Peter Turnley and David Turnley: Photographer Twins at Ground Zero

It is becoming more evident that all the photographers who took the image record of the attacks on September 11th, 2001, in New York City and in Arlington, Virginia, were key co-conspirators to a plot---an inside job undertaken and covered up by secretive members of intelligence agencies working for a worldwide elite.

Whether professional, free-lance or amateur, every image released to the public bears hallmarks of in-authenticity, which we can begin to recognize in the dawning light of reason and truth.

For instance, understanding that an approximately 200-to-300-foot-tall central section of the South Tower's core columns stood for 31 hours after the buildings disintegrated Tuesday morning, damns any image taken of the vicinity during that time frame which lacks this 15, to 20-story element. (See yesterday's blog.)

All the images were filtered through a central office for vetting. Some passed muster after errant details were obscured by photoshopping smoke effects---or fire hoses endlessly spraying WhiteOut into the Pentagon. Any authorial distinction was discouraged, or edited out, although some people were hand-picked for special fame and fortune. This obscuring of meaningful detail further homogenized the work product into a witless gruel, which didn't do its intended job of telling us a believable story---but instead, the story has became about what was not told.

It would be a startling coincidence for such a broad cross-section of news journalists to have produced an image record nearly completely lacking in personal identification, using the standard news journalism photo captions. Instead, those captions were utilized for a repetitive drumbeat about suicidal Arab hi-jackers, with their preferred method of crashing big Boeing's.

Apparently, 9/11 was viewed conceptually as so traumatic an event that editorial boards, on down to gumshoe reporters, uniformly decided to forgo this normal operating procedure as unnecessary journalisticly to sell the story.

So far I have only found two shots from the 11th and 12th, which carry any identification. Both were published in the New York Times. In one, taken in Brooklyn by Suzanne DeChillo, a distraught young woman, Sharnise Wingate, "who witnessed the second plane flying into the tower," is depicted after the first collapse. A motive here is clear, if not her sightline.

In another image, taken by Andrea Mohin, a dazed and bloody Joseph Sylvester walks homeward across the Brooklyn Bridge. This illustrates that any photograph primarily focusing on one or two such individuals should likewise have carried their identification.



Interestingly, naming names wasn't a problem in the dozens of images showing Palestinian women and children celebrating the attacks in the West Bank and Gaza by firing guns and throwing candy in the air. This story-line went circling the globe by Tuesday, September 11th, at 10:15 a.m.

The failure to gather names and report on them is especially glaring in the images of grieving family members attending memorial services. The international news photographer Peter Turnley's images are marred by this inherent disrespect---calling someone "the wife of a slain fireman" is a generality when a specific is called for---especially when she is seen delivering a solitary John-John salute to her husband that only she can spot. No, make that especially when getting an arm assist by an unseen woman handler!

In the context of the "vicsim" research currently underway at the Reality Shack forum, categorizing a cast of characters simply as "mourners," does not legitimize and authenticate the reality of an established and individuated life. Nor does using the lump category, "funeral for a fireman killed on September 11th," suffice to do honor to anyone "real"---but that may be the point.






The very successful photojournalist Peter Turnley, (his twin brother is an equally successful one,) made an interesting professional contribution during 9/11. His 9/11 story is told mainly in an article Seeing the Horror Part II, at The Digital Journalist (Part I is good too.)

In a nut shell,

"I discreetly made my way through a makeshift morgue and triage center for injured victims that was established in a Brooks Brother's store at 1 Liberty Plaza, and found a dark stairway leading upstairs. I went up and found an empty floor of racks of clothes all covered by two inches of dust, and in front of me was a wall of blown out windows, looking over the destruction of ground zero. I found a small office that seemed discreet enough that I wouldn't be in anyone's way or be found there. I sat down to spend the whole night until 7:00am, mostly by myself, looking out and photographing the incredible scene in front of me. I will always remember the unique and surreal feelings of solitude and intimacy I felt with this scene that long night. Around 3:00am, I began to feel very cold and walked into the Brooks Brothers display room and borrowed a cashmere overcoat covered with two inches of dust. I carefully put it back in the morning before leaving."

If you examine the 30 images attributed to him in Peter Turnley's Photo Gallery, only eleven were taken at Ground Zero on the first evening and the morning of the 12th. Six of those are rather obvious efforts at fire department hagiography---depicting glum firemen posed sitting around, or just standing there looking blank. But Turnley does his part in constructing this bogus emotional narrative when he captions some images, "Firemen exhausted after an all-night search for victims. September 12."

Three images appear to have been taken from his elevated hide-away in Brooks Brothers. If so, in the first image we are then looking west, with 116 Liberty Street in the upper left-hand corner. The pile from stricken Building 4 should be in the cleaned-up foreground. The following image, labeled "Ground Zero -- Night of September 11, 2001" should have the towering stalactite remains of Building Two rising up in the background, but it doesn't.
These two images are clearly of the same buff-colored building at 116 Liberty Street. Directly beside the building should be the New York fire department headquarters of Ladder 10 & Engine 10, with it's bright red equipment door. The two images would appear to me to be mutually exclusive.
Taken in the morning of September 12th, well before five p.m. that Wednesday, of what we may presume to be the South Tower remains.
Having this number of "rescue workers" clambering over "the pile" at this point in time is at odds with the narrative of having the precarious remains of the Tower Two remaining standing.

But it is in the following three images that Peter Turnley reveals himself unwittingly. They are of some of the myriad displays put up throughout New York City of "missing persons" posters seeking information about relatives lost at the Trade Center.



It was over at the Reality Shack forum recently that someone had the presence of mind to question this street-art phenomena as being an illegitimate and synthetic ploy for sympathy and validation by the plotters themselves.

If you stop to think about it, the whole idea of a spontaneous, organic missing-persons poster-posting movement arising after 9/11, and covering available city wall surfaces with photocopied pleas for help and information is absolutely absurd. I certainly bought it at the time. I was only familiar with the display put up at the Armory on Lexington Avenue and 26th Street, because I stayed in an apartment nearby. That made sense since the armory was serving as a drop-in center serving the families.

But trying to put yourself in the mindset of a distraught family member living out in Queens---if your victim worked at the Trade Center and didn't come home that evening, would you really think it logical to paper Manhattan with a poorly reproduced image and your telephone number? I could understand it as a therapy for grief perhaps.

But then, in a brilliant synergy of divine intervention, I saw an image taken by Peter's brother, David Turnley. It is of a shuttered-up restaurant somewhere in the Village entirely papered over in fliers. Can you image that each of these fliers was put up by a separate individual working over time? Of course not! This appears exactly similar to the low-brow mini-memorials stocked with cut-out angels, teddy bears, American flags, and child-scribbled messages of hope and revenge. It is entirely a made-up construct. Why would one victim's family follow other victim's families to this location? What's the value in the mass display? If this was legit, why wouldn't a poster stick to telephone kiosks?

