September 11 pager messages released online by activists

Friday, November 27, 2009

AN activist group has begun posting 573,000 pager messages purportedly sent on September 11, 2001.

The messages range from "Second World Trade Centre tower collapses" to "I’m OK & love you… xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox".

The group, Wikileaks, says some of the messages were sent by government and local officials, but most appear to be from regular people, including frantic New Yorkers trying to reach loved ones in and around the World Trade Centre.

Wikileaks was posting the messages for most of Wednesday and was expected to finish last night.

The messages include "DO NOT GET ON THE PATH TRAIN... THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE IS ON FIRE" and "President has been rerouted wont be returning to washington but not sure where he will go."

One says: "THIS IS MYRNA, I WILL NOT REST UNTIL YOU GO HOME, THE SECOND TOWER IS DOWN, I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO KEEP CALLING YOU AFTER EVERY EVENT. PLS JUST GO HOME."

Some are unrelated to the terrorist attacks: "Paul, Jerry and I feel that we can expect around 200 people for the Pig Picking. Call if you want to. Keith".

Wikileaks says its goal is to promote transparency by putting leaked documents online. Its repository includes manuals, lawsuits and numerous government documents.

Daniel Schmitt, a Wikileaks spokesman, said the pager messages were submitted to the site anonymously several weeks ago.

"From the context information that the source provided we have strong reasons to believe that this is valid data," he said.

Publishing the messages "is one more building block to getting a full picture of what happened on that day", he said.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, November 27, 2009