Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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Friday, May. 07, 2004land of da lost
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
Tape of 9/11 Controllers Was Destroyed
By LESLIE MILLER
WASHINGTON (AP) - 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. He said privacy considerations prevented him from disclosing how the manager was disciplined.
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."
On the Net: Federal Aviation Administration
� Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
~~~
So apparently my estimation of yesterday�s temperature was a bit...optimistic. It�s hard for me to judge the weather while I�m at work because I work inside a meat locker and rarely venture out of it. Seriously, it�s crazy up in here. Here it�s been a hundred degrees outside and I�m walking around at work in my Kashmiracle! jacket because the temperature is kept at hypothermia-inducing levels. Heaven forbid I wear a skirt (which I do more than half the time) because then I have to decide if I want to keep my jacket on my body or wrap it around my knees � either way, half of me freezes.
Anyway, it was still over eighty yesterday and is going to be about 10 degrees hotter all weekend than originally forecasted.
John and I talked about possibly going for a bike ride in the mountains on Saturday, after our morning walk. Actually, we figured we�d decide on Saturday if we want to go to the mountains or down south, along the coast. Wherever we go it will be to cool places this time. When he was down a couple of weeks ago, we ended up taking his bike out to freakin� Riverside where it was 105 degrees and the wind was practically blowing me off the back. Sad little aside: We drove through the Lake Mathews area that day. It�s a very lovely lake out there in the inland desert area and as we were riding through I was thinking how lovely it was and I wouldn�t mind owning a house out there�and that�s the area that burned up this week. I believe a few homes were even lost. :(
Um�I have mentioned that John bought a motorcycle, haven�t I? I can�t remember anything these days�
You know what they say about that short-term memory loss. *ahem*
Barbara is home from her vacation today. Yay!
I�ve been very, very busy at work this week. I�ve also been getting a lot of work done, which always makes me feel good. I hate it when I have so much work that it never seems I am getting anything accomplished, even though I�m working my ass off.
Did ya�ll ever notice that I will never, ever say anything in five words when I can say it with fifteen?
So I was thinking on my way to work this morning about how I have never really fit in anywhere.
Growing up, I was certainly never in the popular crowd. I was a total outsider and I liked music that was different than that which most of my peers liked, but I was also never tough or cool enough to hang out with the really cool outsiders and punk rockers who had weird hair colors, wore leather jackets and smoked on the back lawn. I was sort of a drama/music geek, but I never really fit in with them either. They seemed a bit�well, geeky to me. In truth, I was always sort of the coolest of the geeks. Kind of like Anthony Michael Hall�s character in Sixteen Candles.
No wonder I loved those John Hughes movies so much.
At nineteen, I was cool enough to work at Tower Records, but I was the straightest person working there. Annoyingly, agonizingly so. I was the girl my co-workers introduced their parents to. Seriously, when their parents would come to check out where they worked (because, you know every parent worried when their kid got a job at Tower), they would always introduce them to me, as if to say, �See, Mom? It�s just a normal place, with normal people�� forgetting about the blue-haired, flaming homosexual with pierced lips and nipples working at the register over in the �tape room� (as we called it).
Nothing against blue-haired, flaming homosexuals with pierced lips and nipples, mind you�I�m just saying, when you�re nineteen and introducing your sheltered mother from the Philippines to your co-workers, you�re probably thinking it would be best to steer her toward more the more �traditionally�-coiffed.
Throughout my twenties, I was cool enough to be in a band and hang out with some very creative-type people, discussing art and literature and music�but I was generally the one driving; the one too responsible to see the point in letting off illegal fireworks in a residential neighborhood; the one too timid and concerned with my health to do any drugs harder than pot. I was the one who showed up on time and got irritated when others didn�t; I was the one who handled calendars and schedules and money.
(I would like to point out that I am not saying I was wrong, here. I�m just pointing out that I never quite fit in on either side of the fence.)
At my day job, though, I was never �corporate� enough and never quite responsible enough. Although smart and very good at my jobs, I took a few too many �sick� days and showed up late a few too many times. I spoke up when I saw something unfair which, as anyone who�s worked for five minutes in the corporate world can tell you, often spells disaster. Rather then conform to some buttoned-down business-suit, perfect lipstick image of Women in the Workplace, I rarely wore makeup at all and would add dashes of funky attire to liven things up a little.
And now? I still don�t fit in anywhere. I�m now lucky to work for a company which encourages my outsider-tendencies, but I�m still a square peg trying to fit in to a round hole and it is evident in all areas of my life. These days, though, it seems that maybe my corners have rounded a little so that, even though I still can�t exactly fit in to the hole, I can at least balance myself at the top of it to keep from falling over. I guess that�s what comes with age.
And that�s what I was thinking on my way to work this morning.
~~~
Word of the Day for Friday May 7, 2004
hardscrabble HARD-skrab-uhl, adjective:
1. Yielding a bare or meager living with great labor or difficulty.
2. Marked by poverty.
~~~
�Well, all I can say right now is Thank God It�s Friday. I�m having a not-so-good day.�
-- from Health News (apparently, some things never change)
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