Legal Subterfuge If websites can be created to sabotage 9/11 truth exposure by inserting discrediting memes, couldn't a similar tactic be used in litigation? There have been accusations that lawsuits on behalf of 9/11 victims are designed to obstruct rather than elicit justice. One can imagine that a lawsuit could be designed to fail, and thereby discourage and foreclose subsequent legal action on behalf of the victims. However, it could be difficult to distinguish between intentional sabotage and mere incompetence in an unsuccessful lawsuit. Here we examine three lawsuits filed behalf of victims which have serious flaws -- flaws that could do more to damage the cause of 9/11 Truth exposure than help it. Philip Berg's Lawsuit on Behalf of Ellen Mariani

Stanley Hilton's Lawsuit on Behalf of Able Ashes

Philip Berg's Lawsuit on Behalf of William Rodriguez We do not critique the lawsuit submitted to Eliot Spitzer by the Justice for 9/11 Steering Committee that is described on the JusticeFor911 website. The Justice for 9/11 lawsuit avoids the more obvious pitfalls evident in Hilton's and Berg's suits. Philip Berg's Lawsuit on Behalf of Ellen Mariani A former lawsuit by Philip J. Berg on behalf of Ellen Mariani, widow of Flight 175 victim Louis Mariani, was the first to garner widespread support among 9/11 activists. At a November 26, 2003 press conference, Berg announced the filing of an amended complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The complaint charges that President Bush and other officials: Had knowledge/warnings of 911 and failed to warn or take steps to prevent Have been covering up the truth of 911 Are being sued under the Civil RICO Act Carol Valentine attacks Berg's motives in his lawsuit for Ellen Mariani in an essay marred by anti-Semitism. Despite Valentine's attempts to connect Berg's lawsuit to the worldwide plot for Jewish supremacy she perceives, she does make some cogent points about the deficiencies of the lawsuit, including: Berg fails to name Myers, acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11/01

Berg fails to name or even mention Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, Commander or NORAD on 9/11/01.

Berg fails to name Jane Garvey, who on 9/11/01 was the administrator of the FAA. Both NORAD and the 9/11 Commission blame the FAA for long delays in notifying the military of confirmed hijackings. For example NORAD's timeline has the FAA waiting 28 minutes after losing pilot communications with Flight 11 and 16 minutes after overhearing "We have some planes ... Nobody move", before notifying NORAD that there was a problem.

Berg commits gross errors, such as in the passage: "That, on September 10, 2003, Plaintiff and her husband Louis Neil Mariani spent their last day together as husband and wife on this earth. (Summary of Facts, Para. 25)" This is two years off.

Berg's lawsuit, being a class action, could forever sabotage legal efforts to obtain justice. Valentine writes: Berg wrote his Complaint as a class action lawsuit. (27) If the court certifies Berg's claim, he will represent all those who, like Mrs. Mariani, refused to participate in the government's 911 hush fund. If the suit fails, it will fail for Mrs. Mariani and all the others. If the suit is dismissed with prejudice, 9-11 plaintiffs will never be able to bring another suit for that cause of action against the defendants. Berg could ruin every plaintiff's potential case forever.



If, on the other hand, Mariani is awarded damages, the results will be the same: there will be no more 9-11 plaintiffs to bring suits and no more chance for honest discovery. The Mother of All Conspiracy Theories, the suicide pilot fable, will be set in stone. Stanley Hilton's Lawsuit on Behalf of Able Ashes A lawsuit by Bob Dole's former chief of staff Stanley G. Hilton makes wide-ranging accusations against Bush administration officials for the crimes of 9/11/01 and subsequent crimes. Hilton's original suit, filed in the Northern California U.S. District Court on June 3rd, 2004, on behalf of 9/11 victims, names top officials in the Bush administration as defendants, and enumerates various charges against them. A Second Amended Complaint, filed by Stanley Hilton on 8/27/04, adds to the plaintiffs individuals who have been harmed by repression instated in response to 9-11, and seeks various forms of relief, including declaring the USA PATRIOT Act unconstitutional. This version of the suit brings charges against the defendants under three causes of action: Taxpayer Suit Under the Constitution

