The Ten Biggest Lies In “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”

#10 – “There Was An Emergency Preparedness Drill/Exercise Nearby”

Mentioned no fewer than three times in Nobody Died At Sandy Hook, FEMA’s “Planning for the Needs of Children in Disasters” is repeatedly mischaracterized as either a “drill” or an “exercise.” In reality, it’s a six-hour independent study course based on materials from this Save the Children document. While FEMA offers the course online, some state organizations occasionally teach it in a classroom environment—which, for the record, looks a lot more like this:

…than this:

If you have even a passing familiarity with reality, you may notice a couple of differences!

On the morning of December 14, 2012, Connecticut’s Department of Emergency Services & Public Protection did in fact teach this course at a hospital roughly 33 minutes southeast of Newtown. However, the course—focused on preparing for natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes, as well as addressing the needs of children in such emergencies—had absolutely no connection to school shootings, let alone Sandy Hook. Despite this, conspiracy theorists like James Tracy continue to misrepresent this straightforward training session as something far more sinister, earning it a well-deserved spot on this list.

#9 – “The Triage Tarps Were Empty”

Most victims suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were tragically and obviously deceased. They were legally declared so after EMS personnel made multiple attempts to revive them:

Cassavechia stated that four separate patient assessments were made to guarantee no one was resuscitatable.

– Matthew Cassavavechia, Director of Emergency Medical Services for Danbury Hospital

Source: Book 6, 00002113.pdf

Reed stated they then assessed the two adult victims in the hallway and utilized the cardiac machine. Reed stated that Cassavechia had spoken to the Emergency Medical Control Physician D. Pat Broderick and they decided that all the victims with obvious non-life sustainable head wounds would be checked with the cardiac machine. Reed stated they re-assessed the victims in the rooms utilizing the cardiac machine.

– John Reed, Paramedic Supervisor of Emergency Medical Services for Danbury Hospital

Source: Book 6, 00002358.pdf

The deceased were formally triaged inside the school:

Cassavechia said that the victims were formally triaged using the SMART triage program.

– Matthew Cassavavechia, Director of Emergency Medical Services for Danbury Hospital

Source: Book 6, 00002113.pdf

Reed stated that all the victims were given a triage tag, except for the victims in the bathroom. Those tags were put on the thermostat outside the bathroom door. Reed stated they did not want to disturb the crime scene any more than they already had.

– John Reed, Paramedic Supervisor of Emergency Medical Services for Danbury Hospital

Source: Book 6, 00002358.pdf

Three of the four surviving victims were rushed directly to Danbury Hospital by ambulance. The sole remaining survivor, substitute kindergarten teacher Deborah Pisani, was first treated at a secondary triage area in the firehouse parking lot before also being transported to Danbury. This is corroborated by a statement from first responder Ryan Clark:

I exited the vehicle and proceeded to remove any medical equipment we might need into an area that would be called a triage station. EMS Captain Halsted Firefighter Berressi and myself were notified of a potential patient located at the comer of the parking lot furthest from the school. We found and rendered aid to the patient with a laceration to the foot. After wrapping the wound we transferred care to a female member of Newtown EMS. We then returned to the triage station area to continue preparing for the possibility of more patients.

– Ryan Clark, First Responder/Firefighter with the Sandy Hook Fire Company

Source: Book 6, 00256439.pdf

Deborah Pisani, with her left leg wrapped and elevated, can clearly be seen being treated at the secondary triage area in both Channel 12 helicopter footage and Wall Street Journal footage:

Despite the fact that this footage is referenced multiple times throughout Nobody Died At Sandy Hook, the authors inexplicably chose to omit the images of Ms. Pisani receiving care. This deliberate omission further underscores their commitment to misleading their audience.

#8 – “Adam Lanza Was Too Novice A Shooter”

Adam Lanza’s extensive familiarity with firearms is thoroughly documented.

