Tuesday, January 09, 2007

James A. Parcell & Juana Arias: The Washington Post Repeats Scoop Role

For credibility’s sake, the narrative record of the September 11, attack at the Pentagon as told in images, required meaningful contributions from outside of the closed loops of the military and government service. However, only a few professional photojournalists had access there on 9-11, as evidenced by the public record. Among the accredited professionals who worked that day, a handful have long associations with the White House, and their work must be judged in that light. Much of the rest is so banal and repetitive that it damns itself. Only a few photo-journalists did heavy lifting in carrying the narrative message of the day, and when their work was published or posted in highly credible outlets, like Will Morris, of the Associated Press, whose iconic images were published in major newspapers and magazines worldwide, the truth of officially sanctioned facts was established.
I believe that Pentagon-operating PSYOP teams gave individual access to the accredited professionals that day not as a courtesy or favor, but to guide their work output. Part of an effort to plant a planned narrative message into the minds' of the world, a message at odds with the truth. Since such manipulation of the truth is the antithesis of news journalism, this implies that all of the credited work is corrupted to some degree. That the effort succeeded in establishing an official version as fact means that work richest in supporting narrative detail is the most corrupt, and anything contradicting the story, is probably the work of honest skepticism.

Given its status as the local paper and one of the national papers of record, the Washington Post needed special care and handling from the Pentagon story tellers, and the special results achieved can now help unravel the truth from the lie. Embedded in the Washington Post's work is an element that appears to be a silent practical joke. How else to explain a newspaper’s publishing of two images together, taken by separate staff photographers, of the same two unnamed women, in impossibly contradictory circumstances, unrecognized behind a veil of color-theory? Below are the twp photographs taken by James A. Parcell and Juana Arias, two of thirteen pictures that WAPO published and continues to post online in an image essay called

In the first, a uniformed service woman assists a civilian office worker in a march out of danger. Framed by a sea of military men in drab and khaki, the emotional reality of the women is heightened, Adding to the drama, a soldier in the foreground looks back over his shoulder in an animated reference to the escape from Sodom, With crisp humility, the military woman helping the fey and pensive civilian also justifies a strong national defense. The bright cerise-colored Rayon blouse the woman wears untucked and unbuttoned is a bull’s eye of color centering the composition. Professional photographers train their eye to spot visual moments like this, and in capturing it, Parcell earned his paycheck.

The second image is more intimate. It appears to be of a gravely wounded woman in a yellow head brace strapped to a backboard, covered with a lilac-colored thermal blanket. Though her eyes and mouth are closed, a uniformed responder leans over her as if to hear her confession, a gloved hand hovers in healing. In a major coincidence, Juana Arias captured the only two images to emerge from the Pentagon that day depicting recognizable facial features on an apparently seriously wounded casualty. In a major twist, identification nonetheless eluded the top editors in the free world.

Rich in a narrative invoking motherhood and God, these images, and others like them, became the icons motivating America's warriors into a religious retaliation. Any doubt as to their authenticity was viewed, for a time, as beyond the pale, and a fear engendered by the release of other images enforced a code of orthodoxy and obedience.

But if we ask, are these the same women in both images, what does that mean? Could the same casualty, apparently in shock and at risk for paralysis in one, get better and relocate elsewhere, to be depicted as marching in a sea of evacuees, as an icon of the "walking wounded," by a different professional, from the same firm, with both of the results turning out to be narrative standouts in a landscape where narrative was rationed and professionals were quarantined. Or did the brace and blanket come later, after her escape? Is the psychological power of color theory so strong, that its ability to mask a fact—these images depict the same women— be so complete, that for five years the obvious would remain unchallenged? Would the planners risk exposure for a joke? Or was this a covert slap in the face to the paper that brought down a president, the message of now it's your turn, itself a part of the subconscious manipulation, along the religious symbolism? For to conclude that, indeed, these are the same women, starts a chain-reaction in understanding, as scales fall from the eyes, and the baskets come off lamps. Complex psychological components of a massive conspiracy—the false flag attacks of 9-11 on the United States of America, by the United States of America, for the rich of the world, who will always be with us. May what is hidden be revealed. Especially the punchline.

The unnamed female civilian was photographed several times by others:


To capture the enemy's entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to destroy them. For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. Next best is to disrupt his alliances by diplomacy. The next best is to attack his army. And the worst policy is to attack cities

[I am appending my follow up to The Washington Post Repeats Scoop Role in New Case. simply titled, More to the Washington Post Scoop Case , which I posted on January 7. Still new to blogging, I must still be in a defiant stage, because it seems to me blogging is backwards. How are you supposed to append new information? Or, is it bad form to externalize your internal threads? It's called editing you say? Well, in any event, the WAPO story just got better. Enjoy.]

More to the Washington Post Scoop Case

I was startled to notice that the women who appear in two mutually exclusive photographs in the 13-picture Washington Post series, Attack on America: The Pentagon, which were taken by two different Post photographers, Juana Arias and James A. Parcell, resulting in a doubtful news value, are seen in yet another image in the series, this one again by Parcell. Although not prominent in the composition, neither do the women hide, having their placement obscured, in my opinion, paramentally, disguised by color theory, this time by a fire-engine red.

