Sgt. Carmen Burgess: Coming in on the Pentagon Off-ramp

Scott Walsh's Patriot Video No. 1

Below is a 5:34-minute video by a man who will one day rate as a saint, but don't be scared off by the fact. Scott Walsh saved what might be the last known capture of a snippet of uncredited cable news video that shows former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld helping man a litter-bearing team outside of the Pentagon in the first 20 minutes after someone began an endless war there on 9-11. Rumsfeld appears at the 2:27 mark, he's only there for 4 seconds, when you hear the drumbeat of the rat-a-tat-tat, get ready.

Scott's "Patriot Video 1" was made as an art project really--one of a series of efforts he made to process his emotions in the aftermath of 9-11, our emotional reality being one way to tell us apart--different from the un-shocked, co-conspirators, who went straight to agenda without first passing through sorrow. Apparently Scott captured the video off live television, earlier, you see a video ID watermark on some of the clips, TLC, for The Learning Channel.

What a teaching it channels too. Although, the historical fact of Rumsfeld's behavior is well known through multiple official sources, seeing is believing, in wonderment as the Secretary fails to take appropriate steps to protect himself from further surprise enemy attack, goes "missing" to others in the government instead, to grandstand for the camera, before eventually reentering the building, the first to seed, according to reports, "It was a commercial jetliner that crashed into the building," thereby planting the storylet with a healthy dose of manure.

Some components of the story were jettisoned after being shown once on TV, as the puppet masters voted up or down on the elements as they flowed forth. Someone decided they'd made a mistake with Rumsfeld, and pulled the storyboard quick, but an irrationality that stemmed from the error rippled throughout the day as a consequence, stranding rows of empties as props, something colorful to lean on. Life didn't hang in the balance, so much as got drug out interminably. Without first articulating the foundational storyline of vain and valorous effort, (with just a touch of "dear chairman" thrown in,) the trickle-down motifs of man's heroic struggle to save lives, Marines do not leave their buddies behind, was lost. Without a team of quick, animated, kinetic winners, shown against the smoke of battle, or fog of war, there was nothing plausible to hide behind. So left out in the harsh light was this:

I don't mean to criticize this composition's auteur with undue hauteur, although I guess I'm trying to get a rise by using the French. Sgt. Carmen L. Burgess was the most professional and credible member of the whole in-house pictorial entourage, but he was working under some trying handicaps, like having to film his action-packed foregrounds in advance, to get them out of the way for some reason. That led to post-production problems, like the poor matching in the color of the grass, which is an unpardonable dereliction in professional duty.

The photographer's responsibility is to click the shutter at a moment of maximum emotional expression. Even professional actors can't be on stage all the time, although I know one who thinks he can. This amateur late-summer-stock cast is charming, but I think they were going for something more literally disarming. The guy and gal in front are the energetic up-and-comers, while the others are typical army stoics that hide behind them, so first, try reversing the blocking. The trick would be to get the stoics animated, and to stun the gushers into wide-eyed awe. Instead, we get The Iceman Cometh meets Guys and Dolls, not bad I suppose, for a a force that lives by the motto: don't ask, don't tell.

My point is this, just because the narrative hatch marks are checked off; like, service branches and ranks, pitching in together-meme--check, and, African-American lady victim, probably never thought she'd see the day-meme--check, there's no way these folks could act their way out of a wet paper bag, and reality may be a wet paper bag. This result is very disappointing. It's not like the military doesn't understand the drama of crashes and explosions, and smoke and flames, and the effect it has on people, it's that they weren't willing to risk really using it on themselves. They can dish it out but they can't take it. To make this work you'd need an 18-minute continuous running pan shot of shock and awe, like Altman's start to Nashville.

Over on stage right, another misfire, one that should have gone straight to video and skipped the theaters. Our Car-Lo Burgess, once again, with ennui, mismatching the fore-ground with the back, the yesterday not looking much like today. I wonder, as seen through both of Karen Hughes two evil eyes, is this scene the basis for Global War on Terror? To me it's a Gobble Waddles on Turkeys

First, what is that demented looking man doing with that women's child? [a meme?] I know you have daycare, [meme] they got the children out onto the sunny lawn to play, [meme] then why drag that tiny child into a war zone, to show her off? She's a tiny infant. I think the man on the cell phone is calling S.A.G. to report the terrible acting--hunching his shoulders over like that doesn't make him appear to be protecting the baby--it makes him look seedy, like he stole her to get on the last lifeboat off the Titanic. Three extras in the background are standing in a clump, one with his back turned to the action. He is leaning against the car, animatedly making a point with his arm about last night's ballgame. It looks pretty casual to me.

There were 32 chaplains inside the building that day, by coincidence, attending a conference. Were they trotted out for for a kick line behind Father Stephen McGraw, while a Lesbian Nun with an acoustic guitar played Kum ba Yah, my Lord, but it was cut as not explosive enough?

Sorry. My meme.

This is supposed to be the air space where a massive jetliner flew less than 20 feet off the ground at 530 miles-per-hour according to the Kean report, just moments before, with a singeing vortex, a turbulent sucking, and a percussive blast knocking down lamp poles. There hasn't been anything overhead here recently, except for the Oscar Meyer Weiner-Balloon, and we know it's shadow when we see it.

