Former
airline pilot Phillip (alternately, “Philip”) Marshall spent a great
deal of time around Santa Barbara last year preparing for the release of
his controversial 9/11 conspiracy book “The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror.”
During the editing and pre-marketing process of Marshall’s book, he
expressed some degree of paranoia because the nonfiction work accused
the George W. Bush administration of being in cahoots with the Saudi
intelligence community in training the hijackers who died in the planes
used in the attacks.
“Think about this,” Marshall said last year in a written statement,
“The official version about some ghost (Osama bin Laden) in some cave on
the other side of the world defeating our entire military establishment
on U.S. soil is absolutely preposterous.”
Marshall went on to say: “The true reason the attack was successful
is because of an inside military stand-down and a coordinated training
operation that prepared the hijackers to fly heavy commercial airliners.
We have dozens of FBI documents to prove that this flight training was
conducted California, Florida and Arizona in the 18 months leading up to
the attack.”
The veteran pilot confided that he was concerned about his 10-year,
independent 9/11 study and most recent book since they pointed to the
Saudis and the Bush intelligence community as the executioners of the
attack that defeated all U.S. military defenses on Sept. 11, 2001.
Marshall said he knew his book might cause some people to take issue
with him.
Slaying victims Alex and Macaila Marshall with their father, Phillip Marshall.
However, could last weekend’s killings in the remote, gated community of
Forest Meadows outside the tiny town of Murphys be another conspiracy?
Although sheriff’s investigators don’t know the motive, they reported
that the killings as a double murder and suicide. Marshall was found in
his home’s doorway in a pool of blood with a 9mm Glock pistol that he
had just showed to a friend two weeks ago.
The Calaveras County coroner is having a toxicology report performed
on the blood of Marshall and his children to determine if any drugs are
present in their blood streams, which is standard procedure in cases
like this. Reports from the county sheriff indicate the children were
sleeping when shot. The coroner said Macaila Marshall, 14, and Alex
Marshall, 17, were lying 6 feet from each other on separate parts of a
large U-shaped sectional couch.
When asked whether it was possible the children were drugged, the
coroner said he couldn’t say yet. “That’s a good question,” he said in
published reports. “We will be checking tox on everybody. It did appear
as though they were sleeping.” The toxicology results and pathologist’s
report could be completed within three weeks.
“Cause of death is all going to be single gunshot wound to the head
for everybody,” the coroner said. The family dog also was found dead
from a gunshot in a bedroom.
Calaveras County officials said conspiracy theories about the deaths
are growing on online comment forums below stories about the incident.
Many of these stem from Marshall’s involvement with the CIA as a
contract pilot in the 1980s and the books he wrote about 9/11.
The children’s mother, Sean Marshall, was traveling on business in
Turkey at the time of the killings. The coroner said she is expected to
arrive in the area soon to make funeral arrangements.
2008 crime reports indicate friction between Marshall and his spouse.
Phillip Marshall was jailed briefly on suspicion of slapping Sean
Marshall’s sister, but he was not prosecuted. Last year, Marshall told
one of his book editors that he still was disputing custody of his
children with his ex-wife, but gladly attended his son’s football games
and was quite close with daughter.
However, at that time Marshall was heavily involved with publishing what became his last book.
“After an exhaustive 10-year study of this lethal attack that used
Boeing airliners filled with passengers and fellow crew members as
guided missiles, I am 100 percent convinced that a covert team of Saudi
intelligence agents was the source of logistical, financial and tactical
resources that directed essential flight training to the 9/11 hijackers
for 18 months before the attack,” Marshall wrote. “This conclusion was
determined six years ago and all subsequent evidence has only served to
confirm this conclusion.”
On March 1, two former U.S. senators, who headed separate 9/11
federal investigations, also raised the possibility of Saudi involvement
in the attacks that killed 3,000 people and spurred the global War on
Terror. In sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate,
former senators Bob Graham and Bob Kerrey, who saw top-secret
information on the Saudis’ activities, said they believe that the Saudi
government played a direct role in the terrorist attacks.
“I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of
the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the government
of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham said
in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi
government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of 9/11
victims and others. Graham headed a 2002 joint congressional inquiry
into the attacks and has claimed he was muzzled into silence about his
committee’s findings in 2002 by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other top members of the Bush intelligence community. MORE
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