By M.K. Styllinski
“All of this is physically impossible, plain and simple. The wings of a 757 can’t hit a concrete building at more than 500 mph without leaving a mark. And they certainly won’t be vaporized by exploding jet fuel.”
– Craig McKee, 9/11 Researcher at Truth and Shadows
Whilst Building 7 appears to represent the more opportunistic aspect of the 9/11 attacks, the Twin Towers acting as the psychological centre piece for maximum effect, the official story of Flight 77 and its alleged impact of the Pentagon goes even further into the realms of the bizarre. Unlike the WTC, very little evidence was available through which to sift. This is more than a little strange since at 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001, a Boeing jet airliner Flight 77 apparently crashed into the reinforced section of the Pentagon, killing 189 people.
At 8:20 am on September 11, American Airlines Flight 77 left Dulles Airport in Washington DC, veering off course at 8:46 for several minutes. By the time the plane had returned to its original flight path at 8.50 am radio contact had been lost, the transponder switched off and by 8.56 am the plane had vanished from radar. [1] Curiously, by 9:09 am FAA chief Jane Garvey had notified the White House that there may have been another plane down. At 9:25 am air traffic controllers at Dulles Airport issued a warning to the White House that a plane was approaching them at considerable speed. According to the 9/11 Commission, NORAD was not told that Flight 77 had been hijacked at this time or at any time prior to impact. However, the FAA has claimed they officially warned NORAD at 9:24 am and informally warned them even earlier.
The same questions asked of Flights 11 and 175 can be levelled at the response to Flight 77: What on earth were the authorities doing for half an hour? Why had no jets been scrambled? [2]
American Airlines Flight 77
Andrews Air Base in the District of Columbia houses the 121st Fighter Squadron of the 113th Fighter Wing equipped with F-16 fighters; Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321, supported by a reserve squadron; the Air National Guard (DCANG) which provides: “…combat units in the highest possible state of readiness.” Yet Washington remained undefended. A stated delay in Air Traffic clearance simply doesn’t cut the mustard when the biggest emergency of modern times was underway. As one ex-Pentagon employee observes: ““ATC Radar images were (and are) available in the under structures of the Pentagon, and any commercial flight within 300 miles of DC that made an abrupt course change toward Washington, turned off their transponder, and refused to communicate with ATC, would have been intercepted at supersonic speeds within a max of 9 minutes by a Fighter out of Andrews. Period. Why these planes weren’t, baffles me. If we could get fighters off the ground in 2 minutes then, we could now.” [3]
At 9:25 Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice were ensconced in a bunker below the Whitehouse. Cheney is said to have been warned of an aircraft approaching Washington and confirmed by radar evidence tracking the plane as it reached a distance of 30 miles to Washington. [4] Meanwhile, air traffic controllers at Washington Dulles saw an unidentified plane (due to its transponder being turned off) or as David Ray Griffin mentions: “…shortly after AA 77’s transponder signal was lost, the flight was also lost to primary radar. So there was no ‘blip’ until much later, when a high-speed primary target… …is seen moving toward Washington.” [5]
This is later confirmed as Flight 77 travelling at such high speed (500 mph) and with a distinctive manoeuvrability that the experienced Dulles Air traffic controllers thought it was a military fighter plane. One controller also expressed reservations about Flight 77 being a commercial flight: “Nobody knew that was American 77.… I thought it was a military flight. I thought that Langley [Air Force Base] had scrambled some fighters and maybe one of them got up there.… It was moving very fast, like a military aircraft might move at a low altitude.” [6]
Accordingly, the “commercial Jet airliner” Flight 77 was seen by radar making for the Pentagon, which it reached at 9:35 before making an extremely – if not impossible – 300 degree loop reportedly flying: “several miles south of the restricted airspace around the White House.” It performs rapid downward spiral: “dropping the last 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes,” accelerating to 530 mph before crashing into the West wing of the Pentagon at 9:37 am. [7]
Flight Path of American Airlines Flight 11. Such a maneuver is impossible for a expert pilot let alone an amateur one. It is also against the law of aviation physics. | “At 9 11, four planes for two hours were able to drive around, fly around even one hour in the direction going toward the west and then turn around and then comeback. The military air force was not able to interdict them. It’s [un]imaginable.” – Andreas Von Buelow, Former assistant German defense minister, director of the German Secret Service, minister for research and technology, and member of Parliament for 25 years.
Before getting into just a few of the countless oddities that make up the Pentagon attacks, let’s return to the overriding question and which has never been convincingly answered: how on earth did a Boeing 757 jet airliner penetrate the most heavily protected US military citadel on earth? When the aircraft breached White House airspace then why didn’t the automated missile system shoot it down?
