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Fraudulent Sept. 11 survivor degrades tragedy |
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Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
We constantly hear about the evils of terrorists and how we cannot let them win, but what happens when the evil we claim to be fighting lies within our own citizens?
Tania Head, former president of World Trade Center Survivor’s Network, co-founded the organization after bonding with other 9/11 survivors following the tragedy.
Head also publicized her survival story to the media, college students, citizens and political figures.
However,
news organizations have recently reported that maybe Head’s story is
not true after all, as her claims have failed to match investigations.
According to an article published in The New York Times titled “In a
9/11 Survival Tale, the Pieces Just Don’t Fit,” Head claimed that on
the day of the attacks she was on the 78th floor of the south tower and
was badly burned when the planes crashed.
If her story is accurate, she would be one of 19 survivors who were above one of the plane’s impact points.
Head said she crawled through the building and encountered a dying man
who gave her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to
his widow.
She also claimed that another stranger saved her life by putting out
her burning clothes and, finally, that her fiancé and/or husband,
depending on the day she was being interviewed, died in the north tower.
To date, no portion of this story has proven correct.
It is people like Head who are creating distrust between American
citizens and making me wonder why our soldiers are in another country
fighting for people who take advantage of each other’s tragedies.
Head has managed to fly under the radar for the past three years and pull the wool over the eyes of the American people.
What is most disheartening is the possibility that she will get away
with this disgusting act without punishment since she has not received
monetary gain from it.
According to the article, the family and friends of the man she was
supposedly engaged/married to have no knowledge of her existence, the
Merrill Lynch & Company for whom she claimed to work have no record
of her employment there, and no names were ever established for the man
she claimed to take the ring from.
Head has refused to speak about any of these issues and has canceled
several interviews and events citing her privacy and emotional turmoil.
She has been urged to come forth with validation to her claim by members of the survivor’s network and has yet to do so.
It has been investigated whether Head received any financial benefit
for her work with the survivor’s network or from the federal survivor’s
fund but it appears as though she has never applied to receive any
money and she was not financially compensated for her job as president
of the survivor’s network nor was she paid for the tours she gave of
Ground Zero.
While Head has not benefited financially for her harrowing account of
the events that took place on 9/11, she has abused the sympathy and
trust of the American people.
On top of that, she has degraded the real survivors who will now have to question who they can trust other supposed survivors.
We spend so much time focusing on the wrongdoings of other countries
that we lost sight of the horrible things that our own citizens are
guilty of.
This woman has spent the past three years as a representative to
millions as a survivor with a beautiful story of survival and endurance
and in the end, it cannot even be determined whether she ever had
anything to do with the twin towers on 9/11.
Maybe it will come out that the story is true and facts have just been
overlooked or researched improperly during the investigation.
However, with as many inconsistencies and holes as there are at the
moment, the idea that a few, if any, facts turn out to be true is slim
to none.
I believe we will learn over the coming months that Head is guilty of
fabricating her story and unfortunately enough, that this will lead to
investigations of other true survivors.
I just hope this will not lead us to find more people in the world like Head.
Lindsay Craven, a senior journalism and advertising major from Pilot Mountain, is a lifestyles reporter.
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