The Two AP Breaking News Archives From 9/11

In an undated Issue 7 from the web site CovertAction.org, which is a review of intelligence and media matters put out by The Institute for Media Analysis, Andy Weir and Jonathan Bloch write about a prominent British journalist named Robert Moss, who was active on the editorial staff of London's The Economist from 1970-198o, where he was an editorial writer and special correspondent. Specifically, he edited The Economist’s weekly Foreign Report supplement from 1974-1980.

Calling him "perhaps one of the most influential right wing commentators in politics today," Weir and Bloch couched their recognition of Moss's work in terms like "his messianic activities on behalf of the 'free world,'" saying, "it is plain to see that intelligence sources have provided him with the raw material on which he has based much of his reputation.

The weekly magazine The Economist, is considered the establishment paper of record for British business interests, although I much prefer the Financial Times, a very early visitor to stevenwarran.blogspot, and, (I flatter myself,) the mainstream outlet which published the best analysis I've ever seen, this past June, of what 9/11 has wrought.

But it is in the special hybrid Foreign Report that Moss is set apart from his journalistic peers. It is a "confidential" publication sent to selected individuals by prospective subscription, where applicants are screened, required "to provide copious details on themselves, and must agree to keep its contents confidential." The report was able to forecast almost to the day, for instance, the political coup's in Greece in 1967 and Chile in 1973, and such forecasting must rely on access to very high-level sources---like the people who pull the switches.

What the criteria for admission into this rarefied club entails---like the requirement for secrecy---isn't hard to fathom. It must relate to an interconnectedness, even a non-competitiveness between business interests, and certainly it requires obedience to direction. The organizing principle would be the necessitous appearances before government boards and regulators. The life spring of a Rolodex class accustomed to its privileged access, which allows them to parlay their informational advantages over the uninitiated masses. All of it in cahoots somehow with the drug runners, the arms smugglers, and the sex traffickers. In its secrecy, it is the very definition of the word conspiracy. It sounds like fun.

A unique style must result in the finished work product, which we are told, "is interesting reading for fans of unreconstructed conspiracy theories and reads like a gossip column of the intelligence world."

It is that quality of a high-level private one-way conversation which pervades another media record, a recently discovered and little known archive of "breaking news" reports from September 11th, 2001, categorized under the heading "War on Terrorism," and posted to the web by the Irish company Thomas Crosbie Media. The interlinked context is clear here: it is the first of such daily compendiums under that heading running at least until the end of 2001. According to archive.org, the archive page's first appearance online is dated to March 16, 2004.

The bulletins in it out of New York and Washington are recognizable by the verbatim quotes sourced to the Associated Press that were telecast on American TV news programs that day. This timeline is significant in several respects beyond its tone and the glut of incidental, conflicting, or contextualizing information contained within it. To begin with, it is seriously at odds with a competing compendium of AP reports from that day---a mysterious low-brow page put out by the AP and found online, which has generated only one or two references on the web in way of context. Most notably it is serving an important role as a source for facts in the Complete 911 Timeline at The History Commons project online.

This Associated Press timeline is a summation, self-described as "two flashes, 25 APNewsAlerts and 18 bulletins in the first day," presented on an undated and unnumbered, but otherwise professional appearing pdf page found online, which the Complete 9/11 Timeline calls simply, "Associated Press, 2001." Graphically, it looks like it might have come out of the semi-annual, in-house magazine, APWorld, but that can't be determined via Google. The Alerts should open to the promised expanded coverage, but the links are non-activated. Archive.org records the page as not appearing online until March 6, 2008. (Viewable, for some reason, only by pasting into your browser http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://associatedpress.com/log/APNewsAlertsandFlashes.pdf )

A second citation used at the Complete 911 Timeline reinforces eight key items from this pdf timeline page. They appeared in an article in the industry magazine Broadcasting and Cable dated 8/26/2002, and since this was the original preceding effort at damage control, it points to the most actionable conflicts in the timeline. I attempt a bit of explication of what that means in a blog here.

This helps explain why two completely rewritten and timestamped summaries of the AP's work from 9/11 would surface years after the event. I think evidence will show that the Crosbie archive is the legitimate record of the AP breaking news wire from September 11th, 2001. Saved, in an elegant twist, in Ireland, a land whose monasteries had also preserved much of the knowledge of the ancient Greek world during the extended dark period of Christian retrenchment known as the Middle Ages.

I use the term "legitimate" here lightly, since such a list was never intended to be constructed even, let alone seen by the public.

But it will also prove, I submit, that the Associated Press was a key co-conspirator to the massive United States government false-flag, psy-op production we know as the attacks of 9/11. Mixing thoroughly scripted synthetic elements with unavoidable organic material, events unfolded that day in extemporaneous, and sometimes premature, fashions. This resulted in factual inconsistencies within the timeline, conflicts which the summary constructed post-facto, (as distinct from assembled afterward,) attempted to clean up. But the effort surely never anticipated being seen in the light of its alternative "true" twin, so it only manages to dig a deeper hole into the onus, while reminding us of that old Watergate adage---how did that go again?

We can begin by examining the disparities in the timestamps given the breaking news, especially in those items issued in the first frenzied hours after the attacks.

Getting to the bottom of what the Crosbie reports really represented hasn't been easy for me. I put a call into the Irish company to ask about the extent of the AP sourcing, and the method the information would have arrived in---either by satellite, or online---and how the electronic pieces might have been assembled into the list as we now know it, but I didn't get very far. The staff member who answered the phone told me that the BreakingNews.ie line as archived came out of the Press Association of England. This wasn't helpful at all, because it only added an additional corporate layer far removed, between the timeliness of the information and it's final repository.

Since I recognized verbatim AP quotes telecast on American TV news programs that day, but I also saw that the reports were written in standard British spellings and Greenwich Mean times. Could any rewriting represent a lag time of as much as twenty, or thirty minutes in some cases, that would account for the disparities?

No---because in one important item, the very first report, the timestamp in the Crosbie archive is in advance of the competition by five minutes, with internal evidence showing it likewise arose from an attempt to rewrite history and conform it to the unalterable tapes of the telecasts of 9/11 contained in living rooms across America.

The Associated Press pdf page coincides with the on-air announcements in a just too-pat synchronisity. That doesn't explain why an alternate version exists that gets the times so wrong, or why the Crosbie archive would contain so much more fascinating and detailed information, while the competition presents itself in a streamlined, bare-bones form so extreme that it fails to even mention the collapse of Building 7 at 5:30pm on the afternoon of 9/11, a gaffe belying its pose as the whole and complete record of the AP breaking news line from that day.

As if we needed a slap in the face to say this document was constructed after the fact, appending a correction to an egregious error---the report that a car bomb had gone off outside the State Department---does just the trick. In the 10:23am item attributed to "senior law enforcement officials," the [Note: Officials’ version later proved unfounded] is not nearly as contrite as a revealing of who those sources were will be.

By way of contrast, the authentic archive preserved by Crosbie, after first reporting the car bomb blast at its variant scripted time slot of 10:35am, then repeats the error as headline in three more bulletins over the course of the next 36 minutes: issued at 10:42am, at 11:03am, and again at 11:11am---shamelessly driving home the terror, which the AP themselves were originating.

