The Ongoing Pentagon Insurance Scam Exposed

Scott Thewn, Agence France Presse

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I just got home from a screening at the 15th Annual Hamptons Film Festival of a documentary named Body of War. It beautifully tells the story of Tomas Young, an Iraq war casualty who was paralyzed from the chest down by a bullet wound to his spine at age 25, who has since become a leading anti-war activist. It was made by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, and it was a treat of the festival to hear the pair describe making the film, and take questions afterwards.

Anyway, I'd been in a funk for some time pertaining to my efforts here at stevenwarran.blogspot.com--mostly having to do with feeling under-appreciated--but nothing could have snapped me out of my malaise any faster than this documentary, so thank you Tomas, especially. I'd been sleepwalking like most of the rest of America and I'd missed cognition of the history of the political run up to war, but to hear Senator Robert Byrd in his 48th year of Senatorial service sound out the clarion call put that into perspective.

The perspective that Tomas' story brings me is even better though. I've never felt prouder of what I've been doing here, the intent, my execution, and the likely consequences of my study, insight, and reportage, which in the absence of positive feedback about my efficacy must remain theoretical.

I've been stuck trying to move forward with this story, which reduces the 9-11 Pentagon "event" to a fundamental truth: it was really just an insurance scam by a corrupt takeover of government by private industry, on a par with Blackwater's profitable takeover of the actual war. As such it's a pretty long, hard story to tell.

So, I'm going to lead with this portion as Part 1. It will tell of the manipulation of imagery of the visual damage of the only portion we were truly allowed to see: the aerial images of an absurdly damaged roof of the Pentagon building, a full two wedges, or two-million square feet of a heavily constructed, poured-concrete, fire-proof building were said to be affected as a result of this fraud.

To come, will be an exploration of apparently missing firewalls, an exposition of the effects on a supposedly completed $258-million, Wedge 1 renovation, and a non-exoneration of the privately controlled renovation project crew--those dear, dear patriotic Americans who feathered their nests with at least half a billion dollars.

As we left the theater they handed out palm-sized, hardbound copies of the United States Constitution, something which, (luckily for them,) those who attempted to perpetrate this crime will have in place when it comes time to prosecute and punish them. Too bad the million dead to date didn't have the same protection.

You're in good hands, with...

The giveaway of insurance fraud is not in the use of depleted uranium, or white phosphorous, or whatever it was that made for the pretty fires in the night (although it will be interesting to see how a jury will interpret these pictures,) but rather, it's in this effort at a review:
It's all about POV isn't it? Nowhere in these pages of a Hughes Associates report do the firematics professionals make it clear what we are looking at: that under the decorative slate shingles mounted on a wooden subsurface, is a structural roof made up of cast concrete slabs on beams. We were led to believe that the Pentagon roof fire got out of hand and burned for 48 hours causing enormous water and smoke damage to virtually the entirety of Wedges 1 and 2 underneath it.



In fact, the point of this report appears to be the need for firebreaks within the surface structure itself.

So, before we go any further, lets establish what the Pentagon roof is and what it is made of.

Found on the web is a wonderful personal reminiscence of a man, Stanley Nance Allan, who as a boy worked as a carpenter to build the Pentagon, then in a bit of symmetry,

"Twenty-five years later, in 1967, guided by what only could be a mysterious flow of destiny, the architectural design of the Pentagon Metro Station became my responsibility as project manager at the Washington office of Harry Weese Associates."

Mr. Allan writes, "The repetition of the production techniques and the coordinated division of work perfected efficiencies as construction continued upward for each of the five floors and finally for the construction of the sloping concrete roof slabs."


In this FEMA image of the reconstruction is the gable roof over one of the corridors, where the new work will meet the old, and where we get a good glimpse of the thickness of the roof slab.
In a second FEMA image, we see the construction of the wooden base for mounting the decorative slate shingles, on top of the concrete slab, visible to the right.

In a thumbnail, we see the interior of the fifth story of the E-ring, with the underside of the cast-in-place, slab-and-beam roof visible.

