How One Transsexual Shut Down D.C.

ISIS terrorists threatened an attack on D.C. If one happened, how would the city react?

A transsexual with a gun may have just given us a clue.

This week someone who was first reported as a “suicidal woman,” and then rumored to be “a man with a rifle,” shut down a huge section of downtown D.C.

A police spokesman refuses to comment on any questions, and the mainstream media hasn’t mentioned that the culprit, Sophia Dalke, 31, was transgender, which was also left out of the police report. A further investigation reveals several coincidences, and having the police refuse to answer simple questions makes one speculate about all kinds of things.

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. (Several people who live in the area, including me, noted that a very loud helicopter flew continuously in circles low over Foggy Bottom and downtown, beginning at 1 am Monday morning, until dawn.)

Monday there was almost no coverage of just what was involved, other than a mention that it involved a mentally ill woman, as both cars and pedestrians were denied the ability to enter the K street lobbying area.

Later in the day rumors were that it was a man with a rifle.

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 brandishing a gun – so both stories, that it was a woman and that it was a man, were technically correct.

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 transsexual.

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, following, one supposes, the common liberal media practice of not mentioning the race of criminals. 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 transsexual.

I now think there could be more interesting omissions in the story.

It hasn’t been explained why nine city blocks would be closed, making the conspiracy-minded wonder if it was something more, in the wake of recent tragedies. Especially since police and bomb sniffing dogs were reported on local radio to be out in full force Tuesday, on D.C.’s problem ridden subway system, Metro.

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 prosecutor, who also defended the Clinton’s in Whitewater, and who was also appointed to the 9/11 commission, is a partner.

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 subtenants and gave me that phone number, whose voice mail answers “Tina Brown.”

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?

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. So far few have responded, either saying they don’t know her well, or saying they want to protect her and so will answer no questions.

According to Lou Chibarro, the Washington Blade reporter, a perusal of Dalke’s FaceBook account showed that she opposed D.C. gun control, and thought transgender women experiencing violence on the streets should be armed.

I did not find that entry, but I did see that books she read included libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick and novelist Ayn Rand, and Dalke described her politics as “Well… I’d say I was secretly Republican… except that even beyond their onerous and animadversive religious/moralist bullshit where I’m philosophically aligned with smaller government and deregulation, Republicans are sh–b-g hypocrites who don’t walk the talk in office. So I’m openly Libertarian. Friendly to LGBT, business, and individuals, the best of all worlds.”

On Google+ one of the people concerned about her is a staffer at the free market R Street Institute, but when contacted he says he doesn’t actually know her. (I am often thought of us as one of the most connected D.C. libertarians, and I have never heard of Dalke until researching this story.

According to Chibarro, with whom I compared notes Tuesday night, 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.

There is still no explanation of why nine city blocks, as opposed to one building, were closed down for 10 hours.