Both of Adam’s parents, Nancy and Peter, were avid shooters and enthusiastically introduced their two sons to the hobby at an early age. According to family friend Jordan LaFontaine, Adam “was four at the time he shot his first gun.” This occurred at the LaFontaine residence, where Adam was taught to fire a .22 and a “high-powered air rifle” under the guidance of his mother, Nancy, and Jordan’s father, Marvin (Source: “Newtown: An American Tragedy” and Book 7, 00196017.pdf).

Peter Lanza elaborated further on Adam’s experience during a police interview:

S/A Shibley asked Peter “if he transferred any firearms to Nanoy Lanza and documented the transfer in the Connecticut State firearm registry, to which Peter replied no. S/A Shibley asked Peter if he ever gave a firearm to Adam Lanza to which he replied no. S/A Shibley asked Peter if he was aware of Nancy Lanza purchasing and owning firearms to which he replied yes. S/A Shibley asked Peter if he was aware of Nancy Lanza purchasing firearms for Adam to which he replied no. Peter stated he assumed Adam had access to firearms purchased by Nancy because on one occasion he took Adam to Wooster Mountain Shooting Range and Adam possessed two long guns that he believed were purchased by Nancy. S/A Shibley asked Peter if he ever purchased ammunition for Adam to which he replied yes. Peter Lanza stated he would purchase a box of ammunition for Adam when they went to shooting ranges, but they would shoot all the ammunition at the range. I asked Peter if he was aware of how Adam obtained so much ammunition and Peter stated that he did not know.

Source: Book 7, 00006579.pdf

Nancy and Adam frequented three local shooting ranges, including Wooster Mountain, where one witness—a former police officer—recalls giving Adam shooting tips at Nancy’s request:

[redacted] stated that he was at the Wooster Mountain Shooting Range in Ridgefield (Danbury) approximately 2 years ago. He stated that he saw Nancy and Adam there shooting the Bushmaster AR-15 as well as what he believed to be a Glock Model 19 .9mm handgun. [redacted] stated that Nancy asked him if he would be willing to give Adam some pointers and tips on how to shoot. [redacted] stated that he agreed and gave Adam a quick lesson in controlling his breathing and proper aiming techniques.

Source: Book 7, 00256256.pdf

Christian Hansen, a certified NRA instructor who worked at the Fairfield County Indoor Range from 1986 to 2010, provided further insight into Adam’s firearms training:

When I saw the media picture of Adam Lanza, I recognized him. I believe it was about 4 years ago when he and his mother took a basic safety class from me. I remember the mother to be a nice person and Adam to be extremely quiet and polite. To the best of my recollection, the mother took the basic pistol certification class and Adam with his mother took the basic NRA rifle safety course. After they completed the safety course, they came back two or three times within a year of taking the class and rented rim fire pistols and rifles. Both the mother and son were actively shooting when they came to the range. I was working part-time at that time, they could have been there more times. There was a possibility that they brought their own ammunition.

– Christian Hansen, certified NRA instructor

Source: Book 7, 00029167.pdf

The third range Adam visited was Shooters Indoor Pistol Range in New Milford. Investigators discovered a sign-in sheet from 2011 bearing the names and signatures of Nancy and Adam Lanza:

Source: Book 7, 00222826.pdf.

#7 – “Websites Were Set Up And Tweets Went Out Before The Shooting”

This claim, rooted in a profound misunderstanding of technology, alleges that tweets referencing the shooting were sent out hours in advance, while donation websites were supposedly created days earlier (based on their Google cache dates). Neither assertion holds water.

