911 IN PLANE SITE - PARTIAL REVIEW

IN PLANE SIGHT OR JUST PLAIN SHITE?
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
December 13 2006


When Versailles, Missouri-based Dave Von Kleist saw the Meyssan-produced “Hunt the Boeing” website out of Paris, he decided it “drew some very serious questions as to what had really happened at the Pentagon.” Von Kleist aired his concerns via the Power Hour, his daily radio show with his wife Joyce Riley, and later wrote, produced, and hosted a documentary video clumsily titled 911 In Plane Site (911 IPS) – “The FIRST 911 Video to Present VIDEO EVIDENCE – Not Theories.” Directed by William Lewis of "Police State 21" and first released in mid-2004, IPS promised “September 11 changed the world. This video will change September 11.” Others agreed and promoted it; famous writer, comedian, and brilliant civil rights activist Dick Gregory plugged for it (“everyone in America should see this video”) and millionaire 9/11 truth financier Jimmy Walter funded its wide distribution and helped it get local showings and press write-ups nationwide; it proved remarkably successful and largely dominated the field - at first.

Lurid, cluttered, and unbalanced: who says you can't tell a DVD by its cover?

This video was not a wise investment for Walter’s stated cause of bringing the truth to the people, which is clear from the opening montage of 9/11 crash and collapse replays underpinned with über-serious synthesized orchestral music that drags on way too long. It hasn’t improved much before the several agonizing minutes spent examining the “attachment” beneath the windowless “military cargo plane” known as Flight 175, and of the odd-looking video of yellow flashes on the WTC’s façade before – not after but just before - the planes hit. Jeremy Baker at OilEmpire put my own thoughts well, doubting the planners would be so stupid “as to attach a large, highly visible incendiary device to the bottom of a plane that they knew would be showing its belly proudly on every TV set on the planet.”

Dave Von Kleist on the set of 911 IPS

I’m not scientist enough to totally dismiss Von Kleist’s allegations (traceable back to LetsRoll 911 at least) that the planes were firing yellow-flashing missiles from these pods, but the official explanation seems to make more sense: the pods were simply wing faring, an ordinary thing on these two aluminum planes (if distorted by glare high in the brilliant sky). The planes then gave off yellow flashes, as aluminum would do, upon impact, not before (it’s not as easy to precisely read shadows from half a mile away as he thinks). Yet at the video’s conclusion Von Kleist specifically cited his worst evidence – the pods and yellow flashes - as hard and final proof of the otherwise compelling case that “terrorists with box-cutters” were not to blame for this event. He ended by asking his viewers after seeing his great epic “where’s your line in the sand?”

While the video finds irrefutable proof of remote control airliners at the widely documented battle of the World Trade Center, when presented with a lack of evidence of the attack vehicle at the Pentagon, the video’s logic runs wild and latches onto Meyssan’s case, opening its exploration with what Von Kleist thinks is his strongest point, that the Pentagon was not hit with one of the windowless, pod-equipped, missile-firing military drones used in New York, but with a simple missile. All in all, the case is poorly made, focusing mostly on the hole in the outer wall, the plane’s alleged entry wound, giving two drastically different sizes for this hole, both of which he feels were too small to allow a 757 to pass.

One particularly embarrassing mistake in the video is Mike Walters’ partial quote describing Flight 77, “it was like a cruise missile with wings,” which was cited as evidence of a missile. But in the full interview he said clearly it was an American Airlines jet that was like a cruise missile, I guess in the sense that it was flying through the air and was being used as a weapon to pierce a bunker. Any idiot could verify this with a quick Google search, as I did, yet Von Kleist and his entourage were so proud of this evidence they sent everyone who bought IPS a free copy of CNN’s “America Remembers,” so we could see how that video also only played that part of the interview.

As with the attacks he claimed to be unmasking, I doubted so many mistakes could be made on sheer accident, and began to suspect intentional sabotage. Jeremy Baker at Oilempire, a 9/11 Truth site, agreed and wrote of widespread concern that “the producers of this film may be operatives attempting to sabotage and derail the 9/11 visibility movement from within.” Baker bemoaned the effect of this video, amplified by its wide viewing, on the larger movement:

“You don't often see so many glaring blunders in serious documentary film-making, and if you think our detractors won't hop on each and every one of them you‚re wrong. These screw-ups, like it or not, reflect on the entire community of 9/11 activists (especially the ones who so strongly support this video) and could go a long way to alienating the fence sitters we can and should be trying hard to woo.”

With nary a true claim in it, 911 In Plane Site was eventually too widely ridiculed to serve as the vehicle for “changing September 11;” I actually found Fintan Dunne’s dismissal of it as “the In Plane Shite movielet” to be mildly clever. Someof hismoreegregious 'mistakes"in the WTCanalysis arewell-covered in this anonymouly-produced video "Not In Plain Sight." Perhaps even worse, Von Kleist was too old, conservative,and Missourian to effectively reach the teeming masses of the young, urban, and gullible. Both of these problems would be addressed as the Frustrating Fraud and the other flawed seams wound their way into another video try at setting loose the change Von Kleist was unable to.

Sources:
> 911 In Plane Site, the Director’s Cut. 2006. Power Hour video. Directed by William Lewis. Writtem produced and hosted by Dave Von Kleist.
> Baker, Jeremy. “911 – In Plane Site: A Critical Review” Undated, copyright 2004. article copied from: www.oilempire.us/bogus.html#planesite http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/baker1.html