September 11 | The Center for an Informed America

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Prologue I

Dave McGowan — Wed, 12 Sep 2001 00:00:31 +0000

Welcome to the New and Improved Police State

“We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and ‘predictions’ that have already been planned to come true.” –Conspiracy theorist’ Mae Brussell, 1974

I have a friend with whom I frequently disagree on matters of politics. He thinks that I am a crazed conspiracy theorist, and I think that he is a reactionary fascist. There was one thing that we agreed on though.

A few weeks ago, I told him that our fearless leaders seemed to be veering dangerously close to unleashing ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons upon the world. Although he seriously doubted that that was in fact the case, he readily agreed that such an action would be reckless and unconscionable. He stated that he couldn’t envision any scenario under which such a strike would be justified and that we should avoid, at all costs, crossing that threshold. Opening that door, he believed, could only serve to escalate tensions and make this a much more dangerous world in which to live.

He was one of several people who called me yesterday to discuss the alleged terrorist attacks upon America. During the course of that call, he stated flatly that when the perpetrators were identified, they and their backers should be nuked. When I reminded him of our conversation of just a few weeks before, he said that things have changed now. I asked him if he had considered whether that wasn’t perhaps precisely the point of the attacks. Unfazed, he reiterated his belief that I am a crazed conspiracy theorist.

Excuse my cynicism here, but have we Americans completely lost our ability to think? Are we now so thoroughly braindead that we are completely reliant on our media outlets, with their endless supply of ‘experts,’ to make sense of events in the world? Are we really that stupid – or do our leaders just think that we are?

The actions taken on the morning of September 11 were crimes – horrendous crimes against humanity, to be sure, but in the final analysis, not so very different from any other crimes. And the first step in solving any crime is to look at who had a motive and who had the means and opportunity to commit said crime.

As for motive, we are being asked to believe that a band of Islamic terrorists are the most likely suspects. But is that really the case? Was it a state-sponsored terrorist group that had the most to gain by launching such an assault? Or was it our own political, corporate and military leaders?

While the people of the Palestinian territories may well be dancing in the streets today in celebration of the blow struck against the United States, they certainly won’t emerge as the winners in this national tragedy. When the bombs begin to rain down upon them, as they certainly will, the loss of life, property and hope will be far more profound for them than it will be for the people of New York. Their short-term ‘victory’ will be a hollow one indeed.

This is certainly not to suggest that there are no governments, groups, or organizations around the world – or within these borders – that have legitimate grudges against the United States government. The numbers of such entities are legion. Two hundred years of imperialistic covert and overt military ventures have created a lot of enemies of the American ship of state, and a tremendous amount of residual bitterness. Yet none of these groups stood to gain by launching such an attack.

The United States, on the other hand, has much to gain in the aftermath of this chapter of American history. I am not talking here, of course, about the people of this country, who will pay a steep price for the carnage of September 11. Big Brother has assured us that we will be protected from future acts of this sort, and we will welcome with open arms the repressive, overtly fascistic ‘reforms’ that will be enacted.

The people of this country, and of the world, are always the ones to pick up the tab for acts of gross governmental malfeasance. The people of some hapless country (or countries) that is identified as the culprit will pay with their lives and the lives of their children. The people of America, and much of the Western world, will pay with the wholesale stripping away of their remaining human, civil and privacy rights.

Such a scenario only serves to benefit those who sit at the top of the food chain. Our elected leaders – who are elected only in the sense that every couple of years we are given a choice between two interchangeable candidates – will revel in the free reign they will be given to ram through legislation so appallingly reactionary that it would have been unthinkable just days ago. Military spending and the militarization of the country will escalate to a fever pitch.

Welcome, my friends, to the new and improved police state – the largest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced police state the world has ever seen. With the much-lauded U.S. economy tanking, and unemployment figures hitting their highest levels in years, this will come in very handy for the ‘powers that be.’

The ugly truth is that all ‘anti-terrorist’ measures are designed not to protect the American people from attack or to protect our ‘freedoms,’ but to protect wealth and power – specifically the unprecedented levels of wealth currently held by corporate America – and to restrict those very freedoms that threaten their hold on that wealth. This American tragedy, in other words, plays directly into the hands of the corporate and military elite of this nation, who have for years been propagandizing for a more belligerent and imperialistic foreign policy and for more repressive legislation here on the homefront. Having been presented with a pretext to enact such measures, it is our leaders – elected or otherwise – who stand to gain the most from yesterday’s bloodshed.

As for the question of who had the means and opportunity to commit these crimes, the official story holds that they were the work of a well-organized foreign terrorist organization. Officials have acknowledged that the operation was an exceptionally well-planned and well-coordinated series of attacks that required months of planning and a large network of co-conspirators to pull off. So well-organized was the operation that government spokesmen and television talking-heads (which are really the same thing) have been at a loss to explain some of the day’s events. Many questions have been left unanswered and some haven’t been asked at all. Some of the answers that have been offered have strained credibility far past the breaking point.

One question that has gone unanswered is how a plane was able to penetrate so deeply into the Pentagon’s airspace – even after two other planes had already plowed into the World Trade Center towers. Despite the ridiculous current claims, the airspace surrounding the Pentagon is perhaps the most tightly controlled, militarily secure airspace in the world. This would be all the more true in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale ‘terrorist’ attack on New York City.

Claims have been made that even if the approach of the aircraft had sounded an alarm, it would not have been targeted due to the fact that it was a commercial aircraft with many innocent lives aboard. Nonsense. Anyone who thinks that U.S. military/intelligence personnel would hesitate to target a commercial airliner, particularly in light of the fact that two such aircraft had already been used in suicide attacks, is living in a media-induced fantasy world. The question then of how this plane was able to ‘elude’ the Pentagon’s formidable defenses is one that should receive close scrutiny from America’s ‘free’ and ‘independent’ press. There is virtually no chance that that will happen.

Another question that begs for an answer is how teams of presumably armed hijackers were able to breach the security measures of no less than three major airports and successfully hijack four separate flights. Contrary to the claims now being made, security precautions currently in place in U.S. airports are anything but “lax.” That fact was being implicitly acknowledged by this morning, as reports began to come in claiming that the hijackers had improvised weapons from razor blades and other items carried in their shaving kits. The network and cable news broadcasters reporting this story actually did so with straight faces.

This scenario would be laughable were this story not such a tragic one. According to the latest official accounts, three to five terrorists boarded each of the hijacked aircraft (all of these terrorists, of course, were such religious fanatics that they had agreed to give their lives for the cause they believed in, and none of them presumably had second thoughts about that decision once the operation was underway). Does anyone really believe that a few guys wielding toothbrush handles embedded with razor blades could quickly and efficiently gain control of a commercial airliner? I would think that such a group would have their hands full trying to hold-up a liquor store.

How could, as has been reported, such a ‘terrorist cell’ possibly simultaneously overpower the flight crews and corral all of the flights’ passengers into the rear of the planes? I don’t consider myself to be a particularly brave or heroic sort of guy, but I would not hesitate for a second to take on a couple of guys wielding toothbrushes, particularly if my life, or the life of my family, was on the line and if I knew that I had some sixty people (the average number of passengers on the flights) behind me who would back me up. Maybe that’s just me, but somehow I think most Americans would rise to the occasion.

Nevertheless, these terrorist teams reportedly succeeded where so many other, better-armed terrorists have failed. The majority of hijacking attempts, as officials have acknowledged, end in failure. There hasn’t been one to succeed in this country for a decade. And yet these teams succeeded, and on a spectacular scale, in four-out-of-four attempts and with only the most primitive of weapons. To what are we to attribute that fact? Don’t look to the media for answers.

Perhaps the most obvious question raised by the attacks, and one that officials have feebly attempted to answer, is how the planning for such an operation could have escaped the attention of the country’s intelligence services. Whenever such an event occurs, the intelligence agencies rather predictably hang their heads, slump their shoulders and sheepishly grin as they explain their powerlessness to predict such things: “We did the best we could,” they explain, “but our resources are limited, our adversaries formidable, and our sources not infallible.”

That’s a real nice story, but the reality is that the CIA – along with the FBI, ONI, DIA, NSC, NSA, DEA, and virtually every other three-letter acronym you could think of – constitutes the largest and most insidious intelligence network the world has ever seen. Its agents have fully infiltrated every foreign government on the planet, as well as every significant ‘terrorist’ group and every domestic resistance movement that has ever posed even a remote threat to the goals of those who helm the American ship of state. It is simply inconceivable that such an ambitious attack could have been planned, coordinated and launched without the knowledge of numerous members of the national security state.

That is the inescapable reality that no amount of media and government spin can erase, though politicians and their media puppets will work overtime to do exactly that. One need only to turn their television set off and their brain on though to see how preposterous is the claim that these attacks took the intelligence community by surprise.

Perhaps the most disturbing question raised by the attacks is what exactly caused the twin towers of the WTC to collapse? The impact of the planes affected only the upper floors of the towers; their foundations were unaffected. The UK’s Guardianacknowledged that the initial impact of the aircraft would result in less stress on the building than is normally caused by high winds. The buildings were specifically designed to handle such horizontal movement.

The Guardian and its expert consultants conclude that the collapse of the buildings was the result of secondary explosions, attributed to the delayed release of the large supply of jet fuel carried by the aircraft. How though could the ignition of the jet fuel have occurred as a delayed, secondary explosion? As the endlessly played videotapes of the attacks graphically illustrate, the initial impacts resulted in enormous fireballs and the immediate engulfing of a portion of the buildings in flames.

It is inconceivable that the aircraft’s fuel tanks would not have burst upon impact, with their contents then immediately ignited. Indeed, if that wasn’t in fact the case, then how are we to explain the initial explosions and fireballs that were witnessed by the world? What exactly was it that created the spectacular initial blasts if it wasn’t the jet fuel? But if that was the case, what was it then that created the secondary explosions that appear to have occurred? These secondary blasts were acknowledged early in the day by an NBC newsman. The correspondent stated on the air that he had just talked with the fire department’s public safety commissioner who verified that large secondary explosions precipitated the collapse of the towers.

A radio broadcaster on WLS in Chicago (according to a correspondent), whose former colleague* is a CBS journalist who was on the scene at the towers, said on the air that this colleague had witnessed an enormous fireball emanating from beneath one of the towers immediately before it came crashing down. What are we to make of these scattered reports, none of which received any follow-up coverage amidst the non-stop blizzard of media attention?

To be sure, the collapse of the towers, captured on tape for all the world to see, had the decided appearance of controlled implosions, facilitated by the precise placement of technologically advanced explosives. The world has never before witnessed such complete destruction of a targeted building by an act of war or a ‘terrorist’ assault. We have seen the United States target many a building for destruction. In the most recent military venture, we saw an embassy building and a television studio, among many others, take direct and multiple hits from state-of-the-art bombs and guided missiles. The buildings were devastated, to be sure, but the damage didn’t come close to matching the pile of rubble that the Twin Towers were reduced to.

We also saw a highrise Israeli apartment building take a direct hit from an Iraqi Scud missile during the Gulf war (actually, most of us probably didn’t see that, except for those who happened to be tuned in to CNN for the brief few moments when the footage was aired; as it turns out, that Scud missile was actually safely intercepted by a trusty Patriot missile, or so it was claimed, just as if the footage had never aired). The point though is that the building was hit and did suffer extensive damage, and undoubtedly at the cost of many lives. But again, the building – though sheared nearly in half – was in considerably better shape than the WTC towers.

It occurs to me then that perhaps America has invested entirely too much time and money in pursuit of creating ever more powerful and efficient weapons systems. Who would have ever thought that the best weapon with which to reduce an entire tower to rubble was the plane itself. It doesn’t even have to be a military plane – any old commercial aircraft will do. Someone obviously should have followed up on the early work done in this area by the Japanese during World War II.

In the final analysis, we must ask ourselves the following questions: Who had the means to get highly-trained commando teams onto four commercial aircraft flying out of three separate airports? Who had the ability to violate the Pentagon’s airspace, completely unmolested and unchallenged? What weapons were really used to commandeer those aircraft and who had the means to get them on the planes? Who had the ability to plan and execute such an ambitious, multi-pronged attack without the interference of the U.S. intelligence services? Who had the means to staff each of the four teams with at least one well-trained, and suicidal, pilot? Who had the means and opportunity to plant secondary explosive charges, if in fact these were used?

Finally, perhaps the most important question to be asked is: who stands to gain the most in the bleak aftermath? It is certainly not the American people, or any resistance movement within these borders. It’s definitely not the still-to-be identified target(s) of the nation’s wrath (which will likely include Iraq). That would seem to limit the remaining choices.

It is quite possible, indeed quite likely, that members of some ‘extremist’ group served as the foot soldiers of these attacks. But it is just as likely that they were used as pawns in the global chess game that serves as our collective reality. It is also likely that these ‘terrorists’ were motivated by legitimately perceived grievances with the U.S. government. Those motivations weren’t likely shared by their puppeteers, however, who cynically manipulated those belief systems to serve their own ends. Most of the participants probably did not know that they were embarking on suicide missions. Quite likely only the pilots knew that, and they may very well have received a little more ‘training’ than your average pilot.

All of this is, by necessity, just speculation at this point. The true facts of the case will emerge over time in bits and pieces, mixed in with a healthy dose of disinformation. It matters little though in which direction those facts point. The official story has already been written.

* It was previously mistakenly reported here that the woman making the call was the broadcaster’s wife. She was actually a long-time colleague. The correspondent who alerted me to this report contacted the station to inquire about purchasing an audiotape of the broadcast for September 11, and received the following brief reply: “Legally, we’re not allowed to provide program tapes.”

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Prologue II

Dave McGowan — Sun, 16 Sep 2001 00:00:39 +0000

Continuing Commentary on the WTC Attacks

“Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens you can be sure it was planned that way.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

It seems as though more people have been watching the Discovery Channel than the planners of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon may have accounted for. A good number of people are questioning exactly why the collapse of the towers looked so much like controlled implosions. Anyone who has seen a documentary clip of a building being professionally demolished using explosive charges couldn’t help but be struck by the remarkable similarity.

One demolition and explosives expert from New Mexico has already gone public with his suspicions that the buildings were deliberately imploded. Architects and engineers who designed the buildings were at a loss to explain how they could react in such a manner. One expert, prompted by his interviewer to comment on if more steel in the structures could have prevented the tragedy, could only say that it was hard to imagine how any more steel could have been incorporated into anystructure.

And it was, as we all know, not just one tower that literally crumbled before our very eyes, but both of them – in an identical fashion. As I myself was pondering that rather curious fact, I stumbled upon yet another article giving a first-person report on the tragedy. This particular account concerned an architecture student who viewed the unfolding drama from across the bay. Some of his first thoughts – after the buildings had been struck, but before they disappeared – were that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fight a fire at that height, and that it would without question be impossible to repair the damaged buildings. He found himself pondering what would become of the imposing towers, being no longer fit to be occupied. And then, of course, they just sort of vanished.

Suddenly a possible plan began to come into focus. The initial crashes and explosions, which were essential for the shock value of being so utterly audacious, would by necessity destroy the buildings. It would have therefore been necessary, at some time in the future, to implode the buildings. Why not then include it as part of the show?

To stir up as much outrage as possible, it was of course necessary to get footage of the implosions, as well as the crashes themselves, although it seems a little odd that the first crash was recorded so graphically – as if someone was waiting for it, camera in hand (at least two people, actually, according to a British correspondent who claims to have seen footage on the BBC taken from a different angle). That footage, of course, has incalculable propaganda value.

Propaganda is certainly something that we have seen a lot of in the last week. The sheer volume of, and the monotony of, the media coverage has been astounding. Every station across the television dial playing the same footage and providing the same unquestioning commentary, continuously, around the clock, from the moment the first plane hit the tower. The media barrage is unavoidable. Absurdly large headlines scream out from every newspaper and magazine, and every radio station seems to sound the same. There is no escape. And there is likely a reason for that. Somewhere in the halls of power, there just may be an awareness that the official story of the ‘terrorist’ attacks isn’t very convincing.

It isn’t by chance that there is nothing else to be found on the television dial beyond images of planes crashing into buildings. It was reported on Saturday that the networks had been demonstrating what was said to be an unusually high level of cooperation during this crisis. They’ve actually been talking amongst themselves to decide how long the bombardment of the national consciousness should go on.

It has likely been deemed necessary to browbeat the country into accepting the unlikely scenario that is being passed off as fact. It is the media’s job at this point to prevent the people, as much as possible, from actually thinking for themselves. And with such extensive coverage, haven’t our news commentators already thought everything out for us anyway? Apparently not, as people seem to be scurrying about the Internet like cockroaches, trying desperately to snatch up any little morsel of information that the media are holding back on – trying to make sense of a story that makes no inherent sense.

Some additional details have been added that appear to be an attempt to bolster some of the more flimsy aspects of the official story. After reports began to air that home-made knives were the weapon of choice, it was quickly added that bomb threats were made on at least some of the flights. But does that really add to the credibility of the story? If a guy waving a “knife-like” object claims to have a bomb in a box, would he be believed? Would it seem credible that someone who couldn’t get anything more threatening than a razor blade onto the plane had somehow smuggled aboard an unseen bomb? And if pulling off such a bluff was so easy to do, shouldn’t we have seen some other hijackings in the last decade?

Some reports have claimed that cellular telephone calls coming from the doomed flights, allegedly caught on tape, confirm the official story. If true, this raises a number of interesting questions. The first of these is: if these tapes in fact exist, then why haven’t we heard them (or, for that matter, the tapes contained within the ‘black boxes’)? Why, with wall-to-wall coverage of this great American tragedy, have these harrowing tapes not been burned indelibly into the American psyche? Such tapes would obviously have considerable propaganda value in further inflaming the passions of the masses and promoting the genocidal agenda being pursued. Strange then that we haven’t been treated to the poignant final words of some of the victims of this mass murder.

The media certainly weren’t shy about airing such gut-wrenching footage as the images of hapless victims leaping to their certain deaths. Why then haven’t we heard the farewell messages of the passengers aboard the suicide flights? Strange also that some of those alleged calls just happened to be placed to one of the most notorious members of the current administration, Solicitor General Theodore Olson (see “A Supreme Injustice,” Parts I and II).

There is also the question of how such tapes would even exist. There are two possibilities here, and both of them have rather disturbing implications. The first is that all cellular communications are routinely recorded, which would speak volumes about the state of ‘democracy’ in this country. The other possibility is that calls coming from the hijacked aircraft were specifically monitored. That of course raises the obvious question of why, if the flights were being so closely monitored, they were nevertheless allowed to proceed unimpeded to their intended targets.

It has been reliably reported that it was known fairly early on that the flights had been hijacked. It was also known (even though the transponders were disabled, by someone with a high degree of technical knowledge) that the planes had changed their flight paths. It is inconceivable then that the wayward flights were not being tracked and monitored.

According to the official timelines that have appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, by 8:15-8:20 AM, air traffic controllers had received clear indications that flight 11 out of Boston, in flight for just twenty minutes, had been hijacked – the aircraft’s transponder had been shut off and the pilot was not responding to radio calls. By 8:28 AM, the aircraft had radically changed course and there was no question that the flight had been hijacked, a fact acknowledged by the FAA. By this time, flight 175 out of Boston and flight 77 out of Dulles were also in the air. Just two minutes later, flight 175 deviated from its flight path as well, indicating that it had also been hijacked.

It was still nearly thirty minutes before the first plane would plow into the WTC and there were already very clear indications that this wasn’t a normal day for air traffic in America; two civilian passenger planes had been hijacked simultaneously, an unprecedented occurrence, and yet no action was immediately taken to avert the tragedy that was to come.

At 8:38 AM, the Air Defense Command was allegedly first notified of the hijacking of flight 11, twenty minutes after air traffic controllers first became aware of that fact. Reports give no indication that notification was given at that time that the second flight had changed course as well. Five more minutes passed before the military was informed by the FAA of the second hijacking. At 8:45 AM, flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the WTC. Ten minutes later, flight 77 abruptly turned around and turned off its transponder. Three flights were then known to have been hijacked, with two still in the air and one having already spectacularly crashed into a heavily occupied building. The most technologically advanced and militarily prepared nation on earth proceeded to sit on its hands.

After ten more minutes had passed, flight 175 crashed even more spectacularly into the south WTC tower. There was absolutely no question at that point that this was a serious national emergency. Flight 93 out of Newark had by then radically changed course as well, clearly indicating that yet a fourth aircraft had been hijacked and was a potential guided missile. It was allegedly then, and only then, that George W. Bush – the Commander in Chief of U.S. Armed Forces, the man entrusted with the defense of the nation – was notified that there might be a problem. According to the Associated Press, “Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered in his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading.”

With New York’s most visible landmark in flames and two hijacked flights in the air, America’s formidable national security apparatus sat idle while its purported commander, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “listened to 18 Booker Elementary School second-graders read a story about a girl’s pet goat.” Are the American people really so blinded by propaganda that they can’t see the absurdity of this situation?

First of all, it is absolutely inconceivable that Bush would not have been appraised of the situation prior to 9:05. The first aircraft had been hijacked forty-five minutes prior to that. That very first action constituted the most serious ‘terrorist’ act to occur on these shores for a number of years. Yet we are to believe that Bush was not notified of the first hijacking, nor of the second hijacking, nor of the first crash into the World Trade Center tower, nor of the third hijacking, nor even of the fourth hijacking.

In the real world, or at least the one that we think we are living in, the President would have been notified immediately of the first hijacking and would have canceled his morning plans, particularly if they were of no more importance that providing a photo-op with a second-grade class to feign interest in an issue – education – that won’t be receiving any attention in Washington for a long, long time. But we don’t live in the world that we think we live in. We live in a world where, even after the President is informed of the magnitude of the problem, he chooses – in the most bizarre scenario imaginable – to continue listening to seven-year-olds read about a pet goat. And while Nero fiddled ….

According to the Associated Press report, “He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later.” Meanwhile, by 9:10 AM, the Pentagon’s radar had reportedly picked up flight 77, which was still a half-hour away from plowing into what is frequently described as the military’s nerve center. At 9:25 AM, the FAA purportedly notified Air Defense that flight 77 was heading for Washington, though radar had determined that fact fifteen minutes earlier and it had been known for a full half-hour that the plane had turned around and was headed back east.

At 9:35, two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled, at least an hour and twenty minutes after the first flight had been hijacked and nearly an hour after it had crashed. The jets were dispatched, strangely enough, from Langley Air Force Base rather then the much closer Andrews Air Force Base. The Pentagon was struck just minutes later, some fifteen minutes before the F-16s arrived on the scene, but nearly an hour-and-a-half after the rash of hijackings began.

A steady stream of talking heads have taken to the airwaves to claim that no contingency plans were in place for such an attack. Despite decades of military planning for every possible type of attack on these shores, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on civil defense measures, no one – we are to believe – ever envisioned such an assault. We are not talking here, it should be noted, about some type of technologically advanced ‘terrorist’ tactic that should have caught the supposed guardians of our national security off-guard. The use of aircraft as guided missiles has been a technique of warfare that has existed since airplanes became a part of the world’s military arsenal.

To no one’s surprise, the first name mentioned as a suspect, before the first shards of glass hit the pavement from the impact of the first plane, was everyone’s favorite bogeyman, Osama bin Laden. He is, as our media have been telling us for years, responsible for every act of barbarism committed in the last decade, so why wouldn’t he be behind this as well?

Though a mind-boggling amount of media coverage has been devoted to demonizing our all-purpose prime suspect, there seems to be a number of things about bin Laden that the media insist on ignoring – such as that he is almost entirely a creature of our own making. As any number of more honest journalists (as well as MSNBC) have pointed out, it was our very own CIA that armed, trained and funded his organization during our escapades in Afghanistan. In fact, there is certainly a possibility that we are still doing so today. After all, he makes such a great villain, and having a readily available villain is absolutely essential for scaring the American people into line and justifying obscenely high military and intelligence budgets. It’s not like we have the ‘Evil Empire’ anymore. And Fidel is getting a little long in the tooth to make much of a credible villain.

