The Assassination of JFK Junior - Murder by Manchurian Candidate

Overwhelming, jaw-dropping evidence of foul play in the death of John F Kennedy Jr. - all based on official government documents.

This is a must see video.

Where Were the F-15s on 9/11?

September 11, 2001 was an extraordinary day for many reasons. It was a day when hijackers who were amateur pilots and had never before flown jet planes suddenly gained remarkable flying skills. It was a day when scientific laws apparently changed, so that relatively small fires supposedly could cause three massive skyscrapers to disintegrate into dust, each in the space of just a few seconds. And it was also a day when two F-15s appear to have made possibly the slowest journey by military fighter jets in all history.

A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline summarizes the testimonies of numerous witnesses who were on the ground in Manhattan that morning, describing when they first heard fighter jets arriving overhead. Despite a few contradictory accounts, these witnesses generally agree that fighters did not arrive over New York until around the time of the second WTC collapse, so roughly about 10:20 a.m.-10:35 a.m.

In response to the first hijacking, of Flight 11, two F-15 fighter jets were launched from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which is about 153 miles away from New York City. The F-15s were ordered to scramble at 8:46 a.m. and were in the air by 8:53 a.m. But, according to the 9/11 Commission: "Lacking a target, they were vectored toward military controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. To avoid New York area air traffic and uncertain about what to do, the fighters were brought down to military air space to 'hold as needed.' From 9:08 to 9:13, the Otis fighters were in this holding pattern." [1] After leaving it at 9:13, they finally arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. [2]

This account itself is extraordinary. The first sign of a problem with Flight 11 was when it broke communication with air traffic control just before 8:14 a.m., refusing to respond to a request to climb to 35,000 feet. The emergency was compounded when Flight 11's transponder went off minutes later, at 8:21 a.m. [3]

As MSNBC reported: "If a plane deviates by 15 degrees, or two miles" from its pre-arranged course, "flight controllers will hit the panic button. ... It's considered a real emergency." In response, "F-16 interceptors can fly alongside a plane to see who's flying it. They can also try to force it off course. Once it is apparent that it is not following directions, it might be forced over the ocean or to a remote airport--or even shot down." [4]

Clearly then, a plane need not be hijacked for an emergency to exist. A plane that is off course or out of contact with air traffic control would be a potential danger to other aircraft in its area, regardless of whether or not it was hijacked. A speedy response by the military would be essential.

This point has been elucidated by Robin Hordon, an air traffic controller from 1970 to 1981, who in fact was responsible for the air traffic sector where Flight 11 first became an emergency on 9/11: "It is important for people to understand that scrambling jet fighters to intercept aircraft showing the signs of experiencing 'IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCIES' such as going off course without authorization, losing a transponder signal and/or losing radio contact, is a common and routine task executed jointly between the FAA and NORAD controllers. The entire 'national defense-first responder' intercept system has many highly trained civilian and military personnel who are committed and well trained to this task. FAA and NORAD continuously monitor our skies and fighter planes and pilots are on the ready 24/7 to handle these situations." [5]

Therefore, very soon after 8:14 a.m., Flight 11 should have been declared an emergency, and fighters should have been in the air to intercept it within minutes. According to Hordon: "The first fifteen minutes are the key. I have done the math. If we had scrambled some aircraft five or six minutes after we saw this huge deviation, the fighters from Otis would have intercepted American 11 over southwestern Connecticut or just south of Albany, NY." [6] As we know, this did not happen.

Even according to the 9/11 Commission's account, it was more than an hour after Flight 11 became an obvious emergency that the fighter jets launched in response to it finally arrived over New York. But if we believe the claims of the majority of witnesses quoted by the Complete 9/11 Timeline, it actually took more than two hours from when the emergency began for F-15s to arrive over the city. Yet the base from where they took off was just 153 miles away, and F-15s have a maximum speed of 915 mph at sea level, or 1,875 mph at high altitude. [7] So what slowed them down?

It could hardly be claimed that the mission the fighters were being called upon to perform was something out of the ordinary. A report published by the General Accounting Office in May 1994 stated: "Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD's alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites' total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress." In other words, over this four-year period, military scrambles averaged about one per day. After 9/11, it was reported that NORAD had scrambled fighters 67 times during the nine months from September 2000 to June 2001. [8] So clearly the launching of military jets to intercept suspicious aircraft was a routine operation.

Fighters were reportedly able to respond within minutes of being called upon to do so. In the days after 9/11, Otis Air Force Base was reported as keeping two fighters "on 24-hour alert," which, "if needed, must be in the air within five minutes." [9] An alert pilot at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida--another of NORAD's alert sites--said: "If needed, we could be killing things in five minutes or less." And a book published by the 1st Air Force in 1999 described the emergency scramble procedure at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, also one of NORAD's alert sites. Tech. Sgt. Don Roseen, who was responsible for keeping the fighters there ready for instant takeoff, was quoted as saying that the alert jets were "hot and cocked, they are ready. When that alarm goes off, everything else just stops." [10] According to Robin Hordon: "Jet fighters typically intercept any suspect plane over the United States within 10-15 minutes of notification of a problem." [11]

How then can we explain the failure of the military to stop Flight 11 and Flight 175 from hitting the World Trade Center? And why did fighter jets apparently not arrive over New York until around 10:30 a.m.?

