The Silent Settlement
The families of the 9/11 victims at the World Trade Center and Pentagon who sued American Airlines have settled their suits against them. American Airlines and other contractors involved in security will pay an undisclosed sum to the victims and pledge to continue improving security. However, they will also avoid having to admit any negligence, and the evidence will remain sealed — which seems inimical to the plaintiffs’ stated motives:
Four Maryland families whose relatives were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon have settled claims against American Airlines and other companies involved in ticketing and screening passengers at Dulles International Airport.
Family members, who declined to participate in the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, said they opted for litigation to learn more about what went wrong that day.
“I really didn’t go into it for the money,” said Irene Golinski of Columbia, whose husband, Ronald, died at the Pentagon when terrorists flew an airliner into the building. “I went into it for the answers.” …
[Keith Franz, lead attorney] and family members said they could provide few details about what they learned or how much they received in the settlement. They agreed to keep the financial arrangements confidential, and a broad gag order forbids them from sharing information gleaned in the case.
Franz told reporters that the case showed that American’s performance, as well as that of the other contractors, led to the failures that allowed the hijackers to take control of the planes. He also said that the defendants have already corrected most of the procedural problems identified in the depositions. The airline and its co-defendants didn’t say anything at all, other than to express sympathy for the families of the victims — which of course included their own employees.
This bothers me more than most settlements of this nature. The families who sued, who opted out of the VCF to do so, insisted that the money was not important to them. They wanted answers to how the failures occurred, and decided that their separate lawsuits could provide more answers than government investigations. Apparently they have somehow been satisfied as a result of that process — but can’t tell us why. They agreed to remain silent as a condition of the settlement.
Why? If truth was that important to them, why do they now choose silence and a payoff instead of revealing the deficiencies of the system that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people? Given their statement of mission, it makes it seem as though they either learned nothing more than what the official investigations revealed and took the money rather than admit it, or that they let the airlines off the hook for a substantial amount of cash.
The families of 9/11 deserve compassion and sympathy. They are free to act in their own self-interest. However, these particular families want to have it both ways, wanting to tell us that they are on a search for the truth while participating in keeping at least the airline/airport side of the truth hidden from view. Their actions do not meet their rhetoric, and this settlement is not in the best interests of the nation. Whatever truth came out of those depositions should be unsealed. This attack killed their family members, but it was primarily an attack on the entire nation — and we have the same standing to determine whether the failures have really all been identified and corrected.
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4 Responses to “The Silent Settlement”
1 Al in St. Lou 4 October 2007 @ 10:21 am
Once again, the Captain has come up with the best description of an event: they either learned nothing more than what the official investigations revealed and took the money rather than admit it, or …they let the airlines off the hook for a substantial amount of cash. Perhaps they were really after more money from the start.
2 » The ‘Silent’ 9/11 Settlement 8 October 2007 @ 9:18 am
[…] Ed writes that: “This bothers me more than most settlements of this nature. The families who sued, who […]
3 CB_Brooklyn 9 October 2007 @ 3:45 pm
Dr Morgan Reynolds, the former Chief Economist of the US Dept of Labor, is suing private contractors alleging they defrauded the government by supplying bogus analyses for the official 9/11 NIST Report of an aluminum airplane with a plastic nosecone gliding into a steel/concrete building.
Dr Reynolds is represented by attorney Jerry Leaphart, and is demanding a Trial By Jury.
The US District Court, Southern New York, recently unsealed the case and Mr Leaphart is now notifying the Defendants.
See Dr Reynolds site for info and the Court Document PDF:
http://nomoregames.net/index.php?page=911&subpage1=federal_case
Dr Judy Wood, a former Professor of Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University, recently filed an appeal with the government for their refusal to retract their report on the World Trade Center destruction. Dr Wood (and Dr Reynolds) have compiled much evidence demonstrating that the WTC was destroyed with directed energy weapons. She has been in contact with government officials and is getting results. See Dr Wood’s site for evidence of directed energy weapons and PDFs of official Request for Corrections filed with the government:
http://drjudywood.com
Dr Wood is the only 9/11 Research Scientist to get NIST to confirm the statement in their own report of not having analyzed the “collapses” of the towers. This confirmation comes in NIST’s response to Dr Wood’s Request for Correction, both of which are archived here:
http://drjudywood.com/articles/NIST/NIST_RFC.html
The relevant quote from the Chief, Management and Organization Division at NIST to Dr Wood is as follows:
“As stated in NCSTAR 1, NIST only investigated the factors leading to the initiation of the collapses of the WTC towers, not the collapses themselves.”
Dr Wood is also represented by Jerry Leaphart.
In an interview with Kevin Barrett, trial attorney Jerry Leaphart has said:
“What I can tell you and the listeners, Kevin, is this. There is more admissible evidence associated with the theory that the World Trade Center was destroyed by directed energy weapons than there is admissible evidence for any single other theory out there that has been promulgated.”
MP3 Clip: http://drjudywood.com/media/070727_JerryLeaphartRFC_Adm.mp3
Full Show: http://drjudywood.com/media/070727_JerryLeaphartRFCs.mp3
It’s every American’s duty to remove corrupt elements in the government.
Please help by distributing the above material to your local media.
4 Mike 10 October 2007 @ 11:57 am
It sounds like the airlines/private security companies are taking the fall for the intelligence community.
Claudio Manno (in charge of the FAA Intelligence Division at the time) told the Joint Inquiry panel that the names of al Qaeda operatives were not shared with FAA intelligence. If the names had been shared, the al Qaeda operatives would have been picked up in the reservation process.
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