” nirvana died that day. I think I was aware of Bin Laden as a boogeyman before this as there had been attacks on US interests, and bad things were still happening to Palestinians, but it all seemed a long way away to us - admittedly that may also be the prism of my age at the time. Now it feels the world is a more divided, much less innocent place than it was, and I think a lot of that can be traced to that day.

Every year around this time I rewatch some of the docs. The actual footage of the moment the planes struck the towers never loses its ability to horrify, and I don’t think it ever will, though I actively try to avoid watching too much as I wouldn’t want it to lose that power to shock. It really feels like those planes become missiles in those moments. In terms of media around it, I really liked the film United 93 (the plane that crashed) for its portrayal of the events from various perspectives as the morning unfolded in unimaginable ways to the people going about an ordinary days business, not least those unfortunate ones on that plane.

Thinking about the passage of time in a more general sense, it would be interesting to know if it had taken place now, how different the whole thing would play out, no doubt there would be multiple times more footage, New York must be much more diverse than it was, would that make a difference to how the city coped etc? Perhaps it simply couldn’t happen again, we’re all too easy to track now with social media / technology?

 

My limited knowledge of the changes made because of that day would pretty much stop an identical attack from the get-go. They'd have to come up with something very different. I think the planes were flying off course for about an hour - if that happened now they'd likely just be shot out of the sky before they were above any densely populated area. And that's if the hijackers could gain access to the cockpit.

There are genuine question marks as to why jets weren't scrambled to intercept the planes seeing as they knew they were being hijacked quite early on due to Mohamed Atta - in his confusion over how to correctly operate everything in front of him - thinking he was speaking to the passengers but was actually talking to air traffic control. You can listen to the chilling words here:



And as you've alluded to - the amount of footage captured by phone cameras would be huge. As crazy as it sounds, there would likely have been people live streaming events from inside the towers.

 

Before 9/11 USA airports were not much different to bus and train stations regarding security issues....a bit different now!

 

I wonder if they would be shot down? I seem to remember that being discussed at the time in the aftermath - not sure whether it was ever thought about (or even was an option on 9/11) - you'd essentially be killing however many innocent civilians were in the plane(s). Would you want to be the pilot responsible for firing that shot? Would have to be a chance of orders being disobeyed there, if indeed they were given. What if they had managed to regain control etc? What if it had actually just been a more "routine" hijacking? Really difficult decision to take for anyone involved either way, even more so if it happened again probably, knowing what we know now about what people are capable of.

 

I don't know for certain that's what would happen. But in one of the many documentaries since made, they were interviewing the pilots of the jets that did get scrambled to protect the White House (apparently the plane that crashed in the field was said to have been the one heading for it). One of the pilots was female, and she said that if a plane got to within a specific distance of the White House then their orders were to 'take it out'. This included flying directly in to it and sacrificing themself if they failed in shooting it down.

I suppose any shooting of a hijacked plane now would depend on where they believed it was heading. You'd have to think that if they were on course for NYC or Washington D.C again, it would be destroyed and the passengers sacrificed would come under that lovely term 'collateral damage'.

 

Just thinking about this I'm sure it would be possible these days to have GPS controlled no fly zones say below 10,000 ft for large commercial aircraft. If it was impossible for pilots to override, then there would be no possibility of a repeat.

 

Sounds perfectly sensible but my knowledge of how such things work is pretty much zero so I'll have to defer to your understanding of all things aviation related!

How would it work when there's emergencies like that time when the captain landed the plane in the Hudson?

 

It wouldn't be a ring fenced area. I'd also only have it kick in when a certain altitude is reached to avoid any take off issues. Maybe each ringfenced area woudl have a dedicated emergency landign area alternative.
Vicarage road could be ringfenced and planes diverted to Kenilworth Road for instance.