First, let’s address the tweets. By default, new Twitter accounts are set to Pacific Time, regardless of the user’s actual location. Don’t believe me? Create a new Twitter account and check the settings yourself. For instance, despite being located in the Northeast, here’s what my settings showed immediately after account creation (with identifying details removed):

If a Twitter user—such as the person managing a newspaper’s account—neglected to update this setting, their tweets would appear three hours early. And, unsurprisingly, every single one of these “prophetic” tweets is consistently three hours ahead:

To illustrate further, let’s examine tweets from The Hartford Courant during Super Bowl XLVIII on February 2, 2014. According to their timestamp, they successfully “predicted” the winner and final score a mere 20 minutes after kickoff:

For additional proof, visit The Hartford Courant’s Twitter page today (while in the Eastern Time Zone) and find their most recent tweet. Hover over the timestamp and compare it to your local time. For example, the screenshot below shows their most recent tweet as 21 minutes old, yet the hover timestamp reads “12:24 PM.” As verified by the NIST time display in the same browser window, this timestamp is three hours off—exactly what we’d expect from an unadjusted default setting:

Now, let’s tackle the websites. Google’s cache timestamps can be inconsistent and occasionally inaccurate when dealing with active sites. Even Google’s Matt Cutts, an engineer, has acknowledged this:

Replicating this inconsistency is straightforward. Search Google for “Sandy Hook conspiracy theory,” limiting the results to 2011. You’ll find several conspiracy sites—some referencing events like James Tracy’s 2016 firing from FAU—displaying dates from years before the shooting. Surely no one believes these sites possessed clairvoyance:

#6 – “There Are Different Cars In The Parking Lot”

The claim here is that the cars in the school parking lot magically change depending on the photograph. Unsurprisingly, no one making this claim has ever managed to provide actual evidence, because it’s an outright lie.

To demonstrate, here’s what I’ll refer to as “evacuation photo #1” taken by Shannon Hicks:

The vehicles seen in the above photo are:

#1: Green Saturn Vue
#2: Silver Mazda 3
#3: Maroon Honda Pilot
#4: Blue Ford Edge
#5: Red Subaru Impreza
#6: Grey BMW X5
#7: Green Volvo S60 (?)
#8: White Chevy Traverse
#9: Maroon Honda Pilot

In the still from the helicopter footage below, the yellow star indicates the approximate location from which Shannon Hicks took “evacuation photo #1” earlier that morning:

Now compare both to this photo from page eight of Meehan’s parking lot photos:

#1: Green Saturn Vue
#2: Silver Mazda 3
#3: Maroon Honda Pilot
#4: Blue Ford Edge
#5: Red Subaru Impreza
#6: Grey BMW X5
#7: Green Volvo S60 (?)
#8: White Chevy Traverse

Here’s another evacuation photo, which I’ll refer to as “evacuation photo #2”, also taken by Shannon Hicks:

The four most visible vehicles in the above photo are:

#1: Green Ford Expedition
#2: Silver Lexus GX470
#3: Green/blue Chevy Malibu
#4: Black Subaru Impreza

Here’s a still from the helicopter footage, showing those same cars:

While I didn’t mark it in either photo, you can make out the black Nissan Rogue parked just to the right of the black Subaru Impreza (#4).

And here’s page 160 from Farr’s nighttime exterior photos:

#1: Green Ford Expedition
#2: Silver Lexus GX470
#3: Green/blue Chevy Malibu
#4: Black Subaru Impreza

Here’s one last crime scene and helicopter footage comparison, first starting with page 137 of Farr’s nighttime exterior photos:

#1 Silver Toyota Minivan
#2 Beige Toyota SUV
#3 Blue Honda CRV
#4 Silver Nissan Maxima
#5 White Subaru Outback (?)

Compare that to this still from the helicopter footage:

Here’s a closer look:

While the Toyota minivan is cut out of the shot, the rest of the cars are the same:

#2 Beige Toyota SUV
#3 Blue Honda CRV
#4 Silver Nissan Maxima
#5 White Subaru Outback (?)

These are undeniably the same exact cars. Once again, Fetzer is either guilty of abysmal (or non-existent) research—or he’s lying to his readers. There’s no other explanation.

#5 – “A Sign Declaring Everyone Must Check In Appeared Before The Shooting”

The large, electronic sign in front of the firehouse is often paraded by deniers as some of their “best evidence” that the events of December 14th, 2012, were not a tragic school shooting but an “active shooter” exercise where no one was killed. However, for this claim to have any merit, the sign would need to have been in place prior to the alleged drill. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. In fact, we can definitively show that the sign did not appear until sometime on December 15th—making it entirely irrelevant to the events of the previous day.

