Flight 93 Photo Fraud

Flight93photo.blogspot.com

2020-12-31T22:17:00.000-08:00

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HOLY CRAP!: Shanksville resident says
the plume photo is fake because the original
"didn't have a mushroom cloud"!!!

This blog is dedicated in finding out if the smoke plume in Val McClatchey's infamous "End of Serenity" photo is from an explosion originating from a different location than the alleged crash spot of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa which would prove the official story is a fraud, or if her photo itself is a fraud.

Start by reading my original article about the story behind her photo:

Val McClatchey Photo:
More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud?

(Updated: 03/29/08)

Plume analysis only

(Updated: 03/29/07)

See also: Val's Plume vs. WTC 2 explosion plume

(The above article will constantly be updated when new evidence emerges. Blogposts below will be of related evidence and/or updates to the above article.)

"McClatchey ready to put disputed photograph in the past" - Daily American

2011-09-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Comments about this article below.

McClatchey ready to put disputed photograph in the past

September 9, 2011

Val McClatchey stands with Phyllis Musser, left, while holding McClatchey's photo titled, "End of Serenity." Musser owns the red barn captured in the photo.

Life changed in a single camera click on Sept. 11, 2001, for Somerset County resident Val McClatchey.

McClatchey’s infamous photo captured a mushroom cloud from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 rising above a red barn and the rural Western Pennsylvania landscape. For nearly 10 years McClatchey’s photo, which she titled “End of Serenity,” was the earliest known image captured following the crash, until a video surfaced earlier this week.

The video, taken by the late Dave Berkebile, of Berlin, shows a cloud of smoke rising from the crash site. McClatchey herself had known about the video, and even had a copy, since the 5th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I had a message from my husband saying, ‘you’re not going to believe this,’” McClatchey said. She said Berkebile gave her the video when he heard the authenticity of her photo was being criticized.

“He said, here’s your proof,” McClatchey said. The video was kept private until McClatchey gave it to the National Park Service for an oral history leading into the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. She donated it on behalf of Berkebile who died in February.

For McClatchey, the video lends further credibility to her photo. The photo, time stamped at 10:05 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001, and shot on her Hewlett-Packard 315 point-and-shoot, has been a subject of controversy since it was taken.

During the years, conspiracy theorists and bloggers have shown up on her doorstep harassing her, and bloggers have smeared her name on the Internet.

“Google my name and I’m a fraud,” she said.

McClatchey holds a copyright on the photo, prohibiting its use. She’s written complaints to Google asking that they remove her photo from Internet sites, but those complaints have come to no avail.

“I provided documentation and proof that (Internet sites) violated the terms of use of the copyright,” she said. “But who am I to take on Google?”

McClatchey was also involved in a lengthy lawsuit with the Associated Press over their use of the photo. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement.

“The result of the lawsuit was anything but a success,” she said. “When all was said and done, we were in the red.”

McClatchey describes the photo as a mixed blessing. She admitted that there have been times when she wishes she hadn’t taken it.

“I was meant to do it for a reason, even if I don’t know that reason yet,” she said. “I’ve had some great experiences.”

Her photo hangs in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and will soon hang at the Flight 93 National Memorial. After the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, this weekend, McClatchey said she’s looking forward to moving on.

“Everything’s going to be packed up and put away,” she said. “It’ll be pretty much over.”

She does plan to make one more public appearance, however, in 2012. Her photo will be displayed at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.

http://www.dailyamerican.com/da-ot-mcclatchey-ready-to-put-disputed-photograph-in-the-past-20110909,0,3182174.story

First, notice the vast difference in quality of the photo taken by the DailyAmerican reporter versus Val's photo taken with a 10 yr old HP 315 point-and-shoot digital camera.

See here about the suspicions of the newly released Dave Berkebile video that supposedly vindicates Val's photo.

It says the timestamp on her photo is at 10:05 am. Officials are saying Val took her photo approx 5 seconds after the alleged Flight 93 impact. I wouldn't make too much of this since times on a camera are input manually, so a camera's internal time could easily be off due to human error.

Now here's where it gets into some very misleading statements. No one I've heard has "shown up on her doorstep" regarding her photo controversy. The only people I know who meet her in person were Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani, who called and made arrangements with Val to meet with her at her business, in which they said Val was all to willing to meet and discuss her photo with them. At the time of this arranged meeting, Victor and Lisa assumed the photo was real, but thought Val had accidentally taken a photo of an ordnance blast instead and that's what they wanted to discuss with her. They said Val's demeanor turned sour and hostile after this.

About "smearing her name on the internet," is questioning someone's photo smearing the photographer's name? As to Val saying google her name and it says she's a fraud, go ahead and do that and decide for yourself if it says that. In the first mainstream article by the PostGazette that reported about her photo controversy, the yellow journalist reporter made it look like I was calling her a fraud by saying the following in the article: "On a simple Google search, Mrs. McClatchey's name now pops up in the same sentence as 'total fraud.'" Let me remind everyone what the title of my original photo controversy blogpost said: "Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud?" They all seem to forget the word "photo" was in my title.

The thing about Val claiming she was in the red after her AP lawsuit, just like her claim that all her profits from her photo sales were forwarded to the now-defunct Todd Beamer Foundation via the honor system, we only have Val's word to go by because there has never been a paper trail. Open your books, Val!

"Stonycreek Twp. Residents Forever Linked To 9/11" - KDKA Pittsburgh

2011-09-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

(My transcripting in brackets.)

Stonycreek Twp. Residents Forever Linked To 9/11

September 8, 2011

[Two-thirds of the plane had buried itself in the ground, or disintegrated on impact.
~
"I caught a really quick glimpse of -- sun reflecting off of metal and then the explosion. And it was so forceful that it almost knocked me off my sofa. And I jumped and grabbed my camera and went out to the front deck and saw the smoke rising over the hill," Val McClatchey says.]

Val McClatchey’s photo of the mushroom cloud which she titled “End of Serenity” is going to be included in the Ground Zero Memorial in New York.

“It’s going to be six-foot-by-nine-foot, and that’s amazing one picture,” McClatchey says.

[Val has spent a decade defending her photo against those who claim it's a fake.

"There's a lot of bad people out there," McClatchey says.

But then one day vindication arrived at her door. A man from Berlin, a hilltop away, arrived with a videotape he shot moments after Val snapped her one famous frame. He never went public with this tape, but wanted her to have it as proof. She shared it was us for the first time.]

She and her husband are trying to sell their home on the banks of Indian Lake, but she’s certain people will continue to seek out the house just as they have for the past 10 years arriving unannounced.

“They just pull in, walk up on the front porch, and snap a couple pictures of their own,” she says.

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2011/09/08/stonycreek-twp-residents-forever-linked-to-911/

Apparently you're "bad" if you question a photo.

Notice the "inaccuracy" saying Dave Berkenbile never went public with his video. Other articles say he tried, but the media supposedly wasn't interested in it. Val first showed this video to a small group of people in 2007.

'Vindication' smoke cloud video finally surfaces

2011-09-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

Back in 2007, Val McClatchey had reportedly showed an amateur video taken from Berlin, PA to a group at the 2007 Shanksville memorial reunion that supposedly showed the aftermath of the alleged Flight 93 crash explosion and, thereby, "vindicating" her infamous "End of Serenity" smoke cloud photo.

Ten years after 9/11, this video has finally surfaced:

Flight 93 crash site video surfaces
September 3, 2011
SHANKSVILLE — As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, a video shot just minutes after the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 has surfaced.
While the video does not show the moment of impact, it clearly shows a mushroom cloud rising from the site of the crash at an abandoned strip mine near Shanksville.
The voice of Berlin resident Dave Berkebile, now deceased, can be heard speaking calmly in the background.
“This is the remains of an airplane crash over on Lambertsville Road,” he said. “Probably a terrorist bomb on board that blew up.”
Dave Berkebile, now deceased, who shot video of the Flight 93 crash scene, is shown with his wife, Cathy.
Berkebile said the crash “shook the heck out of the house ... A great, big, black cloud just mushroomed right up into the air.”
Then he added: “I wonder if there is anything left of Lambertsville.”

Val McClatchy of Indian Lake, who took the first known photo of the Flight 93 crash, watches a video shot moments after the crash.
Donna Glessner, who is collecting oral histories for the National Park Service, saw the video and said she believes it is the earliest known video of the crash.
“I thought it was just a very important historic piece,” she said.
“No one else has a video of that smoke cloud.”At the time of the crash, Berkebile and his wife, Cathy, lived on Blue Bird Road.
Although he passed away in February, his wife, who has since moved out of the state, spoke about events that day.She said a video camera was kept at easy access to shoot vistas from their home, which was situated on 40 acres.
“My family lives in the city,” she said. “They had never seen the mountains. Up there on my mountain are the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Also snowstorms.
“So I kept the video camera all charged up so I could go out and shoot anything gorgeous to show my family.”
Berkebile said their initial thought when they heard the explosion was that it was dynamite.
Although the distance between their home and the crash site is 8 miles by road, it is just 2 1/2 miles by air and Berkebile said they had an unobstructed view of the skies above the crash site.
“Everything was totally visible and he had the presence of mind to grab (the video camera) and go running out the door with it.”

http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x1095936052/Flight-93-crash-site-video-surfaces

Note that a comment left by Dave's sister in the article's comment section says the actually street location that the footage was taken at in Berlin, PA was Bluebird Lane, not Blue Bird Road:

Diane Deist wrote:
Hello, I am Dave Berkebile's sister. Our two homes are the only ones on Bluebird Lane. I saw it was listed as Blue Bird Road in my morning paper. Yes, that was an exciting morning, When my home shook from the impact, I immediately called Dave and asked him if his house shook, He said yes, 'What was that?' I said it must have been an earthquake! Then he saw the smoke to the NW and said'Look out your big window!' I turned on my scanner and heard a large plane went down in Lambertsville, when he heard this he said'I'm going to see.' I left right after for the Shanksville School where I had two grandchildren enrolled. When Dave returned, he said all he saw was a big hole in the ground. Thank you .
September 4, 2011, 7:43 PM

The article also says that the distance between the Berkebile's house and the crater is 2 1/2 miles by air, but according to Google Earth, the distance is about 5.8 miles.

Let's analyze the Dave Berkebile video. It shows the following:

- a large trailing grey-colored smoke cloud
- looks to be originating where the crash supposedly happened
- smoke trail looks to be drifting east toward Bedford

On the surface, the video does look consistent with Val's photo and the official story, so this should be enough to vindicate Val McClatchey's mushroom cloud photo, right?

Well not so fast.

I think everyone's first and immediate question about this video is why did it take 10 years for this video to surface? Well get this:

“No one else has a video of that smoke cloud,” said Glessner. “As far as I know it has not been shown or broadcast anywhere.”
~
The video will be available at the crash scene’s Flight 93 National Memorial, which is being dedicated Saturday as part of the 10th anniversary remembrance of 9/11.

Berkebile’s wife, Cathy, said her husband initially offered to show the video to news outlets covering the Flight 93 story, but no one was interested in looking at it.

What? The media back then weren't interested in looking at a video of major historically significance??? Now that one is just a little too hard to swallow.

Reminds me of another::

Val McClatchey snapped the single picture with her new digital camera.
~
"I didn't even aim. I was just like, 'Oh, my God,' " she said. She dropped the camera, jolting the battery loose, then tried in vain to call her husband, son and daughter.

Next, you would think that this video was released by Mr. Berkebile’s wife, or other family member. Nope. Guess who of all people?

Five years ago, [Mr. Berkebile] gave the 1 minute, 38-second video to Val McClatchey, the woman who shot the only still photograph of Flight 93’s haunting, skyward aftermath.

McClatchey recently donated the video to the National Park Service for an oral history of 9/11.

The reason Mr. Berkebile allegedly gave it to Val was . . . because of me:

McClatchey recently donated the video to the National Park Service for an oral history of 9/11. She had endured years of harassment from conspiracy theorists who believe Flight 93 was shot down by U.S. military jets and that her photo was a fake.
~
So, she added, he kept it to himself until he read in the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune-Democrat about the conspiracy controversy surrounding McClatchey’s photo. That’s when he decided to give her the video to validate her mushroom cloud picture, dubbed “End of Serenity.”

“We never considered it might be important (until then),” said Mrs. Berkebile.

They never considered it might be important until then??? Did they not know they had the only alleged video of the smoke cloud? Apparently they did when earlier in the article Mrs. Berkebile said her husband initially tried to bring it to the attention of the media.

(Correcting the article, "we" don't think Flight 93 was shoot down. We think it didn't crash and the scene was staged.)

There are some points about this video that are suspicious:

- Mr. Berkebile supposedly filmed this about 6 miles away. The large smoke trail should have been able to be seen from at least double that distance, yet Val McClatchey and Dave Berkebile were supposedly the only ones who filmed the smoke cloud within a 12-mile radius.

- The Berkebile's supposedly went to the "crash" scene immediately after Mr. Berkebile shot the video. He forgot the take his camcorder with him???

- We can't question Mr. Berkebile about his video because he "died suddenly" earlier this year in February and it doesn't help that he was a lifetime member of a Mason lodge.

We also must question how could a large smoke cloud even form at all and I'm not talking about because I think no plane crashed there, but even according to the official Flight 93 crash story?!

The way Flight 93 supposedly crashed was when it was on its side, or upside down (which ever official version you choose to believe), its wingtip hit first causing the 757 to begin to cartwheel. The plane's front end slammed down on the ground next causing the cockpit section to "break off" and shatter into the woods and field. The rest of the plane on back (one quote claiming 80%) then buried deep into the ground.

The ground was reportedly still "loose and uncompacted" and immediately fell back in on itself, affectively self-sealing the hole and plane:

- "The plane had pierced the earth like a spoon in a cup of coffee: the spoon forced the coffee back, and then the coffee immediately closed around the spoon as though nothing had troubled the surface. Anything that remained of Flight 93 was buried deep in the ground." - Lisa Beamer

- The cockpit and first class shattered like the point of a pencil, and remnants sprayed into a line of hemlock pine trees. The fuselage accordioned on itself more than thirty feet into the porous, backfilled ground. It was as if a marble had been dropped into water. - Author Jere Longman

- Veteran FBI agent Michael Soohy had been to airplane crash scenes before, and he thought he knew what to expect: chaos, bodies, a hulking wreck of a jet.
"I don't think anyone expected to see what they didn't see," said the 50-year-old who grew up near Johnstown. "It's almost like a dart hitting a pile of flour. ... The plane went in, and the stuff back-filled right over it."

And the 757 supposedly went in the ground so fast it didn’t have a chance to burn.

And never mind that the grassy field that hardly shows any signs of fire damage:

(See more "crash" scene photos here.)

And as that small section of forest that got fire damaged, the part of the plane that would have caused this was the snapped off cockpit section and I don't know what's in a 757's front end that would even cause an explosion.

There are also witnesses who seem to contradict that there was a large smoke cloud:

- Larry Williams, a retired Pa. State Trooper, was playing golf about 9 miles away from the crater when he saw a commercial airliner fly by and bank on its side until it dipped below the skyline. In his interview, he never mentions hearing an explosion, seeing a fireball or even a smoke trail.

- Paula Long: “I never saw that smoke,” Paula Long, an eyewitness, told AFP. Long ran “immediately” after hearing the crash but did not see the cloud of smoke caught in the now-famous photograph by Valencia McClatchey, she said.

- Unidentified female witness: "...and it was fairly low. It wasn't treetop low, but it was lower than it should have been. And like I said it was cocked like it had been turning to the left. And, just in a nose dive position once it cleared the tree tops I couldn't see it no more. And then when I got out to [Hwy] 30 is when I seen the big puff of smoke, and-- I even had thought to myself that there should have been more smoke than that whenever it crashed cause the jet was extremely big."

And don't forgot the explosive phone call to witness Kelly Leverknight:

Jeff: Val McClatchey... she has a famous photo.
Ms. Leverknight: It was a fake photo, because it didn't have a mushroom cloud.
Jeff: It what?
Ms. Leverknight: There was no mushroom cloud.
Jeff: So it was a fake photo?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Her photo's faked?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: For what? For money?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Why, do you know that for sure?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah!

And lastly, the color of the smoke plumes in both the Val McClatchey photo and Dave Berkebile video are reminiscent of grey-colored ordnance blasts, not black-colored jet fuel fires.

I don't know about you, but I'm declaring shenanigans on this video.

Retired trooper saw 'Flight 93' fall, never mentions explosion or smoke trail

2011-09-05T01:45:00.000-07:00

This is an eyewitness account by retired Pa. State Trooper, Larry Williams. He was playing golf the morning of 9/11 at the Oakbrook Golf Course in Jenners, PA, about 9.25 miles NW of the crater according to GoogleEarth.

He talks about how he heard and saw a commercial plane, being able to see the windows on the side, then seeing the plane nose-up, then bank on to its side before he lost it over the skyline.

