THE MEMORY GAP

A spokesman for the Accor Group in Paris, which owns the Sofitel in New York, told Le Monde that the two men who participated in the victory can longer recall what they were celebrating in the loading dock of the Sofitel on May 14, 2011. So we have a memory gap.

The dance occurred between 1:34 and 1:35 pm, just a minute or so after nearly 4-minute call 911 call to the police was completed. While I had mistakingly said that the dance (instead of the sequence) was 3 minutes, it actually was only 17 seconds.  The issue remains: what event were these two men were celebrating.

One explanation offered in the media is that these two men, both New Yorkers, may have been celebrating the previous night’s New York Yankee baseball game. As it turns out, the New York Yankees lost that game to the Boston Red Sox, their third loss in a row. So the two men would have been celebrating a loss.

The problem with even this explanation is that it suggests that 1:34 p.m. was the first time that these two men were able to go off together to the loading dock to hold their celebration dance. In fact, as yet another surveillance CCTV shows, both men were together in a room off the Reception desk at approximately 12:55 for nearly 4 minutes. In tape D, we see the well-dressed man emerge from the elevator at 12:53.  (Two minutes earlier he had entered the Presidential suite on the 28th floor for the second tine, according to the electronic key records.)  We see him pass through the lobby. stop in security area, return to the lobby where at 12:55,  he is joined by the other dancer. Both men then go into a small room on side of reception desk.

TAPE D--THE MEMORY GAP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBMZbXgsBKo


Lanny Davis, a well-regarded Washington crisis manager, who the Accord group retained to handle this matter, offered a far more plausible explanation of the victory dance on the NBC Today Show. Although acknowledging the men had a memory gap, he suggested that it was possible that they were celebrating that the housekeeper had just agreed “to allow the hotel to call 911.” Davis’ conjecture here raises, however, the issue of what impediment had caused the hour long delay in the decision to call in the police.  The prosecution summary of the case states that her outcry was reported to hotel security which then called 911.  It does not say that she delayed the decision to call in the police for an hour.

NEXT QUESTION: Who was in charge of the security apparatus?

TAPE A--THE SECURITY BOOTH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfDeXNSIhb8

TAPE B- THE VICTORY DANCE IN SLOW MOTION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxsuoY1HXe8


TAPE C- THE AUDIO OF THE 911 CALL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ELHBahz8A

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ne@jooon.com