UPDATE 2014: Added this camera angle, despite its limited view of the building. This of course led to a bigger discussion I haven’t had to do yet because this video missed the other major events around which I’ve based my archive. See my blog post “Case of the Missing NYPD Helicopter Photos” to read about 9/11 NYPD helicopter photographer Detective Dave Fitzpatrick (who took “thousands” of aerial images not yet found on the Internet) and another, unknown camera operator aboard the chopper with the videocamera… and of course Det. Greg Semendinger. But first:
Footage shot aboard a NYPD helicopter aired on ABC Primetime Thursday Nov. 8, 2001 as described in an accompanying ABC News article “Why No Rooftop Rescues on Sept. 11?” (Answer: Door to the roof was locked. Also, quoting Chris Bornag‘s “Aired Video Taken by Jordan’s NYPD Chopper” and wirednewyork.com, “Police Officer James Ciccone of the police Aviation Unit told the 9/11 commission staff that he did not see anyone on the roofs and that the police helicopters were hard to handle. ‘The heat actually made it difficult for us to hold the helicopters because it would interfere with the rotor system,’ he told investigators.”)
Footage was televised, but the WTC 1 shot wasn’t aired. For the purposes of this list, then, I can’t classify the WTC 1 shot as “2001 TV amateur” footage (nor is it a TV Network’s hired camera), so instead of being #67 or so in this list, it’s near the bottom of the page and out of view, unfortunately. The entry will be lengthy, however. So it WILL attract more eyes.
Read a famed quote (among truthers) from the ABC Primetime segment by NYPD Lt. Glenn Daley:
“There were numerous secondary explosions taking place in that building. There was– There were continuous explosions.”
The footage surfaced in “full” length and went viral in March 2011 (“raw” footage without commentary or too many apparent edits [1st collapse edited out? -and most of the 2nd, for that matter?] – full length 17 minutes and a few seconds), thanks to a NIST FOIA by Cryptome.org … and thanks to YouTube, where it was re-posted (RT) … ad infinitum (CNN). It was touted as “leaked” by some, though much of the tape had been seen before, as critics in March 2011 were keen to point out. A year before that I (CTV911) had posted a FOX News version I gleaned from their website (part 1 of 2 is 7:45 in length. Part 2 of 2 is 7:34). That was “released” in Feb. 2009, to no such media buzz. Known TV spots before that, pre-2008 include one Israeli TV version of the footage with Hebrew commentary (source file dead link).
After ABC acquired the footage in the weeks after 9/11, the network decided for ethical reasons it should not air it again, even after careful editing (like a “snuff film of innocent Americans” the ABC guy tweeted). So Fox News Channel acquired the footage in 2002. All of this according to Alex Weprin aka TVNewser at mediabistro.com. I’ll quote that article some more. “A source at Fox News forwarded along the clip’s description from that network’s video vault, which describes the video in part:
Aerials of the terrorist attack of the WORLD TRADE Center (WTC) as seen from police helicopter. Aerials of black billowing smoke emerging from Twin Towers. CHOPPER lands, low angle shot of the Twin Towers on fire. Aerial shot aftermath of Tower collapse. Aerials of white smoke engulfing downtown Manhattan. CHOPPER landed at heliport. Long shot of the second Tower collapsing.
By long shot I hope it means far away, not in time length (I would prefer the vernacular ‘wide’ shot.). This in no way clears up the missing moments/minutes. Notice the videocamera moved several feet to the left between pre- and post-collapse clips, as if the camera were turned off for a bit… or the tape edited.
Apparently there were four NYPD choppers in the air that morning. I can only quote an article now dead on the Internet (defensedaily.com/?): “Where Credit is Due.” Lt. Glenn A. Daley, NYPD Aviation Unit speaking:
As a guest speaker at the recent SAR 2001 conference in San Diego, California, I had the honor of addressing attendees and relating the airborne law enforcement response to the World Trade Center disaster. Specifically, I outlined the role of the NYPD Aviation Unit and the difficult situation facing the responding aircrews. However, at no time was I airborne during the morning of the attacks.
Rather, I helped coordinate the response from the NYPD Aviation Unit Operations Center. My recollection is that I made this clear at the conference.
Consequently, the responding aircrews deserve the proper recognition: NYPD Unit #3: Officers Schub and Kelhetter; #6, Detective Semendinger and Officer Ciccone; #12, Sgt. Rowley, Detective LaGarenne, Officers Diaz and Jordan; and #14, Officers Walsh, Hayes, Gromling, and Maier.
Responding to the events of 9/11 was difficult enough for these aircrews, without giving credit where credit is due.