As some reports have noted, bin Laden has very close ties to the Saudi royal family. What none of these reports note though is that the Saudi regime was installed decades ago in a coup sponsored by lifetime U.S. intelligence asset Allen Dulles, working in tandem with British intelligence asset Jack Philby. The country, which is essentially a family-run oil cartel, and which was actively complicit with the fascist European powers during World War II, has largely been an American puppet-state ever since then. So if bin Laden is still functioning as a covert U.S. intelligence asset, he likely has a lot of company in his social circles, both in Afghanistan and in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking of oil cartels, Dick Cheney made his first appearance before the American people today. I hadn’t seen him all week and I was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t taken the opportunity to have another one of those minor little surgical heart procedures done. Then I realized that he was just laying low to give Bush a much-needed chance to try to look ‘presidential,’ as the press is fond of saying. Dick was on the airwaves claiming that the White House had received what he said was a “credible threat” that Air Force 1 was one of the potential targets that the ‘terrorists’ were aiming for. This has to be the most ridiculous claim that has yet been made.

How could any such threat, even if it were actually made, ever be considered credible? We are talking here, after all, about an unarmed, civilian passenger plane. Was there really ever any danger of it eluding Air Force 1’s military escorts (state-of-the-art fighter aircraft) and plowing broadside into the presidential plane? First of all, the ‘terrorists’ would have had to know precisely where it was. Unlike the World Trade Center towers, Air Force 1 isn’t a stationary target. And it’s a really big sky out there. The last time I checked, it wasn’t standard procedure to post the coordinates and the flight path of AF 1 on the Internet. And even if it was, a civilian airliner doesn’t exactly have the capability to track and hone in on those coordinates.

So this little fable of Cheney’s was a rather obvious fabrication whose intent was clearly to create the illusion that an assassination attempt had been made on our president, thereby creating some kind of ‘rally around the flag’ effect – all part of the plan to herd the American people behind our fearless leader as he is given unprecedented authority to wage war anywhere in the world that suits the interests of corporate America.

The U.S. military response won’t be long in coming and will arrive with a vengeance. It’s always best to strike, as they say, while the iron is hot. There’s no sense in whipping up all this blood-lust among the American people if you don’t use that emotion that has been generated. What we will likely see is a massive, multi-pronged military venture. Who it is aimed at doesn’t really seem to matter. The headline above a column in the L.A. Daily News on Sunday read: “It’s Time to Strike, Not Compare: We Know Well Enough Who the Perpetrators Are.”

Well, I guess if we know well enough, then by all means let the bombing begin.

The funny thing is, this country’s military response will look for all the world as though it has been carefully planned and mapped-out over many years. But we will all know that that isn’t the case, because no one knew these attacks were coming until a few days ago. The other funny thing is, even as we are showcasing for the world exactly what a wholesale assault on human life years of bloated military/intelligence budgets can buy, commentators will continue to talk of how we left ourselves vulnerable to this attack by neglecting the military and intelligence sectors for years.

And the people will stare at their TVs and nod in agreement.

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Prologue III

Dave McGowan — Fri, 21 Sep 2001 00:00:44 +0000

Welcome to the Fourth Reich

Let me see if I understand this situation correctly: in order to wage a war to promote ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ around the world, it is necessary to sacrifice those very democratic freedoms here at home.

That makes perfect sense to me, as it apparently does to all the flag-wavers out there who have fallen victim to the relentless war-mongering propaganda being spewed out by our ‘independent’ media. Some of you, by the way, may want to keep those flags readily accessible in the coming months and years. They will come in very handy to drape over the pine boxes that your sons and daughters will be being shipped home in.

It does seem a bit strange though that the man leading the charge to extend ‘democracy’ to all corners of the globe didn’t actually assume office through anything even remotely resembling a democratic process, but was rather appointed by five men who themselves were appointed to office. I guess that’s unimportant though, as none of our politicians or their fully complicit media hacks have bothered to comment on it.

Still it should be noted that while Sir George rants and raves about how Osama bin Laden hates democracy and freedom, it was Bush and his appointers who showed complete contempt for the most basic tenets of democracy just ten short months ago. The Supreme Court decision signed by Rehnquist did state, in no uncertain terms, that: “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”

So now we are treated to the repellent spectacle of a man who we had no right to vote for even indirectly – according to the interpreters of our Constitution – teaching the world by show-of-force exactly how democracy is practiced. It does seem funny though that none of the supposed ‘liberals’ in Washington or in the press corps have had a goddamned thing to say about any of that. Not a ripple of dissent on Capitol Hill or from the press corps could be heard in reaction to Bush’s absurd statement to Congress and the people Thursday evening that “[The terrorists] hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government.”

Of course, it would be difficult to argue with the first part of that statement. It is certainly true that many of the world’s people hate the men and women that were in that room, and with good reason. It is not, as Bush indicated, because “They hate our freedoms,” but rather because they have been driven to unthinkable levels of hatred by having been denied their own freedoms for decades – thanks in large part to the military interventions designed and implemented by the men in that room.

It is frequently said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat its mistakes. George Bush though has not likely forgotten the history that is now being repeated. It was, after all, his grandfather Prescott Bush and his great-grandfather Herbert Walker who had their assets seized by the Alien Property Custodian under the Trading With The Enemy Act for operating Nazi front companies during World War II. But that didn’t stop Bush from declaring, in his Thursday night speech, that: “We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century … they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism.”

Quite a remarkable statement coming from the grandson of one of the men who financed the rise and genocidal reign of those ideologies. Even more remarkable is that he made that statement immediately after declaring that: “We’re not deceived by their pretensions to piety.” Not surprisingly, his trademark smirk could be detected lurking just beneath the surface of his feigned earnestness.

The script that his forebears helped bring to life many decades ago has now been dusted off and resurrected by the chosen son. All of the elements are already in place: an unelected leader has seized control of the country through ‘legal’ means, though the legality was predicated solely on the fact that those interpreting the law were fully complicit conspirators; the legislative branch of government has abandoned all pretense of being anything other than a single-party entity, and has bestowed upon the Chief Executive sweeping powers to wage war, both at home and abroad, in any way his administration sees fit; the Office of Homeland Security has been created, although it may as well have been dubbed the Department of the Fatherland; the burning of the symbol of the German ship-of-state, the Reichstag, has been replaced with the burning of the symbols of the American ship-of-state – the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

The effect, both then and now, has been to rally unprecedented support for a vacant, demagogic pawn of international corporate fascists. The devolution of America into an overt police state has already begun. War of unthinkable proportions has been declared against a wide swath of humanity. The scapegoating and victimization of a religious minority has already begun, this time with Muslims filling the role previously filled by Jews. A severe economic downturn has begun as well, to further inflame the passions of the American people.

Wake the fuck up, America! Your enemies are not hiding in caves in Afghanistan; they are hiding in plain sight. Your enemies are not the Arab-Americans who walk among you; your enemies look just like you. They do not live half a world away, but are right here in Washington. Their faces can be seen daily populating the cable news shows, right alongside of their craven propagandists in the U.S. media.

Their names are Bush, Daschle, Lott, Clinton, Hastert, Byrd, Cheney, Rehnquist, Scalia, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gephardt, and all the rest of the human refuse who make up the one-party power structure in Washington. They are assisted in their goals by a cast of shitbag propagandists named Brokaw, Rather, Jennings, Koppel, O’Reilly, Matthews, Russert, and too many others to list here.

These are the people who would rob you of your freedoms and liberties. These are the people who have nothing but the most thinly-veiled contempt for democracy, for civil liberties, for human rights, for racial tolerance, and for the right of self-determination for people everywhere. These are the people who, without so much as a hint of shame, would wage genocidal war around the world while spouting platitudes about ‘democracy.’

Bush has pledged that, “We will direct every resource at our command … every necessary weapon of war.” Make no mistake about it, the United States has the capacity and the willingness to kill on an unthinkable level. Before we even resort to our ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, which is a near certainty, America has any number of ‘unconventional’ warfare techniques guaranteed to kill millions, all of which have been used in the past.

There is the low-grade nuclear war that was waged against both Iraq and Yugoslavia by means of depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. tanks and warplanes. The radioactive fallout from such weaponry lasts for decades, and is continuing to claim lives today in the parts of the world where it has been deployed. There is also the ‘food warfare’ made possible by the development of self-terminating crop seeds by corrupt international seed cartels – technology that could conceivably cause massive levels of starvation. Then of course there is weather warfare, which some researchers claim America has taken to a whole new level with technology such as the HAARP facility in Gakona, Alaska. Then there is the type of environmental warfare that was also deployed against Iraq and Yugoslavia, where chemical facilities were deliberately targeted so as to wage what amounted to indirect chemical warfare. In the Serbian city of Pancevo, and in many other places, environmental catastrophes of previously unseen proportions were deliberately created.

All of these are quiet killers. The media makes no mention of them and their victims go uncounted. The massive environmental damage that has poisoned the food and the water goes unreported. The 100,000+ children who continue to die in Iraq every year remain out of sight of the American people, just as do those who die every time the United States launches a cruise missile or drops a ‘smart’ bomb. While actively promoting an unprecedented level of national mourning for the victims of the September 11 attacks, our leaders steer attention away from the fact that every time the United States flexes its military muscle, somewhere in the world a nation mourns. And while the death toll in New York and Washington indeed constitutes a national tragedy, it pales in comparison to the mourning we have caused around the world.

How much more will we cause now? How many bodies will be added to the millions left dead in Vietnam, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Guatemala, Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere? And how many of the Americans who were enraged at footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets will cheer and wave their flags when the bombs begin to fall and the body parts begin to fly?

How many will stop to wonder who is actually on the receiving end of the bombs? How many will realize that the scene in New York that so horrified them is being reproduced elsewhere on an unimaginable scale, and that it is civilians, once again, who are being buried in the rubble? And how many will occasionally stop to ponder how the German people could have been led like lambs to support such atrocities?

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act I

Dave McGowan — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 00:00:43 +0000

Get comfortable, folks, this one runs a little long … but there’s a lot of cool pictures to look at along the way, especially in Acts II and III.

ACT I

It’s anniversary time once again, dear readers, and that means that it is time to take yet another stroll down memory lane and revisit the infamous day when “everything changed.” We do so not because we want to, but because it is what the Republican Party, the party of our honorable leader, has asked us to do.

From my perspective, there have always been three particularly productive avenues of research into the events of September 11, 2001, each of which has yielded a compelling body of evidence that strongly suggests that the attacks that day were a production staged by the Washington establishment, and certainly not a surprise attack by Islamic ‘terrorists,’ nor an anticipated attack by Islamic ‘terrorists,’ nor a ‘terrorist’ plot that was co-opted by elements of our intelligence agencies, nor the work of some foreign government (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Israel, Pakistan or China), nor any other explanation that invokes incompetence, neglect, limited U.S. involvement by some ‘rogue cabal,’ or desperate finger pointing at others.

Those three evidence trails have led to three nearly inescapable conclusions, each of which poses serious problems for those with a vested interest in selling the official mythology of what happened that day:

The perfectly symmetrical and total collapse of three commercial highrise office buildings that day (WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7), the first such collapses in history, can only be explained as controlled demolitions, requiring a considerable amount of advance planning, preparation, expertise and access.
The nation with the world’s most formidable military apparatus, and with the world’s most advanced air defense system, failed in every way imaginable to respond to the attacks, and failed to follow the most basic, routine, automatic procedures for responding to emergency situations. Not only did the Air Force and civil defense systems fail to respond, despite having more than ample time to do so, but the purported commander-in-chief also failed to respond, as did his staff and security detail, and all of his underlings.
It is impossible to reconcile the documented damage to the Pentagon with the notion that it was struck by a 757 passenger jet. Evidence instead indicates that it was either struck by a missile (and not one launched from a cave in Afghanistan), or taken out with explosives planted within the building.

From the beginning, many of the most prominent 9-11 researchers have labored to either discredit, or ignore and direct attention away from, these three key areas of research. From the Wilderness, for example, considered by many to be the preeminent 9-11 site, avoided commenting on the Air Force stand-down for many long months; dismissed the notion of controlled demolitions in a short, unsourced post just two days after the towers had fallen; and still has not, to this day, ever reviewed or addressed the photographic evidence from the Pentagon.

Many other researchers and websites followed suit in the months following the attacks. The evidence, however, has proven to be far too compelling to easily discredit or ignore, and far too indicative of direct government planning to allow to go unchallenged. With the efforts to bury or disparage the incriminating evidence failing, a new plan of action has emerged, this one seeking to neutralize the evidence in other ways.

There are two basic strategies currently being employed to undermine the most compelling 9-11 evidence. The first involves inserting a new legend into the 9-11 literature that will, ultimately, provide a plausible, and relatively benign, explanation for evidence that had previously defied a rational, innocent explanation. Thus we see heavy emphasis now being placed on a number of alleged ‘war games’ that were supposedly being conducted on September 11 — enough ‘war games,’ in fact, to account for the lack of an Air Force response, the bizarre responses of George Bush and his security detail, and even the reported presence of FEMA on the scene in New York the day before the attacks.

What was once a highly incriminating stand-down of the US Air Force and the White House and Pentagon anti-missile batteries, and what was once a response by Bush and his entourage that revealed foreknowledge, will now be magically transformed into simple confusion over ‘war games’ having been co-opted and exploited by those crafty ‘terrorists.’ And just like that, complicity becomes incompetence. And as everyone knows, the cure for incompetence is to divert massive amounts of money into ever more repressive ‘security’ measures.

The other new, emerging line of defense involves introducing ‘new,’ easily discredited, and at times patently absurd, physical evidence, and then associating that ‘evidence’ with the legitimate physical evidence, thus hopelessly tainting the entire mix. Hence we see the sudden popularity of bizarre theories concerning the two flights – American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 – that, according to the official narrative, smashed into the World Trade Center towers.

These theories are based on the assertion that there were strange ‘pods’ affixed to the undersides of one or both of the planes. In some scenarios, these ‘pods’ are said to be napalm bombs or missiles that were launched into the towers a mere fraction of a second before the moment of impact — a feat that would require superhuman timing and, more importantly, serve no purpose whatsoever. Other theories contend that the ‘pods’ were part of a remote guidance system, although I have no idea why the system would have been mounted externally, which would, you would think, have a bit of an effect on the aircraft’s aerodynamics, and on the operation of its landing gear, which I hear plays a key role in getting the plane off the ground.

The ‘pod’ theories either explicitly or implicitly reject the idea that the planes that hit the WTC towers were the American and United flights. Some theories claim that the attack planes had no windows. Other theories claim that the planes that hit the towers were shadowed by other, presumably military, aircraft. And some theories claim, remarkably enough, that there actually were no planes at all, and that the whole thing was essentially a high-tech hologram show!

As several researchers have lamented, these theories can only serve to damage the credibility of the 9-11 skeptics’ case. To be perfectly blunt, I can’t think of too many things that would be more counterproductive than trying to convince people that they didn’t see what the entire world is pretty sure it saw (i.e., planes crashing into tall buildings). The effect is the same as if, in the years following the Kennedy assassination, while skeptics were presenting the case for Kennedy having been shot from the front rather than from behind, a group of researchers suddenly began arguing that he wasn’t actually shot at all!

This ’emerging’ evidence seems to be specifically designed to discredit, through the time-tested method of guilt by association, the evidence indicating that the Pentagon was damaged by something other than American Airlines Flight 77. Since the Pentagon evidence can’t be discredited directly, it must be tainted indirectly, and the best way to do that is to introduce into the skeptics’ literature dubious claims about the attacks on the towers.

[We have just seen, by the way, a classic example of how this technique is employed, in the case of CBS and Bush’s National Guard records. In case anyone missed it, CBS‘s Dan Rather presented, probably knowingly and deliberately, forged copies of Bush’s records, which were then quickly revealed to be forgeries. The effect, of course, is to discredit all the legitimate documentation of Bush’s lack of service.]

There is no question that concerted efforts are being made to closely link Pentagon theories and ‘pod’ theories. Most 9-11 skeptics’ sites fall into one of three camps: those that simultaneously promote ‘pod’ theories and Pentagon theories (http://www.LetsRoll911.org, for example); those that equate ‘pod’ theories and Pentagon theories and then denounce both (like http://www.oilempire.us/bogus.html#podpeople and http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ppfinal.html); and those that largely steer clear of commenting on either issue (like the aforementioned From the Wilderness). A new 9-11 film making the rounds, In Plane Sight, also links ‘pod’ theories and alternative Pentagon theories.

There is a key difference, however, between theories concerning the crash at the Pentagon and theories concerning the crashes into the Twin Towers: everyone has seen, more times than they care to remember, video footage of airplanes crashing rather spectacularly into the WTC towers; no one, on the other hand, has ever seen any footage of an airplane, or anything else, crashing into the Pentagon. Tens of millions of people feel as though they were eyewitnesses to the tragedy in Manhattan. Only a few locals witnessed the Pentagon ‘crash.’

If theories involving what hit the Pentagon can be successfully tied to theories proclaiming that it was really missiles, military jets, and holograms that hit the World Trade Center towers, then the general public, which bore witness to the tower attacks, will certainly not bother to take an objective look at the evidence concerning the attack that they didn’t see — which just happens to be the one that didn’t involve an airplane crash.

With the Pentagon evidence thus marginalized, and the Air Force stand-down evidence explained away with incessant talk of ‘war games,’ the best remaining evidence is the controlled demolitions of the Twin Towers and WTC7. And sure enough – wouldn’t you know it? – there are indications that a campaign may be underway to explain that evidence away as well. The ‘theory’ being developed seems to involve an acknowledgment that the towers were indeed brought down deliberately, but that acknowledgment is coupled with a cover story about the necessity of avoiding the extensive damage and mass casualties that would have resulted if the towers had toppled over. It was, you see, a choice of the lesser of two evils, and our leaders, God bless ’em, chose to sacrifice the few for the benefit of the many. Of course – wink, wink, nudge, nudge – Washington has to officially deny it, just as they have to officially deny downing Flight 93.

The obvious problem with this not-so-clever ‘theory’ is that very few buildings, as far as I know, come pre-packed with explosive charges and pre-wired for an implosion. Most people, I would think, would not feel completely safe living or working in a building that might, at any time, self-destruct into a pile of rubble. I myself would, at the very least, look into getting renters’ insurance before occupying such a building.

To compensate for the tiny little gap in the ‘theory,’ we can look forward to the incorporation of some kind of futuristic, top-secret, laser-assisted pulsed energy weapon (or something along those lines). As I recall, the seeds were sown long ago in the skeptics’ literature.

The campaign to neutralize the most compelling evidence in the 9-11 skeptics’ case is not the only disturbing trend in the ‘9-11 Truth Movement.’ Also of concern are the concerted efforts (which I think I may have commented on previously) to co-opt the movement and rename it the ‘Peak Oil Movement.’ And then there is the insistence by many researchers on continuing to devote an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the issue of ‘forewarnings.’

The American people have had more than enough time to draw conclusions about attack ‘forewarnings,’ since that is the only aspect of the skeptics’ case that has received mainstream media coverage. For the most part, we have divided into four camps: those who choose to believe that the ‘forewarnings’ were simply lost in a sea of intelligence ‘chatter’; those who believe that the ‘forewarnings’ weren’t acted upon due to incompetence; those who believe that the ‘forewarnings’ weren’t acted upon due to embarrassing ties between the Bush family and the Saudis; and those who believe that the ‘forewarnings’ were deliberately ignored to allow the attacks to occur.

The truth, however, is that all of those positions, sold by various avenues of the mainstream and alternative media, are incorrect, and all of them ultimately lend support to the official lie that states that the attacks of September 11 were a plot cooked up by, and carried out by, Islamic ‘terrorists.’ And that is precisely why the ‘forewarnings’ issue has received extensive media coverage, while other, far more incriminating, avenues of investigation have been entirely ignored.

The real issue is not ‘forewarnings,’ it is foreknowledge. They are not the same thing. Simply stated, those who are complicit in the planning and execution of an event do not generally need to be ‘forewarned’ that that event is on the horizon. They already know. And continuing to focus on ‘forewarnings,’ three full years after the fact, serves only to obscure that fact.

* * * * * * * * * *

Well, folks, now that there is an excellent chance that I have already successfully pissed off the vast majority of 9-11 researchers out there, I think we are ready to begin our stroll down memory lane. The goal here will be to focus attention on the most critical evidence of direct U.S. government complicity in the attacks of September 11, and while doing so, to construct a reasonably comprehensive, semi-coherent theory of what really happened on that infamous day. Specifically, we will speculate about what went wrong, and how that lead to damning evidence being left behind.

When I just said “we,” by the way, I really meant “I,” since I am really doing most of the theorizing, while you are primarily just doing the eye-rolling and guffawing. Nevertheless, I use the collective “we” in case this theory, for whatever reason, turns out to be really stupid, in which case you can be pretty sure that I will try to blame the whole thing on you.

We will begin with a timeline of the key events of that fateful morning. As visual aides, we will be using graphics that were provided three years ago by the ever-helpful folks at the Washington Post and at Time magazine. Note that in both of the graphics, the departure time listed for each flight is the scheduled departure time, not the actual departure time.

The theory that will be presented here assumes that the plot initially called for the four identified passenger airplanes to be used in the attacks. It also assumes that those four flights were in fact hijacked, likely by human actors. Remote control theories, as we all know, have been circulating since shortly after the attacks took place. I’ve never been a big fan of them, however.

It should be clarified here that endorsing the notion that the planes were hijacked is not the same thing as endorsing the government fairy tale that says that they were hijacked by 19 positively identified Islamic ‘terrorists’ who snuck box cutters through airport security. The real hijackers were undoubtedly very well-trained teams that were allowed to board the planes armed with more than just box cutters. Their ethnicity, while largely unimportant, is anyone’s guess.

At 7:59 AM, on the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11, a morning commuter flight from Boston to Los Angeles, lifts off from Boston’s Logan International Airport. Curiously, and fortuitously for any potential hijackers, nearly 3/4 of the plane’s seats are empty. Fifteen minutes later, at 8:14 AM, United Airlines Flight 175, another morning commuter flight from Boston to Los Angeles, takes off from Boston’s Logan International Airport. Curiously, and fortuitously for any potential hijackers, over 80% of the plane’s seats are empty. The United flight is about 16 minutes late getting off the ground.

At the very same time that Flight 175 is getting airborne, someone aboard Flight 11 shuts off the plane’s radio and transponder, cutting off all communications to the aircraft. At this time, 8:14 AM, longstanding procedures call for air traffic controllers to notify NORAD. Established and routinely followed procedures call for NORAD to be notified of any potential trouble in America’s airspace. NORAD’s responsibility, upon notification, is to issue scramble orders for interceptor aircraft.

These procedures are followed to deal not just with hijackings, which are obviously quite rare, but with routine air emergencies such as when an aircraft departs from its approved route, or fails to respond to radio requests, or switches off its transponder, or experiences serious mechanical difficulties. Interceptor aircraft, on call 24/7 at military bases all across the country, deal with all of those situations and more. They are, in a very real sense, the policemen of the skies. And like their counterparts on land, they use varying levels of force depending upon the situation they are confronted with. The vast majority of errant aircraft, as with the vast majority of police calls, do not warrant a hostile response.

The initial goal is merely to reestablish communications with the errant plane, first by radio, and, failing that, by establishing visual contact, typically by flying into the other plane’s field of view and rocking the interceptor’s wings to see if the errant craft responds. If necessary, the pilot of the interceptor can fly up close enough to take a look in the cockpit of the other plane and attempt to assess the situation. If all attempts at contact are rebuffed, available options include attempting to force the plane to land and/or firing warning volleys of tracer fire in the targeted plane’s flight path. If all other options have been exhausted, and if it is deemed necessary, then downing the aircraft is an option, but it is one that will be undertaken only as a last resort.

Unfortunately, this needs to be rehashed here to illustrate that the argument that is frequently offered in response to criticism of the failure to dispatch interceptors on September 11 – the argument that says that the government can’t just go around shooting down airplanes full of innocent people – is an entirely false argument, because the skeptics’ argument has never been that the planes should have been summarily shot down; the argument has always been that standard, non-lethal procedures were not followed to deal with errant aircraft.

Imagine, if you will, that there is a hostage situation on the ground somewhere in America. Let’s say that a bank robbery attempt has gone bad and a band of armed thugs are holding employees and patrons hostage. An hour or more has passed since the hostage ordeal began. The police know that the hostages are being held, and they know where they are being held. In fact, everyone with a television or a radio knows that the hostages are being held. And yet, curiously enough, police have not responded and there are no officers at the scene. When questioned, the police chief says: “Well, we can’t very well just go in there and shoot up the place! They have hostages!”

