Did Channel 10 deliberately misinform the public about Sweetwater trustee John McCann's "patriotism"?

10News and Sweetwater's John McCann, True Patriots?
By Susan Luzzaro
Sept. 13, 2012

Many people believe a 10News report broadcast at 5 p.m. on September 12 deliberately misinformed the public.

On September 10, the Sweetwater Union High School District held a special meeting with an ambiguous agenda that suggested controversial interim superintendent Ed Brand would be awarded a contract. After several hours of deliberation, the board had nothing to report to the public.

Approximately 20 speakers addressed the board prior to the special closed-session meeting. When Kathleen Cheers, a community advocate, gave her speech to the board, she pointed out that the trustees had forgotten to do the pledge of allegiance. About 15 minutes later, board member John McCann requested a pledge of allegiance. The audience laughed.

“They were laughing at Mr. McCann’s opportunism,” said Cheers in a September 12 interview. 10News quoted Stewart Payne, a member of Occupy Sweetwater, explaining the laughter as well: "The moans and groans you hear aren't about the Pledge of Allegiance. They're about John McCann making it about himself again.”

Nevertheless, 10News told the story differently. “Disrespectful laughter at the flag and victims of 9/11,” said news anchor Kim Hunt, leading into the story. “10News has obtained an audio recording of a recent local school board meeting where the crowd appears to laugh at a request to say the pledge and a moment of silence for 9/11…. Joe Little tracked down the people in the audience to get their take on the audiotape,” said Hunt, perhaps inadvertently suggesting the tape’s provenance was dubious.

The newscast included a four-second audio clip of McCann’s request being met by laughter. Before introducing the sound bite, 10News reporter Joe Little told the TV audience, “During the meeting, trustee John McCann realized the board forgot to say the pledge of allegiance.” Joe Little was not in attendance at the meeting.

Whether or not 10News had a recording of the entire meeting — including Cheers’s comment about the pledge being forgotten prior to McCann’s request for the pledge — is unknown.

Payne, a Sweetwater parent and one of the five people who took corruption charges to the district attorney’s office, sent the following message to Joe Little upon viewing the report: “I have watched the [10News] story of the board meeting held at SUHSD on Monday. While I feel the story was fairly reported, it is based on inaccurate and misleading information…”... Payne, who is one of those accused of disrespecting the flag, rarely speaks of his military career. He served 21 years in the Marines, was in three combat zones, and retired as a sergeant major. Following the 10News report, late on September 12, Sweetwater board member Bertha Lopez phoned Little, requesting that he retract his story due to the erroneous context presented. She emailed him today to follow up. As of late afternoon September 13, Little had not responded to Lopez’s messages or two phone calls left by this reporter.

Evidence piles up that Bush administration got many pre-9-11 warnings

Evidence piles up that Bush administration got many pre-9-11 warnings
By Robert Windrem
NBC News
September 11, 2012

Video: Author Kurt Eichenwald talks about what the White House knew leading up to the attacks and how they used the intelligence information in the months after.

On the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, there is mounting evidence that the Bush administration received more intelligence warnings than previously known prior to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000. Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter, wrote in an op-ed piece in Tuesday’s newspaper about a number of previously unknown warnings relayed to the White House by U.S. intelligence in the weeks and months prior to the attacks.

Eichenwald wrote of the warnings in his new book, “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.”...

WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?

WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?
Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.
October 15, 2010
By Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic
Los Angeles Times

If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering.

The organization has drawn both high praise and searing criticism for its mission of publishing leaked documents without revealing their source, but we suspect the world hasn't yet fully seen its potential. Let us explain.

There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively. Lately, the two of us have been wondering how things might have been different if there had been a quick, confidential way to get information out.
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One of us, Coleen Rowley, was a special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division and worked closely with those who arrested would-be terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui on an immigration violation less than a month before the World Trade Center was destroyed.

Following up on a tip from flight school instructors who had become suspicious of the French Moroccan who claimed to want to fly a jet as an "ego boost," Special Agent Harry Samit and an INS colleague had detained Moussaoui. A foreign intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group, but FBI officials in Washington inexplicably turned down Samit's request for authority to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal effects.

Those same officials stonewalled Samit's supervisor, who pleaded with them in late August 2001 that he was "trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center." (Yes, he was that explicit.) Later, testifying at Moussaoui's trial, Samit testified that he believed the behavior of his FBI superiors in Washington constituted "criminal negligence."

The 9/11 Commission ultimately concluded that Moussaoui was most likely being primed as a Sept. 11 replacement pilot and that the hijackers probably would have postponed their strike if information about his arrest had been announced.

WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming indifference. They were indeed stuck in a perplexing, no-win ethical dilemma as time ticked away. Their bosses issued continual warnings against "talking to the media" and frowned on whistle-blowing, yet the agents felt a strong need to protect the public.

Bigot starts ground zero church: Where's the outrage?

