Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Cytations: reform is happening: Radio Host Challenges Muslims to Answer Five Questions
Cytations: reform is happening: Radio Host Challenges Muslims to Answer Five Questions
Blogger Thoughts: Prager, will he ever understand?
Blogger Thoughts: Prager, will he ever understand?
Cytations: reform is happening: Radio Host Challenges Muslims to Answer Five Questions
Cytations: reform is happening: Radio Host Challenges Muslims to Answer Five Questions
Blogger Thoughts: Prager doesn't deserve an answer, but this is worth reading.
Blogger Thoughts: Prager doesn't deserve an answer, but this is worth reading.
No Boeing at the Pentagon
No Boeing at the Pentagon
09/11/2001
(Please use the link above for clarity. Formatting below may not be accurate)
Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11
and Neither Did a Boeing 757
by Joe Quinn
After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 reseachers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...
The claim that promoters of the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the "implications". According to Ruppert, the "implications" are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that's the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.
Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn't explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passgengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let's be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't hit the Pentagon, is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That's pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them "in person," as it were.
Since Ruppert's declaration about the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory, many other "9/11 researchers", such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman , have seized upon Ruppert's idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the "no planers" are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the 'kooky' "no plane" theory.
In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let's look at the "evidence" as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.
First, however, I would like a few observations about 9/11 research in general.
Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.
Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be appoached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?
The fact is that, researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened, they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Begin with a beginner's mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.
Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from "ground zero" (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good "best guess". For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the "private" evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don't expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.
The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the "official government cover-up." After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.
Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.
Evidence That A Boeing 757 Really Did Impact the Pentagon on 9/11
by "CatHerder", Member, AboveTopSecret.com/forum
September 11th, 2004
Did a 757 hit the Pentagon on 9-11 First let's start with the factual information available on hand. The 757-200 As we can see from the freely available information for the Boeing 757 (from the Boeing website). The 757 is a midsized commercial airliner designed for short haul and medium haul routes (Medium Range Transport (MR-TR)), although since its release, and the subsequent discovery of the Wake Vortex it leaves behind the FAA has classified the 757 as a "Heavy" aircraft; the FAA places the 757 in the Geometric Design Classification IV, and an ATC Operation Class C. (source) The 757-200 dimensions: Tail Height: 44 ft 6 in (13.6m) Length: 155 ft 3 in (47.32m) Wingspan: 124 ft 10 in (38.05m) Body Exterior Width: 12 ft 4 in (3.7m) Fuel Capacity: 11,489 us gal (43,490l / 43,490kg) Maximum Takeoff weight: 255,000lb (115,680kg) Typical Cruise Speed: 0.80 Mach (573.6mph / 956kmh) Engines used on a 757: Two 166.4kN (37,400lb) Rolls-Royce RB211-535C turbofans, or 178.8kN (40,200lb) RB211-535E4s, or 193.5kN (43,500lb) RB211-535E4-Bs, or 162.8kN (36,600lb) Pratt & Whitney PW2037s, or two 178.4kN (40,100lb) PW2040s, or 189.5kN (42,600lb) PW2043s. (source1) (source2) Auxiliary Power Unit: Honeywell GTCP331-200 left portion: source1 right portion: source2 (height and width notation to graphic added by me) Next, let's look at the Pentagon. The Pentagon The Pentagon was designed in the early 40's and was completed in only 16 months on Jan 14, 1943. The shortages of materials required for war production raised many design and construction problems. The use of reinforced concrete in lieu of formed steel for the building made possible a saving of 43,000 tons of steel, more than enough to build a battleship. The use of concrete ramps rather than elevators further reduced steel requirements. Drainage pipes were concrete; ducts were fiber, interior doors were wood. An unusual wall design - concrete spandrels carried to window sill level - eliminated many miles of through-wall copper flashing.(Source1) (Source2) Recent renovations and upgrades to the building were nearing completion on the side hit on 9-11 and performed reasonably well considering they were not designed to withstand aircraft impact. On September 11, when an American Airlines Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon, home of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), about 20,000 people were at work in this, the largest office building in the world. Yet according to the DoD casualty update on October 1, only 125 Pentagon employees were killed along with the 64 from the fated airliner. (source - Architecture Week)The exterior walls had been reinforced with steel beams and columns, bolted where they met at each floor. Some of these reinforced walls very near the point of impact remained in place for a half hour before collapsing, allowing uncounted hundreds to escape. "Had we not undertaken this effort," said Evey at a press briefing on September 15, "this could have been much, much worse." Now, I'm sure everyone can agree that the above information is a matter of public record, and none of it is incorrect, altered, or misquoted in any way to support either side of the case. It is all merely factual information that we will refer to in the following sections. [Note: I was unintentionally misleading in a previous post when I said the Pentagon didn't use a steel beam construction - while that is still true for the original design, it was reinforced in various areas during the upgrades to include steel beams and columns in some areas of the renovations.] Quoted from ArchitectureWeek.com : In addition to major overhauls of the mechanical and electrical systems, the Wedge One renovation included the fire sprinklers, automatic fire doors, and the steel which saved many lives on the day of the attack. The blast-resistant windows were nearly two inches (5 centimeters) thick. Some of them remain remarkably intact and in place adjacent the point of impact. Some were popped out of their frames by the force of the exploding jet fuel, but they fell without breaking or splintering. Also on the exterior walls, between the steel columns, the renovation crew had placed Kevlar cloth, similar to the material used for bullet-proof vests. This had the effect of holding together building materials so they wouldn't become deadly projectiles in an explosion. Looking At the Big Picture From facts contained above, we can all agree that:
· The length of the outside wall on any side of the pentagon is 921 feet.
· The wingspan of a 757 is 124 feet 10 inches.
· Now, everyone can agree that 921/125= roughly 7.4 right?Given the size of the 757, and the size of the Pentagon, the damaged area fits in peftectly with the dimensions of both the aircraft and the building.
The above "opening gambit" is very telling since it delivers hard facts, one after the other, all of which are accurate. It is in this last statement that the twisting begins. The fact that the length of the Pentagon is equivilent to 7.4 757's wing to wing, or that the width of one 757 equals 13.5% of the facade of the Pentagon has no bearing on the actual damage done. Indeed, given the weight and speed of the 757 that is alleged to have impacted the building, the actual damage done to the Pentagon is entirely inconsistent with an aircraft of the size weight and speed of a 757. In other words, the argument actually supports the "no-boeing" theory better than it supports "Flight 77 hit the Pentagon."
Look at the hole in the building Here is the hole in the building - it's been reported by at least a dozen different sources (including conspiracy theory sites) to be a 16 to 20 foot hole. That is really interesting when you take into account the fact that the 757 body is 12 ft 4in wide and 13 ft 6in high. (Here is where I was mistaken in the past, like so very many others I was led astray by the HEIGHT of the aircraft, which is actually the measurement from the wheels-down to the tip of the tail. That measurement is for aircraft hangar clearance, not the SIZE of the aircraft.) The 757 is basically a cylinder that is 13 feet across. It then should not be surprising that it would create something around a thirteen foot hole in the side of the building.
Here is the next twist. The Boeing 757 is not simply a 13ft wide cylinder, if it were, then the damage to the Pentagon might be more plausible. The reality, however, is that a Boeing 757 is a 13ft wide, 155 ft long cylinder with a tail fin that extends 45 ft into the air. Add to that the fact that there are two 6 ton steel engines slung under each wing about 6 feet to each side of the cylinder body. The wings extend out on each side for 50ft + making for a total aircraft width of 125 feet, a total length of 155 ft and a maximum height of 45 ft. It comes as no surprise then that this large commerical aircraft weighs in at over 90 tons fully loaded. On take off from Washington Dulles airport, Flight 77 weighed approximately 82 tons.
The above nonsensical argument would have you believe that the only thing to consider is a "13 ft wide cylinder" that just magically lost everything else, or that everything else just "folded up" and flew inside the building plastered to the side of that 13 ft cylinder. Even if the wings could do that, we are still left with the two 6 ton engines that were NOT dropped off on the lawn, and which, together, are as wide as the cylinder body!
Look at the nose-on view of a 757 - you can see the body is slightly less than 1/3 the size of the height of the aircraft. The tail certainly isn't going to punch a hole through a reinforced concrete wall; that is why there is no 40 foot hole in the front of the Pentagon in any photos. A 40 foot object didn't hit it, a 13 foot object did.
Again, this is not JUST a "13ft object" by any stretch of the imagination. By now it should be obvious that the author is attempting to subtly manipulate the reader by reducing a large, 82 ton passenger aircraft to "a 13ft object".
Think about this.
Is "a 13ft object" a reasonable description of a Boeing 757? Is it reasonable for the author to reduce a large plane that can carry up to 200 adult human beings to "a 13ft object"? We could take this unreasonable definition one step further and flesh out the image that our author is trying to plant in our heads and say that, according to our author, the Boeing 757 that he/she alleges hit the Pentagon, was comparable to a large SUV, or a similar "13ft object".
While it is reasonable to state that the tail of a 757 may not necessarily have punched a hole through the facade of the Pentagon, can we expect to at least see some evidence of the tail having hit the facade? More than that, we must consider the forward momentum of those two, inescapable, 6 TON Steel engines that were neither dropped on the lawn, nor were they smashed like pancakes against the side of the "13 ft cylinder." If I struck the facade of the Pentagon with a sledge hammer, is it reasonable that I would be able to cause some observable damage? The outer 6 inches of the facade of the Pentagon is made of soft limestone, yet our author sees no problem with claiming that such a soft surface, when struck by a piece of aircraft weighing SIX TONS and travelling at hundreds of miles per hour, would in no way leave any significant and observable damage.
While the "cylinder body" that our author keeps referring to is indeed 13ft 6in high, he omits the fact that the engines extend 5 feet below the body and over six feet to either side, meaning that, if the aircraft were actually able to successfully fly at just 1 inch above the ground (highly unlikely), the height of the "cylinder body" above the ground would be at least 18 ft 6 inches! Let us repeat that: if a Boeing 757 were actually able to fly at just 1 inch above the ground, the height of the "13 ft cylinder body" would be at least 18 feet 6 inches! Now, add to that the fact that the plane also includes those two bothersome 6 TON engines, AND a tailfin that protrudes 25 feet above the top of the cylinder body making for a total aircraft height of just less than 40 feet with wheels up. Obviously then, we can reasonably expect that the damage to the facade of the Pentagon would have extended up to this height IF it was a 757 that hit the building.
However, according to the official Pentagon report:
"The height of the damage to the facade of the building was much less than the height of the aircraft’s tail. At approximately 45 ft, the tail height was nearly as tall as the first four floors of the building. Obvious visible damage extended only over the lowest two floors, to approximately 25 ft above grade."
Look at this close up of the above photo:
The top of the hole in the middle of the white box is at the same level as the top of the windows of the second floor, or about 23-25 feet from ground. The three windows above this are the windows of the third floor. The foam covered window to the top right is the fourth floor. As noted by the Pentagon report, this area (above the center hole) is where the tail should have struck, but there is no evidence of any damage that we would expect from such an impact. What's more, the tail fin was definitely not dropped on the lawn along with the two 6 TON engines.
Conclusion? The tail fin of a Boeing 757 did not strike this area.
What does that suggest? That a Boeing 757 was not involved in the attack.
Is that logical enough?
However, from the point of view the author on the ATS forum and the U.S. government, we are not allowed to use such logic. Instead, we must give in to emotional blackmail and then engage in implausible mental gymnastics to try to explain how a 757 really could have been involved in the Pentagon attack; and all because the US government says so - a government that has made lies the core aspect of its domestic and foreign policy from day one.
In terms of the damage that should have been caused by the other parts of a 757 (you know, the large aircraft that our author has reduced to a mere 12ft 4 in wide cylinder), the official Pentagon Building Performance Report stated that:
"The projected width [of damage to the facade] was approximately 90 ft, which is substantially less than the 125 ft wingspan of the aircraft"
Indeed, but there is no explanation of why there is no damage to the facade where the wings should logically have struck. Could it be that an aircraft with the wingspan of a 757 was not involved
Conspiracy theory?
No, just the most obvious and logical explanation.
The Pentagon report also made note of the fact that:
"With the possible exception of the immediate vicinity of the fuselage’s entry point at column line 14, essentially all interior impact damage was inflicted in the first story: The aircraft seems for the most part to have slipped between the first-floor slab on grade and the second floor."
That is impossible as the following graphic will show. Note the pink line, where the "13 ft cylinder" is supposed to have slipped "under."
Another 9/11 researcher, who is naturally skeptical about the claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, produced the above graphic and posed some obvious and logical questions about the feasibility of the official story quoted above. Given the height of just the fuselage (leaving out the 25 feet of tailfin), how is it possible that the immediate damage and the debris of the plane were "largely confined to the first floor"? And remember, we are talking here about a scenario where the plane is flying at just one inch above the ground!
What is more, evidence from photos of the site show cable spools that were clearly untouched by any incoming aircraft, suggesting that the aircraft would have to have been flying above the maximum height of the spools (some 6 feet) when it hit the Pentagon. In this case, the damage should have been almost entirely to the second floor!
Of course, this is not the case, which leaves us with the logical deduction that it is highly improbable that a 757 was involved in the attack on the Pentagon and that a much smaller and more nimble aircraft was used.
Among those 9/11 researchers that claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon, much is made of the fact that the Pentagon facade was built with "steel reinforced concrete walls". This fact is used to explain the extremely limited immediate damage to the Pentagon facade. But how much credit are we going to give to brick and concrete that has been reinforced with relatively thin steel bars? Is such a wall indestructable? If the tail fin and wings of a Boeing 757 travelling at 400mph+ hit such a wall, could we at least expect them to leave a dent? A little scrape even?
Not at the Pentagon apparently.
Consider the picture below showing the impact hole at the WTC North Tower:
The facade of the WTC Towers were made of prefabricated steel yet as we can see from the imprint of the plane, these steel lattices were in no way strong enough to stop the massive kinetic energy of the entire aircraft impacting the building, including the wings and tail fin and leaving a roughly 757-shaped hole in the facade.
To provide a scale reference, a survivor of the intial impact has been circled in the above photo (click the picture for a close up).
Given that I am no structural engineer however, I cannot make any claims as to the comparative strength of the steel reinforced brick and concrete walls of the Pentagon versus the steel facade of the WTC towers and will allow for the idea that the wall of the Pentagon was stronger than that of the WTC. We can even theorize that it is due to this comparative strength difference that there is not a similar 757-shaped gaping hole at the Pentagon. However, as noted, the facade of the Pentagon was made of soft limestone 6 inches thick. Can anyone explain why a similar shape as that in the picture above does not appear in the soft limestone facade of the Pentagon?
In fact, there appear to be no pictures of the Pentagon facade immediately after the attack that show a clear picture of the exact extent of the damage. That's because all press personnel were restricted. We only have photos because a civilian managed to take them in spite of the "cordon sanitaire." What IS clear is that, as the Pentagon report noted, the Pentagon facade bears NO evidence of damage from parts of a 757 at ALL. One notable explanation for this mysterious lack of damage offered by official government story enthusiasts is that by some mysterious force of nature, the wings and tail must have sheared off before impact. Of course, in such a case, we would expect to see at least some recognisable debris of the wings and tail section outside the building. Yet, as anyone who has carefully inspected the evidence at the scene can attest, there is no such debris.
According to official story enthusiasts, the complete lack of any debris from the wings that we are told somehow sheared off, is not a problem: they simply disintegrated on impact and were rendered little more than confetti that blew away in the breeze (I kid you not; this was actually suggested by several "researchers"). But in this unlikely case, how do we explain that the 125 feet long wings of a 757 disintegrated yet a fairly slender tree standing just a few feet from the front of the Pentagon and in the direct path of the alleged 757, was still standing, albeit severely charred? (Charred tree branches visible in center of image) What's more, this explanation completely omits mention of the two six TON engines attached to said wings.
Can we now at least accept as a possibility the idea that a 757 was not involved in the attack on the Pentagon?
Why is it so difficult for our author to accept this? The answer would seem to be that since the official government story does not allow for such a scenario, like all good and obedient citizens, our author feels compelled to believe what the government says, regardless of the massive historical evidence showing that, on several occasions in the past, the U.S government has allowed, facilitated, or actually carried out, attacks on its own citizens and interests in order to achieve some specific goal, usually associated with waging war on other nations - wars like the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, including the attack on the Pentagon. Either the ATS author is such a "good and obedient" citizen, or we must conclude that said author is an agent of said government.
If we peruse other postings made by the ATS author on the subject of 9/11 in general , it seems that he/she accepts the idea that there was some level of complicty in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the US government. Yet he/she appears to have no problem with using the claims of the same U.S. government to back up his argument that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
For the record, I have nothing against the US government per se, and have no desire to accuse the Bush administration or anyone else unjustly. But in the case of the 911 attacks, there is significant and compelling evidence to suggest that something is not right with the official version of events and that members of the US government are lying about the true nature of those events. In this case, there is a case to answer, and my sole aim is to get at the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be. In pursuing this objective, I will look at the facts and the facts alone and draw conclusions based on what those facts suggest, alone.
At this point, we are approaching the paradox that is at the heart of the argument of the "no 757 " debunkers. They clearly are well aware that there is a serious problem with the lack of damage and debris at the Pentagon, yet that does not deter them from continuing with their increasingly unbelievable theories in an attempt to prove that the official government story is correct. At the same time, after coming up with bizzare explanations for the lack of damage and debris, they are then forced to deal with the fact that, while the damage to the Pentagon facade is not consistent with the impact of a large commerical airliner, the damage to the interior of the Pentagon is even less so.
Now, let's return to the ATS forum post.
Also, as I showed earlier: Here is an L1011 (it's a larger plane than a 757 - but the basic design of how a plane body is built is the same) being scrapped, you can see that almost ALL of the support structure is in the bottom 2/5 of the plane. This is the part that punched the hole in the Pentagon, the rest of the thin, hollow, top of the plane just shredded into chunks, some of which are laying on the lawn and around the rescue vehicles. Most of a commercial airliner is just a thin aluminum shell, insulation, a thin plastic inner liner, some carpet and seats. They're designed to be as light as possible so they can carry more cargo and more people while using less fuel and at the same time remain "safe". It is a given that the majority of mass is going to be in the bottom half of the aircraft - the primary structure and heaviest parts are all located there, as is the luggage and any freight. But lets reinforce this as fact with a photo of a 757-300 being built. (Remember, the only difference between a 757-200 and a 757-300 is the length of the body, and the wings on the 757-300 are reinforced and slightly deeper - the height and width and wingspan remain identical.)
Indeed, aircraft like the 757 are made of aluminium, for the most part, yet that does not take away from the fact that the 757 that is alleged to have hit the Pentagon was over 80 tons and flying at over 400mph, with two six TON steel engines flanking.
(source) We should also make a note of the yellow primer used on the interior of the rear section. This image shows the light green primer used on the primary structure components in the 757 (Boeing uses the same yellow primer and the same green primer on almost every single part of every single 757 and 767 built). What does the green or yellow primer have to do with anything? Well, we'll take a look at the aircraft parts from the Pentagon wreckage photos below.
Are we to assume that Boeing is the only aircraft manufacturer to use green primer on the shells of its aircraft? Is it possible that this primer is an aircraft industry standard and that other aircraft manufactures also use green primer? If so, can the fact that some small pieces of debris that were found inside the Pentagon be reasonably touted as evidence that it had to be a Boeing 757 that impacted the building?
Here, I direct your attention to the fact that Epoxy Primer 37035A is just exactly that shade of yucky yellow/green. It is available from Aerospace Coatings Akzo Nobel and is designated as "Epoxy Primer 37035A (green)" or "Epoxy Primer 37052 (green)". It is apparently widely used on many types of aircraft.
Again, we should note that the entire argument of the ATS author seems to be based on the premise that the official US government story about what hit the Pentagon MUST BE correct, despite the fact that he/she ALSO accepts the idea that there was some level of complicty in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the US government. Again, that is similar to taking the word of a suspected murderer about the very murder he is suspected of having committed. It's just not logical. Could it be that the posts on the ATS forum where "CatHerder" claims to believe that the government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks are examples of what is known in psychology as "malignant pseudo-identification."
Malignent pseudo-identification is the process by which a COINTELPRO agent consciously imitates or simulates certain behaviors or beliefs in order to foster the sincere activist's "identification" with him/her, thus increasing the activist's vulnerability to exploitation.
Activists and those who have altruistic self-concepts are most vulnerable to malignant pseudo-identification especially during work with the agent when the interaction includes matter relating to their competency, autonomy, or knowledge. The goal of the agent is to increase the activist's general empathy for the agent and ideas the agent wishes to "plant" through pseudo-identification with the activist's self-concepts. The most common example of this is the agent who will compliment the activist for his competency or knowledge or value to the movement. Another is to declare identification with many of the ideas of the activist, and then diverge on the one idea that they have been sent in to debunk. And certainly we can see that the issue of whether or not Flight 77 struck the Pentagon is just such an idea that would necessitate major debunking.
Ok, but how did a hollow tube, made of mostly aluminium, manage to punch through the Pentagon? I'm happy to try to help explain it with the aid of the good folks at Perdue University . We'll get to that in a moment.
This is very good question. So which is it? You can make the argument that a 757 was so flimsy that the Pentagon facade was relatively undamaged by the impact, or you argue that the weight and speed of the aircraft was such that it penetrated 3 rings of the building, but you can't have it both ways! Any theory that attempts to reconcile these irreconcilable claims is untenable. But that does not seem to bother our fearless debunker. He/she has already made two assertions (13 ft cylinder and paint color) that in no way whatsoever "prove" any case at all, and now, with the help of the "good folks at Perdue University", our agent - uh, excuse me, author - comes up with a seriously far out theory to explain how a 757 could have caused the damage to the interior of the Pentagon in spite of the fact that most of it "just shredded into chunks" and was scattered all over the lawn.
Examining Ground Debris Landing Gear Evidence Rim photographed in the Pentagon wreckage. You can clearly see it is a double bead design as required by the NTSB, and you can also see it has had 90% of the rim edge smashed off in the crash. Some people have tried to claim that the rims are different from a 757 rim - well here (bottom) is a 757-200 rim from an American Airlines 757, I've outlined the exact same symmetrical holes. I think perhaps some people are thrown off by the balancing led weights attached on the rims in the bottom photo? Have you never taken your car in for a wheel alignment and tire balancing? This is clearly the same kind of rim found on a 757. (The hub-covers/grease-covers are not present for obvious reasons - to remove one you pop it off with a flathead screw driver... so how would you expect it to stay on in a 400mph impact with a reinforced concrete wall?)
While we agree that the wheel rim from the Pentagon appears to be the same as that of a Boeing 757, we need to look at the "wheel rim" evidence firstly in the context of a massive government conspiracy on 9/11, and secondly in context of the other - overwhelming - evidence that points to something other than a 757 having hit the Pentagon.
Taking these facts into consideration and the evidence for a general 9/11 government conspiracy, is it not plausible that the conspirators just might have "planted" evidence at some point in the operation? After all, if CatHerder grants the possibility of a government conspiracy and cover-up, why does he/she draw the line at the planting of evidence?
Keep in mind that there are very few available photos of aircraft debris inside the Pentagon: a wheel rim and a landing gear strut, and engine combustion chamber. The wheel rim was in the non-renovated Wedge 2 by the AE drive hole. And despite the assertions of the author of the ATS post, without expert analysis, no one can say that the few recognizable airplane parts are unequivocally from a 757.
Landing gear strut - appears to be from the nose gear - note how charred the area around it is.
This landing gear strut is inadmissable as evidence given the fact that the CatHerder does not claim to be an expert on landing gear and cannot verify from which aircraft this landing gear comes. As such, it could be the landing gear strut from any number of aircraft.
The next photo is from the cover from one of the conspiracy sites that demands "where is the plane?"- they must not have looked very hard, there are 2 obvious chunks of it in the photo. Another rim from the airplane on the right, and a large chunk of bulkhead on the left.
Again the alleged "evidence" of debris from a Boeing 757 in the above pictured debris is inconclusive. The fact that the ATS author claims categorically that there is "a large chunk of bulkhead on the left" is somewhat comical given his/her admitted lack of expertise in positively identifying charred remains of any aircraft let alone a Boeing 757. We should note that we are not saying that "no plane" hit the Pentagon, we are simply saying that the damage and debris is inconsistent with a Boeing 757.
Below: More parts from inside the 757 - note the Boeing green primer on 3 parts in this photo - two circled.
Again, for anyone, let alone an amateur like CatHerder, to claim that they can positively identify debris from a Boeing 757 from these mangled pieces of material raises questions about the integrity and impartiality of said individual. Can "CatHerder" be sure that these greenish pieces of material are not from some part of the inside of the Pentagon or from another type of aircraft? The very fact that all of these parts and bits of "evidence" were NOT trotted out by the governement and put on display for the public and experts to examine is more indication that if they had been, someone would have recognized them as something else entirely.
No official explanation for the above hole in ring C has ever been put forward, and the ATS author studiously ignores this fact. The official Pentagon building performance report simply states that:
"There was a hole in the east wall of ring C, emerging into AE Drive, between column lines 5 and 7 in Wedge 2. The wall failure was approximately 310 ft from where the fuselage of the aircraft entered the west wall of the building..."
