Caterair, George W. Bush & Mohammad Abdi--Can you hide a gun in a meatball?

The Finnlist: Swedish Meatballs with Lingonberry Sauce

When you finally get a juicy piece of meat in your mouth, it makes you realize what mean fare you’ve endured on the steady diet of BocaBurgers served up by the Bush administration. Such was my sensation when I clicked on an internet document called The Finnlist. Starving for truth over these past six years, I was doubly surprised to learn along the way that George W. Bush was a caterer.

My thanks goes out to Team8Plus—a specialized 9/11 research group for first linking me to the document, and to the indispensable cryptome, for keeping it up even under difficulty. It is supposedly a confidential FBI list naming 370 people suspected of helping Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

"It contains names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail, even some social security numbers, of terrorists involved in the attacks of September 11, sympathizers, and those suspected of providing conduits for terrorist finance,” according to a June 10, 2002 article in London’s Telegraph.co.uk. The UPI reported on November 11, 2001 that the Bush administration confirmed the list, and said it came from the U.S. Justice Department.

It is an investigative file that was distributed confidentially to European counter-terrorism agencies for help in tracking down the so-called al-Qaeda terrorist network. It accidentally was posted on the internet in early October, 2001, by Finland's Financial Supervision Authority (RATA,) which shut down the website when the error was spotted, but not before it had been mirrored elsewhere, hence the name Finnlist.

The FBI has strictly controlled the release of information on the 19 hijackers who they say took part in the September 11 attacks and they were reportedly furious over this breach of security. The document contains raw data, often based on hearsay and unverified leads, on a myriad of Middle Eastern and Islamic names beyond the named hijackers, and it carries with it potential for misinterpretation and abuse. However, it also provides the clearest view yet into the state of American intelligence at a particular moment in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. It also raises more questions than it answers.

For instance, the Finnlist include a reference, “Possibly Deceased,” beside a subset of names, which correlates with the names released to the public of the 19 hijackers, with two exceptions: Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi, who are on the Finnlist, but without the nominator. Lists of hijackers were publicly released on the 14th, and the 27th of September in 2001, and then again on January 24, 2002. We haven't been updated since.

Only one name with the nominator “Possibly Deceased” is on the October 3, 2001 Finnlist--but not on the hijacker’s lists. That name belonged to a 30-year-old from Ashdot, Israeli, Alona Avrham, and it appears instead on the list of victims of Flight 175.

Perhaps like the dual American/Israeli citizen Daniel Lewin, a former officer in an elite unit of the Israeli army--who was trained to kill terrorists with his bare hands, yet he fell victim on Flight 11--she carried with her some sort of special status.

Did Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi have a special status? The earliest FBI list, coming 72 hours after the attacks, contains an oddly phrased request, “that anyone who may have information about these individuals—even though they are presumed to be dead—to immediately contact” the bureau.

The expanded September 27 Release, which was the first look the public had of photographs of the 19 hijackers, carried the caveat, “It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.”

In its third release of January 17, 2002, the FBI had upgraded with new photographs of some of the suspects, although without improving their web site, which still only just limps along, with most of the photographs failing to open, which makes it difficult for the public to lend any assistance. The new images of the Flight 77 suspects are formal shots in traditional Arab dress, the ghutra head scarves held in place by black-corded agal. They must have been provided by Saudi authorities in the interim, but why then does the FBI still describe the men as being possible Saudi nationals?

This third release, The FBI Suspected Hijackers List, starts off with five new names and photographs, of pre-suspects, or suspects-in-waiting, if you will, “believed to be part of the Al-Qaida terrorist network,” with the warning that the images, “depict five persons believed to be ready to martyr themselves” in attacks on America. These martyrs-to-be, or as I prefer, "martyr-ready," show the slack-jawed visages straight out of some B-movie central casting.

In the three publicly disclosed FBI hijacker’s lists, which both pre-, and post- date, the Finnlist, the five Flight 77 suspects, who are said to have flown into the Pentagon, are thought to have possibly resided in San Diego, Phoenix and New Jersey, in various locations often associated with flight schools. But on the once-secret FBI list, all five have addresses in the suburban Washington D.C. area, in close proximity to federal intelligence-gathering facilities, such as the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.

Hani Hanjour, Khalid Al-Midhar, and Majed Moqed shared an address at 5913 Leesburg Pike, in Falls Church, Virginia, 8 miles from the Pentagon; while their teammates Saleem Al-Hazmi and Nawaf Al-Hamzi (apparently an “alias” for “Naweq” “Al-Hazmi,”) lived less than a mile away, on Row Street, in Falls Church. Three other men on the list have addresses in Falls Church: Ibrahim Al-Forahy, Dawood Natto, and Meshal Al-Hajri.

The FBI had an open investigation under way, Case I.D. # 199-I-WF-213589, focusing on Abdullah Bin Laden, who was President and Treasurer of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, or WAMY, a suspected terrorist organization, prior to September 11th, 2001.

Ibrahim S Abdullah and Sameer Moabbir are listed as Vice-Presidents. Abdullah Bin Laden lived with his brother Omar at 3411 Silver Maple Place in Falls Church until August 1997, while WAMY is headquartered at 5613 Leesburg Pike, only a few blocks from the hijackers' residence.

Abdullah and Omar's other brother is named Osama. All the extended bin Laden family members in the United States were given special leave to fly out of the country while the airways were still closed to general aviation.

Falls Church, Virginia could be described as the epicenter of conservative American culture. Supreme Court Justice's Scalia and Thomas worship at a Latin mass in a parish close by, along with ex-FBI Chief Louis Freeh (and incidentally, so did his friend, former FBI double agent for Russia, Robert Hanson.) Father Stephen McGraw, the Opus Dei priest of only a few months standing, but a former Justice Department lawyer to boot, whose photograph showing him kneeling at the side of wounded victims before a burning Pentagon building circled the globe on 9/11 and then back, also works nearby.

The BBC reported that Hani Hanjour and his four Flight 77 accomplices spent their last days in the Valencia Motel on Route 1, which is actually right outside the gates of the NSA complex in Laurel, Maryland. They left the Valencia early on the morning of September 11 to go to Washington’s Dulles Airport, and destiny.

James Bamford, an expert on the NSA, said, “The terrorist cell that eventually took over the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon ended up living, working, planning and developing all their activities in Laurel, Maryland, which happens to be the home of the NSA.” So why did the FBI publicly report them as living in California, Arizona and New Jersey?

The size of the NSA is classified information, but it goes so far to say it would rank in the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, in terms of both its budget, and the number of employees. Other sources say the workforce of 38,000 is sworn to a lifetime of secrecy. In the Operations Building, a monument of black granite is carved with the admonishment, "They Served in Silence."

The surrounding communities are dense with powerful Military-Industrial-establishment figures—-such as retired politicians and executives, who remain vital parts of a shadow government system. So it's interesting to find out they were living alongside a good quota of fanatic Muslim ideologues as well.

Within 72 hours of the attacks, Flight 11’s Waleed Al-Shehri had been credited with using seven different birth dates, with three potential residential addresses in Florida, according to the FBI. However, the address of the rooming house where he stayed on Orrin Street in Vienna, Virginia, may never have been disclosed, had not the accidental release of the Finnlist occurred. That address, incidentally, is three blocks from the CIA's headquarters.

On the three hijacker lists made public, Flight 93 and Flight 175 appear to be merely afterthoughts; with its reputed hijackers appearing like neglected stepchildren to the rest. Seven of the nine, are dismissed with just a cursory “possible residence(s) in Delray Beach, Florida”---while only two get birth dates. But on the once-secret Finnlist the identities of these men come to vivid life---with residences and military associations all over the United States.

McLean Virginia, is home to major defense contractors, along with Flight 93’s Saeed Al-Ghamdi. He is also given an address at 2401 Quarters Road in Lee, Virginia. That is the home of the US Army Logistics Medical Center at Ft. Lee, a facility that also served the medical needs, apparently, of another “suspect,” Abdulrahman Al-Ghamdi, of Vero Beach, Florida.

