For the past 6 months or so, I've been reading through some of the LRF threads saved through the Wayback Machine. I read through quite a few of them, but the EXIF data threads really caught my attention.
I didn't even know about EXIF or IPTC data before reading those threads, and the evidence presented was damning. Phil and the other LRF members did great work, and the EXIF data seemed pretty conclusive. Despite that, I was still having a hard time believing it, so I went to the CNN memorial page and downloaded every AP photo I could find. As of now, I count 217 photos (there could be more, but I can't find them).
After sifting through these photos, I found 50 that pre-date 9/11:
Peter Gay's photo dated 11.16.1995
Jessica Sachs’ photo dated 6.01.1996
Timothy Ward's photo dated 1.11.2000
Brian Dale's photo dated 6.01.2000
Sonia Puopolo's photo dated 4.03.2001
Mark Bingham's photo dated 8.30.2001
Dora Menchaca's photo dated 9.08.2001
42 photos of the Pentagon victims, all dated 2.15.2000
WTC victim Bruce Eagleson's photo dated 5.05.2000
So were they preparing for 9/11 as far back as 1995? Maybe, but that isn't what the metadata suggests. After doing more research, I think I have a good understanding of EXIF/IPTC data and the process of embedding editorial information in photos. For 3 of these photos, the caption and “Special Instructions” fields actually tell us when the photos were taken.
Peter Gay's photo is a file photo dated November 16, 1995.
Jessica Sachs’ photo was taken in June 1996.
The exact date was unknown, which explains why the day was simply set to June 1.
And Bruce Eagleson's photo was taken in May 2000.
Either the exact date was unknown and it was set to May 5, a holiday, or May 5, 2000 is the actual capture date.
From my understanding, this is typical. If the date of the photo is known, the date fields are changed to reflect this. Though looking through all 200+ photos reveals that this wasn't done consistently. The photos that include a known date always credit at least two writer-editors. Presumably, one person sourced the photo while the other added the editorial information. Aside from the Pentagon photos, the other images (mostly) credit different editors, so this inconsistency could be attributed to that fact.
But then I wondered why the date of the photo needed to be included in the “Special Instructions” field at all. The dates shown in the EXIF fields “DateTimeOriginal” and “DateTimeCreated” are recorded automatically when the photo is taken—if that photo is taken with a digital camera. If it was not, there are a number of other reasons this camera data (MakerNote data) could be missing:
The image was uploaded to the news organization's server which stripped this data.
The uploader removed this data.
A file conversion removed this information.
Or the person editing the photo intentionally stripped this data.
The dates of the other photos could be the original capture date recorded by the camera, or they could be:
The date the source news organization uploaded the photo to their server (or when an AP member uploaded it to AP's server).
Or the date the photo was digitized.
It's important to note that the date (if one is already recorded in the field) is not always overwritten when the image is uploaded to editing software (like Photoshop), nor is it overwritten when the image is saved. The date either has to be changed manually, or the date fields can be auto-filled/auto-populated with the current date.
The dates can also be preset, and this brings us to the photo of Brian Dale and 42 photos of the Pentagon victims. I noticed that the dates are round numbers: June 1, February 15.
This can be explained by the use of a metadata template.
Metadata templates are pre-filled with certain editorial information that can be applied to multiple images, such as source, credit, object name, etc.
From my understanding, metadata templates usually leave the date fields blank, which makes sense if you want to preserve the original capture dates for the images. If you don't want to preserve them (or the camera data wasn't saved), you can simply enter a date manually into the date field of the template to be applied to all images. This is usually a round number like January 1, June 15, or notable dates like July 4 or December 25.
Looking at the photos again, they do appear to be using a metadata template.
The format, the object name, and the Photoshop information is identical across every photo. For many of the photos of Pentagon victims, even the dates are identical. They're all set to February 15, 2000.
So it's highly unlikely that the editorial information within Brian Dale's photo was actually added on June 1, 2000. Likewise, it's highly unlikely that the editorial information for the photos of the Pentagon victims was added on February 15, 2000. The editor set the dates manually.
So, does this mean there aren't any images that pre-date 9/11?
Possibly, but it doesn't rule it out entirely.
There are 10 photos dated 9.11.01, and they're clearly using a similar metadata template as the “pre-9/11” Pentagon photos. And they all have different sources.
Daniel Lewin
Barbara Keating
Jane Orth
Richard Ross
Tara Creamer
Candace Williams
Victor Saracini
Sandra Bradshaw
(The rest of the photos in this post are not the original image files because I can only add 30 attachments, but they contain the original metadata)
CeeCee Lyles
David Rice
Assuming the pre-9/11 dates are not the actual day of editing, this “ATTACKS VICTIMS” category must have been created on September 11, and these photos were likely edited using existing templates. However, if these 10 photos were actually obtained on September 11, from different sources, and edited on the same day, that definitely raises an eyebrow.
This also made the Pentagon photos stand out even more, because this February 15, 2000 date is definitely false. From the list of Pentagon victims on the CNN memorial, I found 50 photos credited to "TCH" (staff member?)
There are the 42 photos credited to just TCH, with the same February 15, 2000 date, and 8 others that credit multiple editors. TCH is also credited in the photos of 30 more victims:
Michael Horrocks, Maclovia Lopez, Sarah Clark, Steve Jacoby, Dong Lee, Hilda Taylor, Anna Allison, Edmund Glazer, Robin Kaplan, David Retick, Christopher Carstanjen, Christopher Newton, Dorothy Dearaujo, Shawn Nassaney, Jerry Roux, Michelle Heidenberger, Hilda Marcin, Jeffrey Coombs, Joe Ferguson, Ann Judge, Donald Greene, Yeneneh Betru, Andrew Garcia, Karen Kincaid, Michael Iken, Kathryn Laborie, Jeffrey Fox, Jason Oswald, John Jenkins, and Christopher Larrabee.
That makes 80 photos credited to TCH.
It's possible that TCH created the metadata template, and that's why he's credited with just over ⅓ of the photos. But if some of these photos were edited entirely by other people, they would have removed TCH and put their own name there. They wrote the image specific metadata, not TCH.
Aside from that, if this February 15, 2000 date was manually entered into the template by TCH before processing, then there's no way to determine when the editorial information was actually added.
At first, I thought the “OriginalTransmissionReference” field might reveal this.
From “earlyinnovations”:
“Number or identifier for the purpose of improved workflow handling. This is a user created identifier related to the job for which the image is supplied. As this identifier references a job of the receiver's workflow, it has first to be issued by the receiver, then be transmitted to the creator or provider of the news object and finally added by him to this field.”
According to the explanation from “The Surgeon”:
“Photographer Number: this is the AP Original Transmission Reference. The letters mean the state and city. A code with "100" means it’s a freelance photographer; a code with "101", "102" ... means it is an AP member.
David Rice: OKOKL101 OK = Oklahoma, OKL = Oklahoma City, 101 = AP member code
Alan Beaven: CAOAK101 CA = California, OAK = Oakland, 101 = AP member photographer code
Dora Menchaca: CALOS102 CA = California, LOS = Los Angeles, 102 = AP member code
Peter Gay: MANOA104 MA = Massachusetts, NOA = North Andover, 104 = AP member code”
After looking through all of the photos, the numbers seem to range from 101-109. But I also noticed that many of them have different OTR codes from the ones shown above.
Paul Ambrose's photo
Suzanne Calley's photo
Daniel Lewin's photo
Richard Gabriel's photo
Thomas McGuinness’ photo
I'm not sure what these codes mean (BX, FX, CX, WXS), but I've noticed that all (or at least most) of the images with the different OTR codes are labeled as “handout”. Other photos labeled “MBR” (member) in this field have AP member codes (101–109). If the transmission reference is a means of tracking where an image came from, then these BX, FX codes might refer to different categories or batches.
All photos labeled BX list the “Province-State” as MA (Massachusetts), and there are other codes that reference a location like “LA102” or “NCDUS1”. I haven't found anything similar with the WXS or CX codes. The WXS code appears most frequently for the victims at the Pentagon and the passengers of Flight 77, so maybe this code was assigned to victims at the Pentagon. Still, this code appears for victims from other locations, too.
But the codes for the Pentagon photos are different even from these:
43. Brenda Gibson (WXS248)
44. Meta Waller (WXS249)
From this, it looks like almost all of the photos of the Pentagon victims were obtained at the same time. But there appear to be 5 photos missing from this sequence:
211, 213, 216, 234, 236
I looked through the other images, but I couldn't find any of these missing numbers in the OTR fields. So either the missing codes are from images I couldn't find, or the images weren't published.
