Thursday, November 06, 2008

Chronology of Chaos.

I thought it would be a simple matter to meld together a timeline I'd recently unearthed online called "War on Terrorism," with another one that covered overlapping ground, which was pulled together in August 2002 on the industry website, Broadcast & Cable, in an article called, Three hours that shook America: A chronology of chaos.

I was under the impression that the list I'd found at an Irish web source was the compendium of the Associated Press "Breaking News" wire from September 11, 2001, relevant to terrorism. The chronology of chaos timeline promised to be "a compelling illustration of how news organizations struggled to separate fact from fiction on the morning of Sept. 11."

By that, the author Mark K. Miller, meant to take the significant work of seven broadcast news organizations, over the period from 8:45am to 11:33am on September 11th, 2001, and present it in a running timeline format. He lists the seven as,

"CNN; New York's WABC-TV, WCBS-TV and WNBC(TV); and Fox's WTTG(TV) Washington and WTOP(AM)/-FM Washington."

Mr. Miller wasn't very good at punctuating his list of only six names---so I couldn't tell if a typo was at fault. But then I noticed a seventh news organization was appearing occasionally in the timeline anyway---AP, for the Associated Press, which last I heard, wasn't a broadcaster---it was a news gatherer and sourcer.

So with two strikes against him already, I wasn't happy when I confronted the nature of the eight individual AP items I found on his list. I had no way of knowing for sure if the items on the Irish list represented a complete listing of the news reports that AP issued on 9/11. But when I melded Mr. Miller's AP items with similar ones, I came up with something that looked like this:


9:14am - Plane crashes may have been on purpose "There are reports that the FBI may be investigating the possibility that the two plane crashes may have happened on purpose."
9:15 AP: 'The FBI is investigating reports that the two crashes are the result of foul play.'

9:43 AP: 'An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say. The West Wing of the White House is being evacuated amid terrorist threats.'

9:47am - Reports of helicopter crashing into Pentagon

9:49 AP: 'The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all aircraft takeoffs nationwide.'

10:00 AP: 'An explosion hits another building near the WTC.'
10:02am - Part of second tower collapses

10:23 AP: 'A car bomb explodes outside the State Department, senior law-enforcement officials say.'
10:35am - Car bomb explodes at State Department
"There are reports of a car bombing at the State Department."

10:37 AP: 'A large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania, officials at Somerset County airport confirm.'
10:38am - 747 down in Pennsylvania "There are unconfirmed reports that a 747 has come down in Pennsylvania."

11:15 AP: 'Mayor Giuliani says, 'I have a sense it's a horrendous number of lives lost.''
11:15am - Witnesses tell of horror at New York carnage

11:23 AP: 'American Airlines says it 'lost' two aircraft carrying 156 people.'
11:24am - Aircraft can carry up to 300


It is unlikely for alternate versions to exist of the same AP banners and reports, like the pairings at 9:14/9:15am, and at 10:23/10:25am, which are essentially semantic. Other near matches, like the pairings at 11:15am and 11:22/11:23am, are spooky by their being so close, yet so very far away. The matched pair at 10:37/10:38 is transgressive by the way in which the confirmed item precedes the unconfirmed one. It would have made some sense the other way around, as news developed and a source came in.

If Miller's list was assembled to dissemble, perhaps this next item is the reason

9:49 AP: 'The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all aircraft takeoffs nationwide.'

I'm not personally up on the politics of that action, and If my memory serves, several people try and take "credit" even going for the Oscar gold: "Damn it! I said bring those planes down!

But I am most concerned about the final item, for I find in its very subtlety the seeds of disaster, like the spongy ambiguity of a deflating balloon, softly saying, "aircraft"

I am up on the politics of this one, big time, trust me. I believe that both CNN and CBS went forward with reports of an airplane impacting the Pentagon, in a misstep, as a faux pas, a premature ejaculation triggered by an unanticipated show down with a CNN producer; announcing ahead of its scheduled time, the AP-sourced information---that an airliner had crashed into the Pentagon.

Aaron Brown reported on CNN at 9:46 or 9:47 AM that a "plane," "it was a plane" that impacted the Pentagon, and he attributed the information to the Associated Press. What did you know, and when did you know it?

It was not until 10:11am, in an Associated Press banner: Large airliner crashes into the Pentagon, that it is quoted, "AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner..... It plowed right into the Pentagon."

Over at CBS, it was Andrea Roane who said at 9:43am “Now we are hearing the Associated Press is quoting witnesses as saying it was an aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon..." Hiss the witnesses...

So Mike Buchanan could sound off at 9:43am, "So we’ve got two planes that plowed into the world trade center in New York and now we’ve got a plane plowing into the pentagon here in Arlington!"

But at 9:46am Mike said this on live TV, “He said it was a large airliner...'I saw the tail of a large airliner, it plowed into the Pentagon,' according to an Associated Press radio reporter."

You can make that one an airliner WITH A LARGE TAIL.

That Associated Press report was issued at 10:11am---25 minutes after Buchanan's loud mouth, and lack of cool, and pathological need to be some big tough center of attention, spilled the beans.

The banner headline reads
Large airliner crashes into the Pentagon the body of the report contained, among other things, this item: "AP reporter Dave Winslow also saw the crash. He said, "I saw the tail of a large airliner..... It plowed right into the Pentagon."

This is unambiguous. Without conflict. It is a truth. There are implications.

Like the truth in "a compelling illustration of how news organizations struggled to separate fact from fiction on the morning of Sept. 11," but forgot to add, "and then stepped their foot down on the neck of truth, and drowned it in six inches of water."

I believe this chronology of chaos was constructed in order to hide within the record this grave offense, which threatened the very fabric of this plot. But don't take that seriously though. The plot is unraveling at many different ends.

Since I like metaphor so much, I'm delighted that it is the Irish who have preserved knowledge from the hoards, and thus might be credited with saving civilization once again.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

U.S. Park Police: The Eagle has Landed

An insight into the situation in the first minutes of the terrorism scenario as it played out at the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001, is gained from a report by Chris Plante, the CNN producer and newscaster who was stationed in the Pentagon building that morning, where he was placed under gunpoint by officers of the Defense Protective Service. Then Plante was dissed by his own conglomerate when he tried to speak up about it.

Plant said at 9:48am,
"The U.S. Park police, and other Federal law enforcement department, has arrived in force on the scene. There’s a Park Police helicopter overhead, (19:20) every car that arrives at the gate where I was located, was being stopped by officers at gunpoint. Everybody is being forced out of their vehicles as they arrive at the Pentagon."
I began to wonder what these reinforcements were doing playing such a central law-enforcement role at the Pentagon---which has its own police force on duty, as well as being provided with their own high-level access to helicopter services---at such an early stage in what came as a complete surprise attack. Shouldn't the Park Police have been defending the monuments along the Mall, which is their lawful mandate? Instead, the Park Police helicopter, which Plante mentions, played not just a central role in the visual record of the medical response from that morning. After organizing a file on my computer, of images which I found online, depicting the response by helicopters, I realized that the Park Police didn't play just a central role in the medical response via air transport, so much as they turned out to be the entirely singular and exclusive agents of this helicopter function.


Both photos by Paul Haring

Because after a review of the image file, it became apparent to me that there was only this single instance of a Medivac rescue that day. Although it was photographed from many different angles, all are of the same flight, when two patients---one of whom we can see has his arms visibly burned, as he is wheeled past the view of television cameras---are loaded onboard and then seen departing for the hospital.

Photo by Michael Garcia of the Park Police Medivac

The use of a Park Police helicopter for medical evacuation came under some criticism after September 11, when a point was made that press ganging this equipment into service required it to be reconfigured in order to carry gurneys---a task which took only a few minutes, according to a semi-official retort in a Smithsonian Museum retrospective:
"The U.S. Park Police provided rapid helicopter assistance to the rescue efforts at the Pentagon. This helicopter was reconfigured in eight minutes and arrived three minutes later to transport burn victims to area hospitals."
Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Carmen L.Burgess of a Park Police helicopter evacuation.

These still images were verified by a "live" television video feed of the medical triage taking place that morning . Filmed with a camera controlled by military masters, it was shared between several outlets, although it was broadcast in its fullest form on the local CBS affiliate Channel 9, who also was the only outlet to claim authorship and proprietary rights to it on air. Starting about 10:05am, and televised intermittently over the next 13 minutes, various views of the staged activity along Route 27 were televised, with the helicopter seen landing at 10:11am, and lifting off again at 10:17am. Channel 9's Dave Statter narrates that scene:
"...the Eagle helicopter from the park police is landing, taking this man to the hospital, from my vantage point it looks like he has burns. Also from Arlington Fire and Rescue, we see some doctors, what appear to be doctors, on the scene, not sure if they are military or not, they seem to be helping with the injured. As you can see, Virginia State police are trying to move us back, but I think we've been able to hold them off for the moment. Again this is the E-ring of the Pentagon. Hold on a second Mike and Andrea, we're seeing a second man who clearly is burned being sent to that Medivac helicopter. As you can see they are rushing him down there. This is the second person we can confirm appears to have very serious burns."
At 10:15am (21:34), Mike Buchanan asks Dave a simple question: "Any word on casualties?" Dave Statter begins to answer,
"Other than seeing the two people we saw who were Medivac who had serious burns...um, I... have not...I can't confirm any others. They've been working on others, but we don't know what---certainly, anybody in those windows, or in those offices by those windows, you have to be very, very concerned about right now."
Statter must not have been paying close attention, because on the tape that his voice-over accompanies, we have witnessed a third casualty, being loaded into an ambulance. (Or maybe somebody whispered "plausible deniability" in his ear piece and he lost his train of thought.)

Photo by Dennis Whitehead for Corbus Park Police helicopter at the Pentagon on 9-11

But by his own admission, the only civilian journalist allowed access to the scenes of medical triage taking place outside of the Pentagon that morning along Route 27, says on tape that he can confirm only the two wounded casualties visually witnessed. Seen in this light, the use of a Park Police helicopter to perform the single rescue flight which took place that morning, takes on a wholly different meaning.

Park Police UT0090475 U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 1st Class Mark D. Faram

The mission of the U.S. Park Police, as it is commonly understood, is to protect the White House, and Capitol, and the area which comprises the National Monuments and Memorials along the Mall, along with some prohibited airspace above them, which they routinely patrol---although they're not allowed any longer to give crowd estimates due to the competition, and "crowd-size envy" between the various political factions, which turn out demonstrations.

