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

(Updated: 03/29/08)

Valencia (Val) McClatchey, a real estate agent who lives about 1.6 miles east from the Shanksville crash scene, is the person who took the famous photo of the mushroom cloud rising above a red barn that was supposedly from Flight 93 crashing down in Shanksville. Her photo, which she has called "End of Serenity," has been cheered by a lot of 9/11 researchers, including myself, who have argued that her photo proves that the crash of Flight 93 is fake because the smoke plume in her photo looks more like the plume coming from an ordnance blast because of its grey color rather than from a plane crash since smoke from jet fuel fires are almost black in color.

(Val photo source: pittsburghlive.com. Notice the barn on the left has been painted red on its sides since the original photo. It used to be all white.)

(Left is Val's photo. Middle is ordnance blast. Right is a jet crash.)

Now after nearly five years of speculating over this photo, evidence has been discovered that conclusively shows that the mushroom cloud in her photo did not come from a Boeing 757 crashing at Shanksville and not only that, but there is something else about this photo that makes it a 100% proof positive smoking gun photo!

However there is one slight problem, her photo may be a fake.

How She Got That 'Prize Winning' Shot

As the story goes, Val, founder of the Keystone Camaro Club and who owns Mtn. Lakes Realty east of Indian Lake near Indian Lake Air Park, was at her home watching the events of 9/11 unfold on the "Today" show just after getting her husband John off to work at their saw mill company, JCM Industries (JCM = John C. McClatchey). She had called her husband to talk about the attacks going on and as they were on the phone, she heard the Pentagon had just been hit.

Then she suddenly hears a load roar of a plane's engine fly over Indian Lake and managed to look out her front window and catch a glimpse of the plane's glare, which she states that she thought was a small plane, before it flew over the horizon behind the red barn. Note that Val lives near the northwest tip of Indian Lake and east of the crash site. If the plane flew over the lake towards the west, then the flight path she describes is almost in the opposite direction from the official version's flight path.

(Source: popularmechanics.com. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

She then heard and felt a violent, house-shaking boom that reportedly knocked not only her lights and phone out, but almost knocked her off her couch. She then managed to race out on to her front porch and quickly took one and only one photo with her month-old digital camera of the smoke plume allegedly coming from Flight 93 crashing. She says she took the photo "approx. 5 seconds" after impact which is being confirmed by the FBI. She claims she didn't even aim her camera for the shot. However by looking at her photo, it looks like her camera was aimed perfectly and steady as if it were on a tripod, not from someone who just ran out in 5 seconds with there heart racing and all the anxiety of just hearing a horrendous explosion. Her photo is the only known photo of smoke seen in the sky from Flight 93 crash scene.

(Val's front porch. Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

If this explosion caused her house to shake which she said almost knocked her off her couch, why didn't she report any of the windows, or glassware in her house breaking, or any pictures on her walls falling off from this "house-shaking explosion"? Also, if it was such a violent explosion, is it realistic to believe that her immediate thoughts and reaction would be to jump up and grab her camera to go out and take a picture, or would it be more realistic for her to have duck and cover from being startled and frightened from some unexpected horrendous blast?

The camera she apparently used has been identified as an HP PhotoSmart 315. It comes in two versions (HP315 and HP315xi), but it is not known at this time which version she has. Apparently the only difference between the two is the "xi" version comes with addition software. The camera is only a 2.1 MegaPixel with no optical zoom and had an MSRP of $299.

(Photo source: tribune-democrat.com)

In a Post-Gazette article, it said that Val did not have access to Photoshop or any other photo-altering software at the time of the attacks, however her camera came with editing software although it is not known at this time if the editing software her camera came with was capable of photoshopping a plume on her photo. Also, the reason Val said she only took one shot of the smoke plume is that after her first shot she dropped her camera. In that same Post-Gazette article it mentions that when the camera dropped, it jolted the battery loose. However, her camera doesn't have just one battery as the article implies, but four AA batteries. When did Val exactly drop her camera? Why didn't she just put the batteries back in afterward, close the latch and continue to take more photos? Is she going to say now that the battery latch, or camera broke after it dropped?

(Photo source: imaging-resource.com)

So how did Val manage to grab her camera so fast as she raced out the door? Well get this, supposedly her friend who she had helped out recently was supposed to fly over her house in a helicopter and she had her camera ready right by the front door waiting for him to buzz over her house! Amazing coincidence that on the same morning she hears a plane flies over her area from the most rare and unusual of circumstances, she had already prepared to run out and take of photo of her friend doing a flyby over her house in a helicopter? Remember as already mentioned above, this strange plane she heard fly over head was flying in the nearly the opposite direction Flight 93 was said to have come in.

After taking this photo and dropping her camera, she then ran and grabbed her cell phone. She got in her truck and tried to call 9/11, but she couldn't get through. She says the cell phone service around Indian Lake is not very good. (Now think of the passengers aboard Flight 93 allegedly making all those cell phone calls.) She then went up to her husband's saw mill company which still had their power and phone lines working. This is where she heard it was a commercial airliner that had crashed.

(Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

It's unclear when she came back home, but she never walked up the road beyond the horizon to see what she allegedly photographed. Instead, she just heard the sirens and went into the kitchen and put on a barbecue for the rescue crews as if she was anticipating the events. How did she even think to start cooking for the rescue crews and how did the crews know she was even cooking for them? Did she bring the food down to the rescuers, or did they stop by her house? Wouldn't some official group, such as the Red-Cross, come and feed the crews instead?

FBI Enters the Picture

Val apparently didn't realize what she had just taken a picture of. She says the photo sat in her camera for a few days until the state police and FBI had put a call out to people in the area for photos, debris, or any other evidence of the crash.

