9/11 Commission Report bars 503 1st responder eyewitnesses
Within a month of 9/11, NYC fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen, a 30-year NYFD vet, set up interviews with fire, port authority police and EMT first responders to record their initial impressions of what they experienced on Sept 11.
The stories of 503 men and women ran to 12,000 pages. Graeme MacQueen, a recently retired religious studies professor, read them all. In addition to the heartrending nature of many of the stories, the consistent theme was of hearing, feeling and seeing explosions, a controlled