Listed for Flight 175’s Ahmed Alghamdi are seven US addresses—-one, at 10 Radford Blvd #243, Pensacola, Florida, was reported by Newsweek on Sept. 15, 2001 to be a residence for foreign military trainees at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Newsweek also reported that Flight 93’s Saeed Alghamdi was at this same Pensacola Naval Air Station address, although that is not included among the eight addresses on the Finnlist given to Saeed. That would be evidence of omissions on the Finnlist as well. A third suspect is also listed with an address at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, where all of them applied for and received driver’s licenses or car registrations.

Saeed Al-Ghamdi is given nine aliases, with three possible birth dates, but the age range spans an unbelievably 16 years. The only prior disclosed address for him, “May have lived in Delray Beach, Fla.,” is confirmed here as accurate---now fleshed out with a, “755 Dotterel Road,” which he shared with Flight 175’s Hamza Al-Ghamdi, as well as with his fellow Flight 93 terrorist's Ahmed Al-Haznawi and Ahmed Al-Nawi—-that is if “755 Dehiterel Road, Delray Beach, FL” turns out to be a transcription error, as seems likely.

Such poor proofreading is rife throughout all of the FBI lists. Such unprofessionalism adds immeasurably to what is, for Americans unfamiliar with Islamic or Arabic names, already a very difficult task in identifying the individuals responsible for the attacks. Aliases often appear to derive solely from poor penmanship, a problem I've encountered in my credit report. Even the most basic cross-referencing would have gone far in clarifying matters, but it was overlooked.

Amongst Saeed Al-Ghamdi's various addresses in New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and McLean, Virginia, is a tantalizing one—-a mailing address at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Time Magazine reported that “Pentagon sources confirmed that a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland, and that both Saeed and Ahmed Alghamdi appeared on a list for foreign military housing” there.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported on September 26, 2001, in an article by Jim Ritchie titled, "Hijackers' names linked to sites near airports," that "Credit records examined by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review show that Saeed Alghamdi listed an address at Tyndall Air Force Base near Tallahassee, Fla. [which is] the home of the 325th Fighter Wing." The Air Force also confirmed it was investigating additional links between Alghamdi and Tyndall Air Force base. So why was the FBI so shy in giving us the facts?

The fourth member, and pilot of the Flight 93 team, Ziad Jarrah, is associated with six unique Florida addresses on the Finnlist, but none of them connect to or correspond with any of the other hijacker's addresses. That is unlikely in the extreme to be true.

Flight 77’s Nawaf Al-Hazmi, called “Nawaq” and “believed to be from Saudi Arabia,” on the earliest list, (not to be confused with a Nawaq Al-Handi of Mesa, Arizona,) who was at the Pin Del motel in Laurel, Maryland on the days preceding 9/11. They were all part of a group who were said to have worked out at a gym in Greenbelt, Maryland. Additional addresses would indicate Al-Hazmi was also connected to the San Diego and the New Jersey “cells.”

Waleed Al-Kahtani is provided an address in Radford City, Virginia, with another 15 miles away in Pulaski, Virginia—-a line between the two neatly sandwiches the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.

Al-Kahtani is also listed at an address at 3900 Richmond Lane, Montgomery, Virginia, but that could be a typo. There is no such city in Virginia. But Google Maps redirected me to that address in Montgomery, Alabama---which, surprise, surprise, sits right next door to nearby Maxwell Air Force Base. Newsweek said an unnamed hijacker trained at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, so that could provide a verification for Al-Kahtani.

28-year-old Mohammad Arara is a name listed at 1134 Pinemont Place, in Annapolis, Maryland, which sits directly across the water from the Naval Surface Warfare Center. He is also listed at an Elden Street address in Herndon, Virginia, which is just off the Dulles Airport access road and home of the Federal Aviation Authority.

Vero Beach, Florida

Six names are associated with the same Vero Beach address: 2805 Airport Road, while 13 names are associated with another Vero Beach address: 2840 Flight Safety Drive. Both provide temporary housing for pilot trainees at the Flight Safety Academy.

An additional 47 Vero Beach addresses are associated with other various names on the FBI's Finnlist.

The number of times that "Vero Beach" is mentioned in the “exhaustive” 9/11 Commission Report? Zero.

Which is extremely odd, especially given the fact that four men who were mistakenly named as potential terrorists in the earliest days after 9/11, Adnan Bukhari, Ameer Bukhari, Abdul Rahman Al Omari, and Ameer Kamfar, were also residents of Vero Beach.

A War Against Reality

What use would suiciding martyrs have for stolen identities, aliases, or forged documents, which is the sum story of the 9/11 Commission Report?

Subterfuge served no purpose for the hijackers, who were all apparently in the United States legally. They boarded the planes legally, carrying items that were lawful to carry on---so, why would they risk it? Such clandestine guile and cunning is pointless if unnecessary to achieve an objective, which in this case was a message they supposedly wanted shouted out to the world.

It is the total incomprehensibility of any motive giving rise to the attacks of 9/11, which adds to our terroristic wounding. However, it just doesn't stem from any Saudi hijackers.

Our government’s official case rests on these foreign pilots receiving flight training in the United States for its basic plausibility. Even some of the so-called ‘muscle” also trained to fly—-maybe an “air and a spare” rational, just so long that it doesn't interfere with the other oft-repeated talking point: those all-important gym workouts.

But any time spent in the United States then makes it implausible that it was strict religious ideology that motivated 19 sophisticated young men into a coordinated suicide plan, in order to make some abstract point about "hating our freedoms," which was never actually articulated by anybody! Hate our freedoms? They indulged in our freedoms willingly!

CBS News reported that three of the hijackers were in a strip club in Daytona Beach, Florida the evening before the attack. They spent between $200 and $300 each, on drinks and lap dances, at the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack’s Sports Bar. Get the picture?

President Clinton gave a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, at New York University, on December 3, 2002, in which he shared some rather privileged information:

"We're all in somebody's computer. They know where we live, they know where we pay our utility bills, and they know how many credit cards we have. They know what our debt is. The biggest of these companies is in Arkansas. My best childhood friend works there. He called me a couple of days after September 11th and said, "we have four FBI agents here and we've already found five of these terrorists in our computers." Well, you say, that's fine, but could they have known before September 11th? You tell me. One of the men who flew an airplane into the World Trade Center had 30 credit cards, a quarter of a million of dollars in debt, and a consolidated payout schedule of $9,800 a month. If somebody has been in this country for two years, or less, and already has 30 credit cards, and a quarter a million dollars in debt, they're either really rich, or up to no good, and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out which.

Mohammed Atta, the ringleader, had 12 addresses---two places he lived, and 10 safe houses, under the names Mohammed Atta, Mohammed J. Atta, J. Atta, and his middle initial spelled out. So if somebody has been here a couple years or less and has 12 homes, he's either really rich or up to no good. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out which. That's more important than all that reorganization. That's what we ought to advocate. We ought to drive it home, as part of our homeland security position."

It’s interesting to note that of the dozen or so aliases on the secret FBI Finnlist for Mohammad Atta, the three aliases which President Clinton quoted, which came off an American credit reporting bureau, do not appear.

The name of a Laurel Maryland cleric, Moataz Al-Hallak, appears on the list. As reported by the Washington Post, Al-Hallak was being supported by a group, Solidarity USA, which was formed to help Muslims facing questioning and harassment in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Washington Post article in which Al-Hallak's name appears was primarily about the arrest of a certain Mohammad Abdi, an Alexandria, Maryland security guard, whose name and phone number were found on one of several maps in the blue Toyota registered to Nawaq “77” Alhazmi, which was left behind at Dulles International Airport on 9/11.

Mohammad Abdi's name does not appear on the Finnlist.

The Post article said, “Abdi's early work history also raised red flags for authorities. He worked for an airline catering company called Caterair, which has since been sold, at National Airport in 1993…”

A Google search of “george w bush”+caterair+”mohammad abdi” returned one hit---to the blog of a Margie Burns, titled, This is aviation security?