This high-resolution aerial image shows the nature of the damage from the roof fire, which worked its way under the old heavy slates and into the wooden substructure, stuffed with horse-hair insulation we were told.

But hair is neither here nor there. The concrete structural roof would protect the building underneath from the superficial effects of fire and smoke on top, or the water used to fight it. (And in the photo above, what are the men collecting on the blue tarp?)

In the Pentagon Building Performance Report of January 2003, (commonly called the ASCE report for the volunteer members of the American Society of Civil Engineers who undertook it,) on page 34, they say this:

"Fire damage in the second story appeared most severe around the region of collapse and near the breach in the second-floor slab. Generally, the most obvious fire damage was between the fire walls to the north and south of the area directly damaged by the aircraft debris. (duh) The most severe fire damage occurred on the first and second floors.The team noted no impact damage above the second story.

"The subsequent fire fed by the aircraft fuel, the aircraft contents, and the building contents caused damage throughout a very large area of the first story, a significant area of the second, a small part of the third, and only in the stairwells above."

So apparently, fire doors to staircases were left open, allowing fire to climb into the upper stories. But this doesn't mean the fire could get up into the roof, unless a roof access door was also deliberately left open to facilitate the spread of fire.

According to Lee Harvey Evey--

These are not lessons learned, it is propaganda. Additional fire breaks in the roof would only reduce the spread of drama. But then, they wouldn't be able to steal half a billion dollars!

Could that figure possibly be right? I think so.

First let's put it in the context of the remarks delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, at the Pentagon, on Monday, September 10, 2001, where he said $2.3 trillion in DoD budget spending was unaccounted for.

Arlington Fire Chief Ed Plaughter, answers questions about the "very stubborn fire fight" firemen were still engaged in, at a 10am press briefing. News Transcript Presenter Victoria Clarke Wednesday Sept. 12, 2001

Q: Why it is so difficult in that apparently attic area that continues to burn? What is it about that?

Plaugher: They type of the construction of the Pentagon is very, very, I would call, stout World War II type of construction. A lot of concrete, a lot of very thick masonry. On top of that is a wooden roof structure. On top of the wooden roof structure is slate, and so it's just a very very difficult system to get through to extinguish, and it takes a lot of cutting with special tools and equipment, and then a lot of hand work by the firefighters to get up in there. And we're trying to get ahead of the fire right now.

Q: Question, but with a very brief prelude. Yesterday, earlier, of course, most of the smoke and the fire seemed to be fuel from the plane, and then late yesterday afternoon, that had dissipated or been put out, and there was light smoke, and actually very little late in the afternoon. Now there's a lot more. So, there are two questions, or a two-part question: One, what is burning? And two, what's caused the fire, apparently, to start up again?

Plaugher: Okay. We were never able to fully extinguish the fire in the roof structure. We were able to get it mostly knocked down, and again because we're having extreme difficulty making access under the slate roof, it's to be expected to take awhile to get there. We have had the fuel from the jet catch fire again, and we're now in there with some additional hand-lines and some foam-lines, with aircraft fire-fighters inside of the insides of the Pentagon trying to suppress it, this time with fire-fighting foam.

Q: Will you have to get onto the roof in order to put out that fire?

Plaugher: Yes. We're up on the roof, we're up there now. We have our fire-fighting forces up there with great support from all the area fire departments -- Washington and --
Q: Are you removing sections of the roof to get at the fire?

Plaugher: Yeah. We're doing what's called a "trench cut" which is a slice of the roof, which then lets the fire gases out of that part of the roof. We then bring water streams into the back part of the fire cut, and so that the fire actually sucks the water up to it and helps to extinguish the fire up there. Please excuse me, I've been up all night, so. But that's basically the technique that's used.

Q: Could you describe the extent of the damage caused by the fire now? I mean, Corridors 2 through 6 are closed. Is there fire damage now throughout that -- through all the rings?

Plaugher: Not through all the rings, but to the two rings on each side of the crash site that -- we have some covered walkways and we have fire going down those covered walkways, that has gone out to those covered walkways and now going down those corridors.

