All language subtitles for 9-11 The Falling Man (2006)

It was the most photographed
and videotaped day in history.

Two of the world's tallest buildings
destroyed by hijacked planes.

The next day, newspapers
published photos of the horror.

But there were some images so awful
they provoked rage across the world.

These were the pictures
of people falling.

One photo of a falling man was
the most controversial of them all.

It was branded distasteful,
exploitative, voyeuristic.

It was never seen again.

The images that came to symbolise
the day were those

of the heroic rescuers working in
the rubble.

But some argued that the picture
of the falling man

needed to be confronted.

It not only acknowledged the story
of people who'd been forced to jump,

it alone gave a true sense of
the horror of that day.

The quest to identify one man

became a quest to
give name and voice to that horror

- a journey to help America learn,
and recover, from its darkest day.

'..welcomes you to the observation
deck of the World Trade Center.

'We are travelling in an Otis
elevator at a speed of 20mph...'

When they were completed in
1971, they were the two highest

buildings in the world,
standing 110 stories high.

The World Trade Center was
a beehive of human activity.

Up to a quarter of a million people
walked through its doors every day.

Bond traders, executives, waiters,

dishwashers, tourists,
cleaners, IT staff...

'..at the World Trade Center.

My name is Ernie Scott.'

'Please watch your
step as you exit.'

It was the towers' height that
never ceased to amaze,

standing an extraordinary 1,500
feet above the ground.

'...Tuesday September 11th.

'I'm James Farraday and
here's what's happening...'

September the 11th, 2001
was just another ordinary day.

'...the high 80,
dropping to 60 tonight.

'Up to 78 with sunshine
tomorrow, 76 Thursday.'

'This is Steve Torrey,
and it appears Michael Jordan

'will indeed be coming out of
retirement...'

8.46 a.m.

Flight 11.

9/11.

Certain phrases have become
shorthand for the worst attack

on American soil in history.

Still around, guys, still around.

When it was all over, the world
preferred to remember

the heroic images of the rescuers...

...and how the American spirit
had prevailed.

The impact cut a swath through
floors 93 to 99,

instantly killing hundreds.

Almost immediately, broadcasters
began to transmit

images across the world.

'Let's get this live update...'

Initially, most people could only
react to the breaking news -

one of the world's tallest buildings
wounded by an errant aeroplane.

But for anyone with a relative
inside or nearby,

the immediate thought
was for their safety.

I turned to my computer and I typed,
"Hey, are you there?" Meaning are you

at work - he worked for Bloomberg
LP, and I was going to give him

a heads up not to go downtown
because of what had happened.

So I get a response back that
says, "Yes, I'm here.

"I'm on the 106th floor, there's a
lot of smoke, I'm scared." I just...

I was like, "106th of what building?"

And that's what I turned
around and typed back to him.

And he wrote back, "Windows On
The World, World Trade Center."

Peter Alderman was one of 170 people

at Windows On The World restaurant
that morning.

There were diners, chefs,
waiters and kitchen staff.

Michael Lomonaco, the executive
chef, would have been there, too,

but he was running late because
he'd stopped at an optician's.

How could that happen?
How could a plane on this beautiful,

crystal-clear, blue-skied day,
run into the building?

How could that happen?

I started to take stock of who's up
there, what's happening at Windows.

I tried to take a mental roll call to
try to recall

who was there at that moment.

I knew there was nothing I could do,
but I just couldn't leave.

And all I could think about were my
friends, colleagues, co-workers.

...and trying,
just desperately to... to... to pray,

that they could get out, that they
could get to the fire exits,

get down those fire stairs.

But for nearly 1,000 people on the
upper floors, there was no exit -

they were trapped. The plane had
sliced through the elevator shafts.

The emergency
staircases were impassable.

The plane hit the north tower in a
very central way, resulting in the

fuel from the wings pouring
into the building itself.

The fuel and the fire that was
created spread so far that people

standing in the lobby were burned
from the fireball that came out of

the elevator shaft. You could
see the smoke coming out from

all the way up above Windows On The
World, within minutes of the impact.

Those that could get out did.

But for the others, above the crash
site,

the heat and thick smoke was already
making it difficult to breathe -

in some places, impossible.

But the watching world could only
guess

at the terrible conditions inside.

Only those in direct communication
realised that the danger had spread

far beyond the crash site,
and that casualties might number -

not into the tens, but into
the hundreds, even thousands.

I was freaking. I was crying, and
my boss came into my office

and he's like, "No, it's OK,
it's just a fire.

They'll put it out. You know he's OK."

So I wrote back again to him,
saying, "Can you get out?"

And he wrote back,
"No, we are stuck."

The people trapped on the upper
floors

inundated the emergency
with calls, pleading for help.

At the point of impact, temperatures

were reaching over 1,000 degrees
centigrade. As the flames consumed

everything in sight, the smoke
was becoming increasingly toxic.

In desperation, windows were
broken to let in fresh air.

This only made things worse.

For some people, there
was only one option left.

Oh, my God!

Among the bystanders was
photographer, Richard Drew.

