At 6:42 am Monday the D.C. Police department tweeted out a picture of nine blocks of downtown Washington, D.C.. announcing they were under lockdown Monday morning. From the World Bank at 18th and I Streets NW, near the White House, to the Social Security Administration at 21st and M Streets NW, two blocks from Senator Harry Reid’s Ritz Carlton condominium on 23rd Street, much of the K street lobbying corridor was closed to buses, cars, and pedestrians.
On Tuesday DC’s main gay newspaper, the Washington Blade, reported that nine city blocks were closed for 10 hours for a suicidal male to female transgender with a gun – so both stories, that it was a woman and that it was a man, were correct. Prior to that, Monday evening, when Dalke was arrested The Washington Post and other mainstream media – and the D.C. Police report – omitted the fact that the culprit was a transexual. Local news radio station WTOP headlined its blog post “10-hour D.C. Standoff ends with woman’s arrest.”
The PC prudery of the mainstream media is odd. Ms. Dalke’s Google+ profile reads “I am a pansexual transgender woman who is obsessed with history, politics, booze, and erotica with no shame about any of it.” I first became aware of this when two different conservative Republican lesbian friends told me I should write something on the coverup of the fact that Dalke was a transexual.
I now think there could be more interesting omissions in the story.
Dalke’s latest social media post: “Sorry everybody, I’m dead tonight.”
Dalke had barricaded herself at 1999 K Street, a new environmentally certified modern glass office building near the Peace Corp, law firms, and the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. 1999 K houses the Federal Agricultural Mortgage agency, which makes real estate loans to farmers and agribusiness, and the law offices of Mayer-Brown, where Richard Ben-Veniste, a Watergate special prosecuter, who also defended the Clinton’s in Whitewater, and who was also appointed to the 9/11 commission, is a partner. (Ben-Veniste’s examination of Condi Rice revealed that the government had conducted studies considering the possibility of a 9/11 style attack before it occurred). I called the main switchboard at Mayer Brown and asked for Sophia Dalke, and instead of telling me off the nice British accented switchboard operator looked through her directory and told me Dalke worked for one of their sub tenants and gave me that phone number, whose voice mail answers “Tina Brown.” Of course, the fact that Dalke works in a building with such unusually well connected people is probably merely a coincidence.
I contacted the public information office of the D.C. Police department Tuesday evening and asked four questions: 1) Is it standard operating procedure to shut down several blocks of downtown for one person barricaded in a building? 2) Were these extreme measures because of concerns about terrorism and the events in Paris? 3) Did Dalke work at 1999 K Street where she was apprehended, for a tenant of the Mayer Brown law firm? And 4) Was there a reason Dalke’s being transgender was omitted from the police report. The officer replied to each question with a firm “We have no comment on that at this time.”
I am currently contacting Dalke’s friends, who were on social media urging her to meet them or seek help after her last post, to see what information about her work at 1999 K Street they can supply.
According to Chibarro, with whom I compared notes tonight, Dalke has now disappeared from the court system, and has not been presented to a judge (I have not confirmed this yet.). It is possible she is in the system under a different (her original male) name.
For those interested in her legal defense a GoFundMe has been established.