BushFellas: New Links in Boulis Murder
BUSHFELLASCasino Jack & the Republican Thuggees
"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," wrote Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."
*World Exclusive*Nov 16,2005by Daniel Hopsicker
As three men—Anthony ‘Big Tony’ Moscatiello, Anthony ‘Little Tony’ Ferrari, and James ‘Pudgy Fiorillo— pled not guilty in court this week, the MadCowMorningNews has discovered new details in the investigation into the 4-year old slaying of SunCruz casino ship owner Gus Boulis.
A company which received over $100,000 in suspicious payments before the murder from Adam Kidan, we have learned, is owned by the family of long-time U.S. Senator from Florida Claude Pepper, now deceased, whose ties to illegal gambling there go back to the 1920’s.
It is a startling twist to the case, seeming to indicate, at a minimum, that the surface perturbation in Florida’s gambling world reflected in Boulis’ murder are the result of deeper tectonic shifts which the Evening News is reluctant to acknowledge or explain.
“Even as White House aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby dominated the headlines,” read a typical analysis last week, “according to many observers Jack Abramoff remains the Republican Party's most dangerous problem.”
Here’s why: Kidan wrote a check for the hit.
A dunsky for the agesAdam Kidan, today living under a cloud of indictment for murder, made $250,000 in unexplained payments which have featured prominently in the case since the investigation began.
During the months before Boulis was gunned down, big money went to a mysterious Miami Beach company, and the daughter of a close associate of Gambino crime boss John Gotti.
After failing to pay for his purchase of Boulis’ SunCruz casino ship empire, Kidan added injury to insult, investigators now suspect, by using Boulis’ purloined company to pay for his own death.
Kidan sent checks totaling $145,000 to the daughter of Gambino hood Anthony Moscatiello, one of the three men charged so far in the gangland-style execution in Fort Lauderdale, and checks totaling $105,000 to ‘Moon Over Miami Beach.’ An officer in the company, James Ferrari, has been charged in the case.
“Moon Over Miami Beach” is “a company whose business remains unclear,” reported the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.
“Anthony Ferrari runs Moon Over Miami Beach, a company just off the Lincoln Road Mall that never seems to be open for business,” reported Miami’s Channel 10 NEWS. “And Ferrari refuses to even say what business the company does.”
Moon over Miami Beach sound as phony as some of Abramoff’s other dummy front companies. We recalled the "premiere international think tank" he set up called the American International Center, through which rivers of cash were laundered.
"Want to head an international corporation?"The American International Centre was promoted as "bringing great minds together from all over the globe" under the "high-power directorship" of David Grosh, who turned out to be a rather under-powered lifeguard.
“Want to be head of an international corporation?" Grosh told an incredulous Senate committee hearing he was asked. "I was like, ‘sure.’ It was a hard one to turn down. I asked him what I had to do, and he said 'Nothing.’
“That sounded pretty good to me."
Abramoff charged exorbitant fees for work he didn't do, and set up fake charities to shelter the ill-gotten gains. There were phony grass-roots Christian groups. Phony billing statements. And nonprofits with phony purposes.
When we took a closer look at “Moon over Miami Beach” we discovered the previously undisclosed gambling associations of the firms’ other two officers, Frank and Thomas Pepper.
News accounts identified Frank Pepper as “the 77-year old founder of one of Miami's oldest real estate companies,” and Thomas Pepper as his nephew, a friend of Ferrari and one of four men who received $10,000 in Sun Cruz casino chips. A history of gambling in South Florida
In a startling twist, we have learned that the Pepper family—one of the Miami families dating back to the boom time 1920s—has a rich history of involvement in gambling in South Florida that seems germane today in a murder investigation of a man who owned floating casinos.
For more than 30 years, reported the June 30, 1991 St. Petersburg Times, the FBI and its legendary director J. Edgar Hoover collected details about Claude Pepper in an effort to link him to corruption.
FBI files indicated that Pepper "is suspected of receiving graft through various political manipulations and maneuvers in the state of Florida, although no positive evidence has ever been offered in this request."
The FBI’s suspicion of Pepper may have owed something to the “considerable notoriety” he enjoyed because of his public objections to FBI wiretapping.
A field agent in the FBI's Washington office once wrote Hoover that he was surprised that Pepper had attacked the bureau because agents there had once recovered a diamond bracelet of Mrs. Pepper's which she lost in a Washington taxicab.
"I shall always be most grateful to you and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the exceedingly kind and efficient service which you rendered to me and to Mrs. Pepper," Pepper wrote Hoover in a thank-you note.
Was Claude Pepper a clue?
At the bottom of the note, reported the St Petersburg Times story, Hoover personally added his own sentiment: "Pepper has to serve his masters, the Florida politicians and criminals."
Besides looking at Pepper's ties to left-wing organizations, the paper reported, the FBI also questioned whether Pepper’s nephew was running a gambling operation.
In 1986, Pepper formed the not-for-profit Mildred and Claude Pepper Foundation, to “promote policies and programs which will improve health, provide economic opportunity and contribute to social justice for all Americans,” according to their literature.
A dandy ambition. But despite its lofty goals, the foundation carried on with a very modest budget, until after Pepper's death at age 89, when the financial picture turned unexpectedly rosy...
The U.S. Congress appropriated $ 10-million for the foundation from—are you ready for this?—the Department of Defense budget, “a direct and unrestricted grant to support the purposes of the foundation and to serve as a memorial to Pepper.”
"I've never heard of government money used to create a foundation like that,” said Robert Bothwell, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy in Washington.
Among the creative ways the foundation has found to spend money: $10,000 to the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in El Salvador, during the height of the Contra unpleasantness.
We’re sure we could find more.
BushFellas meet The Soprano's
If the various Abramoff scandals are the brewing scandals Republicans fear most, what may be keeping Abramoff himself up late at night, we suspect, is the murder investigation now grinding forward in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
What makes this a candidate for most explosive scandal (in a Dramatic Category) since Watergate?
First, because Jack Abramoff and his friends are the players in the conservative revolution that took over Congress, the White House, and the lobbying industry...
Second, because Abramoff has been charged with fraud in connection with a gambling ship deal in Florida which ended in a gangland-style killing of the man Abramoff is alleged to have defrauded...
And third... because The Washington Post (and practically everyone else writing about it) can’t resist describing it as a “gangland-style hit straight out of “Goodfellas.”
Congressional Quarterly called the Abramoff-DeLay scandal “The Slow Decline of a GOP “Godfather.’”
How much of this isn’t in jest? Have we truly become what much of the rest of the world sees us as: Gangster America?
Round up the usual suspects
Anthony Ferrari was first identified in print as a suspect four years ago, in August of 2001. The basic facts in the Boulis murder have been known to investigators since that time.
The FBI’s interest in Claude Pepper’s family associations with illegal gambling in South Florida go back six decades. They were writing memos about it in 1937.
With a history that long, and that hidden... the discovery of assorted political murders is not exactly a “stop the presses!” moment.
Especially coming so soon after George W Bush took power, Boulis’ very visible murder would have raised concerns that it might signal a big shake-up in the gambling industry hierarchy.
Details of the “deep politics” behind an industry as important and lucrative as unregulated gambling are of keen interest to anyone who wants to understand how power works in America.
This must be why they are being doled out like flu shots in the middle of a pandemic. They are obviously considered highly-sensitive... need to know sensitive, even.
Imagine that.
Could this be an answer of sorts to one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why have police waited so long to charge people for the crime?
Investigators strongly suspected that Boulis’ cold-blooded murder was related to the dead man’s riches—and his businesses. Boulis’ most profitable business venture was SunCruz Casinos, which he had recently and reluctantly sold to a Washington DC investor group headed by Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and “fronted” by a buddy of Abramoff’s from their College Republican days, a disbarred attorney and “businessman” named Adam Kidan.
The sale price was $147 million.
Thuggee Greatest Hits
An hour before a gunman killed Gus Boulis, a local developer and two prominent Hollywood, FL. lawyers had attempted to persuade Boulis to sell his interest in a big Hollywood waterfront hotel project.
The controversy around the sale of Boulis' SunCruz casino boat empire made Boulis too hot for the public to accept as a partner on a 20-story hotel project on city-owned beachfront land, they told him.
After almost a decade of very public wheeling and dealing, Boulis had suddenly become persona non grata.
If you don’t recall, the Thuggees were a well-organized confederacy of professional assassins, an Indian cult sometimes described as the world's first mafia. They practiced large-scale robbery and murder of travelers between the 13th to the 19th centuries. Members were known as Thugs.
But one brutal murder does not a Republican Thuggee gang make. We needed more examples. They were, alas, almost too easily found...
There’s the gangland murder of Kidan’s own mother, for example. On Feb. 18, 1993, Kidan's mother, Judy Shemtov, 46, was shot in the head and killed after answering the door of their posh Richmond Hill home. The motive of that slaying was a mystery until Chris Paciello, Miami Beach's leading club impresario and sometime boyfriend of Madonna, pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge and turned government informant.
Paciello testified that he was the getaway driver for a crew from the Bonanno crime family who went to the house to rob Kidan's stepfather of $200,000 they had heard he kept in a safe in the house.
When Shemtov answered the door, two young men wearing baseball caps and jeans entered the foyer of her Queens home, said her husband, Kidan’s step-father. One of the crew accidentally shot her.
“A bullet tore through Judy's left cheek. Her small body flew into the air and slammed backward into the foyer, then dropped to the floor. Blood splattered all over,” wrote the tabloid New York Daily News on April 14, 2002, under a headline reading “RISE AND FALL OF A PLAYBOY MOBSTER.”
GoodFellas in action
Calandra looked at Tommy Reynolds. "Let's make this one to go," he said, borrowing the line from his favorite movie "Goodfellas."
The two men fled. Here’s a truly horrible thought: Kidan is suspected by some of being responsible for his own mother’s death, by telling the robbery crew, who knew, where they kept the cash.
Boulis’s murder cast a pall of fear over the people who knew him, said the local paper, the Sun-Sentinel. What they meant was...people are afraid to talk.
At his company, Atlantia staffers remained silent, referring calls to a public relations agency. Even police were having difficulty getting some people to talk.
”There are a lot of people who aren't talking for reasons of personal safety," said Fort Lauderdale Police Detective Mike Reed.
Here’s one you may have heard about: “Boulis was murdered in the exact same way as Don Aronow, Bush’s other partner,” he stated. Bush’s other partner?
Donald Aronow, 59, self-made millionaire; acknowledged guru of the offshore powerboat set, rich and handsome deal-doer adored by friends and family... and killed on Northeast 188th Street in broad daylight by a stranger in a dark Lincoln Town Car who calmly shot Aronow in the chest, blasting his way down to the groin.
Here’s one you may not have, from the White House Spy Scandal we are hearing so little about. Two factions are battling for control of the Philippines. Abramoff, of course, has “a dog in that hunt.”
Abramoff’s clients sent a man named Michael Aquino to the U.S. to lay low for a while. He was arrested with the Marine at the White House who had been feeding him classified material.
They had him over a barrel
Here’s an example of why he's laying low:
Edgar Bentain was a man who released a video clip during the Presidential campaign there showing then-Philippine Vice President Joseph Estrada and a notorious gambler playing high-stakes baccarat at the Heritage Hotel casino.
This was not pleasing to Estrada, an ally of Imelda Marcos and Abramoff’s.
Betain disappeared without a trace. Nothing had not been seen nor heard of him since. Then someone confessed that they’d seen Bentain: in a drum.
"We were brought to a bridge near Bacolor, where we saw Bentain inside a drum. We could still see his head but the rest of his body was already buried under cement," said the man’s statement to police.
“Bentain was crying and begging for his life.”
The statement quoted Aquino as telling Bentain: "Masyado ka kasing pakialamero at iyan ang bagay sa iyo (You deserve this because you mind other people's business too much)!"
Bentain was encased alive in cement. Philippine NBI agents were said to be searching for a metal drum near the bridge.
The players and politicians so desperately distancing themselves from Abramoff would prefer that we think of him as some small-time hustler, a fringe sleaze ball who crawled out of the shadows.
He wasn't. He was a big-league hustler and a mainstream sleaze ball. And he was all theirs.
We’re pretty sure that few will miss the rat-faced weasels about to be sent to jail.
Shakespeare, as acute an observer of the human condition as has ever lived, according to some, famously wrote that “Murder will out.”