I was standing between a
police officer and an EMS worker,

and all of a sudden
the woman says, "Oh, look,"

and we both looked up, all three
of us looked up, and people

started coming down from the World
Trade Center. Bodies were falling,

so I instinctively picked up my
camera and started taking pictures.

It's what I do. It's like a
carpenter - he has a hammer,

he builds a house.
I have a camera, I take pictures.

'Numerous people are jumping.
'Numerous people are jumping.'

You could hear the sound. They would
fall to a certain point and then I

couldn't see them any more because my
view was obstructed from where I was.

But you could always hear them
hitting the ground,

like a sack of cement, a big thud.

Broadcasters were pulling back.

They weren't showing the people
falling, they were reporting them.

People are jumping out
the windows over there.

They're jumping out the windows.

I guess they're trying to
save themselves, I don't know.

But pulling back didn't
spare people from the horror.

Because then the unbelievable
happened, something that made

it clear that the first plane
wasn't accident.

SCREAMS

When United Airlines Flight 175
crashed into the south tower,

millions saw it - live.

Oh, my God!

REPORTERS TALK OVER EACH OTHER

'...down Broadway from thevantage
point of City Hall. I've moved

'inside a building, but all these
buildings are being evacuated...'

Now the thousand people trapped in
the North Tower were joined by 600

in the south. One man, arriving at
his office across the river

in New Jersey, however, was unaware
of the attacks

and the awful predicament
that his wife now found herself in.

The phone ran and it was
my friend Bill, and he said,

"Do you know what's going on at the
World Trade Center?" And I said no.

He knew that Alayne
worked there, we'd been

friends for many years, and he said,
"Well, a plane hit the North Tower,"

and I knew Alayne worked in the South
Tower, so I said, "Well, you know,

"that's horrible but, you know,
let me see what I can find out."

My secretary came in and told
me that Alayne was on the phone.

The first thing I said was,
"Well, thank God you're OK,"

and she said, "Well, not really."

And she told me that smoke was coming
into the room, it was coming through

the vents and that, um, there had
been an explosion beneath them.

She didn't know a plane hit.

Alayne Gentul had seen the North
Tower hit,

and had immediately began
helping her colleagues to evacuate.

She was on the 97th floor when

the second plane struck,
and was now among those trapped.

As she was speaking to me
I could hear her voice.

Her breath was laboured and, um...

I remember saying, you know,
"Don't breathe so hard," you know.

"Try to relax."

When I asked why they didn't try to
go down,

she said it was really hot out there.

And she meant the area near where the
elevators and the stairwells were.

I didn't understand that.

But it was evident to me just from
her breathing that it was becoming

impossible to be there any more.

She said to me, "I'm scared."

She wasn't person who got scared.

And I said, "Honey, it'll be all
right, it'll be all right,

"you'll get down, you'll get down."

Alayne said that she and her
colleagues only had one choice -

to put wet clothes over
their head and to try to get out.

She said to me that she loved me and
she said to tell the boys that I love

them. And I was... I was shocked
that she was saying this to me.

I said, "Of course I will,

"but it's going to be all right."
And she said, "I love you,"

and I said, "I love you,"
and she said, "I love you,"

and I said, "I love you," and then
I said, "Call me when you get down."

And when I hung up the phone I was...

..I was horrified.

Jack Gentul doesn't know what
happened next,

buthe knows where it all ended.

I know that Alayne
was found on the street...

..in front of the building across
from hers.

So whether... she jumped or
fell, I don't know.

I believe she was alive when it
happened because of that phone call.

I hoped that she had succumbed
to the smoke,

but... it doesn't seem likely.

It's something I can't know.

In some ways, it might just be the
last element of control you have.

Everything around you is happening
and you can't stop it,

but this is something
that you can do.

And to be out of the smoke and
the heat, to be out in the air...

..it must have felt like flying.

It's gonna fall. It's gonna explode.

At 9.58, the South Tower fell,
extinguishing in an instant

the hopes of hundreds inside.

SCREAMING

The photographer Richard
Drew caught the moment.

Oh, my God!

I think the camera is sort of a
filter for me, between me and what

I'm photographing. And I'm only
seeing what's coming through my lens.

That helps me separate it,
I guess, psychologically.

What Drew didn't realise was that
he already captured an image

so shocking, so representative
of the horror of the day,

that it would ignite controversy
and anger across the world.

'All the airports
are closed.

'The roads are closed.
The twin disaster

'at the World Trade Center happening
shortly before and around 9 a.m.,

'and then a while ago a third
explosion,

'which brought down the South
Tower...'

More than an hour had passed since
the North Tower had been hit.

On the ground,

people were traumatised
by what they were seeing.

Not just the burning buildings,
but bodies falling.

Some people had been

blown out by the initial explosions,
some may have slipped,

but it was clear that some were
being forced

into an impossible decision.

The fire continued to spread,

burning up
the furniture and office papers

and the combustible materials
throughout the buildings,

and the tower itself became like a
chimney,

sending the smoke up towards the top
of the tower,

and as time passed,
the situation became desperate.

