Hi David, Chris, and Terri,

In the last two days we have spoken with at least 15 people in four towns in conversations ranging from a minute to half an hour. They ranged from an 85-year-old fixer of stringed instruments to three high schoolers (one in one town, two in the next). They included a local police chief in his cruiser who couldn’t have been nicer, a general store clerk who sold us a sandwich which she cut in half and a Coke, a man raking in his front yard, a woman who had seen us hours before and had parked her car and walked from it to talk with us, and a man and a woman (separately) exiting from the same post office each with a parcel.

Two were a pair of Seventh Day Adventists with their tracts (though they could have been FBI agents) who asked us nicely what we were doing. We told them, and I added that if I weren’t a follower of Jesus I wouldn’t be doing it. True. They continued smiling. This was the one-minute conversation.

One was a Cuban-American whose first birthday on U.S. soil was on Sept. 11, 2001, which ruined everything.

Another was a construction worker who stopped in his pickup after a day’s work.

Most of these people have researched 9/11 online and elsewhere, some much further than either of us have. If they’re FBI agents they’re really good at pretending to be something they’re not — earnest citizens relieved to talk with someone as concerned about the mass murders of September 2001, the wars they enabled warmongers to wage, the apparent gagging of the news media that might otherwise not be parroting the government line or doing nothing … and so on.

As on previous days, all them got “Why the Truth about 9/11 Still Matters” brochures on which one of us had written our blog’s address in a margin. As on previous days, we suggested to them, when we remembered, that they go to www.911TAP.org and sign the petition:

 I hereby petition for, and demand, an independent, comprehensive investigation, satisfying all standards specified by the 9/11 Truth Action Project, including subpoena power, testimony under oath, and study of all relevant evidence, leading to transparency and accountability for the crimes of September 11, 2001 and justice for its victims. My name, city, and state will be publicly presented to Congress at www.911TAP.org. My other information will remain private and not released to third parties.

By the way … motorists’ toots, waves, smiles and thumbs-up continue to outnumber negative reactions to seeing us walking along by about 20 to 1.

— Mark

Among the many organizations working for truth and justice in matters pertaining to the attacks of September 2001 is the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry.

What follows is a slightly edited report on the Committee’s petition to the U.S. Department of Justice for a Special Grand Jury Investigation of the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and Building 7.

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On the morning of April 10  attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, together with more than a dozen family members of 9/11 victims, filed a petition with the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, demanding that he present evidence of unprosecuted federal crimes at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, to a special grand jury.

According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is the bombing of a place of public use or a government facility — as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f — as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense.

The petition states,

“The Lawyers’ Committee has reviewed the relevant available evidence . . . and has reached a consensus that there is not just substantial or persuasive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted crimes related to the use of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries . . . on 9/11, but there is actually conclusive evidence that such federal crimes were committed.”

A federal grand jury has broad powers to investigate the alleged crimes and to return an indictment for signature and prosecution by the U.S. Attorney. The petition notes,

“If any crime ever warranted a full special grand jury inquiry, the mass murder of thousands on our nation’s soil on 9/11 clearly does.”

Lawyers’ Committee Executive Director Mick Harrison expressed “cautious optimism” that the U.S. Attorney would fulfill his mandatory duty to present the reported evidence to a grand jury, his optimism based on the fact that the law offers the U.S. Attorney no discretion in whether to do so. However, in the event the U.S. Attorney does not bring forth the evidence to a grand jury, Harrison said, the petitioners reserve the option of bringing a mandamus action in federal court. A mandamus action, if successful, would compel the U.S. Attorney to fulfill his legal obligation.

For the time being, the Lawyers’ Committee will let the process run its course.

“We intend to step back now for a reasonable time and be respectful of the confidential nature of the grand jury proceedings, although we have offered to assist in the presentation of this evidence to a special grand jury,” Harrison commented.

We take a break from more routine entries to bring word of an exceptional free concert on Sunday, June 3, 2018, at 4 p.m., at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church.

“The Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets.” Composed by Neely Bruce (b. 1940), adapting music by William Billings (1746-1800). Performed by the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church Choir, directed by Lila M. Farrar, on Sunday, June 3, 2018, at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church.

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The entire Bill of Rights will be performed in four-part harmony. The words of the Amendments to be sung in their entirety will be read between the motets.