There are claims by 9/11 debunkers who cling to the official conspiracy theory that there is no evidence that these defence systems exist, hence the problem. It would surely be against the most basic military-intelligence protocol to telegraph where these defence systems are located. According to Navy Combat Systems Specialist Dennis Cimino: “The sabotage of routine protective systems, controlled by strict hierarchies would never have been contemplated let alone attempted absent the involvement of the supreme US military command.” He states further that this would include: “…President George Bush, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the then-acting Head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Meyers.” [8]
The Pentagon is protected by State-of-the-Art antimissile batteries or Raytheon Basic Point Defence missile battery armaments embedded on several building rooftops. Cimino adds: “With anti-aircraft missile defences installed in rooftops in the Washington, D.C. area since the mid 1980’s” and likely versions of the “PAC-3 ‘Patriot’ Missile systems and Secret Service agents on the roof with shoulder fired STINGER Missiles, protecting the White House, the claims that the capability did not exist is an untenable assertion. [9]
Cimino further explains that the Sea Sparrow air defines missiles are used:
“… much in the same fashion that Moscow has a system that NATO code named ‘Yo Yo’ that maintains radar surveillance and provides protection to the Kremlin and other high value targets from military incursions. A ‘MODE 4A military I.F.F. response’ (identify friendly or foe – enemy aircraft) which requires special encryption and restricted to use by military aircraft with an additional ‘mission specific MODEX aka SEDSCAF number’ assigned for each plane’ if it is required to ‘meet PLAN OF THE DAY for the area.’”
Cimino tells us it is this number which “… enables an aircraft then to penetrate prohibited or military restricted airspace such as that which surrounds both the White House and the Pentagon, as well as a number of military installations around the globe.” Without this IFF any aircraft would be shot down.” [10]
The question remains: Who “unplugged” the defence systems? The night cleaner?
The Pentagon aftermath from overhead video footage
When 130 billion of US tax dollars were funnelled into the Pentagon’s Strategic Defence Initiative (Star Wars) during the Reagan years, US officials claimed the system could detect and intercept missiles fired from an unknown destination traveling at well over 10 times the speed of a commercial airliner, and to shoot them down in 15 minutes or less, before they reached their US targets. [11] What is more, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us that: “a defensive system may need to hit a warhead smaller than an oil drum that is traveling above the atmosphere at speeds greater than 13,000 miles per hour.” The CBO report states that missile defines and intercept systems must take down an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in a matter of minutes, or its curtains. [12]
Journalist and ex-US government employee Fred Burkes summarises the mystery:
“If these sophisticated military systems were designed to detect missiles fired from unknown locations at over 13,000 mph and shoot them down in mere minutes, why on 9/11 could they not detect any one of the four large airliners traveling at a mere 600 mph, especially when two of them were known to be lost for over 40 minutes before they crashed? … How is it possible that the Pentagon’s highly touted missile detections systems could not locate Flight 77 in the 42 minutes it was known to be lost before it crashed into the heart of the defense system of the U.S.?” [13]
Which is why a Pentagon spokesman’s response that they were: “… simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way… ” is a load of hokum. How is it possible that with the highly sophisticated radar systems such as the PAVE PAWS which “does not miss anything occurring in North American airspace” yet couldn’t detect a huge Boeing 757 on a crash course to the Pentagon with ample amounts of time to do so? [14] If the plug had somehow been pulled on that system, then are we expected to believe that the Pentagon’s National Military Command Centre, NORAD and the FAA had all decided to have an extended coffee break where standard operating procedures suddenly didn’t apply?
PAVE PAWS radar system | Source: globalsecuirty.org
Griffin underscores this confusion when he states: “… if F-16s were airborne by 9:30, as alleged, they would have to travel slightly over 700 mph to reach Washington before Flight 77 does. The maximum speed of an F-16 is 1,500 mph. Even at traveling 1,300 mph, these planes could have reached Washington in six minutes – well before any claim of when Flight 77 crashed. […] Why is the emergency considered important enough to stop all takeoffs from Washington at this time, but not important enough to scramble even a single plane to defend Washington?” [15]
There was also ample time to evacuate all Pentagon personnel. Top officials were well aware of the WTC attacks with air traffic controllers having spotted an unidentified fast-flying aircraft heading towards the Pentagon and the White House at 9:25. By the time of the crash at 9.37am the Pentagon’s ‘War Room’ or Executive Support Centre (ESC) had been in session for at least half an hour watching WTC footage. [16] 30 minutes to a minimum of 12 minutes before the Pentagon was hit, almost everyone could have been evacuated or at least attempts could have been made by a so-called military machine priding itself on safety protocols. Apparently, those in the ESC didn’t even know that they had been hit and it is only when Donald Rumsfeld enters the War Room after thoroughly annoying everyone at the crash scene that anyone knew anything was amiss. If Donald knew all about it and half the Pentagon was smashed in you’d think the heart of the defensive nexus would have at least known the whereabouts of the Secretary of Defence.[17]
Firstly, notwithstanding the fact that Flight 77 was able to hit the Pentagon by executing an almost impossible downward spiral, it is incredible that so little damage was done. The pilot, Hani Hanjour, was not just an amateur but painfully inept. Peggy Chevrette, Arizona Flight School Manager stated in a New York Times piece: “I’m still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon … He could not fly at all … “I couldn’t believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had”. [18]
Pentagon aftermath. We are meant to believe that a Boeing Jet Airliner hit the outer wall and vapourised – including wings, undercarriage and engines. (Source: top: 9/11Review.org | Bottom: Alex Wong/Getty Images
The impact targeted the first floor of the Pentagon’s reinforced west wall, the only part of the Pentagon having recently undergone extensive renovation, causing heavy damage to the building’s three outer rings. Destruction ploughed a path through Army accounting offices on the outer E Ring, the Navy Command Centre on the D Ring, and the Defence Intelligence Agency’s comptroller’s office on the C Ring. It seems nonsensical that the terrorists would aim the plane at an 8ft façade in the process of being renovated and reinforced – and therefore with less people present – when they could have crashed into the roof, a far more expansive target with the possibility of killing far more military personnel. As it happens, most of those killed were civilians.
