Original subtitles

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.