So the missing photos weren't suspicious to me. But I still regarded the Pentagon photos as suspicious because of the date/time fields combined with the fact that they apparently came in as a batch.
The metadata for images credited to TCH dated after 9/11 look normal.
Steve Jacoby's photo
Joe Ferguson's photo
Anne Judge's photo
Christopher Carstanjen's photo
The dates and times are realistic: September 12, 9:57 AM, September 13, 3:03 PM…
Even two photos of Pentagon victims credited to TCH have a realistic time. The photos of Brenda Gibson and Meta Waller (dated 9/19) show the time as 6:22 AM.
Why do these images look different from the other Pentagon photos?
Keep in mind, the photos crediting TCH are spread out over a week, and they include victims from every location: the four flights, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center.
Perhaps TCH was assigned to work on ALL of the Pentagon photos.
But why don't the Pentagon photos have a realistic date and time like the others?
If they were all obtained after 9/11, why wouldn't the editor at least auto fill the date field with the current date?
Aside from the Pentagon photos, TCH edited (or was involved in the process or sourcing of):
18 images dated September 12.
8 images dated September 13.
6 dated September 17.
2 dated September 18.
1 dated September 19.
And 1 dated September 20.
Here are the times for the September 12 images (the other images have the time set to 00:00:00):
Edmund Glazer - 11:00
Shawn Nassaney - 11:22
Steve Jacoby - 14:57
Christopher Carstanjen - 19:40
Anna Allison - 19:41
David Retick - 19:41
Robin Kaplan - 19:41
These are all passengers from the four flights.
I wasn't sure if this actually warranted suspicion or not. This could just be TCH being inconsistent. Maybe they used different templates for these photos. I'm not sure.
(Also, this is probably nothing, but I also noticed that the times are rounded to the minute. Most of the photos either have a 00 (midnight) timestamp or a time rounded to the minute (11:00). Very few have exact timestamps (14:25:19). I'm not sure if this is done automatically or if this indicates that the times were set manually)
For the victims from other locations, I noticed that the “ObjectName” varies sometimes. Instead of being labeled “ATTACKS VICTIMS”, some photos include the name of the victim:
“ATTACKS AIRLINE VICTIMS BINGHAM”
“MA ATTACKS VICTIMS LEWIN”
“ATTACKS VICTIMS LYLES”
I went back and looked through all photos crediting only TCH to see if this label varies, and it does. But there are only two instances:
Maclovia Lopez
Steve Jacoby
The varying names in the other photos could be attributed to the other editor(s) credited. So photos crediting just TCH are almost always labeled as “ATTACKS VICTIMS.”
Looking through the Pentagon photos again, I noticed that the 42 photos dated February 2000 are labeled as “ATTACKS VICTIMS”. There's not a single instance where the victim's name is included.
Combined with the fact that these photos (and 8 other Pentagon photos) have sequential OTR codes, this almost confirms that they were batch processed.
I looked through the other photos crediting TCH to see if I could find any other potential red flags.
On September 13, “TCH” and “DR” are credited in the photo of WTC victim Michael Iken.
Michael Iken
The caption reads:
“FILE--Michael Iken, center, shown in this undated family photo, was on the 84th floor of one the World Trade Center towers and called his brother, Gerry Iken, left, moments after the jetliner slammed into the building to say he was OK and was evacuating. A co-worker says he saw Iken on the 55th floor helping someone down the stairs shortly before the building collapsed. Michael Iken hasn't been seen or heard from since and his brother is still waiting word on his fate. Also in photo, from left, are Dorothy Iken, Anne Iken and Pat Iken. (AP Photo)”
On September 17, TCH is credited in the photo of Jeffrey Fox, another WTC victim who was also reported missing.
And on September 20, TCH is again credited in another WTC victim's photo.
Including the victims from other locations, this seems like a realistic amount of images coming in (and being edited by TCH) each day. The airlines could produce passenger manifests, but there were no complete lists for the people killed in the WTC or the Pentagon. Initially, I thought that only 2–3 of the Pentagon photos reported people as missing, but there are a lot more than that:
Pentagon Victims Killed:
Robert Edward Dolan, Dwayne Williams, Jerry Don Dickerson, Karen Wagner, Stephen Neil Hyland, Ronald D. Milam, Kip P. Taylor, Scott Powell, Wallace Cole Hogan Jr., Sandra L. White, Kris Romeo Bishundat, Jack Punches, Gary F. Smith, Edmund Young, Karl W. Teepe, Michael L. Selves, Robert J. Hymel, Antoinette Sherman, Matthew W. Flocco, Marjorie C. Salamone, Canfield D. Boone, Shelley A. Marshall, Dean E. Mattson, David W. Laychak, Clifford L. Patterson, Edna L. Stephens, Steve Long, Gerald Deconto, Patrick Dunn, Patricia Mickley, Michael Noeth, Dan Shanower, Otis Tolbert, Ernest Willcher.
(34 total)
Pentagon Victims Missing:
Martha Rezke, Judy Rowlett, Jimmy Ira Holley, Janice Scott, Lisa Young, Khang Nguyen, Angelene C. Carter, Cecelia E. Richard, Carolyn Halmon, Jose Orlando Calderon-Olmedo, Ted Moy, Larry Strickland, Max Beilke, Chin Sun Pak, Dennis Johnson, Neahamon Lyons, Angela Houtz, Brenda Gibson, Donna Bowen, Daniel Caballero, Johnnie Doctor, Thomas Earhart, Jerry Moran, Darin Pontell, Marsha Ratchford, Robert Russell, Meta Waller.
(27 total)
Here's what I think:
The values in the OTR field show the order in which the images were acquired. The “gaps” in the sequence could be other images acquired in between, like I suggested earlier. If this interpretation is correct, it means that all the Pentagon photos were acquired at the same time.
After the AP obtained the photos, they were batch processed using a template with the date set to February 15, 2000, and the time set to 00:00:00 (midnight). The fact that most of these photos all share a default template date, rather than having a date and and time after 9/11 like TCH's other photos definitely supports this.
So, what about the people reported as missing or killed? Was TCH arbitrarily describing victims as missing or killed to make this appear legitimate?
The caption in Pentagon victim Thomas Earhart's photo reads:
“Aerographer's Mate First Class Edward Thomas Earhart, 26, of Salt Lick, Ky., shown in this undated file photo, is one of 190 people unaccounted for after a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon Tuesday morning. (AP Photo)”
The caption says that Earhart was one of 190 people unaccounted for. Some were reported dead, others were still missing. Therefore, if the AP really did receive these images as a batch, that isn't necessarily suspicious. There's still the question of when the AP received these photos.
If these images were received and edited before 9/11, the fake date and midnight time make this impossible to confirm.
What about the other photos that pre-date 9/11?
There are still the photos of Timothy Ward, Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham, Dora Menchaca, and David Rice.
Timothy Ward's photo
Timothy Ward's photo is dated January 11, 2000.
The caption reads:
“FILE - Timothy Ward, who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, is shown in a file photo, date and location not known. Ward was an executive with Rubio's Restaurants. The plane was one of two that hit the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/San Diego Union-Tribune)”
Interestingly, the time is not set to 00:00:00. The time is 22 seconds after midnight, which looks like a realistic time.
The writer-editor is “DB” (“DB” might be Dianne Barros, who is credited in Richard Ross’ photo).
DB is also credited in the photos of:
Dora Menchaca, Jeffrey Collman, Christine Barbuto, Laurie Neira, David Retick, Lisa Frost, Jerry Roux, James Debeneure, Robert Ploger, Linda Gronlund, Nicole Miller, Daniel Lewin, Richard Ross, Candace Williams, Bruce Eagleson, Lee Adler, Joshua Poptean, John Rodak, and John Willet.
(A few of these photos also credit TCH)
The caption says this is a file photo, and considering that DB edited many photos dated after 9/11, I'm guessing this January 11, 2000 date is when the San Diego Union-Tribune acquired the image and uploaded it to their server. The time of 22 seconds after midnight could be the original timestamp, but it could also be when the editorial information was added.
How can we be sure that this January 11, 2000 date was not the actual day of processing?
The “ReaderName” field.
This field shows either the version of Photoshop used to process the image or the version used when the image was last processed. ALL photos list this as Adobe Photoshop 6.0, which was released in September 2000. Version 7.0 was released in March 2002, meaning these images were edited using the latest version of Photoshop at the time. However, this also means that any dates earlier than September 2000 are definitely false.
Timothy Ward's photo was not last edited on January 11, 2000.
The Pentagon photos were not last edited on February 15, 2000.
And Brian Dale's photo was not last edited on June 1, 2000.
The other photos aren't so easily explained.