Q: When you say the fire is stubborn, does that mean there are spots of fire in different portions, or --

Plaugher: Up in the roof section. It's hard to get to.

Q: I see. Can you tell me where the fire is now?

The next building update wasn't held until Friday afternoon, September 14th, when James Schwartz, assistant chief of the Arlington County Fire Department makes a statement,

DoD News Transcript Presenter: John F. Irby, Federal Facilities Division Friday Sept. 14, 2001

Schwartz: I'll give you one more piece in terms of recent events, and that is an update from the situation regarding the fire that occurred last night. The situation is -- the fire occurred in that collapsed area. I have continually stated that from the very beginning the fire situation in this particular incident has been extremely difficult. It was not a typical fire when we arrived on Tuesday morning, and it does not -- it has not ever gone into a typical fire situation.


We have heavy fire in an area where there was collapse, and there is an awful lot of material beneath that collapse that is still quite hot. I'm not surprised at all by the idea that there is still burning going on underneath there; it's just that you're not seeing a whole lot of it because it's very deep-seated. As that burning continues, or as the rubble starts to shift, we get air in there and then we see a little bit of flame come out, as we did last night.


We continue our fire watch operations; continued them after the fire was extinguished last night, and continue them today as we go further with this operation, and we'll continue that as we see necessary for the remainder of the incident.

At the same press briefing, John F. Irby, Director of the Federal Facilities Division, answers some questions about the extent of damage.

Q: I have a question for Mr. Irby. How much do you estimate it will cost to repair the damage?


Irby: I think it's too soon to know that. We don't have a -- well, as the chief pointed out, all of the damage hasn't occurred yet. We're still having problems that we're having to deal with, and certainly there's a lot of testing that needs to go on before we could give a reliable estimate.


Q: But as a ballpark figure, could it be in the tens of millions of dollars? Or is it likely to be --


Irby: Oh, it's much more than that.


Q: Much more than tens of millions?


Irby: Yes.


Q: Mr. Irby, when the clean-up effort is completed, about how much of the building will be usable for office workers?


Irby: Well, I think we'll need some more engineering analysis before we can make that -- turn the answer into a number. Right now we're at about two-thirds, and we expect to be expanding that. But the engineers are going to have to work with us on that and --


Q: They're studying the structural safety of the parts that appear to be intact?


Irby: Pardon?


Q: They're studying the structure, the parts that appear to be intact?


Irby: That's correct. That will take some time to look at the potential settling and those kinds of things. And it's, again, an area where we're all cooperating together and we're all working at the priorities of what has to come first. And reoccupying is going to be the last thing in line, so there are a lot of other higher priorities.


Q: I'm sorry to belabor, but you said a moment ago that while you can't give a precise estimate on how much it's going to cost to repair, it's certainly going to be more than in the tens of millions of dollars. Can you, in a ballpark way, characterize where you think it's going to end up -- a billion, several hundred million?


Irby: Well, I think it'll be less than a billion, but certainly more than a hundred million by quite a bit.


Q: Mr. Irby, could you tell us what it cost to renovate that wedge of the Pentagon and what the budgeted amounts are for each of the other wedges?


Irby: Again, I'm operation and maintenance. Lee Evey would be a better one to answer that for you. He's the director of the -- or the program manager of the Pentagon reservation.


Quigley: Renovation.

At the sixth month mark after the attack, Lee Ivey, director of the Pentagon Renovation project, in a DoD News Briefing March 2, 2002, makes a subtle reference:

"After that, we will begin putting the gabled roof above it. It actually has two roofs in that section of the building."

Which, typically, the news reporters didn't pick up on.

The Hughes Associates report is something of a mystery to me. Who commissioned it? What was its purpose? Was it designed to augment the Arlington County After-Action report? If that's the case, was the intent to justify the enormous damage to the Pentagon building that is being claimed? If so, why does this report also include these two illustrations, which are the closest to being truthful summaries?


To the report's credit, it's damage summaries reflect reality far better than the more commonly seen illustrations. They even separate out the different floors. Compare that with the next two put out by the renovation office, or the one following, published in the Washington Post.


