Sunday, June 28, 2009

Osama bin Laden in Cave with Hookah Decor

Or is it Samovar? Are we really in the Russian Tea Room?

Someone reached StevenWarRan on an image search for "bin Laden in cave," but when I tried the same search, I couldn't find hide nor hair of this uncropped image well unto a dozen pages of hit returns. What I did find were lots of low-resolution versions of Osama talking into a microphone, sometimes with al-Zawahiri, but even if the hooka/slash/Samovar isn't cropped out, it is obscured by a logo or chyron---like "BBC," or some such.

This is unacceptable. If there is one thing we must rely on---it is the primacy of War Ran's Googelability.

More importantly, does the average Joe see the absurdity of this set dressing? My eyes have been open for so long now they're starting to dilate.

Compare it with this image. Is this the real Osama bin Laden?


al-Zawahiri by Robert Mapplethorp. Or Hanna Barbera?

As-Sahab- Wikipedia, or, Adam Gadahn, the "Azzam the American" story.

I want this picture at number one within the hour my Googelicious Googlelings!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Janet Langhart Cohen & William S. Cohen Meet Anne Frank & Emmett Till

In a narrative element that raises coincidence and irony to the level of perversion and farce, on the day of the antisemitic gunman's attack on the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., which took the life of an African-American security guard, a premier was scheduled to open there later that evening of Janet Langhart Cohen's one-act, two-character drama, Anne and Emmett, whose literary device---a thematic pairing of Jewish victimization with the African-American experience of bigotry---was itself neatly twinned in a parallel reality that day. Too neatly, in my opinion.

But there are unforeseen consequences rippling out from the parable, and the moral remains up for grabs. It would be ironic indeed, if the boy whose mother demanded an open casket, saying "Let the people see what I have seen. I think everybody needs to know what had happened to Emmett Till," were to meet the black man in the closed casket, who had learned the secret Obama way to get ahead.

And the closed casket is the perfect symbol for all the missing millions of dead, like Irit Shitrit, or the Auschwitz millions, revised downward not by deniers, but by the Jewish custodians of "memory."

Counting the not-dead even has its own parallel in the not-counting of the actually dead, like the hundreds from the 3/7 Cavalry, the Ghost Troops lost in the 2003 Battle for Baghdad.

Of course it doesn't help that here is a short play written for minors by a non-playwright, to be performed in a non-theater, or that it first appeared in a book co-written by a half-black and a half-Jew
"Originally published in the book “Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance,” written by Langhart Cohen and her husband, former U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, “Anne and Emmett” tells the story of a beyond-the-grave meeting of its two titular characters: Anne Frank, a 13-year-old German Jewish girl who hid from Nazis until she was sent to a concentration camp and died at age 15, and Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was kidnapped, beaten and murdered on a trip to Mississippi in 1955." The Bay State Banner April 17, 2008 — Vol. 43, No. 36
Or how about a Secretary of "Defense," who can see the gunman get out of his car and then hear the gunfire, but without witnessing the event? Then he is suddenly inside the building escaping up stairs, while helping others to escape?
"Secretary Cohen, did you know immediately that they were gunshots?"
"I did. I'd arrived much earlier and had come up to try and make contact with Janet, who was scheduled to arrive momentarily, so I was on the phone to get a radio signal on the phone, to touch base with her in the car. At that point I noticed that there was a car parked---it seemed to be out in the middle of the street and an older man getting out of the car but I didn't pay much attention to him because I was on the phone. And then a few seconds later I heard the gunshots, it was pretty clear that they were gunshots. So, Arthur Berger, one of the chief executives at the museum, he and I were together, about five feet apart, and we were about 30 or 40 feet away from where the shots were ringing out. And we just ducked as low as we could and went up a set of stairs to get up to the second level."

"Describe the scene around you."

"Well, it was fairly chaotic as we went up the stairs, we didn't know if people were going to be following us up, or if there were more than one gunman. And as we approached the stairs. there was a group of people who had just completed their tour of the museum, so they were on their way out, and they wanted to go down those stairs, and to leave the building, but we were able to stop them, saying, "don't go there, it's too dangerous."
CBS Early Show June 11, 2009 Video
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen and his wife describe the scene at the Holocaust Museum as the shooting happened and it became a crime scene.
What a horrible idea for a play! Anne Frank died in a concentration camp of typhoid, more a victim of Allied bombing and systemic deprivation than of antisemitism. A better parallel to Emmett Till would be any of the nine million Germans who died of enforced starvation as the war ended.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Jews on Crack

In this much-distributed one-minute, three-second news clip (safely maintained, I should hope, here at the BBC,) Sergeant David Schlosser, with the federal Washington D.C. Park Police, holds a news conference about an attack on the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Because he's in possession of such a remarkably abbreviated amount of information (the gunman is a "male;" he carried a "long gun;" two injured have been transferred to hospital, but "no information" on their conditions,) he overcompensates in his mustered sternness, to the point he comes across as Barney Fife.

As the clip begins, we see Schlosser standing before a blank stretch of asphalt. At the nine-second mark, a male with distinctive red hair and beard sidles in from the right. He is wearing payot, or payoss, the uncut locks of hair worn on the sides of the head by Orthodox male Jews. At the 17-second mark, a similar red-haired male Hasidim who could be his twin, moves to occupy the space on the officer's right, followed almost immediately afterward by a woman who appears to be dressed in a similarly colored wig, and who is smiling demonically, or perhaps pathologically. She holds the insane grin for as long as we catch sight of her---at least until the 34-second mark. At the 30-second mark, a crowd of reporters, camera people and onlookers flood the background as though released through a stanchion.

I haven't found a time stamp for this clip, but it would appear to be the earliest official report released during the day, with the least amount of information, given by the law-enforcement department with the least standing to be working the case---the others being the District of Columbia Metropolitan police department and the FBI, who had lead-agency status and control.

A logical interpretation of the clip would have us witnessing the police officer starting a news conference at a chaotic moment, without a proper head's-up announcement to the assembled beforehand, and with the late arrivals scurrying to take positions as close as possible.

But with men wearing bullet-proof vests, and what looks like FBI windbreakers joining in, it looks more like a director yelled, "Extras!" and used whoever was about to fill in.

The appearance of these Jews in this fashion is meant as a non-verbal communication claiming false-flag responsibility for the shooting, to a world-wide audience who were in on the code---in my humble, gentile opinion---and in on the joke. Nothing else explains the dance of choreography and the Cheshire-cat grin on the inappropriately emoting female.

The following AP news video is of a later portion of the interview, with the same Park Police officer,and one of the Hasidic men is still seen in the background, although it has even less of a grasp on the facts then before.



Although having to stop and correct himself, this scene is a repetition of the limited facts available, and it came after the first clip with the empty background.

This AP News video has most of the operative portion of the BBC:


FOX News has a 4:30 minute extension of the interview, where Sergeant Schlosser takes questions.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Erik von Brunn,

If you put ["Erik von Brunn" statement to abc] into Google, you'll find "it" on top of a good list---but what "it" is, is strange in every way.
Alleged Museum Shooter's Son Slams Dad's 'Cowardice' - ABC News

Perfectly straightforward on the surface, ABC News hosts what it calls, "Statement by Erik von Brunn, Son of Accused Holocaust Museum Shooter Issues Statement Concerning His Father June 12, 2009," without telling us how the news organization happened upon it.

The Associated Press reported the younger Mr. Brunn was interviewed for a Washington Post article from his mother's house in Homosassa, Fla.---going on to quote her, Pat Sadowski, as saying, "her son was not home and was unavailable for further comment."

Since the AP article also said that Erik was "an aspiring teacher and fiction writer who recently graduated from the University of Maryland," he sounds young enough to still be living in her home. When she actually spoke for him, saying he would have no further comment, I also wondered if maybe she wasn't responsible for routing the document.

Since the only editorial comment ABC appended to the communication reads,
"Following is a statement by Erik von Brunn, a son of James von Brunn, the 88-year-old man accused of a shooting attack at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.:"
I wondered if by its arms-length distancing, and lack of context, who ABC was intending to benefit journalism, or the family?

