http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/dotmil/arkin020199.htm: Please can we discuss in a civil manner the points raised in the Washington Post story. IMO, voice morphing was used on 9/11. When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing Bill Arkin By William M. Arkin Special to washingtonpost.com Monday, Feb. 1, 1999 "Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command. At least the voice sounds amazingly like him. But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape. Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors." "They chose to have him say something he would never otherwise have said," chuckled one of Papcun's colleagues. A Box of Chocolates is Like War Most Americans were introduced to the tricks of the digital age in the movie Forrest Gump, when the character played by Tom Hanks appeared to shake hands with President Kennedy. For Hollywood, it is special effects. For covert operators in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, it is a weapon of the future. "Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things," says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military's school for information warfare. PSYOPS seeks to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations. Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives. To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup. Allah on the Holodeck Pentagon planners started to discuss digital morphing after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Covert operators kicked around the idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or showing other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising situation. The nascent plan was for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and the Arab world. The tape war never proceeded, killed, participants say, by bureaucratic fights over jurisdiction, skepticism over the technology, and concerns raised by Arab coalition partners. What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad? But the "strategic" PSYOPS scheming didn't die. What if the U.S. projected a holographic image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to rise up against Saddam, a senior Air Force officer asked in 1990? According to a military physicist given the task of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established of projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the air. But doing so over the skies of Iraq? To project such a hologram over Baghdad on the order of several hundred feet, they calculated, would take a mirror more than a mile square in space, as well as huge projectors and power sources. And besides, investigators came back, what does Allah look like? The Gulf War hologram story might be dismissed were it not the case that washingtonpost.com has learned that a super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project information power from space ... for special operations deception missions." War is Like a Box of Chocolates Voice-morphing? Fake video? Holographic projection? They sound more like Mission Impossible and Star Trek gimmicks than weapons. Yet for each, there are corresponding and growing research efforts as the technologies improve and offensive information warfare expands. Whereas early voice morphing required cutting and pasting speech to put letters or words together to make a composite, Papcun's software developed at Los Alamos can far more accurately replicate the way one actually speaks. Eliminated are the robotic intonations. The irony is that after Papcun finished his speech cloning research, there were no takers in the military. Luckily for him, Hollywood is interested: The promise of creating a virtual Clark Gable is mightier than the sword. Video and photo manipulation has already raised profound questions of authenticity for the journalistic world. With audio joining the mix, it is not only journalists but also privacy advocates and the conspiracy-minded who will no doubt ponder the worrisome mischief that lurks in the not too distant future. "We already know that seeing isn't necessarily believing," says Dan Kuehl, "now I guess hearing isn't either." William M. Arkin, author of "The U.S. Military Online," is a leading expert on national security and the Internet. He lectures and writes on nuclear weapons, military matters and information warfare. An Army intelligence analyst from 1974-1978, Arkin currently consults for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, MSNBC and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Arkin can be reached for comment at william_arkin@washingtonpost.com. This post demonstrates that voice morphing is not only possible, but it being used. I submit that these "calls" from loved ones on the planes were nothing other than this applied technology. Staged, voice morphs, to make the families believe their loved ones were on board. They weren't. Remote controlled planes with NOBODY aboard is what happened in reality. The rest of the "official" BS WAS DESIGNED TO ENRAGE FAMILIES, AND CREATE A WILL FOR PEOPLE TO ACCEPT THE UPCOMING PRE-EMPTIVE WAR. 9/11 was most definitely an inside job. Any objections as to the technology being used?
Once again,you confuse opinion with proof...+Does Papcun think the state of 'voice morphing' art was sufficiently advanced 0n 9/11? did he run his recording by people who knew the general?.....people are unaware of the mannerisms we put into our speech patterns..
The posted article says it takes a ten minute digital recording of a voice to get a working sample. Please explain in a civil manner how some last minute fliers got their voices recorded for ten minutes. Start with Mark Bingham, since we know he changed his flight from the original time. So did Barbra Olsen. So did Todd Beamer.