That's it. The fact that whatever came out through this hole is essentially the object that hit the Pentagon and did the major part of the damage is apparently not deemed important enough, either by the US government or CatHerder, to deserve comment.
The fact is that the above image showing the round hole that was left in ring C is one of the most intriguing aspects of the Pentagon attack. While we might assume that it is unofficially claimed that one of the engines of Flight 77 made this hole (the engine being the only part of a 757 that could possibly be strong enough to pass through three rings of the Pentagon, never mind that it left no evidence of its entry on the exterior of the building), as we have seen, a disk that is verifiably part of the engine of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon was found at the front of the building, not in the third ring. This fact strongly suggests that the engine that the disk came from was destroyed in the initial blast at the front of the building. It is highly unlikely therefore that an engine of the plane that hit the Pentagon punched out this hole. Whatever the object was, it had enough force to breach the main reinforced steel concrete outer wall and then travel some 250 feet, passing through five other double-brick walls on the way. Terry Mitchell, Chief of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) was one of the first on the scene at this “punch out” point. In a DOD news briefing about the reconstruction of the Pentagon he stated:
“This is a hole in -- there was a punch-out. They suspect that this was where a part of the aircraft came through this hole, although I didn’t see any evidence of the aircraft down there.”
Indeed, it just must have been where part of the aircraft came out, yet there was no evidence of any part of an aircraft that could have made the hole! Never mind that CatHerder has just told us about all the evidence of the aircraft that is just laying all around! Later in the same briefing when referring to the same hole Mitchell must have realised his mistake and stated:
“This pile here is all Pentagon metal. None of that is aircraft whatsoever. As you can see, they’ve punched a hole in here. This was punched by the rescue workers to clean it out”.
So which was it? Was the hole punched out by some part of the aircraft or by rescue workers? Was the pile of stuff aircraft debris, as CatHerder claims, or was it "all Pentagon metal" as Terry Mitchell says? Look again at the picture of the hole. We don’t need the contradictory statements of Mr. Mitchell to conclude that, due to the fact that the debris is on the outside of the building, the hole was punched out from the inside, yet how could it have been “punched out” by rescue workers when there are scorch marks at the top of the hole on the outside? Did the rescue workers punch out this hole when the fire was still raging inside? Hardly likely. Limiting air flow is part of fighting a fire. You don’t make holes to let in more air while you are trying to extinguish a fire.
Dare we suggest that the OASD chief was lying that day? That he changed his story because the “official” version of events did not include the idea that part of the aircraft made that hole, because it is inconceivable that any part of a 757 could have done so? If so, then a government official is on record as having lied about the events at the Pentagon, yet such does not dissuade CatHerder from trying to convince the public that the official government story about the strike on the Pentagon is correct.
Below, another photo of a tire with the same pattern as ones used on a 757, found in the Pentagon wreckage.
Again, for anyone to present a grainy picture of something that vaguely resembles a tyre and then claim that this is a positive ID of the wheel of a Boeing 757 simply gives us further cause to believe that CatHerder either has an agenda about which he/she is not being honest, or is so invested in his/her need to prove the government story correct that he/she has lost any hope of being objective about his/her analysis of the evidence.
Engine Evidence Let’s take a look at some of the ground debris that appears to be related to an aircraft engine. Many different sites and posts have reported that the 757 uses Rolls-Royce engines [RB211-535E4B] - however it should be noted, for the sake of thuroughness (ibid), that American Airlines also use Pratt & Witney engines [PW2037] in many of their 757 fleet. You can also view this information on their website. (The 757 fleets around the world actually use over six different kinds of engines.) The 757 that is reported to have hit the Pentagon was using RB211-535E4B engines. Here is are photos of some apparent engine parts from the Pentagon crash site. Image portion cropped from (source) - Another View What is seen in this photo is most likely the APU (Aux Power Unit) used in a 757 that is equipped with Rolls-Royce RB211 engines. The APU (Honeywell GTCP331-200) is located in the tail section of the aircraft (that's what the large vent that looks like a 3rd jet engine is) as edvidenced (ibid) on this technical rescue reference aid from Boeing. Boeing 757 reference website. These small turbine engines are quite common on modern turbine & turbofan passenger aircraft, and are used to furnish ground auxillary power while the main engines are shut down during ground operations. An online training aid lets you Play around with the controls on a 757/767 instrument pannel (ibid).
The reader will notice in the above something that CatHerder does repeatedly throughout his/her analysis. When presenting his/her argument he/she pads out the point being made with additional information that is often irrelevant to the point being made, but which is included, it seems, to create the impression that the point being made is well-researched or "factual". For example, what does a link to an online pilot training aid that lets you play around with a 757 instrument panel have to do with identifying the disk in the above picture?
There have been some people who claim that a Global Hawk was what hit the Pentagon. Here is what John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce (Indianapolis), had to say about the part in the photo above 'It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I'm familiar with, and certainly not the AE 3007H made here in Indy.' (Of course it wouldn't be anything he's familiar with, it's a powerplant made by Honeywell.) The AE 3007 engines are used in small commuter jets such as the Cessna Citation; the AE 3007H is also used in the military's unmanned aircraft, the Global Hawk. The Global Hawk is manufactured by Northrop Grumman's subsidiary Ryan Aeronautical, which it acquired from Teledyne, Inc. in July 1999. A detailed view of what the turbofan that powers the Global Hawk looks like - I'm sure you can see it's too small to be anything in the pictures contained here or anywhere else in the Pentagon crash evidence. Also visible in this photo, one of the 757's blue passenger seats to the left of the turbine, and possibly a 2nd seat above the other seat.
Again CatHerder reveals his/her possible agenda by selective quoting (and without references) in the above paragraph. First of all, the comments by Rolls Royce spokeman John Brown are taken from an American Free Press article written by Christopher Bollyn.
Bollyn undertook the task of trying to find out what exactly the disk in the above photo was. He called Honeywell’s Aerospace division in Phoenix, Ariz., where the GTCP331-200 APU used on the 757 aircraft is made: “There’s no way that’s an APU wheel”, an expert at Honeywell told AFP. The expert, who cannot be named, added: “That turbine disc—there’s no way in the world that came out of an APU”
The first point then is that an expert form Honeywell that makes the APU for the 757 has stated categorically that the APU wheel in the photo is not from a 757.
As mentioned by CatHerder, Bollyn then contacted John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce (Indianapolis), asking if the disk was from a Rolls Royce manufactured engine, perhaps the AE3007H used in the Global Hawk. Brown’s response was:
“It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I’m familiar with, and certainly not the AE 3007H made here in Indy.”
Next Bollyn called Pratt & Whitney who manufactures parts of the 757’s turbofan jet engines:
“If the aircraft that struck the Pentagon was a Boeing 757-200 owned by American Airlines, then it would have to be a Rolls Royce engine”, Mark Sullivan, spokesman for Pratt & Whitney, told AFP.
So we have another spokesman for Pratt and Whitney, who, along with Rolls Royce, manufacture parts of the 757s main engines (not the APU), who has contradicted John Brown of Rolls Royce by saying that the part MUST be from a Rolls Royce engine, which includes the possiblity that it was the AE 3007H which is the engine in a Global Hawk, yet it is NOT the GTCP331-200 which is the APU used on the Boeing 757 as stated by the Honeywell expert.
Bollyn then contacted John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce once more, to inform him that the Pratt & Whitney spokesperson had stated that it must be a piece of a Rolls Royce engine. At this point Brown balked and asked who at Pratt & Whitney had provided the information.
Asked again if the disc in the photo was a piece of a Rolls Royce RB211-535, or from the AE 3007 series, Brown said he could not answer.
Bollyn then asked Brown if he was actually familiar with the parts of an AE 3007H, which is made at the Indiana plant: “No”, Brown said. “I don’t build the engines. I am a spokesman for the company. I speak for the company.”So the Rolls Royce spokesman that CatHerder quotes as an expert on the evidence that the disk in the photo cannot be from a Global Hawk has stated that he is not familiar with the parts of the Global Hawk engine and is therefore not qualified to make any statement about the origins of the the wheel in the photo.
We are left then with the likelihood that the disk in the photo IS from a Rolls Royce engine, but NOT from the APU of the 757 as stated by the Honeywell expert. Could it then be a part of one of the main engines of a 757? By all accounts it is far too small to be the disk from one of the 757's main engines, given that they are between 6 and 7 ft in diameter. The disk on the AE 3007H however is a little over 3 ft in diameter, and despite what CatHerder says, the disk in the photo is a very good match for that of a AE 3007H, the engine used on a Global Hawk but never on a Boeing 757.
Bollyn states:
Rolls Royce produces the RB211-535 (main) engines for American Airlines 757-200 aircraft at a plant in Derby, England. Martin Johnson, head of communications at Rolls Royce in Derby, said he had followed the story closely in American Free Press and had also been notified in advance by Rolls Royce offices in Seattle and Indianapolis. However, rather than address the question of the unidentified disc, Johnson launched a verbal attack on this reporter for questioning the government version of events at the Pentagon on 9-11. ‘You are the only person in the world who does not believe that a 757 hit the Pentagon’, Johnson said. ‘The idea that we can have a reasonable conversation is beyond your wildest dreams’, Johnson said and hung up the phone.
While there can be no definitive statements made on the matter, the available evidence would seem to suggest that the engine disk in the FEMA photos is probably too small to be part of a 757 engine and, contrary to what CatHerder states, according to the Honeywell expert that makes the APU for the 757, it is definitely not a part of a 757’s APU. So what is it? It could very well be part of a Global Hawk AE3007H engine.Back to our ATS author:
Below is a significant portion of a badly smashed RB211 engine in the Pentagon wreckage - what appears to be the diffusor section of the compressor, one of the pumps remains partially attached, some hoses and the familiar webbed wire wraps (to the right of the main ring) and some of the Boeing yellow primed support structure is lying beside it (left, with rivets - again: note the yellow primer, we'll cover that further down). Reference: Image of the engine used on the 757 (it's the rightmost one, top row) Rolls-Royce
Yet again our non-expert author presents photographs of mangled pieces of debris and asserts categorically that they are parts from a 757 engine.
In this case, we are provided with a link to a picture of a 757 engine without its casing from which our author can apparently quite easily identify things like the "diffusor section of the compressor" and "one of the pumps" and "some hoses and the familiar webbed wire wraps".
Ah yes! Those familiar webbed wire wraps, known and loved in every household across the country! The photo below is the reference that our author has used to positively match the mangled and burnt debris above. Well? Can't you see it! It's right there!! Clearly the debris above is the very same 757 engine in the photo below!
No? Well, obviously you just don't trust enough in the word of the US government and its agent, CatHerder. If you did, you would be able to see the truth straight away. (End sarcasm.)
Another engine part, bottom right.
Again, for the author, in his/her non-expert opinion, to declare that the circular piece of debris in the above photo is "another engine part" is either evidence of extreme subjectivity or a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader. We are beginning to think it is the latter.
Below: Evidence of the right engine impact on the side of the building is evident on the large pillar being sprayed with fire retardant. (click photo for huge version)
At this point, CatHerder's sweeping statements about damage to the Pentagon and what caused it are getting to be somewhat farcical. In this case, as in almost every statement made by the him/her so far, the claim is spurious to say the least.
Click on the link to view a larger version of the photo. You will see that the chunk of masonry that is missing is a the level of the second floor windows in the Pentagon. If, as CatHerder states, the engine of a 757 did this damage then the nose of the plane would have impacted several feet higher around the middle of the second floor. Yet CatHerder sees no problem with making such a claim while at the same time presenting photographs that show clearly that whatever hit the Pentagon struck the facade at the level of the first floor!
Again, we realize that we have been dazzled with more photos and more unsubstantiated claims.
The hit lightpoles, and damaged vehicles in the flightpath (click for larger images)
Indeed, damaged lightpoles, but was it a 757 that did this damage or another type of craft? We aren't saying that a plane did not hit the Pentagon. Hardly anyone IS saying that. The only thing at issue is what KIND of plane was it?
The debris field of small chunks of plane witnesses said debris "rained down for minutes after the crash". (click for larger images)
Again, (and we are sure you are getting tired of this by now) the debris in the upper photos is extremely small and most likely to be masonry from the facade of the Pentagon rather than "small chunks of plane" as CatHerder states. Note yet again that he (or she) is making sweeping assertions without providing any evidence at all for any of his/her claims! Somehow, probably due to the abundance of photos and the authoritative writing style that has very little content, many people actually accept this bit of what can only be called "yellow journalism" as a serious debunking of the "No Boeing" idea!
As noted by Thierry Meyssan in his book Pentagate, even the American government has refused to recognise that the infamous piece of debris in the lower photo on the left above is a part of the Flight 77, yet CatHerder sagely affirms that it is, without doubt, a piece of Flight 77. As for the "eyewitnesses" statements that debris "rained down for minutes after the crash", we do not doubt that it did, but that has little or no bearing on our investigation into whether Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, or whether it was something else.
[Deleted part of CatHerder's analysis of the size of the infamous "piece of plane" given that the point has already been made that the US government officially disowns this as a part of Flight 77.]
Even the black boxes have been recovered, the reason given for not playing the flight voice recorder for the media was that it wouldn't serve any use other than to cause more emotional pain to family members (I agree with them frankly).
Well, again CatHerder is being disingenuous.
Flight data recorders were found at the Pentagon on Spetember 14th 2001. On Feb. 25, 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that Flight 77's data recorder provided altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder contained nothing useful. [CBS]
Later, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that the data on the cockpit voice data recorder was unrecoverable. No further explanation was given for these contradictory statements.
If the cockpit voice data really was unrecoverable, it would be the first time in aviation history a solid-state data recorder (the type used on Flight 77) was unrecoverable after a crash.
From a Scientific American feature article lauding the "Better Black Box" in their [WWW] September 2000 issue:
Nearly 100,000 flight recorders have been installed in commercial aircraft over the past four decades. The prices of the latest models generally range from $10,000 to $20,000. Their survival rate has greatly improved in recent years as the FAA has raised the certification requirements. Although older recorders using magnetic tape were susceptible to fire damage, no solid-state device has been destroyed in an accident to date.
Lawyers representing 9/11 victim families are attempting to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain transcripts of the black-box data. See [WWW] 9/11 Lawyers Seek Black-Box Data on Saudi Hijackers by Tom Flocco, which indicates the FBI are obstructing the NTSB review of the black box data. [Flight 77 Black Boxes]
So we see it was not the case that only the public did not get to hear what was on the data recorders, the families of the victims have been left out in the cold too.
So much for wanting to prevent emotional pain!
Of course, as Flight 77 was not the plane involved in the Pentagon Attack, it's black boxes would presumably show that, and the government would be very reluctant to allow the data to be examined, or allow the NTSB to carry out the investigation of the crash that is required by law. [Flight 77 Black Boxes]
As an interesting aside on the black boxes, Allyn E. Kilsheimer is the CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, the company responsible for rebuilding the Pentagon under the Phoenix Project. He was the head structural engineer on the rebuilding project and the first structural engineer to arrive at the scene (at the request of the DOD by the way). He stated
"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." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"
Of course, the idea that we should give any credit to the words of someone who was immediately called by the Pentagon to come and "assess the damage" and who went on to make millions from the reconstruction project is laughable. Kilsheimer was also the "government's man" at the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing and the first WTC bombing. Coincidence?But it doesn't end there. Kilsheimer claimed that he "found the black box" on the afternoon of 9/11. The only problem with this statement is that it is an out and out lie, and verifiably so. From MSNBC
"Carlton Burkhammer was at work at Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Station 14 when he heard about the World Trade Center crashes. Part of Fairfax County’s elite urban search and rescue team, Burkhammer prepared to suit up and head to New York City. One of the nation’s most experienced rescue teams, the squad had been deployed in disasters all over the world: Oklahoma City, embassy bombings, the Turkey earthquake. [...] Early Friday morning, shortly before 4 a.m., Burkhammer and another firefighter, Brian Moravitz, were combing through debris near the impact site. Peering at the wreckage with their helmet lights, the twospotted an intact seat from the plane’s cockpit with a chunk of the floor still attached. Then they saw two odd-shaped dark boxes, about 1.5 by 2 feet long."
Yet again we have a government agent openly and PROVABLY lying about the events surrounding the attack on the Pentagon, but that again does not give CatHerder any pause for thought before trumpeting the official story as the truth.
Area of fence to the right of the impact area partially flattened by the right engine of the plane. Note how a couple of the poles are bent right over, some are sheered off at the top, yet the pole and fence portion on the left is untouched (obviously the right engine took out the fence to the right of those poles) and the entire back side of the fence has been torn away. The generator was hit by the right wing and engine before the 757 hit the building - the damage is evidenced by other photos of the crash area. Closeup of generator smashed in the front and gouged on the top - hard to image a missile accomplishing both of these. But if the right engine of a 757 hit the front of the generator, part of the wing could gouge the top. At the very least, something very large, and very heavy smashed into this extremely heavy desil generator. Click the image on the left to view a large top-down image of the impact area, including the large desil (sic) generator which is visibly damaged, and actually spun ~45 degrees from the impact! Most importantly it is spun ~45 degrees towards the building - if this was a missile or a bomb, the explosion could ONLY have spun it away from the building.
In the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon attack, the Associated Press reported that a truck bomb had exploded at the Pentagon. There were other reports that a helicopter had exploded. It certainly seems likely then that something exploded in the vicinity of the Pentagon before the main impact. As noted by CatHerder, there was a diesel generator stationed just to the right of the impact point in front of the Pentagon that was part of the Pentagon refurbishment project. Diesel generators usually have a large fuel tank located somewhere nearby to power them. Photos taken moments after the impact show an already burning fire to the right of the main impact site that is emitting a dense cloud of black smoke.
This black smoke is consistent with burning fuel (diesel), which continued to burn long after the flames and smoke from the main impact had died down. If Flight 77 impacted the Pentagon, we would expect there to be a major and prolonged fire from the thousands of gallons of aircraft fuel that Flight 77 was carrying. But in the case that another smaller aircraft was used, the lack of burning aircraft fuel would be evident. It is our contention therefore that the conspirators detonated a bomb near the generator just before or at the moment of impact in order to augment the aircraft explosion claim (complete with thousands of gallons of fuel) and also to provide a literal smoke screen in an attempt to hide the fact that Flight 77 was not involved in the attack.
The Gate CameraSome people don't seem to see perspective correctly. I've zoomed in, and compared the two frames over and over - here is what I see as the airplane. I will repeat, however, that this is terrible evidence due to the horrible quality of the original images. I do believe, however, that the white smoke in the images is caused by one or more damaged engine from the impact with the multiple light poles on the way in (as seen in the above image). I stuck in a 757 that was at relatively the same angle - except it's banking slightly to starboard instead of to port - hence the ONE wing is out of place. If it was banking slightly to port it would fit perfectly... However, once again - this is entirely subjective and the image quality from the released surveillance camera is not good enough to form a factual opinion.
The author's comment that "if it was banking slightly to port it (a 757) would fit perfectly" is really quite humorous. The fact is that you could "stick in" a tank or a bus or a large two-storey house and they would also "fit perfectly".
The facts are as follows:
There were at least four video cameras capable of recording the attack on the Pentagon. One was on the roof of the Sheraton Hotel, a second was at a gas station across the road from the Pentagon itself, the third belonged to the Virginia Department of Transportation and was stationed on route 27, which the aircraft flew over. The fourth was the Pentagon’s security camera stationed at the opposite one end of the façade from where the plane struck.
The footage from the cameras at the Sheraton, the gas station and on route 27 were confiscated by the FBI and have never been released. The only footage made available to the public was that recorded by the Pentagon’s security camera. According to the Washigton Times however, both the DOJ and the FBI denied responsibility for releasing the footage from the Pentagon's security camera:
"The Pentagon has not released any video or any photos from security cameras from the terrorist attack of Sept. 11," said Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin. A spokeswoman at the Department of Justice, which reviews taped and photographed evidence obtained by federal security cameras, said she could not comment on whether the photos are legitimate, adding that the photos "were not disseminated by the FBI or the Department of Justice."
Of course, a simple denial does not mean that someone within the DOJ or the DOD or the FBI did not release the footage to the public, after all, we are dealing with a massive 9/11 conspiracy and the footage is from the Pentagon's very own security camera. We can assume with a reasonable degree of certainty therefore, that someone within one of the arms of the American military/ political/ industrial complex released the footage and then denied that they did so, and for a very specific reason.
The above photo is the first still from the only video footage of the Pentagon attack that has been made available. It is alleged that it shows an approaching Boeing 757 in the upper right hand corner. Do you see a Boeing 757-200 in this picture?
If we think back to the images and video footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 hitting the WTC towers, we remember that we all saw both large Boeing airplanes, as clear as day, even though they were flying at over 500 mph and were over 1,000 feet up in the air when they struck the WTC Towers. This provides us with an excellent guide on how such commercial aircraft appear at that distance. The side of the Pentagon is 971 feet long and the plane in the footage is no more than 750 feet (250 yards) from the camera that is stationed near the opposite end of the Pentagon. Remember the indelible images of those huge planes flying into the World Trade Center towers? Even at that distance, even with the size of the WTC towers, the image and size of the aircraft that was burned into our minds from having seen the tapes replayed endlessly, is awe-inspiring.
Now, look again at the above image from the Pentagon Security camera of the plane approaching the building. Ask yourself the question: where is the Boeing 757-200 in this image?
Next time you are at an airport, take five minutes and go and look at some planes on the runway. Pick out a large passenger jet that is approximately 750 feet away, preferably one in the process of taking off or landing. Take a picture of it. Then look at this image from the Pentagon Security camera again and ask yourself. Where is that Boeing 757?!The fact is that if a Boeing 757 really did hit the Pentagon, it would stick out like, well… like a Boeing 757 in this footage, but the simple and obvious fact is that there is no Boeing 757 there. In fact, there is no plane of any description in the footage released by the Pentagon.
Note that the time stamp displays a date and time of September 12th at 5.37:19 pm. The DOD has offered no reason for this discrepancy, which is understandable since they claim to have no knowledge about who released the images. In the footage, the progression of seconds jumps from 19, where it starts, to 21 and then on to 22 and 23 where it ends, meaning that one second and an undetermined number of frames have been cut from the film. No explanation has ever been offered by any official sources as to why this video footage has clearly been “doctored”, why one second and several frames have been removed – frames that would likely show just what it was that struck the Pentagon. Of course, this is very convenient for exponents of the official story. The footage shows something flying into the Pentagon and exploding, and since we were all immediately told that that "something" was a 757, the case is closed, right?
Not really.
Quite apart from the fact that the doctoring of the video strongly suggests that someone released this footage in an attempt to provide "evidence" to the public that a 757 hit the Pentagon, while at the same time removing the incriminating frames and denying the public the right to actually see what it was, in the images above we see a stream of white smoke that is entirely inconsistent with a commercial jet aircraft at ground level and much more in line with the trail left by a missile launch. Please note however that I am not saying that only a “missile” struck the Pentagon.
Note also the picture of actual impact and explosion.
Have you ever burned oil, or car gas or diesel? It burns with a dense black smoke, as does oil (see above picture of claimed truck bomb). The flame is predominantly red, which, I am told, is due to the low burn temperature of oil-based fuel (see picture of flames from plane explosions at WTC). While there are few bomb or explosive experts willing to weigh in, there have been a few who claim to know about bomb detonations who affirm that this white flame is clear evidence of explosives detonating. In fact, several eyewitnesses to the attack made it very clear that they knew that the explosion involved explosives, not a mere aircraft full of fuel.
Eyewitness to the Pentagon attack and Pentagon worker Don Perkal, was on the scene within minutes: “Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere.”
He also stated:
“Hundreds of F.B.I., Secret Service and Defense Department plainclothes investigators were deployed in the parking lot, recording witness statements.”
Another eyewitness, Gilah Goldsmith said:
“We saw a huge black cloud of smoke”, adding that it smelled like cordite, or gun smoke.
Witnesses inside the Pentagon, mostly military men, described a shockwave and a blast.The Washington Post ran a story where it was stated:
Air Force Lt. Col. Marc Abshire, 40, a speechwriter for Air Force Secretary James Roche, was working on several speeches this morning when he felt the blast of the explosion at the Pentagon. His office is on the D ring, near the eighth corridor, he said. “It shot me back in my chair. There was a huge blast. I could feel the air shock wave of it”, Abshire said. “I didn’t know exactly what it was. It didn’t rumble. It was more of a direct smack.” Donald R. Bouchoux, 53, a retired Naval officer, a Great Falls resident, a Vietnam veteran and former commanding officer of a Navy fighter squadron, was driving west from Tysons Corner to the Pentagon for a 10am meeting. He wrote:
“At 9:40 a.m. I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards (should be more than 150 yards from the impact) in front of me and impacted the side of the building. There was an enormous fireball, followed about two seconds later by debris raining down. The car moved about a foot to the right when the shock wave hit.”
John Bowman, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and a contractor, was in his office in Corridor Two near the main entrance to the south parking lot.
“Everything was calm”, Bowman said. “Most people knew it was a bomb. Everyone evacuated smartly. We have a good sprinkling of military people who have been shot at.”
