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"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, p. 58
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
911 inside job and shoeing horses
9/11 – A Letter to a Die-Hard Supporter of the Official Explanation Dr. Frank Legge This is a letter to a person who has had all the arguments explained to him showing that weakening of the steel supports bby fire could not account for the observed manner of collapse of the WTC buildings on 9/11, nor for the material found in the debris, but has not been convinced. The person has asserted that the arguments used must misrepresent the facts as leaders could not perform or assist such an attack and that people who promote the theory that explosives were used are driven by emotional commitment to a political position and not by science.
Dear friend, let's not talk about the details of our previous discussions. Instead let's start from the beginning and consider emotions, and move from there to a brief summary of the case. You already have the observations, calculations and conclusions in the papers in front of you, from the Journal of 9/11 Studies. These will not be repeated, but the essential thread of the argument relating to WTC 7 will be carefully spelled out as an example of how the case for explosives may be made. Please believe that I approach this topic with fear and trembling. I do not want to believe that explosives were used at the WTC. I tried for a long time to argue against it. I am aware of the scale of the consequences to the people of America, and indeed the world, if the idea that explosives were used becomes widely accepted. I am however also aware of the fact that failure to recognize the use of explosives, if they were used, also has grave consequences. As a scientist I accept a duty to investigate this question, doing my best to set all pre-existing beliefs aside. Extreme difficulty is encountered in examining the case as strenuous efforts were made by the authorities to hide and destroy evidence. Some forms of evidence still exist however: eye witness reports, seismic records, analysis of debris, photos and videos. Among these the videos are unique in that they are in the hands of the public and allow the events to be reviewed. When I first heard that the buildings fell at near free fall speed it occurred to me that I could check this myself and thus would not have to depend on others for interpretation of the information. My first exploration of this astonishing assertion was to study the downward acceleration of the roof of WTC 7. I found that it did in fact commence to descend at near free fall speed. This argument depends on an understanding of the behaviour of steel. We all know that when a material melts it can longer resist any force as it becomes, by definition, a liquid. Ordinary fires cannot raise the temperature of steel anywhere near its melting point, which is well above white heat, but can certainly cause it to lose strength. Steel which is hot enough to glow still has remarkable toughness. It has to be bright red hot to be readily workable. If a source of heat is applied to steel it increases in temperature slowly and loses strength slowly. It does not pass from strong to weak in an instant or at a particular temperature, provided the temperature remains below the melting point. You will agree with that from your knowledge of specific heat and graphs of yield strength versus temperature. I knew it from experience from days spent long ago shoeing horses and from working with steel, repairing farm machinery. Knowing something about steel, and learning that the buildings had fallen at near free fall speed, I was immediately suspicious and open to the idea that something more than fire was involved. Others had studied the fall time of WTC 7 from start to finish, reporting times of 6.5 to 7 seconds. I was not satisfied with that so obtained software to enable frame-by-frame study of the video. I was thus able to plot the fall in terms of distance over time. It is not necessary to follow the fall all the way to the ground. To attempt to do so is to invite error as the dust cloud eventually obscures vision and the debris pile at some point will interfere with free fall. If you think about the nature of the collapse, supposedly due to fire weakening the steel, you will agree that it would only be necessary to follow the early stages of the collapse to determine its character. If heat is the cause, the steel will weaken gradually and will start to sag in the region where the fire is most intense. At that moment the steel will have almost enough strength to hold up the weight of the building, but not quite. So we have the force of gravity acting downwards, trying to produce an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, and the force of the hot steel pushing upwards, a force a bit less than that of gravity. Let us say we are looking at it at the moment when the strength has declined to the point where the steel is capable of pushing upwards with 90% of the force required to hold the building up against gravity. There would thus be a net downward force of 10% of gravity. Now acceleration is proportional to force and we have a net force of 10% of gravity so we would see an acceleration downwards of 3.2 feet per second per second. When you graph the data you find that the fall did not start with a motion which could be ascribed to a small net force of that order. The downward acceleration of the roof was very close to free fall right from the start, 30 feet per second per second, and continued at that rate until out of sight. There is no hint of a slow start. This tells us that the steel supports went from adequate strength to virtually no strength in an instant. For reasons stated above this is absolutely impossible if the loss of strength is due to the application of heat. The observed acceleration, if maintained, would bring the roof to the ground in 6.2 seconds. A brick dropped from the roof would take 6.0 seconds. These numbers are so close together that only something which destroys the supports in an instant can account for it. Similarly for the question of the direction of collapse: what happened in the late stages is of no consequence as the mechanism is revealed early. The official story is that the fire is severe but we can see little fire on the north side, and there is evidence of cooling on the north, so this severe fire must be on the south side. Also, falling debris weakened only the south side. The first columns to weaken to the point where they can no longer support the weight must therefore be on the south side. Thus the building must lean toward the south. To fully appreciate what happens after the lean commences we must follow through. The building is now leaning and is therefore off-centre so the centre of gravity has moved to the south. Thus the weight on the south supports has increased and on the north supports it has decreased. The south supports have already given way and now have even more weight upon them so must continue to give way. The north supports survived the previous full weight and now have less weight so must continue to survive. The centre of gravity must therefore move further south. What effect does this have? As the centre of gravity moves further south the downward force on the south supports must increase, so the speed of lean must increase. We see therefore that the lean cannot merely continue, it must accelerate. There is no escape from this natural physical process once it commences. The only possible outcome is that the building will topple over. However, it did not. It came straight down. Not only the south supports, but also the north supports, must have failed in an instant, and the north supports were not hot. Although seemingly highly improbable, both the rate of downward acceleration, and also the direction of motion, provide proof that something other than fire brought down this building. If you are still not convinced I urge you to repeat the experiment with the video of WTC 7 yourself. With so much at stake is it not worth the effort? You will find sources of information about the building here: http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200611/911-Acceleration-Study-Proves-Explosive-Demolition.pdf You can keep in touch with developments by going to the Journal of 9/11 Studies, http://journalof911studies.com/ , as new peer reviewed papers regularly appear there.
Regards Frank Legge, flegge[a]iinet.net.au---nospam, 30 October 2007
Logical, USA must dominate the world by force, or face collapse of the empire based on theft!
The USA ELITES are engaged in a bloodbath to preserve the "freedom to rob, to exploit and dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced."
EVIDENCE:
Chilton Takes U.S. Strategic Command Helm
Donna Miles - American Forces Press Service 2007-10-18
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today praised Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton as the general ceremonially took the reins of U.S. Strategic Command.
Gates said Chilton, who began his tenure at STRATCOM on Oct. 3 after having commanded Air Force Space Command, has the skills and experience to lead the command forward in its critical role in the fight against terrorist threats.
Speaking at today's assumption-of-command ceremony at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., the secretary pointed to Chilton's long, trail-blazing career as prime experience for the STRATCOM job. Chilton was a test pilot on the F-4 Phantom II and F-15 Eagle aircraft, laid new groundwork during assignments at Air Force Space Command, and served as an astronaut aboard three space shuttle missions.
Chilton will tap into this experience to help the United States confront some of the most destructive threats it faces. These include terrorist groups working to get control of weapons of mass destruction and potential adversaries who might leverage information and space technologies to threaten the United States and its interests.
Gates called space-based capabilities critical in stopping the proliferation of dangerous materials. "It is through space that we can monitor the weapons we already know exist," he said. "It is through space that we can track adversaries attempting to acquire these weapons and then do something about it. It is through space that our troops and our leadership monitor the battlefield and communicate with each other.
"Therefore," Gates continued, "it is space that we must protect, especially as we expand its use."
China's successful test of an anti-satellite weapon earlier this year reinforced the importance of maintaining unfettered access to space, he said. "This test and other developments show that our own near-earth satellites are vulnerable and must be protected," he said.
As a former CIA director, Gates said he understands the importance of a strong intelligence-gathering system and the need to analyze that intelligence and plan a U.S. response.
He told Chilton he's confident the general will be able to tackle the challenges ahead and build on the accomplishments Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright began during his three years at STRATCOM. Cartwright served as commander until August, when he became the eighth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Cartwright "flattened the organization," speeding up information flow throughout the command, Gates said. He also introduced the Global Innovation and Strategy Center, which brings together outside experts to focus on a specific issue, brainstorming solutions and developing recommendations for STRATCOM leaders to follow up on.
Gates said he knew filling Cartwright's shoes at STRATCOM would be challenging, but that he believes Chilton is the person to take the command forward. "General Chilton, we look to you for the way ahead during these turbulent times," he said.
Chilton said he feels honored to lead the organization that is "called on to be the most responsive combatant command in the U.S. arsenal."
He noted STRATCOM's broad responsibilities. "We are responsible today for providing the secretary of defense time-sensitive planning to conduct global strike operations anywhere on the planet. We are tasked to conduct operations in support of the global fight we are engaged in today," he said. "And we are tasked to be the masters and defenders of domains that have become ever more critical, not only to the way we fight as a nation, but to our way of life as a nation … -- the domains of space and cyberspace."
With the "tsunami change" that ushered in STRATCOM's reorganization and adoption of a 24/7 operational mission beginning to settle, Chilton said, he's ready to increase the command's focus on future threats as well as today's fight.
"The type of combat we will face in the 21st century will go beyond the physical force on force and the battles of centuries gone by," he said. It will require "innovation, … speed, agility and focus."
He called the men and women serving at STRATCOM "just the team America needs to defend her today and tomorrow."
"I am excited and proud and humbled to join this great team in our noble endeavor," Chilton said.
"Les pieds dans le ruisseau . . . . Je vois mon image...Moi je vois l'idiot." —Jacques Brel, 1955
(Swans - October 22, 2007) CHE REMAINS ALIVE AND WELL: Richard Harris, the professor of Global Studies and World Languages and Cultures at California State University, Monterey Bay, California, and the author of the much acclaimed Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission reminded me by e-mail that October 9 was the 40th anniversary of Che's death. He did not have to, but still, his request to let people know was most welcome. Che Guevara is greater dead than alive. His assassin's bullet killed a man. It did not kill the ideals the man professed all along his tumultuous life. You can kill Gandhi, but there he is in our hearts and souls, ever present. Same goes for the Rev. Martin Luther King...and so many other justice advocates. For Christians, Jesus lives on. For those of us who passionately defend the ideals of social justice, human conciliation and cooperation, dignity, and acceptation of The Other, which includes nature, the struggle will never end until success prevails. It remains the most solemn obligation to which one must dedicate one's own life. Ask yourself this simple question: Can Peace ever be attained without Justice and Dignity?
WHAT'S THE MEANING OF JUSTICE, ANYWAY? It's first and foremost about the little people not being trampled by the few that enrich themselves on their back, and proceed to do so in the most vicious and violent means imaginable. It's as basic as that! You might expand on the concept of Justice. Even relatively moderate, corrupt, and bourgeois politicians know what Justice is all about. Take Jacques Chirac, the former president of France, who was vilified by Anne Applebaum, a grotesque gatekeeper of the Washington Consensus ("Farewell, Jacques Chirac: A Leader With a Deep Scorn for Fostering Democracy," Washington Post, May 8, 2007). Applebaum related that during a visit to Tunisia, Chirac once said that, "the most important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be housed"; and she sneered at him for that eminently obvious statement, adding, "Tunisia's human rights record is 'very advanced' -- never mind the police who beat up dissidents." (Evidently, Ms. Applebaum is little cognizant about police brutality against political dissidents in the U.S.)
BUT CHIRAC WAS QUITE RIGHT. That is exactly what those of us, deemed radicals and extremists, want. That's what Che was about: the right to a decent, dignified life -- food, health, education, and housing. What's wrong with that picture? Has the currently prevailing ideological system brought these four fundamental needs to the masses? Hell, no! Even the dinosaurian mastodon, the USA, has never brought those four basic freedoms to its own people. Remember FDR's famous January 6, 1941, Annual Message to Congress, the so-called Four Freedoms speech? Here is what he pompously and cynically declaimed: In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
I SAY CYNICALLY because at the very time he was calling for worldwide reductions in armaments, he was asking Congress to fund the biggest increase in military spending, which turned into the military-industrial-congressional complex whose "unwarranted influence" Dwight Eisenhower cautioned the country and its policy makers against in his Farewell Address to the Nation twenty-one years later, on January 17, 1961. Far from having abated, far from "a world-wide reduction of armaments," the Iron Triangle has led the U.S. to a permanent war economy, laying destruction and death all over the world, financially ruining the country, and making America feared and hatred by ever wider members of the human commons over the world, all the while -- oh supreme irony! -- having a US populace frozen with paranoid fears.
AS TO FREEDOM FROM WANT, "attainable in our own time and generation . . . . the antithesis of the so-called new order [that some] seek to create with the crash of a bomb" (what an extraordinary metaphor for those willing to glance at their own mirror!) take a look around the globe. What you'll see is a raging spread of poverty and hunger. Or, simply, once again look into your homey mirror: Close to twelve percent of the US population, between 35 and 38 million people, are officially considered to have "very low food security," which is a euphemism to mean that they go hungry. These poor people used to be called "food insecure with hunger," but the word "hunger" has been removed from the bureaucratic lingua franca. In the seemingly wealthiest country in the world (a proposition that should at long, long, long last be challenged) hunger does not "really" exist. This Hidden Crisis, in a land that bears the highest rate of obesity per capita in the world (hunger and obesity are, strangely enough, related), is seldom broached by the chattering classes, of which Anne Applebaum is a card-carrying member. As George McGovern said during his presidential campaign in 1972, "To admit the existence of widespread hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system."
IT'S AN INDICATOR, or metric, that certainly casts doubt on War Corporatism, aka, unfettered capitalism, but it's far from being the only one. Socially-supported education, health care, and housing all fall short from a humane attention in the U.S. Even The Other, the natural realm, is belatedly being destroyed in the name of what Noam Chomsky once called the "Fifth Freedom." In The Culture of Terrorism (1998), he wrote: The central -- and not very surprising -- conclusion that emerges from the documentary and historical record is that the U.S. international and security policy, rooted in the structure of power in the domestic society, has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call the "Fifth Freedom," understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.
BUT IF WE ARE TO STAY within the realm of the "Four Freedoms," those stated by Jacques Chirac vs. those stated by FDR, which alliteration do you think Che Guevara would have espoused? Freedom of speech, which all Swans contributors vehemently defend, is a great, fundamental human concept, but what good does it do when you are hungry and silenced, or simply ignored? I recall my economics teacher in high school eons ago. He would repeatedly remind his pupils that "when one has an empty stomach one has little time and freedom to think." Whatever Anne Applebaum and her ilk may think -- correction, believe -- double-correction, neither think nor believe, but claim out of whole cloth -- and in all due respect, the [Chirac] freedoms "to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be housed" will always beat FDR's four freedoms for the masses and masses of people who have an inner sense of what real justice and common welfare mean. There, in a nutshell, lies the swelling support for that sempiternal troubadour, a mix of Don Quixote and Robin Hood. Che remains an inspiration to millions of people around the world, even for those who consider that his politics were right, yet his actions misconstrued. In this context, Richard Harris's Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission should be on the bookshelf of all decent human beings that have a stomach filled enough to allow them to think...and, hopefully, act accordingly to counter Chomsky's "Fifth Freedom."
WHEN ARE PEOPLE going to at long last get sick and tired, as I am, of the swelling wreck that a tiny clique of very powerful people and profiteers whacked all over the world (and in America, our own country) in our name? When will people rise up and simply say "NO"? Numbers count. Apathy numbs. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
SO, HOW MUCH IS THE IRAQ WAR about the four freedoms and how much is it about oil? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his recently published memoir that, "the Iraq War is largely about oil." General John Abizaid (ret.) -- a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and former CENTCOM big brass in Iraq -- said in a round table, "Courting Disaster: The Fight for Oil, Water and a Healthy Planet," at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University, on October 13, 2007, "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that." Jim Holt, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, submits a coherent explanation in "It's the Oil" (London Review of Books, October 18, 2007). Writes Holt: Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world's oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world's oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today's prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
THIS IS THE STRATEGIC PRIZE that has been heralded by Dick Cheney. Holt, who I suppose could not have had his piece published in the American media, asserts that from the perspective of this formidable wealth to be conquered, "The costs -- a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) -- are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success."
"NEGLIGIBLE COSTS" COMPARED to the potential wealth the war will create. Americans are known, and often envied, for their pragmatic optimism and for their ways to devise solutions based on careful cost analysis. The war has already been a "resounding success" for the military-industrial-congressional complex whose profits and stocks have soared in the past six years (e.g., GE's shares have more than doubled; Halliburton went from $5 to $40; Top executives are paid in the tens of millions -- our taxes at work, folks). Profits remain the central nervous system of the American experiment, and for the few who indeed profit immensely from the policies they put in place and fully control in total disregard of the well-being of the vast majority, the second Gilded Age has finally dawned upon them. Ben Stein, who writes the "Everybody's Business" column in the business section of The New York Times most Sundays, lamented recently that "socially responsible investors shun companies that do military contracting." (NYT, September 30, 2007: "Is It Responsible to Shun Military Contractors?"). Says Stein: "We are currently in a war that is about creating a better, more dignified planet and we are fighting enemies who openly say they want to kill everyone who is not their slavish follower." Apparently, Stein has been drinking the Kool-Aid that is so prevalent and liberally dispensed in the corridors of power. He goes on to flatly contradict the assessment of Alan Greenspan and John Abizaid. It's not about oil. We only import 20 percent of our needs from the Middle East. We should be thankful for the great prosperity oil has brought us thanks to the oil companies. His column stirred me enough to trigger a letter of mine: Dear Mr. Stein,
I am an avid reader of your regular column in the business section of the Sunday NYT. I find them often pertinent and quite instructive. They seem to come from a conservative background, but one that has never forgotten its human soul, sense of fairness, and compassion.