But it is in their desire to create a written record that conformed to the recorded telecasts that the AP went too far.

At 9:55am, a co-anchor of the local CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., Mike Buchanan, reported an item on-air, saying,

"Again, the White House has been evacuated after the Secret Service received credible threat, a credible threat of a terrorist act against the Presidential mansion and residence, again the AP is reporting the Secret Service has received a credible threat, a terrorist threat, against the presidential mansion and residence."

I suppose you'd have to appreciate the bombastic style of Michael "Buck" Buchanan, to understand what it is he's actually been selling in his career as a newscaster---which isn't his reading comprehension skills or oratorical precision, by the way. For the AP to have constructed a 9:55am bullet item that read, "The White House was evacuated after the Secret Service received credible threat of a terrorist act against the presidential mansion and residence," ranks as a monumentally stupid act of obvious spoon feeding.

The dropping of the article "an" before the "credible threat" is a nice writerly touch---it might even appear that Buchanan stops midstream to correct the AP's imprecision. But it is in the use of the solecism "presidential mansion and residence" for "White House" that a clear alarm bell is sounded. The Associated Press is famous for its just-the-facts-Mame style of news writing. The AP used the term "White House" literally scores of times that day. Why would they then use such a Buchananesque expression just this one time?

Isn't it more likely that Mike was winging it here? That the real AP report was the one issued as scheduled at 9:52am? In the bulletin: "Terrorist threats made against the White House," the one that reads, "The FBI has evacuated the White House after they received what they said were "creditable threats" against the White House?"

"FBI/Secret Service---whatever." Did any of the other anchors say the words "presidential mansion and residence" around this time? I'm going to go check now and make sure.

Warning! Hybrid activity! Bisexual alert! Aaron Brown at CNN said at 9:56am

"Just to add a bit, John, to what you've been saying. We're getting a report from the Associated Press now that the White House was evacuated after the Secret Service received what the AP is describing as a credible threat of a terrorist attack against the White House itself. I expect you'll be checking that out. We'll try and confirm that. But that is what AP is reporting right now."

So it's one confirmed White House, but still batting 500 on the FBI/Secret Service mix up. And do notice how the pose of journalistic nicety is for naught, as the AP didn't say it was a credible threat---the Secret...FBI did. And does the FBI run everything up the AP flag pole to see if it salutes?

Since we have proof that it was the Secret Service themselves who called in a false report to the D.C. fire department that a frigging airplane had crashed into the, um, presidential mansion and residence, can't we all just go home now?

Oh, I forgot about the "tone."

In an early report in the Crosbie archive, from 9:14am, Plane crashes may have been on purpose, which corresponds to the rewritten item on the AP pdf from 9:12am, headlined, "Washington: FBI investigating reports of plane hijacking before World Trade Center crashes." we receive the first mention of possible terrorism---sourced from the FBI.

But the Crosbie report contains this bizarre non sequitur, written in a strangely passive voice:

"There are reports that the FBI may be investigating the possibility that the two plane crashes may have happened on purpose.

"The second plane ploughed through the second tower of the World Trade Centre.

"President Bush has been told of the accidents at the World Trade Centre.

"It is said a few planes would be clearing the World Trade Centre by a few miles but ordinarily there would be no planes close to the twin towers.

"There is no way of physically closing down the airspace around the twin towers.

"One eye witness said It seemed that the first plane "lined itself up to hit the building directly".
Emphasis added.

This is the only reference in the record that I'm aware of, of a standing prohibition on commercial plane traffic along the Hudson river corridor. But it is fraught with additional meaning, of some special circumstance on that day, which must have anticipated air traffic near the towers, foreseen, perhaps, as part of some drill or exercise, which then must have gone terribly wrong. This would begin to qualify as a plausible "insider" version of events to share as necessary amongst the elect.

The unnamed source who said the plane, "lined itself up to hit the building directly," is repeating a talking point that dozens of other supposed eyewitnesses in New York also expressed; while in Arlington, a similar meme had the plane, "adding power," or going, "full throttle," into the building. Both were meant to indicate the malicious intent of the evil hijackers, although, it is frankly impossible given the limited perspective, for any eyewitness to have divined intent from the logistics of a surprise plane attack occurring at 540 miles per hour, but that certainly didn't stop the gag writers from laying it on---nor stop our recognition of the obvious pattern of relentlessness now.

The story of Barbara and Ted Olsen takes on a whole new meaning when a report in the Crosbie archive reveals news of it broke at 5:05pm on September 11th---even before Building 7 fell.

The synthetic destruction of Building 7 is more readily apparent in reports like the one in the Crosbie archive from 1:27pm - Third building on verge of collapse, which quotes the experts at "CNN reports it looks likely to fall down."

THE JEWS

A motif that runs repeatedly throughout the day in the Crosbie archive, but which is entirely missing on the AP page, is an attempt to lay blame for the attack (or take credit, if you will) on the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Very early on, in a report from 10:45am which was doubly sourced, said that the DFLP "has claimed responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Center, according to the BBC and Abu Dhabi television."

This was quickly and directly rebutted by contacts within the leadership of the DFLP, but the charges, and counter denials, were repeated again and again throughout the day, and represent some sort of proxy battle.

But making the whole thing ridiculous was the very first report---at 9:52am---inside Terrorist threats made against the White House, which begins by denying the still as-yet-unstated charge, by issuing a non sequitur, using the familiar abbreviated name form, plastered with the modifier, "later," although it clearly is coming first.

"Later a DFLP official denied responsibility for the attack.

I can't make sense of why an alternate version attributing culpability to Israel's political enemies, the Palestinians, was ran at all, much lest in such a coordinated way, unless it was to viscerally spoil the imagination of the body politic by piggybacking some stigma off the horror. Come to think about it, that certainly worked well with Saddam Hussein.

Since by 10:45am, (or 11:17am on the AP pdf timeline,) the demonization and blame of Osama bin Laden was on, and since history has borne out the political agenda of American interests, maybe some competing faction was attempting to co-opt the crisis.

Jewish fingerprints are all over the reports. Maybe given their control of the media they simply couldn't help themselves, but they really should have tried harder. There was the absurd item from 11:35am that said the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania was headed to Camp David, while also reminding us that the anniversary of the Camp David Accord was Sept. 5-17, 1978. It repeats again later.

But simply ask yourself, "If I were an amateur suicidal martyr/pilot, could I ever in a million years find Camp David from the air?" Then could I pick out the presidential cabin, called Aspen Lodge, from one of the many guest cabins -- Dogwood, Maple, Holly, Birch, and Rosebud, to name but a few?

Also overplayed, was the report from 10:56am, that said, "Israel has also evacuated its entire diplomatic staff from Israeli premises all across the United States." It might be noted they were the only diplomats reacting this way outside of Washington and New York, but the Jews have never been known for their less-is-more style.