I can't keep this up, but I want to leave Burgess with some company, so I thought this Paul Disney image was ridiculous enough to eat out on for a month. It conveys the truth of the terrible fraud that was perpetrated that day by using that overused symbol of this medical response, the empty rolling gurney, as the team strolls towards Scarborough fair. No one came out of the building after the first 20 minutes. No one should have come out this side of the building period. Should anyone come out of the building here, they would be covered in smoke and soot. There were triage sites set up in the North and South parking lots, and in the center court. This site was staged for the cameras. Even if this triage site were set up with sincerity, it would have been dismantled after the first of three timed retreats to safety after "reports of incoming" were "issued."

The six anonymous responders with their backs turned towards us are moving in on an off ramp. To get to the action, they will next have to climb over wide concrete barriers and at least two metal barriers. They could have simply driven in under the overpass, like everyone else.

These inane and phony pictures were staged to disguise the fact there were far fewer than even 100 wounded. Somewhere between 35 and 17 is my guess, with seven serious burns. The line between life and death was redrawn on this day, I guess they thought they could redraw the map too.The mound of dirt seen in this picture was used as a stage backdrop and platform in many scenes, a place to play hide and seek and show and tell. So anonymous soldiers could walk up the hill and Jake and Jill could come down, and where Humpty-Dumpty could have his bad fall. In my storyboard, it will forever be a grassy knoll.

Below are a few images of un-peopled conveyances that illustrate my point. To be fair, I will post a file of images which show wounded on stretchers, gurneys, and litters, but segregated out, and seen together, they make my point supporting fraud, just in a different way.

Andrew Garcia: Mimicking the Voice of God

Ahhh....The Arms of Morpheus.

Andrew Garcia, one of the victims of Flight 93, the hero's flight, always struck me as odd or unexplained. My fascination began with the first paragraph of the successful, 62-year-old's obituary

"It wasn't unusual for Dorothy Garcia to answer the phone and be confronted by a strange voice she didn't recognize. Time and again, it turned out to be her husband, Andrew, disguising himself. Invariably, even after 32 years of marriage, she fell for it."

This struck a silent chord in me. Flight 93 should have been called the voice-mimicry flight for all the narrative hero-myth seeds planted by Airphone that day. America went off to war on a sea of "Let's Roll" tattoos, nose art, bomb notes and aircraft-carrier-deckhand synchronized spelling bees. (Bush's Bring It On was Moral Majority cowboy code from Pat Robertson--don't confuse the Latin with the Greek.) The "they fought back--now it's our turn," signs went up like mushrooms after the rain on 9-12. Even the P-FLAG offspring got in on the act, with rugby instead of soccer their true sin--one of marketing. Even with the meme bar set high, widow Dorothy hurdled with ease, reprising the old standard, gold-wedding-band-back-from-hell, routine, to join the crowded ranks as yet another Christian motivational speaker with some shelf life and a great punch line.
Several factors lead me to believe Garcia was C.I.A. and his shop was cover.

First, what family business takes a redaction, followed by the word, Group as its name?What devote Christian would name his "business Cinco Group, using Cinco as an acronym for Christ in Company," as reported in the New York Times, when Cin is pronounced Sin, unless by mimicry, he means something else?
Isn't CINCO more likely to be born from the Collaborative and Interoperable Computing research area? Saying "industrial products business" is almost advertising the real work of "high-explosives delivery systems and the software they love too much." From now on anyone fit and trim is suspect of covert activity in my book. You want to go undercover? Grow a paunch. No raping the world without consequence and then feeling good about it afterward while you blow smoke rings with your Gauloise, thinking, "I be the man!"


I hope the secularists among us heed the wake up call (can you say Kagawa little boy?) Given the speed of technological advancement--wasn't voice-recognition the hot thing before 9-11?--what fresh hell will we have to contend with next, pray tell? Pat Robertson says the Lord told him a big American city will go this year, sometime around September he thinks, but the Lord wasn't clear on the date. The casualties will be in the millions. The morality of our so-called Christian nation is too poor to sustain and protect both us and, say, the Iraqi toddlers. It's the innocent American unborn babies, and the frozen wanna-be's, whose voices cry out in the desert. Help!



"...whimsical bent with a devout Christian faith..." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Many of the passengers were also devout Christians."
"Andrew Garcia named his industrial-products business Cinco Group, using Cinco as an acronym for Christ in Company." The Fourth Target By M. G. LORD New York Times, September 8, 2002

Andrew Garcia of Portola Valley was a businessman by trade, but whose real passion was his family. As the owner of an industrial products company, he frequented the East coast for business meetings and so it was the day before he boarded the ill fated United Airline Flight 93 on September 11th. According to his Son, he was a man of values, always inquiring as to the welfare of others. Christian Talk Radio 740am

1961 you went to work for United Airlines as purchasing manager for a short stay,
Dorothy worked as a secretary downstairs and what a great team you two became.
In time you left the airlines with Dorothy, founding Cinco Group without delay.
You were true Soul mates as well as best friends without question or say.
A prankster with Dorothy and with your many friends of an array,
You would call her and disguise your voice but it was all in fun and play.
You were a Christian man who humbly bowed your head to pray.
Your concern for others can and will never be outweighed.

