Shanksville: The Lingering Questions
BY LISA GULIANI
Part 2 of 3
SHANKSVILLE
Also, every person we spoke to told us a different rate of
speed regarding Flight 93's final moments prior to impact—
the speeds ranging from 330 miles per hour to 700 miles per
hour. We couldn't get the same story twice. The more people
we spoke to, the more it appeared that hardly anyone
actually saw anything firsthand other than multiple sightings
of Flight 93 in mid-air on the morning of 9-11. We have
located no one to date who actually witnessed the plane
crash-landing. Instead, we listened to many accounts from
locals who appeared to be repeating what they had been
told.
Bob Schmucker, "ambassador of Flight 93 temporary
memorial," told us that the entire fuselage of Flight 93 had
been pulled from the crater, describing it as "looking
crumpled-up like aluminum foil when they took it out." He
told us three local excavating companies were used to dig
out whatever was allegedly in the smoking hole, and the
excavators had gone as deep as 50 feet. He could not or
would not name them. Schmucker understood that we had
valid, serious questions and directed us to speak to Somerset
coroner and funeral director, Mr. Miller, who appears to be
the point man in this whole mess. Schmucker also stated that
a mound on the property allegedly contains both human
remains from Flight 93 and ground tree limbs. He cited
Wally Miller as the source of this information. This mound is
located within the fenced-in area adjacent to the temporary
memorial, behind the spot where the crater used to be. The
crater is now completely filled in and inaccessible to the
public. In fact, they don't even want you walking up to the
fence line.
Vicky Rock, correspondent for The Daily American
(Somerset County), told us that not all of the people
allegedly aboard Flight 93 had been identified in the analysis
of human remains after the crash. She related to us that a
Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT) had
assisted the FBI and the coroner Mr. Miller in making positive
identifications. DMORT's own web site states that all of the
people onboard Flight 93 were ultimately identified. However,
this local correspondent firmly stated otherwise to us. She
suggested we speak with Wally Miller for further clarification,
which we did later.
I spoke again with Ms. Rock on May 10, 2006, and once
again she refuted Mr. Miller's statement regarding the Flight
93 identifications. This time, she cited a recent comment
made by a victim family member, Betty Kemmerer, who was
related to Flight 93 passenger Hilda Marcin of Mt. Olive, NJ. At
a meeting, Mrs. Kemmerer wanted still unidentified human
remains to be entombed at the memorial site. According to
Ms. Rock, Mrs. Kemmerer was told by officials that "they
would take care of it."
Curiously, we could not purchase a copy of the
September 12 issue of The Daily American from the newspaper's
circulation department. We were told these issues are
inaccessible and in storage, and we were not allowed to
photocopy the framed article from that specific date which hung
on the wall of the newsroom. So, we had to
make a trip to their local library, where we photocopied all of
the librarian's collected news clippings pertaining to the days
immediately following 9-11. Ms. Rock expressed little—if
any—interest when we informed her that several of the
purported passengers of Flight 93 have yet to appear on the
Social Security Death Index listed as deceased, despite Mr.
Miller's issuance of presumptive death certificates shortly
after 9-11. She did not give us the impression that she was
curious about this strange phenomenon, and during my
telephone conversation with her on May 10, she stated that
neither she nor the newspaper intends to investigate the
passenger list oddities, saying, "We don't think there is any
story there." No story there?
Wally Miller, Somerset coroner and funeral director, was
the man we'd been itching to meet, since Mr. Miller was the
point man who should have been able to tell us all we needed
to know about Flight 93 wreckage, remains and debris. You
would think so, right? We thought Mrs. McClatchey's
behavior was suspect, but let me stress to you that it was
nothing compared to what we've encountered with Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller was easy enough to find, but we weren't exactly
given the hometown welcome or
a civil greeting for that matter. We distinctly got the
impression that he had been tipped off that we were coming
to talk to him, and he grew increasingly agitated during the
three to four minutes we were graced with his presence while
standing at the side doorway of his funeral home. We had just
finished walking through Miller's funeral home looking for and
calling out to him, with no response. The whole place
appeared shut-down and by all appearances, nothing was
going on there that day in the way of viewings, etc. All the
lights were off, no chapels were set-up for wakes, no flowers
delivered or set-out in chapel rooms; nothing one would
typically expect to see preceding such funerary-type events.
When he finally answered the side door, Miller was dressed in
jeans, not the somber attire of a busy funeral director. Still,
Mr. Miller stressed to us how busy he was, how he had a lot
going on that day, and how he had no time to talk to us. He
made it sound like there were viewings scheduled and families
arriving (May 2), yet there were zero signs of any of this
during our previous walkthrough of the funeral home. Plus,
our car was the only one in his parking lot.
Mr. Miller immediately said he did not want to answer any
questions about the movie (which we hadn't intended to ask
him about anyway) and followed that up with, "I don't want
to answer any questions about the remains or the wreckage."
Odd, no? Who else should we ask about the remains and the
wreckage if not the man who was one of the first to arrive
upon the crime scene and who had jurisdiction over it? He
spent the first two-and-a-half minutes of our attempt to speak
to him trying to convince us how extremely unavailable he
would be that
day. We tried to schedule him for later on in the afternoon to
no avail. I then asked Mr. Miller if he would be open to
talking to me on the phone, and he agreed to this. During our
final 30 seconds at Miller's side door, I did manage to ask him
if all the people aboard Flight 93 had been identified, and he
agitatedly said "yes."
I then repeated the contradictory comment made to us by
correspondent Ms. Rock, whose statements refuted Mr.
