Exqueeze me, but isn't the Pentagon located in Arlington County, Virginia?
Even though the name of the subway system's operating organization is Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, we all know that the Metro extends out from Washington, D.C. into both Maryland and Virginia, and that the stations in those states did not magically become the property of D.C. just by virtue of being Metro stations.
So - again. Why is the D.C. Medical Examiner involved in this? They were not the "coroner of record" when the 9/11/01 attack on the Pentagon took place. Arlington County, Virginia got that "honor" and duty.
Seriously, what gives?
stay safe.
skidmark
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030500510.html?hpid=topnews Suspected gunman's Internet writings show resentment of U.S., suspicions over 9/11 attacks
By MATT APUZZO and DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Friday, March 5, 2010; 5:01 AM
WASHINGTON -- Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attacks have surfaced in writings by the Californian identified as the gunman who shot two Pentagon police officers before he was mortally wounded in a hail of return fire.
The shooter's death was confirmed early Friday, hours after the Thursday evening assault, as authorities searched for a motive behind the brazen attack. The two officers, grazed by bullets, were treated in a hospital.
Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office, confirmed the man's death and said his body arrived at her office shortly after midnight.
John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was identified as the shooter. Officials said they'd found no immediate connection to terrorism but had not ruled it out.
Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was "determined to see that justice is served" in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.
The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was "a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions."
That same posting railed against the government's enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author's 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.
The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon - the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 - came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.
Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.
Whatever the motive of Thursday's attack, the method resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire.
Ronald Domingues, 74, who lives next door to Bedell's parents in a gated golf course community in Hollister, said he doesn't know the family well. But he said Bedell sometimes lived with his parents and struck him "like a normal young man."
"He just seemed like a normal guy to me," Domingues said. "I wouldn't suspect he would be involved in anything like this."
Domingues described the neighborhood as middle-class. He said the Bedells live in a one story southwestern-style stucco home. The house was dark Thursday night.
---
Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Christine Simmons, Pauline Jelinek, Anne Gearan, Mike Gracia, Nafeesa Syeed, Philip Elliott and Kasey Jones contributed to this report.