But the Park Police also functions as a kind of formal Praetorian guard for the sitting Vice President---in Dick Cheney's case, they officially protect him by the Vice President's home and providing him with escort. In sum, we are told, the U.S. Park Police are the agency mandated by law as responsible for providing for the security of the vice president.

Their special function that day was revealed by a Bill Line, the National Capital Region Communications Officer, who said,
"National Airport's Control Tower, normally the "nerve center" for directing any response to this type of incident, handed over all command and control duties of the air space to both U.S. Park Police helicopter pilots as thick, black smoke from the Pentagon blew directly toward and into National Airport's Control Tower, blinding the sight of workers there. For most of the rest of the day, U.S. Park Police helicopter personnel directed all air traffic into and around the Pentagon."
The years since 9/11 have not been especially kind to the Park Police force, with issues too numerous and relentless to enumerate. A good place to gain insights into their perspective of the events of 9/11, are in an Interview of Sgt. Ron Galey, of the U.S. Park Police, and in an article National Capital Region Contributes to September 11th Help Efforts.

Photo by Paul Haring, of the departing Park Police helicopter.

Another area of possible concern was the role the Park Police may have played in rumor mongering, and reports of false alarms, which plagued Washington that day. Repeatedly, notices of car bombs and other explosions bedeviled the Mall area. Even the Secret Service was responsible for calling in a report to the fire department that a plane had crashed into the White House! How they came to believe this to be true remains an unaddressed mystery.

At 10:13am on the CBS broadcast taped above, (19:30) Andrea Roane says, "Let's go to Frank Herzog who is near one of the most visible monuments in the city, the Washington monument, Frank what do you see, what do you hear?" Herzog replies,
"I'm on the west grounds of the Washington monument the area has been completely evacuated by Park Police. Needless to say downtown Washington DC, except for the vehicular traffic, which is bumper to bumper, the rest of the city has been shut down. It looks like a Sunday morning here, the Mall is absolutely empty. Park Police came through here about ten minutes ago, evacuated the entire area, and told tourists to go some place else."(19:30)
That is the background, which should be visualized that morning, when ceremonial Washington was shut down---emptied of its inhabitants by 10:00am by members of specialized federal law-enforcement agencies beholden to a corrupt administration. This was done to create a clean slate for the threats of terror, as "reports of a car bombing at the State Department," at 10:35am, and "a car bomb has exploded outside the US State Department," at 10:42am, with the cryptic, "Something has happened at the State Department, we don't know what yet. We hear it might have been a plane," at 11:03am.

Later that morning an altered Plante came back on air to delivery a sad coda to his earlier report. I feel nothing when I hear it. He's Winston now, after his rat-excitation has ended. But I am extremely grateful to Plante for the integrity he woke up with on Tuesday morning, and I fully understand his submission to authority.
PLANTE: "All right, the area to the west of the Pentagon has been evacuated further back by law enforcement and military officials as they anticipate a second aircraft arriving at the Pentagon. It has been deemed to be threatening enough where I saw at least one F-16 fighter jet in the air over the Pentagon, headed to the west, where the plane was reportedly coming in from. Again, they are saying here a second aircraft is expected to arrive at the Pentagon sometime soon. They take it seriously enough that they have scrambled at least one fighter jet that I saw, probably either from D.C. Air National Guard or the Maryland Air National Guard, both of which fly F-16s.

"The west front of the building of the Pentagon along Route 27 has now partially collapsed. About a 60-foot section of the building laterally has collapsed, the entire five stories. The building has obviously---the fire has, is scrambling inward in the building, toward the courtyard, and this wedge, as they call it, of the Pentagon, the westernmost wedge, was just refurbished, and was in fact reinforced for terrorist attack, and for just this sort of thing.

"I know that there were a significant number of injuries. I'm unaware of any numbers on fatalities at this point. People here who came from the building are suggest that surely there were fatalities, but I can not confirm any. I have spoken to a number of people that I know who've pulled people out of rubble. There were severe injuries, a number of helicopters here evacuating, injured people, and I'm told by one senior military source, that the plane in the side of the building has been tentatively identified as a Boeing 767, a full-sized airliner, Boeing 767. But that at this point, they are waiting for arrival of a possible second plane, which has been deemed to be a threat, and as I said, fighter jets have been scrambled to address that matter."
ACCAA The Arlington County After-Action Report inventories the timing of various pieces of equipment as they were dispatched to the Pentagon, without ever stating if any were ever put into use.They weren't.
"Mutual-aid medical evacuation helicopter support was provided by the U.S. Park Police (USPP), MedStar (Washington Hospital Center), and Inova Fairfax Hospital. The Air Traffic Control Tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport notified the USPP of the incident and helicopter Eagle I was dispatched at approximately 9:43 a.m. Eagle II launched 8 minutes later at 9:51 a.m. MedStar was notified by the Arlington County ECC at approximately 10:06 a.m., and launched one helicopter that arrived onscene at approximately 10:18 a.m. Inova Fairfax Hospital launched helicopter AirCare I at approximately 10:00 a.m., after notification by the Arlington ECC. A second helicopter, AirCare II, was launched at approximately 10:40am The USPP, MedStar, and AirCare provided a total of five helicopters."
Nonetheless, and I repeat myself, there was only this single example of medical transport via helicopter to occur that day--which took two patients to Washington Hospital Burn Center. Anything else was used just for show.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Saint Christopher of Plante

I hate it when I labor to create a transcript for a CNN segment, only to find out there was one online all along---I just couldn't find it. Oh well, keeps me humble.

The CNN telecast of September 11, 2001, for the segment that ran from 9:29am to 10:11am, as cataloged at archive.org, first makes mention of a terrorist attack in Washington or Arlington, when a chyron changes at 9:40am (10:52) to “Reports of Fire at Pentagon.”

At 9:42am, Aaron Brown, the preternaturally calm anchor, who was going on-air for the first time on CNN that day, begins a telephone interview with Chris Plante, a CNN producer who has an office in the Pentagon and was the source of the fire report. Aaron asks him, "Chris, you’re on the phone, can you hear me OK?" Chris says, "yes, I can hear you just fine." Aaron prompts, "tell me whatja know."

Chris starts off in a measured cadence, but soon veers off into a ditch,
"Well, ah, arriving at the Pentagon a short time ago there was a huge plume of smoke, which continues to rise from the west side of the Pentagon, over in the area there is a helicopter landing zone, it’s along Route 27, if you’re looking at maps of the area. The building is currently being evacuated. Police and emergency units are, of course, responding from all around the building, and from the local Arlington County Fire Department. The plume of smoke is enormous a couple of hundred of yards across at its base, its billowing into the sky hundreds of yards. It’s impossible for me to say from this side of the building, whether the building itself is on fire, up in flames, or what caused it. I did not hear an explosion, but there is certainly a very, very significant fire in this enormous office building, on the west front. The building is being evacuated, the Defense Protective Service Officers, the police force for the Pentagon, are on a very...tight...string. As I arrived, I was held…at…gun…point..."

Aaron and his ear piece could sense Plant going rogue, so Aaron began overriding that with a "Chris, Chris, Chris…let me interrupt you for a second." (14:00) 9:43am "Hang on, don’t go anywhere."

Aaron had to interrupt Chris and shut him down, and for this he needed a reason. Chris Plante was forcing an on-air showdown over his version of the truth. Since Chris had actually interviewed sources he trusted on the scene, and they formed a consensus, he must not have understood the single-mindedness of purpose he was encountering in his producer, who was insisting on leading with an AP report of a dramatically different eyewitness. Plante must have felt he was acting the role of hero---surely, they'd thank him the next day. But he couldn't know what he was coming up against: a schedule of narrative reports of a synthetic story made up out of whole cloth.

Aaron Brown would ultimately announce that a plane had hit the Pentagon 28 minutes before the AP report sourcing the information was issued. Because of Chris Plante's integrity, Aaron was forced off schedule, and needing to fill up air time quickly, he pulled reports out of his sleeve--literally. Rather than adjusting the rules of journalism to fit a circumstance, or situational ethics, Aaron Brown was now playing games with the fundamentals of reality.

At the same time, Aaron Brown went live with the first Associated Press news report about the White House being evacuated, on-air at about 9:43am, even though the AP report he is quoting wasn't issued until 9:52am, Terrorist threats made against the White House.
"but we’re getting reports now that the White House is being evacuated as well, we don’t know precisely what, ah, is caused that decision to be made, whether that is precautionary, whether something has happened at the White House, again, the president is in Florida this morning so the President is not in any danger but the White House of course is fully operational, whether the President is there or not. We have reports the White House is being evacuated (14:26). Getting back to Chris in a moment, we also have reports now from Chris Plante on the scene, that the Pentagon is being evacuated as well, all of this coming on the heels of a large fire at the Pentagon 9:44am We can’t tell you at this moment whether that fire is inside the Pentagon building itself, or on the grounds of the Pentagon. And these two planes (14:51) that you can see behind us that hit the world Trade Center, that’s Washington, the Old Executive Office Building, I believe, and you can see the plume of smoke rising behind it, which we’ll assume until we’re told otherwise, that that’s the fire at the Pentagon, I believe that’s correct, as you look now at Washington, so we’ve got a major fire at the Pentagon, and the Pentagon being evacuated, the White House being evacuated, and we don’t know precisely the circumstances there, what caused that decision, and we have these two enormous explosions at the World Trade Center here in New York, where two planes slammed into the buildings (15:30) (long pause for ear chatter) We are also getting reports now that there is a fire on the Mall in Washington, that part of the Capital that runs, essentially from the Capital to the White House, in kind of a straight line going up Washington D.C. and we have reports of a fire there, What you’re looking at now is Washington, at least if I can see the monitor in front of me, it’s a little tricky from where we are, but it looks to me like the Old Executive Office Building then in back of it you see the large plume of smoke. Here in New York, sirens everywhere, people out in the streets staring at this grotesque scene of the World Trade Center buildings. It was in February of 93, if memory serves me correctly, that there was an attack, a terrorist attack, on the World Trade Center—bomb exploded in the garage of the Trade Center, on that day in February of 93. Here we are in 2001 and what appears to be deliberate attacks on the World Trade Center. And then we have these two reports out of Washington the fire at the Pentagon."
Aaron's droning small talk masked the furious back stage efforts at detente. Aaron broaches the subject at one point, (16:40) saying, "Chris Plante is still on the phone...I… do…believe...(read: er...ear...piece...is...talking...) but a sharp female voice at an open microphone could be heard to say, "Alright!" and he was warned away for another round.

