Naudet brothers : can someone explain?

[Rich Hunt]

Can someone explain to me why the Naudet brothers are regarded with suspicion by some people?

New York is a huge city, at least one of them went to NYU film school, too. What are the odds that someone would be making a film that very day? Oh excuse me, I forgot that this film was in New York, where it is actually highly likely that at least one filmmaker will be somewhere near the WTC making a film about something. Let's not let probability get in the way of our hidden agendas.

The summary of the film is as follows:

Last summer, French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet began working on a profile of a probationary firefighter, or "probie," in New York City and his company, Engine 7, Ladder 1. For the project, the Naudets, who are brothers, teamed up with their friend, James Hanlon, who is also a firefighter in the company. The company's firehouse is on Duane Street in lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the World Trade Center.

They spent the summer shooting the probie, an eager 21-year-old named Tony Benetatos. As the summer went on, they gathered hundreds of hours of tape on Benetatos and life at the firehouse. Around 8:30 a.m. on September 11, the company received a routine call to investigate a suspected gas leak at an intersection less than a mile north of the World Trade Center. Jules went on the call. While there, he heard a roar from above and turned his camera upward, and captured the only known video of the first plane striking Tower 1.

However, on some websites there is a blatantly snide tone employed when discussing the brothers and their film. For example, there is this page:

http://www.media-criticism.com/Naudet_Brothers_09_2004.html

"It is unfortunate that the Academy Awards failed to nominate the documentary “911" for Best Documentary in 2002. Made by Gedeon and Jules Naudet it is arguably the greatest documentary ever filmed. Two French brothers who look dissimilar arrived in New York City circa 1989. Was greatness predicted in both at an early age?"

Of course this is not "the greatest documentary ever filmed." For those without an ear for such things, this is clearly sarcasm. But if you're not convinced, read on:

"If this miraculous shot wasn’t enough, the Naudets include on their DVD a shot purportedly of a man witnessing the North Tower hit. In other words, from another setup there actually was a video camera trained on a man watching a plane hit the North Tower. The Academy of Motion Pictures should have recognized how extremely rare these two shots are.

As the Naudets reveal their amazing footage from 9/11/01 they continue to bring the story back to comfortable footing with their narration. One example is The Separation Anxiety subplot which arises after the North Tower is attacked and the two lose track of each other. (Apparently they are the only NYC-based filmmakers who work without cell phones.) Another subplot is the one they started with: Tony the Rookie Firefighter."

Perhaps the writer, or those who are sympathetic to them, would prefer to be a bit more upfront and tell us what they are really getting at.

It is one thing to investigate. To get personal and snide compromises the integrity of legitimate inquiries. I do not think it is appropriate. Moreover, I would like to ask these people: do you extend the same contempt toward Hanlon and the other firefighters who hosted the filmmakers?

By the way, I have this film. I am going to watch it and report back if I find anything 'suspicious' or 'creepy' about it. What's more, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the DVD go to the Uniformed Firefighters' Association Scholarship Fund. I suppose someone might find something suspicious about that too, if they look hard enough.

I mean, how 'off track' has the 'truth movement' gotten when it gets so irrelevant and so personal?

[pauldp]

1. Last I checked only a few posters cared about this.

Hardly an indication of the direction of "the truth movement".
Of course now I've just drawn more attention to this topic by posting.

[spooked911]

2. What made me suspicious is the first hit shot-- when the plane goes over

instead of zooming up in the sky to track the plane, the cameraman IMMEDIATELY zooms over to the WTC, as if he knew the plane was heading there. Why does he even care about the plane in the first place?

This is no proof, of course, but it is awfully suspicious to me.

Moreover, in the beginning, the brothers have extremely odd expressions on their faces as they relate their story. It seemed like they were lying about something.

I don't think here is anything particularly sinister about the brothers, just that they knew something was up that day and happened to get some key shots.

[RedSock]

3. my take

***
What made me suspicious is the first hit shot-- when the plane goes over instead of zooming up in the sky to track the plane, the cameraman IMMEDIATELY zooms over to the WTC, as if he knew the plane was heading there. Why does he even care about the plane in the first place?
***

I would say that because the plane was low and probably making a LOT of noise -- way more than a plane would usually make flying over Manhattan -- that the guy with the camera simply looked up, with the camera still at his eye to see.

He could have just as easily put the camera down to look, but the way it happened doesn't seem strange to me.

One thought I had while reading the other Naudet thread is that they were simply in the right place at the right time. If I am out with my camera and I happen to film a bank robber running out of a bank, purely by accident, am I guilty of having advance knowledge of the robbery? I mean, after all, I was RIGHT THERE filming the escape.

No, it was a coincidence. ... The amazing thing is that there was only one (or two, I suppose) people who filmed the first crash. I know tourists are always out early in the morning, so the lack of anything else showing the first hit surprises me.

***
Moreover, in the beginning, the brothers have extremely odd expressions on their faces as they relate their story. It seemed like they were lying about something.
***

Not sure what you are referring to in particular -- I have seen the film, but cannot recall it -- but perhaps they saw some stuff at the WTC buildings that goes against the "official" story. After all, they got their very quickly and had a lot of access.

[spooked911]

5. the suspicious thing to me was the way the guy zoomed right to the WTC

rather than up in the sky.

The thing about their expressions was certainly just my impression. But if you watch it again, check out their slightly supressed/bemused grins as they relate how they got the footage. It just seemed weird to me.

[RayUbinger]

8. They weren't just in the right place at the right time

They were in the PERFECT place at the PERFECT time, IN THE PERFECT WAY. This is what Les Raphael's article so devastatingly lays out.

If 63 coincidences aren't enough to make YOU suspicious, how many WOULD be enough? 64? 65? 165? 1,000,065?


Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

[philb]

4. Did you follow the thread explaining why they had suspicians?

Have you worked with cameras?
Have you followed the reasons for their suspicians and do you think if you were in their place you could have duplicated their results without prior knowledge?
There were very strange and miraculous circumstances here. Its possible they could have done it but highly improbable.

[spooked911]

6. Yes, the way they had the street blocked off in line with the WTC

was rather an amazing coincidence.

Someone named Les Raphael wrote a whole article about how unlikely the set-up was:

"Introduction

At 8.46 am on September 11, 2001, at the intersection of Church and Lispenard Streets in Manhattan, one of two French film-making brothers, 28-year-old Jules Naudet, was filming a group of firemen from Ladder 1/Engine 7 at 100 Duane Street, checking for an alleged suspected gas leak, when he captured what was thought to be unique film of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston flying into the north tower of the World Trade Center, three quarters of a mile away. Two years later — the delay still not satisfactorily explained — a Czech immigrant called Pavel Hlava produced his own video film of the event, shot from south-east of the tower and much further away, at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Naudet's film, with its almost straight-ahead view of the plane hitting the tower, is still in many ways unique, and far superior to the "new" film. Naudet claims his film exists only because of pure luck — as would seem to be logical, given that this was the first attack of the whole "9/11" sequence, and was totally unexpected. When United Airlines Flight 175 flew into the south tower twenty minutes later, it was captured by several photographers who were filming the aftermath of the attack on its neighbour, but who had not, of course, filmed that attack itself. After the first attack, the second one was easy to film — but how else could the first one have been captured than by luck?

