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NEW
YORK Sept. 6 —
The only
videotape known to have captured both planes slamming into the World Trade
Center, and only the second image of the first strike, has surfaced days before
the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The footage,
obtained by The New York Times, was taken by a Czech immigant construction
worker whose son at one point came close to accidentally erasing the rare,
chilling footage, the newspaper reported on its Web site Saturday.
Federal
officials investigating the trade center collapse are trying to obtain a
copy of the hourlong tape, which could cast light on the cause of the north
tower's collapse by helping to determine factors including the exact speed
at which the first plane traveled, The Times said.
The only
other known footage of the first plane's impact came from a French film
crew making a documentary about a probationary firefighter.
Pavel Hlava,
an immigrant construction worker from the Czech Republic, shot footage of
the first plane hitting the north tower as a sport utility vehicle he was
riding in entered the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel en route to lower Manhattan.
Hlava, who
made the tape looking at the camera's relatively low-resolution LCD
display, told the Times he did not see the first plane as he focused on the
towers. But the tape shows a whitish object hitting the tower, followed by
dust spurting from the tower's side and a silvery, expanding cloud.
Passing
through the tunnel, Hlava, his brother and his boss heard a radio report
that a small private plane had hit the World Trade Center, straight ahead
outside the tunnel. That hardly prepared them for what they saw when they
emerged: the north tower, looming over them, bursting with flames.
As Hlava
continued filming, the second jet shrieked behind him. He caught the plane
as it shot into the south tower, exploding into an orange fireball and
sending papers flying in every direction. Later, after crossing the
Brooklyn Bridge, he focused on the buildings again as the south tower
tilted to one side and collapsed.
Hlava and
his brother, Josef, unsuccessfully tried to sell the tape in New York and
in the Czech Republic, the newspaper said.
Hlava said
through a Czech-language translator that language difficulties hindered his
ability to sell or release the tape to the media. He also said that so much
time had passed that he had doubted there was still interest in the tape.
"All
his friends, they told him, 'Hey, you made a mistake. You waited too
long,'" translator David Melichar told The Times.
Hlava's
boss, who was driving the SUV, also had strong objections to selling the
tape, Melichar said.
Hlava and
Melichar's numbers are not listed and attempts by The Associated Press to
reach them were unsuccessful.
In the weeks
and months after the attack, the tape sat in Hlava's apartment in the
Ridgewood section of Queens.
On one
occasion, Hlava said he noticed that his son was playing with the video
camera and erasing the tape. Hlava snatched the camera away before either
of the plane impacts were erased.
A friend of
Hlava's wife obtained a copy of the tape and traded it to another Czech
immigrant to pay off a bar tab. Another woman learned of the existence of
the copy brought it to the attention of a freelance news photographer who
took the tape to The Times.
The
photographer, Walter Karling, who now describes himself as Hlava's agent,
said it had not been sold to any television station. The Times said it had
not paid for the tape.
Karling's
number was not published and he could not be reached for comment by The
Associated Press.
The tape was
scheduled to be shown Sunday morning on the ABC program "This
Week." It was unclear where ABC got the tape; Times spokesman Toby
Usnik said the newspaper had not given copies to any other media. A message
left with an ABC spokesman was not immediately returned Saturday evening.
Copyright
2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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