Litigant In Chief: 9/11 Widow Ellen Mariani Says George W. Bush is a Gangster(Ed Asner)

ThePortlandPhoenix ^ | Saturday, January 31, 2004 | ALEX IRVINE

[ccmay]

Why were San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and others told not to fly on 9/11?

Hmm. If this were the case, one would think that the corrupt little commie popinjay would be shouting it from the rooftops. I can't believe he would pass up an opportunity to smear Bush.

I wonder if they have a source for this, or if it is just more gasbaggery from this blowhard attorney.

-ccm

[bootless]

It's so hard to type in a full immersion suit. Wha a target-rich environment of tin-foiled idiocy and paranoia.

Phoenix: Why couldn’t coincidence, or simple incompetence, explain all this? It’s not difficult to believe that this administration is incompetent.

A competent, unbiased reporter would never have couched the question this way. BLECCH.

And for all the Ray bin-Laden Taliaferro fans:

ASHCROFT!

[WhiteGuy]

Bump

[hellinahandcart]

You should probably point out that the only source of information on that cell-phone "experiment" is some tinfoiler named Anonimeme.

[fight_truth_decay]

I have been called from a pilot myself.

[fight_truth_decay]

Who knows if cell phones or the flight phones on the back of the seats were used. The public is not going to lie about the calls that came to them. This is just a conspiracy theory..by a ambulance chasing attorney and a woman who is distraught and easily influenced by those pushing their own agendas.

Her children are out of the home now. I wonder what their comments would be.

[reg45]

Berg: RICO, the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act, was created by Congress to go after the Mafia or the mob. It’s our strong position that there’s a mob in the White House. For a RICO lawsuit, you have to have an ongoing pattern of conduct before, during, and after an event.

No Mr. Berg, you have it backwards, the mob was thrown out of the White House on January 20, 2001, almost nine months before Mr. Mariani died.

[reg45]

A connection would have been impossible.

Probability of a connection
• 89% at 2,000 feet
• 44% at 4,000 feet
• 30% at 6,000 feet
• 9% at 8,000 feet

Flight 93 was flying at 35,000 feet.

The plane was at an altitude well below 2000 feet when the Islamikazis began their run on the WTC.

[PAR35]

At first she sued United Airlines, but she has since set her sights higher

She needed to look for a new deep pocket when United filed Chapter 11. She didn't want to spend time and money in an adversary proceeding, and then just end up as a general unsecured claimant.

[Cicero]

Cell phones, seatback phones? Who knows? The press may have used the wrong term to describe the phones that were used, which is a typical kind of mistake, but there's not much doubt that phone calls were made from these planes.

As for the rest of it, these two come across as a combination of left-wing fanatics and Area 51 tin foilers. They deserve each other.

It's horrible to lose your husband that way, but the guilty parties were Mohammed Atta & Co., not President Bush.

[OldFriend]

Even allowing for her grief, this woman is clearly insane.

[verity]

She is playing with a severely depleted deck.

[bootless]

Am I remembering correctly that most of the calls were from the in-flight phones?

[hellinahandcart]

What difference does it make? I do remember story after story about what was happening on other planes in the air. People *getting* calls on their cellphones from folks on the ground, and learning about the attacks that way. So the darned things do work in flight.

[NYCVirago]

Neil Mariani died when that plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, and after rejecting a settlement offer of approximately $500,000 from the Victim Compensation Fund, Ellen Mariani embarked on a series of lawsuits.

Here's Lie No. 1 right in the beginning of the article. The average amount that 9/11 victims' families are getting from the Victim Compensation Fund is $2.4 million.

[fight_truth_decay]

Even allowing for her grief

Also sad are those that play on her tragedy for their own personal agenda such as Asner ..lie down with dogs and..you know the rest!

[fight_truth_decay]

...the post was to show a discussion by those into a conspiracy theory only. That was a source on her theory.

[fight_truth_decay]

Question #1 : Who called San Francisco mayor Willie Brown and told him not to fly on September 11?

Answer: Nobody told Willie Brown not to fly on September 11. To quote the San Francisco Chronicle, "For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security -- a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel." He wasn't told not to fly by his airport security, but he was told to be cautious about his air travel. To quote Willie Brown, the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make an alarming statement. It was not an abnormal call. I'm always concerned if my flight is going to be on time, and they always alert me when I ought to be careful." Given the fact that Brown refused to name his source, but that it was someone who he goes to repeatedly for flight and security information, we're probably talking about a contact he has at San Francisco International Airport.

The call must not have been too serious, because Brown did not cancel his scheduled 8am flight to New York on United Airlines. Rather, Brown was waiting for his ride to the airport when the September 11 attacks occurred, causing all flights to be cancelled.

What exactly was the warning that Brown received? Did somebody have some inside information? As it turns out, the San Francisco Chronicle answers this question two days later. On September 7, 2001, the State Department issued an updated worldwide warning on possible threats posed by al-Qaeda. The memo included the original May 2001 warning that "American citizens may be the target of a terrorist threat from extremist groups with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization." It also said, "In addition, we have received unconfirmed information that terrorist actions may be taken against US military facilities and/or establishments frequented by US military personnel in Korea and Japan."

The September 2001 warning was meant mainly for Americans living abroad in Asia, but people involved in security and foreign policy matters took note of it as well (to see the warning in full, click here). According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Officials at San Francisco International Airport said they weren't aware of the State Department warning - but someone in the airport security section knew of it and passed word of the warning onto Mayor Willie Brown when he called to check on the status of flight he was planning to take to New York."

(Sources: "Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel", The San Francisco Chronicle, Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, September 12, 2001; "State Department memo warned of terrorist threat", The San Francisco Chronicle, Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, September 14, 2001; "US renews global terror warning after threats to military in Japan, SKorea", Agence France Presse, Matthew Lee, September 8, 2001)

http://www.liberalconspiracy.com/911FAQ.htm

[humboldtconservative]

The nonreaction from him when we were under attack made me think something was wrong. And I remember seeing debris from the plane in western Pennsylvania, I think five miles from the site of the crash, and after the first couple hours you never saw the story again. Now I’m not trying to take away from the heroes, because as far as I’m concerned every person who died on 9/11 was a hero, but there’s no way that plane in western Pennsylvania was not shot down.

Talk about a conspiracy theory.?!??!?!?!

[Keith in Iowa]

>>and your point is...

I think it's somewhere under his propeller-beanie hat.