This illustration published in the Washington Post is especially misleading. It is part of a pattern of misinformation in graphics published in WAPO. The collapse area is overstated by 500 percent. Likewise, the fire, smoke and water damage is over stated by a geometric percentage.

All have a single-minded objective, I think. To indicate to the public mind that a full two wedges, in other words two million square feet of space, was damaged or destroyed.

The Pentagon Renovation Program "Phoenix" page leaves no doubt of the extent of the damage claimed, saying:

"Reconstruction cost for two million square feet, approximately $526 million---$200 million less than originally anticipated"

or $236 a square foot, as claimed.

ASCE Pentagon Report Illustrations

These factual images were published in the American Society of Civil Engineers Pentagon Building Performance Report.

I'm a War President!

Le Pêntágon blogmonde

They've just released the official Department of Defense hardbound book of history: "Pentagon 9-11," and it is the talk of the Pêntágon blogmonde. Someone (riv?) scanned in the 30-or-so new images and illustrations, and put them up at http://911files.info/77/pentagon_911_book/ where they are not without interest. You can purchase the book at the gov'ment bookstore, for about a dollar an illustration, and expect to wait several weeks for delivery. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite pictorial representations.

On Edit: This tidbit is too delicious to wait for dessert, Defense Historians Doc... Defense Historians Document 9/11 Pentagon Attack
Randy Papadopoulos, a Naval historian, Nancy K. Berlage, an editor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Historical Office, and Diane T. Putney, a historian with the same office, spoke with reporters about the release of "Pentagon 9/11" on Sept. 7, 2007.

"The team of authors learned about more than the individual experiences as they conducted their researched, however. For instance the effects of recently completed renovations to one wedge of the Pentagon that was hit were mixed, said Diane Putne, a historian in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Historical Office.

"Renovations brought features that were really a two-edged sword," she said.

The blast-proof windows didn't explode into deadly shards, and ballistic cloth in the walls did its job protecting employees from brick fragments. But all the force that was being absorbed by these reinforcements had to go somewhere, and it did, blowing a hole in a wall of one of the building's interior alleys.

But, as the oral accounts revealed, the sprinkler systems did their jobs and created welcomed relief from smoke and helped suppress the fires in certain areas of the building."

I think the sprinklers suppressed fires on certain people even. And that hole wasn't a "mixed-edge sword" by any means--it was the point of egress for Kevin Schaeffer to live, and it's how David Tarantino and Dave Thomas heroically rescued Jerry Henson. But my God, they're really grasping at science straws now aren't they? I haven't got the book yet but I'm already anticipating its whole tone of apologetics. Dig yourselves in deeper I say.

We see our first scenes of mortuary science. This is all well and good, given the only two proofs a 757 impacted the Pentagon on 9-11-01 are the purported eyewitnesses and the supposed bodies. Still unresolved though are the complaints of the Virginia Medical Examiner who was ready, able and willing to take on her lawfully mandated job, yet was shunted aside by the new work rules making the FBI capo a capo. It would have helped had Dover not been such a completely closed-casket closed shop.


Working against this practical gain is this mysterious refrigerated-truck image, with its OBA/FBI, Saranwrap, Aerobed, empty-bodybag meme. Since the one true mar on the newspaper of record's earliest coverage, in its first article before 5pm that Tuesday, was a paragraph planted by the Pentagon saying they'd put out a call for a refrigerated truck from a local supermarket to handle the expected load. Like their casualty count inflated from 100 to 800, the prospect of a Winn Dixie hauling our hero's remains away, especially when they badly need to clean the filter on the air conditioner, is, well, tacky and not antiseptic.

Oh goody, goody, goody! A new clock for my clock blog!

Well, on second thought--how boring. What, did they buy a gross of those brown plastic battery-operated affairs at Target. And ho-hum, the point again?. Look how they put it: "The 9-11 Commission determined the plane hit the building at 9:37am," like, we don't have a say, let's blame them, they haven't any credibility left anyway. Who cares if people remember explosions and crashes running from 9:20am clear through to 9:45am. Those were tires exploding and oxygen bottles going off and sonic bombs, I mean booms.