She then went to download her photo onto her new computer, but her seven month old puppy had chewed the end of her camera's cord attachment needed for downloading. She went to get a new cord, but couldn't get it to recognize when connecting, so she went back to get a memory card reader and then was able to download it.

She then made a printout of her photo and took it to the police and within an hour, three FBI agents, Special agents David J Hacker, Todd J. Brown, and Phil Lewzander*, came into her house to look at her photo. They looked at her photo on her computer and then she said they saw what appeared to be debris flying out from the smoke plume and then they took her original memory card from her camera with them. She said, “I’m sure with modern technology they could do, you know, a little more scientific evidence I believe.” Look at her photo and see if you can see any debris coming out of the plume. I sure couldn’t see any debris coming out of that plume over 1.5 miles away.

(*Spelling of their names?)

One more very interesting thing to point out. In this Windsor Park Stories interview of Val, there is a reenactment of somebody opening up a computer and taking a hard drive out. Did the FBI take her hard drive back with them too?

(Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

If Val's photo was legit, then why would three FBI agents come over to her house so quickly to not only look at her photo, but to also confiscate her memory card and possibly her computer's hard drive?

Don't Use it or I'll Sue!

Val, who's nickname is "stooge" from collecting 3 Stooges memorabilia, has copyrighted her photo and is selling copies of it to raise money for the Todd Beamer Foundation (now called Heroic Choices). She says she has no idea if her photo has raised hundreds, or thousands of dollars for the charity. She is very protective of her photo in which she is suing the Associated Press for $150,00 plus any profits the AP realized for alleged unauthorized use of her photo. She even threatened to sue me once for when I had used her photo on my website, but I never bothered contacting her back about this and never heard back from her or her attorney since. (Note that I have never contacted Val by email, phone, or by any other means.)

From: "stooge" {stooge@shol.com}
To: killtown@yahoo.com

Subject: Flight 93
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004

I am very dismayed that you have used my photo as part of your article. It has been forwarded to my attorney for copyright infringement. You will be prosecuted to the fullest extent since you did not have my consent to publish my copyrighted photo "End of Serenity"

Val McClatchey

Her photo also has been used in a fund-raising brochure for the Flight 93 Memorial fund and is used in the Smithsonian Institution's Bearing Witness exhibit. It has also appeared in several magazines and newspapers, from Newsweek to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

(Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

When Lisa and Victor of Wing TV went to interview her at her office during their Flight 93 investigation tour of the area, they said she was pleasant and businesslike at first, but then become very hostile and defensive when they started showing her evidence that Flight 93 couldn't have crashed there. Then they said she became absolutely "livid" when they tried to show her that the mushroom cloud in her photo looked more like it came from an ordnance blast rather than from a plane crash. They said she seemed to just want to discuss her alleged lawsuit against the AP in an apparent attempt to intimidate them and stated that she “didn’t want to be around any people who question the government.” She then jumped up and threw them out of her office, calling them “conspiracy theorists” on the way out. Lisa told me that Val never mentioned to them that her lights and phone service were knocked out by the crash by the way and as Lisa says, Val seems uninterested in learning about the truth about the crash she allegedly caught on camera, but would rather milk her prized photo she is so protective of for all that it's worth.

Cashing In

For people wishing to purchase copies of her photo, it is also sold at Ida's Country Store in Shanksville and several websites currently have it advertised for sale, such as shanksvillememorial.com and thepittsburghchannel.com, which lists her home address to send checks or money orders too. She also advertises it at her real estate business' website mtnlakesrealty.com (archive) which doesn't tell you to send a check, but tells you to drop by her office, or to call her at her at her work:

(Ida’s photo source: Wikipedia)

Prints are available only at the office or by calling Val at Mtn. Lakes Realty, LLC.

Val charges a whooping $20 a pop for a copy of photo in which $18 supposedly goes to the Todd Beamer Foundation (now called Heroic Choices) and Val supposedly only keeps a measly $2 per sale. She also has charged $250 to $350 to various news organizations for one-time use of her photo. If almost all of her proceeds from the sale of her photo goes to charity, why is she even bothering to sue the AP for $150,000?

So what do you get for a whooping $20 a pop? You get an 8 1/2" x 11" print on photo paper*. When purchasing a copy, most of the websites that advertise her photo asks you to make your check, or money order out to the Todd Beamer Foundation. But Val has admitted to keeping some of the proceeds supposedly only for her legal battle with the AP. A question would be is how is she getting reimbursed for the $2 per photo and how is she able to keep some of the profits for her lawsuit if all the checks and money orders are made out to the foundation? Is the foundation simply reimbursing her and agreeing to a certain amount extra for her to help fight her lawsuit? Does Val have access to their account to withdrawal money? That last one seems unlikely for obvious security reasons for the Foundation.

(*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.)

Perhaps the answers are much more simpler. Even though the websites that advertise her photo say to make checks and money orders out to the foundation, at least one magazine where her photo has been advertised tells people to make it out in her name. As already mentioned, her photo has been featured in several magazines and newspapers throughout the world. How many of those have said to make your checks/money orders out to her and not the charity? Now go back and checkout shanksvillememorial.com. Even though they clearly say to make checks/money orders out to the foundation and even bold it (in white lettering on that site), it lists her name and address below it more clearly:

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:

Val McClatchey
107 Osage Path
Stoystown, PA 15563

Also, how many people simply have goofed and made their checks/money orders directly out to Val and still recieved a print? Well, we decided to try it ourselves and found out we were correct:

(Front side of cashed check.)

Also, people in her area that stop by her work to purchase a copy, how many of them simply pay cash for it and what if Val and her husband keep copies of the photo in her car where they can sell to people off the streets and they pay cash for it? So at least in some cases as we proved, Val receives check/money orders made out in her name and possibly receives cash for copies sold in person.