UPDATE: Sep 3, 2010
Mosque foe hits extremist pastor's 9/11 Christian Center
By Justin Elliott
Salon.com

We're finally seeing one of the opponents of the so-called "ground zero mosque" speak out against the "9/11 Christian Center" that an extremist evangelical pastor is launching this weekend...

But the Daily News today has a story quoting mosque opponent Andy Sullivan speaking out against Keller. The twist is that Sullivan seems to object to the 9/11 Christian Center on primarily tactical grounds. Here's the passage:

Andy Sullivan, a leader in the movement to move Park51, said Keller's 9/11 Christian Center is "just what we do not need" near Ground Zero.

"This guy is going to justify all the people who call us bigots and racists for opposing the mosque," he said.


Still no word on Keller's project from the Anti-Defamation League...


Aug 30, 2010
Bigot starts ground zero church: Where's the outrage?
By Justin Elliott
Salon.com

A bigoted pastor who has assailed gays and Muslims is launching the "9-11 Christian Center at Ground Zero" a mere two blocks from the World Trade Center site this Sunday, but so far the project hasn't drawn a peep of protest from those who are outraged by the "ground zero mosque."...And in 2008, he targeted presidential contender Mitt Romney for being Mormon with a campaign called "voting for Satan."...

Glenn Beck Finally Gets Around To Denouncing Bruce Springsteen

Glenn Beck Finally Gets Around To Denouncing Bruce Springsteen
Jason Linkins
Huffington Post
03-12-10

You wouldn't think this was possible, but Glenn Beck had apparently never actually sat down and listened to Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA," never heard the lyrics, never formed a familiarity with the song's storied history in American politics, until this week, I guess? Anyway, now that he's heard that the song isn't some glorious tongue-bath to American exceptionalism, he's denouncing it on the radio. Per Lindsay Beyerstein:

Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen's hit song, "Born in The USA," conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around to listening to the lyrics.


Beck was shocked, shocked to discover that for all these years he'd been rocking out to a song about a bitter down-and-out Vietnam vet who has been kicked to the curb by the aforementioned USA.

Via Spencer Ackerman, here's what Beck had to say about it:

BECK: You get filled with patriotic pride, and then you find out that Bruce Springsteen's 'Born In The U.S.A.' is anti-American. 'Born down in a dead man's town/ the first kick I took is when I hit the ground/ you end up like a dog that's been beat too much/ so you spend half your life just covering up...' [He reads the entire lyrics in an incredulous tone of voice; manages to mispronounce 'Khe Sanh'] Hmm. Yeah! [crosstalk] ... It's time for us to wake up out of our dream state. Out of the propaganda... This is the thing that people who come from the Soviet bloc or Cuba, they're all saying, 'How do you guys not hear this? How are you not seeing this?' Well, because we don't ever expect it.

All of this gives me the opportunity to bring up one thing that's always puzzled me about Beck: his love of the band Muse. Beck follows Muse on Twitter, and he took the stage at CPAC to the tune of their recent hit, "Uprising." Here's the video, you can hear the song pretty clearly:

Don't get me wrong, Muse is awesome. But what's weird about Beck's embrace of Muse is that their lead singer, Matthew Bellamy, is a 9/11 "Truther."

From Spin, Magazine: August, 2009:

...On 9/11: "There is evidence that suggests the powers that be knew of the attacks beforehand and let them happen. There's a video on YouTube called Loose Change that explains it."

I hate to take Bellamy's "curiosity as evidence of belief," but he's been talking up 9/11 as an "inside job" for a long time.

Music is just music. But Beck very recently torched Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina for espousing these same "Truther" beliefs, so it's sort of funny to see him making allowances for Muse, while assailing The Boss for being un-American for that time he thought we should take better care of our veterans.

Republican says U.S. might have contributed to collapse of World Trade Center buildings

Maybe this is what Debra Medina was talking about? Bizarre announcement of WTC 7 collapse while the building was still standing. How did they know it was going to collapse? I remember on September 11, 2001 hearing a reporter say that they were getting people away from building 7 because there was a "bomb" in it and it was going to collapse.

Texas Republican Debra Medina clearly states that the U.S. had nothing to do with the planning and execution of the airplane collisions with the World Trade Center in September 2001. "There is no doubt in my mind that Muslim terrorists flew planes into those buildings on 9/11. I have not seen any evidence nor have I ever believed that our government was involved or directed those individuals in any way." Medina suspects, however, that the dramatic collapse of the buildings, a phenomenon never before seen in a skyscraper fire, might have been designed by someone with foreknowledge of the attacks. Motive? To inflame public opinion to support a war against Iraq.

Texas gov. candidate questions any US role in 9/11
By APRIL CASTRO
02.11.10
Associated Press
...Debra Medina on the Glenn Beck Show that there were "some very good arguments" that the U.S. was involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001..."I don't have all of the evidence there, Glenn," Medina said. "I think some very good questions have been raised. In that regard there's some very good arguments and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there."...