Now, here’s where it gets truly surreal, as Griffin explains:
“…since the aircraft penetrated only the first three rings of the Pentagon, only the nose of a Boeing 757 would have gone inside…The rest of the airplane would have remained outside. […] ‘While the plane’s nose is made of carbon and the wings, containing the fuel, can burn, the Boeing’s fuselage is aluminium and the jet engines are built out of steel. At the end of the fire, it would necessarily left a burnt-out wreck.” […]
… on a Boeing 757,…the jet engines, made of steel, are attached to the wings, so the wings would hit the facade with great force. And yet prior to the collapse…the photos reveal no visible damage to the facade on either side of the orifice, even where the engines would have hit the building…the fact that the photographs clearly show that the facade above the opening is completely intact and even unmarked creates a still more insuperable problem, given Boeing 757’s big tail.”[19]
Furthermore, for a Boeing 757 in excess of 63 tons (virtually empty) to over 100 tons (full) it makes little sense that only the first ring of the building was destroyed so that the second and third rings would only reveal a hole about seven feet in diameter. [20]
In the immediate aftermath of the explosion one would have expected a vast amount of material evidence to have come from a massive 63 ton Boeing 757 Jet airliner crashing into a federal building at a speed of over 530 mph. An aircraft of this size as well as the history of plane crashes show that a huge quantity of debris and smouldering destruction would be spread over a significantly wide area. With no clusters of fires except on the Pentagon itself, only a few pieces of the alleged plane remained, exhibiting no scorching from the alleged “fireball” and which were picked up by hand. What about the thousands of gallons of jet fuel that would have been spilled across the crash site? There was no clean-up of the ground in evidence at any time. If the Boeing 757’s fuselage is made from aluminium and engines made from steel, then no hydrocarbon fire is going to melt them let alone leave no trace as we are being asked to believe.
The tiny remains of so-called plane debris. But is it from American Airlines?
This is the Pentagon lawn immediately outside the Pentagon and after the crash of Flight 77. Fancy a game of golf?
This also leaves the question of the upper floors which survived this elusive inferno. There was no evidence of the sort of intense heat required to completely vanish a jet airliner leaving virtually no debris behind on the Pentagon lawn. More than 35 minutes after the crash at 10.15 am the front section of the Pentagon which had been hit by Flight 77 collapsed exposing the interior. Computers, office furniture and even books and files could clearly be seen and were perfectly intact showing no signs of fire damage. [21]
This is the approx, 20ft, ground floor hole that American Airlines Flight 77 is said to have vanished into. No damage from he wings either side, no damage on the front lawn.
What was perhaps the most glaring anomaly in the whole media-led illusion was the 18 foot diameter impact hole on the second floor which the jet airliner was meant to have squeezed itself into. If the building’s façade was about 18 feet in diameter and the diameter of the fuselage of Flight 77 around 12 feet; wingspan about 125 feet, with the tip of the tail is about 44 feet from the ground, it begs the question if it did miraculously suck itself into the length of the impact pathway then all those plane parts had to have been left behind. [22] But there was nothing of the kind. The condition of the Pentagon lawn was so pristine lawn that it could have hosted a golfing tournament. The official theory would like us to believe that the 6 ton titanium engines, the wings and the tail simply vaporised. They say this, because no sign of them can be found at the crash site. Not even the seat cushions. [23] Or, as Jamie McKintyre of CNN News observed: “[F]rom my close up inspection there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon… …The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage— nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon.” [24]
So, perhaps the wings were vapourised whilst being sucked into the 18 ft. hole which was in fact a worm-hole?
What is more, there is no sign that there were even any people on board the plane unless they were travelling extremely light as no luggage of any kind was found; no suitcases, shoes, clothing, or anything resembling personal effects that would indicate passengers were aboard. Though there were many victims inside the Pentagon, no bodies or body parts were recovered from the crash site. Alleged passengers were identified from DNA samples yet we are told that most of the Boeing 757 simply vaporised or evaporated which somehow left all the bodies intact yet invisible.
A mock-up by a French 9/11 researcher to illustrate how ridiculous the idea is that a Boeing 747 jet-airliner fuselage can somehow vanish into a 20ft to lie comfortably within the interior of the Pentagon, leaving no essential parts behind. Yet, at the same time we are told to believe that Flight 77 powered its flimsy way through three of the five concentric rings of the Pentagon complex.
The orange fireball which people believe is evidence of the net result of a Boeing 747 hitting the outer wall. Where is exactly is all the jet fuel? The wings? Fuselage? wheels? Chairs? Tail-fin? Engine?
The credulity needed to accept the kind of reality where a 125-foot-wide airplane created and then went inside a hole less than 20-feet wide, is beyond anything approaching logic and rationale. Yet, that is apparently what we are expected to believe – even within much of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
9/11 investigators have commented on why the videos surrounding the Pentagon approach were either not working or had been confiscated by the FBI allegedly for analysis. None of the confiscated surveillance and security video tapes from hotels and gas stations, traffic cameras, have been released. Although after much pressure from 9/11 Truth Movement and certain sections of the political and public arena the Department of Defence finally released two clips from Pentagon security cameras no doubt chosen due to the fact they show absolutely nothing.