David Rice
This photo of World Trade Center victim David Rice is credited to “TS” and “DWH”
The caption reads:
“FILE--World Trade Center victim, former Oklahoman David Harlow Rice, is among the confirmed dead in New York. Rice was working in the World Trade Towers as an investment banker on the 104th floor of the second tower that was hit by a hijacked airliner. Rice called his parents, Hugh and Cindy Rice, of Oklahoma City, Okla. to say he was allright after the first plane attack early Tuesday morning, but that was the last they heard from him. (AP Photo/The daily Oklahoman)”
How could David Rice have been “confirmed dead” ON September 11 when there was uncertainty about the whereabouts of thousands of people?
Was this photo actually edited on September 11, or did the editor manually set the date?
The photos of Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham and Dora Menchaca are probably the most suspicious.
Sonia Puopolo
Date: 4/03/2001
Credited to “RM”, “AHK” and “RKK”
Mark Bingham
Date: 8/30/2001
Credited to “KR” and “AG”
Dora Menchaca
Date: 9/08/2001
Credited to “DB” and “CW”
April 3, September 8...
These don't look like default dates from a template. They're too random. It could be argued that the date of Mark Bingham's photo could be from a template, because it is a round number. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's fair to assume that template dates would also be set to the 30th, not just the 1st, 15th, or a holiday.
However, the dates of Mark Bingham's and Dora Menchaca's photos are too close to 9/11. Not only that, but they are also labeled as handouts, and they have AP member codes.
Mark Bingham's metadata
Dora Menchaca's metadata
(^ it's not shown here, but it says handout in the caption)
It's possible that someone sourced images from The Contra Costa Times and The Los Angeles Times prior to 9/11.
Dora Menchaca's photo is the most suspicious. There's no way the Los Angeles Times received this photo on September 8, just 3 days before 9/11.
(I checked the Los Angeles Times’ archive on their website for any articles mentioning Dora Menchaca, Amgen or the FDA, but I couldn't find any, nothing for Mark Bingham either)
The caption says this is a file photo, “date and location not known.” If the LA Times already had this photo in their archive, then it suggests that, either the AP obtained this photo on September 8, the editorial information in Dora Menchaca's photo was added on September 8, or this date came from somewhere else.
There is another element that makes these photos suspicious.
The writer-editors credited in Sonia Puopolo's photo are “RM”, “AHK” and “RKK”.
The writer-editors credited in Mark Bingham's photo are “KR” and “AG”.
“RM” and “KR” are credited in many other photos, but curiously, “AHK”, “RKK”, and “AG” are NOT credited in ANY other photos. Just these two.
The person listed in the “By-line” field of Sonia Puopolo's photo is Roberto Koltun, a member of El Nuevo Herald, a newspaper published in Florida. So “RKK” could stand for Roberto K. Koltun. ?
But “AHK” and “AG” are unknown.
In each photo, at least one of these editors was responsible for sourcing the image.
Why are these people credited only for these photos which pre-date 9/11?
Admittedly, though, there are photos dated after 9/11 that credit people only once. This is only suspicious if these pre-9/11 dates are the actual processing date.
The dates for the photos of Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham and Dora Menchaca could be the date the source news organization obtained/uploaded the photo, or they could be from older templates that already had a date listed (unrelated photos taken on or edited on April 3, 2001, August 30, 2001, and September 8, 2001).
I looked through ALL of the photos again, trying to find anything that could indicate when the images were obtained.
I found this in the "Application Record" field. This field contains each photo's unique ID, along with a link to AP's server.
At first, I thought this ID was random—until I looked at the Pentagon photos again.
Then, I listed all 200+ images in order based on this ID:
NAME — DATE — PHOTO ID
Tara Creamer - 9/11/2001 - 170916
Mark Bingham - 8/30/2001 - 170944
Peter Gay - 11/16/1995 - 171278
Jane Orth - 9/11/2001 - 171295
Richard Ross - 9/11/2001 - 171348
Steve Jacoby - 9/12/2001 - 171686
Jeff Mladenik - 9/12/2001 - 171772
Brian Dale - 6/1/2000 - 171794
Thomas Burnett - 9/12/2001 - 171795
Edmund Glazer - 9/12/2001 - 171813
Sonia Puopolo - 4/3/2001 - 171825
Christopher Newton - 9/12/2001 - 171862
Michelle Heidenberger - 9/12/2001 - 172073
Carl Hammond - 9/12/2001 - 172092
Karleton Fyfe - 9/12/2001 - 172100
John Wenckus - 9/12/2001 - 172146
Stanley Hall - 9/12/2001 - 172156
Maclovia Lopez - 9/12/2001 - 172172
Timothy Ward - 1/11/2000 - 172188
Robert Speisman - 9/12/2001 - 172256
Daniel Lewin - 9/11/2001 - 172298
Candace Williams - 9/11/2001 - 172302
CeeCee Lyles - 9/11/2001 - 172313
Lisa Frost - 9/12/2001 - 172326
Robin Kaplan - 9/12/2001 - 172329
David Retick - 9/12/2001 - 172330
Alan Beaven - 9/12/2001 - 172336
Christopher Carstanjen - 9/12/2001 - 172345
Jacqueline Norton - 9/12/2001 - 172357
Wilson Flagg - 9/12/2001 - 172366
Barbara Edwards - 9/12/2001 - 172376
Leslie Whittington - 9/12/2001 - 172397
Kenneth Waldie - 9/12/2001 - 172404
Berry Berenson - 9/12/2001 - 172413
Suzanne Calley - 9/12/2001 - 172476
Alicia Titus - 9/12/2001 - 172480
Charles Jones - 9/12/2001 - 172498
Mildred Naiman - 9/12/2001 - 172521
Laurie Neira - 9/12/2001 - 172525
Anna Allison - 9/12/2001 - 172564
Leonard Taylor - 9/13/2001 - 172711
Sandra Bradshaw - 9/11/2001 - 172762
Peter Hashem - 9/13/2001 - 172772
Eric Hartono - 9/12/2001 - 172776
Patrick Quigley - 9/13/2001 - 172794
Lynn Goodchild - 9/13/2001 - 172837
Elsy Oliva - 9/13/2001 - 172894
Chris Mello - 9/13/2001 - 172946
Frederick Rimmele - 9/13/2001 - 172986
Janis Lasden - 9/13/2001 - 172991
Robert Jalbert - 9/13/2001 - 173016
Karen Kincaid - 9/13/2001 - 173094
John Cahill - 9/13/2001 - 173237
Dong Lee - 9/12/2001 - 173244
David Angell - 9/13/2001 - 173259
Brian Kinney - 9/13/2001 - 173348
Lauren Grandcolas - 9/13/2001 - 173404
Hilda Taylor - 9/12/2001 - 173414
James Debeneure - 9/12/2001 - 173415
Sara Clark - 9/12/2001 - 173416
Terence M. Lynch - 2/15/2000 - 173420
Thomas Earhart - 9/13/2001 - 173447
Dora Menchaca - 9/8/2001 - 173480
Ann Judge - 9/13/2001 - 173497
Rodney Dickens - 9/12/2001 - 173502
Joe Ferguson - 9/13/2001 - 173510
Chandler Keller - 9/13/2001 - 173523
John Yamnicky - 9/13/2001 - 173529
Yeneneh Betru - 9/13/2001 - 173536
Francis Grogan - 9/13/2001 - 173587
Jim Cleere - 9/13/2001 - 173618
Charles Burlingame - 9/13/2001 - 173622
Dorothy Dearaujo - 9/12/2001 - 173639
Renee May - 9/13/2001 - 173650
Nicole Miller - 9/13/2001 - 173652
Paige Farley Hackel - 9/13/2001 - 173654
Shawn Nassaney - 9/12/2001 - 173655
Dennis Johnson - 9/13/2001 - 173677
Deora Bodley - 9/13/2001 - 173760
Jeffrey Coombs - 9/13/2001 - 173764
Andrew Garcia - 9/13/2001 - 173771
Michael Iken - 9/13/2001 - 173778
Donald Greene - 9/13/2001 - 173789
Robert Ploger - 9/13/2001 - 173805
Angela Houtz - 9/13/2001 - 173822
Daniel Caballero - 9/13/2001 - 173833
Mari Rae Sopper - 9/12/2001 - 173835
Wanda Green - 9/13/2001 - 173836
Philip Rosenzweig - 9/13/2001 - 173866
Richard Guadagno - 9/13/2001 - 173871
Daniel Lee - 9/13/2001 - 173878
Jerry Roux - 9/12/2001 - 173899