In your last column, "Is it Responsible to Shun Military Contractors?" (NYT, 09/30/2007), you asked whether someone could explain why socially responsible investors refrain from investing in military contractors, and you went on to brush aside one portent reason behind the current conflict(s) in the Middle East -- namely oil -- by positing that only about 20% of the oil we import comes from that region. The vast majority of our imports, you asserted, is delivered to our shores thanks to the diligent work of the oil companies, without the intervention of the US military.
I've worked for many years in the oil industry (France -- my country of origin -- Bermuda, and the U.S.) and see no reason to bash it, except for the obscene compensation of its executives (but this latter point is not limited to that industry). Indeed, as you stated, "The staggering prosperity of this country, of the whole developed world, floats on oil."
However, I respectfully submit to you that your facts are slightly twisted and your premises incorrect. You ignore the "staggering" amount of waste associated with our material prosperity. You appear to disregard the projections of the DOE that show how much more dependent our economy will become on Mideastern hydrocarbon resources (oil and natural gas) in the next two or three decades -- the "strategic prize," according to Mr. Cheney. Furthermore, you appear to miss the significance of this mere 20% and its substantial growth in the future (again, please refer to the DOE's projections). Imagine that amount diverted to Japan, India, and China and you will quickly measure the negative consequences on our economy. Finally, you do not even broach the currency issue. What happens to the value of the dollar if Mideastern producers switch to the Euro or the Yen, as Saddam Hussein was planning, and Iran is implementing, is another reason for our military intervention in that region. Black gold and greenbacks!
Which brings me to your premise regarding the quagmire we have willfully created: We are not at war with people who want to destroy us and kill us all. That's an ideological battle that cannot be solved through military means. A few thousands crazies (if they are) won't defeat the West. Like all crazies (if they are) they will dissolve in times. Waging war on flimsy and mostly fabricated evidence can only bring more despair and devastation. Your analogy with WWII, which mirrors the rhetoric advanced by the media and government officials, confuses the actualities that rational and reasonable people must face. There was no Mesopotamian Hitler and there is no Iranian Hitler. Remember FDR's saying about fear?
Socially responsible investors refuse to support the purveyors of the industrial-military-congressional complex because we have long reached the conclusion that war was not the answer to the many challenges humanity confronts. You sold your tobacco shares long ago, and you note that they have done very well ever since. I never invested in them, as I have not invested in the shares of military contractors, which have done extremely well too in the past six years.
And I am a smoker!
Yours sincerely,
NOW, I CAN UNDERSTAND the profit motive and the alluring $30 trillion prize, but that someone of Ben Stein's caliber can posit that the Iraq War is about a "better, more dignified planet" truly boggles the mind. Perhaps Stein should go and read Bill Safire's "On Language" column in the NYT Magazine of October 7, 2007, to grasp the meaning of a "willing suspension of disbelief." What kind of a dignified planet has Mr. Stein in mind? One that has seen one million Iraqis, half children, killed during a dozen years of ignoble economic sanctions? One that has seen over one million Iraqis killed and over 4 million internally or externally displaced since March 2003? One that cannot even feed its own poor and the wretched masses -- according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, over 854 million people worldwide? Or is it a planet in which the dominant player cannot provide universal health care to its citizenry and whose president just vetoed a bill (S-CHIP) that would have insured an additional 5 out of 9 million uninsured American kids -- for whom insurance means a trip to the Emergency Room, in the thinking of the Decider?
OR COULD IT BE that a "better, more dignified planet" is reserved for the few who can satiate themselves at the $30 trillion trough, sip a martini as they refresh themselves in their swimming pool (Mr. Stein lives in a very nice house in Palm Springs, adorned with a beautiful swimming pool), or can afford a Hublot $1 million Big Band watch, "the brand's signature tourbillon with the 44.5mm case and bezel, completely covered in diamonds"?
GILDED AGE, INDEED! As the rest of the world is drowning into penury, I had a brief conversation with a friendly local contractor. He is a good, honest, hard-working man who won't hesitate to give you a hand (he neighborly replaced a leaking faucet on the side of our house, which -- don't laugh -- I was afraid to replace myself). He is a man of his word, which I can strongly vouch for, and I suspect that his politics are a mix of conservatism and libertarianism, a blend that's prevalent in California's rural areas. We usually talk about the job at hand, and, after inquiring about the health of the family, we sometimes broach the economy of the Valley. How's business? is a rather quaint question buried in the normalcy of one's repetitive daily life. Business is good, generally speaking, but prices keep going up from gas and diesel (he uses heavy equipment that requires lots of diesel fuel) to food, etc. I quipped that for some people life was VERY GOOD. Had he heard, I asked, about this manager of a hedge fund that had taken home over 1 billion dollars last year. I'm not sure he knew what a hedge fund was (I'm not sure I know either!) and whether he believed me (I think he did). I asked him whether he could visualize that amount of money, and he sure could not (neither can I). I went on with my usual rant against the obscene wealth of the very few and how it should be redistributed -- and we left it there.
LATER ON, THAT EVENING, we talked over the phone. He brought up our earlier conversation. He understood where I was coming from and what I was advocating, but he was concerned by my approach. In his opinion, and I paraphrase, wealth redistribution runs the risks of stifling business and innovation; that people who take risks and "make it" should be rewarded for their hard work. He did not want, in other words, to straightjacket risk takers, who should be entitled to reaping the profits of their hard work -- a familiar argument that's heard in most segments of society, here and abroad. A correlation to that argument is the old Reagan trickle-down economy whereby when a few boats lift real high, all boats lift, albeit moderately. It does not work, of course; and it has never worked. The stranger part of this argument is that these people by and large negatively suffer from the consequences of the very argument they make -- which is nothing more than a belief, since all the facts contradict it. For those of us who endeavor to reason on a basis of specifics, to recurringly deal with beliefs that are consistently contradicted by facts can be a frustrating experience, to say the least. And, to add insult to injury, we are deemed radicals or, worse, commies. However, that argument did not always prevail. Once upon a time, the views I propound were actually embraced, even if reluctantly and in order to save the elites, by the very elites themselves.
TO MAKE THE CASE, let me turn to Sam Pizzigati, the editor of Too Much, who's long been a bard for income equality in the U.S. Referring to the recent GM auto workers' short strike, whereby the United Auto Workers Union was desperately trying to safeguard job security as the work force was being screwed -- there is no better word -- on its pension and health plans. Pizzigati had this to say: In 1942, for instance, UAW urgings helped convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to call for a 100 percent tax -- the equivalent of a "maximum wage" -- on individual income over $25,000, about $330,000 in today's dollars.
Congress didn't buy FDR's 100 percent plan, but lawmakers did set the nation's top marginal tax rate at 94 percent, and that rate would hover around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the emergence of the first mass middle class the world had ever seen.
In those mid twentieth century years, high taxes on high incomes kept wealth -- and political power -- from concentrating at America's economic summit. Charles E. Wilson, GM's powerful president a half-century ago, took home $586,100 in 1950, the equivalent of about $4.5 million today. He paid $430,350 of that, or 73.4 percent, in tax.
Last year, by contrast, GM CEO Rick Wagoner took home $10.2 million in total pay. We don't know exactly how much in taxes Wagoner paid on that income. But we do know that in 2005, the most recent year with data available, Americans who reported over $10 million in income paid, on average, just 20.9 percent of that income in federal income tax.
In short, GM's current top executive is now enjoying, after taking taxes and inflation into account, about seven times more personal income than GM's top executive back in 1950. (Source: "The Fault Line: Behind the GM Walkout," Too Much, October 1, 2007.)
EVEN EISENHOWER, certainly not a radical or a commie, kept the marginal rate at some 84 percent.
IMMEDIATE QUESTION THAT COMES TO MIND: Does my friendly contractor and conversationalist enjoy, "after taking taxes and inflation into account, about seven times more personal income than" his 1950s predecessors? I'll be glad to bet a good dinner at any one of the fine local restaurants that bless the Anderson Valley. What's baffling is that so many decent people have been taken to the Laundromat by the martini-sipping swimming poolers time and again and have bought the all-boat-lifting Reaganomics and neo-liberalism PR hook, line, and sinker (how many Brooklyn Bridges can be sold?) when the facts are indisputable. Income disparities and concentration of wealth are back to 1924 levels -- Robber Barons, anyone? According to the latest data from the IRS, and in the words of Judith Warner: America's most wealthy earn an even greater share of the nation's income than they did in 2000, at the peak of the tech boom. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported, earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005 (the latest date at which this data are available), up from the high of 20.8 percent they'd reached in the bull market of 2000. The bottom 50 percent of people earned 12.8 percent of all income, compared with 13 percent in 2000. And the median tax filer's income fell 2 percent when adjusted for inflation (to about $31,000) between 2000 and 2005. (Source: "The Clinton Surprise," New York Times, Web site blog "Domestic Disturbances," October 18, 2007)
NOT SURPRISINGLY, as Warner notes, "More and more people are being priced out of a middle class existence. Because of housing prices, because of health care costs, because of tax policy, because of the cost of child care..." THIS IS FACTUAL!
SO, WHAT GIVES? Our elders, like Philip Greenspan and Martin Murie who grew up in the Great Depression, or in its immediate aftermath, and vividly saw and experienced the power of the many, would put it in plain words, seconding Sam Pizzigati: Unions work. People's power works. Cutting the wings of the greedy works. The Four Freedoms that advance real human dignity are achievable. The [Chomsky's] "Fifth Freedom" destroys the fabric of civil societies all over the world and impoverishes the many. They keep repeating that facts and knowledge will trump beliefs and ignorance even if it takes so-called radicals to, in the favorite word of Phil Greenspan, agitate, agitate, agitate.
TALKING ABOUT RADICALISM reminds me of the little comment Rene Stark made in the early goings of Swans. "Oh sure, he's radical as heck!" bursting out in one of her laughs for which she was famous. (More about her in "Remembering Rene Stark.") She knew that I was everything but a "rad," only some idiot who very early on in life felt that peace could not exist without justice, and justice could never happen without a sense of equity. Too bad humanity must spend so much blood and tears, and steps back, to make it happen.
AND SINCE I AM AN IDIOT, I'll conclude these blips with Jacques Brel, and in French: Les pieds dans le ruisseau Moi je regarde couler la vie Les pieds dans le ruisseau Moi je regarde sans dire un mot
[...]
Penchant mon visage Au dessus de l'eau Je vois mon image Moi je vois l'idiot
(Jacques Brel's song, Les pieds dans le ruisseau, 1955.)
. . . . .
Ç'est la vie...
And so it goes...
· · · · · ·
La vie, friends, is a cheap commodity, but worth maintaining when one can. Supporting the life line won't hurt you much, but it'll make a heck of a difference for Swans.
· · · · · ·
Internal Resources
Blips and Tidbits
The Rape of Iraq
About the Author
Gilles d'Aymery on Swans (with bio). He is Swans' publisher and co-editor.
This Edition's Internal Links
The New Obscenities - Charles Marowitz Après Bush! Le Déluge? - Philip Greenspan Lying Is Free Speech? - Gerard Donnelly Smith Lonesome Outsiders - Martin Murie Emerging Markets For Investing In Human Misery - Jan Baughman Is It About Why They Hate Us Or About Why We Hate Them? - Carol Warner Christen Remembering Rene Stark - Gilles d'Aymery Halloween Skeletons On The Rocks - Poem by Marie Rennard Shir Hashirim (Part I) - Poem by Guido Monte & Viviana Fiorentino
Bush's recent remarks about World War III may be ominous. On NBC's Today Show, Air America's Rachel Maddow warned against interpreting those remarks to mean that only the GOP can be trusted to keep the US out of World War III. Bush may not have been warning of World War III but threatening it. There is always the possibility that World War III is already begun.
Iran is slated to become just another front in an Orwellian perpetual war, perpetually empowering a failed and incompetent administration. Bush may get by with a little help from his friends –Bin Laden and al Qaeda. It's no coincidence that only George Bush, the Military/Industrial Complex, and big oil would benefit from a second terrorist attack. A "second terrorist attack" on US soil would be entirely too convenient to be credible.
A second terrorist attack would –conveniently –allow George W. Bush to achieve an agenda communicated to his base in code words. A second terrorist attack would "justify" the dropping of Nukes on Iran especially if can be said –true or not –that "terrorists", on Iran's behalf, had "nuked" a US city or military installation.
A second terrorist attack would complete a coup d'etat begun even before the tragic events of Sept 11, 2001. I refer to an attack of GOP "brownshirts" in Florida effectively ending a recount of ballots. The recount would have spelled defeat for Bush's radical, extremist GOP. It had to be stopped.
Bush assumed under a cloud of suspicion an office that he said would be easier had it been a dictatorship. Later, following, the events of 911, he would quip: "I just hit the trifecta!" Bush's coup was all but complete when the Fox Network, Bush's propaganda arm, announced for Bush on election night. Later, September 11 scared the Democratic opposition in Congress. But as objections were raised to provisions of the Patriot Act, a second attack, a wave of Anthrax letters, would terrorize the Congress into submission. One wonders –if Sen. Jeffords had not defected, announcing his "independence" of the GOP, would 911 have happened?
The Pentagon has become little more than a huge, bureaucratic mechanism by which your tax monies are channeled into the coffers of thousands of "military contractors", all of whom would be out of job in times of peace. A second terrorist attack will keep Blackwater USA employed though they do a better job of making new enemies for America than they've done "securing" Baghdad, the scene of bloody chaos!. They are simply a gang of highly paid cutthroats operating outside the law. Nevertheless, they are symptomatic of the fact that making war has become America's number one export. Uncle Sam is hooked on war and Bush needs another fix.
Meanwhile, the dollar continues it's precipitous decline. Those suffering most from the dollar's decline are the nation's poor and middle classes. A balance of trade deficit will correct itself, but Bush is content to let those who can least afford it pick up the tab. His elite base have already moved their assets. They will watch the dollar fall from afar.
At some point, the middle class will fall off the ladder, leaving an increasingly tiny and absurdly rich elite to rule over or warehouse a growing throng of those who can no longer afford to live in gated communities, who can no longer afford even a modest apartment, who can no longer afford a modest car, let alone an SUV.
The utter collapse of the dollar means that everyone who works for a living is vulnerable to incarceration in a FEMA "work" camp! During Ronald Reagan's "depression" of some 18 months, many middle class families found themselves out of work and out of their homes. They slept under bridges and overpasses in Houston. Did the GOP learn all the wrong lessons from that experience? Did they learn only that people can be warehoused? Is this yet another lesson Bush learned from his Grandfather Prescott Bush and Adolf Hitler?
Of all the charges that may be leveled at George W. Bush and his Nazi gang, it cannot be said that they did not plan ahead. There will be a place for those who cannot afford a chemically induced happiness in Bush's Brave New World. The fate of New Orleans is the nightmarish vision of America's future. There is no relief for those who will most certainly be left behind to escape as best they can the streets, the gangs, the back alley shelters. The alternative is a gulag of hideous camps.
The origins of Bush's utterly failed regime are economic. Not only is terrorism always worse under GOP regimes so, too, the economy. The GOP response to America's declining industrial base made the problem worse. Reagan, for example, all but destroyed the labor movement even as American "high tech" was exported in lieu of cars and steel. US jobs went abroad; US workers stayed at home to get shafted by Bush Sr and, later, the Junior Shrub. For a very brief period in Clinton's second term, the widening chasm between rich and poor abated. Alas, the reprieve was too short to undo the harm done by Reagan, Senior and now the defective sprout.
It is no coincidence that the fall of the dollar coincides with a rise in the price of oil, the new "gold" that Bush has gone to war to control. As a result, the business of the US has become war. It has become the means by which the GOP makes payoffs to its minions in the military/industrialist complex. It is no coincidence that as the dollar falls, the Bush regime ratchets up the rhetoric. It is no coincidence that as the price of oil goes up, so do the fortunes of those hoping to gain control over the world's supply of oil.
As long as the world believed that the US economy was fundamentally sound, it would support the dollar as a convenient international currency. After all, businesses in Europe and the Far East wished to sell products to Americans. They could do so only if the dollar were, in fact, worth something. The cracks in the dam began to show by the time Nixon took the US off the gold standard, in effect, a promise to redeem paper with gold. Clearly, if the US were suddenly expected to "cover" every dollar with a gold coin, Ft. Knox would arm itself against a run on the bank not seen since the Great Depression.
