In Their Own Words: The Untold Stories of the 9/11 Families

The introduction of the video showed the disgruntled families of the victims of the 9/11 incident who believed that the government was not telling the whole truth about the incident. Families claimed that there was a huge difference between what the general public know and what the victims families know of the 9/11 attack. Some issues such as awareness preparation, resolution, and acceptance were among the concerns represented by the victims families regarding the 9/11 incident.

According to the families, media played a significant role giving misleading information to the general public about the 9/11 event. As families and relatives were eager to find answers about what happened, they were overly inquisitive when they arrived at the site of the incident. Based on their observation, some stories which were published by the media showed to have misinformed and conflicted details. This has made the media to come to its defense and claim that they were covering the truth behind the 9/11 attack. On the other note, families of the victims also believed that some media had the courage to hide the truth but were limited to time constraints, administrative commitment, and government mandates.

Families weighted and compared the interviews of government officials about the incident. One of the conclusive concern they got was about the urgency and series of protocols and procedures when the airplane went off-course or could not be contacted through the radio. Although it was implicitly stated, families believed that there should have been an urgent response to the signs so that mass casualty would have been prevented. Because families felt that there was negligence or breach of protocols due to delayed response, they were surprised to learn that nobody from FAA or NORAD was held accountable and fired for their failures. Senator Mark Dayton backed up these concerns from the families of the victims. In addition, families questioned the administration leadership and the national security service for failing to inform the President about the incident on time(who was at a nearby school). They believed that if these protocols had been followed, there would have been a timely chain-of-command to address the crisis. Upon interview analysis, it seemed that the officials had known the attack earlier but followed the advice of the security personnel to stay in the classroom or move to the basement for safety purposes of the officials who held the two uppermost powers in the country.

Two days after the 9/11 attack, General Richard Myers testified in the Congress that there were no jets that went up; contrary, this was counter-stated by NORAD. Myers was not charged with perjury for lying to the Congress and even remained commander of the military for three years. Further investigations until May 2003 revealed numerous discrepancies from the testimonies of the NORAD officials and the 9/11 Commission. Again, nobody from the NORAD has been charged with obstruction of justice or perjury for misleading a criminal investigation.

Higher officials have delayed actions; FBI has too-good-to-be-true conclusions about the attack. Families became suspicious of the comprehensive post 48-hour report of the FBI about who perpetuated the attack. They began to question FBIs report because if they had already details about the individuals, they should have taken actions to prevent the occurrence of the 9/11 incident by tightening the states defense system. It turned out from a report in Saudi Arabia that some of those identified by the FBI to have perpetuated the attack had stolen identities. This made the families question the credibility of the information and the path of investigation.

In general, families of the victims did not believe the information provided by the government because of the inability of the assigned officials to answer their questions regarding the attack, inconsistencies of information from one person to another, hearing excuses instead of answers, and lack of accountability.