The chief would be right, of course; you can’t just go in guns blazing. But his response fails to address the fact that what they could have done was have officers on the scene, attempting, in every way possible, to gain control of the situation and minimize the loss of innocent life. And so it is with the policemen of the skies as well — on every day other than September 11, 2001. Once a scramble order is issued, by the way, it takes just minutes to get aircraft off the ground. And once in the air, F-15 and F-16 interceptors can hit 1,500+ mph in just a few more minutes. Keep that in mind as we proceed. Meanwhile, back to our timeline …

At 8:20 AM, six minutes after the first sign of trouble, Flight 11 veers off course, heading not toward Manhattan, but toward upstate New York, as if possibly stalling for time (see graphics). At this time, the FAA strongly suspects that Flight 11 has been hijacked. At the very same time, American Airlines Flight 77, a morning commuter flight from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, takes off from Dulles International Airport. Curiously, and fortuitously for any potential hijackers, over 3/4 of the plane’s seats are empty. The flight lifts off approximately ten minutes after its scheduled departure time.

At 8:21 AM, a stewardess reportedly calls to report that Flight 11 has definitely been hijacked. There is now no question that this is not just a relatively routine case of an errant aircraft. Seven minutes later, at 8:28 AM, Flight 11 changes course yet again. It is now headed for New York City. Two minutes later, Flight 175 veers off course as well. Both flights are now off their approved routes and headed for New York City. One of them has been confirmed as a hijacked flight. Military interceptors are noticeably missing-in-action.

At 8:42 AM, United Airlines Flight 93 takes off from Newark International Airport bound for San Francisco, California. Curiously, and fortuitously for any potential hijackers, nearly 85% of the plane’s seats are empty. The flight is 41 minutes late taking off from Newark. This poses serious problems for the plan of attack, as we shall see. By the time Flight 93 is in the air, Flight 175’s transponder and radio have been shut off.

Twenty-eight minutes have now elapsed since the first sign of trouble in the air. Twenty-one minutes have elapsed since a hijacking was confirmed. Two flights are wildly off course and cut off from communications. According to the official story, NORAD is notified a minute later, at 8:43 AM (another version of the official story claims the time of notification was a bit earlier, at 8:38 AM). It is inconceivable, however, that notification would not have been made at least twenty minutes earlier, when the first hijacking was confirmed. But even if we accept this aspect of the official timeline, the events that follow are still inexplicable.

At 8:46 AM, thirty-two minutes after the first signs of trouble, Flight 11 plows into the side of the north World Trade Center tower. At that same time, Flight 77 suddenly veers north, possibly preparing to turn back toward the D.C. area. But it is, alas, already too late. By 8:50, Flight 77 is back on course as if nothing had happened, but radio contact is not reestablished.

This graphic, also published circa 9-11-01, placed much greater emphasis on Flight 77’s brief side trip than did the Washington Post or Time graphics. What caused the pilot’s change of heart? Why did the hijacked flight return to its approved route? As I first proposed in Newsletter #16 (posted on the first anniversary of the attacks, more or less), it seems entirely plausible that the original plan called for Flights 77 and 93 to strike simultaneously, or nearly so, at targets in the D.C. area — likely at the Pentagon and the White House, for maximum psychological impact and to allow the administration to claim that the nation’s defenses were crippled in the initial surprise attack, thus preventing a response.

Had Flight 93 got off the ground on time, it could have reached its target at or before the time that Flight 11 was smashing into the World Trade Center. Flight 77, scheduled to depart at 8:10, was only 23 miles from its target when it left the ground at about 8:20 AM. It merely needed to kill time until Flight 93 was in position. When Flight 93 failed to get off the ground, however, Flight 77 opted to proceed along its scheduled route — until Flight 93 finally got off the ground at 8:42 AM, at which time Flight 77 almost immediately changed course.

But, as I previously indicated, it was too late. Flight 93 was still some distance from its target, while Flight 11 had already found its target in New York City, and Flight 175 wasn’t far behind. The New York attacks were most likely supposed to coincide with, or follow shortly after, the attacks on the political and military nerve centers. Had things played out that way, there would not now be questions raised about the failure to muster a timely military response.

At approximately 8:56 AM, Flight 77, with its transponder shut off, reportedly disappeared from radar. Some reports have claimed, erroneously and likely deliberately so, that disabling a plane’s transponder will cause it to disappear from radar. That is a patently absurd claim. Shutting off the transponder will certainly make positive identification more difficult, but it hardly renders an aircraft invisible to radar. If that were the case, foreign bombers could slip past U.S. radar at any time merely by switching off their transponders.

At about the same time that Flight 77 became a phantom plane, George Bush, purported President of the United States and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, arrived at the Booker School in Sarasota, Florida for a planned, and well publicized, photo-op. At that time, one commercial airliner had already crashed into WTC1, killing and gravely injuring hundreds of innocent victims. A second airliner, wildly off course and cut off from communications, was just minutes away from a second spectacular crash. A third airliner had cut off communications, was flying erratically, and had just disappeared from radar. There was clearly a massive, coordinated, unprecedented attack upon the country underway.

It should go without saying that only those who were involved in the planning of the operation had any idea, at that time, what the full scope of the attacks would be. No non-conspirator could have known, for example, whether any bombings on the ground were planned. But one thing could certainly have been assumed: George Bush was at serious risk of being targeted, especially since he was scheduled to be in an unsecured location that had been announced in advance and that was located, amazingly enough, less than five miles from an international airport.

Upon arrival at the school, Bush reportedly told the principal that although “a commercial plane has hit the World Trade Center,” they were going to “do the reading thing anyway.” Bush and his entourage proceeded into the unprotected school. No one mentioned that the plane that had crashed had been hijacked, or that a second hijacked flight was screaming toward Manhattan, or that a third hijacked plane was allegedly missing-in-action.

At 9:03 AM, just as Flight 175 was plowing into the south World Trade Center tower in a telegenic pyrotechnic show, and just as Flight 93 became the fourth commercial airliner that morning to veer off its approved route, George Bush began his extended photo-op in an elementary school classroom. Forty-nine minutes after the first danger signs, and seventeen minutes after the first crash, the skies were free of interceptor aircraft and the commander-in-chief was quietly sitting in an extremely vulnerable location reading a book about a pet goat.

Just a few minutes into the reading, presidential adviser Andrew Card approached Bush to inform him of the second crash. My guess is that he added something along these lines: “The attacks in Washington have not taken place yet. We’re not sure what went wrong. Sit tight while we figure out what to do.” And that, of course, is exactly what Bush proceeded to do.

[As a brief aside, I should mention here that when Michael Moore opted to present (incomplete) footage of Bush at the Booker School in his film “Fahrenheit 911,” the filmmaker felt compelled to add a narrative track that is clearly intended to shape the audience’s perception of Bush’s actions. According to Moore, Bush’s actions revealed incompetence and dereliction of duties. In truth, however, Bush’s actions were more indicative of specific foreknowledge and consciousness of guilt.]

At about 9:09 AM, with Bush still practicing his reading skills, there are reports of a plane crash in a remote area along the Ohio/Kentucky/West Virginia border. According to several published versions of its flight path, that is exactly where Flight 77 is at the time of the reports. These crash reports will later disappear down the memory hole. Flight 77 will, as if by magic, reappear on radar later, nearly a half-hour after it disappeared.

Meanwhile, at 9:16 AM, Bush leaves the Florida classroom and – after taking time out for questions and photos, as if he has nothing better to do – meets with his staff. More than an hour has now passed since the hijackings began, and there is still no sign of a military response, even though Manhattan is in flames and at least two hijacked aircraft are known to be still in the air. With the nation under attack, Bush and his Secret Service detail had been sitting for some twenty minutes in a location that could not be defended against an organized attack and that had been publicized in advance.

At 9:25 AM, ‘Flight 77’ appears on radar at Dulles International, but the plane is moving very fast and air traffic controllers quickly ascertain that it is not maneuvering like your run-of-the-mill commercial airliner. Two minutes later, according to reports, a passenger reports the hijacking of Flight 93. Three minutes after that, at 9:30 AM, Bush delivers an address to the nation, at a time and location scheduled, and publicized, in advance.

Seventy-six minutes have now passed since the first sign of trouble emerged, sixty-nine minutes have passed since the first hijacking was confirmed, at least forty-seven minutes have passed since NORAD was notified, forty-four minutes have passed since the first crash, and twenty-seven minutes have passed since the second crash — and two errant, and presumably hijacked, aircraft are still at large. No interceptors have been scrambled and the commander-in-chief still sits at an unsecured location that had been advertised in advance. Following the speech, Bush and his entourage head to the airport, following a scheduled route and with no added security.

At 9:36 AM, Flight 93 turns toward Washington (see graphics). Approximately two minutes later, ‘Flight 77,’ cruising along unhindered, despite flying through the most closely monitored, secure airspace in the world, and doing so during the highest possible state of alert, purportedly plows into the side of a newly refurbished portion of the Pentagon.

Notice that in all the graphics, it is only the return portion of Flight 77’s route that is shown as a broken line, indicating, supposedly, that the aircraft’s transponder had been shut off. But as everyone knows, the transponders on all four flights were actually disabled. Why then aren’t portions of all four routes depicted with a broken line? One reason for the use of the broken line is surely to create the impression that it was not possible to track that particular flight, thus hopefully defraying questions concerning how an enormous commercial airliner could freely violate the Pentagon’s airspace during a national emergency. But there is another reason for the broken line as well: for most of the return route depicted by the dashed line, Flight 77 did not exist, at least on radar.

The most likely explanation is that Flight 77, having missed the window of opportunity to launch its intended attack, was shot down in some unpopulated area along the Ohio/Kentucky border. The only shred of evidence that Flight 77 ever made it any further than that is an extremely dubious report from Bush Administration insider Theodore Olsen, who claimed that he was the recipient of an unlikely, and unrecorded, phone call from his wife, Bush Administration insider Susan Olsen, who happened to be, conveniently enough, an alleged passenger on the plane, and the only passenger, coincidentally, who was able to allegedly make a phone call, even though, according to Ted Olsen, who is the only witness to the alleged call, all the passengers were encouraged by the hijackers to phone home.

Not only did Flight 77 fly without registering on radar, it crashed without leaving behind any aircraft debris (as we shall see in Act II). As I previously suggested, it is entirely possible that someone, in a misguided attempt to create a retroactive explanation for the complete lack of a military response, and to provide some political cover, made a decision to attack the Pentagon by other means after Flight 77 was shot down.

If the attacks had gone according to plans, in other words, Flight 77 very likely would have crashed into the Pentagon. There would have been physical evidence of the crash of a commercial airliner at the scene, and we probably would have been treated to endless replays of video footage of yet another spectacular plane crash. Instead, what we have is some very incriminating photographic evidence that strongly suggests that Flight 77 never made it to the Pentagon.

At 9:55 AM, Air Force 1, with Bush and his entourage aboard, lifts off with no military escort. For an entire hour, with the country under attack, Bush has stuck to his prearranged, and well publicized, schedule. No effort has been made to protect the life of the President and commander-in-chief. And at no time has the commander-in-chief made any effort to take control of the situation. Neither has Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, or anyone else in a position of authority in the Bush administration or the military establishment.

At 9:59 AM, the south World Trade Center tower inexplicably suffered a total, and perfectly symmetrical, collapse. Just minutes later, Flight 93 reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania. At 10:10 AM, the damaged portion of the Pentagon suffered a partial collapse. Eighteen minutes later, the north World Trade Center tower inexplicably suffered a total, and perfectly symmetrical, collapse. The show was officially over.

Flight 93 was almost certainly shot down. Just as at the Pentagon, there was nothing at the purported ‘crash’ site that indicated that it had been hit by a 100-ton aircraft. Wreckage from the aircraft, notably absent at the ‘crash’ site, was scattered as far as eight miles away, indicating that the plane had exploded in the air and not on the ground. Witness statements, media reports, and even statements by Washington officials indicated that Flight 93 was being shadowed by military aircraft just before it ‘crashed.’

It is possible that Flight 93, now seared into the collective American memory as the “Let’s Roll” flight, was shot down precisely because passengers had taken control of the aircraft, or were attempting to. While recently reading an online version of David Ray Griffin’s new book on the attacks, I was surprised to find that that is the theory that he is floating. I was even more surprised to find that Griffin credits that theory to “9-11 Timeline” assembler Paul Thompson. Before reading that, I had foolishly believed that that theory first appeared on my own website, under the title “What Really Happened to Flight 93,” posted on November 7, 2001, just eight weeks after the attacks.

Looking back now, however, three years after the fact, it occurs to me that my initial theory may have been off the mark. There is little doubt that Flight 93 was shot down, and it most likely was shot down because, like Flight 77, it had become a liability rather than an asset. But it had become a liability regardless of whether there really was a passenger revolt, so it is possible that the tale of passenger heroics was fabricated to explain the ‘crash’ of the aircraft — and to provide a patriotic, feel-good story. Whether the heroics were real or scripted, one thing seems clear: Flight 93 would have been downed either way. How else were all those witnesses going to be silenced?

The response to the attacks – by NORAD, by the U.S. Air Force, by the President, by his security detail, and by all his cronies and underlings – looked nothing like the response that would have greeted any real ‘terrorists’ brazen enough to attempt an ambitious attack on the home turf of the world’s most feared military machine. It looked, instead, like a deliberate non-response. But it was a strange non-response, entirely lacking in consistency, credibility and plausibility.

Much of the cover story had a decidedly improvised feel to it. Critics of the skeptics’ case have asked why, if this was an inside job, a better cover story wasn’t scripted in advance? Why were there so many contradictory, and at time incriminating, statements by key players? Why did elements of the official story change over time (e.g., “there were no aircraft scrambled” changed to “they were scrambled but they arrived late.”)? Why stage an obvious stand-down of the nation’s air defenses? And why risk hitting the Pentagon with something other than Flight 77?

All of these questions, and many similar ones, have been posed by critics of alternative 9-11 theories. We (there’s that “we” again) have suggested here that the answers to such questions may be found in the fact that the attacks of September 11 were, in reality, a botched operation. Had things gone according to plans, there would have been no extended stand-down and no incriminating lack of evidence at the Pentagon, and all the key players would likely have followed their scripts.

According to this scenario, those scripts went out the window when Flight 93 and Flight 77 failed to successfully coordinate their initial attacks. In other words, many of the inconsistencies and obvious cover-ups that plague the official story may very well be due to the lack of improvisational skills of various key members of the Bush administration and the military and intelligence establishments.

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II, Part I

Dave McGowan — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 01:00:52 +0000

[Oops: in Act I, I incorrectly identified Ted Olson’s wife as Susan Olson, rather than Barbara Olson. I think Susan Olson was actually Cindy Brady, sister of Marcia, Jan, Greg, Peter and Bobby. As far as I know, she was never married to a reactionary member of the Bush team.]

ACT II: PART I

Theories proposing that something other than Flight 77 was responsible for the damage done to the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 have been harshly criticized in some quarters. Two of the most frequent criticisms that I have read are: (1) the researchers promoting such theories have never been to the D.C. area to view the crime scene, so they don’t really know what they’re talking about; and (2) promoting such theories can only serve to alienate people in the D.C. area, since so many of them allegedly saw the errant aircraft.

I don’t find either of these criticisms particularly valid. Millions of people, after all, have never visited Dallas to stand in Dealey Plaza, but they have still been able to objectively review the evidence and conclude that the official story of the JFK assassination just doesn’t add up. Likewise, millions of people have never visited the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and yet they have been able to draw conclusions about the RFK assassination after reviewing the evidence. I fail to see why the same rules shouldn’t apply to the attack on the Pentagon.

As for the witnesses, there were actually relatively few, and an unusually large percentage of those who lent support to the official story were either career military types or media representatives. Some of the witnesses reported seeing an aircraft much smaller than a 757, possibly even a missile. Mike Walter, for example, told CNN that what he saw “was like a cruise missile with wings, went right there and slammed into the Pentagon. Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out, and then it was just chaos on the highway.”

(http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.terrorism/)

Witness Tom Seibert told the Washington Post that he “heard what sounded like a missile, then we heard a loud boom.” The same Post article revealed that “Ervin Brown, who works at the Pentagon, said he saw pieces of what appeared to be small aircraft on the ground.” Needless to say, a Boeing 757 would hardly be considered a “small aircraft.”

(http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/5m/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html)

The Post also spoke to a Steve Patterson, who said that he saw the plane from about 150 yards away, “approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground.” He described the plane as having “the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet,” and he said that it “flew over Arlington cemetery so low that he thought it was going to land on I-385. He said it was flying so fast that he couldn’t read any writing on the side.” Patterson also said that the aircraft that he saw “appeared to hold about eight to 12 people” — hardly an aircraft of sufficient size to be a 757. And a bulky 757 is certainly not the type of aircraft that you would expect to be observed approaching the Pentagon “below treetop level,” as this one purportedly was.

The UK’s Guardian began its initial report on the Pentagon attack with the words: “It sounded like a missile at first, the air above Washington filled with the terrifying roar of displaced air.” One witness questioned by the Guardian claimed, strangely enough, that “the blast had blown up a helicopter circling overhead.” Of course, since no photographic evidence of the crash has been produced, there is little hope of either confirming or disproving this claim.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4254934,00.html)

Yet another witness account of the attack, this one from a reporter for Space.Com, reads as follows: “At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball. I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane.”

(http://www.space.com/news/rains_september11-1.html)

It also moved nothing like a passenger airplane, at least on radar. Air traffic controller Danielle O’Brien, who had earlier that morning cleared Flight 77 for take-off from Dulles, certainly didn’t think it was a Boeing 757 that she was tracking on radar as it approached Washington. What she initially saw was “an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed … I had literally a blip and nothing more.” O’Brien described her impression of the projectile that she tracked: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane. You don’t fly a 757 in that manner. It’s unsafe.” The consensus opinion among the controllers, after tracking some of the movements of the projectile, was that it “must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president.” Of the final portion of the aircraft’s destructive journey, O’Brien has said: “We lost radar contact with that craft. And we waited. And we waited.”

(http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_011024_atc_feature.html)

The majority of those claiming to have witnessed the event have offered accounts that are said to corroborate the official story. The stories told by these witnesses, however, are wildly contradictory and at times ridiculously implausible, occasionally involving scenarios where the plane drug a wing along the ground, or even turned cartwheels, before slamming into the Pentagon. As is apparent in collections of witness accounts, like the one posted on an ‘Urban Legends’ website (http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77w.htm), there is little agreement among the witnesses on the size and type of aircraft, the altitude and stability of the aircraft, the angle of approach, and various other details.

As any student of the law knows, even the most sincere, well intentioned witnesses can be, and frequently are, mistaken about what it was that they witnessed (especially during times of extreme stress). Add to that the fact that there is a virtually unlimited supply of potential ‘witnesses’ in the D.C. area who aren’t so well intentioned, and it begins to look like witness reports may not be the best way to get at the truth of what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Simply put, the photographic evidence, which trumps the contradictory witness statements, does not support the theory that an enormous commercial aircraft smashed into the Pentagon. I first reviewed some of that evidence in Newsletter #7 (June 30, 2002). Here I will present a thoroughly revamped version of that posting, incorporating a number of additional photographs, a discussion of why my initial theory is not supported by the evidence, and a review of some of the humorous ‘evidence’ that defenders of the official story have presented.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that the Pentagon was not evacuated on the morning of September 11, 2001, even though it was widely believed to be a potential target, and even though a projectile was reportedly being tracked on radar heading in its direction. More than 20,000 people are employed at the Pentagon, all of them potentially at risk that day. If the building had been evacuated, two things would have happened: lives would have been saved; and thousands of people would have been milling about outside the Pentagon, well positioned to witness whether Flight 77 did indeed crash into the Pentagon.

I should also note here that early media reports mentioned nothing about a passenger airplane. Some reports held that either a truck or a helicopter was involved in the attack. Fox News, that pillar of responsible journalism, initially reported that the Pentagon had been hit by a USAF fighter jet. Unlike in New York, the airplane story took time to fully take shape.

* * * * * * * * * *

Although I refer frequently in this article to the “official story,” there really isn’t, technically speaking, an official story of what happened at the Pentagon that day. What there is instead is an officially encouraged, and notably vague, group consensus — a consensus shaped and reinforced by Washington’s political and media institutions, which have carefully avoided fleshing out too many details. This strategy is apparently intended to disarm critics, since it is much harder to point out the lies and absurdities in the official story if that official story has never been formally presented.

What the (un)official story says is that Flight 77, flying at a high rate of speed while mere feet off the ground, plowed into the side of the Pentagon at about 9:38 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001. Initial statements indicated that the only components of the aircraft to survive the impact and subsequent fire were the black boxes and a single landing light. The black boxes have never been turned over to civilian authorities and their contents have never been publicly revealed.

The failure to recover the rest of the aircraft was unofficially attributed to the fact that the entire plane was vaporized by the fire. Let me repeat that: the aircraft was vaporized by the fire. Not just melted into a pool of molten metal, mind you, but literally boiled away! Over 100 tons of metal, including two five-ton aircraft engines!

Although it should be obvious to any thinking person, it must be stated here anyway: a hydrocarbon fire cannot possibly burn at the temperatures required to even melt a 100 ton aircraft, let alone actually vaporize it. That such an absurd notion was even floated out there for public consumption indicates that Washington officials were desperately seeking any explanation, no matter how preposterous, for the complete lack of aircraft wreckage recovered from the Pentagon.

While the aircraft did not survive the ordeal, the remains of the passengers allegedly did. All but a handful were purportedly positively identified through forensic analysis. Apparently the fire in the Pentagon burned hot enough to vaporize steel aircraft engines, but not hot enough to cremate human remains. Sounds reasonable to me.

(http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/stripe/6%5F48/national%5Fnews/12279%2D1.html)

The attack on the Pentagon reportedly damaged an enormous chunk of office space, and yet, curiously, only 125 people were killed on the ground, with another 80 seriously injured. As in New York, initial casualty estimates were substantially higher. Demolition and reconstruction began almost immediately, and within a year, some of the newly rebuilt offices were already ready for occupation.

Some later reports indicated that Flight 77 had not actually been vaporized, but was in fact largely recovered and reconstructed. Such claims have never been formally confirmed or denied by Washington officials. To date, there is no compelling evidence indicating that any aircraft debris was recovered from any part of the Pentagon.

Many questions have been left unanswered by the official story of the attack. For example, how could hijackers possibly have known that they would be able to fly unmolested for some 300 miles while headed directly into the heart of the nation’s capital, through the most tightly controlled airspace in the world — and do it not in a surprise attack, while the nation’s defenses were sleeping, but rather while the country was on the highest state of alert, and actually anticipating the attack? … while the whole world was watching, and all the broadcast and cable television networks were providing play-by-play coverage?

Wouldn’t it have made far more sense for the Pentagon to be the first target struck, utilizing the element of surprise, considering that the home of U.S. military forces is obviously a little better defended than the World Trade Center? Wouldn’t the logical way to implement the assault have been to hit the military command center first, then strike the civilian targets while the military was attempting to regroup and secure Washington? You would think that even a third-rate terrorist would know that, let alone a terrorist superstar like Osama bin Laden.

Another question that has been raised is why there has never been any film or videotape released depicting an airplane approaching, or crashing into, the Pentagon. As the home of Uncle Sam’s military machine, the Pentagon is quite obviously one of the most secure buildings in the world. It is under constant surveillance by multiple closed-circuit cameras. In addition to the Pentagon’s own footage, surveillance cameras at a Sheraton hotel and a Citgo gas station were also positioned to record the ‘crash.’ Tape from both cameras was reportedly quickly seized by the FBI. None of the footage has ever seen the light of day. And despite the fact that an unusually high number of media personnel claimed that they witnessed the attack, no photographs or videotape of the attack have ever been released by any media outlet. With the exception of one notorious image that is purported to be a frame from a tape from one of the Pentagon’s CCTV cameras, there is no photographic evidence of any airplane, of any size, flying in the vicinity of, approaching, or crashing into, the Pentagon.