There was a long period of time where
people were just, you know,

hanging out by the windows waving
things.

You saw one man just waving a
long white... is it a tablecloth?

It's not clear.

They were people that I knew.

There were people waving jackets or
tablecloths or napkins, there were

people waving, crying out for help
and they were people I knew so well,

and that only made it worse.

Fire-fighters were climbing the
stairs, trying to reach

the upper floors. They could get
nowhere near.

Some people had tried to escape

to the roof, but found the access
door locked.

But it wouldn't have helped anyway.

The thick smoke made it
impossible for helicopters to land.

Peter Alderman

was one of 70 people stuck in
an office on the 106th floor.

He sent seven text messages between
9.07 and 9.25 to friends and family.

His growing desperation was clear.

Someone had asked him if they could
evacuate the building and he said,

"We can't even move." When I spoke
to him he said, "No, we're stuck,"

and I took stuck to
be, you know, maybe

in a room or something but "can't
move", that sounds much much worse.

He said the room was filling with
smoke, so, I mean, the situation

was definitely deteriorating
as the minutes were going by.

You're able to see more and more
people assembling at the windows

as time is passing.

Not only are they assembled at the
windows, but they're stacked

upon each other at the windows.

Acting, I'm sure, with an irrational
search to somehow breathe.

Pushing up against the windows
and bodies lying upon each other.

Some people, in fact, were
actually hanging out of the windows

and holding on across the
steel that divided the windows.

They were just so
desperate to get air.

Imagine leaning out of of the 109th
floor of the World Trade Center.

No rational person would ever do
that.

Holy shit!

Oh, my God!

And they're jumping!

Numerous people are jumping.

Numerous people are jumping.

There were things that were so
big that were falling. And...

It was terrifying and horrifying

to think I didn't recognise the
objects I was seeing as people.

Maybe that thought was just too
horrendous, too horrifying to me.

Others did see what was happening.

Lonely, ten second journeys.

A very public way of dying.

The only visible fatalities in
a day that claimed thousands.

'Clearly we're in the
middle

'of the worst ever
act of terrorism directed

'at the United States
on domestic soil...'

Thomas McGinnis was trapped just
below the crash zone. His wife,

Iliana, had been desperately trying
to reach him for over an hour.

The receptionist said, "Thomas is on
the phone," and right away I took it.

He says,
"This doesn't look good."

And I said, "You're right, oh my
God, this is like World War III."

and I'm not thinking something
wrong because he's on the phone,

he calling me so he must be OK.
He must be on the street.

He's using someone's cellphone, or
he's on a payphone. And he says it

again, three times in a row, and
something in the way he says it,

he was calm about it but something
said to me something's not right.

And I started to get nervous and I
got upset too, I was upset like mad

at him like, "Are you OK?"

And he said it again,
"This doesn't look good."

And I said, "Just answer me,
yes or no, are you OK?"

And that's when he said, "We're in a
conference room on the 92nd floor."

The fire was working its
way down to the 92nd floor.

As Thomas McGinnis talked to
his wife, it was nearly upon him.

And that's when he said to me,
"Iliana, you don't understand,

"there are people jumping from..."

I'm sorry. He said, "There are people
jumping from the floors above us."

And that's when I just
was like, "Oh, my God,

"this is very bad."

As I'm thinking I mean, one thing
is when you're on the 3rd floor or

the 4th floor and there's a fire and
you jump because you think, "I've got

"to escape this fire," and you think,
"I might survive, I might get broken

"legs or a broken back." But these
people are jumping to their deaths.

That's how desperate they are that
they're jumping to their deaths.

And I'm just thinking about
these poor guys in this room

not for five minutes, but for an hour
dealing with that and knowing that if

something terrible is going on up

there and that it's coming down to us
too because we can't get out of here.

And so I know that for him
it was a goodbye call.

But I just wasn't
ready to accept that.

But I know that it was cos he said,
"I love you, take care of Caitlin,"

who's our little girl.

I just kept saying,
"You're coming home tonight."

He says, "If we get out of here
it's going to be a miracle."

And the last thing he said was,
"I got to get down on the floor,"

and that's when
I lost the connection.

And I tried again but
I couldn't get through.

There was no dial
tone, there was nothing.

Thomas McGinnis's call was the
last voice ever heard

from the North Tower.

Three minutes later,
the tower collapsed.

By then, as many as 200 people
had fallen from the sky.

The building's coming down!

A couple of hours later,
the photographer Richard Drew

was back at the Associated Press
newsroom at Rockefeller Center.

He was now methodically working his
way through the images he'd shot.

You photograph what's
there in front of you.

You just instinctively take pictures
of what's there, so I started looking

at the pictures
of the falling people.

I called one of our senior editors
who was there at the time to

start looking at the images with me
and I said, "I really like this one."

It really hits you.

It's just something, that certain
something that you recognise.

I see this not as this person's
death but as part of his life.

There's no blood, There's no guts.

It's just a person falling.