It could hardly have been due to incompetence. In fact, in January 1999, the 1st Air Force air sovereignty team, which, as part of NORAD, is responsible for the air defense of the continental United States, scored an unprecedented "grand slam" in an evaluation of its effectiveness. The three air defense sectors responsible for protecting U.S. airspace had their command and control skills tested in the Air Combat Command Operational Readiness Inspections (ORI). All were rated "outstanding," which was the highest score possible on a five-tier scale. Brigadier General Kenneth Stromquist Jr., the 1st Air Force vice commander, commented: "There's never been a grand slam ... in the history of this outfit." [12]

How could this team's performance plummet so abysmally two-and-a-half years later, on 9/11? Adding to the suspicion is the fact that no one in the military has been punished for this disastrous performance. Retired Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, a former fighter pilot, has summed it up: "No one has been court-martialed. No one has been reprimanded. No one has been demoted. No one is to blame. That only tells me one thing. The ones to blame are too high up to play scapegoat." [13]


From the Complete 9/11 Timeline:

(9:45 a.m.-10:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses First Notice Military Jets over New York, Later Than Claimed by 9/11 Commission
According to the accounts of numerous witnesses on the ground near the World Trade Center, military fighter jets are first noticed flying over Manhattan either shortly before or soon after the second collapse, at 10:28 a.m. Some witnesses recall fighters arriving just before this collapse:
* Emergency medical technicians Dulce McCorvey and Michael D'Angelo hear fighters flying over Manhattan at unspecified times after the first tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/3/2001; City of New York, 10/24/2001]
* Fire Lieutenant Sean O'Malley and firefighters Pete Giudetti and Dan Potter notice jet fighters flying overhead soon before the second collapse. [City of New York, 10/12/2001; City of New York, 12/6/2001; Smith, 2002, pp. 49-50]
Other witnesses say the fighters arrive soon after this collapse:
* Deputy Fire Chief Robert Browne, police officer Peter Moog, and emergency medical technicians Richard Zarrillo and Jason Katz notice fighters overhead immediately after, or fairly soon after, the second tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/24/2001; City of New York, 10/25/2001; City of New York, 12/20/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 79-80]
* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and Office of Emergency Management Director Richard Sheirer are heading north together after leaving their temporary command post on Barclay Street (see (9:50 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). In some accounts, all three of them recollect hearing the first military jets overhead soon after the second tower's collapse. [Kerik, 2001, pp. 339-340; Giuliani, 2002, pp. 14; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] However, according to another account, Giuliani hears the first jet slightly earlier, at around 10:20 a.m. And, in his private testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Kerik claims to have heard a fighter jet coming when he was heading to the temporary command post on Barclay Street, i.e. shortly before 9:50 a.m. [Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 348-349]
A few witnesses claim the fighters arrive earlier on, before the first collapse at 9:59 a.m.:
* Emergency medical technician Frank Puma and Port Authority Freedom of Information Administrator Cathy Pavelec say they see fighter jets overhead at unspecified times before the first collapse. [City of New York, 12/12/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 68]
The fighter(s) are presumably the F-15s launched from Otis Air Force Base at 8:46 a.m. (see (8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001). However, the 9/11 Commission will claim that these arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. (see 9:25 a.m. September 11, 2001), which is significantly earlier than most of the witnesses on the ground recall.

(Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a945fightersnoticed&scale=0)

ENDNOTES
[1] "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 24.
[3] "Transcript American Airlines Flight 11." New York Times, 10/16/2001; "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[4] Dr. Bob Arnot, "What Was Needed to Halt the Attacks?" MSNBC, 9/12/2001.
[5] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[6] Jeremy Baker, "The First Fifteen Minutes of September 11th." CommunityCurrency.org, 3/2007.
[7] Joseph F. Baugher, "McDonnell F-15A Eagle." 2/20/2000; "F-15 Eagle." United States Air Force, 6/2006.
[8] "Continental Air Defense: A Dedicated Force Is No Longer Needed." United States General Accounting Office, 5/3/1994; Leslie Miller, "FAA, Military Now Work Closely: NORAD Notified Immediately of Any Problems." Associated Press, 8/13/2002.
[9] Kevin Dennehy, "Local Reservists Await the Call." Cape Cod Times, 9/15/2001; Kevin Dennehy, "Otis Force Activated; Home Duty Seen Likely." Cape Cod Times, 9/21/2001.
[10] Pat McKenna, "FANGs Bared." Airman, 12/1999; Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies: Air National Guard Takes Command of 1st Air Force. Panama City, FL: First Air Force, 1999, p. 97.
[11] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[12] Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies, pp. 115 and 184; Don Arias, "Outstanding: CONR Sectors Receive Highest Inspection Ratings." American Defender, 3/1999.
[13] Dr Robert Bowman "A Fighter Pilot Looks Back at 9/11 and Forward to a Resurrected America." Speech at the International Citizens Inquiry Into 9/11 in Toronto, Canada, 5/30/2004.

Future 9/11 Commissioner Fantasized About Crashing Plane Into Building

Here's a rather bizarre coincidence. For anyone unaware of this fact, a 1994 bestselling novel by Tom Clancy--Debt of Honor--ended with a Japanese pilot deliberately crashing his Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol building during a joint session of Congress with the President attending, thus decapitating the political leadership.

This is odd in itself, in light of what happened seven years later on 9/11. But check out the following quote from the New York Times' review of Debt of Honor:

[T]he President and the entire Congress must be eliminated in an inadvertently comic deus ex machina piloted by a sullen Japanese airman who miraculously does not grunt "Banzai!" as he plows his Boeing 747 into the Capitol. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman has recently had the arguable taste to remark, apropos this episode in "Debt of Honor," that this particular fantasy has long been his own. I don't like Congress either, but Abraham Lincoln, Lehman's fellow Republican and mine, did go to some pains to keep the Capitol's construction going during the Civil War as a symbol of the Union's continuity.

As is well known, John Lehman went on to become one of the members of the 9/11 Commission.