This image pleases me immensely. To see the fabricators of a narrative element so badly overplaying their hand, provides for some confirmation that this visual manipulation was not real. It also results in what I would call near-art.

Following are some images that reveal a bit of Peter Turnley's apoplectic political and racial biases.

Hamas Militants Gaza 1993

Peter Turnley at the West Bank 1993

Jew Praying on the West Bank 1993

"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservatives, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history."
-Ari Shavit Ha'aretz News Service (Israel) April 5, 2003

Below is some bibliography. Most interesting, is Peter Turnley's authorship of a stunning series of photos taken of the Iraqi "Highway to Hell," or "Mile of Death," a murderous "turkey shoot" on Iraqis retreating from Kuwait on a single ribbon of road that was utterly vulnerable to American bombers and fighters in 1993. While Turnley would appear to have been a good guy for getting the images out into the public record somehow, I think his delay of over a decade marks him as an establishment insider---how else to account for his access in the first place? This would make him a peace-loving liberal poseur hiding his longtime agency death-cult connections, and that would account for his splendid career advancements. Always in the right place at the right time---right Peter?

PeterTurnley.com His professional page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turnley

Peter Turnley photographs the Highway to Hell

Peter Turnley - The Unseen Gulf War

Highway of Death American War Crime Gulf War
by EuroYank On Tuesday, February 24, 2009 At 1:20 AM

Photojournalism and Foreign Affairs By David D. Perlmutter January 27, 2005
Foreign Policy Research Institute

In the Perlmutter link above:

"...in My American Journey, Secretary of State Colin Powell explained his reasons for advising an end to hostilities in the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait, and their escape route out of Kuwait City had turned into a shooting gallery for U.S. fliers. Reporters began referring to this road as the Highway of Death. “The television coverage,” Powell wrote, “was starting to make it look as if we were engaged in slaughter for slaughter’s sake.”

Jennifer Steinhauer, Peter Duveen, Chief Tom Vallebuona & Captain Chris Boyle: Pancake Theory or Domino Effect?

Several pieces of evidence in the written record of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Arlington support a version of reality at odds with what it would appear to be in the limited and stylized photographic record of the event.

For instance, a little-known article by Jennifer Steinhauer published in the New York Times on September 13, 2001, As Remnants Collapse, Workers Run For Cover, describes "the steel and concrete wreckage of the south tower" falling about 5 p.m. on Wednesday the 12th---32 hours after the buildings were struck, This caused a "rolling pillar of smoke" similar to the three pyroclastic dust clouds on September 11th. Although Steinhauer quotes an unnamed firefighter as yelling, ''[t]hat part will go! We are waiting for it to collapse,'' only moments before it did so, she attributes the timing to "seeming aftershocks"---while limiting her description of the ruin, calling it only the "remaining floors of the south tower."

This single-source reference to a dramatic "stampede" by rescue workers "fleeing" danger 24 hours after the already delayed destruction of Building 7, was effectively unknown until December 2008, when Peter Duveen posted hard copies of five articles from the Times, and three from the New York Post into digital existence online. Since all eight contain information which calls into question details of the official narrative of the attacks, it seems plausible that an effort was made to suppress the journalism, an effort which was entirely successful for eight years.

It would not be surprising perhaps, given the tumult in the days following the attacks that even a significant occurrence could fail to be reported on. What is surprising however, is reconciling this newly perceived physical reality with seemingly deliberate lacuna in the homogenized image record---what has been perversely touted as being the most heavily photographed event in world history.

A larger implication here is the ability of thousands of responders to Ground Zero to keep this encore dust cloud a secret---although several oral histories allude to the matter.

In one of them, that of Battalion Chief Tom Vallebuona, we can also see the subsequent efforts of government operatives posing as 9/11 truth seekers who attempt to cover-up the truth with disinformation. Vallebuona is quoted in full by both Killtown and The Web Fairy,

"We thought 7 World Trade Center was going to fall and push the side of the World Trade Center that was still standing, and then it was going to go into 90 and I thought the scaffold was going to fall and cover the block and kill another 30 people." Cached

although they don't draw any significance from the statement. While a poster on an abovetopsecret thread, 186000, Swampfox46_1999, truncated the quote, and nips potential nagging doubts in the bud with a bald-faced lie.

"We thought 7 World Trade Center was going to fall and push the side of the World Trade Center that was still standing." (Before you jump on this one, this refers to the five story piece of exterior metalwork from WTC1) Cached

Quoting Battalion Chief Tom Vallebuona in a fuller context, and referencing his remarks to a site plan, makes it plain he feared Building 7 could have a domino effect on the South Tower, which could then impact 90 West Street.

"90 West St. also had next to it a scaffold covering the whole building and with everything we've been through with scaffolds, I mean that scaffold would have covered the whole block. We were very concerned about the scaffolding, so we tried to knock down the fire.
snip...
"I couldn't get rid of that feeling like everything is going to collapse. 7 World Trade Center---I couldn't even watch that. I said that's enough. I refused to watch that. I took R-and-R. I said you guys can watch that one.
snip...
"We thought 7 World Trade Center was going to fall and push the side of the World Trade Center that was still standing, and then it was going to go into 90 and I thought the scaffold was going to fall and cover the block and kill another 30 people."

The South Tower was 208-feet square in plan and it sat about 300 feet from 90 West Street. That is about the height of a thirty-story building. Another fire department oral history is explicit about the height of the South Tower remains:
Captain Chris Boyle:

"First, we went to Liberty and Church and that was the big pile from the south tower that came down. There was a pile there, had to be 15, 20 stories high with guys roaming around on the pile."

This would be a good point to remember that before Ground Zero became known in the public imagination as "the pile," it was referenced in the media as "the pit." Sending out the right signals about the amount, nature and composition of the debris is one thing. Inventing a "pancake" demolition theory that could incorporate standing sentinels of massive steel core columns is something else. Like the total absence of any images showing fire in the south face of Building 7, the motive for the cover-up is very clear.

Another reference from Perrugia, John, the EMS Division Chief in charge of planning for
the Chief of Department's office.

"I looked up and saw this big gaping hole where the south tower used to be. That's the first point that I realized that the south tower had collapsed. Maybe ten or 15 stories high left of it. Probably most of it being a pile of rubble."