In it, is a tape-recording from 2003 of David Rubenstein, founder of the Carlyle Group commenting on his hiring, and subsequent termination of a former director of the Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair.

That man's name is George W. Bush.

James S. Robbins: Objective Pentagon Eyewitness?

Only two “proofs” have ever been offered by defenders of the official explanation as to what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001—that American Airlines, Flight 77 flew at 530 miles per hour into the side of the building. One proof consists of the presence of bodies of the airplane passengers supposedly found within the Pentagon wreckage, a point eminently debatable despite the shroud of secrecy surrounding even the smallest details of the official version. The other proof is said to be provided by the “hundreds” of eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the plane strike the building.

This blog specializes in debunking those eyewitnesses. I think I’ve made fairly convincing arguments in previous posts about several of the central characters—that they were all co-conspirators, rewarded to fabricate testimony—in on the plot in other words. Liars. But today’s debunkee hasn’t any official role to fall back on. He is entirely self-generated. A gratuitous latecomer to the eyewitness game, a noisome interjector, an insufferably snarky and utterly predictable conservative apologist, and it delights me to show up the egg on his face.

He is James S. Robbins, Contributing Editor of the National Review, Professor of International Relations at the so-called National Defense University, senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point.

Which is enough of a resumé without owning up to being an avid Ayn Rand fan, which apparently he is. At least, in the period before September 11, 2001 he wrote an interesting Op-Ed piece for The Atlas Society & The Objectivist Center Online, an organization that says its aim is “to help create a new culture in our society, a culture in tune with the entrepreneurial spirit of the new economy, a culture that affirms the core Objectivist values of reason, individualism, freedom, and achievement.” (How about a wee touch of honesty and sincerity, hmmmm?)

I thought his opinion piece, published on February 22, 2001, and titled, “The Moral Necessity of Missile Defense:” was a good jumping off place for my purposes. There he writes,

“We have a very sophisticated and robust intelligence and counter-intelligence capability to intercept attacks by so-called “suitcase bombs” carried by terrorists.”

Given that view, how does he toe the Neo-Con line about 19 Arab hijackers with box cutters taking over four airplanes? In a piece published in the National Review on April 9, 2002 called, 9/11 Denial The French bestseller and its company,” in which he ridicules Thierry Meyssan's book, “L'Effroyable Imposture,” the first published account to modestly doubt the Pentagon story, Robbins provides a link to an eyewitness list, which doesn’t have his name on it. He corrects matters shortly.

After first equating that “Meyssan's theory fits neatly with those of the Holocaust deniers,” in something of a stretch, he revels dramatic first-person testimony of his own hitherto unknown and unheralded role as a central witness.

In it, even Robbins’ fenestration is superlative! He tells us he

“was standing, looking out my large office window, which faces west and from six stories up has a commanding view of the Potomac and the Virginia heights. (When I hired on my boss said we had the best view in town…)

“The Pentagon is about a mile and half distant in the center of the tableau. I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time, I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building. I froze, gaping for a second until the sound of the detonation, a sharp pop at that distance, shook me out of it.”

Another 16 words that could haunt a man: “The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory.”

I guess Robbins missed the 5 frames of video that were “leaked” from the Pentagon a month prior, which along with numerous corroborating testimonies, (that he himself touts,) show a level ground-hugging approach, completely irreconcilable with “diving in at an unrecoverable angle.” Maybe eyewitnesses aren’t such a trustworthy source after all. Robbins may prefer the impartiality of the Pentagon Building Performance Report:

"At 9:38 a.m. on September 11 an airliner was flown into the first story of the Pentagon." [pg. 4]

"Two photographs (figures 3.3 and 3.7), when compared, seem to show that the top of the fuselage of the aircraft was no more than approximately 20 ft above the ground when the first photograph of this series was taken." [pg. 14]

"The Boeing 757 approached the west wall of the Pentagon from the southwest at approximately 780 ft/s. As it approached the Pentagon site it was so low to the ground that it reportedly clipped an antenna on a vehicle on an adjacent road and severed light posts. When it was approximately 320 ft from the west wall of the building (0.42 second before impact,) it was flying nearly level, only a few feet above the ground." [pg. 18]

"Eyewitness accounts and photographs taken by a security camera suggest that the aircraft was flying on nearly a level path essentially at grade level for several hundred feet immediately prior to impact." [pg. 35] –

How about the Virginia Department of Transportation, whose offices sat next to the Navy Annex and were directly under the flight path,

“Then, at 9:37 a.m., Chu and other STC employees heard the window-rattling noise of a fast-approaching aircraft. It was close --much too close! The hijacked plane was coming up Columbia Pike, unbelievably low. It exploded into the Pentagon seconds after nearly skimming the rooftop of the Smart Traffic Center. Madelyn Zakhem, executive secretary at the STC, had just stepped outside for a break and was seated on a bench when she heard what she thought was a jet fighter directly overhead. It wasn't. It was an airliner coming straight up Columbia Pike at treetop level. "It was huge! It was silver. It was low -- unbelievable! I could see the cockpit. I fell to the ground.... I was crying and scared," Zakhem recalls. Two seconds later, perhaps three, as Chu looked out his office window, he saw a hijacked plane explode into the fortress-like walls of the Pentagon on the plain just below him. STC staffers remember a loud thud, then a terrible explosion, and then a fireball burgeoning from the core of America's military power.

Now that’s dramatic writing that still gives you room to back out of! “Sounded like a fighter jet,” is so much more unburdened a statement than, “he saw a hijacked plane.” What, Chu saw the hijackers? The VDOT report is refreshing in its honesty:

While everyone in or near the center heard the plane, not everyone saw it, and some thought the plane was the first missile in a missile attack.

They even include the minority reports!

At the same time, rumors were every where that another terrorist's
plane was only 30 minutes away and headed for the area -- then 20 minutes...
then 10 minutes.

(This would have been the period when Rummy was out elbowing in on a photo-opt carrying a victim on a stretcher. Not too safe, Rummy.)

"If I had been on top of our building, I would have been close enough
to reach up and catch it," Madelyn Zakhem, an executive secretary in the Smart Traffic Center (STC) in Arlington, said two days after the terrorist plane rocketed directly over her.

"In the final few seconds before the terrorist-commandeered plane exploded into the Pentagon, the plane roared down on Columbia Pike, almost skimming the roof of the STC after barely missing the Sheraton Hotel. The noise, VDOT team members said, was unbelievably loud, and most felt the hijacker was nosing down the plane at full throttle.

"It was so close the building was shaking," recalls Jimmy Chu, STC manager. Some VDOTers were sure the plane had shifted its direction slightly to avoid a 100-foot-tall cellular tower adjacent to the STC building. As the plane went over the STC, the hijacker banked the plane, lifting the right wing up, in order to swoop down the hill into the target. Just before impact, the plane clipped off two VDOT light poles on Washington Boulevard, a football field or two away from the Pentagon.

"In the same area, the blast from the plane's impact damaged the lenses of one of VDOT's traffic monitoring cameras and knocked the camera sideways.”

Yes, but what about the pictures? Robbins continues:

The adrenaline of the initial shock had worn off a bit, and I was I took the elevator down and walked to the edge of the greensward, in easy view of the able to take in the enormity of the event. Even more than witnessing the plane crash, I remember those long helpless minutes standing in the grass. So, of course, I take it personally when a half-wit like Meyssan comes along saying it did not happen. And he is so evidently at war with reality that one is tempted not to waste time with him. His ideas are obviously foolish, easily disproved, an affront to any reasoning person. It would be easy to ignore him. But that would be a mistake. This is another front in what President Bush called "the war to save civilization itself."

The history of the 20th century should show that no idea is so absurd that it cannot take destructive hold and play havoc with societies, even to the point of sanctioning mass murder. Allowing the extremists to go unchallenged only encourages them. People like Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot and other millennial criminals were just like Meyssan at one point in their careers. If they had been opposed more vigorously sooner, perhaps they never would have attained power. When such ideas are allowed to stand, they take root among the impressionable or those predisposed to think the worst. And especially now that communications technology has made it possible to give global reach to the bizarre and archive it forever, it is essential for men and women of reason resolutely to counter the delusions of the fringe element.

