|
Edited on Sun Jun-25-06 10:27 PM by New World Odor
Shanksville-Flight 93:
Many Unanswered Questions Still Linger
by Lisa Guliani
On May 1, 2006, after a 24-hour respite following our participation in New York City’s huge April 29th anti-war rally, WING TV returned to the road once again with three destinations in mind: Shanksville, New Baltimore, and Indian Lake, Pennsylvania. Victor Thorn and I wanted to spend a couple of days in these locations and re-tread some of the area covered in our book, Phantom Flight 93: The Shanksville Flight 93 Hoax.
NEW BALTIMORE
New Baltimore is a scenic wilderness, accessed via one long narrow road that stretches for miles, descending deeper with every twist and bend while fringed by dense woods, fishing holes and wide swaths of forested mountain landscape. Eventually the winding country road brought us to a small street dotted with a few houses. We saw a man in his yard and pulled into the driveway to ask him a few questions about 9-11.
The man’s name was Dave and he works as a prison guard. After giving him a brief overview of why we were there, he invited us into his home for coffee. We spent the better part of an hour asking him about 9-11, and Dave openly expressed his doubts as to the official government version of events. He told us not to expect to see much of anything at the temporary memorial site for Flight 93 in Shanksville, because there isn’t much of anything to see. Dave was very intrigued by all we related to him regarding the anomalous nature of the official story and equally perplexed by the lack of wreckage and debris shown in the photos on the cover of our book. We could see the wheels turning in his head. He said he would ask around and try to learn more information and get back with us. Dave directed us to speak with a woman who works at the post office just down the road from his home who could point us in the right direction for information.
The post office was nothing more than a pint-sized white shack; and the worker there told us we needed to head over to St. John’s Church and speak with a woman named Melanie. This would be Melanie Hankinson, to whom we refer in Phantom Flight 93. We found Melanie inside the lovely church and she related to us her story of 9-11. Melanie says the lawn maintenance man from Beauty Lawn heard a loud “bang” and subsequently informed Melanie that there were papers blowing all over the churchyard. Upon inspection, she found not only papers littering the property, but also small pieces of metal. Melanie also told us that the FBI had set up a trailer in New Baltimore after Flight 93 purportedly crashed in the field at Shanksville, and locals were advised to bring all recovered debris to this trailer and hand it over to the Feds. Subsequently, she and other residents of the community dutifully delivered bags of debris to the FBI as directed. Along with papers and checks, Melanie also found small pieces of metal in the churchyard, which she said the FBI identified as pieces of the plane’s underbelly. Keep in mind that New Baltimore is roughly 6-8 miles away from Shanksville and the wind speed on the morning of September 11th in that area was only 9-10 mph.
Prior to leaving New Baltimore, we spoke with a woman named Mrs. Oster, whose husband Charlie saw two additional airplanes in the near vicinity of Flight 93 (or something purporting to be Flight 93) on the morning of September 11th. After asking a few questions, she very undeniably said that she, as well as her husband, felt that this airliner had been shot from the sky. Victor then spoke with Mr. Oster via telephone, and he confirmed the sightings of other small white planes flanking Flight 93.
INDIAN LAKE
Indian Lake resembles a picture postcard. It’s sprinkled with nice looking homes, a marina, and a couple of sprawling golf courses. We spoke with several folks at both the marina and the private golf course. Please keep in mind that Indian lake is 1-2 miles from Shanksville.
Stephanie Childers works in the Pro Shop at a private golf course. She told us that she saw Flight 93 intact and in the air on the morning of 9-11 from Hoffman’s Nursery, approximately 3-4 miles away. She drew us a diagram to illustrate the plane’s approach and described how she saw it descending as it flew, and then how it abruptly went into a vertical nosedive and subsequently crashed. She claims to have seen the windows of Flight 93. Stephanie said that at the time it impacted, she thought there was a bomb on the plane.
Standing next to Stephanie Childers was a man named Bob Pile, who had been listening to our discussion. Bob recalled “what seemed like buckets of gravel” hitting the roof of his house on the morning of 9-11 around the time of Flight 93’s reported impact. Bob says his home is one mile away from the crash site. He thinks it is very odd that gravel would reach his home over that distance, and had no explanation as to how this might have happened. We asked him how an airplane as large as Flight 93 could fit into a hole of such significantly smaller dimensions and showed him a representative diagram of the plane and crater dimensions, and he shook his head, unable to reconcile the disparity in dimensions.