A partial list of photo-journalists active in the southeast quadrant of Ground Zero on 9/11, would include Todd Maisel, Ricky Flores, Lori Grinkler, James Nachwey, Thomas E. Franklin, Glen Petit, while publisher Kevin Sutavee, was also located there late in the day with his video camera. (Here's a bunch more. I have a very special blog coming up on the Turnley twins. David Swanson Carolina Salguero, Klaus Reisinger, Rick Falco, Aristede Economopoulos, Mary Altaffer, Peter Turnley, David Turnley) None of them captured a landscape overview that included the South Tower. Most of these professionals only have only a few images in the public record each. We should ask their editors to share the full sequence of any images they took that day as a context---even if utterly banal, the public would benefit.

In his oral history, Battalion Chief Tom Vallebuona, offered up a bit of wry sarcasm, which was spared the blackout marker:

"I walked by where they had the landing gear or whatever in the street, I mean I'm looking, I'm saying what are you kidding me?

On Edit, December 13: I just found the first official mention of the event in the record. From the Office of Emergency Preparedness, Situation Report #7, dated September 15, 2001 1200 Eastern, maintained in a pdf found in the "old" 911digitalarchive.org site

"Shortly after 1000 hours the south tower of the World Center collapsed. Within the next half-hour, the northern tower of the World Trade Center also collapsed.

"At approximately 1730 hours a third tower in the World Trade Center complex, Building #7, also collapsed.

"Wednesday evening, September 12, another building within the World Trade Center Complex collapsed. No additional casualties are expected due to this. However, it may make recovery more difficult."

On Edit, Dec. 14: I just found the first mention of official disinformation concerning this subsequent collapse on September 12---in the Police Commissioner, City of New York, Bernard B. Kerik's September 27, 2001 memorandum to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, titled, "Weekly Report."

NY B33 NYPD Weekly Reports to Giuliani Fdr- 9-27-01 Report

[Somebody posted the document to Scribe, but the Cached version is the only one working at the moment, it seems.]

"Because of known suspected or potential structural damage to other buildings, most mass transit service was suspended south of 14th Street at 9:03 a.m. on September 11. This precaution proved prudent when on Tuesday, September 12, 1 Liberty Plaza experienced a partial collapse In addition to the total destruction of 1 and 2 World Trade Center, and the partial collapse'of 1 Liberty Plaza, buildings 3, 5 and 7 World Trade Center were also destroyed."

This is an odd and weak attempt to disguise the truth. In her article written on September 13th, Steinhauer directly references the building at 1 Liberty Plaza as being not in danger of collapse

"Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen said last night at a news conference that engineers were busy inspecting neighboring buildings in response to reports of a crack in 1 Liberty Plaza, the 64-story high rise. That plaza has sustained structural damage, but officials said last night that although they had not determined the extent of the damage to that building or others on Liberty Street, they did not believe that it was in imminent danger of collapse."

Writing Five Days After the Event, Why Did the Washington Post Get Two AA Pilot's Names Wrong?

Correction to This Article
David Charlebois, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate and American Airlines first officer who died in the American Airlines Flight 77 crash, was incorrectly identified in a Sept. 16 article.
A Sept. 16 article recounting the events of Sept. 11 incorrectly reported the first name of John Ogonowski, the pilot of the American Airlines plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15

For All My Really, Really Terrific New Friends Over at Reality Shack 9/11

First is the Getty image from February 2002---and it comes fully identified (anybody who makes a joke about a "high-speed ferry" will get a quick, spasmodic cream pie in the eye.)

401354 04: (L to R) Christine Lategano-Nicholas, Rev. Patrick Fitzgerald, New York City Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, Dympna Jessich, twin sister of Father Mychal Judge, and New York Waterway President Arthur E. Imperatore Jr. christen "The Father Mychal Judge" high-speed ferry February 20, 2002 in New York City. Judge was the New York City Fire Department chaplain who died along with 342 firefighters in the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Dateline: New York, NY, United States

[Christine Lategano was the assistant with whom Mayor Rudi Giuliani was having an affair. She should be hung upside down beside Il Duce after the tribunals, so I hope she's wearing some nice underwear.] For the dense crew of 9/11 researchers over at Reality Shack (or should that be Reality Hytten? Har, har: Heightened Reality!!!!) who must research their way out of a wet paper bag, I offer the following images.

Consider this an artistic response to a thread, 9/11 And September Clues, Q & A with Simon Shack, which along with a thread dedicated to Father Judge, means to discuss the "reality" of Father Mychal Judge---victim, or vicsim, depending on who you talk to, number one in the 9/11 psy-op.

The images are off my hard drive, downloaded at some distant point in time. They would appear to be from a book published in 2006 called, 'The Saint of 9/11: Father Mychal Judge'. (Available for purchase, I should think, guys.)

Most come with apparent documented publishing history and authorship.

2006_saint_of_911_004 Al Paglione, 1974, The Record, Bergen County, N.J.

2006_saint_of_911_002 Al Paglione, 1974, The Record, Bergen County, N.J.

2006_saint_of_911_005 Rich Gigli , 1982, The Record, Bergen

2006_saint_of_911_010by Ozier Muhammad, courtesy of Newsday

2006_saint_of_911_003 Photo by Michael Goldman

2006_saint_of_911_007 Photo by Michael Goldman

2006_saint_of_911_006 Father Mychal Judge

2006_saint_of_911_001 Fr. Mychal with FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen

This doesn't necessarily mean they are "real," in the sense that they have been verified as having indeed been published in The New Jersey Bergen County Record in 1974 and 1982; with the Ozier Muhammad photo published in Newsday at an unknown date. But they would indicate a "back story" of some rather extreme effort at the very least.

Father Judge was famously involved in ministering in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, and that should have some documentation too. He appears to have been quite the publicity hound---and certainly not shy. The rather tacky detail about his stopping to comb his hair in the mirror and apply hair spray after he had gotten the call to go down to the WTC site says more than a 1000 pictures could.

I suppose these images might not have been available for some reason on Google image search. I can think of no other reason why the great assortment of clairvoyant depth researchers at Reality Shack could have missed them. What else are they missing I wonder?

If you have an hour-and-a-half to spare, why don't you watch the movie? There is not one sincere, authentic moment in the entire work.

Reality Shack 9/11: The Famous hoi polloi, aka Max Konrardy at Work

Any real discussion group requires an overt organizing principle for it to be considered probable reasoning. The newly established InvisionFree forum message board Reality Shack, formed by the recently homeless members of a suddenly shuttered message board 9/11movement.org does not constitute a "real" discussion group---nor can any of the other myriad discussion boards operating under the InvisionFree model be considered as such. In fact, the very terms of service deny such a reality to exist.

Somewhere at the dawn of the computer age, a disconnect was postulated. This disconnect hazarded that internet message board users had left the real world behind them. They hence were to go forth with "nicknames"---avatar shields to their former identities and lives---into this new, vast cyber reality.