The magnitude of this slow but growing crisis did not become apparent until the Arab's called attention to the US weakness with the oil embargo of the 1970's. It shook the world and traumatized the US. Nothing was learned. The Ronald Reagan administration exploited a sense of malaise with an Orwellian term – stagflation. It was perhaps the creation of yet another but more recent addition to the GOP-speak lexicon: Islamofascist or al Qaeda in Iraq!
A second terrorist attack would breathe new life into Bush's quest to gain control over the world's oil supplies and thus, the price of oil. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in fact, conceived and approved a heinous plan to launch a secret war against our own country, a ruse to dupe Americans into supporting a war of aggression against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.
The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win.–Body of Secrets, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following, Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.
More recently:
"There is only one politically serious explanation of this now-indisputable fact: powerful forces within the US military/intelligence complex wanted a terrorist incident on US soil in order to create the needed shift in public opinion required to embark on a long-planned campaign of military intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East. Whether or not they knew the scale of the impending attacks and what the precise targets would be, they acted in such a way as to block the arrest of known terrorist operatives and allow them to carry out their plot."–Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Army intelligence officer
To the degree that our own government contemplates anything of this sort, it is illegitimate. To the extent that Bush is involved personally, he is to be considered a traitor, a self-declared enemy of the people. Indeed, Bush has claimed that he has the authority and the power to wage war on Americans.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.–Bush Claims Power to Wage War on American Citizens, Marjorie Cohn, Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
These are the acts of a tyrant. None of the "powers" Bush has assumed are legitimate; none are granted him in the Constitution. Nor has Bush demonstrated that the alleged terrorist threat, having grown worse statistically as Iraq descended into chaos and civil war, is anything more than a creation of US imperialism, blow back as a result of CIA bungling or, in fact, direct actions by the CIA.
It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.–Guerrilla Warfare, Chapter One: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara,
By that high standard, the regime of George W. Bush is illegitimate; Bush's occupancy is thus impeachable and prosecutable. Bush's occupancy of the Oval Office is a Constitutional crime.
Che was not so "revolutionary". Our own Thomas Jefferson anticipated that principle in 1776 when he, Samuel Adams and a band of "revolutionaries", "conspiracy theorists" and "liberals" accused the regime of George III of waging unjust "war" against his subjects in the colonies.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.–Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson
In other words, the peace had already been broken. What was, in fact, a colonial war of separation became revolution in the world of ideas. Jefferson's ideas influenced an entire generation of French revolutionaries who dared to take up the cause of freedom. [See: The Influence of American Ideas upon the French Revolution, 1785-1800. by Conor Cruise O'Brien, Author(s) of Review: David A. Grimsted]
It is a lesson that George W. Bush, the CIA, the Pentagon never learned. Bush, his Neocon friends, the robber barons of big oil and the CIA are increasingly counter-revolutionaries. The word conservative does not mean the conservation of American freedom. It means, rather, the conservation and acquisition of obscene wealth by means of aggressive war. The word "liberal", by contrast, means "free" or, more precisely, "pertaining to a free person". Never run away from the word "liberal" again. Rather, stuff it up the GOP's fascist ass!
The proposition that terrorism is the inevitable result of imperial aggressions explains Bush incompetent economic policies as well as America's fascist tilt. That terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes is a demonstrable, statistical fact. The CIA creates terrorism two ways by indulging it as a tactic and by inspiring it with its excesses. The legacy of Blackwater USA, an international terrorist organization, will have inspired generations of "terrorists" resorting to a tactic against which top down fascist regimes are impotent.
It's time to fire the Bush administration, his supportive gang, and his army of militaristic bureaucrats for whom keeping their jobs is their only job. This government remains illegitimate until a fair and unfettered election can be held. I am not optimistic that that will happen in the foreseeable future, or even our lifetimes. Until then and for as long as Bush wages war on the people of the US, it is the right of the people to abolish this government.
Thomas Jefferson, were he alive, would agree. The body of the Declaration of Independence is a laundry list of crimes and abuses attributed to George III. The Declaration of Independence is an indictment of a king. A similar indictment of the current George will be even longer and will include even more heinous abuses. It's time for Bush to go! He must submit to arrest and trial for capital crimes. There is a cell awaiting him in the Texas prison system, the hell holes that most certainly inspired Abu Ghraib.
Bush gave the game away. Americans were told that the attack on Iraq was about "terrorism", nevermind that "terrorism" is both created and made worse by US imperialist policies and CIA skullduggery. The rest of the world knows the truth of it. As Rome attacked Dacia for its gold, the US attacked the world for control of its oil.
George Galloway Takes on the US Senate and Wins!
Additional resources James Jeffords Six years on: Amid a failed war and invasion, only 3 percent of Americans believe the US will bring Democracy to the Middle East Iran/Contra Redux: How Bush May be Financing al Qaeda and Other Terrorist Organizations The L-curve The Heritage Foundation Picks a Fight with the Cowboy Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes Americans Have Lost Their Country A List of Right Wing Traitors Wishing for More Terrorist Attacks Against the US Bush Claims Power to Wage War on US Citizens
Discoveries Talk by Naomi Wolf - The End of America A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash Snowball - Our Dancing Cockatoo Concerto pour trompette en mi bémol majeur, de Joseph Haydn Eric Clapton - Reptile Glenn Gould - J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations
America is Somehow to Blame: German Public Television on 9/11
John Rosenthal
World Politics Review Exclusive
Last Sept. 11, German state-owned television ZDF marked the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by broadcasting a prime-time documentary titled "September 11, 2001: What Really Happened." By enticingly implying a discrepancy between what the film itself repeatedly terms the "official version" of 9/11 and the reality of the events, the mere title of the film already provides obvious grist for the mill of what might best be called "alternative" 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing: "alternative" because in the legal sense of the term, the 9/11 attacks were in fact the product of a conspiracy. On the ZDF Web page promoting the documentary, this effect is then underscored by a subtitle portentously announcing that "ZDF Investigations Reinforce Accusations against Authorities." The "authorities" in question are, of course, more specifically American authorities. As is well known, for "alternative" 9/11 conspiracy theorists, it is the latter -- and not Osama Bin Laden and the 19 identified hijackers -- that are supposed "really" to have been "behind" the attacks: often -- though the German broadcaster tastefully avoids this linkage -- in further connivance with the Israeli secret service Mossad.
When, however, Ray Drake of the German media-watch blog Medienkritik called attention to ZDF's seeming pandering to the most disreputable extremes of the 9/11 "truth" movement, his remarks quickly drew irate reactions from some German-speaking defenders of ZDF. The counter-critics argued that while the ZDF documentary did indeed give a platform to some well-known alternative "conspiracy theorists," it in fact served to "debunk" their theories. On the most generous assessment, ZDF had even pulled off a sort of pedagogical coup de force: in effect, fooling the most benighted sections of the German public into watching the documentary by way of its salacious conspiracy-mongering title and promotional material -- only in order then to set them straight about the erroneousness of the alternative "theories." (For the original post and discussion on Medienkritik, see here.)
And, indeed, the ZDF documentary does not exactly endorse the hypothesis that 9/11 was the product of a U.S. government conspiracy. It does not, however, reject it out of hand either. While it concludes that most of the variants of the government conspiracy "theory" are perhaps wrong -- or "unproven," as the narrator puts it, in the conspicuously noncommittal final word with which the documentary concludes -- what is so remarkable about the ZDF documentary is precisely that it treats them throughout as eminently reasonable and hence worthy of serious debate. It thereby, in effect, serves to render them, as one says in German, salonfähig: i.e. acceptable in polite company.
In fact, the thesis of U.S. government and/or Israeli involvement in the 9/11 attacks was already flourishing just on the edges of the established media in Germany long before such "theories," having wafted across the Atlantic, gave rise to similar offshoots in the United States. But even for Germany, ZDF's remarkable indulgence toward the alternative conspiracy theorists represents a significant change in attitude as far as the mainstream is concerned. Thus, for example, in an August 2003 report on its "Panorama" news magazine (video clip), Germany's other public television network, ARD, raised the alarm about a boom in Germany of what the title of the report describes from the outset as "absurd" 9/11 conspiracy theories. "People all over the world were there as it occurred 'live' on their television screens," Panorama's online summary of its report begins:
No terrorist attack has been so thoroughly documented. But self-styled experts on September 11th dispute the facts, suppose that deception and conspiracy lies behind everything, and claim that only they know who was truly behind the attacks and what the real motivations were. Thus, on their account, the World Trade Center was brought down through the use of explosives, the Pentagon was hit not by an airplane but by a missile, and at least some of the alleged hijackers are still alive.
"All sheer nonsense," the Panorama editors conclude, in the same tone of bewilderment as characterizes the report itself, "but more and more people believe it and enthusiastically buy the books of the conspiracy theorists." Panorama refers here to a whole list of German bestsellers: by well-known authors like Mathias Bröckers, a former editor at the popular "leftist" daily die Tageszeitung, and Andreas von Bülow, a former minister of research in the Social Democratic government of Helmut Schmidt -- as well, of course, as the "dean" of 9/11 "conspiracy theorists," the Frenchman Thierry Meyssan. This is in the summer of 2003: at a time when "alternative" 9/11 conspiracy theorizing in the United States was still largely confined to the murkiest backwaters of the Internet.
Note that the Panorama report explicitly draws attention to the irrational, esoteric quality of the "theories": as highlighted by the pretense of their purveyors to be in possession of an exclusive knowledge that stands in bold contrast to the allegedly deceptive obviousness of the widely known facts. Unlike their colleagues at ZDF, moreover, the ARD editors did not shy away from mentioning the use by the alternative "theorists" of the nefarious, esoteric explanation of merely "apparent" political facts par excellence: namely, the hypothesis of a specifically "Zionist conspiracy." "There is no respectable conspiracy without the Jews," the Panorama narrator remarks ironically, amidst footage of interviews with the neo-Nazi Horst Mahler and the Social Democrat von Bülow. "If Israeli Mossad agents are to be believed," von Bülow remarks, "psychological warfare can also lead to the employment of terrorist acts against one's own population." And then he concludes: "so, the Israeli side possibly played a role in 9/11."
The change of tone in the ZDF documentary could hardly be more patent. (The full video can be viewed here.) Now the alternative "theorists" are no longer the purveyors of wildly implausible allegations, which are plainly contradicted by banal and well-known facts. Instead, they are respectable, even courageous, seekers of truth, whose allegations can only be disproved, if they can be disproved, by additional research: such, for instance, as the "investigations" undertaken by ZDF's intrepid documentary team of Michael Renz and Guy Smith.
Now the "theories" of the likes of a von Bülow are not the product of morbid phantasms and prodigious logical leaps, but of reasoned, if ultimately perhaps faulty, reflection. It is none other than the "Former Federal Minister of Research" Andreas von Bülow who is brought out by the ZDF documentarians to set the stage for the other "skeptics": a motley crew of American acolytes of the European "theorists," including the Texas radio show host Alex Jones and Dylan Avery, the 23-year-old director of the Internet documentary "Loose Change." Referring to the "official version" of the events, von Bülow says: "That is the conspiracy theory that the Americans disseminate and that gives them the justification for fighting a worldwide war against terrorism, usually in Muslim countries with oil or mineral resources. I believe this story is not true, that there is a completely different background. And there are many, many skeptics . . ." And then the narrator continues, as if speaking in a single voice with von Bülow, "and many open questions." Unlike in the ARD report, von Bülow is never once confronted with his widely-publicized opinions about Israeli involvement in 9/11.
Now it is not the alternative "theories" of 9/11 that are inherently dubious, but rather the -- supposedly! -- known facts themselves: the ominous "official version." "Most people know where they were as the towers burned," the narration begins, "but do they know what really happened?" And thereafter even the most well-established and uncontroversial facts about the attacks are persistently stylized into mere hypotheses. Thus, for example, as pictures of Mohammad Atta and his accomplices flash rapidly across the screen, the narrator refers to the perpetrators of the attacks -- or rather those "presented [as such] to the world by America's government" -- as "19 young men, allegedly [angeblich] armed with box-cutters." Shortly thereafter, as debris from the twin towers is shown, he speaks of "the remains of two giants that were made to collapse by Osama Bin Laden's young martyrs -- so it is said [heißt es]."
When the ZDF "investigators" manage finally to cast doubt upon one or another of even the most ludicrous arguments of the "theorists," moreover, it is only ever after a seemingly immense intellectual effort -- when simple common sense ought to have sufficed. Thus, for example, the ZDF documentarians, in perfect harmony with the paranoid mindset of the "skeptics," treat it as being inherently suspicious that the hijacked passenger jets that crashed into the World Trade Center were not shot down by American fighter jets -- elements of "the best air defense in the world," as the narration repeatedly emphasizes. They thus reason as if the use of passenger jets as projectiles against buildings was a commonly known practice before 9/11 and, furthermore, as if the obviously knotty ethical question of whether it would be acceptable to shoot down passenger jets under such circumstances had already been resolved. Needless to say, there had never been any real world occasion even just to pose this question, much less resolve it, prior to 9/11. Moreover -- as Michael Renz, the German co-director of the documentary, must know -- it remains to this day a subject of vigorous debate even in Germany.
It is only after speaking with Stephen Trimble from Jane's Defense Weekly, who politely explains to them various technical details of the American air defense response on 9/11, that the filmmakers allow that the inaction of the fighter jets might not, after all, be evidence of a government conspiracy. "Many experts agree," the narration of the segment concludes, "the mightiest military machine in the world completely failed." Never mind that Trimble has not in fact quite said this. He has merely pointed to the fact that U.S. air defense was not prepared for the scenario presented by the 9/11 attacks: noting, among other things, that while fighter jets were indeed eventually scrambled, they were not given definite orders. But for the ZDF documentarians the premise that the inaction of the fighter jets is "surprising" must be preserved -- and thereby too the pretense that the "doubts" of the "skeptics" are reasonable.
It is indeed on the question of shooting down passenger jets that the filmmakers, in effect, show their hand: inadvertently revealing that what they present as reasonable "doubts" or "skepticism" amounts instead to simple irrational prejudice. Thus, in a later segment of the documentary devoted to the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., evidence is presented that is supposed to suggest that UA93 was indeed shot down and not intentionally crashed by the hijackers, as according to the "official version." The filmmakers eventually reject these indications, while noting -- in the ever ominous tones of the narrator -- that the U.S. government is continuing to hold other evidence classified: such, for example, as the bodies of the hijackers. "Why?" the narrator asks, as if there was something deeply troubling about this. Note that in the earlier segment, the fact that U.S. authorities did not shoot down passenger jets is supposed to provide prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy; in the Shanksville segment, however, alleged evidence that U.S. authorities did in fact shoot down UA93 is supposed likewise to provide prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy. This is to say, in effect, that for the filmmakers -- as indeed for the "theorists" -- everything and its opposite is prima facie evidence of a U.S. government conspiracy.
The final abiding message of the ZDF documentary is that America is, in any case, somehow to blame: if not perhaps for the attacks themselves, then at least for the fact that the "skeptics" believe that America was responsible for the attacks. Thus, as in the Shanksville segment, the narration repeatedly pillories the American government for its alleged "secretiveness" [Geheimniskrämerei]: which, we are told -- twice -- "provides the ideal soil for conspiracy theories." The main evidence the filmmakers adduce for this charge is that the authorities that they contacted were evidently less than enthusiastic about meeting all the demands of ZDF. There was, ZDF concludes, a "conspiracy after the conspiracy": an ambiguous formulation, which appears to imply that perhaps the U.S. government was also in on the "first" conspiracy, after all.
In the same spirit, when Alex Jones notes that "there are countless examples of the U.S. government lying to its own people," the ZDF narration wholeheartedly agrees, helpfully providing the examples: "Richard Nixon and Watergate, the Iran-Contra Scandal, Clinton and Monica Lewinsky" -- and, of course, the clincher: "Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction." As the latter words are spoken, the viewer is treated to an archival clip of a Donald Rumsfeld press conference. This is then followed by extended footage of George W. Bush awkwardly joking about missing weapons of mass destruction at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner, artfully inter-spliced with infrared camera shots appearing to show American troops breaking into Iraqi homes and taking civilians prisoner.
The implication is unmistakable: if the Bush administration could lie about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, why could it not lie about 9/11? And if one can be so sure that the Bush administration did "lie" about Iraqi weaponry as the ZDF producers appear to be: why not indeed? (Ironically, in the archival clip used by ZDF, Donald Rumsfeld can clearly be heard saying that "we know" that Iraq has "active weapons programs" -- thus highlighting the actual justification of the Iraq War that has been obscured by the narrow focus on weapon stocks in the habitual "Bush Lied!" scenario. On the whole matter, see my "16 Words, 500 Tons and 28 Kilograms".)
ZDF's supposed "revelation" that the fire insulation in one of the two twin towers was not up to regulation standards represents yet another variant on the same central motif of, so to say, "internalizing" the blame for the death and destruction of 9/11. The source of these allegations, a former New York City Fire Department official by the name of Vincent Dunn, can be heard pathetically "confessing" that "we all have responsibility": which in the ZDF translation becomes "we are all responsible." (The ZDF "investigators" manage erroneously to identify Dunn as "the former Fire Department Chief of Manhattan," thus providing additional gravitas to the charges.)