These five images, purportedly ‘leaked’ by a Pentagon source, have been analyzed endlessly by researchers. According to various accounts, the first frame depicts one of the following about to slam into the Pentagon: a Boeing 757; a smaller passenger plane; a military jet, such as an F-15; a pilotless drone; a missile; or a missile and a jet. Which of those you, as an objective reviewer of the evidence, see in frame #1 will probably largely depend upon (a) your level of sleep deprivation; and (b) the quantity, and variety, of illicit drugs you have consumed.

There are any number of curious anomalies in these images, perhaps the most obvious of which is the fact that the date/time stamps, added after the fact, are off by about thirty-two hours. The second frame differs from the other four in a number of ways: it is brighter, shifted slightly to the left, and obscured in both upper corners. The second frame also has the same time stamp, 17:37:19, as the first frame, though it obviously wasn’t taken at the same time.

Some researchers, by the way, have claimed that the time stamps indicate a tape speed of 100 frames per second, which these same researchers have noted is extremely unlikely. These people apparently never learned how to tell time, so let me clue them in: the difference between 17:37:22 and 17:37:23 is one second, not 1/100 of a second. Time, you see, is generally recorded as hours:minutes:seconds. But no one should let that stop them from making stupid claims that further discredit the field of 9-11 research.

Another curious feature of the images can be observed by focusing your attention on the upper left corner of each frame — the area where it looks like Bob Guccione snuck by and spread a little Vaseline on the camera lens. As can be clearly seen, the pattern of condensation drops (or whatever they are) is quite consistent in frames #1, #4, and #5, but much different in frames #2 and #3, as though the drops began to disperse and then inexplicably returned to their original configuration. Another curiosity is that the helicopter support structure that can be seen in silhouette in front of the fireball in frames #3 and #4 is incongruously painted a bright orange in frame #2.

What then are we to make of these images? Only one of the five purportedly shows an airplane about to crash, and it is of such poor quality that it is not possible to perform any sort of meaningful analysis. There is little question that the images have been manipulated in various ways, rendering them all but useless for shedding any light on what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The most likely scenario is that these doctored photos were ‘leaked’ quite deliberately for the express purpose of further muddying the waters. We will therefore treat these images with the respect that they deserve — which is to say, we will pretty much ignore them.

Unlike the actual ‘crash,’ there is plenty of photographic evidence of the aftermath of the attack. Virtually none of it supports the official story. Nothing that can be confirmed as aircraft debris is visible in any of the photographs that have found their way into the public domain. Photos do reveal, and Pentagon officials have acknowledged, that the initial penetration into the side of the building was not nearly large enough to account for the wingspan of a Boeing 757-200 aircraft (actually, the penetration wasn’t even large enough to account for the fuselage of a 757). In fact, all the available photos reveal that the initial damage to the front facade of the Pentagon, after the alleged crash but before the collapse that occurred about a half-hour later, was relatively minor. And the impact apparently did not generate enough explosive force to even displace the wire spools just below the alleged point of impact.

The pre-collapse photos reveal that the front wall of the Pentagon remained remarkably intact after the initial impact. Pentagon officials, and defenders of the official story, have claimed that the small entry wound made by the alleged plane was the result of the fact that the aircraft’s wings were either sheared off or folded back on impact, and that only the fuselage entered the building — becoming, in effect, a very large missile. That would be a much more plausible claim if a 757 did not have very large wings that would be clearly visible in these photographs if they had in fact been sheared off as the fuselage entered the building. Attached to those wings are two engines, each about 9 feet in diameter, 21 feet long, and weighing nearly five tons. The official story doesn’t really bother to account for them.

One enterprising soul put together a composite image that illustrates, more clearly than any other image that I have come across, the fundamental absurdity of the official story of the crash of Flight 77. Seen below is an actual photo of the Pentagon, over which is overlaid both a properly scaled image of the pre-collapse damage to the facade on September 11, and a properly scaled image of a Boeing 757-200 aircraft.

Perfectly obvious in this composite photo is that the actual impact damage to the Pentagon was entirely inconsistent with the crash of a large passenger plane. Also obvious is that even if we accept the dubious notion that the plane’s fuselage disappeared within the building, some very large aircraft parts seem to be unaccounted for — like the two wings, the two engines, and the three tail fins.

Nevertheless, the official story claims that the plane did in fact impact the Pentagon exactly as depicted in the above photo, as can be seen in the graphic to the right, which was used by Pentagon spokesmen during a post-911 press briefing. As can be seen in the graphic, Flight 77 allegedly plowed through three of the five concentric rings that make up the Pentagon, coming to rest completely within the complex of buildings. According to various 911 gatekeepers, that is why there is no aircraft debris visible on the lawn outside the alleged point of impact (such as in the photo to the left). Also missing, needless to say, is any indication that a 100 ton aircraft performed a gymnastics floor routine on that lawn before slamming into the side of the Pentagon.

After the collapse, there was still no aircraft wreckage visible, as can be seen in these post-collapse photos — the center one taken just after the collapse, while the fire still burned, and the other two taken after clean-up efforts were underway. According to the 911 gatekeepers, the remains of the aircraft were at that time still buried beneath the collapsed building. Fair enough. That seems to be a reasonable enough claim — except for the fact that only the outer ring of the Pentagon collapsed, while the plane, according to the official story, penetrated through two additional rings, neither of which collapsed, and neither of which yielded any verifiable aircraft debris. And if any aircraft debris was later found buried beneath the collapsed portion of the Pentagon, no one bothered to document it with photographs.

Sometimes offered in support of the official story is photographic evidence of an exit wound exactly where we would expect it to be located if an airplane, or some other fast moving projectile, did in fact slice through the concentric rings of the Pentagon in the manner indicated in the official Pentagon graphic. Punched through the inside of “C” ring, at ground level, was a remarkably clean hole that appeared to measure roughly 8′-9′ high and 10′-12′ wide. This hole, punched through a thick, steel-reinforced masonry wall, was purportedly made by the nosecone of Flight 77. There is no indication, however, in any of the photos, of aircraft debris either inside or outside of the hole.

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II, Part II

Dave McGowan — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 02:00:17 +0000

ACT II, PART II

Some websites, however, claim otherwise. Bizarrely enough, some of these same photos are cited elsewhere as evidence that a 757 did crash into the Pentagon. The photo below, for example, supposedly depicts aircraft debris — and remarkably uncharred aircraft debris at that. If you’re having trouble finding it, here’s a hint: it’s the green stuff. If you’re wondering how we can be sure that it is in fact aircraft debris, it’s really quite simple: it has to be aircraft debris, you see, because it’s green. Such is the level of investigative analysis employed by at least one ‘debunker.’ Before I learned the proper way to identify aircraft wreckage, I had assumed that the green stuff was probably just broken up office furnishings of some sort. And I also had no idea that a few flimsy pieces of debris could cleanly punch out a large hole in a beefy masonry wall.

As I explained in my first Pentagon rant, it would have been physically impossible for the nosecone, or any other component, of a Boeing 757 to punch out an exit hole in the “C” ring of the Pentagon after plowing through three entire building rings. As the Los Angeles Times noted, five days after the attacks, the Pentagon was “built to be as strong and impenetrable as this country always hoped its military would be … When ground was broken on the building–eerily, on September 11, 1941, exactly 60 years before Tuesday’s attack–it was a state of the art bunker.”

(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091601pentagon,0,1620389,print.story)

The Pentagon is an immense, and immensely strong, structure. It is composed primarily of thick, steel-reinforced concrete. The exterior walls are a full two feet thick – two feet of solid concrete, brick and limestone (see wall detail, below left). As a pictorial study of the building noted, “the main interior walls above the basement level are of masonry” as well. Throughout the entire complex, spaced roughly fifteen feet apart, in both directions, are thick, steel-reinforced concrete columns (see example, below right). Also throughout the complex are “Transformer vaults and machine rooms … protected by masonry walls and firedoors.” (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/The_Pentagon.html)

The buildings’ floor slabs are composed of 5.5 inches of steel-reinforced concrete. To add further to the total mass of concrete that makes up the Pentagon, “concrete ramps instead of elevators were used to connect the floors,” according to the Department of Defense’s History of the Pentagon. The same source adds that, “By 30 April 1942, about eight months after ground breaking, the contractor completed the first two sections of the building and War Department personnel began to move in.” (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/The_Pentagon.html)

I will leave it to the serious conspiracy theorists in the crowd to ponder the significance of the date of ground-breaking and the date of initial occupation. The point here is to emphasize the number of thick, dense, reinforced concrete obstacles that would hinder the forward progress of any projectile attempting to pass through the Pentagon. To cleanly penetrate just one ring would require blasting through two 24” thick masonry walls, several masonry interior walls (notice the cross-section of “E” ring provided by the post-collapse photos), numerous concrete support columns, and maybe a concrete ramp or a concrete transformer room. Also, since a 757 fuselage (see below — and notice, in the front view, the ‘pods’ visible on the underside) would not easily fit between floors, and since the official story claims that the plane entered between the first and second floors, it would have to rip its way horizontally through a considerable amount of steel-reinforced concrete floor slab.

The L.A. Times (and many other sources) added that, in addition to all the reinforced concrete, the portion of the Pentagon that was hit in the attack had recently been “reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts.” In other words, the Pentagon in general, and especially the portion affected by the attack, is an extremely well fortified building. An airplane blasting through three rings of the complex would be roughly equivalent to an airplane blasting through a whole series of concrete bunkers.

Another interesting fact about the Pentagon attack that is frequently ignored is that, in order for the official story to be true, the ‘airplane’ that hit the Pentagon had to be flying in an almost perfectly horizontal trajectory at an extremely low altitude — mere feet off the ground. And it had to be flying at a rate of speed that would have allowed it to maintain that trajectory, losing almost no altitude, even as it was plowing its way through dozens of reinforced concrete obstacles.

The nosecone of a Boeing passenger plane, pictured below, is composed of carbon. Its function is to serve as an aerodynamic cover for the aircraft’s navigation system. It is not designed to be utilized as, and it will not perform well as, a missile warhead. Impact with the very first masonry wall would have completely obliterated the plane’s nosecone and enclosed electronics. The plane’s fuselage, composed primarily of strong yet lightweight metals, would have fared only slightly better.

If we were to play along with the official story, we might propose that there are two components of a Boeing 757 that might have had sufficient mass and density to punch out such an exit wound: one of the engines, or a portion of the fuselage that had been thoroughly compacted by previous impacts with dense masonry walls and concrete columns. But again, it must be said that while such components might well have punched through multiple walls in one ring of the Pentagon, they certainly could not have punched cleanly through three entire rings.

The official story maintains that, rather then a dense mass of metal, it was the lightweight carbon nose of the aircraft that punched out the exit hole. According to the National Fire Protection Association’s Online Journal, “Captain Defina and airport Battalion Chief Walter Hood, as well as other jurisdictions’ battalion chiefs, led crews inside with attack lines to fight fires on every floor of the ‘D’ and ‘E’ rings. The aircraft had penetrated all the way to the “C” ring. ‘The only way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that we saw pieces of the nose gear. The devastation was horrific.'”

(http://www.nfpa.org/NFPAJournal/OnlineExclusive/Exclusive_11_01_01/exclusive_11.01.01.asp)

Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, when asked at a Department of Defense news briefing about the presence of jet fuel, responded: “We have what we believe is a puddle right there that the — what we believe is to be the nose of the aircraft. So — ” (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/t09122001_t0912asd.html)

To account for these reports of surviving nose gear, and to account for an alleged exit hole that couldn’t possibly have been punched out by a passenger airplane, I suggested in my previous Pentagon rant that the damage was likely caused by a particular type of cruise missile — specifically, a Boeing AGM-86C Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) outfitted with a depleted uranium (DU) warhead. Here are excerpts of what I wrote back in June 2002:

How it operates is explained by the Federation of American Scientists: “After launch, the missile’s folded wings, tail surfaces and engine inlet deploy. It is then able to fly complicated routes to a target through the use of an onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) coupled with its Inertial Navigation System (INS). This allows the missile to guide itself to the target with pinpoint accuracy.” The FAS website also comments on the missile’s “small size and low-altitude flight capability, which makes them difficult to detect on radar.”

The AGM-86 also can be equipped with a “penetrating” warhead, designed to cut into hardened bunkers. As the FAS describes it: “The AGM-86D Block II program is the Precision Strike variant of CALCM. It incorporates a penetrating warhead, updated state of the art, near-precision, GPS guidance, and a modified terminal area flight profile to maximize the effectiveness of the warhead.”

The American Scientists also discuss a “feasibility study [which] was concluded in April 1997, in which it was determined the BROACH Warhead on CALCM would offer very significant hard target capabilities … The BROACH multi-warhead system … achieves its results by combining an initial penetrator charge (warhead) with a secondary follow-through bomb, supported by multi-event hard target fuzing.”

Everything seemed to fit — the clean initial penetration, the low altitude flight capability, the ability to evade radar, the ability to penetrate multiple reinforced targets. Other researchers apparently liked the fit as well. As I mentioned in Act I, I recently read portions of an online version of David Ray Griffin’s book, The New Pearl Harbor. While doing so, I noticed that Mr. Griffin seems to favor the notion that what hit the Pentagon was “one of the latest generation of AGM-type missiles, armed with a hollow charge and a depleted uranium BLU tip.” Griffin credits that theory to Thierry Meyssan.

Last time I checked, Meyssan was selling a truck bomb theory, so I’m not really sure where he and Griffin picked up that crazy AGM missile theory, but after carefully reviewing the photographic evidence, I can now say with considerable confidence that it wasn’t a missile warhead that punched out that exit hole. I can say that because it is perfectly obvious that the ‘exit’ hole wasn’t actually an exit hole at all.

First of all, though no one seems to have given it much serious thought, it is not in the right location to be an exit wound. True, the hole is where it should be if a projectile following the alleged trajectory of the alleged plane sliced through the building in a perfectly straight line from the point of entry. But that would never actually happen in this place that we call the ‘real world.’ In the real world, when a fast-moving projectile strikes a flat, dense, stationary object at an angle (in this case, an angle of approximately 45 degrees, by most accounts), something called deflection comes into play.

It’s been a little while since I had a math or physics class, so I am not going to try to impress anyone here with any complicated calculations — which would be meaningless to most people anyway (including me). Instead, I am going to make the common sense observation that, due to a projectile’s tendency to deflect off of an immovable (relatively speaking) flat surface when striking at an angle, it takes considerably more energy to penetrate at an angle than it does to penetrate head on. And when a projectile does penetrate through an angled surface, the trajectory of that projectile will change due to deflection.

The degree of deflection will largely depend upon the speed and mass of the projectile, and the density of the immovable surface being impacted/penetrated. If the projectile is traveling at sufficient speed and has sufficient mass, and the angled surface offers minimal resistance, then the deflection will be minimal. However, as the projectile’s speed decreases with each successive penetration, each subsequent obstacle will offer greater resistance, and, due to the cumulative effects of deflection, will be struck at a progressively sharper angle, so that, after a given number of impacts/penetrations, the projectile will have lost sufficient velocity, and/or it will be traveling at such a severe angle, that it will, rather than penetrating, ricochet off the next masonry wall or concrete column in its path. In the case of the Pentagon, this would happen long before a projectile plowed through three entire rings of the complex.

Even if we were to accept that the projectile did manage, miraculously and in violation of various laws of physics, to plow a perfectly straight course through three entire rings of the Pentagon, we would still be left with one rather perplexing question: if whatever punched that hole still had sufficient mass and velocity to blast cleanly through two feet of solid concrete, brick and limestone, then what stopped it from continuing on into the Pentagon’s “B” ring? Once it exited “C” ring, after all, there was nothing between it and the next exterior wall but about forty feet of air, which doesn’t normally offer much resistance. And yet, according to all reports (and the photo to the left), the damage did not extend beyond “C” ring. So what exactly was it that stopped the forward progress of the alleged projectile after it cleanly exited “C” ring?

Below is what is purported to be the official damage report on the Pentagon. Notice that in “C” ring, none of the structural columns in the alleged path of travel suffered significant damage. Just for fun, take a straightedge and try to map out a path of travel from the entry hole to the exit hole that does not pass through one or more of those largely undamaged columns. Let me know if you succeed.

What are we to conclude happened here? Did the strangely indestructible nosecone of Flight 77 somehow weave its way around those columns on the way out of the building? Or did it careen around as if it were in a giant pinball machine until, magically, it somehow ended up right back on course and with sufficient energy to punch its way out? Perhaps I am just a bit of a skeptic, but somehow I find either of those scenarios rather unlikely.

So there are, it seems, at least three questions raised by the existence of the ‘exit’ hole; how did the projectile plow through dozens of concrete obstructions and yet still retain enough energy to cut cleanly through a two-foot-thick masonry wall? Once it exited “C” ring, what stopped the projectile’s forward progress? And how did the projectile manage to avoid hitting a whole series of columns on its way out the newly created back door?

As the photo to the left reveals, the space between rings “C” and “D,” and between rings “D” and “E,” is not empty space (as I had erroneously believed when I penned my previous diatribe); rather, those rings are connected, but only for the first two floors. Notice that that there is no visible damage to the second-story roof between “C” and “D” rings, nor is there any visible damage to “C” and “D” rings themselves, with the exception of the blackened ‘exit hole’ (and two additional blackened openings in “C” ring apparently created by firefighters to gain access to the building). It would seem then that there was no significant damage to the building complex above the second floor, at least beyond “E” ring.

In fact, even in “E” ring, the alleged point of entry, there doesn’t appear to have been much significant damage above the second floor. As can be seen in the post-collapse photo above, all the structural columns above the second floor appear to be intact, and, remarkably enough, there doesn’t even appear to be a significant amount of fire damage above the second floor. Furniture sitting right next to the point of collapse appears to be unscathed. The same was largely true of the area on the other side of the collapse, as can be seen in the photo to the lower left, which presents a view across the chasm after the clean-up had begun.

There is nothing suspicious or unusual, by the way, about the clean break between the collapsed and standing portions of the building. Some theorists have mistakenly attached significance to the fact that it looks as though the Pentagon was cleanly sliced. The truth is that the building gave way at what is known as an expansion joint (a built-in break to allow for expansion and contraction), which is exactly where a collapse would be expected to occur, if it was to occur at all (it is marked as an expansion joint on the damage report presented previously, and an expansion joint can be clearly seen running along the roofs of the surviving rings in the aerial photos, directly in line with the ‘slice’ in “E” ring).

The point that I started to make here though is that, with the exception of the collapsed portion of “E” ring, all the structural damage, and nearly all the fire damage, was confined to the first and second floors. It appears as though the fire, from its origins at the point of impact, primarily burned along the roof (until, presumably, firefighters got it under control). As can be seen in the views to the left and upper right, it burned only along the segments of the roof composed of the blue colored material, which doesn’t appear to have been very fire retardant. The apparent lack of fire damage to the upper floors of the adjoining buildings tends to indicate that it was primarily the roof, and not the buildings themselves, that suffered significant fire damage.

But if the vast majority of the significant damage was to the first and second floors only, to such an extent that a second-story roof over a portion of the alleged path of travel shows no visible signs of damage, then we are not really being asked to believe that an enormous 757 jumbo jet disappeared without a trace into a five-story building; incredibly enough, we are actually being asked to believe that it essentially disappeared without a trace into a two-story building!

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II, Part III

Dave McGowan — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 03:00:09 +0000

ACT II, PART III

The remarkable photo to the left, taken after a considerable amount of demolition work had been done, reveals an actual cross-section of the three connected rings of the Pentagon. Notice the number of columns and walls that would have to be cleanly penetrated to blast completely through this massive concrete, brick and limestone structure. And consider that to pass through at a 45 degree angle, a projectile would have to plow through nearly 100 additional feet of concrete obstacles, the equivalent of approximately 1½ more rings.

The distance from the alleged point of penetration to the alleged exit wound was just over 300 feet. For you sports-minded readers, that’s an entire football field. Imagine that across each goal line of that football field is a 24″ thick, steel-reinforced masonry wall. And down each sideline as well. Imagine also that every five yards or so, across the entire field, in both directions, are 24″ square, reinforced concrete columns. Now imagine that there are several concrete slabs spanning between that network of columns, each five-and-a-half inches thick, spaced about fourteen feet apart. Now add some concrete ramps here and there to connect the floors. What we have then, so far, is something the size of a football field that closely resembles a walled, multi-story parking structure. Now add to that, every four or five yards, interior walls, some masonry and some of lightweight construction. Don’t forget to add them in both directions, across the entire width and length of the field. If you’d like, you can also add file cabinets, desks, and various other bulky office furnishings, but that’s really optional. The important thing here is to consider how likely it would be that a 757 flown into the fortress wall at one end of the field would blast its way through a hole in the fortress wall at the other end of the field. I’m guessing not very likely at all.

* * * * * * * * * *

So what really did happen at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001? When I began writing this piece – just a couple short weeks ago, though it seems much longer – I was leaning towards a scenario that involved a missile fired into the point of entry (to create the initial penetration, the facade damage, and the fireball), combined with explosives placed within the building, possibly quite hastily, to create all of the following: the collapse of “E” ring (necessary to hide the fact that no plane actually entered the building); much of the destruction along the ‘path of travel’; and the alleged ‘exit’ hole.

In other words, my theory was that both a missile (possibly fired by a passing jet, assuming that some of the witness reports, and the air traffic controller reports, were accurate) and supplemental explosives were used to simulate, albeit rather poorly, the crash of a passenger plane. That would explain, among other things, why “secondary explosions and plumes of smoke” were reported by witnesses to Washington Post reporters.

(http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/5m/www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html)

But is that what really happened? The reality is that we will likely never know what really happened at the Pentagon that morning. As at the site of the World Trade Center towers, all evidence was quickly bulldozed away. And even if it hadn’t been, we would not likely have learned what secrets lay buried in the rubble. We are talking here, after all, about the Pentagon, which isn’t the kind of place that a truly independent investigator could have wandered into to take a look around.

We will never know which aspects, if any, of the alleged CCTV images are legitimate. Nevertheless, a number of investigators on both sides of the debate have spent countless hours attempting to prop up the images as ‘proof’ either that a 757 did hit the Pentagon, or that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon, when neither conclusion can ever be drawn from grainy, low-resolution images that have clearly been doctored.

We will never have any way of verifying the accuracy of the purported damage report. Was there really extensive structural damage extending well beyond “E” ring? The report says there was, but numerous aerial photos of the buildings reveal little indication of such damage lying within. Even the two-story buildings, amazingly enough, were able to completely conceal the extensive damage.

We really don’t know, with any certainty, how many of the ‘witness’ reports are fraudulent accounts planted in the media. Many of the witnesses were themselves members of the Washington press corps, whose primary function is parroting government lies. We also don’t know how many of the reports are more a reflection of what the witnesses wanted to see than what they actually did see. Any major event, after all, will draw out ‘witnesses’ driven by a desire to be a part of history in the making.

There have been, to date, around 150 published witness reports, with roughly a third of those witnesses claiming to have seen something impacting the Pentagon. The majority of the accounts do not strictly conform to the official story. Indeed, perhaps what is most surprising about the witness accounts of the attack on the Pentagon – considering the magnitude of the event, and the fact that, by 9:38 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001, more than a few people in Washington were nervously scanning the skies for signs of errant aircraft – is that there aren’t a lot more of them.

Some investigators seem to have spent countless hours constructing elaborate theories around multiple witness reports that not only contradict each other, but contradict the photographic evidence as well. The effort seems rather pointless, given that anyone can cherry-pick from the available ‘witness’ reports to validate any number of theories — just as I did at the top of this post.

It has occurred to me, as I’ve been mulling over the evidence, that maybe that is the ultimate goal — to deliberately render the evidence so ambiguous and indecipherable that it becomes impossible to construct a logical and coherent theory that accounts for all the known ‘evidence.’ If no alternative scenario can be constructed that won’t be immediately attacked for ignoring some aspect of the ‘evidence,’ then the official story, by default, becomes the truth.

It was almost certainly realized, very early on, that the Flight 77 fable wasn’t going to stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. The official story, such as it is, cannot really be defended directly, so a very deliberate effort has been made to thoroughly muddy the waters and render the available evidence hopelessly ambiguous and inconclusive.

