"Shortly after the first strike on the World Trade Center, which occurred at 8:46 AM on 9/11, Michael Hess, New York City’s corporation counsel, and Barry Jennings, the deputy director of the Emergency Services Department of the New York City Housing Authority, headed to the Office of Emergency Management’s Emergency Operating Center, which was on the 23rd floor of WTC 7, where they assumed that Mayor Rudy Giuliani would be. But when Hess and Jennings arrived, the place was empty. Jennings then telephoned someone to ask what they should do and was told that they should leave immediately. Finding that the elevators would not work, they started down the stairs. When they reached the sixth floor, however, there was a powerful explosion beneath them, which, Jennings told the makers of Loose Change Final Cut, <1> caused the landing on which they were standing to give way. Making their way back up to the eighth floor, they were able to break a window and call for help. Hess later reported: “
e were trapped on the eighth floor with smoke, thick smoke, all around us, for about an hour and a half the New York Fire Department . . . came and got us out.” <2>
Hess made this statement while being interviewed by Frank Ucciardo of UPN 9 News “on Broadway about a block from City Hall,” almost a half mile from WTC 7. This interview began before noon, most likely at 11:34. The conclusion that it began at 11:34 is based on evidence derived from a DVD containing UPN 9 programs from that morning, in which the Hess interview begins at the 57-minute mark. According to a note on the DVD itself, its video began at 10:37 AM, which would mean that the Hess interview began at 11:34. It is possible, however, that the video might have actually started at 11:00: At the 111-minute mark, the UPN 9 program switched to live coverage by CNN of a Taliban news conference, and the only reference we have been able to find to this coverage indicates that it began at 12:51.<3> This would mean that the video began at 11:00 and the Hess interview, therefore, at 11:57. Nevertheless, whether the earlier or the later starting time is correct, UPN 9 News began interviewing Michael Hess before noon.
However, NIST---the National Institute of Standards and Technology---which was tasked with providing the official explanation of the collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, claimed that the two men were rescued at “12:10 to 12:15 PM.” <4> Why might NIST have made this claim? The reason becomes evident in another NIST document’s statement about Hess and Jennings, which begins:
"With the collapse of the two towers, a New York City employee and a WTC 7 building staff person became trapped inside of WTC 7. The two had gone to the OEM center on the 23rd floor and found no one there. As they went to get into an elevator to go downstairs the lights inside of WTC 7 flickered as WTC 2 collapsed. At this point, the elevator they were attempting to catch no longer worked, so they started down the staircase." <5> "
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