Multiple reports, and dozens of images, depicting scenes of Palestinians celebrating in the aftermath of the attacks, flooded media markets all over the world within hours, all with elaborate identifying captions (a detail sorely lacking on a single photograph from Arlington that day, but something the AP could manage from Gaza with apparent ease.) Israeli interests must be held responsible for this savvy, self-serving public relations manipulation. Such an utter lie is evidence of foreknowledge by at least some members within the Israeli or American intelligence/media complex.

There is a stunning artifact left over from the unstable period immediately following the attacks. It is a denial on September 20th by CNN that said "there is absolutely no truth to the information that is now distributed on the Internet that CNN used 10-year-old video when showing the celebrating of some Palestinians in East Jerusalem after the terror attacks in the U.S." "The source of the allegation has withdrawn it and apologized," it reports. The source, a 20-year-old South American college student named Márcio A. V. Carvalho, had posted the information to a discussion group e-mail list.

That a third-world student's avocational musings could reduce the mighty international news organization CNN to the quivering tones of an aggrieved Duchess, says a lot about the true New World Order. That any law of proportionality, or rule of avoiding psychological focus, would be so abridged by CNN in this expression, says, mostly, I suppose, that they cravenly stand behind their story. Does that mean we should now invade and bomb Palestine?

I think it is very important that the history books preserve alongside one another, Yasser Arafat's condolences from 11:10am, with Ariel Sharon's condolences from 5:11pm, a primary source found only by my relentlessly searching eyes on the Thomas Crosbie Media timeline. Let each of us decide for ourselves, which seems heartfelt, and which might be sinister.

All this Jewish political machination---and I haven't begun to exhaust the examples in the Crosbie archive, mind you---never makes it onto the AP pdf timeline page. It has all simply been swept away, as if by some unseen force.

That Jewish thought is on a downhill trajectory became manifest for me recently when I read Richard Landes' infinitely sad analysis from September 2007, The Jews as Contested Ground in Postmodern Conspiracy Theory Passages such as the following:

because of the role of demopaths: people who use the language of democracy, human rights, and tolerance, not because they believe in these notions and are willing to make the sacrifices involved in guaranteeing them for others, but because they can use them to disarm the West itself. Demopaths "use democracy to destroy democracy."

with its invention of a whole new level of pathological illogicality, makes me wonder how much worse can it get.

Having come to conceptualize "preemptive retaliation," born out of the Jonathan Institute, founded in 1979 by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose brother Jonathan was killed in the commando raid on Uganda's Entebbe airport in 1976, Jewish consciousness is playing an endgame here. Worse than a mental illness---the mis-identification and projection between subject and object, victim and perpetrator---this constitutes a knowing intellectual violence, and should be considered as such.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this decline in Jewish thought is a quote from Alan Dershowitz in an article in the New York Times about Jewish support for Barak Obama.

"Israelis fear Iran 'could be the first suicide nation, a nation that would destroy itself to destroy the Jewish nation,' Mr. Dershowitz said."

________________________

The Crosbie archive is characterized by its disarming candor. In the earliest mention of the attack on the Pentagon in either timeline, at 9:41am, in Pentagon evacuated due to fire, it says,

"The Pentagon is being evacuated in expectation of a terrorist attack. It is believed a fire has broken out in the building."

This is clear, unspinnable English sentence structure, evidence the military had advanced warnings of a multi-phase surprise attack. Like the USAToday article published at 7:05pm on the evening of the attack, which said,

"Before the plane hit, the scene at the Pentagon was already chaotic. Sheriff's deputies were screaming at people to move along quickly. "There's a hijacked plane two minutes away. We don't know where it's going to hit. Keep moving," they shouted."

The AP's timeline bullet item from 9:43am is supposedly the first report that "An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say," and is standardized as such in the Complete 9/11 Timeline. But who are these anonymous sources? Does the plural represent two, or more than two? Why should they carry weight over any conflicting reports, like Plante's plural "witnesses?"

Illogically, we are asked to believe that the 9:43am AP bullet item both originated, and then settled, a fierce disagreement between Chris Plante and his producers at CNN. Why were the producers arguing with Plante prior to 9:43am---that being almost the exact moment Plante was temporarily shut down by Brown after going rouge on-air in mentioning he had been held at gun point by Pentagon guards.

Aaron Brown goes forward about 9:46am with the report "The Associated Press is reporting that a plane, it was a plane that crashed at the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is being evacuated." (The Complete 9/11 Timeline has got this significantly wrong, saying it was at 9:53am.)

Christ Plante is allowed back on air about 9:49am to rebut for the dustbins of history, saying, "contrary to what the AP reported, according to the witnesses that I’ve spoken to anyway—and that this helicopter disappeared behind the building and that there was then an explosion."

My blog, Saint Christopher of Plante, attempts a more detailed explanation of this major turning point in the plot, but in summary, it was Chris Plante's authentic and fiercely defended reporting of organic eyewitness testimony at odds with his producer's synthetic proffering that forced the premature announcement of a plane crash, necessitating a cover-up, and risking the plot.

It is more likely that the original confirmation a commercial airliner had caused the damage at the Pentagon was intended to be the 10:11am Crosbie report, Large airliner crashes into the Pentagon. This report is the first detailed and attributed eyewitness account of a plane crash at the Pentagon to go out on the wires. Only it, or something like it, would carry the gravitas necessary to shift any recipients 's variant thinking and set the new dominant paradigm---that of a 757, American Airlines, Flight 77.

"AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner..... It plowed right into the Pentagon."

We can know it is genuine---it was quoted verbatim on CBS. Many times that day Buck Buchanan milked the sexualized encodes within the phrase: "I saw the tail...plow right into the Pentagon," but without mentioning the name Dave Winslow even once. A named attribution represents the highest level of credibility, and even in the face of opposing eyewitness, it wasn't used.

A wonderfully strange report from 11:05am, Second aircraft hits Pentagon, said,

"A second aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon building. Earlier, a small plane had slammed into the building and set it ablaze."

Perhaps in the confusion, someone was misreporting that a second plane had crashed, rather than a second plane was threatening, and forcing further evacuations. That pull back stemmed from a 10:44am report Hijacked plane heading for Washington. It was too bad that "the forth plane" had already been reported as having crashed, six minutes before, in a report, 747 down in Pennsylvania, from 10:38am.

According to Google, other than the History Commons citation, only one other original-source article refers to the AP pdf. It is the Calgary Herald, in a piece by Kevin Brooker, published March 26, 2007, called The curious tale of the 'other' WTC tower, and the reference was about the AP timeline's failure to mention the collapse of Building 7.

According to Google, other than the History Commons citation, only one other original source refers to the Broadcast and Cable article, by the blog Shoestring911, which picked up on an errant report of fire in the USAToday towers in Roslyn.

Putting the more likely name for the title-less pdf page, "A Stunning 48 hours of News," into Google and only 10 hits are returned. Entering the title of the Broadcast and Cable article also returns only 10 hits in Google. Yet these are the only two sources that the timeline of record, the History Commons project, the Complete 9/11 Timeline, uses to establish the bare fact of an airplane crashing at the Pentagon:

9:43 a.m.-9:53 a.m. September 11, 2001: Associated Press First to Report a Plane Hit the Pentagon; CNN Still Unsure What Happened for Ten More Minutes

CNN wasn't unsure, they were fighting.

