• March 20, 2000 - Filming begins on the The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ episode, which depicts a U.S. government conspiracy plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into the WTC and blame it on foreign terrorists in order to provoke war and increase the military’s budget.

“On March 4, 2001, during Season 8 of “The X-Files,” the three spun off in a seriocomic series of their own, created by “X” producers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban, and co-starring Zuleikha Robinson (“Hidalgo”) and Stephen Snedden (“Coyote Ugly”).
Despite the concern of some fans, the pilot of “The Lone Gunmen” is indeed part of the boxed set. This would seem like a no-brainer — until you realize that the central conspiracy in the episode involved the high-tech electronic hijacking of a commercial airliner with the intent of crashing it into the World Trade Center.
Although the episode was conceived and shot in 2000 and aired six months before the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the eerie coincidence sent shockwaves through cast and producers.
“I’ll never forget that,” says Spotnitz, calling in from the set of the pilot for his remake of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” “That was such a disturbing thing. It was very upsetting. As I say in the DVD featurette, you write something like that, and you assume that if you can think of it, being a Hollywood writer, then somebody in the government has thought about it already.” - Kansas City Star (03/21/05)

“Events further unravel to reveal that a secret government agency known as “The Overlords” is behind a plot to crash a fully loaded [727]…Wizard’s Keep

The Lone Gunmen, Pilot
Fact Sheet
Episode 1AEB79 “Pilot”
Written by: JOHN SHIBAN, VINCE GILLIGAN & FRANK SPOTNITZ
Directed by: ROB BOWMAN
Filming Locations: NEW YORK CITY, NY & VANCOUVER, BC
Shooting from: March 20 - April 7, 2000 - The Lone Gunmen, un-official fan site

(See also:? March 4, 2001 - The Lone Gunmen ‘Pilot’ episode airs on FOX TV; March 21, 2005 - Lone Gunmen co-producer hopes WTC attack wasn’t ’somehow inspired’ by anything they did; Killtown’s: The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ Episode)

• March 4, 2001 - The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ episode, which depicts a U.S. government conspiracy plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into the WTC and blame it on foreign terrorists in order to provoke war and increase the military’s budget, airs on FOX TV.

“Events further unravel to reveal that a secret government agency known as “The Overlords” is behind a plot to crash a fully loaded [727] into the World Trade Building. The Overlords plan to blame the crash on terrorists in an attempt to generate a bigger budget for military spending (of course).” - Wizard’s Keep

The Sept. 11 Parallel “Nobody Noticed”
“We know the ratings for Fox’s short-lived X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen were bad, but this is ridiculous. Six months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — March 4, 2001, to be exact — Gunmen premiered with an episode featuring a terrorist plot to fly a commercial airliner into the World Trade Center. The climactic sequence actually shows the plane heading into one of the Twin Towers, but at the last minute, it’s pulled upward and just misses the building.
Shockingly, this horrifying bit of foreshadowing was never widely reported until Thursday, when industry newsletter The Myers Report broke the story. How is it that virtually no one remembered this post 9/11? “I know! That’s what I’ve been wondering,” marvels Frank Spotnitz, who along with Vince Gilligan and John Shiban wrote the episode. “I thought, ‘Nobody noticed!’ I guess so few people saw the show. But it’s strange too because that was the pilot and the ratings were actually quite good for [that episode], and yet, we didn’t hear anything.”
Myers Report columnist Ed Martin — who was tipped off about the horrific parallel by a friend — wrote that “this seems to be collective amnesia of the highest order. The final act of the Gunmen pilot, which seemingly made no impact last year, now contains some of the most deeply disturbing images ever created for an entertainment program.”
“I woke up on September 11 and saw it on TV and the first thing I thought of was The Lone Gunmen,” recalls Spotnitz. “But then in the weeks and months that followed, almost no one noticed the connection.
“What’s disturbing about it to me is, you think as a fiction writer that if you can imagine this scenario, then the people in power in the government who are there to imagine disaster scenarios can imagine it, too.”
Unlike the actual attacks, there was no suicide hijacker in the Gunmen climax; the terrorists attempted to remotely steer the plane into the skyscraper. “Now, ironically, one of the things [the government is] talking about to prevent [another 9/11] is the ability of terrorists to remotely pilot planes,” Spotnitz says, “which was another element of our story. It’s weird.” - TV Guide (06/21/02)