The "aspiring fiction writer" reference is also troubling, because I've never encountered a tone such as the one found here. Looking at it from any level you can think of---the psychological, spiritual, emotional, interpersonal, political, egoistic, or just its plain public-relations value, the message has about as much credibility and meaning as something penned in Elizabethan English would.

Sticking with the ABC angle for a moment---on the document's web page were 25 comments left from June 12--20 in response to the statement. There, an almost total uniformity of sensibility and outlook is so striking, I felt I'd stumbled upon a reunion of the Stepford family, with the opinions and agenda so honed Karen Hughes could have written it herself.

One exception with an air of authenticity is the posting by a Dalton Lewis, and since he is immediately followed by two lengthy responses directed personally at him, the structure of how operative communications can flood and dominate any genuine discussion or arising exchange on the internet becomes very clear.

What a boring job this must be! No wonder they call them "covert" intelligence agencies and assets!

One other posting stands out. Obviously by an operative on task, "DarthVain" indulges himself in a little mental play nonetheless. This is a risky business, and why they always tell you in psy-op school to stick to the script Darth
"A well written piece. However considering the topic was basically his Nazi father, and with a name like "Erik von Brunn" perhaps using the word "blitzkrieg" may not have been very appropriate. However other than that tiny lapse in judgment it sounds like he said the right thing."
Touché DV---but since Brunn also used the word "appeasement" in the piece, I think the lapse in judgment may be yours, and it isn't tiny!

I'll let the internal evidence within the statement speak for itself. It doesn't bare analyzing. The bottom line is, it lays it on thick when making the case Brunn was a Nazi.

The rest of the Google list below the primary document consists mostly of low-brow blog references---much of it the kind of apparently paid "smalled talk" whose heyday has passed. One item I checked out was this June 14th board-posting on craigslist> Manhattan> politics
thread

Erik von Brunn: NOTHING like his hate filled father. Erik von Brunn sent the following statement to ABC News. Statement by Erik von Brunn Son of Accused Holocaust Shooter Issues Statement Concerning His Father...
newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/pol/1219835667.html

The page I got back was unusual I thought:
This posting has expired. (The title on the listings page will be removed in just a few minutes.)
So I took the page's IP address and put it through archive.org, and got back the dreaded

Robots.txt Query Exclusion.!
We're sorry, access to http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewyork.craigslist.org%2Fmnh%2Fpol%2F1219835667.html&ei=2Og9SpyfEdyLtgflxMQB&usg=AFQjCNE1GfnNknFxRe7bRcU7IrOgzN_6GA&sig2=PMwrhvbnHAH9fUdk68uacA has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.
Now, even I know this isn't kosher. craiglist could clean up its server (leaving only eight days archived?) and this could lead me to a dead link---but shadow copies and caches are a different thing entirely. A robots.txt query exclusion means a site- or page owner is taking a deliberate step to hide something that normally should be there. It looks guilty, I think. The Washington Post does it all the time. Well, they all do.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Faked Assault on the Holocaust Museum

In the United States government-sponsored psychological operation designed to simulate an antisemitic terrorist attack by a lone-wolf gunman on the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., a mistake in the narrative planning was made so fundamental and basic that no amount of amending or eliding to the record will correct it.

The only visual proof of the attack publically released to date are several images of a bullet-scared glass entrance door, the location where a gunman who was approaching the museum building, met a security guard stationed inside, who held the door open for him in welcome. At this close range, the gunman fatally shot the guard, and he fell just inside the door. The gunman was then himself shot by other armed security guards who were present, and the gunman fell wounded just outside the door.

This encounter is said to have bought enough time to mount a response, which prevented the intruder from accomplishing his apparent terroristic goal of causing maximum causalities. By taking a bullet in this fashion, the African-American guard has been lionized a hero, especially by the Jewish custodians of a holocaust memory housed there.

It is up to police and law enforcement professionals to determine the proofs of forensic evidence---establishing the trajectory of a bullet, for instance---and then release it to a supposedly skeptical media, where it filters into the court of public opinion. Ultimately, a court of law makes a decree---and afterward, everybody in a nation of laws accepts it.

It is not up to me to question this visual evidence---noting its contradictions and implausibilities. The ground beneath the record can shift---first reports indicated five shots were fired, later dispatches report eleven shots. Were I to make a legitimate point, I only do the work of those people tasked with manipulating the public record, which is actually quite a malleable thing---the "public" part being only a matter of perception. Operators can suppress and alter "published" sources to a degree honest people find hard to imagine---despite having read George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. Who "wants" to believe in dystopia?

If a man holds a door open for another man, and is shot at the threshold in the process, he could fall wounded inside. Then while the door is still open, the attacker could get shot, and fall backwards outside. Then the door could close, and be pierced by five subsequent bullet shots, but that would take at least seven shots.

Some of the five bullet holes in the glass may have come from the same shot which wounded the assailant, but only if he was hit first while inside, with the bullet continuing on through a closed door, but he would have to open it and stagger outside first to fall---and no report states anything like that. A report could suddenly appear though, which is why the plausible deniability of a compliant bureaucracy in cahoots with amoral media leaves us shaking our heads.

If the multiple reports of five shots being fired were to hold up, then it wouldn't fit the evidence we have of five bullet holes in glass doors separating two men with bullet holes.

One thing I can state with complete assurance: A security guard who holds a door open to allow someone carrying a rifle to enter is never a hero, even if he takes a bullet that buys enough time to save lives. That would be called two things: a bored, distracted, menial worker of a type we all know, combined with an accident of fate.

It is also less than a substitute for what could have been an heroic scenario completely in sync with the established visual evidence:

Imagine a gunman on a mission, walking up to the entrance of a fraught facility. An alert security guard inside the door sees him coming, and has time to draw his handgun, but it doesn't stop the assailant, who is on a mission. As he pulls on the door to open it, the guard refuses to yield. He yanks on the door and a struggle ensues. Either of them could be the one to shoot first ---either in assault or defense---but the image of the guard physically holding the doors shut, as the frustrated gunman fires through the glass and kills him, is the more heroic.

When I was 15 and 16 years old, I was a dishwasher and busboy at Nero's Cactus Canyon and Silver Slipper, a restaurant and nightclub in suburban Nashville, Tennessee that had a one-man band and a postage-stamp dance floor. Despite the sound of that, it was the top place in the city of its kind, with cocktail waitresses dressed in long gowns, and an annual blow-out night after the Tennessee-Vanderbilt football game. One Halloween, everyone who worked there got dressed up in costume for the evening. Although a work shift, given all the festivities, the staff was allowed to join in and start drinking. Two old-school African-Americans---a grillman, and a waiter, got into a fight in the kitchen over a woman, and a disturbance ensued.

I was standing near the bar when the waiter tore past me, stalked by the man marching in deliberate rage and carrying a big knife. The waiter dashed through the front door of the dining room and out into the parking lot, with his assailant right behind. But then, just as quickly, the waiter popped back in an adjoining door to the Silver Slipper bar. A pretty little blond secretary who worked in the office was sitting in a booth up front. Sensing a call to action I was oblivious too, she popped up just in time to grab the door from the inside and hold it, even against the man's far superior strength.

Dressed up as Scarlet O'Hara in a real hoop skirt, the memory of the sight of her, with the skirt's hoops bouncing up in the back from the force of her exertions, is so crystal clear in my memory that I know I was given a gift of something real back then, with which to compare something unreal now. Nearly 40 years later, seeing images of white people, and black people, and Jewish people acting in ways that are so patently unreal, fills me with eternal anguish.

The Day of the Living Dead


This is not about making Jews the fall guys in some battle between good and evil. We are only proxies here anyway. But this sad rerun of a failed Shakespearean sit-com known as 9/11---staged assaults against police, abortion providers, and a Jew's internal sense of safety---isn't working and has to stop. As a life-long liberal, I am angered to see the right-wing set up this way. If an ideology is to fail it should do so on its own demerits, not because somebody turned a dial up somewhere. And if the right-wing could be made to take a fall, it could be the Jews who were getting set up here too---just at a higher level.

