Federal Aviation Administration

While it was still fresh in their minds at least six air traffic controllers gathered together to recount and record their thoughts on the terrorist attacks of September 11th. These people were the ones actually involved monitoring and reporting on two of the hijacked planes just hours before.

In an interview with the FAA, Kevin Delaney talks about the taped recording with air traffic controllers recorded the day of September 11th. He stated he was given the job to transcribe all audio tapes related to the events of 911 and seven days afterwards. This task took him an others 90 days to complete, but they left out the air traffic controllers recount. Instead of transcribing the recount he stated that each of the controllers were asked to submit an official FAA statement to which the report says that Delaney’s statement contradicted other people’s claims that this was not true. He never says why he failed to include the tape even though he said he was not sure if anyone ever listened to the tape for fact finding.

He also tried to downplay why it took so long to report the hijacked planes to NORAD. The report summarizes him saying "an aircraft’s course does not necessarily translate in the mind of a controller to the possibility of a hijack ... but the thought of a hijack would eventually creep back into the controller’s thought process"

On another note Delaney stated that he believed that United flight 93 was shot down based on the eight mile span of the airplane’s debris.

Kevin Delaney was suspended for 20 days with out pay for the destruction of a tape of the six air traffic controllers that dealt with two of the hijacked airplanes on 911. In a statement the FAA said:





They say this in spite of Delaney’s statement given to the FAA in 2003 where he says that no one listened to the tapes - so how could the FAA say that they found “no indication there was ... something to hide”?

A tape was created by air traffic controllers recounting the events of 911, but before the taped evidence was listened to, or transcribed a FAA manager named Kevin Delaney took the tape in his hand, crushed it, shredded it up into small pieces, and went around the building putting the remains in many different trash cans.

In a move that had never been done before the FAA stopped all airplanes from taking off. Flights were grounded for a total of three days.