Affinity corrals were constructed with software, which allow these new denizens of cyberspace to rally round others with similar belief systems and agendas. These message boards were headed by "administrators" and "moderators" who could edit submissions and enforce orthodoxy by banning members.

The very Terms of Service [the "TOS"] or Terms of Use [the unfortunate "TOU"] underlying the use of the software demanded that all the participates refrain from posting any identifying information about the real names or origins of the membership. It became the first rule and cardinal sin not to break this "container."

The fundamental problem with this structure is that it was created by nefarious self-serving entities like the U.S. military-run program D.A.R.P.A., and other covert intelligence organizations, like the CIA. Conceptually, what might have been designed for freedom's sake, became a fearsome trap. Whatever one said or espoused online on the Internet, from political opinion to material advocacy carried with it a new price of exposure.

This eventually led to a preponderance of nonsensical intrigue, as "sock puppets" appeared---sub identities known only to board cognoscenti, who often posted on message boards alongside their master identities. They could frequently be found having discussions, fights, even flirtations with themselves!

This flawed model sought to impose on the reality of open social intercourse the conventions of a subterranean world inhabited by spooks, spies, agents, and operatives of clandestine forces, which exist ostensibly for the safety and protection of society. But these organizations---the United States military is a prime example---which have long held lustrous reputations, have in recent generations seen them tarnished as a consequence of the illegal and immoral wars undertaken at the behest of a profit-driven military-industrial complex.

Many message board communities sprang up in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 whose stated purpose was the quest for the truth of attacks whose narrative storyline in the mainstream media---television, newspapers, and magazines---was confusing, contradictory and chimeric. Groups ran the gamut from orthodox support of the official view, to a more and more skeptical outlook, then back again to debunk the skeptic's claims. Nobody ever claimed to be in support of something less- or else than the truth.

But that is what it would appear to me. The denizens that regrouped at Reality Shack are advancing a radical new theory about the attacks of 9/11. They suggest that out of the nearly 3000 people who were said to have died that day, nearly all of them are synthetic creations of a hidden government's propaganda machine---"vicsims" they are called, for simulated victims. This was carried off, they say, by an army of real-life actors and actresses playing the be-grieved roles of widows and orphans, surviving spouses and coworkers, aunts, uncles and cousins---coaches and school mates, all the interpersonal accouterments of the dying and the surviving, and all of them lying.

This theory naturally is predicated on the belief that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of our fellow Americans, along with a wider world of citizenry, could somehow take part in a collective scheme---even if only at various levels of knowledge and witting complicity---which surely must rank as the most horrendous affront to human dignity and morality to have ever occurred on the planet Earth.

For the record, I believe this theory, or something like it, is true. How such a thing could be accomplished, is, for me as an outsider, still mind-boggling.

But the same group of activist researchers and 9/11 truth seekers at Reality Shack who are promoting this theory, ask us to believe that they are somehow outside of this selfsame scheming system. They want us to know that they are the great truth tellers in the drama. They have uncovered the deepest secrets. They have divined the organizational blunders. And then without a hidden motive, or ulterior agenda, they spill forth their collective knowledge for the betterment of mankind. They will settle for nothing less than the full punishment of every criminal---even if that suggests a fundamental reorganization of all societal norms and mores, a cleansing, purging, and cathartic epiphany of universal proportions.

So then, why do they act like spooks and spies themselves? Why are they afraid for the world to know who and what they are? Might not theirs be a tendentious story line equal to any others?

There is much infighting between the group and their outliers. The prominent group leader who goes by the pleasant sounding name Killtown, headed the previous message board, 9/11movement.org, a board which mysteriously disappeared, taking with it a collected body of research---a loss symbolically on par with the burning of the ancient library at Alexandria. Alas, no member had made a copy, or mirror of the work, and no one seems to really care very much.

Killtown is only a junior member of the new community. The incorporating triad of the new board goes by the internet nicknames, dduck, hoi polloi, and Simon Shack.

A prominent antagonist of Killtown's, as well as several other senior contributors on both message boards, runs a blog called Killtown's Secret Archive. It is here that the tight corset of secrecy binding these identities begins to unravel.

(Apparently the rules governing free speech are looser at blog hosts than forum message boards. I should know. For four years Google Blogger has allowed me unfettered access to an internet soapbox. When a government-released image I'd posted drew the ire of unknown officials, my entire Yahoo Flickr account was terminated, but Google allowed me to repost a copy of the image without further censorship.)

The fight amongst the principles apparently has nothing to do with 9/11 truth, skepticism or denial at all. It is a cat fight of wounded egos and sexual ids, principally between two men---the unidentified Killtown---and someone I know by triangulating postings as an Australian named Vincent Scott. Scott has a serious hard on for two other board members in particular too, one named ozzybinoswald, and another Fred---both of these internet personas are likely to be Neil Edward Thomson of Sooke, British Columbia, Canada, although Fred might be a Fred Weber of New Jersey.

I was a member of Reality Shack from October 20th until October 29th---for all of nine days, and that has to be a world record for me. Being outside of the power dynamics, and a rather volatile and reactive character to boot, it is easy for me to misstep and alienate the supervisory powers. Being subject to unilateral editing and the threat of summary banishment also never suited my mood.

Understanding board dynamics is as important to success on a message board as it is to a corporate board of directors. I had been banned from the previous board incarnation by Killtown as a preemptive gesture. But with the revived board, which was founded (I thought,) by two new friends of mine, men with whom I had only recently spent an intensive week of around-the-clock researching, I really had to push the issue to get canned.

Through it all however, I gained a clearer focus on what established allegiances between a group of men who refuse to publically identify themselves portended---especially in the context of a public feud with a nominally secret opponent.

This whole sorry tale is told (mostly) on a thread here.


PART ONE: CHECK BACK SOON FOR UPDATES

Hi Steve,

Thanks again for the compliments.

I see you got yourself banned from RS. That was quick. What's the deal over there? I was surprised at what happened to you, considering that you just went all the way to Italy to hang out with them. I would have though you guys were buddies? I guess not.

I'm not sure what to make of what's going on there? Especially after everything that happened to me over on **, I don't trust anyone anymore, so maybe I'm being over sensitive. But something doesn't feel right there.

Peace
*****

Well *****, it came as a complete shock and hard emotional blow to get canned the way I did, but I'd call this God doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.

Yes, we were buddies. Visiting Simon in Rome was my great breakthrough moment, when I finally aligned myself with someone in the movement. When movement.org coincidentally (?) went down and Simon and hoi started Reality Shack I was surprised when they didn't invite me to be an administrator. The only good thing to come out of the whole episode was the revelation of the power dynamic---that Simon is beholden to D.Duck (hoi/Max is 26-years-old and seems to be a relative innocent to the power machinations.)