Moral revulsion at the full horror of what the United States has wrought begins to deepen later in the day's reports, as the events of 9/11 cannot be separated out from its fruits---the invasions and domination of foreign countries for the glory and plunder of drugs and oil, and the religiously motivated murder of over one million Muslims at the hands of a sick cabal of Judeo-Christian traitors who lay await within the very heart of the American Military-Industrial Complex, ready to pounce---then surge.

I've never been a fan of the medieval Taliban, or the tyrant Saddam Hussein. But the humanity of our enemies is clear in reports like the one from 12:55pm where

"Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, said in reaction to the news of the terror attacks that 'we want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain and we hope that the courts find justice.'"

Like the resonating truth in the report from 3:15pm where the

Taliban rulers have rejected claims that bin Laden was behind today’s attacks on New York and Washington. They say bin Laden did not have the means to carry out such well-orchestrated attacks.

Or the morality apparent in a report at 1:46pm

Afghanistan's hardline Taliban rulers condemned the devastating terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Tuesday and rejected suggestions that Osama bin Laden could be behind them. "We never support terrorism. We too are targets of terrorism," Abdul Hai Muttmain, the Taliban's spokesman in the southern city of Kandahar, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Or the meaning behind the facts reported from Kabul at 5:41pm that afternoon, when we learn that already "explosions have rocked Kabul for the last hour." The US denied responsibility for the large scale bombing, blaming the Northern Alliance. Michael Hayden testified before Congress that the head of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masood, was killed the day before 9/11, but that he blamed on the Taliban. The way these two were going at it, why did we need to go in there at all?

Compare this hour-long bombardment of a capital city, a retaliation just eight hours after the attack in New York had begun, with the number of days it is taking to sort through the facts in Mumbai, although The Jerusalem Post already posits the perpetrators to be "death-cult Islamists."

My God, CNN even had pre-positioned a reporter in Kabul before 9/11. Were they scheduled to be there reporting on the poppy trade I wonder? (I should never have asked myself this question. You can't believe where it has led.)

But there are signs of hope. The right-wing reactionary reporter from the 1970's with whom I led off this piece, Robert Moss, has had a career change in recent years. He is now a master teacher revealing the secrets hidden within our dream life. He is the creator of a program called Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanic techniques for empowerment and healing, and I must say, his author's page is most impressive.

On his Wikipedia page that charts this transformation, mention is made of his powerful early writings, by which he could almost be said to have invented the concept of modern international terrorism. So it seems perfect to me that he is inventing something else now, equally as powerful I hope, but countervailing. All that remains unrevealed to me now, but I trust him implicitly nonetheless.

I know, I can not be said to be the one who is dreaming. I never sleep.

What? No Continuity of Government Precautions After TWA Flight 800?

How lax.

At 12:10pm on September 11th, 2001, the anchors of the local NBC affiliate in Washington D.C., interview Lieutenant Dan Nichols of the Capital Police Department.

"We have Lt. Dan Nichols of the Capital police now, who's on the telephone with us. Mr. Nichols are you there?"

Lieutenant Nichols: "Yes I am. How are you?"

"I'm doing well sir, the question is how you are doing? We understand that the government has pretty much been shut down. Can you give us the latest on the situation at the Capital?"

Lieutenant Nichols: "Approximately two hours ago we ordered a mandatory evacuation of the Capital and the House and Senate Office Buildings. All members and staff and the public who were in the buildings at the time were evacuated and sent home. We've taken measures to protect Congressional leadership and we have
protective coverage on them at this time."

"When you say 'protective coverage' have they been taken some place special or are they just surrounded by guards? Can you tell us some more about that, sir?"

Lieutenant Nichols: "We have contingency plans in order to provide exceptional protection for leadership, that's part of our Continuity of Government efforts."

"There were no reports of any terrorist attacks at the Capital this morning, tell me if you would what procedures are underway to ensure that nothing does happen there."

Lieutenant Nichols: "Well, right now, we have contingency plans in place for events like this. We've enacted them before, during the World Trade Center bombing that occurred a few years ago and after the Oklahoma City bombing. Right now, we've done a security sweep and we've locked the buildings down and we'll remain in a heightened security posture for the foreseeable future."

"All right, Lieutenant, do you know for how long the Capital will be shut down and remain evacuated?"

Lieutenant Nichols: "That's a decision to be made later this afternoon. We hope to have a word from the leadership on how we're going to proceed tomorrow, but for this afternoon and into tonight, the Capital will remain closed and we will have extraordinary security measures around the buildings."

"And just to confirm, there has been no problem, no explosion, no anything, anywhere near the Capital?"

Lieutenant Nichols: "No, and I need to reassure everyone that this is merely a precaution. We take these types of measures in light of terrorist attacks against American interests. Clearly, this is the most severe terrorist attack we've had and we decided to take these measures as a reasonable and prudent precaution. But the legislative branch still continues to function. Member's of Congress are safe, and the buildings are secure."

"All right. Lieutenant Dan Nichols with the Capital police we thank you very much for that information." (13:27)

The interview begins at the 11:11 mark of this 41:41 minute segment.

NBC Sept. 11, 2001 11:59 am - 12:41 pm (September 11, 2001)
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Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center bombings apparently were dress rehearsals for the enactment of these Continuity of Government precepts and protocols, which were fully engaged on September 11th, 2001 and which, given the Bush administration's rule of law by signing statement, we must assume continue to remain in effect.

The principles of CoG have to do with establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of nuclear war or other catastrophic event. Not to minimize the suffering and loss in Oklahoma City, but I recall the breaking news on CNN first reporting a suspected gas main explosion. There have been fires in nightclubs that claimed similar or greater loss of life. However we categorize the bombing, it was an isolated event in the heart of Midwest America, completely manageable by city and state personnel. Was the bridge collapse across the Mississippi river in St. Paul, Minnesota, thought to be terrorism until proven otherwise? Why not? How this, or the first World Trade Center bombing, comes anywhere near ranking with a catastrophic calamity like nuclear war is untenable. They were Clintonian dress rehearsals for the events of September 11th.

The following 2-minute video clip records a moment in Col. Oliver North's testimony before the Select Committees of the U.S. Congress that in 1987 investigated the Iran/contra matter.
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Congressman Jack Brooks, Democrat of Texas, asks North, "Col. North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on the plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster."

This simple question caused North and his lawyer major conniption fits, as illustrated by their indignant arm crossings and eye rollings. Chairman of the panel, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, interrupted Brooks to say, "I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that sir."

Brooks went on, "I was particularly concerned Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency---contingency plan---in the event of an emergency that would suspend the American Constitution and I was deeply concerned about it and was wondering if that was the area in which he had worked? I believe that it was but I wanted..."

Inouye cuts him off again. "I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this I'm certain arraignments can be made for an executive session."