Another local named Charles McCauley chimed in at this point. McCauley described the debris he’d recovered from his property – black seat backings that the FBI identified as coming from Flight 93. Charles had no idea how these pieces of plane seats could have made their way the few miles to his house. McCauley, like many others, turned this debris over to the FBI. Both Pile and McCauley described lots of paper, parts of magazines, some solid matter (pieces of seats and metal) and checks carried by the wind in the days following 9-11, all of which was determined by the FBI to be from Flight 93.
After touching base with some more folks at Indian lake, we then proceeded to Shanksville. The people at Indian Lake had advised us to contact local realtor Valencia (Val) McClatchey, who took the infamous photo of a red barn with the mushroom cloud behind it, which appears on the cover of our book and has made its way through the vast spectrum of mainstream and alternative media venues since the events of 9-11.
SHANKSVILLE
We spoke with lots of people while in Shanksville, none of whom recalled smelling the unmistakable odor of burning human flesh on 9-11-01. We did call Val McClatchey and met with her at her real estate office. She was initially pleasant and businesslike, but as soon as we showed her our Flight 93 book, McClatchey became very surly, hostile, and defensive. During the first few minutes in her office, she described being at her home on the morning of 9-11 and hearing the purported plane crash. She said she ran and grabbed her camera, which – conveniently enough – was sitting right by the front door, and snapped her famous photo at a distance of one mile from the crash site. When questioned by us, she abruptly poo-pooed the possibility that Flight 93 might have been shot down or brought down by some other means on the morning of 9-11, and became irate when we again produced our diagram, asking how such a massive plane could fit entirely into a crater of such small proportions. We explained how scientifically and physically impossible it would be for this to happen. At this point, McClatchey’s eyes began shooting daggers at us, and she became positively livid when we pointed out that the mushroom cloud in her photo is more reminiscent of an ordnance blast than a jet fuel column. She seemed more inclined to discuss the supposed lawsuit she has brought forth against the Associated Press over her 9-11 photo, apparently in an attempt to intimidate us. McClatchey has previously threatened to sue at least one other 9-11 researcher known as “Killtown” regarding this same photograph, a threat which has thus far not amounted to anything.
She then stated that she “didn’t want to be around any people who question the government.” Incidentally, her photo is prominently displayed throughout the city of Shanksville, in Somerset County, and is being sold at Ida’s Restaurant for $20.00. Val funnels $18 from every photo sale to the Todd Beamer Foundation. But I digress. Approximately 10-15 minutes into our interview, McClatchey suddenly and unexpectedly jumped from her seat and rudely threw us out of her office, mocking and labeling us “conspiracy theorists”. We point out that this realtor had no intelligent or coherent responses to the valid questions we raised, nor was she able to explain the anomalous nature of the purported plane crash. In fact, she simply dismissed the discrepancies regarding the plane and crater. Why muddy the water with facts, right Val?
We were quite intrigued by this woman’s responses and her absolute unwillingness to consider basic inconsistencies with the official story. Our visit with McClatchey has served to fuel our interest even further as to just what is going on in Shanksville. In its wake, 9-11 has provided some interesting “opportunities” for at least some Shanksville locals, and the recent release of Hollywood’s United 93 movie promises a potentially lucrative future for the previously unknown (pre-9/11) community. Val McClatchey made it unmistakably clear to us that she intends to milk her 9-11 claim to fame for all it’s worth, truth be damned.
Ironically, we tried to use a cell phone several times while in Shanksville and the surrounding areas. We couldn’t get a signal at all, no matter where we were, from the ground. This in itself is pretty interesting wouldn’t you say, considering all the supposed phone calls made at 35,000 feet on the morning of 9-11?
Also, every person we spoke to told us a different rate of speed regarding Flight 93’s final moments prior to impact – the speeds ranging from 330 mph to 700 mph. We couldn’t get the same story twice. The more people we spoke to, the more it appeared that hardly anyone actually saw anything firsthand other than multiple sightings of Flight 93 in mid-air on the morning of 9-11. We have located no one to date who actually witnessed the plane crash-landing. Instead, we listened to many accounts from locals who appeared to be repeating what they had been told.
more... http://www.wingtv.net/thorn2006/shanksville.html
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(46 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