Memorial Quilts

Brian Birdwell: How to Serve Man

One of my "insights" into the September 11, 2001 Pentagon attack, which began to emerge recently, five years after the attack, has promised to be a very difficult piece of the puzzle to share because it is so ugly. I've explored my degree of certainty with the truth, my normal five-percent doctrine, a humility allowance for error, was bumped up, since I combine serious research with what I can only call inspiration, but what others might only call madness.

This Reuters news photo by an unnamed stringer was published this morning, and I take it as a sign to proceed.

"A housing debtor runs after setting himself on fire to protest against Chile's housing system in front of the government palace in Santiago January 4, 2007. The man extinguished the flames by jumping into a pool outside the government palace and was arrested by police. CHILE OUT REUTERS/Stringer(CHILE)

A housing debtor? I'd throw back Chilean Habitation-Costs-Arrears Performance Artist Survivor Shaman. If anything is art, to me,this man is art, and timing is everything at the Burn Art Gallery. Too bad nobody was ready, willing or able to show off such artistry at the Pentagon on 9-11. It turns out, the injuries storyboard wasn't so hard to produce after all, the various solutions all boiled down to one, the strangely motivated, Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell. Writing two years after 9-11 in the conservative Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, the well regarded author of Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander, displayed a note of skepticism, in Survivor studies the whys of 9/11

"Few inside the [Navy Command] center survived. In fact, in a catastrophe that appeared as if it would produce mass numbers of wounded, just seven inside the Pentagon, including Mr. Shaeffer, were critically burned."

I have little sense about the other six, Wayne Sinclair, Louise Kurtz, Kevin Schaeffer, John Yates, Juan A Cruz-Santiago and Sergeant Janice Jackson, although I will say, Yates and Kurtz came out of the same corridor as Birdwell and were handled in similar fashions, minus the publicity. Kurtz was also on her second day in a new job there. The points of evidence that support my charge against Birdwell, are singularly his.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Brian Birdwell is living proof why recruits are warned never to volunteer in the military. Birdwell did volunteer for duty on 9-11. I submit he volunteered to undergo a controlled burn, as a leading player in the narrative drama, like another headliner, Maj. Lincoln (two memes down) Leiber, Birdwell was chosen for heroism and its aftermath.

Firematics training includes entering a smoke house, entering a burn tent stretches the imagination, but only for its moral horror. I wonder if Birdwell's burns were consistent with his briefings. He suffered a controlled flash burn over 60 percent of his body, half of that being third-degree burns, as reported in his and his wife's Christian burn charity web site FaceTheFire.org.

A comprehensive article in the US News & World Report on December 10, 2001, reports that

• Birdwell survived because he left his office and went to the men's room. His officemate in Room 2E486, Cheryle Sincock, did not survive.
• Birdwell is the burned man seen with shirt off and hands raised, being loaded onto an ambulance in images taken by Will Morris and Hillary Smith Garrison of the Associated Press. These few images constitute both the the minimum credibility, and the maximum extent of the news images staged for select cameras in front of the West facade of the Pentagon. It was a staged area, not a staging area
• Birdwell is the only burn victim identified in the official record as having been carried to a triage site. The self-justifying reviews of the medical response in the Pentagon reports is entirely anonymous as to the victims.
• The President and Laura Bush's "Hospital Salute to a Soldier Injured in the Terrorist Crash into the Pentagon" was a major Karen Hugh's produced media event, fraught with narrative. Bush's holding of his salute for 18 seconds as Birdwell slowly tried to raise his injured arm in return,can still raise a goose pimple.
• Birdwell's aftermath was assured, if not his afterlife. In retirement, he runs a burn charity with no apparent attachment to credible organizations like the Shriners, .It is a Christian motivational front that promises only to throw real charity dollars into the fire.
  
• Birdwell is motivated by an extreme brand of fundamental Christianity, his and his wife Mel's Christian burn charity, FaceTheFire.org and his Christian burn book, Refined by Fire: have a primary purpose to glorify the God of his understanding, his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

• Larry Dowling of Corbis, who took pictures at the Pentagon on the morning of 9-11, and in the Oval office that evening, took this picture of Birdwell with Norman Minetta.

Birdwell with his wife Mel

I suppose, I should have started with the part about inspiration. The public record was dished out in the same fashion it was planned and created, with a contempt for the hearts and minds of its consumers that can make one choke. Such sloppy work and deliberate muddying of the waters provides a perfect cover. In the case of the Pentagon, the sheer totality of its conception suspended our disbelief. Which is not to say we bought it. We bide our time, and wait for The Big Guy to get to The Big Lie, so that the Big will Die.

At some point, I saw Birdwell in an interview on one of the cable news channels, and his truth became apparent to me, as I saw the consequence of who he had become. By his fruits we shall know him, I believe, is how the New Testament puts it, or maybe it's the Old. Barely able to contain an agitation of resentment, he went through his al-Qaida talking points disconnected from his rage. He described the horror of his treatments, the cadaver skin grafted to his forehead, the maggots introduced to eat the necrotic tissue in his body, and anything that makes leaches seem preferable is pretty awful. But the abstract "enemy" constructed for him to rage upon simply wouldn't take it, as it won't for the rest of America anymore either.