Within minutes, Drew's falling man
joined thousands of images arriving

in newsrooms across the world. Among
them was The Morning Call, a typical

mid-sized American newspaper,
based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

My first reaction to it was horror.

We knew it was happening, there
were reports of it on television,

but TV stations weren't showing
bodies falling from the tower.

My mind right away went to, "Are we
going to print this?" And I felt we

wanted to print it but could the
person be identified, you know?

First thing I tried to do is look
very closely to see, and I couldn't.

The editors wanted to choose
images that best captured the story.

To gauge opinion,
they pinned many on the wall.

Among them was the falling man.

It felt like I was punched in the
stomach. It was such a strong image.

Um... it was hard to look at.

You feel like it's a private moment.

You feel... feels almost
obscene looking at this.

You feel like you're taking away
the person's humanity a little bit.

I said I had the same reaction to

the Eddie Adams photo where the South
Vietnamese police chief stepped up to

the prisoner and put the pistol to
his head and shot him in the temple.

It's just the last
moment of a person's life.

Naomi's reaction was, "Exactly, it is
just like that Eddie Adams photo

"and that Pulitzer Prize winning
photo and that's exactly why

"we should, why we should run it."

At the afternoon news meeting,
as the staff tried to absorb

the day's events,
the editor canvassed opinion.

By the time we got to the news
meeting I recall there were

probably a few voices of concern,
we still discuss the concern.

Naomi was very
passionate about the photo.

She believed there are photos in
history that are flash points that

really kind of get at the truth.

I mean, they're hard to look at,
but there are certain photos that

just tell the story. And in this
case it got to the humanity in

a way that other photos, even that
might be more graphic, would not.

This particular photo that separated
it from all the other photos

was the quietness
and the body position.

I saw grace.

I saw a stillness, even though
I know that he was falling.

I saw a quietness...

in that as opposed to a loud,
horrible burning death.

The Morning Call decided to publish
the Drew image, putting it on the

back page of the first section.

It carried the photo larger than
any newspaper in the country.

You know, you have to know, going
in to this that you're going to get

reader response and it's going to
be heavy and it's going to be angry.

And a lot of it can be
mis-directed anger.

But we get it.

On the morning of September 12th,
170,000 copies of the paper carrying

the image of the falling man
were distributed throughout

The Morning Call's region.

Allentown is so typically American
that it's regularly used

by pollsters to
canvas American opinion.

Its response was unequivocal.

"To the editor. It was with
utter disgust that, as I read

"the September 12th edition, to see
a large photo of some poor soul

"plummeting a thousand
feet headfirst to certain death."

"Do not let your children
read The Morning Call.

"The half-page coloured picture of
a man falling out of the window was

"used in such poor judgement."

I'm not an angry guy, I'm pretty
much a... very... a passive person.

Nothing phases me.

I'm very light-hearted.

But, um, that day, that
picture just made me angry.

We had more response on

this photo than I believe we
ever seen on any photo published.

And a passionate response.

And that's saying a lot. Never
really seen something like that.

Many people just didn't want to
look at it, and they were angry.

You knew that a few seconds earlier
that person had to make a decision.

They were executed, but they
had the choice in the manner

of how they were going to die.

They were either going to fall to
their death or they're going to be

burned alive in the building.
There was no third choice.

And when you saw that photograph you
immediately knew that this person

had thought those thoughts, had
made his decision and acted on it.

We had to capture the
enormity of this event.

There had never been
anything like it prior, and...

the images were absolutely critical.

I really think it did cause

anybody who looked at that photo to
think about that - what would I do?

I thought about that myself you
know, what choice would I make?

And the absolute horror
of making that choice.

And I think maybe that's the
personal space that we went to with

some people where they thought about
what would their personal choice be.

We have not run it since that day,
since September the 12th.

We just couldn't... scratch at
that scab again and open that wound.

But the photo had already
been published,

and the reaction in Allentown was
mirrored around the world.

But some who saw it couldn't
get it out of their mind.

I remember seeing that picture.
It stopped me.

There was something that was every
day about the person who was in it.

He looked like any guy
who you see in the city.

And yet there was something
forever remote about him.

I mean, how could you ever
possibly get to that experience?

He seems almost perfectly composed.

This is impossible. This picture, it
should be and it will go everywhere.

I never saw that picture again.

The photo had disappeared

from public view in a remarkable
spontaneous act of self-censorship.

Newspapers and magazines
decided not to run it again.

No-one wanted to confront
the existence of the jumpers.

In the days following September
11th, there was a desperate search

for survivors. 10,000 were feared
dead or missing under the rubble.

Fire-fighters worked tirelessly
around the clock,

hunting for any sign of life.

Americans had recoiled from the
falling man, but now,

pictures of the rescuers

was something the nation
could celebrate and rally around.

The images that lasted are, in
the most cases, heroic pictures.

There was a spin that came out
of our feeling of being so deeply

wounded on that day which was that
we're Americans and you may have

knocked our buildings down, you may
have killed nearly 3,000 people,

but the American spirit
shall prevail.