I was there. I saw it. That is my entire rebuttal.”

Mr. James S. Robbins, you asshole, there was no “unrecoverable angle,” there was no “dive.” You are a pompous lying sack of shit, just like all your other ideological brethren, willing to say anything to further your cause, and you banked on a truly awful horse in George W. Bush.

I can hear the tumbrels creaking as I speak.

And frankly, I think Ayn Rand would be appalled at your behavior!

Lloyd / Lloyde England at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001

An open letter to Mary Agee,President and CEO of Northern Virginia Family Service’s Survivors’ Fund Project a not-for-profit charity providing long-term support for the victims and families affected by the terrorist attack at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Dear Ms. Agee: As a member of the 9-11 skeptics community, I was gratified to learn through your website, the identity of Lloyd A. England, the 69-year-old, African-American cab driver who was witness to the crash of a 757-jetliner—-American Airlines Flight 77-—into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Although, well known in certain circles through photographs taken of him in the first minutes after the attack, standing alongside his taxi on Washington Blvd., to my knowledge, Mr. England was not publicly identified until your 2003 report. Your organization did a service in bringing him forward-—a piece to the puzzle, which 9-11 truth-seekers aim to solve.

However, some details in your narrative of his experience are at odds with the official version of events. His story of hardship and fortitude—an obvious intent when focusing an appealing “survivor’s spotlight,” (and, speaking generally, the raison d’être of your organization---is also directly contradicted by evidence contained in photographs taken of him that day.

I submit Lloyd England was the star of a short entre-acte, titled, The Taxi Driver and the Downed Lamp Poles, part of a larger epic-—in which the poles starred, not Mr. England—-called The Rumsfeld Conspiracies, where these downed lamp posts serve as a corps de ballet, tangible “proofs” of a 757-jetliner’s trajectory and altitude. Other entre-actes were produced that day, en suite, like the miraculous staging of The Priest at the Medical Triage a human interest story meant to provide verisimilitude, but which instead got panned as mere bathos, melodramatic grist for the Grand Jury.

These were photographed by Mark D. Faram, Journalist 1^st Class in the U.S. Navy, who was, (in his words) “a senior writer with Navy Times newspaper. It is an independent weekly that is owned by the Gannett Corporation (same owners as USA Today,) and published worldwide.”

It would be sad to think Americans had become so somnambulant that we would accept such second-rate fare as served up at the Pentagon on September 11—an aesthetic more Archie Bunker than West Wing, with production values more Judge Judy than Law and Order—-but to analyze it any deeper might bring dread, as we realize this clumsy charade was made so dreadful on purpose, eventually to be found out, perhaps by plan.

I’ll try to keep the sarcastic and accusatory tone out of my criticism of your organization, Ms. Agee. I don’t know what you are aware of, or the timeline of any learning curve. The fact so many obvious inconsistencies exist between your report of benevolence to Mr. England, as compared with the commonly understood evidence from September 11 that it is best explained by indifference, not guile or cunning. But adding the gloss of fake charity as public relations cover for what is, in my opinion, a clandestine false-flag operation by shadow components of government, which has led to the brutality and savagery of two unjust wars to date, tempts me mightily. From your September 2003 Community Report

He had driven his taxicab past the Pentagon a million times before, but September 11 was different from any other day. On that day, Lloyde A. England had just dropped off a passenger and was driving home as American Airlines Flight #77 flew directly overhead, sending a light pole crashing through his windshield. In that brief moment, his car was totaled and his livelihood threatened.

When other agencies did not help, the Survivors’ Fund and NVFS case manager Sarah Carter stepped in and arranged for funds for his mortgage and groceries until he could buy another cab. Perhaps as valuable as those financial contributions were the talks he had with his case manager, who validated the trauma he had experienced that day.

“It’s good to know there are people out there who are willing to help working people,” says England. “It’s not that I couldn’t work. I was just set back.”

However, other than a broken windshield, his cab appears spotless in this photo, not “totaled,” and rather than having “his livelihood threatened,” he might be calling Geico for an estimate.

  http://www.pentagonresearch.com/images/016-large.jpg
A Google search of Lloyd England’s name in the variant spellings you use, returns three relevant references—-two to your group. The third was an interview from April of this year with a local D.C. television affiliate, NBC4, which provides these details:

"The plane was so low it hit the light pole," England said. "And when it hit the pole it knocked the light part off and nothing came through the car but the pole itself." The light pole shaft speared its way through England's cab, pushing the front passenger seat backwards into the rear of the car. If it had fallen a few feet to the right, England said he would have been crushed.

"I had to wrestle with the car to stop it and when I did stop the car there was no noise," England said.

In your Survivors’ Fund web posting, “Lloyd,” no last name, the spelling changing to “Lloyde” in the third paragraph, provides some additional information:

Simultaneously, the plane struck a light pole and the pole came crashing down onto the front of Lloyd’s taxicab, destroying the windshield in front of his eyes. Glass was everywhere as he tried to stop the car. Another car stopped, and the driver helped move the heavy pole off Lloyd’s car. As they were moving the pole, they heard a big boom and turned to see an explosion. The light pole fell on Lloyd and he struggled to get up from underneath, wondering what had happened.

The mental and physical toil these struggles must have taken on Mr. England, combined with damage to the cab’s interior, must have brought your fund and Mr. England together, however some have speculated the intent is more public relations spin, meant to create a public record for an undocumented participant to a historically important event.

But the details are beginning to now not add up. “Another car stopped"...“as he tried to stop the car.” Both of these statements imply the cars were going at some rate of speed. However, there is unanimity in the eyewitness accounts that traffic was at a standstill, or at best crawling, in both directions, on Rt27/Washington Blvd. and in both directions on I-395. Penny Elgas's “Personal Experience At The Pentagon on September 11, 2001,” statement, part of her Smithsonian Museum donation

“I found myself stuck in late morning rush hour traffic-—almost in front of the Pentagon. Traffic was at a standstill.”

Father Stephen McGraw, the Catholic priest whose photograph was published worldwide:

"The traffic was very slow moving, and at one point just about at a standstill," "The plane clipped the top of a light pole just before it got to us, injuring a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away from my car.

Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over.

"There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in."

(Two very good witness lists can be found at Killtown’s and at Eric Bart’s web site.) Research tells us, that without the lamps, the light poles were 30 feet high and weighed 190lbs. It is difficult to imagine even two strong men extracting such an awkward spear without also scratching or denting the hood.

Mr. England describes two sequential events: a plane flying over that clipped the light poles, followed several moments later by an explosion, as he and another driver attempted to remove the pole from the windshield. Although Mr. England may have meant to reference a secondary explosion, of which apparently there were several, conveniently, as exposed diesel and propane tanks exploded, they were by comparison all minor, which in the absence of first mentioning a primary explosion, doesn’t seem the intent of the story.

Moreover, his recollections of a dual event supports any number of theory variants, such as a fly-by, or fly-over with a 757, or a similar jet liner, followed by a Cruise missile, or drone attack—are all possible given the wide range of conflicting testimony.

But there are more reasons to doubt Mr. England’s story. You report, “Police started to arrive on the scene and forced Lloyde to move. They urged the bystanders to leave the area in case there was another explosion. Lloyde was forced to abandon his car in the middle of the street to begin the long walk home.”

I should think the police or F.B.I. would have done just the exact opposite and forced Lloyde to stay and be debriefed as an eyewitness to a horrific crime. In one photo, Lloyde and his taxi are left all alone on the highway, which seems to imply some sort of special status for him.

The F.B.I. was quick to take control of the “crime scene,” even putting journalists in handcuffs in their effort to control access, but strangely, interviews with eyewitnesses is a detail lacking in almost every published account, which strains credulity.

If England isn't being a stooge here, (and he is much too central-casting for me to believe he’s not,) but instead truly was the innocent passerby, caught up like Zelig or Forrest Gump in grand events, then the precision of his new recall of a dual event is very, very useful. As the paradigm shifts, more witnesses will recover disparate memories that weren’t reconcilable with previous versions of “reality.” Of course, one must leave open the possibility any new or changed disclosures are made out of sheer unmitigated stupidity, or even a cunning reverse-psychology misinformation ploy.