Simon is a *** ** * ****, IMHO. There is no evidence that he himself did the video analysis work attributed to him (Am I envious of his growing stature and fame? Is my perception flawed as a result? Open questions.) Killtown, Killtown's enemy (***** *******/******* *****,) Ozzybinoswald, and certainly now this dduck person, are all some sort of operatives in something. I have never been able to sort the good guys out from the bad guys. I fly on a wing and a prayer. I may be doing harm to responsible, good people, but I wouldn't know. (I do know who the good girls are though---SLaD and DYEW!)

I still believe in no planes and video fakery. I think someone needs to do a more sober analysis of the video record (it can wait; it's not going anywhere; it can't be tampered with.) I believe some ratio of victims are vicsims but I can't fathom what the agenda is of Simon and hoi's presentation of the material---with their autocratic unwillingness to correlate their work with other aspects of the record. "Everything is photoshopped" is nihilism. We stop dead in our tracks. Are they trying to be off-putting?

The truth is---amongst my mainstream friends, the concept that no planes hit the towers is still seen as an absolute absurdity. To rush in to a 100-percent vicsim storyline would be viewed as outrageous beyond the pale. All it would take is for a handful of legitimate grieving family members (I still believe in my theory of mock death for most of the remainder of the listed dead,) which might be the kind of destabilization that the PTB could use to effect some sort of shut down of the internet (my only possible retaliatory scenario.)

Let's keep in touch, SW


"We are the harbingers of a very new type of research so let's try to manage it well and leave it inspiring rather than alienating."

Dusty Bobeche

Michael Allen Noeth: G-d Damn!

What utter nonsense. Proof the Vicsim Report is right on the money. Why Mr. Margolin would get all sentimental eight years after the fact, when it had apparently never moved him to editorialize before, is sign they are trying to shore up these identities. A lost Masada cause.

Published: September 11 2009
Op-Ed: An Everlasting Memory by Levi Margolin (www.crownheights.info)
Link

I grew up in a Chabad House. Chabad of Tidewater to be precise. Throughout the years, hundreds upon hundreds of different people have come and gone. Some we remember quite well. For others, it may take a moment. But only a select few are etched in our everlasting memories.

Michael Allen Noeth was born to a Jewish mother and Roman Catholic father. Sometime after, his mother turned Roman Catholic and his father an observant Jew. Michael was a very gifted artist and joined the navy as a painter. His father requested he visit Chabad wherever his military duties lead him. In 1997, it was Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, VA. Michael was added to the catalog of people to stroll through our Chabad House doors. Instantly, he became a fan favorite.

Michael was as kind as they get, and - some would say - as interesting as they get! Michael was a Navy man, there's no mistake about that - he was very proud of who he was. He always tried to rival Tzivos Hashem - the Army of Hashem - with the Navy of Hashem!

We were privileged to share many firsts with Michael. It's hard to forget the faces he made when he unknowingly gulped down Marror as if it were sugar. Michael learned to chant Kiddush with us. I can still hear him yell “Attention Gentlemen” just before the blessing of Hagofen.

Michael quickly became a part of our family. He once attended a family Simcha decorated in his Dress Whites - gloves, hat and all. Almost every Friday afternoon Michael taxied over for Shabbos, with his Stetson perfectly situated upon his head. The conversation with him was always innocent, interesting and heartfelt. He yearned to know more about his faith. As youngsters, we tried our best. We loved Michael. He related to us. He showed us a good time.

After each deployment and trip abroad, Michael always routed his way back to our home. Seeing him never got old - we loved it. In 2000, after a lengthy mission abroad, Michael was officially re-stationed. This time, he was assigned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in the Nation's capital. Oh, Washington, DC. wasn't far. We would see Michael again.

But we didn't. You see, Micheal's new post was in the western side of the Pentagon and on the morning of 9/11/2001, he was proudly positioned there.

He was gone. Senseless hate and a cowardly act had taken my friend away from me. My family had lost an honorary member. I was only 17 years old, but still I cried. I wept. I mourned.

It's eight years later, and I still tear up when I think of Michael Allen Noeth. A gifted artist. A one-of-a-kind. A Proud Jew, enlisted in the Navy of Hashem.

DM2 Michael Allen - Michoel Aron - Noeth USN, truly etched in my everlasting memory.

Three Jason Ingersoll Images From September 11th, 2001 Depict Spent Shells in the Muddy Foreground of the Damaged Pentagon

Who the fuck fired them?



Spent shells, stacked. Long ones, short ones, double banded ones. I was right on February 27, 2008 and I am right today!

Propel Charge Launcher

(Formerly) To judge for yourselves it is best to go to the official government site to see the images in the highest resolution possible. The best way to get there is to go to
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/ and put in the search term Ingersoll.

Two images will come up:
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2002/Marines/DM-SD-02-03910.JPEG

seen here:
and a glancing view here at:
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2002/Marines/DM-SD-02-03899.JPEG
seen here:
another significant view is DM-SD-02-03911 which is no longer current in the government archives but a copy is here:

In any of these images, click on the expanded view and scroll down to the lower right-hand corner. There you'll see what I take to be spent high-explosive casings but what Mr. Paisley contends are rolls of roofing-tar paper, or some other kind of rolled construction material.

The only collaborating evidence I found on the web was an antique example from a forestry archive at Yale University. It nonetheless provided me with some verification as to the scale and mass of a high-explosive shell.

Modular Propelling Charges

Police Officer Vincent Danz: Vicsim or Mock Victim?

Vincent Danz in a 14.27KB image

The Vicsim Report is a new theoretical work which hazards a large percentage of the deaths which occurred as a result of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 were computer fabricated fictions. It is based on a study of the html code underlying the CNN Victims Memorial, plus an analysis of name and face similarities, and possible morphing technologies likely used to construct it.

Even though the CNN victim list strives for comprehensiveness, less than half the victims were supplied with a photographic image---although images can be found for others on memorial lists located elsewhere on the web.

An interesting subgroup was created on the CNN list, in 267 cases where images were originally supplied but then later taken down by the webmasters updating the memorial website.

Viewed through the lens that posits some of these so-called victims may in fact be imaginary constructs and not real individuals at all, logically leads us to the inference that the photographs taken down were of the most marginally journalistically verifiable personages.

A distinct pattern---inverse to the order of the stated death toll---emerges after a look at the 267 now-made-image-less names. Only 54 of those names were said to have been at ground zero in New York when they died (out of a total of 2605 fatalities there, or only two percent,) while 140 were numbered in the 246 said to be on one of the four airplanes claimed to have crashed that day, (or 56 percent,) with 74 out of 125 fatalities at the Pentagon (or 59 percent.)

