Why are the nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11 missing from an official federal registry of death?
According to the Death Master File — the official record of 90 million deceased Americans who were issued Social Security cards since 1937 — there were 6,298 deaths recorded on that awful day in 2001 when terrorists struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a rural area in Pennsylvania.
But since an average of 6,200 Americans die every day, there should have been more than 9,000 deaths recorded for Sept. 11, 2001.
Conspicuous by their absence in the federal file are many prominent victims of the attacks, including New York City Fire Chief Peter Ganci Jr., Fire Department Chaplain Mychal Judge and businessmen Daniel Lewin, founder of Akamai Technologies, and Thomas Burnett Jr. chief operating officer of Thoratec Corp.
“The mystery about 9/11 baffles me,” said Beth Givens, executive director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse which has received complaints about the accuracy of the death file. “The only things that come to mind are some of the conspiracy theories that we hear out there — and I don’t want to go there.”
Conspiracy theorists, indeed, have noticed and are questioning whether the government has told the truth about what happened that day. A video posted on YouTube entitled “Where are the 9/11 Victims?” shows that only 405 people are listed as dying in the state of New York that day.
The Social Security Administration, which oversees the Death Master File, does not have a clear explanation.
Why are 3,000 victims of 9/11 missing from Social Security death list? Daily Republic