Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Author Disputes Official Story of 9/11 Terror Attacks, Then Winds Up Dead In the California Desert


9/11 author Phillip Marshall,
with his children
The author of a recent book that questions the official story of 9/11 was found dead earlier this month--along with his teen-age son and daughter and the family dog--at their home in the desert community of Murphys, California.

Authorities concluded that Phillip Marshall and the other victims died on February 2 from a murder-suicide. But a prominent investigative journalist recently visited Calaveras County, spoke to many of Marshall's neighbors and friends, and found powerful reasons to doubt the official finding.

Marshall published The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror in 2012. But Wayne Madsen, based in Washington, D.C., reports that Marshall was working on a new 9/11 book that might have contributed to his death.

Madsen's full three-part series is available via subscription at Wayne Madsen Reports (WMR). We have received permission to quote from the report. At a post titled "A Black Ops Hit Made to Appear as a Suicide," Madsen writes:

Philip Marshall, the retired United Airlines pilot, 9/11 analysis author, and one-time Iran-contra era associate of CIA/DEA informant Barry Seal, did not shoot his two teen-age children and himself. That is the conclusion of everyone who knew Marshall after he moved to the Sierra Nevadas community of Murphys ten years ago after he sold his home in Santa Barbara. Friends said Marshall was looking for more seclusion. 
Marshall, who believed that the Bush family, allied with Saudi and neo-conservative interests, pulled off the 9/11 attack to engineer a government coup d'etat, was working on a fourth book that promised to reveal some new blockbuster information.

The Santa Barbara View apparently was first to raise questions about Marshall's death. From a February 6 piece titled "Phillip Marshal Wrote About Conspiracies; Was He the Victim of One?"

Former airline pilot Phillip (alternately, “Philip”) Marshall spent a great deal of time around Santa Barbara last year preparing for the release of his controversial 9/11 conspiracy book “The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror.”

During the editing and pre-marketing process of Marshall’s book, he expressed some degree of paranoia because the nonfiction work accused the George W. Bush administration of being in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence community in training the hijackers who died in the planes used in the attacks.

“Think about this,” Marshall said last year in a written statement, “The official version about some ghost (Osama bin Laden) in some cave on the other side of the world defeating our entire military establishment on U.S. soil is absolutely preposterous.”

Marshall went on to say: “The true reason the attack was successful is because of an inside military stand-down and a coordinated training operation that prepared the hijackers to fly heavy commercial airliners. We have dozens of FBI documents to prove that this flight training was conducted in California, Florida and Arizona in the 18 months leading up to the attack.”

What was the result of Marshall's research on 9/11? Here is how he put it in writing to Santa Barbara View:

“After an exhaustive 10-year study of this lethal attack that used Boeing airliners filled with passengers and fellow crew members as guided missiles, I am 100 percent convinced that a covert team of Saudi intelligence agents was the source of logistical, financial and tactical resources that directed essential flight training to the 9/11 hijackers for 18 months before the attack,” Marshall wrote. “This conclusion was determined six years ago, and all subsequent evidence has only served to confirm this conclusion.”

Marshall was not alone in that assessment. Reports Santa Barbara View:

On March 1, two former U.S. senators, who headed separate 9/11 federal investigations, also raised the possibility of Saudi involvement in the attacks that killed 3,000 people and spurred the global War on Terror. In sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, former senators Bob Graham and Bob Kerrey, who saw top-secret information on the Saudis’ activities, said they believe that the Saudi government played a direct role in the terrorist attacks.

“I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of 9/11 victims and others. Graham headed a 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks and has claimed he was muzzled into silence about his committee’s findings in 2002 by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other top members of the Bush intelligence community.

In his own sworn affidavit, Kerrey said “significant questions remain unanswered” about the role of Saudi institutions. “Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the (9/11) attacks has never been fully pursued,” Kerrey said in a March 1, 2012, New York Times article.

Madsen's on-site reporting produced a number of reasons to question the murder-suicide finding:

Neighbors and friends of Marshall contradicted a number of Calaveras County Sheriff's Department findings about what they quickly concluded was a murder-suicide by a crazed killer. Furthermore, one close professional colleague of Marshall believed a federal "black ops" team prevailed upon the Sheriff's Department to come up with the rapid murder-suicide explanation.

WMR learned from a local media source in Calaveras County that Sheriff Gary Kuntz is dragging his feet on providing local newspapers with two critical reports: the toxicological report on Marshall's and his son's and daughter's bodies and the GSR (Gunshot Residue) report on the bullets fired from what was reported to be Marshall's 9 mm Glock, which neighbors reported was never loaded.

