Floating a Narrative, Or Grabbing Whatever Isn't Nailed Down

From: January 10, 1912, New York Times, $18,000,000 Equitable Building Destroyed by Fatal Fire,

About 5 o’clock in the afternoon a sinister red gleam appeared on the very edge of Broadway, in the ground floor of the building. It showed with fitfully shifting brilliance behind a grating of iron bars all of them white. The firemen watched this fascinated, but to attack it was needless. It was the blazing of record books, papers, and accounts of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, stored there in vast quantities, out of reach, and threatening nothing else. Until late last night this was still a red glare matched by another that showed in the darkness from one of the highest remaining parts of the ruined structure.

Apparently this is an optimistic portion, or add-on to the planned narrative, in much the same way that the destruction of records held in Building 7 of the World Trade Center appears to have been piggy-backed by special interests onto that scheme's primary plan of destruction. Somebody with a great deal of hidden power back then was able to make this nonsensical reporting go away, and nothing like it was ever published again.

There is a transcript of the 8,402-word article by Michigan State University available online, or my much perfected copy posted here.