And Now, Tomorrow's News

Let's take a for-instance—and, I'll warn you in advance; this did not happen (at least, as far as I know). Suppose, on the evening of November 21, 1963, you sat in front of your TV, watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report, when you heard Chet Huntley somberly announce the capture of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Startling news, indeed—because you wouldn't have known that Kennedy had been assassinated. Indeed, he hadn't; that event wouldn't occur until November 22.

In the days to follow, as the sad events of November 22 unfolded—as you had to take in the assassination of a widely-loved President twice—you surely would have been compelled to wonder: How did this happen? How could the Kennedy assassin have been identified the day before the assassination?

Was it your imagination? A rare case of precognition on your part? Ah, but millions of people would have seen that broadcast; it would have been the topic of every water cooler discussion in the country. And in years to come, you'd find people who remembered hearing the announcement—but in 1963 there were no home VCRs recording the events of the day; and if no mention of it were ever made on the airwaves again, as the years passed, your memory would falter, your certainty dissolve.

Still…when you thought about it (and you would, every time someone brought up the Kennedy assassination), you'd remember that peculiar announcement, made before there was any assassination at all, effectively predicting the name of the assassin. How could such a thing happen?

Because TV news in 1963 had the reputation of being "free journalism" you might ponder the likelihood of some kind of psychic event. It might never occur to you to wonder if the TV reporter, somehow, had advance knowledge.

Nowadays, of course, we aren't so naive. We know that all the TV networks, and virtually all radio stations and newspapers, are owned by the same, small number of global corporations—and these corporations own stock in each other, making them more inbred than any family of Ozark mountaineers. The same corporations also own major defense contractors (the guys who make money from war), major pharmaceuticals, and Big Oil. It's far more in their interest that they suppress a free press than risk exposing their own schemes. Oh, sure they might have to admit to an Enron scheme or too—after everyone else has learned about it from their stockbrokers—but notice that Enron, which stole billions of dollars, was fined a few million in punitive damages. That's like saying to a carjacker, "You can keep the Jaguar you stole; just give me back the change you found under the seat." Yet that's not something you read about in the papers or saw on the Evening News. You had to hunt up the court documents online, or read about in the blog of someone who had. There was no "film at eleven."

Regular readers know that I do believe in coincidences, and in intuition. I've even had the experience of "hearing" a news article predicting a celebrity's death, decades before that person died. But that doesn't mean I dismiss all evidence of a crime just because of it seems to be anachronistic.

Perhaps it really was a coincidence when, in 1951, a movie entitled The Tall Target was released in which a detective in the year 1861, tries to prevent the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The name of the detective, played by Dick Powell? John Kennedy!

Perhaps it really was a coincidence when Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, describing the sinking of a large ship (the precise size and construction of the Titanic) in April, by hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic while on a crossing from London to New York. As Wikipedia notes,

There are also similarities between the size (800 ft length against 880 ft for the Titanic), speed (25 knots for Titan, 23 knots for Titanic) and life saving equipment on the ship and the number people lost in the disaster ("24 boats for three thousand people").

Now, conspiracy theorists more ardent than I, might suggest that the Illuminati, who they blame for everything from what you ate for breakfast this morning to the cancelling of Northern Exposure, might have orchestrated both the movie and book described above. However, as I said, I do believe that coincidences happen and both of these events read that way to me.

On the other hand, it appears that Abraham Lincoln's assassination was pre-reported, at least in a few towns:

For example, George Kulzer (1831-1912), a pioneer of Stearns County, Minnesota, told the following story about St. Joseph, MN: "That was an eventful year, 1865. In April, an odd thing happened in St. Joseph. Early in the morning on Wednesday, the 14th, people were horror-stricken to hear that President Lincoln had been assassinated. No one knew how the news had arrived, since we had no telegraph. Later we heard that Mr. Lincoln had indeed been assassinated, but not until late in the evening of that day. No one remembered how the news had started. Weeks later, some of the Eastern papers heard of it and tried to infer that the priest of St. Joseph knew of a Catholic plot against the government and had spread the news prematurely. This was, of course, ridiculous. Father Bruno was indignant, but some people wanted to believe it, and many years later it would still be whispered." Mr. Kulzer was wrong on the day of the week as the 14th was a Friday. Manchester, New Hampshire, also received the news on that Good Friday before the press releases were dispatched from Washington. Also, on the afternoon of April 14, the "Whig Press" in Middleton, New York, announced that Lincoln had been killed by an assassin.

