An incredibly weak, and belated, response from the BBC (and why are Boaden and Rudin incapable of speaking for themselves?)
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Von:
info@bbc.co.uk
Betreff: 16019743 BBC Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - the Truth behind the Third Tower
Datum: Wed, 12. Nov 2008 17:08:22 +0000
Dear Mr [MacCruiskeen]
Thank you for your email of 23 October 2008 and I'm sorry for the slight delay in getting back to you.
I have been asked to reply to the points you made by the Director of BBC News, Helen Boaden and the producer, Mike Rudin.
For future reference the best way of making a complaint to the BBC is via the webform on the BBC's complaints website at:
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints.
The BBC has gone to some trouble to establish procedures that will enable us to be as responsive as possible to complaints from the public at the same time as exercising due regard to the need to use licence fee payers' money efficiently. For this reason, we prefer complaints to be processed and logged centrally and programme makers and senior editorial staff, are contacted for responses as necessary.
Our responses to your specific points are set out below:
"On your BBC blog, you are now referring to "an important new [sic] eyewitness", i.e. Michael Hess. This is, to say the very least, deeply misleading. The BBC has in fact known that Mr. Hess as "an important eyewitness" at least since last summer, when you and your team were making "The Third Tower". At that time, you went out of your way to suggest that the late Barry Jennings had suffered his ordeal in WTC7 entirely alone. Why did you do that? Why did you edit out every reference by Barry Jennings to Michael Hess? See my questions below.
1.
In "The Third Tower", why did you not once mention the name of Michael D. Hess, who accompanied Barry Jennings throughout his ordeal in World Trade Centre 7?
We did not go "out of our way" to suggest the late Barry Jennings had suffered his ordeal entirely alone. At no point in the script do we say he
was alone.
2.
Did you ever, at any time during the making of "The Third Tower",
attempt to contact Michael D. Hess for an interview? If so, what was Mr.
Hess's response? If not, why not? He too was a "key witness", was he not?
We were unable to secure an interview with Michael Hess for the first programme. However, we were able to interview Michael Hess for the BBC Two updated programme transmitted on 26 October.
3.
You describe Barry Jennings as "the key witness", as if he were the only one. Why, then, did you edit your interview with Barry Jennings, so that - bizarrely, and without any explanation - he was suddenly heard speaking in the first person plural? Mr Jennings' "we" meant him and who else, precisely? (He must have mentioned a name!) Did the person or persons who accompanied him include Michael D. Hess? If so, why was Mr. Hess left entirely unmentioned by the BBC?
It is a public record that both Barry Jennings and Michael Hess were
trapped in WTC 7. We did not conceal this. However, since we did not have an interview with Michael Hess for the first UK programme, we took the view that mentioning another person who we hadn't interviewed would only add unnecessary detail. In fact, as it turns out Michael Hess has a different recollection which contradicts Barry Jennings and backs up the official account.
4.
Why did you falsify Mr. Jennings' testimony by cross-cutting
reconstructed scenes of his hurried departure down 17 flights of stairs at
WTC7 with lengthy and disturbing documentary film sequences showing thecollapse of the TwinTowers at 9:59 am and 10:28 am respectively? In hisinterview with the Loose Change people, Mr. Jennings clearly states: a)
that he arrived in the OEM on the 23rd floor very shortly after 9:00 am; b)
that he and Mr. Hess began to leave Building 7 as quickly as possible only
minutes after getting there; and c) that the explosion which trapped him
and Michael Hess on the 8th floor of Building 7 took place *before* either
of the Twin Towers had collapsed:
http://www.911blogger.com/node/16573?page=1
As the producer explained in his blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2 ... iracy_theo
.html
We recorded a long interview with Barry Jennings. We also carefully
considered other information and came to our own view based on all of that.
We came to a different conclusion to you:
a) Barry Jennings did not arrive
shortly after 9am, but because of the complication he and Michael Hess had getting to the 23rd floor, they probably arrived some time after that;
b) they spent more than a few minutes sitting outside the OEM; and c) the
black out on the 6th floor probably happened at the time the North Tower
collapsed (10.28am).
5.
Were you aware that Mr. Jennings says he has received threats at his
place of work? If so, did you investigate this claim in any way?
No he did not mention that in our interview.
6.
As you no doubt know, Barry Jennings is now dead. Will you mention this, or deal with any of the foregoing questions, in your forthcoming follow-up programme?
We did mention that Barry Jennings had died in our follow up programme.
We hope this reassures you about the programme. If you send any further emails directly to Helen Boaden or Mike Rudin, they shall read them, of course, but if you wish to receive responses, you will need to use the formal complaints channel mentioned above.
Thank you for your email.
Yours sincerely
Stewart McCullough
Complaints Coordinator
BBC Complaints
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
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"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
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