We shall see.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Joe's Dartblog: More on Willy Pete
Joe's Dartblog: More on Willy Pete: "We cleaned house in Fallujah"
Blogger Thoughts: It's all just a big misunderstanding. We just needed to use the spic-n-span. Right
It gets worse. Update 11/16 Willy Pete sure can do that "shake and bake"
Tags: Iraq burning flesh
Blogger Thoughts: It's all just a big misunderstanding. We just needed to use the spic-n-span. Right
It gets worse. Update 11/16 Willy Pete sure can do that "shake and bake"
Tags: Iraq burning flesh
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
BluegrassReport.org: ***SPECIAL REPORT*** Fletcher Administration Reveals Re-Election Strategy As Told To Business Leaders -- Can You Say 'Scorched Earth'?
Wow, Had no idea Tucker would be such a jerk?
Below is a link to the video the previous night...
http://www.911blogger.com/2005/11/byu-professor-steven-jones-on.html
Tags 9/11 Truth Controlled Demo Cover-Up Steven Jones BYU WTC7
Anxiety Culture: Newsletter
Anxiety Culture: Newsletter
Sample newsletter (from December 2001):
(Emailed in plain text, with no ads or attachments)
:::::: NEWS & DISTRACTION ::::::
LATEST NEWS• After September 11, Clear Channel, America's biggest owner of radio stations, sent out an internal memorandum with a list of songs the stations were forbidden to play, including John Lennon's "Imagine". In response, Yoko Ono, took out a full page ad in the New York Times with lyrics from the song. Ono said: "I think they (Clear Channel) wanted everyone to be in a kind of attack mode."
• During the first Gulf war, a TV ad featuring a cartoon-sexy languorous female bunny rabbit offering Cadbury's Caramel to soldier ants was banned from UK TV. Presumably the unstated message "lazy sex & chocolate is better than marching to war" was deemed inappropriate by those authorities who know what's best for us.
• Gore Vidal, the political historian and dissenter, said he can't find a publisher willing to print his book on US foreign policy (BBC2 Newsnight 7/12/01). Vidal has previously commented that his criticisms of US policy are excluded from public debate.
• One in seven people aged over 65 in the UK are malnourished, or at severe risk of malnutrition, according to the Malnutrition Advisory Group (MAG).
• According to Dr Sadie Plant, the cellphone has become a "psychosexual symbol of performance". (Guardian 1/12/2001)
DIARY OF DISTRACTIONS9th December 2001 - Some voices of "reason and moderation" from the respectable US media:
Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists... are on the side of future mass murders of Americans", they are "objectively pro-terrorist", "evil" and "liars".
Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards... A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them... As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts".
Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution".
Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Urged dissenters to shut up because "it's kill or be killed".
A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity".
WEBSITE REVIEWInteresting survey by FAIR of imbalances in the US press coverage following September 11th (http://www.fair.org/activism/nyt-wp-opeds.html)
Here's a brief excerpt:"In polls that offered a choice between a military response or nothing, it's true that overwhelming majorities chose war. But given the choice between either a military assault or pressing for the extradition and trial of those responsible (eg Christian Science Monitor, 9/27/01), a substantial minority either chose extradition (30 percent) or were undecided (16 percent). These people had next to no representation in the op-ed debate; in fact, it's likely that many people asked to choose whether or not to go to war had never seen an alternative to war articulated in a mainstream outlet."
QUOTE OF THE WEEK(From Robert Anton Wilson)"In the feudal age, people once fought wars over Land, when Land served as the source of wealth. Those who had Land wanted more, on the usual addictive rule that we want more of what makes us feel very very good. They also worried that others wanted to take their Land away. Then paper Money appeared, almost as abstract as pure information in communication theory. For over 400 years now, the world has struggled over Money -- working for it, swindling and robbing for it, conspiring to monopolize it, going to war over it. Since less than one percent of Earthians owns 99 percent of the Money, the [approximately] 6 billion of the rest of us struggle evermore desperately over the one percent of the green magick not yet monopolized".
Sample newsletter (from December 2001):
(Emailed in plain text, with no ads or attachments)
:::::: NEWS & DISTRACTION ::::::
LATEST NEWS• After September 11, Clear Channel, America's biggest owner of radio stations, sent out an internal memorandum with a list of songs the stations were forbidden to play, including John Lennon's "Imagine". In response, Yoko Ono, took out a full page ad in the New York Times with lyrics from the song. Ono said: "I think they (Clear Channel) wanted everyone to be in a kind of attack mode."
• During the first Gulf war, a TV ad featuring a cartoon-sexy languorous female bunny rabbit offering Cadbury's Caramel to soldier ants was banned from UK TV. Presumably the unstated message "lazy sex & chocolate is better than marching to war" was deemed inappropriate by those authorities who know what's best for us.
• Gore Vidal, the political historian and dissenter, said he can't find a publisher willing to print his book on US foreign policy (BBC2 Newsnight 7/12/01). Vidal has previously commented that his criticisms of US policy are excluded from public debate.
• One in seven people aged over 65 in the UK are malnourished, or at severe risk of malnutrition, according to the Malnutrition Advisory Group (MAG).
• According to Dr Sadie Plant, the cellphone has become a "psychosexual symbol of performance". (Guardian 1/12/2001)
DIARY OF DISTRACTIONS9th December 2001 - Some voices of "reason and moderation" from the respectable US media:
Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists... are on the side of future mass murders of Americans", they are "objectively pro-terrorist", "evil" and "liars".
Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards... A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them... As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts".
Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution".
Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Urged dissenters to shut up because "it's kill or be killed".
A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity".
WEBSITE REVIEWInteresting survey by FAIR of imbalances in the US press coverage following September 11th (http://www.fair.org/activism/nyt-wp-opeds.html)
Here's a brief excerpt:"In polls that offered a choice between a military response or nothing, it's true that overwhelming majorities chose war. But given the choice between either a military assault or pressing for the extradition and trial of those responsible (eg Christian Science Monitor, 9/27/01), a substantial minority either chose extradition (30 percent) or were undecided (16 percent). These people had next to no representation in the op-ed debate; in fact, it's likely that many people asked to choose whether or not to go to war had never seen an alternative to war articulated in a mainstream outlet."
QUOTE OF THE WEEK(From Robert Anton Wilson)"In the feudal age, people once fought wars over Land, when Land served as the source of wealth. Those who had Land wanted more, on the usual addictive rule that we want more of what makes us feel very very good. They also worried that others wanted to take their Land away. Then paper Money appeared, almost as abstract as pure information in communication theory. For over 400 years now, the world has struggled over Money -- working for it, swindling and robbing for it, conspiring to monopolize it, going to war over it. Since less than one percent of Earthians owns 99 percent of the Money, the [approximately] 6 billion of the rest of us struggle evermore desperately over the one percent of the green magick not yet monopolized".
Media Monitor - TWA 800 Special Misses the Mark - November 14, 2005
Media Monitor - TWA 800 Special Misses the Mark - November 14, 2005
Blogger Thoughts: What, National Geographic may not have tackled the hard questions?
Blogger Thoughts: What, National Geographic may not have tackled the hard questions?
Amman Bombings: More Suspicious Details
Another Day in the Empire: "Amman Bombings: More Suspicious Details "
No other blogger that I noticed said this....(about this Newsweek Article)
Terror For Export - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com
Maybe we are begin fed a load of manure about what really happened in Jordan? Maybe the entire premise of the Newsweek article is not grounded in any reality?
Maybe we are begin fed a load of manure about what really happened in Jordan? Maybe the entire premise of the Newsweek article is not grounded in any reality?
Civil Commotion � Original Sin
Civil Commotion � Original Sin
Blogger Thoughts: I don't know Bob Felton. I don't claim that his shortcomings of understanding are representative for a huge populace of deranged, confused, and dangerous thinkers/politicos.
I have to say, however, that it certainly appears to be the case.
Blogger Thoughts: I don't know Bob Felton. I don't claim that his shortcomings of understanding are representative for a huge populace of deranged, confused, and dangerous thinkers/politicos.
I have to say, however, that it certainly appears to be the case.
Phosphorous was used at times in Fallujah as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.
Pentagon Used White Phosphorous in Iraq
Blogger Thoughts: Based on reports such as this, it seems to me Rumsfeld should be first in line at the War Crimes Court. Maybe Bush / Cheney didn't know these details?
Blogger Thoughts: Based on reports such as this, it seems to me Rumsfeld should be first in line at the War Crimes Court. Maybe Bush / Cheney didn't know these details?
Bonfire of the Vanities: Why not fight for Oil?
Bonfire of the Vanities: Why not fight for Oil?
Blogger Thoughts: I'm aware that there's a shortage of Priests, but surely there has to be a higher standard?
Blogger Thoughts: I'm aware that there's a shortage of Priests, but surely there has to be a higher standard?
@LL Robot Radio - Virus Hoax Alert # 4 - WTC Survivor
@LL Robot Radio - Virus Hoax Alert # 4 - WTC Survivor
Blogger Thought: Why would anybody have a hoax like this?
Blogger Thought: Why would anybody have a hoax like this?
My email to springerontheradio.com
Date: 11/15/05 11:59:08
To: springerontheradio@yahoo.com
Subject: Call in Comment / Quesiton wtc
Stephanie,
Please forward this if I don't have it addressed correctly.
Approx. about six months ago, I was glad to receive your emails in response
to my comments.
Your first email to me shows that you had sent it around mid-night. And, it
was in response to a not so positive email that I had sent in to the show.
Even though the net result of our correspondence seems to be nil, I was
impressed with your dedication to the show, your position, and the
justification of Jerry's opinions.
In summary I'm trying to be objective and give you and the Show every
benefit of the doubt.
Today when I called in, I was forthright in my explanation that I was
calling about WTC demolition issues. You said it was not on topic. I respect
that in fairness to your guest, you have a defensible point. On the other
hand, to the extent that the public has been lied to about 9/11, and most
likely is being lied to about the Jordan bombing, I think you are part of
the cover up with your screening, knowingly or unknowingly.
I am doing my best to not be accusatory. I have absolutely no evidence that
you personally have an agenda to suppress facts. I realize your job
requires screening. I've never been in your shoes.
So much for history. Could I ask this favor? Could you let me know if the
Springer Show is planning to have any future show where discussion the The
Lies of 9/11 will be on topic. Do you personally think those of us who have
concerns are just bonkers? Others on Air America have broached the subject,
right? Is the topic anathema for Jerry?
I respect that you may be caught in the middle.
If you do pen a response to this email, may I have your permission to post
on my blog: http://bgtruth.blogspot.com
To: springerontheradio@yahoo.com
Subject: Call in Comment / Quesiton wtc
Stephanie,
Please forward this if I don't have it addressed correctly.
Approx. about six months ago, I was glad to receive your emails in response
to my comments.
Your first email to me shows that you had sent it around mid-night. And, it
was in response to a not so positive email that I had sent in to the show.
Even though the net result of our correspondence seems to be nil, I was
impressed with your dedication to the show, your position, and the
justification of Jerry's opinions.
In summary I'm trying to be objective and give you and the Show every
benefit of the doubt.
Today when I called in, I was forthright in my explanation that I was
calling about WTC demolition issues. You said it was not on topic. I respect
that in fairness to your guest, you have a defensible point. On the other
hand, to the extent that the public has been lied to about 9/11, and most
likely is being lied to about the Jordan bombing, I think you are part of
the cover up with your screening, knowingly or unknowingly.
I am doing my best to not be accusatory. I have absolutely no evidence that
you personally have an agenda to suppress facts. I realize your job
requires screening. I've never been in your shoes.
So much for history. Could I ask this favor? Could you let me know if the
Springer Show is planning to have any future show where discussion the The
Lies of 9/11 will be on topic. Do you personally think those of us who have
concerns are just bonkers? Others on Air America have broached the subject,
right? Is the topic anathema for Jerry?
I respect that you may be caught in the middle.
If you do pen a response to this email, may I have your permission to post
on my blog: http://bgtruth.blogspot.com
Republican Senate leader Bill Frist thinks Bush is doing a "very good job" in Iraq
AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "Republican Senate leader Bill Frist thinks Bush is doing a 'very good job' in Iraq "
Nail the 9-11 ghouls in their coffin
news from Daryl Bradford Smith
Nail the 9-11 ghouls in their coffin
by Eric Hufschmid 6 Nov 2005
Jon Carlson frequently writes about the 9-11 attack. His latest article is at Rense: http://www.rense.com/general68/911jh.htm
Jon Carlson, Tom Flocco, Mike Ruppert, Karl Schwarz, and most other "9-11 investigators" include a little bit of truth in their articles, but their primary goal is to put all the blame for 9-11 on a small number of Americans, mainly Bush and Cheney. Some also blame Pakistan's ISI or Saudi Arabia's royal family.
These "Truth Seekers" ignore very important aspects of 9-11, such as:
The World Trade Center towers and Building 7 were demolished by explosives, not fire. Who did that demolition? And who is keeping the media quiet about it?
About 120 Israeli art students were arrested after 9/11, but they were quietly sent back to Israel rather than taken to court. Haaretz has a story on it.