So how does Val forward all the proceeds from her photo to the foundation? By the "honor system". Maybe the Todd Beamer foundation* could shed some more light on this story, but when they were called by the Post-Gazette for questioning, they didn't not return their phone calls. Why didn't the foundation return the reporter's calls for comment? Were they too busy at the time, or are they hiding something?

(*Some curious things about the Todd Beamer Foundation. First, their website's domain name was registered only 9 days after the attacks. Second, they applied for a trademark on Todd's famous "Let's Roll!" phrase 15 days after the attacks. Lastly, they have come under scrutiny for taking in far more money than paying out in services. From 2001 through 2004, the foundation used only 53% of its proceeds to fund its programs which falls short of the Better Business Bureau's Standards for Charity Accountability of least 65% being paid out. Curious to note about Todd Beamer’s father David, who raised Todd to love the Lord, his company received two Pentagon contracts worth over $40 million after the attacks and Todd’s wife Lisa says Todd is still alive, but in a “much different scenario.”)

More Smoking Guns, or Proof of a Fraud?

So how do I know that the mushroom cloud seen on her photo is more likely from a non-plane crash explosion and what is the other even bigger smoking gun? Well first, 9/11 researcher Rumpl4skn was the first person to have pointed something out about Val's photo that would give very strong evidence that the plume in her photo was caused by a different explosion than from a plane crash at the crash scene. He found out (and I concur) that if you line up the camera trajectory of where the smoke plume is from where Val took her photo on her front porch, the smoke plume does not line up with where the crater is! It lines up approx. 250 yards away right next to a pond in back of the crash site and would have taken approx. 50 sec to travel that far in the reported 9 knot wind in the area (remember as mentioned above that Val said that the FBI said they saw what appeared to be debris flying out from the smoke plume and that’s why they took her original memory card from her camera. Not only is there no debris seen flying out of the plume, but I hardly doubt any debris could fly out of a plume that traveled over 250yds 50 seconds after a crash!). Remember that Val supposedly took this shot "approx. 5 seconds" after the crash and the plume in her photo looks consistent with a plume that is still in its infancy and is seen going straight up in the air, apparently not affected by any wind and it doesn't look like it has dissipated at all.

(Plume in photo lines up about 250 yd away from the crater. It would have taken approx. 50 sec to travel that distance in the reported 9 knot wind in the area. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

(Photo source: Pittsburg Post-Gazette. See also ordnance comparison photo above.)

This is a huge smoking gun! It proves that this blast did not come from the crater thereby not from Flight 93 supposedly nose-diving in the ground there. However, this huge smoking gun gets even bigger and better! According to my analysis, this plume could not possibly have come anywhere near the crash site!

The Smokiest Smoking Gun

When I was doing my analysis and observing Val's photo closely to verify Rumpl4skn's results, something astonishing had jumped out at me. When staring closely at the smoke plume in her photo, I realized this smoke plume looked way too big and tall to have come from 1.5 miles away from where she snapped her photo.

I started drawing lines on a satellite photo of her area to determine how wide this plume would have been if it came anywhere near the crash crater. What I concluded (and Rumpl4skn concurred) is that if the smoke plume in Val's photo was near the crater, it would have been a whooping 700+ yards, or approx. 2,200 ft wide! That is over 7 football field lengths, or nearly half a mile wide! Also, notice the landscape rises up to the horizon which is only approx. 440 yards from Val's house. I've been told the crash scene area sits lower than Val's house so imagine how long it would have to take for a smoke plume to rise to even be seen over the horizon and then look how tall the plume in her photo towers over the horizon!

(See also plume comparison. Diagrams and animated gif by Rumpl4skn. Click photos for hi-res. Mirrors: top photo, middle photo.)

I also estimated a "more realistic" sized explosion at approx. 200 yards wide (or 2 football field lengths) based mostly on the fire damage at the scene. If a 757 had crashed and made this size smoke plume at the time Val snapped her photo, you can clearly see that the explosion cloud in Val's photo could not have been anywhere near the crash scene, but much closer to her house:

(Photo scale at 1,000 ft/200 m. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

Local Says Photo is Fake

Secrets are hard to keep in small towns. Shanksville appears to be no different.

9/11 researcher Jeff Hill called Kelly Leverknight, who was one of the witnesses who reportedly saw Flight 93 in the air before it allegedly crashed, to ask her about what really happened at Shanksville. Jeff spoke to a woman who claimed to be Kelly's daughter. However, it is thought that this woman was Kelly trying to hide her identity.

Upon their conversation, Jeff asked her about Val's photo. Here is what Ms. Leverknight had to say about it:

Jeff: Val McClatchey... she has a famous photo.
Ms. Leverknight: It was a fake photo, because it didn't have a mushroom cloud.
Jeff: So it was a fake photo?
Ms. Leverknight: Yeah.

Well what do you know? We discover that the plume in Val's photo lines up far from the crater, it looks way too big to have originated from the crater, we speculate that the plume might have been photoshopped on the photo, and then a local Shanksville resident* confirms our speculation by saying that the photo is fake because the original didn't have a mushroom cloud. How about that?


(*Note that I have never had any contact with any of the Leverknight's and I have no reason to believe that Jeff's and Ms. Leverknight's conversation wasn't real and honest.)

Motive

Are there any motives for Val to be in on faking this photo if it is indeed fake? Unfortunately, there are.

Right before 9/11, her and her husband had suffered "severe business loss." They were later forced to file for bankruptcy for their saw mill company:

(Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

"On September 20, 2001, JCM Industries, Inc. filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. On February 12, 2002, the filing was converted to a liquidation proceeding under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. John C. McClatchey, a director and nominee, is President, director and principal shareholder of JCM Industries, Inc." - Edgar-Online.com

"On February 12, 2002, JCM Industries, Inc. filed a liquidation proceeding under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. John C. McClatchey, a director, was Chief Executive Officer, director and principal shareholder of JCM Industries, Inc." - Edgar-Online.com

They ended up losing their business as of Dec 31, 2001, putting 40 people out of work. Val also mentions that they may lose their house.

And it gets worse. Val mentions that her and one of her children have major health problems. Just imagine if they lost their health insurance around the time when their business goes under. They also have some other potential major expenses coming up with her son buying a house and her daughter getting married in eight months. Remember it's tradition in America for the bride's family to pay for most of a wedding.

Other important questions to ask are, after 9/11 during all this time of financial hardship, having health problems and surgery, then starting classes to for a new career to help out her family, who is taking the time and energy to process all the incoming orders for copies of her photo, print them all out, stuff them in envelopes, stamp them, take them to the post office, and buy future supplies? Was it mostly her husband who she says now works at home after their saw mill business closed, but didn't say does specifically what as she works out of the house with her new real estate career? They are supposedly in a time of severe financial crisis. Do they really have enough time to sell all these copies of their photo in which they say they are not profitting from? Wouldn't that be just too risky to take on this commitment of selling their photo essentially all for charity when they just lost their business, might lose their home, going through major health problems, and potentially having major expenses in the near future with their kids?

So with their severe financial crisis right before 9/11 along with her and one of her kids having major health problems, she buys a new $299 MSRP digital camera and a new computer, which most likely cost over $1,000, and a month after this expensive purchase in a time were they might lose their business and house, she happens to be the only person to photograph the alleged smoke aftermath of the most unusual plane crash in essentially her backyard after having her new camera ready by the front expecting a flyover by a friend with his helicopter, only took one photo because she "drops" her camera afterward which "jolted the battery loose," copyrights this one-in-a-million shot and sues the AP for $150,00 for alleged unauthorized use, sells it for $20 bucks a pop in which she supposedly only keeps a measly $2 per sale with the rest going to charity, has the time to process and printout all the orders for copies of her photo, she admits to keeping some of the profits, and 3 1/2 years later, she is able to open up her own realty company in the spring of 2005. Did any of that sound fishy to you?

Also, note that Val's husband John seems to be no stranger to how money works:

John C McClatchey

Director at
Commercial National Financial Corporation
Latrobe, Pennsylvania
FINANCIAL / REGIONAL - MIDWEST BANKS
Director since 1990
66 years old
Retired, Former Chief Executive Officer, JCM Industries, Inc. Manufacturer of hardwood lumber and pallets

- Forbes

(Photo source: SNL Financial)

And in May 2004, he seems to indicate he’s not in financial trouble anymore from refusing an offer of $1,200 for his domain name (www.jcm.com [archived]) he used for his now defunct saw mill business that he was asking $5,000 for by saying “I do not need the money”.

Now there are lots of reasons to need to buy a new digital camera and a new computer in the time of financial hardship. Some might say she had to make this expensive investment for her new career in real estate which would be very logical. However according to her, she didn't even start taking real estate classes until the after at least Christmas.


Did they just plan this so well in advance for this expensive purchase?


It's sad to think about a family who is having major financial and health problems, but unfortunately, these are the types of extreme circumstances that can cause people to do unethical things in the such dire times and these are the types of things the police would look for in a criminal investigation.

A More Sinister Motive?

But what if there was another motive, one that is a little more sinister like . . . bribery?


Remember the official story is that three FBI agents came over to her house within a half hour after Val took a printed copy of her photo to the police because the claim is that the FBI thought they saw debris falling out of the smoke plume on Val's photo. Does it really make sense that not only one, but three FBI agents would come over to Val's house so quickly because they thought they saw debris falling out of the smoke plume???


Well what would make more sense to have three FBI agents come over her house so quickly and confiscating her camera equipment? Remember that Val had mentioned hearing the roar of an engine over Indian Lake that was going in the opposite direction that Flight 93 allegedly flew and that there were over a dozen witnesses near the Shanksville crash that reported seeing other mysterious small white aircraft in the area before and right after the alleged crash.


One of these witnesses who saw this mystery aircraft was Susan McElwain. She was one of the few who reported to see this aircraft before the crash and not only that, but the mystery aircraft she saw fly 40ft over her minivan was no airplane, but some kind of unmarked white wingless military aircraft!


So what if Val did take some photos that morning, some photos that she wasn't supposed to, like of that little white aircraft seen by all those eye witnesses before and after the crash? Now that would be a good reason for a bunch of FBI agents to rush over to her house. They wanted to confiscate her camera equipment and computer's hard drive to rid the evidence and then maybe, to the luck of the FBI, the McClatchey's, who were in financial dire straits, caved in and took a bribe by the FBI that they couldn't resist; agreeing to keep quiet about the photo Val really took to protect their family's safety and taking part in profiting over a fake photo supplied by the government to get out of the severe financial crisis they were in. That would be totally consistent with Ms. Leverknight's claim that Val's photo is fake because the original didn't have a mushroom cloud in it.

Also, was the reason Val, her husband, and her husband's brother all got into real estate because the FBI told them that the local land value would increase since the crash site would soon become a national memorial?

Here is what we have so far:


1. Val was at her house near the northwest tip of Indian Lake, about 1.6 miles from the crash scene.


2. She had her month-old digital camera ready near her front door waiting for a friend of hers to do a flyby over her house in his helicopter.


3. Val hears a loud roar of a plane fly over Indian Lake towards the crash scene, which flies in almost the opposite direction of the official flight path of Flight 93, manages to catch just a glimpse of when looking out her front window before it dips over the horizon behind the red barn. She thought it was a small plane which is consistent with the multiple other eyewitness reports of a strange small white plane in the area before and after the crash.


4. She is almost knocked off her couch and her lights and phone service get knocked out by the violent, house-shaking boom from the shock wave of the alleged crash. She never reports any of the windows, or glassware in her house breaking, or any pictures on her walls falling off from the this powerful blast.


5. She grabs her camera and runs out on to her front porch and takes only one photo of the smoke plume approx. 5 seconds after impact which is being confirmed by the FBI. Her photo is also the only known photo of smoke in the sky allegedly coming from the crash site.


6. Her digital camera she apparently used has been identified as a HP PhotoSmart 315 that has only 2.1 MegaPixel with no optical zoom and had a MSRP of $299. It came with a bundle of photo editing software, although it is not know at this time if that software could be used for photoshopping a plume on her photo.


7. She says the reason she took only one photo of the plume is because she dropped her camera afterward in and it jolted the four AA batteries lose from the camera.


8. She says her photo sat in her camera for days and didn’t realize any of the significance with the photo she had just taken and then she heard the state police and FBI put out a call to people in the area for photos, debris, or any other evidence of the crash. She printed out a copy of it using her new computer and took it over to the police.


9. Within an hour after taking her photo to the police, three FBI agents (Special agents David J Hacker, Todd J. Brown, and Phil Lewzander) come in her house, look at her photo on her computer, and see what appears to be debris flying out from the smoke plume that's over 250 yards from the crater and approx. 50 seconds after the crash. They take her original camera memory card and possibly her computer's hard drive back with them.


10. Val copyrights her photo and sells it for $20 dollars in which $18 supposedly goes to Todd Beamer Foundation (now called Heroic Choices). What you get for $20 is an 8 1/2" x 11" print on photo paper.


11. She has charged $250 to $350 to various news organizations for one-time use of her photo.


12. She says she uses the "honor system" in forwarding proceeds from selling her photo to the Todd Beamer foundation and she does receive checks in her name and will still send you a print.


13. She is suing the Associated Press for $150,000 plus any profits the AP realized for alleged copyright infringment over her photo.


14. She admits to keeping some of the proceeds made from selling her photo for her lawsuit against the AP


15. The Todd Beamer foundation were called by the Post-Gazette for questioning, but they didn't not return their phone calls.


16. Val claims her photo is authentic saying her neighbors saw the image still in her camera and that her digital camera and computer were new and that she didn't have anyphoto-altering software although her camera did come with photo editing software.


17. The FBI claims her photo is "very legitimate".


18. A local Shanksville resident says that Val's photo is fake because the original didn't have a mushroom cloud in it.


19. Right before 9/11, her husband's company, JCM Industries, is forced to filebankruptcy. The may lose their house. Val and one of her children have major health problems and her son is about to buy a house and her daughter is getting married in eight months.


20. Someone has to take the time to process all the orders for copies of her photo, print them out, stuff them in envelopes, stamp them, take them to the post office, and buy supplies.


21. She opens up her new realty company Spring of 2005.


22. Researcher Rumpl4skn is the first person to notice that the smoke plume in her photo does not line up with the crater at the crash scene and afterward I then noticed that the size of the smoke plume in her photo is way too large to have come anywhere near the crash scene.

Conclusions

So with this revelation that the smoke plume seen in Val's photo couldn't possibly have came from the crash area and that a local Shanksville resident even says the photo is a fake, I can only think of two possible explanations:

1) The smoke plume came from an explosion originating closer to her house.

(See plume analysis blogpost. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

2) The smoke plume on her photo was photoshopped on there.

(Val's "End of Serenity" photo.)

(On a side note, Reuters has just admitted that one of their photographers has been suspended for doctoring smoke plumes on a Beirut photo.)

Who's Going to Jail?

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?

If the smoke plume was photoshopped on there, then the photo is part of a scam in which the Todd Beamer Foundation is excepting scam money, even if unknowingly. The following are possibilities:

1. The photo was simply a fraud by Val and her possible accomplices, including the Todd Beamer Foundation who are in on a scam, but there are no connections to 9/11 even if the attacks turned out to be an inside job and the FBI were too clueless to have notice Val's photo was a fake.

2. The photo was a fraud by her and her possible accomplices including the FBI, who did inspect her photo and took away her original memory card and possibly her computer's hard drive, and with the FBI involved, there is a strong possibility that this scam has something to do with 9/11 being an inside job.

3. The photo was faked by the FBI after Val showed the authorities what she really photographed and was bribed to go along with the fraud.



If the first is true, then Val may be off the hook. If any of the latter two are the case then Val, you got some splainin'to do!


Val's home address was found here (archive) -- where her photo was being advertised -- and also here. Her work website is here (archive) which also advertises her photo and asks people to call her at her business for copies.

Contact her local media and urge them to question her about this photo:

• Somerset Daily American
• WTAE-TV 4 (scroll down halfway)
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Most of the credit for this goes to Rumpl4skn for first noticing that the smoke plume didn't line up with the crash scene.

See also:

• Hunt the Boeing II - Shanksville edition!
• Killtown's: Did Flight 93 Crash in Shanksville?
• Ordnance Blasts - Killtown.blogspot.com
• "F93"- Shanksville 'script': Photo in wrong place? - Team8Plus
• The odyssey of Flight United Airlines 93 - NineEleven2001
• Shanksville-Flight 93: Many Unanswered Questions Still Linger - Lisa Guliani, WING TV
• WING TV & Killtown on Flight 93 & Val McClatchey - WING TV (08/07/06)

Media articles:

• The day that changed America - Pittsburg Tribune-Review (09/11/02)
• Photo Gallery - PittsburghLive.com
• A little romance muscles its way into car lovers' hearts - Pittsburg Post-Gazette (06/29/03)
• Conspiracy theorists blog that Flight 93 photo is fake - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (08/06/06)
• Flight 93 crash photo target of conspiracy theorists - CNHI/Tribune-Democrat (09/08/06)
• The Shanksville Episodes: Val McClatchey, The Picture - Windsor Park Stories (Video done "several months" after 9/11. Download here. Transcribed here.

Plume Analysis

(Updated: 03/29/07)

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

Analyzing the smoke plume in Val's photo


When observing the smoke plume in the photo, it looks like a classic short pulse explosion normally seen from an ordnance blast with a thin column at its base and is more grey in color. Also, it looks like the plume is still in its infancy stage because it looks like it's still rising straight up and doesn't look at all dissipated by the reported 9 knot wind in the area.

(Photo source: Pittsburg Post-Gazette. See also ordnance comparison photo below.)

The plume still being in its infancy stage and looking like it has drifted yet is consistent with Val claiming that her photo was timed out to have been taken approx. 5 seconds after impact. The FBI are saying it was taken within seconds after impact and this time frame is what the Ambassadors are telling visitors at the Flight 93 Memorial too:

"This cloud picture was taken from a mile away within seconds of the crash. The FBI says that had to be within a couple of 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..."

The claim of Val's photo being taken approx. 5 seconds after impact seems impossible. Val claims that she was almost knocked off her couch from the explosion, however the soundwave of the explosion would take approx. 8 seconds to reached her house approx. 1.6 miles from the crater (or 8,438ft). By this account, Val took her photo 3 seconds before the soundwave reached her house!


It's also questionable that Val could even have taken a photo in 5 seconds after jumping up off her couch, running to her door, grab her camera, find the button on her camera to turn it on, wait briefly until the camera warms up and is ready to shoot, go out on her porch, and aim her camera to take that perfect shot. In order for the offical story to be true, the shockwave from the impact that allegedly jolted her on her couch had to reach her house that is 1.6 miles away almost instantly and Val did all the above within 5 seconds.



The Plume

A smoke plume from a jet fuel fire is usually very dark in color and usually has a thick continuous column of smoke coming up from the ground (depending how much fuel it still had at impact) from all the un-burnt fuel and other burning debris when it's still in its "mushroom" stage:

(Crash of a B-52 military jet. Source. Also see video of other large plane crashes into the ground here and here.)

(Left is Val's photo. Middle is ordnance blast. Right is a jet crash.)

It should be noted that a plane crash did leave a rare smoke cloud formation similar to Val's plume:

The plume on the left came from a L-100-30 Hercules crashing in Italy after making a long high speed decent. However there are a few things to note about this plane crash plume and some points actually help the fraud claims against Val's photo:

• It's very rare that a plane crash makes this kind of plume formation.
• It is unknown how much fuel was on board at impact. The pilots could have emptied out most/all of the fuel on board as they knew they were about to crash.
• The photo of this plume looks to be taken within seconds of the crash just like Val's was alleged to since the plume looks like it is still going straight up, it is not that high off the ground, and doesn't look very dissapated (this point will be very important later on in this article).
• This plane crash left large debris of itself unlike Flight 93's alleged crash.
  

Here are the dimensions of a Boeing 757:

Basic Dimensions
Wing span - 124 ft 10 in (38.05 m)
Overall Length - 155 ft 3 in (47.32 m)
Tail Height - 44 ft 6 in (13.6 m)
Body Exterior Width - 12 ft 4 in (3.7 m)
(Source: Boeing)

Here is how we were told Flight 93 crashed:

(Graphic found here.)

Flight 93
Crashed: Shanksville, PA
Crashed into: old strip-mine that was recently backfilled and burrowed itself underground
Angle of crash: 40 deg (alleged Flight Data Recorder); 90 deg (eye witnesses)
Time of impact: 10:03:11
Speed @ impact: 580 mph
Fuel @ impact: 5,500 gal (37,500 lb)

(Link)

Notice that the grass around the crater and even growing right up to it is not burnt which shows that none of the 5,500 gallons of fuel on board at the time of impact splashed on the grass and caught fire when the plane burrowed underground:

Notice that the only thing that is burnt, other than inside the crater, is a section of forest at an odd trajectory. It's like yourself running into a wall and your guts flying out of your right side only and not only that, but your guts fly up and over the street into the neighbors yard without hitting the street:

(Plane allegedly came in from the top left hand corner in photo.)

(Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

Rumpl4skn shows us that the plume in Val's photo does not line up over the crater:

(Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

(Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror. Source for his pics.)

I concur with Rumpl4skn that the trajectory of the smoke plume lines up away from the crater and right next to the pond where a fuselage piece from Flight 93 was reportedly found:

(Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

Rumpl4skn then shows that if the plume originated from the crater, it would take approx. 50 seconds to drift approx. 250 yards south into Val's camera direction from the reported 9 knots wind in the area. Remember it was approx. 13 seconds from when Val felt the blast and ran out to take her photo.

The next batch of comments concerns the issue that - if the smoke cloud was a believable size (which it is not), could it have drifted into position where Val snapped the picture? I.e., could it have originated at the hole, and the prevailing 9 knot wind that morning (Nat. Weather Svc.) blew it into alignment with her camera angle?

For background, consider Val's story, in which she details that she took this shot (the only shot she took, btw) within "5 seconds" of hearing the blast, and rushing out her door, camera in hand.

A 756' [252yrd/230m] drift at 15.19 feet/second (9 knots) would have taken closer to 50 seconds to complete. So, this is another problem with either the hole, the cloud, or Val's schtick.

I know this is approaching overkill now, but we're dealing with some people who are determined to prove my analysis incorrect. However, not quite as determined as I am to prove that it's factual. - Rumpl4skn

We have shown that the plume in Val's photo could not have originated from the crater if Val really did take her photo "approx. 5" after feeling the blast and for the blast taking approx. 8 to reach Val. The plume would have originated right next to the pond which is approx 275 yards from the crater.

Next we will show you that not only did the plume in Val's photo not originate from the crater, but the plume in her photo is way too big to have even originated by the pond approx. 275 yards from the crater and realistically could have only originated just beyond the horizon in her photo.

This first photo is a close-up of Val's house and the red barn and white barn. The yellow line shows the direction that her camera was pointing and the grey lines show the width of the plume (black lines in her photo):

(Photo scale at 100 ft/50 m. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

(Satellite photos of the area taken from Google Maps. All photos are in standard navigational directions; North = top, South = bottom, East = right, West = left)

(Close up detail of Val's house by Rumpl4skn.)

(Val's front porch. Photo source: Windsor Park Stories)

This second photo continues to show the trajectory of her camera direction and the width of the smoke plume on her photo:

(Photo scale at 500 ft/200 m. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

On this last photo analysis, I included two equally sized explosions (orange) that I generously estimated that would have come from the crash scene area (based from the distance from the crater to the outer most part of the burnt forest section) and I inserted one where it first meets the two plume width lines (grey lines). You can clearly see that the explosion cloud in Val's photo could not have been anywhere near the crash scene, but only much closer to her house:

(Photo scale at 1,000 ft/200 m. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

(Photo shows a possible location of where the ordnance blast took place. Credit to Rumpl4skn. Click photo for hi-res. Photo mirror.)

(600ft = 200yd/183m; 2,200ft = 733yd/671m; 100yd = 1 football field)

Also note the the crater sits well below the horizon in Val's photo, so the plume would have had to risen that much more before it is even seen over the horizon to be seen from Val's vantage point.

(See also plume comparison. Diagrams and animated gif by Rumpl4skn. Click photos for hi-res. Mirrors: top photo, middle photo.)

While I stand by my calculations (due to the precise locational parameters of having her porch rain gutter in the uncropped photo) let's assume she wasn't where I say she was. Here is where Val would have to have been standing in order for her smoke plume to align with the "hole" (over 50 yards to the East, behind a tree line and a small garage or shed on the other side of the road):

In other words, a few inches, feet or even yards is not a believable margin of error. Val's location could not be imprecise enough to adjust the smoke plume to where it should be, to confirm the govt's story, and validate the "hole" as the crash site. - Rumpl4skn

Below I superimposed three Heinz Stadiums (home of the Pittsburgh Steelers) at the same scale with the satellite photo back to back to help give more of a perspective of how wide Val’s plume would have been if it originated near the crater (green arrow):

Remember the wingspan of a Boeing 757 is about 125ft wide, not even the length of a football field's 50-yard line which is 150ft long.

(Photo sources: here and here.)

(Length converter. 1 mile = 5,280ft / 1,760yd / 1,609m)

WING TV interviews Val McClatchey

(Emphasis mine.)

Shanksville-Flight 93: Many Unanswered Questions Still Linger

by Lisa Guliani

~

After touching base with some more folks at Indian lake, we then proceeded to Shanksville. The people at Indian Lake had advised us to contact local realtor Valencia (Val) McClatchey, who took the infamous photo of a red barn with the mushroom cloud behind it, which appears on the cover of our book and has made its way through the vast spectrum of mainstream and alternative media venues since the events of 9-11.

SHANKSVILLE

We spoke with lots of people while in Shanksville, none of whom recalled smelling the unmistakable odor of burning human flesh on 9-11-01. We did call Val McClatchey and met with her at her real estate office. She was initially pleasant and businesslike, but as soon as we showed her our Flight 93 book, McClatchey became very surly, hostile, and defensive. During the first few minutes in her office, she described being at her home on the morning of 9-11 and hearing the purported plane crash. She said she ran and grabbed her camera, which – conveniently enough – was sitting right by the front door, and snapped her famous photo at a distance of one mile from the crash site. When questioned by us, she abruptly poo-pooed the possibility that Flight 93 might have been shot down or brought down by some other means on the morning of 9-11, and became irate when we again produced our diagram, asking how such a massive plane could fit entirely into a crater of such small proportions. We explained how scientifically and physically impossible it would be for this to happen. At this point, McClatchey’s eyes began shooting daggers at us, and she became positively livid when we pointed out that the mushroom cloud in her photo is more reminiscent of an ordnance blast than a jet fuel column. She seemed more inclined to discuss the supposed lawsuit she has brought forth against the Associated Press over her 9-11 photo, apparently in an attempt to intimidate us. McClatchey has previously threatened to sue at least one other 9-11 researcher known as “Killtown” regarding this same photograph, a threat which has thus far not amounted to anything.

She then stated that she “didn’t want to be around any people who question the government.” Incidentally, her photo is prominently displayed throughout the city of Shanksville, in Somerset County, and is being sold at Ida’s Restaurant for $20.00. Val funnels $18 from every photo sale to the Todd Beamer Foundation. But I digress. Approximately 10-15 minutes into our interview, McClatchey suddenly and unexpectedly jumped from her seat and rudely threw us out of her office, mocking and labeling us “conspiracy theorists”. We point out that this realtor had no intelligent or coherent responses to the valid questions we raised, nor was she able to explain the anomalous nature of the purported plane crash. In fact, she simply dismissed the discrepancies regarding the plane and crater. Why muddy the water with facts, right Val?