Stars and Stripes reporter Lisa Burgess was walking on the Pentagon’s innermost corridor, across the courtyard, when the incident happened.
“I heard two loud booms - one large, one smaller, and the shock wave threw me against the wall”, she said.
Anger and guilt still sear Lieutenant Colonel Michael Beans who shakes his head ruefully and asks himself why he survived: "Why you, not them? Who made that decision?" (…) Inside the Pentagon, the blast lifted Beans off the floor as he crossed a huge open office toward his desk. "You heard this huge concussion, then the room filled with this real bright light, just like everything was encompassed within this bright light," said Beans. "As soon as I hit the floor, all the lights went out, there was a small fire starting to burn."
So we see that several witnesses, both inside and outside the building, described a shockwave that knocked them to the ground. Several described it as a concussion. Such a shockwave cannot be explained by the impact of an aircraft or the combustion of jet fuel, and indicates the detonation of an explosive. Explosive detonations produce blast pressures thousands of times stronger than hydrocarbon fireballs because explosives are oxidized by chemicals intrinsic to them whereas hydrocarbons rely on oxygen in ambient air for combustion. Consequently the chemical reaction proceeds at a much higher rate in an explosive.
Hydrocarbon fireballs can produce detonation waves if the fuel and air are mixed prior to ignition, but such detonation waves are comparatively weak. The violence of most plane crashes precludes such pre-mixing. In the Twin Tower jet collisions, the columns of the curtain walls diced the fuel tanks in the wings, assuring fuel and air mixing about as optimally as could be imagined in a collision, and yet there were no reports of detonation shockwaves from any survivors from the floors below the impact point.
Cordite is an explosive compound used in aircraft gun ammunition. Several witnesses with the benefit of military experience recognized the smell of this compound. Cordite N consists of three main explosive compounds: nitroguanidine, nitrocellulose, and nitroglycerin. It is cool-burning, and produces little smoke and no flash, but, like other explosives, produces a strong detonation wave.
Back to ATS forum post:
Lets look at the physics involved
Here CatHerder takes us off on a tangent that is wholly irrelevant to the task of analysing the likely physical impact of 80 tons of metal and other solid matter on the Pentagon and therefore to answering the question of whether or not Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, because, despite the above heading, the only physics that is employed by the people at Perdue University is that pertaining to the physics of liquid, i.e. the fuel in the wings of the plane and its hypothesised effect on the Pentagon facade and interior. It therefore has little to do with the job of ironing out the problems of the claim that an 80 ton Boeing aircraft hit the Pentagon. We can only assume that it is an attempt to confuse the reader and detract from the main issue - that the totality of evidence at the Pentagon crash site is entirely inconsistent with a Boeing 757 having hit the Pentagon that day.
Engineers, computer scientists and graphics technology experts at Purdue University have created the first publicly available simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what theoretically happened when the Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon last Sept. 11 Using simulation software called LS-Dyna, the smart folks use the physically accurate simulation results as input to animations and visualizations to produce a vivid reenactment of the impact of the aircraft on the Pentagon building and provide the larger team with the necessary data to construct these using 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD, and research tools.
Again the author is being less that transparent and omits to specify that the referenced research looks at the impact of the liquid in the fuel tanks and its effect on the Pentagon. In fact it is a testimony to the fact that even those that hold to the official version of events have had to resort to the idea that, in their own words:
"a basic hypothesis, informally confirmed with engineers knowledgeable in this subject, is that the bulk of the impact damage is due to the body of fuel in the wing and center tanks."
And why? Because the damage to the Pentagon, including the 8 feet wide circular hole punched out in ring C is ENTIRELY inconsistent with the impact of an 80 ton 757 jetliner.
The Purdue folks further state that:
"The purpose of this simulation is to understand the response of a reinforced concrete column subjected to high-speed impact of the fuel in the aircraft tanks."
But CatHerder conveniently leaves the details out.
Now we can see, through a very competent and valid simulator, what happened in the attack on the Pentagon. Click here to view a video generated by the simulator. Or, click here to read the white paper.
Again, this simulation does not show us "what happened in the attack on the Pentagon", it shows us the hypothesised effect of the FUEL in the wings on the Pentagon and is an example of the desperate attempts to find an explanation, ANY explanation, for why the impact damage is NOT consistent with the impact of a 757 when the government says it was a 757. In fact, the study above is contradictory if one wants to stick with the "13 ft cylinder" and "confetti-ized" wings theory. You can't have it both ways.
In layman's terms the crash dynamics worked like so: A large hollow tube, with a belly full of luggage, a passenger bay with 60 people, and wings full of fuel smashed into the side of an almost solid object while moving at a tremendous speed (somewhere around 350-400mph). When the 225,000lb+ plane hit, it smashed apart with such force from the crash that it became like one massive column of liquid (no, the plane didn't melt or turn into liquid, it just acted like one physically - mountainslides act the same way, a million tons of rock acts like a large field of liquid during a landslide even if no water is present). All the small parts, luggage, people, seats, and all the tens of thousands of pounds of fuel acting like a massive river came crashing into the wall of the Pentagon. This force burst through the outside wall and flowed through the inside to the next wall, and momentum carried this mass until it finally ran out of inertia at the 3rd ring.Plane hitting WTC (another example of crash fluid dynamics) - RealAudio Required - note how the 767 "liquifies" and flows through the WTC tower. Please do read the information on the Perdue website yourself - I don't do it justice with my one paragraph of paraphrasing!
Indeed, not only does the author's paraphrasing and selective use of data not tell the truth about the real nature and reason for this "simulation", it attempts to distract and confuse the reader by suggesting that an 80 ton solid aircraft was little more than a column of liquid! Again, you can't have it both ways. If you are going to include the wings and fuel tanks, and twin 6 TON engines, then the hole is way too small for all of this together to have created it.
For anyone to try and compare the effects of an 80 ton aircraft crashing into a building at 400mph to the effects of a landslide of rocks and soil is far-fetched at best, yet it is testimony to the extreme lengths that CatHerder must go to to try and prove that a 757 hit the Pentagon when there is simply no evidence to stand on.
If a 757 really did hit the Pentagon then there should be no need for outlandish theories about columns of water. The evidence SHOULD be all there, and it should be a breeze to present facts that would quickly dismiss any attempts to suggest otherwise.
But we see that this is not the case, in fact the exact oppostite is true! CatHerder is finding it very difficult to prove something that should be easily provable if the evidence was there for ALL to see.
Please read again his/her claim that the plane:
"smashed apart with such force from the crash that it became like one massive column of liquid (no, the plane didn't melt or turn into liquid, it just acted like one physically) [....] all the small parts, luggage, people, seats, and all the tens of thousands of pounds of fuel acting like a massive river came crashing into the wall of the Pentagon. This force burst through the outside wall and flowed through the inside to the next wall, and momentum carried this mass until it finally ran out of inertia at the 3rd ring"
It is amazing to observe CatHerder suggesting that, on impact with the Pentagon, all of the parts of a 757 broke into pieces - flew everywhere as confetti - then somehow formed themselves into a 9 foot wide 20 feet tall concentrated column of energy (or water-like substance) that broke through 5 walls of the Pentagon leaving a neat 8 ft by 12 ft round hole in the final 6th wall. Understand also that it is to such outlandish lengths that anyone, not just CatHerder, must go to if they want to make a 757 "fit" as the object that struck the Pentagon on September 11th 2001.(Removed two arial images of Pentagon before and after impact due to a lack of any stated reason for inclusion. See ATS website to view them.)
Eye Witness Testimony Lets look at some eye witness testimony sticking only to people who saw a plane hit the building, and not look at people who saw an airliner, but didn't see an airplane hit the building because they looked away or were too far away (behind a hill, behind a building, etc) to see it actually hit the building. "Aydan Kizildrgli, an English language student who is a native of Turkey, saw the jetliner bank slightly then strike a western wall of the huge five-sided building that is the headquarters of the nation's military. 'There was a big boom,' he said. 'Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled "Did you see that?" Nobody could believe it.'" - "Bush Vows Retaliation for 'Evil Acts'." USA Today, 11 Sep 2001
Note that in the above, the statement that this eyewitness saw an "airliner" is made by the USA reporter who wrote the story, not by the eyewitness himself who only heard a "big boom".
"Frank Probst, an information management specialist for the Pentagon Renovation Program, left his office trailer near the Pentagon's south parking lot at 9:36 a.m. Sept. 11. Walking north beside Route 27, he suddenly saw a commercial airliner crest the hilltop Navy Annex. American Airlines Flight 77 reached him so fast and flew so low that Probst dropped to the ground, fearing he'd lose his head to its right engine." - "A Defiant Recovery." The Retired Officer Magazine, January 2002
Again, the comment that this eyewitness saw a "commerical airliner" is made by the reporter, not the eyewitness. In any case, an information management specialist working on the Pentagon Renovation Program is hardly a credible witness.
"Omar Campo, a Salvadorean, was cutting the grass on the other side of the road when the plane flew over his head. 'It was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane,' Mr Campo said. 'I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt the impact. The whole ground shook and the whole area was full of fire. I could never imagine I would see anything like that here.'"- "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts."The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001
As I have said, I am not suggesting that no plane hit the Pentagon, I am suggesting that no 757 hit the Pentagon. I believe a plane did hit the Pentagon, because there is evidence of aircraft debris, (however scant that debris might be) and that it was dressed up in American Airline colors, complete with fake windows, in which case, it is possible that eyewitnesses may have concluded it was a passenger plane. Of course, a passenger plane is also the description of an aircraft the size of a twelve or twenty seat private jet, or something about the size of such a jet painted with AA colors.
"Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over.'There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in.'"- "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts." The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001
This testimony is consistent with an aircraft hitting the Pentagon, but not necessarily a 757. The comment that a "huge screaming noise" was heard is contradicted by other testimonies (below)
"Henry Ticknor, intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, was driving to church that Tuesday morning when American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car and struck the Pentagon. 'There was a puff of white smoke and then a huge billowing black cloud,' he said." - "Hell on Earth." UU World
This eyewitness did not explicitly say that he saw AA Flight 77. His actualy testimony is prefaced with the comment by the reporter that "American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car". What the eyewitness actually saw was a "puff of white smoke", which is a very interesting. One naturally wonders why the reporter did not quote the witness entirely instead of putting words in his mouth that he may never have said.
"We were the only people, we think, who saw it live," Dan Creed said. He and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car near the Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane dive down and level off. "It was no more than 30 feet off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It was nothing more than a guided missile at that point," Creed said. "I can still see the plane. I can still see it right now. It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going full speed, going full throttle, its wheels up," - Ahwatukee Foothill News
If this testimony is truthful, then there is little doubt that this eyewitness saw a plane, but was it a 757? Notice that he never says that it was a Boeing 757. More "selective quoting."
Gary Bauer former Presidential candidate, "I looked at the woman sitting in the car next to me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all thinking the same thing. We looked out the front of our windows to try to see the plane, and it wasn't until a few seconds later that we realized the jet was coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible moment." Massachusetts News
If this testimony is truthful, then there is little doubt that this eyewitness saw a plane, but was it a 757? Having said that, we note that Gary Bauer was a presidential candidate in 2000 and is an avowed right-winger and Bush supporter, for what it's worth.
Sean Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief - "I just looked up and I saw the big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the building," Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief Sean Boger said. "It exploded. I fell to the ground and covered my head. I could actually hear the metal going through the building." dcmilitary.com November 16, 2001
CatHerder must be completely unaware of what constitutes a credible witness. Perhaps it escaped him/her that we are dealing with a government conspiracy to murder and the testimony of a Pentagon official can hardly be called impartial.
"The only way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that we saw pieces of the nose gear. The devastation was horrific. It was obvious that some of the victims we found had no time to react. The distance the firefighters had to travel down corridors to reach the fires was a problem. With only a good 25 minutes of air in their SCBA bottles, to save air they left off their face pieces as they walked and took in a lot of smoke," Captain Defina said. Captain Defina was the shift commander [of an aircraft rescue firefighters crew.] NFPA Journal November 1, 2001
Captain Defina may well have seen pieces of a nose gear, or some aircraft part that looked like a nose gear, but to which aircraft did these pieces belong? Having said that, it is somewhat surprising that the nose gear from any aircraft would be visible inside the Pentagon if we are to believe that the nosegear took the full force of the initial impact. After all, the nose gears is one of the most fragile parts of a Boeing aircraft, being made out of carbon rather than aluminium, and would undoubtedly be destroyed beyond recognition by the time it reached the interior of the building. Of course, if the nose gear of the plane that struck the Pentagon was not the first thing to impact, then it is possible that some nose gear debris might be found inside.
That's just a small smattering of people who have gone on record as seeing the plane, and the plane hit the Pentagon. I could have included the dozens of people who saw the plane, but didn't see it hit (because it went behind a bridge, a hill, or some trees), but I choose only to post the ones that sounded the most valid and actually saw the plane hit the building. (I included the one firechief who states he saw some plane wreckage during firefighting/rescue attempts.) There are most likely twenty times more that either haven't been publicly recorded as seeing the crash, or simply don't want the attention. You can't honeslty sit there and deny the witnesses, the photographs, the facts, the science, and the reality that there was a terrorist attack on the Pentagon if you look at everything available and not one single tidbit of information at a time.
If that's the best CatHerder can do in assembling testimony, it simply proves our point about the overly anxious and desperate efforts being made to prove something that, if it were true, would not require such efforts.
Notice the subtle suggestion that CatHerder's analysis includes "everything available". Notice also that the two testimonies from Pentagon employees are included in those that CatHerder believes to be the "most valid". Also, having presented us with some dubious and inconclusive eyewitness testimonies, we are told that we cannot deny that these testimonies are proof conclusive that a 757 really did hit the Pentagon! What is true, as CatHerder states, is that there are indeed many more eyewitness testimonies that he/she could have included. However, once you read some of them, you will understand why he/she did not include them.
For example:
Lon Rains, an editor of Space.com, was also an eyewitness to the Pentagon attack. He commented:
“In light traffic the drive up Interstate 395 from Springfield to downtown Washington takes no more than 20 minutes. But that morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o’clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment. 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.”
Allen Cleveland of Woodbridge Virginia looked out from a Metro train going to National Airport, to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics."" . . a silver pasenger jet, mid sized"
Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City:
“The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington cemetery so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395. It was flying so fast that he couldn’t read any writing on the side. The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a nonexistent runway"
“I was right underneath the plane”, said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor for Atlantis Co., who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. “I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying.”
Kirk Milburn - who was driving his vehicle at the time - said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon, and because he saw it he also said, “I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying”.
What he said next, however, is not in keeping with a 757:
“I guess it was hitting light poles”, said Milburn. “It was like a whoosh whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion.”
Notice that the witness says, “I guess it was hitting the light poles”. One suspects that he couldn’t see it if he was guessing. What is most interesting is that he said, “It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion”. No doubt he saw something, but since he was also driving at the time, it is not certain exactly what he saw.
Two early, primary witnesses have described a sound of a “whoosh”! The second one, when he couldn’t see it, said it was like a “WHOOSH whoosh”, just like the other man who couldn’t see it, but then he has also told us that he saw a plane and heard a plane. But what he described was most definitely not a 757 flying low over his head.
A 757, under no circumstances makes a sound of “whoosh”, and if the “whoosh” sound was being made by the hitting of light poles, it is a certainty that if a 757 was doing it, you would not hear the “whoosh” of hitting light poles over the roar of the jet engines. If there’s a 757 right overhead that’s hitting light poles, and it’s going 460 mph, it would not be “whooshing”! Anyone that has ever spent any time at the end of an international airport runway knows that the sound of a large commercial jet flying low overhead would be more accurately described as a deafening ROAR!
It is true that eyewitness testimonies are notoriously unreliable. Take ten witnesses to an event and it is likely that you will get ten reponses that will differ from each other in one aspect or another.
Memory Conformity: Disentangling the Steps towards Influence during a Discussion(Amina Memon & Fiona Gabbert, Aberdeen and Dan Wright, Sussex University). It is human nature for people to discuss their shared experiences, especially of extraordinary events such as witnessing a crime. Recent studies of several high profile cases have shown that even a single erroneous eyewitness can have a significant negative influence on the accuracy of another eyewitness’s testimony if the witnesses come into contact with one another and discuss the criminal event. Although it is natural for people to discuss their experiences, it is highly problematic for the legal professionals, and our system of justice, if evidence – in the form of witness statements – becomes contaminated. Our previous research (funded by the Economic & Social Research Council) investigated how peoples’ memories can become influenced during a discussion about a mutually experienced event under controlled laboratory-based conditions. When people discuss an event what one person says is often adversely incorporated into the other person’s report. ...
Having said that, given the nature of the events that are alleged to have occurred at the Pentagon on 9/11 - a large commerical airliner crashing into a large building, we might expect most people to concur at least on the basic details. But, as we have seen, that is not the case with the Pentagon attack.
I am of the opinion therefore that the very conflicting nature of the testimonies of the eyewitnesses to the Pentagon attack are important clues revealing the true nature of what happened that day. Imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a large commercial airliner flying extremely low and at high speed over an urban area and crashing into a building. Imagine also that, not long thereafter, all eyewitnesses to the event are told by authorities and the media that it was indeed a large commercial airliner that flew into the building. Now ask yourself: in such a case, how likely is it that there would be any serious discrepancies between the testimonies of those eyewitnesses? How likely is that any of the eyewitnesses would report that what they actually saw was a small aircraft or something that sounded like a missile? Unlikely, I would suggest.
Now imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a drone aircraft like the Global Hawk for example, which also flies very low and very fast over an urban area. While the wingspan of this drone craft is quite large, it is much smaller in overall size to a large commercial aircraft. Imagine also that this drone is painted with the colors and logo of a well-known airline that are only ever seen on large commercial aircraft. Imagine that there are even “windows” painted on the side to make the illusion all the more convincing. Imagine that, not long after witnessing the incident, all eyewitnesses to the event are told by authorities and the media that what they saw was a large commercial airliner flying into the building. Now ask yourself: in such a case, what are the chances that there would be seriously conflicting reports between eyewitness accounts of the incident? Very good, I would suggest.
Eyewitness accounts are indeed useless when one must rely on them as the sole evidence. This is not, however, the case with the Pentagon attack. There is already much evidence - the facts on the ground - to suggest that it was not a Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon on 9/11. The fact that there are serious conflicts in eyewitness accounts merely serves to back up this other evidence that it was NOT a Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon. We might also wonder why there are no conflicting WITNESS reports of what hit the WTC towers? All eyewitnesses to the event in New York concurred that two large passenger plane hit the North and South towers. Of course, we were all treated to ad nauseum repeats of the video footage of that event, leaving no one in any doubt about what happened. So why not treat us all to the video evidence from the Pentagon?
There is one very obvious answer to this question: the video footage, held by the US government, would disprove the official story.
911 Tape of EMV responding to the Pentagon - includes video outside and inside the building in some areas. (Real Audio Required)
The above video and audio of EMV responding is completely inconsequential to the investigation in hand, and I can think of no reason why CatHerder would include it, other than to attempt in some subtle way to drive home the official claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon.
ConclusionI highly doubt that local firefighters would be involved in any sort of a coverup. I highly doubt that local police officers would be involved in any sort of a government cover up. Cops and firemen are just average Joes like you and me, who go home to the wife and kids, and just try to make a living and have a good life for their families (I have many friends in both professions - of course the firemen are usually more stable marriage-wise because of their job but that doesn't make the cops any less human than you or I). The men and women who pulled over a hundred people (dead and alive) out of that building would more likely than not have noticed somebody carrying over 60 bodies into the middle of the fire they were fighting. To say that the plane that hit the Pentagon was not filled with every single person who died in this terrorist attack (not counting the unfortunate people inside the building) is one thing and one thing only - ignorant.
Oh, LORD! Not the dreaded "malignant pseudo-identification" again! You know, the process by which a COINTELPRO agent consciously imitates or simulates certain behaviors or beliefs in order to foster "identification" with him/her, thus increasing the vulnerability to exploitation. Yes indeed, CatHerder is just an "average Joe" like "you and me." And just to make it hit home, the emotional hooks of "family," a "good life," "making a living," and "stable marriages" are tossed in there followed by the final tear jerker, an outrageous reference to the people who died that day. It is outrageous because it is finally clear that CatHerder is, indeed, an agent of disinformation and using such emotional ploys as this is truly malignant pseudo-identification.
Having said that, let's return to the fact that the point is not that firefighters or police officers were involved in the cover up as CatHerder slickly suggests is the claim of anyone who says that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, but rather that any of them that saw something they were not meant to, could have been easily silenced. The most obvious way to silence the "average Joe" who is honest, hard-working and normally patriotic, is to impress on such a person that they must not talk about something due to "national security". If they were to persist in wanting to talk about what they saw, more persuasive methods can be used like threats to their livelihood etc., up to and including murder. But murder is seldom required. A simple letter with details of family and friends and an order to "keep your mouth shut" is more than enough for most people. As CatHerder says: "cops and firemen are just average Joes like you and me, who go home to the wife and kids, and just try to make a living and have a good life for their families." They are not likely to risk their livelihood, or the lives of their children for 5 minutes of fame on national TV. They keep their mouths shut. And that's a tragedy that CatHerder doesn't seem to be able to understand.
As regards the "carrying of 60 bodies into the middle of the fire". This is simply more evidence of CatHerder's attempts to confuse and manipulate the reader. I know of no site that suggests that the bodies of the passengers on Flight 77 were carried into or out of the Pentagon after the attack. The identification of the bodies was carried out off site by the state pathologist. We were never shown footage nor did we hear reports about anyone picking up pieces of passengers from Flight 77 from the attack site, we were simply told that all passengers were identified from their DNA from body parts that were in the possession of the state pathiologist. It is simply assumed that the state pathologist got the bodies parts from the Pentagon site, because of course, the government told us that Flight 77 crashed there, where else would the body parts come from!? But as I have shown, it is extremely unlikely that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, which makes the question of how the state pathologist got hold of body parts from the passengers a very interesting question.
Of course, we have not even touched on that most bizarre aspect of the Pentagon strike - the alleged final approach of Flight 77. Think about this: The hijackers are a few thousand feet up in the air, they spot the distinctive shape of the Pentagon and decide, "that's our target". What do they do next? Well, logic would suggest that they take the easy and most effective option and nose-dive the plane towards the center of the Pentagon, thereby maximising the chances of actually hitting the building at such high speed and also causing the most damage.
But no, out intrepid "Arab terrorists" have a much more complicated plan: They are going to fly the airliner at maximum speed just a few feet off the ground into the facade of the Pentagon; but not just any part of the facade. No indeed, these guys have a plan. Their specifically chosen "bull's eye" is the section of the facade of the Pentagon that had recently been reinforced and, due to the ongoing internal work, had a significantly reduced number of people in it. These nutty hijackers, consumed with rage and anger at America, its government, its military and its citizens, and determined to inflict as much carnage as possible, had somehow chosen the strongest part of the Pentagon which at the same time had the lowest concentration of people!
Now how's that for bad luck!To carry out their bizarre plan, which appears designed to minimise death and destruction at the Pentagon rather than maximise it, and given that they realise that they are very poor pilots, failing to possess the skills to master the controls of a single-engined cessna, our intrepid "terrorists" decide that they will execute a difficult fast descent from 7,000 feet combined with a 270 degree turn. This done, they are now at a few hundred feet and in "line of sight" of the Pentagon up ahead of them. The only problem is that they are now confronted with a veritable obstacle course of cars, roads, bridges, buildings, trees etc between them and their target. Not to worry they have Allah on their side after all. By some miracle they manage to navigate the massive hulk of the 757 through down town Washington while flying at 500 mph and just a few dozen feet off the ground, getting lower all the time. They make just a little booboo and clip a couple of light poles on the way in, but despite this and the fact that their massive manual missile is just feet of the ground, they politely avoid messing up Pentagon lawn and finally slam into their target at ground floor level.
Now that is one fantastical magical mystery of a story, worthy of inclusion in any children's fairy tale.
Review the facts
· Size of 757 matches the initial size of hole in the building - somewhere between 13 and 16 feet (757 is 13 feet wide/high)
Initial hole only fits the size of a 757 if you subtract the wings, twin 6 TON engines, and tail fin which somehow did not hit the building. Even then the fuselage would have had to slip into the building leaving a round hole that exactly conformed to the diameter and height of the cylindrical tube. In short, highly unlikely, not to mention the fact that the two 50 feet long wings with twin 6 TON steel engines somehow disappeared and could not be found in the wreckage outside the building.
· Rims found in building match those of a 757
Rims - IF they were 757 rims - were quite possibly planted or were the rims from another type of aircraft.
· Small turbine engine outside is an APU
Indeed, it may well be an APU. But as noted previously, a Boeing spokesman has confirmed that the APU was NOT the APU from a 757.
· Same engine has been clearly stated to not match a Global Hawk engine
This is simply not true. No one has come forward to confirm or deny that the disk seen in photos from outside the Pentagon could have come from a Global Hawk. Given the small size of the disk, it is likely that it did not come from a large 757 engine but rather a smaller-engined aircraft. Like a Global Hawk.
· Blue seats from 757 laying on ground in photos
The mangled blue debris could be anything and is inadmissable as conclusive "evidence" of any part of any aircraft.