#3 – Officers Schub and Kelhetter — And Det. David Fitzpatrick taking pictures. “Police officer and pilot William Schub and his copilot, police officer and pilot Yvonne Kelhetter, had taken off in the NYPD’s Bell 206BIII JetRanger just after the second jetliner hit the South Tower.” This fits Dave’s story and timeline. (few details at aopa.org, “The Longest Day: One year after the terrorist attacks, a squad of NYPD’s unsung heroes looks back,” by Phil Scott, Sept. 2002)
#6 – Detective Semendinger and Officer Ciccone — Tail number N206NY per a dead video link, fortunately transcribed by Chris Bornag. Still pictures by Greg Semendinger (JPG mirror) are famous (ITN video interview), having been “new” releases in Feb. 2010 (seen before to some extent [need link]). These images of the WTC 1 event are far more valuable than the distant video listed here. See the “exact” times the photos were taken (actual time minus 1 minute, we can deduce by seeing image 028.JPG of the 1 WTC event named at 10:27:31 instead of reality: 10:28:22 according to one timeline, or 10:28:31 exactly – according to usatoday.com). The image times list leaves JPG #001 details blank. One mystery.
Most puzzling are at least two photos attributed to Semendinger BEFORE the 2nd plane hit (one obvious, seen on ITN at 0:26 zoomed to make it less so!?). Here we have photos of only one tower burning, labeled as Semendinger’s, with no accompanying airplane explosion 2nd hit shot. And those photos had been renamed before the FOIA, which implies Semendinger may not have taken them. Point in fact: Semendinger/NYPD Aviation photos in 911datasets.org NIST FOIA Release 32 folder 42A0321 – G29D7 include “gjs-wtc242.jpg,” before the WTC 2 hit — and the shot after the WTC 2 hit is numbered 240 — NOT like a set of chronological photos would be. In other words they were renamed and perhaps mislabeled.
Semendinger’s images appear in release 8 in the same folder with the pre-2nd plane images (42A0007 – 1of3WTCPlaneCrash). Another subfolder titled “WTC2” has 32 what appear to be original images – not labeled or named Semendinger’s – including the #12 chopper landed, but with no Exif metadata and all sized 1536×1024 (like scanned film photo CD format [Ctrl+F 1536]). It seems the camera was aboard the same chopper as the videocamera. (See video at 12:20 when a guy can be seen carrying a small camera in one hand [I think]). We see no other chopper landed nearby…
FYI the images pre-plane hit are not included with the 32 unnamed shots, but are included with Semendinger’s (not all 32 are sequential, 16 are from the chopper or of the chopper and others on the ground near Ground Zero); release 17 has the screenshots of Semendinger’s image times mentioned above (not including the shots before the plane hit); release 18 (like release 8) includes several shots of the #12 chopper landed from Mystery Shooter during (before and after) the second “collapse,” when Semendinger was in the air. [images at the link, although attributed to Semendinger in the page title, are not his]); release 32 as mentioned above, but note also that no shots of the #12 chopper landed are included; release 35 (not including 4 before plane hit or the #12 chopper), and 38 (not including 4 unidentified photos or [and not including] those of NYPD helicopter 12). Real Semendinger photos are 1600x1200px. Those before the plane hit (and shortly after) are 576x720px. None of the non-Semendinger shots have any exif data that I can find. Real Semendinger shots do (sorry, not the re-named versions [gjs-wtc…jpg] linked at left, but apparent identical originals in a different folder). See 911datasests rel. 8 version of the WTC 1 collapse shot 028’s metadata, for example. Notice the time at one minute behind. NIST took this into account, by the way, in their final report naming the time 10:23 (on page 33) when no there is no image between “10:21:52” (027) and the first collapse photo (028) at “10:27:31.” See their use of Semendinger’s image 027 to “prove” their theory of external column inward bowing leading to collapse.
#12 – Sgt. Rowley, Detective LaGarenne, Officers Diaz and Jordan — Tail number N412PD from what we can see in Mystery Shooter’s photos (another image seen at left – 911datasets releases 8 and 18) At one point in the video, Jordan’s name is visible on the back of his pilot’s helmet (see 6:36 for one frame), so we know this is the source of the video camera. The owner was apparently a “medic” aboard (equipped.org/rw_sar_01.htm), who was sitting on the left side of the cabin (pause and arrow through frame by frame after WTC 2 collapse). Note that our mystery shooter is sitting on the right in his/her photos.
The South Tower event features a police chopper (our #12 I think) veering away from a position closeby the North Tower only seconds before initiation (see similar WTC 2 collapse videos). The crew would later be accused of foul play by the conspiracy video “911 Eyewitness Hoboken” / Rick Siegel, as if a remote detonator was being used, creating flashes on the chopper. Anyway, that collapse event is missing from all versions of this footage (see 4:05 in Cryptome’s or 4:29 in NIST/FBI’s admittedly “redacted” version (faces blurred, at least [see 2:07, with enhanced audio]) from 911datasets.org NIST FOIA 09-42 Release 42 folder 42A0550 – G42D5. The DVD title is “WTCI-FBI-#9-Redacted” and dated Dec 22, 2009 [runs 19 minutes with 2 minutes of street views and blackness at the end]. The 17 minutes appear also in Rel. 42 DVD folder 42A0556 – G43D1). The question is, then: Was this missing time caused by camera operation or post-production editing/both? And what about those “secondary explosions” of Daley’s?