Violation of Fraudulent Claims Act: 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729, 3730 et seq

RICO statute: 18 US CODE §§ 1961 et seq A concern about lawsuits like Hilton's is that they can damage the legal prospects of plaintiffs. Given that the suit is a class action, its dismissal or defeat could make future actions against the named 9/11 defendants more difficult. Michael Ruppert compares Hilton's lawsuit against government officials to the failed lawsuit in the 1980s by the Christic Institute. e x c e r p t title: Mike Ruppert on the Stanley Hilton lawsuit authors: Michael Ruppert It is my strong belief that Stanley Hilton is the Daniel Sheehan of the new century and that anyone who allies with him will be as discredited and broke as those who supported the Christic Institute. He has rounded up 400 victim families and he will destroy their case exactly the same way that Sheehan destroyed Martha Honey's and all who were involved in that one. Accusations of Fraud 9/11 truth activist Scott Munson has accused Stanley Hilton of fraud by including him as a plaintiff against his will. The following e-mail exchange of allegations by Munson and Hilton suggests that there is no written authorization of Munson to be included in the lawsuit. From: Scott Munson

Subject: Stanley Hilton is a fraud.

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 15:44:00 -0700



Stanley Hilton is a fraud.

I have never met a more seemingly incompetent or kooky lawyer than Stanley Hilton.

Stanley Hilton fabricated legal elements in my name for his 911 lawsuit.

When I visited Stanley Hilton's SF office I was shocked to find he had inserted claims on my behalf that I had never made.

In my previous correspondence to Stanley Hilton I had detailed 2 cases of being denied my 1st amendment right to pass out deception dollars. http://deceptiondollar.com

In the first case: On April 4, 2003, Security guards at the metal detector at the entrance of the SF Court Building, 850 Bryant, told me I could not enter the building with deception dollars on my person.

In the second case, on May 20, 2003, a National Park Service Ranger http://nps.gov informed me I could not pass deception dollars out on Baker Beach, SF, CA; in a National Park.

I did not know whether Stanley Hilton was mentally incompetent, or engaged in conscious deception.

I never signed any papers with him or gave him any "OK" or permission to include me in his suit.

But I learned he was including me in his suit anyway. I was upset about this.

So I called him, and emailed him, nearly ten times, over a space of several weeks.

He returned neither my phone calls nor my emails.

I hope there is some law against a lawyer who pretends to be representing me while making up accusations and denying all contact with me.



Scott Munson

Menlo Park, CA

On November 1, 2004, Stanley Hilton declared that he had removed Scott Munson from the lawsuit. In a post on CraigsList Hilton stated: I ASKED THE FED COURT TO DISMISS MUNSUN [sic] AS A PLAINTIFF IN THIS CASE TODAY. I NEVER GOT ANY CALLS OR E MAILS FROM HIM.

THE FALSE AND DEFAMATORY ALLEGATIONS ABOUT ME BY SCOTT MUNSUN ARE TOTALLY FALSE.

MUNSUN [sic] AGREED TO BE A PLAINTIFF IN THIS CASE, IN THE PRESENCE OF WITNESSES. HE NEVER PHONED ME OR WROTE TO ME REQUESTING TO BE REMOVED AS A PLAINTIFF FROM THE CASE. THE FIRST I HEARD OF THIS WAS TODAY, NOV. 1 2004 ON CRAIGSLIST.

MUNSUN'S [sic] FALSE AND LIBELOUS ACCUSATIONS AGAINST ME ARE BIZARRE AND WITHOUT ANY MERIT.

I HAVE FORMALLY ASKED THE COURT TO REMOVE MUNSON AS A PLAINTIFF IN THIS CASE TODAY, IN ACCORD WITH HIS WISHES. SEE ATTACHMENT.

I SUSPECT MIKE RUPPERT IS BEHIND THIS UNJUSTIFIABLE ATTEMPT TO DEFAME ME, BECAUSE OF WHAT HE PERCEIVES AS A "RIVALRY" IN THE "911 TRUTH MOVEMENT."

