1 September 2004

Previous red-team reports of convention preparations and operations:

http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-01.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-02.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-03.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-04.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc05/rnc-prep-05.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-06.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-07.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-08.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-09.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-10.htm
http://cryptome.org/rnc-prep-11.htm

Cryptome toured the areas around Madison Square Garden, Pier 57 (Guantanamo on the Hudson) and Union Square today about 1-4 PM, taking these photos.

After a discussion with a reader about the ethics of showing or hiding credentials by the media, the police and anyone else mingling with and recording the crowd or spying a site, Cryptome today sported an ID-badge stating "Cryptome," to offset the goofy hat, knobby knees, pigeon-toes, prune-face, liver spots and cadaver-stench -- the latter Jon Stewart billboards at MSG as NYC's smell of freedom.

Security has been beefed up around the Amtrak and LIRR sunken train tracks leading to Penn Station under Madison Square Garden, the perimeter moved outward a block from day before yesterday. Amtrak has stationed a mobile command center and "prisoner transport" vans at West 30th Street and 9th Avenue. Could be the Prez and Veep are to be tunneled into MSG via train from New Jersey, say, after Air Force 1 and 2 land at Newark International Airport, thereby avoiding terrifying protestors, covered with a phony caravan sent in from JFK, or a phony jewel deposit by HMX-1 at the West 30th Street heliport.

Pier 57, called "Guantanamo on the Hudson," where some 2,000 protestors have been held for processing.

Prisoner transport vehicles depositing protestors in Mayor Bloomberg's barbed-wire pens -- Mike jokes, "it's not Club Med."

Pier 57 aerial photo, April 2002: http://seamless.usgs.gov

Roof huts for snipers, observers and loiters on Madison Square Garden. On marquee at upper left, at northeast at upper right, at southeast at lower left. A tent-loitering party underway at lower right.

Police video surveillance truck at 8th Avenue and West 30th, with high-frequency horn antenna at right (thanks to 3 readers: not a high-decibel screamer Cryptome surmised).

At Union Square a memorial of military boots with names of the dead and civilian shoes for the Iraqi dead; list of Iraqi dead.