Friday, December 05, 2008

The Damn CIA Has Been at It, Again!

So, I find this article at Highbeam called, "We struggle to grasp historical firsts of Sept. 11, 2001, by this guy named Dan Moran, (that is pronounced...how?) published in The Waukegan Illinois News Sun on September 12th, 2001, and it causes me to go "Oh Poopy!"

Mr. Moran must fancy himself a Windy City Herb Caen---the breezy San Francisco Chronicle gossip columnist who knew and talked about everybody in his day (including my late partner, who was commissioned a 1rst Lieutenant at Yale alongside Herb, on the same day, in 1942.) But blow hard Moran uses wet metaphors, as he stacks 9/11 up against Pearl Harbor, opining, "let the debates begin over which watershed moment held the most water." Then the dipstick tell us about his trip to New York City in 1983 when he went to the top of the Empire State Building. Hoop dee due.

My concern was with Moran structuring his personal post-9/11 essay around six APNewsAlerts, the dramatic breaking news reports supposedly put out by the Associated Press on the morning of September 11th. But I had put my full faith and credit in a competing set of Associated Press breaking news reports, convinced that the set Mr. Moran uses was manufactured post facto out of whole cloth in order to clean up a dicey record.

But with the chance, happenstance of Mr. Moran accidentally incorporating these news items into the body of his published text, he was backhandedly providing a timestamped verification that would be hard to disprove. Such luck was tantamount to finding an original copy of the Declaration of Independence lining the back of a framed Saturday Evening Post print.

I compared Mr. Moran's six items with the "Master List"---a pdf page posted online as "Associated Press, 2001" and his were letter perfect---bearing authentic Central Daylight Savings timestamps, his clocks running two minutes fast, almost to the end. They paired up like this:
7:51 a.m. AP News Alert NEW YORK: Plane crashes into World Trade Center, according to television reports
8:53 New York Plane crashes into World Trade Center, according to television reports

8:07 a.m. AP News Alert NEW YORK: Plane crashes into second World Trade Center tower.
9:09 New York Plane crashes into second World Trade Center tower

8:41 a.m. AP News Alert WASHINGTON: An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say.
9:43:07 Washington An aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon, witnesses say

9:05 a.m. APNewsAlert FLASH NEW YORK: One World Trade Center tower collapses.
10:07 New York One World Trade Center tower collapses

9:27 a.m. AP News Alert FLASH NEW YORK: Second World Trade Center tower collapses.
10:29 New York Second World Trade Center tower collapses

9:36 a.m. AP News Alert PITTSBURGH: Large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania, officials at Somerset County Airport confirm.
10:37 Pittsburgh Large plane crashes in western Pennsylvania, officials at Somerset County airport confirm
BUT WAIT JUST ONE MINUTE!

Having read the books Touching History, and Firefight, along with some additional marginalia and ephemera, like "Girls With Red Wings," put out by the alphabet spooks, IMHO, I have become accustomed to a certain style of obfuscatory dilettantism. Especially noteworthy is the manner of their re-paragraphization, not at issue here. But they leave such careless clues nonetheless. Its enough to make a lizard go postal.

For instance, Mr. Moran identifies his items as "AP News Alert," however that is a copyrighted trademark spelled "APNewsAlert." Surely as a professional journalist Mr. Moran knows not to mess with a branded corporate identity in publication. Why would he alter this in any case? Wasn't his intent in repeating the lines to piggyback some gravitas off the real news? But if he were to do this, why would he carelessly pass over the fifth item, leaving it in its mocking original state of "APNewsAlert?" Doesn't he care about what people think of him? Doesn't he have an editor?

But an even graver, more serious error is made! The two special "FLASH" items are also listed as "AP News Alerts" when anybody who simply glances at the pdf would know that the "AP broke developments to its members in two flashes, 25 APNewsAlerts and 18 bulletins in the first day." An Item Can't Be Both A Flash And An APNewsAlert! Sillies! These have been proven fraudulent impostors!

And little do the masters in Langley, Tavistock and Rome realize that I have roots in Waukegan Illinois. Family. Friends. I will have buttered up the downtown librarian by five this afternoon. I will have photocopies of newsprint, either proving or disproving my thesis before the weekend begins. I will Rock and then Island.

It is always the cover-up! Didn't you learn last time?

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