"We’ll get to him in a second," says Aaron. Needing anything now that was handy, he reaches for a tethered show pony, "Greta Van Sustrin is at Washington Airport…Greta what are you hearing?" Greta chomps at her feed bag:
"I just got off my plane. I was heading to New York. Planes are stalled. I’m at National Airport parking lot. I heard a huge noise; I looked over at—in the direction of, the Pentagon. There’s a huge plume of smoke coming from that area. I can’t verify it’s the Pentagon. There’s these huge buildings in the way. You see particles coming down through the air, white particles, I can’t tell what that is. I heard a noise slightly before I seen the smoke. I don’t know if it was an airplane or a bomb, but it’s certainly something, and there’s a terrific fire going on. The skies are clear here except for the tremendous amount of smoke coming from, there lots of firemen from all different directions, and of course, a lot of uncertainty here at National Airport. (17:20)
Greta doesn't know what "white particles" are because she is repeating a line she has been given. It is good Aaron didn't ask a follow up. Aaron continues, (17:28)
"Uh, uh…G r e t a… thank…you, uh…I want to just again recap as we pick up small pieces of information along the way."

(Recap? Small pieces of information? He's about to spring the first news an airliner crashed into the Pentagon! This man must have ice water in his veins!)

"The Associated Press is reporting that a plane, it was a plane that crashed at the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is being evacuated."

(Aaron is now quoting from another Associated Press release that will be issued at 10:11am, Large airliner crashes into the Pentagon. It is 9:47am ET---or 24 minutes premature.)

"There is a large fire there and there is the smoke (17:43) you see looking at now, whether that fire is inside the building or not, we have not confirmed."

(Are they trying to be ironic? Did he know about the fuel oil tank, or is he farblongjid?)

"There’s a fire on the Mall in Washington."

(I have no idea where Aaron is getting his "fire on the Mall" report, but he could be conflating it with an AP report, Car bomb explodes at State Department, although that one isn't due out for another 30 minutes---at 10:35am.)

"The cause of the fire on the Mall we cannot yet tell you. We can tell you the White House has been evacuated. We can tell you two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. All of this began just a little over an hour ago at eight forty-five Eastern time..."

(suddenly getting the green light and smoothly segueing)

"Chris Plante, tell me what you’ve learned since we’ve last talked:"
Chris: (levelly) Well, in speaking with people here at the Pentagon, as they’re being evacuated from the building, I’m told by several people that there was, in fact, an explosion, I was told by one witness, an Air Force enlisted—senior—enlisted man, that he was outside when it occurred, that he saw a helicopter circle the building, he said that it appeared to be a U.S. military helicopter, and that it disappeared behind the building where the helicopter landing pad, zone was, excuse me, (cough), and that he then saw a fireball go into the sky. I’m attempting to make my way around to that side of the building in my car right now, to see if I can get a, (dripping with sarcasm) ah, better, “visual perspective” of the scene on that side of building, but I can tell you that security has certainly clamped down. The U.S. Park police and other Federal law enforcement department, has arrived in force on the scene. There’s a Park Police helicopter overhead, (19:20) every car that arrives at the gate where I was located, was being stopped by officers at gunpoint. Everybody is being forced out of their vehicles as they arrive at the Pentagon. It is a very tense situation obviously, but initial reports, from witness indicate, that, um, there was in fact, a helicopter circling the building—contrary to what the AP reported, according to the witnesses that I’ve spoken to anyway—and that this helicopter disappeared behind the building and that there was then an explosion. That is about all I have from here. (19:45)

Aaron:(negotiating)OK. let’s do this Chris, why don’t you continue your reporting and I’ll pass along a couple of other things we’re picking up along the way. Trading at the New York Stock Exchange…9:49am etc.

Chris Plante was allowed to air his report, I believe, but only in exchange for telling a white lie, meant to offset a breach of etiquette---by placing himself into the story, when he said he had been put at gun point. Apparently, this crossed some line and needed to be sanitized.

To add insult to injury, Plante's report of a circling helicopter followed by an explosion made it into an AP report at 9:47am, but under a banner "Reports of helicopter crashing into Pentagon," a no-doubt specious item meant to compromise his own, "an eyewitness said that they saw the helicopter circle the building and after it disappeared behind it, an explosion occurred."

It was not a coincidence that so many players in the September 11th drama were either on their first or second days of new jobs, or else filling in for others, like Captain Charles Leidig, who was standing watch in the National Military Command Center for Brigadier General Montaque Winfield. I'd analyzed that fact to indicate a weakening of those roles was the intent. But in Aaron Brown's case I think it's just the opposite.

Perhaps Vice-Presidential candidates are rolled out before they're ready, but that task pales in comparison with the planning that went into 9/11, and Aaron Brown, as a central master of ceremonies would have undergone hundreds, if not thousands of hours of training, briefings and scenarios. The fact that CNN didn't simply move on in that botched moment to something elsewhere, (like New York City for instance,) shows how tightly scripted and constrained they were by their planning. This premature announcement had a snowball effect on the other major player generating narrative output that morning---the local CBS affiliate, and an examination of the glitches there reinforces these conclusions.

Brown's waltzing into CNN stardom that day must have been questioned after the dust had settled. In an extended interview he gave in July 2003 to Brad Goldfarb for bNET, a business management website, an attempt was made to minimize as "urban legend" and "myth" his 9-11 on-air debut, by saying he'd been on the CNN pay role for awhile "designing a show" with his senior executive producer, David Borhman.

Strange is his explanation of how he got the nod that day---no words were used even, just suddenly, "I knew that we were going on the air." His famous energetic nature was likewise acquired as a gift he tells us, when he paused, in the middle of Eighth Avenue, opposite Madison Square Garden, "[a]nd it was as if this wave of calm descended on me." With my luck, I would have gotten hit by a bus.

Pentagon Mind Games Played with Fox News

At 3:33 into this video clip, FOX news begins a live video feed from the Pentagon site. They're shooting from an entrance ramp on Route 27, well north of the Pentagon building itself, and the opening image is of a sideways police car blocking the highway lanes, and in a little closer, is yellow police crime-scene tape, tautly strung from a merge sign support in the center. We get the message: do not enter. The FOX reporter on the scene, Audrey Barnes, has just arrived and is asked what she can see:
"I am on the grounds right across from the Pentagon and what I can tell you is it's still on fire, there is black smoke just billowing throughout the Pentagon grounds, there are several hundred Pentagon employees on the grounds, they are crying and hugging each other. I see about 15 pieces of fire apparatus, ladders its just a scene of utter chaos out here. Traffic, it's still getting by in front of the Pentagon, but most of this roadway has been shut down."
At about 4:04 the video suddenly changes to a much improved view---if not for disaster responders, at least for television viewers and journalists. We can see things! One of the first things we see is a uniformed state policeman moving quickly from left to right while craning his neck to look up--in that heavy-handed "checking out for attack" gesture from 40's gangster movies. I'm not complaining: some stage business!

It is 9:58am in real time, and the FOX network has suddenly been given a taste of the good life. The film that the viewers at home are watching, is identical to that which is running on CBS, whose viewers have grown fat on a steady diet of it. The sudden advent of exciting footage causes the skinny FOX anchor, Luke McCarthy, to interrupt her excitedly, to ask if she knows what it is we are seeing,
"because I'm not sure you can see the picture, we do have a picture now, we can see some people and we can see the smoke and flames you're talking about, and some of the emergency equipment, this is the first time we are seeing that, so please go on Audrey, from your vantage point, with what you are seeing, but we are seeing emergency crews, we can see flames, and a moment ago we DID see some people, so Audrey, go right ahead."
"Audrey Barnes? Are you still with us?" Asks another anchor, Michael Garguilo. McCarthy says, "I'm not sure if we can, I want to get them to pan back to the left here, to see what detail we can, oh, OK, we've lost that picture, well it's a camera we don't control." Honest words indeed.

September 11th, 2001, by the Washington D.C. affiliate of FOX5, and preserved for posterity at archive.org



At the moment of 4:44 in the film clip, which is displaying the time of 9:59am, and the temperature of 67 degrees on a particularly lucid and transparent chyron, which has just newly appeared on the screen, we see a police car that appears from the left of the screen and which moves rapidly to the right. However, it appears to be running in reverse, moving at 40 or 50 miles an hour! Luke McCarthy is too busy describing something and doesn't catch it, or at least doesn't react to it, however her co-host, Garguilo is heard to say softly, OK, as in, I get it, whatever it might be. Within four seconds the police vehicle is gone, hidden behind a replacement chyron that looks like a pair of 19th-century woman's bathing knickers by way of comparison.

The video has been switched back by this time to the telephoto lens shot from the absurdly distant spot FOX has been regulated to north on Route 27, and it stays focused in on the burning diesel-fuel fire, which is spewing black smoke at its most energetic rate of the day. This is the camera that FOX controls and this is the footage that FOX will get, and it is all very deftly managed.

View Larger Map
I finally made sense, to a degree, of what the reports of the plane hitting the helipad were all about. As originally conceptualized, this heavy element of the smoke pot was meant to meld psychologically somehow with the storyline of the plane crash. The earliest overview shots from the River House apartments weren't half bad, if you recall, in the sturmunddrang department---for some reason even the litter looked better than too. But someone handling the deus-ex-machina duties apparently went AWOL and the set changed into the "Pentalawn" look of the early yellow-jacketed firemen, where we might as well have been golfing at Augusta on a Sunday.

I have had my eyes opened here by the simple fact that in Washington D.C. on the morning of September 11th, the most intelligent and honest live television coverage was done by FOX News, the supposed lifetime media Hatfield's to my "we're going to finish what we started in the 60's" McCoy's. But FOX TV was also demonstrably the worst, which is what happens when you don't suck up---you don't get invited out to the party anymore. You are denied access, and information, and support in doing your job. Compared to the hoops CBS makes us jump through, especially with all the sighings and the furious pencil scratchings ("he's saying something important! He's taking notes!) I'd prefer to eat dry crackers with Audrey and Luke all day.

