Do You Know What Just Hit the Washington Monument?

That boom you just heard?

That was it?

Yeah.

Fast forward to the 20:30 mark on this FOX news video to hear this brief exchange, which interrupts an interview Audrey Barnes of FOX news was conducting with an unnamed man standing beside an entry ramp onto Route 27, several hundred yards north of the Pentagon on 9/11. The sudden, off-screen voice insists, "Do you know what just hit the Washington Monument? That boom you just heard?" The figure replies too quickly, "That was it?" The voice answers, yes.



What Barnes doesn't realize is this man is a shill and she is being taken for a ride. Barnes is under forced camera time as her producers try and piece together the story back in the studio. Luke McCarthy, the co-anchor who is holding down the fort with her, acknowledges this, imploring her, "just describe people's faces," which goes too far, triggering Barnes to say, "here, I'm just waving a gentleman over who was at the...were you inside?" (18:18)

He is an interview volunteer, standing by, tasked specifically, we can now know, with neutralizing the meaning of the blast sounds just heard, with any media that cares to pick him up. At (18:56) he says, "I just heard another blast up there," pointing away from the Pentagon, and again, moments later, (19:45) "I just heard an explosion back over that away, I'm not sure what that was," pointing even farther away from the building. And instead of responding to the impertinent interruption as a normal person would do: Huh? He does a coordinated dance of understanding, and dips his partner.

Unfortunately for him, he has the bad habit of turning to look directly at the camera after every talking point, like a puppy dog looking for praise.

Don't bother addressing that issue in the training manuals now through guys. Confidence tricks exploit human weaknesses like greed and vanity, but also human virtues like honesty and compassion. And if any day should have been the day naïve expectations of good faith would work out, that day was September 11th, 2001. Indeed, they are working out. We're on to them now.