Jerry Moran - 9/13/2001 - 173924
Darin Pontell - 9/13/2001 - 173929
Paul Ambrose - 9/13/2001 - 173935
Barbara Keating - 9/11/2001 - 173938
Michael Lamana - 9/13/2001 - 173944
Linda George - 9/12/2001 - 173946
Matthew Picerno - 9/13/2001 - 174013
Marsha Ratchford - 9/13/2001 - 174290
Todd Beamer - 9/13/2001 - 174301
Jessica Sachs - 6/1/1996 - 174354
Michael Shearer - 9/14/2001 - 174362
David Rice - 9/11/2001 - 174376
Jane Simpkin - 9/14/2001 - 174382
Cora Holland - 9/13/2001 - 174481
Timothy Maude - 9/12/2001 - 174570
David DiMeglio - 9/14/2001 - 174777
Alexander Filipov - 9/14/2001 - 174859
Jeffrey Collman - 9/14/2001 - 175006
John Hofer - 9/13/2001 - 175012
Linda Gronlund - 9/14/2001 - 175356
Wendy Faulkner - 9/14/2001 - 175484
Thomas McGuinness - 9/15/2001 - 175801
Bill Bethke - 9/13/2001 - 175875
Steven Goldstein - 9/13/2001 - 175882
Derek Sword - 9/13/2001 - 175922
Richard Gabriel - 9/15/2001 - 175923
Deborah Welsh - 9/15/2001 - 175949
Ruth McCourt - 9/15/2001 - 176056
Kathleen Nicosia - 9/15/2001 - 176097
Christine Hanson - 9/15/2001 - 176175
Neahamon Lyons - 9/15/2001 - 176197
Robert Russell - 9/15/2001 - 176253
Michell Robotham - 9/15/2001 - 176473
John Willet - 9/15/2001 - 176478
Peter West - 9/16/2001 - 176923
Hilda Marcin - 9/12/2001 - 176951
Marie Pappalardo - 9/12/2001 - 176969
Ernest Willcher - 9/13/2001 - 177636
Victor Saracini - 9/11/2001 - 177863
Michael Horrocks - 9/12/2001 - 177917
Louis Nacke - 9/16/2001 - 178081
Sara Low - 9/17/2001 - 178378
Dan Shanower - 9/13/2001 - 178418
Jeffrey Fox - 9/17/2001 - 178457
Kathryn Laborie - 9/17/2001 - 178469
John Keohane - 9/17/2001 - 178487
Jim Tretini - 9/18/2001 - 178951
Susan Mackay - 9/18/2001 - 178955
Jason Oswald - 9/18/2001 - 179526
John Jenkins - 9/18/2001 - 179650
Alberto Dominguez - 9/18/2001 - 179808
Gary Koechler - 9/17/2001 - 180189
Lisa Gordenstein - 9/19/2001 - 180602
Jason Dahl - 9/12/2001 - 180673
Michael Theodoridis - 9/19/2001 - 180712
Lee Adler - 9/16/2001 - 181039
Joshua Poptean - 9/19/2001 - 181111
Otis Tolbert - 9/20/2001 - 181979
Gerald DeConto - 9/20/2001 - 182087
Christine Barbuto - 9/20/2001 - 182196
Christopher Larrabee - 9/20/2001 - 182753
Jesus Sanchez - 9/21/2001 - 182806
Antonio Montoya - 9/21/2001 - 182807
Andrew Green - 9/21/2001 - 183480
Michael McGinty - 9/13/2001 - 185560
Nicholas Bogdan - 9/14/2001 - 185829
John Rodak - 9/13/2001 - 185832
Sean Schielke - 9/17/2001 - 185836
Donald Havlish - 9/24/2001 - 186076
Robert Edward Dolan - 2/15/2000 - 188761
Jerry Don Dickerson Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188852
Ronald D. Milam - 2/15/2000 - 188853
Kip P. Taylor - 2/15/2000 - 188854
Steven Neil Hyland Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188855
Karen Wagner - 2/15/2000 - 188856
Dwayne Williams - 2/15/2000 - 188857
Kris Romeo Bishundat - 2/15/2000 - 188860
Sandra L. White - 2/15/2000 - 188861
Scott Powell - 2/15/2000 - 188862
Wallace Cole Hogan Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188865
Janice Scott - 2/15/2000 - 188866
Edmond Young - 2/15/2000 - 188867
Jimmy Ira Hollie - 2/15/2000 - 188868
Gary F. Smith - 2/15/2000 - 188869
Jack Punches - 2/15/2000 - 188870
Martha Reszke - 2/15/2000 - 188872
Khang Nguyen - 2/15/2000 - 188873
Judy Rowlett - 2/15/2000 - 188874
Marjorie C. Salamone - 2/15/2000 - 188875
Lisa L. Young - 2/15/2000 - 188876
Matthew W. Flocco - 2/15/2000 - 188877
Karl W. Teepe - 2/15/2000 - 188879
Antoinette Sherman - 2/15/2000 - 188880
Robert J. Hymel - 2/15/2000 - 188881
Michael L. Selves - 2/15/2000 - 188882
Larry Strickland - 2/15/2000 - 188886
Ted Moy - 2/15/2000 - 188887
Canfield D. Boone - 2/15/2000 - 188889
Jose Orlando Calderon-Olmedo - 2/15/2000 - 188890
Angelene C. Carter - 2/15/2000 - 188892
Carolyn B. Halmon - 2/15/2000 - 188893
Cecelia E. Richard - 2/15/2000 - 188895
Chin Sun Pak - 2/15/2000 - 188896
Michael A. Noeth - 2/15/2000 - 188897
Dean E. Mattson - 2/15/2000 - 188898
Shelley A. Marshall - 2/15/2000 - 188899
Max Beilke - 2/15/2000 - 188900
Clifford L. Patterson Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188942
David W. Laychak - 2/15/2000 - 188943
Edna L. Stephens - 2/15/2000 - 188944
Steve Long - 2/15/2000 - 188946
Brenda Gibson - 9/19/2001 - 188953
Meta Waller - 9/19/2001 - 188954
Lilian Caceres - 9/27/2001 - 189426
Donna Bowen - 9/17/2001 - 189587
Patricia Mickley - 9/17/2001 - 189588
Johnnie Doctor - 9/17/2001 - 189590
Lacey Ivory - 9/17/2001 - 189591
Patrick Dunn - 9/17/2001 - 189593
Heather Smith - 9/27/2001 - 189613
Bruce Eagleson - 5/5/2000 - 189920
Donald Peterson - 9/28/2001 - 191188
Joseph DeLuca - 9/28/2001 - 191189
From this, I was able to determine that:
- The image dates range from September 11 to September 28, suggesting they were all obtained within than time.
- Photos with lower values were apparently edited days after the others, which makes sense. If the AP obtained dozens of photos at a time, there's no way they would be processed in the order they were obtained.
- As I suspected earlier, the Pentagon photos were definitely obtained at the same time. The WXS codes and photo ID's confirm this. Interestingly, they appear towards the end, which could mean the AP received these photos towards the end of September.
- Some of the photos dated 9.11.01 are spread throughout the other photos, which makes me think that the date shown is from a template created on September 11, and not the day the photo was actually edited.
- And most importantly, the pre-9/11 images are also spread throughout the other photos, which is a strong indication that the pre-9/11 dates are wrong.
If these pre-9/11 images were all obtained before the others, they couldn't hide that fact. And there would be no point in trying to falsify the dates by setting them to September 11, September 12, etc. The photo ID would give it away.
Excluding the Pentagon photos, It's possible that the pre-9/11 images and even those dated after 9/11 were actually edited before 9/11. Maybe they changed the dates of those images to make them look realistic, but forgot to change the dates for Sonia Puopolo's, Mark Bingham's, and Dora Menchaca's photos. But that seems highly unlikely. And it would be impossible to prove.
I didn't even know about EXIF or IPTC data before reading those threads, and the evidence presented was damning. Phil and the other LRF members did great work, and the EXIF data seemed pretty conclusive. Despite that, I was still having a hard time believing it, so I went to the CNN memorial page and downloaded every AP photo I could find. As of now, I count 217 photos (there could be more, but I can't find them).
After sifting through these photos, I found 50 that pre-date 9/11:
Peter Gay's photo dated 11.16.1995
Jessica Sachs’ photo dated 6.01.1996
Timothy Ward's photo dated 1.11.2000
Brian Dale's photo dated 6.01.2000
Sonia Puopolo's photo dated 4.03.2001
Mark Bingham's photo dated 8.30.2001
Dora Menchaca's photo dated 9.08.2001
42 photos of the Pentagon victims, all dated 2.15.2000
WTC victim Bruce Eagleson's photo dated 5.05.2000
So were they preparing for 9/11 as far back as 1995? Maybe, but that isn't what the metadata suggests. After doing more research, I think I have a good understanding of EXIF/IPTC data and the process of embedding editorial information in photos. For 3 of these photos, the caption and “Special Instructions” fields actually tell us when the photos were taken.