Why should continuity of government plans in the event of a major disaster or emergency fall into such a "highly sensitive and classified area?" Egregious suspensions of accepted liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution due to the perils of imposing martial law may be a fact of planning, but it would be better accepted and tolerated by Americans if they understood in advance what the stakes and consequences were. This is a completely independent component from the physical security of the leadership and the protocols and procedures for managing a crisis.

The question then becomes---how far down the chain of command are the responders privy to the eventualities? Is every small-town fire department, often housed in massively upgraded, post-9/11 fire stations that more closely resemble an armory, in on it? Small-town governments have created high-ranking umbrella positions responsible for overseeing police and fire response. In my small town a female animal control officer was elevated to the six-figure job. Was this done to streamline the control and management of these quasi-militaristic forces?

That Continuity of Government protocols were enacted after the Oklahoma City bombing is astounding. That Rep. Brooks spoke up is a signpost of the truth we have been missing. Even the news caster gets a subtle dig in, with his question, "And just to confirm, there has been no problem, no explosion, no anything, anywhere near the Capital?"

Given the lies of car bombings and plane crashes that stemmed directly from federal government law enforcement agencies, like the Secret Service, no wonder he put it that way. Pray God, for "no anything, anywhere" in our future.

Who Gets The Last Laugh Now?

photo by Michael Goldman

The widely distributed falsehood that Father Mychal Judge was administering last rites to a fallen firefighter when he was fatally injured, was a public relations scam, a lie endlessly repeated by authorities, which never had a grain of truth to it. There wasn't a moment when Firefighter Christian Waugh, if no one else, could not relate to us the eschatology of Judge, the manner and circumstance of his death, and his nascent afterlife, having shared his last moments with him in close proximity. Like bringing a puppy into the house, having taken it upon himself to "retrieve" the body of Father Judge, he became responsible for it, and for all the failings in reporting the details of his demise.

Failings being the sarcastic reference for a United States Federal government that wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the District of Columbia. Since the story of Father Judge's death was told in scores and scores of news reports, it could not have been accidental that this untruth was propagated. Especially given the lie was so much more compelling than the truth.

If anything, evidence and testimony show that Father Judge was giving an interview to Jules Naudet at the time of Tower 2's collapse and his mysterious death.

Angels of Darkness. Can you believe this image is only 24.6KB? His Powers!

If Father Judge had been vulnerable to falling objects while giving last rites out on the plaza, to a fireman fatally wounded by a falling jumper, he would not have removed his helmet. There is no sacramental reason to remove the headgear other than it sounds reverential in the storytelling. But America prefers cheap sentiment.

Judge, with his tightly strapped NYFD Chaplain's helmet on for the duration.

Father Judge's status as Victim # 00001 was likewise a public relations stunt. If anyone deserved that right it would be Danny Suhr, the firefighter killed by the falling body---we are told. But since Father Judge's was the only open casket funeral in all of the 3000 deaths which occurred on 9/11, his special status was assured.

But in the testimony of Firefighter Joseph Meola, we are told that Danny Suhr was killed by a jumper off the South Tower onto Liberty Street, about as far away from the location on the plaza where Judge was said to have been killed as one could get.
File No. 9110287 WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW

"After we left 10 and 10, as soon as we walked outside the door, a firefighter from an engine company 2 -- I believe it's 216, Danny Suhr, just outside 10 and 10's quarters on Liberty Street, got hit by a jumper. They were pulling him away. I believe they got him into an ambulance, and they were yelling at us to get away, because jumpers were jumping from the south tower onto Liberty Street, and a few jumpers came close to us..."

The two people closest to Father Judge in the Lobby of Tower 1, according to their own testimony and the video evidence, were Christian Waugh and Jules Naudet, both of whom are cavalier about the manner in which Father Judge died, hypothesizing a heart attack, or a blow during the debris storm of the first tower's collapse (with Jules Naudet even mentioning the marble off the walls as a possible culprit.)

However, no other responder stationed in the lobby surrounding Judge was hurt or killed. Father Judge is shown on the Naudet film wearing his protective helmet standing amid a swarm of other firemen.

William Cosgrove, a self-dispatched traffic policeman, outside of any chain of command, had no legitimate reason to be in the lobby of Tower 1. His involvement supposedly stemmed from his tripping over Father Judge's body, then you couldn't get rid of him. He never checks for a cause of death, such as head injury.

Firefighter Zachary Vause, was detached from his temporary unit, Truck 7, that morning because they left without him, so he too was outside any chain of command. He performed minimal attempts to resuscitate Judge, never checking to note head injury.

Father Judge died of blunt force trauma to the back of his head according to a friend who attended the autopsy, Brian Mulheren, a retired high-level New York City police detective .

In a bizarre and freakish scene in the Naudet film, the dead body of Father Judge is depicted being carried by four firemen, who are directed to set him down ("Put it down! Put it down!) while other firefighters, including chiefs, mill about, while a fifth firefighter brings up a chair, ostensibly to effect a transfer, although by all reports, the litter bearers did not transfer Judge to the chair until they were outside,

The firemen are treating Father Judge's body with great disrespect and contempt. ("Put it down! Put it down!)

A metal chair without pads on the leg ends would not be found in a marble-floored lobby and must have been planted in advance. The chair was a brilliant impromptu device, but introduced here clumsily in the dark of Naudet's documentary, where it reads clearly as a scripted element.

It is a mystery how Father Judge's body left the custody of the firemen, to be taken up by a mixed group consisting of a policeman Cosgrove; ringleader Waugh, free-lancer Vause, a spare OEM government agent, and even a short bond trader, and by that I mean---not tall.

We are told that there were several burn victims who succumbed in the lobby but no effort was made to retrieve their bodies. Since no one is aware that Tower 2 has collapsed---they say---what was the justification for the retrieval of Father Judge's body?

Was the intent of removing Father Judge's body to place it in the gutter of Vesey Street as they did?

Firemen are expert at carrying bodies, with or without a body board, including up or down staircases. Why was Father Judge sat up in a chair during his removal? Has such a thing ever happened before or since?

Kevin Allen, of the Office of Emergency Management, was supposedly lost and looking for his boss Calvin Drayton, but we see Drayton in the lobby, with his boss, Richard Sheirer. Why could he not discern his location?


Allen says, "I didn't know he was a priest at that time. It wasn't 'til we got to Church Street and I saw the white collar that I knew. I said, ‘Oh, my God.'" However, in a scene in the Naudet film, someone narrates, "And then I realized it was Father Judge. We saw him lying at the base of the escalator where we were, and I removed his white collar and I opened up his shirt and remember checking for his pulse and realizing in that time that he was gone." So all Allen gets is hung up on a gratuitous lie.

As Father Judge was being put on display during the portage, the Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton shot the first image, where Christian Waugh is angrily pointing at him, supposedly telling him not to take pictures. However, this image was spoiled by Father Judge's head slipping out of view, leaving the unfortunate illusion that Vause's head and torso belonged to Judge's lower extremities. So that narrative detail was a script misfire and reads as such, since Waugh didn't keep his mouth shut about the errant business. We could have projected our own meaning onto the dramatic scene.

The presence of an additional MSNBC film crew to witness and record the portage is extremely unusual and damning.