I think the lamp poles were rigged to fail in tandem with a fly-over, fly-by, or fly-in, since their evidential job of “proving” the wingspan and the directional path of a 757, was too important to leave up to chance. As is common with lethargic employees good enough for government work, the recounting of the detail of downed lampposts by scores of witnesses, can only be called heavy-handed.

The following two photos cannot be reconciled to my way of thinking. Either Lloyde's taxi was on the bridge with its stone parapets, or it was further along, with open metal guard rails alongside of him.

USAF photo by Staff Sgt. Gary Coppage 030204-O-9999J-007

My final point isn’t so much about Mr. England, as it is about the effect given off by the writing in your reports—-an effect I label Lost In Space.

For instance:

“Perhaps as valuable as those financial contributions were the talks he had with his case manager, who validated the trauma he had experienced that day

Trauma, from the Greek, “to pierce,” doesn’t need validating. To validate, means to confirm, to legalize, to support or corroborate on a sound and authoritative basis; to recognize, establish or illustrate the legitimacy of.

And that does seem to be the intent of your organization, albeit, unwittingly.

Trauma needs healing. Those who thought they were rehearsing simulated drills, playing the closed-mouth cogs within that most hierarchical of environments, a military exercise of mock plane attacks, then wrote the breathless (read: lifeless) prose in the after-action reports. They can be picked out from the planners, those who had actual foreknowledge of the events of that day. Were the bus loads of F.B.I. agents mustered on to the scene within half-an-hour the same ones who couldn’t stop a lame B-movie high-jacking plot before it reached its target? Everybody ran through their chain-of-command training, pitching in, helping out, doing what they were supposed to do, setting up shade tents, seeing to the beverage supply, ordering port-o-potties, all as the fires spread and burned.

Multiple, moving, mobile triage care centers were staffed with hundreds of care providers; litter bearers, and vehicle operators went into gear, all for the benefit of the approximately 58 wounded causalities taken to hospitals, which included the seven serious burn victims to come out of the Pentagon after the attack.

Rowan Scarborough, writing in the conservative Washington Times afterward, struck the right skeptical tone December 26, 2003

“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.”

The Targeted Ones
Lastly, lies need to be rigorous and technically perfect. Who wrote this bit of nonsense?

Lloyd still keeps a torn dollar bill signed by a stranger and dated September 11, 2001. It marks a day he has struggled to survive for two years. As he made his way on foot up Route 395 he met a man who had been working at the Pentagon. Walking side by side they found a dollar bill lying in the road. They picked it up, tore it in half, each signed one half and traded with each other. Parting ways each took half of a torn dollar with a stranger’s name on it. Lloyde still keeps this tangible reminder of his experience on 9/11.

Listen, it would make a great deal more sense if the dollar bill came out of one of their wallets, it was supposedly raining oxygen canisters that day, not money. It would be all there was in lieu of scratch paper, to write down the contact information of the new friend, together bonded by trauma, but whose name happens to escape me at the moment.

Lloyde says the hardest part of his journey since 9/11 has been trying to survive without money. He realized once he got home the morning of September 11 that he would not be able to work without his car—it is his livelihood. He was without a vehicle for two months until he purchased a used car with the help of American Red Cross funds. They were the only people to come to his aid in the beginning until his daughter came across the Survivors’ Fund. With the help of his case manager and financial support from the Fund, he has been able to afford his monthly expenses, something he struggled with after 9/11. “I’m not accustomed to people helping me,” he says. “I’m amazed that there are people there just to do that.”

Lloyde tends to keep his feelings to himself. He is quiet, respectful and humble when speaking of his experiences. When asked if it helps him to talk about September 11^th, he says, “I don’t know. There are things I’d like to forget.” The remnants of September 11, the reminders are all over for him but he concludes, “surviving hasn’t been easy, but it can be done.”

(Not to worry--other survivor stories, like that of Lt. Comdr. David Tarantino, Jerry Henson, and Capt. David Thomas, are equally inane and pointless. A core series of about a dozen high-resolution photographs taken within the first 30 minutes of the Pentagon attack, before a section of the building fell, are archived on a conservative website.

I notice that you haven't run any more survivor stories since 2003--you haven't even updated your web page for almost a year. Maybe that signals your 25 employees on the payroll have spent down the $20 million given you and you'll be moving on. You don't want to be left all alone in the middle of the road, do you? Skeptics of the official story of 9-11 have been busy in the interim, they even interviewed Lloyde. The Loose Change Forum has a thread on him, which is starting to unravel, bit by bit, inch by inch. I highly recommend it!

You're Either With Us, Or You Are With the Terrorists: Because I Said So!

Does George W. have no shame?

(From the official White House web page:)

After holding a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, President George W. Bush poses with fellow birthday celebrants in the East Room Thursday, July 6, 2006. The President celebrates his 60th birthday today. Pictured with him are, from left. Todd Mizis of the U.S. State Department; Raghubir Goyal of the India Globe and Asia Today; and Richard Benedetto of USA Today. White House photo by Kimberlee Hewitt

Everybody else in the room celebrating birthdays that day, were invited up by the president to share the spotlight with the Canadian Prime Minister and to have formal pictures taken and released.

Raghubir Goyal, in his question to the president, mentioned the coincidence of their birthdays being the same day. The spontaneous dialog went like this:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome. Thank you for your birthday gift.

Q: Mr. President, happy birthday.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, very much. Yes.

Q: It's also my birthday.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Today's your birthday, too?

Q: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT BUSH: It is? Come on up. Come up, come up, come up. (Laughter.) Come on.Get up here. Anybody else have their birthday today? (Laughter.) It's your birthday? Yes, sure. It is your birthday? Come on. (Laughter.) It's amazing everybody's birthday.

(The press sings "Happy Birthday.")

PRESIDENT BUSH: Dear Richard---he just told me he's 30 years old. (Laughter.) Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

END 12:34 P.M. EDT

The State Department's Todd Mizis is wearing clothes that don't fit--and that ends his story right there. Raghubir Goyal, of the India Globe, is looked upon as probably one of the biggest jokes in the White House press corps--he's not as obviously corrupt as Jeff Gannon was in lobbing softballs but he can always be counted on to turn the talk at a pivotal moment to third-world cow sanctions, and the like.

Benedetto was a White House reporter for USAToday during George H.W. Bush's presidency, and he obviously made some connections with the higher ups.

Richard Benedetto also just happens to be one of the scores of USAToday and other Gannett media employees who were eyewitnesses to a 757 Jet, American Airlines Flight 77, striking the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. Benedetto's account was also prominently featured on CNN, in addition to many writeups.

Gannett's Vision Statement, reads "Consumers will choose Gannett media for their news and information needs, anytime, anywhere, in any form, (I might add--or else!)

Here is Benedetto's first-person account: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/washscene.htm

“Richard Benedetto, a USA TODAY reporter, saw the plane slam into the Pentagon. "It sounded like an artillery shell. It hit on the west side of the building, near the helipad."

IT. It, he says!

The only question left: Is he a dope, a stooge, a pawn….

These sort of "eyewitness" accounts are being debunked one by one. My favorite is conservative ideologue James S. Robbins, who gives us equal measures of snark and b.s writing in the National Review, "I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory."

Ummm... seemed like rather a level approach to most people. At least his leading with a Voltaire quote, "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous," is suitable. Like the case for going to war in Iraq, only the flimsiest evidence supports the official story. Its two main legs to stands on are the eyewitness reports, and the supposed bodies recovered, which only the F.B.I. and Army pathologists ever saw, constitutes the entirety of the evidential record that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

Gary Bauer Sees AA Flight 77 Hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001

Gary Bauer's eyewitness account that he saw “the plane,” or “the jet,” fly “right into the Pentagon,” on the morning of September the 11^th, 2001, should be disbelieved in its entirety—it is a total fabrication, a deceitful, outright lie, in my humble opinion.