Let’s start by pinpointing the location of the sign. Mick West of Metabunk created a composite image overlaying the photo of Gene Rosen used on the back cover of James Fetzer’s book (from an interview with Megyn Kelly on December 18th, 2012) with a recent street view of the firehouse:

Now that we know where the sign was placed, let’s establish a timeline using photos and videos from various sources.

One of the earliest views of the firehouse comes from Channel 12 helicopter footage, taken around 10:45 AM on December 14th. As you can see, there’s no sign in that location:

Next, we have a photograph by Tim Clayton, likely taken around the same time (or shortly after) as the helicopter footage. Again, no sign:

This alone should bury any speculation surrounding the “check-in” sign and, by extension, dismantle the entire “it was just a drill” narrative. But let’s refine the timeline further.

A photo by John Woike of the Hartford Courant, taken as the sun sets on December 14th, shows the intersection of Dickinson Drive and Riverside Road. Still no sign:

In an interview filmed early on the morning of December 15th, Gene Rosen speaks with reporters from CBS This Morning while seated across the street from the firehouse. This footage provides an unobstructed view of where the sign would have been if it had existed before the 15th, yet there is nothing there:

A photo by Spencer Platt of Getty Images, taken shortly before 9 AM on December 15th (per the image’s EXIF data), shows the sign still missing:

Some claim the small dark shape circled in the following image shows the sign in place on the morning of December 15th. However, even if the sign were off (despite every other photo showing it on), there’s no trace of its bright orange frame:

Here’s a close-up of that area:

Additionally, the sign is noticeably absent from this photo, taken later that same day:

The first undeniable photo of the sign, clearly on and in its proper location, is the following image by Mario Tama, taken around dusk on December 15th:

#4 – “The Children Were Rearranged For The Evacuation Photos”

No, they’re just different children.

This claim is based off of the idea that the same two children appear in both of Shannon Hicks’ infamous evacuation photographs. Why re-use two of the children and swap the rest? Did they run out? Who knows? But this is what James Fetzer, “Vivian Lee”, and a disheartening number of other conspiracy theorists actually believe.

Fetzer and Lee, in Chapter Five of Nobody Died At Sandy Hook, make the absurd claim that these two children…

Are the same as these two:

Besides some superficial similarities in their clothing, it should be obvious that these are different students. Let’s compare:

Set #1 – The children in the black shirts:

• The boy on the left is wearing a long-sleeved black shirt or sweatshirt with a large design printed on the front. The design appears to be of some unknown character, posing with a red skateboard. There doesn’t appear to be any writing. The other boy’s shirt or sweatshirt has a school logo or something similar printed on it: you can see the word “South” at the beginning and it looks like “Fat” or “Fal” on the second line.
• The boy on the left has bangs that sit evenly across his forehead. The boy on the right has his hair swept up in the front, off of his forehead.
• The boy on the left is wearing light blue running shoes/sneakers with a sole that tapers off at the front, like a New Balance sneaker would. There’s nothing in his right hand, and likely nothing in his left hand either. The boy on the right is wearing dark grey sneakers with a uniform sole and holding papers in his right hand. His jeans are also noticeably darker.

Set #2 – The children in the grey shirts:

• Both boys are wearing long-sleeved grey shirts or sweatshirts. The boy on the right looks like he may have a collar.
• The boy on the left has light brown hair. The other boy has much darker hair, though they are cut and styled in a similar fashion. Their facial features are drastically different.
• The boy on the left is wearing black or very dark blue athletic pants with a bright blue stripe that goes at least halfway down the leg. His sneakers are light grey and the large, white sole is very noticeable against the asphalt. The other boy is wearing dark blue athletic pants with what looks like silver strips just below the knees, at least on his left leg. His sneakers are black with a very thin sole.