I don't know for sure, but I would surmise that their voice patterns had been obtained some time in advance. Seems only logical.
You are making assumptions. For this voice morphing plan to work, the 'masterminds' would have to know exactly who was going to be on the flight, and where to call their loved ones. They would have to obtain 10 minutes of digital recordings of each of them. There were several last minute plane switches, both of passengers and crew. This is extremely common in air travel. Respectfully: how could the plotters know?
Well, to be perfectly honest...I do not know exactly how they managed that particular aspect. So does that invalidate it altogether now? Because I don't know?
Evidence would be nice. So far the only evidence you have presented make voice morphing unlikely at best, given the circumstances.
I have no direct evidence of the voice morphing. It is assumed...a speculative point, that seems reasonable. I've repeatedly read from many sources that this is how they may have pulled it off. Many believe as I but, you're correct, I have none for now, but I will dig further and get back to this thread in the event I turn something more concrete up. Fair enough?
More on this here: Taken from here:http://www.how911wasdone.blogspot.com/ 3. Was Evidence of Muslim Hijackers Provided by Phone Calls from the Airliners? I am not going to reproduce the chapter here, just give a short summary. Griffin basically denies that it has been proven that any cell phone calls have been made from any of the 4 airplanes, except, maybe 2 calls from flight93 while the plane was at low altitude, shortly before the crash. Griffin states that at the given height of 30.000+ feet and a cruising speed of say 500 mph succesfully using cell phones from an airplane in 2001 was technically impossible. There was, however, a big problem with these reported calls: Given the technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet, especially calls lasting more than a few seconds, were not possible, and yet these calls, some of which reportedly lasted a minute or more, reportedly occurred when the planes were above 30,000 or even 40,000 feet. This problem was explained by some credible people, including scientist A.K. Dewdney, who for many years had written a column for Scientific American. The information about said phone calls was delivered by the FBI. The FBI had a habit of changing it's story: This suspicion is reinforced by the FBI's change of story in relation to United Flight 93. Although we were originally told that this flight had been the source of about a dozen cell phone calls, some of them when the plane was above 40,000 feet, the FBI gave a very different report at the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. The FBI spokesman said: "13 of the terrified passengers and crew members made 35 air phone calls and two cell phone calls."38 Instead of there having been about a dozen cell phone calls from Flight 93, the FBI declared in 2005, there were really only two. Griffin nevertheless accepts that relatives of the 9/11 passengers did indeed receive phone calls, but concludes that these calls must have been faked considering the high speed and altitude of the planes and the latest data provided by the FBI. If the truth of the FBI's new account is assumed, how can one explain the fact that so many people had reported receiving cell phone calls? In most cases, it seems, these people had been told by the callers that they were using cell phones. For example, a Newsweek story about United 93 said: "Elizabeth Wainio, 27, was speaking to her stepmother in Maryland. Another passenger, she explains, had loaned her a cell phone and told her to call her family."40 In such cases, we might assume that the people receiving the calls had simply mis-heard, or mis-remembered, what they had been told. But this would mean positing that about a dozen people had made the same mistake. An even more serious difficulty is presented by the case of Deena Burnett, who said that she had received three to five calls from her husband, Tom Burnett. She knew he was using his cell phone, she reported to the FBI that very day and then to the press and in a book, because she had recognized his cell phone number on her phone's Caller ID.41 We cannot suppose her to have been mistaken about this. We also, surely, cannot accuse her of lying. This means that somebody else made these phone calls with the intention of setting the myth of the Arab hijackers into the world. This might seem outlandish at first but here is a theory of how it might have been done. What is needed in order to make several phone calls to relatives of people who are on board of a hijacked airplane (either electronically hijacked or hijacked by Arabs)? - passenger lists of hijacked aircraft - phone numbers of relatives of some of the passengers - sound samples of passengers whose voice you want to fake Griffin says this about faking of voices: First, voice morphing technology was sufficiently advanced at that time to make faking the calls feasible. A 1999 Washington Post article described demonstrations in which the voices of two generals, Colin Powell and Carl Steiner, were heard saying things they had never said. Second, there are devices with which you can fake someone's telephone number, so that it will show up on the recipient's Caller ID. Regarding the passenger lists: many people book their flights weeks in advance. This information is stored in the computer of the airline company. This information can be accessed from many sources like travel agencies. This information is not public domain but it is not highly classified information either. Assuming that the date of 9/11 had been set days if not weeks in advance it should not be too difficult for a secret service like the Mossad to retrieve the data of at least a number of the passengers that were to fly on 9/11 on these particular aircraft. But what about the sound samples necessary to fake the voices of the passengers using sound morphing technologies. The answer to that came to me like a flash of insight while reading this. Again, a summary of what it is I believe to be reasonable and makes a good deal of sense to me. I know you despise DRG, but I find him very credible and basically very honest.
