Black copters over Oregon-Bush visit fires conspiracy (Salon)

[onehandle]

President Bush visits rural Oregon to tout his forest plan. Suddenly, huge fires burn. Now a small town is consumed by conspiracy theories.

Sept. 8, 2003  |  SISTERS, Ore. -- The helicopters were indeed black, and when they came thwocking through the clear blue skies above Redmond, Ore., on the afternoon of Aug. 19, Don Berry happened to be having a slow day selling campers and fifth wheels at Courtesy RV. "We just stood there in the lot, my friend Chuck and me, watching," he says before launching into a bit of detail that government sources will not confirm. "They were Chinook military helicopters -- huge things with round noses. There were three of them, and they were moving in tight formation, lollygagging over the woods, zigzagging near Sisters and out toward Black Butte," some 25 miles to the northwest.

The copters were in Central Oregon, officials from the U.S. Forest Service would later note, to do reconnaissance in advance of an Aug. 21 visit to the dry, wooded region by President George W. Bush. "They were doing routine surveillance," according to Ron Pugh, a Forest Service special agent. The president planned to speak in Camp Sherman, a little town near Black Butte, and to call, controversially, for the "thinning" of 20 million acres of fire-prone public forests.

Don Berry is detached from the fray over Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, but as the choppers flew near Sisters that day, he gazed skyward for much of their 90-minute flight. "They came right over the top of us," he remembers, "and we watched them land, and then I looked up at the mountains, where they'd flown."

"Chuck," Berry said at that point, "I hope what I'm seeing out there is a cloud."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/08/oregon/index.html

[WhoDoYouTrust]

1. Thanks for posting this, onehandle.

Certainly was mysterious how this fire happened to break out just before *'s visit. He sure got a great photo-op from it, didn't he? What a shame. I spent many summer vacations camping here.

I'm happy that Salon picked up on the story. Has the possibility of arson dropped from the news in Oregon?

[ConsAreLiars]

2. The fact of the rumor's quick spread

Says a lot about how many people understand that that bunch of criminals have no soul or heart. That area has been hard hit by fires this summer, but whether or not the Greedy Oil Plutocracy ignited these they sure have the blood of the planet on their hands for obstructing efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions.

That small part of Oregon contains several versions of paradise - high desert , alpine meadows, lake-filled forests and more open forest at lower elevations and volcanoes in several levels of dormancy. That this cabal would torch it for a photo-op would not surprise me at all.

[sandnsea]

3. My son was on that fire

No lightening true. But there were some campfires in the backwoods that weren't properly built. Rocks around, but no dugout hole. That soil is very sandy and on top of rock and holds heat. He thought that it was possible a campfire started it. So there is the possibility of another explanation.

Just another 2 cents here.