On May 16 2004, I published an article entitled “Media published fake passenger lists for American Airlines flight 11”. The article was revised on Sept 20, 2006. The article revealed that the mainstream media had fabricated passenger lists for the alleged flight American Airlines 11. I say “alleged flight”, because official flight data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics indicates that no such flight existed on the day.
How many of the people named on these collective lists were real people who are genuinely missing, and how they actually went missing is not the issue of research here. The issue is that the media lied about the information that it was publishing.
For whatever reason, the media could not obtain a genuine official passenger list for AA 11. Instead of admitting this and reporting on the lack of availability of a such list as a story in itself, media outlets published fabricated lists and fraudulently presented them as official lists given to them by the airline.
It wasn’t only the mainstream media which was involved. Wikipedia engaged in the same fraud. It published a list described with the grandiose term “Flight manifest” for AA11, which was so shoddily fabricated that the summary total of the numbers alleged to be aboard didn’t match with the accepted official story and didn’t even tally with the number of names actually on its list. And it plucked seemingly from nowhere, a name not used on any of the other many conflicting lists fabricated by other media outlets. It provided no source for this piece of fiction which it tried to sell to us with the official sounding title “flight manifest.”
But that was only the first of Wikipedia’s lies in relation to this matter. After the publication of my article exposing the deception, Wikipedia, presumably embarrassed by being caught out in this manner, dumped its old passenger list and replaced it with CNN’s list—which has significant differences from Wikipedia’s original “flight manifest”—without ever acknowledging any previous error.
Where did Wikipedia’s previously published “flight manifest” come from ? Did Wikipedia make it up ? Or if Wikipedia was genuinely misled by someone else, supplying it with false information, what does that say about the quality of the processes Wikipedia uses to verify the information it considers for publication ? And what does it say about Wikipedia’s honesty in now attempting to destroy the public record that it ever published such rubbish ?
Let’s take a closer look at Wikipedia’s original lie. It’s first “flight manifest”.
Here is the section of my May 16 2004 article which deals with Wikipedia’s “flight manifest”. At this point in the article, I had been working my way through all of the other conflicting lists pointing out the differences, and had shown that the lists - so far examined - collectively contained the names of 92 alleged innocent victims, even though only 87 were supposed to have been aboard the flight.
[[At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_flight_11
which describes itself as an encyclopaedia about Sept 11, is a link to what is confidently described as a “flight manifest “ for A11, although it gives no source for this information. Clicking on this link takes one to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_Terrorist_Attack/Plane_casualties
which introduces AA 11 as having 93 aboard, including 5 hijackers. The list does contain the names of 5 suspected hijackers (all Arabic names) , so there should be 88 innocents. It specifies this directly by stating “93 people: 82 passengers (including 5 hijackers), 9 flight attendants, 2 pilots “ This makes 11 crew and 77 innocent passengers. 88 innocents in total.
But if you count the names, there’s only 92 , 5 hijackers and 87 innocents, contradicting the summation of 93. This makes a mockery of the rather official sounding title of “flight manifest.” The missing names are Caplin, Jude Larson, Natalie Larson, Roux , Jalbert and Iskander. The reason why six names have been dumped from the collective list of 92 to make 87 is that this list has a new name - Lana Tu. So we now have - collectively - 93 innocents and five hijackers for a total of 92 or 93 aboard. ]]
My allusion to “missing names” refers to which of the 92 names gathered collectively from the other lists did not make Wikipedia’s list. Each list published a different selection of the collectively named 92. Wikipedia’s list extended that total to 93 with the addition of Lana Tu. By the end of the article I had found 95. Wikipedia’s claim of 93 aboard also contradicted the figure of 92 accepted by all other lists (except for one which claimed 95). Like several of the other lists, its summary total did not match the total number of names actually listed.
Wikipedia was the only list which included Lana Tu, something which I directly pointed out at the end of my article.