After, he and his golf buddies speculated if it was in trouble and wondered if it had landed at the small airport in Indian Lake. Finishing his round, he saw police emergency vehicles going East on Rt 30, then saw a state police helicopter fly by.

When he was back at the parking lot, his friends came out of the Club House and told him that plane had crashed in Shanksville.

At no time in the interview did Mr. Williams mention hearing an explosion, seeing a fireball, or any resulting smoke trail.

"The road from 9/11: Shanksville, Pa.: The serenity we lost" - StarTribune

2011-08-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

(Snippet. Emphasis mine. Commentary below.)

The road from 9/11: Shanksville, Pa.: The serenity we lost

Article by: CURT BROWN , Star Tribune | Updated: August 31, 2011 - 10:56 PM

A twist of fate ends the serenity in rolling Pennsylvania hills.

Val McClatchey, a real estate agent who lives about 1.6 miles from the Shanksville crash site, held a photo she took from her front porch 10 years ago.

STOYSTOWN, PA. -- "Right here is where she went over," says Maluchnick, 55, a retired cop in Stoystown, population 385. "It was going so fast, all I caught was the tail. It was flying way too low and I told Ralph: If he doesn't elevate and get his nose up. ... Then we heard the boom and seen the smoke about three seconds later."

~

'End of serenity'

McClatchey is president of the Keystone Camaro Club, so she usually has her Hewlett-Packard 315 point-and-shoot camera handy for car shows. It was sitting on her coffee table at 10:05 a.m. that morning 10 years ago, as she watched the "Today Show" at her house on Indian Lake, a filled-in strip mine.

"Then I heard a surge of an engine and, man, was it loud," she says.

The explosion a couple miles west nearly knocked her off the couch. She instinctively stepped out on the porch and took one shot of a massive plume of gray smoke filling the sky next to her neighbor's red barn. Then she dropped the camera and the battery fell out.

Her photo instantly popped up in newspapers, websites and magazines around the world. She hired a lawyer to copyright her image, which she titled "End of Serenity."

"Another blink of an eye and it would have hit the Shanksville school and all those kids would be gone," she says. "After a while, it gets overwhelming just to think about it."

Ten years later, as grandchildren play in the driveway and an American flag flutters on her porch, McClatchey says she's had enough. She's trying to sell her acre on Indian Lake after 25 years. It's not going well. With the economy sputtering, McClatchey says the market "stinks."

Her famous photo, which sells for $20 at a nearby general store, "has been a blessing and a cure," she says.

Conspiracy theorists hound her on the Internet and even come to her door, claiming she faked the shot. She's burned through five lawyers, trying to protect her copyright. The FBI confiscated her camera immediately and she had to leap through all kinds of hoops to get it back. She keeps the memory card in a safe deposit box.

http://www.startribune.com/local/128842558.html

This article confirms that Val's digital camera was an HP 315 that we had identified back in Oct '06. We also showed that this camera has four AA batteries, not one battery which this article and the Post-Gazette article before it implies it did when describing how Val supposedly dropped her camera after the single shot and the "battery" dislodged. Notice the article also says she usually had this camera handy for her car shows, which seems to suggest this camera wasn't that new, though it could mean she just had her new month-old camera handy for upcoming car shows.

Note that the article says she burned through "five lawyers" trying to protect her copyright. Sounds expensive for someone who was supposedly donating all the proceeds from her photo to charity. It's also the first time we've heard that Val supposedly had trouble getting her confiscated camera's memory card back from the FBI.

Chardon Middle School students capturing Flight 93/Sept. 11 stories for oral history project - The News-Herald

2011-03-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

Chardon Middle School students capturing Flight 93/Sept. 11 stories for oral history project

Published: Sunday, March 27, 2011
By Rachel Jackson

Few circumstances develop the way we would expect.

For Val McClatchey of Indian Lake, Pa., a simple interest in a certain make of automobile has led to a number of twists in her life's path she could never have anticipated a decade ago.

As a real estate agent and member of the North Eastern Ohio Camaro Club in August 2001, she replaced a series of disposable cameras with a digital camera for snapping images at car shows. Less than a month later, that camera happened to be sitting by her front door when a plane crashed in a field not far from her home. Acting on instinct more than conscious thought, she grabbed the camera, ran onto the porch and snapped a photo.

That photo was the first picture to be taken of the crash of Flight 93, a photo that permanently altered her life.

Jeff Forman/JForman@News-Herald.com
Val McClatchey shows a copy of the photo she took of the smoke from the crash of Flight 93 from her front porch in Indian Lake, Pa. McClatchey came to Chardon Middle School Friday to share her 9/11 experiences with the students.

A decade later, the NEOCC connection came full circle for McClatchey. A fellow club member had seen a public notice asking for memories of the Sept. 11 tragedies from those with local connections. That club member told McClatchey, who then contacted Tim Bowens, a Chardon Middle School teacher with a long history of working to keep the Flight 93 memories alive.

McClatchey visited the school Friday to share her experiences and the now-famous photo with sixth-graders working on an oral history project.

She thought she had become numb to the experiences of that day through a decade of retelling them, but found that sharing them with a pair of Chardon sixth-graders helped bring the experiences back to her in a fresh way.
~
The interviews were captured on video and will be combined with live portrayals and readings by students in a special presentation at Geauga Theater in May, said Kristan Rothman of Young Audiences.
~
In June, Bowens' students will make the annual sixth-grade pilgrimage to Pennsylvania, to the Flight 93 memorial.

"I'll be there to greet them in Shanksville," McClatchey said.

http://news-herald.com/articles/2011/03/27/news/nh3811717.txt?viewmode=fullstory

The reporter should have said why Val's camera "happened" to be sitting by her front door; she was supposedly anticipating a helicopter fly-over the morning of 9/11.

Witness: There should have been more smoke

2011-03-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

WITNESS: ...and it was fairly low. It wasn't treetop low, but it was lower than it should have been. And like I said it was cocked like it had been turning to the left. And, just in a nose dive position once it cleared the tree tops I couldn't see it no more. And then when I got out to [Hwy] 30 is when I seen the big puff of smoke, and-- I even had thought to myself that there should have been more smoke than that whenever it crashed cause the jet was extremely big. But, you know-- even when I was telling the dentist about it he thought I was talkin' commercial-- er-- you know a small aircraft that would be a personal airplane. And I said no it was-- it was a big one.

ANDY BRIGGS (KDKA): Did you HEAR something? You say you just saw the smoke.

WITNESS: No, I didn't. And I even-- I stopped in the road. And, you know, cause I had to take a second to realize what I had seen. And I had tried calling my mom on my cell phone, and I couldn't get a hold of her..

More evidence that the 'End of Serenity' photo, with the massive smoke plume seen in it, is a fraud.

Hat tip to Ligon.

Anti-conspiracist removes fake photo accusation on Wikipedia's Flight 93 article

2010-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Talk:United Airlines Flight 93

Verifiability

"Val McClatchey had been watching footage of the attacks when she heard the plane. She saw it briefly, then heard the impact. The crash knocked out the electricity and phones. McClatchey grabbed her camera and took the only known picture of the smoke cloud from the explosion.[64][65] Conspiracy theorists have accused her of manufacturing the photograph.[66]"

The mention of Val McClatchey's photo is unnecessary and the claim that it is fake is difficult to verify. Searching her name seems only to turn up conspiracy theorists' websites. I think that the last quoted sentence should be removed. It is distracting from the rest of the article content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.93.56 (talk) 05:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I removed it, this page is no place for wacko conspiracy claims. The FBI, and various other agencies have examined the photo and verified it's authenticity. Supertheman (talk) 05:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Revision as of 05:46, 20 August 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org

The 'End of Serenity' of a certain picture

2009-07-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

The following analysis is from rSpieker found at CIT forum. I've corrected some spelling and formated his hyperlinks.

-------------------------

The "End of Serenity" of a certain picture

by rSpieker

Most of you will know the famous ©opyrighted picture of Val McClatchey showing a mushroom cloud over the "crash-site" allegedly seconds after the crash of UA 93.

For an overview see the following pictures of an analysis provided from rumpl4skn.

Note that in the pictures above the cloud fits perfect between the red an white barn. We will use them later as reference points for the diameter of the cloud. And please note that the shape of the cloud is quite sharp and clear.

Quote Val McClatchey:

"It turns out to be the very first photo taken related. It’s -- timed it out -- it was approximately 5 seconds after impact that I snapped the photo."

There are a lot of serious doubts e.g. from killtown, rumpl4skn, and terrorcell that this photo is true e.g. at:
Flight93photo.blogspot.com and plume-analysis

...I found some more aspects to endorse the impossibility of this picture.

These are especially:

- the terrain between Val McClatchey and the "crash"-site
- the diameter of the cloud,
- how "old" the cloud must be,
- the influence of wind and turbulences.

When we draw a profile of elevation between the "crash"-site and Val's POV then we get this:

Note that the hilltop at 1.2 miles determines her horizon. ( I ignore the trees at this point)
With a little geometry we´ll find that the top(!) of the cloud has to climb at least 380ft agl to come in sight.

If we put the things together then we get the next picture:

Note that our POV is about 40ft higher than that of Vals camera.

Distance to the cloud is about 1.4 miles.
View is to the west, the blue line indicates the direction of wind from NW to SE, windspeed at that day was 9-12 mph means Beaufort 3.

If we follow the horizontal angle over the red and white barn to the "crash"-site then we can calculate the diameter of the cloud to be at least 1,900 ft (indicated by the thick red horizontal line, a little bit hidden by "c")

I've put the center of the plume to an altitude 700 agl which is obviously too low. To get the complete cloud in our view it has to climb 380ft for the skyline plus 1,900 ft for the diameter = 2,280ft agl ! ("crater" is agl zero!)

The center of the clouds "chimney" is in a distance of about 970ft from the "crater" (indicated by paddle "C")

For the horizontal movement of the chimney at 9-12mph we need between 55 and 73 seconds to come in position.

For the vertical climb I tried to clock the expansion rates of the wtc2 fireball, result about 35ft/sec in the very first seconds means we need 65 seconds for Val's cloud.

A research for the climb rates of stratospheric balloons gave me values between 10 and max 50ft/sec.

So if we want to believe at this point that this mushroom cloud existed, then we have to accept that it is at least 1 minute old (the "crash" being t=0 in this example).

To be fair subtract the 8 seconds the explosion-sound needed to travel to Val. 52(!) seconds is another dimension than her claim that it had been only 5 seconds.

And the cloud is long time disconnected from the "crater"!
But a strong source of energy and smoke is absolutely necessary to conserve a constant climb rate and the clear shape of the cloud.

See yourself in the videos and pictures from the WTC and the Pentagon how the smoke-plume develops ans fades!

A 21-sec video showing the shockwave and typical black smoke cloud from a detonation of 350lb of pure TNT you can see here.

Note: When the energy is gone the clear shape of the cloud fades away.

This is due to the natural turbulence of the air even at very low windspeeds.
(Did you ever see snowflakes dancing in the air?)

Most people aren't aware of it but there are more than 1,000 micro-gusts per hour.

Source: Lecture "Properties of turbulence" , pages 3 and 4.

Now see that even a smooth movement of a human body results in chaotic motion of the air (52 secs).

What we didn't take into account at this point is the additional strong turbulence caused by thermals.

Aviation experts define turbulence as random, unpredictable motion that occurs at the boundary between layers of air moving at different speeds. Just as the smooth flow of an ocean wave breaks up into a maelstrom of swirls and eddies when it crashes on the shore, uniformly moving layers of the atmosphere that brush against each other fragment into vortices, and other small-scale disturbances.

Turbulence is often triggered when energy released by the sun-warmed ground or by a group of forming clouds heats a parcel of air at low altitude. The heated parcel rises, distorting the wind-flow pattern at higher altitudes and generating chaotic motion.

[emphasis by rSpieker]

And now consider the wind at 9/11 in Shanksville (13 to 17 ft/sec):

The following pictures from a scientific study to improve the performance of a chimney shows the influence of the wind at different speeds. Source (page 7):

Conclusion:

Apart from the fact that even if a B757 crashed near Shanksville there was simply not enough energy to produce a mushroom cloud then:

If some way a "mushroom cloud" existed in the very first seconds, there is absolute no way under the atmospheric conditions of that day to keep it stable so long that Val McClatchey's camera had a chance to "see" it.

This spells the definite "End of Serenity" for Val McClatchey's picture.

------------------

rSpieker has also found this nice aerial photo of the Shanksville area.

'Terrorcell': Val's photo fake 'beyond all shadow of a doubt'

2008-12-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

Expert Shanksville researcher Domenick DiMaggio (a.k.a. "Terrorcell"), who has been to Shanksville and interviewed more witnesses there than probably anyone outside the govt, has this response to the following poll question "*If* Val's plume photo turns out to be a fake, is it evidence of a 9/11 cover-up?" which I started at 911movement.org (bolding and hyperlink mine):

yes. it absolutely is.

and i know beyond all shadow of a doubt that it is a fabrication created by [most likely] the fbi.

i know this from talking to eyewitnesses who all describe a black smoke rising into the air and trailing off as one would expect from a violent explosion. none of them described a mushroom cloud and i have spoken with a witness [off the record] who agrees with kelly leverknights assessment that it is faked. furthermore this witness could not believe the whole i dropped my camera and couldn't load the batteries before it was gone because they said the smoke lasted for several minutes.

The two question options for my poll were:

Yes, because the FBI were involved with the forgery.
No, it was just a simple scam for money/fame. No govt involvement.

Domenick was one of the people who interviewed Susan McElwain who saw an unmarked silent white UAV fly a few feet over her minivan moments before the alleged crash of Flight 93, but who never saw a Boeing 757.

Two 'Flight 93 plume' videos pulled by YouTube

2008-09-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Two days after uploading the video Spanair crash plume vs. 'Flight 93 plume' (blogpost) , YouTube pulls it along with the video Shanksville local says Flight 93 plume photo is fake! (blogpost) because of a "copyright infringement" complaint issued by Mtn. Lakes Realty, LLC, Val McClatchey's real estate business.

Notices from YouTube:

Spanair crash plume vs. 'Flight 93 plume'

Shanksville local says Flight 93 plume photo is fake!

Spanair crash plume vs. 'Flight 93 plume'

2008-09-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

(Update 09/22/08: YouTube pulls original video.)

Spanair Flight 5022

crashed Aug 20, 2008

Val McClatchey's "End of Serenity" photo

------------------------------------

(Below was the original video.)

Iran 'faked missile test image'

2008-07-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

To show an example of photo fakery and how well it can be made to look:

"Iran has been accused of altering an image of a missile test, possibly to exaggerate its military capabilities.

Four missiles appear to take off from a desert launch pad in one image of the test published on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards website.

But a similar image has emerged that shows one missile still in its launcher after apparently failing to fire.

Analysts said that in the image apparently showing four missiles taking off, one of the projectiles was added using elements from the smoke trail and dust clouds from two of the other successfully launched missiles.

'Doctored'

The image said to have been digitally altered was disseminated by the AFP news agency and reproduced by media organisations around the world - including the BBC News website, which removed it from pages when doubts about its authenticity were raised. "

- BBC (07/10/08)

Remember that Ms. Leverknight said about Val McClatchey's photo in a phone call from Jeff Hill that the original photo didn't have a mushroom cloud in it which means someone added one in.

"Photo dispute challenges copyright law" - The Globe

2008-03-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

Photo dispute challenges copyright law

By: Rebecca Shaffer
Posted: 3/26/08

When Somerset County resident Valencia McClatchey captured the fleeting moments of peace on a warm fall morning with her digital camera, she never thought that photograph, "End of Serenity," would be the basis for a law suit against the Associated Press (AP) over copyright infringement.

On Sept.11, 2001 McClatchey was at home, glued to the television coverage of the morning's tragic events when she was shaken from her seat by a loud boom. From her living room window she saw a large gray cloud of smoke rising over the horizon. She instinctively went to the door, grabbed her digital camera and captured the infamous image of the smoke rising into the blue cloudless sky over her neighbors' red barn seconds after the crash of United Airlines Flight 93.

In the ensuing months McClatchey's photograph gained so much notoriety that in January 2002 she obtained a copyright for her famous snapshot, which was supposed to allow her the rights to control its use. Eight months later, she would sue the AP, claiming that the large media organization infringed her copyrights, which the AP disputed.

According to Mass Media Law, a copyright protects a work like McClatchey's photograph from being put on display, distributed or reproduced without consent. McClatchey said that she obtained the copyright because she did not want her photo to be misused in any way and she said firmly, "When I copyright the photo, I have the rights."

On the first anniversary of the crash McClatchey was interviewed by AP reporter Charles Sheehan. AP photographer Gene Puskar visited McClatchey a short time later and took her photo to accompany Sheehan's article.

McClatchey posed with her original photograph for Puskar. She said she believed the picture was of both her and her photograph.