I titled this piece To Serve Man, in honor of an early 1960's episode of The Twilight Zone in which men from outer space come to earth bearing blessings that result in great material abundance and peace.They also bring a book, which the linguists are quick to translate the title of, To Serve Man, which delights the people. They grow fat and happy in response. Attempts at translating the rest of the book are the plot of the episode. Despite the concerns of a few, vacation tours to outer space are offered, giving the populace a 21rst-century version of Roman bread and circuses. The hero decides to see for himself what's up, and joins the line to enter the spaceship, but just as he does, the ingénue races up saying, "We've translated the rest of the book! It's a cookbook!" but the hero gets pushed inside. Perhaps as a kid, this was my first experience with suspense, because I can still feel the thrill at discovering the double entendré. The suspense now is killing me.

The evil is in the church, and it begs the question, who cooks and who burns? Stay tuned.

Ron Sachs: Stealth Agent for a Higher Power

A small but important contribution to the body of visual evidence of the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 was made by Ron Sachs, a freelancer whose work is handled by Corbis Sygma. A political insider of years standing, he's become something of a court portraitist during the recent administration, with apparently unlimited access to the powerful in Republican Washington. A name search at Corbis returns over 3000 of his potent news images, each expressing with clarity an emotion or truth worth a thousand words. His subjects must love him---they let him in big time.

And now, he can return the favor to us.

Sach's was one of several professionals producing work at the pentagon that morning, who also were in the Oval office that evening to photograph President Bush addressing the nation, and I hated him for his privileges.

Or so I thought. I began to realize that despite the bad company, Sach's wasn't fawning over subjects, he was telling an almost unbearable truth in nearly every picture. His glamorous shots taken each year of arrivals at the White House Correspondents' Dinners surely go to the wrong heads, but then his images of Sharon and Ozzie Osbourne arriving in 2002 skewered the event as well, revealing the celebratizing of journalists, instead of celebrating journalism, which is apparent now, if it wasn't then.

Sach's pictures of Chuck Burlingame's funeral are gravely beautiful but not hagiography. With his shots of the exclusively black orphans of Pentagon victims waiting to see the president at a 2002 memorial service, an actuarial truth about attack victims emerges.

Ron went along with the programs of the powerful, giving them the mirrors that made them look their best--—or so they thought-—-all the while collecting truth.

That explains this picture.

(On edit: Fuck Flickr. Flickr deleted my entire 3000 image 9/11 study account at the request of a government agency. Rot in hell, Yahoo. I found a copy on my hard drive.)

Ron Sachs, originally uploaded by stevenwarran.

11 Sep 2001, "Washington DC, United States --- In a terrorist attack, a hijacked plane flew into the Pentagon, tearing into the right side of the building. Part of the Pentagon later collapsed as a result of the damage. An injured person is transported out of the Pentagon in a makeshift ambulance following the attack. --- Photo by Ron Sachs/Corbis Sygma --- Image by © Ron Sachs/CNP/Corbis

Holes in the official story all stem from decisions necessary to focus the impact and direct the deaths, otherwise a 747 would have been used, and damn the torpedoes! A missile going in sideways below the level of the second floor of a poured concrete building meant even a paper dictionary on a wooden stand survived unscathed at the point of impact on a floor above, people did as well, I should think. You can map out the floor plan of recently reoccupied offices on the two lower floors yourself, to see the intention of any sacrificed.

The injuries storyboard was the hardest to produce that day, and various solutions were employed to create the arc of injuries one might expect from a plane attack. From the simple bad acting seen in pictures of the dusty and the traumatized, to the complete anonymity of the seriously injured and their care providers, just look at the 215-page Arlington County After-Action Report, alongside Rumsfeld's 139 page Responding in the Pentagon, to see the numbers not add up. A couple of staged medical vignettes produced a dozen or so necessary images that are corny and ill-fitting. The creation of a work product consisting of seven serious burns is a topic I'll save for later.

With less than 100 wounded, (Maj. Lincoln Leiber left the hospital AMA to get back to the action, (which was the wrong meme, dude,) the medical over-response depicted in the narrative record is an indictment of the truth. That Sach's took the Corbis image of a private vehicle being pressed into service to transport victims to hospital, while every other image records scores of ambulances and helicopters waiting empty, is evidence of his genius for getting the truth out, and either the grace of God or the utter stupidity of man.

With the distracted traffic cop, the casual-dress response, and the suburban atmosphere miles from the action, this image not only defeats the narrative, but gives Ozzie Osborn a hell of a good laugh.

Jack Werber and his Palestinian Hanging

The New York Times yesterday published the obituary of 92-year-old Jack Werber, a survivor of Nazi death camps who was instrumental in helping save the lives of several hundred interned Jewish youngsters, a story told in a book he co-wrote, “Saving Children: Diary of a Buchenwald Survivor and Rescuer.”