There is an answer to that question, but an extremely disturbing one. I believe the Naudet film of Flight 11 is a charade, staged to appear accidental. However bizarre that claim may appear to be, the evidence that justifies it is there in the film (the DVD version, issued in September 2002, titled "9/11 — The Filmmaker's Commemorative Edition"), and I challenge anyone watching it and following my arguments to reach any other conclusion. No-one can dispute that this is an extraordinary piece of film — because of its uniqueness as well as its content — and that there must therefore be an equally extraordinary explanation for how it came to be captured. I believe — for the reasons in this essay — that those who had both the motive and the effrontery to carry out these attacks also had the motive and the effrontery to film the first one for propaganda purposes, passing it off as the product of luck, complete with a contrived cover story, the one told in the Naudet film. The second plane would have been filmed anyway, but having "accidental" film of the first one as well was obviously too good to resist. It was too important an event not to somehow record on film and, with the help of professionals from the industry, which has had a long and close relationship with the intelligence agencies, it would not be too difficult to disguise the fact that the scene was arranged — the film equivalent of the (long-outdated, but similar) steganographic technique of hiding a coded message in a microdot, where it would not even be suspected. .

Unfortunately — for them — the people behind this disguise operation were anything but professional, and it does not take a genius to deconstruct the whole thing, when the joins holding it together are so obvious, to anyone who can see not only what is in the film, but — just as important — what is not. Even the still photograph reproduced above raises questions. Where, for one example, in a Manhattan street scene at 8.45 am on a working Tuesday, is the moving traffic? The vehicles in the picture are all parked, and given that two of them belong to the Fire Department and are displaying emergency lights, it would be illegal to overtake them, or park behind them in the same block. Anyone, professional or amateur, who has tried filming street scenes knows about the problems moving vehicles can cause, and that the best solution is filming when there are none — but that normally means waiting for traffic lights to change. Or, even better, the situation in the Naudet film — a junction blocked by authority of the Fire Department, whether traffic lights change or not; a trick not available, it has to be said, to most ordinary photographers — one so unusual, in fact, that it immediately attracts suspicion. Furthermore, this photographer is not only filming at an officially blocked junction, he is filming the firemen who blocked it, as their guest — a 28-year-old beginner, treated the way a documentary film legend like Fred Wiseman might be; the suspicions multiply. At the scene of a potential emergency, a photographer without credentials from the Fire Department would have been told to stand well clear, along with other pedestrians: he would not get the kind of privileged access Naudet gets. And if the white mail van parked at the south-east corner in this film had been turning right up Lispenard Street, between Naudet and the north tower, just as the plane flew into it, not only — since he is in the middle of the road — would he have had to get out of the way rather fast, the plane's impact could not have been filmed. How very convenient that, at the appropriate time, the van was still parked at that corner, the only other vehicles that could have caused problems belonged to the Fire Department and Naudet's view of the tower was unimpeded by either vehicles or people — including the firemen, all conveniently standing well away from the film action to the south.

How many firemen, precisely? According to Firehouse magazine (April 2002), three units responded to the gas leak call — Duane Street, Engine 6 from Beekman Street and Ladder 8 from North Moore Street — and James Hanlon's commentary tells us there were thirteen men on duty just at Duane Street alone that day, with only probationary Tony Benetatos left in charge of the firehouse when the call came in. There must have been at least twenty firemen at this intersection, yet no more than three are ever in shot at any one time. Where were the rest of them? All hiding behind Naudet, camera-shy? And where were the police at this emergency roadblock? The First NYPD Precinct's HQ is at 16 Ericsson Place, just across West Broadway from Lispenard, and round the corner from Ladder 8. Why did no-one contact the police? Why did the brothers choose Duane Street, out of the 224 firehouses in New York, or the 51 in Manhattan? One version says it was because it was one of the oldest in the city, another that the Naudets held interviews with several Fire Academy students and decided Benetatos was the perfect candidate; so it must have been sheer luck — again — that he just happened to work at the same firehouse as — explanation three — their "old friend" James Hanlon. What a coincidence. Or perhaps someone just didn't bother checking script continuity. Ironically — or not — Benetatos' mother, Rev. Patricia Ray Moore, a Presbyterian pastor, says she is convinced the Naudet film was scripted, and "I think it was my boss." I would agree about the scripting, but not the writer: I would suggest someone in the pay of some branch of the US Government.

On that subject, I want to emphasise that this essay does not claim to be able to prove who was responsible for 9/11. The point of the exercise is to establish that the Naudet film must have been staged by people who knew about the attacks in advance: who those people might be is a different subject. I have my own ideas on that, but they have little or nothing to do with the Naudet film, other than observing that it seems rather unlikely that two French infidels would be working for a Muslim fundamentalist group -or that that group could penetrate and subvert the Fire Department of New York, which at some level seems to have been involved in the planning of 9/11 — and the Naudet film. If the film was staged, it strongly suggests that that planning must have been internal, but anything beyond that has to be guesswork, albeit educated. They wouldn't have done it if it was going to be simple to prove who they were: unless, of course, you buy the instant solution of the al-Qaeda confession — so much easier than having to animate the brain cells. Or maybe you prefer the Noam Chomsky argument: it must have involved hundreds of people. It would have leaked out — before it happened. So why doesn't that apply equally to al-Qaeda? Why did none of them talk? Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested before it happened: did he talk? If twenty or thirty Muslim terrorists could pull it off, without leakage, why not twenty or thirty senior US military officers — who would be in a better position to do it, and under the constraints of military discipline?

For the record, my own opinion is that 9/11 was commissioned by that cliché of American politics — the military-industrial complex: the one Eisenhower warned us about — and he should have known — he was one of them; and that the lead role in organising the attacks (and failing to respond to them) was played by the Pentagon, in particular the branch of the armed forces that took zero casualties when that building was hit — the US Air Force — in which formerly served General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and prime 9/11 suspect. Considering method, motive and opportunity, the USA's military leaders have undoubtedly the opportunity of being able to fail to defend the country -at best — or to actually attack it themselves — at worst. Killing people is, after all, their job, and in the nuclear age — now 60 years old — the Pentagon's version of morality is, and always has been, what works. The multiple deceptions of 9/11 — like having Bin Ladin playing his part as the Muslim Lee Oswald, or Hitler, or Satan, or whoever — would have gone to the specialists in that area, George Tenet's CIA. But none of this derives from the Naudet film, and I would not want it thought that that was my case. The case is only that it was staged.