Nevertheless, even through the fog it is perfectly obvious that the one conclusion that can be drawn is that it was not a Boeing 757 passenger jet that caused the damage to the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. What evidence, after all, supports the official story? A smattering of witness reports, to be sure, but those are contradicted by other witness reports and by virtually all of the photographic evidence. In addition to the witness reports, there is the extremely dubious, and unverifiable, forensic identification of the passengers. Then there is the official damage report, which is supposed to support the official story, but in reality reports damage that couldn’t possibly have been inflicted by a passenger plane. The only other aspects of the evidence that support the official story are the notorious clipped-off light poles, and the widely circulated photos that purportedly depict aircraft debris in and outside the Pentagon.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Flight 77 story has been vocally defended by more than a few 911 ‘skeptics,’ some of whom have shown a curious willingness to toss credibility and consistency out the door when necessary. Michael Rivero, of WhatReallyHappened.Com, provides a good case study.

To explain the lack of aircraft wreckage outside the Pentagon, Rivero presents a single post-collapse photo (left) and claims that the aircraft “slid INTO the building, into the first floor space, starting a fire in the first floor, whereupon the upper floors later collapsed down onto the remains of the aircraft. Most of the aircraft wreckage is therefore under the collapsed roof section in the photo.”

A few paragraphs later, Rivero reveals that “aircraft are relatively fragile objects due to weight considerations.” I was shocked by that revelation, having been fooled into believing that aircraft had to be pretty sturdy to withstand years of exposure to the stresses of things like sudden and extreme weather changes, heavy turbulence, and icing. But I guess not. According to Rivero, “jet aircraft … are, if you think about it, mostly filled with air, like an aluminum balloon.”

I’m not entirely sure that Rivero understands the difference between a blimp and an airplane, but I hate to stop him when he’s on a roll, so let’s listen and learn as he compares a commercial aircraft to a glass Christmas tree ornament: “Take a glass Christmas ornament and hurl it against a brick wall. Do you get a round opening in the brick wall the size of the ornament? No, of course not. Neither will an aluminum plane leave a clean outline of itself crashing into concrete. In the case of the plane, there are subassemblies which are heavy and solid, such as the engines, the frames supporting the landing gear, cockpit avionics, the potable water tanks, APU, etc. On impact, these would break loose from the aircraft and continuing forward, produce smaller holes.”

Uhmm … but what happened to the plane sliding into the building? Rivero has inadvertently provided a wonderful example here of the impossibility of defending the official story while maintaining even a hint of credibility. To explain the lack of aircraft wreckage outside the Pentagon, he claims that the plane slid into the building and was then buried under rubble. But then, just a few paragraphs later, while struggling to explain the lack of an entry wound, he makes the completely contradictory claim that the plane essentially blew apart on impact.

In the same post, Rivero makes a bold claim about the pile of indeterminate debris identified by the red rectangle in the photo above. “The Pentagon is a building mostly made of concrete and wood,” Rivero writes, “Yet here is a pile of crumpled aluminum debris, and clearly seen mixed in with it are pieces of luggage. Since the Pentagon itself does not travel, we can conclude that the luggage (and the aluminum shards mixed with them) are part of the remains of the passenger jet which hit the Pentagon.”

I have to concede that I apparently do not have the visual acuity of a Michael Rivero, so it is not entirely clear to me how he could have possibly determined that what we are looking at is “aluminum debris,” let alone the remains of a passenger airplane. I’m also a little unclear on which pieces of debris are luggage and which are aircraft parts. It’s hard to tell when everything is carelessly jumbled together like that, and shoved around by that Bobcat visible in the foreground. But that is, of course, exactly the kind of respect that we would expect would be shown for the personal effects of the Pentagon victims. Hell, for all we know, they might have even tossed some bodies in the pile. In fact, it would be fair to say that the human remains in the pile can be identified with the same level of certainty as the pieces of luggage and aircraft debris in the pile.

One conclusion that can be safely drawn from this photo is that the materials in the pile, whatever they may be, were removed from the building through the open entry door that the debris is piled just outside of. And that door quite obviously does not lead into the portion of the Pentagon that was allegedly hit by the plane. In addition to that, the plane, according to Rivero, is still lying buried beneath the collapsed portion of the building. How, one wonders, was all this alleged wreckage recovered before excavation had even begun on the collapsed portion of the Pentagon?

Joe Vialls displays the very same photo and makes more outlandish claims about the pile of debris: “Which bits of the pile are which bits of American Airlines Flight 77 you had best decide for yourself, because there are lots of bits to choose from … Though most of the Boeing 757 was still in the Pentagon basement [or even below it] on that date, only three days after the crash, there is already enough scrap metal on the pile to construct a pair of fighter aircraft from scratch. And because this aircraft wreckage utterly destroys the French conspiracy, they failed to show it to you. Worse than that. The French deliberately edited it out completely, so you would be unable to reach your own conclusions.”

Those goddamn French! Unlike those “wine-swilling Parisians,” as Vialls refers to them, I have no problem displaying the photo. In fact, unlike Vialls and Rivero (and numerous others), I have tried to present here a representative sampling of all the photographic evidence, even some that I consider to be fraudulent and/or too grainy and ambiguous to be of any value. That, you see, is what enables people to reach their own conclusions.

You may find yourself wondering, by the way, how in the world Flight 77 could have ended up in the Pentagon’s basement. The answer, according to Vialls, is that the plane actually dive-bombed into the Pentagon, barreling straight down into the bowels of the building. And it did so, amazingly enough, without leaving any penetrations in the roof of the complex. Vialls has boldly opted to blaze his own trail on this one, disregarding pretty much all of the available evidence. He has also failed to explain how aircraft debris was excavated from the basement without disturbing the mountain of concrete lying on top of it.

Moving on, I am required by the Fairness Doctrine to show you some additional photos that allegedly depict aircraft debris. However, it is my understanding that the doctrine places no restrictions on my right to thoroughly mock and ridicule this alleged evidence. We will begin with the alleged debris that was photographed either in “C” ring or in the walkway between “C” ring and “B” ring, and then we will move on to the notorious piece of debris allegedly left on the Pentagon lawn. Like the alleged aircraft debris presented by Rivero and Vialls, none of this alleged debris has ever been officially acknowledged — which seems rather odd, since you would assume that the Washington gang would be eager to embrace any evidence that supposedly lends credence to the official story.

First up we have this wheel, reportedly photographed outside the infamous ‘exit’ hole in “C” ring. It is claimed to be part of the landing gear of a Boeing 757. Also photographed in the walkway between “B” and “C” rings is a grainy black object alleged to be the tire that was once mounted to that wheel. Of course, it is impossible to ascertain whether the object to the right is a tire at all, let alone a tire from the landing gear of a 757, just as it isn’t really possible to verify where the photo to the left was actually taken. If we accept that the items are what they are claimed to be, and that they were photographed outside of “C” ring, and that they weren’t planted there, then we must also accept that not only can lightweight aircraft parts smash their way through literally dozens of concrete and steel barriers, but they can emerge from such an ordeal nearly intact and in readily recognizable form. Who knew that alloy rims and rubber tires were actually tougher than multiple layers of concrete, steel, brick, and limestone?

Next up is the photo to the right, which depicts … uhhh, I have to be honest here — I have no clue what it is supposed to be. Some kind of manifold or something. And it was discovered … uhmm, somewhere in the Pentagon, I suppose, but that can’t actually be determined from the photo. Obviously then it must be debris from Flight 77. To the left, jutting out prominently from a pile of indeterminate debris, and obviously better lit and in much sharper focus than other alleged interior shots of alleged aircraft debris, is what is claimed to be yet another component of a Boeing 757’s apparently indestructible landing gear. Whatever.

Similar grainy photos of indeterminate origin can be found on various websites devoted to bolstering the official story through the use of unofficial ‘evidence.’ None of the photos depict any large pieces of actual, identifiable aircraft wreckage. Even if all the of the photos did actually depict debris from a 757, and if all that debris was actually found inside the Pentagon, then a few hundred pounds of Flight 77 has been accounted for. That leaves well over 100 tons unaccounted for — plus all the passengers and crew, since none of the photos, strangely enough, depict any human remains mixed in with the aircraft debris.

We now turn our attention to these infamous images, which I like to call the “is it an airplane or is it a soda can?” photos. This immaculately preserved piece of debris, lovingly photographed by a writer for Navy Times, but ignored by everyone else on the scene, is purportedly a portion of American Airlines Flight 77. Despite having endured both a 450 mile per hour (the speed varies in various accounts) impact into dense concrete, and the massive fireball that resulted from that impact, this purported aircraft wreckage, sitting all by itself, far from the alleged point of impact, doesn’t appear to be charred in the least. After these photos were taken, the mysterious debris was never seen again, nor ever mentioned in any official accounts of the alleged crash.

That is kind of a shame, when you think about it, because it might have been nice to have a piece of history like that displayed in a museum or something. Perhaps the Smithsonian might have been able to find it a suitable home. Better yet, it could have been mounted on a granite base and planted on the Pentagon lawn, exactly where it sits, as a permanent memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks.

Some researchers have claimed that it is actually just one of many pieces of aircraft debris visible in these two photos. Behind it, some say, lies a large ‘debris field’ of shredded aircraft parts. It seems far more likely, however, that the debris closer to the building, which the emergency personnel are freely trampling over, is nothing more than shattered pieces of the building’s limestone veneer, a considerable amount of which was blasted away.

All of this photographic evidence of alleged debris appears to have been ‘unofficially,’ but actually quite deliberately, leaked. The goal appears to be to silence critics of the official 9-11 narrative while carefully avoiding officially acknowledging the existence of the alleged debris. The reason for such a strategy is obvious: Washington cannot acknowledge the existence of what are purported to be random bits and pieces of the aircraft without admitting that it cannot account for the other 99.9% of the wreckage.

Last on the evidence list is the ever-popular ‘toppled light pole’ evidence. To bring those of you unfamiliar with all the minutiae of the Pentagon attack up to date, the 757 that allegedly hit the Pentagon allegedly clipped off five light poles on its way to doing so. And those light poles, of course, were directly in line with the trajectory of the plane established by the entry and exit wounds in the Pentagon and the reported pattern of internal structural damage. Toss in a pinch of debris and a handful of dubious witness statements, stir the whole thing up real good, and you have an open-and-shut case — to a casual observer unaware of the fact that neither the entry hole nor the exit hole could have possibly been created by the crash of a Boeing 757.

The light pole evidence is considered by some researchers to be a crucial piece of the puzzle, because it allegedly establishes three things: the trajectory of the plane on its approach to the Pentagon; the approximate wingspan of the plane (based on the spacing of the poles); and the plane’s extremely low approach altitude. The toppled light poles, however, are problematic in a number of ways.

As can be seen in these photos, these were very sturdy poles that appear to have been ripped cleanly away from their foundations without doing substantial damage to the bases of the posts. You would think that if a 100+ ton metal object traveling at hundreds of miles per hour impacted a steel light pole, it might, at the very least, maybe dent the pole, or perhaps bend it a little bit. In other words, you would think that there would be some kind of impact scar visible on the toppled pole. You would also think that there might be signs of extreme stress at base of the pole, where it had presumably been securely bolted to a concrete footing before being violently torn loose. But you would be mistaken in those assumptions.

You might also conclude that if an airplane hit a sturdy steel light pole with enough force to cleanly uproot it, the impact might do some pretty serious damage to the airplane — maybe take off part of a wing, or disable an engine, or rip a hole in the fuselage. But again you would be mistaken, just as you would be mistaken if you were to assume that an enormous, unwieldy passenger plane already flying in an exceedingly dangerous and unlikely manner would almost certainly crash after hitting just one light pole, let alone five in a row. Consider that an airplane with a 125 foot wingspan flying just 20 feet or so off the ground has very little margin for error. Even a relatively minor tilt to one side or the other would result in one of the wing tips hitting the ground, thus precipitating a very messy crash that would have left the area littered with large pieces of aircraft wreckage.

According to the approach path graphic, both wings of the plane clipped light poles, three on the left side and two on the right side. And yet, amazingly enough, the pilot was able to maintain perfect control of his aircraft, completing a perfectly stable, high-speed, ground-level approach that would have been all but impossible even in a 757 that had not suffered any damage to its wings and engines. According to some accounts, the right wing of the plane also impacted a large generator on the approach path.

As is apparent from the height of the light poles, an airplane flying low enough to clip them with its wings would have been all but scraping its engines across the roofs of the cars on the highway. And, sure enough, there is at least one witness report of the plane actually clipping off the antenna of a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Incredibly enough, some researchers have actually tailored their Pentagon theories to account for this alleged evidence, but I have no idea why. Are these theorists really that naive, or do they just pretend to be? Is it not perfectly obvious that this so-called evidence is patently absurd? How much thrust do you suppose is required to get a fully-loaded, 100+ ton aircraft off the ground and then propel it through the air at 500+ miles per hour? Isn’t an aircraft engine essentially just an immensely powerful fan that is capable of displacing massive quantities of air and expelling it at an extremely high velocity? Is there something I am missing here?

Some time ago, I watched an episode of the television show “Myth Busters” in which one of the myths tested was a story about a car being literally flipped over by the engine exhaust from a jet aircraft. As I recall, the test set up by the program’s hosts failed to flip the car, but it did succeed in thoroughly trashing the vehicle. Steel body panels were literally ripped from the car by the force of the engine, as were the windows, the hood, the mirrors, and various other parts. While the car remained standing, it looked very much like it had survived a bomb blast.

The cars in the light pole photos, on the other hand, are in pristine condition, as are their drivers. Some pedestrian witnesses, amazingly enough, have actually claimed that the plane came in so low over their positions that they ducked for fear of being hit. One such witness, Frank Probst, a retired Army officer, has claimed that as he dove for the ground, one of the plane’s engines passed beside him, “about six feet away.” Probst also claims that he saw the plane clip the SUV antenna and literally shear the light poles in half.

Frank Probst has been propped up as a key witness by some defenders of the official story, despite the fact that his tall tale is contradicted by the photos of the obviously still intact light poles, and, more importantly, by the fact that Mr. Probst is still alive. Simply put, if Probst (and various other witnesses) had been as close to the passing aircraft engines as they claim to have been, they would not have been witnesses to the tragedy; they would have been additional casualties.

* * * * * * * * * *

I have done my best here to present a reasonably comprehensive review of everything that has been offered up as ‘evidence’ of what happened at the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. It is up to each of you, my fearless readers, to decide which aspects of that evidence is credible, and which is not.

So what did cause the damage to the Pentagon that morning? Did American Airlines Flight 77 – missing from radar screens for half an hour, and undetected by America’s state-of-the-art air defense systems – suddenly and inexplicably appear in the skies over Washington? Did it then, after performing a high speed maneuver normally beyond the capabilities of a Boeing 757 (according to some witness accounts), begin a high speed approach to the Pentagon at such a ridiculously low altitude that it actually clipped a car antenna? Did it cleanly uproot five sturdy steel light poles, and smash one of its wings into a large generator, and yet still maintain an arrow-straight, perfectly stable approach to the Pentagon? And did it then strike the Pentagon with such tremendous force that it was able to cleanly blast through over 300 feet of angled, reinforced concrete obstructions? And did it do all of that without anyone documenting it with a single frame of film or videotape?

Or was it something else that hit the Pentagon? Can we even say with any certainty that something did hit the Pentagon? Was it all done with explosives planted inside, and possibly outside, the building? If so, then what toppled those light poles? Can we ever hope to find answers to all the unanswered questions concerning the Pentagon attack? Or is that a hurdle that has been constructed so as to make it impossible to clear?

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II, Addendum II

Dave McGowan — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:55 +0000

ACT II: ADDENDUM 2

[Editor’s Note: A popular hobby of late among some 9-11 researchers seems to involve disparaging the efforts of, and questioning the motives of, those researchers who refuse to ignore the fact that the available evidence is entirely inconsistent with the crash of a jetliner at the Pentagon. These individuals generally refer to certain other Pentagon investigators as “no-plane” theorists. For the purposes of this article, I have adopted a name for them as well: Tattoo theorists. This appellation is, of course, an homage to the “Fantasy Island” character best known for the tag line, “Ze plane! Ze plane!”

Two of the most aggressive of the Tattoo theorists, by the way, are Jim Hoffman and Brian Salter, both of whom were on the other side of the fence, so to speak, until fairly recently. If you have ever known someone who quit smoking and thereafter embarked on a mission to browbeat and berate every other smoker on the planet, then you have a pretty good idea of how the Tattoo theorists operate.]

On February 24, Brian Salter (questionsquestions.net) posted a histrionic denunciation of Pentagon “no-plane” theorists that included the bizarre claim that any efforts to “keep the unnecessary no-plane speculation alive just helps to smear 9-11 Truth activists as hateful maniacs. Maybe that’s the idea.”

Well, I guess the jig is up. Mr. Salter, it seems, has figured out our diabolical plot. All along, the real goal has been to cast 9-11 researchers as – dare I say it? – hateful maniacs. In fact, the ‘talking points’ that I receive from my secret CIA backers routinely contain such notations as: “Operation Hateful Maniacs is, as you know, proceeding on schedule; prepare to shift into the next phase of the program, Operation Deranged Psychopaths.”

Of course, it could also be that those of us who continue to focus on the glaring inconsistencies in the official story of what happened at the Pentagon are actually pursuing the truth, which is what a “Truth activist” is supposed to do, rather than peddling entirely speculative drivel about a mythical ‘plane bomb,’ which is what the Tattoo theorists choose to do.

The primary strong-arm tactic of the Tattoo theorists is to cast “no-plane” theorists as part of a Cointelpro-type operation aimed at undermining the 9-11 skeptics’ case. The “no-plane” theories, it is claimed, are “straw man” arguments, propped up specifically so that they can be easily brushed aside by “debunkers,” thus discrediting the 9-11 movement in its entirety by attacking at points of greatest vulnerability.

In his blog, Salter claims “media debunkers have shown maximum enthusiasm for portraying [Pentagon no-plane theories] as the heart and soul of 9/11 skepticism and making it the centerpiece of practically every hit piece.” (http://questionsquestions.net/blog/) Hoffman has written that “the prominence of the no-757-crash theory will damage the cause, particularly as it reaches a wider audience less inclined to research the issue … The mainstream press is casting the no-757-crash theory as a loony construct of conspiracy theorists, and representative of all 9/11 skepticism.” (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html) Mark Robinowitz has joined the chorus by claiming “‘No Planes’ has been the most effective means to discredit issues of complicity inside the Beltway.” (http://www.oilempire.us/pentagon.html)

Obviously then, everyone is in agreement (as if they were all reading the same ‘talking points’) that we must immediately drop all support for the “no-plane” theories, because if we don’t, we will continue to furnish the enemy with useful ammunition with which to attack and discredit us. Sounds like a good plan — except for the fact that it is based on a false premise.

he reality is that there have been almost no mainstream media ‘debunkings’ of the 9-11 skeptics’ case, and there is a very good reason for that: the cumulative case that has been painstakingly compiled is (despite the spirited efforts of people like the Tattoo theorists) a formidable one that major media outlets, along with most so-called ‘alternative’ media outlets, have wisely chosen not to confront.

By far the most ambitious, high-profile media ‘debunking’ of the claims made by 9-11 skeptics has been the hit piece that graced the cover of the March 2005 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html). Since it is known that this article was co-written by Benjamin Chertoff, reportedly a cousin of our very own Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, then it is probably safe to assume that a primary objective was to knock down all the ‘straw men’ arguments that had been carefully planted and nurtured by government operatives. That is, after all, how this game is played, as the Tattoo theorists readily acknowledge.

We should, therefore, expect to find that the Popular Mechanics article focuses considerable attention on the Pentagon “no-plane” theories, and on the Pentagon attack in general. But what we find instead is quite the opposite; instead of emphasizing questions about the Pentagon, the issue is downplayed and given very little attention — which isn’t really surprising given that the attack on the Pentagon has always been, from day one, relegated to the status of a relatively insignificant footnote.

The PM article presents what it says are the top sixteen claims made by 9-11 skeptics, coupled with what are supposed to be ‘debunkings’ of each of those claims. The claims are grouped into four categories, which are presented in the following order: “The Planes” (the ones that hit the towers); “The World Trade Center” (the collapse of the towers); “The Pentagon”; and “Flight 93.” Five of the sixteen claims examined concern the collapse of the WTC towers, four concern Flights 11 and 175, four concern Flight 93, and just three concern the Pentagon attack. In terms of word count, the article runs (minus the introduction) about 5,200 words, and it breaks down roughly as follows: collapse of towers – 2,050 words; WTC planes – 1250 words; Flight 93 – 1150 words; and the Pentagon – a paltry 750 words.

So if we are to use the focus of mainstream media attacks to gauge the points of greatest vulnerability in the 9-11 skeptics’ case, then, in terms of both word count and number of claims examined, the collapse of the Twin Towers would be, by far, the weakest leak in the chain (which is kind of ironic, when you think about it, considering that most, if not all of the Tattoo theorists actively promote the theory that the towers were brought down with explosives). As for Pentagon “no-plane” theories, they are, according to the given criteria, the point of least vulnerability.

If we use the criteria of prominence of placement on the list, then the point of greatest vulnerability would be theories concerning the planes that hit the towers. Indeed, the very first claim that is examined concerns the notorious “pod plane” theories, and the third delves into the equally inane issue of ‘windowless jets.’ These are, of course, some of the real areas of vulnerability in the 9-11 skeptics’ case. And though they are frequently linked to Pentagon theories, they are entirely separate issues.

Claims concerning the Pentagon attack don’t make an appearance on the Popular Mechanics list until well into the second half of the article. And once they do appear, they are given very little print space. The three claims ‘debunked’ in the PM piece barely scratch the surface of the cumulative case that has been built to challenge the official version of the Pentagon attack. And the ‘debunking’ of even these cherry-picked ‘claims’ is pathetically inept. The undeniable lack of aircraft debris from the alleged crash, for example, is brushed aside with nothing more than this ludicrous emotional appeal from an alleged blast expert and witness to the aftermath of the attack: “I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box … I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?”

You would think that if the Pentagon attack theories were the ‘straw men’ that the Tattoo theorists claim, then the ‘debunkers’ would be better prepared to knock those straw men down, and they would devote more print space to doing so. Instead, we find the Pentagon attack being downplayed in a major media attack on the 9-11 skeptics movement — at the very same time, curiously enough, that a number of 9-11 skeptics have begun aggressively demanding that all “unnecessary speculation” about the Pentagon attack be dropped, and at the very same time that a new purported Pentagon skeptics’ site suddenly appeared, professionally designed and complete with new interviews and photos (from insider sources), numerous omissions, copious amounts of spin and disinformation, a new DVD for sale, and, of course, enthusiastic backing from the Tattoo theorists and other 9-11 skeptics.

I have to say, quite frankly, that all of this just seems too well choreographed for my tastes. And, I have to also say that the Tattoo theorists’ recent efforts to bury the Pentagon “no-plane speculation” seem rather desperate and overreaching. Consider, for example, the opening lines of the Salter post that I referenced at the beginning of this rant:

The latest escapade in the frantic effort to “keep the faith” amongst the Pentagon no-plane cult is the announcement of a great new “smoking gun”. It turns out that a key figure in the Gannon scandal, GOPUSA.com president Bobby Eberle, who was a key White House go-between, testified that he witnessed the Pentagon strike on 9/11. Well, there’s only one logical conclusion that anyone could draw from this — that all of the witness testimony supporting the crash of a 757 airliner into the Pentagon is all part of a vast fraudulent conspiracy masterminded by Bobby Eberle! As the Xymphora blog tells it, with breathless drama:

“Forget about Gannon. The only reason he has been interesting is the prurient part of his story. I’m reading more and more about how everyone in the White House, up to and including Rove and Bush, is as gay as Paul Lynde, which just reflects the deep homophobia in the coverage of Gannongate. The gay aspect is a red herring. The deep politics aspect of the story is the connection between the White House, conservative e-mail harvester and fundraiser Bruce W. Eberle, and GOPUSA President Bobby Eberle. Bobby Eberle’s eyewitness testimony of Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon is the big break we’ve been waiting for, the first tiny window into the American conspiracy behind 9-11.”

