All language subtitles for 911.The.Falling.Man.2006.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG2_English

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 the people who
had 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.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

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

You 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 storeys 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, dish washers,

tourists, cleaners, IT specialists,

insurance salesmen,
maintenance men...

Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the greatest bar

here, located at Windows on the
World, in 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
1,500ft above the ground.

"Tuesday, September 11. I'm James Farraday.

And here's what's happening.
Thousands of New Yorkers..."

September 11, 2001
was just another ordinary day.

"Lower humidity than recently —
the high 80 dropping to 60 tonight.

Up to 78 with sunshine tomorrow,
76 Thursday."

This is Steve Tory.

It appears Michael Jordan

will indeed be coming out
of retirement...

[SCREAMING]

8:46am.

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 swathe
through floors 93 to 99,

instantly killing hundreds.

Almost immediately,

broadcasters began
to transmit images across the world.

Let's get this update
from 101OWINS correspondent...

I'm looking at
the World Trade Center...

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

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

I've now moved inside
a building. But all the buildings...

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, so...

And I was gonna 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 couldn't process
that information.

I was like, “106th floor
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 had stopped at an optician's.

How could that happen?

How could a plane on this beautiful
crystal-clear blue-sky day,

you know, run into the building?

How could that happen?

I started to take stock
of, you know, 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 that
I could do, but I couldn't leave.

And all I could think about

were my friends,
my colleagues, my co-workers.

And trying... just desperately

to pray that they could get out,

that they could get to the fire exits,
get down those fire stairs.

[MUFFLED RADIO
COMMUNICATION]

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 in the instant that it hit

spread so far that people
standing in the lobby were burned

from the fireball that came out
of the elevator shaft.

And 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 out.

I was crying and my boss came into
my office and he's like, you know,

“It's OK. It's just a fire.

They're gonna put it out
and 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."

[SIREN WAILS, HORN BLARES]

The people trapped
on the upper floors

inundated the emergency services
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 a woman EMS worker.

And all of a sudden,
the woman says, “Oh, look”,

and she pointed up
and we both looked up...

...all three of us looked up

and the people started coming down
from the World Trade Center.

Bodies were falling,

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

That's what I do.
It's like a carpenter, you know?

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 anymore

'cause 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.

Oh my God!

Broadcasters were pulling back.

They weren't showing
the people falling.

They were reporting them.

What did you see happen?

People are jumping
out the windows over there.

They're jumping out the windows —

I guess because
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 an accident.

[CRASH!]

[Woman screams]

When United Airlines flight 175
crashed into the south tower,

millions saw it live.

[Woman screams]
Oh my God!

A second plane
crashed into number 2.

And my brother's a photoj...

You can't even see
down Broadway

from the vantage point of City Hall.

I've now moved inside a building,
but all the buildings along Broadway

here at City Hall
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
his wife now found herself in.

The phone rang
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 Alayne worked there.

We had 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 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."

She told me that smoke
was coming into the room,

was coming through the vents

and that 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.

[SCREAMING AND HUBBUB]

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,

“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 anymore.

She said to me, “I'm scared.”

She wasn't a person who got scared.

And I said, “Honey, it'll
be alright, it'll be alright.

You'll get down, you'll get down.”

Alayne said
that she and her colleagues

felt they 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,
of course I will,

but it's going to be alright.”

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...

[Sighs]

...I was horrified.

Jack Gentul doesn't know
what happened next,

but he 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
that 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 and to be out in the air...

...it must've felt like flying.

It's gonna fall.

What's going on?
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, shit!
The World Trade just...

0h, my God!

The whole building collapsed!

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

and that helps me sort of separate it,
I guess, psychologically.

What Drew didn't realise

was that he'd already captured
an image so shocking,

so representative
of the horror of the day,

that it would ignite controversy
and anger across the world.

Nothing's taking off.
All the airports are closed down.

The roads are closed down.

The twin disaster
at the World Trade Center

happening shortly before 9:00am,
then right around 9:00am

and then, just a little while ago,
a third explosion

which actually brought down
the south tower.

1010WINS reporter Juliet Papa
is down around...

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.

Oh my God!