It is, of course, possible — theoretically — that all the circumstances in the film were genuine, if unusual, and that it was captured by chance. The most incredible things do happen that way sometimes, and we have all heard the stories. They do not normally involve capturing the last two seconds of a plane's flight before it ploughs into the joint tallest building in New York. That sets this story apart from the likes of four generations of father and son all having the same birthday. A jet being used to attack a skyscraper is an unusual enough event on its own, without being asked to accept a second bizarre proposition happening at the same time — that someone managed to get full-frontal film of it, while making a documentary about firemen checking a gas leak. How often has that been seen on the streets of New York in the last 50 years? How many fingers would you need to count it? And how many of the cameramen were French? Why not have it captured by an Albanian Jehovah's Witness, standing on his head on a bicycle, while juggling three camcorders, blindfolded? Because what is most unusual — and most suspect — about the Naudet story is that its unusual circumstances are all highly convenient. The scene could not have been filmed by someone in normal circumstances — and wasn't, to prove the point. It had to be an unusual situation — but it would have been far more credible if there had been only one or two unusual elements in it, and none especially convenient to the photographer. Naudet himself has suggested the intervention of "History" to explain his achievement — but we might ask why that intervention did not prevent the plane from hitting the building, instead of letting him film it happening. Why would an omniscient God need a videotape, or want us to have one? But someone in the propaganda business might. Half a dozen pieces of luck coinciding would produce a credible story: when ten times that many are involved, the odds magnify astronomically. You have to take into account that the conveniences in my list do not all have only one alternative — but even if they did, their cumulative effect would be enough to justify my claim that staging is more credible than accident. The Occam's Razor standard says the simplest, most obvious, explanation is normally the correct one, and in this case complicity causes far fewer problems than accepting 64 simultaneous accidental conveniences. In probability terms, one fraud beats a 64-part miracle.

I cannot claim to be able to prove my proposition, except in that sense — but that is the sense in which things are proved in a criminal trial: to the satisfaction of a jury weighing the evidence — beyond a reasonable doubt. I do not believe there is a reasonable doubt that this film shot must have been prearranged, because luck is so improbable an explanation. There is no smoking gun in the film — only circumstantial clues and absences. But I don't need a smoking gun — I only have to demonstrate which is more probable: either Jules Naudet performed the greatest miracle in the entire history of photography, with not one film or still picture remotely comparable to it — no other event of such historical importance, or as unlikely, given its brevity and unexpectedness, to be captured on film, ever has been filmed; or, like so many other miracles before and since, it is a total fraud, the product of dishonesty. The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination started off as film of a public event — a Presidential visit to Dallas; the explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937 — as in the "Oh, the humanity!" film — took place at a public event. There was no public event going on in Lispenard Street in Manhattan on 11 September 2001: no-one (or almost no-one) was expecting a President or an airship — or a hijacked jet. If someone had been filming the Grand Hotel in Brighton in the small hours of 12 October 1984 while making a documentary about the Metropolitan Police, and captured a bomb going off, there might be questions asked as to how the film-maker could be so "lucky" — or whether he might in fact be in league with the IRA. Not an exact analogy — the IRA has never had any interest in filming its bombings, for example -but roughly equivalent to Naudet's achievement. Another example might be a Japanese photographer in August 1945 capturing a large bomb being unloaded from an American plane called the "Enola Gay." No such film or photograph exists — for obvious reasons — and if it did, the reason would be that the photographer was working for the US armed forces. I think that, as it happens, is the explanation of the Naudet film — although I do not necessarily accept that Jules Naudet was the photographer. He claims to have been, and he may have been, but, like my proposition, there is no proof in the film — only circumstantial evidence. One could equally point out that, if my argument is a conspiracy theory, so too is the official version of what happened on 9/11 The only two people to date with upheld convictions were both found guilty of conspiracy. One of them pleaded guilty, meaning no evidence of that conspiracy would be put to the court in a trial, and in the other case the evidence was admitted to be circumstantial, so it arguably remains only a theory - until the major conspirators are convicted.

How probable is it that not only did Naudet (or whoever) capture Flight 11 — as if that were not enough on its own — but that he and his brother Gédéon then went on to record the rest of that day's events — and survive them? Who else could be almost simultaneously inside the towers, out on the streets and back at Duane Street firehouse, eight blocks away, than a pair of miracle workers like these? They even managed — by pure accident, of course — to record the totally unexpected collapse of No. 7 World Trade Center, seven hours after No. 1 fell. The people who helped to produce the Naudets' "9/11" film seem not to know the meaning of the words "subtlety" and "taste" — but I am not a film critic. I am making an accusation of complicity in mass murder, based on the few seconds of film of Flight 11 that I think prove the case. One could be forgiven for thinking the film might have been shot by a recruit of Bin Ladin's based in New York, given al-Qaeda's fondness for videos and cassettes (which they somehow manage to deliver to al-Jazeera, time after time, without ever giving away their whereabouts). They would obviously have had the required foreknowledge, and it certainly suits their interests, or their alleged ones, in shocking and terrorising people. But fear propaganda is a weapon on both sides of the War Against Terrorism, and governments have far more experience of it than terrorist groups. The US and British governments used fear of non-existent WMD to justify their illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and fear of another 9/11 could keep the scaremongers in business for another twenty years — so much so that it seems obvious to some of us that the whole thing is as fabricated as the threat from Iraq. We know they lied about that: what else have they been lying about since 2001? 9/11 itself — the biggest lie of the lot? But, again, while these ideas may help explain the Naudet film's function, they are not proved by it.

The film sequence
... in numbered edits (timings in seconds), with audio, classified as follows:
VO — Voice-Over (overdubbed commentary by James Hanlon)
Int — Interview (edited into film)
Live — sounds on original video, as taped on 9/11 or reconstructed