You’d have to be a lunatic to think that these are the same kids.

#3 – “There Was No ‘Internet Activity ‘ From The School Between 2008-2013”

This outrageous claim rests entirely on a combination of outdated information and a complete (and likely intentional) misunderstanding of how the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine operates.

So what exactly is the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (or “The Wayback Machine”)? Let’s start with Wikipedia’s definition:

The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web and other information on the Internet created by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization, based in San Francisco, California, United States. The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. The service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a “three dimensional index.”

Since 1996, they have been archiving cached pages of web sites onto their large cluster of Linux nodes. They revisit sites every few weeks or months and archive a new version if the content has changed. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who are offered a link to do so. The intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. Their grand vision is to archive the entire Internet.

Hopefully, you caught the important part: The Wayback Machine revisits sites “every few weeks or months.” This concept is reiterated later in the same article:

The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked web site updates are recorded. Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots.

And just in case that still isn’t clear enough, the Wayback Machine states this again—right there as a disclaimer on their calendar view page:

Let me make this crystal clear: archived versions of websites, sporadically crawled by the Wayback Machine, are not the same as “Internet activity.” Confusing the two demonstrates a level of technological ignorance best described as “absolutely staggering.” (Although, to be fair, it’s still not quite as ludicrous as the commenter who claimed “all Internet connections” were “severed”—as if someone stormed the school’s networking closets with a pair of gardening shears and just went to town on the cabling.)

“The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the Internet which uses a special software to crawl and download all publicly accessible World Wide Web pages. It was Jungle Server who first discovered that the Wayback Machine shows an absence of Internet activity from SHES since 2008 — the same year when the school was found to be contaminated with asbestos.” pg. 34

There is absolutely no evidence that Sandy Hook Elementary School was any more “contaminated” with asbestos in 2008 than it was in 1956—when the school was built. For context, my own home wasn’t suddenly more “contaminated” with asbestos when I had the original siding replaced a few years ago than it was when it was built in the mid-1950s, back when asbestos was commonly used in construction materials.

Since the book predictably fails to provide a source for this asbestos claim, I had to trace it back to Maria Hsia Chang’s completely wretched blog, Fellowship of the Minds. Chang, in turn, cites a single short paragraph from the Newtown Bee, published on November 7, 2008. While the original URL is no longer live, the article remains accessible via—wait for it—the Wayback Machine. You can view it here.

Here’s what it says:

Hopefully, your reading comprehension isn’t as poor as Maria Chang’s. But in case you’re confused, let me reiterate: in November 2008, asbestos levels in Newtown schools—presumably including Sandy Hook Elementary, although it isn’t named—were deemed safe and posed no threat to students or faculty. In other words, Chang’s own source doesn’t corroborate her claim.

And if Sandy Hook was allegedly “contaminated” enough to be closed (it wasn’t), what about the high school and middle school, which were specifically identified as having “evidence of asbestos”? Were they closed too?

To drive the point home, the Connecticut Department of Education’s 2011 school facilities survey gave Sandy Hook Elementary a perfect 4/4 score (“Not a problem”) for “Asbestos remediation.”

“To verify Jungle Surfer’s claim, I searched for SHES’s website, http://newtown.k12.ct.us/~sh” pg. 34

Here’s where things really go off the rails: Sandy Hook School’s website hasn’t been located at http://newtown.k12.ct.us/~sh since the summer of 2006. That’s when the Newtown public school district’s webmaster changed the addresses for all the district’s school websites, not just Sandy Hook’s. The address would change again in 2011.

If you search the Wayback Machine for any of those outdated URLs, you’ll find similarly sparse—if not more extreme—results:

This isn’t obscure information. The fact that Newtown changed its school website addresses in 2006 is readily available, as I’ll show you in a moment. Yet somehow, the authors of this book missed it (or ignored it), demonstrating once again just how incompetent—or deliberately dishonest—they are. They cannot be trusted to report facts, and their failure is particularly damning in a book that spends so much time vilifying the so-called “mainstream media.”

