Sanctions in Gallop 9/11 lawsuit send a message: seek justice at your own risk

By Craig McKee

The message is loud and clear. Go after justice for 9/11 in the courts, and not only will you lose, you’ll be punished.

That’s what April Gallop and her lawyer, William Veale, found out as their lawsuit against former vice-president Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers concluded with a final slap in the face. This came in the form of a $15,000 fine levied against Veale for filing a “frivolous” appeal (the appeal had already been turned down in April of last year).

The decision was handed down by a three-judge panel headed by Justice John M. Walker, who just happens to be George W. Bush’s cousin – proving that the American justice system has a twisted sense of humour at times.

In March 2010, a lower court threw the original case out, stating that it was based on “cynical delusion and fantasy.”

Gallop, a former U.S. Army executive administrative assistant and her then two-month-old son were injured in the Pentagon event on 9/11 when an explosion in her office brought the ceiling down on them. Gallop’s desk was in the Pentagon’s E Ring, the outermost of the building’s five rings. Her desk was reported to be just 40 feet from where Flight 77 is supposed to have hit the building shortly after 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 11.

Gallop reports she carried her child to safety through the hole in the building where the plane was supposed to have entered. She says she saw no evidence of a plane having hit: no wreckage, no bodies, no jet fuel, nothing. She says she thought her computer had triggered the explosion, reporting that there were “flames coming out of the computers.”

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