Furthermore, out of the deaths in New York, only one image of a fireman has been taken down (and that is a very special case of one fireman being somehow duplicated twice on the list,) while 17 out of 23 claimed dead New York City police officers have been taken down, or 73 percent.

This would suggest to me that the police contingent---if they turn out to be synthetic constructs---were meant to beef up the numbers by "spreading the wealth" around.

However, some individuals may be "real," taking advantage of an "early retirement"-type union plan. One highly publicized police officer, Vincent Danz, grew up in my hometown of Southampton, Long Island, and I have known his parents for over twenty-five years now (Joe Danz died several years ago, but Ellen Danz is still a member of the community.)

I knew Joe and Ellen best in the late 1980's, when they lost another child, a 28-year-old daughter named Winifred, in a particularly savage double murder. She was found with her boyfriend stabbed to death with their winter coats on in a bathtub in their apartment atop a saloon next door to the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. A 22-year-old resident of the reservation, Anthony Crippen, confessed to the twin homicide. Link 1,

I recall Joe and Ellen's remarkable composure, which I attributed to their deep Catholic faith, as they endured the emotional consequences of such a loss. Their son is memorialized on a family-run website with only a 14.27KB image and a 5.25KB image

5.25KB

3.18KB

3.06KB

However, Vincent's grieving daughter, Winifred, is seen in a 27.21KB image, which is not only an invasion of privacy in extremely poor taste, but 13 more KB's than he was seen fit to be remembered by.
His was the first memorial service of the 23 police officers, and a highly publicized event, behind which it would have been easy to hide other vicsim P.O.'s. It is unclear to me whether Danz was supposed to be on duty on 9/11. I find his phone call to his wife while traveling up in Tower One to be utterly specious.
Squad 1 from Truck 3 returning to the office after a counter-terrorism assignment. Left to right: Tony Otero, Richie Gundacker, Sgt. Will Flores, Ray Neuman and John Latanzio.
Three fellow officers from Truck 3 never came home that day – Vincent Danz, Walter Weaver, and Jerome Dominguez.

I just found a wonderful collection of 250 images, The Staten Island Advance 9 11 Victims Photographs, images published in the Staten Island Advance of 9/11 victim-residents and former residents. Now we can all be vicsim researchers!)

Castle Argghhh:

P.O. Vincent Danz Fallen at the World Trade Center September 11, 2001
If you were in trouble who would you call to help you? You would call 911 of course and the Police or Fire Department will come to help. On 9/11/2001 a great many police and firefighters needed help. So whom do they call when they need Help? In New York they call Special Operations Division for the Emergency Services Unit or ESU.
The NYPD is a little different than many other large city police departments. They have no SWAT teams. The Emergency Services Unit functions as SWAT and much more. If you have a hostage situation, an auto accident, a derailed subway car with people trapped, a collapsed building, then you call ESU. If you need to rappel down a building to rescue a trapped jumper or thrill seeker or perhaps people trapped in an elevator you call ESU. If you need someone to handle special weapons to secure a dangerous felon or special tools to capture a “pet” tiger kept in a housing project apartment you call ESU. If you have any situation that needs special training, special equipment, special weapons and most of all special people, you call ESU.
What kind of man would be attracted to join a unit like that? Where would a man like that be on September 11th? The answer is obvious and may explain why 14 of the 23 NYPD officers who lost their lives were from ESU. And one of those was Police Officer Vincent G. Danz.
Officer Danz wasn’t born into the ESU of course. He grew up in Southampton, New York as the youngest of 9 children. Perhaps the environment and demands of growing up the youngest in a large family made him desire a life of adventure and activity. His life was one of seeking out the next challenge, the next exploit, the next way to serve others. After high school he got started in life as a carpenter with the Dockworkers Union. For many that would be a challenging enough atmosphere, but it wasn’t enough for him so he joined the Marine Corps and served in the Reserves. He then had the opportunity to join the NYPD. For 8 years his beat was the very active environment of the New York City housing projects. After taking his share of bad guys off the streets, Vincent learned that the NYPD was forming a new elite unit called ESU. It sounded like something perfect for him and he became a member of EM3.
Vincent’s brother Greg would always ask him if he had gone on any “good” jobs lately. There would always be a story about this or that accident but then he would complain that he never seemed to be on duty for the “Big Jobs”. On that September morning Officer Danz was on duty for the biggest job ever. He was among the first to get to the towers and entered the WTC after the first airplane hit but before the second. What was he doing that day? It is estimated that Officer Danz and the other first responders saved perhaps 25,000 lives that day by assisting in their evacuation. But they didn’t get them all.
While Vincent’s body was doing its duty his thoughts were in another place thinking of his wife and three young daughters. Taking a brief moment he called his wife Angela but got only the answering machine. "Hon, it's 9:50 and I'm at the World Trade Center. I'm up in the building. Say a prayer that we get some of these people out. I'm OK but say a prayer for me. I love you." It was the last message the family heard. Pray we get these people out … oh, and pray for me too. He was posthumously awarded the New York City Police Department's Medal of Honor for his heroic efforts to save others.
Aside from being a member of an elite unit, Vincent Danz sought out other ways to serve his country. Police Officer Danz joined the United States Coast Guard Reserve drilling at CG Activities New York near the Verazanno Bridge on Staten Island, just across the harbor from the twin towers. He was a Petty Officer Second Class and served as a member of the Port Security Unit (PSU).
September 27th is known as Heroes Day in the Coast Guard and is the day when all Coast Guard heroes are remembered. The day was chosen in honor of Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro who was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of 500 Marines that day in 1942 at Guadalcanal. It is appropriate that on September 27, 2002 in Munro Hall at Training Center Cape May, New Jersey a plaque and memorial were unveiled. A room used to train Reservists was dedicated in memory of Officer Danz and Firefighter Jeffrey Palazzo, another USCG Reservist lost at the Trade Center. Two more heroes to be remembered on Hero Day and every day.
Carpenter, Marine, Coastguardsman, and Police Officer; but that hardly sums up the life of Vincent Danz. More importantly he was a brother, a son, a husband to Angela, and a father to three daughters Winifred, Emily and Abigail. Vincent’s sacrifice is complete while theirs continues.
John 15:13
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Police Officer Vincent G. Danz
New York City Police Department, New York
End of Watch: Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Age: 38
Tour of Duty: 14 years
Badge Number: 2166

The Danz Family Memorial Website

2,000 Mourn Fallen Officer

First memorial for police victim of terrorist attack

By RICHARD WEIR
Daily News Staff Writer
October 6, 2001

Some 2,000 police officers turned out yesterday for the first memorial service for a city cop lost in the World Trade Center disaster.

