Mr.
Halbig, Your Answers, Please
Deanna Spingola
I have conducted over 1,000
radio programs over a period of seven years. During that time, no one ever
accused me of being rude to a guest. On March 4, 2014, I had Wolfgang W. Halbig
on my program. Heknew that we held different views on Sandy Hook and knew exactly what to anticipate
and he was prepared. He seems somewhat like a down-home,
everyone's friend, perhaps deliberately dim-witted,
and a bit bungling. He is reminiscent of Lieutenant Columbo who appeared
to need extra assistance at every turn. In Halbig’s situation, according
to him, if he
can just collect enough money, then he can use his self-proclaimed expertise to
bring the perpetrators of the alleged Sandy
Hook hoax, in the planning for two or three years.
Early in the program, when I began asking Halbig some precise questions, he accused me of trying
to discredit him and I responded by saying that people tend to discredit
themselves, often through their actions and inconsistent rhetoric. People who
regularly and unfailingly tell the truth may occasionally have memory failure
but people who compulsively lie need to have an unfailing memory lest their
lies catch up with them. I believe that Halbig inherently uses the Delphi
Technique or that he was trained as a facilitator. Following are some statements
from researcher/writer Lynn Stuter about the way facilitators
use the Delphi Technique:
“There are ways to diffuse the
technique when you see it being used by Delphi ‘facilitators.’ Stuter gives
the following three steps:
1. Always be charming,
courteous, and pleasant. Smile. Moderate your voice so as not to come across as
belligerent or aggressive.
2. Stay focused. If possible,
jot down your thoughts or questions. When facilitators are asked questions they
don’t want to answer, they often digress from the issue that was raised and try
instead to put the questioner on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic.
Courteously bring the facilitator back to your original question. If he
rephrases it so that it becomes an accusatory statement (a popular tactic),
simply say, “That is not what I asked. What I asked was . . .” and repeat your
question.
3. Be persistent. If putting
you on the defensive doesn’t work, facilitators often resort to long monologues
that drag on for several minutes. During that time, the group usually forgets
the question that was asked, which is the intent. Let the facilitator finish.
Then with polite persistence state: “But you didn’t answer my question. My
question was . . .” and repeat your question.
“The key is to never become angry (or
frustrated). Delphi facilitators win when they make you angry. If you get angry
(or frustrated), you become the bad guy making the facilitator the victim; most
people will side with the victim in a two-way battle.”
[1] The first person to
raise their voice automatically loses.
For almost two years, starting within just hours of the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, several people in the so-called “truth movement” have attempted to discredit thousands of people with their insinuating questions. However, a few people, myself included, are not supposed to ask any questions that might cast suspicion on those referred to as the Sandy Hook hoaxers. It is amazing that presumably well-educated academics, such as James Fetzer, would support and collaborate with someone with faulty, unreliable credentials and does not seem rational and professional in his interactions with others. Those of us who believe, because of the massive evidence that twenty-six people were slaughtered at Sandy Hook must remain silent or, if we oppose the hoaxer’s unsubstantiated theories, as in my case, be called rude, a skank, the “C” word, a paid agent, or a shill. Someone even accused me of being intoxicated while conducting the interview with Halbig which is ludicrous because I do not drink, ever. All of this occurred within an environment that is supposed to endorse critical thinking. I anticipate more attacks on my character from those who are incapable or unwilling to defend their position with rational and respectful dialogue. Such behavior functions as commentary on the substantiality of one's views or perhaps on one's objectives.
I dared to ask Halbig some very
direct questions. As a guest on other radio shows, I listened to Halbig as he
subtly controlled the conversation which is the same as framing the debate or
establishing the flow of conversation but most particularly the subject matter.
Most of the hosts accommodated him and, almost or perhaps deliberately, in a
complicit manner, dismissed any caller who countered what Halbig was saying. Of
course, there are callers who resort to ad hominems or character assassination,
when he/she is incapable of rationally addressing the topic and in that case,
the host should protect the guest and hang up as I did when
Dr. James Fetzer called into my program when I
interviewed Keith Johnson.