In the closest I've come to live blogging, yesterday I made an editorial aside. Having theorized the day before that the African-American victim of the Holocaust Museum shooting, Stephen Tyrone Johns, was a part of a conspiracy, and was in fact, alive, I'd suggested I could be proven wrong by an open-casket funeral the next day, and this is my description of what followed:

In the Washington Post coverage of Johns' funeral, Museum Shooting Victim Remembered at Funeral, Hundreds Gather to Honor Slain Guard in Fort Washington Ceremony, by Washington Post staff writers Keith L. Alexander and Hamil R. Harris, posted online at 2:24pm, today, June 19, 2009, the article explicitly states Johns' was an open-casket funeral:
"At 9 a.m. mourners were allowed in to view the body, walking up to two security guards posted on both sides of the open casket. Leading the mourners were Johns's fellow security officers from Wackenhut security firm. Several officers saluted the casket as they walked by.

Johns was dressed in a cream linen suit, a toy butterfly on the pillow next to him. A recording of local recording artist Jeff Majors's "Psalm 23" was played as mourners streamed in to view the body."
But an accompanying video by Anna Uhls of WaPo, Slain Holocaust Museum Guard Mourned in Md, reports matters slightly differently. The journalist giving the on-camera report was unnamed, but he was a young African-American with a disarming speech impediment that could sometimes get in the way of his report. He said that
"people gathered here as early as seven-thirty this morning to pay tribute to Officer Johns', who lost his life at the Holocaust Museum, when a White Supremacist [oops] walked in and shot him in the stomach---after Officer Johns' opened the door for him.

"Johns' casket was brought in by National Guard, and put at the alter of the church, um, and the first few persons who were able to see him---obviously besides his family---were his co-workers at the Holocaust Museum.

"A lot of the people I talked with, strangely enough, didn't even know officer Johns. They came out to show their support for him and his family."
He says this while the camera pans a shot of crowds of well-dressed professional white people who are seen disembarking off tour buses, which helped to fill the 3000-seat church auditorium.

A single comment posted to the article, by someone with the nic LiveontheHill says:
"Mr. Alexander - don't quit your writing job. TV is not for you."
So it seems Mr. LiveontheHill may actually be DeadBetweentheEars, as he completely misses the subtle distinctions between Mr. Alexander's written reporting and that which he lisps. I didn't miss it. The truth in what Mr. Alexander says is quite clear, and I commend him on his efforts. Revealed are some of the parameters of how things work in the real world. Now: we shall return to our regularly scheduled programing...


Within hours, the video online was radically different, recut so almost to complete eliminate the reporter, Mr. Alexander, and filled up instead with disconnected segments showing the talking heads of white and black living dead.

This is just how the errant bits of our perceptions could formerly be nipped in the bud before being fully transmitted to our group consciousness. Sometimes a swell could swamp a boat, but usually the bucket brigades keep things afloat. Now with the internet, and after the hubris of 9/11, we're all up a creek without a paddle.

I knew this would be the result as I live blogged it but still it came as a surprise. I thought briefly about finding a less transparent style of working but there isn't one. I've found one piece of evidence that Johns' was not an open-casket funeral. A report at WTOP Federal News Radio said
Shortly before the funeral, mourners filed past Johns' body in a large wooden casket topped with an enormous bouquet of cream and blue roses. The casket was flanked on either side by a security guard from Wackenhut Services Inc., the contractor Johns worked for during his six years as a security guard at the museum. Several family members sobbed loudly as they walked past to pay their final respects.

It's hard to top an open casket with an enormous display of flowers. I think I have a safe cache of the page, but you never know. Internet technology seems designed for just these sorts of purposes.


Thomas Jefferson's famous quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants---it is it's natural manure," is from a letter he wrote to William Smith, dated, Paris Nov. 13. 1787. A more extended version of Jefferson's quote reads
"...the British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honorably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
So, the buying off of the press by politicians was old news already in 1787, was it? Well, somebody should have told me. The record of a record has now been cracked open sufficiently enough that there is no way they can stuff the entrails back into that rotting corpse.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

James Wenneker Von Brunn, Stephen "Tyrone" Johns, and More False-Flag Jewish Nonsense

Coincidentally, several news articles with highly improbable narratives caught my attention recently, and after some study, I discovered what I believe to be a unifying element in them: that is an underlying false-flag Jewish authorship to events others are made responsible for. And it all comes across as a desperate, last-ditch effort to boot.

First came the recent murder of three Pittsburgh policemen who were responding to a domestic dispute call concerning an unstable bigot fighting with his mother. A good synopsis of the case---Richard Poplawski: The Making of a Lone Wolf---was put out by the Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network, a "new comprehensive and innovative initiative to assist law enforcement in the battle against extremists," a project undertaken by the (Jewish) Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL tells us that "Poplawski believed that the federal government, the media, and the banking system are all largely or completely controlled by Jews. He [also] thought African-Americans were "vile" and non-white races inferior to whites."

This theme, which pairs Jewish victimization with the African-American experience of bigotry, and makes the terms neo-Nazi and white supremacist indistinguishable, is seen quite commonly in the media, but it has never made a lick of sense to me. The national disenfranchisement and subjugation of American blacks is of an entirely different order than the Jewish experience with Nazi eugenics. Rather then fearing them as racially inferior, the attempted annihilation of the Jews under Hitler stemmed from a popular resentment at clear evidence of a cloaked Jewish superiority.

In my opinion, antisemitism is manifested within the perception of a corrupt abuse of covert Jewish power. The historical disempowerment of American blacks, in practice until only recently, is of a diametrically different origin, energy and purpose. In this case, the white Pittsburgh police victims appear to have been lulled into a vulnerability by the every-day nature of the call they were responding to. They were the blindsided patsies---payback is a bitch---while Poplawski and his family and friends were the synthetic agents in an ordered conspiracy. He lived, didn't he?

None of the details in this story make any sense. Since an "ADL investigation" found out, apparently after the fact, that Poplawski had used multiple identities, which changed over time, when he posted online to supposedly private and secure racist message boards, they can claim a pattern of escalating violent rhetoric in him, and after his "spontaneous" acting out, can now justify a larger message and meaning for the rest of us.

Regardless of his ideology, what Poplawski did in this terrible scenario was logically more akin to road rage than a planned act designed to terrorize urban police, or force the direction of some public policy. It can only be seen as "senseless" if one ignores its cold-blooded usefulness to certain agendas, like ramping up fear and cultural divisiveness.

Then, a little over two months later, comes the shooting in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. by James Wenneker Von Brunn, an 88-year-old assassin---believe it or not---who was a "hate" figure so long-known to authorities he could be said to be pickled in formaldehyde and on auto-pilot. In the immediate aftermath of this octogenarian's extremely dispirited "attack," which claimed one life, with no one wounded, he also was declared to be a "lone wolf," which must be the new model for an updated conspiracy---although how his connections were determined so quickly escapes rational analysis.

Even one death in such a symbolic setting carries an enormous weight. By conjoining the viscerally felt victimization of African-Americans, with what I can only describe as the existential suffering of the Jews---unlike the Pittsburgh killer, Von Brunn's story goes off track. He could have waited in, or near his car, and shot any number of visitors as they entered or exited the building---maybe scoring some Jewish casualties even.

Instead, it appears he waited for a break in pedestrian traffic, then in a split-second encounter, moved directly to face a man who happened to be both black and carrying a loaded hand gun---with armed colleagues positioned nearby. For someone supposedly in possession of maps, and lists of other targets, he didn't scope out an effective strategy within his primary target---what predictably turned out to be his only chance at terror carnage.

If you study any of the compendiums listing Israeli victims of the second intifada, a similar pattern of failure emerges. How often a Palestinian suicide bomber appears to be simply an incompetent--- losing their own lives without even modestly achieving their goal of Jewish casualties.

Van Brunn displayed the same balanced combination of anti-Jew and anti-black views that Poplawski held, which apparently makes an African-American victim an equivalent in this Jewish setting. We are told the security guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, had only the misfortune to be a well-mannered man, who opened a door for a man carrying a rifle.

The motivations of all these actors are suspect. The ADL puts it this way:
"The guards were successful in protecting the museum and its visitors from harm. Tragically, however, the 39-year-old security guard who first took action later died from the gunshot wound he sustained during the incident. Von Brunn was shot in the head and remains hospitalized."
Shooting at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington
Given the compelling evidence for large numbers of faked fatalities in the victim rosters of the September 11th attacks, it is very possible that by design, Johns received a calibrated minor wound, surviving to be rendered into a new identity so that his old one could serve as an (overly lionized) martyr to the holocaust cause. (The construction in the ADL sentence above, which separates out Johns' "later" mortality, was an early clue.)