· Part of "American" fuselage logo visible in more than 1 photo
The only piece of debris showing part of lettering that appears similar to lettering on American airlines craft is pristine, no smoke or explosion damage and has not been accepted by US government as coming from Flight 77. It seems that CatHerder is not only pushing the government line but is going so far as to accept evidence that even the US government wont touch due to its obviously suspect nature.
· Engine parts photographed inside match a Rolls-Royce RB211
Our author is a self-proclaimed non-expert in such matters yet sees fit to pronounce conclusively that mangled pieces of aircraft material are definitely parts of a specific aircraft engine. This alone should make any reader of this fine piece of disinformation wary.
· Structural components photographed in wreckage match Boeing paint primer schemes
The primer is used on many aircraft.
· Large deisel (sic) generator in front of building hit by a large heavy object
Diesel generator was probably moved by initial explosion as reported in early news releases.
· Large deisel (sic) engine outside is spun towards the building - could not be result of bomb blast or missile explosion
Nonsense. See previous comment.
· Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner
Multiple eyewitnesses say they saw a private jet sized aircraft, others said it sounded like a missile.
· Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner hit the Pentagon
Multiple eye witnesses who announced that they saw an American airliners passenger jet were also government and mainstream media employees and their testimonies are therefore unacceptable.
· 60+ bodies, matching the passenger list and flight crew roster identified and returned to families from Pentagon wreckage
60+ bodies were not identified. DNA from all of the passengers was identified, which is actually an interesting point. How can it be that the impact and fire were allegedly so intense that they shredded into tiny pieces and dinintegrated much of the plane, although not all of it, yet body parts from all passengers were recovered and identified?
Conclusion:
It is unlikely that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon because the available evidence is not consistent with the impact of a 757 airliner.
As I have already stated, the best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions would be to wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. If such a person were given all of the publicly available evidence and furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, it is highly improbable that such a person would conclude that a 757 caused the damage at the Pentagon.
Why?
Because the evidence suggests otherwise.
Again I will state that it is only because of the claim by the government and the media that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon that anyone would ever try and suggest that a 757 did the damage. The evidence that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon is so abundant that we continue to be amazed that apparently intelligent people are nevertheless very capable of ignoring facts and concocting elaborate (and often absurd) theories to avoid having to accept that which is right under their noses.
In the months that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was websites like Signs of the Times that took on the job of debunking the clearly false official story about 9/11, in particular the attack on the Pentagon. While we certainly expected a response to our efforts from mainstream newspapers and other government shills, it came as somewhat of a shock and disappointment to realise that other alleged 9/11 researchers joined the attack and attempted to debunk our debunking of the official story. The result is that many honest 9/11 researchers are having to engage in the type of "third level" debunking that I have presented above - a debunking of a debunking of a debunking as it were.
Of course, over the course of the past 4 years, we have become much more familiar with the disinformation tactics of government CoIntelPro. In modern day Iraq, it is generally understood that one of the main roles of US and Israeli intelligence agencies is to foment ethnic strife among the Iraqi people. The logic behind this is that if the Iraqis are fighting themselves, they have less time and energy to fight American soldiers. It should come as no surpise then that the same tactics have been used by US intelligence agencies to deal with honest 9/11 research. But the task of getting honest people who share a common goal to fight with each other is not easy. It requires infiltration over a long periods of time coupled with subtle manipulation of the parties involved. Thankfully for the intelligence agencies, there is another much easier way: you simply have one of your own operatives pose as a Sunni Insurgent or an honest 9/11 researcher and have him attack his fellow insurgents/researchers. Hey presto! You've just created "division" and "infighting" which distracts and confuses the enemy. In the case of 9/11 the "enemy" are the honest 9/11 researchers and the members of the public who look to them for information.
The question then is: are we dealing with such a manufactured group in the Above Top Secret website and forum?
It's hard to tell. There are without doubt many sincere U.S. and other citizens and web site owners who promote the official story about 9/11 because they believe (or perhaps need to believe) that the government is telling the truth. Equally certain is the fact that there are many US citizens and website owners who know for sure that the government story is false, yet have been consciously recruited to push this story on the public. Members of the latter group are simply doing their job, but their influence is most directly felt among members of the former group who want to believe the official story.
Having said that, after reading through the long ATS thread that followed the posting of "CatHerders" article, I have come to the tentative conclusion that the ATS website is just one more government-funded damage control operation, albeit a very subtle one. I will explain why I came to this conclusion.
CatHerders article was received with much fanfare on the ATS forum, and much debate and analysis ensued with the thread finally reaching 125 pages. As the discussion and debate raged, it became apparent that many were convinced by CatHerder's article, but just as many were not. On the 8th page of the thread, two of the three owners of the ATS website weighed in and attempted to silence the naysayers with some large fonts and guilt trips. For example, "SkepticOverlord", "one of the three ATS amigos and co-owner of Abovetopsecret.com" wrote:
"It's very disappointing to see ignorance embraced like this [referring to those who were not embracing Catherders article as "the truth"] Why? Because the real information is not wrapped up in an exciting Flash animation with angry metal grind? [referring, undoubtedly, to our Pentagonstrike Flash] Shall we change our motto? Ignorance Embraced [the ATS motto is "deny ignorance" which seems to be a twist on the QFG motto: Knowledge Protects, Ignorance Endangers.] I still remember speaking to my brother (who was on the highway at the time) calling me that evening, haunted by the memory of a brief glimpse of faces in the windows of the 757. Especially when he discovered his friend was on the flight later that day. This is a sad moment for ATS. I feel like I now see faces."
Very moving. Very manipulative, too. "Springer", another Co-owner, then added the following:
PITIFUL... "CH" (Catherder) has proven his/her POINT beyond much of anything that even comes close to logic... But ALAS, as S.O. (other ATS co-owner) Points out, it is NOT wrapped up in a pretty flash animation filled with BUNK so it must NOT be beleived... [another obvious reference to the Pentagon Flash.]Sad Day for ATS indeed..."
Yes indeed, there's nothing like subjecting your subscribers to a little guilt trip to get them in line.
What is clear from reading the thread is that the owners of the ATS site and the author of the article in question are of the opinion that Arab terrorists, as they are presented by the US government, are real and that a group of them hijacked four planes and attacked the US on 9/11. The only "9/11 conspiracy" that these people hold to then is that the US government may have let 9/11 happen, and the fact is that there are many self-described 9/11 investigators who promote the same idea. You could call it "9/11 conspiracy lite", designed for those who lack the stomach for the unsavory reality of what 9/11 actually meant and where it is taking us.
The problem with such an explanation is that it subtly suggests that, in 9/11, what we are dealing with is nothing more than corrupt government or a few corrupt men, and we all know governments are often a little corrupt, right? The obvious solution, of course, is to simply remove the corrupt government or the few men and we can then get on with the job of fighting those damn "terrorists".
What is missing, however, is the awareness that the "terrorist threat" that came front and center after 9/11 is crucial to the entire conspiracy. It is Bush's "war on terror" that plagues the world to this day, long after 9/11 has lost its edge and drifted to the back of the collective consciousness. It is the threat from "Islamic terrorists" that has led the US military to massacre 100,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years, and you can be sure they are only getting started. Proponents of such a theory expect us to believe that the fact that terrorist hijackers gifted the Neocons with the justification to accomplish their long-held goals is just a matter of good luck!
Anyone that researches the 9/11 event and, most importantly, the background to American and Israeli plans for the Middle East and Israeli government penetration of the American political system, cannot but come to the conclusion that the 9/11 attacks, in their entirety, must have been stage-managed by those who stood to benefit most from the attacks. The fact is, if your goal is to sell the lie that 'Arab terrorists' hijacked planes and flew them into buildings, you don't need to involve real Arab terrorists or real hijacked planes. Indeed, it would not even be advisable to do so given the logistics of getting Arab hijackers, or people masquerading as Arab hijackers, to give their lives in service to your plot and avoid the distinct possiblity that details of the plot would be leaked. No, all you need to do is to make it appear that way with some well placed evidence and then claim that it is so.
We notice that very few items of so-called "conspiracy theory" have rattled the "Bushes" quite like our Pentagon Strike Flash did. The Pentagon Strike video came out on August 23rd 2004. Probably nobody really noticed it at that point, but it hit a chord of response in the hearts of millions of people around the world. They began to madly download and forward it to their friends and relatives. Latest stats on how many people have viewed it to date are 500 million!
Apparently it even landed in the email box of the Editor of the Washington Post, which is why Carol Morello sent us an email asking for an interview. Or so she said. My suspicion was that the Post was instructed to do "damage control", albeit oh, so gently!
Now, look at this mini-timeline:
August 23rd 2004: Pentagon Strike Video which propagates wildly for a month.
September 11, 2004: CatHerder post to Above Top Secret forum.
September 21st 2004: First contact by Carol Morello of the Washington Post
October 7th 2004: Washington Post article It was an interesting feeling to know that if they hadn't seen the Pentagon Strike before, certainly George and Dick, Karl and the gang were watching it after the Washington Post wrote an article about it.
October 19th 2004: George Bush visits New Port Richey - a previously unscheduled "whistle-stop" on his campaign trail. NPR is very small, not likely to be a major target of any presidential candidate, but it just happens to be Laura Knight-Jadczyk's hometown. It was our initial reaction that Dubya's visit to Laura's little home town - certainly of no importance on the campaign trail - was deliberately done to send a message to her. Fact is, her daughter's ex-boyfriend wrote to tell her that he had been among those selected to shake the hand of George W. himself! Now, how's that for a coincidence?
As to exactly what Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote to Laura, here is the pertinent passage which is actually quite revealing:
A couple of editors here saw the video/film, and I was asked to find out what I could about it. As you can imagine, we continue to have an intense interest on the attack on the Pentagon and the people who were affected.
I've just begun reporting, so it would be premature to tell you what "perspective" my story would have.
My initial impressions are that the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet.
The 911 Commission report appears to have done little to dampen the controversy. I hoped to speak to you about how and why you posted it on your web site, what kind of response you've received and what you think about it. […]
Notice that she attributes the resurgence of interest in the "Pentagate" problem to the Pentagon Strike video. Can we say "damage control"?
And if there is damage control, then that means there is damage.
Up to this point in time, the only acknowledgement the administration ever gave to such issues was to refer vaguely and dismissively to "conspiracy theories". Now, suddenly, it seems that dealing with the "conspiracy theories" in a direct manner was seen to be imperative. "9/11: Debunking the Myths" came out in Popular Mechanics Magazine in March of 2005, just five months after the Washington Post article. That's pretty fast work.
Under the tutelage of Editor in Chief Jim "Oh look, a tank!" Meigs, Popular Mechanics assembled a team of researchers, including "professional fact checkers" (impressive eh?) to debunk the 16 most common claims made by conspiracy theorists about 9/11. Unsurprisingly, the PM editors claim that, in the end:
"we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate."
In fact, a careful analysis of the article shows that at most, just three of the sixteen claims could have been the result of "reporting error", forcing us to assume that, in the razor-like, emotionally unclouded cerebrum of Jim Meigs, at least 13 of the conspiracy claims about 9/11 are the result of "cynical imaginations aiming to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate".
The sad fact is that, while Popular Mechanics claims to be interested in understanding what really happened that day, their rebuttal of sixteen of the most common claims by so-called "conspiracy theorists" about 9/11 isn't worth the $3.57 of server space that it has so far cost them to publish it.
If there is one glaring hole in the arguments put forward by 9/11 conspiracy "debunkers", it is the fact that such people have never come up with a reasonable argument to explain why, in the wake of 9/11, so many obviously intelligent citizens became gripped by the uncontrollable urge to continually waste their time recklessly and fecklessly "injecting suspicion and animosity into public debate" for no apparent reason. It really is a mystery. Maybe they're trying to take over the world or something.
On the other hand, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to understand the primary motivations of the conspiracy debunkers. You see, the very last thing that many Americans (and others) want to believe is that their government would attack its own people. For 9/11 "debunkers", logic and intellect have no part to play in investigating the question of what really happened on 9/11. It's pure emotion all the way.
In the beginning, on the morning of September 11, 2001 we were all united in our emotional reactions: shock, horror, grief - (and not to forget: jubilation from a bunch of Israeli Mossad agents). As the emotion subsided, most went on with their lives, but a few stood on, brows furrowed, scratching their heads. After considerable digging and research, it became obvious that the official story did not satisfactorily answer all of the questions, and the fact that officials were refusing to answer those outstanding questions, gave rise, logically enough, to a "conspiracy theory".
Not long thereafter, the debunkers stepped in, not because they had the answers to the outstanding questions, but because they had their emotional buttons severely poked by the fact that someone was saying that their government was lying! Sadly, the editors at PM are no different, and their little fear-inspired rebuttal of 9/11 conspiracy theories is of little actual use to anyone, least of all to those who really do want to know the truth of 9/11. Far from approaching the matter with an open mind (which is crucial in any attempt to find the truth), it is clear that Popular Mechanics' "professional fact checkers" began with the premise that the US government was not lying about the main events of 9/11, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. From there, the objectivity and integrity of their research went sharply downhill as they busied themselves with hunting down the very same sources that provided the official story to confirm that the official story was in fact correct. Apparently, in "debunkerland", it is completely reasonable to ask U.S. government representatives to testify that the U.S. government is squeaky clean and then present that evidence as "fact". It is also kosher, we assume, to have a murder suspect double as a credible court's witness in a murder trial.
For those of you who have looked unemotionally at the events of 9/11, it is not unusual to be left wondering how those members of the US government who were clearly complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their own citizens can remain so smug and seemingly self-assured. To find the answer we need look no further than the Jim Meigs' of this world. You see, it is people like Meigs who lack any love or appreciation for the truth and worship only their subjective view of the world that make it so easy for big government to commit big crime.
At present there are millions of Americans and others around the world who, aided by the years of social conditioning and media mind programming, drew a very clear line around what they would and would not believe about their government and country. Most of what was inside the line was "feel good" stuff about "greatest democracy on earth" and other jingoistic nonsense, with perhaps a few admissions that "sometimes bad things happen" and "not everyone is a saint". This mindset provided (and continues to provide) a perfect opportunity for unscrupulous US politicians to literally get away with the murder of which most of the US public refuse to believe they were, and are, capable.
The result is that, for all intents and purposes, today there are two Americas:
- The America of the average American citizen which is little more than a government-provided dream world.
- The real America of the corrupt politicians and the select few who run the country, and much of the rest of the world.
Luckily for the select few, this second, real America just happens to lie outside of what many ordinary Americans are willing or able to believe is possible. Lest anyone think otherwise, the setting up of any accusation against government as being the domain of "conspiracy nuts" is not the result of pure coincidence. Conspiracy theories are as old as the first lie ever told and the subsequent attempts by the liar to avoid exposure.
Most people think that "conspiracy theories" are made up by "conspiracy theorists", but the term "conspiracy theory" is most often used by those people who have most to gain from the ridicule of the allegations that are directed at them. The tactic has been used to such great effect over the years that certain high crimes committed by government have become the touchstone by which all other "conspiracies" are measured.
Take the folks at Popular Mechanics. In dealing with 9/11 they simply couldn't resist referencing that other most despicable crime committed by a US government - but of course, to them it just another "theory":
"Don't get me wrong: Healthy skepticism is a good thing. Nobody should take everything they hear--from the government, the media or anybody else--at face value. But in a culture shaped by Oliver Stone movies and "X-Files" episodes, it is apparently getting harder for simple, hard facts to hold their own against elaborate, shadowy theorizing."
Did you catch it? The reference to Oliver Stone can mean only one thing: Jim's "fact checkers" contacted the CIA, and they told him straight up that some bullets really can do magic things.
So far, we have been generous to the people at Popular Mechanics. We have assumed that they are simply well-intentioned but misguided souls. However, it appears that there is a more sinister, and dare we say it, "conspiratorial" side to Popular Mechanics' "innocent" debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories. You see, it turns out that one of the main contributors to the article is one Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of the new Dept. of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.
American Free Press' Christopher Bollyn, who dug up the information, also claims that Ben Chertoff's mother was a Mossad agent. While there is, as of yet, no evidence of any working relationship between the two, it is certainly noteworthy that the cousin of the current Homeland Security Chief, (who, in his previous incarnation as head of the Justice Department's criminal division was instrumental in the release of obvious Israeli spies before and after 9/11), happens to be behind a high-profile attempt to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories.
So if you happen to stop by the sorry article in question, don't be fooled or intimidated by the word "science" in big bold letters on the Popular Mechanics page. In Europe, McDonald's drink cups have the words "I'm loving it" emblazoned across them in various languages, regardless of what you put in them. Credit by association or juxtaposition is one of the oldest tricks in the book of mass mind programming. Just because "they" say it, doesn't make it so. This simple, logical statement is a salient lesson for us all in these heady days where disinformation masquerades as truth and even "innocent" fun-loving "boys with toys" have become obedient workers in the lie factory.
According to another 9/11 researcher :
"The editors of Scientific American followed in the footsteps of Popular Mechanics in exploiting a trusted brand in order to protect the perpetrators of the mass murder of 9/11/01. The column by Michael Shermer in the June, 2005 issue of Scientific American, titled Fahrenheit 2777, is an attempt to deceive the magazine's readers into dismissing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was an inside job without ever looking at that evidence. More specifically, Shermer attempts to inoculate readers against looking at the decidedly scientific refutation of the official story… […]
Shermer's column exhibits many of the same propaganda techniques as the ambitious feature article in the March issue of Popular Mechanics by Benjamin Chertoff, for which Shermer professes admiration:
'The single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop is in the March issue of Popular Mechanics, which provides an exhaustive point-by-point analysis of the most prevalent claims.'
Comparing the two attack pieces is instructive. Both pieces mention a similar range of issues, with Shermer adding Jewish conspiracy rumors and UFOlogists to the mix...
This last is undoubtedly a direct reference to Signs of The Times, while avoiding giving a direct link to our website out of fear that the reader might be influenced.
Shermer uses an array of deceptive methods to persuade the reader that challenges to the official story of the 9/11 attack are worthy only of ridicule and should not be scrutinized. His primary technique is to use hoaxes and unscientific ideas to "bracket" the valid ideas that he seeks to shield the reader from.
That Shermer went to such great lengths to thoroughly misrepresent the painstaking, scientific, evidence-based work of many researchers is a testament to the success of the Pentagon Strike Video! It really stepped on a sore toe. And that tells us something important, the same thing Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote:
"…the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet."
We notice that never, in any of the two major "debunking" articles that followed fast on the heels of the Pentagon Strike video, was the video ever even mentioned by name, nor was our website mentioned. Other books, other researchers, other websites were mentioned, but the deliberate avoidance of Signs of The Times - the origin of the Pentagon Strike, was conspicuous. We notice the same trend in the Above Top Secret forum.
Again we point out: debunkers are sent in only when damage control is needed. And damage control is only needed when it is thought that there might be damage. That means that the Pentagon Strike is understood clearly, in the minds of the perpetrators, to be the weak link in their chain of lies.
Debunkers are sent in not to give answers to the outstanding questions, but to push the emotional buttons of the public, to reassure people who really want "a reason to believe" that their government is not lying to them.
It should be clear by now that I am suggesting that there is much more to the 9/11 attacks than most people are aware and what really happened is very, very different from the official story.
Now we get to the interesting part.
If Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon what did, and how?
Two emails received by Signs of the Times about one year ago, (identities concealed to protect the correspondents) are quite informative:
Email #1
Greetings, I have stayed out of this arena for a reason, but can no longer. I am a Maintenence Mechanic here in the assembly plant in [XXX] where we build these great aircraft. 747's-757's and 767's.
Lets do some math for a minute, because those who believe a 757 hit the pentagon, must also believe in the tooth fairy.
The melting temp for brake shoes on a 757 is about 3000 degs., the landing gear struts are solid cast aluminum; the center shafts for the engines are solid titanium. The flame temp for low grade kerosene, (jet fuel) is around 800 degs.
If the 757 was full of fuel, thats 14 pounds of aircraft per one gallon of fuel. Its impossible to "completely incinerate" a 757 at that fuel-to-material ratio. It would be the first time in history it did, and would defy the laws of physics, period.
No 757 hit the pentagon. Where's the engines, landing gears, APU's, stringers, fuel cell walls, wing join assemblies? These are impervious to fire, and, all have survived the worst fires ever seen on aircraft, and I've seen them all.
Oh by the way, if the 757 was "completely incinerated" as the gov't would have the lemming masses believe, how did they come up with DNA from the ashes for every passenger on board. DNA from ASHES!!!?? What a crock of shit. Once you do the math, you'll quickly know that no 757 hit that building, those who say one did, are liars, or have been told to be liars lest they end up like Vince Foster and a few hundred others like him.Email #2
[...] I am probably one of the most qualified people that you will meet to judge some of the info about the Pentagon attack. I have served in the U.S. Army for a number of years now, I have not only dealt with weapons of every type you can imagine, I have also had a great deal of experience with aircraft, not to mention my brother is an analyst for the military who deals with a great many things.
First of all I can guarantee that no missile did this (damage to the Pentagon), none of the patterns add up for such a thing to work, damage ratio is wrong, flight path is wrong, style of impact is wrong. Also think of the item it was hitting, a hardened building made of concrete and steal, all reinforced. Also I can tell you no large aircraft did this [...]
I'm starting to think that maybe it was a TL AM type 2 block 4, better known as a tomahawk type 2 bunker buster with booster and hardened warhead.
While most would say this is absurd because a weapon like that would have completely leveled the Pentagon and a good deal around it, I am however still inclined to believe that this might possibly be what did it. This is my thinking on the matter: the new TLAMs are programmable to pick entry point and detonation point, the hardened warhead on them allows them to penetrate the hardest of buildings and they hit going much faster than the old type 1s that are commonly seen in war footage and test footage.
I think that somehow one of our new type 2s found itself set on a guided path to the Pentagon with a side impact and center detonation programming, but for some reason the warhead didn't go off. That would give it the energy to do the damage and drive through the walls like it did, but by never exploding, it would still leave most of the building perfectly intact like what was seen at the pentagon. The only problem I can see with this scenario is there would have been no fire had this happened, unless something inside the building started burning.
Now they could have just mounted a much weaker warhead on the thing for the sole purpose of starting the fire. If this is what happened though, then someone wanted it to happen like this, to mount a type 2 with a weak warhead not to mention set it on a path with the parameters that would be needed for this. For no one to use the "safety" and blow it up mid flight, it would have to be pretty damn deliberate.
Also the type 2 matches closer to the size proportions of the object that was captured on video. I'm still only going on speculation here as are most of the people who know that they are being lied to.
To tell you the truth, I don't even think that the fire was at the low burning temp of 800 degrees, a fire that hot would have gone farther to bursting the windows and distorting the structure of the building. The more I look into and use my knowledge of missiles, the more I'm starting to think that maybe it was something we haven't seen before and to not take the risk of disclosing to the public that a test project went wrong or that someone did this with something new of ours. They made up the entire pentagon part of 911, at the very least, and went through a whole lot of trouble doing it.
From the evidence presented, we can propose that, due to its suitablity for the task in hand, it was a global hawk-type craft complete with a payload of one missile with a shaped charge hardened war head and secondary war head that struck the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. The first shaped charge war head opened the main hole in the Pentagon facade, the second war head detonated inside doing the rest of the damage and creating the 'T bar' of the final inverted T shape in the facade. The global hawk was swallowed by the hole and the war head explosion. The hardened war head continued on through the other 5 walls coming to rest in Ring C, leaving that neat 8ft wide hole. The war head was then confiscated, much like the various tapes that were witness to the event.
For its part, Flight 77 landed, probably at a military airfield in Ohio around the same time that the Global Hawk and missile struck the Pentagon. All passengers and crew on board Flight 77 were dead by that time, except for one, two or three people. The bodies were "disposed of", and some of the remains were used for identification by the state pathologist.
Shocked? Outraged? You have every right to be, but not at us, or anyone else that points out the logical explanation of the problem. There exists overwhelming evidence to show that, as a general rule, corrupt people in positions of great power do not flinch at murdering their own citizens if it serves their purposes to do so. In some cases, they will murder their citizens - and others - because it gives them pleasure. Such people also, historically, are advocates and practitioners of torture. If you disagree then you disagree with historical fact. Welcome to the real world.
As Laura Knight-Jadczyk notes in her book 9/11:The Ultimate Secret, the attack on the Pentagon is the Achilles Heel of the entire 9/11 coverup, and for one very good reason: while we all saw repeated footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 crash into the WTC towers, and we all saw the wreckage of Flight 93 and have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies that a commercial airliner did indeed crash in Pennsylvania, there is no reliable evidence that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. No one has seen any footage that shows Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, and the tapes that actually exist that could easily and immediately prove what did hit that day, have been confiscated by the FBI and the U.S. government studiously refuses to release them.
The US government claims that a Boeing 757 impacted the Pentagon on 9/11, many people dispute this, yet the same American government refuses to release video tapes that would put the matter to rest and show once and for all what hit the Pentagon. Use your head and ask yourself, "why?"
There is one very obvious answer.
