Special 'War On Terrorism' BS Finder fog of war | patriotic over-reaching "I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt."    __The President of the United States, September 2001

known Fog Of War

Date	Source	Whopper	More Info
9/11	TV speculation	The WTC towers collapsed from the secondary explosions of terrorists' bombs. WRONG! They collapsed because they could not stand up to the intense heat of burning jet fuel.	Purportal
9/11	Internet	CNN deliberately showed 1991 footage of Palestinians celebrating the bombing, in order to inflame the public against Arabs. WEIRD... LOTS OF STORIES HERE, NOT MANY FACTS. Changed -- 31 Oct 01!! An e-mail making the rounds said that CNN had passed off archival footage as new. But Reuters, the apparent owner of this video, insists it was shot on September 11, as claimed by CNN. As of Halloween, this whole episode is turning steadily spookier. It's been said that the footage is indeed authentic, but that it depicts people jumping for thrown candy. Who threw the candy? Was it really the ultimate Trick or Treat? Was it staged? Was it honest? Does it really matter? Unfortunately, none of the explanations are from sources that can be considered authoritative. This whole matter is interesting, but not necessarily relevant. Anyone who's taken a beginning movie making class knows that there is absolutely no way CNN's editors could not have been aware that this juxtaposition of the collapsing buildings and the Palestinians would have just the effect that we saw it have, making a whole lot of people hate the Middle East. CNN may, repeat may, have taken a cheap shot here. Therefore the Bogometer has been lowered to what should be considered a wartime noise floor, and we'll let it go at that. Not one of CNN's finest hours.	Snopes Urban Legends Reference Independent Media Center article #8273, in the middle (scroll down)
9/11	Internet	Arab employees of various businesses, usually Dunkin' Donuts but it varies, were seen celebrating wildly at news of the bombing. WAR HYSTERIA! Surveillance tapes of all the stores in question show no such celebrations. This is more Fog Of War. Some might even be malicious slanders aimed at hurting specific businesses owned by Middle Easterners. This kind of BS gets people sued.	Snopes, The Hole in the Middle
9/12	Internet	A Canadian newspaper gave a passionate defense of the United States in an editorial written right after the bombing. WISHFUL THINKING. Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian radio announcer, wrote and delivered this pro-American commentary in 1973, when many Canadians criticized the US for the Viet Nam war. Sinclair has been dead since 1984. While some of Sinclair's statements remain quite valid, others such as "draft dodgers subsidized by Daddy's checks" and "nothing but American airplanes in commercial use" date the piece.	Chicago Sun-Times, 9/18/01
9/12	Internet	Nostradamus predicted the fall of "Two Brothers torn apart by chaos," which would lead to "The third great war." BOGUS! This particular quatrain was written in the 1990s, to demonstrate how easy it is to fool people with vague sounding prophecies. It appears on a web site debunking this kind of thing. Other such citations are the usual vague stuff.	Snopes, "False Prophecy," also Salon.com
9/13	Internet	Hundreds of Mormon missionaries escaped the World Trade Center attack, when every single one of them miraculously overslept, got caught in traffic, or was otherwise kept away from a scheduled conference by divine intervention. NICE STORY, BUT NOPE! The head of the New York Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) has told a writer on the LDS web site that there was no conference that day, and even had there been, it would not have been at the World Trade Center.	LDS Hoaxes and Mormon Urban Legends
9/14	Art Bell listeners	The face of Satan is clearly visible in the smoke from the burning WTC towers. YES, BUT... People see what they want to see. This is the principle used by the old "Rorschach" tests where ink blots look like horny pictures. In the two clearest of these "Satan" pictures, the camera has indeed caught arrangements of falling debris and billowing smoke that resemble scary faces. And puffy rain clouds look like bunnies, doggies and horsies. Let's get a grip.	Snopes, Faces in the Cloud
9/14	Rumors in Suburban Chicago	A Mobil gas station outside of Naperville put up a picture of Bin Laden after the attack, until angry citizens made the Middle Eastern owner take it down and raise the American flag. RACIST SLANDER! This never happened. It was traced to malicious e-mail deliberately spread by a teacher at a local religious university. Although Chicago news media immediately debunked the story, the gas station lost 30% of its business. It's owner is now sueing.	None yet. Try Chicago newspaper web sites.
