By: Greg Mitchell The flag raised by three firemen over the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 ? captured in an iconic image by Thomas Franklin for The Record in Bergen County, New Jersey ? is missing.
Actually, it was switched with another flag quite some time ago -- with the media remaining unaware -- and may never be found, writes David Friend in his much-awaited study of photographs that emerged from that catastrophe, to be published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in September.
Friend, the former photo editor at Life, now editor of creative development at Vanity Fair, calls the book ?Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind The Images of 9/11.? While it covers virtually 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 (in an advance copy sent to E&P) considers the WTC ?flag raising? captured by Franklin for The Record. Friend looks deeply into disputes over money raised by selling the image, and how the flag went missing, with information and quotes never published before, he says.
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 bars 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 New produced front page stories headlined ?Profits Of Doom? and ?Cashing In On 9/11.? Ultimately the two sides went their separate ways.
Friend also details how the famous ?Heroes of 9/11? postage stamp featuring the image raised $10.5 million to assist emergency workers but not a penny was distributed until this past spring, tied up by FEMA.
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 as if it was the real thing. 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 #2 -- to the Navy for its use just after 9/11 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, referring to his fire department counterparts, "Anybody tells you they don't know where the flag is, they're full of shit."
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. Perhaps an official had sought to safeguard it, and ordred it stowed away. 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?-- this indeed occurred in the case of the famed Iwo Jim flag raising in 1945.
A former NYPD official suspects that when the statute of limitations runs out soon the flag-napper will step forward ?and sell it.?
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