Even though the Sandy Hook address cited in the book is incorrect, the main website for Newtown’s public schools in 2008 was indeed http://www.newtown.k12.ct.us. Plugging that into the Wayback Machine yields the following results:

The first thing you’ll likely notice is a significant gap in snapshots: apart from a single one in January 2010, there’s nothing between November 2007 and July 2011. I’ll explain why in a moment. But if you look at the last snapshot before the gap (November 20, 2007), you’ll see that the listed address for Sandy Hook Elementary was http://www.newtown.k12.ct.us/shs:

This address is confirmed by an edition of The Sandy Hook Connection—the school’s official newsletter—dated January 8, 2009:

When you enter this correct address into the Wayback Machine, the gap narrows significantly, covering only April 2008 to October 2010:

That’s a far cry from the original claim of four full years. And April? Did these geniuses think the school closed with two months left in the academic year?

But even a two-and-a-half-year gap might seem long. So what’s going on? There’s a simple technical explanation, as outlined in the Wayback Machine’s FAQ:

How can I have my site’s pages excluded from the Wayback Machine?

You can exclude your site from display in the Wayback Machine by placing a robots.txt file on your web server that is set to disallow User-Agent: ia_archiver. You can also send an email request for us to review to info@archive.org with the URL (web address) in the text of your message.

What’s a robots.txt file? From Wikipedia:

The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. The standard specifies how to inform the web robot about which areas of the website should not be processed or scanned.

And guess what? On June 4, 2008, the Newtown public schools’ webmaster added the following two lines to their domain’s robots.txt file:

What do these lines do?

• "User-agent: *" applies to all web crawlers.
• "Disallow: /" tells the crawlers not to visit or archive any pages on the site.

Once those changes were made, the Wayback Machine—by design—stopped archiving pages for all schools in the Newtown district, not just Sandy Hook. This isn’t speculation. Anyone with a few spare minutes can replicate these steps and confirm these results. Unlike the shameless contributors to this execrable book, I encourage you to do so.

#2 – “The School Was Being Used As Storage And Staged To Look Like A Real School Shortly Before The Attack”

Contributor “Dr. Eowyn” (aka Maria Hsia Chang) proposes this baseless claim in Nobody Died At Sandy Hook. Chang, who previously ran her own conspiracy-laden blog where she frequently wrote about Sandy Hook, describes the state of the classrooms and hallways at Sandy Hook Elementary School on page 32 of the book.

I’ve highlighted the relevant section and cropped out the rest. For reference, the source photos can be found in Walkley’s scene photos, which are part of the official report and included in the “22 Assorted Files” archive:

Starting with the bottom photo on this page, Maria Hsia Chang (writing as “Dr. Eowyn”) misidentifies it as a hallway being used for “storage.” However, context reveals otherwise: Walkley’s crime scene photos are organized chronologically across 760 pages, and this particular image appears on page 759—very late in the investigative process. Another photo from roughly the same time, almost identical in composition, appears on page 953 (of 970) in Tranquillo’s Back-up Scene Photos #2, also found in the “22 Assorted Files” archive. As with Walkley’s, Tranquillo’s photos are presented in chronological order.

Here’s a clearer, annotated version of Walkley’s photo, which Chang presented without context. This is on page 759 out of 760, near the very end of the investigation’s photographic timeline. As always, you can click to open and view in a larger tab:

In this view, odd-numbered rooms are on the left, and even-numbered rooms are on the right, with room numbers increasing as you move toward the lobby. For clarity, I’ve highlighted the height markers posted on the wall between rooms #3 and #5 and the “Warm up to a good story” display located between rooms #10 and #12 for easy reference.

A blue tarp has been hung between the lobby and hallway, blocking visibility beyond, and red biohazard bags are on the floor between rooms #10 and #12. Several other items visible here appear in earlier photos: white and blue portable storage racks, like the one on the far right, are visible in Walkley’s scene photos (pages 161–162), inside room #10 (Victoria Soto’s 1st-grade classroom). Tranquilo’s backup scene photos #1 (pages 167 and 200) show these same racks and what are likely the same two desk chairs and accompanying computer desk on the left.