Never once in the ZDF documentary, however, is serious attention drawn to the responsibility of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks and their al-Qaida enablers and co-conspirators. The results of a ZDF online poll that appears on the promotional page for the documentary are thus hardly surprising. Asked to identify "who pulled the strings" in the 9/11 attacks, fully 66 percent of respondents, as of this writing, have chosen either "George W. Bush" (26 percent) or "U.S. Authorities" (25 percent) or the "Armaments Lobby" (15 percent). The fourth and remaining choice, "Osama Bin Laden," is given the nod by only 26 percent of respondents.
Such a marked lack of interest in the real background to the 9/11 attacks is especially curious in the case of a German public television network. As is well known, three of the four lead hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks came from Hamburg, Germany. As is equally well known, a fourth member of the so-called "Hamburg cell," Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, was denied entry into the United States, but continued to facilitate the attacks from German soil. The Hamburg terrorist cell has often been described as a "sleeper" cell. But one knowledgeable German observer has noted that the members' behavior was so flagrant that this description is misleading. (See here, for instance, from ARD's "Panorama".) The author of this observation is not some marginal "conspiracy theorist" like radio show host Alex Jones or the 23-year-old Dylan Avery. It is none other than Kay Nehm: Germany's Chief Public Prosecutor at the time of the 9/11 attacks. This is perhaps a subject to which ZDF will want to devote a documentary on the seventh anniversary of 9/11.
John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic relations. He is a WPR contributing editor.
Imagine MANY OF the videos were "real" and SOME EYEWITNESSES saw a big plane.
Imagine there REALLY WAS something of the 767 size in the observed 3D coordinates.
But it wasn't a 767, I can tell because of missing witnesses due to missing warning by the missing turbofan noise, and the missing realism of videos!!
Lets call it a hologramme!
A hologramme that is bright, and realistic from a close-up/favourable angle position (behind/below, Hezarkhani) A hologramme that is dark from a distance and the illusion breaks up, i.e. wings flicker on and off.
Hologramme projectors: Big plane high in the sky somewhere and helicopters hovering as supplemental or relay projectors. A missile (THE POD) carrying the "projections screen" and a warhead.
A mechanism that creates the "impact holes" (and the tiny impact flash)
(some?) frontal shots (767 flying towards camera) are faked because the hologramme does not work from that direction?
Technology used? Tom Bearden (cures cancer - time reversal - conjugate mirror)!
see what I mean?
It fits the phenotype of the 911 organism, but the biology is pure magic to us neanderthals. We just know it still bleeds.
I haven't got the time to study it further, but someone should scrutinise reflection-intensities, light-angles, pods, nose-outs .. etc from all the available vids and stills ... as well as evaluate eyewitness locations/statements
Videos were faked...!! The crummy video quality (by professional TV cameras) was intentional.
2ndplanevarious_a.mpg- Several views of the south tower plane crash from KTLA. Notice how the plane appears as a dark silhouette although the sun is behind the camera and the building is in full sun.
Easy. The missile that carried the "projection-screen-holo-dust" really did go through the tower and the holodust really DID disperse from the exit-hole and the image was "projected" onto it so the Airplane nose really made a re-appearance!
The exit hole:
Of course the hologram projection is not visible from the front.
Proof that there was a missile homing in from a steep trajectory is in the NBC Chopper 4 video -- only barely can a small object be seen:
whereas a boeing 767 would be as large as the impact hole!
MORE?
check these sites and form your own opinion.
The media and the US government LIE. YOu have to rely on alternative media, the blogosphere...
I think the my (variable visibility) hologram theory [VVHT] can be tested. The photos and footage will be the main subject of investigation.
a source for video clips: http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2007/02/56511.php
A hologramme has specific properties that an aeroplane would not have.
But even without detailed study it is obvious that the rudder and wing-angles are DISTORTED. This may be an effect of the material used for the "virtual projection screen" or a result of the viewing angle.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Dynamic holography
The discussion above describes static holography, in which recording, developing and reconstructing occur sequentially and a permanent hologram is produced.
There exist also holographic materials which don't need the developing process and can record a hologram in a very short time. This allows to use holography to perform some simple operations in an all-optical way. Examples of applications of such real-time holograms include phase-conjugate mirrors ("time-reversal" of light), optical cache memories, image processing (pattern recognition of time-varying images), and optical computing.
The amount of processed information can be very high (terabit/s), since the operation is performed in parallel on a whole image. This compensates the fact that the recording time, which is in the order of a µs, is still very long compared to the processing time of an electronic computer. The optical processing performed by a dynamic hologram is also much less flexible than electronic processing. On one side one has to perform the operation always on the whole image, and on the other side the operation a hologram can perform is basically either a multiplication or a phase conjugation. But remember that in optics, addition and Fourier transform are already easily performed in linear materials, the second simply by a lens. This enables some applications like a device that compares images in an optical way [4].
The search for novel nonlinear optical materials for dynamic holography is an active area of research. The most common materials are photorefractive crystals, but also in semiconductors or semiconductor heterostructures (such as quantum wells), atomic vapors and gases, plasmas and even liquids it was possible to generate holograms.
A particularly promising application is optical phase conjugation. It allows the removal of the wavefront distortions a light beam receives when passing through an aberrating medium, by sending it back through the same aberrating medium with a conjugated phase. This is useful for example in free-space optical communications to compensate for atmospheric turbulence (the phenomenon that gives rise to the twinkling of starlight).
It is possible, using nonlinear optical processes, to exactly reverse the propagation direction and phase variation of a beam of light. The reversed beam is called a conjugate beam, and thus the technique is known as optical phase conjugation (also called time reversal, wavefront reversal and retroreflection).
One can interpret this nonlinear optical interaction as being analogous to a real-time holographic process. In this case, the interacting beams simultaneously interact in a nonlinear optical material to form a dynamic hologram (two of the three input beams), or real-time diffraction pattern, in the material. The third incident beam diffracts off this dynamic hologram, and, in the process, reads out the phase-conjugate wave. In effect, all three incident beams interact (essentially) simultaneously to form several real-time holograms, resulting in a set of diffracted output waves that phase up as the "time-reversed" beam. In the language of nonlinear optics, the interacting beams result in a nonlinear polarization within the material, which coherently radiates to form the phase-conjugate wave.
keywords: 911 WTC ua175 175 aa77 aa11 flight 11 flight 175 world trade center new york terrorists attacks 11. september 9/11 conspiracy theories cia mossad fbi mohammed atta hijackings boxcutters arab state terror hegelian dialectic gladio reichstag gleiwitz tonkin northwoods covert operation false flag black op special ops bush wolfowitz rumsfeld schmidt neocons netanjahu silverstein sharon tenet myers shelton kennedy jfk rfk elite buffett offutt us dollar collapse banking credit creation chomsky amy goodman democracy now intellectual corruption september clues tv fakery tvf npt no plane theory no big boeing judy wood beam weapons space brilliant pebbles star wars iran contra scalar weapons tom bearden russia ussr estonia plutonium weaponized hologramm atomic bomb nuclear china syndrome cassini reactor contamination bird flu anthrax aids lab biologial chemical laboratory saddam hussein hoax wmd weapons of mass destruction david thom pictures
I just heard an interview with a Boeing PR spinmeister
To say that there is no alternative to Kerosene aeroplanes
is a lie!
Hydrogen in aeroplanes is very feasable.
In the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen*** Germany Professor Günter Dahl (pronounced: Gewntar Daaal) has successfully powered a turbine on Hydrogen. He told me 5 years ago that it would take 10 years to fly jets with hydrogen if Boeing had the WILL. But Boeing profits from war and you cannot commit wars with electric cars and hydrogen airplanes.
Contrary to CARS, where hydrogen is NOT feasable (dangerous! and a PR scam by the automotive/oil cartels to stop electric cars!) in AIRCRAFT it is very feasable!
Unlike in road-traffic, nothing is left to chance in civil aeronautics. all methods and materials are designed for 100% safety.
Cars produces 20 to 40% of global hydro-carbon emissions, global shipping 6% aeroplanes 1%. People's governments no longer rule societies, the private corporations do.
Today, governments are forced to leave credit creation to private corporations. Yes our NZ Reserve Bank DOES NOT produce our money/investment supply. ###
The common-good is no longer allowed to regulate capitalist accumulation. %%%
Unlike Anglo-American money, german money is still created by public-owned institutions ("Sparkasse") to create values for the common good, like technologies that compete with the OIL HIERARCHY.
================================================================== PUBLIC OWNED MEDIA HAS THE OBLIGATION TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT ==================================================================
I think it is odd that even late in the afternoon on 9/11, United Airlines was still not acknowledging that Flight 175 had hit the South Tower, but merely said it had confirmed the loss of the aircraft and was sending people to New York based on information received from authorities:
Earlier today, United confirmed the tragic loss of two flights:
* United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 aircraft, departed from Newark, NJ, at 8:01 a.m. local time, bound for San Francisco with 38 passengers onboard, 2 pilots and 5 flight attendants. The aircraft crashed near Johnstown, PA. * United Flight 175, a Boeing 767 aircraft, departed from Boston, MA, at 7:58 a.m. local time, bound for Los Angeles with 56 passengers onboard, 2 pilots and 7 flight attendants. United has confirmed the loss of this aircraft. Last radar contact with the aircraft was between Newark, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA.
United has a team en route to Johnstown, PA, to assist in every possible way with the investigation and to provide assistance, help and support to family members. Based on information received from the authorities, United is also sending employees to the New York City area to assist in every way it can with this tragedy. Johnstown Air Force Training Facility Pa,
Photos:
TELESCOPING DOORS
9:53 FAA headquarters informed Command Center that the deputy director for air traffic services was talking to Deputy Administrator Monte Belger about scrambling aircraft. Then Command Center informed headquarters they lost track of United 93 over the Pittsburgh area. Within seconds, Command Center received a visual report from another aircraft, and informed headquarters that the aircraft was 20 miles northwest of Johnstown. A second aircraft had also spotted United 193.
10:01 Command Center advised FAA headquarters that one of the aircraft had seen United 93 "waving his wings." The aircraft had witnessed the radical gyrations in what investigators believe was the hijackers’ effort to defeat the passenger assault.
10:03:11 United 93 crashed in a field near Johnstown, Pa., 125 miles from Washington, D.C.
10:07 The military's NEADS (the Northeast Air Defense Sector) received a call about United 93 from the military liaison at Cleveland Center. The center was unaware that the aircraft had already crashed.
10:08 Five minutes later, Command Center forwarded this update to headquarters:
Command Center: OK. Uh, there is now on that United 93.
FAA Headquarters: Yes.
Command Center: There is a report of black smoke in the last position I gave you, 15 miles south of Johnstown.
FAA Headquarters: From the airplane or from the ground?
Command Center: Uh, they're speculating it's from the aircraft.
FAA Headquarters: OK.
Command Center: Uh, who, it hit the ground. That's what they’re speculating, that's speculation only.
The aircraft that spotted the "black smoke" was an unarmed Air National Guard cargo plane that also had seen American 77 crash into the Pentagon 26 minutes earlier. After being diverted to track American 77, the cargo plane had resumed its flight to Minnesota and saw the smoke from the crash of United 93, less than two minutes after the plane went down.
A United Airlines flight believed to have been hijacked crashed today southeast of ... United has confirmed it will dispatch a team to Johnstown, Pa., ... 911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/evidence/abcnews_airplanecrash010911.html - 46k -
The Johnstown-Cambria Airport "Terror" Team The final procedures: Johnstown, Pennsylvannia and DC Many 9/11 researchers pray it all over again: "There were lots of warnings." It was more than this. The United States lied to us. During 2001, especially in the summer, they mentally prepared, drilled, trained and brainwashed local U.S. communities about a pending (bio-)terror attack, including in the areas of Westmoreland County/Johnstown/Shanksville, Florida, DC and New York. In these 2 parts we will once again focus on the Johnstown Area, which was 30 miles away from the official crash of "flight93".On September 10th, 2001, the day before 9/11, the Cambria County Local Emergency Planning Committee, had their final "terror meeting" of many, which took place in the area around Shanksville....
The lost "terror drills ? Pt.11a This final chapter includes the real reason of "wargames" as a planted distraction to "anti terror drills", two government "agents" on Delta1989 and Colgan5930?, Amalgam Virgo "1.5", Rosetta Stone, the significance of 1951, Tinker AFB, White Sands, STARS, Club Cabana, Coalminers with Tomahawks, Flight91, the story of Dave Friedman, Scrap Yards and the WTC, a mysterious yellow cord, American Airlines in Shanksville, more from Buffalo, Dayton and the Westmore County drills, the soldier disguised as a firefighter, a passenger who died "twice", Codeshares, more BTS, the lost motel manager, Operation Provide Comfort, Honolulu and more...
The lost "terror drill"? Pt.11b 9/11 was a combination of older terror drills, NOT wargames! Major parts had been also tested during Amalgam Virgo 01 (June 2001) and during three until recently lesser-known drills in Westmoreland County, Buffalo and Dayton. These three drills had odd similarities with the fate of Flight 77, Flight 11, Flight 175 and Flight 93.
Flight 93 aka N591UA, Westmore County drill My story of Flight 93 aka N591UA starts already on June 12, 2001. On this weekend the Pittsburgh-area emergency personnel of Westmoreland County, the area around Shanksville, had already participated in full-scale mock-disaster drills. Once again, these drills had nothing to do with "wargames", but clearly have to be defined and distinguished as anti-terror drills: Tribune-Review reported on the weekend of June 19th, 2001, that the U.S. Department of Defense spent nearly $23,000 to stage a 3-hour event which was called "Exercise Mall Strike 2001": "...Participants in the anti-terrorist drill responded to a fictitious report of an explosion at the Greengate Mall. Mock victims at the scene were treated for exposure to chemical or biological contaminations...".
"Twin tails" of pre-Flight 93 and other "phantom flights" The official timeline of Sep11th is breaking apart. Atta's Portland flight didn't exist; various flights of the official flights or the tail numbers of their precursors existed twice; new, recently unknown terror drills show, that the scenario of 9/11 was well known; the new "flight plans" and meeting points of the alleged hijacked flights included too many coincidences; the planners of the "hijack" must have had inside knowledge about other flights and their cancellations as well. On September 10th 2001 a plane with the tail# N591UA was reported in 2 different places at the same time accoring to a Government database at www.BTS.gov this plane was reported the next day to have crashed as flight 93.
Flight 11 was spotted on the radar screens at 8:48 by New York ARTCC controllers: The New York Center controller and manager were unaware that American 11 had already crashed... (9/11 report, p.21)
Flight 11 was reported at 9:21 by Washington ARTCC controllers as "heading towards Washington": discussion
The New York "Approach Control" radar should have seen the aircraft, if the transponder was on - OR as primary returns; if they were looking for them, or by coincidence.
At 8:40 happened the last transmission from UA 175. It stated that they had heard a suspicious transmission (most likely from Flight 11). Minutes later it turned southwest without clearance from air traffic control. At 8:47 it?s transponder code changed, and then changed again. (Commission Report, p. 21)
"The Secret Hijacking The Fifth Plane landed in Cleveland..." (Woody Box) In the morning of September 11, Delta Flight 1989 made an emergency landing at Cleveland Airport. This is a well established fact. Less known to the public is that another airplane landed under similar circumstances about half an hour later, on a different runway.
The Cleveland Airport Mystery Delta flight1989 - wasn't hijacked, and there was no bomb. However, a closer examination reveals a bunch of conflicting statements concerning Delta 1989. This article will prove that not 1, but 2 planes made an emergency landing in Cleveland.
Michael Kane: "9/11 War Games ? No Coincidence" (special thanks to Barbara Honegger for her early work on this line of research) ?I have an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD that on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs of Staff (Richard B. Myers) and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise (FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner. Mike Ruppert - June 5, 2004, editor of FTW fromthewilderness.com
while the official account has Flight 11 being boarded at gate 26, the flight actually took off from gate 32.However, no passengers actually boarded at gate 32, instead boarding at gate 26...
Air Traffic Control Center Ronkonkoma- Red Herring or Cover-up? What does the FAA have to hide? As recently reported by NY Times columnist Matthew L. Wald, the FAA obviously destroyed some evidence of 9/11. Wald wrote about the destroyed FAA tapes from 9/11. "...at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center in Ronkonkoma, which handles long-distance traffic around the New York metropolitan area, the first inkling of a hijacking that most controllers had was when a supervisor came to the cafeteria and asked if he could change the television channel to CNN. "Our TV's are always tuned to ESPN," one controller said. The television screen showed one tower of the World Trade Center with a hole in it. "We didn't know what kind, what airplane. There were rumors it was a 737, One of the most disturbing questions of September 11th, is about the "stand down". Was there some possible evidence on the "Delaney"-tape? http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/05/288004.shtml
Also, Looking at the BTS depatrure data from Dulles on September 11th, I noticed a flight with the tail number N078AA
the problem is, this plane never existed. It was never entered into the American Airlines databse ?
