More Clown Posse

This appears to be the new trend in 9-11 Troof activism; attempted citizen's arrests. You may recall that Splitting the Sky managed to get his F-Troop Indian butt thrown in jail a few weeks ago for attempting to put the manacles on Bush. This one turns out to be a classic Troofer botch job, where they get thrown out of the venue without even getting close to Rudy G.

Could they be More Egocentric?

Another troofer, Shell Game shiller Bill Douglas, puts forth the "we defeated Rudy" theory.

Peggy Noonan, a Republican speechwriter (Reagan’s among others), was perplexed last night on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart as to “why Rudy fell.” It was a mystery to her. Probably because she gets all her information from FOX News and the other corporate media.

Of course those who’s heads aren’t buried in the corporate idiot box, know that 9/11 truth was Rudy’s demise.

Uhh, yeah. These guys have such a small base of support that they get booed down at bookstore meetings in liberal west coast towns, yet they have somehow taken over the base of the Republican Party. They are apparently also forgetting that the current leader is John McCain, the very guy who wrote a foreward to the Popular Mechanics book, denouncing them. They don't appear to be doing too good of a job ending his campaign.

Rudy Taken Down by Fruitcakes?

I gotta laugh at this analysis; it's right up there with Alex Jones' claim that Ron Paul won Florida.

Typically, you now see every reason under the Sun espoused by so-called pundits as to why Rudy Ghouliani's candidacy died — except the most probable reason:

The effect all of the 9/11 Truth and Justice Movement activists made as they dogged Rudy from venue to venue, city to city, state to state, pointing out why he should not be considered. (and pointing out all of his flaws, lies, asininities, etc., as well)

Not to mention all of the extensive online truthination on top of it.

Yep, it wasn't the decision to wait until Florida, it wasn't that McCain built momentum with his victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

It was teh troof!

Sander Hicks and Rudy Giuliani

Sander got the boot from a Giuliani appearance in Colorado.

Giuliani moved slowly through a crowd outside Loveland Coffee Co., shaking hands with potential voters, when Sander Hicks, who said he was a reporter for a newspaper based in Brooklyn, N.Y., tried to ask a question.

He said, "On 9-11, when you-" and was cut off by boos. Giuliani laughed and smiled, moving through the crowd and saying little.

Hicks tried again, but to no avail. Then Giuliani stopped to say hello to Tom Buchalski, a Loveland resident and Bergen County, N.J., native, who opened his jacket so Giuliani could sign his T-shirt. It had a photo of lower Manhattan and it said "Tribute in Light 2002," commemorating the first anniversary of the attack that destroyed the World Trade Center. Giuliani signed his name to the shirt.

Video of the event is here. It looks like there was a sprinkling of Troofers throughout the crowd, somewhat like the Bill Maher hecklivism.

Hicks appears to be trying to resuscitate the claim that Rudy knew the Towers were going to collapse in advance. This is another one of those "mysteries" that only the kooks point to; as I have pointed out numerous times, EMS Battalion Chief John Peruggia was warned by a NYC building engineer at 9:58 AM that the North Tower was in imminent danger of collapse. Presumably either Peruggia or the building engineer proceeded to warn the Mayor. Unfortunately Giuliani has compounded the problem by denying that he had any advance knowledge, perhaps because the kooks generally frame it that he had plenty of warning, when in fact even the famed clip with Peter Jennings makes clear that he was told almost at the instant that the South Tower collapsed.

Note as well the protester screaming about the evidence being shipped off before it could be examined. I found a moderate debunking of this nonsense as well, in an unusual location. Among the board members of the FealGood Foundation is Alan Forcier, whose bio notes:

Alan Forcier, from Kings Park NY, is 47 years old and is a former NYPD undercover narcotics detective. He now lives in Nesconset and is the father of Ryan and Jessica. Alan spent seven months at the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island where he searched and collected evidence during the WTC recovery operation.

Later: I love Sander's explanation that he was not pushing them, he was doing a delicate little dance....

Well, Should Lepacek Be Considered a Reporter?

A couple of hours ago, I was checking the referring logs and noticed a couple Google searches for Matt Lepacek. So I checked out what happens when you Google his name. We come up sixth, but what's this in seventh?

Why, it's Matt Lepacek's page under the Ron Paul Meetup Group! And what has Matt got to say for himself?

"Matt Lepacek & a few others from WeAreChangee.org (sic) are coming down from NYC to support Ron Paul and the NH RP Crew!"