STANLEY G HILTON

Accusations of Malpractice A public statement by Stanley Hilton is taken as evidence by Mark Robinowitz that Hilton is guilty of malpractice by using the least credible evidence. In the statement, Hilton seems to endorse ideas promoted by the In Plane Site video. However, Abel Ashes writes the following in defense of Hilton on suetheterrorists.net. Hilton does not fully support the allegations made by "In Plane Site". He wrote an article after having received the DVD as a gift in the mail from someone at letsroll911.org and wrote an article based upon the theory of events they present. The article has been removed from the website. We provide several criticisms of Hilton's lawsuit and strategy but do not take a position on whether his suit is a form of legal subterfuge or shows legal incompetence. Case Includes Wrong Plaintiffs One would expect that the plaintiffs in Stanley Hilton's lawsuit against government officials for perpetrating the 9/11/01 attack would include people who were either injured in the attack or lost loved ones in the attack. However, the amended complaint, filed on August 27, 2004, contains the following: Plaintiffs have been fired from their jobs, including plaintiff Ashes, who was fired from his job at a Nieman Marcus department store in San Francisco (and assaulted by Nieman Marcus store employees telling him "you can't distribute that, the country is 'at war.'") on or about Feb. 23, 2003, for distributing any 911-related or anti-Iraq-war literature and videos critical of the government. Under the guise of the mantra "the country is at war" plaintiffs have suffered loss of freedoms and loss of tax dollars. One wonders what legal theory Hilton is using to determine whom to include as plaintiffs in his lawsuit. Do people who have been harassed for distributing literature have legal standing in a lawsuit which charges that the defendants orchestrated the premeditated murder of nearly 3000 people? Case Makes Unsupportable Claims Against Wrong Defendants Hilton's complaint names the following defendants: GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DICK CHENEY VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE TENET CIA DIRECTOR ROBERT MUELLER FBI DIRECTOR CONDOLEEZA RICE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER JOHN ASHCROFT ATTORNEY GENERAL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ET AL. Conspicuously absent from the list are: Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, in whom authority to approve intercepts resided.

General Ralph Eberhart, NORAD commander during 9/11/01. Eberhart was later promoted to direct NORTHCOM.

General Myers, Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11/01. Myers was promoted to Chairman days after the attack.

Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor of New York City on 9/11/01. Giuliani admitted on TV that he was warned the "World Trade Center was gonna' collapse," and oversaw the illegal destruction of evidence at Ground Zero. Giuliani was named "Man of the Year" by Time Magazine.