For orientation, here’s this view represented on the Sandy Hook floor plan:

Here’s how that hallway appeared on December 14, 2012, shortly after the shooting. This image, from page 88 of Walkley’s scene photos, has been slightly cropped to resemble the view on page 759. Walkley captured this photo from a position further away from the lobby, standing between rooms #4 and #6 (or room #3 and the hallway), while the photo on page 759 was taken closer, roughly between rooms #6 and #8 (or rooms #3 and #5).

The height markers between rooms #3 and #5 are clearly visible here, and I’ve circled one of Adam Lanza’s clips on the floor. A yellow star marks the approximate position from which the page 759 photo was taken. In the distance, Mary Sherlach’s body is faintly visible:

By room #5 on the floor, you can spot SWAT equipment, including a helmet, a LifePak 15 defibrillator/monitor, an EMT’s backpack, and a bag containing MCI (mass-casualty incident) supplies.

Here’s a closer view of this area, sourced from page 70 of Tranquillo’s “Back-up Scene Photos 1.” In this image, I’ve labeled the height markers between rooms #3 and #5, circled the cartridge, and indicated Walkley’s approximate position when taking the photo misrepresented by Chang. This closer angle highlights the exact scene context and position details:

By now, it’s clear that the photo Chang used was taken while rooms were actively being cleared out, with contents temporarily stored in the hallway to allow investigators unimpeded access to each room. Evidence of this clearing process is visible in Walkley’s scene photos (pages 563-574) and Tranquillo’s “Back-up Scene Photos 2” (pages 151-152), which show room #8 almost entirely emptied out. This procedure is further corroborated by the official report in CFS 1200704597, 00118939.pdf, which documents the meticulous clearing of each space to aid in the investigation:

If the investigation photos weren’t enough, here’s a photo from Sandy Hook’s 2011-2012 scrapbook, capturing this very hallway as it appeared on January 23, 2012—long before any forensic activity began. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a box, chair, or bag in sight, offering a clear look at the everyday school environment devoid of any obstruction or makeshift storage:

The evidence is clear: Sandy Hook’s hallways were never used for storage, and the only reason these images appear out of order in Fetzer’s book is because they were intentionally misrepresented by Maria Hsia Chang and James Fetzer. With nine so-called “researchers” (five of them PhDs!) contributing to this work, you’d think such an “error” would have been caught—unless, of course, they wanted it that way.

And now for the “jammed” classroom pictured at the top of that page. Not surprisingly, it follows the same pattern of intentional deception. The room shown is actually classroom #6, used for special education. The photo, lifted from page 249 of Walkley’s scene photos, was deliberately chosen to show the most cluttered area at the back of the room, near the teacher’s desk. In reality, other angles of this room, taken immediately after the one Chang used, show it was far from overcrowded and perfectly suitable for classes. Here’s a composite I’ve created from those follow-up images, found on pages 249-251 of Walkley’s scene photos—photos Chang would have seen but conveniently ignored:

Not quite as “jammed” as described, is it? Unfortunately for Chang, my second composite—created using four photos taken from the other side of the room, just inside the door (pages 244-247 of Walkley’s scene photos)—shows the room looking even less cluttered than the first set. It’s clear that the special education classroom was nothing like the chaotic image Chang tried to present:

As seen in both composites, there is no fire hazard here as Maria Chang claims. The path to the door is clear and unobstructed. Additionally, personal items such as jackets and water bottles are visible in both photos, further indicating an active classroom. In fact, you can even spot coffee brewing to the left in the first composite, and a December 2012 calendar is prominently visible just to the right of center. All of this points to the fact that this was indeed an active classroom and a functioning school.

#1 – “We Have The FEMA Manual”

They certainly have something, but a legitimate FEMA manual—let alone the FEMA manual—it most assuredly is not.

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!