Whereas Richard Drew's picture,
the falling man picture, became,

for whatever reason, the picture
that nobody wanted to look at.

But Tom Junod, a prize-winning
writer on American culture,

could not stop looking. He felt the
falling man was the defining image

of September the 11th, and decided

to investigate why the jumpers
had been airbrushed from the day.

I talked to the coroner's
office in New York.

I asked them for a count of how many
people jumped that day and what

the woman from the coroner's office
said was, "Nobody jumped that day.

"They were blown out,
they were forced out.

"We don't say that they jumped.
Nobody jumped."

That just made me feel that there
was just something going on that

was not familiar American territory
about dealing with tragedy.

There were things about thatday
that you weren't supposed to say,

you weren't supposed to see,
you weren't supposed to talk about.

And for me, that resistance
wound up centring on

and attaching itself to Richard
Drew's picture.

Junod was not alone
in his curiosity.

A few days after the image was
published,

a Canadian journalist was
asked to identify the falling man.

An editor called me with what I
thought was a ludicrous request.

He wanted me to find out who the
man was and tell his life story.

And my first thought
was, "Good luck."

I don't think it's possible
to get the identity of one person

in an image like that,
but I decided to try.

'The worst ever

'act of terrorism directed at the
United States on domestic soil...'

In the days after September
11th, America was in shock

and in mourning.

The country closed in on itself.

'I'll go to help the
victims and their families.

'And to conduct a
full-scale investigation...'

'..cautions that the Israeli
government sources

'believe Osama Bin Laden
is in fact responsible.'

Peter Cheney began his hunt
for the falling man by having

the image enhanced.

I saw that he was black or Spanish,
he had a goatee and the jacket

was like a waiter's jacket and he
had black pants

and a particular type of shoe.

He was wearing what looked
like a restaurant worker's outfit.

Based on the odds, I thought that
this guy had most likely come from

the Windows On The World restaurant.

'..checked like five hospital
lists, we couldn't find anything.'

There were thousands of people
desperate for information about

their missing loved ones.

'..they were trapped,
you know, um...

'She was on the 79th floor,'

so everything around them
had collapsed already.

If I don't find him, I
have to start all over again.

It's taken me my entire life
to find him,

and I don't know what I will do
without him.

But no-one wanted to lay
claim to the falling man.

For 2 or 3 days I worked non-stop

to try and track down who
this person might be.

But I seemed to be getting nowhere.

I had called Windows On The World,
I had gone all over the city

looking at the missing posters
trying to find somebody who matched

this particular image. I'd had it.

I'd done everything I could think
of doing and it wasn't working.

Then, late one night,
wandering around Times Square,

Cheney came across a poster
of a missing man in a white jacket.

I had this instant
sort of recognition.

I thought it looked like the
man in Richard Drew's picture.

He looked an awful lot like him.

And I almost doubted myself. I said,
"How is it possible that I would do

"all this work and then chance
upon a poster in Times Square?"

The number led to
Milagros Hernandez.

She and her family had pinned
hundreds of posters across New York,

desperate for any news
about her brother Norberto.

He worked at Windows On The World.

I asked her if she and her family
had seen the picture in the paper.

She said yes. And I said
"Did you think it was your brother?"

She said yes. I said,
"Well, I'd like to tell his story."

Milagros was eager that Cheney
come with her

to her brother's funeral and meet
Norberto's family.

But they were incensed
that a journalist was there.

I was standing there,
crying, praying.

I believe I turned back, I see
a man with a photo.

My aunt...

I believe she call me over.

And I cursed and
I told him to get out.

"That's not my father, get out."

Excuse me for saying this but if I
had his address

I will go to his house and...

it wouldn't be so nice.

But some members of the extended
family did identify Norberto

as the falling man.

Cheney went ahead
and published his article.

The story quickly spread around
the world. When one of Norberto's

daughters heard about it, she got
on the internet to investigate.

When I typed up my dad's name on
a search engine,

there were 9,384 articles.

I'm like,
"Wow, let me open a couple."

"The jumper, the jumper."
It was in Czechoslovakian,

Yugoslavian, there was an Italian,
French and I can't read any of those

languages but I was able to pretty
much read out Norberto Hernandez,

jumper, World Trade Centre.
You see the picture.

Norberto's wife and three daughters

refused to accept that the image was
Norberto.

It flew in the face of their family
motto,

"Together forever", and their faith.

My father, he was a gentle giant.

He was 6'2", very quiet,
humble, barely heard him speak.

My father liked salsa. Especially
Salsa Kids and Il Grande Combo.

Dito Rojas. He always was
listening to that music.

He would never have put
us aside for anybody.

I mean, he was our main, he was the
main guy, you know, he was my father.

The thought that her father

could have jumped had a
profound psychological effect

on Norberto's youngest daughter,
Tatiana, 13 years old at the time.

I couldn't sleep.

I thought it was the truth.

I believe it probably was him. And
I started seeing him in the house.

One time I saw him like
creep over and then he was smiling.

And I was so scared cos I
thought everyone else saw it.

I was like, "Oh, my God,
did you see that?"