Betty Ong call !!! I cant believe i hadn't seen this before. In listening to the call with Nydia talking to the AA security officer (the second recording), something didn't sound right to me. The AA officer asks Nydia about 2 passengers. At that point, she (Nydia) hadn't mentioned anything about 2 passengers ?? (many comments)...
Two chapters by Ewing2001 and John Doe II (Team 8+*)
Pt1: 9/10: The Johnstown-Cambria Airport Terror Team -By Ewing2001 Pt2: 9/11: What's happening at Johnstown-Cambria Airport? -By JohnDoe II
Pt.1 The Johnstown-Cambria Airport "Terror" Team By Ewing2001
December 6, 2004
The final procedures: Johnstown, Pennsylvannia and DC
Many 9/11: researchers pray it all over again: "There were lots of warnings." It was more than this. The United States lied to us. During 2001, especially in the summer, they mentally prepared, drilled, trained and brainwashed local U.S. communities about a pending (bio-)terror attack, including in the areas of Westmore County/Johnstown/Shanksville, Florida, DC and New York.
In these 2 parts we will once again focus on the Johnstown Area, which was 30 miles away from the official crash of "flight93".
On September 10th, 2001, the day before 9/11:, the Cambria County Local Emergency Planning Committee, had their final "terror meeting" of many, which took place in the area around Shanksville....
They were not alone.
Let's make this very clear at this point, every focus on "warnings" or "wargames" only, is misleading and supporting the "negligence theory".9/11: was not the result of negligence. The United States orchestrated the attacks on highest military- and intelligence level and sent their representatives into the particular areas.
Despite claims of some researchers, it is not clear, who and how many of the White House officials had been actively involved in the whole 9/11: plan, but some of them, who have, had strong connections to Douglas Feith and the PNAC think tank.
One of the key persons outside the White House, which obviously had prior knowledge about a pending attack, was Rep. John Murtha in Pennsylvannia, who had a huge address book with military contacts.
During the last days before 9/11:, nothing was as usual. Various anti-terror teams in the United States, met to exercise and analyse a pending terror attack. Some of them "did" 9/11:.
On September 8th, at the Buffalo Niagara airport (NY), an Erie County practice run included a "full-scale terrorist exercise". More than 350 participants were involved in this exercise that simulated an aircraft landing with a terrorist on board and the threat of an explosive device on the plane.
On September 10th, as reported by Newsweek, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.
On the same day, the NRO, another U.S. Intelligence Unit, prepared the last steps of their Sep11th-"scenario": Crashing planes into their headquarter. Furthermore, the NSA received a coded terror message: "Tomorrow is Zero Day".
The countdown continued...
On September 10th, also 10 members of the "Cambria County Local Emergency Planning Committee" (CCLEPC), met in the air traffic control tower at the John Murtha Johnstown Cambria County Airport in Richland Township, which would face only a couple of hours later, a strong incident: 9/11 and the alleged hijack of Flight 93 into this area.
Sergeant James Koshute, Michael Hoover, Ron Springer, Ralph Saylor, Bernie McCreadie, June Kania, Mike Huss, Vikki King, Georgia Lehman and Leah Spangler met at the airport on 9/10.
Did they or their contacts have prior knowledge about 9/11:, or was one of them even involved in an "Inside Job"?
Let's take a closer look into the background of the participants...:
Sergeant James Koshute
Sergeant James Koshute of the 258 Air Traffic Control Squadron from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard served as the host. Generally ignored in all mainstream articles about the official story, this military unit moved already on Sep. 1, 1997 to Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, in mid-2001 renamed to Murtha Cambria.
Johnstown Cambria was basically also a military airport, long time before 9/11. They had the United States Marine Corp., the Army National Guard, the Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs and the 258th at the airport. In 1999, the tower, operated by the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, was contracted by the Army Corps of Engineers, designed by Baker Associates and built by Cleveland Construction Co.(CCI)
The 258th was very experienced in military radar operations. During 1995 and 1996 at "Operation Snake Bite", air defense operations in Florida, but also assisting the FAA, by providing their mobile tower and personnel in Erie and Ohio.
In August 1999, Rep. John Murtha opened a new, $2.5 million passenger terminal. Prior, he also brought in $48 million for National Guard and Reserve facilities for national defense with over 200 full-time personnel, including the new Air Traffic Control Tower. In the same month, former President Clinton signed a new military construction appropriations that included $6.2 million to construct an Air National Guard Air Traffic Control Training Complex and $6.3 million for an Army Reserve Maintenance Facility, both to be built near the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport. More on Murtha later.
It should be also mentioned, that in opposite to reports about ATC Cambria/ Johnstown, the 258 Air Traffic Control Squadron, had their own professional AN/MPN-14 Radar Set. It was a "complete ground-controlled approach facility.. to identify and locate approaching aircraft and instructed pilots in guiding their aircraft to a safe landing during reduced visibility." Did they use it on Sep11th, to track "flight 93"?
(Photo: Ron Springer in a June 2003 exercise)
Ron Springer, Ralph Saylor
Ralph Saylor was the local Assistant Fire Chief, Ron Springer director of the "Cambria County Emergency Management". Springer resides in Ebensburg, PA.
Following the activities prior the Sep10th "terror meeting", it becomes clear, that their members had been involved into terror scenarios during the whole year, and carefully briefed on possible attacks. From the timeline during mid 2001:
May 22 Robbin Melnyk, Carol Peretin and Bernie McCreadie met with officials from Verizon concerning 9-1-1 telephone systems.
May 23rd Ron Springer, Ralph Saylor and Bernie McCreadie represented the Department at a planning session on developing a countywide Hazard Mitigation Plan.
July 11 Ron Springer attended a pilot's group meeting at the John Murtha Johnstown Cambria County Airport concerning aircraft search and rescue operations and available resources. It seems, that Springer was with the "Region 13 Task Force", which was already formed three years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in 1998.
This group, formed as a federal pilot program, "unified training and used pooled resources to improve readiness". Director of this group was Robert Full: "It has been a strong partnership since 1998".
July 17 Ralph Saylor represented the Department at a program/software review session on terrorism preparedness with "Consequence Management Interoperability" (CMI) in Johnstown.
The significance of both July 11 and July 17th meetings, point on another important connection between Johnstown and the Pentagon:
The so called "Consequence Management Interoperability System" (CMIS), was in reality developed by the U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command CSLE Marine/NBC. After 9/11, CMIS, was renamed into DMI – Services or Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS), possibly to cover their tracks. CMI-Services was also funded through the Department of Defense. Their newsletter editor during 2001 was Roger N. Fritzel from Battelle, another bio defense contractor.
During the 2001 "terror meetings", the developer of CMIS aka DMIS, also offered for participants of these meetings, to become stakeholders of their emergency software. Some of them obviously became partners, made some money and shut their mouths.
Also, the "Region 13 Task Force", worked later with another emergency software product, which was connected with the military.
This emergency software was developed by Evoxis Inc., which used to make automated communications software for the financial services industry.
Evoxis was founded in July 2001, by Mohan Ramani, who came from Clairvoyance Corporation. Vice President Christopher Dinnin joined Evoxis following a 16-year career at Accenture. Laurie Ann Sims, another vice president, came from Westinghouse Communications and Adelphia. Many others worked prior Evoxis for Marconi.
Marconi, Accenture and Westinghouse are Pentagon contractors. (After 9/11, Accenture became also part of a military task force, together with Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and EDS, pushing the e-voting industry.)
The role of these pre-9/11 "terror softwares" and their psychological impact of their background becomes even more clear, if we look into the connections of another member of the Johnstown Terror Meetings, Michael Huss:
Michael Huss
Fire Chief Michael Huss worked for the City of Johnstown and had many interesting connections.
Prior to the Sep10th-"terror meeting" at the Johnstown airport, he also was involved in two "stakesholder meetings" of CMI-Services (CMIS), on July 17 and 18.
Attending these meetings high rank U.S. Military Officials:
Dr. Scott M. Eyestone, lead functional analyst of CMIS and consultant to the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD).
Tim Baughman, Director of the Western Region of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA).
Colonel Richard Kiehart, USAR, Commanding Officer of the 464th US Army Reserve Chemical Brigade stationed in Johnstown, specialised in advanced drills (see below). Kiehart, was present for the kick-off briefing during these Johnstown Meetings.
CMIS/DMIS is run by Dr. Scott M. Eyestone, consultant to the D.O.D., and Richard D. Munnikhuysen, who was Battelle's Director of DoD Operations.(see CMIS history* at Notes)
As an acquisition specialist in the U.S. Navy, Munnikhuysen served in various capacities on major weapon systems acquisition projects (the AEGIS program*).
Fire Chief Huss, apparently targeted as a stakesholder for CMIS/DMIS, was also involved in another terror "workshop" on July 9th
Among the attendees included:
Jerry Mothershead, Department of the Navy Dr. Scott Eyestone, CMIS Romaine Session Key, Senior Systems Analyst for CMIS, former Project Manager for the Air Force, computer specialist with the Air Force Audit Agency
plus Dr. Barry Erlick, ex-USAMRIID! Here we also have another coincidence pattern of the 9/11-anthrax connection, often ignored by many 9/11 researchers.
Erlick- head of the Military Intel Terror Operation in Johnstown/Shanksville?
The background of Dr. Barry Erlick was obviously helpful to prepare the responsible fire units in this area on a pending terror attack. Erlick represented the perfect authority for this purpose:
Between 1978 and 1982 he served as a Principal Research Investigator and Deputy Chief, Viral Biology, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland.
In 1982 Dr. Erlick joined U.S. Army Medical Information and Intelligence Agency, renamed the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC) in 1986. Since 1982 he served in numerous senior level positions for AFMIC and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) including; Chief of the Scientific & Technical Division and Chief Scientist, AFMIC; Chief of the Department of Defense (DoD) Biological Threat Analysis Center; Chairman of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Subcommittee of the Weapons and Space Systems Intelligence Committee of the Director of Central Intelligence; and Senior Scientist and Deputy Chief of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Analysis Division, DIA. Chief Scientist, Special Programs Battelle Memorial Institute.
Erlick also served as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Chief Scientist for Biological and Chemical Warfare before joining the Department of Agriculture in June 2001.
It appears to be strange, that after an impressive career at military and intelligence, Erlick decided to work at the Department of Agriculture.
Was the purpose of Erlick's position to have an input on the pre-terror script of Sep11th?
During these workshops and all other forthcoming meetings, their protocols also promoted the following event of August 6-10, 2001, which they promoted, "will be of interest to CMI-Services stakeholders":
The International Conference on Disaster Management, Rosen Centre Hotel Orlando
A look into the archive of this event, and other sources, reveals, that David Tait, President of this Conference, was promoting this event since at least early May 2001, by sending out emails about it.
Only 4 weeks away from 9/11, this conference on Disaster Management included the American Red Cross, Department of Justice, FEMA, FBI, National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), International Association of Chiefs of Police, Institute on Business and Home Safety, the National Domestic Preparedness Office and others.
One of the participants of this conference was Trina Hembree, executive director of NEMA.
Interestingly, Hembree even "predicted" 9/11, in one of her early studies. As one of the NEMA newsletters reveal, in 2000 she wrote already a "prophetic essay", "Terrorism Comes to America," and worked since then with state emergency management directors on domestic preparedness.
Coincidentally, on Sep11th, Hembree was at the annual terror conference of NEMA in Big Sky, Montana, and together with high rank officials from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency: "...She watched the state directors switch from speechless shock at the horror on large-screen TV to hectic activity..."
The NEMA conference (photo above) seems to be not the only one, which "coincidentally" invited top security specialists for Sep11th. Also, on the same day, "Jane's Facility Security", organised by the leading source of information on defense, met at the West Coast Salt Lake Hotel.
Terror Targets New York, Florida, DC
The United States was not only prepared on an attack, they also observed some terror patsies, had their informants, infiltrated alleged "terror cells" and trained emergency units on the possibility of an attack, including crashing and collapsing Towers, everything during the same time period:
On May 17th, 2004, recently appointed Homeland Security chief Bernard Kerik, confirmed at the 9/11 panel, that he had been involved in "drills and tabletop exercises simulating a bio/chemical attack", "blackouts, plane crashes" and "building collapses"!
Kerik said, that "all tested the effectiveness of the city's coordinated response system".
FLORIDA: Between June 1-4, 2001, the "terrorist" exercise AMALGAM Virgo 01, took place at the Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. The exercise also included MQM-107 drones, which might have been useful for a switch-plane scenario.
Only 3 weeks later, apparently the anthrax attacks on Florida, had been drilled at "Dark Winter". The anthrax attack was obviously delayed and took finally place October 2001, though the White House already took vaccines on Sep11th.
DC: The same pattern also in Washington, DC. Many fire units had been well prepared for a terror attack. (See also The lost terror drill? -Chapter 11)
In May 2001, the Tricare exercise included a crash of a Boeing 757 airliner into the U.S. military’s headquarters.
Coincidentally, on the morning of 9/11, three (!), fire units had been involved in an exercise:
Fire Truck 101 from the Arlington County Fire Department The same fire unit was already involved in the May 2001 “Abbottsville” drill, a sequel of Don Abbott's (Fieldsoft) November 2000-Pentagon Plane Crash exercise.
Fort Belvoir Fire Department The same fire unit was also involved in a satellite-link exercise from April 2000, conducting "Urgent Victory", a war exercise in Grafenwoehr, Germany., together with the 464th Chemical Brigade, originally stationed in Johnstown.
Fort Myer fire fighters Including one assignement at the Heliport Station at the Pentagon! According to the statement of Alan Wallace, he was "assigned there the day before as well". On the morning of Sep11th, he was supported by Mark Skipper and Dennis Young. They arrived "at about 0730". He also said, that there were two other individuals at the heliport site: Sean Berger (U.S. Army personnel) and Jackie Kidd, both active duty Army.
Wallace confirmed, that it was a new fire station, rarely used and they also used a new crash truck "an Emergency One Titan 3000".
As it turns out, their truck had been strangely disabled and became useless. Its back end was on fire, having been parked against the building with the front end facing the heliport. Wallace said, as part of the exercise, at about 08:30 AM, he "decided to pull the crash truck outside of the fire station and place it in a position more accessible to the heliport landing site.". It wasn't explained, what happened afterwards. On another note, Wallace also pointed out, that "so many people think" Mark and he watched the plane hit the building: "...We did NOT. We only saw it approach for an instant..."
Let's go back to the Shanksville area and Johnstown Airport, on the morning of Sep11th.
A careful analysis of all mainstream articles, sorted into a new timeline by John Doe II, shows, that something in the official "hijacked" rout doesn't add up. A common claim, that flight93 was heading from the south towards Johnstown Airport is a clear contradiction against the official flight path.
Did Flight 11 really pass this area and crashed over there?
Pt.2 What's happening at Johnstown-Cambria Airport? By John Doe II
What's happening at John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport on 911?
In the days after 911 the following story is widely reported:
"Dennis Fritz, the air traffic manager, got a call from controllers in Cleveland warning the Johnstown airport -- which has no radar of its own -- *that a large aircraft was 20 miles south and had suddenly turned on a heading for Johnstown.*
*"It was an aircraft doing some unusual maneuvers at a low level, which is unusual for an aircraft that size,*" Fritz said last night.
""Supervisor Dennis Fritz and controller Thomas Hull picked up binoculars -- the tower has no radar -- and scanned the horizon to the south. The day was clear and, from the highest point in the area, they could spot radio towers in neighboring Somerset County. *A large plane would have stood out.*
"Dennis Fritz, director of the municipal airport in Johnstown, Pa., said the *FAA called him several times as the plane approached his city*, and even warned him to evacuate the tower for fear the jet was going to plow into it.
(Washington Post, 9/13/01)
"When they (Cleveland) called back a minute later, it was 15 miles away. They suggested we evacuate the tower and the airport because they didn't know what was going to happen here. The aircraft was not communicating."
(Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/13/01)
*"'On the first call from Cleveland, they said a 757 was heading in our direction at about 6,000 feet and descending,'* Fritz said. "They were repeatedly trying to raise the pilot on the radio, but there was no answer. " Within minutes, Fritz said, he began to move people from the tower but hesitated to abandon it completely because he felt the incoming plane might be in distress and need to make an emergency landing."
(Bergen Record, 9/14/01)
*"Ninety seconds later (after first call), Cleveland called back. The plane was now 15 miles south and heading directly for the Johnstown tower. ***
"We suggest you evacuate," they told him.
Fritz ordered trainees and custodial staff out of the 85-foot tower. He and Hull stayed at their posts and scanned the south with binoculars. It occurred to Fritz that the plane must be flying below the level of the mountain ridges around them."
""Dennis Fritz, chief air traffic controller at the Johnstown airport, said he ordered the evacuation of nonessential employees at the tower and the airport around 10 a.m. Tuesday after being alerted to 'a large aircraft 20 miles to the south.'" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/13/01)
"Forty-five seconds after telling Fritz to evacuate the Johnstown tower, Cleveland Air Traffic Control phoned again.
"They said to disregard. The aircraft had turned to the south and they lost radar contact with him.'"
It might be rather surprising that Johnstown Airport was ordered to evacuate as it certainly is not a target one could imagine the hijackers to be interested. So while the FAA ordered Pittsburgh control towers at 9:49 to evacuate no skyscraper in Pittsburgh was evacuated.