The seismic laboratories got clear readings from the strikes and the falls of both towers in New York City, but they could find nothing recordable from Arlington, although one might think a 757 hitting the base of a solid masonry building would shake the ground more than a 767 hitting high up on what is, essentially, an elastic tuning fork. But what's this? The observatories were charged with only looking for activity within a three-minute window surrounding the 9-11 Commission established strike time? Oh. I see.

Vertical-Component Seismic Records Covering Time Window of Plane Impact
at Pentagon on September 11, 2001, 09:36:30 to 09:39:30 (EDT), 0.6-5 Hz

Here's a nice photograph of a flight-data recorder resting comfortably on some concrete. Dig the caption: "Flight data recorder found in the building near the hole in the inner C Ring wall leading to A-E Drive." Does this mean they've given up ascribing some legitimacy to that hole, by speaking of it only in generic terms? "The hole that does not speak its name," works.



But look. Finally! After all this time, of taking, and distributing, maybe a hundred different images of that V hole, they find the first, original, shot, still smoking, the one before the FBI man took away the jet-liner's wheel for safe-keeping! Yes!. But what's that damn bridge doing there? That wasn't there before was it? Quick, better call Metcalf.



Here are three illustrations, that keep getting better. It's the first we've seen of the second floor. Where Maude was DOA, and Birdwell, His "well done, my good and faithful servant," just kept getting...more, w e l l d o n e! Har, har, har!





A new kind of interior shot, coolly labeled, Below: An inside view.
Unfortunately, a little too close to, Below, An inside job.


Here's a favorite: the Tyvek-robed Old Guard on a diligent evidence hunt. Of course--that's the way to organize--do it in a big circle, and some of you get in there on top and muck around in it. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. And the sidebar recycling operation is a nice touch! But doesn't the record tell us they did this work under a tent in the North parking lot? I'll have to track down the reference.


On edit: Found the tent reference:
Old Guard Honors Battlefield Tradition by Linda D. Kozaryn writing in a DefenseLink news article on Feb,. 5, 2002

"Gen. John Keane, Army vice chief of staff, was in his office at the Pentagon that day. In mid-January, he talked of the day's terror and courage to a group of reserve officers here.
The soldiers helped sort through the rubble so FBI agents could locate evidence and local search and rescue workers could locate remains. Once found, the Old Guard soldiers carried out body bags containing the remains.
Military mortuary affairs personnel stood by to receive the remains. The Army's 54th Quartermaster Company (Mortuary Affairs), Fort Lee, Va., were first on the scene, followed by the Army Reserve 311th Quartermaster Company (Mortuary Affairs) from Puerto Rico.
"We intended to remove (all the remains) using United States Army soldiers to do it," Keane said. "That's our tradition. That's our custom. So we asked the fire and rescue people to call us when they located (remains) and told them that we would assist them."
The Old Guard's young soldiers, he said, most in their early 20s, some still teen-agers, wore protective garments, respirators, rubber boots and gloves when they went in to recover remains.
All work on the site stopped while they performed the grim mission. Nothing would move except the soldiers, Keane said. They carried the remains to a tent, where there was a short ceremony with the American flag and a chaplain said a prayer.
"We did that outside the view of any camera or reporter," he noted. "We did that because that's who we are and what we stand for. Those are our values.'"

Now, I know just how the revisionist historians in the PsyOps rewrite office will spin this: that these young soldiers wearing white protective-wear gear after labor day were not sifting for human remains, they were looking for paper driver's licenses that belonged to Arab hijackers--which they found. Then tell me, what honorable values are found in the following:

Slow, Grim Work at the Pentagon, by Steve Twomey and David Cho, writing in the Washington Post on September 13, 2001

As the remains began to emerge with regularity in the hour before nightfall, the workers who had used heavy construction equipment to strip away the rubble paused to watch. "I don't think anything can prepare you to see that," said Gerald Ours, a supervisor with Facchina Construction.