(4.2) Interior of Duane Street firehouse — fireman's jacket, etc
VO: I was off that day. 13 guys from my firehouse were on.
(2.6) Close-up of Tony Benetatos' helmet ("Prob Firefighter 8361")
(2.1) Firemen's jackets, etc
Live (unidentified firemen): Around 8.30 ... Engine ...
(1.1) Close-up of alarm bell ringing
Live (unidentified): Ladder ...
(1.4) Fireman 1 interviewed
Int (Fireman 1): I believe the run came in ...
(2.5) Firemen responding to call
Int (Fireman 2): Get the run for the gas leak ...
(2.0) Fireman 2 interviewed
Int (Fireman 2): ... or an odor of gas in the street, actually, I think it was.
(2.2) Firemen leaving firehouse
Int (Fireman 3 — Dennis Tardio): It was Lispenard and Church ...
(1.1) Tardio interviewed
Int (Tardio): ... odor of gas.
(4.2) Fireman 4 (Joseph Casaliggi) interviewed
Int (Casaliggi): You know, you don't think anything of it, you just — you get on the radio, you say "All right, it's an odor of gas."
(2.0) Fire truck pulling out of firehouse
(4.6) Inside Chief Pfeifer's car
VO: Jules was riding with the Battalion Chief, Joseph Pfeifer, videotaping.
(3.2) Jules Naudet interviewed
Int (Naudet): It's just another call — I'm riding with the Battalion Chief.
(4.1) Inside car — close-up of Pfeifer from back seat
VO: It was basically camera practice. See, Jules had only ...
(3.7) Inside car — less close than previous shot
VO: ... been shooting for a few weeks. Before that, Gédéon was the ...
(2.9) Inside car — looking out front windscreen
VO: ... main cameraman.
Int (Naudet): Every time the battalion goes ...
(3.0) View of front of Pfeifer's car, shot from a vehicle immediately ahead of it
Int (Naudet): ... I go. You know, I just need to practise ...
(1.8) Inside car — Pfeifer parks at junction of Church and Lispenard
Int (Naudet): ... so, I shoot ...
(5.9) Out on street, kneeling, looking south at Pfeifer and two other firemen ; they move left out of shot, revealing World Trade Center looming in distance behind where they had been — camera holds on this view
Int (Naudet): ... and I don't stop.
Live (Fireman in next shot): See, right here.
(2.3) Looking up Church Street — two firemen at north-east* corner are trying to find where gas leak might be
(4.5) Close-up of gas detector being pointed at grate in street
Int (Pfeifer): We checked the area with meters ...
(1.6) Pfeifer interviewed
Int (Pfeifer): ... and it was kind of routine.
(41) Looking north-west at group in street — fireman and bystander, another fireman just out of shot to the right, and Pfeifer, checking grate with meter; sound of plane arriving, the two in front turn and look up, Pfeifer turns to camera, photographer pans left and captures impact, zooms in for close-ups of damage
VO: It was 8.46 in the morning. That's when this stopped even resembling a normal day.
Live: (voices in background saying "Holy shit!" several times, etc).
Int (Fireman in next shot): Right then and there, I knew that ...
(4.0) Fireman interviewed
Int (Fireman): ... this was going to be the worst day of my life as a firefighter.
(1.2) Back inside Pfeifer's car — blurred view of surrounding buildings, etc
Live (Pfeifer, on radio): Go to ...
(4.2) Inside car — Pfeifer, filmed from back seat
Live (Pfeifer, on radio): ... go to the Trade Center
Int (Pfeifer): Immediately, I knew that this wasn't an accident.
(4.1) Inside car — view of WTC in distance, through window
(5.0) Inside car — Pfeifer
VO: Chief Pfeifer made the first official ...
(6.4) View of WTC through front windscreen, with close-ups
VO: ... report.
Live (Pfeifer, on radio): We have a number of floors on fire. It looked like the plane was aiming towards the building.
(8.3) Inside car — Pfeifer
Live (Pfeifer, on radio): ... transmit a third along. We'll have the staging area at Vesey and West Street
..... Firetruck beside Pfeifer's car — etc etc.

* NB: Throughout this whole essay, for the sake of simplicity, directions are only approximate — as if Church Street is aligned true north-south and Lispenard true east-west, which they aren't; Church Street and its neighbours are actually about 30 degrees off true north-south. This does not invalidate any of the arguments included.