They lined up 10 deep along a Long Island street to offer a white-gloved salute to the widow and daughters of Emergency Service Unit Officer Vincent Danz, 38, one of 23 Finest believed killed in the terror attack.

As Danz's family waited in a silver limousine outside St. Kilian Catholic Church in Farmingdale, the NYPD Emerald Society's Pipe and Drum Band marched slowly up Conklin Ave. tapping a solemn beat on the black-draped snare drums.

"Mommy, it's the bagpipes," cried out Danz's redheaded daughter, Emily, 5. His wife, Angela, walked into the church holding the hand of her oldest daughter, Winifred, 8, who carried her father's police hat.

During the Mass, Winifred hopped onto a step stool in front of the alter's lectern and read from Ecclesiastes.

"There is a time to be born and a time to die," the girl said. "A time to keep and a time to cast away."

Angela Danz, who was born in Dublin, stood before the overflow crowd of mourners who filled the church to read a letter she wrote to her husband, recalling how, as a new immigrant, she met him in a Southampton, L.I., pub.

"It would be 15 years in February that you walked into Buckley's Irish Pub and changed my life forever. I told you that day that I would marry you, and then you threw your head back and laughed," she said.

"I had just come here, and you were my personal tour guide. From the gas tanks of Queens to the World Trade Center, you loved New York and you knew everything. But then again, Vincent, you always knew everything."

The couple also has a third daughter, 6-month-old Abigail.

Deacon Jim Murphy, in a homily, said Danz, in his last words to his wife, left on their answering machine, showed his selfless nature.

"Hon, it's 9:50 and I'm at the World Trade Center," he said from his cell phone. "I'm up in the building. Say a prayer that we get some of these people out. I'm okay, but say a prayer for me. I love you."

Danz was in Tower 1 when it collapsed at 10:29 a.m.

"Some people have asked where was God on Sept. 11," Murphy said. "God was running into the World Trade Center with Vinny and our other heroes."

Mayor Giuliani praised Danz, a former Marine and a 14-year police veteran who joined the elite Emergency Service Unit in 1995, for his extraordinary sense of duty and heroism.

"He laid down his life for people who weren't his friends, people he didn't know, people he'd never get to meet," the mayor said.

So Many Saved

The deeds of the police and firefighters, he added, helped save some 25,000 office workers who were evacuated in the minutes after the suicide planes crashed.

"That's never been done before in our history. Yes, this was the worst attack on America, but it's also the biggest rescue mission ever accomplished," he said.

Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said that when Danz entered the Police Department in January 1987, he took an oath to protect and serve.

"For 14 years, and up until his last breath, he did just that," Kerik said, noting that Danz had earned seven decorations.

First Deputy Commissioner Joseph Dunne mentioned that Danz, who also served as a reservist in the Coast Guard, was not scheduled to work the morning of Sept. 11.

"For reasons only God will know, Vinny was supposed to work a 4-to-12 shift, but switched it in order to attend engineering school" that night, Dunne said.

In a funeral without a coffin or a hearse, Danz's family members each placed a white rose in a wicker basket beneath a picture of him as a choir member sang "America the Beautiful."

Recalling a Comrade

Danz's colleagues at ESU Truck 3 of the Bronx remembered the fallen officer, an avid Rangers and Mets fan, as a "good E-man," a spit-and-polish cop who always dressed neatly and loved to kid around.

He took some ribbing over his height. "He was short, so he took a lot of short hits," said Detective Eddie Foley, who broke Danz in as an ESU cop. "We taped a measuring chart by the door to measure his growth spurts over the years, like you do for kids."

Most of all, his colleagues said, Danz lived for his wife and daughters, and they would tease him for racing out the door when his shift ended so he could see them.

"He adored his wife and kids," said Detective Eddie Foley, who trained Danz in the ESU. "That's all he ever talked about."

"He was great to his girls," said Dianne Langon, 43, his neighbor in Farmingdale for eight years. "He was home a lot with them. They were always riding bikes together, or taking walks or playing ball in the yard."

Jeannieann Maffeo, Ruth Magdaline (Clifford) McCourt, Paige Farley-Hackel, Ronald Hans Clifford (and little four-year-old Juliana Valentine McCourt)

Paige & Ruth

Try saying that three times fast.

The recent posting of "The Vicsim Report" by the 9/11 researcher known pseudonymously online as hoi.poloi, constitutes a giant leap forward in our collective understanding of the truth of the 2001 attacks. The work theorizes that a large percentage of the American casualties from that day, which variously amount to a figure just shy of 3000 dead, are completely fictitious---computer generated components of synthetic reality, models which played out in the controlled dimension of consumer-fed media and television.

I printed out the 80-page pdf and read it on a long flight to Rome, where I was coincidentally to meet up with the report's real-life author for the first time. I came at the invitation of hoi.poloi's research colleague, Simon Shack, the early and great explicator of video fakery and no-plane studies.

I immediately felt in accord with the human position laid out in the study, since I'd previously arrived at an understanding of the falsity of the victim/hero/villain narrative, without fully understanding the mechanics of how it was achieved. In creating the myth of America's wounding, I'd considered that a high percentage of insider-victims must have underwent "mock deaths," thereby entering into new identities in witness-protection type programs. I wasn't clear about the manageability of the boundaries---could surviving family members be in on the scheme and still act out their parts convincingly, or would their pain have to be "real" to pass muster? Were there degrees?

I am clear however, that given the bad acting found in the historical record, the entire narrative as unfolded up unto now was executed within a single, secretive, compartmentalized, hierarchical organization, which played out both the antagonist and protagonist roles in every drama. Contributions by individuals such as myself, self-motivated "walk=ins" outside of this paradigm, can be vouchsafed simply by their having been ignored by this narrative.

But with the work of people like Simon Shack, and more recently, hoi.poloi, beginning to take on some traction, I think we might be at a tipping point where the computer-modeled and pre-programed existence being foisted upon us might be upset in significant ways.

For instance, at what point does the cognitive dissonance between our variously held perceptions become so overwhelming as to break the hold the big Lie has over us? We can argue the physics of airplane crashes and building collapses forever it seems, but can we argue in support of people who were never there to begin with? Using Google as our new metric, can we fathom the sham nature of such poorly built Potemkin approximations, filled in with folk who lack the necessary hits-and-returns that "being real" now requires?

It was very heady for me to be in Rome this September discussing all of this, as additional proofs the theory works were developing. Simon and hoi.poloi felt, (if I remember correctly,) that upwards of ninety percent of the victim's list might be entirely computer simulated, aided by a standing army of deep-cover assets lending support. I think it's more likely to be mixed up with other manipulations using real people, or established personas at least, incorporating the element of faked death---as was spelled out in the 1960's document, Operation Northwoods.

