- Proof that the 9/11 FEMA story on Rense.com is an
Urban Legend
From: "Roy A Givens III"
roy3rd@disinfo.net
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- Claim: FEMA workers were dispatched to New York City
on the evening of 10 September 2001, which proves the federal government
had advance knowledge of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center. Status: False.
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- Examples:
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- [Collected on the Internet, 2001] FEMA sent the Urban
Search and Rescue Team to New York City THE NIGHT BEFORE the attacks occurred!
One FEMA official, Mr. Tom Kennedy, told Dan Rather on Tuesday, Sept. 11,
"We're currently one of the first teams that was deployed to support
the city of New York in this disaster. We arrived late Monday night and
went right into action on Tuesday morning."
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- whatreallyhappened.com/fematape.html
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- FEMA IN NEW YORK THE NIGHT BEFORE?
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- Click HERE for a RealAudio recording of a statement made
by FEMA spokesman Tom Kenney to Dan Rather, reportedly on Wednesday, September
12th.
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- In this interview, Tom states that Fema was deployed
to New York on Monday night, September 10th, to be ready to go into action
on Tuesday morning, September 11th.
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- Needless to say, this recording has caused quite a stir.
The official reaction is that Kenney was simply confused about the dates.
However, Kenney is complaining on the recording about not getting full
access to the site until "today". Kenney talks about a Monday,
a Tuesday, and "today". That's three days. If indeed the above
recording was made on Wednesday, September 12th as claimed, then the explanation
that Kenney was simply confused about the days doesn't work, because there
is one more day than can be accounted for.
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- Mr. Kenney has since been ordered not to discuss this
incident.
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- Origins: Mighty conspiracy theories from little slips
of the tongue grow.
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- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an
agency of the federal government tasked with responding to, planning for,
recovering from, and mitigating against disasters. As part of that effort,
FEMA sometimes calls upon local urban search and rescue task forces, highly
specialized groups of firefighters, paramedics, and civilian specialists
who have trained to handle many difficult specialized rescue situations;
when dealing with larger disasters, FEMA may mobilizes these local task
forces and send them parts of the country where their assistance is most
needed.
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- After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
on 11 September 2001, the first such task force to be mobilized and dispatched
to New York City was the Massachusetts Urban Search and Rescue Task Force,
an all-volunteer group that arrived at Ground Zero on the evening of September
11. The 62 members of this Massachusetts group spent a week working 12-hour
shifts, digging through rubble in an effort to locate and rescue trapped
survivors.
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- The conspiracy-promoting slip occurred when Tom Kenney,
an officer with the Massachusetts task force, was interviewed by Dan Rather
(who initially misidentified him as "Tom Kennedy") on the CBS
Evening News. As a recording of the interview demonstrates, Mr. Kenney
told Dan Rather:
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- We're currently uh, one of the first teams that was deployed
to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on, uh, late
Monday night and went into action on Tuesday morning. And not until today
did we get a full opportunity to work, uh, the entire site . . . Since
11 September 2001 was a Tuesday, if the Massachusetts task force had really
arrived on a Monday night, as Mr. Kenney said, they would have been deployed
in New York City the evening before the attacks, a rather curious coincidence
seized upon by many conspiracy buffs as "proof" that the federal
government had foreknowledge of the terrorists' plans.
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- The real explanation is, as usual, much simpler and more
mundane:
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- a.. Tom Kenney simply mixed up his days of the week,
saying "Monday" when he meant "Tuesday" and "Tuesday"
when he meant "Wednesday." As someone who muddled through quite
a few television interviews in the aftermath of September 11, I know how
easy it is to become disoriented and confused during live interviews, attempting
to hear questions coming to you through an earpiece and respond to the
disembodied voice of an interviewer whom you can't see while bright lights
are shined in your eyes. A person unused to the experience does well if
he manages to get through a three-minute interview without making a whole
host of mistakes. That someone who had been working around-the-clock in
a crisis situation for two days straight might lose track of the day of
the week is quite an understandable human error. Moreover, a reporter from
the Boston Herald tracked down Tom Kenney to verify that he was not in
New York City on September 10:
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- To confirm, the Herald called the Kenney home on Cape
Cod and spoke to Kenney's wife, who said that her husband did go to New
York on Sept. 11, not Sept. 10. She explained that he was under extreme
stress when Rather interviewed him, and added wryly that it was typical
of her husband to confuse dates.