Now isn't that odd? A man who would later be one of the official investigators of 9/11 revealed that he fantasized about using a commercial jet as a weapon, and crashing it into a landmark building in the U.S.

Paul Craig Roberts Reviews New David Ray Griffin Book

9/11 and the Evidence

By Paul Craig Roberts
March 26, 2007

Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Griffin destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than the defenders of the official story.

Griffin’s book is 385 pages divided into four chapters and containing 1,209 footnotes. Without question, the book is the most thorough presentation and examination of all known facts about the 9/11 attacks. Griffin is a person who is sensitive to evidence, logic, and scientific reasoning. There is no counterpart on the official side of the story who is as fully informed on all aspects of the attacks as Griffin.

At the outset, Griffin points out that the reader’s choice is between two conspiracy theories: One is that Muslim fanatics, who were not qualified to fly airplanes, defeated the security apparatus of the US and succeeded in three out of four attacks using passenger jets as weapons. The other is that security failed across the board, not merely partially but totally, because of complicity of some part of the US government.

Griffin points out that there has been no independent investigation of 9/11. What we have are a report by a political commission headed by Bush administration factotum Philip Zelikow, a NIST report produced by the Bush administration’s Department of Commerce, and a journalistic account produced by Popular Mechanics. Various scientists who work for the federal government or are dependent on government grants have issued speculative statements in behalf of the official conspiracy theory, but have not produced meaningful evidence in its behalf.

The relevant skeptics of the official story are approximately 100 independent researchers consisting of experts and professors whose careers have required them to deal with evidence and its analysis. Their individual contributions to 9/11 analysis can be found online.

Griffin has undertaken to absorb the arguments and evidence for the official account and the arguments and evidence against it. In his latest book, which has just been released, he presents the case for the official account and its evidential failure.

Polls show that 36% of Americans do not believe the official story. Setting aside the 25% of the public that is so uninformed or uninvolved as to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack, leaves 39% of the public who believe the official story. However, this 39% is essentially relying on the mainstream media’s endorsement of the official story. Griffin believes, perhaps naively, that truth can prevail, and it is his commitment to truth that has motivated him to shoulder the enormous task.

Everyone who believes in the integrity of the US government or the Bush administration will find Griffin’s book to be disturbing. Readers will have to confront such issues as why US authorities seized the forensic evidence resulting from the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, the attack on the Pentagon and the crashed airliner in Pennsylvania and prevented any forensic examination of any part of the 9/11 attacks.

Despite widespread belief that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the attack, the evidence we have is a suspect video declared to be "bogus" by Bruce Lawrence, perhaps the leading American expert on bin Laden. The US government has never produced the promised report on bin Laden’s responsibility. When the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden on presentation of evidence, the US government had no evidence to deliver; thus the invasion of Afghanistan.

The fragility of the NIST report is astonishing. The report succeeded because people accepted its assurances without examination.

Griffin shows that the Popular Mechanics report consists of special pleading, circular reasoning, appeals to the authority of the NIST report, straw men, and internal contradictions in the report itself.

There is not space in a review to present the evidence Griffin has mustered. A few highlights should suffice to alert readers to the possibility that the Bush administration has lied about more than Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The two WTC towers did not collapse. They blew up and disintegrated, as did WTC 7. There is an enormous energy deficit in every account that rules out the use of explosives. Gravitational energy is insufficient to explain the pulverization of the buildings and contents and the severing of the 47 massive center core steel columns in each of the towers into convenient lengths to be picked up and loaded onto trucks; much less can gravitational energy account for the pulverization of the top floors of the towers and ejection of steel beams hundreds of feet horizontally just prior to the disintegration of the floors below.

Damage caused by airliners and short-lived limited fires cannot explain the disintegration of the buildings. The massive steel skeletons of the towers comprised a gigantic heat sink that wicked away whatever heat the limited fires produced.

NIST’s final report stated that of the steel available to it for examination, "only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250 degrees Celsius" (482 degrees Fahrenheit). The self-cleaning ovens in our home kitchens reach temperatures higher than this, and the ovens do not melt or deform.

Steel begins to melt at 1,500 degrees C or 2,800 degrees F. Temperatures of 250 degrees C would have no effect on the strength of steel. The explanation that the buildings collapsed because fire weakened the steel is speculative. Open air fires do not produce temperatures sufficient to deprive steel of its structural integrity. Steel framed buildings have burned 22 hours in raging infernos, and the steel skeletons remained standing. The WTC fires in the towers lasted about one hour and were limited to a few floors. Moreover, it is impossible for fire to account for the sudden, total and symmetrical disintegration of powerfully constructed buildings, much less at free fall speeds that are obtainable only with controlled demolition.

Griffin provides quotes from firefighters, police, and tenants, who heard and experienced a series of explosions prior to the disintegration of the towers. Such witness testimony is generally ignored by defenders of the official conspiracy theory.

Molten steel was found in underground levels of the WTC buildings weeks after the buildings’ destruction. As everyone agrees that the fires did not approach the melting point of steel, a possible explanation is high explosives used in demolitions that produce 5,000 degree temperatures. The possibility that explosives were used remains unexamined except by independent researchers.

Contradictions in the official conspiracy theory leap off the pages and hit the reader in the face. For example, the evidence that Flight 77, a Boeing 757, crashed into the Pentagon is the government’s claim to have obtained from the wreckage enough bodies and body parts to match the DNA for each person on the passenger list and flight crew. Simultaneously, the absence of passenger luggage, fuselage, wing and tail sections--indeed the absence of a 100,000 pound airliner--is attributed to the vaporization of the airplane due to the high speed crash and intense fire. The incompatibility of vaporized metal but recovered flesh and blood stood unnoticed until Griffin pointed it out.