The core group of men hauling Father Judge, receives help from other bystanders who peel in and out like an Olympic torch relay as the principles grow weary.

Shannon Stapleton was also gifted by a positioning at the "survivors staircase," another heavily promoted public relations effort, and there took other narratively rich, heavily scripted, and no doubt, wildly profitable images.

Given that other, unknown firemen took Father Judge from his dumping spot in the gutter to his temporary haven in St Paul's chapel, do Vause, Waugh and Cosgrove feel like they did a sufficient job? Was it Cosgrove's story that he and another cop gave Father Judge's corpse the last rites as a way of closure? Were there witnesses? Why did Cosgrove "have to set the record straight" in the New York Post article? Did the proper caretakers of Father Judge's body demand the clarification?

Did they take Father Judge's body and lay it in the gutter next to an ambulance, or was it next to a firetruck? Was that the same firetruck where Father Judge's driver, Firefighter Michael Weinberg, and Capt. Daniel Brethel's bodies were laying?

Did Weinberg and Berthel come in on their day off and stumble onto some sort of secret scene on Vesey Street having to do with the bombing of Building 7? Were they disposed of in consequence? Or was it just another coincidence that the these two also died, crushed under a firetruck when the North Tower collapsed? It was good that their families could be notified so quickly--by that evening. There were few deaths as traumatic, yet as accessible, as these two I should think. Were there other deaths out on Vesey Street? Did autopsies check for gunshot wounds?

"That morning, as thousands of New Yorkers ran for their lives toward midtown, Judge jumped in his Fire Department car. With firefighter Michael Weinberg at the wheel and the siren wailing, they sped downtown toward the World Trade Center."
(Security Magazine 'Five years after: from Father Mychal to better protection' Sept 1, 2006)

"Fr Judge, 68, was found by firefighters on the street lying beside his driver, who was also dead. They took the priest to St Peter's Church on Barclay Street, where they laid his body at the altar. It is understood he was hit by falling rubble. (The Scotsman 'Victims themselves, those who sought to bring succour and safety' Sept. 13, 2001)

CNN Memorial: Michael Weinberg

Of course, the big scripted event was coming up: 3000 mourners at the funeral with ex-President Clinton, Hillery and Chelsea.

A not-happy Mort Weinberg at the White House in 2005

Christian Waugh sure gets around. Is this Fulton Street? Gee, it was only two short blocks from your "freedom escalator" to St. Paul's chapel, lazy bones. You do see how by cutting corners you run the risk of getting caught don't you? Just like all the anti-Roe-vs-Wade contractors in Iraq---they lost the frigging war, numbskulls!

Killing Him and Carrying Him

When Christian Waugh Junior subsequently gets himself in trouble, ask yourself, what heinous act does a guy have to do to a woman who has had sex with 300-400 firemen and cops after 9/11 in order to tip her over to cry rape? And what fireman resigns his job rather than testify, even though he's been offered immunity? What other nefarious crimes could come to light under examination? Hard to keep your sense of humor under those conditions.

Photo by Al Paglione

No, not really.

I've created an extensive bibliography of news sources relating to Father Mychal Judge, Michael Weinberg, and Capt. Daniel Brethel here.

Father Mychal Judge: Icon in a Can

It is an odd fact that out of the terrible pattern of destruction that overlays the traumatic experience we know collectively as September 11th, we were subjected to the sight of only one inanimate human body. Even the carnage of the jumpers, with the harrowing horror of their plunges, left only unimaginable remains.

The corpse that we saw became officially victim number 00001, given to Father Mychal Judge, a Chaplain to the Fire Department, who we were told, met his end early that morning while giving last rights to a stricken fireman, Daniel Suhr, both of them being fatally hit by falling bodies or debris.

After the collapse of the first tower, a group of firemen and others, removed Father Judge's body from the lobby of the second tower, and carried it out into the street, where ultimately it found temporary refuge in Saint Paul's church. Perhaps acts similar to this took place all over that day, going unrecorded and unheralded. But it was Father Judge's singular fortune to serve a passive role in extremis, as a presentation case of a sacrificial victim.

Despite the catastrophic conditions prevailing on the trade center plaza at that particular moment, great honor and reverence were on display, as the men fashioned a makeshift litter out of a chair in order to bear Father Judge away. Ashen and slumping, his death registered before our eyes, galvanizing us to our new emotional reality. The image of Father Judge being borne aloft remains for many people, the iconic image creating meaning out of the suffering of September 11th.
I suppose it is in the nature of these things that a professional photojournalist from Reuters would be operating nearby, there to take the wrenching images of tragic loss and heroic response, images which would wend their way around the world within hours. That photographer, Shannon Stapleton, did much good work in the vicinity---some of it seemingly of a privileged nature, as private government law enforcement agencies struggled to get their bearings back.
Much more surprising perhaps, was the added presence of an MSNBC film crew on the scene. Whatever report they filed has long been unavailable to the public, but a small screen grab exists depicting the coverage, so it is assumed reports were filed, perhaps repeatedly. I know of no other example of a film crew working this close in to the towers---make that tower, for by this time, the first tower is gone.

Five men are named in the record, for their roles in the widely distributed iconic image of Father Judge's portage. Two other images exist of the scene. They show three other men helping at different times, but the record is silent as to their identities. Apparently, they were an ad hoc group from various agencies, and from civilian life, who had survived the fall of the first tower huddled together in the north tower's lobby. What official business it was for them to be there in the first place, isn't clear.

55-year-old Firefighter Christian Waugh, who retired two weeks after 9/11; William Cosgrove, then a lieutenant in the Manhattan Traffic Task Force and more recently working for the New York City public school's investigative arm; Zachary Vause, a NYC fireman with Engine Co. 21, who was detached from his temporary unit that morning; Kevin Allen, of the Office of Emergency Management, who says he joined up with them outside later; and John Maguire, a Goldman Sachs employee who had come over from Wall Street to lend a hand. It isn't known if the five had any previous associations.

Firefighter Christian Waugh, former NYPD Lt. William Cosgrove, John Maguire and Kevin Allen who, aided by firefighter Zachary Vause, carried the body of fire Chaplain Mychal Judge away from the towers.

In another image, what appears to be Chief Pfeifer and a civilian are participating.

Because of the nature of the destruction---the way in which the towers dissolved---much of the loss of life that occurred that day appeared simply to vanish. The rescuing of Father Judge's body played an important psychological role in understanding and processing the enormous losses that were taking place. Not only was the single corpse we were to see from that day presented unenshrouded, he was displayed mockingly sitting up as if on a throne.

In the death of a dearly beloved religious figure core to the mythology of the fire department, the best among us were able to access and deal with feelings by way of projection, or transference, onto the figure of Father Judge, or his rescuers. Since he died, for instance, dozens of books have been written about him, and a serious effort is underway seeking to canonize him as a saint, so the significant role he plays in the emotional lives of survivors continues.

The worst among us used the image of the defeated Father as justification for a religious revenge.

So, it is difficult to imagine the experience of September 11th, without Father Judge's part in it---as difficult as it is to imagine that he played a role by sheer happenstance or coincidence. Certainly, many pieces had to be in place for events to unfold in the fashion in which they did, and in many ways, the story of Father Judge fails the sniff test of authenticity.