The writer for the Times, Dennis Hevesi, ended his obit with this paragraph:

"But bad memories did not fade. A photograph, now infamous, emerged after the war, Professor Helmreich pointed out. It shows three prisoners at Buchenwald. Two are hanging by ropes tied to their hands behind their backs, suspended from a tree. A third prisoner is on the ground. It is Mr. Werber, the professor said, “an officer standing over him with stick under his arm, looking down, a foot jutting into him.”

Professor Helmreich is William Helmreich, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College, who was Werber's co-author of the 1996 memoir.

The man lying face down in the photograph appears lifeless to me. A logical interpretation of the image is that the man has just been cut down after being hung. If the man is Werber, why was he being punished? Didn't he have a high status in the camp as a "barracks clerk?" At what date after the war did Werber's claim of being the man in the picture emerge? Did Helmreich and Werber's 1996 book carry the identification? Why did Werber wait 52 years to write of his experiences at age 82? Would his memory be trustworthy then? Are there any corroborating witnesses or evidence? Is the reference to the officer having a stick under his arm meant to imply Werber has been, or will be, beaten? The web site isurvived.org identifies the SS officer as Buchenwald's chief warden, Martin Sommer, known as the Hangman of Buchenwald. He was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of prisoners. Why would Sommer punish Werber with a flogging at a place of hanging?

If Werber has falsely, or mistakenly, identified himself as the man lying face down in the picture, what does that say about Jewish survivorship and victim-hood? That this most serious punishment---reserved for the gravest crimes in the camps, such as industrial sabotage---would be claimed by a surviving clerk, who later went on to success making Davy Crockett coonskin caps, is, if true, millennial in its madness.

In Jane Meyer's piece in the November 14, 2005 issue of The New Yorker titled, A Deadly Interrogation: Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner? she writes,

"The Associated Press quoted an expert who described the position in which Jamadi died as a form of torture known as “Palestinian hanging,” in which a prisoner whose hands are secured behind his back is suspended by his arms. (The technique has allegedly been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)"

She is talking about Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi "ghost prisoner" who died in Abu Ghraib after a brief "interrogation" at the hands of covert C.I.A. operatives. As may be clear in the Nazi-era photograph, contributing to death is the dislocating of the arms and the collapsing of the thoracic cavity, which leads to asphyxiation. In other words, it is a crucifixion.

Meyer's writing in The New Yorker on the difficult topic of torture has been superbly balanced and nuanced. So I was surprised when I nearly passed over her delicate parenthetical contextualization of "Palestinian hanging," without its meaning registering. Who named it that?

Well obviously, the name was given by the Israelis, who must utilize the horrible and gruesome practice with some frequency to have come up with an insider term as code to use among themselves.

This is not to say that Palestinians haven't also resorted to this sort of torture, just logically they wouldn't name it after themselves.

To spend time looking through internet archives of images of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews in the 1930's and 40's, puts in context the terrible images that flow out of Iraq and Gaza and Lebanon today. It helps me to feel forgiveness for what are, in my opinion, the bullying, amoral tactics of Jewish perpetrators, by knowing that these outrages aren't recent inventions of evolving sick minds, rather they are based in an explainable fear, which must be challenged with sympathy and support for the underdogs.

The Jews are trapped in a cycle of victimization and violence, repeating over and over, off the map and into the sea.

But having joined in an unwise and unholy alliance with American Evangelical Christian groups, combined with the crooked corporate interests who launched George Bush's evil political career, they have become the perpetrators of a destabilizing terroristic threat against Americans like myself. Oddly enough, through Bush, Bandar and George, they share the onus of the Salafism and Islamism of the corrupt ruling family of Saudi Arabia.

For Mr. Werber to self-identify not only as a survivor, but also as a rescuer, adding on an unseemly claim to be the tortured man in an infamous photograph is an illogical overreaching. But it also is a clear sign of God's presence in our affairs. Mr. Werber lived a long and good and successful life--more importantly, he timed his death expertly. May his passing help trigger the self-examination necessary for peace. Victims of unimaginable savagery, through fear Jews now have became as bad, if not worse, than the Nazi sadists who nearly extinguished the race.

On edit, Dec. 26, 2008:

According to this web site, the photograph below is of a photographic display and was taken in the Museum at Dachau in May 2001.

A note says, "The photo, which is a recreation of the 'tree hanging punishment at Buchenwald,' is not included in the new Museum at Dachau which opened in May 2003."

"According to Harold Marcuse, Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara, this scene was created in 1958 for an East German DEFA film, which is why the photo is no longer used [at the museum.] Reference: H. Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen: Ein Bild geht um die Welt," in Stiftung Topographie des Terrors Berlin (ed.), Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief no. 68, Berlin, October 1995, pp. 3-8."

Clearly a variation of the same scene, perhaps Marcuse and Helmreich should compare notes.

Daryl Donley: The Man Behind the Lens

(You may prefer a sequential Daryl Donley experience, in which case, please see my first Donley blog, then move on to my second Donley blog, before continuing here, but I encourage you to try and give it a reverse cowgirl if you're game!)

A video tape of a Library of Congress event, Capturing History: Photojournalists and 9/11, which was held on June 20, 2002, stars the amateur photographer Daryl Donley, who was at the right-slash-wrong place at the Pentagon on 9-11-01, together with a panel of four professional New York City photojournalists working on September 11, 2001, has just worked its way into my consciousness. The one hour and 37 minute tape will begin to play if you go here, and once there you can switch to Real Player for better control options.