Larry Silverstein, controller of the World Trade Center since July of 2001, and beneficiary of a set of insurance policies with terrorist provisions purchased shortly before the attacks. Hilton's complaint names officials in the Bush administration who had alibis, and ignores people who directly benefited from the attack. Hilton Cites Disproved Red Herrings as Evidence The following statement from Stanley G. Hilton, was edited by Abel Ashes and posted on Liberty Forum, then excerpted here and commented in red. It seems to promote some of the most ludicrous claims about the attack. However, Abel Ashes has pointed out that is not representative of Stanley Hilton's approach to the case. Hilton: FEMA videos are being subpoenaed "FEMA officials, who had already set up camp for Tripod II by the morning of September 11th 2001, videotaped all of this in detail. These videos are being subpoenaed in our lawsuit against Bush for personally ordering 911 to happen." *BUSH'S TWILIGHT ZONE* WHICH PLANES REALLY STRUCK THE WTC AND PENTAGON ON 911? by Stanley G. Hilton, Esq. As a matter of general law, the most compelling and credible evidence in any case is always physical evidence, such as photographs and videos. These are objective mechanical recordings that cannot "lie." In the case of the crimes of treason of September 11, 2001, the most compelling evidence is the photos and videos or conspicuous lack thereof, of the three aircraft that struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the two building complexes that were hit on that Day of Infamy. What is most striking is that a close look at the photos and video shots of the two planes which struck the WTC show that the two planes which struck the North and South Towers 15 minutes apart do not appear to be American or United passenger jets, but rather unmanned Air Force "drone" tanker planes without any windows, a special type of Boeing 757 built for the Air Force to fuel fighter planes in the air. The videos show that both planes that actually struck the WTC that terrible morning had conspicuous protruding cylindrical "pods" underneath their fuselage, and that just seconds before they struck the WTC towers, a bright flash went off on the planes, like a match lit to ignite the massive fuel stored in the aircraft. These pods were most likely fitted with an incendiary device and/or a missile designed to inflict maximum damage on the target. They were designed and deployed for military use, but in this case George Bush personally ordered them to be used against American citizens, thousands of them in the WTC for blatantly political gains, in the most shameless act of Treason in our nation's history. When you play the videos in slow motion, at 2 percent of the actual speed, you can clearly see the protruding, elliptical mass underneath the fuselage of the plane and the flash of light going off just before impact. For analysis of these laughable claims, see: ERROR: A Pod Was Attached to the South Tower Plane Eyewitnesses in Manhattan who observed the planes striking the WTC stated that "there were no windows on the planes" and that the planes were unmarked without any insignia. The source of this is one eyewitness in BROOKLYN who couldn't see windows on the plane that struck the South Tower. Duuuh! The videos taken of Flight 175 which hit the second tower at 9:01 am also reveal a second protruding mass underneath the fuselage near the back of the plane, a mass that appears to be a "pod" built on the special 757-tankers which houses the long metallic "gas pump" that emerges from these tankers during flight, and connects with fighter jets that fuel up in the air at these "flying gas stations." The old KC-137's were the prototype of this technology, all produced by Boeing at its Wichita Kansas plant. That these aircraft were used as substitute planes to kill Americans is shocking. That BushLies continue to cover up these crimes is still more shocking. There are plenty of shocking actions by Bush and Co, but covering up fanciful ideas with no supporting evidence are not among them. Eyewitnesses who saw the two Air Force tanker phantoms strike the WTC reported that these planes had "no windows" and appeared to be "military or transport planes." One called it a "spy" plane because it was unmarked. Of course, the planes struck so fast and so suddenly and were so high above the street level, that the normal human eye did not have enough time to actually study the appearance of the jets with any degree of certainty. FEMA officials, who had already set up camp for Tripod II by the morning of September 11th 2001, videotaped all of this in detail. These videos are being subpoenaed in our lawsuit against Bush for personally ordering 911 to happen. There is little question that the two planes which actually struck the WTC on 911 were not the United and American commercial jets which had taken off from Boston Logan Field an hour earlier, but rather unmanned drone Air Force tankers which were operated by a remote control system similar to the NASA 557 remote control system for 757s and 767s, "Cyclops" navigation systems, the systems used in Global Hawks, Predator Drones and other drone aircraft, and the GPS guided remote control system tested by Raytheon at Holloman Air Force Base in July of 2001 . The men at the controls were acting on orders directly issued from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. So what happened to the real UAL and AA commercial jets that had taken off from Boston that morning? Where did they go? What happened to their crews and passengers? The evidence indicates that these planes were ordered by the US Air Force to land at an Air Force base 200 miles from New York City, where the passengers and crew were forced off the plane, and slaughtered on orders from