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- b.. There is nothing unusual in Mr. Kenney's mention
of three different days (i.e., the evening the task force arrived, "yesterday,"
and "today") during the interview. Contrary to the supposition
offered in the second example quoted above, Dan Rather interviewed Mr.
Kenney on the evening of Thursday, September 13, not Wednesday, September
12. Mr. Kenney thus informed Dan Rather that the task force arrived late
in the evening of September 11 (a day he mistakenly identified as Monday
rather than Tuesday), that they went into action on the morning of September
12 (a day he mistakenly identified as Tuesday rather than Wednesday), and
that they did not have an opportunity to first work the entire WTC site
until September 13 (i.e., "today," the day of the interview).
Sinister conspiracy rumors involving FEMA also sprang up after the 1994
Northridge earthquake.
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- Last updated: 1 October 2002
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- The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/rumors/fema.htm
Click here to e-mail this page to a friend Urban Legends Reference Pages
© 1995-2004 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson This material may not
be reproduced without permission
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Sources: Schorow, Stephanie. "Independent Research." Boston Herald.
5 September 2002 (Arts & Life). -- James Neff Webmaster - Rense.com
webmaster@rense.com Digital Art & Design http://www.rense.com
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- Original Article
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- I was watching "Building Tall" on PBS and apparently
in the seventies the New York Citibank Building had some serious design
flaws (some V braces weren't welded as the blueprints called for,and were
bolted instead to "save money" for Citibank) in Building Tall
on PBS they admitted a sustained 70 mph wind on the Citibank Building could
have caused it to fall.
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- And they admitted there was no way to evacuate
the area on which it would fall.
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- Lots of people would have gotten hurt/killed
if it fell,and it almost did. I have all this on tape.
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- They also admitted FEMA and the Red Cross
were secretly deployed in case the worst happened,and it almost did but
the storm that could have caught it in it's vunerable state turned away
to sea.
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- But it was close.
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- And..they said New Yorkers were never even
aware of how close they came to disaster.
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- You can get the video here....
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- BUILDING BIG: Shop http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/shop/edu.html
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- Amazing Slip On National TV By FEMA Official
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- Nowhere is this more evident than in remarks made by
Tom Kennedy, a member of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) "National Urban Search and Rescue Team" during an interview
on national TV with CBS News anchor Dan Rather.
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- During the interview, Mr. Kennedy let slip a frightening
truth. FEMA sent the Urban Search and Rescue Team to New
York City the night before the attacks occurred! Mr. Kennedy tells
Dan Rather, "We're currently one of the first teams that
was deployed to support the City of New York in this disaster. We
arrived on late Monday night [Editors note: September 10] and
went right into action on Tuesday morning" [Editors note: September
11] Click Here to Listen to the actual interview segment in which
these words are uttered. The attacks and collapse of the World Trade
center happened on Tuesday, September 11. Surely it did not take
FEMA almost an entire additional week (the following Monday) to send
the Urban Search and Rescue Unit to help New York? And Mr.
Kennedy says his team was "one of the first" deployed to assist
New York City. Arriving a week after the fact , Mr. Kennedy
certainly couldn't claim to have "been one of the first deployed.
. . .
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- http://www.halturnershow.com/FEMA.htm
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- _____
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- It's probably just a coincidence, don't you think?
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- Sure it is.
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- If they built dangerous buildings they would take their
lumps like the upstanding men and women they are.
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