Many people thought that I was
being rude to Halbig because I tried to avoid surrendering control of the
program to him and his objectives and domination of the conversation. Usually,
my guests have adequate time to fully discuss their topics as time allows. While
Halbig demands answers from others, he adamantly avoids answering questions
that might suggest he is less than honest. He prefers the illusion that he is open and transparent,
and freely gives out his
home phone number and home address. Why shouldn't someone demand some answers from him? I have
an easily-accessible track record of research, writing and broadcasting. I did
not just suddenly appear. I earned whatever trust people have placed in me. I
have a legitimate right to ask Halbig about his credentials and past experiences
and to verify his claims. He and others who claim that Sandy Hook was a hoax
should have absolutely nothing to hide if their claims are legitimate. My mantra
is and always has been that truth does not fear investigation!!!! He knew almost
a month earlier that we had different views on the Sandy Hook issue. Please
listen to the audio of Halbig’s phone call into
my AFP program of February 11, 2014. I was not cooperative so, like a spoiled,
disgruntled child, he hung up. He had emailed me twice early that morning,
although I had not previously communicated with him.
Obviously, there are probably
dozens of other questions that one could ask. The time frame for the questions
are based on the YouTube version of my interview with Halbig,
A Closer Look at Wolf
Halbig and Sandy Hook - Spingola Speaks 3-4-14
Questions for Wolfgang W.
Halbig:
History and Education:
1. You state on your web site
that you were in the United States Air Force from 1967-1970 and that you were
part of the Strategic Air Command, were a Combative Measures Instructor, a
Disaster Preparedness Instructor and a Physical Fitness Specialist. What was
your
AFSC (MOS)? Based on your reported age, you were born in
1947. Did you join the air force at age twenty? How did such a young person
acquire all of the skills necessary to teach others the things that you say that
you taught?
2. In the interview, beginning
at about 21: 30 minutes, you stated that you were the class president and at the
top of your class at the Florida Highway Patrol Training Academy, had top-secret
clearance and was assigned to a presidential detail. What president was that and
where were you assigned to that detail?
3. Were you at the top of your
class at the academy due to your scholastic abilities or did you excel in other
activities at the academy? I asked you why you left after all of that time and
training and you said that you were tired of putting people in jail but wanted
to prevent people from going to jail and went into the educational field instead. Did
you fail to pass the probationary period of your trooper job or did you leave because of the reason you
state?
4. On January 22, 2014, you
wrote a letter to the Newtown Board of Education stating that you had been
Florida State Trooper in Miami from 1974 through 1977. On your current web site,
you state that you were a trooper from 1974-1975. When were you a trooper? You
also state on your web site that you were a teacher and a coach at the Vanguard
High School in Marion County from 1975-1983. Does that mean that you were a
trooper, a teacher and a coach at the same time?
5. You stated in our interview
that you had been a “school administrator” for thirty-six years after being a trooper
from 1974-1977. Thirty-six years from 1977 would end in 2013 (23:30). In the
interview, you said that you were a customs agent in 2002 for about a year to a
year and a half or two. On your web site you state that you were a Customs
Inspector from 1993-1994. Which is it? How could you also function as a national
school safety expert, a customs officer, a teacher, an administrator, and a
coach? Were you a customs inspector at the same time that you were the Assistant
Principal at Lake Mary High School, from 1993-1994?
6. How did you manage to train
personnel in 4,000 US school districts, a claim you make, along with all of your
other activities?
7. (24:30) On my program,
regarding your participation at Columbine (1999), you first stated that you were
“not called” and I asked who hired you and you said Justice and I said, the
Department of Justice. You said “right.” I asked you when they hired you and you
said, “When you get a phone call from the Department of Education … implying
that they had called you. I repeated the question and you said April 21, 1999.
