THE FOIA WARS

FARRELL VS DOD VS BINGHAM VS DOJ
IN SEARCH OF THE HIDDEN VIDEOS
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
December 17 2006

Enter Judicial Watch (JW), a conservative/libertarian grouping of lawyers who target government/judicial/legal corruption. They’ve been harsh on the Clintons and their various scandals, and were instrumental in House of Representatives impeachment efforts in the 1990s. But they have also proven willing to tackle the Bush administration to some extent – after all they’re supposed to be watchdogs. Representing FBI special agent Robert Wright, Judicial Watch charges pre 9/11 incompetence at the FBI’s counter-terrorism division (over both the Clinton and Bush years, from Freeh to Mueller). Most pointedly, they summed up that Wright “accuses the FBI of obstructing investigative efforts that might have prevented some of the September 11 attacks.” [1] Although it apparently wasn’t intended to such ends, the lawsuit has been used by many as evidence of a LIHOP theory of the attacks based in the dubious line that “softness” on “the Saudis” was to blame.

Now Judicial Watch is making moves towards pulling a leading leg from beneath the MIHOP no-plane-at-the-Pentagon crowd. In February 2006 they filed a lawsuit against Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department to release some video of the attack captured by Pentagon cameras. They have also announced plans to sue the FBI to release the 84 videos from surrounding cameras seized and kept under wraps. “Our experience has been that whenever the government takes extraordinary measures to keep the lid on documents,” their announcement of intent read, “it is worth investigating.” [2] JW clarified they were seeking video release “in part to help put to rest conspiracy theories that a government drone or missile hit the Pentagon,” clearly something the government should be eager to cooperate with. [3] Earlier JW suits to this end had been denied, with the government saying they needed to keep the tapes secret on account of the pending trial of Zaccarias Moussaoui.

Whatever logic there may have been in that refusal, it fell flat after the trial’s conclusion in early May 2006. On May 16, Judicial Watch posted the first two videos handed over to them by the Justice Department - one of them is simply the video from the Pentagon's security cameras from which the five stills were extracted in 2002, and the video is no better than the stills. The other was from a camera just a few inches away at the same checkpoint, and equally worthless as evidence for either side. These were not much, but were hoped to be the first in a series of releases. [4] This was big news on May 16; JW President Tom Fitton was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly in his “Impact Segment:” Fitton explained “we wanted to help put to rest conspiracy theories out there that were suggesting that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon, that the government murdered the passengers on Flight 77, and other outrageous stuff. Just having the videos released is one more leg of the conspiracy theory that has been knocked out. This also reminds Americans of the evil we are facing.” [5] Fox News in general also ran the story [6] along with several wire services. Fitton was quoted in a May 16 CNN story as saying “we fought hard to obtain this video because we felt that it was very important to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11.” [7]

Despite the watchdog group’s public relations coup, there is in fact some contention over who is responsible for these releases. Scott Bingham, administrator of the site Flight77.info, claims it was he, not Judicial Watch, that “forced the release of the recent flight 77 video.” He pointed to his FOIA lawsuit, Scott Bingham vs. DoJ et al., with Bingham posting letters sent to the DoJ and responses sent to his attorney Scott Hode. The reason for the request was summed up by the department: “tired of what plaintiff’s complaint calls “outlandish conspiracy theories” about the crash […] plaintiff seeks to correct what he describes as a veritable culture of misinformation.” Their opinion, issued August 1 2005, was that “this information should not be released until the risk to the Moussaoui prosecution has passed. Defendant therefore seeks summary judgment in favor of its assertion of Exepmtion 7(A) and dismissal of plaintiff’s lawsuit with prejudice.” [8] Perhaps it’s no coincidence, but unlike JW, Bingham is a 9/11 Truther, just one fed up with the Fraudsters. He seems to believe neither Loose Change nor the government.

The judge agreed to the exemption and and blocked the release, but as the Moussaoui case was decided, on May 5, Judge Friedman set a deadline date of May 26th, giving the government three weeks to either let the videos go or “show cause” to hold them longer. Bingham explains it was this date, not JW’s actions, that got them released in May. [9] According to a timeline of all this litigation, Bingham was indeed well ahead of JW. (thanks to Jim Hoffman at 9-11 Research for compiling this). It was back on October 14, 2004 that Scott Hodes, on behalf of Bingham, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to David Hardy of the FBI for any videos “that may have captured the impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon.” On November 3: The FBI replies that their search “revealed no record responsive to your FOIA request,” and on the 17th Hodes appealed, citing evidence that the videotapes indeed did exist. [10]

