corrente

I give up. I don't need a tinfoil hat anymore.

If this were a slow news day. From the Times via Atrios:

At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.

Officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That [quality assurance] manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.

The tape had been made under an agreement with the union that it would be destroyed after it was superseded by written statements from the controllers, according to the inspector general's report. But the quality-assurance manager asserted that making the tape had itself been a violation of accident procedures at the Federal Aviation Administration, the report said.

The tape was made because the manager of the center believed that the standard post-crash procedure would be too slow for an event of the magnitude of 9/11. After an accident or other significant incident, according to officials of the union and the F.A.A., the controllers involved are relieved of duty and often go home; eventually they review the radar tapes and voice transmissions and give a written statement of what they had seen, heard and done.

People in the Ronkonkoma center at midday on Sept. 11 concluded that that procedure would take many hours, and that the controllers' shift was ending and after a traumatic morning, they wanted to go home.

The center manager's idea was to have the tape available overnight, in case the F.B.I. wanted something before the controllers returned to work the next day, according to people involved.
(via NY Times)

Just when I think the world can't get any weirder. So, who was the "quality assurance manager" who crushed the casette, and how is he or she doing today?

Or was it actually destroyed? Perhaps a copy was made? Certainly there was plenty of time:

Sometime between December 2001 and February 2002, an unidentified Federal Aviation Administration quality assurance manager crushed the cassette case in his hand, cut the tape into small pieces and threw them away in multiple trash cans, the report said.
(via Post Interlligencer)

Curiouser and curiouser. Why cut the tape into small pieces? Why multiple trash cans? Kinda makes you think, doesn't it? Like maybe at least the "quality assurance manager" listened to it?

The report concluded that there was "some measure of consistency" between witness statements later taken from the controllers and what was recorded on the tape. That conclusion was based on interviews with the six controllers and all 10 witnesses to the taping, and on sketchy notes taken during the tape recording. Also retained were radar data and recordings of radio transmissions from the cockpit.

"Some measure"? WTF?

And then there's the detail that the FAA was told not to destroy anything:

The New York managers acknowledged that they received an e-mail from FAA officials instructing them to retain all materials related to the Sept. 11 attacks. "If a question arises whether or not you should retain the data, RETAIN IT," the report quoted the e-mail as saying.
(via WaPo)

Kinda makes you wonder who was controlling the controllers, doesn't it?

Somehow I feel the report of the 9/11 commission is going to have about the same credibility as the Warren Commission. And that's a shame, because the unanswered questions from the JFK assassination have a lot to do, I think, with the increasing loss of legitimacy of the Republic. And, of course, RFK, MLK Jr., and George Wallace getting assassinated all in the same election year (though Wallace survived) didn't help any.

And the unanswered questions raised by this tape are potentially just as corrosive.