And they were like, "What did
you see?" "Didn't you see Papi?"

Because of her daughter's trauma,
Norberto's wife decided to leave

the family home of 25 years.

The family moved,
hoping for some peace.

'We were
together for nearly 30 years.

And I can put myself
in his situation.

There's a fire.
I'm on the 107th floor.

I'm not going to jump
through the window.

Because I'm thinking - and I
know what he was thinking -

he was thinking of me, his daughters,
his grandchildren and his mother.

"I'm not going to jump.

"I'm going to try to escape any way
possible - down the staircase,

"any way. But the last thing I would
do is jump out of the window."

But it was more than grief that
fuelled

the Hernandez's angry denial.

It was something more fundamental.

I'll say it as it is.

Once a person commits suicide,
their soul automatically goes

to hell with no questioning.

We weren't the most religious family
but we had our beliefs and we went

to church so by you calling him the
jumper, you're kind of saying

that his soul is damned.

You're telling me he's in hell.

I think that's mostly what got to
my mum. That's what got to me too.

To the Hernandezes, the
thought of their Norberto

jumping was impossible. To them it
was a betrayal of love and faith.

To others, identifying thefalling
man smacked of voyeurism.

The chef Michael Lomonaco had worked
with Norberto for nearly 14 years.

What do we stand to gain
by identifying this person?

What's the purpose of this? Why this

exercise in trying to look at this
photo and understand who's in it?

What will we ever know about this
photograph that it doesn't already

say on its own?

But Tom Junod was sure the only way
to remove the stigma surrounding

the falling man and the rest
of the jumpers was to discover

more about them.

I felt that the idea of people
jumping,

I felt that the falling man
had been sort of pushed to the side.

There was an element of exclusion
that he died improperly,

that we want to remember this
day... for its heroism.

And whether we think of the jumpers
as heroic or not, they should not be

excluded from the consecrated ground
of American soil because they died

in a way that makes us uncomfortable.

Junod was convinced that America
needed to confront the falling man,

a harrowing symbol of 9/11 instead
of pretending he didn't exist.

He then found someone who provided

justification for his mission,
someone who'd found comfort

and peace by accepting that his
loved one may have jumped.

It had to be so intense up there
and there was no other way out...

that it was either burn
alive or go quickly.

I envisioned that it had to be the

towering inferno and from the
photos I saw it obviously was.

Who knows how much smoke there
was in there,

you know, do you suffocate to death
or do you jump?

I think it was brave to do that.

When the media started posting
photographs

then I started searching to see
if Karen was one of those jumpers.

After a while it just
became an obsession with me.

I was so intense on
finding something.

I found some photos in my search
that I think was Karen jumping.

I know it's her because of
the clothes and the shape.

I would know her from a shadow.

She had a blue sweater-top,
sleeveless and cream coloured pants.

If you look at the pictures
I have, that's what I see.

It wasn't painful for some
reason, it really wasn't.

I finally have something
I can hold onto here.

This is where she was and this
is how she died - she jumped.

She didn't burn up,
she didn't become dust.

Nothing is more painful
than losing her,

but not knowing how
I lost her was even more painful.

So now that I believe that that's
what took place, it's not painful

for me to talk about it.

And if she jumped, she jumped.

If Tom Junod wanted to create an
acceptance of the image,

he would first need to create
an understanding of it.

He then discovered from the
photographer Richard Drew,

that the picture was just one
of a sequence of twelve.

When I looked at that series,

the out-takes, the story
became a different story for me.

I thought it was probably
a light-skinned black man.

Somebody who had his hair cut so
short that you could see his scalp.

Somebody who was tall, kind of lanky.

So that was also the beginning of
me thinking that, well this is...

This might not be Norberto Hernandez.
This might be someone else.

For Tom Junod, the search for
the falling man had just begun.

As the months passed,
the search for bodies was

replaced by a clean-up operation.

The goal now
was to remove any reminder

of the country's day of horror,
and begin the healing process.

One memory had been wiped from the
record long ago - the photograph

of a man falling from the sky, and
with it, the story of the jumpers.

Writer Tom Junod wanted to make sure
that healing didn't mean forgetting.

If America accepted
the image of the falling man,

that would never happen.

In his quest,

he then discovered that the
photograph was part of a sequence.

When I looked that...

series, the outtakes,

the story became
a different story for me.

He's clearly falling. It's not this
zen-like acceptance of his fate.

He's panicking,
he's rolling through the air.

As he does that, the turbulence
pulls his shirt off,

and the white shirt that
he's wearing comes off enough to

reveal that he is wearing underneath
that white shirt an orange t-shirt.

That was new information.

Junod reluctantly decided
to contact the Hernandez family.

He knew they were grief stricken
and angry at the media

for naming Norberto.

But if he could convince them to
look at the new photos, he would be

able to rule out, or confirm,
Norberto as the falling man.

Surprisingly,
the family agreed to see him.

You go to the house and it's
essentially a shrine to Norberto

and the life that
they had with Norberto.

And there's pictures of him
everywhere.