“On March 4, 2001, during Season 8 of “The X-Files,” the three spun off in a seriocomic series of their own, created by “X” producers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban, and co-starring Zuleikha Robinson (“Hidalgo”) and Stephen Snedden (“Coyote Ugly”).
Despite the concern of some fans, the pilot of “The Lone Gunmen” is indeed part of the boxed set. This would seem like a no-brainer — until you realize that the central conspiracy in the episode involved the high-tech electronic hijacking of a commercial airliner with the intent of crashing it into the World Trade Center.
Although the episode was conceived and shot in 2000 and aired six months before the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the eerie coincidence sent shockwaves through cast and producers.
“I’ll never forget that,” says Spotnitz, calling in from the set of the pilot for his remake of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” “That was such a disturbing thing. It was very upsetting. As I say in the DVD featurette, you write something like that, and you assume that if you can think of it, being a Hollywood writer, then somebody in the government has thought about it already.” - Kansas City Star (03/21/05)

TV spinoff The Lone Gunmen comes to DVD with its prescient 9/11 episode
“The Lone Gunmen, the Complete Series (Fox) - Back in 2001, when The X-Files was breathing its last prime-time gasp, this oddball spinoff series hit the airwaves for 13 episodes.
The most remarkable episode… aired just a few months before 9/11 with an incredibly prescient plot about terrorists hijacking an airliner and threatening to crash it into the World Trade Center. Except, in this plot, the terrorists were a cabal within the U.S. government itself.
On the episode’s commentary track, the creators themselves cannot believe the irony. They recall how, in the immediate hours after the event when it wasn’t known who was responsible, they feared their story might have inspired the real terrorists.” - Canada.com (03/28/05)

- The Lone Gunmen - Official website (Episode 1, “Pilot”, original air date 3/04/01)

(See also:? March 20, 2000 - Filming begins on the The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ episode;? March 21, 2005 - Lone Gunmen co-producer hopes WTC attack wasn’t ’somehow inspired’ by anything they did; Killtown’s: The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ Episode)

• March 21, 2005 -? Frank Spotnitz, co-producer of the now infamous Lone Gunmen ‘Pilot’ episode, which depicted a U.S. government conspiracy plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into the WTC, says he hopes the attacks at the WTC had nothing to do, or wasn’t “somehow inspired” by anything they did.

“On March 4, 2001, during Season 8 of “The X-Files,” the three spun off in a seriocomic series of their own, created by “X” producers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan and John Shiban, and co-starring Zuleikha Robinson (“Hidalgo”) and Stephen Snedden (“Coyote Ugly”).
Despite the concern of some fans, the pilot of “The Lone Gunmen” is indeed part of the boxed set. This would seem like a no-brainer — until you realize that the central conspiracy in the episode involved the high-tech electronic hijacking of a commercial airliner with the intent of crashing it into the World Trade Center.
Although the episode was conceived and shot in 2000 and aired six months before the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, the eerie coincidence sent shockwaves through cast and producers.
“I’ll never forget that,” says Spotnitz, calling in from the set of the pilot for his remake of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” “That was such a disturbing thing. It was very upsetting. As I say in the DVD featurette, you write something like that, and you assume that if you can think of it, being a Hollywood writer, then somebody in the government has thought about it already.
“Obviously that wasn’t the case. Just the idea that a plane could fly into a building, and the building would be unprotected was just … anyway, it was upsetting.”
Although their scenario involved using sophisticated electronics to remotely control the plane and had nothing to do with suicidal terrorists, Spotnitz had some long moments on the fateful September morning.
“I was directing an episode of ‘The X-Files’ when that happened,” he recalls, “so I woke up a little late because we’d been shooting the night before. It was the first thing I saw on TV, one of the trade towers burning. The first thing that went through my head was, ‘I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with what we did, that it wasn’t somehow inspired by anything we did.’
“Nobody knew who had done it or what had happened, but we knew it was an airplane. It became obvious that it didn’t have any connection to what we did.”
Haglund, a frequent guest at sci-fi conventions, had noted a brisk business in “Gunmen” bootlegs over the years. He attributes some of that to the pilot.
“Once the pilot and the 9/11 thing came together,” Haglund says, “all the conspiracy theorists started passing around that pilot at conventions and UFO conventions and started propelling that forward. These guys are all asking questions about, ‘How much did we know?’ ‘Who wrote the script?’ — that kind of thing.
“Other than small, middling details, what’s odd about that ‘Gunmen’ pilot is the larger details they got right. I assume somebody will look through the rest of the episodes and see what other details may be right. I can assure you, I don’t think there is a legion of super-smart military chimps out there.” - Kansas City Star (03/21/05)

(See also:? March 20, 2000 - Filming begins on the The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ episode; March 4, 2001 - The Lone Gunmen ‘Pilot’ episode airs on FOX TV; Killtown’s: The Lone Gunmen’s ‘Pilot’ Episode)

from: http://killtown.911review.org/911smokingguns.html