Peter Gay's photo is a file photo dated November 16, 1995.
Jessica Sachs’ photo was taken in June 1996.
The exact date was unknown, which explains why the day was simply set to June 1.
And Bruce Eagleson's photo was taken in May 2000.
Either the exact date was unknown and it was set to May 5, a holiday, or May 5, 2000 is the actual capture date.
From my understanding, this is typical. If the date of the photo is known, the date fields are changed to reflect this. Though looking through all 200+ photos reveals that this wasn't done consistently. The photos that include a known date always credit at least two writer-editors. Presumably, one person sourced the photo while the other added the editorial information. Aside from the Pentagon photos, the other images (mostly) credit different editors, so this inconsistency could be attributed to that fact.
But then I wondered why the date of the photo needed to be included in the “Special Instructions” field at all. The dates shown in the EXIF fields “DateTimeOriginal” and “DateTimeCreated” are recorded automatically when the photo is taken—if that photo is taken with a digital camera. If it was not, there are a number of other reasons this camera data (MakerNote data) could be missing:
The image was uploaded to the news organization's server which stripped this data.
The uploader removed this data.
A file conversion removed this information.
Or the person editing the photo intentionally stripped this data.
The dates of the other photos could be the original capture date recorded by the camera, or they could be:
The date the source news organization uploaded the photo to their server (or when an AP member uploaded it to AP's server).
Or the date the photo was digitized.
It's important to note that the date (if one is already recorded in the field) is not always overwritten when the image is uploaded to editing software (like Photoshop), nor is it overwritten when the image is saved. The date either has to be changed manually, or the date fields can be auto-filled/auto-populated with the current date.
The dates can also be preset, and this brings us to the photo of Brian Dale and 42 photos of the Pentagon victims. I noticed that the dates are round numbers: June 1, February 15.
This can be explained by the use of a metadata template.
Metadata templates are pre-filled with certain editorial information that can be applied to multiple images, such as source, credit, object name, etc.
From my understanding, metadata templates usually leave the date fields blank, which makes sense if you want to preserve the original capture dates for the images. If you don't want to preserve them (or the camera data wasn't saved), you can simply enter a date manually into the date field of the template to be applied to all images. This is usually a round number like January 1, June 15, or notable dates like July 4 or December 25.
Looking at the photos again, they do appear to be using a metadata template.
The format, the object name, and the Photoshop information is identical across every photo. For many of the photos of Pentagon victims, even the dates are identical. They're all set to February 15, 2000.
So it's highly unlikely that the editorial information within Brian Dale's photo was actually added on June 1, 2000. Likewise, it's highly unlikely that the editorial information for the photos of the Pentagon victims was added on February 15, 2000. The editor set the dates manually.
So, does this mean there aren't any images that pre-date 9/11?
Possibly, but it doesn't rule it out entirely.
There are 10 photos dated 9.11.01, and they're clearly using a similar metadata template as the “pre-9/11” Pentagon photos. And they all have different sources.
Daniel Lewin
Barbara Keating
Jane Orth
Richard Ross
Tara Creamer
Candace Williams
Victor Saracini
Sandra Bradshaw
(The rest of the photos in this post are not the original image files because I can only add 30 attachments, but they contain the original metadata)
CeeCee Lyles
David Rice
Assuming the pre-9/11 dates are not the actual day of editing, this “ATTACKS VICTIMS” category must have been created on September 11, and these photos were likely edited using existing templates. However, if these 10 photos were actually obtained on September 11, from different sources, and edited on the same day, that definitely raises an eyebrow.
This also made the Pentagon photos stand out even more, because this February 15, 2000 date is definitely false. From the list of Pentagon victims on the CNN memorial, I found 50 photos credited to "TCH" (staff member?)
There are the 42 photos credited to just TCH, with the same February 15, 2000 date, and 8 others that credit multiple editors. TCH is also credited in the photos of 30 more victims:
Michael Horrocks, Maclovia Lopez, Sarah Clark, Steve Jacoby, Dong Lee, Hilda Taylor, Anna Allison, Edmund Glazer, Robin Kaplan, David Retick, Christopher Carstanjen, Christopher Newton, Dorothy Dearaujo, Shawn Nassaney, Jerry Roux, Michelle Heidenberger, Hilda Marcin, Jeffrey Coombs, Joe Ferguson, Ann Judge, Donald Greene, Yeneneh Betru, Andrew Garcia, Karen Kincaid, Michael Iken, Kathryn Laborie, Jeffrey Fox, Jason Oswald, John Jenkins, and Christopher Larrabee.
That makes 80 photos credited to TCH.
It's possible that TCH created the metadata template, and that's why he's credited with just over ⅓ of the photos. But if some of these photos were edited entirely by other people, they would have removed TCH and put their own name there. They wrote the image specific metadata, not TCH.
Aside from that, if this February 15, 2000 date was manually entered into the template by TCH before processing, then there's no way to determine when the editorial information was actually added.
At first, I thought the “OriginalTransmissionReference” field might reveal this.
From “earlyinnovations”:
“Number or identifier for the purpose of improved workflow handling. This is a user created identifier related to the job for which the image is supplied. As this identifier references a job of the receiver's workflow, it has first to be issued by the receiver, then be transmitted to the creator or provider of the news object and finally added by him to this field.”
According to the explanation from “The Surgeon”:
“Photographer Number: this is the AP Original Transmission Reference. The letters mean the state and city. A code with "100" means it’s a freelance photographer; a code with "101", "102" ... means it is an AP member.
David Rice: OKOKL101 OK = Oklahoma, OKL = Oklahoma City, 101 = AP member code
Alan Beaven: CAOAK101 CA = California, OAK = Oakland, 101 = AP member photographer code
Dora Menchaca: CALOS102 CA = California, LOS = Los Angeles, 102 = AP member code
Peter Gay: MANOA104 MA = Massachusetts, NOA = North Andover, 104 = AP member code”
After looking through all of the photos, the numbers seem to range from 101-109. But I also noticed that many of them have different OTR codes from the ones shown above.
Paul Ambrose's photo
Suzanne Calley's photo
Daniel Lewin's photo
Richard Gabriel's photo
Thomas McGuinness’ photo
I'm not sure what these codes mean (BX, FX, CX, WXS), but I've noticed that all (or at least most) of the images with the different OTR codes are labeled as “handout”. Other photos labeled “MBR” (member) in this field have AP member codes (101–109). If the transmission reference is a means of tracking where an image came from, then these BX, FX codes might refer to different categories or batches.
All photos labeled BX list the “Province-State” as MA (Massachusetts), and there are other codes that reference a location like “LA102” or “NCDUS1”. I haven't found anything similar with the WXS or CX codes. The WXS code appears most frequently for the victims at the Pentagon and the passengers of Flight 77, so maybe this code was assigned to victims at the Pentagon. Still, this code appears for victims from other locations, too.
But the codes for the Pentagon photos are different even from these:
- Robert Edward Dolan (WXS201)
- Dwayne Williams (WXS202)
- Jerry Don Dickerson Jr. (WXS203)
- Karen Wagner (WXS204)
- Steven Neil Hyland Jr. (WXS205)
- Ronald D. Milam (WXS206)
- Kip P. Taylor (WXS207)
- Scott Powell (WXS208)
- Wallace Cole Hogan Jr. (WXS209)
- Sandra L. White (WXS210)
- Kris Romeo Bishundat (WXS212)
- Martha Reszke (WXS214)
- Judy Rowlett (WXS215)
- Jimmy Ira Hollie (WXS217)
- Jack Punches (WXS218)
- Gary F. Smith (WXS219)
- Edmund Young (WXS220)
- Janice Scott (WXS221)
- Karl W. Teepe (WXS222)
- Michael L. Selves (WXS223)
- Robert J. Hymel (WXS224)
- Antoinette Sherman (WXS225)
- Matthew W. Flocco (WXS226)
- Marjorie C. Salamone (WXS227)
- Lisa L. Young (WXS228)
- Khang Nguyen (WXS229)
- Angelene C. Carter (WXS230)
- Cecelia E. Richard (WXS231)
- Carolyn B. Halmon (WXS232)
- Jose Orlando Calderon-Olmedo (WXS233)
- Canfield D. Boone (WXS235)
- Ted Moy (WXS237)
- Larry Strickland (WXS238)
- Max Beilke (WXS239)
- Shelley A. Marshall (WXS240)
- Michael A. Noeth (WXS241)
- Dean E. Mattson (WXS242)
- Chin Sun Pak (WXS243)
- David W. Laychak (WXS244)
- Clifford L. Patterson Jr. (WXS245)
- Edna L. Stephens (WXS246)
- Steve Long (WXS247)
43. Brenda Gibson (WXS248)
44. Meta Waller (WXS249)
From this, it looks like almost all of the photos of the Pentagon victims were obtained at the same time. But there appear to be 5 photos missing from this sequence:
211, 213, 216, 234, 236
I looked through the other images, but I couldn't find any of these missing numbers in the OTR fields. So either the missing codes are from images I couldn't find, or the images weren't published.
