2007-09-28

9/11 survivor hoax

From the department of crisis=opportunity:
As a matter of history, Ms. Head’s account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. As a matter of emotion, her story deeply moved audiences like college students to whom she spoke and visitors at ground zero, where she has long led tours for the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center for visitors including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

“What I witnessed there I will never forget,” she told a gathering at Baruch College at a memorial event in 2006. “It was a lot of death and destruction, but I also saw hope.”

Much of Ms. Head’s account was posted on the Web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit organization for which she served as president and as point person for corporate donations.

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who truly died in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the gripping immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met with in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

4 comments:

BLBeamer said...

My wife lost a cousin in those attacks (his remains were verified) and this person is scum who deserves all the exposure and public ridicule she gets. I hope she becomes a pariah.

Even OJ Simpson would be ashamed to be seen in public with her.

Anonymous said...

Gosh Beamer... sometimes these events become so burned into our neural networks that they seem somehow inevitable, somehow part of the framework of our lives, ... dare I say it... somehow "normal"?

It takes meeting someone who was there — or who lost someone — to bring it back from TV disaster land "entertainment" into real reality, where people miss family and friends.

Thanks for sharing that sadness with us, and I'm sorry for your wife's loss.

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

Beamer,

You're the first person I've ever had contact with who was directly affected by 9/11. I have never yet experienced the death of a friend or family member under any circumstances, let alone one so tragic and heart wrenching.

I would like to know more about your wife's cousin. Could you tell us about him?

BLBeamer said...

I never knew David, but I knew his grandparents. Here's a link to a tribute page written by his family members.

http://memorial.mmc.com/pgBio.asp?ID=270

He was the only Swedish citizen killed in the attacks and he was an accountant. He was in the first tower struck, I believe, on about the 100th floor.

This contemptible fraud in your article...well, words escape me.