McClatchey said that she also gave a copy of her photograph to Puskar as a gift. The copy contained her copyright management information. "They knew it was copyrighted," McClatchey said.

Sheehan's article ran on Friday, Sept. 13, 2002 in numerous newspapers. Rather than a photo of McClatchey and her famous Sept.11 image, the AP published her "End of Serenity" photograph without her permission.

The AP's use was based on their assumption that Puskar's use of McClatchey's copyrighted image could be used freely because it was considered news.

Then, unbeknownst to McClatchey, in August 2003 her photo appeared through the AP on America Online's Web site with an article concerning a conspiracy theory surrounding Flight 93. "I didn't want the photo used in conspiracy theory stories, because it degrades the passengers and crew," McClatchey said.

McClatchey was horrified to discover the photograph posted on several other news Web sites who subscribe to the AP, without her permission and did not bear the copyright information.

"I didn't know it would be all over the internet," she said.

In January 2005 McClatchey filed a lawsuit in federal court against the AP concerning five counts, three of which dealt with copyright infringement and the other two regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). McClatchey was seeking $150,000 in damages for copyright infringement and $25,000 in damages for the violations under the DMCA. She also requested that the AP's use of the photograph be permanently barred.

McClatchey said that the AP used her photo with knowledge of her copyright, which demonstrates willful disregard. "Pure down and out willfulness," McClatchey said, shaking her head.

The AP disagrees.

"In my view, this is classic fair use," Robert Penchina, AP lead legal council said.

According to Penchina, a copyright is meant to be a balanced protection for both the author of the work and also for the public's best interest, which is to be aware of what is going on in society.

Penchina also said that even if the story was about the photographer and her life one year after shooting the famous photo, she was still being featured because of that photograph.

Because McClatchey had given her photo earlier to many other organizations and she later sold individual prints with a portion of the proceeds donated to charity, the AP argues its distribution of it. The AP feels that their use of the image only brought attention to it and increased its demand.

McClatchey's attorney, Doug Hall countered and said her market was large news organization that now had use of the photo from the AP. Hall compared the availability of the photo online to illegally downloading music.

"They know there is damage done but it is hard to measure how much," Hall said.

McClatchey's case lasted over two and a half years. U.S. District Court Judge Terrence McVerry summarized the situation writing in one opinion, "Puskar's assignment was to 'take pictures of a woman with a picture.' Instead, Plaintiff contends that Puskar, under false pretenses, took a picture only of the 'End of Serenity' photograph itself."

"The Sheehan article and the photograph were distributed as separate items to AP's roughly 2000 PhotoStream member news organizations without her permission," McVerry wrote.

In November 2007 McClatchey accepted a settlement from the AP, which remains confidential.

Today, McClatchey says she would do things differently. She says that any use of her photo will be stated in writing with full disclosure. McClatchey is glad that the case has been settled and she no longer has to defend her photograph. In the end, McClatchey said, "Nothing will ever change the fact that I took the photo."

http://media.www.pointparkglobe.com/media/storage/paper1255/news/2008/03/26/Perspectives/Photo.Dispute.Challenges.Copyright.Law-3284396.shtml

Val McClatchey reportedly has amateur footage that 'vindicates' her photo

2008-02-12T18:37:00.000-08:00

Val reportedly showed amateur footage of the aftermath from the alleged Shanksville crash site at the 2007 Shanksville memorial reunion that supposedly vindicates her photo:

By: Tony Mussari

~

For the past six years we have taken students, relatives, neighbors, friends, and friends of friends to the site of the temporary memorial of the Heroes of Flight 93.

Once there we listen to Janie Kiehl, a Flight 93 Ambassador and dear friend tell the story of United 93. Val McClatchey another good friend, explains the history of her famous photograph, The End of Serenity. Chuck and Jayne Wagner, Flight 93 Ambassadors, are usually on hand to help us and their daughter, Leigh Snyder provides our guests with her book, Patriots of Peace.

At the Lutheran church hall we come together in a community dinner compliments of Janie Kiehl and her family. This year Val McClatchey shared a priceless piece of history with our guests. She played a DVD of the amateur video recorded in Berlin, PA, of the aftermath of the end of United 93 and the now famous plume of black smoke that looked like a mushroom cloud.

For Val McClatchey it was a moment of vindication. It gave lie to the conspiracy theorists. For those of us in the room, it was a chilling moment of discovery and verification of what Val’s picture had recorded for millions of people around the world. We were watching moving images of The End of Serenity. We were experiencing an historically significant event.

http://www.windsorparktheater.com/news_shanksvilletrip%202007.html

Why did it take 6 years for this reported amateur footage to surface and when does the rest of the world get to see it?

This video was reportedly filmed in Berlin, PA, which is about 9 miles SSW of the crater. Remember that the wind near the crater was reported blowing 9 knots in a SE direction.

Also note that I've never suggested that there wasn't an explosion in that empty Shanksville field, or that there was never any smoke being emitted from there. I do not even doubt there might have been a mushroom cloud there after whatever exploded. I just doubt than any mushroom cloud that may have formed over the immediate area around the crater grew to a whopping 700 yards wide, the width that I estimate the plume in Val's photo had to be if it was near the crater.

"Photographer of Flight 93 Somerset crash settles" - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

2007-11-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Photographer of Flight 93 Somerset crash settles

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Somerset County woman who took the only known photograph of United Airlines Flight 93 moments after the crash has settled a federal lawsuit she filed against the Associated Press.

Valencia M. McClatchey claimed the news organization violated her federal copyright by obtaining a copy of the photo and transmitting it to more than 1,000 news outlets.

Ms. McClatchey's attorney, Douglas Hall, said the parties reached a confidential settlement. Part of the agreement, though, calls for the Associated Press to destroy copies of the photograph.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07318/833685-56.stm

So will Val give all this to charity, because she's not in it for the money, right?

"Somerset Hospital marks Sept. 11 anniversary" - Daily American

2007-09-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

Somerset Hospital marks Sept. 11 anniversary
By MADOLIN EDWARDS
Daily American Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:25 AM EDT

“We were ready Sept. 11 and then it took the wind out of our sails,” said Somerset Hospital’s director of corporate communications, Greg Chiappelli.

He was talking about hospital employees who were ready to offer medical help on Sept. 11, 2001, but in the end, weren’t needed. He mentioned this commemoration to employees prior to a Sept. 11, 2001, memorial service Tuesday, which was sponsored by the Pastoral Care Committee at Somerset Hospital. Hospital employees, as well as the public, were invited to the service.

The Rev. Ruth Ann Campagna and the Rev. Mark Bendes offered prayers and scripture. Danny Conner performed two musical selections.

Valencia McClatchey was the featured speaker. She took the photo “The End of Serenity” of the smoke from the Flight 93 plane crash in the field near her home.

McClatchey said she heard a tremendously loud noise, unlike anything she’s heard in her years of living near coal mines, and looked outside of her house to see a flash like sunlight reflecting off a plane. She said she always has a camera by the door because she has a friend who is a helicopter pilot and does training runs around the Indian Lake area.

She said her friend will fly by her house, and she wanted to be ready to get a photo of him flying over for a car club newsletter.

Then she saw the mushroom cloud. She took the photo that has made the news all over the world.

She said she called the photo, which now hangs in the Smithsonian Institute, “The End of Serenity” because it was the end of our peaceful lives as we knew them to be. She said we are slowly getting back to that, but that we’ll never forget Sept. 11, 2001.

Valencia McClatchey, the woman who took the photo “The End of Serenity” on Sept. 11, 2001, of the mushroom cloud after United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, was the guest speaker at Somerset Hospital’s memorial service Tuesday.

http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2007/09/12/news/news576.txt

"Picture Made on 9/11 Takes a Toll on Photographer" - NY Times

2007-09-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

(Response to this article below.)

(Secondary NY Times title: A Sept. 11 Photo Brings Out the Conspiracy Theorists)

September 10, 2007

Picture Made on 9/11 Takes a Toll on Photographer

By SEAN D. HAMILL

Emily Jerich told visitors at a temporary memorial for victims of United Flight 93 about a photograph that Valencia M. McClatchey took of the crash on Sept. 11, 2001. In numerous online postings, critics have ripped apart every element of the photo, and Mrs. McClatchey’s life.

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. , Sept. 7 — Valencia M. McClatchey thought she was doing the right thing when she gave the F.B.I. a copy of her photo of the mushroom cloud that rose over the hill outside her home after United Flight 93 crashed in a field here on Sept. 11, 2001.

And, after it became apparent that hers was the only known picture of that ominous, gray cloud — and the first shot after Flight 93 crashed — she thought she was still doing the right thing when she gave copies to people who asked for them, and let newspapers and television stations use it.

But fame for the photo has had an unexpected cost for the photographer.

“Every time I’ve done any stories it goes online and all these conspiracy theorists start up and they call me and harass me,” said Mrs. McClatchey, 51, who runs her own real estate company.

In numerous online postings, critics have ripped apart every element of the photo, and Mrs. McClatchey’s life. They accuse her of faking the photo, of profiteering from it and of being part of a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Flight 93 was shot down by the government.

They claim the mushroom cloud is from an ordnance blast, not a jet crashing; the cloud is the wrong color for burning jet fuel; the cloud is too small and in the wrong position.

They’ve posted her personal e-mail, phone numbers and street address online. One Canadian “9/11 debunker” surreptitiously taped a phone conversation with her, quizzing her about the photo, and then uploaded it to his Web site.

“It’s just gotten so bad, I’m just fed up with it,” Mrs. McClatchey said. “This thing has become too much of a distraction in my life. I have a husband and a new business to deal with, too.”

The F.B.I., the Smithsonian Institution — which used the photo in an exhibition on Sept. 11 — and the National Park Service’s Flight 93 National Memorial — which has used the photo in pamphlets — all consider the photo legitimate.

“We have no reason to doubt it,” said Bill Crowley, an agent who is a spokesman for the Pittsburgh F.B.I. office, which oversaw evidence collection in Shanksville.

Along with the rest of the nation, Mrs. McClatchey was watching the coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington when she was shaken from her couch by a ground-shaking blast just over a mile away. She grabbed her new digital camera and took just one picture from her front porch.

It is a simple photo, showing a sloping green farm field, with a brilliant red barn in the foreground. Hovering above the barn in a brilliant blue sky is an ominous, dark gray mushroom cloud. Mrs. McClatchey named the photo “The End of Serenity.”

Barbara Black, acting site manager for the Flight 93 memorial, said, “What makes the image so powerful is that it’s this serene scene in Pennsylvania, this typical red barn, green trees, and then this terrible cloud above it that changed our life here forever.”

At the temporary memorial site, Flight 93 “ambassadors,” local residents who volunteer to tell visitors what happened here, always start the story by showing people Mrs. McClatchey’s photo.

From the beginning, Mrs. McClatchey said, she tried to use the photograph to help remember the 40 passengers on Flight 93. She sells copies to people and lets them choose whether $18 of the $20 fee goes to the Flight 93 National Memorial or the Heroic Choices organization (formerly the Todd Beamer Foundation).

To ensure that she controlled distribution of the photograph, in January 2002 she copyrighted it. To “protect the integrity of the photo,” Mrs. McClatchey said, she filed suit in 2005 against The Associated Press, saying that it violated her copyright by distributing the photo to its clients as part of a story. The lawsuit is pending.

One of Mrs. McClatchey’s neighbors here defended her against the allegations of the people he called the “Internet crazies.”

The McClatcheys “are as good neighbors as you could possibly have,” said Robert Musser, who owns the red barn that is so prominent in Mrs. McClatchey’s photo.

To accommodate visitors who will show up on Sept. 11 to recreate the picture, and who eventually find their way to the Mussers’ 94-year-old barn, they’ve tried to spruce it up this past week, adding a touch of paint. They plan to spend thousands in the near future to shore up the foundation on one side so the barn will endure for years to come.

“Here this barn could fall down, and it’s in the picture that’s so famous,” said Mr. Musser’s wife, Phyllis. “We have to do something.”

"The photograph Valencia M. McClatchey took from her front porch on Sept. 11, 2001."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/us/10cnd-shanksville.html

This NY Times article is very misleading, gets a major point wrong and again, fails to mention me by name (so what's new?).

First, they say "we" accuse Val for taking part of the cover-up of Flight 93 being shot down. I have never made that claim, especially when I think it never crashed.

Second, they say my claim is that the plume in her photo is too small, but my claim is that her plume is too big, 7 football fields too big!

Third, they make it sound like I posted her email, phone numbers, and address as if they were all private. I posted her home address, which is posted on the website that advertises her photo for sale and posted her work phone number from her own business' website that also advertises the photo for sale. I posted her email address from the email she sent me, but after I checked and saw her email address is publicly available on the net too.

Btw, did you notice the title of this NY Times article:

Picture Made on 9/11 Takes a Toll on Photographer

"Picture made". Well, guess they got something right. ; )

History Channel's 9/11 conspiracies episode featured 'Flight 93 Photo Fraud' blog

2007-08-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

The History Channel showed a fairly lengthy segment about this blog on their The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction hit piece.

To no one's surprise, the History Channel got most of my claims about Val, her photo, and what happened to Flight 93 wrong and they didn't even bring up most of the evidence I presented (such as the plume in her photo being about 7 football fields wide) that shows her photo proves that the official story of Flight 93 crashing is a fraud or that her photo is a fraud other than the plume in her photo couldn't have been from a plane crashing.

However, there are a couple of interesting things in their clip about her photo. Here is the breakdown in order:

- First the show a picture of Val's house, but notice they only show the back of her house.

They never show the front where she allegedly took her photo. Why the big deal? Well I've been informed that Val has since remolded the front of her house after 9/11. Not bad for filing bankruptcy on their business 9 days after 9/11 and was in danger of losing their house too.

- Also note that they only show the red barn featured on the right of her photo and never the white barn seen on the left side of her photo. That white barn is now painted red.

- She says she heard a load surge of an engine. What the History Channel doesn't tell you is that Val said she heard this roar of an engine over Indian Lake which is in the opposite direction that Flight 93 allegedly flew in at. Val then skips the part where she had said that she almost got knocked off her couch from the shock wave from the "crash" of Flight 93 and that is why she jumped up to grab her camera.

- The narrator then says Val says 9/11 conspiracists have "harassed her" with emails and phone calls. I've never contacted Val by any method ever. However, Val has sent me a harrassing email threatening to sue me for putting her photo on my website (not this blog).

- Next they say that we, the conspiracists who think her photo is a fraud, think Flight 93 was shot down and "accuse" Val of being a part of it. I've stopped thinking Flight 93 was shot down years before I discovered Val's photo was a fraud and I now think the shot-down theory was started on purpose to distract from Flight 93 not crashing in shanksville. I've also never said that I thought Val was part of some conspiracy involving Flight 93 being shot down.

Another thing to notice about History Channel's segment of my claim that her photo is a fraud is that they didn't even have any of their "experts" try to debunk my analysis showing that the plume on Val's photo is way to big and is about 250 yards south of the crater!

Did Val actually photograph the small white mystery aircraft at Shanksville?

2007-07-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

New theory by Domenick DiMaggio (a.k.a. Terrorcell):

Other than a blanket statement of "I don't believe Val's picture to be that of a 757 crash" I've never really spoken publicly on the matter.

I believe Val McClatchey is telling the truth to an extent and covering up something much bigger to another extent.

If one looks at Val's pic then it would appear that this photo had to be taken within 2-6 seconds that being because the smoke isn't "drifting off" but is still in the conceptual stage from the massive explosion which took place.

We know according to eyewitness Susan McElwain that a small white UAV was there at that exact moment. After speaking privately with some unpublished accounts and some published accounts it has been confirmed that the little white UAV was present at the scene.

According to Val, she dropped her camera and the batteries came out of it. In the time it took her to pick them back up and place them in the camera the smoke from this massive explosion was gone. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE.

People drove to the explosion from different areas. They drove towards this massive billowing smoke cloud from over 5 miles away. It's safe to assume one can reload batteries into a camera in the time it would take an individual driving 5+ miles at 50MPH(est fastest speed given terrain)- mostly rural windy roads in the area.

Val also stated a plane flew over her house before the explosion. She stated it sounded like a small plane but insists it was Flight 93. Of course we know this not to be true because at no point did Flight 93 ever fly towards the North. That would mean the "struggle" we were told was taking place on board quite possibly was successful.

Val's house is totally inconsistent with the flight path of the UAV as well. It is possible the fighter jets witnessed in the area passed over Val's house. That would also be consistent with the blast direction of the explosion being towards the west and into the woods.

Eyewitness accounts put the UAV at the site for minutes after the explosion "flying around like he was looking for something." According to Val though she didn't take anymore pics with her digital camera. Just that one. And that is where Val McClathchey is not telling the truth.

The FBI took her camera, her computer, & memory stick. This was in order to clean all of these of the CLASSIFIED UAV which Val managed to capture on film. The FBI would have also checked and confirmed that any images weren't sent out via email to anyone.