The criminal complaint against Brunn says that at about 12:44pm, Johns was struck once in his left chest with a single shot from a .22 caliber rifle.
"Stephen Tyrone Johns was transported by DC EMS 4 to George Washington Hospital, suffering from a gunshot wound to the upper chest. All life saving efforts failed and Steven Tyrone Johns was pronounced dead by Dr. Najan at approximately 3:08PM on June 10, 2009."
I wonder what damage was inflicted to his heart or thoracic cavity that allowed life to linger for 2 hours and 24 minutes, but then ultimately proved fatal? Wouldn't a heart/lung machine have sustained his life? How many witnesses are there who can speak to Johns' condition on arrival, and his subsequent deterioration and death? Is the autopsy report available? Can it be independently verified? (It is telling to me that the FBI can't even spell this black hero's given name consistently within the one bullet item.)

Apparently shot at point blank range, the encounter between Von Brunn and Johns was a strangely intimate and private event. We are told a video tape exists of the entire episode's choreography, which had Johns' falling inside the building lobby while Von Brunn fell outside its doors, but the complaint doesn't even offer those general terms:
As the defendant approached the entrance to the museum, Special Police Officer ("SPO") Steven Tyrone Johns, who was employed as a security guard for the museum, opened the door for the defendant. The defendant raised his rifle, aimed it at SPO Johns and fired one time, striking SPO Johns in the left upper chest area.
It's possible I may be wrong about the important detail of Johns' surviving the attack. A very good way to prove me wrong would be the display of his lifeless corpse in an open casket at his funeral services on Friday, June 19th---at Ebenezer AME Church, 7707 Allentown Rd., Fort Washington, with the wake beginning at 9 a.m., and the funeral at 11 a.m. Such visual closure would be expected, given his age, and the nature of his mortal injury. Anything short of that should be seen as suspect.

On Edit: I shouldn't get ahead of myself and shout out victory from the rooftops, but I'm tuning up the bag pipes and oiling my marimba nonetheless!

In the Washington Post coverage of Johns' funeral, Museum Shooting Victim Remembered at Funeral, Hundreds Gather to Honor Slain Guard in Fort Washington Ceremony, by Washington Post staff writers Keith L. Alexander and Hamil R. Harris, posted online at 2:24pm, today, June 19, 2009, the article explicitly states Johns' was an open-casket funeral:
"At 9 a.m. mourners were allowed in to view the body, walking up to two security guards posted on both sides of the open casket. Leading the mourners were Johns's fellow security officers from Wackenhut security firm. Several officers saluted the casket as they walked by.

Johns was dressed in a cream linen suit, a toy butterfly on the pillow next to him. A recording of local recording artist Jeff Majors's "Psalm 23" was played as mourners streamed in to view the body."
But an accompanying video by Anna Uhls of WaPo, Slain Holocaust Museum Guard Mourned in Md, reports matters slightly differently. The journalist giving the on-camera report was unnamed, but he was a young African-American with a disarming speech impediment that could sometimes get in the way of his report. He said that
"people gathered here as early as seven-thirty this morning to pay tribute to Officer Johns', who lost his life at the Holocaust Museum, when a White Supremacist [oops] walked in and shot him in the stomach---after Officer Johns' opened the door for him.

"Johns' casket was brought in by National Guard, and put at the alter of the church, um, and the first few persons who were able to see him---obviously besides his family---were his co-workers at the Holocaust Museum.

"A lot of the people I talked with, strangely enough, didn't even know officer Johns. They came out to show their support for him and his family."
He says this while the camera pans a shot of crowds of well-dressed professional white people are seen disembarking off tour buses, which helped to fill the 3000-seat church auditorium.

A single comment posted to the article, by someone with the nic LiveontheHill says:
"Mr. Alexander - don't quit your writing job. TV is not for you."
So it seems Mr. LiveontheHill may actually be DeadBetweenTheEars, as he completely misses the subtle distinctions between Mr. Alexander's written reporting and that which he lisps. I didn't miss it. The truth in what Mr. Alexander says is quite clear, and I commend him on his efforts. Revealed are some of the parameters of how things work in the real world. Now: we shall return to our regularly scheduled programing...


Although accounts vary, apparently nobody was in close range of the pair's encounter at the museum entrance, both in or outdoors, so a stage is set for possible chicanery, with plenty of room for deception. Some sources state that normally, the heavy security presence there has guards positioned both inside and outside the museum. If true, this calls into question why Von Brunn ever made it to the door, or why Johns even opened it.

A CBS Video, "Holocaust Museum Horror," interviews eyewitnesses who were nearby---a silly young woman inside the building, and an older couple outside across the street ---none of whom offer the narrative any details.

It's likely authorities would maintain a fairly consistent monitoring of individuals with Von Brunn's record and profile---that is if he truly is what his ideology purports him to be, and not some double-agent, long-embedded within the fringe community. Even his 1983 conviction for storming the Federal Reserve reads today as not being really kosher. Perhaps it was meant to serve to build his legitimacy.

That analysis would make sense of Von Brunn's lack of integration within his subculture---almost as though the true believers knew he was an untrustworthy operative. It would also account for what I take as his awesome spurt of octogenarian writing credentials---an author who only published his first hate book when he was well into his eighties.

For the FBI, the ADL, and the Southern Poverty Law Center to all claim a lack of any prior knowledge Von Brunn was up to no good, (that storyline is shifting in the second week after the attack,) smacks of the same excuses for the inexplicable intelligence failures we see in the records of 9/11 and the Iraq War. They didn't work then and this is another day entirely.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said von Brunn's Web site has long been listed as a hate site.

"We've been tracking this guy for decades," said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the law center's Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil." CBS News "Von Brunn Charged In Holocaust Museum Slay"
Several additional aspects to the case cause me to suspect this attack was entirely a synthetic psy-op, born out of a federal or military script-writer's office; and that Von Brunn is a willing co-agent to the government's efforts, with Johns, the security guard, not getting killed that day, but instead surviving under another identity.

Foremost amongst them, is the appalling performances of Stephen Johns' family members, as they milk the attack's emotional aftermath for the benefit of the media, while lining up some tidy endorsements and sinecures. Especially abysmal is Johns' eleven-year-old son, who sounds both cretinous and extra-terrestrial in the dryness of his emotional affect
Johns' son, 11-year-old Stephen Jr., is among those grieving.

"To me, he was a pretty great guy," says Stephen Johns Jr. "He was always there for me when I was down or sad.

"When I had heard about what had happened, I was just sad, mad at the guy who shot him."
His grandmother comes across as much too poised and serene amid all the unplanned attention. Her display of forgiveness of the man who killed her only child is positively Christ-like, if it seems a tad bit premature too.

They are seen in a video posted by the Washington Post, Holocaust Guard's Family Speaks Out.
"The parents and son of the slain Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen Johns talk about their loss," in the living room of their Temple Hills home.
James W. Von Brunn's family is no better, but given their limited role serving as verification Von Brunn was an evil bigot simmering with life-long rage, they pull it off better. They still sound scripted and paid for.
"I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost [his] life..."
So far, my advertised "coincidence" theory consists only of a series of two. But in a third reference, to Janet Langhart Cohen, the wife of William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, we get definite bonus points, as loft this fiction into the realm of farce. What were they thinking, I wonder? Read it here:
Janet Langhart Cohen & William S. Cohen Meet Anne Frank & Emmett Till





Witnesses At Museum Shooting - CBS News Video
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Watch CBS Videos Online
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Why can't I find the following Washington Post article online? Why does the Washington Post take down the page of an article they published, even going so far as to place a robots.txt query exclusion around cached versions, which may remain in---or be kept hidden---in internet archives---within five days of its publication????? Does anybody have a hard copy they could email me?


Guards Who Stopped Von Brunn Were Retired Cop, Ex-Marine - Live...Jun 12, 2009 ... Guards Who Stopped Von Brunn Were Retired Cop, Ex-Marine. UPDATE: The second guard who prevented James W. von Brunn from getting further ...
voices.washingtonpost.com/.../guard_who_shot_von_brunn_is_re.html -

Robots.txt Query Exclusion. We're sorry, access to http://voices.washingtonpost.com/livecoverage/2009/06/guard_who_shot_von_brunn_is_re.html?hpid=topnews has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.

