MEDIA PUBLISHED FAKE PASSENGER LISTS FOR AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11.

by Gerard Holmgren
[see Interview with Gerard Holmgren, 27 June 2005, at:  http://www.serendipity.li/wot/holmgren_interview.htm]

 As everyone knows, on Sept 11 2001, 5 Arabs allegedly hijacked American Airlines flight 11 and crashed it into the Nth Tower of the World Trade Centre. It was part of a crime which killed approximately 3000 people.

Any serious crime, particularly one of this magnitude, is – or should be – subject to rigourous examination by investigative and law enforcement authorities, such as the FBI. In any crime involving the illegal use of a plane, it is obvious that one of the first investigative steps taken by such authorities is to find out who was on the plane.

This is not a difficult thing to do. Airlines keep well organized records of everybody on any particular flight. Thus the apparent ID of anyone on that flight – regardless of whether they used a true or false ID – should be immediately available to authorities.

Unless the authorities decide that such information should be with-held from public view for fear that disclosure will jeopardize the investigation, then such information should also be easily available to the media. Assuming that authorities cleared it for release, it should be as simple as an exchange of faxes or emails between the media and either the airline involved or one of the relevant authorities to which the airline has released the information. Or possibly printed copies handed out at a press conference.

In relation to the alleged AA11, there has never been any indication that such information has been with-held for security reasons. We, the public have been given the clear impression that the information relating to exactly who was on that plane has been made available to us, via the media – which presumably sourced it in the manner suggested above. If such information had been with-held, one would expect this  to have been disclosed. There would appear to be no reason to believe that disclosure of the official passenger lists would jeopardize any investigation, and even less reason to believe it to be so sensitive that even the fact that its being with-held must be hidden.

Supporters of the official story seem to support this view. In the face of mounting evidence that none of the Sept 11 crashes were actually caused by the planes alleged to have been involved (some of this evidence is linked at the conclusion of this article), supporters of the official story will often reply with a demand to know exactly what happened to the alleged passengers, illogically imagining the lack of a specific answer to represent a flaw in the no planes/substitute planes argument. Implicit in this demand is the belief that there is rock solid documentation of who the passengers were.

Presumably, supporters of the official story depend upon the passenger lists published by the media as proof that the IDs of all the passengers are in the public domain.  Anybody can put up a website or do a radio interview or send an email,  claiming to be family or friend of a plane victim. But ultimately, the only credible, official source for such information is the airline passenger list, and the only credible source for obtaining this information  is the airline itself, or anyone to whom the airline may make it available , who can be reasonably expected to reproduce it accurately – law enforcement authorities and the media. One can’t demand an explanation of what happened to particular people alleged to be on the flight  unless one can prove that they were on the flight. As noted earlier, this should not be a difficult thing to do. It is implicit in  the official story that such information has been established in the public domain by the media.

Given that the passenger lists provided by the media provide an important component of the official story,  it is then incumbent upon any serious investigator to properly examine such passenger lists and ensure that they match with other alleged facts we have been given, and with the processes by which one would expect the information to have been sourced.

In this context, the following statement by “USA Today? in relation to its published passenger lists is of some concern.

“Partial lists of passengers and crew killed in Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, according to family members, friends, co-workers and local law enforcement.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/victims-list.htm

This is a very strange way to source such information. Why not get the information from American Airlines or the FBI? If neither AA nor the FBI  were consulted, then how did USAT know who’s “family members, friends, co-workers? to go looking for? Or if AA and the FBI were the first source of inquiry, why a partial list from hearsay sources? Why  “local law enforcement? rather than the feds, who would surely have any complete database of the victims? This statement appears to make no sense at all, except to confirm that the obvious sources where any media outlet should be looking – American Airlines and the FBI – seem to have been left out of the process. And it gets more ridiculous.

At  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/12/victim-capsule-flight11.htm

USAT gives the following bio of one of the alleged victims.

“Tom McGuinness, of Portsmouth, N.H., was co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, an official at his church confirmed…He said church pastors were with his wife when she was notified Tuesday morning. ?

Surely American Airlines, the FAA or the FBI would be the most reliable sources of who was co-piloting the plane. A family member, who’s ID can be verified would be a reasonably good unofficial source, but first one needs to find out which family one is looking for. In the process of ascertaining that, one should have already received official confirmation of the information. This source is someone who claims to know such a family member – a second hand attribution a source which is not official anyway, and should be subject to confirmation from AA, The FAA or the FBI.

Perhaps the church administrator got this info from the official sources himself and then passed it on to USAT, who lacked the investigative qualities to do this for themselves. Or the church administrator may have known McGuiness well enough to surmise that he was the co-pilot – which would still be an unofficial and unreliable source. But if so, then how did USAT know McGuiness? ID to begin with? How did they know where to go looking for the church administrator? Or if they already knew that McGuiness was the co-pilot, due to enquiries with AA, the FAA or the FBI, then why do they cite the church administrator as the source of the information ? Or did the church administrator contact USAT with this claim, and USAT fail to confirm it with official sources?  This is very poor journalism.

One can’t be certain of the exact processes employed by USAT, but its fair to say that there are strong indications that its passenger list is based on hearsay, because they had some kind of problem in obtaining the routine documentation which one would expect to be available in such a situation, but failed to give a direct disclosure of what that problem was.

In contrast to this, CNN,  introducing its passenger list ,says

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/main.html

?authorities from American Airlines, United Airlines, the Department of Defense, the New York City Medical Examiners Office and the New York City Fire Department, have released partial lists. They are linked below.”