Coincidence? Or plans prematurely revealed? Remember, the Lincoln assassination was a conspiracy; four people were hung for it.

In the reeling days after 9/11/2001, people tried to go on living their lives, even though each day had a nightmarish feel to it. A lot of those folks, watching movies on videotape in the evening, began reporting an oddity: The presence of "9-11" inserted subtly into movies they watched. This isn't a big surprise. Given that the tragic events of that day were named "nine-eleven", it's natural that people would see 9-11s everywhere. For example, in the 1989 movie Batman, about fifteen minutes into the movie we see the door to Vicki Vale's apartment. Directly below the gold number 9 are two black bars in the design on the door that together look like a subtle 911.

Similarly, in the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, 45 minutes into the movie (in the special edition; 41 minutes in the theatrical version), Jeff Goldblum sets up a laptop to watch the countdown. When the camera cuts to a close-up one of the ticks is 00:09:11:01. Well, of course it does! It also ticks 9:12 and 9:13. When people look for numbers, they just naturally find them; because numbers are everywhere.

Except, if you try and look for other numbers—your birthday, for example (mine is 4/8), in a hundred different movies, odds are you won't find them…because, in spite of what I just said, there are seldom that many numbers given precious screen space in a movie. Normally, they have to be significant to the film. The "9-11" in Batman isn't really taking up much space and is only significant in that it shows us that Vale lives in an apartment rather than a house; the "9:11" in Independence Day is building suspense by letting us know how little time the Earthlings have left before the aliens attack.

Which is why the number of times "9-11" does show up in movies—all between 1984 and 2001—is rather bizarre.

Beverly Hills Cop (1989)

Face Off (1997)

Pearl Harbor (1999)

Something to remember here is that these are not "found numbers". That is, the movie scenes were not shot in reality where these numbers just happen to be, waiting to be photographed. In every case, someone—a set designer, a director, someone—had to create the prop with the 911 on it.

For example, in the 1984 movie Gremlins (incidentally, the earliest movie reported with a "9-11" in it), Zach drives a Volkswagen Beetle and when he turns on the radio, we are granted a close-up of it.

As you can see, the indicator is midway between "9" and "11" on the radio dial, making a "9/11". But wait, there's more: The radio logo states it to be a "Sapphire XI". Now, this is a genuine brand of radio that was, indeed, standard in Volkswagens. But…I can't help but note that the sapphire is the traditional birthstone for September (the ninth month) and "XI" is the Roman representation for "11"…making this shot a double 9-11.

And how often do they show close-ups of car radios, even when they're being turned on, in movies, anyway?

When movies shoot on location, they often do pick up "found numbers". One such scene might be this one from 1997's The Peacemaker, shot at New York's JFK airport.

It might be…but it's not. I've been to JFK many times, and desk 10 is located next to desk 9, just as it would be anywhere else. Someone had to make the effort to create a sign for desk "11" and mount it over the number "10" for this shot. Why? To what possible purpose? After all, the camera is moving quickly—George Clooney is chasing a terrorist—and only careful examination with a VCR (or, nowadays, with a DVD) would reveal this odd juxtaposition.

So, what am I saying…that the Illuminati (or someone) did plant clues that something significant was going to happen on a September 11…someday? For what purpose?

Dr. Rebecca Carley, on the October 23, 2004, broadcast of the program The Grassy Knoll, surmised,

"It's time for us to turn the light on these Freemasons…because, in their sick code of honor, as it turns out, as long as they tell us what they're doing, they can get away with it…They're telling us what they're doing in the Sci-Fi channel primarily…and, you know, movies that are done, like Conspiracy Theory, and a lot of Mel Gibson movies, as it turns out, that's where you find out the truth. And, so, people have to realize that's how they get away with things."