Five Israelis who were celebrating the attack were arrested on September 11, and they were reported to have explosive residue in their van and Arab clothing, but they were also quietly deported to Israel. WRH has an article on it.
There is a lot of evidence that shows that some Israelis were deeply involved in the attack on September 11. In fact, they appear to have been the masterminds of 9-11, especially in regards to the attack and demolition of the World Trade Center. The Zionists also have tremendous control over the media, so without their approval, the attack could never be covered up.
However, most of the 9-11 truth tellers find a way to divert attention away from Israel. For example, in Wayne Madsen's verbose article about the Israeli art students who were arrested, he makes the remark:
"If the Israelis were stalking the hijackers, they would have also likely known about their interest in the World Trade Center." http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/Artstudents.htm
Madsen implies the Israelis were following the hijackers because they suspected the evil Arabs were planning nefarious deeds.
Madsen ignores the fact that the Arabs were patsies, not hijackers. Why would Israelis follow patsies? And why would Madsen ignore this crucial information?
The only sensible explanation is that the Israelis were their handlers and protectors; that the Israelis were deeply involved in the attack. And that Wayne Madsen is diverting attention away from Israel.
Jon Carlson's newest article also diverts attention away from Israel, but Carlson starts his article with a deception technique that I had not mentioned in my other articles on deception, so I thought I should mention it. Specifically, he starts his article with what we refer to as "name dropping".
His article begins by creating the impression that Nelson Thall (also known as Lenny Bloom) is a very important person because he has the e-mail address of Andreas von Bulow. Carlson includes a copy of Thall's email to prove this to us and further impress us.
Most people define "name dropping" as the casual mentioning of important people to impress the listener. However, in Carlson's article, the remarks about the e-mail address of von Bulow is so irrelevant to the topic of 9-11 that I would not call it a "casual" mentioning an important person. Rather, I would say it is a "blatant" attempt to impress us. We need a new expression for this, such as "name pushing".
When someone tries to impress you, watch out for deception
If a person has an intelligent analysis of 9-11, he will start the article in an intelligent manner. When somebody starts a 9-11 article by pushing names of famous people, you should assume that he has nothing of value to say, and that he is trying to impress you so that you don't notice that the remainder of his article is disinformation.
Getting back to Carlson's article, he tells us that Lenny Bloom and Sherman Sholnick interviewed von Bulow in 2004 for their radio show, and that von Bulow believes the 9/11 attack was an operation of the US government, not an attack by Arabs.
A bit further along in the article we find a remark that NBC is owned by General Electric, and that General Electric benefits from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That sentence implies that General Electric executives were involved in 9-11 because they profit from war, and that NBC is submissive to these evil General Electric executives. This deflects attention away from the NBC executives, and the media in general, and shifts blame to the mysterious and evil entity known as the "military industrial complex".
The article then gets ridiculous. Carlson explains that a small, white jet that probably took off from an aircraft carrier was guiding a Boeing 737 into the South Tower by remote control.
He shows a photograph of the South Tower a few moments after it was hit, and we can see a white trail, which Carlson claims is the vapor trail of the jet.
However, the jets that crashed into the towers did not leave vapor trails, nor do any jets leave trails at low altitudes during warm weather.
Furthermore, every video clip and photo of that particular moment in time shows the white trail is coming from an object that is flying out of the South Tower, probably an engine or landing gear. You can see this white trail more clearly on page 39 of my book Painful Questions. If you don't have the book, you can see the object in this article by Christopher Bollyn, and in the video at HugeQuestions.com that is identified as being about Uranium for Bollyn.
Carlson also shows a few photographs of a helicopter near the towers, and claims that the helicopter is the white jet. However, you can determine that these objects are helicopters by watching the videos of that day. If there are any white jets in the area, they are higher up, not hovering near the towers.
A smorgasbord of disinformation
The cloak and dagger web site was (maybe still is) promoting the idea that the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center towers were holograms. John Carlson claims the airplane was a Boeing 737. So which was it? Was it a hologram or a Boeing 737?
These people don't care if anything they say makes sense. They just dump lot of ideas into the Internet, and they let each person pick what they like.
What is Carlson's problem?
Carlson's article is as stupid as Tom Flocco's article about the arrest of Barbara Olson. Why is Carlson writing such nonsense? As I mentioned in my article about Flocco, there are lots of possible reasons, so we may never know why, or who he works for.
Carlson's article ends with confusing remarks, and links to dozens of more articles, most of which are his articles, and most of which are packed with nonsense.
Why am I complaining about Carlson?
Carlson is trying to use Andreas von Bulow's remark to support the theory that the 9/11 attack was conducted by the CIA, US military, and a few other Americans. This might seem to be a valid conclusion, but one way to fool people is to give them some truthful remarks but not the entire story.
It is true that some US government officials had to be involved in the 9-11 attack, but the evidence shows that Zionists and British government officials were also involved.
Furthermore, Zionists have tremendous control of the American, Canadian, European, and Australian media, and without control over the media, none of these scams could be occurring.
Carlson appears to be a "Truth Teller" who is struggling to expose the 9/11 attack. In reality, he is diverting attention away from the extremely important role that the Zionists play in these phenomenal crimes, and the role they play in controlling our media, our public libraries, and our school system.
Perhaps they act stupid on purpose
Carlson, Flocco, and some other "9-11 Investigators" are giving 9-11 conspiracy theories a bad image because anybody who tries to verify their information will come to the conclusion that the 9-11 conspiracy theories are coming from morons who do not even have a high school-level understanding of geography, airplanes, or science.
Their deceptive articles get a lot of attention on the Internet, and a lot of people are passing them around by e-mail. When somebody looks on the Internet for 9-11 information, they are very likely to run across to one of these deceptive articles. These people are flooding the Internet with deception.
Chaim Kupferberg is another example. As it is true of many disinformation articles, Kupferberg's articles are somewhat confusing or annoying to read, but if you can get through them, notice that the primary emphasis is that Israel is innocent. For example, try finding the value in this goofy article:
There's Something About Omar: Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html
Some of these disinformation agents make Israel appear a victim of the evil Bush regime, or the evil neocon cabal, or the evil Illuminati organization.
Paul Thompson is another example. He created the 9-11 timeline, which is truthful, but at the same time it implies the evil Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9-11.
When you find a rat, follow him to his nest
Whenever you find one disinformation agent, take a close look at his friends, supporters, and associates, and you are likely to find even more rats.
For example, Carlson's article gives some support to Karl Schwarz, the Guerrilla News Network (GNN), Ariana Huffington, and Wayne Madsen. Do we really get a serious analysis of world affairs from any of those people?
In case you never noticed, the Guerrilla News Network is one of many groups who try to convince us that Pakistan's ISI was a significant participant in 9-11.
Don't worship a golden calf
The people I personally know remind me of a scene from the movie The Ten Commandments. There is a scene where Charlton Heston goes up the mountain to pick up the tablets with the Ten Commandments, and when he comes back he finds everybody worshiping a golden calf.
I find people around me worshipping Tom Flocco, and when I finally convince them that Flocco is a liar, I find that a week later they are worshiping Jon Carlson. After spending time explaining to them that Carlson is a liar, I discover a week later that they are worshiping Chaim Kupferberg. A week after that they are telling me that Pakistan's ISI funded the September 11 attack because Paul Thompson told them so.
America and Europe are perpetual victims because most people are terrible at selecting leaders. They select leaders who make them feel good, not leaders who provide the truth. The truth is too painful for most people to deal with.
People such as Tom Flocco, Jon Carlson, Sherman Sholnick, Chaim Kupferberg, and Mike Ruppert make everything seem simple. They tell us that all of our problems are due to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the CIA. They tell us Patrick Fitzgerald will soon arrest Bush and Cheney, or that the lawsuit filed by Phil Berg will soon expose 9-11 and bring about the arrest of Bush and Cheney.
They imply that as soon as Bush and Cheney are arrested, we will run out into the streets, hold hands, sing songs, and live happily ever after, just like in a Hollywood movie.
These disinformation agents are similar to politicians who promise us that they will end crime, improve our schools, and reduce our taxes. The majority of people fall for these promises during every election.
Unfortunately, reality is not so simple. America's problems are not going to be solved by arresting Dick Cheney or George Bush. Even with a different president, America would continue to be dominated by Zionists, pedophiles, corrupt unions, selfish businessman, and incompetent university officials.
Have you seen the accusations from John DeCamp? If what DeCamp and the children are saying is true, the raping of boys at Boystown has been going on year after year, president after president. It makes no difference who the president is, nor what party he belongs to.The rapings also go on year after year regardless of whether Democrats control the Senate, or whether Republicans are in control.
However, do you ever hear remarks like this from Carlson, Flocco, Ruppert, Schwarz, Kupferberg, or any of the others Truth Seekers? Of course not. Instead, they promise that if you follow them, they will soon arrest Dick Cheney are George Bush, and everything will be wonderful.
Most of the Truth Seekers are Pied Pipers who are leading the naive people in the wrong direction.
We need better leaders in the "truth movement"
The only way this world is going to improve is if we start bringing better people into leadership of government, schools, businesses, and all other organizations.
All of the liars and incompetent nitwits must be driven out of the 9-11 movement. Once in a while you should send an email to the web sites, radio stations, and newspapers to stop promote the nonsense.
We also must drive the mainstream media out of business. People should stop buying their newspapers, magazines, and television channels.
Nail the 9-11 ghouls in their coffin
by Eric Hufschmid 6 Nov 2005
Jon Carlson frequently writes about the 9-11 attack. His latest article is at Rense: http://www.rense.com/general68/911jh.htm
Jon Carlson, Tom Flocco, Mike Ruppert, Karl Schwarz, and most other "9-11 investigators" include a little bit of truth in their articles, but their primary goal is to put all the blame for 9-11 on a small number of Americans, mainly Bush and Cheney. Some also blame Pakistan's ISI or Saudi Arabia's royal family.
These "Truth Seekers" ignore very important aspects of 9-11, such as:
The World Trade Center towers and Building 7 were demolished by explosives, not fire. Who did that demolition? And who is keeping the media quiet about it?
About 120 Israeli art students were arrested after 9/11, but they were quietly sent back to Israel rather than taken to court. Haaretz has a story on it.
Five Israelis who were celebrating the attack were arrested on September 11, and they were reported to have explosive residue in their van and Arab clothing, but they were also quietly deported to Israel. WRH has an article on it.
There is a lot of evidence that shows that some Israelis were deeply involved in the attack on September 11. In fact, they appear to have been the masterminds of 9-11, especially in regards to the attack and demolition of the World Trade Center. The Zionists also have tremendous control over the media, so without their approval, the attack could never be covered up.
However, most of the 9-11 truth tellers find a way to divert attention away from Israel. For example, in Wayne Madsen's verbose article about the Israeli art students who were arrested, he makes the remark:
"If the Israelis were stalking the hijackers, they would have also likely known about their interest in the World Trade Center." http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/Artstudents.htm
Madsen implies the Israelis were following the hijackers because they suspected the evil Arabs were planning nefarious deeds.
Madsen ignores the fact that the Arabs were patsies, not hijackers. Why would Israelis follow patsies? And why would Madsen ignore this crucial information?
The only sensible explanation is that the Israelis were their handlers and protectors; that the Israelis were deeply involved in the attack. And that Wayne Madsen is diverting attention away from Israel.
Jon Carlson's newest article also diverts attention away from Israel, but Carlson starts his article with a deception technique that I had not mentioned in my other articles on deception, so I thought I should mention it. Specifically, he starts his article with what we refer to as "name dropping".
His article begins by creating the impression that Nelson Thall (also known as Lenny Bloom) is a very important person because he has the e-mail address of Andreas von Bulow. Carlson includes a copy of Thall's email to prove this to us and further impress us.
Most people define "name dropping" as the casual mentioning of important people to impress the listener. However, in Carlson's article, the remarks about the e-mail address of von Bulow is so irrelevant to the topic of 9-11 that I would not call it a "casual" mentioning an important person. Rather, I would say it is a "blatant" attempt to impress us. We need a new expression for this, such as "name pushing".
When someone tries to impress you, watch out for deception
If a person has an intelligent analysis of 9-11, he will start the article in an intelligent manner. When somebody starts a 9-11 article by pushing names of famous people, you should assume that he has nothing of value to say, and that he is trying to impress you so that you don't notice that the remainder of his article is disinformation.
Getting back to Carlson's article, he tells us that Lenny Bloom and Sherman Sholnick interviewed von Bulow in 2004 for their radio show, and that von Bulow believes the 9/11 attack was an operation of the US government, not an attack by Arabs.
