Conservative Freedom Works has a panoramic photo of 9-12 in DC, and ironically, it seems to prove that there were no more than 60,000 tax protesters present.
http://iowntheworld.com/...
At first glance, it looks like 200,000. In the foreground you see the west lawn of Capitol Hil. Then is the Capitol Reflecting Pool, overseen by the Ulysees S. Grant Monument. In the distance, you can see two blue buses on Third Avenue, which separates Capitol Hill from the Mall. As you can see, the crowd doesn't really reach the Mall.
Now open a window for Google Maps and search for "Peace Circle DC" which is the little traffic circle just a few yards north of General Grant.
We'll show the crowd is fenced into a 200 ft wide arc on the west edge of the lawn. Which would be enough space for 40,000 people packed dangerously tight.
Max Blumenthal finds plenty of elbow room.
With a little math, we'll show that estimates of 60,000 people are on the generous side.
Looking at Google earth, the oval area the protesters are standing on an oval that measures 900 by 500 ft. Let's say about 360,000 sq ft. Suppose people are packed tight - that would be 120,000 people! But they only occupy the west edge of this space.
This is the key point: you can see that the crowd is only 200 ft deep, and fenced into the western edge of the lawn.
Let's pick a reference point common to the Google Earth image and the panoramic photo: the biggest tree in the photo, to the right of the Mall. To its left you can see the Washington Monument, and just to the right of the crown of the tree you can see the tower of the Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue. Now look at the Google Earth image - that big tree is just below the words "Peace Circle."
Go back to the panoramic photo, and to the right of the big tree, you can see a bit of street pavement being kept open. This is the Peace Circle. Individual cops can be seen in fluorescent green vests (get your magnifying glass).
Now you can see that the crowd is being fenced into a strip 100-200 feet wide. Don't believe it? On Google earth, look at the medium sized trees lining the service road from the Capitol building to Peace Circle. The crowd only extends inward to the second tree in a long line of trees!
If you look closely at Google Earth, you will see a curving track across the Capitol lawn, the sort of path left by utility vehicles. The crowd seems to be fenced off maybe a little east of that track, which the groundskeepers probably used as their guide. The trucks that set up the sound stage probably used this path across the lawn, and set up the equipment just inside the track.
So now we are down to about 120,000 sq ft, where you might squeeze in 40,000 people. But they aren't packed that tight. On the south side, people aren't densely packed at all - you can see entire torsos of people in the crowd. And they are fenced off of various paths and east Capitol circle, so we are down in the 35,000 range. And we can add another 5,000 around the Grant Memorial. If we add 15,000 people less densely packed out beyond the Reflecting Pool, we get around 55,000 but anything past 60,000 is probably a stretch.
Nevertheless, here's some yahoo fresh off the turnip truck from Podunk, standing on the Ulysees S Grant Memorial (hey get off there jackass) who claims he's looking at 1.5 million people and the highways have been closed. Actually what he's showing us that even dead center and only 100 yards from the stage, there's plenty of breathing room.
How dense was the crowd from the Reflecting Pool to 3rd Avenue? Folks were sitting on blankets.
Oh and here's the marchers, looks like a couple thousand people per block just ambling along. In the frame below, they are milling around as they reach the end of Pennsylvania Ave, in a space largely occupied by parked cars.
Update: Even Time magazine takes the he-said-she-said approach to this issue
If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic.
...and some say Time is just pathetic.