The standard cry from those confronted with the hint of a possibility that something other than a jet aircraft hit the Pentagon is a hands-on-hips question of: “Well, what happened to the plane and all the people?” This question alone is deemed more than enough proof that to contemplate any other scenario is both silly and pointless. Along with what can be seen and verified at the crash site the US authorities have refused to give any evidence to prove that Flight 77 did hit the Pentagon. Despite the FBI and the CIA having a record of lying as long as your arm, they expect us to dutifully trust them in the face of the most obvious evidence that something is very, very wrong.
It is clear from the voluminous analysis now available on internet journals that various examples of obfuscation and blocking by US and government agency officials have continued to this day. On October 14, 2001, flight control transcripts for the 9/11 aeroplanes were finally released. Yet the data on Flight 77 ends almost 20 minutes before it crashes. Could it be, out of many floated explanations that government officials simply didn’t want the press and public to hear what actually took place during the final 20 minutes of Flight 77?
“After five years of talking to many individuals in the intelligence community, in the military, foreign intelligence agencies, and a whole host of other people, people from the air traffic control community, the FAA, I came to the conclusion that after five years what we saw happen on that morning of September 11, 2001, was the result of a highly-compartmentalized covert operation to bring about a fascist coup in this country … These people need to be brought to justice, if not by our own Congress, then by an international tribunal in the Hague…”
– Wayne Madsen, Former U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer, specialist in electronic surveillance and security. Formerly assigned to the National Security Agency and the State Department
At 9:37 am September 11, the Pentagon’s ‘War Room’ otherwise known as the Executive Support Centre (ESC) was in session. Torie Clarke, the Assistant Secretary of Defence for public affairs, describes the capabilities of the War room as having: “… instant access to satellite images and intelligence sources peering into every corner of the globe” and where: “… the building’s top leadership goes to coordinate military operations during national emergencies.” That being the case, it is doubly strange that no one realised the Pentagon had been hit, or if they did, nobody stirred. Some of the individuals present included Clarke, Stephen Cambone, Donald Rumsfeld’s closest aide, and Larry Di Rita, Rumsfeld’s personal chief of staff, all of whom decided it was either a bomb or “the heating and cooling systems.” Indeed, Clarke would claim that the first they heard it was a possible “plane” was from Rummie himself half an hour after the attack was heard and while the ESC team were still “glued to television screens showing two hijacked planes destroying the World Trade Center,” (no doubt with pop-corn in hands).
The Usual Suspects: Clueless authoritarians or did some have the inside scoop?
Rumsfeld decided to arrive at the ESC at 10.15 am after running about the crash scene; getting in the way of rescue teams and interfering with a crime scene. It was also Rumsfeld who first made the executive decision in less than 30 minutes that the Pentagon had been struck by an aeroplane. [25] [26] Like so many of the Bush Administration officials, Torie Clarke followed the Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice school of dramatic denial in claiming the notion of a jet airliner attacking was “unfathomable,” when it has been proven beyond doubt that the opposite was the case. [27] As we have seen, the US government had long since created simulations and models to predict what would happen if terrorist flew planes into the White House, The Twin Towers and the Pentagon, including intelligence reports illustrating how “Al-Qaeda could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives … into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House.” [28]
Donald Rumsfeld “lending a hand” outside the Pentagon
Just one example in an ocean of foreknowledge includes the more peculiar case of Charles Burlingame who in 1990 participated in a department of Defence exercise called “Project MASCA” in which a commercial jet airliner is deployed as a weapon and crashed into the Pentagon. Charles Burlingame was found to be none other than the Captain who supposedly flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon. [29]
In creating distractions to reinforce the official story on 9/11 there are plenty of people on hand to deliver. Though most of the sources for making the link between AA Flight 77 and whatever struck the Pentagon came from military personnel, Ted Olson, Republicrat, U.S. Solicitor General and his wife Neo-Con author Barbara Olson became the designated pillars of truth linking Flight 77 with the Pentagon attack. There were other calls reportedly made by passengers and flight attendants, but Ted Olson was the only person to receive calls from his wife at around 9:25 and 9:30am.
According to a CNN report, Ted Olson maintained that his wife had: “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,” further stating that: “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters.” [30] This helped to produce the outpourings of indignation and collective revenge surrounding the death of Olson’s wife who had been downed by foaming-at-the-mouth Muslim terrorists, the antithesis of American Christian values. The highbrow “bring ‘em on” philosophy of Bush which seeped into middle town America’s vengeance meant that the “War on Terror” took on new vigour.
Barbara and Ted Olson
Ted Olson was a faithful supporter of Bush and Neo-Conservatism which right then and there, allows some scepticism about his claims. David Ray Griffin reminds us that he: “… pleaded George W. Bush’s cause before the Supreme Court in the 2000 election dispute” and also: “… defended Vice President Cheney’s attempt to prevent the release of papers from his energy task force to the committee investigating the Enron scandal.” [31] While adoration of the Bush Doctrine isn’t enough to place him under suspicion of lying, the contradictions and constant changes and vagueness in his story certainly are.