The conveniences

The photographer is outside, not — like most people in Manhattan at any given time — in a building (like the firehouse he was in 15 minutes before) or a vehicle (like the car he was in 5 minutes before), where filming a plane would be far more difficult.
He is in the middle of the street, not on a pavement, where he would risk pedestrians walking in front of him, bumping into him, etc.
He is at a crossroads, with a view of the Twin Towers — not, for example, further up Lispenard Street, with the 430-foot AT&T Building in front of him, blocking the south view (which a twenty-foot building would do, if he was on the pavement in front of it).
He has a camcorder with him, unlike most people — even professional photographers don't always have their equipment with them.
He is already filming with it when the plane appears, when he might still have had to switch it on, load a tape, change the battery, etc.
The group are all standing still, unlike most New York pedestrians — or firemen — who tend to be going somewhere.
The gas leak has just been dealt with seconds before the plane appears, and nothing of any great importance happens in the interim, which allows the photographer to immediately switch to filming the new subject.
The plane flies alongside the next street west, when it could have been 20 blocks away — but would they have heard it?
The cameraman is already filming westwards — almost towards the plane's closest approach to him, about 250 yards away — just before it arrives. This makes it easier to capture on film when it does arrive, by simply waiting for it to pass its closest point and disappear behind the AT&T Building before panning left. The plane could have turned up behind him, or at an awkward angle, instead of passing straight in front, from right to left, north to south.
The plane's closest point is where it is most difficult to film: the cameraman does not attempt to film its flight until it passes that point, and is flying away from him — much easier to film than flying towards him, at that speed, that close — yet he must have been able to see the plane arriving, beyond the Post Office building to the north-west.
The plane is flying horizontally, in a straight line, making its direction easier to follow, when it could have been turning, or flying in circles, or climbing, or falling.
The gas leak call is at 8.30, putting the group on location at the right time, when it might have been ten minutes earlier, and by 8.45 they would have been back down in Duane Street, having dealt with it — or ten minutes later, and they would still have been driving up Church Street when the plane passed, heading in the opposite direction.
The call (which was not filmed, despite the cameraman being at the firehouse when it came in) is about a gas leak, when it might have been about a fire — but would the cameraman have been able to film the plane if he was filming a fire, with noise, smoke and danger?
How many other cameramen could have been "in the right place, at the right time" if, like Naudet, they had been conveniently filming one of the emergency services, whose job involves being in any place, at any time, allowing an instant pretext to be contrived?
The cameraman is not troubled by traffic obstructing his view, any more than pedestrians: the junction has been blocked with fire vehicles — although, since the gas leak is at the north-east corner, they could have been parked up the east end of Lispenard — but that would not be convenient, when it would leave northwards traffic, like the white mail van parked at the lights, or one that might be heading up to the Post Office for a collection.
At a junction of two one-way streets, where the northwards street has been blocked, he only has to worry about traffic coming from one direction — the one he is filming towards — west.
There would not be much through traffic from that direction in any case, since from this junction eastwards, Lispenard Street is virtually a one-way cul de sac, stretching only one more block before ending where Broadway meets Canal Street. . But he needs to be able to guarantee no traffic.
The photographer shows views of the junction in all directions — except east: he apparently wants to avoid even briefly turning his back to the plane — before there is any plane.
It cannot be to avoid being dazzled by the sun, because, as the film clearly shows, he cannot even see it — he and the entire width (and length) of Church Street are in the shade, while the Trade Center towers are in the sunshine — perfect filming conditions.
The cameraman is with a group of firemen, of all people, just as one of the most disastrous fires in US history breaks out, when he could have been with, for example, a group of office workers — in, for example, the World Trade Center.
He manages to record a plane actually crashing — incredibly rare, if not unique — when no-one captured either Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon or Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania later that morning, or — for example — the crash in Queens two months after 9/11, or the crash of a DC-8 in Brooklyn in 1960.
He isn't — as shown earlier in the film — kneeling in the street filming firemen hiding the Twin Towers when the plane passes, or they would have blocked the view.
He isn't — also as shown earlier in the film — filming towards the ground when the plane passes, or capturing the plane would have been far more difficult.
He is standing, stationary, undistracted and facing the subject when the plane passes, when he could have been kneeling, walking, concentrating on filming something important or with his back to the subject.
The men in front of him when the plane arrives behind them are apparently only pretending to be busy, and it never gets established whether there actually was a leak, or if so, how to deal with it. Chief Pfeifer fiddles with his gas meter and sticks his hand in his pocket, and his fireman colleague leans over the grating, as if, like the bystander beside them, looking for the world's first visible gas leak. If they had been genuinely occupied, it would have been a distraction from the plane — which, unlike the photographer's ostensible subjects, could hardly be called aimless.
No-one in the film distracts his attention by talking to him, and the cameraman's own voice is never heard; voices close to the camcorder microphone could even have drowned out the plane. The firemen might have noticed it, but would the cameraman?
He has no view of the south or west sides of the north tower and only a distorted view of the top third of the east side; the only part of the building he has a clear, direct view of is the top third of the north face — less than 10% of the whole tower. When the plane's impact could have been on any side of the building, down to at least the 50th floor — more than 50% of the tower's exterior surface — most of it hidden from the cameraman — how convenient it should be in the middle of the only 10% has a clear view of, on the face closest to him.
He judges the point where the plane reappears so precisely — left and up simultaneously — rather than left and then up, wasting time — that no adjustment is required, up or down, left or right, when he might have overshot, undershot, or had to raise or lower the camera, blurring his picture of the impact.
He judges the plane's speed (and the length of the building) so precisely he catches it just as it comes back into sight: neither too early — which would look premature -nor too late to capture the impact.
He captures the point of impact almost exactly in the centre of the picture, when it could easily — and far more credibly — have been off centre, at the edge, or barely captured at all.
In a TV interview in 2002, he claimed to have been so close (but still managing to avoid mentioning he was in the next street, as if he could fail to be aware of it, having lived in New York since 1989) he could read the plane's markings, making the accuracy of his judgment even more astonishing, if he was looking up at the plane one second, and down at his camcorder's viewfinder the next, to pan left.
He films a plane flying at 450 m.p.h. with a stationary camera, when most photographers would have to move the camera — and/or themselves — to track a plane in motion; in this film, the camera motion stops when the plane motion starts — when it first appears, that is — when most film of planes has both together.
He manages this feat by having a 430-foot building hiding the plane until it is far enough away to film from almost straight behind it, with plane and target so close together it disguises the fact that the focus of the film is the target, not the plane about to hit it.
He is at the north end of this building, which hides the plane for most of its remaining flight — until the last couple of seconds — when if he had been further south, it would have reappeared earlier, which might involve trying to follow it with the camera; further north, and neither plane nor target would be visible at all.
He condenses a plane flying half a mile into an angle of 20 degrees, between its reappearance at the south-east corner of the AT&T Building and the impact point on the north tower: the last two seconds of a 46-minute flight, condensed to an eighteenth of a full circle, before the plane hits the only twelfth of the building clearly visible to the only cameraman in Manhattan to record it happening: photographic minimalism at its most minimal.
He could have been at the Duane Street firehouse, but filming the plane would have been far more difficult, with only three seconds' warning, and, being much closer to the tower, having to swing the camera right up to the top 20 floors — even if the firehouse faced south, which it doesn't, meaning he would have had to run outside and across the street.
He could have been in West Broadway, but the plane would have been just about overhead, with no AT&T Building providing an excuse for not even attempting to track it in motion.
He could have attempted to zoom in on the plane before it hit its target, but might have lost it with the tiniest camera motion magnified, and missed the impact shot, or blurred it.
At the plane's speed, it would have been a mile away within eight seconds; if he was so curious about the plane, having lost his chance to capture a close-up and seen it disappearing behind a huge building, how much was he hoping to be able to see by the time it reappeared? What made him carry on trying to film it when it was already tiny, and getting tinier by the second?
He is standing on the same spot when the plane hits the building, three quarters of a mile away, as when it almost flew over his head six seconds before, when he might have had to walk, or at least lean — more than just pan 90 degrees — to capture an object that had moved that distance at that speed.
Between the sound warning and the impact, he has a convenient six seconds to capture the event, when it might only have been two — or gone on for sixty, if, for example, the plane had flown around the target and come back for the collision — as the Pentagon plane did later.
The plane's flight is horizontal, and low enough to allow the engine noise to be heard on the ground, when it could have targeted the tower diagonally downwards, and not been audible until the last couple of seconds.
He has a completely unobstructed view of the small part of the tower he could see, when there might have been other buildings or street furniture in the way — like the traffic lights at the south-east corner, or — not shown in the film -the suspended lights at the north-east corner.
The plane hits the first building visible ahead of it after it first appears on film, when it could have hit the second one (the south tower), a third one not visible in the film, etc — or none at all.
The north tower is hit first, when it could have been the south tower — but filming a head-on view of that from the same distance would put the photographer in the Hudson River. None of the actual views of the south tower impact were from that angle or distance — and that's why.
He and the firemen — and the alleged gas leak — could have been on the west side of Church Street, but the towers would have been completely hidden behind the AT&T Building, making capturing the plane virtually impossible.
The gas leak could have been — most are -inside a building, but was allegedly out on the street.
The pan is only 90 degrees, when it might have been 180 or more — if, for example, he had been facing east, and swung round anti-clockwise, towards the firemen, increasing the risk of blurring the picture.
All the firemen are standing in front of him or on his right when the plane passes, when they, or one of them, could have been on his left, blocking his view of the impact. There were 12 from Duane Street alone, yet no more than three, including Chief Pfeifer, are ever in shot at any one time: where are the rest of them, where are the men from the two other firehouses who answered the call, and how could every one of these 20-plus firemen manage to avoid accidentally getting in his way?
The phone call was not, like many of those received by FDNY, a hoax call, or the firemen would have left the scene before the plane arrived.
The gas leak is dealt with before the plane turns up; if the plane had turned up just as they arrived at the junction, it would look premature, and suspiciously convenient — even more so than having Subject A dealt with first, before Subject B. In real life, Subject B would be more likely to interrupt than wait for an earlier subject to end.
He could have recorded 10 seconds of the flight, but not the last 10 seconds ; he could have recorded the 10 seconds before the last 10 but then lost view of the tower; that did not happen.
If you wanted to arrange film of the impact, followed by a close-up of the gash in the building, a photographer north of the tower would be needed; this photographer is to the north, only 12 degrees east of the plane's flight path.
He would have to be not too close, to get a proper view of the top of the tower — and to avoid danger — but not so far away he had no view at all; this photographer is at just the right distance — about 1,300 yards.
He would have to be quite close to the plane, so as to hear the engine noise above sounds closer to him — music, traffic, etc; this photographer was one street away, at a crossroads with no moving traffic — but two parked fire trucks, more than capable of burying plane noise, if close enough, and if their engines weren't switched off.
He would need to avoid tracking the plane in motion, so as to record the impact clearly; his pan left means he blurs only the building, not the plane, and the entire filmed flight is contained in just one stationary frame.
He would want to visually condense the flight to the minimum, so as to avoid camera motion — the best way being to get right behind the plane; this film is shot from right behind the plane, with the visible flight condensed to 20 degrees.
He would want to leave out all of the flight but the last few seconds — the rest of the flight would be an irrelevance or a distraction, and only the impact needs to be captured; he films only the last two seconds.
He would want to leave out most of the tower, and only capture the area of the impact — the rest of the tower would only be taking up valuable filming space, nothing is happening there, and if anything did, it could be a distraction, or an obstacle to filming; only the top third of the north face is visible in the film, the rest of the building being hidden behind others. The plane hits that very part of that face. The partial view also misleads as to how close the photographer is to tower and plane.
He would need to have some photographic experience, when no amateur could capture a scene like this, with its sudden, fast, perfectly-judged 90-degree pan. He and his brother are documentary film-makers, jointly credited for cinematography in their only previous film — "Hope, Gloves and Redemption: The Story of Mickey and Negra Rosario" (1999) — despite Jules' claim to have almost no camera experience.
He would need a cover story as a pretext for being in the right place at the right time to capture the plane; the documentary film about the firemen and the gas leak at that junction provide a plausible pretext — on first appearances.
His film was about firemen, when if he had been filming, as in his previous film, boxers, they would not have been out in the street first thing in the morning, they would not have had the right to block road traffic at a junction, they would not be able to provide instant transport down to the tower after the first impact or the authority to enter the building, etc etc.
He already has a perfectly clear view of the target from where he is standing, so he could have captured the impact without having to pan the camera left at all, but it would look suspect if he was filming the target just as the plane appeared in view; the camera motion suggests unpreparedness — although the perfect motion and the perfect view at the end of it, having the tower in the middle of the frame, suggest otherwise.
If just one of these circumstances had not applied, this film might easily not exist; how likely is it that every one applied, not one went wrong, and that not one other person in Manhattan managed even one single piece of luck, to produce even an off-centre, blurred monochrome photograph of the event, let alone perfect colour film of it? A unique film might be credible — if it had faults — or, conversely, a perfect film, if we had others less perfect to compare it with — if not quite as imperfect as the Hlava film. How likely is it that this photographer achieved both uniqueness and perfection?
The word "perfection," is, of course, relative: the film is "perfect" in the sense that it fulfils all the requirements. It is slightly blurred — but not nearly as much as it might have been; and it captures the sound of the plane, its last two seconds of flight and its impact, right in the centre of the picture, followed by close-ups, with no editing — the whole 41-second sequence is uninterrupted; and it does it in a way that looks plausibly accidental. The kind of perfection that involved showing us a clear, totally undistorted close-up of the plane in flight, with its "American Airlines" livery visible, would be the kind of perfection that destroyed any chance of luck as an explanation. An exercise like this involves weighing different factors against each other. You can never have absolute perfection in every department — sacrifices have to be made, and the main sacrifice here was that the plane had to be filmed from a considerable distance. It is still clearly identifiable as a plane, and that was the point of the exercise — filming the damage, and what caused it.