The moment you start to see something you didn't see before is startling. When I realized FOX was being fed tape that was running backwards, I felt a chill go up my spine, at the sinisterness and jokey evilness of the gesture. The larger chyron wasn't rushed in milliseconds too late, like the well-known nose-out fiasco. A beautiful and open one allowed us in for a look-see, for the psychologically optimum length of time, and then it was over. But when you've watched a video clip like 80 times in a row---and then you see it, well! It is like spotting the devil.

Because, although I can't be absolutely sure, my technical skills are too poor for a rigorous test, I do believe that this image of a police car running backwards is happening at the exact same moment tower Number Two is falling down in New York City. It is that moment, with the world gone mad, changing into its new mushroom-cloud reality that I've been finding my way back out of and homeward ever since. It's going well.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Why did the AP Repeat The Same Error Over and Over and Over Again?

Make that...and Over! Not only did the Associated Press make mistakes on the morning of September 11th, 2001, which exacerbated response problems and compounded the terror, they made one big mistake over and over and over and over again. Four times AP reported a car bomb having gone off outside the State Department that morning---at 10:35am, at 10:42am, at 11:03am, and again at 11:11am, a span of 36 minutes, before they let the matter drop without a retraction.

The first three reports were news banners, and contain only this item. This means no mitigation or circumstance would force them to make the report. The third report was fleshed out with an attribution, if you can call this level of anonymity, imprecision and illiteracy fleshed out:
"Car bombing outside of State Department-- The State Department was evacuated Tuesday due to a possible explosion or fire amid a rash of explosions in New York and Washington.

"A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident appeared connected with the two plane crashes at the World Trade Center, an explosion at the Pentagon and the evacuation of the White House.

"'Something has happened at the State Department,' the source said. "We don't know what yet. We hear it might have been a plane.""
I can't possibly do the quote justice. To get the full effect, listen to the portentous tones of Mike "Buck" Buchanan, the CBS News9 co-anchor bad boy, as he histrionically intones something has happened...we hear it might have been a plane! When I first heard it I thought it had to be a joke but it's not. Fast forward to (30:32)
________________

________________

Buchanan doesn't even try to read things right---or maybe he has other excuses. He doesn't say, "the State Department was evacuated due to a possible explosion or fire, he says "the State Department was evacuated after a possible explosion or fire," probably because "due" was too passive and he knows his audience. (30:34)

He doesn't say what the AP wrote: "The FBI has evacuated the White House after they received what they said were "creditable threats" against the White House." He says,
"Again, the White House has been evacuated after the Secret Service received a credible threat of a terrorist act against the Presidential mansion and residence, again the Secret Service has received a credible threat of a terrorist threat."

Saying Secret Service for FBI is an odd mistake for someone with a long career reporting in the city of titles and acronyms. It may be Freudian---or Fraudian. But saying 'terrorist act" for "terrorist threat" is simply actionable.

At 10:25am (31:39 in the tape) Buchanan says,
...we just got this from the Associated Press, a car bomb explodes outside the State Department. being attributed to senior government officials again a car bomb has just exploded outside...

to attribute, even anonymously, is a step up from the mere "reports that a car bomb has exploded outside the US State Department in Washington." Buchanan is comingling his AP reports.

But the real problem begins when you meld the CBS and AP timelines together. Mike Buchanan appears to have been reading these AP reports on air from ten to 30 minutes before the Associated Press issued them.

If the tape segment from archive.org begins at 9:54am and Buchanan first references the car bombing at the State Department at a point 30:34 minutes into the segment, that means he is telecasting at 10:25am, or ten minutes before the first of the four AP reports is timestamped, and almost 40 minutes before the version he's reading, attributing the report to an anonymous senior government official, was issued.

Now put this in the context of the second tower collapsing at 10:30am, along with a 10:44am AP report that a hijacked airplane was heading for Washington, (erroneous though it was) and I'd fairly put Washington was the equal of New York in the terrorized department.

Perhaps this makes sense from a spy-master management perspective, as it compromises the principle players so and provides leverage. Or maybe I got it backwards, and Buchanan was reading rogue AP reports. It certainly sounds like it! Sending out repeated versions doesn't provide cover by confusing the issue as much as it draws attention to it, and as so it has after all these years. Since I'm not Karen Hughes---thank God---I'll trust that is the explanation.

The White House and State Department Timeline

9:52am - Terrorist threats made against the White House

10:35am - Car bomb explodes at State Department
There are reports that a car bomb has exploded outside the US State Department in Washington.

This is the fifth explosion in an hour and a half in a spate of major terrorist attacks on the United States.

10:42am - Car bomb explodes at State Department
There are reports that a car bomb has exploded outside the US State Department in Washington.

10:44am - Hijacked plane heading for Washington
Another hijacked aircraft is on its way to Washington.

11:03am - Car bombing outside of State Department
The State Department was evacuated Tuesday due to a possible explosion or fire amid a rash of explosions in New York and Washington.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident appeared connected with the two plane crashes at the World Trade Center, an explosion at the Pentagon and the evacuation of the White House.

"Something has happened at the State Department," the source said. "We don't know what yet. We hear it might have been a plane."

11:11am - Thousands feared dead in US terror strikes
Thousands were feared dead today after terrorists launched an astonishing and brutal attack on the American nation, demolishing the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and striking at the heart of the US military machine.

Suicide bombers seized three airliners and crashed them into the WTC and the Pentagon in Washington, a car bomb blew up outside the State Department in the US capital. There were reports that a fourth plane had also been hijacked.

Can you believe the following explanation for two full-site evacuations? This is the military headquarters of the free world??!!

"The second and third full site-clearing evacuations were ordered based of reports of unidentified aircraft heading toward the Pentagon. One occurred at about 2:00 p.m. on September 11, and the other around 10:00 a.m. on September 12. In both cases, the Arlington County ECC was notified by the control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport of “inbound unidentified aircraft.” The ECC properly notified the Incident Command of each and Chief Schwartz ordered evacuations. It was later determined the incoming aircraft were “friendly.” One carried Attorney General John Ashcroft and the other, FEMA Director Joseph
Allbaugh. Operating only on the information that “an unidentified aircraft is 10 minutes out and heading this direction,” the Incident Commander had no option but to order full evacuations."

from the Arlington County After-Action Report Annex A, Page A-30
____________________________

Now don't miss (31:58) Frank's big Howard Beale moment, "Hold on just a second!" It's so Mama Rose!

Do You Know What Just Hit the Washington Monument?

That boom you just heard?

That was it?

Yeah.

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



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

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

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

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

The Secret Service MakesTerrorist Threats Against the White House

In the Thomas Crosbie breaking-news wire archive for September 11, an item at 9:52am - Terrorist threats made against the White House, reports that
The FBI has evacuated the White House after they received what they said were "creditable threats" against the White House.
In The Initial Fire & EMS Response, by Michael J. Ward, from the April 2002 issue of JEMS, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, Ward writes,
"Although the Pentagon response proved overwhelmingly successful, some problems did occur. The news media created confusion for EMS and fire agencies in Virginia and Washington, D.C. By the time American Airlines Flight 77 had crashed into the Pentagon, a cacophony of unconfirmed reports of other terrorist incidents dominated the media airways. One report claimed a car bomb had exploded in front of the State Department. Other reports indicated a fire was supposedly burning on the National Mall, near the Washington Monument.

"An example of the impact this confusion caused can be seen in the activities of DCFEMS dispatch. About the same time Arlington County requested a box alarm from DCFEMS for the Pentagon, the Secret Service called to report that a plane had crashed into the White House, and a box alarm was dispatched there.

"D.C.'s Engine 16 and Truck 3 are first-due to the White House. Normally, they greet the uniformed Secret Service officer at a closed access gate. When they arrived on Sept. 11, the access gate stood wide open. Next to this gate, the media conduct their talking head shots, using the White House as a background. Responding crews knew something was up because they observed tripods and stepladders typically used by camera operators abandoned on the hill. As Engine 16 and Truck 3 pulled up, a uniformed officer waved them off, telling them, "Get the f--- outta here! There's a plane coming in!"

"Fortunately, no plane crashed into the White House. One reason for this false alarm may have been a split-second decision by an air-traffic controller. When the hijacked plane turned into the Pentagon, it was on a collision course with an airliner leaving Reagan National Airport as scheduled. Without the data from Flight 77's transponder and not knowing the intention of the hijacked plane, the controller ordered the departing aircraft to take a hard right, into the protected airspace above the White House."
This story---that the Secret Service called the District of Colombia's fire and emergency medical service to report that a plane had crashed into the White House---is credible for many reasons, even if the crash report an fire alarm itself was not.

The article was written by Michael Ward, who retired from the Fairfax County (Va.) Fire & Rescue Department in July 2000, after 25 years of service. He is the regular contributor to Firehouse Magazine's "Company Officer Development" column, so Ward had both the credibility as a writer, as well as the connections to have been properly tasked with the review.

His job was successfully completed with he turned in a vetted product that passed muster, where the actionable detail of the Secret Service's phoning in a phony plane-crash scare---a fact which must have been widely gossiped about in the district fire service---needed massaging, and a bit about the National Airport directing a departing aircraft into restricted airspace over the White House to avoid a hi-jacked airplane, led to an exaggerated claim of a "crash."

While this alibi might have worked on its surface in April 2002, it doesn't anymore. I don't know if it's mentioned in Lynn Spencer's book, but other researchers, like Rob Balsamo at Pilots4911Truth, haven't addressed it.

The inescapable fact here is the U.S. Secret Service was rumor mongering at a time of utmost danger and peril for our nation, for the purposes of hindering the response of emergency services to the Pentagon. Whether this constitutes the FBI's "credible threat"or not I don't know, but it's the germ of an idea.

What is the penalty for subversion through rumor in a time of war?

Hey, Mike Ward's email address is companycommander@aol.com. I think anybody with an email address that great deserves some crank email!

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Unmistakable Evidence of Foreknowledge in Reporting the Collapse of Building 7

can be found on footage telecast on the morning of September 11th, 2001, by the Washington D.C. affiliate of FOX5, and preserved for posterity at archive.org



It is clear from examining the clip for the local FOX affiliate in Washington D.C., Channel5's telecast between 9:54am and 10:36am on September 11, 2001, that Building #7 was intended to collapse in the shadow of the first collapse of the World Trade Center Tower Two, at 10:00 am---evidenced by the pre-planted talking points that went off more than seven hours in advance of pre-planted explosives.