The claim that his wife had called him twice from a cell phone via the Department of Justice collect was contradicted on a Hannity and Colmes, Fox News interview on September 14. Olson thought she must have used the aeroplane phone because for some reason her credit cards were inaccessible. This doesn’t work either because a credit card is still needed to activate a passenger-seat phone. [32] No doubt realising he was digging a hole for himself, when giving an interview to American talk show host Larry King, he said that the call went dead because “the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well” which was a huge understatement considering that high-altitude cell phone calls from jet airliners were not possible until 2004. [33] Olson’s statement is contradicted a second time by American Airlines who are on record saying that no Boeing 757s had phones at that time: “The passengers on flight 77 used their own personal cellular phones to make out calls during the terrorist attack.” [34]
Perhaps, Mrs. Olson used her cell phone after all? Taking into account the improbability of such a move given the state of technology, an FBI report at the 2006 trial of alleged hijacker Zacharias Moussaoui added to the weakening of Olson’s story still further by attributing one “unconnected call” to Barbara Olson lasting “o seconds”. According to the FBI report, there was no incoming call from Flight 77 to Ted Olson or anyone else from a cell phone or passenger phone. Why was this total refutation of Ted Olson’s famous “two calls from his wife” not reported?
The nail in the coffin of Ted Olson’s story is the sheer absurdity of the hijack scenario that Ted and Barbara Olson would like us to believe, yet remains a fundamental pillar of the official 9/11 narrative. According to Olson his wife had said that: ‘all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers.’ This is barely credible. 60+ people are hardly likely to be held against their will by 3-4 armed with knives and “box-cutters.” (Actually box-cutters were not allowed on any aircraft from 1994 onwards, so this is another fantasy). Further, the hijackers had previously been described by the 9/11 Commission as: “… not physically imposing, … the majority of them were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height and slender in build’…” If Charles Burlingame had been aboard as claimed, as a weight-lifter and boxer it is distinctly unlikely he would have suddenly turned into a pussy-cat. His brother also dismissed this scenario who said: “I don’t know what happened in that cockpit, but I’m sure that they would have had to incapacitate him or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane.” [35]
Either Ted Olson was lying or he was a useful idiot. Probably both. The story which he has given to the media doesn’t hold up under any kind of scrutiny though it did provide suitable distraction. But this still leaves us with the burning question:
What was it that hit the Pentagon?
This perhaps:
See: Truth and Consequences: A Watershed Moment for Rebuilding a Movement by Scott Creighton | Though the tiny amount of debris that was found does not fit the wreckage profile of a jet airliner by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly conforms to the idea of a drone.
Or even a cruise missile such as this one?
During an October 2001 interview U.S. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld made a revealing remark:
“They [find a lot] and any number of terrorist efforts have been dissuaded, deterred or stopped by good intelligence gathering and good preventative work. It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it’s physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique. Here we’re talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building [the Pentagon] 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.” [36]
Did Rumsfeld “misspeak”? Was the reference to a missile hitting the Pentagon just an innocent slip of the tongue or did it reveal a deeper truth? If it was truly a jet airliner how could anyone confuse this with a missile unless it is a truth that slipped out unconsciously – a common trait of the psychopath.
Recall that the nose of the Boeing 757 is composed of carbon fibres and thus very fragile. It is physically impossible to suggest that the most fragile part of the aircraft could have piled through three rings of the Pentagon to create a seven-foot exit hole in the inside wall of the third ring. The head of a missile however, would be a much more logical conclusion. The fire produced at the Pentagon shows red flames which are consistent with the type of AGM Maverick, Tomahawk or Russian/Soviet Granit missile which would indicate a hotter and more instantaneous fire. [37]
Short video clips from Pentagon security videos were leaked by an alleged whistleblower in 2002 from which the most pertinent five frames were analysed and pored over, (as it turned out, to little avail) showing something hitting the Pentagon but very likely not a Boeing 757. On May 16th 2006, the U.S. Department of Defence released two more short video clips apparently to placate those calling for the release of all security tapes. Officials declared that these clips show conclusively AA Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon. Once again, there is an explosion but it certainly doesn’t show anything resembling a Boeing 757. What the images do seem to resemble on the so-called crash site is a cruise missile or carrier drone.
The so-called “leaked” video of a “Boeing 747” hitting the Pentagon. The smoke and fireball however, looks suspiciously like some variety of tomahawk or stinger missile.
