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THIS IMAGE OF FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY AND FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH appeared on the bills distributed in Kennard.
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TUESDAY, FEBRUARAY 17, 2009
KENNARD - James Dudley found something he didn't expect when he walked out to get his Monday edition of The Courier-Times.
Sitting on top of his paper was a fake, oversized bill bearing the faces of former Vice-President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush. Instead of a dollar amount, the bill was marked "9-11."
The realistic feel and color of the note impressed Dudley, who said it felt like a new bill freshly released from an ATM. It bore words at the top reading "Fraudulent Event Note," ones at the bottom saying "One Deception" and several Web site addresses.
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FLIERS:
Cause stir in Kennard
Charles Millis, another recipient of the bill, was moderately impressed by its realism. "It's fairly realistic," he said. Millis called a couple people he knew who lived on the south side of town, but they hadn't gotten anything like the "9-11" dollar with their newspaper.
Managing Editor Randy Rendfeld said the newspaper didn't deliver the bills, which had also found their way into several other newspaper boxes in Kennard. So where did they come from?
John-Michael P. Talboo is one of six organizers from Indiana of a Web site focused on the official and unofficial versions of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.
He lives in Kennard and said he had delivered 10 or 12 of the bills - which are sold online - while out on a morning walk. "I don't claim to really know what the truth is," he said. "I just don't think I have been told the whole story," he added.
Like other skeptics, Talboo says, he questions the official account that hijacked airliners brought down the towers by flying into them. "I had questions from day one," he said.
Unofficial theories allege the federal government was complicit in the attack or allowed it to happen to align public opinion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Talboo said he strongly suspects government involvement or awareness but isn't convinced.
Talboo and other skeptics often criticize the conclusions of the report prepared by the 9/11 Commission organized by Bush and Congress in 2002.
The Kennard man hopes to move to Columbia, Mo., in late February, he said, and resume organizing there.
He runs a blog with several other writers. The address was written on the back of at least one of the satirical bills delivered on Monday.
"If it was before the election," Dudley commented, "I would just say it's a political ad, but the election's over."
