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ACT II, PART I
[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.]
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:
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.
(click image to
enlarge)
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 below 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.
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