You added, “There are a lot of us; there is an expert out of California, Ron
Stevens, one in Washington… you said that they asked us to come out and “see
what happened so that they could make it safer next time.” You said, “I worked
as an expert in researching the response of how law enforcement, swat teams and
the paramedics responded to Columbine.” Did you report the results of your
research to the Justice Department or to the Department of Education? Why is
there no record of your participation in Columbine except an article that you
wrote for a local Florida newspaper?
8. You state that you were a
guest on Dateline (NBC) and
Good Morning America (CBS) talking
about school safety. Will you please provide some links of those programs for verification?
9. You
state that you have testified before a Congressional Commission studying school
safety and security. What was the date of that testimony and where might one
find the transcript?
10. When you were in charge of
Risk Management for the Lake County School District (2005-2009), you obtained a
Domestic Security for School District Instructor’s Course (DSSD). Thereafter,
you state that you were an instructor and have trained “3,500 school police
officers for the Justice Department.” What are “school Police officers?” Those
were presumably in addition to you training personnel in 4,000 school districts,
right?
There is a huge difference
between someone who has credentials and a verifiable history versus those who
simply claim to have credentials and a verifiable history. Ken Trump, the
President of National School Safety and Security Services wrote about
school safety experts that one can trust. Trump is the author of the 1998
best-selling book, Practical
School Security: Basic Guidelines for Safe and Secure Schools
(Corwin Press), and more than 80 articles on school security and crisis issues.
His second book was, Classroom
Killers? Hallway Hostages? How Schools Can Prevent and Manage School Crises,
it was released in July of 2000. His most recent book, Proactive
School Security and Emergency Preparedness Planning was released in
2011. Trump has been interviewed as a school safety and crisis expert by ABC
World News Tonight, ABC Nightline, ABC 20/20, ABC Prime Time, CBS This Morning,
CBS Evening News, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, Geraldo at
Large, Good Morning America, The Today Show, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, The
O’Reilly Factor (Fox News Channel), Associated Press, Newsweek, Time Magazine,
USA Today, NY Times, Education Week, and many other national and international
media. He says that many people, seeing a profitable opportunity, decided to
enter the school safety expert business following Columbine.
Business and Occupation:
1. Mr. Halbig, you created the
National Safe School Institute, Inc. on Friday, August 13, 1999, a
corporation that existed for a relatively short time. You were listed as
the president of that corporation and at the same time, as the Director of The
National "Break the Code of Silence" Foundation. Did you create this corporation
as a result of the Columbine shootings?
2. If one were to scour the
Internet searching for information about you as a school safety expert, they
would find no history of your connection to school safety outside of your
connection to Sandy Hook. Why is that?
3. You established the National
Institute for School and Workplace Safety in 2001, which was defunct in less
than a year. Was this during the time that you were a “school administrator”?
4. You established the
Children’s Safety Institute on October 29, 2012 in an Orlando suburb. With a new
business, how did you have time to investigate Sandy Hook? Why did you take down
the CSI web site three days after I interviewed you and challenged your
credentials and the references that you used on the CSI web site?
5. When you created the
Children’s Safety Institute business, you gave five
references, two of whom were deceased; one who died a year before and one who
died three years before you created
your business? Using dead people constitutes a falsification of credentials.
What else have you falsified?
6. Why did you imply, using a
street address, 5703 Red Bug Lake Road, Suite 103, that your business had a
physical office, when it was actually just a mailbox at Mailboxes Etcetera?
7. In our interview regarding
the Children’s Safety Institute and your letter to the school board, I asked
you, “Was it your objective to acquire information to assist you in your work
through the Children’s Safety Institute?” You said no. It was to
train teachers in their handling of
“autistic children” who were experiencing “sensory overload.” Yet, on October
29, 2013, you emailed Captain Joseph Rios, a Newtown police official, demanding
copies of the contracts and costs for the Crime Scene Cleanup. In your email,
you stated that you were the Chief
Investigator for the Children’s Safety Institute and a School safety Expert
“which now requires this information to be made available since it has been
eleven
months and you have not even provided a simple police or incident report.”