A local Shanksville area is currently writing a book that tells 'her' side of the story. If the female author of this book is who I suspect it is then Val is now writing a book detailing her 9/11 experience and life after 9/11 and dealing with "internet conspiracy kooks" in her post 9/11 life. I hope, in fact I am pleading with Val (because I suspect one way or another she will be reading this), to TELL THE WHOLE TRUTH IN HER BOOK.

DO NOT LEAVE OUT THE UAV WHICH WAS SEEN THAT DAY.

People are coming forward everyday. Some are willing to speak publicly like Susan has and others are not so willing out of fear. But there are more than enough who collaborate the story told by Susan McElwain that morning. And if Val really wants all the "internet conspiracy kooks" to finally stop then she needs to come clean. Otherwise history will look unfavorably upon her.

The FBI gave Val the image she titled "End of Serenity" and sells over the internet and various local places. So whether or not the image itself is fake is still debatable. I can't really pick one side or the other anymore. I don't believe it to be the smoke plume that is created from a massive jet fuel explosion. Perhaps the FBI gave Val a faked pic and she could be totally unaware it is a manipulated image or perhaps the image is genuine and not reflective of a jet fuel induced explosion. Either way Val knows something she isn't talking about.

If you read this Val please feel free to contact me at Reichstag_911@yahoo.com
If you have any doubt about my integrity or whether or not I am a man of my word than you need to speak to your friend John at the COF Motel.

What you can't do though is call me "another one of those anonymous internet kooks".

At the bare minimum you know I am telling the 100% TRUTH about the UAV that was there that morning. You saw it with your own eyes....just like everyone else who was in the vacinity.

Domenick DiMaggio

Discuss further at 911movement.org.

MCCLATCHEY v. ASSOCIATED PRESS

2007-07-31T02:33:00.000-07:00

MCCLATCHEY v. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Plaintiff Valencia McClatchey alleged that defendant the Associated Press (AP) over the AP's unauthorized use of her copyright End of Serenity photograph.

Plaintiff: VALENCIA M. MCCLATCHEY
Defendant: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Case Number: 3:2005cv00145
Filed: February 24, 2005

Court: Pennsylvania Western District Court
Office: Johnstown Office
County: Somerset
Presiding Judge: Terrence F. McVerry

Nature of Suit: Intellectual Property - Copyrights
Cause: 17:101 Copyright Infringement
Jurisdiction: Federal Question
Jury Demanded By: Plaintiff
Amount Demanded: $0.00

Available Case Documents

The following documents for this case are available for you to view or download.

~

http://news.justia.com/cases/featured/pennsylvania/pawdce/3:2005cv00145/66017/

"Court Finds Single Act of Copyright Infringement Where Infringing Photo Was Distributed Numerous Times" - Winston & Strawn LLP

2007-07-02T02:39:00.000-07:00

July 2, 2007

Court Finds Single Act of Copyright Infringement Where Infringing Photo Was Distributed Numerous Times

On September 11, 2001, Valencia McClatchey took a photograph of the mushroom cloud caused by the crash of United Fight 93. Although she obtained copyright of the image, the Associated Press allegedly distributed the image though its PhotoStream service to various AP members.

When McClatchey learned her photo was being used without permission, she sued AP for copyright infringement, alleging that each distribution to various Associated Press customers constituted an infringement. However, the court held that AP was only liable for the single act of releasing the photo to subscribers, even though the photo was re-distributed by AP to numerous parties.

TIP: In the event that you are accused of copyright infringement, and you are attempting to negotiate a settlement, this case may be helpful in attempting to limit the calculation of damages.

http://www.winston.com/index.Cfm?contentid=34&itemid=2381

Fair Use and Photos of 9-11, McClatchey v. AP

2007-06-15T15:28:00.000-07:00

June 15, 2007

Fair Use and Photos of 9-11, McClatchey v. AP

In a decision dated June 4, 2007 the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania considered pretrial arguments for the McClatchey v. AP case.

On September 11, 2001, Valencia McClatchey took a photograph of the mushroom cloud caused by the crash of United Fight 93. She obtained copyright of the image and title it "End of Serenity." While doing a story about McClatchey a year later, Associated Press reporter, Charles Sheehan, took a photo of a copy of "End of Serenity" which included the title and copyright notice. Associated Press then allegedly cropped the title and copyright notice out of the image and distributed the unattributed image though their PhotoStream service to various AP members.

In August of 2003, McClatchey learned her photo was being used on AOL's homepage without permission and that AOL had obtained the image from AP. McClatchey brought suit against AP for direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and for removing and distributing false copyright information in violation of the DMCA.

This hearing made a decision regarding six pretrial motions: (1) motion in limine to exclude certain documents and testimony regarding AOL by AP; (2) motion in limine to limit plaintiff to one statutory damage award under the copyright act by AP; (3) motion in limine to limit plaintiff to two statutory damage awards under the DMCA by AP; (4) motion in limine to exclude certain documents and testimony regarding iPhotoart by AP; (5) first motion in limine to preclude Eric N. Lieberman from testifying at trial by Valencia M. McClatchey; and (6) motion in limine to exclude certain documents and testimony regarding alleged third-party infringements by AP.

The first motion, the motion to exclude certain documents and testimony regarding AOL by AP, is the only motion that touches on fair use issues. AP wanted the court to exclude documents and testimony related to the publication of McClatchey's image by AOL. AP claimed the AOL had a "separate and independent right to make fair use of the photograph," which would make AOL's use noninfringing, making AP not liable for contributory or vicarious infringement. McClatchey claimed that AOL's use was not "fair use" and was instead a direct infringement, and that evidence of that infringement is relevant for proving "AP distributed the photograph to its subscribers." The Court found that a fair use analysis of AOL's use would be relevant for the case and denied the motion to exclude.

The Court granted the second motion, the motion to limit plaintiff to one statutory damage award under the copyright act by AP, and imposed a limit on AP's statutory damages to one award, following the statute on damages in 17 U.S.C. § 504©(1).

The Court granted the third motion, the motion to limit plaintiff to two statutory damage awards under the DMCA, reasoning that under 17 U.S.C. § 1203©(1), the term "each violation" refers to "each violative act performed by Defendant." Therefore AP could only be liable for the one time it distributed McMclatchey's imagine, even though it was distributed to multiple parties.

The Court denied the fourth motion, the motion to exclude certain documents and testimony regarding iPhotoArt by AP, reasoning that the evidence about the price of other historic images solid by iPhotoArt was a good benchmark for the value of McClatchey's image.

The Court denied the fifth motion, the motion to preclude Eric N. Lieberman from testifying at trial by McClatchey, reasoning that the factors laid out in Quinn v. Consolidated Freightways Corp. of Delaware, 283 F.3d 572, 577 (3d Cir. 2002) (importance of the testimony, prejudice or surprise in facto to opposing party, ability of that party to cure the prejudice, disruption of trial and bad faith of willfulness), supported AP's argument to deny the motion.

The Court granted the sixth motion, the motion to exclude alleged third-party infringement, since McClatchey did not have any evidence of infringement by the third parties AP sought to exclude.

McClatchey v. AP, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40416, was decided on June 4, 2007. The opinion was written by Judge Terrence F. McVerry. The trial is scheduled for June 25, 2007, and should provide some interesting fair use analysis.

For only $20 you can order your very own copy of End of Serenity in 8.5 X 11 format here.

By Matthew Sag (Dan Rothenberg contributed to this post)

http://thefairuseblog.typepad.com/the_fair_use_blog/2007/06/fair_use_and_ph.html

"Lawsuit over 9/11 photo heads to trial" - Tribune-Democrat

2007-04-12T15:24:00.000-07:00

Lawsuit over 9/11 photo heads to trial

April 12, 2007

BY SANDRA K. REABUCK
The Tribune-Democrat

SHANKSVILLE — A Somerset County woman’s lawsuit is headed for trial on whether The Associated Press infringed on the copyright of the famous photo she took seconds after the crash of United Flight 93.

The picture depicts a mushroom cloud of gray smoke rising above the pastoral landscape.

U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry of Pittsburgh refused to throw out the lawsuit Valencia McClatchey filed in 2005 against The AP.

McClatchey, who lives along Osage Path in Indian Lake Borough, grabbed her camera when she heard a “boom” and saw smoke as she was watching TV coverage of planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

She told The Tribune-Democrat in a September interview that she managed to snap just the one photo – and didn’t recognize its significance until later.

The compelling photo of the smoke against a blue sky with a red barn and rolling hills in the foreground has come to symbolize how the war on terror began in the hills of Somerset County.

She titled it “End of Serenity” and received federal copyright protection for the photo in January 2002, according to the lawsuit.

It turned out that the photo is the only one of the immediate aftermath of the Flight 93 crash.

An enlarged version is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The AP used the photo with a story about McClatchey and also put it on a downloadable database without her permission, McClatchey asserts. She is seeking at least $150,000 in damages, plus any profits AP realized.

The AP has denied copyright infringement and has sought to have the judge dismiss the lawsuit.

McVerry rejected the AP’s contention that its use was permissible under a “fair use doctrine.”

The wire service contends McClatchey consented to the use of the photo, but the judge said a factual dispute exists on that issue.

AP’s story about McClatchey was written after the one-year anniversary of 9/11. The day that she was interviewed by an AP reporter, an AP photographer identified as Gene Puskar went to her home to photograph her for the story.

“The crux of this case involves the details of the interaction between Mr. Puskar and Ms. Mc-Clatchey,” the judge said.

McClatchey contends Puskar snapped a photo of her photograph that included her title and the copyright information, but later cropped them out.

She contends the story and photo were distributed as separate items to AP’s 2,000 Photo-Stream member news organizations without her permission.

She later learned it was being used on AOL’s home page.

AP contends its use of the photo was proper and was done with McClatchey’s consent.

McVerry was assigned the case this year after U.S. District Judge Kim Gibson, a Somerset County resident who presides in the Johnstown federal court, removed himself from the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

McVerry has not yet set a trial date. But he has set a pretrial conference for April 20 in Pittsburgh.

McClatchey’s attorneys al-ready have filed a pretrial statement, and the AP’s is due Wednesday.

McVerry’s decision not to dismiss the lawsuit was issued March 9.

http://www.tribune-democrat.com/local/local_story_102232748.html

See also:

Judge preserves lawsuit over Sept. 11 photo - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Printed Credit Line on Photo May Be 'Management Information' Under DMCA" - Media Law Reporter

2007-04-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

Media Law Reporter

Volume: 35 Number: 15
April 10, 2007

Printed Credit Line on Photo May Be 'Management Information' Under DMCA

Printed credit information on a photograph composed using a computer program may constitute “copyright management information” whose alteration is prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled March 9 (McClatchey v. Associated Press, W.D. Pa., No. 3:05-cv-145, 3/9/07).

Denying the Associated Press's motion for summary judgment, the court sustained claims by a woman who took a picture of the hijacked United Airlines airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Plane Crashed Near Plaintiff's House.

On the day of the terrorist attacks, Valencia M. McClatchey of Shanksville, Pa., was a witness to the crash of United Flight 93 near her house. She photographed her view of a column of smoke rising from the wreckage. She gave the image the title “The End of Serenity” and registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office. The image has been displayed in public on several occasions, and McClatchey licensed the image several times for one-time use by news organizations and sold copies of it.

In 2002, Charles Sheehan, a writer for the Associated Press, met McClatchey and wrote an article about her. Then, Gene Puskar, an AP photographer, was assigned to take a photograph to accompany Sheehan's article. The photograph subsequently distributed on the AP's photo wire was an image of “The End of Serenity.”

In 2003, McClatchey discovered that “The End of Serenity” was posted on America Online's Web site accompanying a story about a conspiracy theory. McClatchey learned that AOL had obtained the image from the AP.

McClatchey sued, alleging that Puskar had photographed a print of “The End of Serenity” in McClatchey's photo album and then had cropped out the copyright information. McClatchey alleged copyright infringement, contributory and vicarious infringement, and removing copyright information and distributing false copyright information.

The AP--arguing that the copy McClatchey had at home did not include copyright information and that the use was fair use--moved for summary judgment on all claims.

Fair Use Claim Survives Motion.

Judge Terrence F. McVerry first determined that the court could not resolve the fair use issue at the summary judgment stage because there existed outstanding questions of material fact. First, the court said, the use made by the AP might reasonably be construed as a commercial rather than educational use. The court, noting that the AP distributed the image separately from Sheehan's article without any notation that the two must be used together, said:
The text of the article focused on the woman who took the “End of Serenity” photograph and Ms. McClatchey believed that Puskar was taking a photograph of her holding that photograph. A year [had] passed from the time of the crash depicted in the photograph and the article described the events in [McClatchey]'s life during that year. Although the photograph certainly depicts a newsworthy event, that event was no longer timely and had been extensively chronicled. Thus, there was arguably no significant “newsworthiness” in disseminating the photograph, by itself, a year later.

The remaining three fair use factors could also be reasonably judged as weighing in McClatchey's favor after a full examination of the facts, the court concluded.

Turning to the secondary liability claims, the court concluded that there did seem to be some evidence of secondary infringement by the AP's subscribers, and that McClatchey had pleaded prima facie cases for both contributory and vicarious infringement.

Printed Information Might Be Protected.

Finally, the court determined that there also existed outstanding issues of material fact concerning McClatchey's crediting claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, 17 U.S.C. §1202.

Section 1202(a) prohibits the provision and distribution of false “copyright management information.” Section 1202(c) creates eight categories of such information that is conveyed together with copies of works.

The AP argued that those provisions did not apply here, because the copyright notice on McClatchey's photographs was an ordinary printed or written notice, not digitized code accompanying a digitized work.

The court concluded that McClatchey's use of a computer program to print hard copies of her photograph with the copyright information qualified as copyright management information under the DMCA. Citing IQ Group Ltd. v. Weisner Publishers LLC, 409 F.Supp.2d 587 (D.N.J. 2006), the court said:
Ms. McClatchey testified in her deposition that she used the My Advanced Brochures software program on her computer, in a two-step process, to print the title, her name and the copyright notice on all printouts of the photograph. The Court finds that this technological process comes within the digital “copyright management information” as defined in the statute. Moreover, Section 1202(c) defines the term broadly to include “any” of the information set forth in the eight categories, “including in digital form.” To avoid rendering those terms superfluous, the statute must also protect non-digital information.

The full text of McClatchey v. Associated Press will be published in an upcoming issue of Media Law Reporter.
http://ipcenter.bna.com/pic2/ip.nsf/id/BNAP-6ZZHDD

"Judge preserves lawsuit over Sept. 11 photo" - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

2007-04-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

Judge preserves lawsuit over Sept. 11 photo

Tuesday, April 03, 2007
By Milan Simonich, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Valencia McClatchey, an amateur photographer who claims The Associated Press pirated her historic picture of the Sept. 11 attacks, is entitled to her day in court, a Pittsburgh judge has ruled.

Mrs. McClatchey took the picture seconds after hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near her home in Somerset County.

Her photo shows a blue sky, a red barn and a towering cloud of gray smoke from the downed jet, whose 44 passengers died in the crash near Shanksville.

Mrs. McClatchey received a federal copyright for the photo in January 2002, four months after snapping it.

She says Associated Press photographer Gene Puskar surreptitiously copied the photo later in 2002 and the wire service distributed it to 2,000 news organizations without her permission.

Lawyers for the AP counter that the wire service used the photo with her consent.

"We vigorously disagree with Mrs. McClatchey and will respond in court at the appropriate time," said Michael Berry, an AP attorney.

U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry last month denied the AP's motion for summary judgment. He told both sides to file summaries of their cases before a pretrial conference April 20.

Mrs. McClatchey, 51, says in her lawsuit that she agreed to be photographed with her picture for an AP story marking the one-year anniversary of the attacks.

She says Mr. Puskar duped her by taking a photograph of her photograph. She claims he also cropped the photo to remove the copyright notice.

Lawyers for the AP say Mrs. McClatchey's account is untrue. In her deposition, they said, she admitted that the only copy of the photo in her home was a framed one that did not carry any mention of the copyright.

Once the AP distributed the photo without her authorization, Mrs. McClatchey says, it appeared in The Washington Post and Philadelphia Daily News.

Before her trouble with the AP, Mrs. McClatchey had licensed the use of her photo to various news organizations, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Newsweek and ABC. She generally charged $250 to $350 for one-time use of the picture, admitting she did not know how much freelance photographers commanded.

She is seeking $150,000 in damages, contending the AP was guilty of "willful infringement" of the copyright.

Aside from marketing the photo to news companies, Mrs. McClatchey sold personal copies. She charged $20 for each, $18 of which went to the Todd Beamer Foundation. Mr. Beamer was a passenger on Flight 93. The rest of the money from personal sales went for paper and printing costs, her lawyers said.

(Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1956. )

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07093/774585-85.stm

See also:

Lawsuit over 9/11 photo heads to trial - Tribune-Democrat (04/12/07)
'End of serenity' is copyrighted (01/29/02)

"Blogger recording phone calls to Sept. 11 witnesses" - Daily American

2007-03-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

This article is about Jeff from Pumpitout.com:

Blogger recording phone calls to Sept. 11 witnesses

By ROB GEBHART
Daily American Staff Writer
Saturday, March 31, 2007 11:47 PM EDT

A Canadian man has been calling Somerset County residents and, without their knowledge, recording the phone conversations he has with them about Flight 93 and Sept. 11.

Jeff Hill of Saulte Sainte Marie, Ontario, then posts the conversations on a Web site dedicated to debunking conventional beliefs about the events of Sept. 11.

During a telephone interview Wednesday, Hill confirmed he had called four county residents and recorded their conversations.

“It's not right at all,” said Paula Purbaugh of Somerset, one of the people Hill contacted and recorded.

In Pennsylvania, it is a felony offense to record telephone conversations without the consent of all parties that are involved in the conversation, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The nonprofit organization provides free legal assistance to journalists.

But because Hill lives in Canada, it is unclear if he broke the law, Dalglish said.

“If he were to come to the state of Pennsylvania, they could probably try to get him,” she said. “I'm not sure that legally there's much that can be done to him, at least not done easily.”

Hill defended his actions, saying the National Security Agency is recording the telephone conversations of everyone in North America. His recordings are no different, he said.

Pressed further, he admitted that making the recordings was unfair to the people he had called.

“No, it's not fair I did that, but I want to get to the truth,” Hill said.

Locally, the Web postings of the recordings were found by Val McClatchey of Indian Lake, who shot the now famous photo of a plume of smoke rising behind a red barn after Flight 93 crashed into the ground. McClatchey titled the photo “End of Serenity,” copyrighted it and began selling copies of it for $20, with most of the proceeds being donated to The Todd Beamer Foundation or the Flight 93 Memorial. She has used some of the proceeds to cover mailing costs, she said.

But starting about two years ago, claims arose that McClatchey had faked the photo. Skeptics of her shot said, among other claims, that the smoke should be black instead of gray and resembled an ordinance blast more than a jet fuel blaze.

Soon, bloggers began attacking her online, accusing her of being a fraud and developing elaborate theories about her background. To keep track of what was being written about her, she set up an account with Google Alerts; the Internet search engine sends her an e-mail anytime her name is posted on a Web site. She receives about four or five notifications from Google every day she said. Through everything, she has maintained the authenticity of her photograph.

Hill called McClatchey at her real estate office on Jan. 26 and told her he'd like to order a copy of the photo. He then began questioning her about the photo, gradually asking more aggressive questions about the photo's legitimacy. But throughout the conversation, McClatchey said Hill was very nice.

The next day, Google notified McClatchey that the conversation she'd had with Hill had been posted online. But McClatchey took no action until last Tuesday, when Hill began calling other Somerset County residents. At that time, she received e-mail notifications that he had recorded phone calls with three other area residents and posted their conversations online. In the conversations, Hill tries to get people to say McClatchey's photo is fake.

McClatchey went to state Rep. Bob Bastian's office to see what he could do to help. She said Bastian suggested she talk to the newspaper. Bastian did not return a phone call seeking comment.

“This is more or less to let people know they're being recorded illegally,” McClatchey said.

Hill said he called people whose names he found in media reports about Flight 93.

He said he first became interested in Sept. 11 theories when he accidentally stumbled across a Web site that claimed Building 7 of the World Trade Center fell too quickly.

Soon he became obsessed with discovering what he describes as “the turth” about Sept. 11. He said he was put on sick leave from his job at Dell Computers, where he took phone calls for technical assistance.

“Maybe they were afraid I'd start talking to the customers,” he said, which Hill said he never did.

Hill said he was sent to a doctor for psychological help. Doctors said he was “uptight” and “paranoid,” and they prescribed him “happy pills,” which he never took. He said he doesn't know what it would take to get his job back and at present he is in the process of being put on disability.

(Rob Gebhart can be reached at robg©dailyamerican.com.)
http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2007/03/31/news/sunday/news03.txt

Shanksville resident says Val McClatchey's photo is fake!

2007-03-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Hill (a.k.a. "Shure") from Pumpitout.com in Canada calls Shanksville resident Kelly Leverknight, who was one of the witnesses who reportedly saw Flight 93 in the air before it allegedly crashed, and speaks to a lady claiming to be Kelly’s daughter*. Jeff asks this lady on the phone about Val’s Flight 93 plume photo.

Jeff: Val McClatchey... she has a famous photo.
Ms. Leverknight: It was a fake photo, because it didn't have a mushroom cloud.
Jeff: It what?
Ms. Leverknight: There was no mushroom cloud.
Jeff: So it was a fake photo?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Her photo's faked?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: For what? For money?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.
Jeff: Why, do you know that for sure?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah!

Entire phone call

This admission from Ms. Leverknight is pertinent for three reasons:

1. She confirms one of my two theories about Val's photo; that it's fake.

2. Before this admission, I had never speculated that Val took any photos on 9/11. Ms. Leverknight implies that Val did indeed take at least one photo on 9/11, but that this original photo did not have a mushroom cloud in it.

3. I've never had any contact with any of the Leverknight's, ever, so I have no reason to believe that Ms. Leverknight is not being honest and sincere about this admission.

(*The lady on the phone suspected to be Kelly.)

(Update 09/22/08: YouTube pulls video. Alt link at LiveVideo.)

AP's Motion For Summary Judgment Denied

2007-03-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

VALENCIA M. MCCLATCHEY,
Plaintiff,
v.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS,
Defendant.

3:05-cv-145
(Johnstown) '

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Before the Court for consideration is a MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT (Document No. 18) filed by Defendant, The Associated Press (“AP”). Plaintiff has filed a response, AP has filed a reply, and the motion is now ripe for disposition. After reviewing the record evidence and the authorities cited by the parties, the Court concludes that the motion will be denied.

~

http://www.thelen.com/tlu/McClatcheyVAP.pdf

McClatchey entry now at CooperativeResearch.org

2007-03-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

(10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Local Resident Captures ‘One-of-a-Kind’ Photo of Flight 93 Crash Explosion

A local resident is able to take the only photo showing the Flight 93 crash in the seconds after the plane went down. Val McClatchey lives just over a mile away from the crash site. [Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2006] She is at home watching television when she hears the surge of a plane engine, sees a silver flash outside, and then hears a loud boom that causes her house to shake. Luckily she has her new digital camera ready by her door. She was planning to photograph a friend who had promised to fly over in a helicopter on this day. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/29/2003; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/6/2006; Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown), 9/9/2006] She grabs it and from her front porch manages to take a picture of the smoke cloud rising into the sky, “approximately five seconds after impact,” she says. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002; Windsor Park Stories, 3/23/2003] Her photo will appear in numerous newspapers and magazines. According to the FBI, it is the only known image taken within seconds of the crash. Considering the sparsely populated area in which Flight 93 went down, Pittsburgh FBI agent Jeff Killeen calls it “one-of-a-kind.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/6/2006; Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown), 9/9/2006; Wall Street Journal, 9/12/2006]

Entity Tags: Val McClatchey

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

More Evidence - Flight 93 Photo Fraud

2007-02-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted here by 'nick7261' on 22-2-2007.)

I just did a couple of quick graphics showing the scale of the Flight 93 "smoke plume" in relation to the size of the WTCs.

Val McClatchey claims to have taken this photo within seconds of the crash of Flight 93 iin Pennsylvania.

Killtown originally did an analysis of the size of the smoke plume, which I confirmed. If the smoke plume was at the crash site, it would be 2200 feet wide (give or take!).

Here's what the WTCs would look like if they were under the plume in the McCLatchey photo, drawn to scale:

Here's what the McClatchey plume would look like if it were over NYC.

Notice how small the explosion in WTC2 is compared to the size of the smoke plume from the McClatchey photo.

Q: How could the crash of Flight 93 have created a smoke plume so large???

A: It couldn't!

*Note: Officially Flight 175 supposedly crashed with 65% more fuel left than Flight 93 supposedly did (9,100 gal vs. 5,500 gal) and most of Flight 93 (past the cockpit section on back) had supposedly buried deep into the ground so fast that "it didn’t have a chance to burn."

Q: How could Flight 93 have created this big of a smoke plume from the crash, and yet fail to burn the grass next to the crater it supposedly left??

A: It couldn't!!

----------------------

*My addition to nick7261's post.

Val and the 'honor system'

2007-02-11T20:19:00.000-08:00

There has been an ongoing debate as to whether Val is able to profit from the sales of her photo. Conspiracy skeptics say that Val is unable to profit, because they point out that the website that advertises Val’s photo states that checks are to be made out to the Todd Beamer Foundation:

It is also important to note that Val is not profiting from this photo. She has stated that she is now keeping some of the proceeds to deal with legal fees relating to a lawsuit with this picture, but if you go to her website to order a copy of her picture, you'll find this:

To order an 8.5 X 11 print of this photo, send a $20.00 check made payable to the Todd Beamer Foundation to the following address:

Last time I checked, her name was Val McClatchey, not "Todd Beamer Foundation". So she can't very well deposit these checks into her own account.

However, if all the checks are made out to the charity, how does Val get reimbursed $2 per print she keeps to cover for supplies and shipping and how is she able to keep some of the proceeds she admits keeping in order to help fight her lawsuit against the AP?

I’ve pointed out before that in at least one occasion, a magazine that had advertised Val’s photo for sale did not say to write checks out to the Beamer Foundation, but told people to make it out in Val’s name. I’ve also argued that it’s possible that people going to her work to buy a print might be able to pay cash for it.

I have also wondered how many people who went to the website that advertises Val’s photo where it says to write checks out to the Beamer Foundation accidentally goofed and wrote their check out in Val’s name and still got a print, so to test out this theory, I had someone “accidentally” write out a check in Val's name:

(Front view of cashed checked.)

...and this is what they got:

Remember, it’s by the honor system that Val forwards her proceeds. Let’s just hope Val is true to her word and forwards $18 from this check to the Beamer Foundation.

What you get for $20

2007-02-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

Here is what you get when you send Val $20 for a print of her “End of Serenity” photo:

It is an 8.5 x 11 print on Kodak photo paper*.

(Back of print. Kodak photo paper used.)

(Three stamps used totally $1.17.)

Quality of the Print

The person who purchased this copy of her photo describes the blown up print as “horrible”. They said the print was blurry and there is all this ugly writing all over it:

I asked was the print worth the $20 and they responded with a big “No!”

It’s also interesting to note that Val had mentioned that the reason the FBI took her camera’s memory card back with them is because she said they saw debris flying out of the plume in her photo. If you look at a close-up of the plume in her photo print, there seems to be a few dark spots on it, but nothing that looks like plane or paper debris flying out from it, but more like just blotches of ink.

(*Note that I was incorrect in previously speculating that the print out you get was printed out on regular computer paper which her interview on Windsor Park Stories showed a copy of her photo being printed out on regular computer paper.)

"9/11 Conspiracy Theory" - CW11 New York

2007-02-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

Watch clip here (@17:00).

CW11's Fact Finders

9/11 Conspiracy Theory
"Other skeptics raising questions claim this picture showing the smoke cloud after United Flight 93 crashed looks like and out-and-out fake." - CW11 WPIX-TV New York (02/07/07)

See also:

CW11 New York Airs Feature Story on 9/11 Skeptics – 911blogger.com

Pumpitout.com calls Val McClatchey

2007-02-04T00:27:00.000-08:00

Click Here

Listen to it on video:

93 Ambassador says Val's photo taken 'within seconds' of impact

2007-01-02T21:13:00.000-08:00

Ambassador:

"This cloud picture was taken from a mile away within seconds of the crash. The FBI says that had to be within a couple seconds because the wind immediately moved the cloud east toward Bedford and all this debris kept falling out it as it went, so they had to send people tracking it -- climbing on rooftops and treetops, through fields...”

Val suggested in an interview of her that the FBI timed her photo out to have been taken “approx. 5 seconds” after impact:

"timed it out -- it was approximately 5 seconds after impact that I snapped the photo."

And the FBI is confirming the time:

“The FBI says it is the only known image taken within seconds of the crash.” – Post-Gazette (09/12/06)

Val also mentioned in her interview that the FBI said they saw debris coming out of the smoke plume in her photo and that’s why they wanted to take her camera’s memory card back with them:

Well the FBI, when they came in, they looked at it on my computer which is a lot clearer. They could actually see what they appear to be debris flying out from that cloud of smoke which I'm sure with modern technology they could do a little more scientific evidence I believe

…apparently the FBI thought it was worthwhile; they took the original memory card.

One thing to note about the alleged time Val took this photo, Val claimed she almost got knocked off her couch from the force of the impact about 1.5 miles from her house and then she immediately jumped up and ran out of her house grabbing her camera that she said she had ready at the door for her friends alleged helicopter flyover that morning.

Since she is about 1.5 miles from the crater, the shockwave from an explosion at that distance would have taken about 8 seconds to reach her house, so it would have been impossible for her to have taken her photo 5 seconds after impact. The minimum time she could have taken this photo would be about 13 seconds after impact and remember that the plume in her photo is 250+ yards south of the crater and it would have taken about 50 seconds to travel that distance in a 9 knot wind!

*The memorial Ambassadors are reciting the official story to visitors:

Local 'ambassadors' tend to Flight 93 site

The ambassadors say they try not to speculate too much. During a training process led by Ms. Glessner, ambassadors agree to stick to the official 9/11 Commission Report or to say, "We don't know." – Post-Gazette (09/12/06)
-------------------------------------
"Today Ambassadors are at the temporary memorial every day of the year and have welcomed over one million visitors from all over the world. They have participated in rigorous educational training to become familiar with details of Flight 93 and the passengers and crewmembers to inform visitors about what happened here on 9/11." - HonorFlight93.org

Video taken at the Flight 93 Memorial by 9/11 researcher Gideon524.

The band '27' winner of plume photoshop contest

2006-12-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

(Update: Just got word from '27' that the plume in their album is not a photoshop, but an actual painting of Val's plume by artist Brendan Killian. Even so, I still like it and it still wins the Flight 93 plume photoshop contest!)

The Boston band ‘27’ is the winner of my Flight 93 plume photoshop submission contest with their album cover for their bonus album “Animal Life”, released in Sept. ‘05, about a year before I asked for photoshop submissions, but what the hay.

27's myspace.

Runner up is 'Melle Belle':

See all submissions:

Photoshop submissions from InfoWars forum

2006-11-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

From InfoWars forum.

By AudioWhore.

“Val's gotta have faitha-faitha faithaa ... go george @ shanksville”
- joseph hall

“Nana Gin is out from Redfern to Pennsylvania.. she tell them dawgs to bee'ave”
- Aboriginal Australia

“Sorry, but this one just had to be done.” - joseph hall

By AudioWhore.

By websuspect.

See also:

Phun with Photoshopping

Video of a real plane crash smoke plume

2006-11-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

Here is a smoke plume from the crash of a large commercial jetliner (Tupolev 154*):

Here is how dissipated the plume is about 30 sec after it formed:

Compare that to the "Flight 93 plume" that had to travel about 250yd in 50 sec from the reported 9 knot wind to line up with this shot:

*Not 100% sure this link is of the same crash as the video. Regardless, look at the size and amount of debris it left after it crashed.

Val McClatchey's camera identified, contained editing software

2006-10-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

In a recent article about this Flight 93 photo fraud controversy from the Tribune-Democrat, they included a new photo showing Val clutching the digital camera that it is assumed to be the one she used to take her "End of Serenity" photo with:

The camera she is clutching has been identified as a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 315:

This digital camera comes in two versions, HP315 and HP315xi, and had a MSRP of $299. The "xi" version seems to be the exact same camera, but includes extra editing software (at this time it is unknown which version Val has):

Product / Model number
HP Photosmart 315 digital camera / C8452A
HP Photosmart 315xi digital camera / C8455A

Product description
The simple-to-use HP Photosmart 315 series digital camera takes high-quality photos you can share with family and friends on the Internet or via e-mail. It comes with HP software for manipulating, storing, and printing photos.

Specifications
Sensor - 2.1 MegaPixel, 1/2.7 inch (15 mm) CCD
Color depth - 30-bit (10 bits x 3 colors)
Resolution - 2.1 MP (1600 x 1200)
Zoom - 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x variable digital zoom
Date and time stamp - Not available
Interfaces - USB to PC or Mac; Standard tripod mount
Minimum system requirements PC:
* Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0* or Windows 2000 Professional
* 166 MHz Pentium(R) processor or equivalent
* 32 MB RAM*
* 150 MB free disk space - 800 x 600, 16-bit color display
* CD-ROM drive
* USB interface - Sound card and speakers recommended
* NT 4.0 requires 64 MB RAM and does not support USB. Compact Flash card reader required instead. (Card reader must be purchased separately.)

