WTC Flag Missing

[CAM502 6]

September 4, 2006 -- The historic flag raised by three firefighters at Ground Zero on 9/11 has vanished, and the city has launched a probe into its disappearance.

The famed 4-by-6-foot flag is a central element of an iconic photograph that has raised $10 million for 9/11 responders.

Millions have seen it, yet it mysteriously vanished from its pole at Ground Zero - to be replaced by a slightly larger, 5-by-8 flag.

"My guess is, someone said, 'This flag is pretty small. This is a big flagpole. Let's put a bigger flag up,' " said Shirley Dreifus, who owns the flag with her husband, Spiros Kopelakis.

"So down came the 4-by-6-foot flag, and up went a 5-by-8-foot replacement."

Mayor Bloomberg has ordered the Fire Department to find out why.

Hours after the World Trade Center attack, firefighter Dan McWilliams borrowed the flag from the couple's yacht, which was docked near the World Financial Center.

McWilliams and two colleagues, George Johnson and Bill Eisengrein, then raised the flag over the rubble as Bergen Record photographer Thomas Franklin snapped their picture.

The image is reminiscent of the famous photo of Marines propping up Old Glory against a backdrop of destruction during the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

The WTC-flag photo appeared on the front page of The Record on Sept. 12, the cover of The Post on Sept. 13, and since then has been widely reproduced - even on a postage stamp.

But as the picture made its way into the public consciousness, the famous flag vanished without a trace.

Dreifus suspects that whoever took the smaller flag simply kept it.

"People don't crumple a flag and throw it in a corner. You are trained to take down the flag and fold it," she reasoned.

For months after the switch, everyone took the 5-by-8 flag to be the genuine article.

Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Gov. Pataki signed it. It appeared at a memorial service at Yankee Stadium, flew at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games, was lent to an aircraft carrier headed to the Arabian Sea to support the Afghanistan campaign, and was hung from City Hall.

It wasn't until August 2002, when it was loaned back to Dreifus and Kopelakis, that anyone realized it wasn't the flag in Franklin's photo.

"The one we got, which had the signatures, was not the one from our boat," Dreifus said.

She returned the 5-by-8 flag to the city.

There's some hope the flag could turn up in the next few weeks. That's because New York's five-year statute of limitations on the theft or misappropriation of the flag will soon run out, allowing whoever has the flag to come forward with little fear of prosecution.

Dreifus hopes that when it is recovered, the original flag could eventually be displayed at Ground Zero or maybe even in the Smithsonian.

"I think the flag should be preserved," she said.

"It's a shame that it's gone. I guess in the scope of people losing their lives, it's only one small thing. But still."

bill.sanderson@nypost.com

[Guest]

Obviously an interesting topic to me....

Some food for thought from "Soldiers for the Truth"

"D + 4 on Iwo Jima was Friday,February 23,1945.At about 10:30 hours I was standing on the broad rim of the crater on top of Suribachi looking up at our colors snapping in the breeze.

Suddenly something extraordinary happened.We could clearly hear cheering from the Marines in combat on the plain of Iwo below us.They had spotted the flag and as the word spread more Marines joined in cheering our flag crowning Suribachi some 500 feet above.Soon the boats along the landing beaches and the ships at sea joined in blowing horns and whistles.It was a remarkable moment in Marine battle history but unfortunately soon to be forgotten.

I was PFC Raymond Jacobs,the radioman with F Company 2nd Battalion 28th Marines.About 40 minutes earlier I had been assigned to accompany an E Company combat patrol for the climb up Suribachi to supply communications between the patrol and battalion.The patrol was led by Lt.Harold Shrier,E Company XO. At the top I watched as Lt.Shrier,Sgts.Henry Hansen and Ernest Thomas,Cpl.Charles Lindberg and Pvt Phil Ward secured the flag to a piece of Japanese water pipe.

Joined by PhM2c John Bradley they walked the flag and pipe over to the high ground,jammed it into the ground and raised the flag.

Leatherneck cameraman Sgt.Lou Lowery had been with the patrol since it was formed.He faithfully followed the patrol taking pictures of the people and our movements every step of the way.In particular,he shot about a dozen pictures of the group of eight people most associated with the flag raising.

Lowery's pictures clearly show the faces of those people. Yet for decades the official Marine Corps record of that event has failed to identify or misidentified five of the people pictured in Lowery's photos?

Obviously,given the time and place,no one was interested in gathering names for the record...but there were other forces at work.