The 16-member choir has been rehearsing “The Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets” since last November. Last Thursday, 12 members practiced the motets for Amendments Two, Three, Six and Ten in the church basement with director Farrar. Local truther Wendy Newhall sings soprano.

Composer Neely Bruce plans to attend. William Billings is sometimes described as America’s first native-born composer, a friend of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and a staunch patriot.

The gray stone church is located at 19 River St. (Route 148) on the Brookfield Common.

Sorry to all of you who have been hanging on every entry at this site. Both of you. It’s been crazy.

Briefly, bused to Worcester from Pittsfield on Wednesday the 2nd, were picked up by the estimable Dennis and Timothy, ferried to the Westboro Shopping Plaza where we feasted on the buffet at the Mayuri Indian Restaurant. They do it right. It’s one of three in a Boston-area Mayuri chain. Across the parking lot to a Big Y to get me some sun block before Tim and Dennis left with our backpacks in the trunk. Much faster and easier without the packs.

On the 12-mile stretch with “9/11 TRUTH” signs fore and aft, we counted roughly 20 positive signals from motorists for the one or (possibly) two against, the latter vulgar of course.

Approaching Worcester we were informed by an Ocean State Job Lot sign that it was 87 degrees F. at 4:06, and by a Herb Chambers Ford place that it was 90 degrees F. at 4:20. Two lads working there walked across the parking lot of a Lexus dealership to hand us bottles of Maine springwater labeled Lexus Elite something or other.

We were sitting in the shade resting near the entrance of a pizza place when up drives a Hispanic couple with two small kids, Alexander and Annie. The father asked us about the signs. He had researched the Dallas JFK murder in 1963 and 9/11 in 2001 was entirely with us on the latter. We were with him that the Warren Commission report was complete hooey. We agreed it was a coup d’état.

On the way stopped at a business run by a former student of Bruce’s, doubled recently in size. He took down several website addresses including this one and we were on our way, each with a free pad promoting the business. The proprietor not surprised at our take on 9/11, but like millions of Americans he has been so immersed on matters closer to home that have kept him from researching it.

Good discussion on many topics Wednesday evening at Tim’s house in Worcester outside in the driveway over several varieties of Berkshire Beer and chili Tim made from his mother’s recipe.

Up and out of the house with our packs before 8 the next morning and breakfast at Nu Kitchen in a repurposed manufacturing plant on Chandler Street before heading west toward Brookfield and other friends of Bruce’s, both way better versed on matters 9/11 than I.

Every block or three getting out of Worcester and up, up, up into Leicester on Route 9 elicited memories of when Bruce taught at Worcester State and ate here with these people or knew a student who did this or that there.

With all sorts of detail left out, this account arrives to around midday yesterday, Thursday the 3rd. It’s time for bed.

– Mark

Osneyda picked out “The Pirates of Somalia” yesterday at East Street Variety & Video and we watched it after supper. In its own way (screenwriter and director Bryan Buckley’s), it traces the offbeat early career of real-life Canadian journalist Jay Bahadur as he, with zero conventional reporting experience, finds out what makes the Somalian pirates tick and becomes a best-selling author and sought-after authority on them.

If half a dozen reporters like Bahadur (at least the character in the movie) were on the case, would the truths of the September 2001 attacks be common knowledge and justice in this atrocity be under way? That’s hard to say, because every news outlet you can name with the kind of budget to put reporters on it simply won’t — at least that we know about. It’s been nearly 17 years, what are they waiting for?

Barrie Zwicker, in his 2006 book, Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11 (which I’ve read only bits of), nails the reason why. Bruce’s copy is somewhere on Cape Cod, part of an offloading from our backpacks in Wellfleet to make them lighter. Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, Towers of Deception is not mentioned in Zwicker’s Wikipedia entry.

Maybe Seymour Hersh, who turned 81 this month, is working on the needed exposé. I was reminded of the possibility by the first name Buckley gives the fictional Seymour Tobin, played flavorfully by Al Pacino in “The Pirates of Somalia” as a retired but celebrated Canadian reporter. (The movie’s working title was “Where the White Man Runs Away,” a fitting description of the U.S. media and 9/11 truth.)

Recommended: Hersch’s 10,000-word article published three years ago by The London Review of Books: “The Killing of Osama bin Laden,” available online for free. Also see the New York Times Magazine article by Jonathan Mahler, “What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?