Another striking inconsistency in the official conspiracy theory is the difference in the impact of airliners on the Pentagon and the WTC towers. In the case of the Pentagon, the emphasis is on why the airliner caused so little damage to the building. In the case of the WTC towers, the emphasis is why the airliners caused so much damage.

Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that just prior to 9/11 Cathleen P. Black, who has family connections to the CIA and Pentagon and is president of Hearst Magazines, the owner of Popular Mechanics, fired the magazine’s editor-in-chief and several senior veteran staff members and installed James B. Meigs and Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of Bush administration factotum Michael Chertoff. It was Meigs and Benjamin Chertoff who produced the Popular Mechanics report that Griffin has eviscerated.

In his conclusion Griffin reminds us that the 9/11 attack has been used to start wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to plan an attack on Iran, to curtail constitutional protections and civil liberties in the US, to radically expand US military budgets and the power of the executive, and to enrich entrenched vested interests. Griffin is definitely correct about this regardless of whether a believable case can ever be made for the government’s version of the 9/11 conspiracy.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Source: http://vdare.com/roberts/070326_evidence.htm

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Dead Man Confesses to Being 9/11 Mastermind

According to news reports, alleged al-Qaeda "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has now confessed to having planned the 9/11 attacks. Last Saturday (March 10), he supposedly told a tribunal panel of three military officers and a government-provided representative: "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation." This was not all. In fact, he supposedly confessed (though not under oath) to involvement in a total of 31 attacks or planned attacks, including the 1993 WTC bombing and the 2002 Bali bombing.

However, there is one rather large problem with this story: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reportedly killed on September 11, 2002, during an hours-long shootout with Pakistani security forces. Intelligence officials had supposedly tracked him down to an apartment in the southern part of Karachi. FBI and Pakistani ISI officials then surrounded the building, and were joined by hundreds of police vehicles and Pakistan Rangers.

The subsequent sequence of events that culminated in Mohammed's death has been reconstructed by the Asia Times Online, based upon reports from the Pakistani media, supplemented by information from intelligence sources.

Plain clothed officials had entered the building, and urged the people inside to evacuate. But a hand grenade was thrown, injuring two of them and forcing them to retreat. Troops then entered the building and a fierce gun battle ensued. Eleven suspected terrorists were captured and two were killed. After examining the two dead bodies, a female FBI official reportedly exclaimed: "You have killed Khalid Sheikh Mohammad." She then ordered that one of his fingers be cut off and taken away, presumably for DNA testing.

Mohammed's wife and child were taken away to an ISI safe house, where they identified one of the dead bodies as being that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. After being kept in a private NGO mortuary for 20 days, it was buried in a graveyard in Karachi, under the surveillance of the FBI. However, according to the Asia Times Online, "News of the death of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was intentionally suppressed so that officials could play on the power of his name to follow up leads and contacts."

Then, six months later, Mohammed apparently returned to life, and was reported as having been arrested in Rawalpindi. After spending time in secret CIA prisons, he was moved last year to Guantánamo Bay. He is understood to have been tortured while in U.S. custody, including undergoing "waterboarding."

So what is the truth? Has the "9/11 mastermind" really confessed to his crimes? Or does the U.S. simply have some unfortunate guy of unknown identity in its custody, and they have tortured him into confessing that he is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that he was the mastermind of 9/11?

Sources:
1) Ed Pilkington, "'I was responsible for 9/11, from A to Z' - a confession from Guantánamo Bay." The Guardian, March 15, 2007.
2) "Shock and scepticism greet alleged 9/11 confessions" The Guardian, March 15, 2007.
3) Syed Saleem Shahzad, "A chilling inheritance of terror." Asia Times Online, October 30, 2002.
4) Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Khalid: A test for US credibility." Asia Times Online, March 6, 2003.

The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller

Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11.

He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. It became like a giant funeral service." (Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground," Washington Post, 5/12/2002)

Since there were 44 people on board Flight 93, a crash site with "no bodies" makes no sense. Where were the victims? Something appears to have been seriously wrong.

Yet Miller now seems to dispute his earlier claim. In the recent BBC documentary 9/11: The Conspiracy Files, he explained: "I said that I stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes because it was perfectly clear what the cause and manner of death was gonna be. It was a plane crash but yet it was a homicide because the terrorists hijacked the plane and killed the people, and the terrorists committed suicide. So from that point, yes it was a misquote, because the point that I was trying to make was, after that it more or less became a large funeral service." The BBC documentary's producer Guy Smith endorsed this claim, telling Loose Change creator Dylan Avery that Miller meant his earlier statement only as "a simile. ... It looked as if that had happened. ... But he didn't mean that literally." (9/11: The Conspiracy Files, BBC 2, 2/18/2007)

Was the Washington Post mistaken? Did they "misquote" Wallace Miller? Other reports suggest differently. In the 12 months following 9/11, Miller in fact described the surprising lack of human remains at the Flight 93 crash site, repeatedly and unequivocally:

• He told author David McCall: "I got to the actual crash site and could not believe what I saw. ... Usually you see much debris, wreckage, and much noise and commotion. This crash was different. There was no wreckage, no bodies, and no noise. ... It appeared as though there were no passengers or crew on this plane." (David McCall, From Tragedy to Triumph, 2002, pp. 86-87)



• He told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "It was as if the plane had stopped and let the passengers off before it crashed." (Tom Gibb, "Newsmaker: Coroner's quiet unflappability helps him take charge of Somerset tragedy," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/15/2001)



