Doug Copp Rescuer or rip-off artist

[LostInSpace]

Link

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Rescue or rip-off?

Did the 'world's most experienced rescuer' defraud the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund?

INVESTIGATION

By John Hockenberry

Correspondent

Dateline NBC

Updated: 8:13 p.m. ET July 15, 2005

Out of the ashes of Ground Zero emerged the faces of heroes. They were tear-stained faces, soiled faces, and scarred faces of the fearless.

For a time, Doug Copp seemed to be one of those heroes.

As chief of the American Rescue Team International for the past 16 years, Doug Copp had been circling the globe, offering his services in disaster zones from from El Salvador to Turkey.

The people who met him were given hope in the most dire of circumstances. But that hope would soon turn to doubt. Believers would be asking themselves questions about the man who calls himself "the worldÔÇÖs most experienced rescue worker."

Meeting Doug Copp

Albuquerque Journal Reporter Leslie Linthicum first met the then 51-year-old Copp shortly after 9/11. Linthicum was looking for a way to get to New York to cover the story, but her paper had a plane on standby. Since the nation's airspace had been shut down, she had no way to get it in the air.

Then her boss told her about Doug Copp, a rescuer who said he had the kind of high-level connections that could clear the plane for take-off.

A few phone calls later, that's exactly what happened. ÔÇ£I thought he must be pretty good at what he does and a pretty big wheel if he's going to get that kind of clearance for us,ÔÇØ said Linthicum.

Copp said he had that clout and was working with the White House to secure a fax that would give them unfettered access to Ground Zero.

Listening to Copp's confidence about his friends in high places were three other people: A writer working on a screenplay about Doug Copp, and filmmakers Mike Miller and John Grace.

Miller and Grace learned about Copp in the summer of 2001 when they came across dramatic video of Doug Copp appearing to pull a little girl out of the rubble after an earthquake in Turkey.

When the filmmakers set out to learn more about Copp, they came across an impressive resume that began in 1985. Copp, a demolitions expert, offered his services after the Mexico City earthquake. In the years that followed, he claimed trips through 892 collapsed buildings at 100 disasters around the world. Where Copp went, there were cameras. He appeared in numerous documentaries and news reports, including a 1999 appearance on MSNBC news after the Egypt air crash.

After a brief meeting, Miller and Grace decided enthusiastically to produce a documentary about Copp. The themes, the producers thought, would center around rescue, danger and heroism.

The 9/11 tragedy

Grace and Miller thought they would travel to catastrophes all over the world for their film ÔÇöbut then disaster struck right here at home. Their project was suddenly overtaken by a much bigger story.

ÔÇ£The world-famous American rescue team leader is right here,ÔÇØ says Miller. ÔÇ£And we've got to get him to New York, so he can start doing some stuff to do some good.ÔÇØ

As they flew toward New York, Copp warned that when it came to staying alive in the smoldering ruins, there was no higher authority than his word. Copp had also led them to believe that they had a faxed approval from the White House to go directly to Ground Zero.

"He waved a paper at me one day before that I assumed was the fax," says Miller. "I didnÔÇÖt have any reason to challenge him at that point."

But things began to go awry the moment they went to pick up their credentials. They called the White House, but no one they spoke to knew anything about Copp or that paper. Copp's request was denied.

At the time, they just chalked these setbacks up to just the general chaos and confusion.

Eventually, Copp flagged down a police officer and told him that he had a special invention he called ÔÇ£The Copp Casualty LocatorÔÇØ that could detect gases given off by decomposing flesh and find bodies trapped in the rubble. The police officer led them to Ground Zero. And there, with the filmmakers cameras rolling, Copp put the sniffing machine to work.

ÔÇ£It began beeping like there was something going on. And these fire people are scrambling like crazy trying to get to where they believe a body might be,ÔÇØ says Grace. ÔÇ£They wanted to believe too.ÔÇØ

But the beeps were just that ÔÇö nothing more.

ÔÇ£Doug wrote it off as, ÔÇÿWell, it must have been just a little blood left in the dirt,ÔÇØ says Grace.

With that, Linthicum had seen enough. She decided to move on. ÔÇ£I thought, ÔÇÿI'm never going to hear his name again.ÔÇÖÔÇØ

But the filmmakers stayed on, hoping the setbacks were temporary.

After a few minutes of sifting through the rubble, Doug Copp changed tactics. It was time, he said, to go underground to look for survivors.

Mike Stewart / Courtesy of The Albuquerque Journal

Doug Copp sat on a ledge outside the ground zero perimeter on Sept. 13, 2001, after he talked his way past the first police barrier.

Once he reached the ramp of the parking garage beneath the collapsed towers, Copp heard some banging that he thought was coming from trapped survivors. The noise turned out to be merely the heavy equipment removing the rubble above. But Copp continued to search this ramp area, all the while documenting his exploits on videotape.

Then after about 15 minutes, as the tape and battery for the video camera ran out, Copp headed back up to the surface. There was to be no more shooting that day, and their time on the rubble at Ground Zero that night was about to run out.

ÔÇ£We were there for probably three hours before we were escorted out,ÔÇØ says Miller.

Testing the 'Copp Casualty Locator'

The next day, on September 14, the filmmakers went to a fire station on their own. They were hoping to convince firefighters that machine could help them find their fallen brothers. They put the sniffer in a jar of rotted meat Copp used for such demonstrations, and much to their relief, it seemed to work.

The firefighters were convinced and brought the filmmakers back to Ground Zero.

But once again, the machine failed.

They say that when they told Copp that the machine did not work, he accused the filmmakers of ruining the device. And when Copp learned that they had thrown away the jar of rotted meat he kept for testing the machine, Copp ÔÇ£went off like a bottle rocket.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£He was so mad about that sample of meat being discarded that you thought the world had ended for him right there on the spot,ÔÇØ says Miller. ÔÇ£That was one of the things that started me to thinking there's something wrong here.ÔÇØ

By September 15, two days after they arrived in New York, the filmmakers had seen enough. They pulled the plug on their documentary and headed home.

ÔÇ£At that point, I was done with it. I wanted out. We felt like posers. We felt like total frauds. And it's a terrible time in our nation's history. And to be in the spotlight at Ground Zero, at that time and place and to not deliver on something that gave those guys so much hope. It was emotionally horrific,ÔÇØ recounts Grace.

The filmmakers, too, thought that would be the last they would hear of Doug Copp.

A few days later Copp also returned to his home in New Mexico.

And before long, the rescuer claimed to be in need of rescuing himself, complaining of debilitating health problems. (cont. on page 2 of the link)

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Watching this report right now on NBC. From seeing all the stuff brought out about this guy I'd say he's a rip-off artist. He goes to these diaster zones to profit from them anything he contracts from these sites he deserves.

[Kalshion]

Great, another idiot you likes to profit off disasters... thanks Lost for posting this, just another idiot to add the list of idiots

I swear, what drive's these people to do these things?

[John Prezioso]

I'm not going to read any more of these posts, lest I get worked up into a murderous rage. Someone who would look to profit from suffering on this scale just can't be a human being.

[jamotto]

only needed to get as far as his self promoted title

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world's most experienced rescuer

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[Kalshion]

More like the worlds most experienced CON artist... errrrr