Jun 11, 2009
Round Up Hate-Promoters Now, Before Any More Holocaust Museum Attacks
By Bonnie Erbe

Shooter's Son: I Wish Dad Had Died Instead. Son Of Man Charged In Holocaust Museum Murder "Deeply Sorry"; Says Father's Hate "Ruined Our Lives As Well"

Criminal complaint against James Wenneker von Brunn
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In the Washington Post article, Museum Suspect's Writings Had Not Triggered a Probe

David C. Friedman, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, visited the museum yesterday to check in with friends and said he felt "overwhelmed" and "protected" by the police presence. Many of the lawmen who fanned out across the site were known to Friedman, who 10 years ago launched a training program there for local police and federal agents.

story

Friday, June 05, 2009

New York Firefighter John Schroder Finds a Dead Body in a Closet on the Third Floor of the North Tower, Moments Before It Collapses

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"New York Firefighter John Schroder, a 9/11 first responder at the World Trade Center, finds a body in a closet during the attack. Could this have been John O'Neill?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz8lXCGvWmU posted by jaymzdean, September 16, 2008

"Ladder 10/Engine 10 are located on the south side of Liberty Street across from Tower 2. Before the 1993 bombing, we would respond 15-20 times a day to the World Trade Center. After the bombing it dropped to four or five runs a day. Each building has an individual fire command station. I was working 24 hours. I went upstairs to wash up. I heard a boom. It sounded like a steel plate shifting in the street. John Schroeder yelled out that a plane just went into the World Trade Center." FF Mike Cancel - Ladder 10, in an interview with Firehouse.com magazine

If there is one spot in Manhattan where we could safely assume that it would be impossible to see the flight path of American Airlines Flight 11 as it crashed into the north face of Tower 1 of the World Trade Center, it would have to be from the headquarters of the "10 & 10," the firehouse on Liberty Street that was home to Ladder 10 and Engine 10. No other New York City Fire Department members were as familiar or sophisticated about the World Trade Center as were the men of the 10 & 10.

For John Schroeder to have yelled out that a plane just went into the World Trade Center, is convincing evidence that he was foreknowledged. The incidental nature of the reporting of his colleague, Fireman Mike Cancel, in his Firehouse.com interview at WTC: THEIR STORY, can consequently be trusted as truthful, and not agenda-driven.

Neither Cancel or Schroeder gave interviews in the World Trade Center Task Force project.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Chief Joseph Pfeifer/Pfeiffer and Deputy Chief Peter Hayden: Big Twitter or SharedCopy This at Your Peril!

In the year following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, an attempt was made to analyze why the New York City Fire Department suffered such a grievous loss of life that day---343 uniformed personal dead. But determining if operational dereliction was at fault, whether of communications, or of command and control, was impossible under the political and emotional circumstances that prevailed in the aftermath.

A case in point: when the Port Authority released a 78-minute recording of firemen’s radio traffic that had been boosted by an electronic device in the complex called a repeater, it was evidence which conflicted directly with the conclusion in the officially sanctioned study by McKinsey & Company that blamed the repeater’s failure for missed and lost communications---so the parties simply agreed to disagree. The study’s author sided with the fire chiefs in the North Tower “who had tested the system and believed it was not operating,” while the audio tape proves fire chiefs in the South Tower had no problem working with the system---with one fire chief, Orio Palmer, being in both towers, and apparently, being of a different mind in each.

But I think the key to understanding the discrepancy can be found in a November 2, 2002, New York Times article about the issue, which tells us
“...the tape, which recorded transmissions as they were passed through the repeater […] contains the only permanently preserved voices of firefighters from the tower stairwells.”
I submit, the chiefs in the north tower purposefully chose not to utilize this equipment---both to avoid producing just such a permanent record of their work inside, but more importantly, to serve as a convenient scapegoat on which to blame the dramatic loss of life that day. For I further submit, the inexplicable volume of deaths we saw in the north tower was a necessary part that served a larger purpose, and it was calculated to that effect. Moreover, in my opinion, it is quite likely that many of the 343 deaths that day, especially in the north tower, were faked to boot, with the victims rendered into witness-protection-type programs.

Even without such tapes, other records do exist---evidence which reveals hidden behind the “fog of war” of a supposed surprise attack of an unprecedented nature, with its resulting Münchausen syndrome by proxy halo effect---are the fire chief’s true intentions in the north tower that morning: this was a fraudulent, faked, faux firefighting response to a false flag attack that only meant to approximate the real deal. Made up of inconsistencies, anomalies and narrative conflicts, they now add up to a smoking gun.

My thesis isn't as shocking as it might seem at first glance. Reading between the lines, I think the authors, Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, get it right in their Times article, 9/11 Tape Raises Added Questions on Radio Failures, which closes with the sort of disconnect from ordinary reality that's really at stake here:
Despite a public position that the repeater did not work, the city's top officials now want to replicate the trade center's system in high rises all over the city. Indeed, two weeks ago, Mr. Scoppetta sent a letter to the Port Authority saying that the mayor wanted the technical plans for the trade center's repeater system.
When I say the chiefs in the north tower, I specifically speak of Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer and Deputy Chief Peter Hayden of Division 1; along with Hayden's aide, firefighter Christian Waugh of Ladder Co. 5 (Chief Pfeifer's aide, Ed Fahey, was on his first day of a new job, and is thus absolved of responsibility.) These men, and others, were the operative level of a major component in the 9/11 conspiracy. There may be other, lessor, components of faked death and/or real, premeditated, sacrificial death within the department that day---in the south tower, and the Marriott hotel and elsewhere, but a lion's share was scripted here.

It was such "selfless" casualties as those of the New York City Firefighters, which meant to galvanize America's fighting forces to seek revenge, and seek revenge we did indeed. Not only were our mercenary wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq illegal and immoral, they were especially vicious and punitive assaults on two of the poorest and most war ravaged nations on the planet, and the overlap between the fire department and the Marine Corp is pronounced.

My hypothesis has a likely breakdown of about 200 faked "strategic" deaths---rendering the "victims" into alternate identities elsewhere---primarily drawn from the devastated elite rescue units and the departmental upper echelons, which would leave 143 mostly "grunt" deaths as the tactical reality on the ground. Scripted elements with public relations value, such as the deaths of Father Mychal Judge, and Firefighter Danny Suhr, were carried out as specific acts---indeed, Father Judge was murdered in the north tower lobby by these very men.

That no records were to be kept of the members who entered the north tower can be demonstrated beyond the existence of an empty repeater tape, which was useful in establishing an alibi at least:
"On Sept. 11, it did not seem to be working well to Battalion Chiefs Joseph Pfeifer and Orio Palmer, two of the first chiefs to respond. They tested their radios but could not hear each other, an effort that was recorded by the repeater tape."
9/11 Tape Raises Added Questions on Radio Failures, The New York Times, November 9, 2002, By Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn
In his World Trade Center Task Force interview, Chief Joseph Pfeifer plays dumb and disingenuous:
A: But right before the south tower collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I heard we had a crew of all different people, high-level people in government, everybody was gone, almost like they had information that we didn't have. Some of them were moved across the street to the command post.
Q. Who were you with at this time?
A. You name them, they were there.
Q. With you?
A. Yes, in the lobby. They were moving the command post. So, I guess, after that companies were coming in and we were listing them on the command board so we had an account of everybody. Unfortunately, the command board is not around any longer.
By implication, Pfeifer is saying the assignment records were destroyed in the collapse, but who is to blame for that? In the revealing transcript of Firefighter Michael Beehler, from Ladder Company 110, he says
"We had gotten the order to evacuate the building. Lieutenant Mera told us all to stay together and as we started making our way down, we, like I said, we piggybacked floors with another truck company, forcing each door on the way down. Like they took the odd floors, we took the even floors, to make sure there was nobody on that floor and make sure that everybody heard the evacuation order. We got down to the 9th floor and from there down it was very congested. It felt like we waited on each landing for about 30 seconds to a minute, because the staircases were packed with members of the Fire Department that were evacuating. So you did get to 9, then you got down to 8-1/2. Felt like you waited another 30 seconds to a minute. Got down to 8 and continued to go down.