• He told CNN: "It was a really a very unusual site. You almost would've thought the passengers had been dropped off somewhere. ... Even by the standard model of an airplane crash, there was very little, even by those standards." (CNN, 3/11/2002)



• Author Jere Longman wrote: "Wallace Miller, the Somerset County coroner, arrived and walked around the [crash] site with [assistant volunteer fire chief Rick] King. ... They walked around for an hour and found almost no human remains. 'If you didn't know, you would have thought no one was on the plane,' Miller said. 'You would have thought they dropped them off somewhere.'" (Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, 2002, p. 217)



• Recalling the crash scene, Miller told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "This is the most eerie thing. I have not, to this day, seen a single drop of blood. Not a drop." (Robb Frederick, "The day that changed America," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002)



• Australian newspaper The Age reported: "Miller was familiar with scenes of sudden and violent death, although none quite like this. Walking in his gumboots, the only recognisable body part he saw was a piece of spinal cord, with five vertebrae attached. 'I've seen a lot of highway fatalities where there's fragmentation,' Miller said. 'The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven't, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop. The only thing I can deduce is that the crash was over in half a second. There was a fireball 15-20 metres high, so all of that material just got vaporised.'" ("On Hallowed Ground," The Age, 9/9/2002)

It would be ridiculous to claim that these accounts were all 'misquotes.' Furthermore, several other witnesses also made the same observation, and later said they saw virtually no human remains at the Flight 93 crash site:

• According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, when former firefighter Dave Fox arrived at the scene, "He saw a wiring harness, and a piston. None of the other pieces was bigger than a TV remote. He saw three chunks of torn human tissue. He swallowed hard. 'You knew there were people there, but you couldn't see them,' he says." (Robb Frederick, "The day that changed America," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002)



• Local FBI agent Wells Morrison told author Glenn Kashurba what he saw when he arrived at the crash site: "We arrived in the immediate area and walked up to the crater and the burning woods. My first thought was, 'Where is the plane?' Because most of what I saw was this honeycomb looking stuff, which I believe is insulation or something like that. I was not seeing anything that was distinguishable either as human remains or aircraft debris." (Glenn Kashurba, Courage After the Crash, 2002, p. 110)



• After hearing a plane was down nearby, Jeff Phillips, who worked at Stoystown Auto Wreckers, "left work to locate the crash site," along with a colleague. "But when we arrived," he says, "Almost nothing was recognizable. The only thing we saw that was even remotely human was half a shoe that was probably ten feet from the impact area." (David McCall, From Tragedy to Triumph, 2002, pp. 29-30)



• Jon Meyer, a reporter with WJAC-TV, says: "We were so early that they hadn't had a chance to set up a barrier for the press. ... I was able to get right up to the edge of the crater. ... All I saw was a crater filled with small, charred plane parts. ... There were no suitcases, no recognizable plane parts, no body parts."(Newseum, Running Toward Danger, 2002, p. 148)



• Faye Hahn, an EMT, responded to the first reports of the crash. She says: "Several trees were burned badly and there were papers everywhere. We searched. ... I was told that there were 224 passengers, but later found out that there were actually forty. I was stunned. There was nothing there." (David McCall, From Tragedy to Triumph, 2002, pp. 31-32)

Despite this absence of human remains at the Flight 93 crash scene, the Washington Post reported: "[T]he 33 passengers, seven crew and four hijackers together weighed roughly 7,000 pounds. ... Hundreds of searchers who climbed the hemlocks and combed the woods for weeks [after 9/11] were able to find about 1,500 mostly scorched samples of human tissue totaling less than 600 pounds, or about 8 percent of the total." (Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground," Washington Post, 5/12/2002)

By December 19, 2001, "the remains of the 40 passengers and crew, and, by process of elimination, the four hijackers" had all been identified. (Steve Levin, "Flight 93 victims' effects to go back to families," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/30/2001)

How was this possible?

How Did They Know Building 7 Was Going to Collapse?

"That building is never coming down, that didn't get hit by a plane, why isn't somebody in there putting the fire out?"

- Comment by a firefighter, September 11, 2001.


World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a modern, steel-framed high-rise, had ever collapsed because of fire before. In fact, photos indicate that the fires it did suffer were relatively minor, particularly when compared to other building fires that have not caused such a total collapse. If the official explanation is correct--that WTC 7's collapse was not due to pre-planted explosives--then this was the biggest scientific anomaly of all time. People must surely have been astonished when this massive building suddenly fell to the ground late in the afternoon of 9/11.

Yet this was not the case.

As the dozens of witness accounts below show, many people were warned in advance to evacuate the area surrounding WTC 7, because of the "imminent" collapse. Indeed, a specific "collapse zone" was set up and, consequently, there were no casualties when WTC 7 eventually fell. Furthermore, a small number of senior firefighters have claimed they could tell beforehand that this building was going to come down, even though such an event would have been totally unprecedented.

So how did they know Building 7 was going to collapse?