The program was sponsored by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, which purchased the 9-11 work of the five. The four professionals had their photographs showing together in a New York gallery, which provided easy, one-stop shopping for the L. of C. How Donley got discovered is a moot point here, although the moderator of the panel, Jeremy Adamson, risks asking the question "So how did your shots get into the media if you don’t have a media connection?" he fails to ask the same of himself: How Donley's Pentagon images wound up in the Library of Congress is the pink elephant sittting in the middle of the lecture hall.,

In any event, Donley is more rhinestone than zircon, especially when experienced amid a couple of diamonds shining forth from the New York contingent. Contrasted against the backdrop of images of real suffering and heroism, Donley reveals more than he intends. The three new photographs we see added to his previously known corpus of five, add absolutely nothing to our knowlege base, but are thrilling nonetheless to jaded old skeptics like me, who drearily click banal view after banal view.

I can't imagine how banality like that exists in the universe without getting sucked down a black hole.

But the real revelations come from watching and hearing Donley in action on tape--my carefully rendered transcript is only a poor substitute. He almost loses it at the very start of his presentation, when even he doesn't take himself seriously, and again, at the end, when asked a question he's obviously prepared for, he flusters. But it's in his mindless rehashing in the middle that some very interesting logistical information sneaks out.

Daryl Donley Transcript Capturing History June 20, 2002 Mumford Room Library of Congress

Hi, umm, before I show the images I’ll just briefly say, umm, as Carol has just mentioned, that I was in front of the Pentagon, stopped in the worse commuter traffic I’d ever experienced, before or since, and then heard a very loud plane, it got progressively louder, and it got so loud I ducked in my…(laughter)…is anyone out there? (laughs)... I, I ducked in my car it got so loud, and I turned to my right and the plane was next to me, umm, at an angle, at just above ground level, and I later realized it had knocked down lampposts next to me, and saw it fly into the Pentagon.

(Picture 1: Overview of diffuse fire with rusty guardrail in front)

So I’ll show you the first image and (question…you have the projector on?) yes, (laughter) there we go. This was the very first photograph that I took. Umm. What, what happened was I, as soon as the plane crashed into the Pentagon, and I, like everyone else, screamed a great deal, got out of my car, paced across the highway, a number of times, and then I realized I had all my camera equipment with me—I was going to photograph Senator Kennedy at the Kennedy Center that night unveiling a new exhibit, and umm, as I spoke with umm, other photographers, umm, Steve, who will speak later, umm, we both had the same reaction, of “I can‘t photograph this!” And the next thought was, “I have to.” So I went to my car, grabbed my equipment, I was shaking like I’d never done before, and had to load camera, film and batteries, and so my first photograph was about three minutes after the impact.

(Picture 2: Diffuse fire—close up)

The thing that really shocked and amazed me was I do have some very nice equipment, I have a 100 to 400mm zoom lens, and I was at the maximum, umm, 400mm scanning the scene, looking for the plane, and could not find it. And, all I could see is possibly some scrap metal in the foreground, but I could only distinguish that later.

(Picture 3: Generator fire)

As you may know, umm, this was the side of the Pentagon that had a, renovation work, done on it, and from what I can tell, this is a generator that was fenced in the construction area, which is right next to the impact site.

(Picture 4: Brand new image: Yellow firetruck arriving)

Umm, this is the only photograph I really waited to happen, umm, this is the first emergency vehicle on the scene umm, I first photographed it in the distance, to the right, if you’re looking at the Pentagon, and since I felt like I was recording a sequence of events, I really wanted to firmly establish what happened and when, so I waited for the fire engine to come into the frame, and then shot it.

(Picture 5: The Donley Fireball)

This is a secondary explosion, probably, , don’t know, probably another tank of fuel in the back of the plane and, it was probably about three or four minutes after the impact, umm, it is about 35 feet in diameter, the explosion goes up to the fourth floor, above ground on the Pentagon, umm, and, you can, I think, in another photograph, you’ll see something else I want to show you.

(Picture 6: Long shot—smoke)

There’s now two columns of smoke, umm, I showed this to my cousin who was in special forces and he knew exactly what kind of jet fuel it was from the way it was burning and the color, and you can see in the top right the sun being eclipsed, also in the foreground, in a couple of photos, you can see the lamppost that was knocked down.

(Picture 7 New close-up)

This is an emergency vehicle at the Pentagon that is for the heliport, where helicopters land, and it was decimated, there is a firefighter running towards it with a fire extinguisher.

(Picture 8: New road shot)

Um, people began to evacuate of course immediately, umm, there was not…people were not running…they were moving quickly, and some people were actually walking slowly, umm, just because they were in disbelief and I could just tell, a major puzzlement: them not knowing what had just happened. This is looking north along, umm, Washington Blvd and Route 27, of all the pentagon employees and personnel evacuating, and cars stopped. Once we were stopped in traffic we were held there for at least ten minutes, and then when they were ready, they wanted us out of there as fast as possible. Also you can see in the road, possibly, all the, umm, debris from the Pentagon—there’s lots of cement chunks in the road.