Two hours later photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped a picture of five Marines and a Corpsman raising a replacement flag for the smaller original flag.His picture rightly captured the imagination of the American public.

It was a masterpiece of photography and gave a tremendous boost to the image of the Marine Corps in the eyes of the public."

There is film footage of "both" flag-raisings on Mt. Suribachi. The Marine Corps Memorial at Arlington captures the event most movingly...as all of the Marine campaigns encircle the base of the statue--just like battle ribbons. American blood flowed mightily in the Pacific theater.

September 11, 2001--another battle ribbon added.

Joseph Rosenthal, rest in peace.

God Bless America

[IzzyEng4 427]

Controversy for a flag that has been unde controversy since 9-11. The flag that was raised by our three brothers that day was supposed to be taken for a boat somewhere berthe off Battery Park, according to the owner of the boat if memory serves me correct.

Reguardless of this, I hope there was no "back door" loosing of this icon of our nation nor anyone trying to replace it or taking it for their own needs. This flag is our nation's icon, Our Flag, and it better be found soon.

[mfc2257 464]

Controversy for a flag that has been unde controversy since 9-11.  The flag that was raised by our three brothers that day was supposed to be taken for a boat somewhere berthe off Battery Park, according to the owner of the boat if memory serves me correct.

Reguardless of this, I hope there was no "back door" loosing of this icon of our nation nor anyone trying to replace it or taking it for their own needs.  This flag is our nation's icon, Our Flag, and it better be found soon.

←

This is a true story. The Yacht was/is owned by the parents of a former co worker of mine.

I can't confirm this part, but I believe the missing flag problem began several months after September 11th when as a courtesy, some officials went to return the flag to the people who owned the boat. When they saw the flag they indicated that the flag couldn't have been the one taken off the boat on 9/11/01 because it was too big.

Regardless, whomever has the flag should do the right thing here.

[Guest]

Found this from August 30, 2006 USAToday:

NEW YORK — On April 1, 2002, a flag that had become the emblem of American resilience was unfurled in a solemn, wordless ceremony outside City Hall.

Hours after the 9/11 attacks, three firefighters had spontaneously used a U.S. flag taken off a yacht and raised it in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. A newspaper photographer captured the scene, creating a classic image.

Seven months later, the three firemen were guests of honor as the flag was run up the City Hall pole. But Dan McWilliams, one of the firemen, said softly, "That's not the flag."

Bill Kelly, the firefighters' lawyer, stared at him. "That's much bigger than the one we put up," McWilliams explained. Kelly says he looked at the other two firemen: "They said, 'No, that's not it.' " The men said nothing more, and the flag flew at City Hall for a week before beginning a tour of police stations and firehouses.

It was an impostor. Five years after 9/11, the day's most famous artifact is still missing.

"It's a piece of history," says Shirley Dreifus, owner of the yacht from which one of the firemen took the flag. "I don't think the average citizen knows it's missing."

The flag in the photograph taken on 9/11 by Thomas Franklin of The Record of Bergen County, N.J., was 3 feet by 5 feet. The one raised at City Hall — and flown at Yankee Stadium and on warships and once destined for the Smithsonian — is 5 by 8.

How did the flags get switched? Did someone replace the smaller with the larger at Ground Zero? If so, why? And what happened to the original?

Photo captured a moment

The three firemen raised the flag at the darkest hour of one of the darkest days in U.S. history. The twin towers were in smithereens. After six hours of searching, it was apparent there were few survivors.

As McWilliams walked past a yacht docked on the Hudson River, he spotted an American flag attached to a broken wooden pole. He grabbed it and walked back toward Ground Zero, joined en route by George Johnson, a member of his Brooklyn ladder company, and Billy Eisengrein, whom he'd known since they were kids on Staten Island.

At Ground Zero, the firefighters found a long metal flagpole jutting at a 45-degree angle from a ledge about 20 feet above the ground. They climbed up and began rigging the flag to the pole.

They never saw Franklin, who took the picture from about 100 feet away. As he was shooting, he thought of the famous photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima in 1945.

The Record sent the photo to the Associated Press — and through its network to the world. Over the next year the image appeared on U.S. commandos' "calling cards" on the battlefields of Afghanistan, on a postage stamp, on the side of a barn in Upstate New York.

Within 10 days after it was raised, the flag — or rather, a flag — was taken down by the fire department; the Navy wanted to borrow it for display on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, heading to the Arabian Sea off Afghanistan.

