Doesn’t Anybody Care about April Gallop? Or Attorney William Veale?

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

This article is about a 9-11 lawsuit, Gallop v Cheney, filed by a female soldier, April Gallop, who worked at the Pentagon. It’s quite a shocker of judicial arrogance and malfeasance.  Before getting to it, let me mention the current status of the action by the Lawyers Committee for 9-11 Truth.

That group asked the US District Court of the Southern District of New York to form a Grand Jury to investigate the matter of the collapse of the three buildings at the World Trade Center. The request was acknowledged, but no word has been forthcoming. The Architects and Engineers website says:

“Attorney Mick Harrison, Litigation Director for the Lawyers’ Committee, stated: “We understand the need for secrecy relating to what occurs before the Special Grand Jury. However, the law does not preclude the U.S. Attorney from communicating with the Lawyers’ Committee regarding whether our Petition and Supplement have in fact been provided to the Special Grand Jury, and whether our attorneys and scientific experts will be allowed to present evidence.

“The U.S. Attorney has been silent on these important questions. Out of necessity, we have just advised the U.S. Attorney that we are considering filing a federal court petition under the federal mandamus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1361, and the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 702, 706, to compel the U.S. Attorney to perform its duties….”

Gallop v Cheney

April Gallop was a private in the Army, stationed at the Pentagon. On that famous day, September 11, 2011, she had just returned from maternity leave and brought her son Elisha to enroll him in the Day Care Center there. She was told to go to her desk first and soon the attack occurred. She and the baby were injured.

The following are excerpts from the lawsuit she filed against Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers. Her attorney was William Veale, at the Center for 9-11 Justice in California:

“[Plaintiff April Gallop] attempted to learn what the proper procedure would be if an attacker were seen in the sky approaching the Pentagon. It would be this:

“First, since Cheney knew for 71 minutes that a plane was coming towards Washington, there should have been an alarm sounded within the Pentagon building so employees could run for safety. Indeed such alarms, complete with evacuation of the building, had been so common in the past that employees found them annoying.

“Second, the jets that should have been scrambled were capable of going from their hangars to a height of 29,000 feet in three minutes, and were very capable of dealing with an attacker plane. Again, that was common practice: 67 times in the 9 months prior to 9/11, when aircraft went astray in the US, Air Force jets went aloft in response.

The thing that hit the Pentagon cannot have been a Boeing 757 for at least three reasons [she says]:

“One: the story that a hijacker named Hani Hanjour piloted the plane makes no sense. He was an amateur, and the 330-degree turn maneuver that was required is not only beyond his capability but beyond that of even a skilled pilot.

“Two: the nose of a Boeing contains radar equipment and therefore its outer shell is porous; it could not have made its way intact through the concrete wall (as Rumsfeld said it did).

“Three: Gallop says: ‘as shown on CNN television, a large military aircraft, identified as an E-4B – the so-called Doomsday Plane, which carries the most complete and sophisticated military command and control apparatus – was circling above Washington at the time the Pentagon was hit. It was in a perfect position to coordinate the detonation and/or missile shot’.”

 — End of excerpts from the Pleadings

I shall now quote some bits from the dismissal.  Yes, the judge denied the nation the chance to see the facts of 9-11 brought forward in the proper, non-political way, in a courtroom. Gallop’s case occurred in 2010 — years after Congress had “done its best” by holding a Commission.

Judge Denny Chin’s Dismissal

I will choose five items from the US District Court’s ruling, and add my own comments to each:

I. “These affidavits [by theologian David Ray Griffin and physicist Steven Jones] only contain conclusory statements and personal opinions without evidentiary support.”

Comment: Books by Griffin and Jones contain meticulous research and much evidence re 9/11.

II. “Plaintiffs concede that their complaint is alleged ‘without reference to any binding or even analogous precedent.’”

Comment: How could a person get access to ‘precedent’ of government officials blowing up buildings?

and “Factual allegations contained in the complaint, must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.”