I realise that this theory present presents more questions than answers. But since the complete answers to what really happened on 9/11 (and much more) are contained in the book "9/11: The Ultimate Truth", it would be remiss of me to present them here. Suffice to say that Truth is much stranger than fiction.
09/11/2001
(Please use the link above for clarity. Formatting below may not be accurate)
Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11
and Neither Did a Boeing 757
by Joe Quinn
After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain '9/11 reseachers' was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them...
The claim that promoters of the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the "implications". According to Ruppert, the "implications" are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that's the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.
Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn't explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passgengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let's be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't hit the Pentagon, is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and “disposed of” by the conspirators. That's pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them "in person," as it were.
Since Ruppert's declaration about the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory, many other "9/11 researchers", such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman , have seized upon Ruppert's idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the "no planers" are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the 'kooky' "no plane" theory.
In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let's look at the "evidence" as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.
First, however, I would like a few observations about 9/11 research in general.
Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.
Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be appoached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?
The fact is that, researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened, they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Begin with a beginner's mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.
Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from "ground zero" (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good "best guess". For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the "private" evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don't expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.
The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the "official government cover-up." After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.
Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.
Evidence That A Boeing 757 Really Did Impact the Pentagon on 9/11
by "CatHerder", Member, AboveTopSecret.com/forum
September 11th, 2004
Did a 757 hit the Pentagon on 9-11 First let's start with the factual information available on hand. The 757-200 As we can see from the freely available information for the Boeing 757 (from the Boeing website). The 757 is a midsized commercial airliner designed for short haul and medium haul routes (Medium Range Transport (MR-TR)), although since its release, and the subsequent discovery of the Wake Vortex it leaves behind the FAA has classified the 757 as a "Heavy" aircraft; the FAA places the 757 in the Geometric Design Classification IV, and an ATC Operation Class C. (source) The 757-200 dimensions: Tail Height: 44 ft 6 in (13.6m) Length: 155 ft 3 in (47.32m) Wingspan: 124 ft 10 in (38.05m) Body Exterior Width: 12 ft 4 in (3.7m) Fuel Capacity: 11,489 us gal (43,490l / 43,490kg) Maximum Takeoff weight: 255,000lb (115,680kg) Typical Cruise Speed: 0.80 Mach (573.6mph / 956kmh) Engines used on a 757: Two 166.4kN (37,400lb) Rolls-Royce RB211-535C turbofans, or 178.8kN (40,200lb) RB211-535E4s, or 193.5kN (43,500lb) RB211-535E4-Bs, or 162.8kN (36,600lb) Pratt & Whitney PW2037s, or two 178.4kN (40,100lb) PW2040s, or 189.5kN (42,600lb) PW2043s. (source1) (source2) Auxiliary Power Unit: Honeywell GTCP331-200 left portion: source1 right portion: source2 (height and width notation to graphic added by me) Next, let's look at the Pentagon. The Pentagon The Pentagon was designed in the early 40's and was completed in only 16 months on Jan 14, 1943. The shortages of materials required for war production raised many design and construction problems. The use of reinforced concrete in lieu of formed steel for the building made possible a saving of 43,000 tons of steel, more than enough to build a battleship. The use of concrete ramps rather than elevators further reduced steel requirements. Drainage pipes were concrete; ducts were fiber, interior doors were wood. An unusual wall design - concrete spandrels carried to window sill level - eliminated many miles of through-wall copper flashing.(Source1) (Source2) Recent renovations and upgrades to the building were nearing completion on the side hit on 9-11 and performed reasonably well considering they were not designed to withstand aircraft impact. On September 11, when an American Airlines Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon, home of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), about 20,000 people were at work in this, the largest office building in the world. Yet according to the DoD casualty update on October 1, only 125 Pentagon employees were killed along with the 64 from the fated airliner. (source - Architecture Week)The exterior walls had been reinforced with steel beams and columns, bolted where they met at each floor. Some of these reinforced walls very near the point of impact remained in place for a half hour before collapsing, allowing uncounted hundreds to escape. "Had we not undertaken this effort," said Evey at a press briefing on September 15, "this could have been much, much worse." Now, I'm sure everyone can agree that the above information is a matter of public record, and none of it is incorrect, altered, or misquoted in any way to support either side of the case. It is all merely factual information that we will refer to in the following sections. [Note: I was unintentionally misleading in a previous post when I said the Pentagon didn't use a steel beam construction - while that is still true for the original design, it was reinforced in various areas during the upgrades to include steel beams and columns in some areas of the renovations.] Quoted from ArchitectureWeek.com : In addition to major overhauls of the mechanical and electrical systems, the Wedge One renovation included the fire sprinklers, automatic fire doors, and the steel which saved many lives on the day of the attack. The blast-resistant windows were nearly two inches (5 centimeters) thick. Some of them remain remarkably intact and in place adjacent the point of impact. Some were popped out of their frames by the force of the exploding jet fuel, but they fell without breaking or splintering. Also on the exterior walls, between the steel columns, the renovation crew had placed Kevlar cloth, similar to the material used for bullet-proof vests. This had the effect of holding together building materials so they wouldn't become deadly projectiles in an explosion. Looking At the Big Picture From facts contained above, we can all agree that:
· The length of the outside wall on any side of the pentagon is 921 feet.
· The wingspan of a 757 is 124 feet 10 inches.
· Now, everyone can agree that 921/125= roughly 7.4 right?Given the size of the 757, and the size of the Pentagon, the damaged area fits in peftectly with the dimensions of both the aircraft and the building.
The above "opening gambit" is very telling since it delivers hard facts, one after the other, all of which are accurate. It is in this last statement that the twisting begins. The fact that the length of the Pentagon is equivilent to 7.4 757's wing to wing, or that the width of one 757 equals 13.5% of the facade of the Pentagon has no bearing on the actual damage done. Indeed, given the weight and speed of the 757 that is alleged to have impacted the building, the actual damage done to the Pentagon is entirely inconsistent with an aircraft of the size weight and speed of a 757. In other words, the argument actually supports the "no-boeing" theory better than it supports "Flight 77 hit the Pentagon."
Look at the hole in the building Here is the hole in the building - it's been reported by at least a dozen different sources (including conspiracy theory sites) to be a 16 to 20 foot hole. That is really interesting when you take into account the fact that the 757 body is 12 ft 4in wide and 13 ft 6in high. (Here is where I was mistaken in the past, like so very many others I was led astray by the HEIGHT of the aircraft, which is actually the measurement from the wheels-down to the tip of the tail. That measurement is for aircraft hangar clearance, not the SIZE of the aircraft.) The 757 is basically a cylinder that is 13 feet across. It then should not be surprising that it would create something around a thirteen foot hole in the side of the building.
Here is the next twist. The Boeing 757 is not simply a 13ft wide cylinder, if it were, then the damage to the Pentagon might be more plausible. The reality, however, is that a Boeing 757 is a 13ft wide, 155 ft long cylinder with a tail fin that extends 45 ft into the air. Add to that the fact that there are two 6 ton steel engines slung under each wing about 6 feet to each side of the cylinder body. The wings extend out on each side for 50ft + making for a total aircraft width of 125 feet, a total length of 155 ft and a maximum height of 45 ft. It comes as no surprise then that this large commerical aircraft weighs in at over 90 tons fully loaded. On take off from Washington Dulles airport, Flight 77 weighed approximately 82 tons.
The above nonsensical argument would have you believe that the only thing to consider is a "13 ft wide cylinder" that just magically lost everything else, or that everything else just "folded up" and flew inside the building plastered to the side of that 13 ft cylinder. Even if the wings could do that, we are still left with the two 6 ton engines that were NOT dropped off on the lawn, and which, together, are as wide as the cylinder body!
Look at the nose-on view of a 757 - you can see the body is slightly less than 1/3 the size of the height of the aircraft. The tail certainly isn't going to punch a hole through a reinforced concrete wall; that is why there is no 40 foot hole in the front of the Pentagon in any photos. A 40 foot object didn't hit it, a 13 foot object did.
Again, this is not JUST a "13ft object" by any stretch of the imagination. By now it should be obvious that the author is attempting to subtly manipulate the reader by reducing a large, 82 ton passenger aircraft to "a 13ft object".
Think about this.
Is "a 13ft object" a reasonable description of a Boeing 757? Is it reasonable for the author to reduce a large plane that can carry up to 200 adult human beings to "a 13ft object"? We could take this unreasonable definition one step further and flesh out the image that our author is trying to plant in our heads and say that, according to our author, the Boeing 757 that he/she alleges hit the Pentagon, was comparable to a large SUV, or a similar "13ft object".
While it is reasonable to state that the tail of a 757 may not necessarily have punched a hole through the facade of the Pentagon, can we expect to at least see some evidence of the tail having hit the facade? More than that, we must consider the forward momentum of those two, inescapable, 6 TON Steel engines that were neither dropped on the lawn, nor were they smashed like pancakes against the side of the "13 ft cylinder." If I struck the facade of the Pentagon with a sledge hammer, is it reasonable that I would be able to cause some observable damage? The outer 6 inches of the facade of the Pentagon is made of soft limestone, yet our author sees no problem with claiming that such a soft surface, when struck by a piece of aircraft weighing SIX TONS and travelling at hundreds of miles per hour, would in no way leave any significant and observable damage.
While the "cylinder body" that our author keeps referring to is indeed 13ft 6in high, he omits the fact that the engines extend 5 feet below the body and over six feet to either side, meaning that, if the aircraft were actually able to successfully fly at just 1 inch above the ground (highly unlikely), the height of the "cylinder body" above the ground would be at least 18 ft 6 inches! Let us repeat that: if a Boeing 757 were actually able to fly at just 1 inch above the ground, the height of the "13 ft cylinder body" would be at least 18 feet 6 inches! Now, add to that the fact that the plane also includes those two bothersome 6 TON engines, AND a tailfin that protrudes 25 feet above the top of the cylinder body making for a total aircraft height of just less than 40 feet with wheels up. Obviously then, we can reasonably expect that the damage to the facade of the Pentagon would have extended up to this height IF it was a 757 that hit the building.
However, according to the official Pentagon report:
"The height of the damage to the facade of the building was much less than the height of the aircraft’s tail. At approximately 45 ft, the tail height was nearly as tall as the first four floors of the building. Obvious visible damage extended only over the lowest two floors, to approximately 25 ft above grade."
Look at this close up of the above photo:
The top of the hole in the middle of the white box is at the same level as the top of the windows of the second floor, or about 23-25 feet from ground. The three windows above this are the windows of the third floor. The foam covered window to the top right is the fourth floor. As noted by the Pentagon report, this area (above the center hole) is where the tail should have struck, but there is no evidence of any damage that we would expect from such an impact. What's more, the tail fin was definitely not dropped on the lawn along with the two 6 TON engines.
Conclusion? The tail fin of a Boeing 757 did not strike this area.
What does that suggest? That a Boeing 757 was not involved in the attack.
Is that logical enough?
However, from the point of view the author on the ATS forum and the U.S. government, we are not allowed to use such logic. Instead, we must give in to emotional blackmail and then engage in implausible mental gymnastics to try to explain how a 757 really could have been involved in the Pentagon attack; and all because the US government says so - a government that has made lies the core aspect of its domestic and foreign policy from day one.
In terms of the damage that should have been caused by the other parts of a 757 (you know, the large aircraft that our author has reduced to a mere 12ft 4 in wide cylinder), the official Pentagon Building Performance Report stated that:
"The projected width [of damage to the facade] was approximately 90 ft, which is substantially less than the 125 ft wingspan of the aircraft"
Indeed, but there is no explanation of why there is no damage to the facade where the wings should logically have struck. Could it be that an aircraft with the wingspan of a 757 was not involved
Conspiracy theory?
No, just the most obvious and logical explanation.
The Pentagon report also made note of the fact that:
"With the possible exception of the immediate vicinity of the fuselage’s entry point at column line 14, essentially all interior impact damage was inflicted in the first story: The aircraft seems for the most part to have slipped between the first-floor slab on grade and the second floor."
That is impossible as the following graphic will show. Note the pink line, where the "13 ft cylinder" is supposed to have slipped "under."
Another 9/11 researcher, who is naturally skeptical about the claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, produced the above graphic and posed some obvious and logical questions about the feasibility of the official story quoted above. Given the height of just the fuselage (leaving out the 25 feet of tailfin), how is it possible that the immediate damage and the debris of the plane were "largely confined to the first floor"? And remember, we are talking here about a scenario where the plane is flying at just one inch above the ground!
What is more, evidence from photos of the site show cable spools that were clearly untouched by any incoming aircraft, suggesting that the aircraft would have to have been flying above the maximum height of the spools (some 6 feet) when it hit the Pentagon. In this case, the damage should have been almost entirely to the second floor!
Of course, this is not the case, which leaves us with the logical deduction that it is highly improbable that a 757 was involved in the attack on the Pentagon and that a much smaller and more nimble aircraft was used.
Among those 9/11 researchers that claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon, much is made of the fact that the Pentagon facade was built with "steel reinforced concrete walls". This fact is used to explain the extremely limited immediate damage to the Pentagon facade. But how much credit are we going to give to brick and concrete that has been reinforced with relatively thin steel bars? Is such a wall indestructable? If the tail fin and wings of a Boeing 757 travelling at 400mph+ hit such a wall, could we at least expect them to leave a dent? A little scrape even?
Not at the Pentagon apparently.
Consider the picture below showing the impact hole at the WTC North Tower:
The facade of the WTC Towers were made of prefabricated steel yet as we can see from the imprint of the plane, these steel lattices were in no way strong enough to stop the massive kinetic energy of the entire aircraft impacting the building, including the wings and tail fin and leaving a roughly 757-shaped hole in the facade.
To provide a scale reference, a survivor of the intial impact has been circled in the above photo (click the picture for a close up).
Given that I am no structural engineer however, I cannot make any claims as to the comparative strength of the steel reinforced brick and concrete walls of the Pentagon versus the steel facade of the WTC towers and will allow for the idea that the wall of the Pentagon was stronger than that of the WTC. We can even theorize that it is due to this comparative strength difference that there is not a similar 757-shaped gaping hole at the Pentagon. However, as noted, the facade of the Pentagon was made of soft limestone 6 inches thick. Can anyone explain why a similar shape as that in the picture above does not appear in the soft limestone facade of the Pentagon?
In fact, there appear to be no pictures of the Pentagon facade immediately after the attack that show a clear picture of the exact extent of the damage. That's because all press personnel were restricted. We only have photos because a civilian managed to take them in spite of the "cordon sanitaire." What IS clear is that, as the Pentagon report noted, the Pentagon facade bears NO evidence of damage from parts of a 757 at ALL. One notable explanation for this mysterious lack of damage offered by official government story enthusiasts is that by some mysterious force of nature, the wings and tail must have sheared off before impact. Of course, in such a case, we would expect to see at least some recognisable debris of the wings and tail section outside the building. Yet, as anyone who has carefully inspected the evidence at the scene can attest, there is no such debris.
According to official story enthusiasts, the complete lack of any debris from the wings that we are told somehow sheared off, is not a problem: they simply disintegrated on impact and were rendered little more than confetti that blew away in the breeze (I kid you not; this was actually suggested by several "researchers"). But in this unlikely case, how do we explain that the 125 feet long wings of a 757 disintegrated yet a fairly slender tree standing just a few feet from the front of the Pentagon and in the direct path of the alleged 757, was still standing, albeit severely charred? (Charred tree branches visible in center of image) What's more, this explanation completely omits mention of the two six TON engines attached to said wings.
Can we now at least accept as a possibility the idea that a 757 was not involved in the attack on the Pentagon?
Why is it so difficult for our author to accept this? The answer would seem to be that since the official government story does not allow for such a scenario, like all good and obedient citizens, our author feels compelled to believe what the government says, regardless of the massive historical evidence showing that, on several occasions in the past, the U.S government has allowed, facilitated, or actually carried out, attacks on its own citizens and interests in order to achieve some specific goal, usually associated with waging war on other nations - wars like the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, including the attack on the Pentagon. Either the ATS author is such a "good and obedient" citizen, or we must conclude that said author is an agent of said government.
If we peruse other postings made by the ATS author on the subject of 9/11 in general , it seems that he/she accepts the idea that there was some level of complicty in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the US government. Yet he/she appears to have no problem with using the claims of the same U.S. government to back up his argument that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
For the record, I have nothing against the US government per se, and have no desire to accuse the Bush administration or anyone else unjustly. But in the case of the 911 attacks, there is significant and compelling evidence to suggest that something is not right with the official version of events and that members of the US government are lying about the true nature of those events. In this case, there is a case to answer, and my sole aim is to get at the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be. In pursuing this objective, I will look at the facts and the facts alone and draw conclusions based on what those facts suggest, alone.
At this point, we are approaching the paradox that is at the heart of the argument of the "no 757 " debunkers. They clearly are well aware that there is a serious problem with the lack of damage and debris at the Pentagon, yet that does not deter them from continuing with their increasingly unbelievable theories in an attempt to prove that the official government story is correct. At the same time, after coming up with bizzare explanations for the lack of damage and debris, they are then forced to deal with the fact that, while the damage to the Pentagon facade is not consistent with the impact of a large commerical airliner, the damage to the interior of the Pentagon is even less so.
Now, let's return to the ATS forum post.
Also, as I showed earlier: Here is an L1011 (it's a larger plane than a 757 - but the basic design of how a plane body is built is the same) being scrapped, you can see that almost ALL of the support structure is in the bottom 2/5 of the plane. This is the part that punched the hole in the Pentagon, the rest of the thin, hollow, top of the plane just shredded into chunks, some of which are laying on the lawn and around the rescue vehicles. Most of a commercial airliner is just a thin aluminum shell, insulation, a thin plastic inner liner, some carpet and seats. They're designed to be as light as possible so they can carry more cargo and more people while using less fuel and at the same time remain "safe". It is a given that the majority of mass is going to be in the bottom half of the aircraft - the primary structure and heaviest parts are all located there, as is the luggage and any freight. But lets reinforce this as fact with a photo of a 757-300 being built. (Remember, the only difference between a 757-200 and a 757-300 is the length of the body, and the wings on the 757-300 are reinforced and slightly deeper - the height and width and wingspan remain identical.)
Indeed, aircraft like the 757 are made of aluminium, for the most part, yet that does not take away from the fact that the 757 that is alleged to have hit the Pentagon was over 80 tons and flying at over 400mph, with two six TON steel engines flanking.
(source) We should also make a note of the yellow primer used on the interior of the rear section. This image shows the light green primer used on the primary structure components in the 757 (Boeing uses the same yellow primer and the same green primer on almost every single part of every single 757 and 767 built). What does the green or yellow primer have to do with anything? Well, we'll take a look at the aircraft parts from the Pentagon wreckage photos below.
Are we to assume that Boeing is the only aircraft manufacturer to use green primer on the shells of its aircraft? Is it possible that this primer is an aircraft industry standard and that other aircraft manufactures also use green primer? If so, can the fact that some small pieces of debris that were found inside the Pentagon be reasonably touted as evidence that it had to be a Boeing 757 that impacted the building?
Here, I direct your attention to the fact that Epoxy Primer 37035A is just exactly that shade of yucky yellow/green. It is available from Aerospace Coatings Akzo Nobel and is designated as "Epoxy Primer 37035A (green)" or "Epoxy Primer 37052 (green)". It is apparently widely used on many types of aircraft.
Again, we should note that the entire argument of the ATS author seems to be based on the premise that the official US government story about what hit the Pentagon MUST BE correct, despite the fact that he/she ALSO accepts the idea that there was some level of complicty in the 9/11 attacks on the part of the US government. Again, that is similar to taking the word of a suspected murderer about the very murder he is suspected of having committed. It's just not logical. Could it be that the posts on the ATS forum where "CatHerder" claims to believe that the government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks are examples of what is known in psychology as "malignant pseudo-identification."
Malignent pseudo-identification is the process by which a COINTELPRO agent consciously imitates or simulates certain behaviors or beliefs in order to foster the sincere activist's "identification" with him/her, thus increasing the activist's vulnerability to exploitation.
Activists and those who have altruistic self-concepts are most vulnerable to malignant pseudo-identification especially during work with the agent when the interaction includes matter relating to their competency, autonomy, or knowledge. The goal of the agent is to increase the activist's general empathy for the agent and ideas the agent wishes to "plant" through pseudo-identification with the activist's self-concepts. The most common example of this is the agent who will compliment the activist for his competency or knowledge or value to the movement. Another is to declare identification with many of the ideas of the activist, and then diverge on the one idea that they have been sent in to debunk. And certainly we can see that the issue of whether or not Flight 77 struck the Pentagon is just such an idea that would necessitate major debunking.
Ok, but how did a hollow tube, made of mostly aluminium, manage to punch through the Pentagon? I'm happy to try to help explain it with the aid of the good folks at Perdue University . We'll get to that in a moment.
This is very good question. So which is it? You can make the argument that a 757 was so flimsy that the Pentagon facade was relatively undamaged by the impact, or you argue that the weight and speed of the aircraft was such that it penetrated 3 rings of the building, but you can't have it both ways! Any theory that attempts to reconcile these irreconcilable claims is untenable. But that does not seem to bother our fearless debunker. He/she has already made two assertions (13 ft cylinder and paint color) that in no way whatsoever "prove" any case at all, and now, with the help of the "good folks at Perdue University", our agent - uh, excuse me, author - comes up with a seriously far out theory to explain how a 757 could have caused the damage to the interior of the Pentagon in spite of the fact that most of it "just shredded into chunks" and was scattered all over the lawn.
Examining Ground Debris Landing Gear Evidence Rim photographed in the Pentagon wreckage. You can clearly see it is a double bead design as required by the NTSB, and you can also see it has had 90% of the rim edge smashed off in the crash. Some people have tried to claim that the rims are different from a 757 rim - well here (bottom) is a 757-200 rim from an American Airlines 757, I've outlined the exact same symmetrical holes. I think perhaps some people are thrown off by the balancing led weights attached on the rims in the bottom photo? Have you never taken your car in for a wheel alignment and tire balancing? This is clearly the same kind of rim found on a 757. (The hub-covers/grease-covers are not present for obvious reasons - to remove one you pop it off with a flathead screw driver... so how would you expect it to stay on in a 400mph impact with a reinforced concrete wall?)
While we agree that the wheel rim from the Pentagon appears to be the same as that of a Boeing 757, we need to look at the "wheel rim" evidence firstly in the context of a massive government conspiracy on 9/11, and secondly in context of the other - overwhelming - evidence that points to something other than a 757 having hit the Pentagon.
Taking these facts into consideration and the evidence for a general 9/11 government conspiracy, is it not plausible that the conspirators just might have "planted" evidence at some point in the operation? After all, if CatHerder grants the possibility of a government conspiracy and cover-up, why does he/she draw the line at the planting of evidence?
Keep in mind that there are very few available photos of aircraft debris inside the Pentagon: a wheel rim and a landing gear strut, and engine combustion chamber. The wheel rim was in the non-renovated Wedge 2 by the AE drive hole. And despite the assertions of the author of the ATS post, without expert analysis, no one can say that the few recognizable airplane parts are unequivocally from a 757.
Landing gear strut - appears to be from the nose gear - note how charred the area around it is.
This landing gear strut is inadmissable as evidence given the fact that the CatHerder does not claim to be an expert on landing gear and cannot verify from which aircraft this landing gear comes. As such, it could be the landing gear strut from any number of aircraft.
The next photo is from the cover from one of the conspiracy sites that demands "where is the plane?"- they must not have looked very hard, there are 2 obvious chunks of it in the photo. Another rim from the airplane on the right, and a large chunk of bulkhead on the left.
Again the alleged "evidence" of debris from a Boeing 757 in the above pictured debris is inconclusive. The fact that the ATS author claims categorically that there is "a large chunk of bulkhead on the left" is somewhat comical given his/her admitted lack of expertise in positively identifying charred remains of any aircraft let alone a Boeing 757. We should note that we are not saying that "no plane" hit the Pentagon, we are simply saying that the damage and debris is inconsistent with a Boeing 757.
Below: More parts from inside the 757 - note the Boeing green primer on 3 parts in this photo - two circled.
Again, for anyone, let alone an amateur like CatHerder, to claim that they can positively identify debris from a Boeing 757 from these mangled pieces of material raises questions about the integrity and impartiality of said individual. Can "CatHerder" be sure that these greenish pieces of material are not from some part of the inside of the Pentagon or from another type of aircraft? The very fact that all of these parts and bits of "evidence" were NOT trotted out by the governement and put on display for the public and experts to examine is more indication that if they had been, someone would have recognized them as something else entirely.
No official explanation for the above hole in ring C has ever been put forward, and the ATS author studiously ignores this fact. The official Pentagon building performance report simply states that:
"There was a hole in the east wall of ring C, emerging into AE Drive, between column lines 5 and 7 in Wedge 2. The wall failure was approximately 310 ft from where the fuselage of the aircraft entered the west wall of the building..."
That's it. The fact that whatever came out through this hole is essentially the object that hit the Pentagon and did the major part of the damage is apparently not deemed important enough, either by the US government or CatHerder, to deserve comment.