9/14	Internet	Someone whose father works for FEMA reported 30 rental trucks missing, all rented by "Middle Eastern" types and not returned. An e-mail made the rounds telling people to stay out of malls, recreational areas, etc., because these trucks would be used to carry bombs. PANIC! Ryder, U-Haul, and Verizon accounted for all their trucks. None were missing. Similar rumors have swept the net ever since, always variations on the theme of, "My friend's father is a fed and he says [stay home Halloween, stay out of malls, etc.], and this time it's for REAL!"	Snopes, Ryders of the Storm
9/15	New York News Reports	A gas station on Long Island was burned by three men who retaliated against its Pakistani owner for being Asian. BOGUS! The owner of the gas station later admitted burning it himself, and fabricating the story to make it look like a hate crime.	Newsday, 10/5/01
9/18	Internet	4000 Israelis did not go to work in New York the day of the attack, proving that Israel was behind it, or at least knew it was going to happen. MORE FOG OF WAR! This story was originally reported on a Lebanese TV station with known connections to the Hezbollah, after which it began its trip through the Internet rumor mill. Apparently, someone was confused by the Israeli embassy's inquiry into the whereabouts of 4000 of its citizens, though the embassy will neither confirm nor deny that it did this. In any event, nothing close to 4000 skipped work that day, and very few Israeli citizens actually worked in the WTC anyway.	Slate.msn.com Anti-Defamation League
9/18	Internet	Clear Channel Communications, owners of 1200 radio stations, issued a list of banned songs, which included "Imagine," "Peace Train," and "Obladi Oblada." OUT OF CONTEXT! Apparently some overzealous program directors began circulating a list of songs they were personally discouraging at their own stations, and it grew steadily longer and sillier, finally leaking out and taking on a life of its own. At no time did Clear Channel actually issue a top-down edict banning songs. Program directors, as a class, tend to worry an awful lot. Such timidity is common after any highly publicized and traumatic event.	Snopes, Radio Radio
9/19	Internet	A webcam shows a "ghost image" of the World Trade Center. YES, BUT...... The low-definition photo shows a lot of backlit smoke. Those wanting to make towers out of this image have my blessing. As an artist, I've imagined weirder things than this, but never believed any of them.	none
9/21	Internet	A camera was recovered from the WTC rubble. When the film was developed, a tourist snapshot from the observation deck showed the plane about to hit the building. BRAVO SIERRA, YOU ARE CLEARED FOR LANDING... This picture is indeed a nice piece of work. The perpetrator did a relatively professional job of pasting one image into another, except for: 1. Wrong time of day. The WTC observation deck had not yet opened for the day when the plane hit. 2. Wrong tower. The photo shows the plane approaching from the north. The observation deck is on the south tower, which was hit from the west. 3. Wrong time of year. Yes, granted, it used to get pretty darn windy up there, but the guy is still dressed more for December. 4. Wrong sun angle. The sun on the guy is low and in the southeast, right where it should be in the morning. The sun on the plane, however, is in the southwest, and too high up. 5. Wrong laws of physics. There is no jet blast. There is no APU exhaust. There is no background image distortion from air flow over the wings. There is no blur, despite the high image velocity across the film plane of a slow-shutter camera. The plane is level, when it should already be in a steep bank. 6. Wrong camera. The tourist shapshot is blurry, and its shadows are badly underexposed. The airplane is razor-sharp (blowups even freeze the rapidly moving engine fan blades), and evenly lit. The tourist snap has a reddish cast, while the plane has a bluish one. Web searches turn up this same image with the airplane on a taxiway, before it was cut and pasted. No Oscar for you.	Snopes, Nick of Time! Steve Moss' Cheap Homepage Airliners.Net Photos
9/21	Internet	The flight number of one of the hijacked planes was deliberately selected to send a message by font substitution in Microsoft operating systems, either as an anti-Semitic statement, or to clue Israeli spies that their country was responsible. PEOPLE WITH TOO MUCH TIME... This is a fun little game, but one with no factual basis. Here's how it works. Take the flight number: Q33NY and change the font to Wingdings. You get: Q33NY or, obviously, an airplane hitting two towers causing death to or by Jews. Obviously. The first problem, beyond wishful thinking, is that none of the four hijacked planes had the flight number of Q33NY. Of course, fun myths like this die hard, and people have made plenty of attempts to keep it going. Some have insisted that the plane was a connection to Australia and had a Qantas flight number as well, which is a common American Airlines practice on east coast/west coast runs. However, Qantas flight 33 does not go outside Australia. The only plane with a second Qantas number was the one that hit the Pentagon, and it was QF 3058. Some other people have insisted that, of course, Q33NY is not the flight number at all, but the registration number of the airplane. Unfortunately, all the planes were US registry, with numbers beginning in "N." Nice try, though.	ABC News Online Forum CSICOP Hoax Watch