WITNESSES WHO WERE WARNED OF THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE

1) Firefighter Thomas Smith: "They backed me off the rig because seven was in dead jeopardy, so they backed everybody off and moved us to the rear end of Vesey Street. We just stood there for a half hour, 40 minutes, because seven was in imminent collapse and finally did come down." (Interview, 12/6/2001)

2) Firefighter Vincent Massa: "At this point Seven World Trade Center was going heavy, and they weren't letting anybody get too close. Everybody was expecting that to come down. ... I remember later on in the day as we were waiting for seven to come down, they kept backing us up Vesey, almost like a full block. They were concerned about seven coming down, and they kept changing us, establishing a collapse zone and backing us up." (Interview, 12/4/2001)

3) Firefighter Tiernach Cassidy: "Then, like I said, building seven was in eminent collapse. They blew the horns. They said everyone clear the area until we got that last civilian out. We tried to give another quick search while we could, but then they wouldn't let us stay anymore. So we cleared the area. ... So yeah, then we just stayed on Vesey until building seven came down." (Interview, 12/30/2001)

4) Indira Singh, a volunteer EMT: "What happened with that particular triage site is that pretty soon after noon, after midday on 9/11, we had to evacuate that because they told us Building 7 was coming down. ... I do believe that they brought Building 7 down because I heard that they were going to bring it down because it was unstable, because of the collateral damage. ... By noon or one o'clock they told us we had to move from that triage site up to Pace University, a little further away, because Building 7 was gonna come down or being brought down. ... There was another panic around four o'clock because they were bringing the building down and people seemed to know this ahead of time, so people were panicking again and running." (KPFA, 4/27/2005)

5) EMT Joseph Fortis: "When the third building came down, we were on that corner in front of the school, and everybody just stood back. They pulled us all back at the time, almost about an hour before it, because they were sure -- they knew it was going to come down, but they weren't sure. So they pulled everyone back, and everybody stood there and we actually just waited and just waited and waited until it went down, because it was unsafe." (Interview, 11/9/2001)

6) Fire Chief Thomas McCarthy: "So when I get to the command post, they just had a flood of guys standing there. They were just waiting for 7 to come down. ... I made it down Vesey Street to just in front of the overpass of 7 World Trade. People were saying don't stand under there, it's going to come down. ... So at that point we were a little leery about how the bridge was tied in, so no one was really going onto it, and then they were also saying 7 was going to come down. They chased everyone off the block." (Interview, 10/11/2001)

7) Firefighter Matthew Long: "And at that point they were worried that 7 was coming down so they were calling for everyone to back out. ... Because they were just adamant about 7 coming down immediately. I think we probably got out of that rubble and 18 minutes later is when 7 came down." (Interview, 10/9/2001)

8) Firefighter Edward Kennedy: "That was the only Mayday that I remember, and to tell you the truth, the only guy that really stands out in my mind that I remember being on the radio was Chief Visconti. ... I remember him screaming about 7, No. 7, that they wanted everybody away from 7 because 7 was definitely going to collapse, they don't know when, but it's definitely going to come down, just get the hell out of the way, everybody get away from it, make sure you're away from it, that's an order, you know, stuff like that." (Interview, 1/17/2002)

9) Paramedic Louis Cook: "We got to Chambers and Greenwich, and the chief turns around and says, 'There's number Seven World Trade. That's the OEM bunker.' We had a snicker about that. We looked over, and it's engulfed in flames and starting to collapse. ... We hear over the fire portable, 'Everybody evacuate the site. It's going to collapse.' Mark Steffens starts yelling, 'Get out of here! Get out of here! Get out of here! We've got to go! We've got to go! It's going to collapse.' ... We pulled the car over, turned around and just watched it pancake." (Interview, 10/17/2001)

10) Battalion Fire Chief John Norman: "After we found Chief Ganci, in addition to recon, I was detailed to make sure the collapse zone for 7 WTC had been set up and was being maintained. The sector commanders were trying to clear out of that area. We expected it to fall to the south, into the areas we were searching." (John Norman, "Search and Rescue Operations," Fire Engineering, 10/2002)

John Norman (in another account): "Now we're still worried about 7. We have guys trying to make their way up into the pile, and they're telling us that 7 is going to fall down - and that was one of the directions from the command post, to make sure we clear the collapse zone from 7 and this is a 600-foot-tall building, so we had to clear a 600-foot radius from that building." ("WTC: This Is Their Story," Firehouse, 5/2002)

11) Deputy Fire Chief Nick Visconti: "Now, World Trade Center 7 was burning and I was thinking to myself, how come they're not trying to put this fire out? ... At some point, Frank Fellini said, now we've got hundreds of guys out there, hundreds and hundreds, and that's on the West Street side alone. He said to me, Nick, you've got to get those people out of there. I thought to myself, out of where? Frank, what do you want, Chief? He answered, 7 World Trade Center, imminent collapse, we've got to get those people out of there. ... There were a couple of chiefs out there who I knew and I called them individually. I said to them, listen, start backing those people out, we need them back up to the command post. While this was going on, I saw individual company officers. I was whistling, Captain, bring your guys this way. I was getting some resistance. The common thing was, hey, we've still got people here, we don't want to leave. I explained to them that we were worried about 7, that it was going to come down and we didn't want to get anybody trapped in the collapse. One comment was, oh, that building is never coming down, that didn't get hit by a plane, why isn't somebody in there putting the fire out? A lot of comments, a bit of resistance, understandable resistance." ("WTC: This Is Their Story," Firehouse, 8/2002)

12) Firefighter James Wallace: "They were saying building seven was going to collapse, so we regrouped and went back to our rig. We went to building four or three; I don't know. We were going to set up our tower ladder there. They said no good because building seven is coming down." (Interview, 12/29/2001)

13) Fire Captain Robert Sohmer: "As the day went on they started worrying about 7 World Trade Center collapsing and they ordered an evacuation from that area so at that time, we left the area with the other companies, went back to the command post on Broadway ... We were about to proceed our operation there and this was in the afternoon, I would say approximately maybe 2:00 roughly, where we started to operate and then they asked us to fall back again due to the potential of 7 World Trade Center collapsing." (Interview, 1/17/2002)

14) Fire Lieutenant William Ryan: "Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 o'clock, that they thought 7 was going to collapse. So, of course, we've got guys all in this pile over here and the main concern was get everybody out, and I guess it took us over an hour and a half, two hours to get everybody out of there. ... So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and that's when 7 collapsed." (Interview, 10/18/2001)