In briefly summing up each list, I wrote in relation to Wikipedia:
[[Wikipedia claims a summation of 93 aboard, but lists only 92 names (including hijackers). It is the only site to list Lana Tu. Those missing are Iskander, Vamsikrishna, Caplin, the two Larsons, Jalbert, Weems, Ward and Roux. This makes it the same as the USAT list with the addition of Tu, or put another way - the Same as the NBC and PBS lists except that Tu is in for Iskander. ]]
So if Wikipedia became aware of my article, then it knew exactly what it had to do to make its list compatible with that of somebody else’s. And it appears that Wikipedia did become aware of it. If you go to Wikipedia’s flight manifest as it appears now and examine the details, you could be forgiven for thinking that I libelled Wikipedia by misrepresenting what it published. Because now what you’ll see is a very different list.
The faux pas in the summary total has been corrected, four names have been deleted and three added. Out go Lana Tu, Kelly Booms, Waleed Iskander and Pendyala Vamsikrishna, and in come Robin Caplin, Jude Larson ,Natalie Larson .
Wikipedia has changed its list by simply dumping the old list and replacing it with CNN’s list which is acknowledged as the source. Unfortunately for Wikipedia, here is a Google Cache of its original page, providing a record of its “flight manifest”, as it was before my article exposed what was wrong with it.
The whole point of the May 16 2004 article was that virtually all of the passenger lists published by various sources contradict each other. Which means that there is a lot of fibbing going on. These cannot possibly be from an official list provided by American Airlines because if that was the source, everyone would have the same list.
Wikipedia’s “flight manifest” was particularly embarrassing in that it contained no source, published a name not published by anyone else, was the only list to claim 93 aboard - and can’t pass this off as a typo because it also itemised the figures by crew ,passengers, and hijackers –and then published a different number of names from its summary total.
And then, after the publication of my article which embarrassed this “flight manifest”, Wikipedia tried to cover up the fraud by deleting it’s old “flight manifest” and replacing it with CNN’s - without offering any acknowledgment that the previous list ever existed. Had I not pointed out the cached page which proves the existence of its previous “flight manifest”, Wikipedia could claim that it had always used CNN’s list and that I lied about the contents of their “flight manifest” and that people only had to check the list for themselves to see that I was lying. Apart from the obvious attempt to protect their own reputation through the dishonest manipulation of information, one can also interpret this as a continuation of the attempt to present the AA11 passenger lists as reliable and consistent information, when Wikipedia knows very well that this is not the case.
On closer examination, it appears that CNN may have also slightly changed its list from how it was when I first published the fake passenger lists article, because there is now a discrepancy, in that the first Wikipedia list had the same number of names as CNN’s, but in the second version Wikipedia had dumped four names but only added three, and claims to be using CNN’s list. I will update this article again, when I work out exactly which discrepancy I haven't picked up yet.
If legal processes counted for anything, Wikipedia would be brought for trial on charges of obstructing justice. It published demonstrably false information in relation to the murder of thousands of people. Whether it was directly responsible for this fabrication itself or whether it was misled to it by someone else behind the scenes, we don’t know. And Wikipedia doesn't want anyone to find that out. Its false list is part of a larger case of widespread fabrication of information in relation to the crime. And once Wikipedia’s part in that falsehood was exposed, it actively tried to destroy the public record that any such fabrication on its part had occurred, and actively continued the pretence that correct and reliable information was being published even though it knew this to not be the case.
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
You've just given an excellent demonstration ...
19.12.2006 13:55
sceptic
Is anyone getting the impression that we are being led on a wild goose chase?
19.12.2006 16:01
If you want to get to the bottom of it, and you don't think it's a waste of time, here are a few practical steps:
For any indiscrepancy, follow it up, ask the people where they've got their evidence from, and than ask those people where they've got theirs from, remember, the passenger list source needs to come from the airliner or the airport.
The “non-existent” flight, go to the air port and ask to see the footage of the passengers boarding that flight, and compare it with their pictures. get the passport number of all passengers, and in particular of this flight.
Call their families and friends, and ask them whether they we're flying, whether they said they were flying somewhere beforehand.
Ask for the control tower record of that day, and check it they have that flight recorded.
Check the prices the passengers paid for their flight, and if you can compare credit cards.