9/29	Radio News Reports, heard on several Los Angeles stations	The Assistant Police Chief of Washington, DC was pepper-sprayed by "anarchist" anti-war protesters. CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR... A video taken at the scene clearly shows the assistant chief putting on his riot helmet, then taking it off and shouting, "It was in the helmet." It appears that he pepper-sprayed himself. A prank by another cop is suspected, as this chief is unpopular with the ranks and this has happened before.	DC Independent Media Center, Article #12961
10/18	Internet	100 grams of anthrax properly dispersed downwind over Washington, D.C. could kill between 150,000 and three million people in the surrounding areas. NOPE.......... The actual amount is 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds of anthrax spores. That's a hell of a lot of anthrax. Even then, all three million people would have to breathe the spores directly, as anthrax is not contagious. This is nearly impossible to achieve. Finally, wouldn't it have to be upwind? Check Gaffin's "Anthraxities" page for some good stories on anthrax over-reaction, including the pulling of the Seinfeld episode where Susan dies from licking mail.	Anthrax FAQ Anthraxities Johns Hopkins University CDC Bioterrorism Response USPS Anthrax Threat Page
10/18	GRM (General Rumor Mill)	Bin Laden owns Snapple. TURN ON THE FOGHORN!!!!! As with most large, interlocking, publically traded companies these days, nobody "owns" Snapple. It's a subsidiary of British food conglomerate Cadbury Schweppes, which bought it from Triarc, which bought it from Quaker. Most likely source of this whopper is the fact that Snapple used to use a Saudi Arabian food distributor which had the Bin Laden family as one of its investors. Keep in mind that this is a huge family, with vast wealth, and it has interests in practically everything. For example, it contributes to Harvard University. The family has publically renounced all ties with Osama on several occasions. (There's always a black sheep somewhere... :-) )	Snopes, Snapple Rumor
10/20	Internet	Numerous online art images by a refugee from Iraq are really a secret message to Bin Laden operatives to start an upcoming germ warfare campaign which will kill millions. ANTHRAX OF THE BRAIN? Modern and post-modern art mean a lot of different things to different viewers, but this one stretches it a bit. The "story" began on a paranormal/ conspiracy web site operated by a rather famous commentator in this area who I will not publicize any further by naming. It has taken on a life of its own via the usual Internet rumor mill. These images were actually painted around 15 years ago, during the Iran/Iraq war, and they describe the artist's inner emotional horror from an attack on Baghdad. A horse on a cliff above the city sniffs a yellow plant, unleashing an evil glow which ultimately destroys everything. To the conspirators, this yellow plant is obviously a biological warfare agent. Obviously. Since the accusers actually believe their load of manure, and have even testified to that effect before the FBI, our Bogometer only gets to horse shit levels.	Detroit Free Press Snopes, Paint Your Dragon Wandawi's Paintings
10/23	News reports, repeated worldwide	Berkeley removed American flags from its fire trucks. Well, yes, for one whole day..... Berkeley did indeed remove 4 foot by 6 foot American flags from its fire trucks, for one day, until smaller ones could be found. While many fire trucks have rather large flags, this is more like a huge flag, and it flaps around quite a lot, which, after all, is what flags are supposed to do. Being Berkeley, local authorities were apparently trying to deny demonstrators an opportunity to grab so large a flag and burn it, though no such threat to the flag ever materialized. No demonstrator ever tried to steal a flag from a fire truck. The flags were replaced with ones half that size the next day. This kind of thing is pure Fog Of War, where news media jump on provocative sounding stories without further investigation, and the rumor mill takes it from there.	Snopes, Fireban
11/5	2000 "West Wing" TV Episode, then Internet rumor mill	The head of the American eagle is turned the other way in wartime. LOUSY RECEPTION! The head of the American eagle never turns. The confusion comes because, before 1945, the head on the Great Seal of the United States (the one you see on a dollar bill) turned toward the talon holding the olive branch of peace, but the head on the Presidential Seal turned toward the talon holding the arrows of war. Given the rather bellicose nature of our last few presidents, this might be appropriate, especially since the president is the Commander-In-Chief. No matter. The Presidential Seal was changed, and the eagle looks the same way as the Great Seal, at all times. Since there hasn't been an official declaration of war in 50 years, it hardly matters anyway.	Snopes, A Turn of the Head
11/16	Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, United States of America, as quoted by AP, CNN, BBC, others.	A document found in al-Queda safe house would "be helpful in making a nuclear device", and it contained information widely available on the Internet. Ridge added that such dangerous information showed just why the government should censor the net. APRIL FOOL IN NOVEMBER!!!! There are two possible scenarios here, both equally bizarre. Either Bin Laden's organization fell for a big ol' whopper while dragging the Internet for nasty information, or they deliberately left this 1979 joke article behind to make total fools out of its discoverers. Yup. The Captured Bin Laden Nuclear Bomb Instructions are a geek-humor joke, from a parody science magazine called (at that time) The Journal of Irreproduceable Results. The article, which was written to make fun of nuclear paranoia 20 years ago, has absolutely no useful information that people don't learn in the second grade. Basically, it says to bang two sub-critical masses of plutonium together. Period. Oh, it's also suggested that the "local Junior Achievement" would be a good source of the plutonium, that Crazy Glue could hold it together, and that the bomb should be stored under your kitchen sink. One wonders if Junior Achievement will be added to the government's list of "terrorist organizations."	Daily Rotten.com The Physics Club of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Village Voice.com Washington, DC Independent Media Center