A bit further along in the article we find a remark that NBC is owned by General Electric, and that General Electric benefits from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That sentence implies that General Electric executives were involved in 9-11 because they profit from war, and that NBC is submissive to these evil General Electric executives. This deflects attention away from the NBC executives, and the media in general, and shifts blame to the mysterious and evil entity known as the "military industrial complex".
The article then gets ridiculous. Carlson explains that a small, white jet that probably took off from an aircraft carrier was guiding a Boeing 737 into the South Tower by remote control.
He shows a photograph of the South Tower a few moments after it was hit, and we can see a white trail, which Carlson claims is the vapor trail of the jet.
However, the jets that crashed into the towers did not leave vapor trails, nor do any jets leave trails at low altitudes during warm weather.
Furthermore, every video clip and photo of that particular moment in time shows the white trail is coming from an object that is flying out of the South Tower, probably an engine or landing gear. You can see this white trail more clearly on page 39 of my book Painful Questions. If you don't have the book, you can see the object in this article by Christopher Bollyn, and in the video at HugeQuestions.com that is identified as being about Uranium for Bollyn.
Carlson also shows a few photographs of a helicopter near the towers, and claims that the helicopter is the white jet. However, you can determine that these objects are helicopters by watching the videos of that day. If there are any white jets in the area, they are higher up, not hovering near the towers.
A smorgasbord of disinformation
The cloak and dagger web site was (maybe still is) promoting the idea that the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center towers were holograms. John Carlson claims the airplane was a Boeing 737. So which was it? Was it a hologram or a Boeing 737?
These people don't care if anything they say makes sense. They just dump lot of ideas into the Internet, and they let each person pick what they like.
What is Carlson's problem?
Carlson's article is as stupid as Tom Flocco's article about the arrest of Barbara Olson. Why is Carlson writing such nonsense? As I mentioned in my article about Flocco, there are lots of possible reasons, so we may never know why, or who he works for.
Carlson's article ends with confusing remarks, and links to dozens of more articles, most of which are his articles, and most of which are packed with nonsense.
Why am I complaining about Carlson?
Carlson is trying to use Andreas von Bulow's remark to support the theory that the 9/11 attack was conducted by the CIA, US military, and a few other Americans. This might seem to be a valid conclusion, but one way to fool people is to give them some truthful remarks but not the entire story.
It is true that some US government officials had to be involved in the 9-11 attack, but the evidence shows that Zionists and British government officials were also involved.
Furthermore, Zionists have tremendous control of the American, Canadian, European, and Australian media, and without control over the media, none of these scams could be occurring.
Carlson appears to be a "Truth Teller" who is struggling to expose the 9/11 attack. In reality, he is diverting attention away from the extremely important role that the Zionists play in these phenomenal crimes, and the role they play in controlling our media, our public libraries, and our school system.
Perhaps they act stupid on purpose
Carlson, Flocco, and some other "9-11 Investigators" are giving 9-11 conspiracy theories a bad image because anybody who tries to verify their information will come to the conclusion that the 9-11 conspiracy theories are coming from morons who do not even have a high school-level understanding of geography, airplanes, or science.
Their deceptive articles get a lot of attention on the Internet, and a lot of people are passing them around by e-mail. When somebody looks on the Internet for 9-11 information, they are very likely to run across to one of these deceptive articles. These people are flooding the Internet with deception.
Chaim Kupferberg is another example. As it is true of many disinformation articles, Kupferberg's articles are somewhat confusing or annoying to read, but if you can get through them, notice that the primary emphasis is that Israel is innocent. For example, try finding the value in this goofy article:
There's Something About Omar: Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11 http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html
Some of these disinformation agents make Israel appear a victim of the evil Bush regime, or the evil neocon cabal, or the evil Illuminati organization.
Paul Thompson is another example. He created the 9-11 timeline, which is truthful, but at the same time it implies the evil Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9-11.
When you find a rat, follow him to his nest
Whenever you find one disinformation agent, take a close look at his friends, supporters, and associates, and you are likely to find even more rats.
For example, Carlson's article gives some support to Karl Schwarz, the Guerrilla News Network (GNN), Ariana Huffington, and Wayne Madsen. Do we really get a serious analysis of world affairs from any of those people?
In case you never noticed, the Guerrilla News Network is one of many groups who try to convince us that Pakistan's ISI was a significant participant in 9-11.
Don't worship a golden calf
The people I personally know remind me of a scene from the movie The Ten Commandments. There is a scene where Charlton Heston goes up the mountain to pick up the tablets with the Ten Commandments, and when he comes back he finds everybody worshiping a golden calf.
I find people around me worshipping Tom Flocco, and when I finally convince them that Flocco is a liar, I find that a week later they are worshiping Jon Carlson. After spending time explaining to them that Carlson is a liar, I discover a week later that they are worshiping Chaim Kupferberg. A week after that they are telling me that Pakistan's ISI funded the September 11 attack because Paul Thompson told them so.
America and Europe are perpetual victims because most people are terrible at selecting leaders. They select leaders who make them feel good, not leaders who provide the truth. The truth is too painful for most people to deal with.
People such as Tom Flocco, Jon Carlson, Sherman Sholnick, Chaim Kupferberg, and Mike Ruppert make everything seem simple. They tell us that all of our problems are due to George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the CIA. They tell us Patrick Fitzgerald will soon arrest Bush and Cheney, or that the lawsuit filed by Phil Berg will soon expose 9-11 and bring about the arrest of Bush and Cheney.
They imply that as soon as Bush and Cheney are arrested, we will run out into the streets, hold hands, sing songs, and live happily ever after, just like in a Hollywood movie.
These disinformation agents are similar to politicians who promise us that they will end crime, improve our schools, and reduce our taxes. The majority of people fall for these promises during every election.
Unfortunately, reality is not so simple. America's problems are not going to be solved by arresting Dick Cheney or George Bush. Even with a different president, America would continue to be dominated by Zionists, pedophiles, corrupt unions, selfish businessman, and incompetent university officials.
Have you seen the accusations from John DeCamp? If what DeCamp and the children are saying is true, the raping of boys at Boystown has been going on year after year, president after president. It makes no difference who the president is, nor what party he belongs to.The rapings also go on year after year regardless of whether Democrats control the Senate, or whether Republicans are in control.
However, do you ever hear remarks like this from Carlson, Flocco, Ruppert, Schwarz, Kupferberg, or any of the others Truth Seekers? Of course not. Instead, they promise that if you follow them, they will soon arrest Dick Cheney are George Bush, and everything will be wonderful.
Most of the Truth Seekers are Pied Pipers who are leading the naive people in the wrong direction.
We need better leaders in the "truth movement"
The only way this world is going to improve is if we start bringing better people into leadership of government, schools, businesses, and all other organizations.
All of the liars and incompetent nitwits must be driven out of the 9-11 movement. Once in a while you should send an email to the web sites, radio stations, and newspapers to stop promote the nonsense.
We also must drive the mainstream media out of business. People should stop buying their newspapers, magazines, and television channels.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The RNC has just released a video chronicling Democrat hypocrisy.
Myopic Zeal :: RNC Video :: November :: 2005
Blogger Thoughts: The "War on Terrorism" has morphed into the "Propaganda War on Demoncrats."
Blogger Thoughts: The "War on Terrorism" has morphed into the "Propaganda War on Demoncrats."
Salon.com News | Gulf Coast slaves
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/15/halliburton_katrina/print.html
Gulf Coast slaves
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.
By Roberto Lovato
Nov. 15, 2005 Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.
"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said.
He says that Tovar "kicked us off the base," forcing him and other cleanup workers -- many of them Mexican and undocumented -- to sleep on the streets of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly owed more than $56,000 by Tovar. Tovar claims that she let the workers go because she was not paid by her own bosses at United Disaster Relief. In turn, UDR manager Zachary Johnson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told the Washington Post on Nov. 4 that his company had not been paid by KBR for two months.
Wherever the buck may stop along the chain of subcontractors, Martinez is stuck at the short end of it -- and his situation is typical among many workers hired by subcontractors of KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root) to clean and rebuild Belle Chasse and other Gulf Coast military bases. Immigrants rights groups and activists like Bill Chandler, president of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, estimate that hundreds of undocumented workers are on the Gulf Coast military bases, a claim that the military and Halliburton/KBR deny -- even after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency turned up undocumented workers in a raid of the Belle Chasse facility last month. Visits to the naval bases and dozens of interviews by Salon confirm that undocumented workers are in the facilities. Still, tracing the line from unpaid undocumented workers to their multibillion-dollar employers is a daunting task. A shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring -- and abuse -- of these workers.
Right after Katrina barreled through the Gulf Coast, the Bush administration relaxed labor standards, creating conditions for rampant abuse, according to union leaders and civil rights advocates. Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires employers to pay "prevailing wages" for labor used to fulfill government contracts. The administration also waived the requirement for contractors rebuilding the Gulf Coast to provide valid I-9 employment eligibility forms completed by their workers. These moves allowed Halliburton/KBR and its subcontractors to hire undocumented workers and pay them meager wages (regardless of what wages the workers may have otherwise been promised). The two policies have recently been reversed in the face of sharp political pressure: Bush reinstated the Davis-Bacon Act on Nov. 3, while the Department of Homeland Security reinstated the I-9 requirements in late October, noting that it would once again "exercise prosecutorial discretion" of employers in violation "on a case-by-case basis." But critics say Bush's policies have already allowed extensive profiteering beneath layers of legal and political cover.
Halliburton/KBR, which enjoys an array of federal contracts in the United States, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has long drawn criticism for its proximity to Vice President Dick Cheney, formerly Halliburton's CEO. Halliburton/KBR spokesperson Melissa Norcross declined to respond directly to allegations about undocumented workers in the Gulf. "In performing work for the U.S. government, KBR uses its government-approved procurement system to source and retain qualified subcontractors," she said in an e-mail. "KBR's subcontractors are required to comply with all applicable labor laws and provisions when performing this work."
Victoria Cintra is the Gulf Coast outreach organizer for Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which recently partnered with relief agency Oxfam America to help immigrant workers displaced by Katrina. She says KBR is exposing undocumented workers like Martinez to unethical and illegal treatment, even though they are supposed to be paid with federal Katrina-recovery dollars to clean and rebuild high-security facilities like the one President Bush recently visited. Cintra is one of several people fighting to recover the wages owed the workers: She drives her beat-up, chocolate-colored car across the swamps, damaged roads and broken bridges of the Gulf Coast to track down contractors and subcontractors. With yellow legal pad in hand, she and other advocates document abuses taking place at Belle Chasse, the Naval Construction Battalion Center at the Seabee naval base in Gulfport, Miss., and other military installations.
I was with Cintra when she received phone calls from several Latino workers who complained they were denied, under threat of deportation, the right to leave the base at Belle Chasse. Cintra also took me along on visits to squalid trailer parks -- like the one at Arlington Heights in Gulfport -- where up to 19 unpaid, unfed and undocumented KBR site workers inhabited a single trailer for $70 per person, per week. Workers there and on the bases complained of suffering from diarrhea, sprained ankles, cuts and bruises, and other injuries sustained on the KBR sites -- where they received no medical assistance, despite being close to medical facilities on the same bases they were cleaning and helping rebuild.
Cintra and other critics say there's been no accountability from the corporate leaders who signed on the dotted line when they were awarded multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contracts. "The workers may be hired by the subcontractors," Cintra says, "but KBR is ultimately responsible."
"Latino workers are being invited to New Orleans and the South without the proper conditions to protect them," adds Cintra, who recently provided tents to Martinez and several other unpaid Mexican workers who fled Belle Chasse for Gulfport after being dismissed by Tovar. Cintra, a Cuban exile and born-again Christian, has since seen a small tent city of homeless immigrants spring up in the yard of her church, Pass Road Baptist, in Gulfport. "This is evil on top of evil on top of evil," she says. "The Bush administration and Halliburton have opened up a Pandora's box that's not going to close now."
Halliburton/KBR is the general contractor with overarching responsibility for the federal cleanup contracts covering Katrina-damaged naval bases. Even so, there is an utter lack of transparency with the process -- and that invites malfeasance, says James Hale, a vice president of the Laborers' International Union of North America. "To my knowledge, not one member of Congress has been able to get their hands on a copy of a contract that was handed out to Halliburton or others," Hale says. "There is no central registry of Katrina contracts available. No data on the jobs or scope of the work." Hale says that his union's legislative staff has pressed members of Congress for more information; apparently the legislators were told that they could not get copies of the contracts because of "national security" concerns.
"If the contracts handed out to these primary contractors are opaque, then the contracts being let to the subcontractors are just plain invisible," Hale says. "There is simply no ability to ascertain or monitor the contractor-subcontractor relationships. This is an open invitation for exploitation, fraud and abuse."