We were quite intrigued by this woman’s responses and her absolute unwillingness to consider basic inconsistencies with the official story. Our visit with McClatchey has served to fuel our interest even further as to just what is going on in Shanksville. In its wake, 9-11 has provided some interesting “opportunities” for at least some Shanksville locals, and the recent release of Hollywood’s United 93 movie promises a potentially lucrative future for the previously unknown (pre-9/11) community. Val McClatchey made it unmistakably clear to us that she intends to milk her 9-11 claim to fame for all it’s worth, truth be damned.

Ironically, we tried to use a cell phone several times while in Shanksville and the surrounding areas. We couldn’t get a signal at all, no matter where we were, from the ground. This in itself is pretty interesting wouldn’t you say, considering all the supposed phone calls made at 35,000 feet on the morning of 9-11?

~

http://www.wingtv.net/thorn2006/shanksville.html

See also:

• Shanksville - Flight 93 Hoax SOLVED!!! from WING TV

Val threatens to sue Killtown over her photo

Val sent me this email threatening to sue me for posting her "End of Serenity" photo that I once had on this webpage of mine (not this blog):

From: "stooge" {stooge@shol.com}
To: killtown@yahoo.com

Subject: Flight 93
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004

I am very dismayed that you have used my photo as part of your article. It has been forwarded to my attorney for copyright infringement. You will be prosecuted to the fullest extent since you did not have my consent to publish my copyrighted photo "End of Serenity"

Val McClatchey

"9-11 Mysteries Remain" – AFP

(Snippet. Emphasis mine.)

9-11 Mysteries Remain
Three Years After Terror Attacks, Public Still Doubts ‘Official’ Story

By Christopher Bollyn

Updated September 17, 2004

SOMERSET COUNTY, Pennsylvania—Three years after the events of 9-11, half of the residents of New York City believe U.S. leaders had foreknowledge and “consciously failed” to act to prevent the disasters, while two in three want a new investigation of the “still-unanswered questions.”

~

FLIGHT 93

American Free Press visited Somerset County to look into some of the questions surrounding United Airlines Flight 93, which allegedly turned over and crashed in a refilled strip mine between Lambertsville and Shanksville, Pa., taking 44 lives with it.

Many local residents believe the plane was shot down, which they say would explain why parts of the plane and its contents were found strewn over a large area.

One question, “is what happened to the physical wreckage of the plane?”

“There was no plane,” Ernie Stull, mayor of Shanksville, told German television in March 2003:

“My sister and a good friend of mine were the first ones there,” Stull said. “They were standing on a street corner in Shanksville talking. Their car was nearby, so they were the first here—and the fire department came. Everyone was puzzled, because the call had been that a plane had crashed. But there was no plane.”

“They had been sent here because of a crash, but there was no plane?” the reporter asked.

“No. Nothing. Only this hole.”

When AFP asked Stull about his comments, he disagreed about when he had gone to the crash site. “A day or two later,” Stull said, was about when he went to the site. But he reiterated the fact that they saw little evidence of a plane crash.

Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, was the first person to go up to the smoking crater.

Lensbouer told AFP that the hole was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described hearing “an explosion, like an atomic bomb”—not a crash.

Lensbouer called 911 and stayed on the line as she ran across the reclaimed land of the former strip mine to within 15 feet of the smoking crater.

Lensbouer told AFP that she did not see any evidence of a plane then or at any time during the excavation at the site, an effort that reportedly recovered 95 percent of the plane and 10 percent of the human remains.

While specific details vary, the explanation for the disappearance of the plane is that the reclaimed land acted like liquid and absorbed the aircraft, which is said to have impacted at between 450 and 600 miles per hour.

This explanation is also used to explain why there was only a brief explosion with one short-lived smoke cloud, not unlike a bomb blast.

“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.

“It [the ground] liquefied,” Bob Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard and correspondent with Somerset’s Daily American, told AFP regarding how the wreck and much of the fuel disappeared. One of the massive engines, Leverknight said, however, bounced off the ground and was found in the woods.

Jim Svonavec, whose company worked at the site and provided excavation equipment, told AFP that the recovery of the engine “at least 1,800 feet into the woods,” was done solely by FBI agents using his equipment.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/9-11_mysteries.html

"A little romance muscles its way into car lovers' hearts" - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

(Snippet. Emphasis mine.)

A little romance muscles its way into car lovers' hearts

Sunday, June 29, 2003

Ruth Ann Dailey

~

"I know a lot of people who, if there's even a hint of rain, won't consider coming out," said Val McClatchey.

But Val was there. She sat near the Mars spaceship. The FBI has a photo of her sitting on the Mars spaceship.

More people know another of Val's photos than know her name. On Sept. 11, 2001, she was in her Somerset County home, having recently helped a Camaro buddy looking to relocate in Johnstown. As a way of saying thanks, the friend promised to buzz her Indian Lake house in a helicopter.

She set her camera by the door, waiting for the sound of his flyover, but what she heard instead was the horrific roar of Flight 93 going down. The impact nearly knocked her over, but she got to the door in time to capture the black smoke billowing above a red barn seconds after the crash in Shanksville.

The photo is in the Smithsonian Institution and all over the Internet and has been used as a fund-raiser for the proposed memorial.

FBI agents inspecting the memory card from her digital camera wondered about the photo preceding it -- a shot of Val atop the Mars spaceship.

"What were you hatching?" they asked.

The founder 10 years ago of the Keystone Camaro Club, Val wouldn't let a threatening sky keep her away on Saturday, but it was Sherry Archer of Atlanta, Ga., who stood nearest Mars' fabled aluminum ship.

~

http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20030627ndaileyp1.asp