Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Appendix A

“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Appendix A

This is it—the infamous “FEMA manual” James Fetzer just can’t stop gushing about. Don’t worry if you find it disappointingly underwhelming. That’s probably because it’s an obvious amateur forgery. But before we dive into the weeds, let’s start with a little background…

Tony Mead, owner of Absolute Best Moving Company—winner of the prestigious “Least Creative Company Name” award for 24 consecutive years—is a loud and proud (emphasis on loud) Sandy Hook denier from the sad and ugly swamplands of Florida. Because, really, where else would he be from? Perhaps jealous that his good buddies James Fetzer and Wolfgang Halbig were hogging all the attention (and donations), Tony—an exposed liar and all-around awful human being—miraculously got his greasy mitts on the so-called “FEMA manual.” Naturally, he uploaded it to his personal Mediafire account in October 2014.

Where did it come from? Who the hell knows! Predictably, this document was never authenticated, nor did it appear on any actual government website or server. For all intents and purposes, it originated solely with Mead. Of course, this lack of legitimacy never mattered to the denier community—does it ever? James Fetzer, a man who claims to have taught courses in critical thinking but clearly applies none of it himself, latched onto the document with gusto. He mentions it no fewer than six times in Nobody Died at Sandy Hook before reprinting it in its entirety as one of the book’s appendices.

Beyond its dubious origins, the “manual” is riddled with glaring issues. Most notably, it’s nearly an exact copy of a legitimate government document available on Massachusetts’ state website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170301083859/http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/dph/emergency-prep/dispensing-site-kit/drill-site-activation-call-down-exercise-plan.doc

It’s painfully obvious that Tony—or whoever duped him, which is probably not a Herculean task—downloaded this document, performed a lazy find-and-replace on the placeholders, and saved the result as a PDF to make further tampering more difficult. It’s a real shame, though, because this thing is in desperate need of a proofreader.

First and foremost, this document outlines instructions for a “Site Activation Call-down Drill.” In emergency preparedness, a call-down drill is defined as “a series of telephone calls from one person to the next used to relay specific information. An established and exercised call-down protocol can be used during emergency situations, such as a flu pandemic, to deliver urgent information to and for communication among members and staff.” In other words, it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Honestly, the fact that the clown who slapped this together couldn’t even find a more relevant document to plagiarize is impressive in its own way.

Secondly—and just as importantly—there’s no record of an “Emergency Response for Mass Casualties Involving Children” mass casualty drill on FEMA’s website. The closest match is a completely unrelated course titled “Preparing for Mass Casualty Incidents: A Guide for Schools, Higher Education, and Houses of Worship.” And this “course,” for what it’s worth, is a short, self-paced program that absolutely anyone can take online. From its course description:

This course will help you understand the threats and challenges of mass casualty incidents, and present ways you can improve your level of preparedness should the unthinkable occur.

So, we’re not even past the first page, and we’re already waist-deep in horseshit.

Then, on page five, under “Handling Instructions,” the barely literate author of this farce entered the following:

Agency POC:

Tom Romano
Federal Emergency Management Agency
860-256-0844 (office)
thomas.romano@ct.gove

Exercise Director:

Not Available

Yes, that is exactly how they entered Tom Romano’s email address after copying his information from a Connecticut Department of Emergency Services & Public Protection website that also contained this error: with an extra “e” at the end. This detail establishes that the fraudulent document was cobbled together from bits and pieces of legitimate sources. They also never bothered to verify who he actually works for or what his title is, as Mr. Romano is a Region 5 Training Coordinator for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, not FEMA. Adding to the incompetence, they failed to include anyone as the “Exercise Director,” which becomes a glaring issue by page fourteen, where the manual itself explains just how critical this role is to the supposed drill:

• Exercise Director/Controller/Evaluator. This position has the overall responsibility for planning, coordinating, and overseeing all exercise functions. He/she monitors the status of play and the achievement of the exercise design objectives.They declare when the drill starts and ends and manage the flow of the drill. This is the only participant who will provide information or direction to the players. However, because the drill focuses on the collection of time-based metrics, they should not intervene in timed activities while the drill is in progress.He/she is responsible for timing the overall drill, gathering individual call data collection sheets, computing metrics, and taking notes to identify areas for improvement.