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/02/gannongate-and-9-11.html

While I certainly do not agree with everything that Xymphora has written here concerning the Gannon scandal, it is immediately apparent that Salter is grossly misrepresenting the situation. Specifically, no one that I know of, and certainly no one cited by Salter, has claimed that Bobby Eberle “masterminded” a vast conspiracy. Indeed, Xymphora’s actual position is clearly stated in another excerpt that Salter has thoughtfully posted:

“I have speculated that at least some of the witnesses to the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon were ringers planted by the conspirators. What are the chances that Eberle, whose name has come up prominently in Gannongate, was an eyewitness to the crash? Those who are so certain that the testimony of eyewitnesses means that Flight 77 must have crashed into the Pentagon, despite the enormous amount of physical evidence to the contrary, just might want to give their heads a shake and rethink things. If the evidence of the crash of Flight 77 is so goddamn clear, why did the operators in the Republican Party feel the need to gild the lily?”

That is, I must say, a perfectly legitimate question — although Salter dismisses it by proclaiming that “there is no basis to claim that Eberle’s testimony represented an effort to ‘gild the lily.'” Salter’s position might be a valid one if – and this is a very big “if” – Eberle was the only political operative that stepped out of the shadows with an unlikely account of the attack on the Pentagon. But he wasn’t the only one. Not by a long shot.

Of course, that fact might not be immediately apparent to anyone relying upon the witness list assembled by French researcher Eric Bart, which is the witness list that virtually all of the Tattoo theorists routinely cite as the ‘most complete’ list (Salter calls it “the most extensive available,” Robinowitz touts it as “perhaps the best list of eyewitness accounts,” pentagonresearch.com describes it as a “comprehensive witness list,” and Hoffman has paid tribute by re-posting the list). In truth, however, Bart’s list is not by any means a complete list, though it is certainly the most imposingly long list. Most of that length, however, is due to extensive padding. As it turns out, a substantial portion of the entries on the list are not witness accounts at all; instead, they fall into one of the following categories:

News reports that retell the official story without citing any specific witnesses.
Statements by official government spokesmen who were not themselves witnesses to the attack.
Hearsay accounts.
Reports that have nothing to do with what did or did not hit the Pentagon (such as an air traffic control report, two seismic reports, a Navy report on treating blast injuries, a Federation of American Scientists report on blast effects, an engineer’s report on the reinforcement work done on the Pentagon, and, most bizarrely, a Washington Post report on the creation of the Information Awareness Office).
Accounts of rescue workers who tended to the wounded.

As for the potential witnesses that are included on the Bart list, roughly half of them offer no information that is useful for determining what really happened at the Pentagon. About three dozen of the cited witnesses were inside the building complex at the time of the attack; their accounts describe only the explosion and/or the smoke and fire, offering no clue as to what caused that explosion and fire (although there are numerous reports of multiple explosions, and a few reports of the smell of cordite, none of which lend much weight to the official legend). Similarly, many of the outside witnesses could be described as ‘earwitnesses’; these individuals heard something fly by, and/or they heard (or felt) an explosion at the Pentagon, but they did not actually see anything. Other witnesses saw the fireball or smoke cloud, but not what caused it.

After editing the Bart list to eliminate all the non-witnesses and all the irrelevant witnesses, what is left is, at most, 70 witnesses who claim to have seen something flying in the vicinity of, approaching, or actually crashing into, the Pentagon. So much for the endlessly cited “hundreds of witnesses” that the Tattoo theorists can’t seem to stop talking about (even the brazen liars at Popular Mechanics, by the way, acknowledge that there were “dozens of witnesses,” not hundreds) …

Something else, by the way, that the Tattoo theorists love to talk about is how the dastardly “no-planers” like to pluck portions of witness statements out of context, particularly in the case of oft-cited USA Today reporter/witness Mike Walter. Given the manner in which Mr. Bart presents the testimony of ‘witnesses’ like Scott Cook, I’m sure that those in the opposing camp will understand why I say: “pot, meet kettle.” According to Bart (and, by extension, all the Tattoo theorists who have endorsed and/or re-posted his list), this is Cook’s account of the Pentagon attack:

It was a 757 out of Dulles, which had come up the river in back of our building, turned sharply over the Capitol, ran past the White House and the Washington Monument, up the river to Rosslyn, then dropped to treetop level and ran down Washington Boulevard to the Pentagon (…) As we watched the black plume gather strength, less than a minute after the explosion …

As presented, Cook’s recollection appears to be a very specific account of the approach and crash of a 757 aircraft into the Pentagon. In fact, it appears to be an impossibly specific account, since no witness at the scene could have know, at the time of the alleged crash, that the plane had flown out of Dulles. But Mr. Cook never actually made such a claim. For the record, here is how Scott Cook’s ‘witness’ account read before it was deceptively (and apparently quite deliberately) edited by Eric Bart:

We didn’t know what kind of plane had hit the Pentagon, or where it had hit. Later, we were told that it was a 757 out of Dulles, which had come up the river in back of our building, turned sharply over the Capitol, ran past the White House and the Washington Monument, up the river to Rosslyn, then dropped to treetop level and ran down Washington Boulevard to the Pentagon. I cannot fathom why neither myself nor Ray, a former Air Force officer, missed a big 757, going 400 miles an hour, as it crossed in front of our window in its last 10 seconds of flight. (The more I’ve thought about it since, the odder the choice of the Pentagon as a target appeared. The Pentagon is a huge pile of concrete, the walls over a foot thick, and no plane is big enough to do more than superficial damage to it. Had the hijackers chosen to dive into the Capitol or the White House, much smaller sandstone buildings with little internal framework, the damage and the death toll would have been infinitely higher. Both houses of Congress were in session, and in addition Laura Bush was in the building, preparing to testify to some committee about school reading programs. I guess the symbolism of the Pentagon was more important to the terrorists, who blamed the US military for everything, much like Chomskyites blame everything on the CIA. As horrible as it sounds, the hit on the Pentagon may have been a blessing.) As we watched the black plume gather strength, less than a minute after the explosion …

It is quite obvious that what Cook actually said was that even though both he and his partner were positioned to witness the alleged plane and the alleged crash, and therefore should have witnessed the alleged plane and the alleged crash, neither one of them actually saw anything of the sort. Far from confirming the official account of the alleged crash, Mr. Cook appears to have been somewhat bewildered by it. Of course, you would never know that from reading through Eric Bart’s ‘witness’ list — which raises the question of why, if the ‘witness’ evidence is so compelling, Eric Bart felt the need to gild the lily.

Scott Cook, by the way, wasn’t the only one who missed seeing the plane that day. One of the non-witnesses on Bart’s list, Tom Hovis, had these thoughts to share: “Strangely, no one at the Reagan Tower noticed the aircraft. Andrews AFB radar should have also picked up the aircraft I would think.” Well … yeah … I would tend to think so as well — but I guess those terr’ists were just real sneaky or something, stealthily flying that large aircraft into Washington without it registering either visually or on radar.

But then again, maybe not, since I see that, according to the very same Tom Hovis, “The plane had been seen making a lazy pattern in the no-fly zone over the White House and US Cap.” According to witness Clyde Vaughn, “There wasn’t anything in the air, except for one airplane, and it looked like it was loitering over Georgetown …” And journalist Bob Hunt claimed that he “talked to a number of average people in route who said they saw the plane hovering over the Washington Mall Area …”

I have to confess my ignorance here, since, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t even know that it was possible for a passenger plane to hover. Despite the fact that I have the good fortune of living under the approach path of the local airport, and have therefore seen more than my share of airplanes, I have personally never seen one hover, even briefly. But since this information is not only included on Pentagon witness lists, but is attributed to average people, then I know it must be true (just as it must be true that the plane actually dive-bombed into the Pentagon, as at least five witnesses saw it do, and it must simultaneously be true that the plane actually hit or scraped the ground before impacting the building, as at least five other witnesses have claimed, and it must also be true that there was a second plane, since at least nine witnesses saw it).

So, this is apparently the situation that existed at around 9:30 AM the morning of September 11, 2001: both World Trade Center towers had been attacked and hundreds of people were already dead or dying; not just the nation, but the entire world was watching and knew that America was being attacked by hijacked aircraft, some of which were reportedly still in the air and still very much a threat; the nation’s defenses were, presumably, on the highest state of alert; and, in the midst of it all, a hijacked aircraft was – as would be expected, I suppose – leisurely cruising through the most secure airspace in the known world, over the most sensitive political and military installations in the country, with nary a military jet in sight.

Now, some may find this pre-suicide sightseeing by the terr’ists to be somewhat odd, but my guess is that they were probably stalling to allow time for all the news crews to get set up so that they could capture all the nonexistent photographs and video footage that we are still waiting to see. Either that, or those ballsy terr’ists were actually taunting the U.S. military, daring the fighter jets to come out and play, knowing full well that a squadron of F-16s are no match for an unarmed 757. But here I digress …

In the interest of compiling a more complete (and accurate) list of witnesses than that presented by Bart, I went searching elsewhere and found that there are actually many more purported witnesses of the Pentagon attack. Some of the names that Bart has conveniently chosen to leave off are painfully obvious lily-gilders. Others have told stories that are, I have to say, laughably absurd. Consider, for example, the tale told by purported witness Dennis Smith, who was supposedly “smoking a cigarette in the center courtyard [of the Pentagon] when he heard the roar of engines and looked up in time to see the tail of a plane seconds before it exploded into the building.”

Now, I obviously can’t say for sure what was in that ‘cigarette’ that Dennis was smoking, but according to my trusty high school geometry book, it would have been very difficult for him to peer over a structure 77 feet high and 200 feet wide and see something that was, according to legend, some 50 feet off the ground — unless, of course, Mr. Smith happens to be about 100 feet tall, or to have x-ray vision. I’m going to go on record here as saying that neither seems very likely.

In any event, the point here is that Eric Bart has prepared a very selective presentation of the available Pentagon witness testimony. Some of the testimony that Bart has opted to omit from his list can be found here (http://www.geocities.com/someguyyoudontknow33/witnesses.htm), and yet more can be found here (http://mouv4x8.club.fr/11Sept01/A0082_b_They%20saw%20the%20aircraft.htm).

Although these two lists mercifully omit many of the non-witness accounts that Bart has used to pad his list, and include many purported accounts that Bart has left off, both of the additional lists are plagued by problems of their own. Probably the biggest problem is that a good number of entries are credited to what amount to anonymous sources (people identified by only first name, or by initials, or by pseudonym). Some listings are, incredibly enough, unverified pseudonymous postings to internet discussion groups that appeared months, and even years, after the fact. I would hope that we can all agree here that anonymous, belated boasts of having witnessed one of the most significant events in modern American history do not exactly qualify as actual witness accounts.

By combining the three lists, minus all the filler, I came up with a list of roughly 110 named individuals who have claimed, at one time or another, to have witnessed something flying near, headed towards, and/or crashing into the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. However, nearly three dozen of these individuals held off telling their tales until long after the official version of events had thoroughly penetrated the American psyche, leaving roughly 75 people who claimed, in the hours and days immediately following the attack, that they had witnessed the event. With this more complete witness list in hand, it is time to return to the original question being examined here (as posed by Xymphora): “If the evidence of the crash of Flight 77 is so goddamn clear, why did the operators in the Republican Party feel the need to gild the lily?”

As it turns out, it was actually more of a ‘bipartisan’ affair, with operatives of both alleged political persuasions joining the lily-gilding party. Consider the following list of self-described witnesses: Gary Bauer, Paul Begala, Bobby Eberle, Mike Gerson, Alfred Regnery, and Greta Van Susteren. Many of them need no introduction, but let’s run through the list anyway:

Gary Bauer: Talking head and former Republican presidential candidate who has been linked to the notorious Project for a New American Century.
Paul Begala: Democratic Party operative and nominally liberal punching bag on CNN’s “Crossfire.”
Bobby Eberle: President and CEO of GOPUSA, a portal of right-wing propaganda. \
Mike Gerson: Director of George W. Bush’s speech writing staff.
Alfred Regnery: President of Regnery Publishing, another portal of right-wing propaganda — one that has seen fit to bestow upon the world the literary stylings of Ann Coulter, the Swift Boat Veterans, and numerous other accomplished liars.
Greta Van Susteren: Nominally liberal legal analyst for Fox News.

I don’t know if the Tattoo theorists are aware of this, but all of the people on that list share at least one thing in common: they are all professional liars. It is their job, individually and collectively, to lie to the American people. On a daily basis. They are, by any objective appraisal, propagandists for the state. So if all of them are selling the same story, in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, it is probably best to assume that they might not be telling the truth.

Let’s take a look now at some of the other people that are hawking the same story: Dennis Clem, Penny Elgas, Albert Hemphill, Lincoln Leibner, Stephen McGraw, Mitch Mitchell, Patty Murray, Rick Renzi, James Robbins, Meseidy Rodriguez, Darb Ryan, Elizabeth Smiley, and Clyde Vaughn. And who are they? Allow me to handle the introductions:

Dennis Clem is a Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Penny Elgas sits on the FDIC Advisory Committee on Banking Policy, alongside of Jean Baker, who just happens to be the Chief of Staff at the Office of President George H.W. Bush.
Albert Hemphill is a Lt. General with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Captain (now Major) Lincoln Leibner is a communications officer for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Stephen McGraw is a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney reborn as an Opus Dei priest.
Colonel Mitch Mitchell serves as a CBS News ~~war spinner~~ military consultant.
Patty Murray is a United States Senator (D-Washington).
Rick Renzi is a United States Congressman (R-Arizona).
James Robbins is a contributor to National Review, a national security analyst, and a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council (I, by the way, have decided that I should refer to myself as a Senior Fellow at the Center for an Informed America).
I’m not sure exactly who Meseidy Rodriguez is, but his name appears in legal filings concerning Dick Cheney’s top-secret energy policy meetings, which probably isn’t a good sign.
Vice Admiral Darb Ryan is the Chief of U.S. Naval Personnel.
Elizabeth Smiley is an intelligence operations specialist with Civil Aviation Security at FAA headquarters — which means that she is one of the people who inexplicably failed to perform their jobs on September 11, 2001, possibly because she was busy watching phantom jetliners crashing into the Pentagon.
Brig. General Clyde A. Vaughn is the deputy director of military support to civil authorities — which means that he is another one of the people who inexplicably failed to perform their jobs on September 11, 2001, possibly because he was also busy watching phantom jetliners crashing into the Pentagon.

Anybody see anyone on that list that they would want to buy a used car from? No? How about Colonel Bruce Elliot or Major Joseph Candelario? Or Lt. Cols. Stuart Artman or Frank “Had I not hit the deck, the plane would have taken off my head” Probst? Still no? Then how about Elaine McCusker, a Co-Chairman of the Coalition for National Security Research? Or retired Naval Commanders Donald Bouchoux or Lesley Kelly? How about Shari Taylor, a finance manager at the Defense Intelligence Agency, or Philip Sheuerman, the Associate General Counsel for the U.S. Air Force?

How about any of the names on this list: Bob Dubill, Mary Ann Owens, Richard Benedetto, Christopher Munsey, Vin Narayanan, Joel Sucherman, Mike Walter, Steve Anderson, Fred Gaskins and Mark Faram? Aside from claiming to have witnessed the attack on the Pentagon, what do these ten people have in common? We’ll get to that in just a moment, but first let’s hear from Mr. Faram, who is, it will be recalled, the gentleman who captured the two famous shots of the alleged aircraft debris that many investigators have inexplicably spent countless hours trying to match up with images of various American Airlines aircraft fuselages:

I hate to disappoint anyone, but here is the story behind the photograph. At the time, I was a senior writer with Navy Times newspaper. It is an independent weekly that is owned by the Gannett Corporation (same owners as USA Today). I was at the Navy Annex, up the hill from the Pentagon when I heard the explosion. I always keep a digital camera in my backpack briefcase just as a matter of habit. When the explosion happened I ran down the hill to the site and arrived there approximately 10 minutes after the explosion. I saw the piece, that was near the heliport pad and had to work around to get a shot of it with the building in the background. Because the situation was still fluid, I was able to get in close and make that image within fifteen minutes of the explosion because security had yet to shut off the area. I photographed it twice, with the newly arrived fire trucks pouring water into the building in the background … Right after photographing that piece of wreckage, I also photographed a triage area where medical personnel were tending to a seriously burned man. A priest knelt in the middle of the area and started to pray. I took that image and left immediately … I was out of the immediate area photographing other things within 20 minutes of the crash.

To say that Mr. Faram’s account of his actions that morning strains credibility would be a gross understatement. Imagine this scenario: you are a reporter for a major news service, and you happen to find yourself, purely by chance, among the first on the scene of the most significant news story in decades — one that would occupy all of the media’s time for weeks to come. Would you be at all surprised to find a triage area already set up and staffed by medical personnel and a priest? And, more importantly, would you just take a quick look around, snap off a few quick photos, and then hurriedly leave the scene, because there was apparently something else to photograph on the other side of town — like maybe a really important dog show?

Despite the dubious nature of Mr. Faram’s account, he did at least provide us with some useful important information — specifically, that USA Today and Navy Times are both part of the Gannett family of news outlets. Actually, if Faram weren’t so modest, he would have noted that Gannett also publishes Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corp Times, Armed Forces Journal, Military Market, Military City, and Defense News. In other words, it’s just your typical independent, civilian media organization.

Having established that, let’s now take a look at who our group of mystery witnesses are (or who they were at the time of the Pentagon attack):

Bob Dubill was the executive editor for USA Today.
Mary Ann Owens was a journalist for Gannett.
Richard Benedetto was a reporter for USA Today.
Christopher Munsey was a reporter for Navy Times.
Vin Narayanan was a reporter for USA Today.
Joel Sucherman was a multimedia editor for USA Today.
Mike Walter was a reporter for USA Today.
Steve Anderson was the director of communications for USA Today.
Fred Gaskins was the national editor for USA Today.
Mark Faram was a reporter for Navy Times.

Is it just me, or does anyone else detect a pattern here?

Now, it is my understanding that the Tattoo theorists claim, for the most part, not to be ‘coincidence theorists.’ So, I guess that the question that I have is this: exactly how many Gannett reporters and editors does it take to make a conspiracy? I could accept that maybe two or three of them might have been, purely by chance, in position to witness the attack on the Pentagon. Hell, being an open-minded kind of guy, I might even be willing to go as high as four or five. But ten?! Ten?! What are the odds that ten of the alleged Pentagon witnesses would be from the same news organization?

Perhaps some readers are thinking that maybe there is a simple explanation for this statistical aberration — like maybe the Gannett building is ideally located to provide a view of the attack, or maybe everyone was riding together on a Gannett ride-sharing bus. But neither of those appear to be the case, since only one of the ten Gannett journalists claims to have witnessed the attack from his office, while all the rest maintain that they just happened to be positioned in various strategic locations near the Pentagon. So unless USA Today staff was holding its annual company picnic on the Pentagon lawn that morning, it seems to me that there is something seriously wrong with this story.

Amazingly enough, no fewer than five of those ten Gannett reporters and editors (Benedetto, Munsey, Narayanan, Sucherman and Walter) were able to specifically identify the plane that they saw as an American Airlines jet, and a sixth (Faram) managed to capture the only known photographic images of something vaguely resembling a twisted piece of wreckage from an American Airlines jet! I have to note here that it’s a damn good thing that we had proactive and incredibly observant reporters like the USA Today staff swarming all over the scene of a pending national tragedy. I guess that when you’re a seasoned professional, you just have a sixth sense about where to be and when to be there. That’s probably why Eugenio Hernandez and Dave Winslow, two Associated Press reporters, were also on the scene to witness the attack. Hernandez, by the way, is a video journalist — but not the kind of video journalist who shot any actual video footage.

According to Dave Winslow, an AP radio reporter, his being on the scene to witness the attack and then quickly call in a report ensured that “AP members were first to know.” I guess he didn’t notice that nearly the entire staff of USA Today was loitering around the scene and calling in reports as well.

According to the ‘witness’ compilations, it wasn’t just major media outlets that knew immediately what had happened at the Pentagon. Witness Mark Bright, a Defense Protective Service officer who was manning a guard booth, claims that, “As soon as it struck the building, I just called in an attack, because I knew it couldn’t be accidental.” If true, then I guess his call must have come in right after that of fellow witness and Defense Protective Service officer William Lagasse, who said on ABC‘s “Nightline” program: “It was close enough that I could see the windows and the blinds had been pulled down. I read American Airlines on it … I got on the radio and broadcast. I said a plane is, is heading toward the Heliport side of the building.”

The Christian Science Monitor reported that Fred Hey, a congressional staff attorney and yet another purported witness, had the following reaction to the attack: “‘I can’t believe it! This plane is going down into the Pentagon!’ he shouted into his cell phone. On the other end of the line was his boss, Rep. Bob Ney (R) of Ohio. Representative Ney immediately phoned the news to House Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Livingood, who ordered an immediate evacuation of the Capitol itself.” And according to the Seattle Times, Senator Patty Murray was meeting with other Senate Leaders when, “From a window in the meeting room, she saw a plane hit the Pentagon.”

The Birmington Post Herald held that Pentagon firefighter/witness Alan Wallace “switched on the truck’s radio. ‘Foam 61 to Fort Myer,’ he said. ‘We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK. The airplane was a 757 Boeing or a 320 Airbus.” According to another report, local Engine Company 101 also witnessed the attack and immediately radioed in this report: “Engine 101–emergency traffic, a plane has gone down into the Pentagon.”

According to yet another report, “Barry Frost and Officer Richard Cox, on patrol in south Arlington County, saw a large American Airlines aircraft in steep descent on a collision course with the Pentagon. They immediately radioed the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center. ACPD Headquarters issued a simultaneous page to all members of the ACFD with instructions to report for duty.” In addition, a purported transcription of an Arlington County Police Department log tape reads as follows: “Motor 14, it was an American Airlines plane. Uh. Headed eastbound over the Pike (Columbia Pike highway), possibly toward the Pentagon.”

So what we can safely conclude, after reviewing these various accounts, is that – within mere moments of the attack/explosion – all of the following entities knew exactly what had happened at the Pentagon on the morning of September 11: the Pentagon’s own police force; the Pentagon’s own fire department; the Arlington County Police Department; the Arlington County Fire Department; the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center; the leadership of the United States House of Representatives; the leadership of the United States Senate; the country’s national newspaper; and the nation’s largest newswire service. In addition, there were, according to the Tattoo theorists, literally hundreds of witnesses on the scene who knew exactly what had happened. And according to John Judge (perhaps the least credible of the Tattoo theorists, with the possible exception of Jean-Pierre Desmoulins), “local news immediately interviewed and broadcast eyewitness accounts of the plane going in.”

(http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/notAllCequal.html)

In other words, there was never any doubt about what hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. From the very moment of impact, it was perfectly clear to everyone exactly what had happened. We know this because the accounts contained on the ‘witness’ lists of various Tattoo theorists tell us that it is so. And we should, I suppose, believe these accounts even though the objective reality is that – despite the alleged presence of hundreds of eyewitnesses, including numerous local and national media figures, prominent politicians, police and fire personnel, and military and intelligence personnel, and despite the fact that it was widely known that hijacked commercial aircraft were being used as weapons that day, and that a hijacked plane had allegedly been heading toward Washington – no one initially seemed to know what had happened at the Pentagon.

According to Assistant Secretary of Defense Torie Clarke, it was none other then Donald Rumsfeld who first determined that the Pentagon had been struck by an airplane — half an hour after the attack had occurred: “[Rumsfeld] was in his office, really not that far away from the side of the building that got hit by the plane. He and another person immediately ran down the hallway and went outside and helped some of the people, some of the casualties getting off the stretchers, etc. When he came back in the building about half an hour later, he was the first one that told us he was quite sure it was a plane. Based on the wreckage and based on the thousands and thousands of pieces of metal. He was the one that told us, the staff that was in the room. So he was really the first one who told us that it was most likely a plane.” (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t09162001_t0915wbz.html)

It wasn’t until later that it was declared that the alleged aircraft was an American Airlines passenger plane. As David Ray Griffin recounted in The New Pearl Harbor, “At 10:32, ABC News reported that Flight 77 had been hijacked, but there was no suggestion that it had returned to Washington and hit the Pentagon. Indeed, Fox TV shortly thereafter said that the Pentagon had been hit by a US Air Force flight.”