The fact is that the above image showing the round hole that was left in ring C is one of the most intriguing aspects of the Pentagon attack. While we might assume that it is unofficially claimed that one of the engines of Flight 77 made this hole (the engine being the only part of a 757 that could possibly be strong enough to pass through three rings of the Pentagon, never mind that it left no evidence of its entry on the exterior of the building), as we have seen, a disk that is verifiably part of the engine of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon was found at the front of the building, not in the third ring. This fact strongly suggests that the engine that the disk came from was destroyed in the initial blast at the front of the building. It is highly unlikely therefore that an engine of the plane that hit the Pentagon punched out this hole. Whatever the object was, it had enough force to breach the main reinforced steel concrete outer wall and then travel some 250 feet, passing through five other double-brick walls on the way. Terry Mitchell, Chief of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) was one of the first on the scene at this “punch out” point. In a DOD news briefing about the reconstruction of the Pentagon he stated:
“This is a hole in -- there was a punch-out. They suspect that this was where a part of the aircraft came through this hole, although I didn’t see any evidence of the aircraft down there.”
Indeed, it just must have been where part of the aircraft came out, yet there was no evidence of any part of an aircraft that could have made the hole! Never mind that CatHerder has just told us about all the evidence of the aircraft that is just laying all around! Later in the same briefing when referring to the same hole Mitchell must have realised his mistake and stated:
“This pile here is all Pentagon metal. None of that is aircraft whatsoever. As you can see, they’ve punched a hole in here. This was punched by the rescue workers to clean it out”.
So which was it? Was the hole punched out by some part of the aircraft or by rescue workers? Was the pile of stuff aircraft debris, as CatHerder claims, or was it "all Pentagon metal" as Terry Mitchell says? Look again at the picture of the hole. We don’t need the contradictory statements of Mr. Mitchell to conclude that, due to the fact that the debris is on the outside of the building, the hole was punched out from the inside, yet how could it have been “punched out” by rescue workers when there are scorch marks at the top of the hole on the outside? Did the rescue workers punch out this hole when the fire was still raging inside? Hardly likely. Limiting air flow is part of fighting a fire. You don’t make holes to let in more air while you are trying to extinguish a fire.
Dare we suggest that the OASD chief was lying that day? That he changed his story because the “official” version of events did not include the idea that part of the aircraft made that hole, because it is inconceivable that any part of a 757 could have done so? If so, then a government official is on record as having lied about the events at the Pentagon, yet such does not dissuade CatHerder from trying to convince the public that the official government story about the strike on the Pentagon is correct.
Below, another photo of a tire with the same pattern as ones used on a 757, found in the Pentagon wreckage.
Again, for anyone to present a grainy picture of something that vaguely resembles a tyre and then claim that this is a positive ID of the wheel of a Boeing 757 simply gives us further cause to believe that CatHerder either has an agenda about which he/she is not being honest, or is so invested in his/her need to prove the government story correct that he/she has lost any hope of being objective about his/her analysis of the evidence.
Engine Evidence Let’s take a look at some of the ground debris that appears to be related to an aircraft engine. Many different sites and posts have reported that the 757 uses Rolls-Royce engines [RB211-535E4B] - however it should be noted, for the sake of thuroughness (ibid), that American Airlines also use Pratt & Witney engines [PW2037] in many of their 757 fleet. You can also view this information on their website. (The 757 fleets around the world actually use over six different kinds of engines.) The 757 that is reported to have hit the Pentagon was using RB211-535E4B engines. Here is are photos of some apparent engine parts from the Pentagon crash site. Image portion cropped from (source) - Another View What is seen in this photo is most likely the APU (Aux Power Unit) used in a 757 that is equipped with Rolls-Royce RB211 engines. The APU (Honeywell GTCP331-200) is located in the tail section of the aircraft (that's what the large vent that looks like a 3rd jet engine is) as edvidenced (ibid) on this technical rescue reference aid from Boeing. Boeing 757 reference website. These small turbine engines are quite common on modern turbine & turbofan passenger aircraft, and are used to furnish ground auxillary power while the main engines are shut down during ground operations. An online training aid lets you Play around with the controls on a 757/767 instrument pannel (ibid).
The reader will notice in the above something that CatHerder does repeatedly throughout his/her analysis. When presenting his/her argument he/she pads out the point being made with additional information that is often irrelevant to the point being made, but which is included, it seems, to create the impression that the point being made is well-researched or "factual". For example, what does a link to an online pilot training aid that lets you play around with a 757 instrument panel have to do with identifying the disk in the above picture?
There have been some people who claim that a Global Hawk was what hit the Pentagon. Here is what John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce (Indianapolis), had to say about the part in the photo above 'It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I'm familiar with, and certainly not the AE 3007H made here in Indy.' (Of course it wouldn't be anything he's familiar with, it's a powerplant made by Honeywell.) The AE 3007 engines are used in small commuter jets such as the Cessna Citation; the AE 3007H is also used in the military's unmanned aircraft, the Global Hawk. The Global Hawk is manufactured by Northrop Grumman's subsidiary Ryan Aeronautical, which it acquired from Teledyne, Inc. in July 1999. A detailed view of what the turbofan that powers the Global Hawk looks like - I'm sure you can see it's too small to be anything in the pictures contained here or anywhere else in the Pentagon crash evidence. Also visible in this photo, one of the 757's blue passenger seats to the left of the turbine, and possibly a 2nd seat above the other seat.
Again CatHerder reveals his/her possible agenda by selective quoting (and without references) in the above paragraph. First of all, the comments by Rolls Royce spokeman John Brown are taken from an American Free Press article written by Christopher Bollyn.
Bollyn undertook the task of trying to find out what exactly the disk in the above photo was. He called Honeywell’s Aerospace division in Phoenix, Ariz., where the GTCP331-200 APU used on the 757 aircraft is made: “There’s no way that’s an APU wheel”, an expert at Honeywell told AFP. The expert, who cannot be named, added: “That turbine disc—there’s no way in the world that came out of an APU”
The first point then is that an expert form Honeywell that makes the APU for the 757 has stated categorically that the APU wheel in the photo is not from a 757.
As mentioned by CatHerder, Bollyn then contacted John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce (Indianapolis), asking if the disk was from a Rolls Royce manufactured engine, perhaps the AE3007H used in the Global Hawk. Brown’s response was:
“It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I’m familiar with, and certainly not the AE 3007H made here in Indy.”
Next Bollyn called Pratt & Whitney who manufactures parts of the 757’s turbofan jet engines:
“If the aircraft that struck the Pentagon was a Boeing 757-200 owned by American Airlines, then it would have to be a Rolls Royce engine”, Mark Sullivan, spokesman for Pratt & Whitney, told AFP.
So we have another spokesman for Pratt and Whitney, who, along with Rolls Royce, manufacture parts of the 757s main engines (not the APU), who has contradicted John Brown of Rolls Royce by saying that the part MUST be from a Rolls Royce engine, which includes the possiblity that it was the AE 3007H which is the engine in a Global Hawk, yet it is NOT the GTCP331-200 which is the APU used on the Boeing 757 as stated by the Honeywell expert.
Bollyn then contacted John W. Brown, spokesman for Rolls Royce once more, to inform him that the Pratt & Whitney spokesperson had stated that it must be a piece of a Rolls Royce engine. At this point Brown balked and asked who at Pratt & Whitney had provided the information.
Asked again if the disc in the photo was a piece of a Rolls Royce RB211-535, or from the AE 3007 series, Brown said he could not answer.
Bollyn then asked Brown if he was actually familiar with the parts of an AE 3007H, which is made at the Indiana plant: “No”, Brown said. “I don’t build the engines. I am a spokesman for the company. I speak for the company.”So the Rolls Royce spokesman that CatHerder quotes as an expert on the evidence that the disk in the photo cannot be from a Global Hawk has stated that he is not familiar with the parts of the Global Hawk engine and is therefore not qualified to make any statement about the origins of the the wheel in the photo.
We are left then with the likelihood that the disk in the photo IS from a Rolls Royce engine, but NOT from the APU of the 757 as stated by the Honeywell expert. Could it then be a part of one of the main engines of a 757? By all accounts it is far too small to be the disk from one of the 757's main engines, given that they are between 6 and 7 ft in diameter. The disk on the AE 3007H however is a little over 3 ft in diameter, and despite what CatHerder says, the disk in the photo is a very good match for that of a AE 3007H, the engine used on a Global Hawk but never on a Boeing 757.
Bollyn states:
Rolls Royce produces the RB211-535 (main) engines for American Airlines 757-200 aircraft at a plant in Derby, England. Martin Johnson, head of communications at Rolls Royce in Derby, said he had followed the story closely in American Free Press and had also been notified in advance by Rolls Royce offices in Seattle and Indianapolis. However, rather than address the question of the unidentified disc, Johnson launched a verbal attack on this reporter for questioning the government version of events at the Pentagon on 9-11. ‘You are the only person in the world who does not believe that a 757 hit the Pentagon’, Johnson said. ‘The idea that we can have a reasonable conversation is beyond your wildest dreams’, Johnson said and hung up the phone.
While there can be no definitive statements made on the matter, the available evidence would seem to suggest that the engine disk in the FEMA photos is probably too small to be part of a 757 engine and, contrary to what CatHerder states, according to the Honeywell expert that makes the APU for the 757, it is definitely not a part of a 757’s APU. So what is it? It could very well be part of a Global Hawk AE3007H engine.Back to our ATS author:
Below is a significant portion of a badly smashed RB211 engine in the Pentagon wreckage - what appears to be the diffusor section of the compressor, one of the pumps remains partially attached, some hoses and the familiar webbed wire wraps (to the right of the main ring) and some of the Boeing yellow primed support structure is lying beside it (left, with rivets - again: note the yellow primer, we'll cover that further down). Reference: Image of the engine used on the 757 (it's the rightmost one, top row) Rolls-Royce
Yet again our non-expert author presents photographs of mangled pieces of debris and asserts categorically that they are parts from a 757 engine.
In this case, we are provided with a link to a picture of a 757 engine without its casing from which our author can apparently quite easily identify things like the "diffusor section of the compressor" and "one of the pumps" and "some hoses and the familiar webbed wire wraps".
Ah yes! Those familiar webbed wire wraps, known and loved in every household across the country! The photo below is the reference that our author has used to positively match the mangled and burnt debris above. Well? Can't you see it! It's right there!! Clearly the debris above is the very same 757 engine in the photo below!
No? Well, obviously you just don't trust enough in the word of the US government and its agent, CatHerder. If you did, you would be able to see the truth straight away. (End sarcasm.)
Another engine part, bottom right.
Again, for the author, in his/her non-expert opinion, to declare that the circular piece of debris in the above photo is "another engine part" is either evidence of extreme subjectivity or a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader. We are beginning to think it is the latter.
Below: Evidence of the right engine impact on the side of the building is evident on the large pillar being sprayed with fire retardant. (click photo for huge version)
At this point, CatHerder's sweeping statements about damage to the Pentagon and what caused it are getting to be somewhat farcical. In this case, as in almost every statement made by the him/her so far, the claim is spurious to say the least.
Click on the link to view a larger version of the photo. You will see that the chunk of masonry that is missing is a the level of the second floor windows in the Pentagon. If, as CatHerder states, the engine of a 757 did this damage then the nose of the plane would have impacted several feet higher around the middle of the second floor. Yet CatHerder sees no problem with making such a claim while at the same time presenting photographs that show clearly that whatever hit the Pentagon struck the facade at the level of the first floor!
Again, we realize that we have been dazzled with more photos and more unsubstantiated claims.
The hit lightpoles, and damaged vehicles in the flightpath (click for larger images)
Indeed, damaged lightpoles, but was it a 757 that did this damage or another type of craft? We aren't saying that a plane did not hit the Pentagon. Hardly anyone IS saying that. The only thing at issue is what KIND of plane was it?
The debris field of small chunks of plane witnesses said debris "rained down for minutes after the crash". (click for larger images)
Again, (and we are sure you are getting tired of this by now) the debris in the upper photos is extremely small and most likely to be masonry from the facade of the Pentagon rather than "small chunks of plane" as CatHerder states. Note yet again that he (or she) is making sweeping assertions without providing any evidence at all for any of his/her claims! Somehow, probably due to the abundance of photos and the authoritative writing style that has very little content, many people actually accept this bit of what can only be called "yellow journalism" as a serious debunking of the "No Boeing" idea!
As noted by Thierry Meyssan in his book Pentagate, even the American government has refused to recognise that the infamous piece of debris in the lower photo on the left above is a part of the Flight 77, yet CatHerder sagely affirms that it is, without doubt, a piece of Flight 77. As for the "eyewitnesses" statements that debris "rained down for minutes after the crash", we do not doubt that it did, but that has little or no bearing on our investigation into whether Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, or whether it was something else.
[Deleted part of CatHerder's analysis of the size of the infamous "piece of plane" given that the point has already been made that the US government officially disowns this as a part of Flight 77.]
Even the black boxes have been recovered, the reason given for not playing the flight voice recorder for the media was that it wouldn't serve any use other than to cause more emotional pain to family members (I agree with them frankly).
Well, again CatHerder is being disingenuous.
Flight data recorders were found at the Pentagon on Spetember 14th 2001. On Feb. 25, 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that Flight 77's data recorder provided altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder contained nothing useful. [CBS]
Later, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that the data on the cockpit voice data recorder was unrecoverable. No further explanation was given for these contradictory statements.
If the cockpit voice data really was unrecoverable, it would be the first time in aviation history a solid-state data recorder (the type used on Flight 77) was unrecoverable after a crash.
From a Scientific American feature article lauding the "Better Black Box" in their [WWW] September 2000 issue:
Nearly 100,000 flight recorders have been installed in commercial aircraft over the past four decades. The prices of the latest models generally range from $10,000 to $20,000. Their survival rate has greatly improved in recent years as the FAA has raised the certification requirements. Although older recorders using magnetic tape were susceptible to fire damage, no solid-state device has been destroyed in an accident to date.
Lawyers representing 9/11 victim families are attempting to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain transcripts of the black-box data. See [WWW] 9/11 Lawyers Seek Black-Box Data on Saudi Hijackers by Tom Flocco, which indicates the FBI are obstructing the NTSB review of the black box data. [Flight 77 Black Boxes]
So we see it was not the case that only the public did not get to hear what was on the data recorders, the families of the victims have been left out in the cold too.
So much for wanting to prevent emotional pain!
Of course, as Flight 77 was not the plane involved in the Pentagon Attack, it's black boxes would presumably show that, and the government would be very reluctant to allow the data to be examined, or allow the NTSB to carry out the investigation of the crash that is required by law. [Flight 77 Black Boxes]
As an interesting aside on the black boxes, Allyn E. Kilsheimer is the CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, the company responsible for rebuilding the Pentagon under the Phoenix Project. He was the head structural engineer on the rebuilding project and the first structural engineer to arrive at the scene (at the request of the DOD by the way). He stated
"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." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"
Of course, the idea that we should give any credit to the words of someone who was immediately called by the Pentagon to come and "assess the damage" and who went on to make millions from the reconstruction project is laughable. Kilsheimer was also the "government's man" at the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing and the first WTC bombing. Coincidence?But it doesn't end there. Kilsheimer claimed that he "found the black box" on the afternoon of 9/11. The only problem with this statement is that it is an out and out lie, and verifiably so. From MSNBC
"Carlton Burkhammer was at work at Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Station 14 when he heard about the World Trade Center crashes. Part of Fairfax County’s elite urban search and rescue team, Burkhammer prepared to suit up and head to New York City. One of the nation’s most experienced rescue teams, the squad had been deployed in disasters all over the world: Oklahoma City, embassy bombings, the Turkey earthquake. [...] Early Friday morning, shortly before 4 a.m., Burkhammer and another firefighter, Brian Moravitz, were combing through debris near the impact site. Peering at the wreckage with their helmet lights, the twospotted an intact seat from the plane’s cockpit with a chunk of the floor still attached. Then they saw two odd-shaped dark boxes, about 1.5 by 2 feet long."
Yet again we have a government agent openly and PROVABLY lying about the events surrounding the attack on the Pentagon, but that again does not give CatHerder any pause for thought before trumpeting the official story as the truth.
Area of fence to the right of the impact area partially flattened by the right engine of the plane. Note how a couple of the poles are bent right over, some are sheered off at the top, yet the pole and fence portion on the left is untouched (obviously the right engine took out the fence to the right of those poles) and the entire back side of the fence has been torn away. The generator was hit by the right wing and engine before the 757 hit the building - the damage is evidenced by other photos of the crash area. Closeup of generator smashed in the front and gouged on the top - hard to image a missile accomplishing both of these. But if the right engine of a 757 hit the front of the generator, part of the wing could gouge the top. At the very least, something very large, and very heavy smashed into this extremely heavy desil generator. Click the image on the left to view a large top-down image of the impact area, including the large desil (sic) generator which is visibly damaged, and actually spun ~45 degrees from the impact! Most importantly it is spun ~45 degrees towards the building - if this was a missile or a bomb, the explosion could ONLY have spun it away from the building.
In the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon attack, the Associated Press reported that a truck bomb had exploded at the Pentagon. There were other reports that a helicopter had exploded. It certainly seems likely then that something exploded in the vicinity of the Pentagon before the main impact. As noted by CatHerder, there was a diesel generator stationed just to the right of the impact point in front of the Pentagon that was part of the Pentagon refurbishment project. Diesel generators usually have a large fuel tank located somewhere nearby to power them. Photos taken moments after the impact show an already burning fire to the right of the main impact site that is emitting a dense cloud of black smoke.
This black smoke is consistent with burning fuel (diesel), which continued to burn long after the flames and smoke from the main impact had died down. If Flight 77 impacted the Pentagon, we would expect there to be a major and prolonged fire from the thousands of gallons of aircraft fuel that Flight 77 was carrying. But in the case that another smaller aircraft was used, the lack of burning aircraft fuel would be evident. It is our contention therefore that the conspirators detonated a bomb near the generator just before or at the moment of impact in order to augment the aircraft explosion claim (complete with thousands of gallons of fuel) and also to provide a literal smoke screen in an attempt to hide the fact that Flight 77 was not involved in the attack.
The Gate CameraSome people don't seem to see perspective correctly. I've zoomed in, and compared the two frames over and over - here is what I see as the airplane. I will repeat, however, that this is terrible evidence due to the horrible quality of the original images. I do believe, however, that the white smoke in the images is caused by one or more damaged engine from the impact with the multiple light poles on the way in (as seen in the above image). I stuck in a 757 that was at relatively the same angle - except it's banking slightly to starboard instead of to port - hence the ONE wing is out of place. If it was banking slightly to port it would fit perfectly... However, once again - this is entirely subjective and the image quality from the released surveillance camera is not good enough to form a factual opinion.
The author's comment that "if it was banking slightly to port it (a 757) would fit perfectly" is really quite humorous. The fact is that you could "stick in" a tank or a bus or a large two-storey house and they would also "fit perfectly".
The facts are as follows:
There were at least four video cameras capable of recording the attack on the Pentagon. One was on the roof of the Sheraton Hotel, a second was at a gas station across the road from the Pentagon itself, the third belonged to the Virginia Department of Transportation and was stationed on route 27, which the aircraft flew over. The fourth was the Pentagon’s security camera stationed at the opposite one end of the façade from where the plane struck.
The footage from the cameras at the Sheraton, the gas station and on route 27 were confiscated by the FBI and have never been released. The only footage made available to the public was that recorded by the Pentagon’s security camera. According to the Washigton Times however, both the DOJ and the FBI denied responsibility for releasing the footage from the Pentagon's security camera:
"The Pentagon has not released any video or any photos from security cameras from the terrorist attack of Sept. 11," said Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin. A spokeswoman at the Department of Justice, which reviews taped and photographed evidence obtained by federal security cameras, said she could not comment on whether the photos are legitimate, adding that the photos "were not disseminated by the FBI or the Department of Justice."
Of course, a simple denial does not mean that someone within the DOJ or the DOD or the FBI did not release the footage to the public, after all, we are dealing with a massive 9/11 conspiracy and the footage is from the Pentagon's very own security camera. We can assume with a reasonable degree of certainty therefore, that someone within one of the arms of the American military/ political/ industrial complex released the footage and then denied that they did so, and for a very specific reason.
The above photo is the first still from the only video footage of the Pentagon attack that has been made available. It is alleged that it shows an approaching Boeing 757 in the upper right hand corner. Do you see a Boeing 757-200 in this picture?
If we think back to the images and video footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 hitting the WTC towers, we remember that we all saw both large Boeing airplanes, as clear as day, even though they were flying at over 500 mph and were over 1,000 feet up in the air when they struck the WTC Towers. This provides us with an excellent guide on how such commercial aircraft appear at that distance. The side of the Pentagon is 971 feet long and the plane in the footage is no more than 750 feet (250 yards) from the camera that is stationed near the opposite end of the Pentagon. Remember the indelible images of those huge planes flying into the World Trade Center towers? Even at that distance, even with the size of the WTC towers, the image and size of the aircraft that was burned into our minds from having seen the tapes replayed endlessly, is awe-inspiring.
Now, look again at the above image from the Pentagon Security camera of the plane approaching the building. Ask yourself the question: where is the Boeing 757-200 in this image?
Next time you are at an airport, take five minutes and go and look at some planes on the runway. Pick out a large passenger jet that is approximately 750 feet away, preferably one in the process of taking off or landing. Take a picture of it. Then look at this image from the Pentagon Security camera again and ask yourself. Where is that Boeing 757?!The fact is that if a Boeing 757 really did hit the Pentagon, it would stick out like, well… like a Boeing 757 in this footage, but the simple and obvious fact is that there is no Boeing 757 there. In fact, there is no plane of any description in the footage released by the Pentagon.
Note that the time stamp displays a date and time of September 12th at 5.37:19 pm. The DOD has offered no reason for this discrepancy, which is understandable since they claim to have no knowledge about who released the images. In the footage, the progression of seconds jumps from 19, where it starts, to 21 and then on to 22 and 23 where it ends, meaning that one second and an undetermined number of frames have been cut from the film. No explanation has ever been offered by any official sources as to why this video footage has clearly been “doctored”, why one second and several frames have been removed – frames that would likely show just what it was that struck the Pentagon. Of course, this is very convenient for exponents of the official story. The footage shows something flying into the Pentagon and exploding, and since we were all immediately told that that "something" was a 757, the case is closed, right?
Not really.
Quite apart from the fact that the doctoring of the video strongly suggests that someone released this footage in an attempt to provide "evidence" to the public that a 757 hit the Pentagon, while at the same time removing the incriminating frames and denying the public the right to actually see what it was, in the images above we see a stream of white smoke that is entirely inconsistent with a commercial jet aircraft at ground level and much more in line with the trail left by a missile launch. Please note however that I am not saying that only a “missile” struck the Pentagon.
Note also the picture of actual impact and explosion.
Have you ever burned oil, or car gas or diesel? It burns with a dense black smoke, as does oil (see above picture of claimed truck bomb). The flame is predominantly red, which, I am told, is due to the low burn temperature of oil-based fuel (see picture of flames from plane explosions at WTC). While there are few bomb or explosive experts willing to weigh in, there have been a few who claim to know about bomb detonations who affirm that this white flame is clear evidence of explosives detonating. In fact, several eyewitnesses to the attack made it very clear that they knew that the explosion involved explosives, not a mere aircraft full of fuel.
Eyewitness to the Pentagon attack and Pentagon worker Don Perkal, was on the scene within minutes: “Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere.”
He also stated:
“Hundreds of F.B.I., Secret Service and Defense Department plainclothes investigators were deployed in the parking lot, recording witness statements.”
Another eyewitness, Gilah Goldsmith said:
“We saw a huge black cloud of smoke”, adding that it smelled like cordite, or gun smoke.
Witnesses inside the Pentagon, mostly military men, described a shockwave and a blast.The Washington Post ran a story where it was stated:
Air Force Lt. Col. Marc Abshire, 40, a speechwriter for Air Force Secretary James Roche, was working on several speeches this morning when he felt the blast of the explosion at the Pentagon. His office is on the D ring, near the eighth corridor, he said. “It shot me back in my chair. There was a huge blast. I could feel the air shock wave of it”, Abshire said. “I didn’t know exactly what it was. It didn’t rumble. It was more of a direct smack.” Donald R. Bouchoux, 53, a retired Naval officer, a Great Falls resident, a Vietnam veteran and former commanding officer of a Navy fighter squadron, was driving west from Tysons Corner to the Pentagon for a 10am meeting. He wrote:
“At 9:40 a.m. I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards (should be more than 150 yards from the impact) in front of me and impacted the side of the building. There was an enormous fireball, followed about two seconds later by debris raining down. The car moved about a foot to the right when the shock wave hit.”
John Bowman, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and a contractor, was in his office in Corridor Two near the main entrance to the south parking lot.
“Everything was calm”, Bowman said. “Most people knew it was a bomb. Everyone evacuated smartly. We have a good sprinkling of military people who have been shot at.”
Stars and Stripes reporter Lisa Burgess was walking on the Pentagon’s innermost corridor, across the courtyard, when the incident happened.
“I heard two loud booms - one large, one smaller, and the shock wave threw me against the wall”, she said.
