Missing Flight Evidence

Suppression of Evidence of the Commandeered Flights

The vast majority of evidence that could shed light on what really happened to Flights 11, 175, 77, and has either mysteriously disappeared or been suppressed by authorities. The information vacuum is less complete for Flight 93, but its true fate is still shrouded in mystery. Consider the following.

• No video shows hijackers at two of the three airports from which targeted flights originated.
• The flight data recorders from Flights 11 and 175 were never recovered, according to authorities.
• The cockpit voice recorders from every plane but Flight 93 were either deemed unrecovered or too damaged to yield data.
• No audio recordings from any of the phone conversations with passengers or flight attendants have been released.
• None of the electronic records of the monitoring of the hijacked flights by air traffic control systems have been released, although transcripts of radio communications were finally published in 2006.
• No interviews with air traffic controllers involved in the incident have been released.
• Human remains from only a fraction of the people onboard Flights 11 and 175 have been identified. Government claims to have identified the remains of Flight 77 are unverifiable.

Other gaps in the evidence result from failures to collect it. A striking example is the fact that on September 11th, there were no video cameras in the departure lounges of Logan Airport. This is highly peculiar, since such cameras have been in widespread use in airports since the mid-1980s, and Logan is a large international airport.

Investigators Stonewalled

Attempts by Village Voice reporters James Ridgeway and Russ Kick to obtain communications from the doomed flights using the Freedom of Information Act were met with stonewalling by the authorities.

The written response of the Federal Aviation Administration contained the following excerpts:

The recordings of communications, transcripts, and any documents relating to your request are part of an ongoing, sensitive investigation.

There are no records or other correspondence relating to any signals, alarms, or any other form of nonverbal communications emanating from the four hijacked flights. ... There are no documents in written or recorded form having to do with communications from any of the four hijacked flights.

The response from the FBI contained:

[The] material you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure.

The CIA referred Ridgeway and Kick to the FBI and the FAA. ¹  

Given all this, the real reason for the withholding of video evidence seems more likely to be that it protects the perpetrators, than that it protects the US public or the cause of justice.

---

References

1. Feds Stiff Reporters Asking for 9-11 Tapes, the Village Voice, 11/6/02 [cached]