This is a clear indication that CNN claims to have sourced its passenger information as one would expect.

The first list passenger list for AA11 which  I studied was that presented by CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html

It says that there were 92 people aboard, but if you count the names listed there are 87 – and no Arabic names. On the surface, this seems reasonable. One can speculate  that CNN has published the names of all 87 innocent victims, and deleted the names of the 5 hijackers for sensitivity reasons.

If so,  why is this described as a “partial list? ?

For the moment, lets  give CNN  the benefit of the doubt and  assume this  to be a complete list (in contradiction to what they wrote) of the 87 innocents alleged to be on board – a list sourced from AA, whether directly, or indirectly via a law enforcement agency. A reading of the names suggests that the CNN list may actually represent only 86 people –  one name duplicated with different spelling.

Robin Caplin and Robin Kaplan are listed as two different people. There is a brief bio for Kaplan, but nothing for Caplin, except the home town. Perhaps this is just an enormous co-incidence and two people with such names actually were on the flight ? Lets suspend judgment  for the moment, while we investigate further.

I then checked the passenger list provided by USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/victims-list.htm

Again, it is described as a partial list. It contains 86 names – one less than the 87 which should represent a complete list.  Robin Caplin is  missing.   However, two other names from the CNN list – Jude Larson and  Natalie Larson –  are also missing, and the list contains  two names which are not on the CNN list. Kelly Booms and  Pendyala Vamsikrishna. Lets think through the possibilities.

1) Two of the names from the collective passenger lists are fictitious.

2) Neither list is complete, and the complete list of innocents only emerges from a collective viewing of the lists – as strongly implied by the term “partial list? used in relation to both lists. If so, then we have 89  innocents. If this is the case then there can’t be 5 hijackers for a total of 92 people. And yet nobody seems to dispute these two figures.

At   http://www.boston.com/news/daily/12/victims_list.htm

We find a list of AA 11 victims published on Sept 13 2001, which, judging by the introduction, may have come from exactly same the source as that used by USAT today. It begins thus.

“By The Associated Press.  Partial list of those killed in Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, according to family members, friends, co-workers and law enforcement. ?

Lets compare it with the introduction to the USAT list.

“Partial lists of passengers and crew killed in Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, according to family members, friends, co-workers and local law enforcement.”

However this list is quite different from that published by USAT – or CNN . While not giving any summation, it contains the names of 89 alleged innocents and introduces two new names – Robert Jalbert and James Roux. Vamsikrishna and Booms are the two names not included from the collective CNN and USAT lists. Since it publishes 89 names as a “partial list ? this implies a minimum of 90 innocents aboard the plane.

From the three combined lists, we now have 91 alleged innocents and 5 hijackers for an apparently undisputed summation of 92. The Boston Daily list ,in isolation, implies a minimum of 95 aboard, while the collective lists imply 96 – if one is to believe in 5 hijackers. Alternatively, there must be four fictitious innocents.

This Boston Daily list also contains “Heath Smith”, which would appear to be a substitute for  “Heather Smith? named on the previous two lists.

A year later, the Boston Daily published a very different list, seemingly without acknowledging any previous error.

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/victims/flight11.htm

It contains only 87 names. Jalbert ,Roux,Caplin and the two Larsons have been dropped for Booms,Vamsikrishna and another new name – Waleed Iskander – who is not alleged to be one of the terrorists.  Heath Smith has become Heather Lee Smith. A person named on every other list as Antonio Montoya has become Antonio Jesus Montoya Valdes.

Peter Hashem has been replaced by Peter el-Hachem.From the bio, it appears to be a different name for the same person  While the odd spelling discrepancy or missing hyphen is quite plausible, this much of a name change is stretching the credibility a little. I can believe that “Green? could become “Greene? or “Catherine? become “Katherine”, but “Hashem? becoming “el- Hachem? – from an official passenger list – is more difficult to accept.

This is most unsatisfactory. The combined lists now name 92 innocents, so if one is to believe in 92 aboard, 5 of which were hijackers, we now have 5 fictitious innocents.

Furthermore, we now have three major mainstream media outlets, publishing 4 lists which all contradict each other about who was on board, when this information should have been very simple to source accurately.

I checked another list – from the Guardian dated sept 13 ,2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551423,00.html

This also claims 92 people aboard. It published only 75 names, saying

“This is a preliminary, partial list of passengers aboard the flight whose next of kin have been notified. Some families asked the airline not to include their loved ones’ names: these do not appear. ?

Fair enough. So this list is unable to be fully tested for consistency with either of the other four conflicting lists. However, it does agree on the number of people aboard. This creates a real headache for the official story. Is the figure of 92 incorrect? Should it be really be 97 – the 92 collectively listed innocents plus 5 hijackers? If so, why is everyone saying 92 ? Or were there no hijackers? If so, why is everybody saying 5 ? Or are 5 of these names fabricated ? If so, how,why and by whom?

The Guardian list also has Heath Smith instead of Heather Smith. It has Hashem not el-Hachem

There’s another problem. If AA released only 75 names on Sept 13, how did the Boston Daily mange to publish 89 on the same day ? Where did they get the extra names that the airline was still withholding ?

Now the list from NBC

http://www.msnbc.com/modules/wtc/victims/default.asp?p=5

It lists 87 names for a summation of 92, and is the same as the USAT list, except for the addition of Iskander.That is – the same as the anniversary list from the Boston Daily.

 I checked another mainstream media source – PBS

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/sept11/victims/aa11.html

which entitles its list ? One year later. Remembering the victims.”

This agrees with the NBC and Boston anniversary lists .