The manoeuvre seen in the security video clips is straight as an arrow and typifies the trajectory and behaviour of a missile, as researcher Peter Wakefield Sault explains:
“The reason it could not be an airplane is that airplanes swoop up and down, always pointing in the direction of flight, unlike cruise missiles which, because they are pilotless, can perform violent maneuvres known as ‘bump up/down’ wherein the attitude of the missile does not change while the missile changes its line of attack. A cruise missile is steered with one or more onboard devices known as ‘Control Moment Gyroscopes’ (CMGs). These control the direction that the missile points in, its attitude, and thereby its course. The wings, which swivel laterally in their entirety, can be used to cause a sudden rapid ascent or descent while the gyroscopes force the missile to maintain the same attitude. This is the maneuvre shown as ‘bump up/down’ … Cruise missiles are designed to hug the ground (or sea) at a height of 6 feet (2 metres) during their final approaches, employing radars and high-speed electronics to achieve this.” [38]
The vapour trail which can be seen in the security camera video clips and stills has also been listed as singular proof of the Aircraft’s presence before slamming into the Pentagon, riding heavily on the power of suggestion, as with most of the 9/11 images. However, jet airliners do not produce vapour trails below 30,000 ft. which must therefore exclude any kind of aeroplane, though the US State Department very much wanted us to believe otherwise. A cruise missile is propelled by a rocket motor and could be seen if launched from a relatively short-distance from the Pentagon. Though speculative, the Army and Navy Club, less than two miles away is one location where a possible missile trajectory can be traced and which may have served as the missile launch zone. [39]
Wakefield-Sault also alerts us to considerable evidence concerning the presence of an aeroplane which passed low and nearby a press conference sometime between 09:31 and 09:38 on the morning of September 11th 2001. Then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, had convened the conference over three miles North-East of the Pentagon.
According to taxi-driver Lloyde England a large airplane flew very low across State Route 27 taking out five lampposts as it approached the Pentagon, one of which hit Mr. England’s car. According to his testimony on the now defunct website of The Survivors’ Fund Project:
“As [Lloyde] approached the Navy Annex, he saw a plane flying dangerously low overhead. Simultaneously, the plane struck a light pole and the pole came crashing down onto the front of Lloyde’s taxi cab, destroying the windshield in front of his eyes. Glass was everywhere as he tried to stop the car. Another car stopped and the driver helped move the heavy pole off Lloyde’s car. As they were moving the pole, they heard a big boom and turned to see an explosion. The light pole fell on Lloyd and he struggled to get up from underneath, wondering what had happened.” [40]
Given the trajectory of the flight-path it is highly probable that this is the same plane heard at the Porter Goss press conference and does mean that there was not some kind of aircraft approaching the Pentagon. However, the timings are wrong since “… the flight time from the highway to the Pentagon is about one second. Clearly then, if Mr England is correct about the sequence of events, the explosion could not have taken place at the same time that the airplane flew over the Pentagon.” [41]
Furthermore, “…at least half of the “north side flyover” witnesses also claim to have seen the airplane they saw flying over hit the Pentagon, … which is contradicted by the physical evidence of the damage path both inside and outside the Pentagon, hence diminishing their credibility as witnesses to a great big zero.”
Lloyde England’s Taxi which was used to justify the direction and trajectory of the alleged Flight 77. Unfortunately, for the official story, this too is riven with contradictions.
“National Security Alert” a short documentary film made by Citizen Investigation Team claims to have established that witnesses supported a banking north side approach to the Pentagon, with nothing on the South side, “this means the damage to the light-poles and taxi-cab had to have been staged.” The video extract continues: “As unanimously demonstrated by the witnesses, the plane was nowhere near the downed light poles, but it was furthest from light pole no.1 which is what cab-driver Lloyde England claims he lifted out of the windshield of his cab minutes after the attack.” In June of 2008 the CIT confronted England with the information, but before the interview began audio test recording picked up a “strange reaction.” Saying “… he knew that his cab and light pole were on the bridge.” Here is short transcript of what he had to say:
L: One guy who took..um..the pictures lives right over here on 17th street
CIT: He took pictures of your cab?
L: and, um…. he took pictures … He was up on the bridge. He took pictures of the pole, he took pictures of the car.
CIT: Oh, right.
L: And as far as I know he still has them.
When cameras started rolling England states the exact opposite and refused to admit he was anywhere near the bridge. Later on in the film he becomes more candid:
L: I’m not supposed to be involved in all this… This is their thing.
CIT: Meaning they are doing it for their own reasons?
Lloyd England by his car after the Pentagon attack and before the collapse.
L: That’s right. I’m not supposed to be in.
CIT: But they used you right?
L: I’m in it.
CIT: You’re in it?
L: Yeah, we came across … across the highway together.
CIT: You and their “event”?
L: That’s right.
CIT: Then they must have planned it?
L: It was planned. […] One thing about it you gotta understand something, when people do things and get away with it – you…eventually it’s going to come to me. And when it comes to me it’s going to be so big I can’t do nothin’ about it …. So, it has to be stopped in the beginning when it’s small, you see, to keep it from spreading.” [42]
CIT claim that England was cautious not to “outright confess,” working hard to distance himself from the planners while admitting it was planned. They believe this is corroboration for other witness statements in the film testifying to a North side approach, the staging of the light-poles and cab event and thus the plane could not have hit the Pentagon.