Bauer gave two in-depth interviews on his 9-11 experience---to The Charlotte World, a World Newspaper Publishing outfit specializing in Evangelical points of view, and MassNews, a free daily, which describes itself as the voice “for inquisitive moderates, liberals, conservatives and libertarians everywhere, with a special emphasis on news.…in Massachusetts,” but one with a clear conservative tone to it’s coverage.^*

* For instance, its founder, attorney J. Edward Pawlick, wrote a 2003 book called “Libel by the New York Times,” and in a brief “About Me” page online, he says,

“There was no way of knowing that the family which owned the Boston Globe and The New York Times Company had just installed a new Chairman, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., who had had a terrible childhood and was out to get even with his family by promoting gay marriage across the entire country, beginning with the state where they absolutely dominated the media. All his ancestors were "homophobes," Sulzberger said and there was some truth to that statement."

Both reports repeat essentially the same details in nearly exact language.

Bauer was driving into the District of Columbia on the morning of September 11^th*

*In something of a coincidence, he was on his way to a press conference being held in opposition to the radical Muslim government of Sudan’s persecution of Christians.

when his office calls with news of the strike to the second tower, the message carrying an immediate awareness of terrorism. Mr. Bauer realizes he’s in a “massive” traffic jam, stuck on I-395 for twenty minutes, and it has positioned him the nearest possible point of public access to the Pentagon. He realizes he’s in danger, when “all of a sudden,” he “heard the roar of a jet engine…coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible moment.” Elsewhere in the reporting Bauer calls “it,” the plane, and, the jet.^*

* Timing isn’t everything in life—you also need a good choreographer and a good scriptwriter.

With such a divine synergy to the “religious” Bauer’s first-person testimony, and given the overwhelming context of emotional catharsis generated by the New York attacks, it is no wonder Americans blithely accepted the chutzpah of Bauer’s claim, which along with other, equally suspect, eyewitness accounts, became one of the foundation proofs that a regularly scheduled American Airlines commercial 757 jet airplane melted into the Pentagon.

Did no one remember Bauer was the only Evangelical Christian leader who signed the Statement of Principles, for the Project for a New American Century, in June of 1997? Some of the other 24 co-signers include Dan Quayle, Lewis Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and the trifecta of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz.

Although Bauer himself didn’t contribute to the famous September 2000 document REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, where the cataclysmic events of 9-11 were predicted as necessary to galvanize Americans into endless war through a “new Pearl Harbor,” it can certainly be said he laid the philosophical and moral ground work for Ground Zero.

That Bauer foresaw good fortune that morning there is little doubt in my mind. Along with other leaders of the religious right like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and pro Zionist neoconservatives like William Kristol, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and David Wurmser, they all, in my opinion, shared privileged foreknowledge of the events of 9-11 and contributed accordingly—-at minimum co-conspiring the aftermath to what Bush Family/C.I.A. nabobs knew about, nursed along, ultimately even navigated and “nuked”^*

* read “pancaked.”

the “Al Qaeda” plane attacks that struck America on 9-11. Although each held a different focus to their agenda, all anticipated manipulating an increase in power stemming from the drastic curtailing of American civil-rights during times of war.

Some theorist’s hypothesis hold that had 9-11 unfolded as fully planned^*

*the fourth plane was 45 minutes late in taking off

and the Capital and the House of Representatives were struck as intended, with a major loss of life down the chain of command, then an immediate martial law would have been declared in the United States.^*

*as it already secretly had been declared a few days prior by Governor Jeb Bush in the state of Florida.

Had that happened, the last five years of the Bush regime would seem like a pale shadow of the Fascism envisioned.^*

*Is it much of a leap for those who think the Constitution is being misused in justification of a “right” to murder unborn babies, then it could also be used to not justify certain rights, like first-amendment rights championed by the ACLU? Likewise, suicide bombers blow up on your city buses, understandably unsettling, but where does the feeling of powerlessness lead?

Bauer became the co-founder in 2002 of The American Alliance of Jews and Christians (AAJC), which unites American Jews with Christians in a stated goal “on behalf of traditional values,” but in practical terms the alliance is a trade-off—with Christians giving an unprecedented Messianic level of support for Israel^*

*with the freshly minted theological justification as necessary to fulfill Biblical prophecy leading to the second coming of Christ, which is now upon us. Pat Robertson thinks He’s coming in this lifetime. Pat Robertson is an old man.

in exchange for covert Jewish support for a move toward a militaristic American Judeo-Christian theocracy, one that, admittedly, gives them second-class status as “Christians-in-waiting.”

When a morally vacuous, incompetent, and drifting Bush 2000 political campaign came shopping, this alliance bought.

In a just-released working paper, THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, by John J. Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, this alliance is called “The Lobby,” and it “includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives. They believe Israel’s rebirth is part of Biblical prophecy, support its expansionist agenda, and think pressuring Israel is contrary to God’s will.”

The AAJC's Board of Advisers also includes Dr. James Dobson, Charles Colson, Pastor Rick Scarborough, as well as Rabbi Barry Freundel, Rabbi David Novak, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Michael Medved, John Uhlmann.

Strange bedfellows sometimes resort to strange rhetoric, like when the chronically foot-in-mouth diseased Pat Robertson acts more Zionist than any Jew, most recently when he claimed God visited a stroke on Ariel Sharon in response to his "giving away" Holy land.

Jews must have to be sanguine about the motivation behind this Christian support, recognizing a dynamic which once was described as being, “a three-act play with the Jews disappearing in the second act.”^*

*Oy.

Bauer has stated as much. He has had problems with scandal, both sexual and financial; in a financial one from 1996 he took a six-figure fee plus expenses from the Cult leader Sun Myung Moon to speak before the "Family Federation for World Peace," alongside Moon and his fourth wife. Bauer defended his speech by saying.

"I don't see why Christians should censor themselves out of any forum in which our perspectives can be heard. I disagree with the theology of many groups that I address; Jews, for example, who do not accept Jesus, or atheists,”

Bauer’s part in the wide-ranging conspiracy which manifested on September the 11^th, which gave the pretext for U.S wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, lays responsibility for the unfolding moral horror directly at his feet. The Old Testament Bible says, we know a man by his fruits.

This so-called “pro-life” activist, Bauer, is either morally neutral on war, or he actually likes it. Although God is no longer on America’s side anymore, if we are to judge the outcomes of war, it hasn’t stopped Bauer’s reflexive defense of even the most heinous crimes committed in His name, like Abu Gharib.

A piece Bauer penned for www.beliefnet.com, a broadly ecumenical web site which offers a Belief-O-Matic™ quiz that can tell you what religion you should be practicing, is titled simply, “FRENZY,” with the pull-quote: “Some people are willing to believe anything America’s enemies say while believing our own leaders are liars.”

In it, Bauer writes about “the apparent prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib,” chides Senator Kennedy for his criticisms by bringing up Chappaquiddick, bemoans those “who adamantly opposed the U.S. liberating Iraq to begin with,” and castigates a Kerry campaign for the gall that “used the scandal to fund raise over the weekend. How disgusting can you get?” Nowhere does Bauer use a term like “disgust” to describe the actual abuse of the Iraqi “murderers and thugs” who are having “a bad time of it in prison,” going only so far as to say “such abuses violate our own values,” and “appropriate” steps should be taken in response to “the mistakes of a few U.S. soldiers.” He fails to mention that only a small fraction of photos have been released, the others depicting scenes of abuse deemed too troubling for public viewing.

Bauer ends with a fearsome flourish, saying, “bin Laden and the other murderers plotting right now to kill thousands of us and our allies…continue on their mission to bring us to our knees using whatever tactic or weapon they can find. The odds of us being hit before the November election grow by the hour…”

An article at www.counterpunch.org published April 8, 2003, by Akiva Eldar, who also writes for Ha'aretz, is titled, Gary Bauer and Likud: An Unholy Alliance with the Christian Right. In it, Eldar writes,

“On the first day of the AIPAC convention, a man named Gary Bauer took the podium. He reminded the cheering thousands that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people and, therefore, there is an absolute ban on giving it to another people. Bauer is not a member of the National Religious Party, nor of the Likud central committee. He's not even Jewish. He is a leading preacher from the Christian right in America, one of those who believe the Jews are The Chosen People and one day will even choose the right messiah. Bauer is a leading spokesman for arch-conservative policies, including a total ban on all abortions and favoring government funding for religious schools.