15) Fire Captain Brenda Berkman: "We no sooner got going on something there when a chief came along and said, 'Everybody's got to leave the area. We're afraid that Seven World Trade is going to fall down.' The whole south side of Seven World Trade had been hit by the collapse of the second Tower, and there was fire on every floor." (Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at Ground Zero, 2002, p. 213)

FireWork newsletter (adding to Berkman's account): "After being ordered back because of the fear that yet another building was about to collapse (7 World Trade Center, 40+ stories), Brenda [Berkman] and her crew went to find other firefighters who might have some tools or a radio. ... That afternoon, 7 World Trade Center came down. 'We had cleared an enormous collapse zone for that, and it still wasn't big enough. When the thing came down, the rubble and the dust came across the West Side Highway, over and past the rubble from the towers that was there.'" (Linda Willing, "Report from Ground Zero: The World Trade Center Collapse," FireWork, 9/2001)

16) Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman: "At that point, Seven World Trade had 12 stories of fire in it. They were afraid it was going to collapse on us, so they pulled everybody out. We couldn't do anything." (Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at Ground Zero, 2002, p. 17)

17) Firefighter Pete Castellano: "We were ordered down from the tower ladder because of a possible collapse at Tower 7." (Interview, 12/28/2001)

18) Firefighter Brian Fitzpatrick: "We were then positioned on Vesey Street between North End and the West Side Highway because there was an imminent collapse on 7 World Trade, and it did collapse." (Interview, 12/6/2001)

19) Firefighter Christopher Patrick Murray: "Probably about 4:00 o'clock, 5:00 o'clock, our radios went dead, because we heard reports all day long of 7 World Trade possibly coming down and I think at 5:30 that came down." (Interview, 12/12/2001)

20) Firefighter Kevin McGovern: "Actually I think at that point just as we were leaving, guys -- I don't know who it was. I guess it was a chief was saying clear the area, because they were worried about number Seven World Trade Center coming down and burying guys who were digging. So we basically went back to the rig, because they were clearing that area out. It took about three hours for Seven World Trade Center to actually come down." (Interview, 12/11/2001)

21) Firefighter George Holzman: "We stayed there for quite sometime when I don't even know who, I think it was someone, Lieutenant Lowney spoke to, asked us to leave the area, they were concerned about 7 World Trade Center collapsing." (Interview, 1/17/2002)

22) Byron Pitts, CBS News correspondent: "About an hour ago, World Trade Center building number 7 collapsed. ... It was the one calamity that was not a surprise. Police had evacuated the area hours ago, fearful building number 7 would indeed fall down." (CBS News, 9/11/2001)

23) Kansas City Star: "About 4:30 p.m., word went out to evacuate the area. Officials were worried that Building 7 of the Trade Center complex would collapse." (David Hayes, "Amid despair, photographer's work brought hope," Kansas City Star, 3/28/2004)

24) Tom Franklin, photographer: "It was about 4 p.m., and they were anticipating Seven World Trade Center collapsing. The firemen were leaving en masse." (Newseum, Running Toward Danger, 2002, p. 204)

Tom Franklin (in another account): "It was 4:45 p.m., and all the firemen and rescue workers were evacuating Ground Zero after word came that a third building -- WTC 7 -- was ready to fall." (Tom Franklin, "The After-Life of a Photo that Touched a Nation," Columbia Journalism Review, 3/1/2002)

25) Mark Jacobson, reporter, New York Magazine: "Hours later, I sat down beside another, impossibly weary firefighter. ... Then, almost as a non sequitur, the fireman indicated the building in front of us, maybe 400 yards away. 'That building is coming down,' he said with a drained casualness. 'Really?' I asked. At 47 stories, it would be a skyscraper in most cities, centerpiece of the horizon. But in New York, it was nothing but a nondescript box with fire coming out of the windows. 'When?' 'Tonight ... Maybe tomorrow morning.' This was around 5:15 p.m. I know because five minutes later, at 5:20, the building, 7 World Trade Center, crumbled." (Mark Jacobson, "The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll," New York Magazine, 3/27/2006)

26) Paramedic Joseph Cahill: "The reason we were given for why we were moving was that 7 World Trade Center was going to collapse or was at risk of collapsing. So we must have been somewhere in this area where we would have had a problem with that. ... They wanted us to move the treatment sector because of 7 World Trade Center was imminently to collapse, which, of course, it did." (Interview, 10/15/2001)

27) EMT Mercedes Rivera: "At that point, they said that Seven World Trade had no face and it was ready to collapse." (Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at Ground Zero, 2002, p. 29)

28) Christine Haughney, reporter, Washington Post: "Then a policeman directed me north. The Solomon Smith Barney building--Building Seven--was about to collapse." (Chris Bull and Sam Erman, At Ground Zero, 2002, p. 17)

29) Peter DeMarco, reporter, New York Daily News: "Seven or eight blocks down Greenwich Street, the No. 7 World Trade building, a smaller, forty-story structure, was on fire. The street was closed; the building was going to collapse." (Chris Bull and Sam Erman, At Ground Zero, 2002, p. 97)

30) Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer: "Yes, I watched 7. At one point, we were standing on the west side of West Street and Vesey. And I remember Chief Nigro coming back at that point saying I don't want anybody else killed and to take everybody two blocks up virtually to North End and Vesey, which is a good ways up. And we stood there and we watched 7 collapse." ("WTC: This Is Their Story," Firehouse, 4/2002)