Comment: Ms Gallop is not “speculating” when she tells what is in the official 9/11 Commission report: Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta stated that a young man in the White House kept coming into the room to tell Cheney how close the plane was getting, and asked if orders NOT to shoot had been changed. Cheney replied in the negative.

III. “Plaintiffs have provided no factual basis to support a meeting of the minds.”

Comment: That is, one must show that the conspirators actually agree on things. Everyone knows that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers work together. Is Judge Chin joking?

IV. “Plaintiffs assert that under the doctrine of equitable tolling, the statute [of limitations] was ‘extended by additional acts of concealment in furtherance of the conspiracy.’ The purpose of the time-bar… is to preclude the resuscitation of stale claims.”

Comment: The issue is hardly stale, as the event of 9/11 is called upon constantly to support new legislation and foreign invasions.

Note: The judge called Gallop’s claims “delusional and fantastic.”

The Appeal

So then what happened?  Ms Gallop appealed the dismissal of her case to the  U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

The judges were  Winter, Walker, and Cabranes. Their decision was made on April 27, 2011. They said ” We … agree with the District Court that Gallop’s allegations of conspiracy are baseless and spun entirely of “cynical delusion and fantasy.”

The text of their ruling is as follows (but abridged):

“April Gallop appeals from a March 18, 2010 judgment of dismissing her complaint asserting violations of her constitutional rights …a common law tort of conspiracy to cause death and great bodily harm, and a  violation of the Antiterrorism Act…

“Gallop alleged that defendants, former senior government officials, caused the September 11, 2001 attacks in order to create a political atmosphere in which they could pursue domestic and international policy objectives and to conceal the misallocation of $2.3 trillion….

“We hold that the District Court did not err in concluding that Gallop’s claims were frivolous, and affirm Background

As the sentient world well recalls, on the morning of September 11, 2001, “agents of the al Qaeda terrorist organization hijacked commercial airplanes and attacked the World Trade Center and the national headquarters of the Department of Defense” See, e.g., The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report. …

“Apart from these factual allegations, the Complaint hypothesizes a fantastical alternative history to the widely accepted account of the “explosion” that injured Gallop and killed hundreds of other men and women inside the Pentagon. Among other things, Gallop’s complaint alleges that American Airlines Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon …

“Instead, the Complaint alleges that the United States’ most senior military and civilian leaders cause[d] and arrange[d] for high explosive charges to be detonated inside the Pentagon, and/ or a missile of some sort to be fired at the building… to give the false impression that hijackers had crashed into the building….

“On May 6, 2009, defendants moved to dismiss Gallop’s complaint on the following bases: (1) that defendants are entitled to qualified immunity; (2) that the Antiterrorism Act fails to provide a cause of action against U.S. government officials; (3) that Gallop’s constitutional claim is untimely, and, in any event, fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; (4) that all of her claims are barred under the doctrine of judicial estoppel; and (5) that all of her claims are frivolous.

“To survive dismissal, Gallop “must provide the grounds upon which [her] claim rests through factual allegations sufficient ‘to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” As the Supreme Court explained in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, a complaint that merely “tenders naked assertions devoid of further factual enhancement” fails to meet standard.

“A court may dismiss a claim as ‘factually frivolous’ if the sufficiently well-pleaded facts are ‘clearly baseless’ that is, if they are ‘fanciful,’ ‘fantastic,’ or ‘delusional.’

“While, as a general matter, Gallop or any other plaintiff certainly may allege that the most senior members of the United States government conspired to commit acts of terrorism against the United States, the courts have no obligation to entertain pure speculation and conjecture.

“Indeed …. the complaint utterly fails to set forth a consistent, much less plausible, theory for what actually happened that morning in Arlington. We therefore agree with the District Court that Gallop’s allegations of conspiracy are baseless and spun entirely of “cynical delusion and fantasy.”

Recusal?

