Toby Harnden

‘World Trade Center’ is insulting

Toby Harnden says that ‘World Trade Center’ ditches Oliver Stone’s left-wing conspiracy theories, but dishonours one of the heroes of 11 September by caricaturing his faith

Toby Harnden says that ‘World Trade Center’ ditches Oliver Stone’s left-wing conspiracy theories, but dishonours one of the heroes of 11 September by caricaturing his faith

New York

Staff Sergeant David Karnes was working as an accountant at DeLoitte & Touche in Wilton, Connecticut, on 11 September 2001 when the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. He and his colleagues watched it on television. Karnes announced that America was ‘at war’ and drove home in his Porsche 911 (he saw this as an omen from above) to don his old marine uniform. He got a buzz cut at the barbers, picked up equipment at a storage facility that he rented and went to a church to pray before driving to Manhattan, stopping for a McDonald’s on the way.

Once there, his uniform got him through checkpoints outside Ground Zero, which had been declared unsafe for rescue workers. ‘God made a curtain with the smoke, shielding us from what we’re not yet ready to see,’ he said as he set out alone to find survivors. He located two Port Authority cops, Sergeant John McLoughlin and Officer William Jimeno, trapped in the rubble and, after helping save them, reflected on New York’s losses with the observation, ‘We’re going to need some good men out there to avenge this.’ And this is just what Karnes did. After 9/11 he re-enlisted for active duty and, now 48, has served two combat tours in Iraq.

Staff Sergeant Karnes is a supporting character in Oliver Stone’s 9/11 movie World Trade Center, which opens in London next month. He is hardly your typical Stone hero — being a God-fearing patriot rather than an agonising left-liberal — but he is not at all happy about the way he has been portrayed: as a religious zealot.

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