How many errors can a “truther” squeeze into four sentences?

If you are Michael Ruppert the answer is 5 to 6. This is neither new nor directly related to 9/11 but I recently started looking into it and it relates to the credibility of a leading “truther”. The passage below comes from his book Crossing the Rubicon and previously appeared in a From the Wilderness articlehe co-authored entitled “A Career In Microbiology Can Be Harmful To Your Health, POST 9-11 DEATH TOLL MOUNTING AS CONNECTIONS TO DYNCORP, HADRON, PROMIS SOFTWARE AND DISEASE RESEARCH EMERGE”

In 1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas and was planning to go public with his personal knowledge of HHMI [Howard Hughes Medical Institute] “front door” grants being diverted to “back door” black ops bioresearch. The next day, Trias and his wife were found dead in their Chevy Chase, Md. home. Chevy Chase is where HHMI is headquartered. Police described the killings as a Professional hit.

1) Trias and his wife were not scientists

The article was about the supposed rash of deaths of microbiologists thus one would presume Trias was one or at least a bioscientist / doctor, but he and his wife were both lawyers. Trias and his wife seem to be the only non-biologists amongst the “victims”. I doubt Ruppert simply forgot to tell his readers what Trias’ profession was.

2) “The next day, Trias and his wife were found dead”

Trias and Julie Gilbert, his wife, were found on Monday, May 16, 1994, they were last seen alive the afternoon of Saturday the 14th “Police estimate that they died between 9 p.m. May 14 and 9 a.m. Sunday”

3), 4)“…dead in their Chevy Chase, Md. home”

They lived in Bethesda but were found dead in their weekend home near Annapolis.

5) “Police described the killings as a Professional hit.”

This is the most significant error and the one most indicative of an attempt to mislead. The earliest newspaper articles and all subsequent ones indicated robbery was the suspected motive. Most also mentioned that one of the couples Acura Legends was missing. Police quickly identified and arrested the culprit, Scotland Eugene Williams, a cat burglar/petty thief who was photographed by security cameras using Gilbert’s bank card and in one driving her car, when he was arrested he had her watch and a two pairs of handcuffs in his possession. Despite the papers saying the Trias’ were not bound both were handcuffed. He admitted to having robbed them and forced them to give him the PIN numbers of the bank cards. He denied entering the house but was placed there by DNA and a shoe print. Additionally he had plead guilty to a previous break-in and was a suspect in various others but no cases of robbing people or stealing cars from public place were mentioned in media reports

The closest any newspapers came to saying the police thought it was “a Professional hit” were two articles which said the police considered the possibility but concluded the motive was burglary or thought the latter more likely. A May 18 article in The Capital, an Annapolis newspaper entitled “Mystery surrounds lawyers' murders” reported the following:

Although police still consider robbery the motive in the slayings of wealthy attorneys Jose Enrique Trias, 49, and Julie Noel Gilbert, 48, the circumstances of the crime raise many questions.

The killer or killers didn’t break into the home at 1624 Winchester Road, police said. Neither victim was bound, and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

And unlike most burglaries or robberies, the house was not ransacked.

And detectives have been unable to determine what, if anything, is missing from the house near Winchester on the Severn, said Officer Randy Bell, a county police spokesman. As a result, police are wondering if Mr. Trias and Ms, Gilbert were victims of an execution-style killing.

“I’m sure that’s one of the many, many options that has run through (detectives’) heads,” Officer Bell said.

From THE YEAR IN CRIME; Few Big Cases End in Clean Getaways, a December 29 review of notable crimes in 1994 in the Washington Post:

A pair of influential Washington tax lawyers were found shot to death execution-style in May at their $725,000 weekend retreat in Anne Arundel County.

Although the slayings of Jose Trias, 49, and his wife, Julie Gilbert, 48, seemed like a professional hit, police said they were prompted by a simple burglary. When investigators released pictures of a man who used Trias's bank card at an automated teller machine, an Anne Arundel detective recognized him as Scotland E. Williams, 31, a suspect in a string of cat burglaries the previous fall.

So an honest accounting of what happened would have indicated that though the police said the murders bore traces of a professional hit they quickly concluded they were the result of a simple burglary and quickly identified arrested a suspect who is currently serving life with out parole for killing the couple.

6)? “In 1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas …”

None of the news articles about the murder mention him having been to Houston or even having left town. It is unlikely he would have travelled during the work week if he did not want to attract attention at the HHMI. Since “neighbors said Mr. Trias arrived at the home about 3 p.m. May 14” he would hardly have been time for a trip on the Saturday. In theory he could have flown out on the Friday after work and returned the next day but that begs the question if he and his wife were killed to shut him up why didn’t they kill the friend in Houston as well? If the friend were killed why isn’t he (or she) cited?