His colleague Mike Crotty described encountering the body of a woman inside an office that had felt the plane's impact. "She was in her chair, leaning back," he said. "It didn't look like she knew what hit her . . . and her face was as if she was shocked."

The value I read into that is the high status placed on workers from "Facchina Construction," who seem to have had the run of the place. What I'd like to know is, what was the concrete subcontractor for the future rebuilding contract doing on-site on Wednesday, September 12? Polishing the terrazzo?
____________________________________________________________________________


Oh my goodness. Is that Van A. Harp? What the hell happened? Is he Dorian Gray in need of a re-stretching? I guess that stuff catches up with you eventually--Ruby Ridge, Trafficant, those Daschel spores--whatever they're called. You know, it's not my place to judge, but I'm also not going to roll over and hand madmen the KY. I think we should all keep our own sides of the street clean. But I really hope all of you Holy Cross and Fordham and Notre Dame FBI jocks check your moral compasses. There's nothing worse than being misguided.



I don't know what to say after looking at this one. I just keep thinking of how immoral and unjust our wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan are. How do we put things right?

Here's a goody! Amended After-Action Reports for dinner! Yum yum!

Don't try and reconcile this with "Responding in the Pentagon."


Now, finally, proof positive. A debris shot with logo and cereal number, sitting up high on the grass--what kind of grass is that? Is it Easter basket grass?

Oy vay, I wish I were blond.

Kit Landis, Craig Ranke, Chris DeWolf, Jude Rothschadl, Alan Pakula, Loyde England, Webster Tarpley and me.

Yesterday was a very painful day for me. The experience of it started off in the early morning hours, (actually, I segued in from the night before,) as I was finishing off a blog about Judy "Jude" Rothschadl, and through the aegis of Google, I came upon an unfortunate coda to her story: the untimely and tragic accidental death of one of her colleagues, Chris DeWolf, in January of 2004.

The 41-year-old father of young children had skidded off the interstate highway in a snow storm while on his way to work as a fireman in Portsmouth New Hampshire. While the loss felt senseless (single-car accident on the morning of a workday for a trained first-responder in a snow state?) it was nothing to jump to any conclusions about, even though I felt sure DeWolf had arraigned for the unprecedented access at the Pentagon on 9-11, but I was left with a vague sense of unease.

By the end of the day (and I did give that day a proper ending,) I'd finished another blog about Loyde England. While not expecting praise, or reward, or kudos, or anything like that, I was a bit taken aback, when my single correspondent at present, a touchstone of sorts named Craig Ranke, dismissed my effort as off-base in two comments he appended to the blog.

He linked me to some of his previous research at http://www.thepentacon.com/Topic7.htm. In that thread, Craig had posted several documentary photographs from a marvelous resource he had acquired, a computer file of images taken by Jason Ingersoll, the marine corporal who was on-scene at the Pentagon early on September 11, and who took a series of well-known high-resolution images which have been a boon to research.

I don't know the count of the Ingersoll images that have been previously released into the public record. I have one file with 62 but it is far from comprehensive. My great debt of gratitude to Ingersoll was in spotting what appears to be spent artillery shell casings littering the muddy foreground of the damaged Pentagon building in two images he took, DM-SD-02-03910, and DM-SD-02-03911



and a glancing view here at:
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2002/Marines/DM-SD-02-03899.JPEG

Fired from either the exposed rectangular silos whose metal lids we see flung aside, or perhaps from the area of the burning generator, these munitions were only one aspect of a multi stage, timed action. They definitely didn't come from a 757.

Craig had told me about the new Ingersoll photographs previously, when he said he'd been given the file--he calls it "a literal treasure trove,"--by an employee of the Virginia Department of Transportation, whose nearby offices were expropriated by Pentagon brass after 9-11. More recently, Craig had done some specific research pertaining to 9-11 there. I remember salivating at the news, and I was envious of Craig, who I, rightly or wrongly, questioned as being non-independent in light of his holdings.