In the beginning, Catherine did
all the talking for her mother,

but as time went on, Eulogia
became more eager to tell the story.

Her eagerness was expressed
most positively

when I asked her if she knew
what Norberto had worn that morning.

Was he wearing an orange t-shirt?

No...

No, nunca.

'No, never.

'That day, he was wearing
black trainers, white socks,

'stonewashed blue jeans, and the
blue coloured shirt with patterns.'

While speaking to the family,
Junod was shocked to realise

that none of them had ever looked
at the original photo.

The thought had been too painful.

Here was an opportunity to confirm,

beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
Norberto was not the falling man.

He tentatively asked Catherine

whether she wanted to look.
She leapt at the chance.

As soon as I saw the picture,
I was like, "This isn't my dad."

The face and the colour,
it wasn't him.

You could immediately tell
it wasn't him.

Suddenly, Eulogia
was over our shoulders.

She had come out,
and she said, "Let me see those."

'I was curious.
I had to see it, I had to see it.

'It was obvious it wasn't him.

'From that day, everything changed
at home. Everything changed.

'I changed.

'I was no longer in such a bad way.

'Before that, I was in a bad way.

'In a very bad way.'

Catherine said, "I don't know what
I would have done if that was my dad.

I'd have had a nervous breakdown."

Everything they thought
their family represented

was contradicted by this picture.

The last thing that Eulogia left me
with as I got in my car and left,

she looked at me and she said,
"Please, clear my husband's name."

But Junod wanted to do more than
clear Norberto's name.

He wanted to clear the name
of all the jumpers.

He believed that by finding out more
about the life and death of one man,

he could do this.

He looked again at the reporter,
Cheney's, article.

When Peter Cheney did his story on
the falling man, he thought he could

see the face of the man, and that he
could see details that were enough.

Cheney looked at that picture,
saw the black pants and said he was

a kitchen worker, but in fact
most kitchen workers in New York

don't wear black pants, they wear
these black and white checked pants.

But in fact, Norberto was a chef

and would not have been
wearing black pants.

So, I don't know who it is.

I do know
it's not Norberto Hernandez.

But Junod did agree with one thing
in Cheney's article.

The falling man had come
from Windows on the World.

Good evening. Welcome to the greatest
bar, located in Windows on the World,

in the World Trade Center.
My name is Ernie Scott.

Since opening in 1976, Windows
had become a New York institution.

Customers loved the location,
and so did the staff.

Many of them had
worked there for years,

which had created an unusual
camaraderie among them.

It was just a good feel,
a good place.

Certain nights,
there'd be an incredible sunset.

We'd all stand there and go,
"Wow, isn't that cool?"

Just tiny things like that,
dumb things. People you met,

things you did, birthdays
you celebrated with each other.

People that became really part
of your extended family every day.

That family had been devastated
by September 11th,

when 79 of its members had perished.

But could one of them
have been the falling man?

Junod now hired a researcher
to help him.

They compiled a list
of 22 possible names,

based on age, race and body type.

They then asked surviving staff

whether they would consider
looking at the photos.

You're asking these people to look
at something that could possibly be

a colleague of theirs, could
possibly be a good friend of theirs.

This is not something that you...

You're not looking through
a high school yearbook with them.

This is something that you've really
got to approach respectfully.

For anyone who had lost
a friend or colleague,

this was a painful request.

Most took some time
to consider the idea.

I felt like it was my duty
and my responsibility to help

identify this person if I could.

There might be somebody out there
who would want to know that

their father was in this picture,
or their brother, or their son.

I was very nervous
before I looked at the pictures.

I was...

hopeful and terrified at the same
time that I would know who it was.

I didn't... In some ways, I did want
to know if it was one of our people,

but I really didn't want it
to be one of my people.

Not everyone felt they could help.

Michael Lomanaco had stood
and watched helplessly as smoke,

then flames, then people,
poured out of his restaurant.

I didn't want to see the photos,
I didn't want to be in the same room,

I didn't want to handle them,
I didn't want to participate in this.

Other Windows staff agreed
to meet with the researcher,

who brought with him
the falling man series of photos.

It was actually
very easy to eliminate

a lot of people right off the bat.

Literally, just went one by one
thinking about, was it this person,

was it this person, and reaching
a conclusion at the end

that it wasn't anyone
that I could positively identify.

As time passed, more and more names
on the list were ruled out.

Not the right body type, not the
right shoes, not the right hair.

Finally, there were just
a few names left,

and one last staff member to look.

We went through those pictures
with a fine toothcomb.

It didn't resonate in my mind
that it was anybody from our staff.

And in a way, I felt
really bad about that because

you want to give somebody an answer.

But in a way, I was so glad
it wasn't. So glad it wasn't.

The investigation
had reached a dead end.

America was moving on
from September 11th.

The falling man was in danger
of remaining in obscurity.

Then a breakthrough.

The chef, Michael Lomanaco,
agreed to look at the photos.

A few days later, over lunch,
he met with the researcher,

who had with him the pictures, and
the names that refused to go away.