"When we got down to the lobby I just remember seeing all the windows in the north tower on the lobby floor blown out and there was like dust and debris everywhere. As we were walking out, we walked out the same place where we came in, and I remember seeing the board there by itself with nobody there. There was a guy actually standing outside the building telling us if it was safe or not to come out because he said there were jumpers coming down at that time. He said come on, come on, go."
Since Beehler is speaking of a time just moments before the north tower collapsed, apparently Pfeifer had abandoned the lobby command post with the command board just sitting there. Since he himself had issued the order to all personal to evacuate the building after the collapse of the south tower, he must have had a reasonable expectation the north tower would collapse too, and that the only record of assignments in the building would be destroyed in the process.

This is a failure of command and control, but not of the membership---this one is a failure of the chief. He is provided with aides for just these sorts of purposes, but it is the chief's job responsibility to keep records safe. Likewise, with the command post established in the ramp of a parking garage outside on West Street, there was no reason that debris would have "destroyed" the command boards. Their recovery was essential, tantamount to finding the black boxes from the airplanes, or the Port Authority finding the tapes in the ruins of the Trade Center. But that could be problematic:
Q. Did they give you a specific task? In other words, when you came in, did they tell you to go to the 30th floor or the 50th floor?
A. Yes, there was a chief, I guess it was at the staging area. There was basically just one chief standing there saying, "All right, you guys make your way up to the north tower." I don't know-
Q. He didn't tell you to go to the 30th floor or the 50th floor?
A. No. He just said make your way up to the north tower. That was it. We got our rollups and gear and everything else and that's it. That's about it, then.
Barry, Albert Engine 65 Firefighter

"We went into the tower, we were in the lobby a couple minutes. There was only one chief there. We really had no direction what to do. Captain Burke decided we would either go up on our own or wait for someone. We went up, started our way up."
Byrne, Robert Firefighter Engine Company 24
That a decision was made early on to not attempt to fight the fires is evident---one justification being the many rescues that were being necessitated.
"We made a conscious decision early on that we weren't going to try and put the fire out, for a number of reasons. One, there was too much volume of fire. Second, the building systems were probably not functional. We had too many distress calls coming in. We didn't think the standpipe system was even going to be intact up there. We had to forgo the whole idea of trying to put any fire suppression efforts in there. This was strictly a search and rescue operation. Hayden Firehouse.com Interview
"I specifically remember telling Commissioner Von Essen that we were not attempting to extinguish this fire. It's just strictly a search and rescue operation. We were not trying to put this fire out. We had thousands of people coming down the stairs, and that was our focus, to answer as many distress calls as we could and complete whatever searches we could. That was the focus of our strategy there at the time." Deputy Chief Hayden WTC Task Force Interview Transcript
So if they weren't going to put out any fires, why did Pfeifer instruct at least half the men to go up carrying 30lbs of hose?
Firehouse: Did you formulate any type of plan?
Pfeifer: The game plan was to pair up the engines and to only take half the amount of hose. This way we could switch back and forth. And the trucks to get me some information. Pfeifer Firehouse.com Interview
Q. You were the first highest ranking officer on the scene?
A. Correct. Shortly after I was there, the division came in. They started out the same time we were rolling. So they were there very quickly, and I briefed Chief Hayden on what I knew at the time, which was an approximate floor and we believe we had people trapped. Then we kind of went through a high-rise operation to try and get people up there. We paired the engines. I know I told engines, half the group to take hose, the other half not to, at least early on, and started their way up. Pfeifer WTC Task Force
Since none of his men made it anywhere near to where the real rescue need was---the seriously injured civilians above the 80th floor---in all recorded cases getting, at most, only about half way up there---wasn't his instruction to carry hose an additional, unnecessary burden, which further prevented the firemen from rendering proper assistance?
"I was in communications with members of Engine 6. They were on the 27th floor, proceeding upward. I heard communications from a squad company that informed them that it was an hour's climb to 30." Butler, Michael Assistant Chief Bureau of Fire Prevention
Since the entire time span from the first plane crash into the north tower until the north tower collapsed was only 104 minutes, isn't the maximum firemen could have reached in that time about the 45th floor?

Might not many of the department members have gone down the stairs instead of up?
Firehouse: Somebody said that that stairwell went right up from the lowest lobby. Is that correct?
Hayden: Right. Hayden Firehouse.com Interview
Why didn't they take the elevator? Why didn't Pfeifer know that some elevators were still operating safely in the north tower---just accessed from the mezzanine? I found three such testimonies of firemen before I had even made it out of B's in the index.
"We were only there [lobby of the north tower] for maybe about 2 minutes when Lieutenant Mera came over. He said come on, we are going up to the 21 floor. There are reports of people trapped there."

"He said he thought there was a bank of elevators that were working. So we went up to the mezzanine, I believe it was. We went up the escalator to the mezzanine. There was a bank of elevators there that were still in service, so we took that up to, I believe the 15 or 16th floor. We got up and then we walked up to the 23 floor from there in the B staircase…” Beehler, Michael Firefighter Ladder company 110

“We went with I believe it was Chief Picciotto. We went up to the mezzanine and we took an elevator. The Chief said that these elevators were all right. We took an elevator, which I believe goes up to eight. We got off at eight and proceeded to walk up to 23. We stopped on 23 and then we went up to 25. Then we made our way back. So we were either on 23 or 21, I don’t know, I don’t remember that, I think it was 23. The Lieutenant gave us instructions to make a thorough search, pop all the doors, make sure everybody is out of the building.” Brodbeck, Michael Firefighter Engine Company 210

"We decided to take an elevator up. 13 Truck took us up. I'm assuming it was a low riser. It was one of the only elevators that were clear, and it looked like it was working. 13 took us up to -- first they took a couple guys from my company up. Byrne, Robert Firefighter Engine Company 24
Things start to get much worse at this point. The next failing of Pfeifer & Company should have become legendary, but for some reason, it's not known at all.

A shocking series of articles published in USA Today at the one-year anniversary mark of 9/11, concern themselves with the elevators in both of the towers, and we learn some horrible details about an excruciating reality from that day:
USA TODAY estimates that at least 200 people died inside World Trade Center elevators, the biggest elevator catastrophe in history.

USA TODAY The express elevators in the north tower had eight survivors in two elevators. In the other eight express elevators, nobody is known to have lived.

USA TODAY On Sept. 11, people fought their own way out of elevators or they died.

USA TODAY could not locate any professional rescues of people stuck in elevators. The Fire Department of New York and the Port Authority also could not cite successful rescues. Poor communications among rescue workers meant elevators were ignored even after trapped passengers used intercoms to report their locations, sometimes only a few feet from firefighters. Most passengers could not save themselves: Safety devices designed to prevent people from falling down shafts locked people inside elevators the moment the elevators malfunctioned.USA TODAY
How can this possibly be? Hundreds of firefighters milling about and not one elevator rescue? Did these firemen make no attempt at rescuing civilians trapped mere feet away from them in the lobby? What does this mean? Has nobody cross-referenced these articles and transcripts and highlighted the disparity in the narratives before?

Lies! Damn lies! They answered ZERO distress calls!
"We discussed with Chief Downey the operations, and that continued for a while. We were making a concerted effort to get the elevators down and answering all the distress calls. We were working with the engineers. We were working the intercom in the lobby between the elevators, trying to get an idea what floors they were on. The engineers told us we have people on this floor, that floor, 66th floor, 71st floor, stuck in the elevators. We answered as many of the distress calls as we could."
Deputy Chief Hayden WTC Task Force Interview Transcript

In the north tower

  • Seven passengers trapped for 45 minutes pried open an elevator stopped in the lobby. They used force to overcome pressure from a motor pushing the doors shut.



  • Five passengers trapped in an elevator stuck between floors used a window washer's squeegee to cut through an elevator shaft made of three layers of drywall. They then kicked a hole through a tile wall into a 50th floor bathroom to escape.



  • Two Port Authority employees stuck in an elevator on the 71st floor were rescued by colleagues who passed wire cutters through a crack in the elevator doors. One of the trapped men then cut a cable holding the doors shut.