– Mark

Words relevant to 9/11 truthism are practically everywhere. A needed break from the walk is good in that it lets me cite an example from three days ago:

“We are a family,” Marcus Halley writes. “We are incredibly connected to one another, even if at times we fail to live into that relationship with integrity, and even if at times we would like our relationship to be different or even not exist. Nevertheless, we are connected across oceans, cultures, languages, and religions. God calls us to be concerned about others because they are human and worthy of life and love. Our well-being is tied together.

“Regardless of our nation of origin or current residence,” He goes on, “we all live in the midst of some strained relationships. In learning how to love each other well — especially when we don’t agree — we would do well to remember the Xhosa proverb popularized by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the height of apartheid in South Africa. ‘I am because we are,’ illustrates that the fullest version of our humanity is expressed in relationship to other people.”

Halley is rector of a church in Minneapolis. Just above is his commentary on a passage in the Book of Acts for Wednesday — from Forward Day by Day, a quarterly that follows the Episcopal Church’s daily and Sunday lectionaries. Some people try to live the way he tries to, whether they consider themselves religious or not. As for Halley, he may be clueless about the lies cloaking the murderous attacks of September 11, 2001, but has plenty of other responsibilities and can’t begin to delve into the details of the crime of the century and its coverup.

An errand took me today to Easthampton, MA, where I’m tapping this out in the Emily Williston Memorial Library and Museum, a quaint and quiet place insulated from many of the stresses and distractions that keep the lies of 9/11 from becoming perfectly obvious to billions of people.

This small library has two of David Ray Griffin’s books, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004) and Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (2007). It probably helps that Griffin’s 9/11 books are published by Olive Branch Press in Northampton. Mainstream book publishers have taken a hike from anything challenging the government’s 9/11 narratives. So have the mainstream news media, whose conspiracy of silence abets the government’s.

I brought along an old paperback copy of M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New York, Touchstone: 1983) to read somewhere else after the library closes. I’m sure this library once had some of Peck’s books*, but no longer.

– Mark

We walk from Braintree westward avoiding Blue Hills through the towns of Westwood and Randolph into Canton. Green Lodge Street seems by the map to go through, but it dead-ends at a railroad station built to accommodate fast AMTRAK Acela trains. We outflank the barriers, cross the heavy rails on concrete ties and enter the station. It offers good services and is well used. We lunch on sandwiches and coconut water.

Onward out the front of the station we find MA 135 and walk it through Needham and Wellesley to Weston Road, on which we proceed to MA9. That route goes to Pittsfield and we intend to follow thither.

On reaching it we are ready to quit for the day, but … no motel for miles!

On we trudge out of Wellesley into Natick hoping to find lodging associated with Natick or Framingham Mall. After walking most of the way through Natick we take an on-ramp to Speen Street (which crosses over MA9) to inquire at what seems to be a gas station how to phone for a taxi to take to a motel. After seeing it’s a fire station Mark looks north and cries: “Holiday Inn!” It is just across MA9 on Speen. We jump on it. Turns out to be a Hilton-affiliated Hampton Inn. We are in no mood to argue: at 28 miles it is our “longest” day.

Next day, Tuesday April 24, we start early out of Natick, thence across endless Framingham seeing en route in the eponymous mall at least one non-chain motel. Southboro, then Westboro, last town east of Shrewsbury which lies across Lake Quinsigamond from Worcester.

Bruce having lived in Worcester (1990-2007) has a cadre of friends (Timothy Hagopian, Dennis McCarthy, Joseph McEvoy, Tuck Amory) on whom we call (exhausted and with likely injury) for rescue at 4 p.m. from Westboro. Dennis scoops us (and later, Tim) up with his Mazda and delivers us to “Berki Central,” 12 Berkmans Street, Worcester, former Henry residence now owned by Tim H., where things soon evolve into to a beer-and-pizza forum on 9/11, the walk, and related topics. We crash there that night.

Next day, W April 25, we take a “better part of valor” day of R&R, brunching out with Joe McEvoy, another “forum” adding Dennis, Tim, and Tuck until the whole crew excepting Tuck goes over to meet Sue Serpa and Laurenzo Fine, Sue a famous Worcester truther of whom we have heard for months from members of Boston 9/11 Truth. In Worcester’s Tatnuck section Sue, a friendly white-haired lady, feeds the company pasta with her own sauce.