Finally on December 15 Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations & Research Chris Farrrell first asks for the same videos. Farrell’s request bypassed the DoJ and instead was put on a fast track via the Defense Department, though the request covered files from the FBI and Homeland Security as well. Both Hodes and Farrell received early-2005 responses that the evidence needed to be kept secret to protect ongoing legal cases. On September 9, 2005, a FBI Counterterrorism special agent filed a declaration admitting to 85 videotapes in the FBI's possession that were “potentially responsive” to Hodes’ and Bingham’s request; the agent further declared that she watched 29 of them before she found one that actually showed the impact. On September 26, Hodes filed a request seeking all 85 videos. [11]

On February 22, 2006 Judicial Watch filed a further lawsuit against the DoD for its refusal to release the videos, and on May 16 they finally obtained them, although the actual handover was by the Justice Department. They immediately posted the clips on the Judicial Watch website. Hoffman noted “the site is down for about half of the day due to demand” for the brand new footage. The high-profile lawyers thus were able to break the story first despite entering the race late and thus eclipsed Bingham and his site which, unlike JW, seeks to prove a MIHOP scenario with remote controlled airliners. It seems possible Rumsfeld and his lawyers helped JW steal Bingham’s thunder by approving the video first to Farrell - indicating that their days of letting secrecy feed the wing nuts were perhaps nearing an end.

Disc sent by Hardy at FBI to Hodes and Bingham, 3/16/06

Yet back on March 16, exactly two months earlier, David M. Hardy, section Chief of Records/Information dissemination at the FBI sent Hodes a disc with the same two time lapse videos later received by JW, labeled with a fancy cursive font “Flight 77 CD-ROM”. Bingham seems not to have posted them at this time – or if he did it seemed to generate no buzz. The first news my internet searches are showing was on and after May 16. On the 17th, Alex Jones’ Infowars site did a piece on the videos that mentioned the Bingham case, but this seems to be the biggest story on Bingham’s pivotal role, which remains absent from the mainstream news.

sources:
[1] Klayman, Larry, Chairman, Judicial Watch Schippers, David, Counsel, Schippers and Bailey, Judicial Watch. Wright, Robert, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Judicial Watch News Conference: FBI Whistle-Blower.” May 30 2002. National Press Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.infowars.com/jw_transcript.htm
[2] Judicial Watch Files Lawsuit Against Defense Department for Withholding Video of 9/11 Attack on PentagonDOD has "no legal basis" to refuse release of videotapeMarch 1 2006http://www.judicialwatch.org/5724.shtml
[3] See [2].
[4] “First video of Pentagon 9/11 attack released: Watchdog group says video will end 'conspiracy theories.'” CNN. May 16, 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/16/pentagon.video/index.html
[5] The O’Reilly Factor Flash. Tuesday, May 16 2006. http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=807
[6] "Pentagon releases video of plane Hitting Building on 9/11" Fox News. May 16 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195702,00.html (Conspiracy theorists may or may not be disappointed Tuesday when they see footage released from the Pentagon showing two angles of American Flight 77 hitting the western wall of the building on Sept. 11, 2001...)
[7] See [4].
[8] Case 1:05-cv-00475-PLF Document 13 page 5 of 23. Filed 08/01/05. Accessed November 8 2006 at: http://www.flight77.info/documents.htm
[9] Accessed November 8 2006 at: www.flight77.info
[10] Hoffman, Jim. “Pentagon Attack Footage: The Suppression of Video Footage of the Pentagon Attack.” http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/footage.html
[11] See [10].
[12] See [10].
[13] Accessed November 8 2006 at: www.flight77.info
[14] Watson, Steve. “FBI Withholding 84 More Tapes of Pentagon on 9/11: Magically Only 1 shows impact so why not release the rest?” Infowars. May 17 2006. http://infowars.net/articles/may2006/170506Pentagon_videos.htm

LETSROLL’S ROLE

9/11 MADE SIMPLE-MINDED BY THE POD PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / The Frustrating Fraud
December 2006
(updated 2/6/07)

The website LetsRoll 911 (or more fully "LetsRoll 911 Made Simple") is a central player in the propagation of the Frustrating Fraud. Since its establishment in early 2004 its forums have focused on simplifying the complexities of the evidence - especially the physical - and boiling it down to digestible pellets. These could then be painted red and popped into as many mouths as possible in hopes of waking up the masses of brainwashed "sheeple" to resist the Matrix.