One researcher Gerard Holmgren and his brilliant analysis found that many of the testimonies were seriously flawed or in Holmgren words: “What appeared at first reading to be 19 eyewitness accounts … actually turned out to be none.” Yet he was open-minded and aware that: “Eyewitnesses who are vague on fine details are generally more likely to be telling the truth than those who claim to have meticulously taken in everything. But there should be some indication that the object was a large passenger jet, and could not have been a much smaller jet, a military craft, a light plane, a helicopter or a cruise missile.” His meticulous findings concluded that such indications did not materialise. [43]
The source of his initial research of eyewitness accounts focused on a website called http://www.urbanlegends.about.com, which included a rebuttal of the theory that Flight77 did not hit the Pentagon. The main evidence presented was the listing of 19 web-linked eyewitness accounts of the event which appeared to be compelling at first glance. On closer inspection Holmgren found they were all missing a “basic condition” in that: “the witnesses did not actually claim to see the Pentagon hit by the plane. What they claimed was to have seen a plane flying way too low, and then immediately afterwards to have seen smoke or an explosion coming from the direction of the Pentagon which was out of sight at the time of the collision.” This became a familiar theme which could not be in anyway termed “evidence” and thus had to be ruled out. This, in addition to logistical and photographic inconsistencies, non-existent witnesses, tampering with witness reports and possible examples of CoIntelpro, led Holmgren to conclude: “… that there is no eyewitness evidence to support the theory that F77 hit the Pentagon …” [44]
After the collapse of the outer ring. Of course, that’s where all the plane wreckage is buried…But didn’t they say the plane reached two inner rings of the Pentagon? Did they collapse? Nope. Any wreckage there? Nope.
An enormous contribution to 9/11 official theory derives from witness testimony disseminated by the MSM has come down to us as fact when it is more often a product of trauma-induced confusion sitting alongside careful disinformation. Most of these witnesses were either Pentagon employees, thus unreliable, or USA Today reporters such as Walters whose statements have been heavily referenced. However, as Canadian author and independent journalist Dave McGowan points out, knowing what we know about media complicity in PSYOPS, can we trust what these reporters have to say about the events, given the newspaper’s background and a distinct pattern of USA Today interest which has emerged?
McGowan explains: “USA Today and Navy Times are both part of the Gannett family of news outlets. … Gannett also publishes Air Force Times, Army Times, Marine Corp Times, Armed Forces Journal, Military Market, Military City, and Defence 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 Walters 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. [45]
The odds of all those USA Today reporters being on sight and in such numbers and touting the same story counter to the evidence is a stretch. Or as McGowan reiterates: “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.” [46] This is the same newspaper which reported that Andrews Air Base: “… had no fighters assigned to it,” and in a later piece, that Andrews did have fighters present “but those planes were not on alert” both statements of which were wholly untrue. As evidence from multiple reports that immediately after the attack on the Pentagon, F-16s from Andrews were flying over Washington. [47]
It is also true to say that this doesn’t mean that USA Today was necessarily in on the official story conspiracy. As Holmgren mentions: “if a newspaper gives a one line quote from an anonymous witness and gives no details of when, where or how the quote was gathered, does not specify who wrote the story and gives no other details, then this is not an eyewitness account. It is hearsay.” And the vast majority of eyewitness accounts which support the official story are precisely that.
The total lack of evidence of anything remotely fitting the description of a jet airliner being found at the scene should be the defining characteristic of the Pentagon attacks. Yet, the 9/11 Truth Movement cries “disinformation!” at the merest hint of such a suggestion since it opens a veritable hornet’s nest of uncomfortable questions which apparently, cannot be answered. (i.e. Where did Flight 77 go? What happened to the passengers? – and other conundrums.)
Just because this raises more complicated questions and “reinforces conspiracy theory” doesn’t mean that we should shy away from appraising a crime scene and reaching conclusions based on what is. Digging for truth is a dirty job and doesn’t necessarily fit into neat boxes with nice little ticks. Sometimes all we have is a framework upon which we can build further answers. Yet, the framework is crucial. If that is wrong then we are led down avenues of exploration which must be wrong too. And so it is with Flight 77 and the Pentagon.
Notes
[1] ‘FAA Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events September 11 2001 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB165/faa7.pdf
[2] ‘ “We have planes. Stay quiet” – Then silence’ by Michael Ellison, The Guardian, 17 October 2001. | ‘Timeline in Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001’ Staff and Wire Reports, Washington Post, September 12, 2001 | ‘9/11 commission staff statement No. 17,’ NBC News, http://www.msnbc.msn.com June 17, 2004.
[3] http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_timeline.html
[4] 9/11 National Commision on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Public Hearing Friday, May 23, 2003. http://www.9-11commission.gov/ | ‘Clear the skies’ September 8, 2002 http://www.mnet.co.za
[5] p.232; Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the .Official Conspiracy Theory by David Ray Griffin,, Olive Branch Press, 2007 | ISBN-10: 156656686X
[6] ‘Get These Planes on the Ground’ Air Traffic Controllers Recall Sept. 11: ABC News October 24, 2001.| MSNBC Transcript: ‘American Remembers, Air Traffic Controllers Describe How Events Unfolded As They Saw Them on September 11th.’ MSNBC Dateline. September 11, 2002.
[7] ‘Probe reconstructs horror, calculated attacks on planes’ By Glen Johnson, The Boston Globe, November 23, 2001. | ‘Primary Target’ CBS News, February 11, 2009 | ‘Primary Target’ CBS News, February 11, 2009. | ‘Part I: Terror attacks brought drastic decision: Clear the skies’ By Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams and Blake Morrison, USA Today, August 12, 2002 | National Transportation and Safety Board, Office of Research and Engineering, Washington D.C. 20594, Febraury 19 2002. Flight Path Study American Airlines Flight 77. http://www.ntsb.gov/info/Flight_ Path_ Study_AA77.pdf
[8] ‘The Official Account of the Pentagon Attack is Fantasy’ March 3, 2012. http://www.veteranstoday.com By Dennis Cimino and Jim Fetzer,| Dennis Cimino, A.A., EE; 35-years EMI/EMC testing, field engineering; FDR testing and certifications specialist; Navy Combat Systems Specialist; 2,000 hours, Pilot in Command, Commercial Instrument Single and Multi-Engine Land Pilot, Eastern Airlines 727-200, Second Officer. Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer and founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] ‘Ill-Starred ‘Star Wars’ Tests’ Los Angeles Times, December 20, 2004.