So, of course, to any researcher who has poured over the limited public resource available, again and again until bleary eyed, the new images were like manna. However, they weren't especially useful to the point at hand, although there were several pertaining to areas of personal interest, like the shots of a car and a firetruck as they were being devoured by EXO weaponry seen in the background of several shots.

The new shots were interleaved within a tight sequence of known Ingersoll images, made as he descended a hill from the Navy Annex and worked his way around towards the disaster scene. Craig intended the images to provide a context surrounding two very important shots of Loyde England, the taxicab driver on Route 27 who witnessed a 757 strike the Pentagon and who had a lamp pole spear its way through his windshield, narrowly missing him. Anyone familiar with the death of Alan J. Pakula, the movie director who was killed in a freak accident on the Long Island Expressway, couldn't avoid being shocked at Mr. England's close-call.

But the sequence works against Craig's interpretation--that as Corporal Ingersoll moves closer to the scene of carnage and devastation, with his horizon engulfed in flames and a supposedly terrorized response, he would stop and take boutique vignette shots, two tightly posed, close-up portraits of a driver on a cell phone, one amongst many, and his vehicle, albeit one with a damaged windshield and an inferable downed lamp pole nearby. Did Ingersoll take time to focus and compose these informatively controlled and narrative-rich shots, or was he just lucky?

My interpretation is that these two images of Mr. England attributed to Ingersoll are part of a recognizable subgroup of Pentagon images that do the heavy lifting in the story-telling department. I should think they were staged and recorded some days in advance of September 11, but that doesn't add to their inherent falsity, it only speaks to their technical limits and imperfection. They are indicted by their meaning in trying to tell a story, consequently they can be suspected as being the furthest away from the real truth.

In any event, I sense Craig and I are not working at cross purposes here, as we are moving closer to the unveiling of some fundamental truths, those being: knowing the motive of who benefited, as it has become revealed by subsequent history, what was the specific mechanical intent of the perpetrators, how did their plans go awry (assuming they did--how else to account for the slipshod results?) and how to apportion blame and responsibility amongst the various levels and components--some perhaps competing--of a plan as large and complex as 9-11 (I remember the confusion in the immediate aftermath, when a politician, recognizing that no state would dare do such an act, for any would appreciate the consequences the United States would visit upon them in return, wondered what possible non-state actor was capable of such a vast enterprise. It rather limits the suspects--none.)

Maybe it's wishful thinking (I've certainly staked my future and well-being on it as the outcome,) but there is no way that the that official story will stand. Any possible imagined future scenario--another Clinton presidency, another false-flag disaster on the scale of 9-11 or greater, war with Iran, further encroachments on American liberties, riot and civil strife, martial law, incarcerations--will not prevent or stop the gradual unfolding of the truth of American complicity, responsibility and authorship for the events of 9-11. We will either live with a poisoned society living a half-held lie, or one cathartically purged of the figment.

On a deeper level, what is being revealed is a truth about victimization, power, secrecy, and the causality of reality, which is all good.

But I was horrified to learn from Craig's thread that "[I]n an extremely strange and suspicious twist that we can only pray is a coincidence," the young man who gave Craig the Ingersoll computer file, Christopher "Kit" Landis, committed suicide "about a week after we had obtained the CITGO witnesses testimony on film."

While that reference means little to me in establishing a likely relationship between the acts and players, it may only be a coincidence per se for them, but it is not coincidental for me to learn of Landis's death off of an August 13, 2007 thread only now, when it addresses the death of Chris DeWolf.

Both of these men displayed a level of access and privilege that seems remarkable to someone outside their realm, whatever that may be. They both certainly look like a duck and quack like a duck as being the clandestine operatives of some shadowy organized force, be it Masonic or Platonic. And they both paid the ultimate price--in consequence, I imagine, for some failure pertaining to their roles in staging and massaging the September 11th event.

Dewolf's, at least, was a "line-of-duty" death, with all the resources that implies for his widow and two small children. But like the Oklahoma City survivors who were hurt by the largess shown their 9-11 compatriots, one must wonder at the fate of Landis's widow and four small children, given the differing circumstances.