So the missing photos weren't suspicious to me. But I still regarded the Pentagon photos as suspicious because of the date/time fields combined with the fact that they apparently came in as a batch.
The metadata for images credited to TCH dated after 9/11 look normal.
Steve Jacoby's photo
Joe Ferguson's photo
Anne Judge's photo
Christopher Carstanjen's photo
The dates and times are realistic: September 12, 9:57 AM, September 13, 3:03 PM…
Even two photos of Pentagon victims credited to TCH have a realistic time. The photos of Brenda Gibson and Meta Waller (dated 9/19) show the time as 6:22 AM.
Why do these images look different from the other Pentagon photos?
Keep in mind, the photos crediting TCH are spread out over a week, and they include victims from every location: the four flights, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center.
Perhaps TCH was assigned to work on ALL of the Pentagon photos.
But why don't the Pentagon photos have a realistic date and time like the others?
If they were all obtained after 9/11, why wouldn't the editor at least auto fill the date field with the current date?
Aside from the Pentagon photos, TCH edited (or was involved in the process or sourcing of):
18 images dated September 12.
8 images dated September 13.
6 dated September 17.
2 dated September 18.
1 dated September 19.
And 1 dated September 20.
Here are the times for the September 12 images (the other images have the time set to 00:00:00):
Edmund Glazer - 11:00
Shawn Nassaney - 11:22
Steve Jacoby - 14:57
Christopher Carstanjen - 19:40
Anna Allison - 19:41
David Retick - 19:41
Robin Kaplan - 19:41
These are all passengers from the four flights.
I wasn't sure if this actually warranted suspicion or not. This could just be TCH being inconsistent. Maybe they used different templates for these photos. I'm not sure.
(Also, this is probably nothing, but I also noticed that the times are rounded to the minute. Most of the photos either have a 00 (midnight) timestamp or a time rounded to the minute (11:00). Very few have exact timestamps (14:25:19). I'm not sure if this is done automatically or if this indicates that the times were set manually)
For the victims from other locations, I noticed that the “ObjectName” varies sometimes. Instead of being labeled “ATTACKS VICTIMS”, some photos include the name of the victim:
“ATTACKS AIRLINE VICTIMS BINGHAM”
“MA ATTACKS VICTIMS LEWIN”
“ATTACKS VICTIMS LYLES”
I went back and looked through all photos crediting only TCH to see if this label varies, and it does. But there are only two instances:
Maclovia Lopez
Steve Jacoby
The varying names in the other photos could be attributed to the other editor(s) credited. So photos crediting just TCH are almost always labeled as “ATTACKS VICTIMS.”
Looking through the Pentagon photos again, I noticed that the 42 photos dated February 2000 are labeled as “ATTACKS VICTIMS”. There's not a single instance where the victim's name is included.
Combined with the fact that these photos (and 8 other Pentagon photos) have sequential OTR codes, this almost confirms that they were batch processed.
I looked through the other photos crediting TCH to see if I could find any other potential red flags.
On September 13, “TCH” and “DR” are credited in the photo of WTC victim Michael Iken.
Michael Iken
The caption reads:
“FILE--Michael Iken, center, shown in this undated family photo, was on the 84th floor of one the World Trade Center towers and called his brother, Gerry Iken, left, moments after the jetliner slammed into the building to say he was OK and was evacuating. A co-worker says he saw Iken on the 55th floor helping someone down the stairs shortly before the building collapsed. Michael Iken hasn't been seen or heard from since and his brother is still waiting word on his fate. Also in photo, from left, are Dorothy Iken, Anne Iken and Pat Iken. (AP Photo)”
On September 17, TCH is credited in the photo of Jeffrey Fox, another WTC victim who was also reported missing.
And on September 20, TCH is again credited in another WTC victim's photo.
Including the victims from other locations, this seems like a realistic amount of images coming in (and being edited by TCH) each day. The airlines could produce passenger manifests, but there were no complete lists for the people killed in the WTC or the Pentagon. Initially, I thought that only 2–3 of the Pentagon photos reported people as missing, but there are a lot more than that:
Pentagon Victims Killed:
Robert Edward Dolan, Dwayne Williams, Jerry Don Dickerson, Karen Wagner, Stephen Neil Hyland, Ronald D. Milam, Kip P. Taylor, Scott Powell, Wallace Cole Hogan Jr., Sandra L. White, Kris Romeo Bishundat, Jack Punches, Gary F. Smith, Edmund Young, Karl W. Teepe, Michael L. Selves, Robert J. Hymel, Antoinette Sherman, Matthew W. Flocco, Marjorie C. Salamone, Canfield D. Boone, Shelley A. Marshall, Dean E. Mattson, David W. Laychak, Clifford L. Patterson, Edna L. Stephens, Steve Long, Gerald Deconto, Patrick Dunn, Patricia Mickley, Michael Noeth, Dan Shanower, Otis Tolbert, Ernest Willcher.
(34 total)
Pentagon Victims Missing:
Martha Rezke, Judy Rowlett, Jimmy Ira Holley, Janice Scott, Lisa Young, Khang Nguyen, Angelene C. Carter, Cecelia E. Richard, Carolyn Halmon, Jose Orlando Calderon-Olmedo, Ted Moy, Larry Strickland, Max Beilke, Chin Sun Pak, Dennis Johnson, Neahamon Lyons, Angela Houtz, Brenda Gibson, Donna Bowen, Daniel Caballero, Johnnie Doctor, Thomas Earhart, Jerry Moran, Darin Pontell, Marsha Ratchford, Robert Russell, Meta Waller.
(27 total)
Here's what I think:
The values in the OTR field show the order in which the images were acquired. The “gaps” in the sequence could be other images acquired in between, like I suggested earlier. If this interpretation is correct, it means that all the Pentagon photos were acquired at the same time.
After the AP obtained the photos, they were batch processed using a template with the date set to February 15, 2000, and the time set to 00:00:00 (midnight). The fact that most of these photos all share a default template date, rather than having a date and and time after 9/11 like TCH's other photos definitely supports this.
So, what about the people reported as missing or killed? Was TCH arbitrarily describing victims as missing or killed to make this appear legitimate?
The caption in Pentagon victim Thomas Earhart's photo reads:
“Aerographer's Mate First Class Edward Thomas Earhart, 26, of Salt Lick, Ky., shown in this undated file photo, is one of 190 people unaccounted for after a hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon Tuesday morning. (AP Photo)”
The caption says that Earhart was one of 190 people unaccounted for. Some were reported dead, others were still missing. Therefore, if the AP really did receive these images as a batch, that isn't necessarily suspicious. There's still the question of when the AP received these photos.
If these images were received and edited before 9/11, the fake date and midnight time make this impossible to confirm.
What about the other photos that pre-date 9/11?
There are still the photos of Timothy Ward, Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham, Dora Menchaca, and David Rice.
Timothy Ward's photo
Timothy Ward's photo is dated January 11, 2000.
The caption reads:
“FILE - Timothy Ward, who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, is shown in a file photo, date and location not known. Ward was an executive with Rubio's Restaurants. The plane was one of two that hit the World Trade Center. (AP Photo/San Diego Union-Tribune)”
Interestingly, the time is not set to 00:00:00. The time is 22 seconds after midnight, which looks like a realistic time.
The writer-editor is “DB” (“DB” might be Dianne Barros, who is credited in Richard Ross’ photo).
DB is also credited in the photos of:
Dora Menchaca, Jeffrey Collman, Christine Barbuto, Laurie Neira, David Retick, Lisa Frost, Jerry Roux, James Debeneure, Robert Ploger, Linda Gronlund, Nicole Miller, Daniel Lewin, Richard Ross, Candace Williams, Bruce Eagleson, Lee Adler, Joshua Poptean, John Rodak, and John Willet.