Gallop’s Attorney Veale then requested a rehearing, based on the judges being prejudiced (in part because one of the three judges, John Walker, is a first-cousin of George W Bush). In reply, the Court, on July 7, 2011, ordered Veale to show cause why he should not pay sanctions. Said the judges:

“Indeed, rather than pursuing his client’s interests, Veale’s actions appear to be malicious – intended, in bad faith, to use his position as an attorney of record to harass and disparage the court…. Such conduct, in our view, is ground for consideration of further appellate sanctions.”

Enter, the American Bar Association

Dear Reader, you are waiting eagerly for the legal profession, and all constitutional scholars, to come to the aid of their colleague William Veale, arguing dramatically that such a case cannot be dismissed and that the conflict of interest by Judge Walker was unquestionably required.

Well, uh, no. If you search Google scholar for Gallop v Cheney, you will come up almost empty. Actually you will find my name as one of the scholars — but I did not do much to support Veale, as I had not realized that he got personally clobbered.  He was sanctioned and fined for his advocacy for his client. This is scandalous and extremely disheartening.

Consider the tone in this one journal article, by Debra Cassens Weiss, entitled ‘Fantastical’ 9/11 Lawsuit Could Lead to Sanctions for Lawyer, 2nd Circuit Says”. It is dated April 28, 2011.

“In an opinion  issued on Wednesday, the New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order to show cause why sanctions should not be imposed. The case had been argued only three weeks before. The court said the complaint was frivolous and affirmed dismissal, calling the suit a “fantastical alternative history.”

“The plaintiff, April Gallop, said she was working at the Pentagon with her infant son on the day of the attacks, and both sustained head and brain injuries from the collapse of the building’s ceiling and walls. She alleges the Pentagon was destroyed, not by a plane crash, but possibly by a missile or explosives on the orders of U.S. leaders, the appeals court said. According to the opinion, she claimed the conspiracy was motivated by a desire to create a political atmosphere where officials could pursue their policy objectives and to conceal trillions of dollars in defense misappropriations….

“In this case, the appeals court said, the plaintiff advanced inconsistent theories, including that the defendants may have ordered explosives to be planted in the Pentagon, may have hired Muslims extremists to carry out the attacks, may have used Muslims as dupes or patsies, or may have fired a missile into the Pentagon. Nor did the plaintiff cite any facts to support a conspiracy among the defendants, according to the opinion.

Gallop’s lawyer is identified as William Veale of Walnut Creek, Calif. In an interview with the ABA Journal, Veale said opinions by the appeals panel and then-U.S. District Judge Denny Chin were “both entirely, in all due respect, dishonest. They didn’t mention half of what we presented to them in the complaint. They simply disregarded mountains of evidence.”…

“He elaborated in an interview, urging us to mention what he sees as two pieces of key evidence. The first: One of the substances found at Ground Zero has been used in controlled demolitions, he said. The second: Cheney told a subordinate before the attack on the Pentagon that the “orders still stand.” That direction, according to Veale, was not an order to shoot down the plane. Instead, he claims, it was an order allowing the Pentagon to be attacked.

“In a phone call to the ABA Journal, Gallop said she was not sure why the government failed to stop the attack on the Pentagon, but the dismissal of the lawsuit means she won’t get a chance to learn more. She felt the court gave short shrift to her complaint and focused too much on whether Veale was indeed a lawyer.”

To which I can only say: “Huh?”

We Are Not Dead Yet

It’s not over till it’s over.  There are at least three ways that could re-enliven Gallop V Cheney.  The first is that someone, anyone really, could petition the original court for a writ of coram nobis, showing that the court was defrauded, in various ways, in 2010.

Second, the plaintiff could ask to present evidence that has since come to light. Namely, the FBI testified in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui that the telephone records of Flight 77 show that Barabara Olsen made one call, not two as in the official story , and that the one call lasted for 0 seconds. (This is elaborated in Elias Davidsson’s book Hijacking America’s Mind on 911.)

Third it is now time for “the baby” in the case to come forward with a lawsuit concerning the injuries he received on 9-11 at the Pentagon.   Gallop’s son, Elisha, who was an infant on the day, is now 18. I believe the statute of limitations for him did not begin to toll until his 18th birthday.

Let’s hear it for Elisha!