Congress has heard a number of complaints recently about Halliburton/KBR's hiring practices, including the alleged exploitation of Filipino, Sri Lankan, Nepalese and other immigrant workers paid low wages on military installations in Iraq. And KBR subcontractor BE&K was a focus of Senate hearings in October, for the firing of 75 local Belle Chasse workers who said that they were replaced by "unskilled, out-of-state, out-of-country" workers earning $8 to $14 for work that typically paid $22 an hour.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has been an outspoken critic of the use of undocumented workers at Belle Chasse and on other Katrina cleanup jobs, said in a recent statement, "It is a downright shame that any contractor would use this tragedy as an opportunity to line its pockets by breaking the law and hiring a low-skilled, low-wage and undocumented work force."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is also against the practice, citing its "serious social ramifications." As he told Salon, it devastates "local workers who have been hit twice, because they lost their homes."
Seventeen-year-old Simitrio Martinez (no relation to Arnulfo) is another one of the dozens of workers originally hired by Tovar, the North Carolina job broker working under KBR. "They were going to pay seven dollars an hour, and the food was going to be free, and rent, but they gave us nothing," says the thin Zapotec teenager. Simitrio spent nearly a month at the Seabee base. "They weren't feeding us. We ate cookies for five days. Cookies, nothing else," he says.
Simitrio, his co-workers, and the dozens of KBR subcontractors that employ them operate under public-private agreements like federal Task Order 0017, which defines the scope of work to be fulfilled under the contracts. Under the multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contract, KBR is supposed to provide services for "Hurricane Katrina stabilization and recovery at Naval Air Station Pascagoula, Naval Air Station Gulfport, Stennis Space Center and other Navy installations in the Southeast Region," according to a Defense Department press release.
But the details of the agreements remain murky. "Not only is it very difficult to see the actual signed DoD contracts, but it is nearly impossible to see the actual task orders, which assign the goods or services the government is buying," says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight in Washington. The military can ask for goods and services on an as-needed basis, he says, which means that the contracts, which add up to tens of millions of dollars, can remain open ended. According to DoD press statements, the contracts call for considerable manual labor, including "re-roofing of most buildings, barracks, debris removal from the entire base, water mitigation, mold mitigation, interior and exterior repairs to most buildings, waste treatment plants, and all incidental related work."
Simitrio and any other workers on the high-security military bases must get permission before entering the guarded gates, where they get patted down by M-16-wielding military police. Responsibility for getting private-sector construction and cleanup workers on the bases rests with the general contractor -- in KBR's case, security chief Kevin Flynn. One of Flynn's responsibilities is to negotiate passes and entry for KBR subcontractors -- and their hires -- to do the work stipulated by the task order.
Yet, following several complaints by Landrieu, and just a few days after President Bush visited the Belle Chasse base, agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided the facility and detained 10 workers who ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said had "questionable" documentation.
Representatives of Halliburton/KBR do not acknowledge the existence of undocumented workers providing labor for their operations on the Gulf Coast bases. Flynn suggested speaking to the U.S. military, who he said "has real strict control" and would know whether there were undocumented workers. "We have workers from all ethnic groups on the base," Flynn said. "To the best of my knowledge, there are no undocumented workers."
Steve Romano, head of housing on the Belle Chasse base, said, "We have no relationship with [KBR] at all. I have no idea what that's about." A similar response was given by an official at the base's health facility when asked about undocumented workers who complained about health issues and injuries sustained on the KBR sites. The only military person to acknowledge seeing Latino workers was a watch commander who greeted me at an entry to the base. The commander estimated there were 100 such workers there. Meanwhile, representatives with the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance say they received calls from undocumented workers at Belle Chasse who estimated there were more than 500, or "about eight busloads" of immigrant workers on-site.
Texas-based DRS Cosmotech is another subcontractor that provided cleanup crews to Halliburton/KBR in the Gulf. Roy Lee Donaldson, CEO of the company, refused to respond to accusations of non-payment and exploitation leveled at his company by several workers, including 55-year-old Felipe Reyes of Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. (Donaldson hung up the phone when I identified myself as a reporter.)
"Mr. Donaldson promised us we'd live in a hotel or a house. We lived in tents and only had hot water that smelled like petroleum," Reyes said. The city of Belle Chasse has been identified in recent years as one of the most toxically polluted areas in the entire region, with several major energy companies operating there. A wide range of advocacy groups have warned about serious health risks facing Katrina cleanup workers.
"They didn't want to pay us for two weeks of work. So we stopped working. We started a huelga [strike] on the base" added Reyes, who along with other workers, says he was later paid $1,100 -- only part of what he says he was owed.
Another KBR subcontractor, Alabama-based BE&K, says it is not responsible for keeping track of the workers. BE&K spokesperson Susan Wasley said, "I can't say that we require our subcontractors' employees to produce documentation for us, because that's what our subcontractor as employer has to do. That's his responsibility."
At the bottom of the KBR subcontracting pyramid are job brokers like Tovar and Gregorio Gonzalez, who helped hire laborers for Florida-based On Site Services, another subcontractor that reportedly failed to pay wages owed to workers in the Gulf Coast. The job brokers find workers by placing ads in Spanish-language newspapers like La Subasta and El Dia in Houston; the ads typically promise room, board and pay in the range of $1,200 a week. Job brokers also run television ads on Spanish-language stations like Univision. And they attend job fairs in places like Fresno, Calif.
Not all subcontractors refuse to discuss their links to KBR. Luis Sevilla is pretty open about it if you can get to the crowded hangar on the restricted premises of the Seabee naval base where he and his crew sleep and work. Sevilla put together crews for KBR subcontractors to remove asbestos and do other construction work; his workers told me they are paid and treated well. Asked about the people who own the R.V. with a "KBR" logo outside the hangar where his workers crowd into small tents, Sevilla says, "They contract with many, many companies." Interviews with members of Sevilla's crew revealed a number of undocumented workers.
Despite the evidence of undocumented workers cleaning up after Katrina, Halliburton/KBR maintains that it runs its operations within the bounds of the law. "KBR operates under a rigorous Code of Business Conduct that outlines legal and ethical behaviors that all employees and subcontractors are expected to follow in every aspect of their work," spokesperson Norcross said by e-mail. (She did not respond to several requests for a phone interview.) "We do not tolerate any exceptions to this Code at any level of our company."
Standing in spitting distance of the KBR-branded R.V., which is parked as if it were guarding the hangar, Jose Ruiz of Nicaragua knows that his role in the Katrina cleanup is anonymous at best. "I don't have any papers, kind of like in that song by Sting -- 'I'm an illegal alien,'" says Ruiz, who lived in the United States for many years before arriving to work for Sevilla at the Seabee base. "That's the way it is."
-- By Roberto Lovato
Salon Media Group, Inc101 Spear Street, Suite 203San Francisco, CA 94105Telephone 415 645-9200Fax 415 645-9204
Gulf Coast slaves
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.
By Roberto Lovato
Nov. 15, 2005 Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.
"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said.
He says that Tovar "kicked us off the base," forcing him and other cleanup workers -- many of them Mexican and undocumented -- to sleep on the streets of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly owed more than $56,000 by Tovar. Tovar claims that she let the workers go because she was not paid by her own bosses at United Disaster Relief. In turn, UDR manager Zachary Johnson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told the Washington Post on Nov. 4 that his company had not been paid by KBR for two months.
Wherever the buck may stop along the chain of subcontractors, Martinez is stuck at the short end of it -- and his situation is typical among many workers hired by subcontractors of KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root) to clean and rebuild Belle Chasse and other Gulf Coast military bases. Immigrants rights groups and activists like Bill Chandler, president of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, estimate that hundreds of undocumented workers are on the Gulf Coast military bases, a claim that the military and Halliburton/KBR deny -- even after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency turned up undocumented workers in a raid of the Belle Chasse facility last month. Visits to the naval bases and dozens of interviews by Salon confirm that undocumented workers are in the facilities. Still, tracing the line from unpaid undocumented workers to their multibillion-dollar employers is a daunting task. A shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring -- and abuse -- of these workers.
Right after Katrina barreled through the Gulf Coast, the Bush administration relaxed labor standards, creating conditions for rampant abuse, according to union leaders and civil rights advocates. Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires employers to pay "prevailing wages" for labor used to fulfill government contracts. The administration also waived the requirement for contractors rebuilding the Gulf Coast to provide valid I-9 employment eligibility forms completed by their workers. These moves allowed Halliburton/KBR and its subcontractors to hire undocumented workers and pay them meager wages (regardless of what wages the workers may have otherwise been promised). The two policies have recently been reversed in the face of sharp political pressure: Bush reinstated the Davis-Bacon Act on Nov. 3, while the Department of Homeland Security reinstated the I-9 requirements in late October, noting that it would once again "exercise prosecutorial discretion" of employers in violation "on a case-by-case basis." But critics say Bush's policies have already allowed extensive profiteering beneath layers of legal and political cover.
Halliburton/KBR, which enjoys an array of federal contracts in the United States, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has long drawn criticism for its proximity to Vice President Dick Cheney, formerly Halliburton's CEO. Halliburton/KBR spokesperson Melissa Norcross declined to respond directly to allegations about undocumented workers in the Gulf. "In performing work for the U.S. government, KBR uses its government-approved procurement system to source and retain qualified subcontractors," she said in an e-mail. "KBR's subcontractors are required to comply with all applicable labor laws and provisions when performing this work."
Victoria Cintra is the Gulf Coast outreach organizer for Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which recently partnered with relief agency Oxfam America to help immigrant workers displaced by Katrina. She says KBR is exposing undocumented workers like Martinez to unethical and illegal treatment, even though they are supposed to be paid with federal Katrina-recovery dollars to clean and rebuild high-security facilities like the one President Bush recently visited. Cintra is one of several people fighting to recover the wages owed the workers: She drives her beat-up, chocolate-colored car across the swamps, damaged roads and broken bridges of the Gulf Coast to track down contractors and subcontractors. With yellow legal pad in hand, she and other advocates document abuses taking place at Belle Chasse, the Naval Construction Battalion Center at the Seabee naval base in Gulfport, Miss., and other military installations.
I was with Cintra when she received phone calls from several Latino workers who complained they were denied, under threat of deportation, the right to leave the base at Belle Chasse. Cintra also took me along on visits to squalid trailer parks -- like the one at Arlington Heights in Gulfport -- where up to 19 unpaid, unfed and undocumented KBR site workers inhabited a single trailer for $70 per person, per week. Workers there and on the bases complained of suffering from diarrhea, sprained ankles, cuts and bruises, and other injuries sustained on the KBR sites -- where they received no medical assistance, despite being close to medical facilities on the same bases they were cleaning and helping rebuild.
Cintra and other critics say there's been no accountability from the corporate leaders who signed on the dotted line when they were awarded multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contracts. "The workers may be hired by the subcontractors," Cintra says, "but KBR is ultimately responsible."
"Latino workers are being invited to New Orleans and the South without the proper conditions to protect them," adds Cintra, who recently provided tents to Martinez and several other unpaid Mexican workers who fled Belle Chasse for Gulfport after being dismissed by Tovar. Cintra, a Cuban exile and born-again Christian, has since seen a small tent city of homeless immigrants spring up in the yard of her church, Pass Road Baptist, in Gulfport. "This is evil on top of evil on top of evil," she says. "The Bush administration and Halliburton have opened up a Pandora's box that's not going to close now."
Halliburton/KBR is the general contractor with overarching responsibility for the federal cleanup contracts covering Katrina-damaged naval bases. Even so, there is an utter lack of transparency with the process -- and that invites malfeasance, says James Hale, a vice president of the Laborers' International Union of North America. "To my knowledge, not one member of Congress has been able to get their hands on a copy of a contract that was handed out to Halliburton or others," Hale says. "There is no central registry of Katrina contracts available. No data on the jobs or scope of the work." Hale says that his union's legislative staff has pressed members of Congress for more information; apparently the legislators were told that they could not get copies of the contracts because of "national security" concerns.
"If the contracts handed out to these primary contractors are opaque, then the contracts being let to the subcontractors are just plain invisible," Hale says. "There is simply no ability to ascertain or monitor the contractor-subcontractor relationships. This is an open invitation for exploitation, fraud and abuse."
Congress has heard a number of complaints recently about Halliburton/KBR's hiring practices, including the alleged exploitation of Filipino, Sri Lankan, Nepalese and other immigrant workers paid low wages on military installations in Iraq. And KBR subcontractor BE&K was a focus of Senate hearings in October, for the firing of 75 local Belle Chasse workers who said that they were replaced by "unskilled, out-of-state, out-of-country" workers earning $8 to $14 for work that typically paid $22 an hour.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has been an outspoken critic of the use of undocumented workers at Belle Chasse and on other Katrina cleanup jobs, said in a recent statement, "It is a downright shame that any contractor would use this tragedy as an opportunity to line its pockets by breaking the law and hiring a low-skilled, low-wage and undocumented work force."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is also against the practice, citing its "serious social ramifications." As he told Salon, it devastates "local workers who have been hit twice, because they lost their homes."