(A few of these photos also credit TCH)
The caption says this is a file photo, and considering that DB edited many photos dated after 9/11, I'm guessing this January 11, 2000 date is when the San Diego Union-Tribune acquired the image and uploaded it to their server. The time of 22 seconds after midnight could be the original timestamp, but it could also be when the editorial information was added.
How can we be sure that this January 11, 2000 date was not the actual day of processing?
The “ReaderName” field.
This field shows either the version of Photoshop used to process the image or the version used when the image was last processed. ALL photos list this as Adobe Photoshop 6.0, which was released in September 2000. Version 7.0 was released in March 2002, meaning these images were edited using the latest version of Photoshop at the time. However, this also means that any dates earlier than September 2000 are definitely false.
Timothy Ward's photo was not last edited on January 11, 2000.
The Pentagon photos were not last edited on February 15, 2000.
And Brian Dale's photo was not last edited on June 1, 2000.
The other photos aren't so easily explained.
David Rice
This photo of World Trade Center victim David Rice is credited to “TS” and “DWH”
The caption reads:
“FILE--World Trade Center victim, former Oklahoman David Harlow Rice, is among the confirmed dead in New York. Rice was working in the World Trade Towers as an investment banker on the 104th floor of the second tower that was hit by a hijacked airliner. Rice called his parents, Hugh and Cindy Rice, of Oklahoma City, Okla. to say he was allright after the first plane attack early Tuesday morning, but that was the last they heard from him. (AP Photo/The daily Oklahoman)”
How could David Rice have been “confirmed dead” ON September 11 when there was uncertainty about the whereabouts of thousands of people?
Was this photo actually edited on September 11, or did the editor manually set the date?
The photos of Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham and Dora Menchaca are probably the most suspicious.
Sonia Puopolo
Date: 4/03/2001
Credited to “RM”, “AHK” and “RKK”
Mark Bingham
Date: 8/30/2001
Credited to “KR” and “AG”
Dora Menchaca
Date: 9/08/2001
Credited to “DB” and “CW”
April 3, September 8...
These don't look like default dates from a template. They're too random. It could be argued that the date of Mark Bingham's photo could be from a template, because it is a round number. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's fair to assume that template dates would also be set to the 30th, not just the 1st, 15th, or a holiday.
However, the dates of Mark Bingham's and Dora Menchaca's photos are too close to 9/11. Not only that, but they are also labeled as handouts, and they have AP member codes.
Mark Bingham's metadata
Dora Menchaca's metadata
(^ it's not shown here, but it says handout in the caption)
It's possible that someone sourced images from The Contra Costa Times and The Los Angeles Times prior to 9/11.
Dora Menchaca's photo is the most suspicious. There's no way the Los Angeles Times received this photo on September 8, just 3 days before 9/11.
(I checked the Los Angeles Times’ archive on their website for any articles mentioning Dora Menchaca, Amgen or the FDA, but I couldn't find any, nothing for Mark Bingham either)
The caption says this is a file photo, “date and location not known.” If the LA Times already had this photo in their archive, then it suggests that, either the AP obtained this photo on September 8, the editorial information in Dora Menchaca's photo was added on September 8, or this date came from somewhere else.
There is another element that makes these photos suspicious.
The writer-editors credited in Sonia Puopolo's photo are “RM”, “AHK” and “RKK”.
The writer-editors credited in Mark Bingham's photo are “KR” and “AG”.
“RM” and “KR” are credited in many other photos, but curiously, “AHK”, “RKK”, and “AG” are NOT credited in ANY other photos. Just these two.
The person listed in the “By-line” field of Sonia Puopolo's photo is Roberto Koltun, a member of El Nuevo Herald, a newspaper published in Florida. So “RKK” could stand for Roberto K. Koltun. ?
But “AHK” and “AG” are unknown.
In each photo, at least one of these editors was responsible for sourcing the image.
Why are these people credited only for these photos which pre-date 9/11?
Admittedly, though, there are photos dated after 9/11 that credit people only once. This is only suspicious if these pre-9/11 dates are the actual processing date.
The dates for the photos of Sonia Puopolo, Mark Bingham and Dora Menchaca could be the date the source news organization obtained/uploaded the photo, or they could be from older templates that already had a date listed (unrelated photos taken on or edited on April 3, 2001, August 30, 2001, and September 8, 2001).
I looked through ALL of the photos again, trying to find anything that could indicate when the images were obtained.
I found this in the "Application Record" field. This field contains each photo's unique ID, along with a link to AP's server.
At first, I thought this ID was random—until I looked at the Pentagon photos again.
Then, I listed all 200+ images in order based on this ID:
NAME — DATE — PHOTO ID
Tara Creamer - 9/11/2001 - 170916
Mark Bingham - 8/30/2001 - 170944
Peter Gay - 11/16/1995 - 171278
Jane Orth - 9/11/2001 - 171295
Richard Ross - 9/11/2001 - 171348
Steve Jacoby - 9/12/2001 - 171686
Jeff Mladenik - 9/12/2001 - 171772
Brian Dale - 6/1/2000 - 171794
Thomas Burnett - 9/12/2001 - 171795
Edmund Glazer - 9/12/2001 - 171813
Sonia Puopolo - 4/3/2001 - 171825
Christopher Newton - 9/12/2001 - 171862
Michelle Heidenberger - 9/12/2001 - 172073
Carl Hammond - 9/12/2001 - 172092
Karleton Fyfe - 9/12/2001 - 172100
John Wenckus - 9/12/2001 - 172146
Stanley Hall - 9/12/2001 - 172156
Maclovia Lopez - 9/12/2001 - 172172
Timothy Ward - 1/11/2000 - 172188
Robert Speisman - 9/12/2001 - 172256
Daniel Lewin - 9/11/2001 - 172298
Candace Williams - 9/11/2001 - 172302
CeeCee Lyles - 9/11/2001 - 172313
Lisa Frost - 9/12/2001 - 172326
Robin Kaplan - 9/12/2001 - 172329
David Retick - 9/12/2001 - 172330
Alan Beaven - 9/12/2001 - 172336
Christopher Carstanjen - 9/12/2001 - 172345
Jacqueline Norton - 9/12/2001 - 172357
Wilson Flagg - 9/12/2001 - 172366
Barbara Edwards - 9/12/2001 - 172376
Leslie Whittington - 9/12/2001 - 172397
Kenneth Waldie - 9/12/2001 - 172404
Berry Berenson - 9/12/2001 - 172413
Suzanne Calley - 9/12/2001 - 172476
Alicia Titus - 9/12/2001 - 172480
Charles Jones - 9/12/2001 - 172498
Mildred Naiman - 9/12/2001 - 172521
Laurie Neira - 9/12/2001 - 172525
Anna Allison - 9/12/2001 - 172564
Leonard Taylor - 9/13/2001 - 172711
Sandra Bradshaw - 9/11/2001 - 172762
Peter Hashem - 9/13/2001 - 172772
Eric Hartono - 9/12/2001 - 172776
Patrick Quigley - 9/13/2001 - 172794
Lynn Goodchild - 9/13/2001 - 172837
Elsy Oliva - 9/13/2001 - 172894
Chris Mello - 9/13/2001 - 172946
Frederick Rimmele - 9/13/2001 - 172986
Janis Lasden - 9/13/2001 - 172991
Robert Jalbert - 9/13/2001 - 173016
Karen Kincaid - 9/13/2001 - 173094
John Cahill - 9/13/2001 - 173237
Dong Lee - 9/12/2001 - 173244
David Angell - 9/13/2001 - 173259
Brian Kinney - 9/13/2001 - 173348
Lauren Grandcolas - 9/13/2001 - 173404
Hilda Taylor - 9/12/2001 - 173414
James Debeneure - 9/12/2001 - 173415