One WTC 2 collapse video in particular shows the chopper beside the roof of the North Tower in slow motion… which looks just like #12. I think the photos of chopper #12 landed [and, I think, the ones shot from inside it minutes before] — help us to track the missing part of the NYPD Helicopter video. The missing collapse footage. Unidentified images P0004247.JPG through P0004256.JPG (not missing any in the series, all shot in the air) begin with both towers standing. The chopper approaches and photographs the WTC 1 roof closeup from the west, twice — same route taken by the identical-looking chopper in the last seconds of WTC 2 — then in the next shot the chopper is some distance away to the northeast and the first collapse cloud has filled lower Manhattan. FYI, Semendinger’s earliest shots [that we’ve seen] are from over Brooklyn, and missed WTC 2’s descent between image 01 and 02.
No other police units had a video camera, apparently. Omitting at least pilot Semendinger, NYPD photographers were listed and pictured in the book Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001, Christopher Sweet, Ed., Viking Studio, 2002, p. 6. All aerial images in the book are credited to Detective Dave Fitzpatrick (See my blog post!) Funny: “The [Semendinger] images were taken from a police helicopter carrying the only photographer allowed in the air space near the towers on Sept. 11, 2001.” WRONG! (AP/nytimes.com “Aerial Photos of Trade Center on 9/11 Released,” Feb. 10, 2010.)
#14 – Officers Walsh, Hayes, Gromling, and Maier — Hayes was interviewed by ABC and id’d as piloting (Walsh was really, according to a quote coming shortly). The 2002 HBO program “In Memoriam: New York City 9-11-01” (see 12:00) featured Pat Walsh but mistakenly labeled the helicopter video as being shot by him and Hayes. Most remarkably of any helicopter’s level of peril during the day’s events, this aircraft was barely missed by the 2nd plane’s impact. See Detective/Pilots Timothy Hayes and Patrick Walsh in the 2002 New York Times-aided documentary by Investigative Reports: “The Anatomy of September 11th.” In that film Hayes says “I told Pat, ‘You have to climb. He’s gonna hit us.'” From elsewhere: “Theirs was the first helicopter on the scene after Tower No. 1 was hit.” No camera. (One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001, Time, Inc., 2001, p. 146.) “Walsh and Hayes, along with crew chiefs John Maier and Donald Gromling and scuba divers Steve Bienkowski and J.P. Felin, boarded the Bell and they were airborne within four minutes.” (aopa.org, “The Longest Day
One year after the terrorist attacks, a squad of NYPD’s unsung heroes looks back,” by Phil Scott, Sept. 2002) Did they snap any photos? Surely they would tell us.
While there were four NYPD Aviation units, more choppers would join the effort (that day? week? time not specified): “With their rescue plans in shambles, NYPD aviation personnel devised new tactics, literally on the fly. ‘We started to disperse our aircraft throughout the city, to keep them safe and ready for response. We realized it was time to regroup,’ Daley said, describing how his unit designated new landing zones (LZs) around New York City and New Jersey, and began coordinating with other assets that immediately began pouring in. These soon grew to 12 helicopters and crews from neighboring Suffolk and Nassau Counties, New York and Massachusetts State Police.” (Harry Weisberger, “Aero-cops ponder 9/11 rescue lessons learned,” Aviation Int’l News, Sept. 2002.
“Daley, who was flying over ground zero in New York City on September 11, showed the audience a gripping video taken in the cabin of his NYPD Bell 412 during the attacks. At one point, his helicopter was about 150 feet from the hijacked Boeing 767; indeed, the commandeered commercial airliner dove to avoid Daley’s helicopter.” (http://www.defensedaily.com/sar2001/wrap3.htm) Sorry to quote bad journalism, but I have to correct this error. Lt. Daley was in command. So technically they were all his choppers. But, Daley said himself: “at no time was I airborne during the morning of the attacks.” (unfortunately dead link, “Where Credit Is Due,” defensedaily.com/?)
An mpeg-2/DVD VOB of the ABC TV broadcast version — minus the WTC 1 footage of course — is found in release 28, 42A0286 – G27D16. The raw footage on the NIST website under “FBI Original Video from Tapes (Redacted)” file name “607_WTCI_457_I” has no audio. Release #42 DVD version in folder 42A0550 – G42D5 does have audio. Other NYPD FOIA files listed above.