Pulled what off exactly? What sequence of events would have required the passengers not to have actually been on the planes? If some people had decided to fake this terrorist attack and had already decided that they're willing to kill potentially hundreds of people in and around the buildings, why wouldn't they just use the actual planes? You seem to be approaching this from entirely the wrong direction. You've decided something happened but you're trying to work out the specifics of how it happened without first working out exactly what it was. The fact that you've absolutely no idea how this voice morphing technology could have practically been applied to your mysterious conspiracy (as per the comments form others) is a secondary problem.
Much of these particulars are speculation, due to facts like cell phone technology in 2001 generally didn't work at all above 2000 feet. The seat back phones come into question because you'd have to ask why didn't everybody call their loved ones using them if that were the case? Barbara whatshername's story is suspect as well. First, her husband said she called from a cell, then he said she called from a seatback, then he said he wasn't sure. See, stories change like this in almost every aspect of 9/11. To me, when a story changes several times (or more than once for that matter), I suspect the truth still isn't being conveyed. If I lie to the cops about where I was when a bank was robbed, and I give them different stories as to my whereabouts, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't believe any of my stories. Works the same way here. Truth is truth. It doesn't change, and you don't need a good memory to recall it, and repeat it verbatim every time, because the truth is what actually happened. One doesn't need to "enhance" the truth. It is what it is. It's truth or a lie. Most of 9/11, IMO, is the latter.
Your definitive opinion, stated in your OP that "voice morphing was used on 9/11" (my emphasis) is not speculation. There are plenty of unknowns, uncertainties and questions surrounding 9/11, many of which can't or won't ever be answered. I've no real interest in getting in to those. I am (vaguely) interested in challenging your general approach to the case, which appears to be raising a very specific unanswered question and then inventing a stand-alone definitive answer for it with absolutely zero positive evidence and zero context with any proposed sequence of events. If there is any kind of organised cover-up at any level, I suggest that your approach is doing more harm than good in discovering the truth. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that you're not really interested in doing that.
Perhaps RWF should ask him. http://soundevidence.com/ Telephone: 505.986.9636 Email: drpapcun@soundevidence.com I think Papcun's opinion of RWF's theory would be quite interesting.
Nor do you appear to be interested in anything counter to the "official" stance on everything, or you would apply the same scrutiny to the "official" version of events as you do to something counter.