Sara Clark - 9/12/2001 - 173416
Terence M. Lynch - 2/15/2000 - 173420
Thomas Earhart - 9/13/2001 - 173447
Dora Menchaca - 9/8/2001 - 173480
Ann Judge - 9/13/2001 - 173497
Rodney Dickens - 9/12/2001 - 173502
Joe Ferguson - 9/13/2001 - 173510
Chandler Keller - 9/13/2001 - 173523
John Yamnicky - 9/13/2001 - 173529
Yeneneh Betru - 9/13/2001 - 173536
Francis Grogan - 9/13/2001 - 173587
Jim Cleere - 9/13/2001 - 173618
Charles Burlingame - 9/13/2001 - 173622
Dorothy Dearaujo - 9/12/2001 - 173639
Renee May - 9/13/2001 - 173650
Nicole Miller - 9/13/2001 - 173652
Paige Farley Hackel - 9/13/2001 - 173654
Shawn Nassaney - 9/12/2001 - 173655
Dennis Johnson - 9/13/2001 - 173677
Deora Bodley - 9/13/2001 - 173760
Jeffrey Coombs - 9/13/2001 - 173764
Andrew Garcia - 9/13/2001 - 173771
Michael Iken - 9/13/2001 - 173778
Donald Greene - 9/13/2001 - 173789
Robert Ploger - 9/13/2001 - 173805
Angela Houtz - 9/13/2001 - 173822
Daniel Caballero - 9/13/2001 - 173833
Mari Rae Sopper - 9/12/2001 - 173835
Wanda Green - 9/13/2001 - 173836
Philip Rosenzweig - 9/13/2001 - 173866
Richard Guadagno - 9/13/2001 - 173871
Daniel Lee - 9/13/2001 - 173878
Jerry Roux - 9/12/2001 - 173899
Jerry Moran - 9/13/2001 - 173924
Darin Pontell - 9/13/2001 - 173929
Paul Ambrose - 9/13/2001 - 173935
Barbara Keating - 9/11/2001 - 173938
Michael Lamana - 9/13/2001 - 173944
Linda George - 9/12/2001 - 173946
Matthew Picerno - 9/13/2001 - 174013
Marsha Ratchford - 9/13/2001 - 174290
Todd Beamer - 9/13/2001 - 174301
Jessica Sachs - 6/1/1996 - 174354
Michael Shearer - 9/14/2001 - 174362
David Rice - 9/11/2001 - 174376
Jane Simpkin - 9/14/2001 - 174382
Cora Holland - 9/13/2001 - 174481
Timothy Maude - 9/12/2001 - 174570
David DiMeglio - 9/14/2001 - 174777
Alexander Filipov - 9/14/2001 - 174859
Jeffrey Collman - 9/14/2001 - 175006
John Hofer - 9/13/2001 - 175012
Linda Gronlund - 9/14/2001 - 175356
Wendy Faulkner - 9/14/2001 - 175484
Thomas McGuinness - 9/15/2001 - 175801
Bill Bethke - 9/13/2001 - 175875
Steven Goldstein - 9/13/2001 - 175882
Derek Sword - 9/13/2001 - 175922
Richard Gabriel - 9/15/2001 - 175923
Deborah Welsh - 9/15/2001 - 175949
Ruth McCourt - 9/15/2001 - 176056
Kathleen Nicosia - 9/15/2001 - 176097
Christine Hanson - 9/15/2001 - 176175
Neahamon Lyons - 9/15/2001 - 176197
Robert Russell - 9/15/2001 - 176253
Michell Robotham - 9/15/2001 - 176473
John Willet - 9/15/2001 - 176478
Peter West - 9/16/2001 - 176923
Hilda Marcin - 9/12/2001 - 176951
Marie Pappalardo - 9/12/2001 - 176969
Ernest Willcher - 9/13/2001 - 177636
Victor Saracini - 9/11/2001 - 177863
Michael Horrocks - 9/12/2001 - 177917
Louis Nacke - 9/16/2001 - 178081
Sara Low - 9/17/2001 - 178378
Dan Shanower - 9/13/2001 - 178418
Jeffrey Fox - 9/17/2001 - 178457
Kathryn Laborie - 9/17/2001 - 178469
John Keohane - 9/17/2001 - 178487
Jim Tretini - 9/18/2001 - 178951
Susan Mackay - 9/18/2001 - 178955
Jason Oswald - 9/18/2001 - 179526
John Jenkins - 9/18/2001 - 179650
Alberto Dominguez - 9/18/2001 - 179808
Gary Koechler - 9/17/2001 - 180189
Lisa Gordenstein - 9/19/2001 - 180602
Jason Dahl - 9/12/2001 - 180673
Michael Theodoridis - 9/19/2001 - 180712
Lee Adler - 9/16/2001 - 181039
Joshua Poptean - 9/19/2001 - 181111
Otis Tolbert - 9/20/2001 - 181979
Gerald DeConto - 9/20/2001 - 182087
Christine Barbuto - 9/20/2001 - 182196
Christopher Larrabee - 9/20/2001 - 182753
Jesus Sanchez - 9/21/2001 - 182806
Antonio Montoya - 9/21/2001 - 182807
Andrew Green - 9/21/2001 - 183480
Michael McGinty - 9/13/2001 - 185560
Nicholas Bogdan - 9/14/2001 - 185829
John Rodak - 9/13/2001 - 185832
Sean Schielke - 9/17/2001 - 185836
Donald Havlish - 9/24/2001 - 186076
Robert Edward Dolan - 2/15/2000 - 188761
Jerry Don Dickerson Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188852
Ronald D. Milam - 2/15/2000 - 188853
Kip P. Taylor - 2/15/2000 - 188854
Steven Neil Hyland Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188855
Karen Wagner - 2/15/2000 - 188856
Dwayne Williams - 2/15/2000 - 188857
Kris Romeo Bishundat - 2/15/2000 - 188860
Sandra L. White - 2/15/2000 - 188861
Scott Powell - 2/15/2000 - 188862
Wallace Cole Hogan Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188865
Janice Scott - 2/15/2000 - 188866
Edmond Young - 2/15/2000 - 188867
Jimmy Ira Hollie - 2/15/2000 - 188868
Gary F. Smith - 2/15/2000 - 188869
Jack Punches - 2/15/2000 - 188870
Martha Reszke - 2/15/2000 - 188872
Khang Nguyen - 2/15/2000 - 188873
Judy Rowlett - 2/15/2000 - 188874
Marjorie C. Salamone - 2/15/2000 - 188875
Lisa L. Young - 2/15/2000 - 188876
Matthew W. Flocco - 2/15/2000 - 188877
Karl W. Teepe - 2/15/2000 - 188879
Antoinette Sherman - 2/15/2000 - 188880
Robert J. Hymel - 2/15/2000 - 188881
Michael L. Selves - 2/15/2000 - 188882
Larry Strickland - 2/15/2000 - 188886
Ted Moy - 2/15/2000 - 188887
Canfield D. Boone - 2/15/2000 - 188889
Jose Orlando Calderon-Olmedo - 2/15/2000 - 188890
Angelene C. Carter - 2/15/2000 - 188892
Carolyn B. Halmon - 2/15/2000 - 188893
Cecelia E. Richard - 2/15/2000 - 188895
Chin Sun Pak - 2/15/2000 - 188896
Michael A. Noeth - 2/15/2000 - 188897
Dean E. Mattson - 2/15/2000 - 188898
Shelley A. Marshall - 2/15/2000 - 188899
Max Beilke - 2/15/2000 - 188900
Clifford L. Patterson Jr. - 2/15/2000 - 188942
David W. Laychak - 2/15/2000 - 188943
Edna L. Stephens - 2/15/2000 - 188944
Steve Long - 2/15/2000 - 188946
Brenda Gibson - 9/19/2001 - 188953
Meta Waller - 9/19/2001 - 188954
Lilian Caceres - 9/27/2001 - 189426
Donna Bowen - 9/17/2001 - 189587
Patricia Mickley - 9/17/2001 - 189588
Johnnie Doctor - 9/17/2001 - 189590
Lacey Ivory - 9/17/2001 - 189591
Patrick Dunn - 9/17/2001 - 189593
Heather Smith - 9/27/2001 - 189613
Bruce Eagleson - 5/5/2000 - 189920
Donald Peterson - 9/28/2001 - 191188
Joseph DeLuca - 9/28/2001 - 191189
From this, I was able to determine that:
- The image dates range from September 11 to September 28, suggesting they were all obtained within than time.
- Photos with lower values were apparently edited days after the others, which makes sense. If the AP obtained dozens of photos at a time, there's no way they would be processed in the order they were obtained.
- As I suspected earlier, the Pentagon photos were definitely obtained at the same time. The WXS codes and photo ID's confirm this. Interestingly, they appear towards the end, which could mean the AP received these photos towards the end of September.
- Some of the photos dated 9.11.01 are spread throughout the other photos, which makes me think that the date shown is from a template created on September 11, and not the day the photo was actually edited.
- And most importantly, the pre-9/11 images are also spread throughout the other photos, which is a strong indication that the pre-9/11 dates are wrong.
If these pre-9/11 images were all obtained before the others, they couldn't hide that fact. And there would be no point in trying to falsify the dates by setting them to September 11, September 12, etc. The photo ID would give it away.
Excluding the Pentagon photos, It's possible that the pre-9/11 images and even those dated after 9/11 were actually edited before 9/11. Maybe they changed the dates of those images to make them look realistic, but forgot to change the dates for Sonia Puopolo's, Mark Bingham's, and Dora Menchaca's photos. But that seems highly unlikely. And it would be impossible to prove.
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