Seventeen-year-old Simitrio Martinez (no relation to Arnulfo) is another one of the dozens of workers originally hired by Tovar, the North Carolina job broker working under KBR. "They were going to pay seven dollars an hour, and the food was going to be free, and rent, but they gave us nothing," says the thin Zapotec teenager. Simitrio spent nearly a month at the Seabee base. "They weren't feeding us. We ate cookies for five days. Cookies, nothing else," he says.
Simitrio, his co-workers, and the dozens of KBR subcontractors that employ them operate under public-private agreements like federal Task Order 0017, which defines the scope of work to be fulfilled under the contracts. Under the multimillion-dollar Department of Defense contract, KBR is supposed to provide services for "Hurricane Katrina stabilization and recovery at Naval Air Station Pascagoula, Naval Air Station Gulfport, Stennis Space Center and other Navy installations in the Southeast Region," according to a Defense Department press release.
But the details of the agreements remain murky. "Not only is it very difficult to see the actual signed DoD contracts, but it is nearly impossible to see the actual task orders, which assign the goods or services the government is buying," says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight in Washington. The military can ask for goods and services on an as-needed basis, he says, which means that the contracts, which add up to tens of millions of dollars, can remain open ended. According to DoD press statements, the contracts call for considerable manual labor, including "re-roofing of most buildings, barracks, debris removal from the entire base, water mitigation, mold mitigation, interior and exterior repairs to most buildings, waste treatment plants, and all incidental related work."
Simitrio and any other workers on the high-security military bases must get permission before entering the guarded gates, where they get patted down by M-16-wielding military police. Responsibility for getting private-sector construction and cleanup workers on the bases rests with the general contractor -- in KBR's case, security chief Kevin Flynn. One of Flynn's responsibilities is to negotiate passes and entry for KBR subcontractors -- and their hires -- to do the work stipulated by the task order.
Yet, following several complaints by Landrieu, and just a few days after President Bush visited the Belle Chasse base, agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided the facility and detained 10 workers who ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said had "questionable" documentation.
Representatives of Halliburton/KBR do not acknowledge the existence of undocumented workers providing labor for their operations on the Gulf Coast bases. Flynn suggested speaking to the U.S. military, who he said "has real strict control" and would know whether there were undocumented workers. "We have workers from all ethnic groups on the base," Flynn said. "To the best of my knowledge, there are no undocumented workers."
Steve Romano, head of housing on the Belle Chasse base, said, "We have no relationship with [KBR] at all. I have no idea what that's about." A similar response was given by an official at the base's health facility when asked about undocumented workers who complained about health issues and injuries sustained on the KBR sites. The only military person to acknowledge seeing Latino workers was a watch commander who greeted me at an entry to the base. The commander estimated there were 100 such workers there. Meanwhile, representatives with the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance say they received calls from undocumented workers at Belle Chasse who estimated there were more than 500, or "about eight busloads" of immigrant workers on-site.
Texas-based DRS Cosmotech is another subcontractor that provided cleanup crews to Halliburton/KBR in the Gulf. Roy Lee Donaldson, CEO of the company, refused to respond to accusations of non-payment and exploitation leveled at his company by several workers, including 55-year-old Felipe Reyes of Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. (Donaldson hung up the phone when I identified myself as a reporter.)
"Mr. Donaldson promised us we'd live in a hotel or a house. We lived in tents and only had hot water that smelled like petroleum," Reyes said. The city of Belle Chasse has been identified in recent years as one of the most toxically polluted areas in the entire region, with several major energy companies operating there. A wide range of advocacy groups have warned about serious health risks facing Katrina cleanup workers.
"They didn't want to pay us for two weeks of work. So we stopped working. We started a huelga [strike] on the base" added Reyes, who along with other workers, says he was later paid $1,100 -- only part of what he says he was owed.
Another KBR subcontractor, Alabama-based BE&K, says it is not responsible for keeping track of the workers. BE&K spokesperson Susan Wasley said, "I can't say that we require our subcontractors' employees to produce documentation for us, because that's what our subcontractor as employer has to do. That's his responsibility."
At the bottom of the KBR subcontracting pyramid are job brokers like Tovar and Gregorio Gonzalez, who helped hire laborers for Florida-based On Site Services, another subcontractor that reportedly failed to pay wages owed to workers in the Gulf Coast. The job brokers find workers by placing ads in Spanish-language newspapers like La Subasta and El Dia in Houston; the ads typically promise room, board and pay in the range of $1,200 a week. Job brokers also run television ads on Spanish-language stations like Univision. And they attend job fairs in places like Fresno, Calif.
Not all subcontractors refuse to discuss their links to KBR. Luis Sevilla is pretty open about it if you can get to the crowded hangar on the restricted premises of the Seabee naval base where he and his crew sleep and work. Sevilla put together crews for KBR subcontractors to remove asbestos and do other construction work; his workers told me they are paid and treated well. Asked about the people who own the R.V. with a "KBR" logo outside the hangar where his workers crowd into small tents, Sevilla says, "They contract with many, many companies." Interviews with members of Sevilla's crew revealed a number of undocumented workers.
Despite the evidence of undocumented workers cleaning up after Katrina, Halliburton/KBR maintains that it runs its operations within the bounds of the law. "KBR operates under a rigorous Code of Business Conduct that outlines legal and ethical behaviors that all employees and subcontractors are expected to follow in every aspect of their work," spokesperson Norcross said by e-mail. (She did not respond to several requests for a phone interview.) "We do not tolerate any exceptions to this Code at any level of our company."
Standing in spitting distance of the KBR-branded R.V., which is parked as if it were guarding the hangar, Jose Ruiz of Nicaragua knows that his role in the Katrina cleanup is anonymous at best. "I don't have any papers, kind of like in that song by Sting -- 'I'm an illegal alien,'" says Ruiz, who lived in the United States for many years before arriving to work for Sevilla at the Seabee base. "That's the way it is."
-- By Roberto Lovato
Salon Media Group, Inc101 Spear Street, Suite 203San Francisco, CA 94105Telephone 415 645-9200Fax 415 645-9204
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials - New York Times
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials - New York Times
November 15, 2005
Editorial
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials
To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.
•
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.
The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.
Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.
Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated.
Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?" Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on "special equipment"' - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old.
•
The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.
November 15, 2005
Editorial
Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials
To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.
Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.
It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.
•
Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.
Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.
It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.
The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.
The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.
Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was "significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's "hammering" on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency.
Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated.
Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous "mushroom cloud" comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?" Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on "special equipment"' - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old.
•
The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.
Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.
[Professors:]...Demolition Most Likely Brought Down the WTC and Further Investigation Is Needed
Articles, government corruption, freedom of speech, truth
Professor Steven E. Jones is another in the long line of conservatives in the political and academic world joining the 9/11 truth movement and asking to open up further investigations on the true cause of 9/11.13 Nov 2005
By Greg Szymanski
The BYU physics professor who believes the WTC collapsed from a controlled demolition isn’t alone in the academic community, as a group of more than 60 colleagues from two universities also agreed with Professor Steven E. Jones’ conclusions.
Jones told the Arctic Beacon Saturday in a telephone conversation from Provo, Utah, he first presented his explosive conclusions at Brigham Young University (BYU) on September 22, to 60 people from the BYU and Utah Valley State College faculties, including professors of Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Geology, Mathematics and Psychology.
After presently scientific arguments in favor of the controlled demolition theory, Jones said everyone in attendance from all backgrounds, conservative and liberal, were in total agreement further investigation was needed.
“I was quite surprised how my conclusions were received,” said Jones, adding he plans to give two continue telling the public how he came to his startling conclusions essentially ripping apart the official government story that jet fuel brought down the towers, including Building 7.
“In fact, after I researched how Building 7 fell, I am certain there existed pre-positioned explosives to bring down the three buildings.”
Jones added that the contingent of faculty members at the September seminar were all in agreement that the government needed to “come clean” and release more that 6,900 photographs and close to 7,000 segments of video footage, now being held from independent investigation by the FBI and other agencies.
Since day one, the Bush administration has safely guarded much of the 9/11evidence, including the WTC steel hauled away by FEMA and eye-witness testimony of basement explosions censored by the 9/11 Commission and the state sponsored press, as well as discrediting many other scientists or academics like Jones who have disagreed with the official story.
“We are calling for the release of all the data, including the videos and photos, in order that a cross-disciplinary, preferably international team of scientists and engineers can reach an independent conclusion,” said Jones, adding all 60 professors in attendance agreed with this course of action.
“Since I decided to come forward with my findings, I have found the people in the 9/11 community very supportive and helpful. I hope my contribution will one day help get at the truth of what really happened and specifically how the towers collapsed.”
Jones’ theory on the way the towers collapsed was presented in a 9,000 word formal paper already approved for publication in an upcoming academic journal. The following is a partial explanation of how and why he came to his conclusions that the WTC most likely collapsed due to pre-positioned explosives. He writes:
“In writing this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned explosives.
“I consider the official FEMA, NIST, and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings. And I present evidence for the explosive-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, testable and falsifiable, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government.
And the reasoning behind his conclusions can be summed up as follows:
• The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says. "Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?" Jones asks. "And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway? The 'symmetry data' emphasized here, along with other data, provide strong evidence for an 'inside' job."
• No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says.
• WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. "Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?" he asks. "That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors — and intact steel support columns — the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?" The paradox, he says, "is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses." These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.
• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."
• Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says.
• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.
• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.
• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.
Jones will also be appearing on Greg Szymanski’s radio show called “The Investigative Journal” on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.rbnlive.com on Monday at 12 noon central time.
For Jones’ full report go to www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Professor Steven E. Jones is another in the long line of conservatives in the political and academic world joining the 9/11 truth movement and asking to open up further investigations on the true cause of 9/11.13 Nov 2005
By Greg Szymanski
The BYU physics professor who believes the WTC collapsed from a controlled demolition isn’t alone in the academic community, as a group of more than 60 colleagues from two universities also agreed with Professor Steven E. Jones’ conclusions.
Jones told the Arctic Beacon Saturday in a telephone conversation from Provo, Utah, he first presented his explosive conclusions at Brigham Young University (BYU) on September 22, to 60 people from the BYU and Utah Valley State College faculties, including professors of Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Geology, Mathematics and Psychology.
After presently scientific arguments in favor of the controlled demolition theory, Jones said everyone in attendance from all backgrounds, conservative and liberal, were in total agreement further investigation was needed.
“I was quite surprised how my conclusions were received,” said Jones, adding he plans to give two continue telling the public how he came to his startling conclusions essentially ripping apart the official government story that jet fuel brought down the towers, including Building 7.
“In fact, after I researched how Building 7 fell, I am certain there existed pre-positioned explosives to bring down the three buildings.”
Jones added that the contingent of faculty members at the September seminar were all in agreement that the government needed to “come clean” and release more that 6,900 photographs and close to 7,000 segments of video footage, now being held from independent investigation by the FBI and other agencies.
Since day one, the Bush administration has safely guarded much of the 9/11evidence, including the WTC steel hauled away by FEMA and eye-witness testimony of basement explosions censored by the 9/11 Commission and the state sponsored press, as well as discrediting many other scientists or academics like Jones who have disagreed with the official story.
“We are calling for the release of all the data, including the videos and photos, in order that a cross-disciplinary, preferably international team of scientists and engineers can reach an independent conclusion,” said Jones, adding all 60 professors in attendance agreed with this course of action.
“Since I decided to come forward with my findings, I have found the people in the 9/11 community very supportive and helpful. I hope my contribution will one day help get at the truth of what really happened and specifically how the towers collapsed.”
Jones’ theory on the way the towers collapsed was presented in a 9,000 word formal paper already approved for publication in an upcoming academic journal. The following is a partial explanation of how and why he came to his conclusions that the WTC most likely collapsed due to pre-positioned explosives. He writes:
“In writing this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned explosives.
“I consider the official FEMA, NIST, and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings. And I present evidence for the explosive-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, testable and falsifiable, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government.
And the reasoning behind his conclusions can be summed up as follows:
• The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says. "Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?" Jones asks. "And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway? The 'symmetry data' emphasized here, along with other data, provide strong evidence for an 'inside' job."
• No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says.
• WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. "Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?" he asks. "That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors — and intact steel support columns — the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?" The paradox, he says, "is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses." These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.
• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."
• Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says.
• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.
• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.
• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.
Jones will also be appearing on Greg Szymanski’s radio show called “The Investigative Journal” on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.rbnlive.com on Monday at 12 noon central time.