Anger and guilt still sear Lieutenant Colonel Michael Beans who shakes his head ruefully and asks himself why he survived: "Why you, not them? Who made that decision?" (…) Inside the Pentagon, the blast lifted Beans off the floor as he crossed a huge open office toward his desk. "You heard this huge concussion, then the room filled with this real bright light, just like everything was encompassed within this bright light," said Beans. "As soon as I hit the floor, all the lights went out, there was a small fire starting to burn."
So we see that several witnesses, both inside and outside the building, described a shockwave that knocked them to the ground. Several described it as a concussion. Such a shockwave cannot be explained by the impact of an aircraft or the combustion of jet fuel, and indicates the detonation of an explosive. Explosive detonations produce blast pressures thousands of times stronger than hydrocarbon fireballs because explosives are oxidized by chemicals intrinsic to them whereas hydrocarbons rely on oxygen in ambient air for combustion. Consequently the chemical reaction proceeds at a much higher rate in an explosive.
Hydrocarbon fireballs can produce detonation waves if the fuel and air are mixed prior to ignition, but such detonation waves are comparatively weak. The violence of most plane crashes precludes such pre-mixing. In the Twin Tower jet collisions, the columns of the curtain walls diced the fuel tanks in the wings, assuring fuel and air mixing about as optimally as could be imagined in a collision, and yet there were no reports of detonation shockwaves from any survivors from the floors below the impact point.
Cordite is an explosive compound used in aircraft gun ammunition. Several witnesses with the benefit of military experience recognized the smell of this compound. Cordite N consists of three main explosive compounds: nitroguanidine, nitrocellulose, and nitroglycerin. It is cool-burning, and produces little smoke and no flash, but, like other explosives, produces a strong detonation wave.
Back to ATS forum post:
Lets look at the physics involved
Here CatHerder takes us off on a tangent that is wholly irrelevant to the task of analysing the likely physical impact of 80 tons of metal and other solid matter on the Pentagon and therefore to answering the question of whether or not Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, because, despite the above heading, the only physics that is employed by the people at Perdue University is that pertaining to the physics of liquid, i.e. the fuel in the wings of the plane and its hypothesised effect on the Pentagon facade and interior. It therefore has little to do with the job of ironing out the problems of the claim that an 80 ton Boeing aircraft hit the Pentagon. We can only assume that it is an attempt to confuse the reader and detract from the main issue - that the totality of evidence at the Pentagon crash site is entirely inconsistent with a Boeing 757 having hit the Pentagon that day.
Engineers, computer scientists and graphics technology experts at Purdue University have created the first publicly available simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what theoretically happened when the Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon last Sept. 11 Using simulation software called LS-Dyna, the smart folks use the physically accurate simulation results as input to animations and visualizations to produce a vivid reenactment of the impact of the aircraft on the Pentagon building and provide the larger team with the necessary data to construct these using 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD, and research tools.
Again the author is being less that transparent and omits to specify that the referenced research looks at the impact of the liquid in the fuel tanks and its effect on the Pentagon. In fact it is a testimony to the fact that even those that hold to the official version of events have had to resort to the idea that, in their own words:
"a basic hypothesis, informally confirmed with engineers knowledgeable in this subject, is that the bulk of the impact damage is due to the body of fuel in the wing and center tanks."
And why? Because the damage to the Pentagon, including the 8 feet wide circular hole punched out in ring C is ENTIRELY inconsistent with the impact of an 80 ton 757 jetliner.
The Purdue folks further state that:
"The purpose of this simulation is to understand the response of a reinforced concrete column subjected to high-speed impact of the fuel in the aircraft tanks."
But CatHerder conveniently leaves the details out.
Now we can see, through a very competent and valid simulator, what happened in the attack on the Pentagon. Click here to view a video generated by the simulator. Or, click here to read the white paper.
Again, this simulation does not show us "what happened in the attack on the Pentagon", it shows us the hypothesised effect of the FUEL in the wings on the Pentagon and is an example of the desperate attempts to find an explanation, ANY explanation, for why the impact damage is NOT consistent with the impact of a 757 when the government says it was a 757. In fact, the study above is contradictory if one wants to stick with the "13 ft cylinder" and "confetti-ized" wings theory. You can't have it both ways.
In layman's terms the crash dynamics worked like so: A large hollow tube, with a belly full of luggage, a passenger bay with 60 people, and wings full of fuel smashed into the side of an almost solid object while moving at a tremendous speed (somewhere around 350-400mph). When the 225,000lb+ plane hit, it smashed apart with such force from the crash that it became like one massive column of liquid (no, the plane didn't melt or turn into liquid, it just acted like one physically - mountainslides act the same way, a million tons of rock acts like a large field of liquid during a landslide even if no water is present). All the small parts, luggage, people, seats, and all the tens of thousands of pounds of fuel acting like a massive river came crashing into the wall of the Pentagon. This force burst through the outside wall and flowed through the inside to the next wall, and momentum carried this mass until it finally ran out of inertia at the 3rd ring.Plane hitting WTC (another example of crash fluid dynamics) - RealAudio Required - note how the 767 "liquifies" and flows through the WTC tower. Please do read the information on the Perdue website yourself - I don't do it justice with my one paragraph of paraphrasing!
Indeed, not only does the author's paraphrasing and selective use of data not tell the truth about the real nature and reason for this "simulation", it attempts to distract and confuse the reader by suggesting that an 80 ton solid aircraft was little more than a column of liquid! Again, you can't have it both ways. If you are going to include the wings and fuel tanks, and twin 6 TON engines, then the hole is way too small for all of this together to have created it.
For anyone to try and compare the effects of an 80 ton aircraft crashing into a building at 400mph to the effects of a landslide of rocks and soil is far-fetched at best, yet it is testimony to the extreme lengths that CatHerder must go to to try and prove that a 757 hit the Pentagon when there is simply no evidence to stand on.
If a 757 really did hit the Pentagon then there should be no need for outlandish theories about columns of water. The evidence SHOULD be all there, and it should be a breeze to present facts that would quickly dismiss any attempts to suggest otherwise.
But we see that this is not the case, in fact the exact oppostite is true! CatHerder is finding it very difficult to prove something that should be easily provable if the evidence was there for ALL to see.
Please read again his/her claim that the plane:
"smashed apart with such force from the crash that it became like one massive column of liquid (no, the plane didn't melt or turn into liquid, it just acted like one physically) [....] all the small parts, luggage, people, seats, and all the tens of thousands of pounds of fuel acting like a massive river came crashing into the wall of the Pentagon. This force burst through the outside wall and flowed through the inside to the next wall, and momentum carried this mass until it finally ran out of inertia at the 3rd ring"
It is amazing to observe CatHerder suggesting that, on impact with the Pentagon, all of the parts of a 757 broke into pieces - flew everywhere as confetti - then somehow formed themselves into a 9 foot wide 20 feet tall concentrated column of energy (or water-like substance) that broke through 5 walls of the Pentagon leaving a neat 8 ft by 12 ft round hole in the final 6th wall. Understand also that it is to such outlandish lengths that anyone, not just CatHerder, must go to if they want to make a 757 "fit" as the object that struck the Pentagon on September 11th 2001.(Removed two arial images of Pentagon before and after impact due to a lack of any stated reason for inclusion. See ATS website to view them.)
Eye Witness Testimony Lets look at some eye witness testimony sticking only to people who saw a plane hit the building, and not look at people who saw an airliner, but didn't see an airplane hit the building because they looked away or were too far away (behind a hill, behind a building, etc) to see it actually hit the building. "Aydan Kizildrgli, an English language student who is a native of Turkey, saw the jetliner bank slightly then strike a western wall of the huge five-sided building that is the headquarters of the nation's military. 'There was a big boom,' he said. 'Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled "Did you see that?" Nobody could believe it.'" - "Bush Vows Retaliation for 'Evil Acts'." USA Today, 11 Sep 2001
Note that in the above, the statement that this eyewitness saw an "airliner" is made by the USA reporter who wrote the story, not by the eyewitness himself who only heard a "big boom".
"Frank Probst, an information management specialist for the Pentagon Renovation Program, left his office trailer near the Pentagon's south parking lot at 9:36 a.m. Sept. 11. Walking north beside Route 27, he suddenly saw a commercial airliner crest the hilltop Navy Annex. American Airlines Flight 77 reached him so fast and flew so low that Probst dropped to the ground, fearing he'd lose his head to its right engine." - "A Defiant Recovery." The Retired Officer Magazine, January 2002
Again, the comment that this eyewitness saw a "commerical airliner" is made by the reporter, not the eyewitness. In any case, an information management specialist working on the Pentagon Renovation Program is hardly a credible witness.
"Omar Campo, a Salvadorean, was cutting the grass on the other side of the road when the plane flew over his head. 'It was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane,' Mr Campo said. 'I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt the impact. The whole ground shook and the whole area was full of fire. I could never imagine I would see anything like that here.'"- "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts."The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001
As I have said, I am not suggesting that no plane hit the Pentagon, I am suggesting that no 757 hit the Pentagon. I believe a plane did hit the Pentagon, because there is evidence of aircraft debris, (however scant that debris might be) and that it was dressed up in American Airline colors, complete with fake windows, in which case, it is possible that eyewitnesses may have concluded it was a passenger plane. Of course, a passenger plane is also the description of an aircraft the size of a twelve or twenty seat private jet, or something about the size of such a jet painted with AA colors.
"Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over.'There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way in.'"- "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts." The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001
This testimony is consistent with an aircraft hitting the Pentagon, but not necessarily a 757. The comment that a "huge screaming noise" was heard is contradicted by other testimonies (below)
"Henry Ticknor, intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, was driving to church that Tuesday morning when American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car and struck the Pentagon. 'There was a puff of white smoke and then a huge billowing black cloud,' he said." - "Hell on Earth." UU World
This eyewitness did not explicitly say that he saw AA Flight 77. His actualy testimony is prefaced with the comment by the reporter that "American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car". What the eyewitness actually saw was a "puff of white smoke", which is a very interesting. One naturally wonders why the reporter did not quote the witness entirely instead of putting words in his mouth that he may never have said.
"We were the only people, we think, who saw it live," Dan Creed said. He and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car near the Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane dive down and level off. "It was no more than 30 feet off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It was nothing more than a guided missile at that point," Creed said. "I can still see the plane. I can still see it right now. It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going full speed, going full throttle, its wheels up," - Ahwatukee Foothill News
If this testimony is truthful, then there is little doubt that this eyewitness saw a plane, but was it a 757? Notice that he never says that it was a Boeing 757. More "selective quoting."
Gary Bauer former Presidential candidate, "I looked at the woman sitting in the car next to me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all thinking the same thing. We looked out the front of our windows to try to see the plane, and it wasn't until a few seconds later that we realized the jet was coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible moment." Massachusetts News
If this testimony is truthful, then there is little doubt that this eyewitness saw a plane, but was it a 757? Having said that, we note that Gary Bauer was a presidential candidate in 2000 and is an avowed right-winger and Bush supporter, for what it's worth.
Sean Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief - "I just looked up and I saw the big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the building," Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief Sean Boger said. "It exploded. I fell to the ground and covered my head. I could actually hear the metal going through the building." dcmilitary.com November 16, 2001
CatHerder must be completely unaware of what constitutes a credible witness. Perhaps it escaped him/her that we are dealing with a government conspiracy to murder and the testimony of a Pentagon official can hardly be called impartial.
"The only way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that we saw pieces of the nose gear. The devastation was horrific. It was obvious that some of the victims we found had no time to react. The distance the firefighters had to travel down corridors to reach the fires was a problem. With only a good 25 minutes of air in their SCBA bottles, to save air they left off their face pieces as they walked and took in a lot of smoke," Captain Defina said. Captain Defina was the shift commander [of an aircraft rescue firefighters crew.] NFPA Journal November 1, 2001
Captain Defina may well have seen pieces of a nose gear, or some aircraft part that looked like a nose gear, but to which aircraft did these pieces belong? Having said that, it is somewhat surprising that the nose gear from any aircraft would be visible inside the Pentagon if we are to believe that the nosegear took the full force of the initial impact. After all, the nose gears is one of the most fragile parts of a Boeing aircraft, being made out of carbon rather than aluminium, and would undoubtedly be destroyed beyond recognition by the time it reached the interior of the building. Of course, if the nose gear of the plane that struck the Pentagon was not the first thing to impact, then it is possible that some nose gear debris might be found inside.
That's just a small smattering of people who have gone on record as seeing the plane, and the plane hit the Pentagon. I could have included the dozens of people who saw the plane, but didn't see it hit (because it went behind a bridge, a hill, or some trees), but I choose only to post the ones that sounded the most valid and actually saw the plane hit the building. (I included the one firechief who states he saw some plane wreckage during firefighting/rescue attempts.) There are most likely twenty times more that either haven't been publicly recorded as seeing the crash, or simply don't want the attention. You can't honeslty sit there and deny the witnesses, the photographs, the facts, the science, and the reality that there was a terrorist attack on the Pentagon if you look at everything available and not one single tidbit of information at a time.
If that's the best CatHerder can do in assembling testimony, it simply proves our point about the overly anxious and desperate efforts being made to prove something that, if it were true, would not require such efforts.
Notice the subtle suggestion that CatHerder's analysis includes "everything available". Notice also that the two testimonies from Pentagon employees are included in those that CatHerder believes to be the "most valid". Also, having presented us with some dubious and inconclusive eyewitness testimonies, we are told that we cannot deny that these testimonies are proof conclusive that a 757 really did hit the Pentagon! What is true, as CatHerder states, is that there are indeed many more eyewitness testimonies that he/she could have included. However, once you read some of them, you will understand why he/she did not include them.
For example:
Lon Rains, an editor of Space.com, was also an eyewitness to the Pentagon attack. He commented:
“In light traffic the drive up Interstate 395 from Springfield to downtown Washington takes no more than 20 minutes. But that morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o’clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment. 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.”
Allen Cleveland of Woodbridge Virginia looked out from a Metro train going to National Airport, to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics."" . . a silver pasenger jet, mid sized"
Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City:
“The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington cemetery so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395. It was flying so fast that he couldn’t read any writing on the side. The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a nonexistent runway"
“I was right underneath the plane”, said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor for Atlantis Co., who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. “I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying.”
Kirk Milburn - who was driving his vehicle at the time - said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon, and because he saw it he also said, “I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying”.
What he said next, however, is not in keeping with a 757:
“I guess it was hitting light poles”, said Milburn. “It was like a whoosh whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion.”
Notice that the witness says, “I guess it was hitting the light poles”. One suspects that he couldn’t see it if he was guessing. What is most interesting is that he said, “It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion”. No doubt he saw something, but since he was also driving at the time, it is not certain exactly what he saw.
Two early, primary witnesses have described a sound of a “whoosh”! The second one, when he couldn’t see it, said it was like a “WHOOSH whoosh”, just like the other man who couldn’t see it, but then he has also told us that he saw a plane and heard a plane. But what he described was most definitely not a 757 flying low over his head.
A 757, under no circumstances makes a sound of “whoosh”, and if the “whoosh” sound was being made by the hitting of light poles, it is a certainty that if a 757 was doing it, you would not hear the “whoosh” of hitting light poles over the roar of the jet engines. If there’s a 757 right overhead that’s hitting light poles, and it’s going 460 mph, it would not be “whooshing”! Anyone that has ever spent any time at the end of an international airport runway knows that the sound of a large commercial jet flying low overhead would be more accurately described as a deafening ROAR!
It is true that eyewitness testimonies are notoriously unreliable. Take ten witnesses to an event and it is likely that you will get ten reponses that will differ from each other in one aspect or another.
Memory Conformity: Disentangling the Steps towards Influence during a Discussion(Amina Memon & Fiona Gabbert, Aberdeen and Dan Wright, Sussex University). It is human nature for people to discuss their shared experiences, especially of extraordinary events such as witnessing a crime. Recent studies of several high profile cases have shown that even a single erroneous eyewitness can have a significant negative influence on the accuracy of another eyewitness’s testimony if the witnesses come into contact with one another and discuss the criminal event. Although it is natural for people to discuss their experiences, it is highly problematic for the legal professionals, and our system of justice, if evidence – in the form of witness statements – becomes contaminated. Our previous research (funded by the Economic & Social Research Council) investigated how peoples’ memories can become influenced during a discussion about a mutually experienced event under controlled laboratory-based conditions. When people discuss an event what one person says is often adversely incorporated into the other person’s report. ...
Having said that, given the nature of the events that are alleged to have occurred at the Pentagon on 9/11 - a large commerical airliner crashing into a large building, we might expect most people to concur at least on the basic details. But, as we have seen, that is not the case with the Pentagon attack.
I am of the opinion therefore that the very conflicting nature of the testimonies of the eyewitnesses to the Pentagon attack are important clues revealing the true nature of what happened that day. Imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a large commercial airliner flying extremely low and at high speed over an urban area and crashing into a building. Imagine also that, not long thereafter, all eyewitnesses to the event are told by authorities and the media that it was indeed a large commercial airliner that flew into the building. Now ask yourself: in such a case, how likely is it that there would be any serious discrepancies between the testimonies of those eyewitnesses? How likely is that any of the eyewitnesses would report that what they actually saw was a small aircraft or something that sounded like a missile? Unlikely, I would suggest.
Now imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a drone aircraft like the Global Hawk for example, which also flies very low and very fast over an urban area. While the wingspan of this drone craft is quite large, it is much smaller in overall size to a large commercial aircraft. Imagine also that this drone is painted with the colors and logo of a well-known airline that are only ever seen on large commercial aircraft. Imagine that there are even “windows” painted on the side to make the illusion all the more convincing. Imagine that, not long after witnessing the incident, all eyewitnesses to the event are told by authorities and the media that what they saw was a large commercial airliner flying into the building. Now ask yourself: in such a case, what are the chances that there would be seriously conflicting reports between eyewitness accounts of the incident? Very good, I would suggest.
Eyewitness accounts are indeed useless when one must rely on them as the sole evidence. This is not, however, the case with the Pentagon attack. There is already much evidence - the facts on the ground - to suggest that it was not a Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon on 9/11. The fact that there are serious conflicts in eyewitness accounts merely serves to back up this other evidence that it was NOT a Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon. We might also wonder why there are no conflicting WITNESS reports of what hit the WTC towers? All eyewitnesses to the event in New York concurred that two large passenger plane hit the North and South towers. Of course, we were all treated to ad nauseum repeats of the video footage of that event, leaving no one in any doubt about what happened. So why not treat us all to the video evidence from the Pentagon?
There is one very obvious answer to this question: the video footage, held by the US government, would disprove the official story.
911 Tape of EMV responding to the Pentagon - includes video outside and inside the building in some areas. (Real Audio Required)
The above video and audio of EMV responding is completely inconsequential to the investigation in hand, and I can think of no reason why CatHerder would include it, other than to attempt in some subtle way to drive home the official claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon.
ConclusionI highly doubt that local firefighters would be involved in any sort of a coverup. I highly doubt that local police officers would be involved in any sort of a government cover up. Cops and firemen are just average Joes like you and me, who go home to the wife and kids, and just try to make a living and have a good life for their families (I have many friends in both professions - of course the firemen are usually more stable marriage-wise because of their job but that doesn't make the cops any less human than you or I). The men and women who pulled over a hundred people (dead and alive) out of that building would more likely than not have noticed somebody carrying over 60 bodies into the middle of the fire they were fighting. To say that the plane that hit the Pentagon was not filled with every single person who died in this terrorist attack (not counting the unfortunate people inside the building) is one thing and one thing only - ignorant.
Oh, LORD! Not the dreaded "malignant pseudo-identification" again! You know, the process by which a COINTELPRO agent consciously imitates or simulates certain behaviors or beliefs in order to foster "identification" with him/her, thus increasing the vulnerability to exploitation. Yes indeed, CatHerder is just an "average Joe" like "you and me." And just to make it hit home, the emotional hooks of "family," a "good life," "making a living," and "stable marriages" are tossed in there followed by the final tear jerker, an outrageous reference to the people who died that day. It is outrageous because it is finally clear that CatHerder is, indeed, an agent of disinformation and using such emotional ploys as this is truly malignant pseudo-identification.
Having said that, let's return to the fact that the point is not that firefighters or police officers were involved in the cover up as CatHerder slickly suggests is the claim of anyone who says that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, but rather that any of them that saw something they were not meant to, could have been easily silenced. The most obvious way to silence the "average Joe" who is honest, hard-working and normally patriotic, is to impress on such a person that they must not talk about something due to "national security". If they were to persist in wanting to talk about what they saw, more persuasive methods can be used like threats to their livelihood etc., up to and including murder. But murder is seldom required. A simple letter with details of family and friends and an order to "keep your mouth shut" is more than enough for most people. As CatHerder says: "cops and firemen are just average Joes like you and me, who go home to the wife and kids, and just try to make a living and have a good life for their families." They are not likely to risk their livelihood, or the lives of their children for 5 minutes of fame on national TV. They keep their mouths shut. And that's a tragedy that CatHerder doesn't seem to be able to understand.
As regards the "carrying of 60 bodies into the middle of the fire". This is simply more evidence of CatHerder's attempts to confuse and manipulate the reader. I know of no site that suggests that the bodies of the passengers on Flight 77 were carried into or out of the Pentagon after the attack. The identification of the bodies was carried out off site by the state pathologist. We were never shown footage nor did we hear reports about anyone picking up pieces of passengers from Flight 77 from the attack site, we were simply told that all passengers were identified from their DNA from body parts that were in the possession of the state pathiologist. It is simply assumed that the state pathologist got the bodies parts from the Pentagon site, because of course, the government told us that Flight 77 crashed there, where else would the body parts come from!? But as I have shown, it is extremely unlikely that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, which makes the question of how the state pathologist got hold of body parts from the passengers a very interesting question.
Of course, we have not even touched on that most bizarre aspect of the Pentagon strike - the alleged final approach of Flight 77. Think about this: The hijackers are a few thousand feet up in the air, they spot the distinctive shape of the Pentagon and decide, "that's our target". What do they do next? Well, logic would suggest that they take the easy and most effective option and nose-dive the plane towards the center of the Pentagon, thereby maximising the chances of actually hitting the building at such high speed and also causing the most damage.
But no, out intrepid "Arab terrorists" have a much more complicated plan: They are going to fly the airliner at maximum speed just a few feet off the ground into the facade of the Pentagon; but not just any part of the facade. No indeed, these guys have a plan. Their specifically chosen "bull's eye" is the section of the facade of the Pentagon that had recently been reinforced and, due to the ongoing internal work, had a significantly reduced number of people in it. These nutty hijackers, consumed with rage and anger at America, its government, its military and its citizens, and determined to inflict as much carnage as possible, had somehow chosen the strongest part of the Pentagon which at the same time had the lowest concentration of people!
Now how's that for bad luck!To carry out their bizarre plan, which appears designed to minimise death and destruction at the Pentagon rather than maximise it, and given that they realise that they are very poor pilots, failing to possess the skills to master the controls of a single-engined cessna, our intrepid "terrorists" decide that they will execute a difficult fast descent from 7,000 feet combined with a 270 degree turn. This done, they are now at a few hundred feet and in "line of sight" of the Pentagon up ahead of them. The only problem is that they are now confronted with a veritable obstacle course of cars, roads, bridges, buildings, trees etc between them and their target. Not to worry they have Allah on their side after all. By some miracle they manage to navigate the massive hulk of the 757 through down town Washington while flying at 500 mph and just a few dozen feet off the ground, getting lower all the time. They make just a little booboo and clip a couple of light poles on the way in, but despite this and the fact that their massive manual missile is just feet of the ground, they politely avoid messing up Pentagon lawn and finally slam into their target at ground floor level.
Now that is one fantastical magical mystery of a story, worthy of inclusion in any children's fairy tale.
Review the facts
· Size of 757 matches the initial size of hole in the building - somewhere between 13 and 16 feet (757 is 13 feet wide/high)
Initial hole only fits the size of a 757 if you subtract the wings, twin 6 TON engines, and tail fin which somehow did not hit the building. Even then the fuselage would have had to slip into the building leaving a round hole that exactly conformed to the diameter and height of the cylindrical tube. In short, highly unlikely, not to mention the fact that the two 50 feet long wings with twin 6 TON steel engines somehow disappeared and could not be found in the wreckage outside the building.
· Rims found in building match those of a 757
Rims - IF they were 757 rims - were quite possibly planted or were the rims from another type of aircraft.
· Small turbine engine outside is an APU
Indeed, it may well be an APU. But as noted previously, a Boeing spokesman has confirmed that the APU was NOT the APU from a 757.
· Same engine has been clearly stated to not match a Global Hawk engine
This is simply not true. No one has come forward to confirm or deny that the disk seen in photos from outside the Pentagon could have come from a Global Hawk. Given the small size of the disk, it is likely that it did not come from a large 757 engine but rather a smaller-engined aircraft. Like a Global Hawk.
· Blue seats from 757 laying on ground in photos
The mangled blue debris could be anything and is inadmissable as conclusive "evidence" of any part of any aircraft.
· Part of "American" fuselage logo visible in more than 1 photo
The only piece of debris showing part of lettering that appears similar to lettering on American airlines craft is pristine, no smoke or explosion damage and has not been accepted by US government as coming from Flight 77. It seems that CatHerder is not only pushing the government line but is going so far as to accept evidence that even the US government wont touch due to its obviously suspect nature.
