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11 September 2008

9/11: The "ghoulish hyena who shits on the graves of the dead" "making a living on the backs of the dead"

Seven years on from 11th September 2001, Channel 4's flagship documentary series Cutting Edge hits the telescreens on anniversary night with 9/11 Faker. The opening show of the series features the story of Tania Head (pictured left, alongside 9/11 New York mayor Rudy Giuliani) the fake survivor of a terror attack who lied her way all the way up to the heady status of president of the 9/11 World Trade Center's Survivor Network. Until, that is, it was discovered that she was a shameless liar, fraud and self-publicist with a great line in cross-media marketing.

Head appeared as one of a handful of people who claimed to be on a floor above the point of explosion in the south tower, a factor -- as clearly distinct from a 'fact' as could be -- that made her story all the more remarkable, although 'incredible' would perhaps be a better choice of word.

Much of her account was posted on an Internet message board, oft-times the places that such legends are born, a message board that just happened to be the web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. It was for the Survivors Network that Head served in no lesser role than president handling, among other things, corporate donations.

Terror has always been very good for various business interests and, if the example of Head is anything to go by, very good for self-aggrandisement and self-publicity.

Along the way, Head variously claimed to have lost her fiance, Dave, or her husband by the same name, depending on which lie she was telling. She claimed to have an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a business degree from Stanford. However, neither college had any record of her attendance. Head claimed to work for Merrill Lynch, but Merrill Lynch didn't have any record of her employment either. Head claimed many other things too, all of which were little more than embellishments to the great lie.

Ultimately, it was the wealth of conflicting stories sprayed forth by Head's loose lips that would be her undoing, just as soon as anyone bothered to try and verify any of them. It is a sad reflection on the state of the modern corporate news media that it wasn't until the New York Times finally checked and blew open Head's flimsy cover as late as September 2007 that the veracity and authenticity of her story began to be challenged by other survivors.

In all it took six years before Jennifer Adams, chief executive of the September 11th Families’ Association, acknowledged, "At this time, we are unable to confirm the veracity of her connection to the events of Sept. 11". As one blogger noted, "Tania’s myth has collapsed. Brought down by investigation, reasonable inquiry, and candid disclosure of a conclusion."

Tania Head is in fact Alicia Esteve Head, so not even her name was genuine, and she comes from a well-known Barcelona business family that was implicated in the 1992 economic scandal known as the Planasdemunt Affair, a major scandal in the history of Catalonia. Both Head's father, Francisco Esteve Corbella, and her brother, Francisco Javier Esteve Head, were sentenced to prison terms (translated excerpts here, full Google translation here) for forging documents issued by the Barcelona firm BFP. Deception and deceit would appear to run in the Head family.

Channel 4 bill their Cutting Edge piece as follows.
The 9/11 Faker
C4 Thursday 11 September 2008 9pm


In the years following the 9/11 attacks, many stories emerged of triumph, tragedy and heroism. But one story stood out. Tania Head, one of only 19 people at or above the point of impact to survive, who also lost her fiancée in the attacks.

As Tania's fame grew, so, finally, did the questions. In September 2007, the New York Times published a front page article questioning Tania's account. Shortly afterwards, she packed her bags and disappeared.

Since the New York Times article appeared Head's pronouncements, which have consisted almost exclusively of "No comment", have all been issued by her lawyer, although not just any lawyer but a media and entertainment industry lawyer. When there's a media scandal to manage there is nobody better to manage it than a PR guru.

At this stage it is not known whether Tania Head wrote a book 'which fitted into a burgeoning genre of "misery memoirs"', addressed the United Nations, or whether she had dinner with the UN Secretary General at the height of her infamy.

Luckily, the sort of immaculate deception perpetrated by Tania Head only happens in America.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aaah Tania. She lived the American dream.


A dream that only ended when OTHERS woke up. Of course it's concers bonkers to suggest that other cases of Headism could and do permeate society today.

Could have been worse I suppose, at least she was more of a 'lone gunman' rather than having anyone steering her. Her actions seem rather apolitical.

Or were they?...

The Antagonist said...