Bush. There is ZERO evidence of this. The 19 Arab so-called hijackers were paid US double agents who served as decoys for the real operation on Bush Day. They just followed orders to knowing the true nature of the bit roles they were playing in what will go down as the greatest act of treason in world history. In a classic, brilliant and historic "military decoy operation," the original passenger jets seem to have been replaced by these drone aircraft somewhere between Boston and New York airspace. Furthermore, air traffic controllers were confused by a series of "drills" that day which were meant to send up a smokescreen of chaos, under which any dissenting officials would be rendered neutral. Then there is the Pentagon, where half an hour later we are told that another 757 American Airlines passenger jet hit the building and caused a 16-foot hole? The government has yet to release a single video to prove their bogus allegation that a 757 smashing into the Pentagon. In an area with the highest number of surveillance and video cameras on earth, not a single video has been released showing clearly what actually took place during this mysterious incident. Many eyewitnesses reported seeing something other than a 757 strike the Pentagon and the FBI reportedly confiscated all videotapes from all surveillance cameras within a ten-mile radius of The Pentagon, including those from the gas station across the street. Stranger still is that a 757 is 125 feet wide and 155 feet long, but the hole in the Pentagon is only 16 feet wide. The 757's tail is 20 feet taller than the Pentagon's roof, yet no structural damage was done to the roof upon impact. Photographs taken immediately after the alleged strike show office furniture still intact right at the damage site and a slice or cross section of the floors also shows desks and filing cabinets intact. This is totally inconsistent with the government's own theory that fuel-laden commercial airliners struck all three buildings, the WTC Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The government's theory asserts that the impact of the planes and the burning of the jet fuel brought about the total destruction of the Twin Towers. If we are to believe the government's nonsensical theory such aircraft laden with jet fuel striking the Pentagon would have caused massive fires that would have spread throughout the building and impact damage destructive enough to severely destroy a very large section of the Pentagon. What we saw instead was a hole smaller than the aircraft alleged to have made impact and relatively minor damage when compared with the total destruction of the Twin Towers by what were alleged to be similar striking objects. For analysis of the claims that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon, see: Pentagon Attack Errors There can be no doubt that the government's own theory is totally inconsistent. Bush claims the same types of aircraft flown by the same ragtag gang of Arabs and full of the same type of fuel struck both the WTC and Pentagon, yet the damage is totally inconsistent. The two huge towers of the WTC were totally destroyed while the Pentagon escaped with a small 16 foot hole that could not even fit the fuselage of a 757, much less the wing span. Even more bizarre, there was never found any aircraft wreckage of the 757 that allegedly struck the Pentagon. The real plane appears to have vanished into thin air. Another huge error, see: ERROR: The Pentagon Crash Left No Debris What really happened at the Pentagon may be that a cruise missile was fired at the Pentagon by an Air Force fighter-bomber that swept down the Potomac River and this missile, which looks like a cylinder with two small wings at the rear caused the "surgical strike" that produced the 16-foot hole. There is no credible evidence for the involvement of a missile. See: Pentagon Attack Eyewitnesses. As for the crew and passengers of the real jet that had taken off from Dulles Airport that morning, they were forced to land and murdered, like their counterparts from Boston. The planes were commandeered into the Air Force fleet, their serial numbers altered. It would be difficult to concoct a story that average people would reject as insane. And again there is ZERO evidence of this. Finally there is the mystery of the fourth commercial plane that took off that morning, United Flight 93, which took off from Washington DC's Dulles Airport, and headed for San Francisco. Unlike its three cousins, which may have been "disappeared", this jet wound up in small pieces on the ground in a wreck stretching a mile and a half at "Camp Bush" in western Pennsylvania. Here Mr. Hilton confuses Flight 93, which took off from Newark, New Jersey, with Flight 77, which took off from Washington DC's Dulles Airport. The official lie is that Flight 93 was also hijacked and was heading for the White House when heroic passengers wrestled the hijackers and either accidentally or intentionally caused the plane to crash. Like most of the other lies about 911, this too is a fantasy. Why was the plane 300 miles off course, west of Washington at the time it crashed? How is it that these super-smart terrorists whose brothers flew with precision into the WTC and Pentagon could not even find the course for Washington, when they had just taken off from Dulles Airport, 20 miles west of Washington itself? It would have taken them less than ten minutes to fly the plane from Dulles to the White House, but we are told they stayed in the air for over an hour 300 miles off course. United Airlines flight 93 was shot down by an Air Force fighter under the command of Dick Cheney, possibly because the pilot became suspicious and refused to land his plane at the directions of the military. The pilot had radioed the Pittsburgh Airport