A brutal purge of the senior staff at Popular Mechanics preceded the publication of last month's scandalous propaganda piece about 9/11. Pulling the strings is the grand dame of Hearst Magazines and behind the scene is her obscure husband a veteran propaganda expert and former special assistant to the director of the C.I.A.

The Reichstag fire, a key event in German history, and the steps that followed en suite leading to the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, provide remarkable precedents for what occurred in the United States on 9/11 and since.

The fire that consumed the German parliament building on the night of February 27, 1933, is widely believed, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government to turn public opinion against its opponents and allow it to assume emergency powers.

The day after the burning of the Reichstag, the government headed by Adolf Hitler enacted a decree for the Protection of the People and the State.