A ten minute sample might make someone SOUND like someone else, but everything else would be wrong. We, as a species, go by far more than what a voice sounds like to differentiate different voices. We listen to cadence, inflection, grammar, pet names, accent, and a host of other identifiers that help us identify who we are talking to. Pretending someone can just pick up a phone and call someone's loved one and pull off convincing them they are who they say they are is unrealistic at best. I know my wife very well. I can tell from her voice if she is OK or if she is not OK. I can tell from her voice what mood she is in. If someone tried to fake her calling me, even if it sounded exactly like her, I would know it wasn't her from what the imposter does or does not say. Would someone else listening in to one of our conversations pick up on some of the idiosyncracies of our conversation? Yes. Would they catch them all? Highly unlikely. A prime example of what I am talking about is used by truthers to pretend Mark Bingham was a faked call. Mark starts the call with "Mom, this is Mark Bingham." Wow! I never call up my mom and identify myself this way! And that is what truthers use to pretend the call was faked. However, Mark Bingham's mom said that he would do this when he was all business. So who are we to believe? Truthers? Or the person who knows Mark the best? She didn't find it odd in any way. The fact he didn't do it all the time means that someone just listening in on random calls probably wouldn't have known about this little quirk. RWAF has also not sufficiently addressed the fact Mark Bingham wasn't even suppose to be on that flight. Since the technology requires preparation, scripts, samples etc. etc, and since Mark Bingham was a last minute switch to flight 93, how did they manage to so successfully fool his mother? Did they prep everyone going from Newark to San Francisco and then somehow get the flight list to know who was onboard the flight so they would know who to fake? What about the flight attendants who called in to work? They were on the phone almost the entire time, yet were able to convince the people they knew on the ground that they were who they said they were and that what was happening was happening. Did the government get a bunch of trained, experienced flight attendants who would know the lingo and right things to say? The more you look at voice morphing as a possibility, the more complex and convoluted the issue becomes.
Here's what he has to say on the issue at his site, but I've emailed him to see if he wishes to comment further.
You have yet to present one piece of real evidence that your theory is in any way, shape or form correct. Right now all "voice morphing" is is an attempt to explain the serious lack of integrity in the truther theories that is generated by the actual evidence such as phone calls to loved ones and co-workers. It doesn't cut it. Not even close. You're not an expert in voice morphing technology. DRG isn't an expert in voice morphing technology. The guy who actually invented it said it was highly unlikely. Bottom line, voice morphing is nothing more than an excuse to ignore the evidence that destroys the truther theories. It is like thermite paint. Never mind the fact thermite paint isn't even possible. Never mind the fact that even if it were possible it wouldn't do anything more than make the columns slightly warm. Never mind the fact the columns would have shown physical evidence of the thermite applied that way. Never mind that RWAF's claim of how the thermite paint was ignited completely goes against the whole idea of having thermite paint in the first place which is controlled demolition. Excuses are placed out there as fact so that truthers can somehow convince themselves their theories are in some way possible. They are no more willing to look at the problems with their excuses as they are the problems with their theories.
This theory appears to have the same problem many of the Inside Job theories have: too many moving parts that exponentially raise the possibility of failure. KISS principle please. It also begs the question: Why bother with this? The potential of failure vastly outweighs any "believability" factor voice morphing would add.
If someone starts presenting extreme speculation regarding individual aspects of the "official" stance as definitive facts without any kind of supporting evidence, I'll challenge them in a similar way.
Well, I call my mom occasionally. I never introduce myself with my proper name. To me, that is ludicrous. I'm assuming you're an expert on voice morphing? If so, could you please acknowledge this fact as I have some more specific questions that would be best answered by such an expert. Anyone an expert on the technology? Please speak up?
What I attempt to do is offer possible explanations that the "official" BS story simply ignores. I'm glad you're so "**** sure" of your positions though, as I have more SPECIFIC questions for you or another similarly credentialed expert on controlled demolition, voice morphing, or government black ops. I won't offer insults. I'll try and stick to specifics. Thank you.
I can dream up all kinds of possible explanations, but it is pointless. You're trying to make the point 9/11 was not done by Al Qaeda but by the government. If you want to convince anyone, possibilities doesn't cut it. You need evidence your theories are true. And, as has been pointed out, you don't present these "possibilities" as possibilities but as fact. So cut the games. You're not fooling anyone.