But if the FAA wants to run no risk on 911 and evacuate all airports that could be touched then again it's rather surprising that the advice was only given while UA 93 was only 20 miles away.
Assuming a speed of 500 mph (it crashed with the official speed of 580 mph) this means that Johnstown had only 2 ½ minutes to evacuate. Which certainly is not sufficient especially as Dennis Fritz doesn't decide immediately. So if the FAA wanted to run no risk when then wait so long?
But leaving this point aside and having a closer look at what happened at Johnstown Airport on 911 there are several very bizarre points that stand out:
Not only is the final crash site of UA 93 16 miles *south* of Johnstown Airport (so when first noticed as heading for Johnstown UA 93 is almost exactly at the very location it will later crash (being apparently lower than 2800 feet it is surprising that no eyewitness remarked this plane then)) but this direction is in contradiction to the official flight path of UA 93. If one has a look at the map and follows the official flight path the plane would be west or maximum southwest of Johnstown Airport. So, who is right?
There is one account that contradicts all the quoted statements that UA 93 was heading from the south to Johnstown Airport:
"John Hugya, an administrative assistant to U.S. Rep John Murtha, said *he has been told that the plane initially flew over Cambria County Airport in Johnstown.* There was no communication from the plane, and the plane was not responding to Cleveland Center, which is how they knew it was one of the hijacked planes."
In clear this means that UA 93 managed 5 miles in the very time Johnstown had been alerted and finally been evacuated and the big relieve came.
Assuming that UA 93 was heading with 500mph (it crashed with official speed of 580 mph) *than the whole period when Johnstown was in danger lasts 36 seconds! *
This is rather surprising and difficult to believe.
As UA 93 "turned again towards the south" "about 15 miles south of Johnstown" it is basically exactly at the very place (within a mile) that it will crash. This again is quite unlikely. Nobody reported a 180° turn of UA 93 in the very last minute of its flight. And no eyewitness has recalled this.
One last question is also why Johnstown Airport neither sees UA 93 nor the white jet that seven eyewitnesses remarked at the crash site. Cleveland stated that UA93 was flying at an altitude of 6000 feet and descending. This is also reported by Cleveland controller Stacey Taylor who was in charge of UA 93 (NBC, 9/11/02). So if it was a clear day, a big aircraft would stand out and it was obviously flying above 2800 feet why then wasn't it seen?
But why does Johnstown Airport have no radar forcing the staff to use binoculars?
On June 15, 1999 the following information is made about Johnstown Airport on the site of the Airport Traffic Control Service:
"Control tower services have been taken over by the Department of Defense. ATC services are provided by Federal Employees of the US Air Force."
Why does nothing of this story that explains the evacuation of Johnstown Airport makes any sense? Or in other words: It makes as little sense as the explanation surrounding the evacuation of Cleveland tower and Cleveland Airport.
***************************************** NOTES
Aegis Definition: (DOD) A totally integrated shipboard weapon system that combines computers, radars, and missiles to provide a defense umbrella for surface shipping.
2000: Congress set aside funds and the Consequence Management Interoperability Services (CMI – Services) project began.
2000/1: Responders provided requirements and assisted with analysis and testing.
2001: Project transitioned from DoD/USMC to FEMA eGov Disaster Management program; the name changed from CMI – Services to DMI – Services.
9/11/01: Responders asked for tools development first.
Debris problem
Officially, flight93 crashed at Shanksville. This is conflicting with the following report: "...Moments after the crash, Carol Delasko initially thinks someone had blown up a boat on Indian Lake: “It just looked like confetti raining down all over the air above the lake...”
Hull, Lt. Col. Edward J. , one of the air traffic controllers, was also 193rd Regional Support Group commander and former commander of the 258th ATCS.
Johnstown Airport Within 7 months, Johnstown Airport faced two unexplained plane crashes
October 2000 "...A twin-engine plane carrying state Transportation Secretary Bradley L. Mallory made an emergency landing at Johnstown-Cambria County Municipal Airport after an engine failed Monday morning... ...Mallory, 48, was appointed transportation secretary by Ridge on Jan. 13, 1995 after previously serving as an attorney and deputy secretary for the state agency... ...It was the second time in two years a plane carrying Mallory was forced to make an emergency landing. In 1998, Mallory said he was traveling in a state-owned plane when a turbo engine malfunctioned en route to Franklin, Franklin County..."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/news/s_166240.html May 2001 A small plane crashed and killed two men, 15 miles north of Johnstown, after takeoff from the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport. The cause of the crash was not immediately disclosed. 2.5 years later, Mary Ann Guercio, widow of one of these victims, filed a lawsuit blaming the accident, in part, on a defective carburetor and unmarked power lines.
Credits
Ewing2001: Thx to Matthew E. for pointing me on the "Knox drill" and DC Fire Unit exercise reports (see below). Thx also for the latest findings of TheMemoryHole. See also The lost terror drill? -Chapter 11
John Doe II: This chapter is based on the central finding of 911 researcher Zeitmaschine and the research of Time 8+ and Zaphod 36.
Thx to the rest of Team8+ (*temporary name) for an extraordinary teamwork on this topic: Brad M., Frank Levi, k-robjoe, Christian Walther, WoodyBox, DulceDecorum and seatnieb.
Preparing 9/11 during 2001
1) April 2001 As disclosed by watchgroup POGO, "five months prior to 9/11—officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) wanted to develop a response in the event that a terrorist group used an airliner as a missile to attack the Pentagon. According to the e-mail, aides to the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the scenario as “too unrealistic.”
2) May 2001 Pentagon's DiLorenzo clinic’s tri-service staff participated in a simulation exercise for the possibility crash of a Boeing 757 airliner into the U.S. military’s headquarters.
3) May 2001 “Abbottsville” Unit 161 of Fort Myer Fire Department, in a sequel of Don Abbott's (Fieldsoft) November 2000-Pentagon Plane Crash exercise
4) June, 6th 2001: "...United Airlines Flight 1230, a fictional flight carrying 89 passengers, "crashed" at the Portland International Jetport on Thursday, kicking off an emergency exercise held every three years at the airport...."
5) June 12, 2001 Exercise Mall Strike 2001, Westmore County area around Shanksville Anti-terrorist drill responding to a fictitious report of an explosion at the Greengate Mall.
6) ~June/July 2001 Westmore County Drill, area around Shanksville, simulating a terrorist attack
7) June 8th- 9th, 2001 "Operation Amber Sky", Dayton International Airport, Ohio. "Realistic" full-scale mock exercise, including a simulation of "a disaster at the airport". The exercise was on runway 6R* near the Amateur Trapshoot Association grounds.
8) June 22-23, 2001 The US GOV organised their biggest bio terror scenario so far: DARK WINTER.
9) June 1-4, 2001 "Terrorist" exercise AMALGAM Virgo 01 at the Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.
10) August 6th-10th Disastermeeting.com: International Conference on Disaster Management
11) September 8th, 2001 Erie County/Buffalo Niagara airport "terror drill" "Full-scale terrorist exercise", more than 350 participants were involved in this exercise that simulated an aircraft landing with a terrorist on board and the threat of an explosive device on a plane.
13) September 10th, 2001 "Anti-terror meeting" at Murtha Johnstown Airport, Westmore County/Shanksville area, incl. Sergeant Koshute (LEPC), plus Michael Hoover, Ron Springer, Ralph Saylor, Bernie McCreadie, June Kania, Mike Huss, Vikki King, Georgia Lehman and Leah Spangler.
14) Sep11th, 2001 Besides the already well-documented four distractive "wargames" on that morning, we're currently also count at least 5(!) terror-exercises and another emergency drill. We can assume, that like with the purpose of "wargames", there had been more "emergency exercises" throughout the country, to confuse from the most important drills.
Fire Truck 101, Arlington County Fire Department ("Exercise")
Fort Belvoir County (Virginia) Fire Dep (Training "exercise"), together with
Fort Myer Fire Department, Heliport Station at the Pentagon
Warmup of Sep 12th, 2001- Exercise Tripod II Biowar exercise in New York City scheduled for September 12, but officially "postponed"
Furthermore, possibly as a distraction, on September 11, 2001, Knox County EMA, along with personnel from the United States Coast Guard, Maine Emergency Management, Lincoln County EMA, Emergency Response agencies,communications and hospitals from both counties and MS Scotia Prince Ferry were in the beginning stages of a mass casualty drill. The exercise was halted between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. and participants returned to their respective agencies."
The "Knox Regional Communications Activity Report For 10 September 2001" writes:
"...The US Coast Guard in conjunction with Knox and Lincoln County Emergency Management Agencies will be conducting a marine disaster exercise on September 11 & 12, 2001. The exercise will enable members of the response community to test emergency response procedures and plans for a potentially catastrophic marine disaster in and around the waters of Coastal Maine. The exercise will center around a major catastrophe about the MS. Scotia Prince, a seven hundred passenger cruise ship, while she is enroute Portland, ME. From Nova Scotia. The Knox RCC will be heavily involved in the drill as well as Lincoln County Communications. The Lincoln County Mobile Command Post will be set up at the Samoset to handle all drill communications..."
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.airnav.com/airport/KJST JST - JOHNSTOWN-CAMBRIA COUNTY AIRPORT 27 DECEMBER 2001
Facility use: Open to the public Sectional chart: DETROIT Control tower: yes ARTCC: CLEVELAND CENTER FSS: ALTOONA FLIGHT SERVICE STATION [1-800-WX-BRIEF] NOTAMs facility: JST (NOTAM-D service available) Attendance: 0600-0000 Wind indicator: lighted Segmented circle: no Lights: DUSK-DAWN WHEN TWR CLSD ACTVT HIRL RY 15/33, MALSR RY 33, PAPI RY 33, TWY LGTS TWYS A, B, & G, & MAIN TERMINAL APRON - CTAF. Beacon: white-green (lighted land airport) Fire and rescue: ARFF index A Airline operations: 12 HRS PPR FOR ACR OPNS WITH MORE THAN 30 PSGR SEATS; CALL AMGR (814) 536-0002.
APCH/DEP SVC PRVDD BY CLEVELAND ARTCC ON FREQ 128.45/307.1(ALTOONA RCAG).
ATCT OWNED BY CAMBRIA CO/OPERATED BY BARTON ATC INC.
Nearby radio navigation aids
VOR radial/distance VOR name Freq Var ------------------- ----------------------- ------ --- JST at field JOHNSTOWN VORTAC 113.00 06W RECr205/14.4 REVLOC VOR/DME 110.60 09W AOOr276/(24.3) ALTOONA VOR 108.80 07W IHDr056/31.6 INDIAN HEAD VORTAC 108.20 06W TONr229/34.0 TYRONE VORTAC 114.90 07W
Fuel available: 100LL JET-A Parking: hangars and tiedowns Airframe service: MAJOR Powerplant service: MAJOR Other services: air freight, charter flights, flight instruction, aircraft rental, aerial surveying
Runway Information
Runway 5/23
Dimensions: 4507 x 100 ft. / 1374 x 30 m Surface: asphalt/grooved, in good condition Weight limitations: Single wheel: 62000 lbs Double wheel: 87000 lbs Runway edge lights: medium intensity RUNWAY 5 RUNWAY 23 Traffic pattern: left left Runway heading: 047 magnetic, 039 true 227 magnetic, 219 true Markings: nonprecision instrument nonprecision instrument Markings condition: good good Latitude: 40-18-37.427N 40-19-11.867N Longitude: 078-50-21.637W 078-49-44.752W Elevation: 2270.0 ft. 2278.4 ft. Threshold crossing height: 41 ft. AGL 49 ft. AGL Visual glide path angle: 3.00 degrees 3.00 degrees Visual slope indicator: 4-light PAPI on left 4-box VASI on left Runway end identifier lights: yes REIL RY 23 OTS INDEFLY. Displaced threshold: no no TOUCHDOWN POINT: yes yes TD elevation: 2283.0 ft. 2284.0 ft. OBSTRUCTIONS: TREES TREES Height: 17 ft. 41 ft. Slope to clear: 7:1 26:1 Distance from threshold: 328 ft. 1270 ft. Distance from centerline: 265 ft. 282 ft. right Additional obstruction remarks: +6 FT SIGN 73 FT FM THLD; 76 FT L.
Runway 10/28
Dimensions: 3700 x 100 ft. / 1128 x 30 m Surface: asphalt, in good condition Weight limitations: Single wheel: 26000 lbs, LMTD TO 12500 LBS BY AMGR. Double wheel: 35000 lbs Runway edge lights: medium intensity RUNWAY 10 RUNWAY 28 Traffic pattern: left left Runway heading: 095 magnetic, 087 true 275 magnetic, 267 true Markings: nonprecision instrument nonprecision instrument Markings condition: good good Latitude: 40-19-02.827N 40-19-04.735N Longitude: 078-50-18.622W 078-49-30.926W Elevation: 2284.2 ft. 2279.6 ft. Threshold crossing height: 41 ft. AGL 31 ft. AGL Visual glide path angle: 3.25 degrees 3.00 degrees Visual slope indicator: 2-box VASI on left 2-box VASI on left Displaced threshold: no no TOUCHDOWN POINT: yes yes TD elevation: 2284.0 ft. 2284.0 ft. Obstructions: TREES TREES
Runway 15/33
Dimensions: 7003 x 150 ft. / 2135 x 46 m Surface: asphalt/grooved, in good condition Weight limitations: Single wheel: 62000 lbs Double wheel: 87000 lbs Runway edge lights: high intensity RUNWAY 15 RUNWAY 33 Traffic pattern: left left Runway heading: 152 magnetic, 144 true 332 magnetic, 324 true Markings: precision instrument precision instrument Markings condition: fair fair Latitude: 40-19-25.172N 40-18-29.093N Longitude: 078-50-31.941W 078-49-38.988W Elevation: 2270.2 ft. 2260.0 ft. Threshold crossing height: 52 ft. AGL 53 ft. AGL Visual glide path angle: 3.00 degrees 3.00 degrees Visual slope indicator: 4-box VASI on left 4-light PAPI on right Approach lights: MALSR: 1,400 foot medium intensity approach lighting system with runway alignment indicator lights Instrument approach: ILS Displaced threshold: no no TOUCHDOWN POINT: yes yes TD elevation: 2276.0 ft. 2281.0 ft. OBSTRUCTIONS: TREES NONE Height: 12 ft. Slope to clear: 28:1 Distance from threshold: 538 ft. Distance from centerline: 435 ft. right Additional obstruction remarks: +6 FT SIGN 70 FT FM THLD; 189 FT L.
Airport Inspection
Inspected by: FAA Airports field personnel from the Eastern Region: Jamaica, NY Last inspection: 25 April 2001 Federal agreements: - National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) - Grant agreements under FAAP/ADAP/AIP - Assurances pursuant to Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964 - AP-4 agreement under DLAND or DCLA has expired
Airport Operational Statistics
Aircraft based on the field: 70 Aircraft operations: average 97/day Single engine airplanes: 26 53% transient general aviation Multi engine airplanes: 4 21% military Jet airplanes: 2 14% local general aviation Military: 38 12% commercial
Remarks
-
DEER ON & INVOF ARPT.
A30A-10
RY 10/28 CLSD TO ACFT WITH WINGSPAN 50 FT OR ABOVE.
From http://forum.911movement.org/index.php?showtopic=752
KILLTOWN wrote: Flight 93 wreckage kept under high security - Iron Mountain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBkJrqV2qkQ
Blackheart77 wrote: I do not believe there is any 'wreckage' from Flight 93 in Iron Mountain. There would be tons of stuff. TONS! Show me, I say. I can take it. Gruesome? Doubt it. It's almost certain the passengers didn't die there. There wasn't enough flesh. As for the 'hole' in PA, that plane just wasn't there. ( I think debris at Indian Lake is from the little white plane Pete Raffa shot down)
Perhaps 93 landed at Johnstown Air Force Training Facility, right behind Cambria Airport, whose tower said they 'saw' 93. Check out that place JAF, it has a huge door and an elevator that takes planes underground. I have postulated that 93 landed there in other forums, but no one ever looked at it. (It would fit the Northwoods scenario that has planes land and get the 'killed' passengers off)Anyone interested? I have lotsa info, but am at a standstill for new stuff.
================
Shoot it down?
At United Airline's crisis center, a solitary blip glows red on a big screen. It transfixes Hank Krakowski, the airline's flight operations director. Although the airline still has hundreds of flights in the air, officials at the airline's headquarters outside Chicago choose to illuminate only the path of Flight 93 on the status board.
Are they gonna have to shoot it down? he wonders.
A 737 captain who flies vintage fighter planes at air shows, Krakowski, 47, isn't the only one wondering. Military jets already are closing on the Boeing 767 as it barrels toward Washington.
Then, at 10:06 a.m., the blip stops moving over Pennsylvania.
"Latitude and longitude," Krakowski snaps. The coordinates put the jet at Johnstown, Pa., about 120 miles from the nation's capital.
Krakowski picks up the phone and is patched through to the Johnstown airport. No answer.
No answer? How can there not be an answer?