Oh, my! Now it is certainly no shock that Lepacek is, like many 9-11 Deniers, a Ron Paul supporter. But that he wrote this beforehand certainly reveals that he was not going into that Spin Room as a legitimate reporter, but as a political operative, official or not, of the Ron Paul campaign.

In The Interests of Getting Us All on the Same Page

I think a lot of us have listened to the Prison Planet audio of this, noticed that there seems to be some skipping, and assumed that Alex Jones' minions fiddled with the tape to make it seem like Giuliani had some warning of the possibility that the Twin Towers would collapse.

As far as I can see, this is not the case. (Wrong: See update below) Skepticism is warranted when dealing with stuff from Jones, but in this case he just seems to have gotten hold of a bad tape. If you listen to the interview here, it seems abundantly clear that Giuliani was warned almost immediately prior to the collapse of the South Tower:



But, and this is the important point, there is no big mystery here. There were warnings prior to the collapse of South Tower. Battalion Chief John Peruggia:

I was in a discussion with Mr. Rotanz and I believe it was a representative from the Department of Buildings, but I'm not sure. Some engineer type person, and several of us were huddled talking in the lobby and it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers was quite significant and they were very confident that the building's stability was compromised and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse.

I grabbed EMT Zarrillo, I advised him of that information. I told him he was to proceed immediately to the command post where Chief Ganci was located. Told him where it was across the street from Number 1 World Trade Center. I told him "You see Chief Ganci and Chief Ganci only. Provide him with the information that the building integrity is severely compromised and they believe the building is in danger of imminent collapse." So, he left off in that direction.

We know from Zarillo's testimony that message was in fact delivered to Ganci immediately prior to the collapse of the South Tower:

As I was walking towards the Fire command post, I found Steve Mosiello. I said, Steve, where's the boss? I have to give him a message. He said, well, what's the message. I said the buildings are going to collapse; we need to evac everybody out. With a very confused look, he said who told you that? I said I was just with John (Peruggia) at OEM. OEM says the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get everybody out.

He escorted me over to Chief Ganci. He said, hey, Pete, we got a message the buildings are going to collapse. His reply was who the f*ck told you that? Then Steve brought me in and with Chief Ganci, Commissioner Feehan, Steve, I believe Chief Turi was initially there, I said, listen I was just at OEM. The message I was given was that the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get our people out. At that moment, this thunderous, rolling roar came down and that's when the building came down, the first tower came down.

I can't yet trace it to who actually warned Giuliani, but it is hardly surprising that he would be warned. I'll go through some more testimonies and see if it comes up.

Update: Jones or whoever provided him with his version of the tape did a little creative editing to make it seem like Giuliani had 10-15 minutes warning. But in fact he had almost none. Further details here.

Giuliani and Foreknowledge of the Collapse

Luke Rudkowski and company get a little more attention by sandbagging Rudy Giuliani as he was about to enter a fundraising event.

Yes, as far as I know, Rudy's wrong when he says there was no forewarning of the possibility of collapse of the WTC towers.

"I--I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us."

As noted on page 302 of the 9-11 Commission Report (page 319 of the PDF file), "At about 9:57 an EMS paramedic approached the FDNY Chief of Department and advised that an engineer in front of 7 WTC had just remarked that the Twin Towers in fact were in imminent danger of a total collapse."

Discussion of this incident is included in the interview with EMS Division Chief John Peruggia on page 17 of the PDF file.

Giuliani's Performance on 9-11

Here's what looks like a solid job of debunking some of the criticisms of Rudy Giuliani:

No one can deny that any executive must delegate the execution of many details to subordinates. Rudy had a team of deputy mayors, as well as fire and police commissioners and their subordinates to assist him. Barrett at no time says that Rudy did anything unethical personally involving the purchase of the radios from Motorola. Barrett mentions explicitly the person responsible, the unnamed “pivotal person at the city’s information agency.” But yet the blame falls to Mayor Giuliani who should have stopped juggling the responsibilities of managing the most dynamic city in the world to get down to the warehouse to inspect the new radios, or perhaps become a radio expert himself and personally select the radios.

Bernie Kerik addressed this issue in his testimony to the 9/11 commission stating, “Show me one radio that they will guarantee you this radio will go through that metal, it will go through the debris, it will go through the dust, and you will have 100% communication 100% of the time-there is none.”

He does not get into the kooky stuff.