(Picture 9: New shot, different side of Pentagon)

This is, umm, again, the emergency vehicles all assembled, as, as the time went on, it’s to the right of the Pentagon if you’re on the roadway. Once we got cleared out, umm, once I picked up my camera I became a photographer, umm, and was looking at the scene as a photographer, always looking for the shot. And as we drove away, as we were moved out, I photographed some personnel on the side of the road, and then this shot caught my eye in the rear view mirror, and for me it really tells the story of the day and what happened to all of us, just a basic disbelief and shock of what has just happened, with the, if you can’t see in the back, there is a, umm, gentleman, a businessman with a briefcase, standing in the middle of the road, right in front of the source of the smoke in the distance.(Tape edited?) And thank you.(Scattered applause.

Jeremy Adamson: Daryl you were there at the Pentagon, your photographs were reproduced, Life magazine. How did that happen?

Well, I never wanted to be a photojournalist, (laughter) umm, I have always been passionate about photography, umm, I certainly admire and respect all photojournalists (snicker,) but its not something that I wanted to do, fulltime, so when, when I was, but I, if you will, was at the wrong place at the wrong time….

Susan Watts (NY Daily News Photographer): Or the right place at the right time

....or the right place at the right time....but first I just wanted to address this certain theme in photographing in circumstances like this, there seems to be a certain (inaudible) that “then something took over, and I’m a photographer,” there’s a certain distance that happens, it’s sort of like Tai Chi, practicing everything slowly but then all of a sudden when called to, everything is fast, but it’s comfortable, it’s automatic, you don’t think about it, umm I have been a photographer most of my life, umm, just in different contexts, so the moment I decided, umm, that I was going to photograph, then it was not about me, it’s about recording history and then all of a sudden I was a photographer and it was just automatic, umm, so, umm. I’m sorry....what was your question? (snicker)

Jeremy Adamson: (patting Donley’s arm) So how did your shots get into the media if you don’t have a media connection?

....umm, well....after, umm, I, finally....well, to cut to the end of the story, once I finally got home and was watching the news like everyone else, I remembered I had a friend who worked at the Gannett, newspaper, main office, so I called her with, umm, I called her and told her I witnessed what happened....concentrating....and she took down my account....starring off into the middle distance....and she brought me to her photo editor that Friday after I got the film back when the lab reopened, umm, and....hocus pocus—keep the focus!....from there it went to a photo agency and the, umm, images got published throughout Europe and made it into the Life book....nod..…nod?…....silence....I just want to add one thing too, that something that was very satisfying to me in the vein of recording this for history, I did get a full set of my images to the FBI, umm, I had contacted them through somebody else, and it was something I wanted to do, it took a while to accomplish, but umm, but I had noticed that one of the images, that was not up here—a close up shot of the entry point of the crash, that I noticed five week’s afterwards, that there was a person in it, and, umm, which completely horrified me, then I notified the FBI and got them a full set of photos and they said it would help with their investigation, so that was very satisfying, that, just in that decision to make, to take, the photos, that it would make a difference....nod....once we were stopped in traffic we were held there for at least ten minutes, and then when they were ready, they wanted us out of there as fast as possible. Once we got cleared out, umm....and as we drove away, as we were moved out.

What is Donley saying here? Don't try and read between the lines, just read the lines!

I'm editing in (on August 21) a juicy quote of Donley's from an article by Gary Wheeler published in Gannett News Service, on September 11, 2001, called "Witnesses: Airplane hit the Pentagon hard", The quote reads, “Another witness, Daryl Donley, saw the crash as he was driving on Washington Boulevard. Among debris that was scattered as the plane crashed, he found a "scorched green oxygen tank marked 'Cabin air. Airline use'" on the road.” The article has been apparently, suppressed

Steve Riskus Needs a Critical Thrashing

When I said in a recent blog that Steve Riskus’ Pentagon 9-11 “strike” photographs weren’t posted online in a timely enough fashion to be credible as evidence, I generated a response from a certain online persona named xjacktarx, who posted on the Riskus message board,

"That guy says you waited months to make those photos public, but didn’t you post them on pr.n or pf.c or whatever it was on the actual day of the attacks?”

If I had only read that message board first, a discussion of the work of Gerard Holmgren and Dick Eastman, it would have spared me my mistake. Not only was the Riskus series posted online September 11, winding up on a website launched only the day before, but the posting was up within an hour, which is quick editing, even for a task force. This would confirm my belief that in the five relevant Riskus pictures (eight others are meaningless, pointless contextual poppycock,) the foregrounds were staged and photographed in advance and married to the background scenes of a burning Pentagon within the hour. Such doctoring is common throughout all the meaningful work of every photographer who took pictures that day at the Pentagon.

I dug a little in the Internet archive known as The Wayback Machine, and came upon the Critical Thrash Index of Terror, a synopsis of the web site’s history. After posting his pictures on September 11, 2001, Riskus updated the site on March 11, 2002 with the addition of thumbnails, probably as an enticement for those with slower computers who were having a hard time uploading such large photo files. Lastly, on January 6, 2003 he created the page as we see it today, an existential blank slate, without context or linkage, but with an overkill of contact information as compensation.