Oh, come on. You must be aware of how everything that glitters really is actual gold!

More so if it's on TV!

Anonymous said...

You mean to say there could have been people pushing her???

*swoons with shock*

The Antagonist said...

Any excuse for a link to George Carlin's low-down on the American Dream.

Anonymous said...

George Carlin:
I know he passed away recently as I spotted a number of 'truther' tributes to him. The clip you linked to was actually the first thing of his I've seen! And based on that clip, I've been missing out :( but now no more :((

He's saying what needs to be said. I can see my weekend will be spent hunting for Carlin stuff. Thanks for the link.

Bill Hicks was also another late-comedian whose passing was mourned by some 'truthers'. It was a bit of a rollercoaster to me watching Hicks as be sometimes trampled on things I hold dear, but other times he was spot on.

Anonymous said...

Heh, I watched that documentary and an eerie sense of deja vu crept over me, I can't for the life of me imagine why?

The Antagonist said...

Can't imagine why that might be, Alex!

It all becomes still more convoluted when one one learns: "Study shows how false memories rerun 7/7 film that never existed"

"Some people claimed to have seen non-existent CCTV footage of the bus exploding in Tavistock Square in July 2005, while others gave detailed descriptions of footage which did not exist. || Neither the CCTV or the computer reconstruction existed, but 40% and 28% of British respondents claimed to remember seeing them. The equivalent figures of the Swedish participants were 16% and 6%."

This is backed up by such things as Observer journalists referring to:

"The twin images, of the young men swiftly saying goodbye at the station, and of the shredded bus, with its top deck peeled back by the blast, have become iconic, summing up both the new terrorism that is striking the UK and the apparent banality of the men who perpetrate it."

Except, of course, there is no "iconic" image "of the young men swiftly saying goodbye at the station", not even released as part of the "7/7 helpers" trial in which the evidence was so compelling that the jury failed to reach a verdict.

Yet the notion of the "iconic" image is reinforced despite it never having existed. Not particularly clever, nor very subtle.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there is also a story by Kim Sengupta in the Independent which refers to, "Those convicted of the 7/7 bombings".

Oh really? News to me and a great many others. When and where did the mythical conviction of the alleged perpetrators of 7/7 happen?

When standards of journalism are as infallible as the two examples highlighted above, it seems there aren't many options left but to read the Dead Trees with a slightly more critical eye.

As for eye-witnesses, the raft of problems with them are incredibly well documented. So well documented in fact that in any case where real, tangible evidence exists, eye witness accounts are automatically discounted.

Anonymous said...

Ant and Co.

In one of my earlier posts on http://bridgetdunnes.blogspot.com/ I mentioned something like smoke in the carriages before the bomb went off. Obviously this was important and numeral asked me for a source. I searched very hard because I wanted to make sure I wasn't holding and passing on false info, but try as I might, I couldn't find one reference, so I asked B et al to discount it. But I was convinced I read a report about smoke filling the carriage before the bomb (supposed bomb)

If I'm wrong I may have been confusing reports involving smoke - a distinct possibility and I now think this is what transpired, but if i wasn't challenged on it and checked it out, I'd still he holding something that would be wrong.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure I did read it because I'm sure I thought to myself at the time 'how odd that the smoke was produced beforehand." But it may be I was reading a report about people elsewhere in the tube (or smoke due to an electrical problem - I'm sure the electrical 'problem' occurred to me at the time as well!)


An interesting question is this: Are any of our false memories implanted or simply and innocently due to human frailty? If 7-7 was a conspiracy, I believe it was, then to think they wouldn't try and plant or encourage false memories is perhaps not likely.

The anonymous Observer article and the proportion of false memories amongst Brits vs. Swedes makes me suspicious.

I try to excuse my probable error by saying I'm just a single person without the responsibilities of a msm journo who should always check his info in cases like this and gets paid for writing it.


But what’s not in dispute is the 3yers+ now that the govt had obstructed a full and proper investigation as cased ambiguity and error (and apathy) to flourish.

Shame on them.



http://bridgetdunnes.blogspot.com/2006/06/guardian.html
I posted as Tony-broke-the-law