Where is the Marshall investigation headed? It might be too early to say, but Madsen reports that the official story seems to contain a number of holes:

The Sheriff . . . stated that no gunshots were heard by neighbors on the evening of January 31 or early morning of February 1 because the houses are far apart. In fact, the houses are extremely close together and one neighbor stated she could "hear Phil whistling from inside his house." Police immediately denied that a silencer or other noise suppression device could have been used in the four shootings that included single shots each to Marshall, son Alex, daughter Macaila, and Shih-tzu dog "Suki," the latter found in a bedroom. One neighbor reported hearing an unusual noise during the evening of January 31, a Thursday.

20 comments:

Bob O. said...

How did this story slip under my radar completely? Not sure what to make of it, but thanks for the report, LS.

Anonymous said...

Contact Major Bashinsky's brother about this. He will tell you that people reflexively turn to suicide when they have the slightest downturn in life.

legalschnauzer said...

Anon at 7:43--

You make an interesting point. Like you, I've always thought the older Bashinsky was awfully quick to label most any unusual death as suicide. In the Marshal case, however, I've seen no indication in various reports that he had any downturn in life. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure Major Bashinsky had a downturn in life either, other than the brother's notions about a fear of being outed as gay. And there seems to be very little in the way of facts to support that.)

Anonymous said...

I'm sure Daily Kos won't allow any reporting on this. They've labeled Wayne Madsen as a conspiracy theorist, so it must be so.

legalschnauzer said...

Speaking of Major Bashinsky, we are coming upon the third anniversary of his disappearance and death. We will be having new reports at that time.

Anonymous said...

I don't think anyone would call me a whack job, tin-foil hat type, but this certainly raises suspicions. I'm glad Mr. Madsen is looking into it.

TLR said...

If you live in Alabama and have followed what the government has done to Don Siegelman, you know our "leaders" are capable of some horrible stuff--especially since the 2000 presidential election was pilfered by the Bush crowd. I appreciate Wayne Madsen's efforts to shine light on this.

legalschnauzer said...

Anon at 7:57--

There is a lot of good reading at Daily Kos, but in some ways, it's as closed off as any right-wing site. Some topics are officially sanctioned and others are not--and no determination is made about the qualifications of the reporter involved. Wayne Madsen has genuine credentials as an investigator and journalist. I can't vouch for everything he's written, of course, but I know his sources in Alabama are strong. Daily Kos is mostly a political site, about getting certain kinds of Democrats elected. It has very little to do with journalism.

Anonymous said...

This guy had ties to Iran-Contra? Now that's interesting. Wonder if he knew anything about drug running in SE Alabama and NW Florida.

DTrain said...

I'm sure the mainstream media will be jumping on this story at any moment.

Anonymous said...

The Marshall family aren't the only people who have been killed or disappeared. There are more than a few! People who reported bombs going off around WTC are dead or missing. You should dig into who was on the planes and what was going on at night at WTC leading up to 9-11.

Anonymous said...

Good God, two children and the family dog were killed, too? I have a hard time seeing this guy doing that himself.

Anonymous said...

Marshall believed the Saudis, Bush family, and neoconservative interests carried out the 9/11 attacks? And now, Marshall and his children are dead? I don't think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to see a possible connection here.

David in S. Alabama said...

I am still wiating for somebody to tell us what happened to the plane that hit the World Trade Tower and iseen in video footage coming out of it and falling downward. I can find nothing about where it landed and whatt happened to its wreakage or i any bodies where recovered from it.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this LS.

Incredible reporting. This story is the potential to take the "official" STORY of how we got to the no rule of law, screw due process because the people have gone insane in the endocrine system or DNA from being birthed into the upper southern Riley, Rollins, and other Dixie Mafia? families?? The U.S. of A. has been in a coup d'etat and coup d'grace for a long time.

BUT, 9-1-1 is the key and this story proves how truly DEADLY it is to be an American in these years of the criminally insane own the courts and of course the money that pays the salaries of all the criminals that run around as though holding Congress.

Here you go again, watch your back, luckily no children, but wife and animal lover.

jeffrey spruill said...

The neocons at Project for the New American Century (PNAC) pulled off 9/11.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/aboutpnac.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRY92id6yZ0

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a040301secondvirginia#a040301secondvirginia

Anonymous said...

Marshall was on target although the Saudi involvement to that extent seems illogical politically speaking.

e.a.f. said...

After 9/11 the U.S.A. was able to invade Iraq and Afganistan. Neither of these countries were on the top of the hit parade for the Saudi's.

Killing the dog was a bit over the top. if it actually was a father killing his children and then himself, the dog would most likely have gotten away. It would be interesting to know if the dog died before or after the humans.

The deaths don't have to be a government conspiracy. There are enough wing nuts in the U.S.A. to do this all on their own.

Usually these types of things do work themselves out into the public arena if people continue to dig into it. Some one in the police dept. will talk.

jeffrey spruill said...

Project for the New American Century (PNAC):

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor".

Anonymous said...

The dog died after the children. He shot the kids. Than walked into the bedroom and shot the dog in the head. Than walked back out to the living room. Shot himself in the left side of his head. Where he fell back, face up with the gun under his back. Btw..He was right handed.