These are just a few things I can come up with, I think it's a waste of time and effort though. remember, when it all comes crumbling down, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
OsamaBinLaden
Attributing this to some "Wikipedia Conspiracy" completely misses the point.
21.12.2006 03:30
At it's heart, Wikipedia is just like this site - people post - people reply. Accusing "Wikipedia" of lying is akin to accusing AOL of lying when someone posts you an email scam. The truth in this case is almost certainly that some individual posted an incorrect list - other Wikipedia members evidently spotted a problem and tried to correct it - rightly or wrongly. There could not possibly have been a concerted effort to "lie" - or to concoct some kind of "cover up". As you already discovered, Wikipedia is built to make it impossible to have a 'cover up' because you can always click on the history link and find out exactly who wrote every single word - and when they did it - accurate to the nearest second.
The process of making WIkipedia articles is always one of homing in on the truth - often with many errors happening along the way. The totally surprising result of this is an encyclopedia which (it has been demonstrated in MANY studies) is more accurate than the hallowed 'Encyclopedia Britannica' and covers ten times as much subject matter and in dozens of languages! Is it perfect? No - absolutely not. Is it better than the alternatives? Yes, generally - but not always - it depends on the subject matter. But you have to put that in context - there is absolutely no source of general information anywhere in the world that you can utterly, 100%, rely upon to be true. Not a single one. Everyone makes mistakes. Studies have shown that there are an average of two to four errors in every Encyclopedia Brittanica article they checked...Wikipedia is a little better than that...on the average.
Take a concrete example: My contribution to Wikipedia over the past few days - the article is called "Mini Moke" and it's about an obscure British car that was built from the 1960's to the 1990's. Yesterday, I read a book about the Mini Moke - and it said that the car was later made with 12" and 13" wheels to "improve it's ground clearance" over the 10" wheels it had been designed to use. This was a good nugget of information - so I added this 'fact' to my article - rephrasing it in my own words and fitting it into the article at a suitable point in the narrative. This morning, someone else was reading my article and noticed my new statement. He said that no, the 12" wheels used skinnier tyres and so didn't increase the ground clearance - they merely allowed for larger disk brakes...but the 13" ones did. Well, I double checked some other books - and lo and behold, this guy was correct. So when I have a moment, I'll fix the error in the article - but right now it's *WRONG*. But when I fix it, Wikipedia will be a teeny-tiny bit more accurate. This is how progress is made. Now - would you say I lied? Will changing the article constitute a "cover up"? Hell no! I made a mistake - someone called me on it - and I'll fix it when I have a moment.
It's important to understand what's going on - this is not a once-and-for-all encyclopedia. It evolves towards increasing truth.
If you should happen to find another problem like this - YOU CAN FIX IT - click the 'edit' tab and off you go! Congratulations! You're writing for an encyclopedia! Your mother would be proud. You can discuss the article with it's authors - you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. In the end, if there is a dispute - call the authors on their references. "Where did you get your information?" - if they don't have a good answer and you do - then there is no more dispute.
You shouldn't use Wikipedia (or any other single data source for that matter) for life-changing decisions - but if (as happened to me just last night) you happen to miss the first 30 minutes of the movie that's on TV - you can go to Wikipedia and have a 99% chance of getting a cast list and enough of a plot synopsis to catch you up. If you are reading about the poisoning of that Russian spy in England and you want to know the half-live of Polonium-210 - it's right there. How many Pokemon were there in the first series of cards? Which Greek philospher did the bathtub overflowing thing? Is chocolate really poisonous to dogs? It's there - more than that, you KNOW it's there. There is simply no other resource on the entire planet that can do that for you.
But when it has errors - they are just that - errors. There cannot possibly be some grand secret conspiracy in a community of 100,000 editors who are pretty much constantly churning the wikisphere. Even if there were - all communitations between editors, every single edit made to every single word of every single article can be traced back to exactly who did it - just look in the HISTORY and DISCUSSION tags at the top of every single page.
What was the ground clearance of a 1980 Mini Moke? Well - I'm working on that one...sorry....but it's not in that 32 volume $1500 set of Encyclopedia Britannicas either.
Steve Baker
e-mail: www.sjbaker.org