12/6	Internet	Bin Laden owns Citibank. OH, JEEZ, NOT AGAIN............ Citibank, like Snapple (see 10/18), is a widely held public company which nobody really "owns." A Saudi Arabian prince, whose name just happens to be Alwaleed bin Talal, does own 4.8% of the stock. The Saudi upper classes get a lot of our money from selling oil, and they invest it in everything. I guess, for some people, if you've seen one Saudi with a "bin" in his name, you've seen them all. But this and all future Internet rumors about Osama Bin Laden's ownership of companies will very likely continue to go straight to the BS bin.	Snopes, Citibank Rumor
12/19	Internet	In order to pay for increased security, the US Post Office has asked Congress to tax e-mail at the rate of 5 cents a message. EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN! This message is the famous (or infamous) "Bill 602P" hoax. It's one of an odd class of apparently immortal Internet hoaxes, all of which seem to come around about once a year. Another example is the "FCC warning of a new virus" which "IBM and Microsoft" have detected, and which can only be prevented by removing a certain obscure system file from Windows. Neither the Senate nor the House ever give numbers like 602P. The supposed sponsor, Tony Schnell, does not exist. The law firm of "Berger, Stepp and Gorman," which appears as a source for the information in some versions of the hoax, does not exist. Its address is on a street that does not exist. This one apparently started in Canada around spring of 1999, though some trace it even further back to the "modem tax" hoax, which is around 20 years old. Many Congress members, and the Post Office itself, have repeatedly denied this one after getting e-mail barrages. It's old, and it's bogus.	It's an urban legend: http://netsquirrel.com/combatkit/ postage.html http://www.truthorfiction.com/ rumors/postoffice.htm http://urbanlegends.about.com/ library/blemtax2.htm   It started in Canada: http://urbanlegends.about.com/ library/blemtax.htm   There is no Tony Schnell: http://www.al.com/news/ birmingham/May2000/ 22-e355313b.html http://www.purplesquirrel.com/ articles/2000/dec/ watchtower.shtml http://www.house.gov/cannon/ rumor_602p.html http://www.house.gov/ sununu/Issues_postoffice.htm
1/16/02	Speech by Laura Bush	U.S. divorces have decreased, weddings are way up, and families are spending more time together. NOT. This speech was based on an erroneous Houston news report which was retracted four days earlier, but apparently our First Lady missed this. Divorces have risen in many places, as stressed-out couples get into fights. (I can testify from personal experience that S11 has done nothing for marital harmony around here!) People may be spending more time at home, but one poll showed that women were actually spending less time with their husbands and more with their dogs. Sounds like a good idea to me.	Guardian Unlimited, 1/16
1/16/02	Colin Powell, & persistent news stories	Military recruiting is way, way up since the attack. WELL, NOT REALLY...... Indeed, recruiters report more inquiries, but the actual enlistment rate is about the same. According to one Army recruiter, the "level of success" has not changed, and that's fine with him unless the military's needs change.	Guardian Unlimited, 1/16
9/25/02	Many Internet Rumors	Oliver North knew Bin Laden was up to something big as early as 1987, and Al Gore discounted the threat. THE MACHINE GRINDS ON... It is no longer possible to believe anything that gets into the media, including the net, about Al Gore. A small number of neo-conservative jargoneers keep starting or embellishing these stories, and people who want to believe bad things about Gore keep believing them. In this particular case, we are talking about an old misunderstanding of real testimony, in which Ollie North explained that he had purchased an expensive security system because he perceived a threat from Abu Nidal, not Bin Laden (who was still on "our" side at the time). This and other Gore horror stories are periodically revived and circulated, presumably intentionally, by people who don't want him to run for president again. Another good example here is the folk truism that "Al Gore claims to have invented the Internet." This whopper started in a Wired magazine column about a Gore speech in which he claimed to have been one of the first to ask the government to help pay for fiber optics backbones. This got distorted slightly by Wired, and the jargon factory took it from there until it was another "$200 haircut" and "Bush doesn't know what a market scanner is" story. (Both of these are also urban legends.) With good Internet research, it is usually possible to trace the development of these stories from misunderstandings to outright disinformation, being created from all parts of the US political spectrum in an attempt to exploit the well-understood urban legend formation process. So the old rule about politics still stands: "Don't believe what you read in the papers [or the net]."	Phil Agre's links document the whole evolution of this one. The pre-Gore urban legend was debunked, before its latest mutation, at urbanlegends.com. Even the conservative GOPUSA debunks this whopper.

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