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.

[RADIO BABBLE]

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 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
that I knew so well

and that only made it worse.

Firefighters 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 7O 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",
to me, that sounds 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 were 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 are 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 the 109th
floor of the World Trade Center.

No rational person
would ever do that.

Holy shit! Oh my God!

They're jumping!

Numerous people are jumping.

Numerous people are jumping.

There were things that were so big
that were falling.

And, um...

...it was terrifying and horrifying

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

Maybe that thought was just too...

...too horrendous,
too horrifying to me.

Others did see what was happening.

Lonely 10-second journeys.
A very public way of dying.

The only visible fatalities
in a day that claimed thousands.

Surely we're in the middle

of the worst ever act of terrorism
directed at the United States

on domestic soil.

And it may not be over.

Sources ascertain
at the Fox News channel...

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.
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's wrong

because he's on the phone,
he's calling me, so he must be OK.

He's at the bar or on the street

or he's using somebody else's
cellphone or he's on a payphone.

And he says it again. He just
says it 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. 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.

That's when he said to me, he goes,
“Iliana, you don't understand.

There are people jumping from the...”
[Sobs]

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 bad.

This is very bad”,
'cause 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,
“OK, I've gotta escape this fire.”

And you think,
“Well, I might survive.

I might get broken legs
or a broken back or...”

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 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 for him
'cause he said,

“I love you. Take care of Caitlin”,
who's our little girl.

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

And he says, “If we get out of here,
it's gonna be a miracle.”

And the last thing he said was,
“I've gotta get down on the floor.”

And that's when
I lost the connection.

And I tried again, but I just...
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.

OH, MY GOD!
IT'S COMING DOWN!

Let's go!

IT'S COMING DOWN!

Shit.
[SIREN WAILS IN THE DISTANCE]

[MUFFLED RADIO
COMMUNICATIONS]

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, over

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 midsized 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 gonna 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.

[LOW-LEVEL CONVERSATION]

Among them was the falling man.

It felt like I was punched
in the stomach, you know'?

It was such a strong image.

It was hard to look at.

You feel like it's a private moment.

It 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 Vietcong prisoner,

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's a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo,

and that's exactly
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 were concerned.

We'd still discuss the concern.

Naomi was very passionate
about the photo.

She believed there are photos
in history that are flashpoints,

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 into 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
misdirected anger, but we get it.

[PRINTER WHIRRS]

On the morning
of September 12,

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 canvass American opinion.

Its response was unequivocal.

“To the editor,
It was with utter disgust that,

as I read the September 12 edition,

I turned a page, only to see
a large photo of some poor soul

plummeting 1,000 feet headfirst
to certain death.”

“Do not let your children
read the 'Morning Call'.

The half-page colour picture
of a man falling out of the window

was used in such poorjudgment.”

I'm not an angry guy.

I'm pretty much
a very passive person.

Nothing fazes me.
I'm very light-hearted.

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

We had more response on this photo

than I believe we've ever seen
on any photo published —

and a passionate response —
and that's saying a lot.

I'd 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 were 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've not run it since that day,
since September 12.

We just couldn't, you know, scratch
at that scab again, 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 everyday

about the person who was in it —

you know, he looked like any guy
who you see in the city.

And yet there was something,
you know, 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.

[MUFFLED RADIO
COMMUNICATIONS]

In the days
following September 11,

there was a desperate search
for survivors.

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

Firefighters worked tirelessly
around the clock,

hunting for any sign of life.

Americans had recoiled
from the falling man.

But now, pictures of the rescuers

were something the nation
could celebrate and rally around.

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

There was a spin
that came out of our feeling

of being so deeply wounded
on that day

which was that, you know,
“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 11

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 just things
about that day

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”, you know.

“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,

and it may not be over.

In the days
after September 11,

America was in shock and in mourning.

The country closed in on itself.

I've ordered that the full resources

of the Federal Government

go to help the victims
and their families...

...and to conduct
a full-scale investigation

to hunt down and to find those
who committed this act.

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 more like
a waiter's jacket

and he had black pants
and a particular type of shoe.

And 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.

We have checked, like,
four or 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...