(You can read the relevant chapter from Griffin’s book here, along with some amusing criticism from Jean-Pierre Desmoulins: http://www.earth-citizens.net/pages-en/npp-griffin.html)

So it appears that, nearly a full hour after the attack had occurred, no one had yet begun to flesh out the official story of what happened at the Pentagon. “Only sometime in the afternoon did it become generally accepted that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon was Flight 77,” writes Griffin. “The first move toward the identification was made by a statement on the website of the Pentagon announcing that it had been hit by a ‘commercial airliner, possibly hijacked.'”

That statement, we can safely assume, was likely based on the assessment of Donald Rumsfeld. Griffin continues: “Then that afternoon the story that this airliner was Flight 77 spread quickly through the media. The source of this story, the Los Angeles Times reported, was some military officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The media also started reporting that Flight 77, just before it disappeared from view, had made a U-turn and headed back toward Washington. But, argues Meyssan, since the civilian air controllers were, according to the official account, no longer receiving information from either radar or the transponder, this ‘information must also have come from military sources.'”

(http://www.earth-citizens.net/pages-en/npp-griffin.html)

There was, of course, one other person who played a key role in fleshing out the official story: Theodore Olson, U.S. Solicitor General and right-wing conspirator extraordinaire. It was Olson, it will be recalled, who single-handedly verified the ‘hijacked by Arabs and flown back to Washington’ story through his inconsistent accounts of unverified cellphone calls that he supposedly received from his wife, yet another right-wing propagandist and talking-head.

The truth of the matter is that the “American Airlines 757 Crashes Into The Pentagon!” story did not spontaneously arise from the eyewitness accounts of rank-and-file citizens. To the contrary, it was a product of the work of Donald Rumsfeld, Ted Olson and unnamed Pentagon officials, and it was reinforced by the media largely through the words of the political operatives and media whores we have already gotten acquainted with — and people like reputed Navy pilot Tim Timmerman, who spoke on the air with CNN correspondent Bob Franken on the afternoon of September 11 (some four-and-a-half hours after the incident at the Pentagon). Timmerman was seemingly on a mission to unequivocally establish what it was that had allegedly struck the Pentagon:

Bob Franken: What can you tell us about the plane itself?

Tim Timmerman: It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question.

Franken: You say it was a Boeing, and you say it was a 757 or 767?

Timmerman: 7-5-7.

Franken: 757, which, of course …

Timmerman: American Airlines.

Franken: American Airlines …

And who exactly was this witness who was so cocksure of his identification of the plane? No one seems to know. One researcher (Jerry Russell) failed in his efforts to verify that he is an actual person. Maybe he is the Tim Timmerman mentioned in this story out of Michigan (http://clubs.calvin.edu/chimes/2002.02.15/cmm2.html and http://www.detnews.com/2001/metro/0103/05/c08-195512.htm), which seems to carry the distinct stench of black operations. Or maybe he doesn’t even exist at all.

In any event, the American Airlines 757 story was further embellished through the notorious photographs of Mark Faram of the infamous Gannett Ten, and through the fragment of indeterminate metal lovingly and patriotically preserved and donated to the National Museum of American History by a woman who just happens – coincidentally, of course – to sit on a board with George Bush, Sr.’s Chief of Staff, and through various other images of supposed aircraft debris, virtually all of which are credited to “anonymous” or “unknown” photographers. (http://pentagonresearch.com/photographers.html)

* * * * * * * * * *

In the beginning, nobody talked much about the Pentagon attack. Most of the internet chatter was about advance warnings and put options. A few brave souls questioned the collapse of the Twin Towers, the appearance of an air defense stand-down, and the fate of Flight 93, but no one really talked about what happened at the Pentagon.

We never saw any footage that verified the official story, nor did we initially see or hear anything that contradicted that story. And so it was until Thierry Meyssan, working from thousands of miles away, alerted the world to the fact that the official story of what happened at the Pentagon was at serious odds with the available photographic evidence.

In retrospect, it seems odd that we had to look to France for answers to what happened in this nation’s capitol. After all, don’t we have any real investigative journalists of our own? Don’t we have our own ‘conspiracy researchers’? And aren’t many of them based right there in Washington, DC? Weren’t some of them in an ideal position to blow the whistle on the various Pentagon anomalies?

John Judge is one name that immediately comes to mind here. Judge is, as most readers are probably aware, a veteran researcher who is revered in many ‘conspiracy’ circles. He is not only a current resident of the nation’s capitol, but a native son as well. In fact, he literally grew up in the Pentagon, as he is fond of telling people. If any alternative journalist knows his way around the Pentagon, it is John Judge.

Perhaps more so than anyone else, John Judge was in a position to serve as a whistleblower. But John Judge was also ideally positioned to fill another role: upholder of the official story within the so-called ‘truth movement,’ and denouncer of anyone who dared to question the veracity of that official story. Ever since questions first began to arise about what really happened at the Pentagon, John Judge has filled the latter role.

Judge is smart enough to realize that he can’t possibly come out on the winning end of any arguments over the merits of the available evidence, so he has, for some three years now, studiously avoided debating the actual evidence. Instead, he quickly created an apparently fictional entity, in the form of an unidentified, but supposedly dear friend of his who just happens to be a flight attendant for American Airlines, and just happens to regularly fly the route flown by Flight 77 that fateful day, but just happened to have taken that particular day off so that she survived and now has insider information, unavailable to anyone else, that Flight 77 really did crash into the Pentagon that day.

This mythical person has served Judge well for the past three years, enabling him to sidestep any and all substantive questions concerning the evidence anomalies with a pat answer that goes something like this: “Well, you know, there were hundreds of witnesses, and my friend says that it really did happen the way the government says, so it must be true.”

Judge’s phantom friend, it should be noted, is not your average flight attendant. In a post dated February 21, 2004, Judge told the latest fanciful, and unintentionally hilarious, version of his friend’s story, which has grown more and more elaborate, and more and more ridiculous, over the past three years:

A dear friend and fellow researcher had been working as a flight attendant for American for many years, and that was her regular route, several times a week … As it turned out, my friend had not been on Flight 77, having taken the day off work to care for her sick father … When questions arose about Flight 77, I contacted her to raise the issues that concerned me and the speculation of others who denied the plane hit the Pentagon. She was adamant in saying it had, and told me she had been to the crash site and had seen parts of the plane. I asked her about the speculation that the plane would have made a larger hole due to the wingspan. She informed me that the fuel was stored in the wings and that they would have exploded and broken off, as the fuselage slammed through the building walls.

Already we see that not only is this person a flight attendant, but also a fellow researcher and, apparently, an expert on airplane crashes. As we return to the story, Judge’s mystery friend has been “approached by another flight attendant to assist in support work for the rescue crews at the site.” Let’s see what happens next:

The Pentagon was seeking people with security clearances that they could trust to be near the site and all the airline attendants qualified for that level of clearance … [My friend] and her mother signed up for an overnight shift on Friday, September 21st. She and her mother spent the entire night continuously providing drinks to rescuers … At the end of her shift on Saturday morning, September 22nd, she was approached along with other attendants to visit the crash site. One declined, but she and two others took a van driven by the Salvation Army to the area.

I have to interrupt here briefly to ask a couple of silly questions that come to mind. First, how is it that someone who is supposedly a conspiracy researcher, and a dear friend of a very well known conspiracy researcher, obtains a security clearance that allows them to roam about the Pentagon? And second, if the mystery friend had just spent the entire night tending to the rescue teams working at the Pentagon crash site, why did she then have to be driven to the crash site? Where did that Salvation Army van take her — across the Pentagon lawn?

Memo to John Judge: lying isn’t as easy as it may appear to be. If you’re going to completely fabricate a story, you have to be careful that that story is consistent. And with that out of the way, let’s get back to the story, which is about to veer off into bizarro world:

The area was covered with rescue equipment, fire trucks, small carts, and ambulances. They were still hoping to find survivors. Small jeeps with wagons attached were being used to transport workers and others at the site. One flight attendant was driving one of these around the site. Once inside the fence, she was unable to clearly discern where the original wall had been. There was just a gaping hole. She got off the van and walked inside the crash site. The other attendants broke down crying once they were inside. But my friend went in further than the others and kept her emotions in check as she has been trained to do and usually does in emergency situations.

How do I even begin to dissect out all the absurdities present in this one brief passage? I suppose I could begin by pointing out that the mystery friend couldn’t possibly have seen a “gaping hole” since any entry hole was buried in rubble shortly after the alleged crash, when the Pentagon was afflicted with that curious September 11 malady known as Collapsing Building Syndrome. I also have to point out how extremely unlikely it is that a group of flight attendants would be invited to freely tour a site that was: (1) one of the world’s most secure military installations; (2) ground zero of an investigation into what was supposedly the deadliest act of ‘terrorism’ ever on American soil; and (3) a badly damaged, unsafe, partially-collapsed structure that obviously would have been off-limits to anyone who didn’t need to be in there.

I was also going to comment on the scenario of the unnamed flight attendant cruising around the site in a jeep-and-wagon set-up, but, to be perfectly honest, every time the visual flashes through my mind I find myself too convulsed with laughter to think of anything to say.

At this point, you are probably wondering what the phantom stewardess/researcher/crash expert/rescue worker saw when she entered the building. Quite a bit, as it turns out. Certainly far more evidence of a plane crash than anyone else has ever claimed to have seen. And much of what she saw, believe it or not, was wreckage that could be positively identified as wreckage of an American Airlines Boeing 757, which she was, of course, an expert at identifying

She saw parts of the fuselage of an American Airlines plane, a Boeing 757 plane. She identified the charred wreckage in several ways. She recognized the polished aluminum outer shell … and the red and blue trim that is used to decorate the fuselage. She saw parts of the inside of the plane … The soft carpeting and padding of the inner walls had a cloud design and color she recognized … The blue coloring of the drapes and carpet were also specific to the 757 or 767 larger planes … Seating upholstery also matched the AA 757 planes … She saw other parts of the plane and engine parts at a distance but they were familiar to her … One area of fuselage had remaining window sections and the shape of the windows … was also distinct to the 757’s she had flown. She also saw parts with the A/A logo, including parts of the tail of the plane. Smaller A/A logos and “American” logos are also on the planes and she saw parts of those.

Who knew there was so much identifiable aircraft wreckage? Wreckage that was apparently never photographed and never shown to anyone other than John Judge’s friend? Am I the only one here who is wondering whether Mr. Judge has maybe been watching too many reruns of old Saturday Night Live skits featuring Jon Lovitz. “Yeah, John, that’s it … that’s the ticket.”

The anonymous friend “also saw,” we are to believe, “charred human bones but not any flesh or full body parts.” So the bodies were apparently reduced to charred bones, but the upholstery, carpet and drapes were, of course, still looking factory fresh.

In an earlier version of the flight attendant story, posted on October 30, 2002, Judge claimed that his friend was also “shown autopsy photos of her fellow crew members, including the severed arm of her best friend at work, which she recognized from the bracelet she wore.” I have to confess here that I never realized how much access flight attendants have. I now find myself wondering what kind of access commercial pilots must have. I’m guessing they could probably sit in on the President’s morning briefings if they really wanted to.

Anyhow, getting back to the story, we aren’t quite through yet being subjected to outlandish claims. The next one goes something like this:

The crew of Flight 77 who died in the crash included her personal friend Renee May. She had spoken to Renee’s mother after the crash, and Renee had used a cell phone to call her mother during the hijacking.

It sounds like the phantom stewardess has this case all wrapped up. She has, single-handedly, gathered more evidence that AA Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon than the entire federal government and all of its media mouthpieces combined. I, for one, am impressed. She has seen and positively identified wreckage of Flight 77. She has seen and positively identified the remains of actual humans who were supposed to be on the flight. She has seen the gaping entry wound. She has spoken to someone who can personally vouch for the hijacking story.

And that’s not all! Judge has other phantom witnesses as well, and they can verify other portions of the official fairy tale:

Other American ground crew workers saw some of the suspects board American Airlines Flight 77 and recognized them from published photos … My attendant friend knows and has put me in touch with other American Airlines employees and pilots who were at the site and took photographs. We are busy locating these, as well as another attendant who was at the site with her that day.

Well, you keep working on that, John. Let us know just as soon as you can produce a single one of these alleged witnesses, or any of their alleged photographs. But, really, there’s no rush. We understand that these things take time, and you’ve only had three-and-a-half years to locate these witnesses that you claim to have already been in touch with.

By the way, what were they all doing stomping around the Pentagon crash site? Was it open to all American Airlines employees? How about United Airlines employees? Were Boeing employees allowed to tour the site as well? How about employees of Dulles International Airport? How about employees of the company that catered the meals for Flight 77? Did the baggage handlers get to take a peek? I don’t mean to sound snide here; I’m really just trying to determine what the criteria were for deciding who was allowed to tour this very sensitive site, because, truth be told, I would have liked to take a look for myself, but my invite must have gotten lost in the mail or something.

Moving on, it’s time for Mr. Judge to abruptly segue into the conclusion of his formidable case:

My friend is therefore a credible and very knowledgeable eyewitness to the fact that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. She has been vilified by those who refuse to believe the obvious … My friend is herself a researcher for many years into government misdeeds and cover-ups. If she did not see the parts, she would say so. She has no reason to lie about it. Nor is she confused about what she saw. She is a professional and is used to looking at evidence.

Let it never be said that I participated in the vilification of a nonexistent person. That just wouldn’t be right. For the record, the argument here is not that Judge’s friend is a liar. No, the argument here is that John Judge is a liar. And not a particularly good one — but certainly a very ambitious one. Lest there be any lingering doubt about that, Judge saves his best for last. In the final paragraph of his missive, he actually makes the following claim:

One employee saw the nose of the plane crash through her office wall.

No shit? I hope she didn’t receive any serious injuries.

In that same paragraph, Judge claims that Flight 77 “flew dangerously close to the ground, skidding into the ground floor of the Pentagon.” In yet another Pentagon rant, this one from October 23, 2002, Judge made a similar claim: “the plane bottomed out just short of contact with the building and bounced into it.” That scenario, of course, was long ago discredited, owing to the fact that it is quite apparent that there was no damage to the Pentagon lawn consistent with an airplane crash. And yet, more than three years after the events of September 11, Judge is still hawking the same story.

The bottom line here is that Judge has quite obviously fabricated an elaborate tale – allegedly, but not actually, based on the testimony of unnamed witnesses – and he has used that story to shield himself from having to deal with the very real evidence anomalies uncovered by legitimate researchers. For three years, he has asked that we take him at his word, because he is, after all, the great John Judge. And that, my friends, is what legend building is all about.

After reviewing Judge’s various Pentagon rants, I have a few final questions for the Tattoo theorists: why did the ‘powers that be’ feel the need to call on the services of an established ‘conspiracy theorist’ to further gild this lily? Why is John Judge so obviously lying? Or, if he is isn’t lying, then why do all you Tattoo theorists shy away from referencing his ‘work’? After all, he has obviously presented more evidence in support of your Tattoo theories than anyone else. Isn’t the fact that you choose to ignore his contributions a tacit admission that you know full well that he is lying his ass off?

So, again I must ask: if the evidence of the crash of Flight 77 is so persuasive, then why is John Judge gilding the lily?

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II, Addendum III

Dave McGowan — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:00:50 +0000

ACT II: ADDENDUM 3

Among 9-11 skeptics, there has been considerable debate over the size of the alleged entry hole that was created by whatever it was that hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 (assuming that something did, in fact, hit the Pentagon). More than a few researchers have claimed that the supposed entry hole was large enough to accommodate the fuselage of a Boeing 757-200 aircraft. I find it hard to discern such a hole in any of the available pre-collapse photographs (to clarify here, I define the word “hole” to mean a clean penetration into the building, unobstructed by partially intact columns and the like), but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that such an opening did exist.

The size of the opening that has been claimed – generally around 16 to 18 feet wide – leaves little margin for error in accounting for an angled entry by an object measuring roughly 12½ feet across (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/757family/pf/pf_200tech.html). Accepting the claim that a Boeing 757 entered the Pentagon in such a manner requires accepting that there was no deformation of the fuselage due to compacting, and, more importantly, that the wings and tail sections of the plane were sheared cleanly and completely off, leaving only a decidedly phallic object that then slid cleanly into the building like … well, use your imagination on that one. This is a family newsletter. Sort of.

When reading through Pentagon crash theories, it is nearly impossible to avoid frequent encounters with the word “confetti,” as in statements such as: “the plane’s wings were reduced to confetti.” On many websites, it seems to be generally accepted as a truism that passenger airplane wings will not only snap off as easily as the wings on a child’s balsawood glider, but will thereafter disintegrate into such fine particles that they all but disappear.

Now, I will freely admit that I am not an aircraft engineer and I have never worked on the design or manufacture of commercial aircraft. But that’s okay, because neither have any of the people who talk incessantly about airplane wings being reduced to confetti. And as is so often the case, all we really need do here is apply a little logic and common sense and we should be able to determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, how likely it is that the wings of a Boeing 757-200 aircraft could be sheared off and/or reduced to confetti.

As can be clearly seen in the accompanying photos of just such an aircraft, the most prominent feature of the wings are the enormous engines hanging from each of them. Those engines weigh in at roughly 9,000 pounds each – nearly 12,000 pounds each if we factor in the steel struts that support them (according to pentagonresearch.comand the ASCE). Some researchers have already pointed out that the aircraft’s wings have to be quite strong to support those massive engines. That much seems rather obvious. Of far more significance, I would think, is that those engines are what propels the plane. In other words, in order for the plane to actually lift off the ground and fly, the engines, and hence the wings, have to literally drag that fully-loaded, 127-ton aircraft into the air and then pull it along to its destination.

It seems to me then that if a 757’s wings were as flimsily attached to the fuselage as many researchers claim, we would regularly be treated to rather comical scenes of wingless jets sitting on runways while the wings themselves took flight in wild, unpredictable ways. And that’s not the kind of thing you see on the evening news that often.

Also clearly visible in these photos is the aircraft’s main landing gear, which also happens to be attached not to the fuselage, but to the wings. That landing gear adds nearly two tons of weight to each wing. More importantly, the fact that the gear is attached to the wings means that when the plane is on the ground, it is the wings – described by more than a few 9-11 skeptics as consisting of little more than a thin aluminum skin – that have to support almost the entire weight of the aircraft (up to 255,000 pounds at take-off). And when the plane lands, needless to say, that landing gear provides the first point of contact with the ground. It also provides the primary means of braking the aircraft to a stop. It seems safe then to conclude that the wings can not only support the entire weight of the plane but can also simultaneously arrest its considerable forward momentum. Imagine the stress that is placed on that landing gear as a 200,000+ pound airplane skips down the runway at a relatively high rate of speed and it becomes quite clear that the landing gear, and the wings themselves, have to be very securely attached to the fuselage.

Indeed, the area of the plane with the greatest structural strength, by any logical analysis, would have to be the span between those two enormously heavy, and enormously powerful, engines. In other words, the wings are not some insignificant appendages that are tacked on with a few aviation rivets and a wad of bubblegum; they are an integral part of the aircraft.

In addition to the engines and the main landing gear, the wings are also home to the aircraft’s fuel tanks, which carry a combined 11,240 gallons of fuel (at least according to the graphic reproduced here; fuel capacity is listed elsewhere as 11,489 gallons or 11,275 gallons), weighing some 75,000 pounds. Each wing holds nearly 15,000 pounds of fuel and another 45,000 pounds, more or less, is stored in tanks between the wings.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, each wing of a Boeing 757-200 weighs in at a whopping 44,000 pounds, including the engine and struts, the landing gear, a full load of fuel, and the weight of the wing structure itself (steel and other metals account for about 2/3 of that weight, or roughly fifteen tons, with the fuel accounting for the other seven tons). If we add together the weight of the two wings (88,000 pounds), the weight of the fuel stored between the wings (45,000 pounds), and the weight of the heavily reinforced cross-section of the fuselage between the two wings, we come up with a figure, I would guess, somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 pounds. Since a fully fueled Boeing 757-200 weighs in at roughly 200,000 pounds (127,000 pounds for the aircraft and 75,000 pounds for the fuel), a little rudimentary arithmetic reveals that fully 3/4 of the aircraft’s weight is distributed in the cross-section between the wing tips. The bulk of the fuselage, which appears to be the most massive portion of the plane, in reality accounts for only about 25% of the aircraft’s total weight.

What the “plane-bomb”/”confetti” theorists would have us believe then is that the area of the plane with by far the greatest structural strength, greatest mass, and greatest density, is the section that was magically reduced to confetti, while the relatively lightweight, low-density and low-strength fuselage punched cleanly through the reinforced masonry walls of the Pentagon.

Jean-Pierre Desmoulins, for example, has created a series of images, including the one below, to illustrate how the wings of a 757 will allegedly snap cleanly off on impact, while the turgid fuselage will, of course, plow cleanly through pretty much any obstruction — even though the fuselage is, in reality, little more than a reinforced aluminum tube filled, in large part, with a mixture of air and relatively soft materials like luggage and human bodies. (And yes, by the way, I do realize that that sounds very similar to the claim made by Michael Rivero that I earlier ridiculed. What’s your point?)

I can’t imagine that an actual 757 aircraft would ever perform in the real world as this one does in Desmoulins’ world. To the contrary, what would most likely happen is that the nose of the plane, from the very moment of initial impact, would begin to compact. The effect would be very similar to the workings of a vice, with the two-foot-thick Pentagon wall serving as the stationary jaw of the vice and the extreme forward momentum of the 150,000 pound wing section serving as the other. In other words, the effect would be akin to stomping on an upright aluminum can, with the ground representing the Pentagon, the empty can serving as the forward section of the fuselage, and your foot filling in for the wings of the plane.

The initial compacting, needless to say, would occur nearly instantaneously and would be quickly followed by the impact of the plane’s wings and engines, bringing the full weight of the aircraft to bear on the front wall of the Pentagon. It is certainly possible that, at that time, the tips of the wings – which is to say, the area beyond the engines – could be sheared off or bent back. But it is extremely unlikely that the wings would be sheared off completely, and it is inconceivable that they would break off before even impacting the building.

It should be noted here, before moving on, that Desmoulins did get one thing right with his series of fanciful impact images: the deflection of the plane upon impact with an angled surface is clearly illustrated. In the image above, the aircraft has already begun to veer from its initial course. In subsequent images, Desmoulins depicts the plane deflecting further still from its trajectory. Curiously though, Jean-Pierre forgets to mention that this deflection completely invalidates the claim that the aircraft somehow managed to punch out an exit hole that was directly in line with the initial trajectory of the plane rather than with the deflected trajectory. But here, I suppose, I have digressed.

As can be clearly seen in the photograph to the right, taken at a Boeing assembly plant, an aircraft of the Boeing 7X7 family is not assembled by slapping a couple of flimsy wings onto the fuselage. To the contrary, the wing section is quite obviously manufactured as a single unit — and necessarily so, for there are undoubtedly continuous steel structural elements that run through the wings from engine to engine. The tail sections appear to be separate pieces, to be sure, but the wings are clearly an integral component of the main body of the aircraft. They are not separate structures that can snap off at the seams because, as it turns out, there are no seams. The only seams, as is clearly evident, are in the fuselage.

Given that any seams are inherently the points of greatest structural weakness, and given also the angle of impact, it seems reasonable to conclude that if the aircraft was going to begin to break apart upon initial impact with the exterior wall of the Pentagon, it would do so as depicted in the graphic to the left (which I, utilizing my obviously formidable skills at computer animation, have taken the liberty of adapting from one of Desmoulin’s impact images). Such a crash scenario, needless to say, would not have resulted in a ridiculously small entry hole coupled with a complete lack of aircraft debris deposited outside the building, but it would be consistent with the actual design characteristics of the aircraft that purportedly created that entry hole.

The bottom line here, it seems to me, is that the existence of a 16-18 foot wide hole in the face of the Pentagon does not even begin to explain the complete disappearance of a Boeing 757-200 aircraft. Such an airplane, viewed head-on, looks much like the photo to the left. The “confetti” theorists would have us believe that that entire aircraft can disappear, without a trace, into an entry hole not much larger than the diameter of the fuselage, as is crudely depicted in the image to the right. In reality, the design and weight distribution of a 757 strongly suggest that the smallest possible entry hole would actually look like the equally crude image to the lower left.

