Flagging a Story, From World War II to 9/11

By: Greg Mitchell In this time of declining newspaper influence, it's refreshing to see a press photograph at the center of a major Hollywood movie. The film, of course, is "Flags of Our Fathers," directed by Clint Eastwood, and it revolves around the six military men snapped by the late Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal as they raised a flag on Iwo Jima in early 1945. It's too bad Rosenthal died earlier this year and can't see himself on the screen.

Watching the film, I had to grin, grimly, at the scene where newspapers land on doorsteps around the country, from cities to rural villages, and readers open them up to find Rosenthal's photo across the front page, creating a national frenzy. If only newspapers were capable of providing that today, say, with a photo from Iraq.

Just a month before the film's release, an important book appeared, exploring the effects of images during a time of national trauma. It discusses the Iwo Jima photo in the context of what some consider its modern-day equivalent: the evocative flag-raising by three firemen over the smoldering ruins of Ground Zero in New York in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

But here's the twist: The author, David Friend, reveals that the flag raised by the three firemen -- captured in an iconic image by Thomas Franklin for The Record in Bergen County, N.J. -- is missing.

Actually, it was switched with another flag quite some time ago -- with the media remaining unaware -- and may never be found, writes Friend in his book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Friend, the former director/photography at Life and now editor of creative development at Vanity Fair, calls his book "Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind The Images of 9/11." While it covers every pictorial aspect of the event -- from images of the World Trade Center "jumpers" to the video of President Bush reading "The Pet Goat" -- one of its longest sections considers the WTC "flag raising."

After describing at length how the small flag was yanked from a nearby yacht and planted at the WTC site by the three firemen -- and then how Franklin got that picture and it ended up in print around the world -- Friend looks at how the Record decided to set up a fund for victims out of the licensing deals for the picture, while aiming to keep it off T-shirts for strip clubs and the like. It then struck a 50/50 partnership for a similar charity deal set up by the firemen.

He chronicles the sad results, after "the partnership and the esprit de corps frayed, unraveled, dissipated." Almost a million dollars has gone to charity, but the lawyer for the firemen accused the paper of vetoing licensing deals that might taint its bid for a Pulitzer (which it did not get). The paper felt it received unusually high legal bills from the firemen's side, and New York's Daily News produced front-page stories headlined "Profits Of Doom" and "Cashing In On 9/11." Ultimately the two sides went their separate ways.

But then Friend declares, "In the tumultuous life of the photograph, the most bizarre chapter of all entails the untold mystery of the lost -- or stolen -- Stars and Stripes. The flag that the firemen raised at Ground Zero has, quite simply, disappeared." It's quite a yarn, as Friend suggests that the flag vanished within three days of its raising, though the media chronicled the movements and display -- from ballpark to aircraft carrier -- of its much larger substitute. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg eventually ordered a probe, which came up empty. The owners of the yacht from which the flag was plucked threatened a lawsuit.

There is some evidence that one or more firefighters turned over the larger flag -- or as some call it, Flag No. 2 -- to the Navy for its use so they could safeguard the original, but there are no chief suspects or any proof of this. An unnamed former high-ranking member of the NYPD tells Friend, "Anybody tells you they don't know where the flag is, they're full of s**t."

Friend concludes: "One logical explanation could be that someone hoping to cash in on it had recognized its financial possibilities once it appeared on the front page of the Sept. 14 New York Post -- which upped its cultural value." Or: "Perhaps someone in command perceived it as too modest a flag to be seen from a distance ... and deliberately replaced it with a more commanding flag" (as occurred in the Iwo Jima flag raising in 1945).

A former NYPD official suspects that when the statute of limitations runs out, the flag-napper will step forward "and sell it." Major motion picture to follow, no doubt.