See also: http://learningboosters.blogspot.com/2009/06/california-high-school-physics-teacher.html

At last the 9/11 Commission can get a look at the evidence in the World Trade Center attack

See all posts on WTC collapse.

For some unknown reason, President George Bush ordered the steel from the World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on September 11, 2001 to be immediately sent to China for recycling. Obviously, the evidence of the collapse couldn't be studied at that time, but we can all go look at it now that it's been turned into a ship.


USS New York comes to life; ship born of 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel
BY Stephanie Gaskell
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
November 7th 2009

The USS New York is seen during its commissioning on November 7, 2009 at Piers 86 and 88 in New York City.
Loccisano/Getty

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stands with sailors and Marines at the commissioning of the USS New York.


* Articles
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* Get the details on the Yankee parade in Manhattan
* President Obama OKs extension of unemployment benefits, first-time homebuyers tax breaks
* Gov. Paterson defends pricey trips abroad if they can help bring jobs to NY
* No satisfaction for Paterson in Bam's heat over election losses
*

The New York came to life Saturday, becoming the Navy's newest warship - and a proud symbol of fortitude.

The $1 billion amphibious transport dock carries 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center in her bow stem.

"The New York will be a visible testament to our resilience," said Navy Secretary Ray Mabus as the first watch was set and hundreds of sailors and Marines ran onto the decks of the ship, a tradition signaling the official commissioning of the vessel.

Cmdr. Curt Jones, a native New Yorker, took command during an emotional ceremony at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum attended by more than 6,000 people, including Secretary of State Clinton, Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg.

"There is a lot of emotion that is associated with this ship for all of us," Jones said. "The steel that is in the bow of the ship, that motivates us literally every day in what we do."

The ship, which has a crew of about 360 sailors, will be docked at Pier 88 until Thursday, when it heads to its home port at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia.

"This ship has been the product of a lot of hard work," Paterson said. "It is not just named the New York - it IS New York."

Clinton said the New York will help the nation heal, more than eight years after the World Trade Center attack.

"In that steel, burned but unbroken, lives the spirit we saw on 9-11," she said. "Sometimes our pain can lead us to purpose."

Mike Petters is the president of Northrop Grumman, which built the ship in Avondale, La.

"We needed this ship," Petters said. "New York needed this ship. And America needed this ship."

For Carl Scheetz, a firefighter with Rescue 1 in Hell's Kitchen, the ship is a reminder of the city's strength.

"To me it's a show of resiliency to the whole tragedy that happened," he said. "The crew members are great. I met a Marine and went to say 'Thank you' to him. He said, 'No, sir, thank you very much.' "We have a lot in common," Scheetz said.

Green jobs czar resigns after saying George Bush knew ahead of time about 9-11 World Trade Center attack

See all posts on WTC collapse.

Obama did not order Van Jones' resignation, adviser says
September 6, 2009
CNN

The resignation of Obama administration figure Van Jones, following controversies over a petition he had signed and his comments about Republicans, did not come at the request of the president, the White House senior adviser said Sunday.

"Absolutely not -- this was Van Jones' own decision," David Axelrod told NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked if the president had ordered the resignation.

The chairman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, had called for Jones to resign or be fired...

Jones has frequently been dubbed a "green-jobs czar" for the administration.

In a statement Saturday night, the White House said Jones was giving up his post at the Council on Environmental Quality, where he helped coordinate government agencies focused on delivering millions of green jobs to the ailing U.S. economy.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in the statement. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."...

The decision followed an uproar over a petition Jones signed in 2004 calling for an investigation into whether government officials deliberately allowed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to occur...

9/11 widow: Do I really want the truth?

See all posts on WTC collapse.

9/11 widow: Do I really want the truth?
My husband jumped from the towers eight years ago. At least, that's what I always thought happened
By Alissa Torres
Salon.com
Sept. 11, 2009

...My husband died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, on his second day of work at the brokerage company Cantor Fitzgerald. I was pregnant with our son. In the days and months that followed, I worked tirelessly to find out the rest of what happened...

The afternoon of the attack, I gathered in a makeshift 9/11 Family Center nearby St. Vincent's Hospital with other shocked families from my husband's work. We shared rumors and truths cobbled together from what we had, which was not much. Before I left that night, I posted a note on the wall: "To give/get information, please call …"

My phone rang all night, every call from a desperate person looking for answers, too.

In those days, the search for answers gave me a sense of purpose, an organizing principle in a life turned chaotic. I have watched this churning need in other trauma victims since then...

By the end of September, Eddie's body did surface, but no, the funeral director told me, I couldn't see it. I had a death certificate, and although I read it again and again, I couldn't understand it. "Multiple blunt trauma to head, torso and extremities," it read.

That meant Eddie jumped, right?...