Let’sRoll’s front-page "pod" analysis, which they carefully compared to a real, unmodified toy plane

Sounds like a good enough idea, but of course, however it happened, their pellets were poison. The tiny hole at the Pentagon and the origins of all the gears and parts found there, obscure and shifting accounts of the WTC's construction and endless speculation on what precisely brought it down, etc. My favorite is their proud achievement in discovering “the pod or extra piece of equipment on the bottom of Flight 175” and “the missile firing from its undercarriage or side-carriage.” Both the pod and the yellow missile flash were also seen with Flight 11, if less clearly. Compare this to the official explanation: the pods were simply wing faring, the "shoulders" where the wings attack and landing gear is stored. They are roughly the shape of the attachments seen, but looked larger due to glare from the alluminum skin high in the brilliant sky. The planes then gave off yellow flashes, as aluminum would do, upon impact, not before (it’s not as easy to precisely read shadows from half a mile away as they think). While I'm not scientist enough to know for sure, I think that makes sense (as does Jim Hoffman's case at 9-11 Research).

The general consensus formed by the core members of the crew I thus came to know as “the pod people” was then passed on to others. As he was putting together 911 In Plane Site, Dave Von Kleist drew heavily on their evidence pool in developing his approach of zooming in on pixels to see the pods and the yellow flashes. Von Kleist mirrored their take on the Pentagon and mentioned their help repeatedly in the video while directing people back to the site, apparently the only one mentioned in the video.

Let'sRoll later expanded their influence, advising Korey Rowe, Nick Bermas, and Dylan Avery as their video Loose Change first took shape. IPS-boosting site administrator Phil Jayhan promoted it's planned premier in DC on 9/11/ 2004, was handing out limited copies of the first cut by mid-October, and helping sell them by the end of November. The 2nd edition from late 2005, which hewed less closely to the LetsRoll line, still thanked prominent LetsRoll member “Red Pill Neo” for his contributions, and Jayhan “for getting the first edition off the ground.” But by the second Edition, there was a rift and feud between Jayhan and Avery, which I will cover in another post.

Jayhan has also thanked himself for the site's pivotal role in world history, in a nice rumination intercepted by Jeff Wells at Rigorous Intuition: "When I decided to then publish my findings, I thought I would end up within a week, with either a bullet in my head or CNN trucks in my driveway. It was kind of a hard decision, as I really desired neither. But I chose to publish. So on April 15th, 2004, I released a press release that literally changed the face of the world and its politics. [...] Had Phil Jayhan never existed, and never taken out this website, all of you would be experiencing an alternate reality, quite different than the one which you now enjoy." [1]

I was at first intrigued with their approach and the possibility of hard proof, as seen in the LetsRoll-promoted short internet video “Pentagon Strike.” I signed up on as member “Vigilant Guardian” and so was an active member from January to March 2005, just as Loose Change was going from local fame to wider acceptance. My meager enthusiasm soon soured though as I scored a copy of the new “director’s cut” of IPS and watched it tumble right off the tracks, then returned to the LetsRoll forums. With growing trepidation and occasional rants, I watched their praise for IPS morph into missionary zeal for Loose Change, then just being finished.

Jayhan in war paint: time for the revolution to begin!

After I left the site, things got rather odd there. On May 17 2006,following a rousing speech he'd given to an ad hoc group of car license lawyers in Los Vegas, Phil Jayhan started a new thread: “Time for the revolution to Start!” He told his followers “they will NOT simply give back what they have hijacked,” and he foresaw no help coming from Congress, the Judiciary, or much of anywhere else. “The press is under the same MK Ultra subversion as the Justice Department, and thus we cannot expect anything from them.” Cleary it would be up to the vanguard; “we need to take it back, by force if necessary.” [2] The Let’sRoll truthers had apparently been holding back their secret army, hoping for a peaceful solution, but the elites’ intransigence was just too much. As of writing in early November, I’ve heard nothing of the country being taken back by force nor of Jayhan’s public impalement and crucifixion. But they’re still taking donations.

Then four months later things got even weirder with the hack attack of 9/11/06, but for that you’ll need to read another post.

sources:
[1] Wells, Jeff. "Cynical, sophisticated and subtle." Rigorous Intuition. Posted May 27 2005. http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_rigorousintuition_archive.html
[2] Jayhan, Phil. "Time for the Revolution to Start! - First shot fired tonight." LetsRoll Forums -> 911 For the Tired, weary, huddled masses... Posted Wed May 17, 2006.

LETSROLL 911'S 911 INSIDE JOB?