For Jones’ full report go to www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
BYU NewsNet - Prof. calls for 9/11 investigation
BYU NewsNet - Prof. calls for 9/11 investigation
BYU NewsNet
Prof. calls for 9/11 investigation
Photo by Dana Tanner
Steve Jones, a BYU physics professor, explains his ideas on the September 11 attacks. He hypothesized, based on the evidence he has researched, explosives were planted in the buildings, casing them to crumble. Daily Universe
14 Nov 2005
By Ryan McIlvain
BYU Physics Professor Steven E. Jones doesn't look like a conspiracy theorist. Sitting in his office in the Eyring Science Center, he's wearing a button-up shirt, dress slacks, matching socks. He's soft-spoken, polite — the picture of the mild-mannered professor.
What's more, Jones doesn't sound like a conspiracy theorist. He won't try to tell you about second gunmen on grassy knolls or trick photography with the Apollo 11 mission. Nothing like that has really swayed him before.
But now, what he will try to tell you, in his quiet, confident way, is that official explanations of what happened on Sept. 11 — that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed from damage and superheated fires — are shaky, if not unscientific.
"It just does not add up," says Jones, referring specifically to the 47-story building known as WTC 7. "It doesn't add up that this [collapse] was caused by planes hitting the other buildings."
Jones, who studies fusion and solar energy at BYU, has lately turned his attention to Sept. 11 research and has turned more than a few heads in the process.
In a paper posted online Tuesday, Jones suggests that "pre-positioned explosives," not planes, were what brought down the three World Trade Center buildings — the two Twin Towers and WTC 7. Jones' article, which has been accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Two days after Jones' article appeared, The Deseret Morning News ran a front-page story on it. Later that night it made the evening news.
The media attention is welcome, Jones says, especially as it drums up interest in the scientific community, from which Jones hopes to cull an independent, international investigative team that would consider his "explosive demolition hypothesis."
"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes in his article. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame after all."
Jones says previous government investigations, including those by FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), failed to address even the possibility of pre-planted explosives. This, despite the fact that WTC 7 wasn't even hit by a plane and that fire damage has never brought down a steel building before or since Sept. 11, he says.
"[WTC 7] is the most mysterious collapse and it does suggest an inside job," Jones says. "If the explosive hypothesis…" He corrects himself: "If the explosive demolition hypothesis — it is rather explosive — if this hypothesis is correct, that would imply an inside job because to bring a building down symmetrically using explosives … takes a lot of planning."
Pressed about the implications of his hypothesis, Jones leans back in his chair and says, "Okay, let me back up."
He mentions a few lesser-known details about the Sept. 11 attacks, appending little comments like "and that's a fact" or "and that's on tape" at several points along the way:
Larry Silverstein, WTC leaseholder, insured the buildings against terrorist attack for billions of dollars less than two months before Sept. 11, Jones says.
The towers were loaded with asbestos — "not anymore," Jones adds, "but they were. There was discussion for a long time: 'We've got to either get rid of the asbestos in these buildings or take them down and start over.'"
In the aftermath of the buildings' collapse, Silverstein said of WTC 7, "We decided to pull it." Jones says "pull" is a common demolition term. "To pull a building means you initiate the demolition."
Much of the steel from the collapsed towers was shipped to Asia for recycling, Jones says. "This was done over the objections of serious scientists and engineers, saying, 'Look, you're destroying evidence. We want to know how fire and damage could have possibly caused these buildings to collapse.'"
"You didn't know that, did you?" Jones says. He leans back farther in his chair. "We need an investigation," he says again.
When asked if he's afraid of getting brushed aside as a conspiracy theorist, Jones says, "Brushing things aside without reading a serious paper, well, that would be an unfortunate thing."
The professor says he's content to let stock labels like "conspiracy theorist" and "fringe author" fly where they will. As a scientist, his responsibility is to the truth, he says.
At this Jones swivels his chair around to face the computer, accesses his paper online, and brings up several video clips of WTC 7's collapse.
One clip is from the CBS Evening News. You watch the 47-story tower tremble, dip slightly in the middle, then drop beneath the cityscape. You hear Dan Rather's distinctive voice: "It's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen of buildings that are deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite …"
Jones replays the clip. "That's a perfect demolition," he says. "It's just what they shoot for. Middle goes down, they pull the core supports, the sides lean in, and then it goes straight down at near free-fall speed.
"And again, I'm not saying this proves it," he adds. "There's just a lot of evidence, and so it needs to be investigated."
Now Jones shows a different clip, from a different angle. The building trembles, dips, falls again.
"See that fall?" Jones says. "It's symmetric. Notice it dips in the middle. Did you see that? It dips in the middle first, which implies that the core supports there in the middle were pulled before the other supports. And that's common for demolition."
In his paper, Jones says the Twin Towers dipped in a similar way. He includes video footage of the north tower's antenna dropping some 10 feet before the rest of the tower begins to move.
"We look at the collapse of the tower's themselves," Jones says, "and there are a number of mysteries there as well."
Given the implications of Jones' research, the professor says he was extra careful in preparing it. He stresses how the paper was peer-reviewed and then explains something of that rigorous, anonymous process.
"If it hadn't been peer-reviewed," he says, "I wouldn't be talking about it now."
He also mentions the seminar he gave — on Sept. 22, as it happened — to a group of colleagues from the BYU Physics and Astronomy Department. It was a sort of dry-run test for how his research would be received, a final behind-closed-doors check before he went public with his provocative suggestions.
After the seminar, all but one of Jones' colleagues said they agreed an investigation was in order, Jones says. And the lone dissenter, physics professor Harold Stokes, came around the next day.
BYU NewsNet
Prof. calls for 9/11 investigation
Photo by Dana Tanner
Steve Jones, a BYU physics professor, explains his ideas on the September 11 attacks. He hypothesized, based on the evidence he has researched, explosives were planted in the buildings, casing them to crumble. Daily Universe
14 Nov 2005
By Ryan McIlvain
BYU Physics Professor Steven E. Jones doesn't look like a conspiracy theorist. Sitting in his office in the Eyring Science Center, he's wearing a button-up shirt, dress slacks, matching socks. He's soft-spoken, polite — the picture of the mild-mannered professor.
What's more, Jones doesn't sound like a conspiracy theorist. He won't try to tell you about second gunmen on grassy knolls or trick photography with the Apollo 11 mission. Nothing like that has really swayed him before.
But now, what he will try to tell you, in his quiet, confident way, is that official explanations of what happened on Sept. 11 — that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed from damage and superheated fires — are shaky, if not unscientific.
"It just does not add up," says Jones, referring specifically to the 47-story building known as WTC 7. "It doesn't add up that this [collapse] was caused by planes hitting the other buildings."
Jones, who studies fusion and solar energy at BYU, has lately turned his attention to Sept. 11 research and has turned more than a few heads in the process.
In a paper posted online Tuesday, Jones suggests that "pre-positioned explosives," not planes, were what brought down the three World Trade Center buildings — the two Twin Towers and WTC 7. Jones' article, which has been accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Two days after Jones' article appeared, The Deseret Morning News ran a front-page story on it. Later that night it made the evening news.
The media attention is welcome, Jones says, especially as it drums up interest in the scientific community, from which Jones hopes to cull an independent, international investigative team that would consider his "explosive demolition hypothesis."
"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes in his article. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame after all."
Jones says previous government investigations, including those by FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), failed to address even the possibility of pre-planted explosives. This, despite the fact that WTC 7 wasn't even hit by a plane and that fire damage has never brought down a steel building before or since Sept. 11, he says.
"[WTC 7] is the most mysterious collapse and it does suggest an inside job," Jones says. "If the explosive hypothesis…" He corrects himself: "If the explosive demolition hypothesis — it is rather explosive — if this hypothesis is correct, that would imply an inside job because to bring a building down symmetrically using explosives … takes a lot of planning."
Pressed about the implications of his hypothesis, Jones leans back in his chair and says, "Okay, let me back up."
He mentions a few lesser-known details about the Sept. 11 attacks, appending little comments like "and that's a fact" or "and that's on tape" at several points along the way:
Larry Silverstein, WTC leaseholder, insured the buildings against terrorist attack for billions of dollars less than two months before Sept. 11, Jones says.
The towers were loaded with asbestos — "not anymore," Jones adds, "but they were. There was discussion for a long time: 'We've got to either get rid of the asbestos in these buildings or take them down and start over.'"
In the aftermath of the buildings' collapse, Silverstein said of WTC 7, "We decided to pull it." Jones says "pull" is a common demolition term. "To pull a building means you initiate the demolition."
Much of the steel from the collapsed towers was shipped to Asia for recycling, Jones says. "This was done over the objections of serious scientists and engineers, saying, 'Look, you're destroying evidence. We want to know how fire and damage could have possibly caused these buildings to collapse.'"
"You didn't know that, did you?" Jones says. He leans back farther in his chair. "We need an investigation," he says again.
When asked if he's afraid of getting brushed aside as a conspiracy theorist, Jones says, "Brushing things aside without reading a serious paper, well, that would be an unfortunate thing."
The professor says he's content to let stock labels like "conspiracy theorist" and "fringe author" fly where they will. As a scientist, his responsibility is to the truth, he says.
At this Jones swivels his chair around to face the computer, accesses his paper online, and brings up several video clips of WTC 7's collapse.
One clip is from the CBS Evening News. You watch the 47-story tower tremble, dip slightly in the middle, then drop beneath the cityscape. You hear Dan Rather's distinctive voice: "It's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen of buildings that are deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite …"
Jones replays the clip. "That's a perfect demolition," he says. "It's just what they shoot for. Middle goes down, they pull the core supports, the sides lean in, and then it goes straight down at near free-fall speed.
"And again, I'm not saying this proves it," he adds. "There's just a lot of evidence, and so it needs to be investigated."
Now Jones shows a different clip, from a different angle. The building trembles, dips, falls again.
"See that fall?" Jones says. "It's symmetric. Notice it dips in the middle. Did you see that? It dips in the middle first, which implies that the core supports there in the middle were pulled before the other supports. And that's common for demolition."
In his paper, Jones says the Twin Towers dipped in a similar way. He includes video footage of the north tower's antenna dropping some 10 feet before the rest of the tower begins to move.
"We look at the collapse of the tower's themselves," Jones says, "and there are a number of mysteries there as well."
Given the implications of Jones' research, the professor says he was extra careful in preparing it. He stresses how the paper was peer-reviewed and then explains something of that rigorous, anonymous process.
"If it hadn't been peer-reviewed," he says, "I wouldn't be talking about it now."
He also mentions the seminar he gave — on Sept. 22, as it happened — to a group of colleagues from the BYU Physics and Astronomy Department. It was a sort of dry-run test for how his research would be received, a final behind-closed-doors check before he went public with his provocative suggestions.
After the seminar, all but one of Jones' colleagues said they agreed an investigation was in order, Jones says. And the lone dissenter, physics professor Harold Stokes, came around the next day.
Kate/A/blog: Ceiling Bomb
Kate/A/blog: Ceiling Bomb
Monday, November 14, 2005
Ceiling Bomb
Bomb in ceiling caused Jordan hotel blast. Amman-A blast at the Radisson hotel in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday was caused by a bomb placed in a false ceiling, police sources at the scene told Reuters. I suppose this story will disappear down the memory hole?AMMAN - The Iraqi wife of a suicide bomber made a chilling confession on Jordanian state TV Sunday, saying she also tried to blow herself up during a hotel wedding reception last week but the explosives concealed under her denim dress failed to detonate.Al-Rishawi was shown on state television wearing a white head scarf, a buttoned, body-length dark denim dress, and belts packed with explosives and ball bearings. Still wearing her bomb on Sunday's TV confession - and look how she utilizes duct tape.
posted by Kate-A 11/14/2005 09:54:00 PM PermaLink
1 Comments:
Anonymous said...
wife of suicide bomber story...reminiscent of Hill and Knowlton's pr extravaganza with fake Kuwaiti nurse telling stories of babies being hurled from incubators onto floors by evil Iraqi soldiers pre-Iraq 1? yeah, those staged photo ops really convince me now....NOT!peace kate, et al...