[2] You made the
same statement to me in an unsolicited email that you sent (2/11/2014),
the day that you called into my AFP program. You said, “I
am the Chief Investigator for the Children's Safety Institute who
protects children and young adults with Autism from serious injuries if not
death.” What do you or did you investigate?
8. On December 2, 2013, you
emailed Sally Cox and said, “I am a trainer for the US Justice Department COPS
IN SCHOOL PROGRAM.” How long have you been a trainer for the US Justice
Department in the COPS program?
Halbig’s Sandy Hook Research:
1. On January 9, 2013, you
posted a message on Face Book about the mental health issue and the reality of it
in connection with school shootings. You have not addressed that issue since.
Did someone ask you not to bring up that issue again? You should be fully aware of the incident of psych drugs and their tie to violence in the
schools? You should also be aware of the fact that schools receive extra money
for children who have special needs such as those on psych drugs.
2. At 25:44 minutes, I asked
when you became interested in Sandy Hook and you said that you said that it took
you a week to “figure it out” and concluded that Sandy Hook was a hoax within a
week after its occurrence based on your review of the 42-minute WABC helicopters
on CNN Live. You claimed that it was not Sandy Hook but that it was another
school that they were using. What do you base that on? You said, “As an expert
witness, I can only look at data and it not what I think or what I believe.”
What other research did you personally conduct? Where have you appeared as an
"expert witness?"
3. At about 27:18 minutes, when
I asked you if you looked at the official reports, you said, “I have looked at
each of the documents” in the Connecticut State Police’s official report. If
that is the case, why did you express surprise when I mentioned the nine books
(53:18), the major portion of the reports? When I asked you if you read all of
the reports in book 6, you said, I don’t know what book six is.” (56:18)
The official report gives all of the answers to the questions that you have been
asking.
4. You mentioned the SH
Advisory Commission that one member called a data dump. Why do you discourage
others from reading the report? You claimed to have read the entire report. Do you want to interpret the report for other
people? Why have you misrepresented some of the data from the report?
5. On February 19, 2014, Dr.
James Tracy posted
several emails that you sent to numerous officials in Newtown in September,
October and November 2013, saying that you were a former Florida State
Trooper, the Chief Investigator for the Children’s Safety Institute and a school
safety expert, and demanded answers to questions. You said, “We in law
enforcement are on duty 24/7 always on call.” While you say that you left that
field to do something nobler, you regularly claim to be part of some law
enforcement brotherhood with such phrases as “We are law enforcement partners
for life.” Why did you call these people cowards, insinuating that they were
derelict in their duties, failed to act appropriately, suggested that the police
chief be fired, suggested that there was a lack of common sense in Newtown, you
demanded paperwork and completion dates, and demanded the names of contractors
and information such as the asbestos inspection reports for the school, which
may be found online via the school district’s reports? You asked for contracts
and costs for the Crime Scene Cleanup in Decontaminating and Sanitizing. In your
email to the FBI, you claimed that the FBI is negligent. What provoked this
furious flurry of letter writing in September, October and November of 2013? Was
it because you had a chance to look at and embrace the research of others?
6. Did you really expect that
the use of profanity, poorly-executed emails and time-consuming demands would
actually produce the results that you were seeking?
7. You claimed that Sandy Hook
was a “scripted event in the planning for maybe two years” On what do you base
that claim?
8. At 14:03-15:05, you said
that if “they,” presumably meaning that if the lying, derelict, cowardly people
of Newtown could answer the sixteen questions, then you would believe that
children died.
9. Have you changed your mind
about children dying since our interview?
