Controllers' 9/11 Tapes Destroyed
By Leslie Miller
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center but a supervisor destroyed the tape, government investigators said Thursday.
A report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead said the manager for the New York-area air traffic control center asked the controllers to make the recordings a few hours after the crashes in belief they would be important for law enforcement.
Investigators never heard it. 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.
``We were told that nobody ever listened to, transcribed or duplicated the tape,'' Mead said in the report sent to Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican asked the inspector general to look into how well the agency was cooperating with the independent panel investigating the attacks.
Neither manager told anyone outside the center - including their superiors and law enforcement officials - about the tape's existence, the report said. The Sept. 11 commission learned of the tape during interviews with New York air traffic control center personnel between September and October.
The destruction occurred even though the FAA sent a directive three days after the hijackings: ``Retain and secure until further notice ALL Administrative/Operational data and records. ... If a question arises whether or not you should retain the data, RETAIN IT.''
The quality assurance manager said he destroyed the tape because he felt it violated FAA policy calling for written statements from controllers who have handled a plane involved in an accident or other serious incident. He also said he felt the controllers were not in the right frame of mind to have consented to the taping, the report said.
The manager said he waited several months to destroy the tape because he promised the local controllers' union vice president that he would get rid of it once the control center's formal accident package was complete, the report said. That package was sent to FAA headquarters in November 2001.
The report did not characterize the tape's destruction as an attempted cover-up. But it said the recording could have helped provide a fuller explanation of what happened on Sept. 11.
``What those six controllers recounted in a group setting on Sept. 11, in their own voices, about what transpired that morning, are no longer available to assist any investigation or inform the public,'' the report said.
Mead said his office referred the case to federal prosecutors in New York, but they declined to prosecute because of lack of criminal intent.
FAA spokesman Greg Martin said the quality control manager was disciplined for violating the directive to keep everything relating to the hijackings and to turn them over to investigators.
Martin said the FAA believes the tape is consistent with written statements and other materials provided to investigators. It ``would not have added in any significant way to the information already provided to investigators and members of the 9/11 commission,'' Martin said.
The report said the controllers who made the tape had either talked to the hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center or were working radar positions that intersected with the jetliners' flight paths.
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.
John Carr, president of the air traffic controllers' union, said he did not know whether the manager did the right thing by destroying the tape.
``It was a traumatic time for him,'' he said. ``He was the custodian for the darkest moment in our nation's history.''
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