"These are the people generating the spiritual energy fueling George Bush's war on global terrorism. Evangelist Christians from South Carolina paid for the huge billboard on the Ayalon Highway declaring "There's no land for peace." TV evangelist Pat Robertson last week reprimanded Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, saying "Who do you think you are, handing Jerusalem over to Arafat?"

“With Christian friends like these close to the president's ear, the right-wing government in Israel does not need Jewish friends to rebuff political initiatives like the road map. But the Jewish activists are not giving up. The religious sources of the values that drive the Christian right are not preventing some Jewish organizations from turning them into a natural ally. Among those organizations are some that only a decade ago were thriving by exposing the anti-Semitic sloganeering in the sermons of some of their new-found friends.

Although Bauer is a lawyer and a civil servant and not a preacher, it is easy to make the mistake and call him a leader of the Christian right. He is a central nexus figure between politics and a religious political activism that has lost its soul.

9-11 The Smithsonian Museum Collects September 11: Flight 77 Hits the Pentagon

Airplane fragment in patriotic box

Description: Penny Elgas built a patriotic box to preserve this piece of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/images/large/28_182.
Donation of airplane fragment: G। Penny Elgas presents her airplane fragment and the box she made for it to National Museum of American History curator William Yeingst.

Subtitle: Can this Gal Craft, or What?

Of all the eyewitness accounts that attest to actually seeing an American Airlines 757 hit the Pentagon, Penny Elgas’s 2767-word report is by far the longest and most detailed. It also has to be the screwiest—reading like a novel conceived by Linda Tripp on acid, it helps support a dozen theory-variants as it aims wobbly at the official version.

She’s grounded in digital reality 1927 words into her epic, when she confesses she phoned in her morning’s first-hand experience to radio station WMAL, going on air with announcer Chris Core, to offer a “somewhat incoherent” testimony that led Mr. Core to reply rhetorically on air afterward, “How weird was that?”

Her still unsettled written account combines a mixture of manic off-topic minutia with holes big enough to fly airplanes into. Although she let’s herself go in a free-fall of free association, she never actually uses words to describe the central facts of her case, but a thoughtful curatorial comment provides the salient details:

Context: Driving on a highway adjacent to the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, Penny Elgas stopped as she saw a passenger jet descend, clip a light pole near her, and then crash into the Pentagon. Arriving home, Elgas found this plane fragment in the back seat of her car (she theorizes that it dropped through the open sunroof). Feeling that it was her patriotic duty to preserve the fragment as a relic, she crafted a special box and lined it with red, white, and blue material.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/images/large/28_315.

Source: Gift of G. Penny Elgas and American Airlines (Tax deduction: priceless.)

“Her” airplane fragment? Like catching a fly ball at Shea? Isn’t it essential lawful evidence of a heinous crime committed? “Feeling” her patriotic duty was to preserve the fragment as a relic?” How about “feeling” her way to the F.B.I. crime lab? All of these people are on the public payroll?

Thank God this lightweight fragment fell into the open sunroof of a car belonging to an experienced American craft hobbyist, one who instantly recognized it as a 20” piece of tail from a Boeing 757 airplane, and as such worthy of archival preservation if cleaned first of any fingerprints and dust. So Mrs. Elgas carefully washed the fragment in rare unguents and dried it with her hair, making it lustrous and desirable, coordinating it with her choice of patriotic chintz, and then making a neat solander box, which she has decorated with a bumper sticker message.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/images/large/28_54.jpg
Detail of airplane fragment:
This piece of a Boeing-757, American Airlines Flight 77, was torn from the plane as it clipped a light pole on approach to the Pentagon. All fifty-three airplane passengers, six crew members, and five hijackers were killed in the crash.



15 cars, tree blocking the shot
http://criticalthrash.com/terror/P1010013.JPG
Best link, with a close-up zoom, very clear focus

Shocked passers-by, witnesses to the gravest penetration of American military might since December 7, 1941, exit their cars to stand in mute, solitary horror in the first seconds after American Airlines Flight 77 disappears into the limestone façade of an empty wing of the Pentagon office building undergoing renovation in Arlington, Virginia. Some turn away, unable to bear the full magnitude of what they see, while we almost hear over the gulf of space and time, the sounds of a repeating refrain, “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” Others stand manfully, with hands defiantly on their hips, or thrust casually into their pockets, exemplars of the American way of facing disaster. Mrs. Elgas’s adrenaline-fueled observations are surely taking place just outside the picture frame, in one of the controlled, traffic lanes in the foreground, keeping company with the damaged taxi cab, and the abandoned vehicle of the Catholic priest who jumped into action, where all the debris is strewn. All apparently await instructions from the hazmat drill captain for their sector, someone who possessed the necessary authority to shout out, “Everybody back into your cars!” and then, “Go, Go, Go!” so as to empty the roadway for the emergency first responders and set the scene for subsequent images, which will constitute our visual memory bank for that fateful day, September 11, 2001, the day war without end began.



http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=28

Bearing Witness to History

Statement from Penny Elgas
Personal Experience At The Pentagon on September 11, 2001
By Penny Elgas

I had an early appointment on September 11th, so I drove to work later than usual. I work at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation near the White House. I headed north on 1-395 to DC from my home in Springfield, Virginia and I entered the highway a little after 9am so that I could take the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) express lane. As usual, traffic was very heavy and after I exited I-95, I found myself stuck in late morning rush hour traffic -- almost in front of the Pentagon. For most of my drive I had been totally focused on my radio and was extremely aware of the events that were unfolding in New York. Even though the radio reporters were cautious, I was already convinced from the first strike that it was not just an unfortunate pilot error. However, I felt that New York was under attack and I couldn't have imagined what would unfold in front of me.

Traffic was at a standstill. I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there. My first thought was “Oh My God, this must be World War III!”

In that split second, my brain flooded with adrenaline and I watched everything play out in ultra slow motion, I saw the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport. In the nano-second that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I remember recognizing it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the color stripes. And I remember thinking that it was just like planes in which I had flown many times but at that point it never occurred to me that this might be a plane with passengers.

In my adrenaline-filled state of mind, I was overcome by my visual senses. The day had started out beautiful and sunny and I had driven to work with my car's sunroof open. I believe that I may have also had one or more car windows open because the traffic wasn't moving anyway. At the second that I saw the plane, my visual senses took over completely and I did not hear or feel anything -- not the roar of the plane, or wind force, or impact sounds.

The plane seemed to be floating as if it were a paper glider and I watched in horror as it gently rocked and slowly glided straight into the Pentagon. At the point where the fuselage hit the wall, it seemed to simply melt into the building. I saw a smoke ring surround the fuselage as it made contact with the wall. It appeared as a smoke ring that encircled the fuselage at the point of contact and it seemed to be several feet thick. I later realized that it was probably the rubble of churning bits of the plane and concrete. The churning smoke ring started at the top of the fuselage and simultaneously wrapped down both the right and left sides of the fuselage to the underside, where the coiling rings crossed over each other and then coiled back up to the top. Then it started over again -- only this next time, I also saw fire, glowing fire in the smoke ring. At that point, the wings disappeared into the Pentagon. And then I saw an explosion and watched the tail of the plane slip into the building. It was here that I closed my eyes for a moment and when I looked back, the entire area was awash in thick black smoke.