Monday, November 14, 2005
Ceiling Bomb
Bomb in ceiling caused Jordan hotel blast. Amman-A blast at the Radisson hotel in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday was caused by a bomb placed in a false ceiling, police sources at the scene told Reuters. I suppose this story will disappear down the memory hole?AMMAN - The Iraqi wife of a suicide bomber made a chilling confession on Jordanian state TV Sunday, saying she also tried to blow herself up during a hotel wedding reception last week but the explosives concealed under her denim dress failed to detonate.Al-Rishawi was shown on state television wearing a white head scarf, a buttoned, body-length dark denim dress, and belts packed with explosives and ball bearings. Still wearing her bomb on Sunday's TV confession - and look how she utilizes duct tape.
posted by Kate-A 11/14/2005 09:54:00 PM PermaLink
1 Comments:
Anonymous said...
wife of suicide bomber story...reminiscent of Hill and Knowlton's pr extravaganza with fake Kuwaiti nurse telling stories of babies being hurled from incubators onto floors by evil Iraqi soldiers pre-Iraq 1? yeah, those staged photo ops really convince me now....NOT!peace kate, et al...
wingtv.net 11/11/05 - Google Video: WTC Demolition Steven E. Jones
wingtv.net 11/11/05 - Google Video
Tags: wingtv.net 11/11/05 - Google Video: WTC Demolition Steven E. Jones 9/11 Cover-Up
Tags: wingtv.net 11/11/05 - Google Video: WTC Demolition Steven E. Jones 9/11 Cover-Up
Joe's Dartblog: Does Senator John Kerry Read Newspapers?
Joe's Dartblog: Does Senator John Kerry Read Newspapers?
Blogger Thoughts: Of course, there is very little I agree with in Joe's Post. However, Kerry's performance at a persuasive politician is subject to criticism on any number of issues over the past years.
If the Dems wanted to have a strong case, why wouldn't they prepare a joint statement that a large number signed on to? I certainly don't want to jump to the conclusion that it's Harry Reid's fault, or that it's Howard Dean's fault. It is certainly disappointing.
I think it's fair to ask anyone who knows the heinous crimes that our Nation is committing: How can you imagine supporting the Republican or the Democratic Party?
Blogger Thoughts: Of course, there is very little I agree with in Joe's Post. However, Kerry's performance at a persuasive politician is subject to criticism on any number of issues over the past years.
If the Dems wanted to have a strong case, why wouldn't they prepare a joint statement that a large number signed on to? I certainly don't want to jump to the conclusion that it's Harry Reid's fault, or that it's Howard Dean's fault. It is certainly disappointing.
I think it's fair to ask anyone who knows the heinous crimes that our Nation is committing: How can you imagine supporting the Republican or the Democratic Party?
911 Dutch Treat? One must also ask, if the 9/11 surveillance tapes at these airports do in fact exist, why haven't we seen them?
911 Dutch Treat?
By Stephen M. St. Johnmetatron.metatron@verizon.net11-15-5
Why haven't we seen the routine video surveillance tapes of ANY of the passengers alleged to have boarded the ill-fated 9/11 flights at Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports?
Will two lips in Holland end the 9/11 coverup?
NEW YORK -- Those who have bothered to read the 9/11 skeptics know about the extraordinary "coincidences" that took place that fateful morning. One of them happens to be the lack of routine video surveillance tapes of ANY of the passengers alleged to have boarded the ill-fated flights at Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports.
The 9/11 Commission simply ignored this issue even though it can be fairly said that not only did the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington originate at these airport gates, but so did the resulting invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why haven't we seen these video tapes? Why has the Fourth Estate failed to ask, Why haven't we seen these video tapes? Why the conspiracy of silence?
Well, the answer may very well lie in Holland. You see, security at some if not all of these airport gates of 9/11 was in the hands of an American minimum-wage subsidiary of a Dutch corporation called ICTS-International. What is most remarkable about this arrangement is that the Dutch corporation ICTS-International was, as of 9/11, Dutch in name only. An early 2003 check of its web-site showed a Board of Directors consisting entirely of nationals of the Zionist state with the single exception of the Comptroller, who apparently was the nominal Dutchman. And if I need to clue in the clueless, the Zionists were hellbent on finding a reason for the USA to invade Iraq. And it would be fair to say that these Zionists of ICTS-International were the gatekeepers of 9/11 and all that followed, such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Interesting, eh?
But the story gets even wilder. Not long after 9/11, the chairman of ICTS, Ezra Harel, whose surname is famous in the annals of the Mossad, died suddenly of a heart attack in his early 50s on his yacht off the coast of Palestine. Talk about not being available for comment!
But that's not the kicker. Hours before the House version of the first Patriot Act went to a vote, "technical corrections" were inserted into the body of the legislation whereby foreign security companies such as ICTS-International would be immune from lawsuits related to the events of 9/11. Talk about not being available for deposition! This "Patriot" act legislative sleight of hand occurred before the inception of the 9/11 Commission when Fearless Leader George W. Bush was still resisting the very IDEA of an investigation into 9/11. Hence, in the face of an institutional cover-up, citizens were denied the possibility of a discovery process which is normally afforded to litigants. Without such discovery process, ICTS-International would never be compelled by a court of law to give testimony and show evidence related to the missing airport video surveillance tapes of 9/11 or any other aspect of security measures in place on 9/11.
The legal situation has since changed and ICTS-International is now a co-defendant in a lawsuit in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. (see www.sept11tortlitigation.com) More about this will follow.
And so, we are supposed to believe that even as multiple NORAD drills were underway, video surveillance tapes from multiple cameras at multiple locations in three different "Category X" high security international airports just happened to fail to capture images of ANY of the passengers - the good, the bad and the ugly - about to board the ill-fated flights of 9/11! As many 9/11 skeptics already know, what I have just described here is just one aspect of the BIG LIE about 9/11. Some of the answers to our national security problem will be found in Holland. That is for sure!
But there are those who will insist that they have seen on television video surveillance tapes of the hijackers of 9/11 and are satisfied with the official explanation of what happened on that fateful day.
However, these people are confused by the tape repeatedly shown on TV of two of the alleged hijackers (Mohammad Atta being one of them) passing through a security checkpoint at Portland Maine International Airport to take a connecting flight to Boston on the morning of 11 September 2001.
This Portland tape has no timestamp, which makes it suspect. Also, even IF the tape were genuine, it does not place either of the two young Arabs at Logan International Airport.
Nearly all Americans were lulled into believing that the Portland, Maine tape was sufficient proof when it was not. People were mesmerized by the repeated showing of this tape on TV and in their emotional state did not realize exactly what they were looking at and what they weren't looking at.
Also, yet another tape was shown in the 24 hour interval leading to the official release of the 9/11 Commission Report; however, this tape, released to the news media by the South Carolina law firm Motley Rice LLC, was almost immediately withdrawn because it quickly became apparent that it was bogus. This Motley Rice surveillance tape purportedly showed two young Arabs boarding flight 77 at Dulles International Airport on the morning of 9/11. But again, just like the Portland Maine tape, there is no timestamp, which makes it suspect. Beyond that, as pointed out by the late, great Internet researcher/writer Joe Vialls, who some believe is really Ari Ben-Menashe (see www.judicial-inc.biz), the shadows appearing just outside the terminal door are those you would expect to see at midday rather than in the early morning. Moreover, the surveillance camera is no ordinary surveillance camera; for the tape reveals a panning camera focused on the two young Arabs and then zooming in on them and then moving left as they move left instead of following the pretty blonde lady who was going to the right. Clearly, some person unknown at some time unknown was filming these young Arab men for a specific but unknown reason.
This Motley Rice film was never shown again because of the critical eyes of researchers, many of whom preserved copies of the mysterious tape in their computers.
In consideration of the foregoing, one must conclude that no tape has EVER been shown that reveals ANY of the passengers boarding the 9/11 flights out of Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports.
One must also ask, if the 9/11 surveillance tapes at these airports do in fact exist, why haven't we seen them? And if they do not even exist, how can this be explained?
By Stephen M. St. Johnmetatron.metatron@verizon.net11-15-5
Why haven't we seen the routine video surveillance tapes of ANY of the passengers alleged to have boarded the ill-fated 9/11 flights at Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports?
Will two lips in Holland end the 9/11 coverup?
NEW YORK -- Those who have bothered to read the 9/11 skeptics know about the extraordinary "coincidences" that took place that fateful morning. One of them happens to be the lack of routine video surveillance tapes of ANY of the passengers alleged to have boarded the ill-fated flights at Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports.
The 9/11 Commission simply ignored this issue even though it can be fairly said that not only did the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington originate at these airport gates, but so did the resulting invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why haven't we seen these video tapes? Why has the Fourth Estate failed to ask, Why haven't we seen these video tapes? Why the conspiracy of silence?
Well, the answer may very well lie in Holland. You see, security at some if not all of these airport gates of 9/11 was in the hands of an American minimum-wage subsidiary of a Dutch corporation called ICTS-International. What is most remarkable about this arrangement is that the Dutch corporation ICTS-International was, as of 9/11, Dutch in name only. An early 2003 check of its web-site showed a Board of Directors consisting entirely of nationals of the Zionist state with the single exception of the Comptroller, who apparently was the nominal Dutchman. And if I need to clue in the clueless, the Zionists were hellbent on finding a reason for the USA to invade Iraq. And it would be fair to say that these Zionists of ICTS-International were the gatekeepers of 9/11 and all that followed, such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Interesting, eh?
But the story gets even wilder. Not long after 9/11, the chairman of ICTS, Ezra Harel, whose surname is famous in the annals of the Mossad, died suddenly of a heart attack in his early 50s on his yacht off the coast of Palestine. Talk about not being available for comment!
But that's not the kicker. Hours before the House version of the first Patriot Act went to a vote, "technical corrections" were inserted into the body of the legislation whereby foreign security companies such as ICTS-International would be immune from lawsuits related to the events of 9/11. Talk about not being available for deposition! This "Patriot" act legislative sleight of hand occurred before the inception of the 9/11 Commission when Fearless Leader George W. Bush was still resisting the very IDEA of an investigation into 9/11. Hence, in the face of an institutional cover-up, citizens were denied the possibility of a discovery process which is normally afforded to litigants. Without such discovery process, ICTS-International would never be compelled by a court of law to give testimony and show evidence related to the missing airport video surveillance tapes of 9/11 or any other aspect of security measures in place on 9/11.
The legal situation has since changed and ICTS-International is now a co-defendant in a lawsuit in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. (see www.sept11tortlitigation.com) More about this will follow.
And so, we are supposed to believe that even as multiple NORAD drills were underway, video surveillance tapes from multiple cameras at multiple locations in three different "Category X" high security international airports just happened to fail to capture images of ANY of the passengers - the good, the bad and the ugly - about to board the ill-fated flights of 9/11! As many 9/11 skeptics already know, what I have just described here is just one aspect of the BIG LIE about 9/11. Some of the answers to our national security problem will be found in Holland. That is for sure!
But there are those who will insist that they have seen on television video surveillance tapes of the hijackers of 9/11 and are satisfied with the official explanation of what happened on that fateful day.
However, these people are confused by the tape repeatedly shown on TV of two of the alleged hijackers (Mohammad Atta being one of them) passing through a security checkpoint at Portland Maine International Airport to take a connecting flight to Boston on the morning of 11 September 2001.
This Portland tape has no timestamp, which makes it suspect. Also, even IF the tape were genuine, it does not place either of the two young Arabs at Logan International Airport.
Nearly all Americans were lulled into believing that the Portland, Maine tape was sufficient proof when it was not. People were mesmerized by the repeated showing of this tape on TV and in their emotional state did not realize exactly what they were looking at and what they weren't looking at.
Also, yet another tape was shown in the 24 hour interval leading to the official release of the 9/11 Commission Report; however, this tape, released to the news media by the South Carolina law firm Motley Rice LLC, was almost immediately withdrawn because it quickly became apparent that it was bogus. This Motley Rice surveillance tape purportedly showed two young Arabs boarding flight 77 at Dulles International Airport on the morning of 9/11. But again, just like the Portland Maine tape, there is no timestamp, which makes it suspect. Beyond that, as pointed out by the late, great Internet researcher/writer Joe Vialls, who some believe is really Ari Ben-Menashe (see www.judicial-inc.biz), the shadows appearing just outside the terminal door are those you would expect to see at midday rather than in the early morning. Moreover, the surveillance camera is no ordinary surveillance camera; for the tape reveals a panning camera focused on the two young Arabs and then zooming in on them and then moving left as they move left instead of following the pretty blonde lady who was going to the right. Clearly, some person unknown at some time unknown was filming these young Arab men for a specific but unknown reason.
This Motley Rice film was never shown again because of the critical eyes of researchers, many of whom preserved copies of the mysterious tape in their computers.
In consideration of the foregoing, one must conclude that no tape has EVER been shown that reveals ANY of the passengers boarding the 9/11 flights out of Boston's Logan, Newark's Liberty and Washington's Dulles international airports.
One must also ask, if the 9/11 surveillance tapes at these airports do in fact exist, why haven't we seen them? And if they do not even exist, how can this be explained?
Mark Bingham phoned his mother and said, "Hi Mom, This is Mark Bingham"
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