A staffer finds the cell phone number for the airport manager. Krakowski tries again. "We might have a plane down in your area there," he says calmly. "See anything unusual?"
The answer is the one Krakowski fears. A black column of smoke rises from a field due south of the airport, near the town of Shanksville, the manager tells him. Krakowski feels numb as he looks at the screen. We just watched one of our airplanes crash.
I want to say there is so much info on flight 93 that its hard to include it in this page, so i urge you to read all of the links.
I will start with some oddities, then move on to the maps further down the page.
How many people were scheduled to fly on flight 93? Frank at the-movement.com has identified several here... Flight 93 Weirdness Since then we have added several to this list that either were scheduled at the last minuite, or were put on flight 93 cos flight 91 was cancelled. The funny thing about this is that flight 91 was a LATER flight, not an earlier one! We have been hard pressed to find anyone who bought a ticket for this flight before sept10th.
Next, we have 2 seperate incidnts of planes being reported at the same time at 2 DIFFERENT ariports on Sept 10th. First is 591UA (to be flight 93), next is 594UA. In Arpil of 2003 the person below, supposedly flew 591UA (from his logs). My imidiate reaction was that he wrote down the number wrong, but on second look, i noticed that he also wrote down the NOSE number which also identifies the plane. It is very doubtfull that he waited till he got home then looked up the nose# on the internet and cross-referenced it. Noticing the other flights, it seems he wrote down the NOSE#'s on all planes seperately. These numbers can change with the planes. Checking the BTS.GOV records, the plane was flight 1111 and the tail number was 594UA.
On Sept 10th 594UAdeparted Detroit at 11:12 to ORD as 1581, the, it arrived in chicago from DTW at 10:58 as 1581
United Airlines employee Mr Friedman kept a log of all the flights he flew on during 2003, including details about their crews and the tail number (N-number) of the planes. He recorded that on April 10, 2003, he flew on a United Airline Boeing 757 with tail/N-number N591UA. This is the tail number of Flight UA 93, which was supposed to have crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. See his log at:friedmanfamily.org/ua2003594UA was also seen in a move archive for dec 2001 here
In addition to this, some have seen 591 see info here
More oddities have been recognised by researcher Frank Levi. The estimated arrival times of "Flight 93" (aka N591UA) starting at 2:15 PM, then it changes SOUTH of Pittsburgh, well after it was hijacked and a new flight plan was filed to 10:28. Also another close researcher pointed out to me, that all flights were being diverted by the time 93 was officially hijacked. And yet the transcripts give the impression that it was still on its way to San Francisco at the time. According to some hobby plane spotters, N591UA was still flying in 2003.Some researchers also indicated that this original UA-flight is "masked" as N594UA.There is a website, which shows 23 Boeing 757s, which were ordered, but never built.What happened with them? An investigation into the production of the Tail Numbers (N591UA has construction #28142) also revealed, that "State Street Bank & Trust Co" is the trustee for the plane owners for 590 592 593. So it it makes one suspect that N591UA could have been in that sequence, too. On N594UA also some findings from Brad M.:On September 10th, N594 departed Detroit at 11:12 to ORD as 1581 594 arrived in Chicago from DTW at 10:58 as 1581 It arrived before it left. This is not possible.
591UA did the same thing. It was seen at 2 different airports at the same time on Sept 10th. This info is usually supplied by ACARS automatically. Then the arilines send it to the BTS.GOV database. It is unclear to me if a UA employee could manipulate this data before it gets to the database or not. This raises SERIOUS questions. From what i understand this is not a normal occurance, and for 2 planes with links to 911 being invloved, it seems the odds are astronomical.
Here is the full sequence for flight 93 given to us by flight explorer.
The map here shows the last point as being 10:28am(ETA) with a destination of DCA. at 364 mph.
This is a map I created showing the flight explorer points I saw as relavent.
Notice when it is approaching Pittsburg, it is still showing SFO as the destination airport.
According to the Post Gazette...It was 9:45 a.m. Somewhere outside Cleveland, United Flight 93 had made a sharp turn and began flying east, toward Washington, D.C
The flight explorer maps show it was at 9:35 it made the turn.
9:28 a.m. on Flight 93, “there are the first audible signs of problems, in background cockpit noise
9:30 a.m. Flight controllers mistakenly suspect that Delta Flight 1989, flying west over Pennsylvania, has been hijacked. The controllers briefly suspect the sound of hijackers' voices in Flight 93 is coming from this plane, only a few miles away
9:36 a.m.Flight 93 files a new flight plan with a final destination of Washington :9:35, “turned around near Cleveland,” Radar shows the plane turning 180 degrees.The new flight plan schedules the plane to arrive in Washington at 10:28.http://www.pahighways.com/features/shanksville.html
The Newark-to-San Francisco flight reportedly diverted its route near Pittsburgh and ignored calls from Pittsburgh International Airport controllers. Allegheny County Emergency Management Coordinator Bob Full said that Pittsburgh International Airport officials had knowledge of the plane headed for Pittsburgh and that it was taking precautionary action when the plane diverted its course. The plane actually reached the Cleveland area before turning around. ABC News reported that a request to change the flight plan to Washington, D.C. was asked for by someone on the plane. http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/956356/detail.html
The estimated arrival times starting at 2:15pm then it changes SOUTH of Pitt, well afterit was hijacked and a new flight plan was filed to 10:28 it stays around that time, until the last blip which indicates 9:34 as the ETA, BUT it crashed much later than that. How could the ETA show 9:34 when it was well after that at the time of the crash?
As you can see here the map shows that the destination airport changes well south of Pitt. (as does the ETA). So did Flight 93 file the new flight plan after it was hijacked? Supossedly the hijackers were in control of the craft at this point.
Here you can see flight 93 at 36,900ft travelling at 435mph !
kinda fast to make a 90 degree turn eh !!! It slows to 348mph, but increases in altitude !
At 40,700ft, this is about the time many of the cell calls were supposedly have been made. As a cell phone engineer, i find this quite hard to believe!
These top to maps show the last 2 recorded "blips" from the flight explorer maps.
the problem is, they are at the same location, with different data. (last blip on the right)
The speeds are different, and the ETA is also different ! I thought they may be at 2 differnt point, so i did an overlay of the images.
They seem to match quite nicely. (perfectly in fact! )
This is the ACTUAL last blip as recorded in flight explorer this shows an ETA of 9:34 !
Its noted that the plane crashed much later than that! its also shown as traveling at 473mph and at 35,000ft. this is at odds with witness reports that the flight had slowed down and was low in the air.
We also have the probem of WHY 3 airports were evacuated? Cleveland, Johnstown and Pitt were evactuated because of either Delta 1989 OR flight 93. I have to wonder why a airport would evacuate a tower just because it lost radio contact? It is not like these towers were targets as the WTC or Pentagon were? The plane may have been in trouble an needed an emergency landing, so why make everyone leave?
Other reports have indicated that the ATC guys controlling Johnstown airport were told to leave and a "new guy" from Cleveland was coming in to handle the situation?
The Johnstown-Cambria Airport "Terror" Team The final procedures: Johnstown, Pennsylvannia and DC
Many 9/11 researchers pray it all over again: "There were lots of warnings." It was more than this. The United States lied to us. During 2001, especially in the summer, they mentally prepared, drilled, trained and brainwashed local U.S. communities about a pending (bio-)terror attack, including in the areas of Westmore County/Johnstown/Shanksville, Florida, DC and New York. In these 2 parts we will once again focus on the Johnstown Area, which was 30 miles away from the official crash of "flight93".On September 10th, 2001, the day before 9/11, the Cambria County Local Emergency Planning Committee, had their final "terror meeting" of many, which took place in the area around Shanksville....
What's up with AMERICAN airlines flight 93? It was also scheduled for Newark (18:21 PM EST!, no wheels off) Flight93 scenario, by WoodyBox (November 2004)The *real* UA 93 pushed back from the gate at 8:01. All the passengers we know from the passenger list plus (probably) the "hijackers" were on board. Dahl and Homer were the pilots. Nothing unusual so far. 8:28 The plane takes off. (as also documented at BTS)
9:16 A "hijacking exercise" begins (the pilots have been informed previously about a drill, so they take part on the game).
9:22 Melanie Homer sends an ACARS message to her husband, gets no answer
9:25 The plane lands in Johnstown. The airport has been evacuated before - apart from a "core team".
9:27 Some of the passengers and crew leave the plane and are escorted to a "safe" place. Others stay in the cabin and begin making phone calls...
9:31-9:58 This is the time the airfone calls happened. Verizon has a record of these calls. So the calls were coming from flight 93, indeed (even the cellphone calls!) but the plane was on the ground.
Harrisburg: Some members of the german "Phantom"-forum on ezboard speculate about Harrisburg Airport, as another possible switch for a UA93 stand-in.
Johnstown Airport "...A short time later, Cleveland called again. The unknown aircraft was now fifteen miles south of the field, heading directly for Johnstown. The tower should be evacuated. Fritz ordered four workers to leave. Still, he saw no sign of a plane through his binoculars. Forty-five seconds later, the Cleveland center called a third time. Disregard the evacuation. The aircraft had turned south. Cleveland had lost radar contact." ("Among the Heroes", p. 275f)
Logicon "Logicon Task Team", part of Northrop Grumman This "task" included Veridian (in 2003 aquired by General Dynamics), Advent Systems Inc., Mountain View, EDS, Advanced Engineering & Sciences, RDR Inc., SRS Technologies. In March 2001, Logicon TASC officially announced their five-year, $57 million contract for "Trailblazer" (WP reported. Another subcontractor of Logicon TASK (diff. sp.) became Modern Technologies Corporation (MTC) of Dayton. MTC included Kenneth A. Minihan (ex-NSA, ex-DIA) and General Lawrence A. Skantze (ex -U.S. Air Force).
Veridian had also close ties with AMS (in 2004, two different parts got acquired by CGI and CACI). AMS is a NASA contractor. On their board is Neil A. Armstrong (Apollo 11), Dr. Joseph P. Allen (Apollo 15 and 17), Steven C. Beering (Eli Lily) and Dr. Sally K. Ride (mission specialist on space shuttle flights in 1983 and 1984). (from "lost war drill? pt.10")
SAIC
Most obvious, some of the real perpetrators of 9/11 are also hiding at SAIC. Controlled by at least two former CIA bosses John Deutch and Robert Gates, SAIC is meanwhile connected with one anthrax suspect, the "maintenance" of e-voting machines, former OEM-Director Jerome Hauer, some other drills, the audition of Venezuela's oil company PDVSA, plus equity partners like Bechtel, Danet, Saudi SAI, DigiLens or VeriSign.
Thoratec: Kellogg, Peter R Inside Trading August 2004
According to New York Times tax correspondent David Cay Johnston, Peter R. Kellogg is also using the "Indian tribe" scheme to avoid paying taxes. This scheme, technically not illegal, works like this: Tax-exempt entities from Indian tribes to pension plans to Dutch banks with offices in the West Indies regularly "rent out" their tax-exempt status to tax cheats, for a relatively small fee and at virtually no risk to themselves. Though sharing the same name, Peter Kellogg seems to be not related to Halliburton's KBR. M W Kellogg is a british engineering and construction joint venture between US-based Kellogg Brown & Root and Japan-based JGC, which was acquired by Halliburton when it bought Dresser Industries in 1998. Kellogg did also side investments in mid-1990s with Alex. Brown (-Deutsche Bank)
Timeline
It also became most obvious, that the official timeline of targets messed up on that morning. Following all diverted flight routes, it makes not much sense anymore, why the alleged "hijacker" attacked their targets in that particular order.
It's possible, that the order of targets was mixed up. DaveMc Gowan has more on a possible scenario, in which in made more sense, for the "Pentagon to be the first target struck". Apparently the real perpetrators of the 9/11 drill screwed up or had been in competition with another script.
Tinker Air Force There is another indication, what parts of "Amalgam Virgo" had been possibly reactivated on Sep11th: As "letsroll"-member Herb Briggs explained, the original Amalgam Virgo document on GlobalSecurity, was possibly altered, to distract from the 513th Air Control Group (AWACs) deployed from Tinker AFB.
According to GlobalSecurity, this group "was activated at Tinker Air Force Base, OK, on March 15, 1996". I will explain their significane further below.
In August 2004, Briggs checked the Tinker website, but there was no mention of the 513th. Then he also looked into the air base newspaper "Tinker Take-off" and recognised, that several key issues around September 11th, 2001 are missing... Briggs is right. In late November 2004, there are still no recent documents about 513th Air Control, in their search engine.
There is however an important detail about Tinker, which obviously had some prior knowledge about a pending attack.
On April 30, 2001, an Air Force alert was issued from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City concerning "possible intelligence collection being conducted by Israeli Art Students." Tinker AFB houses AWACS surveillance craft and Stealth bombers. Commander of the 513th ACG is Colonel James L. Kerr
Between June 1-4, on Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., members of the 513th Air Control Group, tested new "fast, low-flying cruise missiles", which are hard to detect. Was this a test for the Pentagon wing, which was later attacked on Sep11th?
Lt. Col. Lee of Oklahoma City worked as a pilot for United Airlines. He was on call in Denver on Sept. 11, 2001, waiting to fill in if another pilot was sick or could not make a flight for any reason.
West Virginia Flight Control
From the official timeline at 9:05 a.m.: West Virginia flight control notices a new eastbound plane entering their radar with no radio contact and no transponder identification. They are not sure if it is American Airlines Flight 77.
9/11 researcher Woodybox wonders, who is "West Virginia flight control"? There is no long-range Air Traffic Control Center in West Virginia, so he has his doubts if this "eastbound plane" emerging at 9:05 really existed. I also couldn't find them, but have the strange feeling, that there's possibly a connection with West Virginia University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Other Sources
The Cleveland Airport Mystery The plane - Delta flight1989 - was not hijacked, and there was no bomb. However, a closer examination reveals a bunch of conflicting statements concerning Delta 1989 This article will prove that not one, but two planes made an emergency landing in Cleveland - in close succession
Michael Kane: "9/11 War Games - No Coincidence" by Michael Kane -June 08 (special thanks to Barbara Honegger for her early work on this line of research) "I have an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD that on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs of Staff (Richard B. Myers) and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise (FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner". Mike Ruppert - June 5, 2004, editor of FTW www.fromthewilderness.com Researchers Nico Haupt & Woody Box have done a detailed analysis based entirely on mainstream accounts and eye witness statements showing that, while the official account has Flight 11 being boarded at gate 26, the flight actually took off from gate 32.However, no passengers actually boarded at gate 32, instead boarding at gate 26...
World Premiere -WoodyBox: How to steal an airliner and fake a hijacking - The names of the hijackers don't appear on the passenger list - There is no video footage of the hijackers passing the security check at the airport - The flying skills of the alleged pilot Mohammed Atta were hardly sufficient to hit the Tower - The hijackers didn't choose the optimal flight path, i.e., the shortest way to New York City (more...) How to steel an airliner... (Pt.2)
"Twin tails" of pre-Flight 93 and other "phantom flights" The official timeline of Sep11th is breaking apart. Atta's Portland flight did not exist; various flights of the official flights or the tail numbers of their precursors existed twice; new, recently unknown terror drills show, that the scenario of 9/11 was well known; the new "flight plans" and meeting points of the alleged hijacked flights included too many coincidences; the planners of the "hijack" must have had inside knowledge about other flights and their cancellations as well. On Sept 10th 2001 a plane with the tail# N591UA was reported in 2 different places at the same time accoring to a Government database at http://www.bts.gov/ this plane was reported the next day to have crashed as flight 93. More here and also in the article above. John Doe compiled quick new summaries about Flight 93: Too many contradictions and Identifications of hijackers by DNA. "...On September 8, 2001, the LEPC together with the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport ran a full-scale terrorist exercise. More than 350 participants were involved in the exercise that simulated an aircraft landing with a terrorist on board and the threat of an explosive device on the plane. The exercise was a tremendous success..."
9/11 was a combination of older terror drills, NOT wargames! Major parts had been also tested during Amalgam Virgo 01 (June 2001) and during three until recently lesser-known drills in Westmore County, Buffalo and Dayton. These three drills had odd similarities with the fate of Flight 77, Flight 11, Flight 175 and Flight 93.