Overnight again at Berki Central then Thursday April 26 Mark and I take the 11:15 a.m. Peter Pan bus back to Pittsfield, Joe having ferried us to Worcester Union Station (train and bus) after breakfast at McDonald’s.

It is now Friday, 2018-0427. We’re back in Pittsfield reorganizing, resting at our respective homes, consulting the medical profession before rejoining the walk in Westboro, date to be determined.

– Bruce

We’re in Natick or Framingham tonight after having put in more than 30 miles on foot. Decided to skip Boston this trip and come back with more energy and better preparation. Thanks to everyone who has helped!

We’re not handing out ENOUGH 9/11 TAP brochures. Spoke with just three people in our longest-distance day, but do have the address of one of them and will follow up. Learning a lot. Feet sore and somewhat swollen right now.

– Mark

“Do you know who Mike Juliano is?”

The questioner has pulled his old Ford Ranchero over to the side of a suburban back road in Braintree. Heavyset and wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses and a short-sleeved white shirt, speaking through a salt and pepper beard. Out for a Sunday drive or going to church?

“We’re not local,” I say to indicate we don’t know Mike.

“He was incinerated in the Towers … thanks for your help.”

Then he pulls away in the direction we’re walking. It’s about 9 this Sunday morning, and we continue plodding along. The Ranchero driver has seen only a couple of strangers wearing “9/11 TRUTH” signs and had to stop.

He might be typical of the friendly people we encounter if we had the luxury of talking with them for even that long – about 20 seconds.

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“What IS the truth?” This yesterday afternoon from the thirty-something driver of a clean late-model pickup truck as he waits for a green arrow signal to let him take a left off of Union Street in (I think) Braintree still. Not much time to fill him in on the whole truth.

“We don’t know, but it’s not what the government says,” I shout across a couple of lanes, and he is off, the light having changed.

It is a good question that we get once or twice a day. The pejoratives “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists” is a handy way to put down truthers who are trying to figure out 9/11 themselves. I don’t like to get bogged down in who did what, why, how, where, etc. What is certain, I say, is that the government’s accounts of the crashes at all three sites – the World Trade Center, the Pentagon headquarters and the field in rural Pennsylvania – can’t POSSIBLY be true. Why all these lies, lies, lies?

Reinforced by the uncurious, parroting news media, or we wouldn’t be out here walking across Massachusetts.

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“I know who did it … the Bush family!” shouts a fairly well-heeled guy in his forties a in late-model car who has slowed down while driving in the other direction this afternoon. He smiles widely. Then he is on his happy way.

Who knows?

An hour or so later we check in at a chain motel where the front desk clerks checked out our signs and were delighted to see and talk with us. One had studied the atrocity for awhile and then gave up.

Yesterday at a Chili’s the young black female version of a maitre di beamed at us when she spotted our signs. All waitpersons were positive. One had done research on the Kennedy assassination and liked my assessment that the Kean Commission report on 9/11 didn’t have any more validity than the Warren Commission report on JFK in Dallas. A teenage patron several booths away smiled at us, took our picture, and gave a big thumbs up. We get a lot of thumb up from people in cars, often accompanied by toots. But it was nice to see it from someone in the same room. Gave her a big smile and a thumbs up back.

Well, it’s about 6:30 and we’ll head out for supper. Seventeen or so miles today.

We decided today to defer Boston activities to a separate trip when we have more energy and are not on foot. We’re left with shunpiking around the Blue Hills Reservation, a state park covering parts of six municipalities south of Boston, and heading west. Lots of roads and turnings. With a late-morning start we only made about 12 miles. Add to this a couple more in the twilight without backpacks or signs trying to reach Grill 110 clearly visible from our Braintree motel but over eight lanes of screaming traffic. We gave up and settled for chili at a Barnes & Noble, which wasn’t bad. Unsurprisingly, B&N had no books in stock by David Ray Griffin or other authors disproving the official 9/11 narratives.

Today we got more (always quite vulgar) negative comments/hand gestures than in the countryside, but still many more supportive reactions by comparison, especially in a Chili’s where we had lunch. This afternoon a woman driving a Volvo seemed relieved to see us: “Yeah, tell them!” As it is no small feat in town to safely park a car and get out, all conversations are brief and through open car windows.

We hope tomorrow to find MA 135 and schlep to Wellesley or at least Needham. In Wellesley we join MA 9, which we can follow all the way to Pittsfield.

– Bruce