The maps

Now please refer to Maps 1 and 2 (click on them to enlarge)



and consider the proposition in reverse. This, of course, contravenes the scientific standard — or would if it was the only method I was using. It is intended as a confirmation of the standard, in the same way as you would reverse a mathematical process to prove it was correct in both directions. In this case we have a fact at one end and a hypothesis at the other — but the exercise proves they are at least consistent. If there are other hypotheses that fit the facts, I would like to hear them.

Assume as given the information that a civilian airliner will be deliberately flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8.46 am on the morning of 11 September, 2001, hitting the tower head on at 450 m.p.h. after flying in a straight line towards it, at a constant height of about 1,200 feet, impacting at around floor 95 (15 or so from the top of the tower) — to contain the death toll to roughly 2,000 (can there be any other explanation for the height?); we need propaganda film of this event, showing the last seconds of the plane's flight (just in case there are no eyewitnesses, in which case the fire could have been caused by something inside the building) and allowing a close-up of the damage to the building after impact, which means filming from somewhere north of the tower. Obviously, the film has to be disguised as "accidental," so a cover story has to be contrived, and a suitable filming location chosen. This is no doubt exactly how the Naudet film was organised — by setting requirements, and trying to solve all the problems involved — in a brainstorming session like the one in the film "Wag the Dog," about a fabricated war, ironically — starring Robert De Niro, who, even more ironically, was somehow persuaded to introduce the Naudet film, and lend credibility to it, when he or his management should have known better.

The vast majority of Manhattan's population at any given time is either inside a building — home, school, workplace, etc — or a vehicle — car, bus, subway, etc. Of the small minority who are outside on the street, on foot, most of those are moving towards a destination. It would be virtually impossible to capture the impact either from inside a building or vehicle, certainly a moving one, or while walking, so the photographer has to be outside, on the street, stationary. The most convenient pretext for being in a certain place, at a certain time, is to use people who have to be at any place, at any time — one of the emergency services: firemen, for example. But firemen don't normally carry cameras with them. Solution — have someone else filming them, for a documentary. But the film couldn't be about a fire, if we need to capture the plane: it would be too distracting and too dangerous. The plane would only be audible and visible for about ten seconds from any one point in the city; ten seconds of extraneous noise near the camera could completely drown out the plane's engines. What we need is a silent emergency — a gas leak, for example. Since we want to avoid filming the plane in motion, which might blur the impact shot, we need an excuse for only filming the last few seconds, preferably from behind the plane — but not straight behind it, because that would look too convenient; as would managing to grab a camera, or start filming, just before the impact. The best method is to have the plane hidden from view temporarily — plausible enough, in a city as full of tall buildings as New York. Not that you need a tall building to hide a plane — or even the World Trade Center towers. If they were the only buildings in New York, and the rest of it was flat, it would be easily possible to hide them from one person's view by having someone else standing in the way — an adult in front of a child, for example — or, as shown in the Naudet film, a fireman filmed from a child's height. Or the camera's view could be blocked by having the lens coated in dust — another scene from the Naudet film, as it happens. Not to mention other filming hazards like lampposts, traffic lights, road signs, tree branches, birds, etc.

The number of streets that can be used for filming is extremely limited, and for these purposes I would reduce it to the six north-south streets shown in Map 1 — in eastwards order, West Broadway, Church Street, Broadway, Cortland Avenue, Lafayette Street and Centre Street.

Objections — and answers to them:

Why not from somewhere west of the flight path?

Because it would mean filming eastwards, towards the sun. That whole region is completely excluded for that simple reason: it has to be east of the plane, with the sun behind the camera, to avoid any possibility of flashes of sunlight ruining the impact shot.

Why not from somewhere north of Canal Street?