NOTE: According to Dulce Decorum, who researched repair records, he found out, "that N519UA was a heap of junk, always breaking down and needing repair, while 591 was a healthy plane"
Tracing N594
(Reminder: According to some plane spot-witnesses, Boeing 757-222 SERIAL NUMBER 28142 is flying around Chicago under the alias 594UA. According to the FAA, N594UA Boeing 757-222 flies now with a DIFFERENT serial number, namely 28145.) 1) Left Newark on 09/07/2001 to San Francisco Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/07/2001 0081 N594UA SFO 07:00 AM EST Wheels-off Time: UA 09/07/2001 0081 N594UA SFO 07:23 AM EST 2) Arrived in SF on 09/07: Scheduled Arrival Time: UA 09/07/2001 0081 N594UA EWR 10:10 Wheels-on Time: UA 09/07/2001 0081 N594UA EWR 9:46 Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/07/2001 0186 N594UA IAD 11:00 Wheels-off Time: UA 09/07/2001 0186 N594UA IAD/Dulles 11:10 3) arrived in DC Dulles on 09/07: Scheduled Arrival Time UA 09/07/2001 0186 N594UA SFO 19:02 Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/07/2001 0225 N594UA SFO 20:00 Wheels-off Time: UA 09/07/2001 0225 N594UA SFO 20:44 4) arrived in SF again on 09/07: Wheels-on Time in SF: UA 09/07/2001 0225 N594UA from IAD/Dulles 23:11 (no wheels-off on that day after this time)
checking Newark: Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/08/2001 N594UA NONE Wheels-off Time: UA 09/08/2001 N594UA NONE Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/09/2001 N594UA NONE Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/09 -09/14 N594UA NONE
checking DC, found it: Wheels-off Time: UA 09/10/2001 1179 N594UA DEN/Denver 15:56 5) arrived in Denver on 09/10 Scheduled Arrival Time: UA 09/10/2001 1179 N594UA IAD 17:15 Wheels on Time: UA 09/10/2001 1179 N594UA IAD 17:07 Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/10/2001 1197 N594UA SEA 17:55 Wheels-off time: UA 09/10/2001 1197 N594UA SEA 18:10 6) arrived in Seattle on 09/10 Scheduled Arrival Time: UA 09/10/2001 1197 N594UA DEN 19:35 Wheels-on Time: UA 09/10/2001 1197 N594UA DEN 19:25 Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/10/2001 N594UA NONE Wheels-off time: UA 09/10/2001 N594UA NONE Scheduled Departure Time: UA 09/11 -09/12 N594UA NONE
Reported by 9News Staff Web produced by:Liz Foreman 9/11/01 11:43:57 AM
A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White.
White said the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated. United identified the plane as Flight 93. The airline did not say how many people were aboard the flight. United said it was also "deeply concerned" about another flight, Flight 175, a Boeing 767, which was bound from Boston to Los Angeles.
On behalf of the airline CEO James Goodwin said: "The thoughts of everyone at United are with the passengers and crew of these flights. Our prayers are also with everyone on the ground who may have been involved. "United is working with all the relevant authorities, including the FBI, to obtain further information on these flights," he said.
When you go to the link where the story was archived, you find this:
Plane Lands In Cleveland; Bomb Feared Aboard
Reported by: 9News Staff Web produced by: Liz Foreman 9/11/01 11:43:57 AM
This story has been removed from WCPO.com. It was a preliminary AP story, and was factually incorrect.
Now, just suppose that it wasn't Flight 93 that landed in Cleveland but that it was actually Flight 77? This is perhaps not so crazy a solution since there is an unverified witness report that
...something is odd with the serial numbers of Flight93 and Flight 175. The serial numbers of the ORIGINAL planes are SAME serial numbers of the planes that ARE STILL FLYING. 591UA 612UA
Although N-number can be transferred, the manufacturer's serial number CANNOT be transferred. According to some spot-witnesses, Boeing 757-222 SERIAL NUMBER 28142 is flying around Chicago under the alias 594UA. According to the FAA, N594UA Boeing 757-222 flies now with a DIFFERENT serial number, namely 28145. more here thanks to ww.cassiopaea.org/
At 10:02,the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft —presumably hijacked —heading toward Washington.That aircraft was United 93.The Secret Service was getting this information directly from the FAA.The FAA may have been tracking the progress of United 93 on a display that showed its projected path to Washington,not its actual radar return.Thus,the Secret Service was relying on projections and was not aware the plane was already down in Pennsylvania.217 At some time between 10:10 and 10:15,a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out.Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft.218 His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive,“in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.”The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane.He told us he based this authorization on his earlier conversation with the President.The military aide returned a few minutes later,probably between 10:12 and 10:18,and said the aircraft was 60 miles out.He again asked for authorization to engage.The Vice President again said yes
a 767 from pittsburg was hijcked approaching Northern virginia, circling an airport in virginia. Fox reporting a second plane heading toward the pentagon (after the 93 crashed)
(from audio of Howard Stern on the day of 9/11)
No one can yet say exactly how close the hijacked jetliner that crashed Tuesday in Somerset County came to Pittsburgh, but a map of the flight path shows the plane passing just south of the city.
The Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday it turned over to the FBI a radar record of United Airlines Flight 93's route.
The data traced the Boeing 757-200 from its takeoff from Newark, N.J., to its violent end at 10:06 a.m., just outside Shanksville, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
FBI agents refused to comment about the flight path.
During the two hours Flight 93 was aloft, it traveled westward to Cleveland, then made a sharp turn to the south, according to a map provided by Flight Explorer, a Virginia company that sells real-time flight data it receives from the FAA.
Flight Explorer's map shows that after the jetliner turned south, it banked back eastward, cutting through West Virginia's Northern Panhandle before re-entering Pennsylvania.
A series of air traffic controllers would have handed off the plane several times, moving from Newark to New York to the FAA's Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center as the plane headed across the country
As the plane neared Somerset County, air traffic controllers in Cleveland alerted their counterparts at John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport that a plane was about 12 miles away, "heading directly at the airport at about 6,000 feet," said Joe McKelvey, the airport's executive director.
"The Johnstown tower chief told me that under the circumstances, he was going to evacuate the tower," McKelvey said. "Before either one of us could get off the phone, the aircraft had already passed us by."
Moments later, it crashed 14 miles to the southeast, killing all 45 people aboard.
What’s happening at John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport on 911?
In the days after 911 the following story is widely reported:
"Dennis Fritz, the air traffic manager, got a call from controllers in Cleveland warning the Johnstown airport -- which has no radar of its own – that a large aircraft was 20 miles south and had suddenly turned on a heading for Johnstown. "It was an aircraft doing some unusual maneuvers at a low level, which is unusual for an aircraft that size," Fritz said last night. http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2...
“”Supervisor Dennis Fritz and controller Thomas Hull picked up binoculars -- the tower has no radar -- and scanned the horizon to the south. The day was clear and, from the highest point in the area, they could spot radio towers in neighboring Somerset County. A large plane would have stood out. "We didn't see a thing," Fritz said.” http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93main...
"Dennis Fritz, director of the municipal airport in Johnstown, Pa., said the FAA called him several times as the plane approached his city , and even warned him to evacuate the tower for fear the jet was going to plow into it. (Washington Post, 9/13/01)
"When they (Cleveland) called back a minute later, it was 15 miles away. They suggested we evacuate the tower and the airport because they didn't know what was going to happen here. The aircraft was not communicating." (Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/13/01)
“’ On the first call from Cleveland, they said a 757 was heading in our direction at about 6,000 feet and descending ,’ Fritz said. "They were repeatedly trying to raise the pilot on the radio, but there was no answer. " Within minutes, Fritz said, he began to move people from the tower but hesitated to abandon it completely because he felt the incoming plane might be in distress and need to make an emergency landing.” (Bergen Record, 9/14/01)
“Ninety seconds later (after first call), Cleveland called back. The plane was now 15 miles south and heading directly for the Johnstown tower. "We suggest you evacuate," they told him. Fritz ordered trainees and custodial staff out of the 85-foot tower. He and Hull stayed at their posts and scanned the south with binoculars. It occurred to Fritz that the plane must be flying below the level of the mountain ridges around them.” http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93main...
“"Dennis Fritz, chief air traffic controller at the Johnstown airport, said he ordered the evacuation of nonessential employees at the tower and the airport around 10 a.m. Tuesday after being alerted to ‘a large aircraft 20 miles to the south.’” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/13/01)
“Forty-five seconds after telling Fritz to evacuate the Johnstown tower, Cleveland Air Traffic Control phoned again. "They said to disregard. The aircraft had turned to the south and they lost radar contact with him.’” http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93main...
It might be rather surprising that Johnstown Airport was ordered to evacuate as it certainly is not a target one could imagine the hijackers to be interested. So while the FAA ordered Pittsburgh control towers at 9:49 to evacuate http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20010923city0923... no skyscraper in Pittsburgh was evacuated. But if the FAA wants to run no risk on 911 and evacuate all airports that could be touched then again it’s rather surprising that the advice was only given while UA 93 was only 20 miles away. Assuming a speed of 500 mph (it crashed with the official speed of 580 mph) this means that Johnstown had only 2 ½ minutes to evacuate. Which certainly is not sufficient especially as Dennis Fritz doesn’t decide immediately. So if the FAA wanted to run no risk when then wait so long? But leaving this point aside and having a closer look at what happened at Johnstown Airport on 911 there are several very bizarre points that stand out:
Not only is the final crash site of UA 93 16 miles south of Johnstown Airport (so when first noticed as heading for Johnstown UA 93 is almost exactly at the very location it will later crash (being apparently lower than 2800 feet it is surprising that no eyewitness remarked this plane then)) but this direction is in contradiction to the official flight path of UA 93. If one has a look at the map and follows the official flight path the plane would be west or maximum southwest of Johnstown Airport. So, who is right?
There is one account that contradicts all the quoted statements that UA 93 was heading from the south to Johnstown Airport: "John Hugya, an administrative assistant to U.S. Rep John Murtha, said he has been told that the plane initially flew over Cambria County Airport in Johnstown. There was no communication from the plane, and the plane was not responding to Cleveland Center, which is how they knew it was one of the hijacked planes." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010911somerset0... But this seems even less believable than the above mentioned accounts. If UA 93 flew over Cambria County Airport in Johnstown then certainly Dennis Fritz would have remarked it?!
The next problem is the moment when Johnstown is signalled that there is no more danger: “Then, somewhere within the air zone, about 15 miles south of Johnstown, the plane turned again toward the south." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2...
In clear this means that UA 93 managed 5 miles in the very time Johnstown had been alerted and finally been evacuated and the big relieve came. Assuming that UA 93 was heading with 500mph (it crashed with official speed of 580 mph) than the whole period when Johnstown was in danger lasts 36 seconds! This is rather surprising and difficult to believe.
As UA 93 “turned again towards the south” “about 15 miles south of Johnstown” it is basically exactly at the very place (within a mile) that it will crash. This again is quite unlikely. Nobody reported a 180° turn of UA 93 in the very last minute of its flight. And no eyewitness has recalled this.
One last question is also why Johnstown Airport neither sees UA 93 nor the white jet that seven eyewitnesses remarked at the crash site. Cleveland stated that UA93 was flying at an altitude of 6000 feet and descending. This is also reported by Cleveland controller Stacey Taylor who was in charge of UA 93 (NBC, 9/11/02). So if it was a clear day, a big aircraft would stand out and it was obviously flying above 2800 feet why then wasn’t it seen?
But why does Johnstown Airport have no radar forcing the staff to use binoculars? On June 15, 1999 the following information is made about Johnstown Airport on the site of the Airport Traffic Control Service: “Control tower services have been taken over by the Department of Defense. ATC services are provided by Federal Employees of the US Air Force.” http://web.archive.org/web/20020201000201/www.airnav.co... and we find the following information: “ATCT OWNED BY CAMBRIA CO/OPERATED BY BARTON ATC INC.” http://web.archive.org/web/20020204130525/www.airnav.co... So, how come they hadn’t no radar on 911?
Why does nothing of this story that explains the evacuation of Johnstown Airport makes any sense? Or in other words: It makes as little sense as the explanation surrounding the evacuation of Cleveland tower and Cleveland Airport.
This article is based on the central finding of 911 researcher Zeitmaschine and the research of Time 8+ and Zaphod 36.
Here is a precise timing of UA 93 being considered a danger to Johnstown Airport:
"At some point, it turned slightly. Cleveland air traffic controllers called Dennis Fritz, the air traffic manager at the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, 56 miles east of Pittsburgh, at 10:04 a.m. They said the plane was 15 miles south of him, bearing down on the airport." (AP, 9/20/01)
10:04 really? I though it had crashed already at that point?
Johnstown Tower is a VFR tower. They don't offer approach control services (I know, I used to work planes in and out of Johnstown every day).
The military has an ATC training facility located there, but a private contract tower actually works the airplanes (total staffing of 7 or 8 controllers...not 7 or 8 at a time, 7 or 8 TOTAL).
A new name and a new home both became reality in 1997. First, on May 16 the unit was redesignated the 258th Air Traffic Control Squadron to reflect the Air Force policy of assigning number series to specific unit types. Then, on September 1 the unit moved to Johnstown-Cambria County Airport where they were to assume an additional mission of full-time air traffic control, which also meant the unit would grow from a 68-member flight to a 79-member squadron.
"After moving into the main Johnstown tower, we will still use the mobile tower for tactical training," continued Thomas. "The mobile tower can be used in emergencies and we can deploy with it and set it up anywhere planes are landing or taking off, even at a dirt field."
"Our mission today is to control aircraft from the moment they initially start engines ... "
The future of airport operations at Johnstown rests with the men and women of the 258th.
In September 1997, the 258th Air Traffic Control Squadron successfully transitioned from the 114th Air Traffic Control Flight in State College to the 258th Air Traffic Control Squadron in Johnstown.
The mission of the 258th is to deploy, operate and maintain air traffic control and landing systems, provide support in conjunction with operations, and augment the fixed control tower at Johnstown/Cambria County Airport.
The unit uses four primary pieces of equipment to accomplish this mission: the mobile Radar Approach Control system, consisting of a van containing two separate radar systems and a van containing operating consoles for the air traffic controllers; a mobile air traffic control tower; a portable, tripod-mounted tactical antenna; and a truck-mounted communications facility.
During this biennial period, unit members provided outstanding support in a number of ways which benefited federal, state and local interests. The most notable achievement of the 258th was the successful transition and move from State College to Johnstown. Unit air traffic controllers now operate the Johnstown/Cambria County control tower, providing air traffic control service to military aircraft, general aviation and commuter airlines. The squadron maintenance section provides routine and emergency maintenance on numerous pieces of equipment that are used to control aircraft.
In 1999, a state-of-the-art, $6 million tower was built when Murtha, a former U.S. Marine, was able to convince Congress on the importance of the structure.
...
Assigned to provide air traffic control services for the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport 17 hours a day, seven days a week, unit members feel like they finally have the right tools for the job.
Hoping to dispel rumors that United Airlines Flight 93 might have been shot down by military aircraft, the FBI Saturday said that two other planes were in the area but had nothing to do with the hijacked flight crashing in western Pennsylvania.
The FBI said that a civilian business jet flying to Johnstown was within 20 miles of the low-flying airliner, but at an altitude of 37,000 feet. That plane was asked to descend to 5,000 feet -- an unusual maneuver -- to help locate the crash site for responding emergency crews.
...
On Friday, WTAE-TV reported that the mystery pilot in the white plane may have been an area farmer. James K. Will, a Berlin, Pa., farmer who pilots a white Cessna with red stripes (pictured at right) and who has an airstrip near his farm, told Team 4 reporter Paul Van Osdol that he circled the scene about 45 minutes after the crash.
Will said he had just returned from Altoona and, when he'd heard about the crash, flew to the site to take photos of the wreckage. Pennsylvania State Police said that his plane may have been the one that many saw. Will's flight was intercepted by a state police helicopter and was escorted to the Johnstown-area airport. His plane was searched and he was released.
A picture of the little, tiny, helpless and radarless (that, despite this, basically served as the Flight 93 command post) John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport:
About 10 minutes later, Full's phone rang. It was Kurt Sopp, the airport authority's security manager. Full said Sopp told him that he had been informed by Pittsburgh International Airport's air traffic control tower "that there was a plane within 10 miles in the Pittsburgh airspace that they had no contact with whatsoever, and they had reason to believe it was possibly a hijacked aircraft, and they were taking appropriate action by moving personnel out of the control tower."
That was all Full learned of the plane. He had no idea of its altitude, heading, speed or apparent destination. "It meant to me that it was pretty damn close to the airport, especially when they told me the control tower was beginning to move personnel out of the tower," Full said. "I didn't ask for any of those particulars. I didn't even look at the clock for a time."
Full got off the phone with Sopp and alerted Pittsburgh officials. Full alerted City Communications Chief John Rowntree. But even as Rowntree was learning about the mysterious plane, it continued on its southeast path, away from Allegheny County. As the plane neared Somerset County, air traffic controllers in Cleveland alerted their counterparts at John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport that a plane was about 12 miles away, "heading directly at the airport at about 6,000 feet," said Joe McKelvey, the airport's executive director.
"The Johnstown tower chief told me that under the circumstances, he was going to evacuate the tower," McKelvey said. "Before either one of us could get off the phone, the aircraft had already passed us by."
The 3rd quarter meeting of the Cambria County Local Emergency Planning Committee was conducted on September 10th in the air traffic control tower at the John Murtha Johnstown Cambria County Airport in Richland Township. Sergeant James Koshute of the 258 Air Traffic Control Squadron from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard served as the host. In addition to Sergeant Koshute, other LEPC members in attendance were Michael Hoover, Ron Springer, Ralph Saylor, Bernie McCreadie, June Kania, Mike Huss, Vikki King, Georgia Lehman and Leah Spangler.
![[Image]](http://www.thehawkeye.com/features/2001/911/wtcpics/wtutah.jpg)
![[Image]](http://www.duke.edu/%7Epirre001/abbottville2.gif)
Earth's magnetic field:
