FROM..http://killtown.911review.org/flight77.html

• August 25, 1999 - The FBI final admits that potentially incendiary tear gas cartridges were used on the final day of the Branch Davidian compound siege, but claim these cartridges didn't cause the fire because they were used hours before the fire broke out.

"The FBI yesterday reversed a six-year-old position that it never used munitions capable of sparking the blaze that ended a standoff with the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Tex., and left 76 people dead.
The acknowledgment that FBI agents fired "a very limited number" of potentially incendiary tear gas cartridges on the final day of the 51-day siege contradicts congressional testimony from high-ranking Justice Department officials, such as Attorney General Janet Reno, who said that the tear gas used against the Davidians "could not have caused a fire."
An FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, said yesterday that none of its munitions started the fire on April 19, 1993, and noted that they were used hours before the inferno that consumed the Davidians' compound. FBI officials said they still believe that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his followers deliberately torched the compound but expressed regret if their answers to Congress ultimately may prove to be inaccurate." - Washington Post (08/26/99)

(See also: April 19, 1993 - The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidians ranch ends when the compound is completely destroyed by fire.)



• January 1, 2000 - CBS inserts a digital image of their logo to block out rival NBC's Jumbotron advertising screen in Times Square during a live New Year's Eve TV broadcast.



Digital developments: Networks changing images on your TV

"On the set of the CNN show "Showbiz Today," everything is real, from the anchors' backdrop to their hairdos. But some of what's appearing on TV these days you could never touch; it exists only on a computer.
Digitally inserted images have become a fact of life on television, loud complaints over CBS's recent digital imaging swap-out notwithstanding. On New Year's Eve, Dan Rather stood in front of Times Square during the evening news and for coverage of the start of 2000.
But the CBS network logo in the background was digitally added and blocked out rival NBC's Jumbotron advertising screen in Times Square. The swap was so smooth that if you were watching the Eye network that night, you would never have known the difference.

With the trend only likely to grow, digitally inserted images are raising concern all the way to the network level.

"We are heading in a lot of dangerous ways," says broadcast journalist Linda Ellerbee.

Princeton Video Image of Lawrenceville, New Jersey creates inserts. The company says digital product placement gives advertisers the flexibility to sell different items.

"What happens," says Michael Wolff, a media columnist for New York Magazine, "is that people say, well if you've changed that, what else have you changed? If you've manipulated that, what else have you manipulated?" - CNN (01/25/00)



• 2000 - The media starts warning the public about live TV broadcasts being altered by video-manipulation technology.

When TV brings you the news as it didn't happen
Broadcasters are using virtual imaging technology to alter live broadcasts - and not even the news is safe from tampering

"Viewers tuning into American broadcaster CBS's recent news coverage of the millennium celebrations in New York witnessed a televisual sleight of hand which enabled CBS to alter the reality of what they saw. Using "virtual imaging" technology, the broadcaster seamlessly adjusted live video images to include an apparently real promotion for itself in Times Square. The move has sparked debate about the ethics of using advances in broadcast technology to alter reality without telling viewers that what they are seeing isn't really there.
While it's little surprise that advances in TV technology enable broadcasters to better manipulate existing images and create new ones, what is surprising is that this was done during a live broadcast and in a news programme. The CBS evening news coverage involved replacing the logo of rival network NBC with the CBS logo on a large video screen in Times Square. NBC was "outraged" by the use of the technology, and even CBS's evening news presenter, Dan Rather, admitted it was a "mistake".
The technology to do this comes from the defence industry where, following the end of the Cold War, a number of companies have developed new ways of commercially exploiting their military navigation and tracking expertise.
The system CBS used was developed by a United States company called Princeton Video Images (PVI). Other players in this field include Symah Vision - part of French defence to media group Lagadere; Israel-based Orad Hi Tech Systems, and SciDex, another Israeli firm with offices in Europe and the US. Each system, while similar, has its differences. None of the companies will publicly discuss how their's works. But the principle is common: each alters the live video image in the split second before it is broadcast.

Now concern is being voiced over TV viewers believing they can see something which is not actually there." - independent.co.uk (01/24/00)



Lying With Pixels
Seeing is no longer believing. The image you see on the evening news could well be a fake - a fabrication of fast new video-manipulation technology.

"In films such as Forrest Gump and Wag the Dog, reality twisting has become commonplace.
In the fraction of a second between video frames, any person or object moving in the foreground can be edited out, and objects that aren't there can be edited in and made to look real.
As live electronic manipulation becomes practical, the credibility of all video will become just as suspect as Soviet Cold War photos.

It is perfectly possible now to insert sets of pixels into satellite imagery data that interpreters would view as battalions of tanks, or war planes, or burial sites, or lines of refugees, or dead cows that activists claim are victims of a biotech accident.
A demo tape supplied by PVI bolsters the point in the prosaic setting of a suburban parking lot. The scene appears ordinary except for a disturbing feature: Amidst the SUVs and minivans are several parked tanks and one armored behemoth rolling incongruously along. Imagine a tape of virtual Pakistani tanks rolling over the border into India pitched to news outlets as authentic, and you get a feel for the kind of trouble that deceptive imagery could stir up.
The ability to manipulate video data in real time, he says, has just as much potential as some of these forerunners. "Now that you can alter video in real time, you have changed the world," he says.
Deleting people or objects from live video, or inserting prerecorded people or objects into live scenes, is only the beginning of the deceptions becoming possible.
Haseltine agrees. "I'm amazed that we have not seen phony video," he says, before backpedaling a bit: "Maybe we have. Who would know?"
It's just the sort of scenario played out in the 1998 movie Wag the Dog, in which top presidential aides conspire with a Hollywood producer to televise a virtually crafted war between the United States and Albania to deflect attention from a budding Presidential scandal. Haseltine and others wonder when reality will imitate art imitating reality.
Combine the potential erosion of faith in video authenticity with the so-called "CNN effect" and the stage is set for deception to move the world in new ways. Livingston describes the CNN effect as the ability of mass media to go beyond merely reporting what is happening to actually influencing decision-makers as they consider military, international assistance and other national and international issues. "The CNN effect is real," says James Currie, professor of political science at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington. "Every office you go into at the Pentagon has CNN on." And that means, he says, that a government, terrorist or advocacy group could set geopolitical events in motion on the strength of a few hours' worth of credibility achieved by distributing a snippet of well-doctored video.
With experience as an army reservist, as a staffer with a top-secret clearance on the Senate's Intelligence Committee, and as a legislative liaison for the Secretary of the Army, Currie has seen governmental decision-making and politicking up close. He is convinced that real-time video manipulation will be, or already is, in the hands of the military and intelligence communities. And while he has no evidence yet that any government or nongovernment organization has deployed video manipulation techniques, real-time or not, for political or military purposes, he has no problem conjuring up disinformation scenarios. For example, he says, consider the impact of a fabricated video that seemed to show Saddam Hussein "pouring himself a Scotch and taking a big drink of it. You could run it on Middle Eastern television and it would totally undermine his credibility with Islamic audiences."
John Pike, an analyst of the intelligence community for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., says the credibility risks are simply too great for governments or serious organizations to get caught attempting to spoof the public." - technologyreview.com (07/00) [Original]



(See also: Spring 1995 - Air Force college professor advocates incorporating 'TV fakery' into military's arsenal; September 27, 1998 - Sportvision's live video overlay technology that creates the illusion that a yellow first-down line is painted on the field debuts; 1999 - Media warns public about use of audio and TV fakery by the military.)





• January 13, 2000 - The president of CBS News warns about how computer-generated techniques can make airplanes crashing look "so real."



CBS Is Divided Over the Use Of False Images In Broadcasts

"The CBS decision to use a new form of technology that allows electronically created images to replace actual structures had stirred a debate inside CBS News and today -- at news conference attended by Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, and Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS Television -- it was clear the debate was not over.
Mr. Heyward, responding to questions about an article on the topic in The New York Times on Wednesday, defended CBS's use of the technology, developed by a firm called Princeton Video Image.

He said that he understood the argument against the use of the technology -- which is widely employed in sports and some entertainment shows -- on news programs. The danger is ''that it looks too real and therefore it's wrong or potentially wrong,'' he said. ''I certainly agree it's potentially subject to abuse.''
He noted that advances in computer-generated techniques had made things like missiles hitting Baghdad and airplanes crashing look so real that it was incumbent on networks to underscore that these were not real images.
''We're not sitting here rubbing our hands, saying how can we use this again,'' Mr. Heyward said. ''We are not in the deception business..." - NY Times (01/13/00)



• January 2000 - CIA information about two alleged 9/11 hijackers in San Diego is squelched before reaching the FBI.

Memo on 9/11 Plotters Blocked
New disclosures show that CIA information in 2000 about two Al Qaeda operatives in San Diego was squelched before reaching the FBI.
"A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged Thursday, when the Justice Department disclosed that about 20 months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a CIA official had blocked a memo intended to alert the FBI that two known Al Qaeda operatives had entered the country.
The two men were among the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
If the FBI had received the official communique from the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit when it was ready for transmittal in January 2000, its agents likely could have tracked down the men, according to U.S. intelligence officials familiar with a newly declassified report of the Justice Department's inspector general.
Officials involved in the case of alleged would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had attempted to block release of the report, asserting that it would compromise the outcome of his case. But Inspector General Glenn A. Fine went to court and won release of the report after deleting the section on Moussaoui.
An 18-month delay in the CIA's handing over of information about the two hijackers to the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies had been well-publicized. But the report's conclusion that an agent had written a memo specifically designed for transmittal to the FBI to alert the bureau to the men's presence — and that a supervisor deliberately had prevented it from being sent — is new.
The reason the CIA official, identified by the fictitious name "John," put a hold on the communique remains a mystery, the report said. It said the officials involved didn't recall the incident. Even when the author of the memo followed up a week later with an e-mail asking if it had been sent to the FBI, nothing was done.
Records show that the CIA didn't forward the information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi to domestic law enforcement officials until late August 2001, when it asked that the men be put on watch lists." - LA Times (06/10/05) [Reprinted at: informationclearinghouse.info]





• March 3, 2000 - CNN has employed active duty military psyops personnel.



Army 'psyops' at CNN

News giant employed military 'psychological operations' personnel

"CNN employed active duty U.S. Army psychological operations personnel last year, WorldNetDaily has confirmed through several sources at Fort Bragg and elsewhere.
Maj. Thomas Collins, U.S. Information Service has confirmed that "psyops" (psychological operations) personnel, soldiers and officers, have worked in the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The lend/lease exercise was part of an Army program called "Training With Industry." According to Collins, the soldiers and officers, "... worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news."

The CNN military personnel were members of the Airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread 'selected information.' Critics say that means dissemination of propaganda.

Cable News Network suffered a major embarrassment in the wake of the 'Tailwind' story it aired, alleging the U.S. government used lethal sarin gas to kill suspected defectors during the Vietnam war. After WorldNetDaily was the first news organization to expose the fraudulent news production, two CNN producers were fired and, eventually, CNN veteran reporter Peter Arnett also was ousted. In that case, Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Perry Smith quit his long-time job as a military adviser to CNN." - WorldNetDaily (03/03/00)



(See also: February 1, 1999 - Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a voice morphing technology)





• March 20, 2000 - Filming begins on the The Lone Gunmen's 'Pilot' episode, which depicts a U.S. government conspiracy plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into the WTC and blame it on foreign terrorists in order to provoke war and increase the military's budget. Co-producers were relieved to hear that the 9/11 plot "pre-dated" their show.



"On March 4, 2001, during Season 8 of “The X-Files,” the three spun off in a seriocomic series of their own, created by “X” producers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban, and co-starring Zuleikha Robinson (“Hidalgo”) and Stephen Snedden (“Coyote Ugly”).
Despite the concern of some fans, the pilot of “The Lone Gunmen” is indeed part of the boxed set. This would seem like a no-brainer — until you realize that the central conspiracy in the episode involved the high-tech electronic hijacking of a commercial airliner with the intent of crashing it into the World Trade Center.
Although the episode was conceived and shot in 2000 and aired six months before the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the eerie coincidence sent shockwaves through cast and producers.
“I'll never forget that,” says Spotnitz, calling in from the set of the pilot for his remake of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” “That was such a disturbing thing. It was very upsetting. As I say in the DVD featurette, you write something like that, and you assume that if you can think of it, being a Hollywood writer, then somebody in the government has thought about it already." - Kansas City Star (03/21/05)



Chris Carter Says 9/11 Killed X-Files, But America is Ready for It Again

"...director Chris Carter, writer Frank Spotnitz, and stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny were in attendance. Here's what they had to say about X-Files and 9/11, as well as what it's been like to return to the story after all these years.

A fan asked asked about the X-Files and 9/11 controversy. (For those who don't know, the pilot episode of X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen is about a plot to crash a hijacked plane into the WTC.) Carter passed the question to Spotnitz, who said: 'We were really upset, and worried that somehow we had inspired the plot. But we were relieved to discover that the plot pre-dated The Lone Gunmen, and that 9/11 had nothing to do with our work. And then once we realized that, my next thought was how the government hadn't known about this plot. There have been a lot of conspiracy theories about the connection between 9/11 and The Lone Gunman, but none of them are true.'" - io9.com (02/23/08)



"Events further unravel to reveal that a secret government agency known as "The Overlords" is behind a plot to crash a fully loaded [727] into the World Trade Building. The Overlords plan to blame the crash on terrorists in an attempt to generate a bigger budget for military spending (of course)." - Wizard's Keep



The Lone Gunmen, Pilot
Fact Sheet
Episode 1AEB79 "Pilot"
Written by: JOHN SHIBAN, VINCE GILLIGAN & FRANK SPOTNITZ
Directed by: ROB BOWMAN
Filming Locations: NEW YORK CITY, NY & VANCOUVER, BC
Shooting from: March 20 - April 7, 2000 - The Lone Gunmen, un-official fan site



(See also: March 4, 2001 - The Lone Gunmen 'Pilot' episode airs on FOX TV; March 21, 2005 - Lone Gunmen co-producer hopes WTC attack wasn't 'somehow inspired' by anything they did; Killtown's: The Lone Gunmen's 'Pilot' Episode)



• May 25, 2000 - Unlike Airbus, Boeing lets aviator override fly-by-wire technology

Unlike Airbus, Boeing lets aviator override fly-by-wire technology

"Should pilots or a computer have the ultimate control authority over a commercial jetliner as the plane approaches its design limits in an emergency?
Airline passengers can't see it, but this is the most significant difference between Boeing and Airbus planes.
Dramatic advancements in technology have made it possible for planes built by either manufacturer to be flown by computers from shortly after takeoff through the landing.
But Airbus has taken a much different philosophical approach to using computers than its rival. The European airplane maker designed its new fly-by-wire jets such as the A320 with built-in hard limits, or "protections."
The Boeing Co., on the other hand, believes pilots should have the ultimate say. On Boeing jets, the pilot can override onboard computers and their built-in soft limits.
On all Airbus planes other than the older A300 and A310, computers prevent the pilot from putting the plane into a climb of more than 30 degrees where it might lose lift and stall. The maximum bank or roll allowed is 67 degrees. The plane's nose-down pitch is limited to 15 degrees. There are protections against overspeed.
And the computer won't allow the plane to make any extreme maneuvers that would exceed 2.5 times the force of gravity.
Though fly-by-wire was used on jet fighters and on the supersonic Concorde, the first Airbus plane with the technology was the A320, which entered service in 1988.
Fly by wire simply means that computers on the plane transmit the pilot inputs into electrical signals that are sent through wires to actuators that move the control surfaces.
On conventional planes, the flight-control surfaces are moved by hydraulic devices controlled by cables that run through the airplane.
Airbus also eliminated the wheel-and-control column, or yoke, that is used on all Boeing jets. Instead, Airbus pilots control the plane by moving a small, hand-held joystick off to the side.
The only Boeing plane with fly-by-wire technology is the 777." - Seattle Post-Intelligencer (03/20/00)


• May 25, 2000 - Taleban warns neighbors, Taleban would retaliate against Russia's allies, officials say - BBC (05/25/00)

• June 2000 - On the cover of the U.S. Department of Justice/National Sheriffs’ Association's Managing Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents: An Executive Level Program for Sheriffs participant manual, which is funded by the Office of Homeland Security, is a picture of the WTC with a gun scope's cross-hairs aimed at one of the towers.

"NSA through funding from the Office of Homeland Security, Office for Domestic preparedness, is conducting “Executive Level Training”, a 12-hour block of instruction which is open to the Sheriff and his Command Staff. These classes will provide a broad overview of the terrorist threat and address response strategies and safety." - National Sheriffs’ Association

See a full copy of it at: The Memory Hole

(Also see: August 1997 - FEMA Brochure.)

• July 2000 - Taliban bans the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been accused of being the main source of instability in Central Asia by experts attending an international conference on drugs and security in the region.
In July, the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar, issued an edict banning the cultivation of poppies." - BBC (10/19/00)

(See also: March 5, 2005 - Afghanistan opium production surges)

• September 2000 - Exactly one year before 9/11, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) advocates the build up of the U.S. military, but won't think it will happen unless the U.S. experiences a major catastrophic event such as a "new Pearl Harbor".

REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century

"To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs.
Moreover, the Pentagon, constrained by limited budgets and pressing current missions, has seen funding for experimentation and transformation crowded out in recent years. Spending on military research and development has been reduced dramatically over the past decade.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

I. Lewis Libby (Dechert Price & Rhoads), Paul Wolfowitz (Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University), Dov Zakheim (System Planning Corporation), William Kristol (The Weekly Standard)

" - PNAC (Pages 50-51; Sept. 2000) [HTML; Reprinted: manifestor.org] Homepage: Project for the New American Century

"...in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."
That event came on Sept. 11, 2001. By that time, Cheney was vice president, Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, and Wolfowitz his deputy at the Pentagon." - ABC (03/10/03) [Reprinted at: WayBack Machine]

"Like his father, Bush tries to keep a daily diary of his thoughts and observations. That night [9/11], he dictated: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." - Washington Post (01/27/02)

"This is the second Pearl Harbor. I don't think that I overstate it," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., referring to the attack 60 years ago that surprised the nation's intelligence apparatus and propelled the country into World War II." - The Post (09/11/01)

(See also: January 26, 1998 - PNAC sends President Clinton a letter recommending U.S. military action against Saddam Hussein; May 4, 2001 - Dov Zakheim is sworn in as Comptroller and CFO for the Department of Defense; June 27, 2001 - '02 defense budget request is a $37.8 billion or 11.5% increase over '01)