AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER TAPE ON 9/11 WAS DESTROYED http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5069481 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Air controllers who communicated with or tracked hijacked jets on Sept. 11, 2001, taped their recollections later that day but the recording was destroyed without anyone ever listening to it, a U.S. investigator said on Thursday. Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead found irregularities in how two Federal Aviation Administration managers at the main air traffic center on New York's Long Island handled the tape and concluded they used poor judgment. The tape dealt specifically with the two aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers. A third hijacked plane struck the Pentagon and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. One of the men, a quality assurance manager, destroyed the tape months after it was made. He crushed the single audiocassette in his hand, cut the recording strands into small pieces and threw the debris into different trash cans at the center, Mead said.