THE MYSTERIOUS COLLAPSE OF THE LETSROLL FORUMS, 9/11/06

I had left the "truth" site LetsRoll 911 in mid-2005 with a weird, creepy feeling and no appetite for their ‘revolution.’ I cast nary a glance back until I happened to return in mid-September 2006, trying to scour the forums for some posts of mine I hadn’t archived. The first thing I saw on my return was a post with big red letters proclaiming “LetsRoll was hacked on September 11th, 2006, at 12:01 AM, only 1 minute into the day of 9/11.” This had been announced by Jayhan in a next day update, which further stated “the forums were hacked and brought down at about 5:20PM, later the same day,” thus playing the telltale role of WTC7 in their mini-9/11 drama.

But who ordered the forums “pulled?’ Jayhan’s post, featured prominently on the front page along with the pod pictures, listed “some of the last IP's accessing LetsRoll on September 11th as it was being hacked,” and wouldn’t you know it,“all ip addresses are from the Justice Department! & 1 From the U.S. State Department!” [1] He does not specify that the government computers actually hacked the site or took down the forum, but the impression left is one of well-founded suspicion of a DoJ/State attack.

Wherever it came from, it was only a symbolic strike - the forums were soon enough re-established, and were only silenced for a few days. On September 22 I recieved a bulk e-mail from Jayhan "to let everyone know that the letsroll website and forums are now back online after being hacked on 9/11/06." No explicit connection between the two events is mentioned. "The forums are now on their own webspace, so please make note of this and bookmark the new url." [2] As they came back alive, I expected twitchy pent-up minds and typing fingers buzzing with speculation and “investigations” over the attack, certainly from a government that felt threatened by their growing popularity. But when I finally got around to combing the forum archives, I saw nothing on the apparent hack attack. One member complained they “couldn't access this site since 9/11 [...] username kept changing every time I tried to log in [...] wiped my computer clean,” but all was “ok now.” [3]

Indeed, it was all the usual business, like pushing the Frustrating Fraud. In a thread started September 25 one new poster suggested a large plane really did hit the Pentagon, casting doubt on the HTB line; “it created a 70-75 foot hole. how could a missile do that?” (click here to see how this is correct) The party line defender was brutal with the caps lock key; “THERE WAS NOT A 70FT HOLE!!!!!!! HOW PLAIN IS THIS????? IT WAS NO GREATER THEN 20FT WIDE.......... YOU CANT FIT A B757 INTO A 20FT WIDE HOLE.... WITHOUT LEAVING THE WINGS.... ENGINES... UNDERCARIAGE BEHIND... God no wonder we are screwed..... with people such as yourself....” [4]

Finally I found some posts from Jayhan regarding the events of 9/11/06. On that very day he posted: “I just got off the phone with ipowerweb [their service provider], and get this, they took the website, LetsRoll down because it was too popular, in their own words! […] I hadn't exceeded bandwidth, nor files size. And they shut me down tonight, with no warning, on September 11th!” [5] But within a week, things were sorted out and re-established with Ipowerweb, despite the unexpected betrayal, with thanks from Jayhan for “the ones who helped me get this up and did more than they had to!” [6]

They’ve been pulled off the page since I copied them over, but those red letters Jayhan posted the day after made it seem the website was attacked by the government, and one has to dig to find that the host pulled the plug, allegedly with no warning and due to its “popularity.” Sarcasm can’t be ruled out here - every time I visit the site these days it tells me I’m the only person looking at it at the moment (one guests, zero members). The DoJ/State Internet Protocols, piggybacking on the unexplained pull, almost seem designed to boost and promote the site in the face of apparent government suppression, and perhaps get them closer to “exceeding bandwidth.” I sense Ipowerweb’s complicity at least, and possibly the hidden hand of an external benefactor. My main question remains whether the government IPs were faked by Jayhan or an affiliate, or really did come from the Bush junta. Both have a stake in keeping this train going on its current tracks. (LetsRoll)

Sources:
[1] LetsRoll911.org Hacked, 12:01AM, September 11th
Posted by: Phil_Jayhan on 09/12/2006 10:02 PM. LetsRoll 911 Front Page. http://www.letsroll911.org/phpwebsite/
[2] e-mail. From: Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 8:47 AM. Subject: "Lets Roll Forums Back Online from the Hack." Signed: "Lets Roll" Cheers- phil jayhan
[3] Thread: “Anyone Else Have to Login after every post?” untitled post. Posted by “Mason-Free Party.” October 5 2006, 11:57 am.
[4] Thread: “I say a cruise missile hit the pentagon...or...?” untitled post. Posted by “Roadwarrior,” September 26, 2006 5:51 am.
[5] Jayhan, Phil. “Lets Roll Shut down by Ipowerweb!” Posted September 11 2006, 12:36 am .
[6] Jayhan, Phil. “Lets Roll Forums Finally back from the Hack!” Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:15 pm.