This story has been making the rounds on the newsgroup/bulletin board circuit for a while, but I wanted to have more confidence that it was real before I posted it. Looks pretty real.
This is from the South Bend Tribune:
November 22, 2004
Area man stirs debate on WTC collapse
South Bend firm's lab director fired after questioning federal probe
By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN
Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND -- The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.
Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.
On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency probing the collapse -- challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.Related: UL Executive Speaks Out on WTC Study
posted by Kevin at 9:50 PM
I was checking the logs and I noticed a .gov machine name that kept showing up:
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov
My stats viewer doesn't list IP numbers for me when it's set to resolve the host's domain name. It just lists the domain name, not the IP number. I find the IP manually when I'm interested in something and then use that to find the activity in the raw log.
But this was a weird one. I wasn't able to determine the IP for this treas.gov system. When I did a dig, I found this:
11/23/04 19:22:36 dig nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov @ 68.4.16.25
Dig nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov@ns21.treas.gov (199.196.132.3) ...
Authoritative Answer
Recursive queries supported by this server
Query for nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov type=255 class=1
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov MX (Mail Exchanger) Priority: 5 mx2.dhs.gov
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov MX (Mail Exchanger) Priority: 5 mx1.dhs.govWhat does that mean?! This thing is listed as a mail exchanger for the Department of Homeland Security.
Still, I had no IP for nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov. Try it. See if you can determine that thing's IP number.
Can't ping it. Can't nslookup it. Can't whois it. Can't tracert it. Can't dig it. Pretty slick, eh?
I looked at the time he showed up on the log viewer and then checked that moment in the raw log file. Sure enough, there he is:
63.167.255.31 - - [23/Nov/2004:08:48:43 -0700]
"GET /2004_04_18_blogarchive.html HTTP/1.0" 200 102566 "http://www.google.com/search?q=photograph+al+qaeda+training+manual+
agriculture&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&start=30&sa=N"
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 4.0)"The user conducted a Google search for:
photograph al qaeda training manual agriculture.
Was this really a Treasury hit? * Hmm *
That seems much more like a dhs.gov search than a treas.gov search. Also, if it's a mail exchanger, why is someone doing Google searches about al Qaeda from it? I wonder if any mail related ports are even running on that thing? I sure as hell wasn't willing to nmap it to find out.
Any comments?
P.S. If you want a real treat, do a Google search on
63.167.255.31 and check out some of the "work" these feds are accomplishing with our tax money!
My personal favorite is:
http://www.batcho.net/PersianGuestBookView.htm
Name:
BRANDY
Email:
BEELOU13@YAHOO.COM
Remote Name:
63.167.255.31
Date:
06 Oct 2004
Comments
HI KERRIE, YOUR BABIES ARE BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE LOVED PERSIANS SINCE I WAS A CHILD BUT HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO HAVE ONE. THEY ARE VERY HARD TO FIND IN VERMONT!! I RESCUED A BUFF TABBY CAT LAST YEAR AND I AM LOOKING TO FIND SOME KITTY FRIENDS FOR HIM. I RAN ACROSS YOUR WEBSITE AND IT IS VERY CLEAR THAT YOUR BABIES ARE WELL LOVED AND TAKEN CARE OF. I NOTICED THE PICTURE OF JELLY AND I AM INTERESTED IN BRINGING ONE OF YOUR CATS INTO MY FAMILY. COULD YOU PLEASE EMAIL ME SOME INFORMATION. FOR SOME REASON I CAN'T DIRECTLY EMAIL YOUR SITE. THANK YOU AND KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!
Or maybe this from the venerable Prophetic Dreams site:
http://members2.boardhost.com/mydreams/msg/3146.html
Re: what does my dream mean
Posted by elizabeth on 11/19/2004, 9:01 am, in reply to "what does my dream mean"
63.167.255.31
I had a bad dream lastnight, I dreamed that I was being fallowed by some hit men, I was trying to hide from them. I found myself under a truck just waiting for them to come by the truck and when one of them did come by I found myself with a shot gun and a hand gun, I shot at his knees to disable him. I than made my way out from under the truck. I stood in front of him saw him face to face and then I got my shot gun and finished him off. At this time ran into a cargarage to hid from the rest of the men. I ended getting into a cross fire with the rest of the men and I finished them off aswell. However, While the cross fire was going on there were two toddlers twins in the middle of it. Nothing happened to them. Funny thing is I don't know why I was wanted by thise hit men.
It means you're wasting taxpayer money, you twit!
Anyway, I didn't bother looking through all of it.
posted by Kevin at 7:32 PM