Many questions were asked in the aftermath of the tragedy, and at the one-year anniversary mark an article was published in the New York Post, which interviewed the surviving heroes who rescued Father Judge. (Reposted at Firehouse.com on 9/9/02, and still available at archive.org --with my archive of their archive here,)

Father Mike: What Really Happened By Neil Graves Courtesy The New York Post

About a half-dozen rescue workers were suddenly stuck in a smoky nook in the north tower lobby, with debris everywhere and the floor still quivering from the collapse of the south tower.

William Cosgrove, then a lieutenant with the NYPD, was gasping for air in the choking darkness after being tossed across the floor by the tremendous thud of 110 stories falling to the ground.

"I said, ‘Everybody, let's just hold hands so we know where each other are,'" Cosgrove recalled recently.

"I tripped over something. I said, 'There's a body over here.' A fireman showed the light on the person on the floor. And he said, 'Oh, my God - it's Father Mike.'"

The Rev. Mychal Judge, the Fire Department's much-beloved chaplain, had died doing the job he was born to do - ministering to others: He had just given the last rites to another victim.

Judge loved his firefighters so much that he lived just across from Ladder Co. 24/Engine Co. 10, in the Franciscan friary on West 31st Street.

And the men that day would love him back, eventually placing his body at the altar of St. Peter's Church, a block from the World Trade Center, after he was retrieved by five heroes.

Moments before the ghastly discovery, firefighter Christian Waugh of Ladder Co. 5 watched the priest talk to a video team when matters were bad but not yet catastrophic.

"Father Judge was standing a few feet away, giving an interview to [documentary-makers Jules and Gedeon Naudet]," Waugh remembered.

"When the plane hit the second building, we felt it. The pressure threw us to the ground."

Before the collapse, Zachary Vause, of Engine Co. 21 on East 40th, had taken the subway downtown, dressed in full gear, because the engine company he was on loan to, Truck 7, had taken off without him. Upon emerging from the Brooklyn Bridge station, Vause ran smack into a tidal wave of people running the other way.

"I was swimming through people on my way in," he said.

He arrived at the scene just in time to get his helmet jarred off his head from the force of the south tower's collapse. Lost in the pitch-black north tower lobby, Vause could see none of the others as Cosgrove asked them to huddle.

"Next thing I know, somebody was screaming, ‘Over here, over here,'" Vause said. "[Judge] was taking his last breath.

"We opened his shirt. I tried pumping out his chest with my chest pump. He came up - for one last gasp. I checked his pulse and there was nothing."

The men crawled out of the area, only to find they were facing an out-of-commission escalator that led to a balcony area. They started toting the body.

"Everybody had a leg or an arm, but he was so heavy," Cosgrove said.

Kevin Allen, of the Office of Emergency Management, came all the way from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that morning and reported to the OEM command bus on the far side of the Church Street Post Office.

"We felt this huge shake, the whole ground was shaking," said Allen. "I guess that's when the south tower came down. We got in the bus, behind the building, and that's what saved us - that post-office building."

The OEM team fanned out and were stunned to hear the voice of their boss, Calvin Drayton, the first deputy commissioner, calling for help over the radio. But no one could discern his location.

On his way searching for Drayton, Allen saw three men carrying a body. He pitched in.

"I didn't know he was a priest at that time," Allen admitted. "It wasn't 'til we got to Church Street and I saw the white collar that I knew. I said, 'Oh, my God.'" John Maguire, a Goldman Sachs employee who had come from Wall Street to help, saw the four struggling toward him.

"I asked them if they needed any help," said Maguire, a West Point grad who is presently an inactive Army captain.

"These guys were really exhausted. They had on so much gear and I didn't."

The team then accepted a godsend on the balcony overlooking West and Vesey.

"People were jumping in and out trying to help and someone gave us a chair," Vause said. "The core of us kept on carrying him in the chair."

The team finally got Judge to an ambulance and laid him down.

Having taken him that far, someone felt they ought to give the priest a proper sendoff.

"I asked an officer to get a priest," Cosgrove said. "But no one could find one. Somebody said, ‘If you're Catholic, you can give him last rites.' So myself and a young cop gave last rites."

Right after that came the other sickening eruption. "As we covered him up, the north tower came down, and we started to run," Waugh said.

The Rev. Mychal Judge wound up on the altar of St. Peter's, carried by a posse of firefighters. Cosgrove wanted to make sure to set the record straight.

"Some people thought we brought him there," said Cosgrove, who started a new position with the public school's investigative arm last month.

"We didn't take him there. We left him next to the ambulance. That was the last time I saw him."

The article raises more questions than it answers. Firefighter Waugh, who was in the lobby as aide to Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, says he saw Father Judge talking to film-makers Jules and Gedeon Naudet right before the collapse. Whatever blew in to strike and kill Judge must have been specific to the back of Father Judge's skull. The film-makers were back on their feet within moments shooting in the thick haze of dust that obscured the view.

The self-dispatched fireman Vause, says it was he who checked for a pulse and performed chest compression without success, having become attached to the group when somebody yelled out, "over here!" He doesn't say whether he checked for a head injury. In a scene in the Naudet film, someone narrates,

"And then I realized it was Father Judge. We saw him lying at the base of the escalator where we were, and I removed his white collar and I opened up his shirt and remember checking for his pulse and realizing in that time that he was gone."

Kevin Allen, the misplaced OEM worker who was hunting for his boss when he decided to pitch in and help, says he wasn't motivated by Catholicism. "I didn't know he was a priest at that time," Allen admitted. "It wasn't 'til we got to Church Street and I saw the white collar that I knew. I said, ‘Oh, my God.' So unless Vause reattached the collar, this gratuitous detail is a lie.

The self-dispatched traffic cop Cosgrove, says that he stumbled upon the body, and that inaugurated his participation. However, a a scene in the Naudet brother's film captures a moment when we see a booted foot---part of the body of Father Judge, we are told, which is being carried---set down by four firemen, ("Put it down! Put it down!") We also see another fireman carrying a chair in preparation, we are led to believe, to transfer Judge. Other uniformed firemen, including two chiefs, stand by, with no sign of Cosgrove in the picture.

But Vause says Judge wasn't sat up in a chair until they were outside:

"The team then accepted a godsend on the balcony overlooking West and Vesey.
People were jumping in and out trying to help and someone gave us a chair...The core of us kept on carrying him in the chair."

Christian Waugh, late of Ladder Co. 5

The Observer "Heroes of Ground Zero" Feb. 17, 2002

Firefighter Christian Waugh, 55, helped to carry the body of Father Mychal Judge, the Fire Department chaplain, out from Tower One of the World Trade Center

Everywhere I go now, someone mentions this picture. I can't get away from it. The Oprah Winfrey Show wanted the five of us in the photograph to come down, but none of us went. My family and friends try not to talk about it, but it's always being brought up at work. It's even been nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Ironically, at the time I was so mad that it was taken. I was telling the photographer to leave us alone, to get out of there. I didn't like the idea of it, but the guy was just doing his job, like I was doing mine.