  • A man trapped alone in an elevator at the ground floor lobby was suddenly able to slide the doors open five minutes before the building fell. The south tower's earlier collapse had cut power to the motor that had kept the doors closed. USA Today

  • The main article in the USA Today series, Elevators were disaster within disaster, By Dennis Cauchon and Martha T. Moore, even uses a photograph of Chief Pfeifer to illustrate the piece. Can this be tongue in cheek or projectile vomiting?

    Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer works at a command post in the north tower lobby, in this photo from the CBS documentary 9/11. The elevators in the background were not checked.

    None of this makes any sense looked at rationally. Pfeifer and Hayden, along with Kevin Culley, a fire department Captain working in the Office of Emergency Management, refer extensively to the need to rescue passengers trapped in the elevators. Why did it not happen?

    Culley was going to work in the OEM office on 23rd floor at 7 World Trade Center on 9/11.
    "From the lobby we saw debris falling from above. We could not actually see the impact due to the view. When the debris stopped falling, I left the third-floor lobby, ran out onto the street, looked up, saw fire showing out of two, three floors, on two sides of the building, the north face and the east face of the building. There was no sign that it was a plane, at least not to me."

    "...what I'm supposed to do is liaison to any agencies other than Fire with the incident commander. So at that scene you had Port Authority, you had some other federal agencies, FBI is one that I recall, and you also had your building -- the World Trade Center Fire Safety Director and his staff,"
    "A:The only report that I remember was that somebody I believe in the FBI had a telephone conversation with somebody on the 51st floor reporting that there's jet fuel on that floor. It wasn't clear to us exactly what floor the impact was on, but I knew it was higher than that."
    A: "We were still working on trying to find maybe there would be freight elevators or any kind of elevator that's working. Are all of the elevators out due to the incident or are some just maintenance problems that we may be able to get moving? That wasn't happening for us."
    "Q. What were you seeing in the lobby as you got there?
    A. In the lobby, all the usual people, the 1st Division, 1st Battalion, reporting in units, I can't remember specifically, the Fire Safety Director, who I recognized, FBI agents, people on the staff, building staff, particularly people that were involved with helping us read the elevator panels."
    "There were no elevators in operation. What made it more of a problem is that all those elevators were shut down and there were people in them. So we were actually -- once I had staff that could operate the panel, they could speak to each individual elevator, ask how many people are in the elevator, what floor they were on, and if there's anyone injured, and I was passing that information on to the incident commander.
    "Q. Can you describe what you visually were seeing around, like outside or on the concourse?
    A. On the concourse? I don't remember on the concourse. In the lobby? As I said, the usual people that would show up. I saw at least three chaplains there."
    "Also, I'd note that, once I arrived at the fire command station, I was told by someone who had actually witnessed the plane hitting it that it was indeed a plane. Up until that point, I thought it was a bomb."
    "Q. Were there any communications at that point; radios still working?
    "A. The radio that I carry is an 800 megahertz connected to the OEM channels. I was transmitting and receiving. All the Fire Department radios that I was aware of were transmitting, you know, you could hear all the conversations going on."
    "It was also clear then that there wasn't any control of that building, no elevators, communications above. Except for that one conversation on the 51st floor, as far as I know, there were no other conversations. That doesn't mean I knew everything. We did have conversations with people stuck on elevators and that was it."
    "Q. The first building came down. What was the operation line? What was going on?
    "A. Nothing really had changed. Like I said, all the elevators were still stuck. I think there were elevators that were on the first floor, the doors closed. Not that I saw it. I looked at the panel and realized that some of these stuck elevators are right here on the lobby floor and people were assigned to go take care of that. Were in a hallway for a while and then ducked into some stairs. My belief is that we actually ran out of the building enclosed. The stairwell we were in was probably inside of 6 World Trade."
    Captain John "Kevin" Culley, in the Office of Emergency Management
    Chief Pfeifer appears to be convinced that the elevators were inoperable
    I went into the lobby. There were people injured. I went into the lobby and tried to gather information, where the plane hit, what floor, and the best we could get is somewhere around 80. As the units were coming in, we checked for the elevators to see if we had any elevator service. There wasn't any. Pfeifer, Joseph

    Then what we did was I started to send people up to perform a rescue because we knew there were people trapped above the fire and <>we were getting reports in the lobby people were trapped in the elevators and people were trapped, and I believe we started sending units up. Pfeifer, Joseph April 2002 Firehouse Magazine, Interview with Chief Pfeifer, Battalion 1

    Chief Joseph Pfeifer Interview, April 2002 Firehouse Magazine

    Firehouse: On average, how many times would you go to the Trade Center in a week or a month?
    Pfeifer: It’s a complex of buildings, so maybe about 15, 17 times a month.

    Firehouse: How many years have you worked down here?
    Pfeifer: Five.

    Firehouse: What did they have at that command center that’s in the corner? Do you have fire alarms for the building?
    Pfeifer: Yes, the fire alarm panel. They have floor diagrams and next to it is the elevator status. And you had the all-star crew. You had me and you had Hayden. You had people in that new era, Orio Palmer, I mean Donald Burns. If you had to pick the all-star crew, you had them. Chief Pfeifer

    Firehouse: When you walked in, did somebody give you a rundown?
    Pfeifer: We walked in. There was glass, all broken, and there were a number of people burnt in the lobby. I went over to command post and they didn’t have exact information. They were estimating from calls somewhere around 78. But that was just speculation. The elevators were out for the most part. One opened up at one point and let people out. I don’t know how that worked, but the elevators were out. I sent companies to double-check that.

    Firehouse: You sent companies to check the elevators. Do they come back and tell you that it was negative?
    Pfeifer: Yes, they said there were no elevators working. That was also confirmed by the control panels.


    Firehouse: Besides all this rush of companies coming in, there are other people there talking to you, giving you other information. Was there anything else specific that they were giving you?
    Pfeifer: People trapped in the elevators, a lot of people trapped.
    Chief Pfeifer

    Firehouse: Under normal circumstances, if the fire alarm went off, shouldn’t those elevators drop down to the lobby?
    Pfeifer: Depending on what was activated, so it’s a complicated question to answer.


    Firehouse: If the smoke detector goes off on the 102nd floor, they’re not going to bring the elevators down from 17?
    Pfeifer: No, and then you have sky lobbies. You had a sky lobby on the 78th floor.


    Firehouse: There were a lot of people trapped in the elevators?
    Pfeifer: Right.


    Firehouse: I know there were jumpers coming down. Were all of those windows broken?
    Pfeifer: I don’t know if all the windows, but a substantial amount were. And then what we heard was the jumpers actually hitting the canopy, which was where the battalion car was parked. A number of times, I had to send my aide out to the car to get a radio or turn on the repeater radio. The tracer has a repeater radio which operates on Channel 7 on our handie-talkies and we attempted to use that. I attempted to use that with Chief Palmer. We tried to communicate to each other, since we were very familiar with the system and that failed. It did not work. Chief Pfeifer

    Firehouse: Were you monitoring your radio? Could you hear a lot?
    Pfeifer: With any high-rise, you get some communications and you miss some. There were messages, urgent messages of firefighters having chest pains as they went up, but there wasn’t a lot of need for handie-talkie communication because there wasn’t any information to be passed either way. A number of times, we tried to contact people and we had difficulty. Then other times there was no problem, which was the typical high-rise.