10. Others, by reading the
official reports, have obtained answers to those 16 questions. You state that
you read the entire report. Why did you not find the answers to your questions? On your web site, you say,
“Please all focus on those sixteen questions then we will move to the next set
of questions.” Is it your goal to ask questions or simply raise money that you
never give an accounting of?
Have you read the answers that researchers have provided to your sixteen
“simple” questions, also furnished by the official report that you claim to have
read? Why do you keep asking the
same questions that have
already been answered -
Questions answered
11. At 30:10 minutes, I stated
that the first responders parked right in front of the school and not a ¼ mile
from the school as you have claimed on many radio programs. At 32:00 minutes,
the report #113999 explains exactly where the first responders parked – William
Blumenthal’s dash cam showed that the cars were parked right next to the school.
That report, “in their own words,” stated where first responders parked. One unit parked on Crestview,
at another entrance to the school, as the police did not know what they
were dealing with. Why do you keep stating that the first responders parked a
quarter of a mile away?
12. At 33: 25 minutes, I
mentioned the DHS booklet
Active
Shooter How to Respond (2008) on how law enforcement was to
respond to an active shooter incident.
They changed those policies in December 2013 because of SH. When I explained DHS
policies and reiterated that they had followed them to the letter. You
said that you have a FEMA Certificate (2006) and said, “I am an instructor and you
are telling me that … “I teach people this class.” I then repeated, “You said
they did not follow policies.” Then you said, “I am an instructor, Hello
Deanna…(using ridicule) I asked you where you instructed those classes and
you said, “Across the country when I do safe school workshops. I trained 3,500
school police officers”… “For the Justice Department” I asked you where, and you
responded “Did you not read my resume?” (again using ridicule) I asked you where
you did this training and you said, “Every major city in the country.” (avoiding
specifics) I then asked you about your statement that they did not follow HS FEMA
policies if you were in fact teaching those policies. You changed the subject and
claimed that they didn’t “order helicopters or let the paramedics in.” I
responded that “that is not true.” The FEMA guidelines do not mandate the ordering of
helicopters and paramedics were some of the first people into the school.
Officials arrived at the scene in three minutes and 11 seconds – some of whom
were EMTs and paramedics.
13. Why did you add words to the
police dispatch (9:55:31, 12/14/2012) just to justify your theory that Sandy was
a hoax?
14. You visited the office of
The United Way in Newtown to obtain its records of donations/dispersals that
are readily available online as obligated by law. When do you intend to post
the donations/dispersals that you have collected? Did you pay any radio host to promote you
or help you in your actions against anyone in Newtown?
15. Usually police personnel
defend each other. You question the behavior and accuse the Newtown police
officials of dereliction of duty while ignoring the alleged harassment by local
police officials. Have you filed a civil suit against those local officers for
harassment?
16. Much of the credibility that
you have achieved was through your claims that the local Florida authorities
threatened you and told you to stop asking questions about Sandy Hook. You were in the midst
of a radio interview and announced that you had to hang up as the police had
arrived again. If you are the astute investigator that you claim to be, why did
you leave in the midst of the show instead of putting your phone on speaker so
that the listeners could listen to the police harassing you. It would have confirmed your story that the local police were
harassing you. Why didn’t you do that Mr. Halbig?
17. Others have been asking
questions about Sandy Hook since it occurred yet no one else has experienced
local police harassment. Did the local police really visit you about Sandy Hook
or about another matter such as the
arrest of your son Eric for domestic battery on 12/14/2012 who thereafter
moved into your home?
[1] As quoted by
Carolyn Dean MD ND, Death by Modern Medicine: Seeking Safe Solutions:
3rd Edition, Perfect Pitch Editions, Kindle Edition, 2012, Locations
2012-3586
[2] James Tracy,
Wolfgang Halbig’s Quest For Sandy Hook Truth, March 2, 2014,
http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/wolfgang-halbigs-quest-sandy-hook-truth/