His JPEG’s are numbered 11 through 26, so first, we can wonder what became of images one through ten? And since his current website displays 13, not 15, we cull to find two missing images, numbers 16 and 21, and how such things can be indexed and be missing from the archive taxes my computer organizational skills completely. Additionally, we find two images, numbers 12 and 14 that were thoughtfully relinquished from the current web page—shots of the Riskus arm,

and the Riskus dashboard.


These were probably originally intended as tributes to the authenticity Gods but were misunderstood as burnt offerings in the temple of Skepticism and Cynicism, thus fell out of favor. As is typical of all the Pentagon photographs, the least amount of information conveyed is the clear intent—here, atypically, by a lack of camera focus, not that knowledge of a Burgundy Impala's mileage would be empowering to anyone.

The great discovery of the index is the unveiling of Riskus’ role in the authoring and disseminating to the web on March 27, 2002, of

“A list of witness at or near to the Pentagon, September 11^th, 2001 collated from reports to be found online,”

a document I first linked to from an article published in the National Review on April 9, 2002, by the conservative columnist, James S. Robbins, called, 9/11 Denial, an attack on Thierry Meyssan's book, “L'Effroyable Imposture,” the earliest book published to question the Pentagon story. In the article, Robbins lays claim to being an eyewitness himself, although he links to an eyewitness list, which doesn’t have his name on it. No authorship is claimed for the list, but internal evidence suggests guilt by association with Robbins. For instance, the entry for Alfred S. Regnery, "president and publisher of Regnery Publishing, Inc., a sister company of Human Events,” is definitely TMI. A clue to a Riskus’ role is in a truncated quote given for Mike Walter, the USAToday reporter who was one of the many Gannett employees who saw a ferreting American Airlines 757 jetliner burrow in sideways to the Pentagon. Walter's quoted, "I was sitting in the northbound on 27 and the traffic was, you know, typical rush-hour--it had ground to a standstill. I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, ‘This doesn't add up, it's really low.’ And I saw it. I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon."

Left out, his CNN quote continues, "Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out. And then it was chaos on the highway as people tried to either move around the traffic and go down, either forward or backward. We had a lady in front of me, who was backing up and screaming, 'Everybody go back, go back, they've hit the Pentagon.' It was just sheer terror." Was that left out on purpose because it conflicted with the visual evidence of detachment and calm that permeates his shot? And why by the way, did Daryl Donley get the only early fireball shots and the big Life bucks? Riskus was there and he didn’t need to compose himself, the cool dude.


The website which is his cover story, doesn’t even link to his terror page. All in all, it is a weird level of participation in these matters.

Before there was criticalthrash.com there was youthenrage.com where somebody by the name of Dave Hackett had a slogan Youth Enraged For All My Life. When you clicked on his picture you read, "There is nothing here yet. Hopefully soon I will be obtaining a digital camera and a new domain name for this site. I plan on making this site a place for midatlantic pool and ditch skaters. I want this to be a network of all the skate spots around. Eventually I will be putting up a messageboard so people can post the places they skate. I will also put up a gallery and a listing of wide decks and crap like that. If you have any suggestions or anything like that email me." So what happened Dave? You don't have to be indeterminate any longer.

Artist Aaron Koplin Soars with "Flight Patterns"

It's been awhile since I've been as excited by a creative result as much as I am in watching a very short video clip, Flight Patterns by Aaron Koplin, found on YouTube,




A shorter but much higher quality version can be found at the UCLA Center for Embedded Networking Systems

Koplin takes F.A.A. flight data and uses it to create luminous video maps of human interconnectivity in an ingenious and utterly modern retake on the famous video capture of the FAA radar screen going slowly blank on September 11, 2001 after American air space was shut down in response to the attacks on New York and Washington.

Art at its highest level heals, and Koplin's goes a long way in healing the collective wound of 9-11, so much so, in fact, that the work makes the idea of flying seem almost magical again.

Part of its artistry for me stems from the setting at U.C.L.A. that gave rise to it, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, given partial funding by the federal government, since the Christian conservatives haven't caught on to it yet as Art with a Capital A, and demanded the money be used instead for third-world abstinence education.

Koplin's work is part of a larger project called Celestial Mechanics, which is "a planetarium-based artwork installation that visualizes the statistics, data, and protocols of man made aerial technologies---a graphic display of the paths and functions of the machines hovering, flying, and drifting above our planet. The sky is filled with aircraft that transport people from place to place, perform utilitarian duties, assist in communications, enact military missions, or wander above us as debris. Celestial Mechanics combines science, statistical display, and contemporary art by presenting these mechanical patterns and behaviors as a dynamic visual experience," to which I say, O.K!

A work sheet page here documents different components that go into the assemblage.

Flight Patterns has already generated artistic response, a sure sign of merit.

Artists have been at the forefront in stopping the descent of the earth's peoples into the madness of Armageddon, a list that in my opinion includes even the director Mel Gibson---a man true to his artistic impulse. Aaron Koplin (and I insist on pronouncing that as Copeland) is a rising young star with a bullet, up there with the artist who woke me up, old Harold Pinter.