Richard Gage’s structural engineers

I decided to look over the credentials and statements of the structural engineers (SEs), in AE911T. There are only 30, 19 in the US and 11 in Canada, Australia and Western Europe. Anders Björkman who used to claim to be an SE is now more accurately classified as a “Naval architect & Marine engineer”

Two to four seem to not really be SE’s. Charles Pegelow is no longer listed as a structural engineer and his now expired license was for civil engineering. Apparently Rich Reed recently earned his BS, is unlicensed and left his bio (and statement) blank. Albert Arey from Chicago is listed as being “Degreed and Licensed” and “Verified” but he is in the “Other Supporters and A&E Students” group, did not provide a license number and is NOT licensed in Illinois. He claims to have a degree from Ecole Centrale Lyon, which only gives degrees in general engineering, so he might be licensed in France. Other than his education his bio gave no indication what experience, if any, he has. The only work experience William H. Russell “Architect, Structural Engineer”, of Atlanta mentioned was as an architecture professor 1973 – 2006 but failed to disclose were he taught from 1979 onward. He claims to have earned his BA in architecture and MS in architectural engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana and to have been an “Asst Professor” there 1973 -77. He also claims to be the holder of RArch#3454(GA) and “S.Eng#4161(IL,inactive)” both issued in 1977 but a he did not turn up in the IL or GA engineers databases*, the latter of which lists inactive licensees and used 9-digit numbers and like most states neither IL nor GA issues licenses for specific types of engineers so there is no way he could have earned a “Structural Engineering Registration” in either state in 1977 or any other year. Also it is hard to believe one of the prestigious architecture programs in the US would hire an unlicensed architect as an assistant professor which is a tenure track position.

Despite truthers using the excuse that they sign up so few engineers because many are afraid of being ostracized, marginalized, fired or otherwise persecuted with the exception of a guy who moved from Belgrade to London in 1989 AE911T does not have any SEs from Moslem, Communist, formerly Communist or anti-US countries (unless you count France).

Only 14 of them claimed to have experience with buildings and only one, Steven Merritt, cited tall buildings. Paul A. Thomas claims to have designed “concrete & steel structures to 240 ft. height” but worked mostly for “Mining & Industrial clients”.

Surprisingly only 3 mentioned NIST but only one or two seem to have read the report. The aforementioned Mr. Arey from Chicago simply said “The collapse was too neat to be ascribed to the official story and what was described in NIST report. A new investigation is warranted”, so I doubt he actually read it. His inability to spell out from an engineering perspective why he thinks the towers were CDed is yet another reason to doubt he really is an SE.

Bill Boggia and Ronald H. Brookman critiqued the NIST report in ways that suggest they actually read it (or at least articles by truthers who had). Boggia’s experience however is with offshore platforms. Brookman claims to have “over 21 years experience in structural analysis, design, evaluation and rehabilitation of buildings in northern California” but makes no mention of what types of buildings. Other than forums and truther sites the only mention of an engineer named Ronald, Ronald H. or Ronald Herman Brookman was the California Board for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors.

However like the others neither Boggia nor Brookman not Merrit nor Thomas have written a technical critique of the NIST report including calculations showing (or attempting to show) that it was flawed let alone gotten anything published in an engineering journal

To save space in the chart below I edited down most of their bios and statements, substituted numbers with numerals and used the following abbreviations: ME mechanical Engineer, CE civil engineer, BSe Bachelor Sci. Eng. (general engineering or field not specified), CD controlled demolition, BLD building, FF free fall, FTP footprint. All mentions of the NIST report and experience with buildings were included.