    Firehouse: Eventually, did you get any reports from upstairs? Do you recall any of the highest reports where you got somebody was upstairs?
    Pfeifer: I know talking to people after, they were up around 40.
    Some of them might have gotten a little farther, but generally around there. One of the things that really should be mentioned is that very early on, Mike Hurley, the fire safety director, asked about evacuating the other tower. I mentioned that to Chief Hayden and we both agreed that it should be evacuated. This is a matter of a couple of seconds. We told them to evacuate the tower and that was very early on, which proved to save a lot of people and that was way before the second plane hit. Chief Pfeifer

    Were you receiving any other information? How about the building people, was there any other information that they were passing on at this time, anything else that was important?
    Pfeifer: Just basically people trapped in the elevators. They were trying to call. At different points, some of that service came back on and they were able to contact the elevators.
    Firehouse: What happened then?
    Pfeifer: There was a report of a third plane, but that really wasn’t told too well to us and I tried to confirm that and I couldn’t get anybody to confirm it. That’s when Chief Callan called people down. I was involved in a different part of the operation. And I’m trying to get a hold of the helicopters and that wasn’t working too well because I couldn’t get an outside line or couldn’t get through. Chief Pfeifer April 2002 Firehouse Magazine
    Deputy Chief Peter Hayden also appears convinced that no elevators were working that day.
    "We found out there weren't any elevators working. Not too long afterwards, we found out we had no communications from the building either. The repeater system wasn't working. We tried to get that going. We were really at a complete disadvantage. We had no elevator. We had no communication systems." Deputy Chief Peter Hayden April 2002 Firehouse Magazine

    "We had Port Authority engineers. We're working all the time with the Port Authority trying to get, number one, some communications going and also to see if we can get the elevators up and running. One of the engineers was actually going through the elevator intercom system contacting each of the elevators---there were 99 elevators in each of these buildings---and going through each elevator and through the intercom system attempting to contact each car, to see if anybody was in the car. And if they could tell us what floor they were on, we would send somebody up there to get them out of the cars. There were a number of cars where people were reported trapped. The highest one I remember was the 71st floor. I sent a company to the 71st floor. We had reports of people in wheelchairs unable to get off the floors they were on because the elevators weren't working, so we gave specific assignments for those type of distress calls. We had one report, I think it was around the 40th floor, that as many as 30 people on one floor were severely burned and in need of assistance. So we were at a complete disadvantage." Deputy Chief Peter Hayden April 2002 Firehouse Magazine

    Self Dispatching Units and Members
    "I really didn't get involved with that because early on we realized that a number of the companies were coming in and were not reporting to any staging area we established. So we were losing some control of the companies coming in. There was also some communication problems later on with companies coming in, units responding to the second alarm after the other plane hit. They weren't sure which was World Trade Center One and World Trade Center Two. So that became confusing. Of course off-duty members were coming in, and they were reporting directly upstairs. So at one point in time -- I want to say that Chief McGovern was still in the lobby -- we had to account for everybody that was going upstairs. It became a critical issue." Deputy Chief Hayden WTC Task Force Interview Transcript
    The Murder of Father Mychal Judge
    "We stumbled upon Judge. He had no pulse. One of the Chiefs just said we're not going to leave him here. We just picked him up and went up the stairs we came down. I can't tell you how we got outside. It was still dark. We ended up in front of-- we ended up on the west face of 6 World Trade Center, which happens to be up on a pedestrian walkway which is like three stories up. We had no way to get down. So we were still carrying the chaplain. We come around on the Vesey side of this pedestrian walkway. You really couldn't see more than about 60 feet in front of you at best. So I sort of ran ahead of the group to see if we could get over any obstructions, and if it became a dead end, we were going to have to turn around. So that's what I was doing."
    "We got to the end of 6 World Trade, there's a gap between 6 and 5. We really didn't know what had happened. We heard all this noise, but we didn't know what actually happened. There was a lot of debris out there. It was unclear. I looked to where 2 World Trade -- the south tower was. You really couldn't see through it. I figured it was a dangerous area. We were going to have to run this gap between 6 and 5. It didn't seem like anything was happening. We took Judge's body in a chair and we ran across that gap. We went down the escalator stairs right there and that gets us down onto the street. Now we can get away from the building."
    "A. We get to the corner of Vesey and Church. We turn over Judge's body to some EMTs. I ran into two federal officers, I always think they're FBI, but there's a lot of federal badges, and they said they were going to be setting up -- or somebody had notice that there was going to be a command center set up on either Park Place or Murray, one of those streets just north of the area, and that's where I would normally be assigned."
    "Q. So with the secondary collapse, the only persons with you were FBI agents? Were there any Fire Chiefs?
    "A. No. I was with a group. When we carried Judge's body out, I was with the 1st Division, a couple of Port Authority cops, one of the aides, one of the firemen. I couldn't tell you who else. I remember another OEM fellow who I had met on the way down.
    "Q. Is he a firefighter? Is he Fire Department personnel?
    "A. He was an EMT that works in OEM

    We are asked to believe that the members of these elite rescue and specialist units went into the north tower and ascended beyond the reach of radios delivering evacuation notices; that as a group they would be willing to remain incommunicado as they traveled above the highest floors achieved by any other regular companies---those who were first to arrive at the disaster and had the most time to climb the stairs; that these men would ignore the trauma of the south tower's collapse, remaining oblivious to the changed realities on the ground and in the air; would in fact lose their lives without effecting a single rescue, or saving any building occupants, like anyone from an elevator, for instance.

    RESCUE COMPANIES

    Rescue 1
    Captain Terence Hatton F
    Lieutenant Dennis Mojica F
    Joseph Angelini F
    Gary Geidel M
    William Henry F
    Kenneth Marino M
    Michael Montesi F
    Gerard Nevins F
    Patrick O'Keefe F
    Brian Sweeney F
    David Weiss M

    Rescue 2
    Daniel Libretti F
    William Lake F
    Peter Martin F
    John Napolitano M
    Kevin O'Rourke F
    Lincoln Quappe F
    Edward Rall F

    Rescue 3
    Christopher Blackwell M
    Thomas Foley F
    Thomas Gambino, Jr. F
    Raymond Meisenheimer M
    Donald Regan M
    Gerard Schrang F
    Joseph Spor M

    Rescue 4
    Captain Brian Hickey F
    Lieutenant Kevin Dowdell F
    Peter Brennan M
    Terrence Farrell F
    William Mahoney F
    Peter Nelson F
    Durrell Pearsall F

    Rescue 5
    Captain Louis Modafferi M
    Lieutenant Harvey Harrell M
    John Bergin M
    Carl Bini M
    Michael Fiore M
    Andre Fletcher M
    Douglas Miller M
    Jeffery Palazzo M
    Nicholas Rossomando M
    Allan Tarasiewicz F

    SQUAD COMPANIES

    Squad 1
    Captain James Amato F
    Lieutenant Edward D'Atri M
    Lieutenant Michael Esposito F
    Brian Bilcher F
    Gary Box M
    Thomas Butler F
    Peter Carroll F
    Robert Cordice M
    David Fontana F
    Matthew Garvey F
    Stephen Siller M

    Squad 18
    Lieutenant William McGinn F
    Eric Allen F
    Andrew Fredericks F
    David Halderman F
    Timothy Haskell F
    Manuel Mojica F
    Lawrence Virgilio F

    Squad 41
    Lieutenant Michael Healey M
    Thomas Cullen III M
    Robert Hamilton F
    Michael Lyons M
    Gregory Sikorsky F
    Richard Vanhine F

    Squad 252
    Tarel Coleman M
    Thomas Kuveikis M
    Peter Langone M
    Patrick Lyons M
    Kevin Prior F

    Squad 288
    Lieutenant Ronald Kerwin F
    Ronnie Gies F
    Joseph Hunter M
    Jonathan Ielpi F
    Adam Rand F
    Timothy Welty M

    Tactical Support Unit 1
    Joseph Mascali F

    Haz-Mat 1
    Battalion Chief John Fanning M
    Lieutenant John Crisci F
    Dennis Carey F
    Martin Demeo F
    Thomas Gardner M
    John Giordano F
    Jonathan Hohmann M
    Dennis Scauso M
    Kevin Smith M

    Waters Patrick Captain FDNY Special Op. Found
    Stackpole Timothy Captain FDNY Division 11 Found
    Simpson Jeff Firefighter Other Other Found
    Russo Michael, Lieutenant FDNY Special Op.Missing
    Roma Keith Fire Patrol Other Found
    Lovero Joseph Firefighter Other Other Missing
    Bucca Ronald FM FDNY Fire Marshal Found
    Kasper Charles Battalion Chief FDNY Battalion Soc Missing
    Higgins Timothy Lieutenant FDNY Special Op. Found
    Ganci Jr. Peter Chief of Department FDNY Chief Of Dept.Found
    Feehan William First Deputy Commissioner FDNY1st DC Found
    Downey Raymond Battalion Chief FDNY Special Op. Found
    Barbara Gerard Assistant Chief FDNY Command Center Missing