31) Battalion Fire Chief Frank Congiusta: "While we were searching the subbasements, they decided that Seven World Trade Center, which was across the street, was going to collapse. So they called us out. ... When I came out, they were calling us on the radio to tell us to get out. Then I reported that the search was negative, and then they wouldn't let anybody near the site pretty much, because Seven World Trade Center was going to come down." (Interview, 1/8/2002)

32) EMT Jason Charles: "So we started heading over to where Building 7 was at and they were like Building 7 is going to collapse, you can't go over there, this and that, and there was another building that they thought was going to collapse that was like right behind the triage center, the building that we were in." (Interview, 1/23/2002)

33) Fire Lieutenant Roy David: "At Pace University we had -- we set up -- I'm sorry, we set up in that lobby of that building, the lobby and the actual whole first floor. There was a threat of collapse of building number seven, so 225, we had to evacuate it." (Interview, 10/12/2001)

34) EMT Decosta Wright: "They said -- we were like, are you guys going to put that fire out? I was like, you know, they are going to wait for it to burn down and it collapsed. ... Yes, so basically they measured out how far the building was going to come, so we knew exactly where we could stand. ... 5 blocks. 5 blocks away. We still could see. Exactly right on point, the cloud just stopped right there. Then when that building was coming down, the same thing, that same rumbling." (Interview, 10/11/2001)

35) Fire Lieutenant Rudolf Weindler: "I ran into Chief Coloe from the 1st Division, Captain Varriale, Engine 24, and Captain Varriale told Chief Coloe and myself that 7 World Trade Center was badly damaged on the south side and definitely in danger of collapse. Chief Coloe said we were going to evacuate the collapse zone around 7 World Trade Center, which we did." (Interview, 1/15/2002)

36) Liz Gonzalez, reporter, Telemundo/Channel 47: "They started evacuating the area because they thought a third building was going to go down. We decided to stay. We saw the third building crash." (Newseum, Running Toward Danger, 2002, p. 209)

37) Sara Kugler, reporter, the Associated Press: "I saw hundreds of firefighters leaning against buildings, sitting on trucks, eating fruit and water that the Red Cross was handing out. 'Where are all the injured?' I asked. 'They are not letting us in. It's not stable,' said the firefighters. ... All of a sudden Seven World Trade Center started to collapse." (Newseum, Running Toward Danger, 2002, p. 210)


WITNESSES WHO APPARENTLY KNEW IN ADVANCE OF THE COLLAPSE

1) Fire Chief Frank Fellini: "The major concern at that time at that particular location was number Seven, building number seven, which had taken a big hit from the north tower. ... We were concerned that the fires on several floors and the missing steel would result in the building collapsing. So for the next five or six hours we kept firefighters from working anywhere near that building, which included the whole north side of the World Trade Center complex. Eventually around 5:00 or a little after, building number seven came down." (Interview, 12/3/2001)

2) Fire Chief Daniel Nigro: "The biggest decision we had to make on the first day was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story building heavily involved in fire. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building's integrity was in serious doubt. I issued the orders to pull back the firefighters and define the collapse zone. It was a critical decision; we could not lose any more firefighters. It took a lot of time to pull everyone out, given the emotionalism of the day, communications difficulties, and the collapse terrain." (Daniel Nigro, "Report from the Chief of Department," Fire Engineering, 9/2002)

Daniel Nigro (in another account): "I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we wouldn't lose any more people. We continued to operate on what we could from that distance and approximately an hour and a half after that order was given, at 5:30 in the afternoon, 7 World Trade Center collapsed completely." (Interview, 10/24/2001)

3) Fire Chief Frank Cruthers: "Early on, there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the collapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse. So we instructed that a collapse area ... be set up and maintained so that when the expected collapse of 7 happened, we wouldn't have people working in it." (Interview, 10/31/2001)

Frank Cruthers (in another account): "Of primary importance early on in the operation was the structural condition of 7 World Trade Center. Assistant Chief Frank Fellini had been approached by several chiefs who were concerned about its stability. It had been heavily damaged in the collapse and was well-involved in fire. Chief Fellini had looked at it and described to us some damage to its south side; he felt that structural components of the building had been comprised. So when Chief Dan Nigro arrived at the command post, he convened a meeting of staff chiefs, and this was a major subject of the meeting. We were all in accord about the danger of 7 WTC, and we all agreed that it was not too conservative of a decision to establish a collapse zone for that building, move the firefighters out of the collapse area, and maintain that strategy." (Frank Cruthers, "Postcollapse Command," Fire Engineering, 9/2002)

4) Fire Captain Ray Goldbach: "There was a big discussion going on at that point about pulling all of our units out of 7 World Trade Center. Chief Nigro didn't feel it was worth taking the slightest chance of somebody else getting injured. So at that point we made a decision to take all of our units out of 7 World Trade Center because there was a potential for collapse. ... Made the decision to back everybody away, took all the units and moved them all the way back toward North End Avenue, which is as far I guess west as you could get on Vesey Street, to keep them out of the way." (Interview, 10/24/2001)

5) Fire Engineering magazine: "FDNY chief officers surveyed 7 WTC and determined that it was in danger of collapse. Chief Frank Cruthers, now the incident commander, and Chief Frank Fellini, the operations commander, both agreed that a collapse zone had to be established. That meant firefighters in the area of the North Tower had to be evacuated. This took some time to accomplish because of terrain, communications, and the fierce determination with which the firefighters were searching. At 5:30 p.m., about 20 minutes after the last firefighters evacuated the collapse zone, 7 WTC collapsed. It was the third steel-frame high-rise in history to collapse from fire--the other two had collapsed earlier that day." ("World Trade Center Disaster: Initial Response," Fire Engineering, 9/2002)