Something looks off in the composition however, with five subsets not relating to each other. A man could be resting on the back running board of the fire truck, but his butt would be in conflict with the bumper relative to the women. Perhaps that's why another man is assisting him. This may indicate digital artifice has been introduced into the image, like many another. Perhaps the gentleman in shades, and white pants after Labor Day, works for Kroll, or is in the secret service, and has answers. He's giving us the eye like he knows somethings up.

In this blowup the two women seem to be doctored into the image perhaps.

In another image by Juana Arias, published elsewhere in the Washington Post, color theory is having a field day, as an unnamed man, apparently suffering from a great deal of tooth pain, is adjusted by a medical attendant, who wears scrubs that appear to be cut from the same cerise blouse material as the lady pictured as walking wounded. A green on an oxygen bottle is introduced, in too saturated a color to be accidental, with just a touch of the yellow, this time used very sparingly, so obviously a key ingredient. Since any possible meaning escapes me, it must be working, and I wouldn't try color-theory at home without supervision.


In the next picture, color shocks our senses, but to what end? This picture looks like it is by Arias, but it is by a 23-year-old amateur photographer named Michael Kleinfeld, who was allowed highly privileged access into the center court triage that day, and whose work went out on the UPI, but whose subsequent professional career was for naught. Since the composition is by a color theorist extraordinaire, of that there can be no doubt, we must assume that Kleinfeld gave us his all, and is now in a color-blind rest home.

In it, a uniformed-service woman seems to be having a fit of some kind, while her disassociated handlers hold on. It doesn't seem to bother the woman in the foreground who, now making her fourth appearance in related news photographs, is the woman in a yellow neck brace, her cerise tucked under lilac. She is back to serenely resting with her eyes closed, but now she is hooked up to an IV bag delivering fluids, so she must be going down hill.

I wonder what the point of all this play is? The uniformed-service woman, who looks to be in existential pain, has a respirator still around her neck, a detail not much found in the pictures of service members from the Pentagon, except Lincoln Leiber, pushing his oxygen off, to mope like a bad boy. Given the amount of second-hand smoke, face masks would have made a nice touch. This lady looks very similar to the anonymous firefighter in the following image,

who is oddly bundled up for the heat of late day, let alone for the heat of a fire, in a black snood, which then draws the eye down to a helmet lying at her feet, which we presume to be hers, and on which we can make a rare identification, as belonging to a D.C. firefighter. Hood. Helmet. I.D. Heavy-handed if you ask me.
In an interview she gave in 2002, to Women in the Fire Service, Inc. WFS, a District of Columbia Fire Department firefighter, Tomi Rucker, gave a very interesting report about her experience responding to the Pentagon fire on 9-11.

She was working as a fitness instructor at the district training academy, where Engine 34, a reserve piece, is kept. She says, "we were one of the units dispatched to the Pentagon, shortly after 10 a.m. There were seven people on the crew, all of them officers except me, and I was the only woman."
"As soon as we got on the scene, the Secret Service ran up to us and told us to find as many body bags as we could. We thought, "Oh, my God, this is real!" And actually, the Secret Service man called me by my name: "Hey, Rucker, we need body bags." How did he know who I was? I wasn't wearing a name tag. I thought, "This is some heightened security here!"
As they began setting out hose, an official "told us we had to evacuate, because there was another plane on the way. But we'd gotten all of this hose, we were just trying to run to get there with it, get geared up and go in, so we did."
"When we got into the building, we started to feel the heat right away, and as we walked deeper down the hallways, it got hotter and hotter. It was just fire everywhere: not so much smoke, but just fire all around us. You couldn't see the plane, just debris wherever you looked. We'd put water on it, but it would come right back up. We were probably in there 20-25 minutes before they took us out and sent other crews in. After that, we worked outside, doing SCBA changes and other support tasks."
Perhaps in the conceptual stages of 9-11, bigger things were planned for Firefighter Rucker. As an attractive, articulate African American woman, she was central casting to play many cultural meme roles. She was given a very privileged task that day, a 20 minute shift inside of the Pentagon, so her special status is clear. She was participating as part of a highly unusual crew, more fifth-responders, than first. She was recognized by sight, and called by name, by an orchestrator of the day's events, whom she identifies as secret service. Her team marched to the beat of their own drum, contrary to orders. But for reasons unknown, any parts she was intended to play in the after-story were sidelined.

She gives an overview of her feelings in the interview
"People on the scene were angry. Actually, it was a whole host of emotions: angry, scared, confused. We knew about the firefighters in New York, we couldn't accept how many must have died, but we knew from seeing it on TV they had to be dead. I remember thinking, "How much hatred could a person have for this country that they could do something like this?"
"Then you start thinking retaliation. We've got to get these people back for this. At that point, we really weren't sure who had initiated the attack. We were still trying to make ourselves believe that it had really happened. Was it really an accident? The media tells you a lot of things, and you don't know what to believe."
I couldn't have said it better myself. Rucker has achieved some measure of fame following her response to 9-11. But her looks have changed for some reason, and since I couldn't ID her with any assurance to begin with, I can now only say, God speed, Tomi Rucker. I hitched my star on your wagon knowing what I don't know--it's the unknown unknowns we have to watch out for. Be well.

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