I was not sure what to do next. Everyone started to emerge from their cars and, with looks of horror and disbelief, many began to beg for cell phones to call 911, to call family, or to call the story in to their newspapers. I continued to listen to the radio and everything was still about the events in New York. I was absolutely convinced that another plane was headed our way because there had been two planes at the World Trade Center and I felt that we were all sitting ducks on that road. I wanted the traffic to turn around. I didn't know what else to do so I got out of my car and ran back toward the highway yelling "Go Back! They just hit the Pentagon!" But of course, no one could move in any direction because traffic was at a standstill. A young woman in her 20's from the car in front of me was standing in front of my car and was visibly distraught and said she didn't know what to do. I told her that she was could come sit with me in my car for awhile and then I went to my car and started throwing everything from the front seat into the back seat to make room for her. I remember momentarily thinking that something was odd about the stuff as I tossed it back, but I didn't focus on it. Just then, a rather large man (from the regular traffic lanes) in a light tan military uniform bellowed to everyone within earshot. "Get Back In Your Car!!" So we did.

Then I became aware of people streaming out of the back side of the Pentagon and congregating on the sidewalks. It appears it was only a minute or two after the impact because they weren't yet looking at the crash site and seemed perplexed as to why they were outside. Perhaps only a few minutes lapsed from the actual time of impact to the time when someone was yelling at the traffic to "Go! Go! Go!" But it seemed like an eternity. As I began to drive, I heard a crunching sound (like driving on gravel) and I saw a piece of metal on the road about the size of a softball (it looked like a small conveyer belt-like roller with pins.) I remember thinking that I could puncture my tires - but in that same thought, I vowed to keep driving, even if I had to ride home on the tire rims. As the car moved slowly forward in traffic, I realized that I was still headed toward my office and I absolutely did not want to go there - my office is on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a few doors down from the White House.

So I made my way across the lanes of traffic and instead, I exited into the Pentagon's parking lot. I circled around to the right and came out under the road that I had just been on -- headed toward I-66 West. It was then that I realized that my car seemed to be shaking and I thought that perhaps I had punctured a tire. It also seemed that my car was moving extremely slow and that I might be stuck in 2nd gear. I looked down at the gearshift and confirmed that it was in "Drive". Then I looked up at my speedometer - and I was flabbergasted to find that I was traveling at over 80 mph and it felt as if I was not moving at all. My car tires were okay, but my little Dodge Neon was shaking because I never pushed it that fast before. I realized that I was still feeling the effects of the adrenaline rush and I forced myself to slow down.

As I drove, I remember being frustrated and thinking that everyone else on the road looked too normal and too unaware of the atrocity that had just unfolded in front of me. I turned off I-66 and when I reached the corner of Glebe Rd and Columbia Pike, I hear a terrible explosive noise (which I later was told was the sonic boom of our fighter jets). I thought it was evidence of another attack. Traffic stopped and people poured out of stores and cars and homes to look up to the sky. I turned on the radio to find out what happened, and heard that a WTC tower had collapsed. So I pulled over to the side of the road to catch my breath and sobbed for all the lives lost and for what seemed to me at that time like the beginning of the end. I turned south onto Columbia Pike and headed home - stopping once to attempt to use a pay phone, but all lines were busy. As I drove farther from the crash sight, emergency vehicles continued to zoom past me toward Arlington, Virginia and the Pentagon.

A Second Shock...

When I arrived home, I turned on every radio and TV in the house -- I'm not sure whether I was trying to drown out my thoughts or whether I was just hungry for news. I made a cup of tea to calm my nerves and called my husband to let him know that I was okay. I told him that there was a piece of the plane in my car, but for some reason, I couldn't deal with it just yet. I also called my son at college to reassure him that I was okay. Apparently, I made several cups of tea that I don't remember making because later that day I found four sopping teabags lined up on my kitchen counter. I believe now, that I was operating on “auto-pilot” and was probably in shock for much of that day. At some point I opted for quiet and turned off all the noise except the radio in my kitchen. Then I went to my car and faced that piece of the plane that was in the back seat. It appeared to be a piece of the tail. There was no metal on it and it was very lightweight -- all plastic and fiberglass. It was 22" long and 15" wide. I have no idea how it got into my car because I do not remember seeing any rubble flying around while I was at the crash site. I assume that it dropped in through the sunroof or flipped in through a window. The plane piece consisted of a layer of white paint, and layers of yellow and gray fiberglass as well as a thin brown corrugated material.

I gingerly picked up the piece and carried it into the house. As I entered the kitchen, I heard the radio announcer on WMAL state that it was an American Airlines flight and I thought to myself, "I knew that." But then the announcer said that is was Flight number 77 and he stated the number of passengers and crew and it hit me hard that the planes had been full of innocent victims. The radio announcer said that they were taking calls from people who had a personal experience to share. I dialed the station. I remember that I told them that I was "Penny from Springfield" and that I had a piece of the plane. The next thing I knew, I was on the air and Chris Core said "Penny from Springfield, What did you see?" I don't remember any of the rest of our conversation and coworkers who heard it said it was somewhat incoherent. The only thing that I remember is that at the end, Chris Core said, "How weird is that?" And I remember thinking that his comment didn't make me feel any better.

As you could imagine, I was in no shape to work the next day so I stayed home with my husband. All day on September 12th, I sat glued to the television and overdosed on horrible replays from New York and DC/Arlington. At one point, I unconsciously barricaded myself in a mound of sofa cushions and that's when I realized that I needed to find some mental relief. I talked to several coworkers and to a counselor from our Corporation's counseling program, as well as to family and friends. I wasn't too keen about returning to work, but I had a major project to roll out and I just kept telling myself that I would not let the terrorists succeed in terrorizing me further. I returned to the office on September 13th with several rolls of red, white and blue ribbon and a supply of pins. I began to make multi-colored ribbon loops and pinned them to the bulletin board outside my office with a note that they were available for anyone that wanted to wear one. On that day and the next, I posted over 160 ribbons and it was helpful to me to see them worn by so many.

On the One-Month Anniversary, October 11, 2001, my co-workers and I were still felt traumatized by the events of one month ago. I invited them to come to my office to watch the commemorative ceremony in New York via CNN on my computer. It was then that we learned of the Pentagon Memorial service planned for later that morning. A co-worker, Victoria Hebert, and I decided that we must attend it. We knew that it would be a heavily guarded event, and we didn't think that we would be able to crash it, but we felt compelled to try and get as close to it as possible. We left the office around 10:00 am for the 11:00 am service. We took the Metro to the Pentagon station and surfaced right up into the Pentagon Parking Lot. The event was held on the side of the building opposite the damaged side. We followed a few people that were in the parking lot and we were stopped at several checkpoints by armed military personnel but were always allowed to proceed toward the River Parade Area.

It was both unsettling and reassuring to see all the military personnel in their battle fatigues with guns drawn and machine guns strapped to their backs, standing atop HumVees and other military vehicles. The most unnerving view was later during the services, when we saw FBI personnel patrolling the riverside behind the bleachers -- with large guns drawn. One of FBI agents was dressed in black from head-to-toe with a tight black hood pulled over his head that showed only two white circles for his eyes.

There, we headed to the seating area reserved for ticketed guests. We passed through the metal detectors, but we were turned away when we couldn't produce a ticket. Fortunately, they directed us to seating that was set aside for the public in the grassy area just below. There were chairs, bleachers, large-projection screens and an excellent sound system. We chose seats at the top of the bleachers and from that vantage point we could see the roofline of the Pentagon with its large flag draped down from the top (and armed snipers walking along the roof).

We visited the "wall" of American Heroes which was a three-panel board containing the names of each of the dead from the Pentagon disaster and an obituary for each. It was at this wall that Milegro Arcega of the local NBC news interviewed us. Mr. Arcega and his cameraman were extremely respectful. The interview was not aired, but it was another opportunity for us to express our anguish and to heal.

The Pentagon memorial service was very moving and personally very helpful. My co-worker and I were so glad that we were able to be a part of it. After the service, we made our way to the other side of the building, through the parking lot and up onto the grassy embankment not far from where my car had been on the morning of September 11th. Victoria and I climbed up the embankment with reverence, but I was unprepared for the overwhelming anguish that I would experience when I turned around and viewed the gashed building again in the sunlight, for the first time since September 11th. God Bless America!

May her story survive the eons of time and serve to awaken those who slumber yet.