The difference is certainly not an insignificant one. An entry hole such as the one to the left would have to be about 50 feet wide. And as even the “plane bomb”/”confetti” theorists acknowledge, there was no such hole in the Pentagon’s façade. What that means, needless to say, is that no Boeing 757 or similar aircraft crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, regardless of whether or not there was an identifiable entry hole measuring some 16-18 feet across. Such an entry hole might be consistent with a missile strike, but it certainly is not consistent with the crash of a Boeing aircraft with wing-mounted engines.

Speaking of missiles, our old friend Donald Rumsfeld, last seen providing the very first identification of the aircraft that supposedly hit the Pentagon, apparently decided later that it was actually a missile that had done the damage. In an interview with Parade magazine dated October 12, 2001, Rumsfeld had this to say:

Here we’re talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed [sic] with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them. (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t11182001_t1012pm.html)

Rumsfeld’s interviewer, Lyric Wallwork Winik, did not bother to ask for clarification of the missile reference. Some researchers have claimed that Rumsfeld’s choice of words was deliberate – that his goal was to plant a ‘meme’ that would misdirect the efforts of 9-11 researchers. Many of the researchers making that claim, however, are the same people who have spent the last several years muddying the waters, planting red herrings, and working diligently in various other ways to sabotage the efforts of other theorists.

This was not, by the way, the only ‘meme’ that has been planted by Herr Rumsfeld. In an address to U.S. troops in Baghdad, the Secretary of Preemptive War let slip a curious remark about United Airlines Flight 93: “the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania …”

So I guess Rumsfeld is either very skilled at planting ‘memes,’ or he is not very good at keeping secrets. Let’s assume, since we know that Flight 93 was indeed almost certainly shot down, that Rumsfeld has a bad case of Freudian diarrhea-of-the-mouth and was actually telling the truth about a missile strike at the Pentagon. Such a scenario, of course, would not offer a complete explanation for what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It would not explain, for example, the alleged ‘exit hole,’ nor the downed light poles (which, unfortunately, I must return to in the next outing; who knew that breakaway poles really do exist?). But it would explain the pre-collapse damage to the exterior of the Pentagon and the alleged flight characteristics of whatever it was that may or may not have hit the building.

If it had been a late model, American-made cruise missile that slammed into the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, it likely would have left impact damage very similar to the damage done by the American-made cruise missiles that slammed into the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the ‘liberation’ of Kosovo. And curiously enough, the low-altitude impact of those missiles created entry wounds that should look at least vaguely familiar to anyone who has taken a serious look at what really happened at the Pentagon that fateful morning.

* * * * * * * * *

Some researchers have applied the same faulty “flimsy wings” arguments to analyses of the crashes at the Twin Towers. Consider, for example, the following excerpt from a piece penned by Australian researcher Gerard Holmgren:

When you sit in a passenger jet and look out the window to the wings, what do you see? A light aluminum structure which is segmented into panels and movable flaps. Hardly a cutting blade or battering ram, except against light materials. The WTC was constructed of heavy construction steel, built to withstand hurricanes. We are asked to believe that such flimsy aluminum wings sliced through this structure decisively enough to make a cartoon type shape of themselves.

Holmgren might just as easily have made another argument that would have been equally as valid:

When you look up at the World Trade Center Towers (prior to September 11, of course), what do you see? A lightweight structure composed of individual glass panels separated by light gauge aluminum mullions. Hardly an effective barrier, except against very lightweight and slow-moving projectiles. The attacking aircraft weighed 100+ tons and was traveling hundreds of miles per hour. We are asked to believe that such a projectile would not have passed cleanly through the building.

The fatal flaw in both these arguments, of course, is that they ignore an adage that any school kid is familiar with: never judge a book by its cover. What you see when you look at the wings of a passenger aircraft has no relevance for determining the composition of those wings, just as what you would have seen when looking at the Twin Towers would have been of little help in determining the structural characteristics of those buildings. Holmgren seems to recognize that fact in regards to the towers, but certainly not in regards to the aircraft — an oversight that has lead him to amusingly characterize as “flimsy” two 22-ton, steel-and-aluminum structures that were capable of handling a dynamic load well in excess of 100 tons.

What Holmgren and some others in his clique have argued, essentially, is that the existence of a hole the size and shape of a 767 aircraft in the side of one of the Twin Towers is proof that a 767 aircraft did not create that hole. “This kind of thing,” says Holmgren, “might happen in cartoons,” but not in the real world.

This same group, it should be noted, has steadfastly maintained that there was no plane crash at the Pentagon on September 11, a conclusion based in part on the fact that there was no entry hole consistent with the crash of a passenger plane. Fair enough. But in the case of the WTC attacks, they have reached the same “no planes” conclusion, this time based in part on the fact that there was an entry hole conforming to the dimensions of a Boeing aircraft. It would seem that some researchers have chosen to set the bar rather high.

Other researchers, curiously enough, have concluded that the impact hole in the side of the World Trade Center did not conform closely enough to the outline of a Boeing 767. These theorists have noted that while there is a gaping hole at the center of the impact zone, there are no actual ‘holes’ where the outer portion of the wings would have impacted. There is obviously substantial damage to the exterior of the building in those areas, but there is not a clean penetration. Based on this observation, these researchers, like those in the other clique, have concluded that the impact hole was faked with either conventional explosives or some sort of ‘black’ technology.

Both subsets of researchers, it seems to me, are mistaken. The reality is that the weight distribution and design characteristics of a Boeing 7X7 aircraft would seem to indicate that an impact hole should look remarkably like the hole photographed in the side of the World Trade Center tower on the morning of September 11 – with a clean penetration at the center of mass and substantial damage, though not necessarily penetration, at the wing extremities.

There was no such penetration at the Pentagon. And no amount of delusional theorizing about flimsy, conveniently self-destructing airplane wings will ever change that fact.

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act III, Part I

Dave McGowan — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 01:00:06 +0000

ACT III: PART I

Demolishing a highrise office building that has outlived its usefulness is a daunting task. As a general rule, tall buildings tend to grow in clusters, much like mushrooms, and the owners and occupants of the surrounding buildings usually frown upon having their own buildings damaged or destroyed in the process of bringing down a neighboring building. The trick then is to get the unwanted building to drop straight down, forming a neat pile that doesn’t extend much beyond the structure’s original footprint.

That is not something that tall buildings are naturally inclined to do. A large structure can be brought down in that manner, but it is an extremely difficult trick to pull off. A considerable amount of study, planning and preparation is required. Specific quantities of explosives have to be precisely placed at key structural locations throughout the building, and those explosive charges have to be programmed to detonate in a specific pattern. There is almost no margin for error. Only a handful of companies have the technical expertise to take on such a project.

When one of these highly specialized demolition companies does their job properly, the result is a spectacular show during which the targeted building seems to self-destruct and simply drop away from the skyline, as though it had never been there at all. The show is generally over in just a few seconds, making the entire process appear to be very quick and easy. But it is decidedly not easy.

When a building implodes (like the one to the left, which you can click on to view a short video of another controlled implosion), all that we as spectators see is the end result of months of research and preparation by a team of specialists with decades of training and experience. Buildings never implode by accident — at least they never did before September 11, 2001. But the south WTC tower did, at 9:59:04 AM that fateful day. And the north WTC tower did as well, at 10:28:31 AM. And then WTC7 did the very same thing, at about 5:20 PM. In less than eight hours time, three separate highrise office buildings allegedly did what no buildings in history have done before: spontaneously collapsed into their own footprints.

The inexplicable collapse of the twin towers has always been the single most compelling aspect of the events of that day — compelling because the controlled collapses point directly to inside involvement, and compelling because this evidence of direct U.S. sponsorship of the attacks has always been brazenly displayed for all to see.

The evidence suggesting that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon was not immediately available, but rather was developed over a considerable period of time. It was immediately apparent that routine procedures for responding to potential emergencies were not followed that day, but grasping that concept required exercising a little independent thought, rather than just robotically processing the propaganda blizzard of words and images that followed the attacks.

Most people, reeling from the media assault, were unable to connect the dots and recognize that a stand-down had occurred. And most people have never seen the body of photographic evidence that overwhelmingly suggests that a passenger plane did not hit the Pentagon. Even many skeptics have not seen that evidence, thanks to the zealous efforts of the 911 gatekeepers. But virtually everyone saw the twin towers brought down in controlled demolitions. In fact, most people have likely seen footage of the twin collapses replayed dozens of times.

Perhaps what is most compelling then about the collapse of the towers is that the very images that were seared into our brains as reminders of the horrific nature of the attacks are the same images that should have been presented as “Exhibit A” in the people’s case against the real perpetrators of the crimes committed that day. The collapsed towers, in other words, are iconic symbols of the power of media and information control.

The tower collapses, airing as the dramatic final acts in the 9-11 production, were meant to be seen. And with the knowledge that we were witnessing, in real time, the tragic deaths of untold numbers of victims, the images were meant to horrify and traumatize. A traumatized subject, you see, is a receptive subject, and when you are trying to sell the need for a fundamental shift in our collective reality, it helps to have as many traumatized, compliant subjects as possible. And it helps to provide images that aren’t easily forgotten.

Imagine if the twin towers had not collapsed that day. Imagine no endlessly replayed footage of the spectacular collapses. Imagine no footage of massive devastation. No “Ground Zero.” No footage of dazed, dust-covered New Yorkers. No instantaneous revision of the New York skyline. No tributes to the scores of dead firefighters. No heart-wrenching appeals from family members desperately seeking information on relatives likely buried deep in the rubble.

Without the collapses, would the events of September 11 have had the same impact? Would Americans, with their notoriously short memories, still vividly recall the images and the human drama from that day, or would we have largely moved on, giving little more thought to September 11 than we do to the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building? Is it the loss of life that causes the events of that day to linger in our collective memory, or is it the harrowing and ubiquitous images of massive property destruction?

In order for the attacks of September 11 to serve as the catalyst for a realignment of the ‘group mind,’ the events of that day had to play out on a grand scale. The spectacular collapses of the towers were, therefore, undoubtedly the most important component of the production. But they were also the riskiest aspect of the production, since there was no way to disguise the fact that the collapses were, by necessity, the result of controlled demolitions.

The collapses then represented a fundamental weakness in the master plan. Were it not for the virtually complete control exercised by Washington over the media, both mainstream and ‘alternative,’ the twin collapses would almost certainly have been recognized as an obvious smoking gun. Of course, the perpetrators never had any reason to doubt their ability to thoroughly control the flow of information, both in the media and in the so-called ‘skeptics community.’

Many in that community have harshly denounced those intrepid souls who have questioned the cause of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, just as they have cast aspersions on those who question whether it was really a commercial airliner that struck the Pentagon. From the Wilderness set the tone very early on with a post that was up barely 48 hours after the towers hit the ground:

Credible Evidence, Expert Witness Testimony Convincing: No Explosives Hidden in WTC

Sept 13, 2001 — 1500 PDT

(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/09_13_01_No_Explosives.html)

FTW – Based upon a detailed review of an interview with a NY architect who is expert on high rise construction and upon today’s BBC story which I have linked at the bottom of this page, I am now virtually certain that there were no explosives placed within the WTC buildings. The motive for such a move would have been unclear in light of the drama and the security risks for “pre-event” compromise posed by dual efforts that would have accomplished the same ends.

Discovery of the explosives before the hijacking would have emptied the buildings and placed the nation on alert before the hijackings could have been carried out. The WTC towers would have been evacuated and that would have reduced the impact of the crashes.

Gravity would have taken all of the unburned fuel down central shafts of the building and the physics in this story are consistent with both witness statements and other expert interviews I have read.

In addition, my ex-wife Mary lives a block away and witnessed both the second crash and the collapse of both towers from a close distance. Neither she, nor any other person she knows, heard any explosions or believe that secondary charges were a factor in of the collapses.

I will be posting a more detailed bulletin for my subscribers on this shortly.

Mike Ruppert

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1540000/1540044.stm

The phantom New York architect was never identified. The alleged “expert interviews” never actually existed. The BBC report was shown to be littered with errors. And the “more detailed bulletin” never surfaced. Instead, Ruppert allowed his hastily assembled initial post to stand for over two years as his only commentary on the collapse of the towers. The dust from the World Trade Center hadn’t even settled yet and already the 9-11 gatekeeper position had been established, courtesy of Mike Ruppert and the BBC.

Before the spin had fully set in, there was one early media report, published in the relatively obscure Albuquerque Journal, that accurately identified the cause of the collapse of the towers:

Televised images of the attacks on the World Trade Center suggest that explosives devices caused the collapse of both towers, a New Mexico Tech explosion expert said Tuesday. The collapse of the buildings appears “too methodical” to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures, said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse,” Romero said. Romero is a former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures … Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures. “It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that,” Romero said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. … “It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points,” Romero said.

(Albuquerque Journal, September 11, 2001)

That report would have been quickly lost in the blizzard of media coverage of the attacks were it not for the work of Internet researchers, particularly Jared Israel ofemperors-clothes.com, who first called attention to the story on September 14 (http://emperors-clothes.com/news/albu.htm 9-14-01). A week later, the Journal ran a follow-up report that found Mr. Romero radically reversing his position:

A New Mexico explosives expert says he now believes there were no explosives in the World Trade Center towers, contrary to comments he made the day of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. “Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail,” said Van Romero, a vice president at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology … Romero supports other experts, who have said the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers’ steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above … Conspiracy theorists have seized on Romero’s comments as evidence for their argument that someone else, possibly the U.S. government, was behind the attack on the Trade Center. Romero said he has been bombarded with electronic mail from the conspiracy theorists. “I’m very upset about that,” he said. “I’m not trying to say anything did or didn’t happen.”

(Albuquerque Journal, September 21, 2001)

Those damn conspiracy theorists! What is it with them? They seem to be forever insisting that the stories told to the American people by our media guardians actually make sense and reflect some kind of objective reality. On September 14, the same day that the Albuquerque Journal article hit the Internet, The Financial Times added further fuel to the conspiracy fire:

The owners of the demolished World Trade Center in lower Manhattan acquired the buildings just two months ago under a 99-year lease allowing them to walk away from their investment in the event of “an act of terrorism.” The owners, Silverstein Properties and Westfield America – a shopping mall specialist – purchased the buildings from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for $3.2bn in July and completed the financing just two weeks ago … It is understood that the buildings are insured for more than $3bn, enough to cover rebuilding costs.

(The Financial Times Limited, September 14, 2001)

Though it seems to be forgotten now, it was only through their destruction that the twin towers were transformed into beloved symbols of America. Prior to September 11, 2001, most New Yorkers would have been quite happy to see the towers disappear from the city’s skyline, albeit in a less deadly and destructive manner. Controversial when first proposed and considered an eyesore upon completion, the towers never really captured the hearts of the city’s inhabitants. And they were never really necessary, judging by the chronically high office vacancy rates in lower Manhattan.

On the morning of September 11, the World Trade Center towers hit the ground at an estimated 124-miles-per-hour, less than ten seconds after they first began to collapse. They were, in other words, virtually in free-fall. Once the collapses had begun, the 200,000 tons of steel and nearly 500,000 cubic yards of concrete that supported the massive structures seemed to offer no resistance at all. In just seconds, 10,000,000 square feet of commercial office space simply ceased to exist.

We all watched it happen, just three short years ago, but it is still difficult to believe that two 110-story monoliths, stretching a quarter-mile into the sky, were reduced to a 1.8-million-ton pile of rubble that stood, at its tallest points, just 60 feet high. In under ten seconds.

What has never been in dispute is that the fall of the south tower, just 56 minutes after it had been hit, marked the first time in history that a steel-framed highrise structure had suffered a total collapse due to fire. Never before had such a building suffered even a partial collapse due to fire. At 10:28 AM, the north tower became the second steel-framed highrise structure to suffer a total collapse due to fire.

The twin towers were certainly not the first highrise structures to ever sustain significant damage from a fire. Nor were they the first steel-framed buildings to be struck by errant aircraft. Various buildings around the world, including the Empire State Building, have been hit by airplanes of various size. And countless steel-framed buildings around the world have been hit by U.S.-launched cruise missiles and guided bombs. None of them have ever suffered a complete collapse, even after sustaining multiple impacts.

To explain the unprecedented series of events that unfolded on September 11, 2001, ‘experts’ trotted out by the media have posited that the photogenic collapses resulted from an historically unique combination of three factors: the initial damage inflicted on the towers by the airplane crashes; the damage caused by what were said to be intense fires; and the unconventional “tubular” design of the twin towers.

These experts, however, have offered no explanation for why the building known as #7 World Trade Center – a conventional steel-framed highrise structure that was not hit by a plane – became, at approximately 5:20 PM on September 11, 2001, the third highrise structure in recorded history to suffer a complete collapse due to fire. FEMA struggled to find an explanation to include in a report on the collapses, but came up short: “The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time.” (http://www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm)

Though dwarfed by the massive twin towers, WTC7 was an imposing structure that would have dominated the skyline of many large cities. Built in 1985, it was a modern, 47-story structure that housed 1,868,000 square feet of commercial office space, much of it occupied by governmental agencies bearing three-letter acronyms, including the CIA.

Some have suggested that WTC7 collapsed due to damage caused by debris from the falling towers, particularly the north tower. That does not appear to be the case, however, since photos and video of the building taken in the hours after the collapse of the towers show that WTC7 was quite intact prior to its collapse. There is also the curious fact that WTC6, which sat between WTC7 and the towers, somehow managed to avoid suffering a complete collapse that day.

Some reports, including the BBC report cited earlier by Ruppert, seemed to imply that the building’s foundation had perhaps been “weakened by the earlier collapses.” But if that had been the case, WTC7 would not have dropped straight down, as though sinking into the ground; it would have toppled over, taking out neighboring buildings in the process. The BBC report also warned that “more nearby buildings may still fall,” as though it had suddenly become commonplace for tall buildings to spontaneously convert themselves into neat piles of debris.

Fires purportedly raged within WTC7 for hours before the building collapsed, but the source of the fires remains largely a mystery, as does the complete failure of the building’s modern sprinkler system, which should have been more than adequate to contain any fires. Considering the intense media attention that was focused on lower Manhattan that day, still photos or video footage of WTC7 engulfed in flames are curiously hard to find. Photos of the building taken not long before the collapse (such as the one to the upper right) reveal only small pockets of fire that were confined to two floors.

World Trade Center #7 hit the ground, reduced to a neat pile of rubble, in approximately seven seconds. Like the twin towers, it was in virtual free-fall. Also like the towers, WTC7 collapsed into its own footprint with absolutely uncanny precision. It is no accident that the American people, although bombarded with images of the collapsing towers, have never seen footage of the collapse of WTC7. It is nearly impossible to watch video footage of the collapse and fail to recognize it for what it is: a deliberate, and perfectly executed, controlled implosion. ~~[Click on the two small animated gifs to view video clips of the collapse from two different vantage points.]~~

The official explanation for the collapse of the twin towers (WTC7 is rarely mentioned) is that the steel and concrete floor slabs, in the areas of the towers damaged by the initial plane crashes, broke free and collapsed down upon the floors below, which then in turn broke free and collapsed, thus creating an alleged ‘pancake’ effect that quickly gained mass and speed. Once the floors broke free, so the story goes, the outer steel shells of the towers lost structural integrity and collapsed in upon the pancaking floor sections.

There are a few very obvious problems with this ‘pancake’ theory. First, there is the question of whether fires raged in the towers at sufficient intensity, and for a sufficient amount of time, to cause the failure of the floor trusses. All of the images captured that day show that at the time of the collapses, the towers were billowing copious amounts of thick, black smoke — indicative not of raging infernos, but of low intensity, smoldering office fires. Transcripts of fire department audiotapes indicate that firefighters on the scene reported only pockets of low intensity fire that posed no danger to the structural integrity of the building.

(http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/firefighter-tape-excerpts.htm)

The graphic to the left, published with the previously cited BBC report, was supposed to help the public understand what caused the collapse of the towers. The illustration, however, contained obvious errors, including the claim that the fires reached “800° C – hot enough to melt steel floor supports.” There is no indication that the fires burning in the towers reached such temperatures — and even if they did, steel doesn’t actually melt at 800° C (about 1,500° F); it melts at about 1,500° C (about 2,750° F).

The text of the BBC report contained this curious claim: “the towers’ ultimate collapse was inevitable, as the steel cores inside them reached temperatures of 800C – raising questions as to why hundreds of rescue workers were sent into the doomed buildings to their deaths.” Actually, if the claim about the core temperatures were true, it would have raised questions as to how hundreds of rescue workers were sent into the doomed buildings to their deaths, since the only way up was through the building cores, where all the stairwells and elevators were located.

Perhaps the best evidence refuting the notion that the fires in the WTC towers were burning at extremely high temperatures can be found through close examination of the pre-collapse photos to the left. Near the center of the gaping entry wound (which looks much different, by the way, than the phantom entry wound in the Pentagon) stands the tragic figure of an apparently young woman still very much alive — and seemingly unaware that she is clinging to a piece of nearly molten metal.

Technically speaking, the ‘pancake’ theory does not require that the fires reached temperatures capable of melting steel; it requires only that temperatures were high enough to substantially weaken the steel floor supports. A 1500° F fire could conceivably accomplish that task, if that temperature was maintained for a considerable amount of time. But there is no indication from firefighter reports, survivor reports, or the photographic evidence that there were any fires of that magnitude that burned for any appreciable length of time.

Another problem with the ‘pancake’ theory is that it fails to address the fate of the cores of the two towers. Contrary to the deceptive BBC graphic, the cores of the WTC towers occupied a considerable portion of the buildings’ footprints, as can be seen in the accurately scaled graphic on the lower left, and in the photo on the lower right, taken while the towers were under construction. These configurations of 47 massive steel support columns, heavily cross-braced, were designed to not only be self-supporting, but to support the floors and exterior walls as well.

Even if we accept that the floor slabs somehow ‘pancaked,’ and that the outer steel and aluminum shells then buckled and collapsed, we are left with no explanation of what happened to those massive concrete and steel cores. Clearly, the floor slabs were hardly the wide-open ‘pancakes’ depicted in deceptive media graphics. In truth, the ‘pancake’ theory, at best, offers only an explanation of how the floor and exterior wall sections may have collapsed. Even if such an extremely unlikely event had occurred, the end result would not have been a 60-foot-high mound of rubble; it would have been two 137′ x 87′ x 1,360′ towers standing in place of two 208′ x 208′ x 1,360′ towers.

Yet another problem with the ‘pancake’ theory is that it is wholly dependent on a perfectly symmetrical failure of the floor slabs, even though the initial damage to the buildings was clearly asymmetrical, and the fires certainly did not burn uniformly throughout the damaged floors. And yet we know that for the destruction to be complete, the collapse of the initial floor slabs would have had to be perfectly uniform; every point of connection around the perimeter of the core, and every point of connection around the exterior shell, would have had to fail at precisely the same moment in time. And each successive floor would have had to fail in exactly the same perfectly uniform manner, unerringly, all the way down the line. When the ‘pancake’ effect has to course through 110 floors, there isn’t really any margin for error. And yet both towers, as we all know, ‘pancaked’ into oblivion in matching, perfectly choreographed collapses.

Remarkably enough, the two towers somehow collapsed in exactly the same manner even though the initial damage to each tower was quite different. The plane that hit the north tower plowed straight into the center of the north face of the tower, and then straight into the center of the tower’s core. The south tower, however, was hit with more of a glancing blow, through the southeast corner of the building, in such a way that the plane likely did minimal damage to the tower’s core. Nevertheless, the damage to the south tower may have been more significant than the damage to the north tower. In the north tower, the weight of the upper floors was transferred to the remaining structural elements of the north wall of the tower. But in the south tower, since it was a corner of the building that was blown out, there was nowhere for the load to be transferred. Also, the south tower was hit at a lower elevation, so there was more weight bearing on the damaged area.

It is interesting to note here, by the way, that in both tower crashes, the initial impacts caused structural damage on at least six floors. The south tower was impacted on floors 78-84, and the north tower on floors 93-98. The Pentagon, on the other hand, miraculously sustained impact damage on just two floors.