At 9:59am, the local Fox network affiliate switches over to a video feed coming out of New York City. The move seems to startle the co-anchors, Michael Garguilo and Lark McCarthy. It is fascinating to watch them try and make sense of what they are witnessing, incorporating the images in tandem with the information being feed into their earpieces.

Listen to these honest and intelligent anchors as they communicate through stressed words the information as conflicting reports are considered and rejected. Fast forward to 05:28 in the clip to start the sequence transcribed here.
9:59 am: FOX switches to video in New York of the first collapse

Lark McCarthy: Ah, we want to go back now to New York City and it appears that something else has occurred, we’re not quite sure what, but the level of, the smoke, this is a different—this is a slightly different area of the World Trade Center—OK it is now the BASE of the World Trade Center. There appears to be a second area there of smoke, so perhaps indicating some sort of explosion or fire there; of course what may have happened with the…all the systems compromised in the building, you may be getting an explosion from that. We do not know what has happened, but obviously something has happened there, near the BASE of the building, setting off another round of major smoke, and apparently, a fire, but we don’t know, whether again, because it is the building...because of the earlier damage.

Michael Garguilo: Oh, OK…

Lark McCarthy: Ah! The tower has collapsed!

Michael Garguilo: Yeah, this ah, oh! And, it looks like we are seeing…

Lark McCarthy: The tower collapsed.

Michael Garguilo: Yeah, unfortunately, one of the worst fears of what might have happened has come to pass. One of those towers, 110 stories, has apparently collapsed. Ah, we can only hope that the area around it was evacuated what possibly have been in the time, we are going to go try and get some more information on that. So this is a major update on this terrible day of developments. One of the two world tower centers…oh…OK now we are finding out that may not have happened.

Lark McCarthy: (06:43 on clip/10:00 am onscreen clock) Right, now, we should... the Associated Press is reporting that an explosion has hit ANOTHER building near the World Trade Center, so folks, obviously we are going to try and sort this out, this is a developing situation, but A.P. is reporting an explosion has hit ANOTHER building NEAR the World Trade Center to explain this round of white smoke there you see there billowing up from the bottom. As the professor was saying, this is well planned, this is concerted, this is major, this is an escalation, this is a different technique.
Approximately, two minutes later, after an exchange with FOX reporter Audrey Barnes near the Pentagon, the feed is switched back to images of New York, with the anchors sounding a bit more reassured.
Michael Garguilo: (08:50 on clip/10:03am onscreen clock) You’re looking at the scene there on the right-hand side; there are some new developments in New York City, we do believe there was ANOTHER blast AFTER the two that rocked the World—the twin towers…the World Trade Center towers. We are trying to determine now if this was a consequence of one of those two earlier attacks or perhaps this was a separate explosion.

Lark McCarthy: It was a separate explosion.

Michael Garguilo: Right…we do believe…

Lark McCarthy: That is what we are trying to sort out, but it is beginning to appear that there was a separate explosion, but again that cannot be sorted out at this moment.
A brief exchange between Lark McCarthy and Audrey Barnes follows this exchange, but Mike Garguilo interrupts it with news,
Michael Garguilo: (11:16 on clip/10:05am onscreen clock) Audrey, if you would hold on for one second, we just saw the Associated Press is now reporting that another explosion HAS hit ANOTHER building near the World Trade Center. We were speculating at that point whether it was a consequence of the original attacks. Now it appears to be another explosion hitting another building near the World Trade Center.
Having gotten that off his chest, Garguilo engages Audrey Barnes at the Pentagon by asking an identical question to one which she's already had to badly answer, because she is no where near the scene:
Michael Garguilo: Getting back to Audrey…Audrey, with regards to the Pentagon, the reports that we have received, is that the plane may have impacted on that helicopter pad. There is a small control tower there, set up on that side of the Pentagon, near to where you are standing. Can you see any of the wreckage yourself, can you confirm that, or does it look like it impacted the building itself?

Then Lark McCarthy makes small talk with Barnes for what seems like an eternity, although it was only a few minutes, while further behind-the-scenes vetting is underway. When Garguilo brings up the subject of New York four minutes later, it is to offer what is a partial explanation:
Michael Garguilo: (14:50 on clip/10:09 am onscreen clock) Let’s go back to New York City for a second. The latest reports now from the Associated Press does say that one of those towers, this is tower one, the second tower, has collapsed. Now that is the second tower, and we believe that is the one hit higher up---we do not control this camera, it is from New York City---but the Associated Press is reporting that the second tower has collapsed. We don’t know if that is a complete collapse, a partial collapse, or whatever. We hope to see it soon. Once again, you are looking at tower two, and this was the first one hit just after nine o’clock this morning.

Lark McCarthy: It certainly would not be a surprise given the level of damage and the fact that firefighters were unable to fight the fire because it happened so high up in the building. So it certainly would not be surprising if there were a collapse, partial or total.
This is the first appearance of the term "partial" as some sort of possible explanation for what it is we think we have seen and what they know they have told us. The billows of smoke we saw earlier may have indeed hidden a partial collapse, but that would have been in addition to, rather than instead of, But such an either/or proposition is nonsensical. It simply ignores his previous talking points about ANOTHER explosion that hit ANOTHER tower NEAR the World Trade Center AFTER the two that rocked the twin towers.

Luke McCarthy attempts a balanced presentation, repeating the new term "partial," while introducing a future meme required for Building 7---the dangerous lack of firefighting that imperils steel buildings even in the absence of airplane crashes. However, by appending it to "partial," which was never a part of the plan, she muddies its value. But since she's brought it up anyway---why would fires high up in towers destroy buildings all the way to the ground? And three of them at that? On the same day? For the first time in history?

The subject is then not only dropped, but held down with a foot to its neck, as Luke McCarthy keeps the coverage on Audrey Barnes at the Pentagon, acknowledging the lack of news worthiness there, while making encouraging suggestions like, "just describe the looks on their faces." This goes on, in a scandalous dereliction of duty---for a five full minutes---as an excruciatingly banal conversation is undertaken at a site well north of the Pentagon, between Audrey Barnes and an unnamed man who hyperventilates and saw nothing. When the subject of the carnage in New York is next brought up, it is with an air of finality.
Michael Garguilo:(21:27 on clip/10:15 am onscreen clock) We also do have some confirmation and more specifics now on what we had been reporting on the possible collapse up in New York City, one of the World Trade Centers, but it is being described now as a partial collapse, and of course that building was hit on a much lower level than the first impact, which came on the one tower at the 90th floor, so, this was hit on the 50th floor so it’s being described now as a partial collapse. I believe, we are seeing, is that New York City on the right hand side? This may be one of those towers.
Not only does this close all this claptrap about partial collapses, it defuses its daughter dissemination---the talking point about "50 stories that went down." The problem here is that no one ever thought the first plane hit the fiftieth floor of Tower One; or that only half a building fell down; or that office fires reduced Building 7 into a neat pile. But these logical fallacies would have to wait until the mass societal delusion could lift.

____________________________________________________________________________________-


WTC7 on the verge of collapse, Rose Arce, CNN, reporting at 12:22pm

Allan Dodds Frank of CNN Incorrectly Reports Possible Third Skyscraper Collapse in New York at 11:07 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001

Dan Abrams, WTC7 collapse warning, CNN, 4:54pm 9/11/01

CNN and Others Report WTC 7 May Have Collapsed 4:15 p.m.-4:27 p.m. September 11, 2001:

BBC Reports WTC 7 Collapse Before It Happens 4:54 p.m.-5:10 p.m. September 11, 2001:



Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Volunteer Firefighter Eric M. Jones, Marine Maj. Dan Pantaleo, Army Staff Sgt. Chris Braman, and Ms. Sheila Moody

One of the most distressing aspects of the "big lie" known as 9/11 is the part of the falsehood comprised of fake heroism. In Arlington, scores, even hundreds, of medals were issued to honor participants for their duty and courage in rescuing their fellow officemates. However, since only 49 victims were admitted to hospitals, as we are told in an amended Arlington County After-Action report, there are too few casualties to supply all of the military and civilian employees in the Pentagon who wish to lay claim to rescuing them---let alone leaving any left over for the narratives of the professional firematics and public safety responders who manned the triages and the transports.

Evidence points out that men like Lieutenant General (Dr.) Paul Carlton Jr., Surgeon General of the Air Force, and USAF Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda, could not have undergone the heroics attributed to them in the narrative. Likewise for the navy, a clear case can be made that Lieutenant Commander David Tarantino and Capt. David Thomas are frauds.

But the most egregious example of unearned honor arising from the deceitful storytelling must belong to a cell of working-class and enlisted conspirators who were outed in a photo caption in the Washington Post on September 14th 2001. Since not a single image emerged following the attack on the Pentagon anywhere in the national news record that was captioned identifying anyone prior to this image's distribution, we can judge the advent of the publicity as having been a significant tactical mistake.

In the Washington Post's online essay, America Under Attack: Aftermath, this image is identified:
U.S. Marine Dan Pantaleo carries a Marine Corps flag that escaped damage during the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. Also on hand, from left: firefighter Eric Jones, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Chris Braman and Capt. Jared Hansbrough.
This "rescue" of a Marine Corp flag from the cleaved offices was a major narrative element in the days subsequent to 9/11. It received vast amounts of press coverage for its buoyant symbolism, and it literally made heroes out of at least two of the four men. Inexplicably, when Representative Curt Weldon entered an honorific into the Congressional Record, he mentions only three:
"Volunteer firefighter/paramedic Eric Jones, Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Braman, and Marine Corps Major Dan Pantaleo were featured rescuing a Marine Corps flag from the burning Pentagon on the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the world. It is this image that will remain in our memories as a symbol of American patriotism, unity and strength."16
So what happened to Capt. Jared Hansbrough I wonder? Maybe he was smart and tried to maintain a covert status--Googling him brings up only two minor references---so, kudos, if you're CIA, Jared! I mean...oops.

Jones and Braman as running buddies, with Pantaleo as group leader, were bonded in some fashion before this image was taken---if only through advanced briefings. They were operating at a marked level of security and access. To my mind, it is clear they are co-conspirators to the plans hatched out of the Secretary of Defense's office, an exercise, which became the violent event that took 184, ostensibly innocent, lives.