control tower for permission to make an emergency landing, and wound up being shot down by planes of our own military. The government won't release the Pittsburgh Control Tower records or the black boxes. What I believe was supposed to happen, according to the script for the spectacular 911 stunt show on Bush Day, was that this plane like the three others was supposed to land at an Air Force base, where the passengers and crew were to be "disappeared" while a fourth unmanned tanker drone 757 was supposed to strike a US military base in nearby Ohio, as part of a larger scenario of pseudo-events produced and directed by the Bush Administration, intended to scare the American people into giving Bush dictatorial control powers. However, because the pilots became recalcitrant and suspicious, they would not play along with the script and were shot down by a military jet fighter. The fourth plane's "mission" of treason was aborted. In our lawsuit against Bush for High Treason and mass murder, we seek all documents pertaining to Air Force records and commercial air traffic control records that will reveal what really happened on 9/11/01. We seek the black boxes to all four ill-fated jets and from the tanker drones that really struck the WTC, which the government has thus far refused to produce, claiming "national security." What is really at stake is not national security but rather national insecurity. In classical BushLies, the purpose of the Bush administration is not to reveal, but to deceive. The 911 Whitewash Commission, which inept and timorous congressmen put together with the reluctant "semi-cooperation" of the White House, is a sham. It did not address any of the issues described above. This Whitewash Commission will surely go down as a shameful footnote in history; a glaring testimony to the political weakness of our "democracy" and the utter impotence and cooption of Congress. The holocaust that BushLies have unleashed in the Middle East through mindless wars of destruction against Afghanistan and Iraq, with more to come, is the logical and political result of the spectacular Twilight Zone sound-and-light show of 911. In an administration based on fraud and chicanery, we can expect nothing else but more stunts like 911 and more wars of aggression against harmless Third World nations replete with oil. Bush Day, Sept. 11, was intended to be a well-planned catalyst for galvanizing the Congress and public into supporting unlimited aggressive wars in pursuit of a dubious political agenda. Bush has well earned his place in History's Rogue's Gallery along such luminaries as Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan. George Bush II is guilty not only of crimes against humanity, but also of crimes against his own people. The 3000 souls who evaporated on Bush Day, Sep. 11, cry out for vindication. Bush's Supreme Act of Treason makes Benedict Arnold look like George Washington. Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Let us hope he was right. - Statement of Stanley G. Hilton, Esq. September 2004 Philip Berg's Lawsuit on Behalf of William Rodriguez Willie Rodriguez and Phil Berg Ellen Mariani, Philip Berg's first client in a lawsuit against the Bush administration for complicity in the 9/11 attack, dropped out. Berg then found a new client, William Rodriguez, a maintenance worker at the World Trade Center who "single-handedly rescued fifteen people". A press release for the lawsuit describes his heroism: The only employee with the master key to the North Tower staircases, he led firefighters up the stairs, unlocking doors as he went, aiding in the evacuation of hundreds of additional people who, but for his efforts, might have perished. Although his job description did not include saving lives, Rodriguez re-entered the building three times after the first plane struck, and was the last person to exit the North Tower alive. He survived the collapse of the North Tower by diving beneath a fire truck to avoid the avalanche of concrete and steel. After onsite treatment for his injuries, Rodriguez plunged right back into rescue efforts at the site. At dawn the next morning, Rodriguez returned to Ground Zero from his home in Jersey City, to continue to aid in rescue efforts. Berg filed Rodriguez v. Bush, et al., Civil Action No. 04 cv 4952, in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, on October 22, 2004. This lawsuit is much longer and goes much further than the lawsuit on behalf of Mariani, in alleging that officials "were complicit in the 9-11 attacks, and either planned the attacks, or had foreknowledge of the attacks and permitted them to succeed, in order to exploit a 'New Pearl Harbor' to launch wars against Afghanistan and Iraq." In this critique of the complaint we point out some of the flaws with this lawsuit, which include: The complaint goes even further than Stanley Hilton's in its kitchen-sink approach of naming numerous defendants and making numerous and wide-ranging allegations of criminality. This approach is diametrically opposed to the one that would appear to have the best chances of success: a narrow focus on the most provable charges against a few individuals.

The complaint fails to apply the smell test to the allegations it lists, and includes thoroughly debunked and patently nonsensical claims among the valid ones. Interestingly, while it fails to cite any 9/11 skeptics' websites or books that provide substantial evidence of insider involvement, it trumpets the hoax-promoting site LetsRoll911.org.

The complaint is poorly organized and full of syntactic and structural errors, making it difficult to read and summarize. (In our critique, which reproduces the original complaint, we have attempted to clean up the structure in order to help the reader.)

page last modified: 2006-12-17