Miller's. Remember, Ms. Rock told us on that same day (May 2,
2006) that the Flight 93 identifications were incomplete and
not everyone had been positively identified. Mr. Miller became
even more flustered when I questioned him about this
contradiction, barking out, "Yes, yes, everyone was
identified." Since Mr. Miller was supposedly in charge of the
Shanksville crime scene, in our view, he is a man with some
answers. Strangely enough, many people had told us to go
see Mr. Miller and they said he would be happy to talk to us.
He has been described as a solid rock of the community and
"Mr. Unflappable." Yet clearly Mr. Miller was not happy to see
or talk to us. From his demeanor, we might as well have been
trying to sell him encyclopedias. Mr. Miller is cited in several
9-11 reports as having jurisdiction over this crash site, at
least until the FBI descended upon the scene and claimed
authority over the investigation.
I have spoken with Mr. Miller via phone twice since May
2, 2006. On May 10, during the first call attempt, Mr. Miller
pretended not to remember his agreement to talk to me by
phone from just a few days ago—and when I refreshed his
memory, he promptly snarled, "Nahh, nahh, I've got nothing
to say to you people." He then hung up on me. This took
place within the span of about
33 seconds. I waited a while and then made a second call to
Mr. Miller, and this time I managed to keep him on the phone a
bit longer. However, Mr. Miller was fit to be tied during this
second call. He raised his voice, "What questions? What
questions?" And instead of allowing me the time he had
previously agreed upon days ago and allowing me to ask my
questions, he interrupted repeatedly with, "What is your
theory?" I tried to explain that all I wanted to do was ask him
some basic questions that really need answers, but he kept
yelling instead of answering. In response to the above
bellowing, I calmly stated that I didn't think the government
has been entirely truthful about the events of 9-11. He
responded with, "That's a bunch of hooey!" He used words
like "half-truths" in reference to the comments made to us
about the fuselage by Mr. Schmucker at the memorial site.
Due to his apparent and unconcealed agitation, it was very
difficult talking with Mr. Miller, or even asking any of the
questions I'd compiled. I brought up the matter of how several
people from Flight 93, for whom he had issued presumptive
death certificates shortly after 9-11, have not appeared listed
as deceased on the Social Security Death Index. He became
irate, and his answer was, "I don't work for the Social
Security Administration." It's kind of hard for me to believe
that Mr. Miller has conducted himself in this same fashion
during countless hours of interviews he'd given in the past to
scores of media correspondents. So why would Mr. Miller flip
out like this with me before I even had an opportunity to ask
more than one or two of the 22 questions I'd compiled? In
fact, he acted in this manner from the very first second he saw
us at his door. The question is, why?
Considering his strange responses, I asked him if he was under a
gag order and unable to talk to me about the wreckage or the
remains. He quickly denied this, stating that he'd given many
interviews before; and then in the same breath he proceeded to
hurl a name at me in between the yelling. He told me to contact
Bill Crowley from the FBI and ask him my questions. Bill Crowley,
eh? So, Mr. Miller isn't under a gag order, but he immediately
referred me to the FBI for information. This is very interesting,
especially since Mr. Miller has remained accessible for so many
previous mainstream interviews and has spoken at length with
journalists over the last four or so years. He apparently felt
comfortable enough in doing those interviews, but curiously, not
this one.
Moreover, if you examine those past Mr. Miller interviews, they
are all pro-official story, pro-government conspiracy theory. They
were softball fluff interviews, all vomiting the same questions and
canned responses like a script. Obviously, he had no problem
maintaining his composure or modulating his voice during those Q
& A sessions. You see, those reporters asked Mr. Miller the "right"
questions. And you can bet your bottom dollar he didn't send
mainstream reporters scurrying off to the FBI for answers to their
fluffy questions. Nope, he simply fielded them himself. Yet, he
became obnoxious, uncooperative and high-pitched with me on the
phone in a matter of minutes, and then punted me to Pittsburgh FBI
agent Crowley. Now remember, Mr. Miller denies he is under a
gag order.
Suddenly during our second phone call, Mr. Miller barked out,
"I've read your business card! Citizens to Discredit (unintelligible
word). Are you kidding me?" I
thought for a second and replied, "Sir, I don't think I gave you a
business card. In fact, I know we never gave you a business
card." There was a brief pause on the line, and then Mr.
Miller proceeded to hang up on me once again. How odd is
this? In addition, my business card does not bear the words
"Citizens to Discredit...."
It's noteworthy that I had never met or spoken to the
Shanksville coroner prior to May 2 and have only achieved
three minutes of actual face time with him thus far beyond the
very few minutes he spent yelling at me and hanging up on
me on two separate occasions on May 10, 2006. I have come
away from these three interactions with a very distinct
impression: Mr. Miller is afraid to talk to me for some reason,
and from where I sit he's not handling the pressure of
potentially "dangerous" questions too well. I have never
handed him a business card, so if he did manage to see my
card, there are only a few possibilities as to where he might
have seen one. Greg Chiapelli and Ms. Rock are two names
that immediately come to mind, since we gave these
individuals business cards. Mr. Miller must have realized he
slipped up, and so he hung up instead of explaining how he
could have read a card I never gave him.
From what we could determine from those we spoke with,
the FBI took control over everything involving the crash of
Flight 93 from the second they arrived. They reportedly
remained on the scene for approximately two-and-a-half
weeks according to locals. Yet, Mr. Miller also must know
what was there at the crash site. He's the man who can tell
us what we need to know about the plane wreckage, debris
field and human tissue remains identification. Yet, Mr. Miller
isn't talking. He's flapping
and balking, but he sure isn't talking. It seems to me that Mr.
Miller is owned by the FBI. All indicators point to a cover-up.
Not surprisingly, all roads are leading toward the FBI.