I'll begin with Eric M. Jones, and a good jumping off place there is his own self-penned expression of what he experienced. This can be found in two places---in essentially what was a self-plagiarization. The earlier of the two was his peppy Diary of Sept. 11 Pentagon Hero12 from July 15, 2002, which ABC News posts online---I suspect because they were willing to pay the most. An edited-down version, darkly retitled, Hell's Heroes: A Personal Memoir of September 118 was published that fall by GW Magazine, the alumni magazine for Jones' alma mater, George Washington University.


Eric M. Jones

Jones' involvement began, he says, because, "I am a volunteer firefighter who happened to be driving near the Pentagon when the plane crashed into it. I stopped the car and ran to the site." Although he doesn't claim so himself, multiple sources---UPI, AP, The Washington Times, American Forces Press Service, a DoD press release---state that Jones saw Flight 77 impact the Pentagon. An article in Washington Informer7 says that Jones was driving on Interstate 395 on his way to school. "I realized then my skills as a firefighter and paramedic might be helpful as initial rescue personnel had yet to arrive. I pulled into the South parking lot and ran and ran toward the damaged area."

(From Ron Harvey's Pentagon Eyewitness List "They saw the aircraft," Oct. 19th 2002)
"Eric M. Jones, 25, a medical student at GW University and volunteer firefighter with the Hyattsville unit of the Prince George's County, Md., Fire and EMS Department, "was driving through nearby Arlington, Va., when he saw the plane slam into the Pentagon's northwest outer wall."34
Strangely, Jones doesn't mention his second big moment in his memoir either, but the DoD put it this way:
"He stopped his car and made his way to the impact area. By this time, the initial response firemen had arrived and were attempting to stop the blaze at the point of impact. Jones saw one fireman in grave danger on a ladder; his suit was on fire. Without hesitation, Jones pulled the burning fireman from the ladder to safety."3
This important anecdote never made it into the Arlington County After-Action report either. But a central conclusion the report did concern itself with was the major problem self-dispatching volunteers created within the chain of command. But for some reason, officials allowed Jones to stay and serve independent of that command.

I doubt any claims from eyewitnesses on I-395 who say they saw a plane strike the Pentagon. How Jones navigated his way to the scene so quickly without foreknowledge is also questionable. His story about the fireman on the ladder is highly doubtful. If we needed a clincher, the DoD advisory3, which says, "Jones then entered the building through the impact opening and began helping people," will do nicely for its absurdity. The photographic record of the damage makes this unlikely.

Jones' report states clearly that after only 15 or 20 minutes helping at the scene, a retreat was ordered because of mistaken fears of another plane inbound. The remainder of his 72 hours at the Pentagon was spent, he says, "working with the Army mortuary affairs unit and the FBI to locate, mark, and remove the bodies." How an unknown, uncredentialed, unconnected, and unvetted self-dispatched volunteer firefighter from another county in a different state wound up tasked with such recovery operations is never explained. Jones seems like a quick study though. He says on the morning of the 14th, "some members of the FBI asked Chris Braman and me to go in and assist them, since we had been in numerous times and knew what to expect." How they navigated the notoriously labyrinthine building without lights or power is one thing---how security clearances could be ignored for accessing some of the most top-secret departments in the United States government, is another.

Jones' next big moment came at an emotional nadir on the third day, he said,
"For some reason, we looked up at the hole in the building and saw an amazing and beautiful sight. In front of us, hidden from view from most angles, standing proud and tall amidst total devastation was an apparently intact U.S. Marine Corps flag."
Given how hokey and contrived every aspect of the Pentagon attack story was unfolded, especially the emotionally manipulated themes, this flag rescue is not so bad. Marine Maj. Dan Pantaleo seems to have had some rank on the scene. Jones says,
"The major was great at organizing recovery operations, communicating with fire department and law enforcement agencies, and looking after rescue workers. He helped arraign for President Bush to come over and speak with us."
There was no ulterior motive for this flag initiative either. Jones tells us that Pantaleo and Staff Sgt. Christopher D. Braman, "respectfully declined media interviews, and they had no interest in anything other than getting the flag safely to headquarters." This "particularly impressed" Jones, who nonetheless didn't feel equally constrained. He seems handpicked, in fact---a media-ready civilian with deep roots in military culture. Attractive, young, personable, a go-getter, his grandfather was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, while his father was a Vietnam war hero, who today is a successful businessman. Jones' appearance on Oprah with Sheila Moody was a smash hit. However, his live interview on CNN on the first anniversary of the attack---headlined, 9/11 Hero: Discussion With Eric Jones, was something else, as exemplified by this exchange:
WOLF BLITZER: When you ran inside to rescue people, was that just your adrenaline, your instincts? Did you think about it, or you just moved?

ERIC JONES: I think I just moved. Every I was with, we were just going back in, and you could hearing people calling out, you could hear people banging on yelling to saved. It just seems like the right thing do. There wasn't really another option.17
That Jones, like George Bush, could find a benefit deriving from 9/11 can not be doubted. Nationally recognized as a hero, awarded the Medal of Valor, the highest award the military gives to civilians.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

He was honored in December 2001 by being asked to carry the Olympic torch to the White House.11, 18, 20, 22,
One writer, Joe Elam, ending an article, 9/11 Hero's Valor Stems from Heroic Parentage, with this paragraph:
"Fearlessness, altruism, wanderlust and adventure seeking blend harmoniously in his character. Eric Moreland Jones is destined for bigger things in life. It is strange why some of the area universities with Medical Schools are not offering any scholarship to this young man aspiring for a medical degree in emergency medicine and trauma surgery. Who knows if Eric will become another Ben Carson, the world famous pediatric neuro surgeon at Johns Hopkins?"7
When a firefighter friend recognized Jones' photograph on the front page of the Washington Post, he called and asked him if he wanted to join a group of firefighters going to New York to help relieve the "exhausted" New York Fire Department. However, this begs the same question about self-dispatching that marks Jones' presence at the Pentagon.

I am reminded of a local story about volunteer firemen from Westhampton Beach, NY who were prohibited from going into New York City with their equipment. For regional firefighters, the desire to go in to help out was nearly overwhelming. But the captain of the local fire department had received a directive from officials denying local volunteers access. Ground Zero was locked down almost immediately after the attack with strict controls. For righteous reasons, several firemen disobeyed their orders and went in anyway. They faced stern disciplinary measures as a result. I question how Jones and Company acted with such insider privilege in accessing the site.

The experiences Jones relates from his time in New York are the usual sentimental talking points and memes, but written in a highly exaggerated style. Some of his paragraphs are patently ridiculous. A case in point:
"As I was returning some equipment, I walked through an area I had been previously. It was part of the shopping arcade in the still standing adjacent building. The first night I arrived, I had noticed dozens of cash registers still there, still filled with twenty and fifty-dollar bills. Though the money was in plain view of the hundreds of people, both civilian and rescue personnel, who walked through the area daily, nobody had touched it! Similarly, jewelry stores, clothing stores, and electronic stores remained unlooted. A Ritz camera store, covered in debris and surely destined for demolition, had dozens of wrappers from disposable cameras on the floor. That did not surprise me, because I had seen many people taking pictures of the site for their own memories. What surprised me was the pile of wadded up money on top of the dusty cash register and on the counter. People were taking the cameras and film, but they were leaving money because, despite the devastation, they did not want to feel as if they were stealing. I spoke with an iron worker who had returned to leave ten dollars for a disposable camera he had taken a few days earlier. That day was the first time he had left the site and was able to get some money."12
It is in such doubly absurd statements like these that I realize Jones did not author this dairy/memoir. Much looting did in fact occur---like the firemen who soon after the collapses went to the yacht basin and "expropriated" an American flag off of a vessel because they needed a mood change. And picture taking was absolutely controlled in both Arlington and new York---try finding an image of the south face of Building 7 during the day of September 11th, for example. The overwrought sentiments must stem from some secret cult of NSA or CIA writers, who delight in telling lies diametrically opposed to the truth. We had no idea that people could stoop so low on a scale so vast, and we better wake up to the fact their lies are often 180 degrees from the truth.

So Jones' 15 minutes of heroism can be fairly proven to be entirely a fictitious construction. What about his remaining 71 hours and 45 minutes on site at the Pentagon? He says he was "working with the Army mortuary affairs unit and the FBI to locate, mark, and remove the bodies."

But in a Feb. 5, 2002, DefenseLink News Article, Old Guard Honors Battlefield Tradition, by Linda D. Kozaryn, General John Keane, Army vice chief of staff, had this to say about honor and military duty:
"We had a formidable task ahead of us to find the remains and remove them. We went to see the fire marshal and the special agent in charge and told them that as far as we were concerned, this was a battlefield and those were our dead. We have a way of dealing with this. On the battlefield, we take care of own and that's what we intend to do here. We intended to remove (all the remains) using United States Army soldiers to do it. That's our tradition. That's our custom. So we asked the fire and rescue people to call us when they located (remains.)"46
The whole house of cards begins to crumble at this point from the inconsistencies in logic and principle. So much double talk has gone into finessing this issue of victim's remains---it is likely that none of the supposed Flight 77 passengers died at the Pentagon. This may also be true for some or many of the Pentagon work force fatalities. This is the only possible explanation for the secrecy and duplicity afoot.

But the dead are mere ministerial details compared to the manufactured stories of heroic live rescues, which were central to the upcoming narrative of American retaliation. The ultimate meaning to understand about 9/11 lies in the illegal and immoral wars that stemmed from it.

A single person was said to have been rescued, only to die in the hospital. She was 35-year-old Antoinette Sherman, a civilian employee of the Army. She died at 5:18 a.m. on September 18th at Washington Hospital Center, of burns received at the Pentagon, and I mourn the unmistakable reality of her loss. U.S. Army Sgt. Chris Braman was the man credited in the attempt to save her life.



If Eric Jones is entirely a fake, made-up creation, could the same be true of other rescuers? I think so. The details of Sgt. Braman's rescue of Antoinette Sherman sleep with the fishes, but his other big save of the day was supposedly Sheila Moody. Paired together, Braman and Moody prayerfully went on the Oprah Show, then like so many other survivors, Braman was launched out onto the Christian motivational speaker circuit.53

A problem in this narrative pairing though, is it appears to have been an afterthought, and early contradictory information in the record waits to be uncovered beneath its veil of robot.txt.

It would seem, Firefighter Alan Wallace was Moody's intended suiter for the role of savior.