Software
HP Photo Imaging software (PC only)
Arcsoft PhotoImpression 2000
Arcsoft PhotoMontage 2000 (315 and 315xi only)
Adobe(R) PhotoDeluxe Business Edition 1.1 (PC 315xi version only)
Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0 (Mac 315xi version only)

There are three interesting things about this camera: (1) it does not have an optical zoom -- only digital zoom; (2) it did contain editing software in which a Post-Gazette article said that Val did not have access to any editing software on 9/11:

"Mrs. McClatchey acknowledged that a lot of people are alleging she fabricated the photo, but she stands by its authenticity. Days after Sept. 11, neighbors saw the image, still in her camera. The camera and computer were new, and she didn't have access to Photoshop or any other photo-altering software." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (08/06/06)

Let me make it clear that I'm not saying Val lied about not having photo editing software. I am just bringing up the fact that her camera did come with editing software. Also, I do not know at this time if the editing software that came with her camera could be used to photoshop a smoke plume on her photo and I do not know if Val, or her husband have photoshopping skills.

Also remember that Val said her and her husband were in severe financial trouble right before 9/11, yet she buys this camera that had a MSRP of $300 a month before the attacks along with a new computer. It is not known at this time how much she paid for this camera, or how much her new computer cost, but most new computers back in 2001 were over a $1,000. This seems like an expensive purchase for a them to have made during their financial crisis. The purchase of her new camera and computer right before 9/11 could have been for her new career in real estate, but as for as I can tell, she did not start taking real estate classes until sometime after Christmas:

"I’d had some health problems. Gall bladder surgery and during the testing for all the gall bladder problems, they found a tumor on my kidney and lesions on my liver, so day after Christmas, I had my gall bladder out. Right after there I went right into taking real estate classes to start a new career to help support my family." - Windsor Park Stories

(3) It was mentioned that the reason Val only took one photo of this smoke plume was because after snapping her shot, she dropped her camera and the battery was jarred loose:

"I didn't even aim. I was just like, 'Oh, my God,' " she said. She dropped the camera, jolting the battery loose, then tried in vain to call her husband, son and daughter. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (08/06/06)

However, her camera does not have one battery as the article implies, but four AA batteries:

See also:

(Update 08/31/11)

A StarTribune article confirms the camera was an HP 315:

McClatchey is president of the Keystone Camaro Club, so she usually has her Hewlett-Packard 315 point-and-shoot camera handy for car shows.

"Blogs Shoot First, Ask Questions Later" - Photo District News

2006-10-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

Blogs Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

October 04, 2006

By Daryl Lang

In some ways, the blogosphere corrects itself, as bloggers try to one-up each other with new information. The popular technology blog Boing Boing, which questioned Wilson’s microphone cable picture, removed the post later.

Hard-core conspiracy theorists, however, play by different rules.

Someone who is well aware of this is Val McClatchey, a real estate agent from Pennsylvania who took the famous picture of a puff of smoke that rose after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near her house on Sept. 11, 2001.

McClatchey has been smeared by people who think she is covering something up. One 9/11 skeptic examined McClatchey’s finances and family health history, speculating that she is motivated to lie for profit. Another posted an account of a confrontational visit to McClatchey’s office.

“Right now it’s become more of a curse than a blessing that I took it at all,” McClatchey recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (McClatchey is also suing the Associated Press for distributing the photo without her permission; the AP denies this.)

– Photo District News

http://pdnonline.com/pdn/newswire/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003220381

Notice that PDN does not link back to my blog so readers can get the whole story.

Val on the attack; calls me a 'coward' on TV

2006-09-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled upon a TV video clip of Val McClatchey on KDKA channel 2 (CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh) which was posted on their site back on the 10th. In the video clip and printed article, Val blasts me for my allegations that her photo may be a fake and calls me a “coward” for not setting foot in her town and make my claims:

Small Town Under Microscope Since 9/11

Sep 10, 2006

~

McClatchey, who titled her picture “End of Serenity”, is getting a taste of the worst.

“I’d like to see him - the coward that he is - set foot out here and lay claim to that,” McClatchey said.

Recently a blog website has claimed McClatchey’s photo is a fraud.

“It makes me really mad, and that’s putting it politely in a very professional way - it makes my blood curl,” McClatchey said. “The simple fact is that they don’t even have their facts straight.”

First of all, the news keeps getting my allegations wrong. I’m not claiming her photo is a fake, I’m saying it may be a fake, or it’s real but shows an explosion originating closer to her house.

Second, Val says that I don’t have the “facts straight”. I’m really curious what facts I don’t have straight that she’s referring too!

Third, what happened to all the investigating reporters? Why aren’t they questioning Val about her very odd story behind the photo? She has motive and opportunity to be in on faking her photo (if it is indeed fake) and the FBI has their fingerprints all over it too.

Also, why haven’t any of these news and TV companies have their photo and graphic arts experts analyze her photo to prove any of my allegations wrong? Are they “cowards”?

At least I’m glad the media is at least keeping the story alive even if they don’t have my allegations quite correct and are not questioning Val or her husband about her story.

(Article archived here.)

Italian debunking blog gets plume photo claims wrong

2006-09-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

An Italian 9/11 debunking blog undicisettembre (English version) tries to debunk the notion that the plume on Val McClatchey’s “End of Serenity” photo can only come from a bomb blast. They say that conspiracists, such as I, claim “plane crashes don't make plumes like that, bombs do” and that we also say the plume in Val’s photo "proves conclusively" that Flight 93 did not crash there. They even specifically quote me:

"It proves that this blast is more likely an ordnance plume"
- Killtown, in his/her site.

(It’s “his” btw ;-)

They then go on to show an interesting photo of a L-100-30 Hercules plane crash in Italy* that crashed after making a long high speed decent and makes a very similar looking plume as the one in Val’s photo (although it is not known at this time how much fuel was aboard this L-100-30 when it crashed):

(L-100-30 Hercules crash left. Val’s photo right.)

They conclude by saying:

“anyone who claims that a cloud with that shape can only come from an ordnance blast is making a false claim and any theories based on such a premise are flawed.”

Well after seeing that photo, I would have to agree with their conclusion, however there is one slight problem with this Italian blogger’s debunk attempt, they are debunking the wrong claims of mine!

First, I’ve never claimed and I’m not claiming that plane crashes never make plumes like the one seen in Val’s photo (I would argue it's still rare though!). Second, about them saying that I claim that Val’s photo proves Flight 93 didn’t crash there, this was something I used to think before Rumple4skn and I found out the new evidence about Val’s plume photo that shows her plume couldn’t have originated where Flight 93 allegedly crashed, so believing her photo proves the plane didn't crash there is now a moot point. They obviously didn’t read my current claims very well on my blogpost that they linked too!

So why I said Val's plume “more likely” (apparently they missed this part in the sentence of mine they quoted) came from and ordnance blast is because:

(1) Val’s plume doesn’t line up with her camera direction and would have looked more dissipated than it does from having to been blown the approx. 250yds in approx. 50 sec needed to have lined up in her camera direction.

(2) Her plume would have been approx. 7 football fields (or 3 Heinz football stadiums!) wide if it had originated from the crash spot which would have been impossible for a plane with only 5,500 gals of fuel on board to have made since we are told it burrowed underground and crash scene photos show none of the grass around the crater was scorched by fire.

So why didn’t they try to debunk these current claims of mine about Val’s photo (aside from her photo might being a fake)? My guess is they couldn’t, so they tried to confuse this issue at hand (or maybe they just can’t read English that well!).

One thing I will change concerning Val’s plume that I’m sure this Italian blog will be happy to hear is that I’ll try not to suggest her plume more likely came from an ordnance blast than from a plane crash as much, but not because they showed a plane crash plume that looks like an ordnance plume, but because since Rumple4skn and I conclude that Val’s plume could not have originated anywhere near the crash site, it really doesn’t matter at all what created the plume in her photo since it didn't come from Flight 93 crashing at the alleged site! I’ll simply refer to her plume as coming from an explosion originating from a different location.

Btw, the crash this Italian blogger brought up is interesting in another aspect. It was also a high speed descent crash like Flight 93 allegedly was, however this one didn't bury at all and left very noticeable debris behind:

(Photo source)

Grazie Italian debunking blog, grazie!

(*Correction: plane crash in Italy was a Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules, not a C-130 as first stated.)

Victor Thorn article

2006-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Killtown, Flight 93, & Val McClatchey

by Victor Thorn

Over the past few years, a researcher named Killtown has been doing some intriguing work on 9-11, especially the anomalies surrounding Flight 93 and a woman named Val McClatchey.

All those who have studied the Shanksville Hoax know that Ms. McClatchey was the woman who produced a photograph of the infamous smoke plume which supposedly arose from the wreckage of Flight 93.

Of course the lack of debris (i.e. wings, fuselage, engines, luggage, etc) and bodies – not to mention the 10-12 foot crater that Flight 93 purportedly “vaporized” inside – have justifiably caused many to question the government’s official version of events. [For more information, see Phantom Flight 93]

Another element of this perplexing puzzle which has come under increasing scrutiny is Val McClatchey herself. In a series of articles regarding this woman, Killtown has uncovered a number of inconsistencies in her story. To view them, please click on these links:

Flight 93 Plume Photo Analysis

Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud?

The Flight 93 Crash Smoke Plume Photo

In all, I feel Killtown best sums-up this scenario of Flight 93 NOT crashing-landing in an abandoned Shanksville landmine with the following quote: “If it really was an ordnance blast not too far beyond the white barn … then this would be a true smoking gun and one of the clearest examples of complicity in the 9-11 attacks by the U.S. government because what else could have caused such a large explosion and who else would have been behind it?”

The question we all need to ask ourselves is: why are so many individuals in the 9-11 “truth movement” and alternative media ignoring this crucial information?

Many thanks to Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani of WING TV for their continued support in helping to spread this photo fraud smoking gun find!

See also:

Flight 93 News Blackout by Victor Thorn

"Local 'ambassadors' tend to Flight 93 site" - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

2006-09-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

Article first printed in the Wall Street Journal and reprinted at the Journal Gazette. See my rebuttal to this article here. (emphasis mine)

Local 'ambassadors' tend to Flight 93 site
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
By Jeffrey Zaslow, The Wall Street Journal

SHANKSVILLE -- On Sept. 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 fell from the sky and crashed in a field three miles from Chuck Wagner's house.
Five years later, he says, his life priorities are now crystallized: "My family, my church, Flight 93."
A 57-year-old heavy-equipment operator, Mr. Wagner is one of 42 volunteer "ambassadors" at the crash site. They are all local people who now see it as their duty to tell visitors about the heroics on that plane, when passengers fought back against terrorists.
Mr. Wagner helps preserve the thousands of mementos left by visitors at the site's makeshift memorial. He maintains decorum; if tourists are giggling into cellphones, he asks them to take their calls elsewhere. When people cry, he has cried with them. "I've told the story thousands of times, but some things just grab my heart," he says. "I'll see a tear running down a woman's cheek, and it's hard for me to keep talking."
Like Mr. Wagner, many of the 2,500-or-so area residents here say Flight 93 forever changed how they view their role in the world. And their sense of purpose has profoundly touched the families of the passengers and crew members. The locals "watch over the area where the plane went down as if it were their own family cemetery," says Christine Fraser, whose sister, Colleen, was on the flight.
"From day one, they opened their arms, their hearts and their homes to all of us," says Larry Catuzzi, who lost his daughter, Lauren, on the plane.
For residents here, such praise makes them wonder: Is there something about their rural area -- populated largely by blue-collar, church-going families -- that makes them special, or would any community have risen to the occasion?
Locals say the past five years haven't been easy for them. Some ambassadors say their home lives have been tested, as they pay less attention to their children while giving long hours to Flight 93 projects. Others have been targeted by bloggers and conspiracy theorists, who charge that they are somehow involved in nefarious cover-ups involving the flight.
At the crash site just outside of Shanksville, in the township of Stonycreek, a $58 million permanent memorial is slated to open in 2011. The 2,200-acre National Park Service project will have 40 groves of maple trees leading to what it calls the "Sacred Ground," where the plane fell. A tower with 40 wind chimes will mark entry to the site, which will include a museum. About $30 million of the cost is to come from nongovernment sources. About $7 million has been raised so far.
Many Shanksville-area residents approve of the design, calling it a fitting tribute to the 40 passengers and crew, whose actions prevented terrorists from reaching their alleged target in Washington, D.C. Others fear the formal memorial won't offer the emotional tugs found at the "temporary" one, which overflows with handmade tributes, crosses, flags and photos.
The current memorial has a Mom-and-Pop quality to it. Mementos are placed on a 40-foot-long, 10-foot-high section of fencing erected on a gravel lot overlooking the filled-in, now grassy crash site, 500 yards away. Ambassadors bring their personal photo albums, showing snapshots they took in the aftermath of the crash. They share stories about how their homes shook when the plane hit, or how debris from the crash floated into their yards. In bad weather, ambassadors invite visitors to talk in a small former state-park guard shack.
Locals think of the memorial as "the people's place," says Donna Glessner, 48, who works at her family's building-supply store and organized the ambassadors. "We didn't make it. The world made it. We just take care of it."
More than 130,000 people visit the site each year -- the ambassadors count them on hand-held clickers -- and all have questions. The ambassadors say they try not to speculate too much. During a training process led by Ms. Glessner, ambassadors agree to stick to the official 9/11 Commission Report or to say, "We don't know."
Dignitaries come and go here, usually on anniversaries. President Bush is due to visit Monday. But the ambassadors are on duty 365 days a year, from morning to sunset. They are scheduled in two-hour shifts. They have collected 30,000 mementos and notes left by visitors, all of which are stored and catalogued: poems, baby pacifiers, guitar picks, soldiers' boots. "We can understand the visitors' words," says Barbara Black, curator of the collection. "Their objects are harder to understand."
Some ambassadors say they appreciate all the crosses and religious tokens now at the site, and worry that the permanent memorial won't have references to faith. "If it is secularized and sanitized, I don't know if I will be involved," says Ed Klein, an ambassador. He believes symbols of faith "bring order out of the chaos that was that flight."
Many say religious expressions belong here, because the crash site is a final resting place. Flight 93 took off from Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco. There were 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, and given the impact of the crash -- the plane hit the ground at 580 miles an hour and debris was imbedded 45 feet deep -- more than 90 percent of human remains couldn't be recovered from the site, according to the county coroner.
Shanksville-area residents understand the impulse people have to come to the site. And they are getting used to outsiders. At first, they admit, they were nervous when hundreds of leather-clad motorcyclists would roar through town in search of the crash site. Ambassadors now say bikers are among the most reverent and patriotic visitors.
At the site, ambassadors show visitors a photo taken by local real-estate agent Val McClatchey. She lives just over a mile from where the plane fell. At 10:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, she was in her living room, watching TV coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. A loud boom shook her house. She grabbed a digital camera that was by her front door.
The photo she took shows a mushroom cloud rising into a blue sky, with a neighbor's barn in the foreground. The FBI says it is the only known image taken within seconds of the crash. Ms. McClatchey, 50, says, "If I knew how much chaos it would create in my life, I might have just deleted it."
Accusations about her photo have spread across the Internet. Conspiracy theorists say the photo actually depicts a bomb blast, or that the cloud suggests the plane was shot down by the U.S. government. Others charge the photo is a phony. It is hard, she says, to see her name on the Internet alongside the words "total fraud."
The ambassadors feel for Ms. McClatchey. If bloggers would come to Shanksville, "they could talk to a hundred people who saw that same cloud that day," Ms. Glessner says.
Many ambassadors and other locals have formed lasting friendships with the victims' families. Shirley Hillegass, 68, lives three miles from the crash site. Six months after the plane fell, she attended a church service for victims and sat behind a woman who was weeping. Ms. Hillegass says she felt the woman's pain so deeply that "it was like I was in her body." The woman was Esther Heymann, stepmother of Honor Elizabeth Wainio, who died on Flight 93 at age 27.
Ms. Hillegass also has lost a child. Her 32-year-old daughter, Annette, died in a car accident during a 1994 snowstorm.
Ms. Heymann, 57, lives in Catonsville, Md., and every couple of months, drives 180 miles to the crash site. Over time, the two mothers have grown close. They talk about their daughters: vivacious young career women who were alike in many ways. They also recognize the differences in their losses -- one so public, one little noticed beyond friends and loved ones.
Ms. Hillegass last talked to her daughter, who lived out of town, a week before the car accident. It was an uneventful conversation.
By contrast, Ms. Heymann received a cellphone call from her stepdaughter before Flight 93 crashed. They decided that, to remain calm, they both would look at the beauty outside their windows. Ms. Heymann, safe in her home, looked into the sky above Maryland. Ms. Wainio gazed out of the plane at the sky above western Pennsylvania. Ms. Wainio expressed her love for each family member, then said she had to hang up because passengers were "breaking into the cockpit."
Lined up on the grounds of the Flight 93 memorial are 40 painted angels on sticks. The angel bearing Ms. Wainio's name has a photo of her looking radiant, wearing jeans and a short-sleeve white shirt. In the winter, that photo saddens her stepmother. "She's not dressed for snow, and I feel so impotent," Ms. Heymann says. "I wish I could keep her safe." Between Ms. Heymann's visits to the site, Ms. Hillegass checks up on the photo, or places flowers there.
Mr. Wagner, the heavy-equipment operator, is the ambassador in charge of maintenance at the site. He often emails Flight 93 families to let them know that tributes or photos have gotten sun-bleached or tattered and should be replaced. "I try to be their hands and eyes at the site," he says.
For seven days after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Wagner volunteered at the crash site, helping to gather plane parts, personal effects such as clothing and shoes, and human remains. "I asked God to direct me," he says. "If it was something I could handle, I wanted to be part of it." Some passengers' loved ones know that Mr. Wagner saw a lot that week. They don't ask him many questions, he says, "and I don't share much."
At the crash site, presentations have changed as information has become available. This spring, the transcript of Flight 93's cockpit voice recorder was made public, revealing the mayhem of the final 31 minutes. Ambassadors now bring photocopies of the transcript to the site each day. Many visitors stand there, solemnly reading every word.
Ambassadors keep a log about each day's visitors. One entry describes a busload of blind people, who crawled along the ground, feeling the tributes left by other visitors. They also asked to touch the ambassador's face.
The ambassadors, who will remain on duty once the permanent memorial opens, say they have become better listeners since 2001. Many visitors want to tell them where they were on Sept. 11, and how they felt, and ambassadors see it as their job to listen.
When Ms. Glessner interacts with visitors, a mix of sadness and anger sometimes creeps up on her, she says. "I think, 'Why am I, this little person in this little town, talking about Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta? Why did they invade my space?'"
Her children, ages 17 and 20, are proud of her work on the memorial but have little interest in Flight 93 anymore, she says. "They see it as something that has taken me away from the family." Though two-thirds of the ambassadors are senior citizens, there is optimism in Shanksville that the younger generation eventually will step up when called on. Ms. Glessner says: "It's a story that will be told as long as stories are told."
Ben Wainio, who lost his daughter on the flight, has visited the crash site on the coldest, windiest days of winter. At times, he has been alone there -- except for the ambassador on duty. Ambassadors have helped him wipe snow off a bench that bears his daughter's name, and they have sat next to him in the cold, saying little. "We just look out at the field together," Mr. Wainio says.
Shanksville's embrace has led him to look at his loss in new ways. There is a thought that never would have occurred to him five years ago, but now he feels comfortable saying it aloud: Americans were murdered on four planes on Sept. 11, and if Elizabeth was fated to be on one of them, he says, "I'm so glad it was Flight 93."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06255/721163-85.stm

