 Thursday, May 6, 2004  Tape
of 9/11 Controllers Was Destroyed
By Leslie Miller
Associated Press
Writer WASHINGTON -- Air traffic
controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights
on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences
shortly after the planes crashed, but a supervisor
destroyed the tape, the government said Thursday.
A report by Transportation Department Inspector
General Kenneth Mead said the manager for
the New York air traffic control center asked the
controllers to record their experiences a few hours
after the crashes, believing they would be
important for law enforcement. 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. The 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
weren't in the right frame of mind to have
consented to the taping, 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,
R-Ariz., who asked the inspector general to look
into how well the FAA was cooperating with the
independent panel investigating the Sept. 11
attacks. That panel learned of the tape during interviews
with New York air traffic control center personnel
between September and October. Mead said his office referred the case to
federal prosecutors in New York, but they declined
to prosecute because of lack of criminal
intent. The report did not characterize the tape's
destruction as an attempted cover-up but said it
could have been valuable in providing the public
with a full 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 letter said.  | ![[]](../../std/dings/list.gif){kind=small}
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