Page 80 of False Flag

Jake was such an emotional wreck, his knees went weak. The fear that had been consuming him had just been neatly removed from his shoulders. His eyes burned, but he managed to keep the emotion out of his voice. “Not a problem. But how is FMV able to arrange it?”

“One of the principals of the organization lives on the Olympic Peninsula with her husband, a former Special Forces operator who was on Pax and Cal’s team. Bastian Ford. He’s now the chairman of the Kalahwamish Tribe. The tribe owns the boat.”

He flopped down on the couch. “I can pay the tribe. Make it a charter.”

“We’ve got it covered. Mission or not, we’ve got your back. And Staci is FMV family.”

And that was all that needed to be said. Jake’s biological brother might be gone, but he had his SEAL brothers.

He wasn’t alone in the world.

After breakfast, Staci settled in front of her computer in her bedroom and used gloriously unfettered email and non-firewalled internet to reach out to locals in the archaeological, historical, and cultural preservation communities. Her first order of business was to find the author of the Letora Island archaeological inventory report.

The Cultural Resources Management community was small and interconnected. Dig bums—archaeologists who worked primarily in the field on excavations and surveys—might work for several different CRM firms in a calendar year. Background history sections of reports were sometimes authored by historians who’d been hired as subcontractors by those same firms.

This meant rival companies shared employees and subcontractors, and, if there wasn’t some sort of blood feud between firms, they often helped each other out—quietly letting a colleague know which fieldworkers were worth rehiring, and which clients were difficult to work for. They often collaborated on larger projects.

This should make locating the author of the Letora Island Cultural, Historical, and Archaeological Inventory report easy to find, but the only name Staci had to start with was Jennifer Meyers, MA. No company name. No school affiliation for that master’s degree. She didn’t even know if Meyers was from the US or Canada.

She would assume Canada, except on the “Works Cited” page of the report, Jennifer Meyers was listed as the author of a background history for Strawberry Island, a small uninhabited island in Island County, Washington—not to be confused with the other small, uninhabited Strawberry Island in Skagit County, Washington. The page also listed a report on American Camp, which was part of San Juan Island National Park, best known for the role it played in the Pig War. Both reports were about places that were firmly in present-day United States, not Canada, which, in most situations, should mean the archaeologist or historian who authored the Letora Island report was a qualified professional in both the US and Canada.

Except in this instance, the client had been Casper Osborne, who was a champion of pseudoarchaeology and AI. Which made Staci wonder if Jennifer Meyers was even a real human.

There were certainly hundreds of very real Jennifer Meyers in the US and Canada. Dozens probably had master’s degrees. But how many of those had degrees in anthropology or history? Had a real Jennifer Meyers with a master’s degree in the proper subject written this report? Or had Osborne’s fake history machine invented a convenient name to slap on his fake report?

The fact that she hadn’t been able to search for the report’s author due to firewalls when on Osborne’s network was just a tad suspicious.

She followed the meager breadcrumbs she had and searched the internet for the American Camp report, which should be in the database of reports filed with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.

The report wasn’t listed in the DAHP database, however. The only reference she could find was on the American Camp Wikipedia page.

Alexander Osborne, an American soldier who helped construct the still-extant Robert’s Redoubt in 1859, found several carved stones while digging the fortification. These artifacts were later donated to the Native Sons of British Columbia. [7]

Staci stared at the name. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Did Casper Osborne really have an ancestor who was stationed at American Camp? There was no doubt he had family in the US Washington Territory and British Vancouver Island in the late 1850s. He could just as well have ancestors at English Camp.

But she hadn’t seen this reference when she researched the Pig War more than a week ago. She’d have noticed the name then. She checked her list of bookmarks for pages consulted, and the only Pig War page listed was the main one, not a separate American Camp page. On the main page, she scanned for a hyperlink to American Camp and noted there wasn’t one.

That was odd. She scrolled to the bottom of the American Camp page and noted it was last edited yesterday. The Pig War page was last edited a month ago.

She made a note to find out when the American Camp page was created and ask why it wasn’t linked to the main page. There wasn’t a separate page for English Camp or British Camp, as it was sometimes called.

Returning to the American Camp page, she clicked on the hyperlink for the citation and opened the link to the source material. This brought her to a local history website that had a section dedicated to famous settlers and their descendants. The article outlined Casper Osborne’s family history in British Columbia and his current ownership of Letora Island. The report stated he had an ancestor who helped construct Robert’s Redoubt at American Camp, where he found several artifacts that were later donated to the Native Sons of BC, becoming the first pieces in their collection. The citation for this took her back to the American Camp Wikipedia page.

No other source. Not from the Osborne family nor from any of the museums that now might hold those particular artifacts from the nativist organization’s collection. There was no date on the article and no way of knowing how long it had been on the website. No hint of where those artifacts might be now.

She did a quick search on the terms artifact, Osborne, and Robert’s Redoubt, getting two hits. The first was a story about Alexander Osborne, an early settler in British Columbia who became known for collecting artifacts—these points were backed with multiple citations and were likely facts, but she’d be certain to check every link.

But the statement she was looking for—that he had been in the US Army and helped construct Robert’s Redoubt—had only one citation, which was the history website with the profile of the Osbornes that she’d just visited. Once again, there was no date on this source.

The second hit was a blog post written a few days ago by a Lost Civilizations fanboy the day after it was announced that Osborne was working with Campbell. The fanboy had also picked up on the Native Sons artifact connection and speculated that Osborne had his own versions of the Hepburn Stone all along. His source was, of course, the first link Staci had followed with the history of the Osbornes as early settlers.

She sat back and stared at the screen.

She knew exactly what she was looking at. There was even a word for it: citogenesis. A cartoonist, Randall Munroe, had coined the term in a comic more than a decade ago.

Citogenesis was the pseudoarchaeologist’s best friend. Edit a Wikipedia entry with an unsubstantiated claim. Wait for someone to cite that claim, linking to the Wikipedia page. Link the original page to the new source—in this case, the local history article on the Osborne family. The link and associated false information propagate further with each citation. The more places the information was cited, the harder it was to trace the original source as being phony.