[12] ‘Alternatives for Boost-Phase Missile Defense’ CBO Report, July 1, 2004. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/15852
[13] ‘9/11, Pentagon, and Missile Defense: $130 Billion on Pentagon’s Missile Defense Fails to Stop Four Airliners on 9/11’ By Fred Burkes, http://www.wanttoknow.info.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Paul Thompson (9:03-9:08 AM), citing USA Today, September 12 and 13, 2002.
[16] U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Speech Testimony Prepared for Delivery to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States | http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=105 | Testimony Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 23, 2004.
[17] p.5; Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy By Andrew Cockburn, Published by Scribner 2007. | ISBN-10: 1416535748.
[18] ‘A Trainee Noted for Incompetence’ By Jim Yardley, New York Times, May 4, 2002.
[19] 9/11:The Big Lie By Thierry Meyssan Published by Carnot Editions 2003. ISBN-10: 1592090265 | p.22.
[20] Aircraft Information Boeing 757/767: http://www.simviation.com/rinfo75767.htm
[21] op. cit. LeLong (p.118)
[22] ‘Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11and Neither Did a Boeing 757’ by Joe Quinn, Sott.net, June 9, 2006.
[23] http://www.911hardfacts.com/report_16.htm
[24] ‘Live CNN Report of Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon’ | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02dE5VKeck
[25] op. cit. Griffin (2004; p.34)
[26] Ibid. | TV Transcipt: ‘The Pentagon Goes to War’ National Military Command Centre, CNN American Morning with Paula Zahn | ‘Keeping the Heart of the Pentagon Beating’ By Jim Garamone, American Airforces Press Service, July 9 2006.
[27] (p.219 – 221) Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game By Torie Clarke, Published by Free Press, 2006.
[28] ‘1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack’ By John Soloman, AP Press, April 18 2002. (The report can be found in the Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, entitled: ’The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism.’) George W. Bush denied he had ever seen such a report despite the fact it is was commonly known to intel personnel and available all over the internet. | p.175; Learning Rants, Raves, and Reflections: A Collection of Passionate and Professional Perspectives Elliott Masie (Editor) Paul L. Nenninger: “Simulation at the Secret Service – As Real as it Gets” Published by Pfeiffer, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0787973025.
[29] ‘Ex-Navy Pilot Flies Flight 77’ http://www.911lies.org/was_911_an_inside_job.html
[30] ‘Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane,’ by Tim O’Brien, CNN, September 11, 2001. (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson).
[31] op. cit. Griffin; (2004; p.28)
[32] Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, September 14, 2001 | http://www.s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/foxnews091401.html.
[33] ‘America’s New War: Recovering from Tragedy,’ Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001 http://www.edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html | ‘Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials’ by David Ray Griffin, Global Research, April 01, 2008.
[34] Ibid.
[35] ‘Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials’ By David Ray Griffin, Global Research, April 01, 2008.
[36] U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) News Transcript: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine, Interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik. October 12 2001. http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3845
[37] 9/11 Deceptions by M.P.LeLong Published by XLibris 2011. (p.260)
[38] ‘September 11th 2001: A Cruise Missile at The Pentagon’ by Peter Wakefield Sault, http://www.odeion.org/ updated August 2012.
[39] Ibid.
[40] ‘Pentagon Attack Cab Driver Lloyde England’s Virtual Confession’ Citizen Investigation Team http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHM5f9lVho | See the complete interviews with Lloyde here: thepentacon.com/eyeofthestorm.htm
[41] Perdue Universities RCAC center produced this Pentagon FEA simulation. Originally produced in 2003, before the 9/11 Truth movement, this groundbreaking FEA based simulation was followed by the more famous WTC North simulation, presented on Youtube. This simulation pioneered mass data input for 3D modeling and input, and developed file formats that allow universities to create, trade, and build a library of huge digital models of 3D aircraft, ships and buildings. By V. Popescu, C. Hoffmann, S. Kilic, M. Sozen, S. Meador, “Producing High-Quality Visualizations of Large-Scale Simulations”, Proc. of IEEE Visualization, Oct., 2003.
[42] op. cit pentacon.com
[43] ‘Did F77 hit the Pentagon? Eyewitness accounts examined: Examines the apparent contradiction between photographic evidence and eyewitness evidence.’ by Gerard Holmgren. 5 ’03)
[44] http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t4603.html
[45] ‘September 11, 2001 Revisited’ By Dave McGowan, The Center for an Informed America Newsletter #68E April 12, 2005. http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr68e.html
[46] Ibid.
[47] ‘Military now a presence on home front’ By Andrea Stone, USA Today,September 16, 2001.
INFRAKSHUN 