In a fascinatingly early and comprehensive piece by David Maraniss published on page one of the Washington Post on September 18th, Maraniss introduces 49 individuals by name from all aspects of the 9/11 events. Titled, appropriately, "Steve Miller Ate a Scone, Sheila Moody Did Paperwork, Edmund Glazer Boarded a Plane: Portrait of a Day That Began in Routine and Ended in Ashes," Moody and Wallace are paired in context, and the public relations value of this could not have been accidental. She goes first,
"Sheila Moody, in Room 472, heard a whoosh and a whistle and she wondered where all this air was coming from. Then a blast of fire that left as fast as it came. She looked down and saw her hands aflame, so she shook them. She saw some light from a window but could not reach it and could not find anything to break it with in any case. Then she heard a voice. "Hello!" a man called out. "I can't see you." Hello, she called back, and clapped her hands. She heard him approach and sensed the shoosh of a fire extinguisher and then saw him through a cloud of smoke, the rescuer who would bring her out and ease her fear that she would never get to see her grandchildren."43
The article only places Wallace nearby, at the exit point for rescuers,
"About 9:40, Alan Wallace...looked up and saw a jetliner coming straight at him. It was about 25 feet off the ground, no landing wheels visible, a few hundred yards away and closing fast...Wallace could hear voices crying for help and moved toward them. People were coming out a window head first, landing on him."43
However, in his undated personal essay (archive.org dates the original page April 8, 2002. It was taken down October 3, 2003) where he shares his 9/11 experience, Wallace makes the connection with Moody more explicate,
"I do not think I went into the building any further than 20 feet. I would see fire and spray the extinguisher on it. It makes a very loud noise when being discharged and I did so several times. Out of nowhere, I heard the clear voice of a woman yell “hey!” She had heard the sound of the fire extinguisher and realized she was near another person. She did not sound panicked. I yelled back “I can’t see you” and she clapped her hands. I was waving my flashlight. I did not go after her, and later I questioned my courage about why I hadn’t."

"Several days later, I noticed an article in the Washington Post which mentioned me. It also described a woman, Sheila Moody, who heard the swoosh of a fire extinguisher from someone, called out, and was answered by and rescued by a firefighter. I do not remember making contact with her. I believe it was my fire extinguisher she heard, but I also believe she was intercepted by another firefighter. But had I not had the fire extinguisher but had taken the garden hose attached to the fire station, she might not have known she was very near the outside of the building and near rescuers."
30
Out of such tiny narrative acorns grow the mighty oaks of history. To uproot it, we will need to prove that Braman was unlikely to have been at this location at this time by finding contradictory evidence in the record, along with further supporting evidence that Alan Wallace was here---windows located beside the fire station where he worked, which served as an exit route for several people. Wallace says,
"I was later told by a civilian rescuer that I helped him climb into the window of the Pentagon where most of the victims exited the building. I don’t remember helping him up. But I definitely remember him being there. I feel he was instrumental in organizing the rescue effort at this area of the Pentagon. At the time, I described him as a civilian 35-40 years old wearing black jeans, black polo shirt with a red logo on the shirt. In April, 2002, I learned that the identity of this ‘civilian’ was Blair Bozek. He turns out to be a Lt. Col. USAF, (Ret.). He was one of the SR71 Spy plane pilots. Ha!"30
He is talking about, Lt.Col. Blair Bozek, a Reconnaissance Systems Officer who flew 70 missions in the hush-hush Blackbird aircraft, including the "11,000 mile, 10.9 hour-long 'Giant Scale II' mission in 1988." Earlier he flew as a Weapons Systems Officer in F-4 Phantom II's. Bozek is now a senior defense analyst with SAIC and he has "supported the Director of Air Force Test and evaluation in the Pentagon since May of 2001."

Alan Wallace provides the sorts of details that truth is constructed from:
  • forgetting that he gave someone a boost up through a window
  • giving away the credit for organizing the rescue
  • feeling shame at his lack of courage to go any deeper into the smoky interior
  • not being afraid to mention his fear
  • casually offering up the name of a likely operative
  • one which could then be cross referenced by others)
  • and in making it perfectly clear for the record that he didn't see a plane impacting with the Pentagon building..
Russell Pickering's website, Pentagon Research, posts an otherwise identical version of Wallace's story, which he tells us "was originally taken from a now broken link at the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters website." However, one small difference is apparent: Blair Bozek's named is misspelled as Blair Booze. This sort of feint has CIA fingerprints all over it, in my opinion.

This misspelling of names has a long tradition in covert life. In an article found at archive.org, little known because of it, the normally reliable Jim Garamone misspells Sheila Moody's name by calling her Sheila Mundy.
"Sheila Mundy had just started her second day on the job at the Pentagon when the plane hit. A personnel specialist, she told Rumsfeld of an incredible rescue.

After the explosion, Mundy and another woman struggled to reach a window in an attempt to flee the building. Neither had a clue what had happened nor that a gaping hole had been blown in the building, she said.

"A soldier, I believe his name was CPL Burns, he came in with a fire extinguisher," Mundy continued. "I heard him say, ‘Is anybody in there?’ And I said, ‘Yes, we’re here!’"

The smoke was too thick for Mundy to breathe. She had to clap her hands to get the corporal’s attention. "He came toward the sound, and he put out the flames between us. I stepped over some of the rubble, and he led me outside," she said.

She told the corporal about the other woman inside. The man turned around, went back in and rescued her. "He’s an angel to have come in to get me," Mundy concluded."48
I don't think this was a simple mistake. Moody's cute reference to a "Corporal Burns" sounds like code to me. Garamone had written an article and taken a photograph just the month before, when Mrs. Rumsfeld visited Moody in the hospital on September 13. 55 How did he then get her name wrong when writing on October 7th?48 Someone seems to be using Moody to make a deliberate veiled statement here. Would Moody have gotten both the name and the rank wrong?

Alan Wallace was at the location where Sheila Moody's rescue occurred. So, where was Chris Braman working when the attack on the Pentagon occurred?

In Earl Swift's extraordinary work in The Virginian Pilot, in a four-part series that began September 8, 2002, we are given a carefully worded backhanded hint of the location of "the 45-seat restaurant that served the Army's top brass," where Chris Braman did his work, like "cater[ing] a twice-weekly prayer breakfast." Swift references the food facility, saying,
"One floor down and 200 feet clockwise around the mammoth Pentagon doughnut [from the kitchen,] in the big room of cubicles occupied by the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel, the moment felt significantly different."41
The personnel office is dead center in the violent-event strike zone, between Corridor 4 and the firewall dividing wedges 1 and 2. This would mean Braman's workplace is on the third floor, and well south of Corridor 4. So, did Braman exit out of Corridor 4 right into the heart of the action? Well, no.

Swift's Virginian Pilot piece tells us,
"On the Pentagon's third floor, a chef dashed into Staff Sgt. Chris Braman's office, eyes wide, asking: What do we do? Braman ran past the man into the kitchen, which still had lights, and shut off the stoves. The hall was crowded with people running and shouting and ordering evacuation. In the time it took Braman to lock the kitchen door, they were gone. He was alone.

"He walked the empty halls and stairs and kicked open an emergency door on the Pentagon's northeast side. A crowd had gathered at the Remote Delivery Facility, where little more than an hour before he'd been unloading groceries. All eyes seemed to be on something beyond his view, around the Pentagon's curving perimeter.

"Braman started toward the throng. On the way he encountered a Pentagon police officer trying to carry a wounded soldier and a baby. The cook took the baby, whose hair had been singed, and who didn't make a sound on the 65-yard walk to a first-aid station.

"It was there that Braman got his first glimpse of the new wedge's outer wall. Flames shot from the windows and a large, irregular hole in the limestone. Smoke erupted in plumes that folded over themselves, curled into tubes, swirled into dirty brown twisters. Braman handed off the baby and without thinking, ran for the breach."41
In a scene from the movie 12 Angry Men, deliberating jurors measure out the steps a crippled man has to take to get out of bed, timing his travel down a long hallway. Braman will have to close down his facility in response to an unknown crisis, then travel across the entire distance of the building internally---from the south west corner to "the Pentagon's northeast side." He has to deal with the crowds, while gathering information along the way. He doesn't encounter an opportunity to be of service until he's outside, where he takes a baby from a policeman, (and possibly its soldier-mother?) delivering it to a triage "65 yards" away. Then he'll have to make a mad dash for "the breach" to successfully complete three separate missions.

In a surprisingly controversial assessment, the Arlington County After-Action Report states,
"At about 9:55 a.m. on September 11, Captain Gibbs [...] observed what appeared to be a slight structural movement at the initial impact area. He ordered everyone out of the building. Within minutes, the upper floors collapsed onto those below. Captain Gibbs’ quick and decisive action prevented serious injuries to firefighters in a part of the impact area where there were no surviving victims."
Criticism of this conclusion contends that this most sober of documents got the monumental fact of a partial building collapse of the Pentagon wrong by 15 minutes, mixing up warnings of a collapse with the actual event. But work I've done analyzing local television coverage in D.C. leads me to believe that at least two stations cooperated in shielding the timing of the collapse, delaying "live" coverage of the event for 15 minutes.

Even Sgt. Braman admits he cut it close,
"Braman went on to say that his "training and belief in God" allowed him to accomplish the mission at hand without fear or hesitation. Two minutes before the building collapsed, Braman made his final trip into the building and pulled out his last
survivor, Sheila Moody, who dubbed him her 'guardian angel.'"31
but accepting 9:38am as the time of a crash, and a 10:00am building collapse, would leave only a 28 minute window of opportunity.

But in the public record, the only infant figuring in the narrative, at least on this side of the Pentagon, is April Gallup's baby boy. It is said that Gallop and her child made an escape out of the blast hole itself. However, in this well-known Carmine Burgess photograph, baby-boy Gallup is seen as traveling north.

In any event, since each side of the Pentagon is 921 feet long, a triage "65 yards" away from the Remote Delivery Facility could only indicate the brief triage set up alongside Route 27, which for some reason constitutes the majority of the photographic record, and all of the video record, of the medical response that day.

