Monday, September 04, 2006

Executive Mansion Fire Accidental?

Not much info in this story, but we hear on BBC that three independent investigation teams (US, South African, and one other) have concluded that the fire in the Executive Mansion was not arson, even though it happened on Founders' Day, even though it burned the president's own offices, and even though the president happened to be hosting presidents from 3 other African countries at that particular moment.

I'm not calling bull-crap on it per se, but you have to admit that it's much more convenient for the president, the UN, and the US if the fire is deemed accidental. And this country can hardly afford any more instability right now.

Making things weirder is a conversation we had with an employee of a big US contractor the other day. This person (a single source, granted) claims to have attended a going away party for the American arson investigator two weekends back, where it was announced on the mic that he had concluded the fire was not arson.

Fine, but why was the report only released on Saturday? Our source says maybe the president wanted to use the fire as an excuse to clean house of some of her less desirable staffers and security people. Can't blame her, I guess. Or maybe they were just waiting for the other two reports to come in?

On the topic of the state security forces shooting at each other a few weeks ago, those shootings that everyone speculates were related to the fire incident: according to our single source again, the dude who died was drunk and shooting wildly when he was killed, and the shooting had nothing to do with the fire. Our source even claims to know an American guy who was drinking with the deceased shortly before he was killed.

1 Comments:

Blogger David said...

I don't trust happy or unhappy accidents - even when the BBC reports them.

8:43 AM  

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