On Sept. 23, the same flag appeared at a service at Yankee Stadium, where it was signed by Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the fire and police commissioners. Then it was flown off to the Roosevelt.

In January 2002, Shirley Dreifus called USA TODAY to say the flag came from the yacht Star of America, owned by her and her husband. The firefighters signed an affidavit confirming that claim.

In March, as the carrier returned to Norfolk, Va., Johnson and Eisengrein were flown onboard to accept the flag, folded in a triangle, on behalf of the city.

That summer, Dreifus asked the city to borrow the flag for a firefighters' fundraiser on the yacht. When she got the flag, she realized it was too big to have been the yacht's.

"I don't doubt it flew at Ground Zero," Dreifus says of the larger flag — it even smelled of smoke. "It just wasn't the one from our boat."

Pressing the search

They demanded that the city find the right one. In what Dreifus describes as an attempt to "put some energy" behind the search, they sued the city for $525,000 — the price at which appraisers valued the flag, which originally cost $50.

The city couldn't find the flag, and the suit was dropped. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he didn't know where the flag was: "I don't know where Osama bin Laden is, either."

Coincidentally, two flags also were raised on Iwo Jima by different groups of servicemen. The second, larger one was in the Associated Press photo; both are in the Marine Corps collection in Quantico, Va.

David Friend, a Vanity Fair editor and author of a new book on the visual images of 9/11, says he believes the flag was switched within days.

The three firemen have declined interview requests over the past five years. But Friend's book, Watching the World Change, quotes Billy Eisengrein as saying that while working at Ground Zero a few days after 9/11, he noticed the flag was gone from the pole: "Who took it down, I have no idea."

Was the first flag replaced because it was too small? Was it lowered when it began to rain and innocently switched with another flag found at the site? Did someone in the fire department not want to let the Navy borrow it? Once the photo appeared on the front page of the New York Post on Sept. 13, did a thief realize its value? Was Ground Zero in the week after the attack still sufficiently chaotic to allow someone to take the flag unnoticed?

Dreifus keeps an eye on the Internet to make sure no one tries to sell it: "I think whoever took it down must know what it was."

[Guest]

Found this on Sept. 8, 2006 The Golden Eagle

USS JOHN C. STENNIS (CVN 74) in port, Naval Base Kitsap, Bremerton – Protecting what is perhaps one of the most important American artifacts of the War on Terror, and the price of freedom, USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) proudly remains the home of a ground zero flag.

“May I see the flag?†guests often aboard Stennis ask. It’s something special. Recovered from the debris of the fallen World Trade Center, Tower Two, more then five years ago; the flag continues to capture the imagination of all who see it.

On Sept. 25, 2001, the crew of the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) was preparing to deliver America’s response to the attack of 9-11.

Across the country, guarding the still smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center Towers, Sergeant Karl Hagstrom, of the New York City Police Department, tired and covered in dust, was working perimeter security.

His eye caught something laying on the debris near the ruins of the North Tower. In the backdrop of the burnt steel, dust and ash, he discovered an American flag that had been flying on September 11th. In the world of, the late, Sir Francis Scott Key, “Our flag was still there.â€

Like witnessing the fist signs of life after a forest fire, Hagstrom knew he had found something important. First he contacted New York’s senators, nothing; and then the governor’s office, still nothing. Next he tried contacting the Smithsonian. Curiously, no one responded.

Determined that the flag find an appropriate home, Hagstrom saw news reporting that the Stennis Strike Group was deploying to launch air strikes against al Qaeda at their strong hold deep inside Afghanistan. He knew what needed to be done; Stennis should take the flag with them into battle. As the strike group moved into position, Hagstrom contacted the ship. Plans were made to deliver the flag. Word spread quickly, and the whole ship was alive with purpose.

The flag accompanied the F/A-18 Hornet on the ship’s first bombing mission. As a bombs rained down on the region to Tora Bara Mountains, the flag was there. On Dec. 17, 2005 2,996 people are still reported missing or dead from the 911 attacks. Thousands of Americans were never found in the debris. The Ground Zero flag, now serves as a quiet reminder of the immense sacrifice required to establish and maintain this great nation.

Surge ready, USS John C. Stennis’ Strike Group is to deploy early 2007.

[CAM502 6]

I happened (by sheer luck) to be on the yacht Star of Amaerica on Saturday night for a dinner cruise. They have a 9/11 memorial on the boat and some framed articles about the flag. They say there has been no updates on it's whereabouts.