Ooh, that sounds scary…especially if you are now looking twice at that seemingly nice neighbor of yours who happens to go to Freemason meetings each week.

But Dr. Carley has pointed the Finger at Mel Gibson. If Mel was dropping hints regarding 9/11, they shouldn't be hard to find…

And they're not. In The Patriot, in the very first minutes of the movie, Gibson's character weighs a chair he's made and says (read the caption):

Then, of course, there's his thriller Conspiracy Theory, in which his character believes in all kinds of conspiracies—which he recites!—including the Kennedy assassination, and more—none of which, according to the film, actually happened. But another conspiracy in the movie, orchestrated by the CIA, is real.

Gibson himself wrote that dialog in The Patriot. Frankly, nine pounds, eleven ounces, sounds a little light to me for a hand-made, wooden chair. But he wrote that dialog, and then spoke it for the cameras. Statistically speaking, of all the possible chair weights he might have measured, what are the odds that that would be chosen—if, indeed, it was chosen at random? And then, factor in the odds of all these other occurrences—and still more that I haven't shown you—and aren't the odds so astronomically high that believing they comprise a meaningless coincidence is a form of insanity?

But why? Dr. Carley's explanation, that "Freemasons" are compelled to reveal their plans for some twisted moral system to which they adhere, seems a little lame. Conspiracy theorist Vyzygoth says:

…if you believe that the New World Order is, in fact, the prophesied Satanic takeover, then the NWO is a spiritual matter. In turn, if it is a spiritual matter, then you had better understand we are dealing with principalities of darkness and generational worshippers of Evil, who are, shall we say, no less than Knights in Service to Satan. So, if you feel the 9-11 numerology is deliberate, not coincidental, then knowing about this is important because it makes a statement about the perpetrators of 9-11: That they are nothing less than ritualistic serial killers. These Satanists do love their numerology and derive huge pleasure from the secret knowledge that the joke is on us—the useless feeders. That's what these 9-11 subliminals represent: occult high signs—a wink of the eye and nudge of the elbow—that they know something we don't. On September 11, 2001, these Satanists killed nearly 3000 people; and it may be that the plan was crafted at least as far back as 1990.

I'd say 1984, based on that clip from Gremlins. (Not to mention the obvious point that George Orwell would think that was the perfect year to come up with this plan.) But I have to admit: When I try to imagine the kind of arrogant jerk who'd happily kill 3,000 people to raise his oil and weapons stocks a few points, that does seem like the kind of person who'd get a kick out of sharing an in-joke with his buddies on a screen seen by millions, but meaningful only to those in the know.

Besides, forget the subtle clues (or winks, if that's all they are). The entire plot, just about, was given away, in the pilot film of the TV show The Lone Gunmen. This short-lived spin-off of The X-Files was broadcast just six months before the planes hit the World Trade towers.

In this show, terrorists intend to fly a jet into the World Trade Center…the terrorists leave from Boston…and the purpose is to increase arms sales. As one of the characters says, "Bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you'll find a dozen tin-pot dictators all over the world just clamoring to take responsibility and begging to be smartbombed."

Finally, let's leave the hints and winks behind and look at an undeniably true piece of news-ahead-of-its-time. On September 11, 2001, the BBC was frantically reporting the events just as was every other network in the world. They placed a British reporter (clearly unfamiliar with Manhattan) in place and got her to report the events. She described the collapse of the final World Trade Center edifice, Building 7. The problem: She reported this 23 minutes before the building collapsed…and you can see Building 7, still standing, over her shoulder!

Moreover, in the extended clip, the reporter's predictions are preceded by the BBC anchorpersons describing Osama bin Laden as the perpetrator, days before the FBI announced that it was, indeed, bin Laden who'd dun it (in addition to the reporter's almost gleeful prediction that Americans will happily give up their "freedoms" to protect themselves from terrorists).

Coincidence? Satanists "winking" at each other? Or a simple confusion of when to read which script?

You decide.