Kit Landis did not commit suicide, just like the 19 Arabs who were the supposed culprits did not commit suicide. I suppose you'd have to try it yourself and fail, maybe even attempt it a couple of times, to understand how unlikely that scenario is. A "Masada complex," or Shimshon Haggibor---the "Samson the Hero," is of a different legend and culture altogether.

However Chris DeWolf met his end it was well-handled. Better certainly, than the staged beheading of Nicholas Berg by masked Americans standing in front of walls painted the same yellow color as the walls in Abu-Gharib prison.

(For the benefit of the anonymous poster below with the psychological defense mechanism turned up to Threat Con Delta, check out this analysis of Berg's murder, at Berg decapitation video was filmed inside the Abu Ghraib prison, and if you're up to it, you can watch the actual video here, at Video: Nicholas Berg's Beheading.

And while you're at it, don't miss another video up at that site [www.aztlan.net ] reposted here. In it, an American soldier brags to his buddies about participating in a rape at Abu Gharib prison in Iraq of a 15-year-old girl. You have to SEE the evil, before you can KNOW the evil, before you can begin to CHANGE the evil.)

Webster Tarpley was right when he wrote, "The world of secret intelligence agencies is a realm of falsehood, camouflage, deception,violence, unspeakable cruelty, treachery, and betrayal. It is the most desolate and grim sector of human endeavor, where no human values can subsist. It knows neither hope nor mercy nor redemption. It is the one area of human life where Hobbes's maxim holds true: it is the war of all against all."

Having exposed this law of club and fang through the failed September 11th attacks and the failed Iraqi and Afghani wars, might we, with God's help, transform it into something new?

On edit: I'll start a collection down here, of suspicious deaths, with perhaps more than meets the eye behind them.

In memoriam: Scott Shuger. - By Michael Kinsley - Slate Magazine

Shuger was a progressive muck-raking blogger who was as fit in a jujitsu dojo as he was in the water, but who died in scuba diving accident at age 50--my age--coincidentally, on my birthday, making him universal and local.

He wrote a well-known piece: The military screw-up nobody talks about.

In the Run Up:

June 6, 2000, John I. Millis, a former case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency who for the last three years served as the top staff member of the House Intelligence Committee, committed suicide on Sunday, the police and Congressional officials said today. He was 47 and lived in Vienna, Va.

Before becoming a senior staff aide in Congress, Mr. Millis served as a case officer for the C.I.A. for nearly 13 years. In that period, he lived in Pakistan, working to provide covert aid to Afghan rebels who were fighting the Soviet army.

Craig-- Why don't you recognize and highlight the significance of this shit?

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=87970&page=10

"We tried contacting Kirk Milburn and confirmed his account with his son but unfortunately he told us that his Dad was killed in a motorcycle accident."

I'm collecting unusual deaths over at stevenwarran. I must thank you. You guys are responsible for bringing more shit to light than any other trippers.

Love, Steven

ADD-ON "James Mosley - FOB#2 (Navy Annex)
Lyte: Mr. Mosley has apparently passed away since 2001 and is thus unavailable for further comment. His story thus remains unconfirmed and should be dismissed."

Charles D. Riechers, whose Air Force career took him from the back of a B-52 cockpit to the front of the service’s $30 billion procurement office, said something was telling in the fact that his suicide note to his boss was typed. They described it as an effort to set the record straight by a meticulous man who felt deeply misunderstood.

Charles D. Riechers

"I first and foremost express my deepest regret for a situation based on my naïveté," Mr. Riechers's note read, according to a person familiar with it. "I've created a scandal."

On Oct. 14, neighbors found the body of Mr. Riechers, a 47-year-old husband and father, in his garage in Loudoun County, Va., just outside Washington, dead apparently from the fumes of his car. Instead of clarity, though, Mr. Riechers's last act cast a cloud of suspicion over the Air Force, threatening to plunge a service still struggling to emerge from one of its worst scandals into another quagmire.

OMFG! This man did not commit suicide!!!!!! Assholes!!!