And of course, a basic threshold of mortality would be expected when the heart of a giant scheme is the destruction of two 110-story structures---even if mostly emptied out in advance. Deaths, whether simply accidental, or as a byproduct of insider struggles for power that must have taken place, could have occurred ritualistically, or as an unfortunate, but "legitimate" part of some covert process----as the evidence of gunfire and extreme law-enforcement activity at Ground Zero on 9/11 suggests.

Because not only does the big Lie derive force from such things as faking death, it also gains strength by denying the experience and reality of actual death---like the hundreds of American fatalities incurred in the Battle for Baghdad's airport in 2003, which were never reported in the American press.

Much cross-referencing will be necessary, I think, to deconstruct the artificially created identities from the real ones, and the process is likely to challenge our grasp on the nature of reality itself. We can know for sure that Barbara Olson once existed, I suppose, but isn't it interesting to note that Ted Olson's new wife looks a lot like his old wife Barbara?

I found an interesting sub-group of related victims, (along with their corollary, a fake hero,) to form a study around, as I find their narrative shot through with much laughable mendacious detail, but it also evidences the extreme degree to which the established powers-that-be will go to keep their control on the creative levers and wheels of reality.

I may be going way out on a limb here, as the group centers on a supposedly seriously burned victim, Jeannieann Maffeo, who, we are told, died 41 days after the attack, at Cornell Medical Center---thereby becoming, like Antoinette Sherman in Washington, D.C., one of the very few "public," or marginally verifiable deaths stemming from 9/11. Or maybe not.

Maffeo's story is told repeatedly in the record by her hero rescuer, Ronald Hans Clifford, who is never described himself much beyond being an Irish immigrant out and about on important business that day, but available for interviews afterward. In still more of the quirk, twist, fluke and irony surrounding the story, he was said to be attending a meeting at the World Trade Center Marriott which had been moved at the last moment from the Marriott in Times Square, but that's an over-written and lost detail to me.

Maffeo was waiting for a bus outside the Trade Center on West Street when the North Tower was hit, spewing her---and apparently only her---with burning jet fuel from 90-stories up, which left her with third-degree burns over 90-percent of her body. We never hear from any other of her fellow commuters; apparently, since Mr. Clifford spotted her he gets to handle her---after she spun through a revolving door into the Marriott Hotel, where he doused her flames with his coat, got her into an ambulance, then picked up the mantle as her spokesman and spinmeister.

Ron Clifford binds this group together, because as he was acting out the role of hero rescuer to Jeannieann Maffeo on the ground, his 45-year-old sister, Ruth Magdaline McCourt, along with her daughter, his four-year-old niece Juliana Valentine McCourt, are crashing into the second tower. This is just after a family friend, Paige Farley Hackel, who was traveling on a second jet plane flying between Boston and Los Angeles that morning---both just a quarter-filled with passengers---had crashed. Though the two adult women drove to the airport together, and were traveling on vacation together, the desire by one of them to use her frequent-flier miles with a particular airline, necessitated their separation that the choice in service afforded.

This should give us pause. If two competing airlines are running identical cross-country services between the same cities, with departure times only minutes apart, and both routes are operating at a 25-percent occupancy rate, then they might combine the services and still lose money running at a fifty-percent occupancy rate.

Beyond such errant details in this group of stories, what damns them is both their centrality to the media narrative and their timing. Coming out within 24 hours of the crash, this telegenically tragic tale was pieced together by the shocked, unknowing survivors and was hitting the streets and airways around the world.

A brother to Ron and Ruth, John Clifford, was interviewed from Cork, Ireland by the BBC for an article timestamped 17:03 GMT, which is only noon on Wednesday, the 12th. Speaking of Ron's brush with danger, John Clifford said:

"He went through the front door on the ground floor and a lady was about three seconds in front of him. She was hit by a terrific fireball. She subsequently died."

But John Clifford is speaking about Jeannieann Maffeo on 9/12, when she wasn't supposed to have "subsequently" died until 40 days later! 2

Clifford of Cork even gets neural-linguistically tangled up---and the BBC reporter makes a very clear point in noting it:

"He said that unfortunately, while he was OK, he had a feeling that his sister - my sister - had left Logan Airport to go to Los Angeles with her daughter at around 7.30 in the morning." 2

Not only does the human interest drama sound too contrived and off-color to be real, its rapid dissemination would confirm it.

USAToday's Greg Farrell wrote an article on September 12, called Best friends died on different flights, which is illustrated with a photograph of Ruth and Juliana McCourt that is sourced to an overseas news organization---Agence France Presse. Farrell's lead paragraph highlights the irony that befell the women.

"Ruth Clifford McCourt and Paige Farley Hackel were inseparable in life. Tuesday, in a fluke of airline ticketing, they became inseparable in death."

Their inseparability was caused because they were incomprehensibly separated in flight.

By the time she makes it onto the CNN victim list, the Mrs. Hackel of Farrell's article has been replaced by a hyphenated Mrs. Farley-Hackel, where she can often be found indexed with the other F's, an issue which seriously effects her Googlebility.

Three days after I published this blog, Simon Shack posted a video to YouTube covering much the same ground. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9VnZ-BMR3s


Ruth McCourt left a widower with a stilted Google, a shadowy figure in New London, Connecticut involved in a recognizable pattern of desultory charity, which peters out after a few years, named David McCourt, owner of "Abco Welding & Industrial Supplies." He went on the Today Show program on January 10, 2002, was interviewed by Al Roker, and presented a $40,000 check to some anti-bullying organization intended for children. David McCourt has his own web page at the New London police union web site, where an annual benefit softball game between cops and firemen raised only $7,300 over the previous three years. 4




1. The Juliana Valentine McCourt Children's Education Fund is Created:
2. BBC 'Survivor's family die in tragic twist' Sept. 12, 2001, 17:03 GMT 18:03
3.USAToday, 'Best friends died on different flights,' Sept. 12, 2001
4. The New London, Conn Police Union
5. Boston Globe, Paige Farley Hackel, 47; Inspirational Speaker, Sept. 15, 2001
6. News7 Boston, N.E. Remembers: Paige Farley Hackel, by Chris May, Sept. 4, 2002
7. LA Times, The Human Toll: Ruth Clifford McCourt, by Joe Mathews, Sept. 17, 2001
8. Associated Press, 'WTC attack burn victim dies after six-week struggle,' Oct. 24, 2001
9. Associated Press, 'New York City officials identify Trade Center victims through DNA matches for first time,' By Sara Kugler, Oct. 24, 2001