Because, as can be seen in the still from the Naudet film, the tower — and the plane — are quite small as seen from Lispenard Street; they would be even smaller from further north. He could have used his zoom lens to get a closer view, but that would also apply to Lispenard, where we get no close-up until after the impact. He could have shown the plane's markings in the film with his zoom lens — but didn't.

Why not from an east-west street?

Look at the still again. Only the antenna on the north tower is above the height of the cafe sign at the south-east corner, and the two tallest buildings in New York are apparently smaller than one only five floors tall. A 20-foot building on the south side of an east-west street, at that distance from the Trade Center towers, would completely hide them, unless the street was 25 yards wide — and very few buildings in Manhattan are only 20 feet tall. There may be streets in New York with no buildings on the south side, but not many in this part of the city. This close to the Trade Center, north-south streets are a far better proposition for a view of the towers — the closer the better, without being too close, southwards or eastwards. Intervening buildings are a problem in both directions, south and east.

Why not from further east — say, the Bowery or the Brooklyn Bridge?

For two main reasons: because the plane would be further away, smaller and less audible, especially with the traffic on the bridge, and because the impact shot would be from an angle of 45 degrees or more — not the best view for a close-up.

Why not from nearer the tower, say Duane Street?

Because of the time factor: it would half the amount of time available to capture the plane, since Duane Street is only three seconds of flying time from the north tower (Map 2). It has to be done from somewhere nearer Canal Street, giving about six seconds. That period could be extended by filming the plane arriving from the north, but it would involve tracking it in flight as it approached the camera and flew on towards the target — too wide a panning angle - if, in the first place, the plane's noise gave enough warning to film it approaching before it passed the photographer. It would be better not to attempt filming it until after that point.

Why not from West Broadway?

Partly because of the 370-foot-tall Western Union Building (C on map), which hides the north tower from view (the "blind area" shown in blue in Map 1) until about White Street, where the impact point starts to become visible. Even if filmed from somewhere between White Street and Canal Street, the plane would be too visible for comfort: it would look far too convenient that the photographer just happened to find himself almost right under the plane, with its target directly in front of him. From the junction of West Broadway and Lispenard, only about the top 250 feet of the tower would be visible above the Western Union, with the plane hitting 150 feet from the top. If Church Street, with the top 400 feet visible, looks too convenient, this would be even worse. There would also be the major problem of how to film a plane flying above the photographer, especially with no large building to hide it behind. The Western Union itself can be rejected, only four seconds of flying time from the tower.

Why not from Broadway?

Because, as the map shows, the part of Broadway from Canal Street southwards as far as Worth Street is a blind area, because of two buildings — the AT&T "Long Lines " Building (D on the map), 551 feet tall, and the Tribeca Tower (E on the map), 545 feet. South of Worth Street, the time factor and the angle factor come into play — and distance, a quarter of a mile from the plane.

Why not Cortland Avenue, Lafayette Street or Centre Street?

Cortland is excluded because it is entirely within the same blind area that excludes the above part of Broadway. Lafayette is partly inside that blind area and partly inside one caused by the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building (F on the map), 587 feet tall, which also excludes half of Centre Street. Either street might still be suitable: there is a "window" in both giving a view of the WTC, but it would mean filming it between the Javits Building on the left and the Tribeca Tower on the right, which might look a little too convenient — presuming, that is, none of the intervening buildings on the west side of Broadway were an obstruction; there is also, again, the distance problem, Centre Street being 700 yards from the plane. The sound might well carry that far, but the further away, the less likely to be audible above ambient noise. The only candidate left, having effectively disposed of everywhere else, is far superior to any of the above in several different ways: the top end of Church Street, south of Canal Street, is firstly not in a blind area. Not only does it have no large buildings hiding the Trade Center — except right at the top, where it meets Canal Street — but the two giant buildings that cause that problem from Broadway and West Broadway are both hidden from sight from Church Street — the Western Union completely hidden behind the Tribeca Grand Hotel (B on the map, and under the north tower in the still photo), the "Long Lines" Building barely visible (above and to the left of the traffic lights in the still). It is the closest street to the plane, after the too-close West Broadway, and allows a full six seconds of flying time from the plane's target. Without checking a map, even people who live in Manhattan might not know — and the film predictably fails to point out — that those towers in the distance are at the end of the next street to the west; filmed from that street, their location would be obvious. Most importantly, Church Street has the 430-foot AT&T Building (A on the map) — more than tall enough to hide a plane flying at 1,200 feet 250 yards away, and long enough to hide its flight from Lispenard Street southwards, until two seconds from impact. It would also telescope those two seconds of flight into a 20 degree angle, in a stationary picture. The easiest way to pick this out as the best filming location is one that is no longer available: doing it in reverse, by studying the view from the topmost floors of the north tower of the Trade Center, using a zoom lens if necessary, to see which part of which street supplied the best combination of all the factors required. It takes a bit longer using a two-dimensional map, but it can still be done.

It may be a piece of genuine luck that the Tribeca Grand, opened in May 2000, is only eight floors tall, when its "sister" hotel, the SoHo Grand, between Canal and Grand Streets, opened in August 1996, is 15 floors. What would a 15-floor building in front of the AT&T do to Naudet's view of the north tower? Look at the still photo and work it out. But, fortunately, there wasn't one: if there had been, perhaps a different location would have been chosen. As it is, the Church-Lispenard junction may not be the only option, but it is by far the best. How strange that that should be exactly where Jules Naudet managed to find himself, with a camcorder, in the right company, facing the right direction, at the right time, on the right morning, on the right side of the street, etc etc, ad nauseam. What are the odds of the only photographer in Manhattan to capture this impact being in the best possible place to do it, and in all the right circumstances? Is this remotely credible?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Manhattan, looking northwards from the observation deck of Two World Trade Center, the South Tower, showing the view to the north-east, the best area for capturing the last seconds of Flight 11, and (lettered as in Map 1, from left to right, C, A, D and F) the four biggest buildings — and biggest potential problems. Note that the photographer has to be at street level: no-one inside a building would be able to both see the plane and discern its direction, in time to capture it (someone on a rooftop might, but would that be a credible story?). Note also that the only streets clearly visible are north-south, Broadway (3) being barely visible at all. This also applies in reverse: if you can’t see the street from the Trade Center, you can’t see the Trade Center from the street. The small red spot to the right of the A (the AT&T Building) marks the approximate position of Jules Naudet, at the junction of Church (2) and Lispenard. The black arrow shows the approximate path of the plane as it flies over the Western Union Building (C) towards the North Tower (G). Building B in Map 1, the Tribeca Grand Hotel, is missing from this view because it was only built in the late 1990s; likewise, E, the Tribeca Tower, was only built in 1991; the only effect of adding these two to the picture would be to even further restrict the filming options.

Conclusion

Why does the film never mention that the tower was at the end of the next street west, or that the plane was so close to the photographer? Because it would look too convenient. Why was the film never claimed to be unique until a year later, when it must have been known within a day of being shot? How could anyone else have filmed it without realising it, or — Pavel Hlava, for instance — wanting to publicise it? Naudet's film was shown on television at least as early as September 12, 2001, in both the USA and UK: if it had been described as unique at that time, it might have raised questions about its authenticity much earlier. The film is said to have been "accidental," but Naudet did not film the plane accidentally: he was consciously trying to record it. This "accident" was actually a whole series of coinciding "accidents," of time, place, traffic, etc, that allowed him to do it — far too many to be credible, and none of them drawn attention to in the film.

Although the full-length film, "9/11," is not my main subject in this, it does have many more suspect sequences. For example, when we see the front of Chief Pfeifer's car driving up Church Street to check the gas leak (Edit 17 in the Film Sequence listing), it is implied Naudet is inside the car (although the glare in the windscreen prevents identification): so who filmed the car from outside it? This scene is obviously a reconstruction: apart from the ethics of doing that in a documentary, it raises the question of why Naudet, who was at Duane Street firehouse when the alarm call came in, did not film the whole episode from then on, instead of reconstructing the scene using later interviews with the firemen. He was there himself: why do we have no film of it actually happening? And why, once the live filming does start, at the junction, just before the plane arrives, is he apparently kneeling in the street as he films the firemen standing in front of the Trade Center towers — which he holds the camera on as they walk out of shot, as shown in the still photograph in the heading? He was there for one reason — to film the firemen: why is he prematurely filming the Trade Center, as if he somehow knows it is about to become the subject of the film, seconds before it does? And why, when James Hanlon's commentary was overdubbed later, and this is our last ever view of the towers intact, is nothing said about it? It can only be an "establishing shot" - to make the (unspoken) statement that he can see the Trade Center from where he is — because it would look suspect if our first view of it was when he panned left to film the plane hitting it. But it looks suspect anyway, because unless he knew that was going to happen, why would he need to make the statement? How could he have made it? "I can see the Trade Center." So what? How could he possibly have known the answer to "so what?" before the plane supplied it? And why was he kneeling? Who knows? Possibly checking his view for height. Is there some innocent explanation?

Jules Naudet makes filming the plane, a moving subject, look just as easy as filming the burning tower, a stationary one: simplicity itself. In reality, what could be harder than capturing an unexpected and unrepeatable scene of a jet flying at 1,200 feet for two seconds at 450 miles an hour, from a ground level street in New York, the city of skyscrapers? How could such a film be shown many thousands of times, all around the world, without attracting the suspicion it deserves? Because — and the people behind it were doubtless relying on this — to most people who see it, the idea that the film was staged by their own government would be literally unthinkable: it would not even occur to them. Even those prepared to think the unthinkable — to believe the 9/11 attacks themselves were an "inside job" — might not realise the film was part of it, set up by the same people. How could documentary film of one of the attacks, shot by someone with no apparent link to the government, be suspect? Would they be stupid enough to use someone linked to them? The film's uniqueness demands an explanation that fits logic and objectivity, and if luck fails that test, which it does, we have to admit alternatives, however disturbing."

[Rich Hunt]

10. oh bullshit

I am REALLY tired of your clams and your ridiculous attempt at 'spin management'. If you had any brains (or decent lawyers), you'd get off all 9/11 boards.

Fact is, I HAVE 'handled cameras' as you 9/11 stalkers, you people who have been terrorizing and threatening me since 9/11 well know.

If you've used ANY sort of camera, if your eye goes there, so does your camera. I cannot believe we sensible people are being asked to SWALLOW this bullshit.

Attacking filmmakers and firefighters is clearly hateful nonsense being propagated by those who have something to hide.

[spooked911]

11. "terrorized and threatened"? "spin management"? "something to hide"?

"Decent lawyers"? "9/11 stalkers"?

What on EARTH are you talking about?

PS, please PM me if you don't want to discuss this here. But I would like to know what you are talking about!

[kerry_s]

14. Boom

If anyone had seen original footage he would notice that loud "BOOOOOM" can be heard 4 second after collision

1) This footage was manipulated

2) There was another explosion after impact.

[RayUbinger]

12. 63 coincidences cited. How many before YOU would become suspicious?

64? 65? 165? 1,000,065?
Put your next non-answer right here:


Conveniently forgetting what I'm referring to? Read it again:
http://911foreknowledge.com/staged.htm

[Generarth]

7. I agree

even though I'm firmly of the belief that this was an inside job I can't fathom some of the stuff that goes on here. The Naudet brothers were either lucky, or unlucky if you like, to have been there and got that footage. But that's all it was.

[RayUbinger]

15. There's no # of coincidences that would be enough to make you suspicious

is there?

Not 63, not 64, not 164, not even 1,000,064. Right?


Ray Ubinger
referring to
http://911foreknowledge.com/staged.htm

[RayUbinger]

9. Bottom line

> Perhaps the writer, or those who are sympathetic to them, would prefer to be a bit more upfront and tell us what they are really getting at.

The S11 perps had agents from someplace like CIA or FEMA infiltrate the FDNY, to arrange for a snuff film to be made out of the day's events, with dramatic "lucky" footage of unique propaganda value, and then they sold it back to us as a respectable documentary. The movie was intended to be about S11 all along, ever since they started filming in June 2001.

The alleged original subject of the documentary, Antonios "Tuh, Tony" Benetatos, is some kind of agent or actor, not a real fireman. He appears nowhere in the boot camp footage where they allegedly discovered him. He is not shown doing one lick of actual firefighter work anywhere in the whole movie. Plot devices are built in specifically to get him off camera. He gets a SINGING credit at the end.

James Hanlon, the Fireman/Narrator/Co-Director/Interviewer, is a professional actor, with a TV resume dating back six years before S11.

Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer is a pencil-necked milquetoast who is constantly fumbling, bumbling, putting his hands in his pockets, staring off into space, everything BUT being a LEADER of BURLY MEN in an incredibly physical occupation. For example, watch him (dressed in his white garrison uniform) during the Seven Second Stall, between when they stop checking the "gas leak" and start reacting to the "plane sound":
http://tinyurl.com/6zx44

Pfeifer also helps hold FDNY Chaplain Mychal Judge as a fellow perp whom I refer to as Mr. Backofhead lunges into Judge with a mysterious vigorous thrust of an arm.

What else do you want to know?


Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

[izzy911]

13. Can't wait to see reaction over faked film......

"By the way, I have this film. I am going to watch it and report back if I find anything 'suspicious' or 'creepy' about it. What's more, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the DVD go to the Uniformed Firefighters' Association Scholarship Fund. I suppose someone might find something suspicious about that too, if they look hard enough.

I mean, how 'off track' has the 'truth movement' gotten when it gets so irrelevant and so personal?"

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I've shot a lot of film but I've never been able to get two objects same distance from the camera, one in focus, tho other fuzzy. Man, these guys must have been good! Too bad they vanished.

Why do you suppose it take them 8 hours to turn in the only film containing the first impact?