Name	Loca tion	Deg ree	Lice nse	Experience	Statement
William H. Russell,	GA	MS AE	??	Architecture professor 1977 - 2006	“too much information missing and misinformation included”
Alfred Lee Lopez	MI	BS AE	yes	“48 years…all types of BLDs”	“I agree the fire did not cause the collapse of the 3 BLDs”
Antonio Arthay	FL	MS SE	SE BC	“15+ years of experience in BLD design”	“Fire and impact were insignificant in all 3 BLDs. Impossible for the three to collapse at free-fall speed.”
Charles N. Pegelow	CA	BS CE	CE exp	Offshore oil platforms	No AE911 statement previously critiqued the ASCE report but not NIST’s. Has gone on record saying he believes the towers well felled with “mini-nukes”
David Topete	CA	BS CE	CE SE	“residential, commercial and light manufacturing facilities”	“I am curious to … how [WTC7] collapsed, while no other adjacent structures suffered such fate.”
Dennis J. Kollar	MI	BS CE- SE	exp	“structural design of residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional structures”	“the most convincing aspect that the 911 collapse was a CD is the recorded explosions on the 9/11 Eyewitness DVD”
Edward E. Knesl	AZ	MS CE SE	CE SE	“35 years of experience domestic and overseas in commercial and transportation projects”	“Any tall structure failure mode would be a fall over to its side…We do not know the phenomenon of the high rise BLD to disintegrate internally faster than the FF of the debris coming down from the top”
John Charles Lewelling	TX CO	BS AE	CE SE	“35 years…hospital, office, retail, storage, industrial, airports(s)…public assembly,[schools]”	X
Kamal S. Obeid	CA	MS CE	CE SE	“Consulting structural engineer specializing in BLD and other structures design and retrofit.”	“Only recently have I begun to examine the structural collapse of the BLDs. Photos of the steel, evidence about how the BLDs collapsed,”
Lester Jay Germanio	TX	BS CE	SE	“5 years experience as bridge designer and self employed as design build contractor and SE for 20 years”	“I…have watched numerous video and films of the collapse since that time. It is and has been my opinion that the most probable cause of the WTC BLDs was CD.”
Marshall Casey Pfeiffer	CA	BS CE	CE SE	“SE in CA for 12 years designing Earthquake resistant BLDs.”	WTC BLD 1, 2, and 7 collapsed due to controlled demolitions, please investigate
Nathan S. Lomba	ID CA	BS CE	CE SE	“39 years…custom residential to heavy industrial structures …project for the USAF…Pulp Machine BLD…Natural-gas fired power plant”	How did the structures collapse in near symmetrical fashion when the apparent precipitating causes were asymmetrical loading?
Paul A. Thomas	AZ	MS Arch SE	yes	“Designed concrete & steel structures to 240 ft. height ” “Mining & Industrial clients. Design concrete & steel structures, foundations”	The 2 towers, as they collapse, appear to be a CD event rather that a "pancake" type failure…molten steel found in the wreckage of the BLDs
Ronald H. Brookman	CA	BS MS	CE SE	“21 years experience in structural analysis, design, evaluation and rehabilitation of BLDs”	“NIST, FEMA and the 9/11 Com. have all fallen short of a detailed accounting of the catastrophic collapses”
Steven F. Dusterwald	NV	BS CE	yes	“Structural analysis and design…of BLDs and other structures”	“There was not enough energy delivered to the BLDs by the impacting aircraft to destroy all the structural materials.”
Steven Merritt	CA	MS SE	CE	“I have designed steel high rise BLDs for the past 8 years.”	“There seem to be a lot of unanswered ?s and it would serve the greater good to re-open the investigation.”
Albert Arey	IL	BSe	?	????	“The collapse was too neat to be ascribed to the official story and what was described in NIST report”
Peter I. Staker	AL	BS	No	“degree in SE…worked as an Engineer for 40 years”	X
Foreign SE’s in AE911T
Rich Reed	CA	BS	No	???	X
Bill Boggia	UK	BS ME	ME CE	offshore oil, gas, wind, wave and tidal energy projects.	“NIST structural simulations - are not…to final collapse and the failure mechanisms seem to have been manually adjusted…The pulling forces on the perimeter columns by the sagging floors were adjusted”
Bill Genitsaris	Aust.	BSe	yes	“structural engineer in the residential and commercial fields.” “demolition”	“If the pancake theory is correct, then as each floor truss disconnects from the columns…the columns should have remained in 1 complete length (ie over 100m long)”
Cyrille Houdebine	Frnce	MS	yes	“working as a SE in a subsidiary of the group SNC-Lavalin in Nice”	“The crash…caused the destruction of several columns …could have created a phenomenon of buckling in chain…it is impossible that this happen at the speed of a FF approximately”
Robert T. Mote	Can	PhD	yes	“Special interest in dynamic and explosion behaviour of structural elements and foundations”	“I could never understand the 'convenient' vertical collapse at the base due to an extreme event at height. I was most concerned by the 3rd tower collapse”
Erwin De Jong	Neth	MS	no	“offshore (steel structure) and aerospace engineering”	“it is not explainable that a steel structure sinks down into its own FTP with obviously no resistance"
Graham John Inman	UK	Yes	yes	“Member Institute of CEs Member Institute of SEs”	“WTC 7 BLD could not have collapsed as a result of internal fire and external debris…the fire..was small & localized”
John Watt	UK	BS	yes	“steel framed, masonry and timber BLD designs”	“very serious ?s to be asked about how 3 robust steel framed BLDs collapsed into their own FTPs…WTC7 not struck by an aircraft…relatively minor fire”
Paul W. Mason	Aust	BSe	yes	“35 years experience designing, constructing and maintaining major structures for state government agency”	“It is simply not physically possible for a structure to collapse at near-FF speed and, at the same time, pulverize all of its concrete and steel into tiny fragments”
Jason Mewis	Can	BSe	yes	“President and Senior SE w/ Engcomp for the past 27 years” Mostly industrial	“the official story of how the WTC collapsed doesn't make any sense from an engineers perspective”
Miroslav Kurkic	UK	BS	yes	“Consulting Engineer working in the UK since 1989”	“Convinced that the BLDs are demolished in controlled manner. As a SE it is so obvious to me.”
Richard P. Hall	UK	BS	No	“25 years experience in construction and structural design"	“There is no doubt the 3 BLDs were taken down by CD. To believe otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of the overwhelming evidence”

* There’s a William J. Russell, also inactive in IL database residing in Murphysboro 4 hours from Urbana who like everyone else in it has a 9 digit number. There was no match for engineer’s license # 4161. There is a William H. Russell in GA engineer’s database but his license was issued in 1958, is # 4176 and shows an address in Mcdonough 40 miles from Atlanta the city listed in architect’s license.

Sources:

AE911Truth petition page

http://www2.ae911truth.org/signpetition.php

Engineer License Lookup

http://www.engineersguideusa.com/engineer_license_lookup.htm

Ecole Centrale Lyon engineering program English homepage

http://www.ec-lyon.fr/76957584/1/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=Programs