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 two or three days,
I worked nonstop

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
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 newspaper.

She said, “Yes.”

And I said, “Did you think it was
your brother?”, and 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
when they discovered

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 called me over...

And I cursed him.
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 would go 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 the 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 Center”,

and 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 El Gran Combo.

And Tito Rojas.

He always was listening
to that music.

He would never
put us aside for anybody.

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

The thought
that her father could've 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 believed that. I was, like,
“Oh, it probably was him”, you know.

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, 'cause
I thought everyone else saw it.

I was, like, “Oh my God.
Did you see that?”

They're, like, “What? What?”

I'm, like, “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.

[Speaks Spanish]

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 gonna 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 gonna 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.”

[MUFFLED RADIO
COMMUNICATIONS]

But it was more than grief

that fuelled
the Hernandezes' angry denial.

It was something more fundamental.

I'll say it as this —

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 mom.

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, the idea
of identifying the falling 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
that 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 jumpers,
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.

[MUFFLED RADIO
COMMUNICATIONS]

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
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
just finding something.

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

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

I would know her from a shadow.

She had a blue sweater top on,
sleeveless,

and cream-coloured pants.

If you look at the pictures
that I have,

I mean, that's what I see.

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

I finally, you know, have something
I can hold on to.

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 12.

When I looked at that series —
the outtakes —

the story became
a different story for me.

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

Someone 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 might not be
Norberto Hernandez after all.

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.

When I looked at that series —
the outtakes —

the story became
a different story for me.

He's clearly falling.

It's not this almost Zen-like
acceptance of his fate.

He is panicking,
he is rolling through the air.

As he does that,

the turbulence pulls his shirt off

and the white shirt
that he is wearing comes off enough

to reveal that he is wearing
underneath that white shirt

an orange T-shirt.

Well, 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,
you know, everywhere.

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

But as time went on,
Eulogia became more and more eager

to tell, you know, the story.

And 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. [Laughs]
No. [Speaks Spanish]

No. No. Never.

That day he was wearing
black trainers,

white socks,

stonewash blue jeans

and a 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 think, “This isn't my dad.”

The facial... and the colour...
It wasn't him.

And you could immediately tell
it wasn't him.

Suddenly,
Eulogia was over our shoulder.

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've done if that was my father.

I think I would've had
a nervous breakdown.”

Everything that they thought
that 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
'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 that he was
a kitchen worker.

But, in fact, most kitchen workers,
in New York at least,

don't wear black pants,

they wear these
black-and-white check pants.

But, in fact, Norberto was a chef

and would not have been wearing
black pants.

So, I don't know who it is.

But 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,
ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the greatest bar,
here located at 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 feeling.
It was a good place.

You know, certain nights
there'd be an incredible sunset.

You know, we'd all stand there
and go, “Wow! Isn't that cool?”

You know, just tiny things
like that. Dumb things.

You know, people that you met,
things that you did,

birthdays that you celebrated
with each other.

People that, you know,

just became really part
of your extended family every day.

That family had been devastated
by September 11

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... I...

I guess 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 Lomonaco
had stood and watched helplessly

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

My reaction to the photographs
was I didn't want to see them,

I didn't want to be
in the room with them,

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

and 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 tooth comb.

It just...
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 11.

The falling man was in danger
of remaining in obscurity.

Then a breakthrough.

The chef, Michael Lomonaco,
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 Wielder.

What about Junior?
It can't be Junior.

Um, 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... a good guy.

A hardworking, 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, um...

You know, I...

...I miss him.

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

Was Jonathan Briley the falling man?

Every September 11,

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 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 that 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, um... 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 sewed you.

I want to know where my son is.”

The next day, we had a phone call
from the coroner,

said to come down.

They 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, “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 then had
the velcro thing around the ankle.

I didn't remember anything
about an orange T-shirt,

but when I talked with Timothy,
he did.

He talked about how Jonathan
had this orange T-shirt

and they would tease him
because 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 it and I 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.

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 who we are...

...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.

[CHOIR SINGS
AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM]

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.

[People read names of the deceased]

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.

I mean, 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.

[Woman reads names of the deceased]