Over half at LCF think Flight 93 photo is fake

2006-09-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

Out of 70 votes at a Loose Change Forum poll, most think Val McClatchey's "End of Serenity" photo is fake:

(Note: You might have to register at the forum to view poll.)

"Team 4 Looks At Flight 93 Conspiracy Theories" - WTAE-TV 4 Pittsburgh

2006-09-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

(emphasis mine)

Team 4 Looks At Flight 93 Conspiracy Theories

POSTED: September 11, 2006

Five years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, conspiracy theories abound about what caused Flight 93 to crash.

Many people still believe it was shot down. Others say the plane never crashed at all.

Team 4's Paul Van Osdol has been looking into some of these theories.

Do a Google search on Flight 93 conspiracy and you'll get more than 2 million hits.

Some of the theories are wild and easily challenged, but others raise serious questions about shortcomings in the government investigation.

The movie "United 93" portrayed government officials as frantic, slow to respond, overwhelmed by events, but conspiracy theorists say the movie failed to tell the real story.

Just one day after Flight 93 crashed, rumors about a government conspiracy were already swirling around Shanksville, Pa.

Some of the early conspiracy theories were fueled by witnesses along Indian Lake. Flight 93 went down on just the other side of the lake, and these witnesses say they saw an unidentified white jet circling the crash site just minutes after Flight 93 went down.

"We all looked at it and said, 'What's he doing?'" said marina owner Jim Brant. "We had no idea what was happening at that time."

Brant, one of the first people at the scene, told Team 4 the day after the crash his comments were picked up by conspiracy theorists, but today, Brant does not buy into a conspiracy.

"I don't think there was any outside interference to that plane at all," said Brant. "I don't think there is any conspiracy other than what was in the plane."

But the Internet continues to buzz with theories about a government shoot-down, and that's not all.

Some have posted articles alleging a famous photo (pictured, above right) taken at the time of the crash is a fake.

A retired Army colonel claims there was no plane at all at Shanksville, saying the hole in the ground was far too small for a Boeing 757.

Another theory: Flight 93 never crashed but ended up in Cleveland, where the "Zionist controlled NASA Space Agency led the cover-up," the same NASA responsible for "dubious Apollo moon landings."

Theories like this flourish in an information vacuum.

Researcher Bryan Sacks of the group www.911truth.org does not necessarily believe the government shot down Flight 93, but he says the 9/11 Commission failed to do a thorough investigation.

"Most of the commissioners had direct conflicts of interest, ties to the airlines that were involved," said Sacks.

He and other researchers also point to an Army seismic study that indicates Flight 93 crashed at 10:06 a.m., three minutes later than the government's official version.

"So why is there this three-minute gap? We really don't know," said researcher Paul Thompson.

Thompson created a timeline of all the Sept. 11, 2001, events. He points out that it took a half-hour after Flight 93's hijacking for air traffic controllers to notify the military.

"They knew the World Trade Center had been hit," said Thompson. "They knew the Pentagon had been hit and yet they don't bother to tell anyone of importance about it? They don't bother to tell the military that this plane has been hijacked? I mean, if you look at that, it just doesn't make sense."

And he wonders why authorities never positively identified the remains of the hijackers.

"We just labeled them terrorist 'A, B, C and D,'" said Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller.

"Why wasn't the step made to go beyond that and try to identify them name by name?" Van Osdol asked.

"We couldn't, because nobody gave us a DNA profile," Miller said.

Miller, one of the lead figures in the Flight 93 investigation, still gets occasional late-night calls from conspiracy theorists. He says the evidence does not support a shoot-down.

"There's nothing that I saw on the ground that would suggest that," said Miller. "It would seem like there would have been debris, upwind around Greensburg or somewhere like that, but as far as I know, nothing was found."

But critics said there are still too many unanswered questions about one of the most momentous events in recent history.

"People are interested to know what happened on 9/11 and they do suspect that they're not getting the full story," said Sacks.

Van Osdol talked to several relatives of Flight 93 passengers. Most of them are skeptical of conspiracy theories and they support the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission.

But some other 9/11 families just put out a DVD called 'Press for Truth,' airing their concerns about the government investigation.

Related Links:

www.cooperativeresearch.org

www.911truth.org

www.flight93crash.com

www.physics911.net

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/9822498/detail.html

"Near Shanksville, Pa., Local 'Ambassadors' Tend to Flight 93 Site" - Wall Street Journal

2006-09-11T01:13:00.000-07:00

Snippet. Also printed at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Journal Gazette. See archived article here. (emphasis mine)

Near Shanksville, Pa., Local 'Ambassadors' Tend to Flight 93 Site

By Jeffrey Zaslow
September 11, 2006
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. -- On Sept. 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 fell from the sky and crashed in a field three miles from Chuck Wagner's house.
~
At the site, ambassadors show visitors a photo taken by local real-estate agent Val McClatchey. She lives just over a mile from where the plane fell. At 10:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, she was in her living room, watching TV coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. A loud boom shook her house. She grabbed a digital camera that was by her front door.

The photo she took shows a mushroom cloud rising into a blue sky, with a neighbor's barn in the foreground. The FBI says it is the only known image taken within seconds of the crash. Ms. McClatchey, 50, says, "If I knew how much chaos it would create in my life, I might have just deleted it."

Accusations about her photo have spread across the Internet. Conspiracy theorists say the photo actually depicts a bomb blast, or that the cloud suggests the plane was shot down by the U.S. government. Others charge the photo is a phony. It is hard, she says, to see her name on the Internet alongside the words "total fraud."

The ambassadors feel for Ms. McClatchey. If bloggers would come to Shanksville, "they could talk to a hundred people who saw that same cloud that day," Ms. Glessner says.
~

Notice that the WSJ mentions this controversy of Val's photo along with Flight 93 being shot down. No where did I ever say that the anomalies in her photo suggest Flight 93 was shot down. I've been suggesting for a while now that all the "shoot down" rumors of Flight 93 were specifically started by the government on the day of 9/11 to distract people from the realization that Flight 93 did not crash in Shanksville.

Also notice Ms. Glessner's quote that "a hundred people" saw the same cloud that's in Val's photo. Do you really believe a hundred people saw the plume in Val's photo, but only Val managed to take a pic of it?

"Small Town Under Microscope Since 9/11" - KDKA

2006-09-10T23:35:00.000-07:00

(Article contains video coverage. Emphasis mine.)

Small Town Under Microscope Since 9/11

Sep 10, 2006

(KDKA) SHANKSVILLE Stoney Creek Township is the kind of place where birds, not cars are the dominant sound in quiet moments.

The peaceful nature of the town made the violence of Sept. 11 all the more painful for residents.

“I heard a very loud roar of an engine and I just turned to look out my front window,” said Val McClatchey, an amateur photographer.

“I immediately heard the plane you know, heard the engines screaming and just seconds later it hit,” said Rick King, of the Shanksville VFD. “The whole town shook, my porch rumbled - the ground just rumbled.

“It was so forceful that it almost knocked me off my sofa,” King added. “I jumped and grabbed my camera and on the front deck and saw the smoke rising over the hill.”

King was on the first fire truck to leave Shanksville and the first to arrive at the scene.

“I get up there and I look around and it was like - it was like where's the plane,” King said. “I mean there was just like small pieces that you could pick up and put in the palm of your hand just scattered everywhere.”

The fire fighters were rescuers with no one to rescue

Four years later, King declines all interviews and has reduced his volunteer fire involvement.

“Nobody wants to hang around anymore,” said Shanksville VFD Fire Chief Tom Shaffer. “Every time you open the doors anymore, somebody’s pulling in, ‘where’s the crash site? Where were you guys on 9/11 still’.”

Shaffer who was another first responder and is no less effected.

“It has never stopped since the plane crashed, there’s always something,” Shaffer said.

He feels compelled by his position so he reluctantly accommodates reporters.

“Sometimes it’s aggravating, when it interferes with your personal life then it’s aggravating,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer says they’ve experience the best and worst in people since that day.

McClatchey, who titled her picture “End of Serenity”, is getting a taste of the worst.

“I’d like to see him - the coward that he is - set foot out here and lay claim to that,” McClatchey said.

Recently a blog website has claimed McClatchey’s photo is a fraud.

“It makes me really mad, and that’s putting it politely in a very professional way - it makes my blood curl,” McClatchey said. “The simple fact is that they don’t even have their facts straight.”

McClatchey still gives the proceeds from the picture to a foundation for Flight 93 families.

The people of Shanksville, Lambertsville and Stoney Creek Township have learned that outside aggravations are part of being under a microscope.

(KDKA-TV is the CBS owned & operated television station for Pittsburgh.)

http://kdka.com/911/local_story_253090222.html

Note that the article doesn’t mention me by name, or link to my blogpost to get the whole story.

More of my comments on this article here.

"A photo of a plane crash or a con?" - Pressefotografforbundet

2006-09-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

From a Danish online photo journal site. Thanks to Mew at Loose Change Forum for translating this article.

A photo of a plane crash or a con?

The conspiracy theories are going strong after 9/11. This is what an American amateur photographer has found out. She took a sensational picture of a plane crash.

By Jens Tønnesen

In the morning of 9/11 United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on a field near Val McClatchey's farm. She soon grabbed her digital camera and took a picture from her porch of the column of smoke.

She printed the out the picture and handed it over to the police and her farm was soon invaded by FBI agents. When the extent of 9/11 became clear, Val McClatchey’s picture became a sought after souvenir.

The picture has been used in national collections to the relatives of the victims, and has toured the country around on exhibitions. By the crash site, volunteers tells about the tragedy and show Val McClatchey’s picture in a laminated plastic version.

But it has also become an important evidence for the conspiracy theorists to show that the whole truth about the theorist attack has not come out. They have analyzed the wind direction, the spreading of wreckage and camera angles in an attempt to show that the plane crash was a con.

A group of bloggers, who call themselves “9-11 investigates”, have visited Val McClatchey and accused her of manipulating the picture and to put in fake smoke on the picture.

They have moreover picked her story from each other and pointed out discrepancy, all in an attempt to get the 50 year old real estate agent and amateur photographer to appear untrustworthy.

When you search her name on Google, it appears in the same sentences as “Total fraud”, which is probably not the best name for a real estate agent to have.

Published: 10-09-2006

http://www.pressefotografforbundet.dk/3094

Note that this article makes it sound like I am accusing Val of faking her photo. That is not accurate. Her being involved in faking her photo is just one possible scenario. The other being her photo is authentic and it's a photo of an explosion originating from a different location from the alleged Flight 93 crash site.

"Photo under fire" - Tribune-Democrat

2006-09-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Article first came out in the CNHI and some of their affiliates on Sept. 8 which is archived here. Comments about new photo in Tribune article below. (Snippet, emphasis mine):

Photo under fire

Local woman forced to defend shot's integrity

Published: September 09, 2006

By KIRK SWAUGER
The Tribune-Democrat

SHANKSVILLE — If a picture’s worth a thousand words, Val McClatchey’s is the Da Vinci Code.

Her photograph of a mushroom cloud of gray smoke rising above the bucolic countryside – snapped just moments after the crash of Flight 93 – has become a target for 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Five years later, the 50-year-old Indian Lake woman is frustrated by allegations the photo is a masterful hoax.

~

McClatchey said she ran a short distance to the door, saw smoke and instinctively grabbed her month-old digital camera from nearby.

http://www.tribune-democrat.com/siteSearch/apstorysection/local_story_252234421.html

This article contains a revealing photo. The bottom photo is a current photo of Val McClatchey apparently clutching her then month-old digital camera that she supposedly used to take her infamous plume photo with. It was presumably taken from the Tribune-Democrat reporter doing the story.

Just look at and compare the color quality of both photos. Look how dramatically different the colors are between them! The reporter's photo, to me, looks like a real photo. However, Val's photo looks like it's colors have been manipulated which then adds evidence that her photo was faked.

Also, notice in the reporter's photo that there is a small white cloud barely over the horizon above the red barn. Notice the horizon is higher than her house and from what I've been told, the crash spot sits lower in elevation than Val's house. If that white cloud is hovering near the crash spot, then just imagine how tall the plume in Val's photo would be!

One more thing to point out, if you look at the thin column of smoke under the round part of the plume in Val's photo, notice on the lower left side of the smoke column just above the tree line that there looks like there is also a small white cloud and it appears to be behind the plume. If this small white cloud were in fact hovering near the crash spot, this would make the height of the plume practically a mile high! It also gives more evidence that the plume was photoshopped on there because it seems way too tall and wide to have come from the crash spot and it is starting to look like it is even way too tall and wide to have even come from just beyond the horizon!

CNHI & affiliates - "Flight 93 crash photo target of conspiracy theorists"

2006-09-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Posted at Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (CNHI) and some of its affiliate (see below). Original story came from their affiliate The Tribune Democrat [local]. (Emphasis mine.)

Flight 93 crash photo target of conspiracy theorists

Published September 08, 2006

By KIRK SWAUGER
THE TRIBUNE-DEMOCRAT (Johnstown, Pa.)

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. —

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, Val McClatchey’s is the Da Vinci Code.

Her surreal photograph of a mushroom cloud of gray smoke rising above the bucolic countryside – snapped just moments after the crash of Flight 93 – has become a target for 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Five years later, the 50-year-old Indian Lake, Pa., woman is frustrated by allegations that the photo is a masterful hoax.

“It’s extremely disturbing,” said McClatchey, owner of Mountain Lakes Realty near Indian Lake.

“My main focus,” she added, “is to protect the integrity of the photo.”

Conspiracy theorists, specifically the blog Killtown, contend the photo is an elaborate fraud that starts with McClatchey and serpentines up to the highest levels of the federal government.

Killtown suggests the photograph is a fake, claiming the gray smoke looks more like a plume from an ordnance blast than the black cloud from a jet crash.

“If it really was an ordnance blast not too far beyond the white barn and white farm house, then this would be a true smoking gun and one of the clearest examples of complicity in the 9/11 attacks by the U.S. government because what else could have caused such a large explosion and who else would have been behind it?” Killtown wrote.

McClatchey is incensed at the allegation.

“These people are making all these conspiracy theories about the very country that fought to give them the freedom to write the garbage they do,” McClatchey said. “They’re the biggest hypocrites in the world.”