Father Judge was standing about 20ft away from us in the lobby, and when the second plane hit, the debris from the second building came down and blew into the lobby of Tower One. The dust and the wind blew us over and everything went jet black. As it started to lift, I found Father Judge laying there. I think he died of a heart attack. We put him in a chair and carried him out.

His nephew says if it wasn't for Father Judge the five of us would have been trapped in the building and we would have been killed. So he got us out of the building by dying. When you look at it that way, it helps to have a reason why I'm out, why I'm walking around.

My firehouse lost 11 men and the house I was working with that day lost 14. That's 25 guys that I know right off the bat. I wake up at night and still see the different faces of missing firefighters coming into the building and walking by me in the lobby. So long as they're still digging down there and people are still missing, it makes it harder. They're still finding people; I understand they found two bodies the other day.

Cosgrove and Waugh both use the same excuse: that Father Judge died of unknown causes while they weren't looking during the tumult of the collapse of the first tower; either getting hit by debris, or as Waugh supposes, perhaps dying of a heart attack. Neither does a thing to help Judge out, nor do they say if anybody else was hurt. At least fireman Vause puts in an effort, or at least says he did when telling the story.

"We opened his shirt. I tried pumping out his chest with my chest pump. He came up - for one last gasp. I checked his pulse and there was nothing."

This level of callousness would be disturbing in a gang member, let alone in a band of brothers. The two men cared enough to haul the apparently not-so-light Judge outside, and to exert themselves on the stairs for photographs and videos, but then what? According to Cosgrove in the Post article above, "We left him next to the ambulance." In other words---they left Father Judge lying in the gutter outside of the ambulance. Understandable, perhaps, if the second tower suddenly started to come down very fast and they had to sprint to safety to save their hides, but they had time for an impromptu prayer service. And if other firemen came back as soon as they could to care for their fallen comrade, why couldn't they? Failure to follow through belies any genuine motive for hauling Father Judge past the cameras, because there is a very clear motive there---it's just, for that, you need a recently dead Chaplain. To be seen or photographed carrying a lifeless body to safety is to say to the world I care so much about this person that even their lifeless body is a thing of value to me. Cosgrove and Waugh are saying something else entirely.

In the World Trade Center Task Force Interview of Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory
published in the New York Times, Gregory informs us the what happened next:

"As we were passing St. Peter's Church, the captain of Ladder 102 and the lieutenant from Ladder 102 were coming out of the church and they informed me that they had Father Judge's body inside the church. They had brought it from wherever they recovered it into St. Peter's Church. At that point in time Tom McGonigle from the Field Com and myself went into the church. We went up to the altar. They had Father Judge on the altar. He was wrapped in sheets, some type of white sheeting, and they had him laying on the altar. We knelt down. We said a prayer."

The New York Times published a link to the transcript of the World Trade Center Task Force interview with a Lieutenant Frank Nolan of Ladder 102---he mentions finding two civilian bodies, but says nothing about Father Judge. Nolan mentions a Lieutenant Ciaravino who responded to the scene with him, but Ciaravino is not interviewed. The captain of Ladder 102 isn't mentioned, but he may be John P. O'Connell.

After a 26-year career with the New York City Fire Department, O'Connell went to work for Collapse Rescue Systems, Inc., as an instructor. His page at CRS Inc.'s web site says he "served in Engine 257 Canarsie, Brooklyn for one year and Hook & Ladder 102 in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn for 7 years," without specifying his role on 9/11/01. But it says he was "in charge of all underground and confined space penetrations at the 9-11 WTC incident," and was "the technical advisor to the incident commander at the World Trade Center collapse," so he may have ranked as Captain of Ladder 102.

So, many of the fire fighters associated with Father Judge did not give testimony to the World Trade Center Task Force project: Zachary Vause of Engine Co. 21 , Christian Waugh Ladder Co. 5 , Lieutenant Ciaravino of Ladder 102, Captain John P. O'Connell of Ladder 102

Concern about how Father Judge died arose immediately after 9/11 and has never abated. In an article in the New York Times on September 27, 2002, titled, Killed on 9/11, Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger Than Life, the author, Daniel J. Wakin, seems to get to the bottom of what killed Father Judge.

"Some firefighters speculated that he died of a heart attack, but Brian Mulheren, a retired New York City police detective who attended the autopsy, said Father Judge died of blunt trauma to the back of the head.

Shannon Stapleton, the photographer who took the famous shots of Father Judge, was working as a spot news photojournalist that day, when he also took another very successful image: of people escaping the towers down a staircase that became known as the "freedom staircase."

That staircase was a heavily promoted work product developed with much public relations effort and not a lot of soul, as the single place of egress to escape the plaza for the final batch of survivors to emerge from the tower before it fell. If that were sincere it would have a profound meaning. But I should think these people were channeled down this staircase, maybe more than once. I know the gentleman with the hair white with dust figures in another well-known solo image by Stapleton, as well as other famous images by Stan Honda. These people are hand-picked, chosen for their looks, with a bit of overacting going on too, if you look closely.

I should think her images of Father Judge were even more heavily scripted. The implications of this being true are enormous, beginning with the fact we'll have to accept, that Father Mychal Judge was the victim of pre-meditated murder on the morning of September 11th, 2001 The motive being more than obvious when it dawns on you that we have been having a scam run on us for several years now by you know who.

To let all the hero myths built up around 9/11 come crashing down will be a necessarily painful adjustment, but we are beyond being starved for truth. Anything other than the truth is poison to our systems.

I truly believe that Mychal Judge is a saint, by the way he has positioned himself in death, his usefulness to help reveal the cancerous tumor hiding in our body politic. He really does inspire people doesn't he? I know he inspires me.

Look at what the caption says on this photograph! "Police Officers had a hard task of keeping onlookers away from the scene." I know, and all that standing around is exhausting too! I'm afraid of them. They look tough!


This photo from 2004 shows both of Chris' sons have become FDNY firefighters since 9-11. (There's more story there---save it for another day.)

You gotta love a man in a kilt.

Isn't this the worst sculpture you've ever seen in your life? I mean, my God! What were they thinking? Don't you love the way they've decorated the street scene up with funeral flowers? This is supposed to be the memorial for our Father Judge that somebody came up with. It looks like it belongs in an S & M club. I say: do over.

All those little jibbies---pieces of the true beam, from the sanctified Ground Zero, flicked with holy thermit, blessed by directed EXO rays, subject to ongoing chemical deterioration. No small-town fire-department headquarters is complete without several. Collect the series.

And look! It's the Bells of Remembrance Project, starring Maureen O'Sullivan! That was a joke. Sorry. I just hate cheap charity. In word or deed.

Suddenly, I don't feel like cracking jokes anymore. I can't explain how I feel, but it isn't very good.

I just have one question, please. Come over here, I don't want to be overheard...Tell me, how, do you create a corpse on a schedule? Tell me, I want an explanation. I need to know.


St. Anthony

And don't miss part two of the Father Judge saga: Who Gets the Last Laugh Now
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