Chris Bauman is found piggybacking onto other bits and pieces of the narrative too. Compare the following two references by Lt. Col. Ted Anderson:
"Lt. Col. Ted Anderson kicked open an interior door and with the help of two others, carried a heavy woman out of the building and boosted her through the broken window. Then back inside a dark corridor, Anderson said he saw a flash go by and realized a man's clothes were on fire. He tackled the employee and rolled him on the ground to extinguish the flames."25
"Anderson was picking himself up, “when I noticed a brilliant flash of orange light shoot past me like a jet. I didn’t know if part of the roof was falling down or what. But whatever it was, it bounced up against the window in front of me like a rubber band. I suddenly realized it was someone on fire—a guy. The whole front of him was on fire, and I realized he was trying to find his way out of the building, and he must have thought that window was a door. The sergeant and I jumped on top of him, and smothered the flames, and grabbed him—his feet and hands, anything we could grab—and pulled him out of the building."51
with an identical reference in Swift's Virginia-Pilot article attributed to Braman:
Outside the new wedge, Staff Sgt. Chris Braman and another rescuer, an Army lieutenant colonel, clambered through a broken first-floor window and into the E Ring's fiery wreckage. Just inside, Braman saw a bright light, and turning, discovered that it was a man engulfed in flames. The man sprinted for an unbroken window, bounced off the glass and flopped to the floor. Braman and the colonel pounced on him, smothered the fire with their bodies, then threw him to rescuers outside.39
Sheila Moody has gotten more and more imprecise recollecting her role in her rescue, especially with the timeline. At this year's anniversary, in a perceptive piece in the Utica Observer-Dispatch, she just went with plural guardian angels.
"Moody also is looking forward to meeting one of her rescuers, retired firefighter Alan Wallace. She and Wallace have been exchanging holiday cards ever since, she said, but will be meeting face-to-face for the first time.

“Even today, there are still bits and pieces of the events, the timeline of things that happened, that are still fuzzy to me,” she said. “And I’ve talked to the sergeant (Chris Brayman) quite a few times, but I’ve never talked to any of the other rescuers that were there that day. So I’m very anxious to sit down and talk to him."33
Obviously she misspells her angel's name in the interview, which the reporter neglects to fact check.

And what of U.S. Marine Dan Pantaleo? Not much public-source information is available, which may or may not itself carry meaning. In this 2001 video link, he is running the Olympic torch around the Iwo Jima Memorial and looking good. However, in this photograph taken at the Citgo gas station during his rescue of the Marine flag a few months before, he and U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Chris Braman wear two of the most moronic expressions I have ever witnessed on a grown up of either gender. Even their biceps can't redeem them. This is God's work at play, and it is the image I will always remember them by.





___________________________________________________________________

44 At the Pentagon, fear and anger, Scripps Howard News Service By M.E. Sprengelmeyer and Ryan Alessi, Sept. 11, 2001
45 Pentagon Fire Out; Interim Morgue Set Up, Washington Post, By D'Vera Cohn, Sept. 12, 2001
55 Mrs. Rumsfeld Shares Sympathy, Good Wishes With Attack Victims, American Forces Press Service, By Jim Garamone, Sept. 13, 2001
43 September 11, 2001: Steve Miller Ate a Scone, Sheila Moody Did Paperwork, Edmund Glazer Boarded a Plane: Portrait of a Day That Began in Routine and Ended in Ashes, Washington Post, By David Maraniss, Sept. 16, 2001;
25 Heroes saved lives in Pentagon, 9/11 Army News Service, By Gary Sheftick, Marcia Triggs Sept. 19, 2001
50 Survivors, public try to cope, Washington Post By Donna St. George and Avram Goldstein, Sept. 24, 2001
54 Attack victims relate stories, Army Communicator, Voice of the Signal Regiment, by Jim Garamone, Fall 2001 Vol. 26 No. 3
10 Army Hero Recalls Pentagon 9-11 Rescue-Recovery Efforts, American Forces Press Service, By Gerry J. Gilmore March 13, 2002
16 Recognition of Public Safety and Military Personnel Efforts on September 11, Congressional Record Extension of Remarks E1885 the Hon. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives, Oct. 12, 2001
32 Pentagon Honors Its Heroes Army News Service, Official Site of the Defense of Freedom Medal, by Staff Sgt. Triggs, Oct. 25, 2001
49 Never Leave Them Behind: Pentagon Staffers Who Ran Back Inside to Save Their Colleagues, ABCNEWS.com Nov. 2, 2001
36 Army Ranger Pulled Survivors From Pentagon Debris, Transcript CBS Evening News with Dan Rather By Dan Rather and Sharyl Attkisson, Nov. 16, 2001
51 Washington’s Heroes: On the ground at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Newsweek Web Exclusive Nov. 23, 2001
21 Headline: Eye On America (September 11/Jones) The recovery work of graduate student/paramedic Eric Jones, CBS Evening News for Wednesday, Dec 19, 2001, (Washington: Sharyl Attkisson)
18 CNN Live Event/Special Bush Speaks at Olympic Torch Bearing Ceremony, CNN.com Transcripts, Aired December 22, 2001 - 08:17 ET
20 President Welcomes Olympic Torch Runners to White House, Remarks by the President at 2002 Olympic Torch Relay Ceremony, The South Lawn, The White House Press Release, 8:27 A.M. December 22, 2001
11 Sept. 11 Heroes Carry Torch in D.C., KSL TV Eyewitness News at 5, By Bruce Lindsay December 21, 2001
22 Bush Honors Area's Faces of Courage: 37 Torchbearers Continue Olympic Flame's Journey Into District, Washington Post, By Michael Amon December 23, 2001
24 Olympic Ceremony Honors Pentagon Heroes, American Forces Press Service, By Linda D. Kozaryn December 21, 2001
31 Local Hero Christopher Braman Joins DCMA in CFC Victory Celebration Ceremony Defense Contract Management Agency Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, By Dianne Ryder, February 2002
46 Old Guard Honors Battlefield Tradition, DefenseLink News Article By Linda D. Kozaryn, Feb. 5, 2002
52 Pentagon Burn Victim Gets Purple Heart Award, The 700 Club, By Tim Branson, March 15, 2002
9 DoD Honors Private Citizens, The Official Site of the Medal of Valor, By Arlo Wagner July 12th, 2002
3 "Sept. 11 Heroes to Receive Medal of Valor" U.S. Dept. of Defense Press Advisory No. 129-02, July 12,2002
10 Army Hero Recalls Pentagon 9-11 Rescue-Recovery Efforts, American Forces Press Service, By Gerry J. Gilmore March 13, 2002
6 Two Civilians Honored for Sept. 11 Heroics, United Press International, July 12, 2002
12 Diary of Sept. 11 Pentagon Hero: Stubborn Defiance, By Eric M. Jones, ABC News, July 15, 2002
5 Defense Honors Private Citizens for Pentagon Heroism, (Steve A. DeChiaro and Eric M. Jones receives Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal of Valor) American Forces Press Service, By Jim Garamone July 15, 2002
4 Pentagon Heroes Receive Medals, Associated Press Online, By Derrill Holly, July 15, 2002
1 2 receive Medals of Valor for aid; Helped in rescue after terror attack, The Washington Times, July 16, 2002
2 Another Medal for Valor is in order.(Letters) The Washington Times, By Charles P. McDowell, Reva, Va., July 20, 2002
8 Hell's Heroes: A Personal Memoir of September 11th, GW Magazine (George Washington University Alumni) Fall 2002
35 Remembering Sept. 11: Pentagon Soldier Became a Hero on Sept. 11, The Columbian, Olympia Wash. By Nichole Gress Sept. 9, 2002
17 CNN Live Event/Special 9/11 Hero: Discussion With Eric Jones, CNN.com Transcripts, Aired 12:42ET September 11, 2002
14 'It feels good seeing they rebuilt it' 'Hard-hat Patriots' Honored at Pentagon, Rocky Mountain News, By M.E. Sprengelmeyer; with Tara Copp and Jennifer Sergent of Scripps Howard News Service, September 12, 2002
23 'Mystery Flt 77? Fuselage? Part at Pentagon,' zetaboards.com/LooseChangeForums/topic/705826/1/
15 America Remembers--Heroes: Eric Jones; 'Heroic efforts, horrific memories, Grad student joined Pentagon and Ground Zero rescue efforts', CNN.com 2002
26 9-11 hero recalls Pentagon tragedy, Pointer View Weekly Newspaper for the Members of the West Point Community, By Master Sgt. Jon Connor September 6, 2002
40 Out of Nowhere: Inside the Pentagon on 9/11, The Virginian-Pilot, By Earl Swift, Sept. 7, 2002
41 Inside the Pentagon on 9/11: Trial by Fire, The Virginian-Pilot, By Earl Swift, Sept. 8, 2002
37 Trial by Fire Without Warning, An Airliner had torn into Pentagon Offices Crowded with Workers. The
Minutes that Followed Decided their Fate, The Virginian-Pilot Norfolk, VA) By Earl Swift, September 8, 2002
42 Inside the Pentagon on 9/11: Life after Death, The Virginian-Pilot, By Earl Swift, Sept. 10, 2002
39 Inside the Pentagon on 9/11: The Call to Duty, The Virginian-Pilot, By Earl Swift, Sept. 9, 2002
29 Sheila Moody's Story American Forces Press Service, By Linda D. Kozaryn Sept. 9, 2002
19 GW hero reflects on rescue, The GW Hatchet-An Independent Student Newspaper, by Julie Gordon September 12, 2002
7 9/11 Hero's Valor Stems from Heroic Parentage, Washington Informer, By Joe Elam, September 18, 2002
28 Rebuilding at the Pentagon: Limestone, sweat, and the will to prevail, U.S. News & World Report, By Angie Cannon, November 3, 2002
30 Actual Account of Fire-Fighter Alan Wallace www.911myths.com
34 Ron Harvey's Pentagon Eyewitness Compilation "They saw the aircraft," October 19th 2002
47 WRAMC provides support following Pentagon attack, Stripe, by Bernard S. Little, Sept. 5, 2002
48 Attack victims relate stories, American Forces Press Service, by Jim Garamone, Oct. 7, 2002
53 One Year Later: How Campus Crusade for Christ responded to the attacks on America, Worldwide Challenge Magazine, By Jennifer Abegg, Sept./Oct. 2002,
38 For Soldier and Hero, 'So Much Death' Eventually Took Its Toll, The Washington Post, By Philip Rucker, May 4, 2008

33 9/11 memorial opens Thursday at Pentagon: Former Whitesboro resident will be there Utica Observer-Dispatch By Staff and Wire Reports Sept. 08, 2008