Or on page fifteen:

If a real emergency occurs that affects the entire exercise, the exercise may be suspended or terminated at the discretion of the Exercise Director/Controller… The exercise is scheduled to run until the Exercise Director/Controller determines that the exercise objectives have been met.

Since the forger removed the [Exercise Duration] field from the original document, and there’s no Exercise Director, does that mean this thing is supposed to run forever?

These glaring omissions and errors discredit the document within the first five pages. And yet, somehow, it gets worse!

On page ten, the author inexplicably left “Mass Prophylaxis” from the original document as one of the Target Capabilities but decided to tack on the following gems:

• Mass Death of Children at a School by Firearms
• Suicide or Apprehension of Unknown Shooter
• Use of Media for Evaluation
• Use of Media for Information Distribution

Jeez… a little on the nose, don’t you think?

Setting aside how absurd it is to imagine a single mass casualty drill encompassing both prophylaxis and a school shooting (which would require vastly different responses), none of these bizarre additions represent real Target Capabilities. Of course they don’t.

Here is FEMA’s actual Target Capabilities List as it would have appeared in 2012 (Source):

I’ve highlighted “Mass Prophylaxis” to show that the only legitimate Target Capability listed in this sham document is the one they accidentally left in from the original. Unsurprisingly, the four additions don’t appear anywhere on this list—because they’re not real.

The author also included the following on page fifteen:

• All communications (written, radio, telephone, etc.) made during the exercise will begin and end with the phrase, “This is a drill.”

The importance of this phrase is reiterated on page sixteen:

• All exercise communication will begin and end with the phrase “This is a drill.” This is a precaution taken so anyone overhearing the conversation will not mistake the exercise play for a real-world emergency.

Unsurprisingly, this phrase is completely absent from every written statement, 911 call, and radio transmission in the final report. Not a single instance.

Building on this, Sandy Hook Facts provides an excellent write-up detailing the numerous ways in which the Sandy Hook shooting diverged from established “Active Shooter” drill protocols.

Page eighteen contains the following paragraph:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the RAND Corporation have developed a data collection spreadsheet and scoring metrics computation spreadsheet, for assessing site call-down capability.

Wait… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? It’s almost as if this was written for a Mass Prophylaxis exercise. Which, of course, it was.

Finally, as Kelbel over on the Metabunk message board pointed out:

I’m going to try and keep this as short as possible, because this document is so blatantly fake, it shouldn’t even need to be explained this many times.

The exercises are planned and executed at the above mentioned levels (state, local, tribal, etc.) and NOT the Federal level. The fake document has FEMA and DHS as the Sponsoring Agency(ies). The fake also contains at least 4 different “Exercise Names”, including “National Preparedness” and “National Incident Management System”, which are NOT scenarios, they are actual THINGS.

While exercises are planned with the guidance from FEMA and DHS, those agencies are not those who carry them out:

The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) doctrine consists of fundamental principles that frame a common approach to exercises. Applying these principles to both the management of an exercise program and the execution of individual exercises is critical to the effective examination of capabilities.

• Guided by elected and appointed officials
• Capability-based, objective driven
• Progressive planning approach
• Whole community integration
• Informed by risk
• Common methodology

If you want to see what an actual Active Shooter exercise plan looks like, take a look at this one from Purdue University (dated July 2010). The differences between the two documents are numerous and downright staggering.

Update 04/09/16: Group harassment organizer and zany hat wearer Tony Mead unleashed a load of binary diarrhea on the Crisis Actors Guild Facebook page earlier today, claiming that the fake FEMA document did not originate with him, but with someone named “JB Lewis.”

There’s just one teensy problem with this alibi: the link he provided (courtesy of a user with exactly one video—shocking, I know) shows that the video was uploaded on October 8, 2014:

And yet, the document appeared on Tony’s own Mediafire account one day earlier:

Oh, and just for fun, where was this TOP SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL document unearthed? Why, on Webs.com, a platform where anyone can create a free, anonymous website. Very official, indeed.

Better luck next time, Tony!