· Engine parts photographed inside match a Rolls-Royce RB211
Our author is a self-proclaimed non-expert in such matters yet sees fit to pronounce conclusively that mangled pieces of aircraft material are definitely parts of a specific aircraft engine. This alone should make any reader of this fine piece of disinformation wary.
· Structural components photographed in wreckage match Boeing paint primer schemes
The primer is used on many aircraft.
· Large deisel (sic) generator in front of building hit by a large heavy object
Diesel generator was probably moved by initial explosion as reported in early news releases.
· Large deisel (sic) engine outside is spun towards the building - could not be result of bomb blast or missile explosion
Nonsense. See previous comment.
· Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner
Multiple eyewitnesses say they saw a private jet sized aircraft, others said it sounded like a missile.
· Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner hit the Pentagon
Multiple eye witnesses who announced that they saw an American airliners passenger jet were also government and mainstream media employees and their testimonies are therefore unacceptable.
· 60+ bodies, matching the passenger list and flight crew roster identified and returned to families from Pentagon wreckage
60+ bodies were not identified. DNA from all of the passengers was identified, which is actually an interesting point. How can it be that the impact and fire were allegedly so intense that they shredded into tiny pieces and dinintegrated much of the plane, although not all of it, yet body parts from all passengers were recovered and identified?
Conclusion:
It is unlikely that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon because the available evidence is not consistent with the impact of a 757 airliner.
As I have already stated, the best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions would be to wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. If such a person were given all of the publicly available evidence and furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, it is highly improbable that such a person would conclude that a 757 caused the damage at the Pentagon.
Why?
Because the evidence suggests otherwise.
Again I will state that it is only because of the claim by the government and the media that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon that anyone would ever try and suggest that a 757 did the damage. The evidence that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon is so abundant that we continue to be amazed that apparently intelligent people are nevertheless very capable of ignoring facts and concocting elaborate (and often absurd) theories to avoid having to accept that which is right under their noses.
In the months that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was websites like Signs of the Times that took on the job of debunking the clearly false official story about 9/11, in particular the attack on the Pentagon. While we certainly expected a response to our efforts from mainstream newspapers and other government shills, it came as somewhat of a shock and disappointment to realise that other alleged 9/11 researchers joined the attack and attempted to debunk our debunking of the official story. The result is that many honest 9/11 researchers are having to engage in the type of "third level" debunking that I have presented above - a debunking of a debunking of a debunking as it were.
Of course, over the course of the past 4 years, we have become much more familiar with the disinformation tactics of government CoIntelPro. In modern day Iraq, it is generally understood that one of the main roles of US and Israeli intelligence agencies is to foment ethnic strife among the Iraqi people. The logic behind this is that if the Iraqis are fighting themselves, they have less time and energy to fight American soldiers. It should come as no surpise then that the same tactics have been used by US intelligence agencies to deal with honest 9/11 research. But the task of getting honest people who share a common goal to fight with each other is not easy. It requires infiltration over a long periods of time coupled with subtle manipulation of the parties involved. Thankfully for the intelligence agencies, there is another much easier way: you simply have one of your own operatives pose as a Sunni Insurgent or an honest 9/11 researcher and have him attack his fellow insurgents/researchers. Hey presto! You've just created "division" and "infighting" which distracts and confuses the enemy. In the case of 9/11 the "enemy" are the honest 9/11 researchers and the members of the public who look to them for information.
The question then is: are we dealing with such a manufactured group in the Above Top Secret website and forum?
It's hard to tell. There are without doubt many sincere U.S. and other citizens and web site owners who promote the official story about 9/11 because they believe (or perhaps need to believe) that the government is telling the truth. Equally certain is the fact that there are many US citizens and website owners who know for sure that the government story is false, yet have been consciously recruited to push this story on the public. Members of the latter group are simply doing their job, but their influence is most directly felt among members of the former group who want to believe the official story.
Having said that, after reading through the long ATS thread that followed the posting of "CatHerders" article, I have come to the tentative conclusion that the ATS website is just one more government-funded damage control operation, albeit a very subtle one. I will explain why I came to this conclusion.
CatHerders article was received with much fanfare on the ATS forum, and much debate and analysis ensued with the thread finally reaching 125 pages. As the discussion and debate raged, it became apparent that many were convinced by CatHerder's article, but just as many were not. On the 8th page of the thread, two of the three owners of the ATS website weighed in and attempted to silence the naysayers with some large fonts and guilt trips. For example, "SkepticOverlord", "one of the three ATS amigos and co-owner of Abovetopsecret.com" wrote:
"It's very disappointing to see ignorance embraced like this [referring to those who were not embracing Catherders article as "the truth"] Why? Because the real information is not wrapped up in an exciting Flash animation with angry metal grind? [referring, undoubtedly, to our Pentagonstrike Flash] Shall we change our motto? Ignorance Embraced [the ATS motto is "deny ignorance" which seems to be a twist on the QFG motto: Knowledge Protects, Ignorance Endangers.] I still remember speaking to my brother (who was on the highway at the time) calling me that evening, haunted by the memory of a brief glimpse of faces in the windows of the 757. Especially when he discovered his friend was on the flight later that day. This is a sad moment for ATS. I feel like I now see faces."
Very moving. Very manipulative, too. "Springer", another Co-owner, then added the following:
PITIFUL... "CH" (Catherder) has proven his/her POINT beyond much of anything that even comes close to logic... But ALAS, as S.O. (other ATS co-owner) Points out, it is NOT wrapped up in a pretty flash animation filled with BUNK so it must NOT be beleived... [another obvious reference to the Pentagon Flash.]Sad Day for ATS indeed..."
Yes indeed, there's nothing like subjecting your subscribers to a little guilt trip to get them in line.
What is clear from reading the thread is that the owners of the ATS site and the author of the article in question are of the opinion that Arab terrorists, as they are presented by the US government, are real and that a group of them hijacked four planes and attacked the US on 9/11. The only "9/11 conspiracy" that these people hold to then is that the US government may have let 9/11 happen, and the fact is that there are many self-described 9/11 investigators who promote the same idea. You could call it "9/11 conspiracy lite", designed for those who lack the stomach for the unsavory reality of what 9/11 actually meant and where it is taking us.
The problem with such an explanation is that it subtly suggests that, in 9/11, what we are dealing with is nothing more than corrupt government or a few corrupt men, and we all know governments are often a little corrupt, right? The obvious solution, of course, is to simply remove the corrupt government or the few men and we can then get on with the job of fighting those damn "terrorists".
What is missing, however, is the awareness that the "terrorist threat" that came front and center after 9/11 is crucial to the entire conspiracy. It is Bush's "war on terror" that plagues the world to this day, long after 9/11 has lost its edge and drifted to the back of the collective consciousness. It is the threat from "Islamic terrorists" that has led the US military to massacre 100,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years, and you can be sure they are only getting started. Proponents of such a theory expect us to believe that the fact that terrorist hijackers gifted the Neocons with the justification to accomplish their long-held goals is just a matter of good luck!
Anyone that researches the 9/11 event and, most importantly, the background to American and Israeli plans for the Middle East and Israeli government penetration of the American political system, cannot but come to the conclusion that the 9/11 attacks, in their entirety, must have been stage-managed by those who stood to benefit most from the attacks. The fact is, if your goal is to sell the lie that 'Arab terrorists' hijacked planes and flew them into buildings, you don't need to involve real Arab terrorists or real hijacked planes. Indeed, it would not even be advisable to do so given the logistics of getting Arab hijackers, or people masquerading as Arab hijackers, to give their lives in service to your plot and avoid the distinct possiblity that details of the plot would be leaked. No, all you need to do is to make it appear that way with some well placed evidence and then claim that it is so.
We notice that very few items of so-called "conspiracy theory" have rattled the "Bushes" quite like our Pentagon Strike Flash did. The Pentagon Strike video came out on August 23rd 2004. Probably nobody really noticed it at that point, but it hit a chord of response in the hearts of millions of people around the world. They began to madly download and forward it to their friends and relatives. Latest stats on how many people have viewed it to date are 500 million!
Apparently it even landed in the email box of the Editor of the Washington Post, which is why Carol Morello sent us an email asking for an interview. Or so she said. My suspicion was that the Post was instructed to do "damage control", albeit oh, so gently!
Now, look at this mini-timeline:
August 23rd 2004: Pentagon Strike Video which propagates wildly for a month.
September 11, 2004: CatHerder post to Above Top Secret forum.
September 21st 2004: First contact by Carol Morello of the Washington Post
October 7th 2004: Washington Post article It was an interesting feeling to know that if they hadn't seen the Pentagon Strike before, certainly George and Dick, Karl and the gang were watching it after the Washington Post wrote an article about it.
October 19th 2004: George Bush visits New Port Richey - a previously unscheduled "whistle-stop" on his campaign trail. NPR is very small, not likely to be a major target of any presidential candidate, but it just happens to be Laura Knight-Jadczyk's hometown. It was our initial reaction that Dubya's visit to Laura's little home town - certainly of no importance on the campaign trail - was deliberately done to send a message to her. Fact is, her daughter's ex-boyfriend wrote to tell her that he had been among those selected to shake the hand of George W. himself! Now, how's that for a coincidence?
As to exactly what Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote to Laura, here is the pertinent passage which is actually quite revealing:
A couple of editors here saw the video/film, and I was asked to find out what I could about it. As you can imagine, we continue to have an intense interest on the attack on the Pentagon and the people who were affected.
I've just begun reporting, so it would be premature to tell you what "perspective" my story would have.
My initial impressions are that the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet.
The 911 Commission report appears to have done little to dampen the controversy. I hoped to speak to you about how and why you posted it on your web site, what kind of response you've received and what you think about it. […]
Notice that she attributes the resurgence of interest in the "Pentagate" problem to the Pentagon Strike video. Can we say "damage control"?
And if there is damage control, then that means there is damage.
Up to this point in time, the only acknowledgement the administration ever gave to such issues was to refer vaguely and dismissively to "conspiracy theories". Now, suddenly, it seems that dealing with the "conspiracy theories" in a direct manner was seen to be imperative. "9/11: Debunking the Myths" came out in Popular Mechanics Magazine in March of 2005, just five months after the Washington Post article. That's pretty fast work.
Under the tutelage of Editor in Chief Jim "Oh look, a tank!" Meigs, Popular Mechanics assembled a team of researchers, including "professional fact checkers" (impressive eh?) to debunk the 16 most common claims made by conspiracy theorists about 9/11. Unsurprisingly, the PM editors claim that, in the end:
"we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate."
In fact, a careful analysis of the article shows that at most, just three of the sixteen claims could have been the result of "reporting error", forcing us to assume that, in the razor-like, emotionally unclouded cerebrum of Jim Meigs, at least 13 of the conspiracy claims about 9/11 are the result of "cynical imaginations aiming to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate".
The sad fact is that, while Popular Mechanics claims to be interested in understanding what really happened that day, their rebuttal of sixteen of the most common claims by so-called "conspiracy theorists" about 9/11 isn't worth the $3.57 of server space that it has so far cost them to publish it.
If there is one glaring hole in the arguments put forward by 9/11 conspiracy "debunkers", it is the fact that such people have never come up with a reasonable argument to explain why, in the wake of 9/11, so many obviously intelligent citizens became gripped by the uncontrollable urge to continually waste their time recklessly and fecklessly "injecting suspicion and animosity into public debate" for no apparent reason. It really is a mystery. Maybe they're trying to take over the world or something.
On the other hand, it doesn't take a degree in psychology to understand the primary motivations of the conspiracy debunkers. You see, the very last thing that many Americans (and others) want to believe is that their government would attack its own people. For 9/11 "debunkers", logic and intellect have no part to play in investigating the question of what really happened on 9/11. It's pure emotion all the way.
In the beginning, on the morning of September 11, 2001 we were all united in our emotional reactions: shock, horror, grief - (and not to forget: jubilation from a bunch of Israeli Mossad agents). As the emotion subsided, most went on with their lives, but a few stood on, brows furrowed, scratching their heads. After considerable digging and research, it became obvious that the official story did not satisfactorily answer all of the questions, and the fact that officials were refusing to answer those outstanding questions, gave rise, logically enough, to a "conspiracy theory".
Not long thereafter, the debunkers stepped in, not because they had the answers to the outstanding questions, but because they had their emotional buttons severely poked by the fact that someone was saying that their government was lying! Sadly, the editors at PM are no different, and their little fear-inspired rebuttal of 9/11 conspiracy theories is of little actual use to anyone, least of all to those who really do want to know the truth of 9/11. Far from approaching the matter with an open mind (which is crucial in any attempt to find the truth), it is clear that Popular Mechanics' "professional fact checkers" began with the premise that the US government was not lying about the main events of 9/11, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. From there, the objectivity and integrity of their research went sharply downhill as they busied themselves with hunting down the very same sources that provided the official story to confirm that the official story was in fact correct. Apparently, in "debunkerland", it is completely reasonable to ask U.S. government representatives to testify that the U.S. government is squeaky clean and then present that evidence as "fact". It is also kosher, we assume, to have a murder suspect double as a credible court's witness in a murder trial.
For those of you who have looked unemotionally at the events of 9/11, it is not unusual to be left wondering how those members of the US government who were clearly complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their own citizens can remain so smug and seemingly self-assured. To find the answer we need look no further than the Jim Meigs' of this world. You see, it is people like Meigs who lack any love or appreciation for the truth and worship only their subjective view of the world that make it so easy for big government to commit big crime.
At present there are millions of Americans and others around the world who, aided by the years of social conditioning and media mind programming, drew a very clear line around what they would and would not believe about their government and country. Most of what was inside the line was "feel good" stuff about "greatest democracy on earth" and other jingoistic nonsense, with perhaps a few admissions that "sometimes bad things happen" and "not everyone is a saint". This mindset provided (and continues to provide) a perfect opportunity for unscrupulous US politicians to literally get away with the murder of which most of the US public refuse to believe they were, and are, capable.
The result is that, for all intents and purposes, today there are two Americas:
- The America of the average American citizen which is little more than a government-provided dream world.
- The real America of the corrupt politicians and the select few who run the country, and much of the rest of the world.
Luckily for the select few, this second, real America just happens to lie outside of what many ordinary Americans are willing or able to believe is possible. Lest anyone think otherwise, the setting up of any accusation against government as being the domain of "conspiracy nuts" is not the result of pure coincidence. Conspiracy theories are as old as the first lie ever told and the subsequent attempts by the liar to avoid exposure.
Most people think that "conspiracy theories" are made up by "conspiracy theorists", but the term "conspiracy theory" is most often used by those people who have most to gain from the ridicule of the allegations that are directed at them. The tactic has been used to such great effect over the years that certain high crimes committed by government have become the touchstone by which all other "conspiracies" are measured.
Take the folks at Popular Mechanics. In dealing with 9/11 they simply couldn't resist referencing that other most despicable crime committed by a US government - but of course, to them it just another "theory":
"Don't get me wrong: Healthy skepticism is a good thing. Nobody should take everything they hear--from the government, the media or anybody else--at face value. But in a culture shaped by Oliver Stone movies and "X-Files" episodes, it is apparently getting harder for simple, hard facts to hold their own against elaborate, shadowy theorizing."
Did you catch it? The reference to Oliver Stone can mean only one thing: Jim's "fact checkers" contacted the CIA, and they told him straight up that some bullets really can do magic things.
So far, we have been generous to the people at Popular Mechanics. We have assumed that they are simply well-intentioned but misguided souls. However, it appears that there is a more sinister, and dare we say it, "conspiratorial" side to Popular Mechanics' "innocent" debunking of 9/11 conspiracy theories. You see, it turns out that one of the main contributors to the article is one Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of the new Dept. of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff.
American Free Press' Christopher Bollyn, who dug up the information, also claims that Ben Chertoff's mother was a Mossad agent. While there is, as of yet, no evidence of any working relationship between the two, it is certainly noteworthy that the cousin of the current Homeland Security Chief, (who, in his previous incarnation as head of the Justice Department's criminal division was instrumental in the release of obvious Israeli spies before and after 9/11), happens to be behind a high-profile attempt to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories.
So if you happen to stop by the sorry article in question, don't be fooled or intimidated by the word "science" in big bold letters on the Popular Mechanics page. In Europe, McDonald's drink cups have the words "I'm loving it" emblazoned across them in various languages, regardless of what you put in them. Credit by association or juxtaposition is one of the oldest tricks in the book of mass mind programming. Just because "they" say it, doesn't make it so. This simple, logical statement is a salient lesson for us all in these heady days where disinformation masquerades as truth and even "innocent" fun-loving "boys with toys" have become obedient workers in the lie factory.
According to another 9/11 researcher :
"The editors of Scientific American followed in the footsteps of Popular Mechanics in exploiting a trusted brand in order to protect the perpetrators of the mass murder of 9/11/01. The column by Michael Shermer in the June, 2005 issue of Scientific American, titled Fahrenheit 2777, is an attempt to deceive the magazine's readers into dismissing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was an inside job without ever looking at that evidence. More specifically, Shermer attempts to inoculate readers against looking at the decidedly scientific refutation of the official story… […]
Shermer's column exhibits many of the same propaganda techniques as the ambitious feature article in the March issue of Popular Mechanics by Benjamin Chertoff, for which Shermer professes admiration:
'The single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop is in the March issue of Popular Mechanics, which provides an exhaustive point-by-point analysis of the most prevalent claims.'
Comparing the two attack pieces is instructive. Both pieces mention a similar range of issues, with Shermer adding Jewish conspiracy rumors and UFOlogists to the mix...
This last is undoubtedly a direct reference to Signs of The Times, while avoiding giving a direct link to our website out of fear that the reader might be influenced.
Shermer uses an array of deceptive methods to persuade the reader that challenges to the official story of the 9/11 attack are worthy only of ridicule and should not be scrutinized. His primary technique is to use hoaxes and unscientific ideas to "bracket" the valid ideas that he seeks to shield the reader from.
That Shermer went to such great lengths to thoroughly misrepresent the painstaking, scientific, evidence-based work of many researchers is a testament to the success of the Pentagon Strike Video! It really stepped on a sore toe. And that tells us something important, the same thing Carol Morello of the Washington Post wrote:
"…the questions and theories expressed in the video got a spurt of attention in early 2002, after the publication of a best selling book in France, then the furor died down for a while, and now they have re-emerged with the extraordinarily wide dissemination of this video on the Internet."
We notice that never, in any of the two major "debunking" articles that followed fast on the heels of the Pentagon Strike video, was the video ever even mentioned by name, nor was our website mentioned. Other books, other researchers, other websites were mentioned, but the deliberate avoidance of Signs of The Times - the origin of the Pentagon Strike, was conspicuous. We notice the same trend in the Above Top Secret forum.
Again we point out: debunkers are sent in only when damage control is needed. And damage control is only needed when it is thought that there might be damage. That means that the Pentagon Strike is understood clearly, in the minds of the perpetrators, to be the weak link in their chain of lies.
Debunkers are sent in not to give answers to the outstanding questions, but to push the emotional buttons of the public, to reassure people who really want "a reason to believe" that their government is not lying to them.
It should be clear by now that I am suggesting that there is much more to the 9/11 attacks than most people are aware and what really happened is very, very different from the official story.
Now we get to the interesting part.
If Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon what did, and how?
Two emails received by Signs of the Times about one year ago, (identities concealed to protect the correspondents) are quite informative:
Email #1
Greetings, I have stayed out of this arena for a reason, but can no longer. I am a Maintenence Mechanic here in the assembly plant in [XXX] where we build these great aircraft. 747's-757's and 767's.
Lets do some math for a minute, because those who believe a 757 hit the pentagon, must also believe in the tooth fairy.
The melting temp for brake shoes on a 757 is about 3000 degs., the landing gear struts are solid cast aluminum; the center shafts for the engines are solid titanium. The flame temp for low grade kerosene, (jet fuel) is around 800 degs.
If the 757 was full of fuel, thats 14 pounds of aircraft per one gallon of fuel. Its impossible to "completely incinerate" a 757 at that fuel-to-material ratio. It would be the first time in history it did, and would defy the laws of physics, period.
No 757 hit the pentagon. Where's the engines, landing gears, APU's, stringers, fuel cell walls, wing join assemblies? These are impervious to fire, and, all have survived the worst fires ever seen on aircraft, and I've seen them all.
Oh by the way, if the 757 was "completely incinerated" as the gov't would have the lemming masses believe, how did they come up with DNA from the ashes for every passenger on board. DNA from ASHES!!!?? What a crock of shit. Once you do the math, you'll quickly know that no 757 hit that building, those who say one did, are liars, or have been told to be liars lest they end up like Vince Foster and a few hundred others like him.Email #2
[...] I am probably one of the most qualified people that you will meet to judge some of the info about the Pentagon attack. I have served in the U.S. Army for a number of years now, I have not only dealt with weapons of every type you can imagine, I have also had a great deal of experience with aircraft, not to mention my brother is an analyst for the military who deals with a great many things.
First of all I can guarantee that no missile did this (damage to the Pentagon), none of the patterns add up for such a thing to work, damage ratio is wrong, flight path is wrong, style of impact is wrong. Also think of the item it was hitting, a hardened building made of concrete and steal, all reinforced. Also I can tell you no large aircraft did this [...]
I'm starting to think that maybe it was a TL AM type 2 block 4, better known as a tomahawk type 2 bunker buster with booster and hardened warhead.
While most would say this is absurd because a weapon like that would have completely leveled the Pentagon and a good deal around it, I am however still inclined to believe that this might possibly be what did it. This is my thinking on the matter: the new TLAMs are programmable to pick entry point and detonation point, the hardened warhead on them allows them to penetrate the hardest of buildings and they hit going much faster than the old type 1s that are commonly seen in war footage and test footage.
I think that somehow one of our new type 2s found itself set on a guided path to the Pentagon with a side impact and center detonation programming, but for some reason the warhead didn't go off. That would give it the energy to do the damage and drive through the walls like it did, but by never exploding, it would still leave most of the building perfectly intact like what was seen at the pentagon. The only problem I can see with this scenario is there would have been no fire had this happened, unless something inside the building started burning.
Now they could have just mounted a much weaker warhead on the thing for the sole purpose of starting the fire. If this is what happened though, then someone wanted it to happen like this, to mount a type 2 with a weak warhead not to mention set it on a path with the parameters that would be needed for this. For no one to use the "safety" and blow it up mid flight, it would have to be pretty damn deliberate.
Also the type 2 matches closer to the size proportions of the object that was captured on video. I'm still only going on speculation here as are most of the people who know that they are being lied to.
To tell you the truth, I don't even think that the fire was at the low burning temp of 800 degrees, a fire that hot would have gone farther to bursting the windows and distorting the structure of the building. The more I look into and use my knowledge of missiles, the more I'm starting to think that maybe it was something we haven't seen before and to not take the risk of disclosing to the public that a test project went wrong or that someone did this with something new of ours. They made up the entire pentagon part of 911, at the very least, and went through a whole lot of trouble doing it.
From the evidence presented, we can propose that, due to its suitablity for the task in hand, it was a global hawk-type craft complete with a payload of one missile with a shaped charge hardened war head and secondary war head that struck the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. The first shaped charge war head opened the main hole in the Pentagon facade, the second war head detonated inside doing the rest of the damage and creating the 'T bar' of the final inverted T shape in the facade. The global hawk was swallowed by the hole and the war head explosion. The hardened war head continued on through the other 5 walls coming to rest in Ring C, leaving that neat 8ft wide hole. The war head was then confiscated, much like the various tapes that were witness to the event.
For its part, Flight 77 landed, probably at a military airfield in Ohio around the same time that the Global Hawk and missile struck the Pentagon. All passengers and crew on board Flight 77 were dead by that time, except for one, two or three people. The bodies were "disposed of", and some of the remains were used for identification by the state pathologist.
Shocked? Outraged? You have every right to be, but not at us, or anyone else that points out the logical explanation of the problem. There exists overwhelming evidence to show that, as a general rule, corrupt people in positions of great power do not flinch at murdering their own citizens if it serves their purposes to do so. In some cases, they will murder their citizens - and others - because it gives them pleasure. Such people also, historically, are advocates and practitioners of torture. If you disagree then you disagree with historical fact. Welcome to the real world.
As Laura Knight-Jadczyk notes in her book 9/11:The Ultimate Secret, the attack on the Pentagon is the Achilles Heel of the entire 9/11 coverup, and for one very good reason: while we all saw repeated footage of Flight 11 and Flight 175 crash into the WTC towers, and we all saw the wreckage of Flight 93 and have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies that a commercial airliner did indeed crash in Pennsylvania, there is no reliable evidence that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. No one has seen any footage that shows Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, and the tapes that actually exist that could easily and immediately prove what did hit that day, have been confiscated by the FBI and the U.S. government studiously refuses to release them.
The US government claims that a Boeing 757 impacted the Pentagon on 9/11, many people dispute this, yet the same American government refuses to release video tapes that would put the matter to rest and show once and for all what hit the Pentagon. Use your head and ask yourself, "why?"
There is one very obvious answer.
I realise that this theory present presents more questions than answers. But since the complete answers to what really happened on 9/11 (and much more) are contained in the book "9/11: The Ultimate Truth", it would be remiss of me to present them here. Suffice to say that Truth is much stranger than fiction.
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