McClatchey says she will not respond directly on the blogs.

“The more fuel you add to it, the worse it gets,” she said. “Sooner or later, like a fire if you don’t put oxygen in it, it’s going to die.”

Joanne Hanley, Flight 93 superintendent for the National Park Service, agreed.

“I think what Val is going through is shameful,” Hanley said. “Just because something is on a blog doesn’t make it true. People need to realize that.

“It’s also hurtful to the families. They’re discrediting the heroes and what they did. I think it’s unnecessary, and I think people should focus their energies on something positive.”

On Sept. 11, 2001, McClatchey said she was watching the “Today” show when reports broke of planes hitting into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

As she was trying to call her husband from an area with spotty cellphone coverage, she said she heard the sudden surge of a jet plane and saw a silver flash outside.

“All of a sudden, boom!” McClatchey said. “The house shook, my electricity went out. I was sitting on the edge of the sofa at the time, and it knocked me off balance. You could tell something happened outside.”

McClatchey said she ran a short distance to the door, saw smoke and instinctively grabbed her month-old digital camera from nearby.

She said she managed to snap just one photo.

“I didn’t realize any of the significance,” she said.

Now, her photo has come to symbolize the crash, specifically how the war on terror began in the rolling hills of Somerset County, Pa.

An enlarged version is on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and it has appeared in U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Time and newspapers across the country.

Through all the controversy, McClatchey said she cherishes the bonds she has forged with Flight 93 families.

“They are the most wonderful people I’ve met,” she said. “I admire their strength and courage.

“It restores your faith.”

Kirk Swauger writes for The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pa.

http://www.cnhi.com/cnhinsstories/cnhinsall_story_251131209.html

Val McClatchey's incredible photograph, taken moments after the crash of United Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pa., has become a target for conspiracy theorists who say it is not authentic.

The following CNHI affiliates carried this story too:

Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (CNHI), Birmingham, AL
CNHI Editors Picks
CNHI disasters
The Cushing Daily Citizen, Cushing, OK
The Free Press, Mankato, MN
The Herald, Sharon, PA
The Meadville Tribune, Meadville, PA
Mineral Wells Index, Mineral Wells, Texas
New Castle News, New Castle, PA
The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, PA
The Tribune Star, Terre Haute, Indiana

Jones Jones'd Flight 93 photo evidence news

2006-08-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

I was really disappointed that some of the "big boys" in the alternative press (WhatReallyHappened.com, Rense.com, PrisonPlanet.com) didn't pick up on the story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Aug. 6 earlier this month about my smoking gun finds in Val McClatchey's infamous 'Flight 93' photo which shows that plume in her photo is an ordnance blast that had to have originated from a different location, or that the photo is possibly a fake.

I emailed Lisa Guliani and Victor Thorne at WING TV a couple of days after the story broke expressing my disappointment about these three big websites I had admired in the past stiffing this story that had made mainstream news (I had even emailed all three of them about this story!).

I had mentioned WING TV in my original blogpost because they had previously interviewed Val at her work about her photo and the Post-Gazette article mentioned WING too. Victor then wrote and article on the 10th blasting the "Big 3" for not picking up on the story.

A couple of days after Thorne's story came out, I noticed something peculiar. I had been tracking the Post-Gazette story daily to see who was picking it up on the internet by doing web searches (that's how I noticed that the "Big 3" didn't pick it up on their websites) and all of a sudden I saw links to PrisonPlanet.tv on my internet search results. This was weird because I had been checking the "Big 3" sites daily to see if they had picked it up and I swore I never saw PrisonPlanet link it, but then again I never looked on PrisonPlanet.tv for the article, but only on PrisonPlanet.com. I started to feel bad that I accused PrisonPlanet of stiffing the story.

So I checked out PrisonPlanet.com to see if they had linked to it, but I still didn't see it (maybe it was only linked on PrisonPlanet.tv?). I then realized they probably only had it up for a day or two, so I started checking their archives. This is where is gets interesting. I finally found which day PrisonPlanet.com had linked it. They had it liked on the Wednesday the 9th under their "Police State" section. However when I clicked on the link, in which I noticed that they had archived the story, they had the date of the story as 10th! How could they have linked to their archived story on the 9th when they archived it on the 10th??? (Remember that the original story came out on the Sunday the 6th and Thorne's article was posted up on the 10th!)

They obviously tried to sneak it on their site after they felt the pressure from Thorne's article that they had censored it. Also, if you notice on their archived page of the 9th, the link to the article is almost at the top under the "Police State" section which means they had just linked it. On Jones' mirror sites, PrisonPlanet.tv had it listed first on their "Breaking News" section along with PropagandaMatrix.com under the "Other News" section which confirms they had quickly added it before the day was over. I never saw it linked at InfoWars.com, or at JonesReport.com.

So why did Jones first censor this important smoking gun story that made mainstream news and then try to sneak on his multiple sites? Is it because he hates WING TV that much (or me) that he couldn't put aside his personal feelings and help capitalize on this opportune moment about a 9/11 smoking gun being mentioned in the news and then only snuck it on his sites so as to not appear he was censoring it? Pathetic.

He also didn't even link to my original blogpost that the Post-Gazette article was written about on his archived page. At the very least, he could have done that in which the Post-Gazette article also failed to do.

Well at least I'm somewhat happy that he eventually archived this important smoking gun story (even if he snuck it on there) because this story is important and having it on his sites means more people are exposed to it.

But what's Michael Rivero's (WRH) and Jeff Rense's excuse for not linking the story? They couldn't put their personal differences with WING TV aside for the sake of the truth movement either?

(Originally posted here.)

Phun with Photoshopping

2006-08-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

(Updated: 01/02/07)

Would it be impossible for someone to have photoshopped the plume seen on Val McClatchey's infamous Flight 93 photo? You decide...

Here is the original:

(Source: post-gazette.com)

I asked for people to photoshop objects on the sky of her photo (newest entries first):

- Berliner Kindl

- Melle Belle

- Melle Belle

- StillDiggin

By Brad from 911review.org.

By ~GmX.

"ait, here's my contribution to this. 5min in fusion5" - 4saken

"that's my for real one lol. it took 5 mins" - Braheem

"lol its united 93? see it was on fire before it hit the ground cuz a missile hit it" - Braheem

"I'm not sure we should discount the Romulans" - Nevermore

"You can add this, I did it 30 minutes, and I'm a noob at Photoshop, so anyone could edit these photos. It's not the best, but what the hell I was bored." - Sureshot

"Ooopss.. I've blown up the crater." - mgldzcrr

"10 minutes..." - rattler14

"Took me roughly 10-15mins..." - Barcoded

"...here's a link to a whipped up plume behind Val's farm." - Lee Franklin

"Here's a quick one." - Tony

Following by Tarya:

-------------------

By 2Faced.

"This was also made under 20 mins, so a quick job." - Kingston

"Here you go. Took me roughly 10-15mins." - broodlinger

And for quick clean-up...

By Rumpl4skn.

See also:

Flight 93 photo plume comparison - killtown.blogspot.com
Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud? - killtown.blogspot.com

McClatchey interview from Windsor Park Stories

2006-08-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

Windsor Park Stories -

What is America?

The Shanksville Episodes:

Val McClatchey

"The Picture"

(Not all of the printed interview below is in the above video. You can see the full streaming video here, or download it here. Totally running time of video is 29:00. All photos on this blogpost are from the video.)

[1:52 - Start of interview.]

Narrator: Her name is Val McClatchey and although you don’t know the name, you certainly know the picture of the red burn and the mushroom cloud that was ascending toward heaven shortly after Flight 93 crashed on that hill in Shanksville.

We met Val McClatchey several months after that picture was taken. What a wonderful person and what an inspirational story. It’s a story that will help us to answer the question, “What is America?”

[2:32]

Narrator: Tell us a little about life in Shanksville, Somerset, and western Pennsylvania.

~

[3:18]

Val McClatchey: September 11, 2001 started out just like most days. I got my husband off to work. I was sitting on the sofa watching TV having my 2nd and 3rd cup of coffee as usual and that’s when everything started going wrong in the world it seemed. The first plane had hit and at that time we thought it was an accident and when the second plane hit, it was just an incredible feeling like the whole world was gone crazy.

I was pretty much glued to the TV, like I’m sure most Americans were who had access to the TV at the time, and I had called my husband, who was on his way to a meeting, and while I was talking to him, the Pentagon had just been hit and it was, he was going to try to get back home. He knew they were not going to be able to make their meeting, so he was going to try to fight the traffic to get home.

And it wasn’t long after the Pentagon had gotten hit that I had heard a very loud surge of an engine. I just turned out to look out my front window and I just caught it, just a glimpse of just a flash and then the explosion had hit. It was forceful enough that it about knocked me off my sofa.

I’d had my digital camera -- was right by the door -- and I ran out and took a photo. The smoke rising over the hillside was just; it was so incredible when you think of the clear blue sky and everything. It was just, I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I just did and I ran and grabbed my cellphone and got in my truck and tried to call 9/11 -- couldn’t get through. The cell -- we don’t have cell service very well at Indian Lake.

(This is their saw mill; JCM Industries.)

From then on I ran to our saw mill and they still had power and their phones were still working. That’s when we initially heard that it was a commercial liner that had gone down.

[6:03]

Narrator: The story of your photograph is very important. Tell us how the photograph came to be and how it changed your life.

Val: Well the photo, as I said, it was -- that was just an accidental, it was nothing intended. It was basically something that I’d just taken just because of the strange and not knowing what had happened, or anything.

It sat in my camera for a few days. You know, to me it was just a photograph of something. The state police and the FBI were asking for any photos related to Flight 93.

When I went to download it, I then realized my then seven month old puppy had chewed the end of my chord to download it into my computer, so I had taken the chord and everything, had it replaced, could not get it to recognize my camera into the computer. Ran back and got a memory card reader and as soon as I did I downloaded, made a copy of the photo, took it to the state police and within an hour, three FBI agents were in my house.

(These are the signatures of the 3 FBI agents who went to Val's house and took her memory card. Their names are Special Agents David J Hacker, Todd J. Brown, and Phil Lewzander.)

It turns out to be the very first photo taken related. It’s -- timed it out -- it was approximately 5 seconds after impact that I snapped the photo. It was the very first one related. In some of it, I -- apparently the FBI thought it was worthwhile; they took the original memory card. So it turns out that photo was a piece of history that I captured that second in time. I still look at it in kind of disbelief that I’m the one who did that, or had the presence of mind to do it and that’s not something you think about.

(This part in the video is confusing. Val said the FBI agents took her camera's memory card, but this clip shows as if the FBI took her computer's hard drive too.)

[8:26]

Narrator: Val as I understand it, your photograph has brought agony and ecstasy. Tell us about the initial reaction of the FBI when they discovered that you had this incredible photograph.

Val: Well the FBI, when they came in, they looked at it on my computer which is a lot clearer. They could actually see, you know, what they appear to be debris flying out from that cloud of smoke which I’m sure with modern technology they could do a little more scientific evidence I believe.

I really don’t know, I mean when I think about it, the agony of it is knowing that just seconds, lot of people died… But since then it’s, that photo’s been everywhere. People, neighbors want a copy, so of course they wanted to pay for the paper and my ink and everything. Taking the money for myself didn’t feel right, so we decided that the money needed to go to the families of Flight 93.

(Here is what Val basically gives you for $20, an 8 1/2 x 11 color computer paper printout.)

At that time there were no funds set up for it. So I was on my way to the bank -- I had sold a few pictures -- and that’s when Lisa Beamer had taken the same flight that Todd would have taken. She announced at that time the forming of the Todd Beamer Foundation and the checks that come and money that comes in and we’ve been sending out to support the families of Flight 93 and that’s just -- it felt like the right thing to do.

The photo has been all over the world; Australia, France, over in Germany, everyone. It’s now hanging in the Smithsonian Institution and that was the most unique experience out of it. I’ve seen the photo thousands of times already, but seeing it hanging there and hearing the other people’s reactions to it, that was probably one of the most memorable times regarding my photo.

~

[14:20]

Narrator: When you look at your picture, what do you see there?

Val: The end of serenity. Things haven’t been the same since obviously; the traffic. For the two weeks afterwards, we had the generators running at night. You could hear them all night long. You could see the glare, the lights against the sky. You couldn’t, you didn’t feel free to drive up and down the road. There was state police and FBI and everything surrounding the area for weeks afterwards. It turned our quiet little town to something out of a movie scene.

[15:02]

Narrator: What has it done to you personally?

Val: Well our life has definitely changed. Right before 9/11, we suffered some severe business loss to the point we were forced to file Chapter 11 with our business. We were in the process of reorganizing and right afterwards the insurance company decided they no longer want to deal with high-risk businesses. I feel that the insurance companies took advantage of the 9/11 situation in general. When we tried to get insurance, we could no longer afford it. The rates have doubled, tripled, quadrupled to the point we couldn’t recoup, so as of Dec. 31st, we ended up losing our business, putting 40 some other people out of work, which is not a great way to start the New Year.

(JCM Industries is named after Val's husband; John C. McClatchey, CEO.)

I’d had some health problems. Gall bladder surgery and during the testing for all the gall bladder problems, they found a tumor on my kidney and lesions on my liver, so day after Christmas, I had my gall bladder out. Right after there I went right into taking real estate classes to start a new career to help support my family.

[17:58]

Narrator: And to you, what is important in life?

Val: Wanting to wake up everyday. Just knowing that people I care about ’s going to be ok. Lot to look forward to, a wedding to plan. I’ve got a great husband that -- he’s been through a lot and he has supported me. We’ve done a complete role-reversal. He’s at home, doing some work at home and I’m the one going out with the briefcase in the morning, which is quite a unique challenge, facing life’s little twists and turns, but we try to look forward to the fact that as one door closes, who knows what lies on the other side of the other doors? That is what I’m trying to focus on right now.

We may have lost our company. We may lose my house, but who knows? We might find a nicer house, we might – you know you just don’t know? Things have changed, but somehow love finds a way to make it all work out.

(This is the front of Val's house where she took her photo at on her porch about were her front window is. This is also the window she looked out of to see the glimpse of the plane she heard fly overhead.)

[19:28]

Narrator: So how do you go one? What motivates you? What inspires you?

Val: Well what inspires me is having to get up everyday and face life. It beats the alternative.

I have a young, well my son and his young wife. They just bought a house, looking forward to starting their family. A daughter, who is getting married in May, just found out she has cancer, so now I have to be strong for her and supportive and get her through her crisis and get her happily married and start her family. And I have a great husband and somehow we’re going to make it.

[22:11]

Narrator: You have the strength and resilience and good spirit and good will of the most admirable dimensions. Where does that all come from?

Val: I would say, just comes from the love I have from my family and friends and just the faith that if you do the right thing and live the right way, it’s gonna come back. Yeah, I have my bad days. Yeah, I feel like going out and punching somebody in the face and I go home and punch on the pillow, or something, or take my frustrations out on exercise, or some other way, but I’m only human. Like everybody else, I have my faults. But as I say if you do the right thing and sooner, or later, it’s going to come back for you; ten-fold.

[23:11]

Narrator: When it’s all said and done, what do you want people to know about you? What do you want your legacy to be?

Val: That in no matter what, that somehow, someway, I’ll find a way to smile and keep going and somehow, someway put it behind me and just trust in God that he’ll make things right for us.

[23:37 - End of interview.]

See also:

Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud? (07/18/06)
The Shanksville Episodes: Val McClatchey - Windsor Park Stories (download)

Flight 93 photo plume comparison

2006-08-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

(08/22/06)

Here is Val McClatchey's photo that supposedly shows the smoke plume created after Flight 93 allegedly crashed about 1.5 miles away from her house where she took this photo:

(Photo source: Shanksville Memorial)

As I've shown, the smoke plume in her photo is way to big to have come from the alleged crash spot. Val says she snapped her photo about 5 seconds after almost being knocked off her couch from the explosion. Wind gusts near the crash spot were only 9 knots blowing SE.

Here is an example of what a smoke plume from a real plane crash would have looked like if it came from the alleged Flight 93 crash site, about 1.5 miles away from where this photo was taken:

(Comparison photo by Rumpl4skn.)

(Gif by Rumpl4skn.)

Here is the video clip of where this dark smoke plume in the comparison photo came from. It is from a B-52 military jet crashing:

Here is a video clip of a re-enactment of the Pearl Harbor attack at the Dayton Air Show. Notice all the "short pulse" explosions that were set off look exactly like the plume in Val's photo:

Here is a video clip of exploding a munitions cache and notice that the color and shape of the plume looks exactly like the grey smoke plume in Val's photo rather than the thick dark smoke plume of the jet crash:

"Now that's a friggin' mushroom cloud there!"

See also:

Val McClatchey Photo: More Smoking Guns, or Total Fraud? - killtown.blogspot.com
Did Flight 93 Crash in Shanksville? - Killtown