"No, it can't be Charlie Moore,
it can't be Wilder,

"What about Junior? Can't be Junior.

"What about Jonathan?"

And he stopped.

Michael took a real close look,
and it took a while for him to be

ready to speak to me about that.

Jonathan was Jonathan Briley.

He was a sound engineer
who looked after conferences

and functions at the restaurant.

Jonathan fit the body type,

the size,

colouration of the person
in that photograph...

and it left the door open for me...

that there was a possibility
that it was really Jonathan.

Which, having known Jonathan, and
really admired him and liked him,

and I thought he was just
a terrific person, a good guy,

a hard working,
dedicated good guy,

with a great sense of humour,
and a person who embodied

an individual that I could call
"friend" and respect.

It offered me no comfort to think,
"Oh, that's Jonathan."

If it is Jonathan,

I can only feel so bad for him having
to have suffered the way he did.

And... you know...

I... I miss him.

He was somebody that I would
of have liked to have known forever.

Was Jonathan Briley
the falling man?

Every September 11th, two giant

shafts of light commemorate
where the twin towers once stood.

A dramatic image,
but it gives no clue

to the thousands who died that day.

One man believed
that a simple photo did.

He now believed
he knew who the man might be -

someone called Jonathan Briley.

Now, he needed confirmation
from the family.

Of all the interviews,
it was the most heartbreaking

because Jonathan Briley's father
was a preacher.

He said, "I'd like to talk to you,

"but I can't.

"For my life's work, I... I tell
people that they have to

"go on after tragedy."

And then he said
in that same impossible voice,

"But I can't do this,
I can't do it for myself."

The Reverend Briley
suggested that Junod talk to

Jonathan's older sister, Gwendolyn.

She'd been especially
close to Jonathan.

Jonathan...

Jonathan Eric Briley was
this person that just loved life.

And it was contagious. So, when you
were around him, you couldn't help

but smiling and laughing.

Every time Jonathan comes to mind,
he's walking

and he's talking and he's smiling
and he had this bounce in his step.

He was one of these special people
that could spread himself

around the whole family
and we all got, erm,

our piece of Jonathan.

In the days after the attack,
the Brileys waited for his return,

a phone call, anything.

As the days passed, their hopes
of finding him alive faded.

Reverend Briley gathered
the family in prayer.

He talked to God

like someone who absolutely knew

that he existed.

He says, "I believe you
can create a miracle.

"I want my miracle."

He said, "I have loved you,

"I do love you, I believe you,
I have served you.

"I want to know where my son is."

The next day,

we got a phone call
from the coroner.

He said to come down,
they'd found Jonathan.

We knew where he was.

That was a gift.
That was a gift from God.

The coroner's office
identified Jonathan through DNA

and dental analysis.

Jonathan's younger brother Timothy
had the painful experience

of confirming the identification.

Timothy recognised his shoes
and his hands.

He said... he said, "I would know
my brother's hands and his feet."

He took one of his shoes
and he kept it.

They were black tennis shoes,

lace up, and they had the Velcro
thing around the... the ankle.

I didn't remember

anything about an orange t-shirt but
when I talked with Timothy he did,

he talked to me about how Jonathan
had this orange t-shirt

and they would tease him
cos he wore it all the time.

Could Jonathan be the falling man?

When I first looked at it,

it was almost like touching a hot
stove, you just... your mind just...

I looked at the figure

and I saw it was a man.

Tall, slim.

"Wow!" I looked at him and said,
"If I didn't know any better...

"..that could be Jonathan."

But for Gwendolyn, the identity
of the falling man didn't matter.

She understood that it symbolised
something far more significant

than a single individual.

I never thought of
the falling man as Jonathan.

But I thought of

him as a man that just...

..took his life
in his hand for just that second.

Did that person have so much faith

that he knew that
God would catch him?

Or was he so afraid
to experience the end

up there?

That's something I'll never know
because that happened to him.

I hope we're not trying
to figure out who he is

and more, figure out whoweare

through watching that.

Tom Junod could never be
absolutely certain

that Jonathan Briley
was the falling man.

But he'd learned something
far more important from Gwendolyn -

the man's identity didn't matter.

The power of the image came
not because the falling man

could be identified,

but because he couldn't.

# Oh, say can you see

# By the dawn's early light... #

What that day needed more than
anything else was essentially

what a lot of other wars had,
which was a tomb for the unknown.

What makes the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier so poignant

is the fact that he is unknown.

It's not the fact that he is
identified, it's the fact that

one has been made to stand for many.

When Richard took that picture,
I believe that he took a picture

that really stood as the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier for that day.

Tom Junod's quest had revealed just
how important the falling man was.

The image didn't
insult those who died -

rather, it was a fitting
and just memorial to them,

because it forced the world
to acknowledge and remember

the terrible events of that day.

One of the reasons why I became
so determined to plumb the meaning

of the falling man was that
we can't hope to understand

these incredible times unless we

look at these images and
accept the witness of these images.

And I think that looking at
the falling man and to discuss it

is the only option that we have,
given that there is a falling man.