New Research Source: Victims' phone calls and transcripts

Believe it or not, almost 5 years after the events of 9/11, the City of New York is only now finally releasing recordings and edited transcripts of 911 calls made on 9/11 by victims of the attacks. Previously the city refused to release these important recordings because, they alleged, the recordings and transcripts might upset victims families.

The transcripts and recordings are being made available under a court order as a result of a lawsuit by the New York Times and nine families of victims.

Bizarrely, the heavily edited transcripts will not include the victims' sides of the conversations, but only the operators, unless the families of the victims consent to the release of the victims' words.

The families will be entitled to a CD containing the full unedited calls if they want them, but if the city's letters to families are any indication, only 24 families have been contacted about the imminent release of the recordings, suggesting that the city has only identified 24 victims from the recordings. It also isn't clear whether the families will receive only the recording of their own family member or of the entire archive.

Already, however, the recordings promise to provide important new data. The news program of the local NBC affiliate in New York this morning played a recorded call -- presumably released by family members -- in which a caller claims that a bomb has gone off in the World Trade Center.

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/002537.php

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1770316

for five years-- explosions and what else?

It seems that the restrictions on these tapes and transcripts are so severe, that we may never know what was said on them.

Our best hope is that there is a victim's family member who is permitted to and does request the full CD and who then makes it available to researchers.

But I thought the choice of a tape about an explosion, as the first to be publicly aired on a local news program, was very interesting.

in the background.

Is it possible that an audio recording of the beginning of one of the collapses exists?

There's an interesting quote in an NYT article by Jim Dwyer about these recordings. It says:


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/nyregion/30tapes.html

Has anyone seen any other mentions of a "disaster drill" at the WTC? Dwyer, along with Kevin Flynn, in their book 102 Minutes (pp. 76-77) says something similar:



As to the identity of the "technology consultants" who had come for the "disaster backup preparations," they may have been working for Oracle, whose headquarters is in Redwood Shores, California. For example, one article says:


http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/09/18/010918hnlosses.html

Any thoughts on this?

Each family member will only receive a recording of that particular victim's conversation. What was released to the Times was only the responder's part of the conversation.

This is so fishy my cat wouldn't eat it. Even some of the families are calling this bullshit according to the article.

This does accomplish de-contextualizing and atomizing the calls and the information in them. It is just so disappointing.

That they can with a straight face refuse to release these tapes because it might hurt the families feelings makes my blood boil.