The sacked head of a 9/11 survivors network came under fire on Friday, accused of betraying Sept. 11 victims after a report alleged she invented her tale of living through the attacks on the twin towers.
"We were, I thought, close friends and what she has done is not just betrayed our friendship but also the whole Sept. 11 community," Richard Zimbler said.
He took over as head of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network after Tania Head was removed from the board two days ago.
She was sacked from the prominent survivors' group on Wednesday, a day before the New York Times ran a front-page story that said "the pieces just didn't fit" in the repeated tale of her ordeal to escape from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
CELEBRITY
Head rose to mini-celebrity status with her vivid description of crawling through smoke and flames on the 78th floor of the south tower, being saved by a volunteer firefighter, and losing her fiance in the attacks.
She was interviewed in the media, invited to university conferences and to contribute to publications.
But when she canceled interviews with the Times on three occasions, the paper sent reporters to take a closer look at her story, and they picked holes in it, sparking disbelief and dismay in people like Zimbler.
"There was no reason to doubt her story," said Zimbler, who joined the survivors' network in 2005, when Head was co-chair.
"She looked the part. She had a badly injured arm that appeared to have burn scars and her story was very, very realistic," he said.
"And why would I question the veracity of the chairperson of the organization?" said Zimbler, who was in an office building across the street when the twin towers were struck by two airplanes hijacked by terrorists.
`VERY, VERY SAD'
Aaron Zimmerman, executive director of the New York Writers' Coalition, which has published two poems by Head in volumes of writings by survivors of the attacks, called the accusations "very, very sad."
Like Zimbler, he said he had no inkling that Head might be a fraud.
"The first impulse when you work with survivors or people who have experienced trauma and loss is compassion rather than suspicion ... There was nothing that sounded the alarm bells," said Zimmerman, who met Head numerous times.
Zimbler was struggling to understand what motivated Head to create a persona around the tragedy of Sept. 11.
"There is no accusation about money being involved, and I can tell you from my own experience that she spent a lot of her own money ... This was not done for financial gain," he said.
Psychologist Bella DePaulo said Head probably "did it for something deeper."
"She wanted what most liars want ... which is to change the way other people look at them, to be loved and respected and valued and cared about," DePaulo, who teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said on CBS television.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS