FDR 1: THE EVIDENCE TRAIL

FDR 1: THE EVIDENCE TRAIL
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Updated 5/23/07

Researchers curious about the Flight data recorder from the Pentagon attack plane, from 9/11 to mid-2006 anyway, were frustrated by an uncooperative government. The National Transporatation Safety Board (NTSB) Web site announced “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and any material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI. The Safety Board does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket." The FBI of course released nothing as its PENTTBOM investigation ground on, and so the data the NTSB had gleaned remained behind closed doors for years.

The data did form a partial basis of the 9/11 Commission’s work. The path for Flight 77 the Commission published in mid-2004 was based on this, not that they ever explicitly said so, and reflected the official story. Oddly, the Commission never mentioned anything about Flight Data Recorder from any flight but 93, neither confirming nor denying the existence of the other three in its Final Report, even in the footnotes.

FOIA lawsuits for the entire NTSB record of 9/11 planes were finally successful in the wake of the Moussaoui trial’s conclusion in mid-2006. The National Security Archive at George Washington University announced on august 11 “the documents were released in their entirety to the National Security Archive and were received directly from the NTSB.” The “entire” catalog of info posted online at the Archive’ site that day included three types of reports:

1) Air Traffic Control recording logs: presented for all four flights
2) Flight path and altitude studies for flights 11, 175, and 77, the first two with complete paths and altitudes based on radar returns, 77’s path partially drawn-in due to a radar gap, but showing the final grand loop over Washington, as seen on Dulles radar, over a topographic map in close detail.
3) A detailed report on the Flight Data Recorder of Flight 93.

Regarding the third category of one, the archive’s announcement read in part: “in addition to the Flight Path Studies and Air Traffic Control Recording transcripts, the NTSB released a February 2002 “specialist’s factual report of investigation” on United Airlines Flight 93 based on the flight's recovered digital data recorder.” Since its cockpit Voice Recorder, the only one recovered and readable, is still under wraps, this clearly means the FDR. “According to the report, the flight recorder functioned normally,” and provided investigator with “graphic analysis of the data recovered from Flight 93.” But oddly, this release made a claim I’ve never heard explicitly elsewhere: Flight 93’s was “the only surviving recorder from the hijacked planes on 9/11.”

Wow! I knew the Black Boxes and CVRs in New York, while three of four were allegedly found but were buried and never admitted to having survived. But I had always heard that the Black Boxes were found at both Shanksville and at the Pentagon and had yielded data in both cases. But after seeing this and seeing no mention of such a study in the 9/11 commission’s report, it almost seems reasonable to ask if the FDR even survived at all.

But of course that’s not where it stands, and this is clearly just a mistake, perhaps by an intern asked to write up apiece beyond her understanding, taking Flight 77’s FDR study not being included as a sign it didn’t have one. That still doesn’t explain [i]why[/i] it wasn’t included, of course, and it is still telling.

The evidence of the recorder surviving is thick enough. Just after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI took over the crime scene, and brought in the NTSB to help locate plane parts and especially the black boxes. By about 4:00 am on September 14, the cockpit voice recorder and the FDR were found, according to CNN and other sources. According to the ASCE's Pentagon building performance Report, the FDR at least was found near the end of the plane's trajectory in ring C (see above). The recorders were turned over to the NTSB laboratory in Washington that same day, where technicians set to summoning the data within. The CVR was found to be useless, and so we had no audio directly from inside the plane, but on the 15th FBI Diretor Mueller said useful information was gleaned from the data recorder.

The 9/11 Commission had referenced this data indirectly, via the NTSB flight path study. As with the same for Flights 11 and 175, it included an altitude mapping, but while those were based on radar returns (with no FDRs “found”), flight 77’s altitude chart is listed as a readin from the FDR. Finally, I just found, the NTSB does have a site for downloading the once-elusive Specialist's Study for Flight 77 in PDF format: "Frequently Requested Items." That's one part of the story made less mysterious. [direct PDF download link]

Back to FDR Masterlist

VIDEO REVIEW: PENTAGON STRIKE

First released for free viewing online in mid-2004, the Flash animation short Pentagon Strike (subtitled “what hit the Pentagon on 9/11?”) immediately made waves with its slickly-produced, strong-seeming argument that something other than a Boeing 757 was responsible for the attack on the Pentagon. It was created by Darren Williams, a 31 year-old British systems analyst and member Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s Cassiopaea.org. Williams e-mailed a copy of the video to Knight-Jadczyk, who posted a link on the group's Web site August 23. “Within 36 hours,” the Washington Post later reported, “Williams's site collapsed under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others to fill the void […] Across thousands of sites, demand for the video was so great that some webmasters solicited donations to pay for the extra bandwidth.”

My younger brother first told me about this little mind bomb in late 2004. Until that point the whole no plane argument never did sound right to me, but he swore this video would change my mind. I finally watched it and was actually impressed, if still skeptical, and started my journey to sort the glittery from the gold regarding this part of the attack I’d previously ignored.

Eventually associated as well with the Quantum Future Group and the website Sings of the Times, Pentagon Strike is still available for viewing at the same site: http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm if you haven’t seen it yet. It wouldn’t be entirely fair to call the video deliberate disinfo – Conspiatainment is a better word. It does give fair warning, opening with a screen reading in part “Critical Discernment suggested – knowledge and awareness recommended.” Of course they had a certain kind of “awareness” in mind, and knew few people at the time had much “knowledge” of the attack and would be well set-up to glean it from the video that’s done loading now…

It starts with brooding trip-hop music and a voiceover from Adolph Hitler, I believe, and text alerting us that despite the official story of the Pentagon attack, “in reality a Boeing 757 was never found.” What follows is a five-plus minute montage of still images and animated text in which circumstantial evidence like the seized videos of the attack is well-explained enough. The five stills from 2002 are analyzed incredulously, and a slew of eyewitness reports – or select snippets anyway – verifying all the tiring charges: small jet, missile, no plane parts, etc. Quoting the video’s backer Laura Knight-Jadczyk, the on-screen text reads “the very first descriptions - before the mind control machine had time to go into action” had described something “like a missile.” This was a clever way of indirectly misquoting Mike Walters (who said it was an AA jet that was flying like a missile and two other witnesses who thought it sounded like a missile).

As for the video’s physical evidence analysis – what I didn’t know then but can finally comment on – the punch-out hole analysis is better than average; they have it correctly placed and no talk of six walls. But otherwise it’s an unprecedented display of the Frustrating Fraud, all the machinations used before and repeated later. Williams again rehashes the Meyssan trick of showing a spray of fire foam while claiming to show the single small hole in the façade. Deceptive long shots of the lawn showing no debris are brandished, and only the smallest bits are shown up close – a supposedly exhaustive run-down that passed up, as usual, the telltale landing gear found inside the building. The unmarked Pentalawn and a brief golf animation are cleverly used to imply a specific 757 witness (Tim Timmerman) was lying about his whole story – just look at that lawn! The blue tarp smugglers were vaguely shown in the section on plane wreckage with a large question mark. The unburnt stool on the third floor is featured, as it was in IPS at about this same time, in questioning where the supposed 757-full of jet fuel went (answer: across the two floors beneath that – it never touched the third floor).

But such misleading “facts” are emotionally bolstered by a varied musical underpinning with well-timed highs and lows and long moments of suspense punctuated with dark techno/trip hop and screaming groove metal borrowed from the Dust Brothers (via Fight Club) and Marilyn Manson. This work clearly puts emotion above logic even as a computerized voice tells the viewer “you are now looking at the objective reality – please stay focused.” The video seems designed to snap the viewer dizzily from one point to the next, a torrent of images, “facts” and “quotes” that has worn down the skepticism defenses millions of average 9/11 Truthers and likely created thousands of new skeptics itself. After an open-minded six minute viewing experience, it would seem almost undeniable to many that anything but a Boeing 757 struck the temple.

These people know all about “mind control machines” going into action.

SOURCE PHOTO INDEX

SOURCE PHOTO INDEX (WITH COMMENTARY)
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
WORKING VERSION:
Last Updated 6/25/07

Skeptics often ask me about the sources of my photo evidence; Why are there no photos or videos of the plane? Why so few pictures of the impact or the building damage? Why so few of THOSE don't catch the impact hole before the section collapsed? Why so few close-ups in general? Why no photos of plane parts, inside or outside the Pentagon? There are many questions, and as many answers, which I'll tackle one section at a time.

I have seen no good reason to suspect fakery in any of these pieces of evidence, and certainly have no problem passing on where I got the photos and who has vouched for their validity. So here is a partial working list of some of the shots I've used, at full size, with links and info. I will catalog all the relevant shots sooner or later, these are just the first.

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Pre-Collapse Damage Photos: September 11, 9:37-9:57 am
(right click, open in new window for full size view.)
Ninteen minutes after the 9:37:45 crash of the Boeing 757, the impacted segment collapsed. Thus after 9:57, the area was effectively closed off to most photographers, who were pushed back to a distance as authorities took control of what they felt was a dangerous scene. This is an important clue to why the earliest photos taken, from impact to collapse, are in fact the best evidence of a 757 impact. As we are pushed farther from the actual evidence, the room for mystery grows. Step one in the propogation of the Fraud.

Daryl Donley. Downed lamp post.Taken just about 9:38 am. This photo clearly shows the initial explosion of the impact. The often-argued case that this flash is indicative of explosives instead of/in addition to jet fuel, is something I haven't studied and I have no specific opinion on yet. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photohraphs Division. (slightly brightened)

Daryl Donley. Eclipsed Sun. One of the less seen photos of the attack, detailing the "intact columns" to the right (south) of main impact, likely entry point for the right engine and wing root. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photohraphs Division. (slightly brightened)



Cpl. Jason Ingersoll, USMC. Taken before 9:57 am. Source: US Department of Defense.







Cpl. Jason Ingersoll, USMC. Source: 911research.wtc7.net










Cpl. Jason Ingersoll, USMC. Source: Defend America.mil







Cpl. Jason Ingersoll, USMC. Source: Around. Attributed to him via its similarity to the above shot. I'm pretty sure it's yet another Ingersol classic. We are indebted greatly to this man. For goood or ill. This is the one most widely used to argue for an intact column at line 14 on the second floor.

Will Morris. Associated Press. Source: Washington Post. Flaming car, remmoved wall and columns on first floor, north side on the impact zone. Note on second floor, facade removed but windows intact, and then a section of wall completely gone. This is about the center of the impact area.


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Debris Photos outside the buildingMark Faram, senior writer with Navy Times newspaper. Taken "within fifteen minutes of the explosion," apparently just before 9:57. Source: Geoff Metcalf. geoffmetcalf.com





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Debris inside (or from inside) the building: September 11-14
Many of the photos below are from a 2002 article by Sarah Roberts posted at Rense.com
As she explained her reasoning, "since most of the plane reportedly entered the building, we should also look for images of debris inside the building." Among the reasons for a dearth of such images: "Most other photos remain in the private hands of investigators, rescue workers, and others who were inside the building. Many images are officially classified." But where the veil of secrecy and the diffusion of evidence were overcome, we see again strong evidence of a Boeing 757 having hit the building.

Anonymous. Apparent landing gear strut, apparently found in Ring C near the punch-out hole. Source: Sarah Roberts.




Anonymous. A large sheet of burned metal, possibly fuselage, against a bowed column. Source: Sarah Roberts.



Jocelyn Augustino, FEMA photographer. Cropped from an original huge photo famous for the apparent engine rotor on the left. The piles of debris at both left and right are of additional possible interest.



Virginia Task Force 1 (VATF-1) photo. Apparent engine part, possibly combustion chamber housing. The scale is not entirely clear, and opinions still seem ti differ as to whether it's from the RB-211 engines from a 757. Source: Sarah Roberts.



Virginia Task Force 1 (VATF-1) photo. A round rim (bottom right): another engine part? Source: Sarah Roberts.

SUPPORT COLUMNS {Masterlist}

Update on the Pentagon's Support Columns thought by some to disqualify a 757
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Last updated 9/10/07 mid-day

According to the ASCE's Pentagon Building Performance Report, “the original structural system" of the Pentagon "was entirely cast-in-place reinforced concrete using normal-weight aggregate." [2] This means the frame, comprised of columns supporting and connected to beams, girders, and floor slabs. The report illustrated "the typical members" in the impact area (left). The reinforcements in these columns are vertical bars, typically six, wrapped with a welded rebar that spirals from top to bottom. This cage is filled and covered with concrete, all told measuring 21” square. [3] These were evenly spaced at intervals of roughly ten feet (I'm not sure exactly).

As seen above, many impacted columns inside the building exhibited a pronounced inward bend, what seems to be a bowing by Boeing. At least one column on the outer wall seems to bear this mark: Column 9aa - warped by the left wing"

Assessing initial, pre-collapse damage to support columns is problematic; after the impacted section collapsed about twenty minutes after the 757 attack, the initial plane imprint was invisible beneath a heap of masonry, with only a few published photographs taken of the in that window of time. There was little if any video of the elusive original wound, and of course no up-close studies conducted. While most of the photos are of the best quality, it was still a violent and chaotic scene and a little hard to read, but often all investigators, even official ones, had to go on.

In assessing a “hole,” we can talk about superficial damage like removal of the building’s limestone façade and windows, and structural damage to the building’s frame and support columns. Missing outer wall and windows are generally agreed on when addressed on both sides of the debate – this is all evident. But not everybody agrees on the state of the columns in the 757’s alleged flight path.
For example, take the roughly 16 foot wide "hole" apparent on the second floor; the ASCE reported "on the second floor, the facade was missing between column lines 11 and 15. However, windows and their reinforcing frames were still in place between column lines 11 and 13," thus leaving the impression of less damage there. [1] One photo I've seen shows what seems to be a column running down the middle of that hole where 14 would be - but all other shots show no column in that spot. Through the magic of selectivity, many 9/11 Truthers have found this pillar intact and sound and concluded no plane fuselage entered there.
- Why they're wrong. Columna 14AA: The Smoking Gun That Fell Away?

But the main question with the state of the supports is on the first floor; above is one of the few shots of the first floor showing clearly the impact point and the right (south) half of the damaged area where the plane hit. Note the orange of fires is here prevalent on the second floor and almost absent from the first. This is consistent with the high impact of the fuselage breaching the floor slab and sending exploding jet fuel into both floors, and the reported banking angle of the plane, with starboard wing tipped high and cutting across the second floor slab. Just beneath that and just to the right of main impact, is what would have to be the entry “hole” for the 757’s right engine and wing root. In that spot, most all sources on both sides agree, there are three exterior columns there, 15-17AA, that are badly damaged and warped (the picture above is from the ASCE’s Performance Report). Opinions differ as to whether or not that’s odd, and what it means for the 757 impact story.
- I disagree with nearly everyone here, and this post explains why. This graphic sums it up somewhat:


One clue there’s a problem with identifying just what was a column in this area is the discrepancy even between official reports, explained in this Split-off sub-post:
Confusion in Reports: 15-18 missing, present, or a bit of both?

If these three mystery slants are indeed something other than columns 15-17, then we are left with a roughly 90 foot-wide area in which all supports were obliterated on the ground floor, front line - leaving plenty of room for the engine-fuselage-engine penetrating core of a 757, whose deeper but less even damage further in would explain the collapse of everything above that twenty minutes later.

Additional column damage deeper in the building will be covered in another forthcoming post, and will also be touched on briefly in an upcoming post on the “Punch-out” hole.

THE BLUE TARP SMUGGLING OP EXPOSED

The Blue Tarp Smuggling Op Exposed
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / The Frustrating Fraud
December 18 2006
(title repair and slight update 1/21/07)

The 'movers' with their box shrouded in blue mystery

I recall near the end of my days at LetsRoll 911 Made Simple running across the story of what I’ll call the “blue tarp smuggling op” – A member at LetsRoll 911 posted in December 2004 a thread titled “coffin with Blue Tarp Takin Away from Pentagon,” with a link that alerted me to the above picture. [1] After I left, others there looked to recent “news reports” to clarify that this was indeed a Pentagon team removing a large crate filled with some evidence – perhaps the chassis of the attack craft. I missed a later LetsRoll thread started by member “Sinister Dick Cheney” in September 2005: “What's Under the Blue Tarp in Crate?” SDC showed the picture and offered some guesses: “A cruise missile that turned out to be a dud? An engine from an F-16 or an A-3 Skyhawk?” [2]

The “news reports” leading to this conclusion seem to have been from Karl Schwarz, Jon Carlson, and Tom Flocco, all of whom have their history with controversial and downright boneheaded theories. In April 2005, Karl Schwarz told radio listeners that "there's a lot you can tell about the shape of that wing even though it is underneath that blue tarp. That wing is a configuration of an A3, not a 757." The following month Flocco in weighed in with an implausible narrowing of the case to: “a group of military personnel and federal officials in suits tightly covered the piece of wreckage with a blue tarp and carried it away to a waiting truck. No reporters or independent aircraft experts have been permitted to examine any of the recovered aircraft parts and no subpoenas have been issued to hear public grand jury testimony from the ‘movers.’” [3]

Jon Carlson had been running pieces on Rense.com arguing along with Schwarz for an A3 Sky Warrior as the Pentagon attack vehicle. On April 24 2006 he too mentioned the photo that “was first posted on a military server but NOW even it is gone as the link to it is dead.” Carlson wondered “can this small group of men, some middle-aged and paunchy, carry the entire wing end of an A-3 over their shoulders like this? Or, could they be carrying something else entirely...perhaps some debris with human remains or blood all over it? Or some piece of classified material? We may never know the truth.” [4]

I didn’t look into the issue at all, although I passed it on in largely the LetsRoll context on my early blog in 2005. But the mystery was resolved to my standards at least by a certain Russell Pickering at the Pentagon Research website, whose work deserves a post of its own here soon. On a page created in late 2004 but that I just recently discovered, he summed up a refreshingly verifiable and amusingly simple explanation.

“The first clue" Pickering cited that the photo would prove irrelevant to any conspiracy theory "is that the photo was taken by the military, reviewed and then "RELEASED" to the public.” Looking at it now, I see it's by Tech Sgt. Jim Varhegyi, USAF, taken at an unknown time on September 11. By the sun I'd say AM, probably about 11:00. How on earth could they have dug the plane/missile out of the wreckage within two hours, while fire was still raging inside, boxed it up, and hauled it across the lawn to the moving truck? Referring to the picture above, Pickering broke his analysis down into points:

“1) Notice that there is no significant weight on their arms.
2) Look carefully inside to see that it is hollow.
3) They are inside the guardrail carrying towards the grass.
4) There are only two trees on the Pentagon grounds. You can see one of them in the background which helps locate this shot.
5) The grass, lamp pole, guardrail and the concrete divider also provide clues to locating this shot."

Here I represent with full respects Pickering’s photo analysis:

"1) See that the grass, tree, lamp pole, guardrail and the concrete divider are in the exact positions they would be in photo 1.
2) See that other tents are being used on the grounds.
3) The tent right next to the guardrail may be the one they are placing in photo 1.” [5]

He re-argued his case again in April 2006 at Rense.com - the day after Carlson’s piece was run - explaining the mysterious blue box was merely a service tent, this one used for decontamination of rescue and cleanup workers. [6] Also note that The two-layer blue-gray tarp is there, the white top, the right size, the right location. Only an idiot or a fool could not see - after looking at hese two pictures - that the photo that started the ruckus is of the team ten feet and one second away from setting down that tent at lower left. Any other conclusion is laughable, and all this was known and available on the internet well before 2006 when Dylan Avery ignored the facts to note vaguely in Loose Change Second Edition “employees of the Pentagon were seen carrying away a large box shrouded in blue tarp. Why the mystery?”

This was also available before the September 2005 thread at LetsRoll started by Sinister Dick Cheney. One sharp poster “Hybrid EB” responded “unless everyone is walking backwards, the blue tarp is being carried TO the Pentagon, not away from it. […] the tarp could be a makeshift tent or covering of some sort that's completely hollow inside. So responding to your question, if all I'm given is this picture, my money goes on absolutely nothing.” SDC responded: “No sorry news reports clearly said they were taking wreckage away from the Pentagon. […] I was thinking it's something that would clearly be from a vehicle other than Flight 77. It'll remain a mystery forever we'll never know for sure.” member Vodalus weighed in “whatever it is, it is very lightweight, from the way they are carrying it, so I doubt it's an engine. […] I'd speculate on it being the remnants of the fuselage of some kind of UAV made out of a lightweight composite instead of metal. I'd also suppose that we're never going to know what it was.” [7]

Hybrid responded with a brief, well-put post featuring photos like Pickering’s and summarizing his explanation to show his precisely correct case. SDC was totally convinced: “Well done HybridEB! You seem to have solved a mystery just one of many mind you. Now please find for us the actual surveillance video!” Vodalus changed course as well. “the tents in the overhead shot in Hybrid's post have got to be what the guys are carrying.” But luckily site administrator and grand poobah Phil Jayhan stepped in, unmoved and unconvinced. He'd been happy with the one photo and the news reports, but now that more pictures had been added, he wanted more yet. “Not enough photos to prove your point Hybrid! Good enough for Dickboy cheney, not good enough for me or us; More photo proof please!” [8]

Sources:
[1] "Coffin with Blue Tarp Takin Away from Pentagon." Posted by Snidley Whiplash, December 19 2004. LetsRoll Forum. Pentagon. http://letsrollforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4399
[2] "What's Under the Blue Tarp in Crate?" Posted by "Sinister Dick Cheney," September 4 2005. LetsRoll Forum. Pentagon. http://letsrollforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10112
[3] Flocco, Tom. "Missile & remote control systems added to small jets before 9-11; same parts found at Pentagon." May 26, 2005 http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/WitnessesLink.htm
[4] Carlson, Jon. "Pentagon 911 Blue Tarp Photo Uncovered." Rense.com. April 24 2006. http://www.rense.com/general70/tarp.htm
[5] http://www.pentagonresearch.com/090.html
[6] Pickering, Russell. "The Blue "Tarp" Is A Service Tent." April 27 2006 http://www.rense.com/general70/bluett.htm
[7], [8] See [2]. Various responses.

VIALLS, VON BUELOW, HOME RUN:

NAMING NAMES
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
January 5 2007
Updated 5/8/07

[The following is an excerpt (slightly edited) from my original Shadow9-11 Series book III, "Scenario 12-E" ] I've more recently found that Von Buelow is more directly related to this page as well - after this interiew he released a book called Die CIA und der 11 September alleging remote control for the WTC attack planes we saw, and that despite this great system's availability, the planes we didn't see didn't exist, and certainly did not crash into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Von Buelow is definitely a fraudster.]

Anreas Von Buelow: 9/11 was "unthinkable, without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry.”

In January 2002, as the dust was just starting to settle in Afghanistan and the world started to settled into the first full year of America’s “new century,” the German paper Tagesspeigel published an incendiary interview with Andreas von Buelow, former German Secretary of Defense and Minister of Science and Technology. The interviewer started out noting “you seem so angry, really upset.” Von Buelow responded “I can explain what's bothering me. I see that after the horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong […] I wonder why many questions are not asked.” [1] He then proceeded to ask some of these questions himself, wondering why the 9/11 hijackers were not stopped, why warnings were ignored, why the air defense was so inadequate, and why the U.S. government then proved so nimble when it came to assigning blame. He also said of the perpetrators:

“Planning the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms. To hijack four big airliners within a few minutes and fly them into targets within a single hour and doing so on complicated flight routes! That is unthinkable, without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry.” [2]

It must be noted that von Buelow is not an impartial observer in all this. Germany in general stands to lose much from the state of affairs unleashed by 9/11, and von Buelow in particular is keen on conspiracy theories, having praised Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon as “touching on the inner sanctum of the hidden government agenda.” In this interview, von Buelow also cited the opinion of one (unnamed) “British flight engineer,” according to which “the steering of the planes was perhaps taken out of the pilots’ hands, from outside.” This could have been done by a technology devised in the 1970s whereby the American government “could rescue hijacked planes by intervening into the computer piloting.” Von Buelow said that this technology was named “Home Run.” [3]

Some other sources explain that “Home Run” is merely a nickname for a DARPA program whose real name has remained classified. Either way, the system was first addressed by this name by Joe Vialls, apparently the unnamed Brit von Buelow was referring to. A self-described aviation engineering expert (British-trained), Vialls made a fairly convincing sounding, and I think plausible, case for how this system worked, and evidence that it was used to carry out the September 11 attacks. [4] LetsRoll posters like TitleForce, strike2Force, and General Carter seem to be inspired by this enigmatic and little-photographed theorist, the precise source of many of the pieces they re-posted. They may have been him for all I know.

He first came to my attention for tackling the Frustrating Fraud, calling French accusations of a missile a "sick joke." He postulated neither a missile nor an empty drone, but the regular Flight 77 with everyone aboard but the hijackers, seized remotely and slammed into its target. He saw the same basic plan at work in New York as well, in a simple, chillingly possible scenario I later came to adopt as "Shadow 9/11."

But as a source he has problems – Vialls offered few if any sources of his own, yet seemed an expert in almost any field he tackled. He was a mysterious and controversial writer to say the least; he has called the Peak Oil theory a “Zionist scam,” [5] accused “New York” of causing the Indonesian tsunami of 2004, accused Isreal of running New York, and argued that smoking cigarettes prevents lung cancer. Vialls Died in July 2005, apparently of natural causes (presumably not lung cancer), in his native Perth, Australia. His exact history and credentials are unclear, but he had set up and mirrored a galaxy of websites offering certain analyses of world event in his trademark crayon fonts. He started out leaving the perpetrators of 9-11 nameless, but offering links to self-hosted articles by others who pointed to Israeli execution. Vialls’ later articles were more blunt, with one article from his last month of life laden with grisly images of crimes perpetrated on “bewildered” Muslims by “American and/or Jewish soldiers and brutal sub contractors.” [6]

Oddly, Vialls is alleged by at least one Australian researcher as born Otho Jewell Vialls, seeming suspiciously Jewish himself, and therefore likely an agent of someone’s sent in to hijack legitimate conspiracy theories and crash them into the ground, as he is alleged to have done in several previous cases. [7] It must be noted that this is from Judicial.inc, which I don't take as a reputable source; their site is rather sickening in fact, but they probably have at least some facts, like this one, straight. Nor do I personally care about Vialls' ethnicity - Jews are as free as anyone to call themselves “Joe” rather than Otho and to criticize Israel and even come across as anti-Semitic. I just liked the image this gave me of covertness and of hijacking theories, noting his early involvement in the most plausible of the dark conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.

Whatever then to make of his interesting argument and its detractors, Vialls published his first article on Home Run in October 2001, in which he had noted:

“Nowadays there are large numbers of people apart from the author privy to the basic data [on Home Run]. As long ago as the early nineties, a major European flag carrier acquired the information and was seriously alarmed that one of its own aircraft might be "rescued" by the Americans without its authority. Accordingly, [the airline] completely stripped the American flight control computers out of its entire fleet, and replaced them with a home grown version. These aircraft are now effectively impregnable to penetration by Home Run, but that is more than can be said for the American aircraft fleet.” [8]

He left the nation and airline unnamed at the time, but after von Buelow’s interview, Vialls updated this, revealing the nation as Germany, and the airline as Lufthansa. “Bearing in mind his former posts as Secretary of Defence and Minister of Science and Technology” at about that time, he noted, “Herr Von Buelow would have known all about this mammoth but secretive task.” Vialls also praised the timing; “how very clever (and discreet) of Von Buelow to sort of ‘drop the information’ into the middle of an interview about the 9/11 attacks!” [9] How very clever and discreet of Vialls to cite as evidence, of all the “large numbers of people” aware of Home Run, almost the very guy who would come out and cite Vialls as evidence later.

Hmmm…

Sources:
[1], [2], [3] Tagesspiegel, 13 Jan 2002 interview. Partial translation. Accessed October 30, 2005 at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/VonBuelow.html
[4], [8], [9] Vialls, Joe. “Home Run: Electronically Hijacking the World Trade Center Attack Aircraft.” October, 2001. Accessed October 30, 2005 at: http://www.geocities.com/mknemesis/homerun.html
[5] Vialls, Joe. “Russia Proves 'Peak Oil' is a Misleading Zionist Scam” August 25, 2004. Accessed November 13, 2005 at: http://www.vialls.com/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html
[6] Vialls, Joe. “Bush, Blair, and Howard Photo Atrocities.” May 24, 2005. Accessed November 13, 2005 at: http://www.vialls.com/torture/criminals1.html
[7] Beattie, Stewart. “Did Joe Vialls ever Play Fullback for Jerusalem?” Judicial Inc. November 16, 2003. Accessed November 7, 2005 at: http://judicial-inc.biz/Vilas_Beattie.htm.

THE UNMARKED PENTALAWN

Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Updated 5/7/07

One of the most persistently-used evidentiary leadups to no-757 claims is the Pentagon's lawn, showing narry a scratch in the photographic record despite the massive Boeing 757 that had just passed inches over it and exploded. Myriad revisionists have pointed to early eyewitness accounts that had the giant Flight 77 skimming and then actually hitting the grass before it actually hit the Pentagon’s façade. For example, Tim Timmerman reported "I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. [...] it was right before impact, and I saw the airplane just disintegrate and blow up into a huge ball of flames." CBS News reported onSeptember 26 “some eyewitnesses believe the plane actually hit the ground at the base of the Pentagon first, and then skidded into the building. Investigators say that's a possibility.” How so? All photos and video from the day of the attack have shown the same unmarked lawn seen below.


Time, September 12: “There is a helicopter pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there, then the plane cartwheeled into the building.” ESPN, September 12, referring to other accounts: “What - or who - caused Flight 77 to hit ground first, diffusing most of its destructive energy before it slammed into the Pentagon?” They seemed to be hinting it was heroes on board, like with Flight 93, who helped grind the plane into the ground to weaken its impact. The turf, as I’ve seen it, shows no such evidence of heroism. Besides Loose Change, 911 In Plane Site points this out with glee, and it’s been marveled over by Killtown as the miraculously resilient “Pentalwan 2000.”

Actually, there is some truth to the stories of the plane hitting the ground. It was flying remarkably low, with its port (left) wing tilted lowest. Looking along the flight path, explained in another post, this would indeed put the wingtip near or in the dirt not far from the helipad (in front of the small building at left is top picture). Below we can see where the underhanging left engine may well have nicked a low retaining wall around an exhaust structure about 100 feet from the impact site, and may have scraped some sod there as well. However, grass damage appears questionable even here, and over the vast expanse of the lawn, especially seen from a distance and far to the right as usually shown, indeed, there are no meaningful marks. This is undeniable, but even without that damaged wall, it's also another red herring tossed on the pile rotting in the sun of over-scrutiny. The official plane never did hit the ground in a real way. The no-planer’s missile never touched the ground. Even if it was blowing up just before impact as Timmerman and some evidence indicates, Nothing touched the ground, except at that one spot. So we all agree, let’s move on. Harping on this point proves nothing but a few mistaken witnesses who had after all just seen a massive jet descend from the sky to just a few inches off the ground – in their minds they expected a crash with the ground and most were probably too busy diving for cover to watch closely.

As for what the conspiracy theorists see in these mistaken accounts, some see in it the impossibility of flunky pilot Hani Hanjour NOT hitting the ground and suspect precision remote control - I find this likely myself. But others of the Loose Change variety perhaps see a clue that the Pentagon was pressuring people to lie about what they saw, and (ironically?) as the reported gouges in the lawn evaporated, so too did the reported plane for the Dave Von Kleists and Dylan Averies of the world. Perhaps some folks actually were coached to say this despite its instant disprovability as part of a Pentagon-sponsored disinformation campaign for precisely the end of spurring such useless conspiracy theories. Otherwise, I'm guessing they just thought it hit the ground.

THE GLOBAL HAWK THEORY

RQ4? RQ SERIOUS?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
May 6 2007

Northop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk (R= reconnaissance, Q = unmanned). Specifications:
Wingspan: 116 feet
Fuselage length: 44 feet
Tailfin height: 15 feet
Top speed: 454 mph.
Engine: one, Rolls Royce AE3007H turbofan
Empty weight: 8,490 pounds
Maximum loaded weight: 22,900 pounds

Still under development at the time of 9/11, the Global Hawk entered reconnaissance use in the Afghanistan War, and has been used widely over Iraq. Clearly its timing of production just in time for the War on Terror is rather interesting to skeptics; it had just made the news in April 2001 by being the first drone to fly unaided across the Pacific, from Edwards AFB in California to a base in Australia and back in just under a day. [1] In 2003, as Pentagon questions were taking off after Meyssan’s lead, the RQ4 made news again, being the first UAV given FAA certification to fly unannounced in civilian air corridors. [2] Understandably, when people didn’t see the airliner fly into the building as they did in New York, imaginations run wild, and once a 757 had been discredited in some minds, the RQ4 had a certain appeal as a replacement.

Quinn’s picturing of the RQ4 decked out with missiles and a partial AA paintjob

Among those who run with their imaginings is “quantum futurist” Joe Quinn, who wrote in late 2004 “imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a drone aircraft like the Global Hawk […] 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.” [3] Of course, the eyewitness accounts are overwhelmingly either vague on model or cite an “airliner” or specifically a 757 or something of that scale, with no one indicating anything like a Global Hawk.

For five years after the attack, despite its serious shortcomings, many revisionist theories passively mentioned the RQ4 as a possibility, starting with Meyssan’s fingering an unspecified drone, possibly a Global Hawk, and picking up steam in 2003. Col Donn De Grand Pre told a listener on the Alex Jones show in early 2004 that he believed “it was a cruise missile. It could have been a Global Hawk. It was not a commercial aircraft." More often the craft is mentioned as a mere illustration, and far from the most relevant one, that airliners like the 9/11 attack planes could have been flown remotely. But some specifically and consistently pushed the theory that this very bug-brained drone was responsible for the damage at the Pentagon. Besides Quinn is French Researcher “Silent but Deadly” felt that it was the best explanation. Laura Knigh Jadczyk decided “there's no reason why [Osama bin Laden] couldn't also have been accused of getting his hands on a Global Hawk," and then wondered "again, and again, and again: why can't the American People SEE WHAT HIT THE PENTAGON?” [4]

Among those who've most explicitly fingered this new spy drone as the culprit, Israeli-obsessed, borderline anti-Semitic 9/11 Truth clowns Christopher Bollyn and Eric Hufschmid stand out. Hufschmid is especially prolific, from his mixed-quality 2002 book Painful Questions to his much worse 2003 video Painful Deceptions and beyond, his Global Hawk arguments make his theorizing look more like a parody of sorts than an actual attempt at truth. It was to Hufschmid that self-described Pentagon attack witness Sam Danner turned in 2006 with his incredible tale of the Global Hawk strike. Before he admitted he had fabricated the whole incident, Danner’s self-destructing testimony also dragged in Bollyn as well as fellow anti-Zionist conspiratainer Michael Collins Piper.

Luckily the lie wasn’t all they had, as Bollyn hedged slightly in his first Danner piece: “The evidence supporting the theory that a Global Hawk was flown into the Pentagon by remote control has been investigated by this writer in American Free Press.” This is true, as is that “Danner's testimony is unique in its detail and description of the aircraft.” but beyond that Bollyn’s analysis has nothing true to offer; Sam's story “is supported by an abundance of photographic evidence and numerous statements made by other eyewitnesses," and besides, "while Danner's testimony corroborates this hypothesis, which is supported by evidence, there is not a single piece of evidence, physical or photographic in the public domain to support the government version that a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon.” [5]

Looking at the physical evidence, a Global Hawk would have nearly the wingspan to clip all the light poles that were clipped, but not likely the weight necessary. That this tiny object should have continued after that to hit the building is doubtful, as is its ability, even with missiles, to blast the damage hole into the Pentagon’s west wall. The width of its penetrating core (engine/fuselage) is about six feet, compared the 50-foot core of a 757 and to the 100-foot wide swathe of destroyed columns of the ground floor. As for the airplane scraps found on the lawn, a painted RQ4 could possibly explain these, as could the official 757.

Regarding debris found inside the building, Joe Quinn feels the 757-looking landing wheel actually matches a Global Hawk's, and ignoring that even large engines have small parts, he addressed the famous FEMA rotor photo: “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.” [6] Quinn was drawing on Bollyn, who believed the part was from an RQ4’s Rolls Royce AE3007H engine. Bollyn had contacted a company spokesman, who said of the photo “It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I’m familiar with, and certainly not the AE3007H made here in Indy.” Bollyn included this as evidence. (??) [7]

Even after all this lack of correllary evidence and even after the Danner debacle, “Silent But Deadly” still sums up in the eyewitness preamble to his carefully crafted 3-D test of the official story (which the 757 failed), “sam danner said he lied, so statements are removed. Nevertheless, the best version is still the globalhawk one.” [8]

Sources:
[1] Aviation history as Global Hawk completes US-Australia flight Australian Minister of Defence Hon. Dr. Brendan Nelson MP http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Nelsontpl.cfm?CurrentId=628
[2] FAA Clears Global Hawk For Routine Operation In US National Airspace August 18 2003 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-03zl.html
[3], [6] Quinn, Joe. “Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757.” Signs of the Times. http://www.kasjo.net/ats/ats.htm
[4] Knight-Jadczyk, Laura. “Comments on the Pentagon Strike.” Signs of the Times. http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/boeing.htm
[5] Bollyn, Christopher. "Official Pentagon 9/11 Story Debunked." American Free Press. http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=75&contentid=3741&page=1
[7] http://www.propagandamatrix.com/140903enginepart.html
[8] "Silent But Deadly." Pentagon 3-D Test. Page 2. http://0911.site.voila.fr/index11.htm

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS {masterlist}

Last Updated 3/19/07

For whatever reason, mostly the fallibility of memory, I'd always avoided the eyewitness accounts of the Pentagon attack in putting together my case. But recently I finally started taking a close look at the eye-and-ear-witness stories. This started thanks to a challenge casually offered to and then accepted by "Jack Tripper" over at Above Top Secret, re-offered and accepted by me: an attempt to top them: he and his partners had four witnesses testify, in their video ThePentaCon, to an explicitly north-of-the-Citgo station flight path, with all that implies, and I suggested I could find more than four witnesses of the official path with all that implies - like the damage at the pentagon actually being caused by a 757. I finally ceded the challenge in annoyance with Jack's stipulations, but continue here with the sorting of and learning from these shifty stories.

One pattern I'm noticing is the "right over me" effect, which I'll be referring to often enought to give it an acronym: ROME. the attack plane is reported as coming in right over or from right behind witness; no matter where they are, no matter facing which way they say this. People north testify to a plane from the north, and people from the south a plane from the south. It's uncanny. Just look at the map. Witnesses farther from the flight are less likely to do this, but their locational testimony is bound to be less precise. Those truly under the plane, if we can firmly locate them at the time, are most useful.

one thing I'm disregarding off-the-bat is any account of a missile or plane other than a 757-type plane, the real deal. This is what everyone saw, not metaphor, not mix-up. THE plane. it's not what it was but where it was I'm looking at here. Here is a working map of the witneses I'm analyzing, their locations, direction headed when possible, and when possible, a guesstimated flight path in the witness' designated color. This is all somewhat inexact, so please don'tread it all too literally: accounts below give you the clues I'm working from. (right-click-new window for full-size)

The Witnesses:
- Mickey Bell / Jack Singleton / Singleton's equipment: an odd and multi-dimensional account covered in-depth here. Totally consistent with the official story. Bell was directly beneath the plane at its final impact point, and amongt the construction equipment had no view of the attackpath, and he has no memory of the incident, at least on record, though the equipment itself demonstrates the official fliht path.

- Chadwick Brooks: A pentagon cop who saw a United airlines flight (wrong colors, wrong plane) on an unuusual northern flight path, but saw it hit the building he thinks. Account covered in-depth in The PentaCon review
(source: the PentaCon, testimony Nov 2006)

- Bobby Eberle:
Creds: Not the best for credibility: Eberle was a big shot at GOPUSA, a Texas-based Republican activist company. Their media subsidiary, Talon News, later provided the White House press room with their favorite fake GOP plant (and male prostitute to boot) James Guckert (aka Mark Gannon).
Location: "Riding in a convertable with the top down," but stuck in slow traffic, apparently headed north; “at about 9:30 am, we rounded a bend and had the Pentagon in our sites - right in front of us.”
Account:”I then heard a tremendously loud noise from behind me and to my left. I looked back and saw a jet airliner flying very low and very fast. […] The aircraft was so very low. […] the aircraft passed from behind my left shoulder to in front of me [and] crashed into the Pentagon and exploded.”
Notes: The plane coming from his left indicates he’s not headed south on Route 27, in which case it’d be from the right. Rounding the bend to have the Pentagon in front of him, could be read as turning east on 395 or north on 27 beneath it – So I’m placing him between the two points.
(source: http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/bobby/2001/bobby_0912.shtml, published 9/12/01, since pulled. Found via some guy I don't know.)

- Penny Elgas:
Location: Headed north on I-395 towards DC, "stuck in late morning rush hour traffic - almost in front of the Pentagon"
Account: "Traffic was at a standstill. I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there. […] I saw the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport. In the nano-second that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground.
Notes: Finally a mention of the Citgo! “to the side” is a bit vague, but from her vantage and reported nearness, I’d guess the south side. It’s hard to place her on the map – north on 395 means quite a ways south, nowhere near the Citgo. Her location description is on 395 before the east turn, but account of plane position sounds more like Route 27, but that's not the way into Washington. "straight at us" is another manifestation of ROME, giving us a line that makes no sense if read literally. The line here is my best guess, icluding her slight turn towards the Heliport. (Source: Penny's full account, via American History.si.edu)

- Bruce Elliot:
Creds: Former commander of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant who, reassigned to the Pentagon in July.
Location: about to board a shuttle van in a south parking lot
Account: "I looked to my left and saw the plane coming in," said Elliott, who watched it for several seconds. "It was banking and garnering speed." He also said the craft clipped a utility pole guide wire, which may have slowed it down a bit before it crashed into the building and burst into flames.
Notes: South means looking west or northwest to see the plane. Seeing it for several seconds means a longer vantage point and relatively unobstructed view. This means nothing for north-south differentiation, with nothing tall enough to obstruct either path for the last probably 2-4 seconds. With no specifics, I cannot venture a useful guess at Elliot's implied flight path.
(source: "The Hawkeye," 9/13/01. Found via: Eric Bart.)

- Albert Hemphill
Location: the new BMDO office at the Navy Annex, “with two nice windows and a great view of the monuments, the Capitol and the Pentagon.”
Account: he “stood peering out of the window looking at the Pentagon" by chance. Cued by the noise from above, "immediately, the large silver cylinder of an aircraft appeared in my window, coming over my right shoulder as I faced the Westside of the Pentagon directly towards the heliport. The aircraft [...] seemed to come directly over the annex, as if it had been following Columbia Pike […] All in all, I probably only had the aircraft in my field of view for approximately 3 seconds." Covered in-depth here
(source: e-mail by Albert Hemphill, TML September 2001 archive, lists.travellerrpg.com, 9/12/01. Found via Penny Schoner)

- Kirk Milburn
Creds:construction supervisor for Atlantis Co.
Location: on the Arlington National Cemetery exit (to route 27) of Interstate 395
Account: “I was right underneath the plane” …he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. "I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying. I guess it was hitting light poles. It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion."
Notes: ROME uncorrected here, account read as literal - path is probaly near this one but not exact. Clearly not north of the Citgo, therefore south, if not explicitly.
(source: Washington Post, 9/11/01. Found via: Eric Bart.)

- Terry Morin: The astute witness
Location: mid-south side of Navy Annex/Federal office Building 2.
Account: Noise cues first, then "the airliner came into my field of view. [...] essentially right over the top of me and the outer portion of the FOB (flight path parallel the outer edge of the FOB). [...] Within seconds the plane cleared [the building] and was heading directly towards the Pentagon. [...] The tail was barely visible when I saw the flash and subsequent fireball rise." Covered in detail here.
Notes: A straight path along the south edge of the annex would be just about right to hit the building properly and clip all five poles, passing just south of the Citgo station on the way. The map shows the closest straight line to his account, and it's damn close.
(source: Eric Bart.)

- Lon Raines: An oddball account
Creds: Upstanding editor of Space News.
Location: on Route 27, “with the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o'clock on the dial of a clock"
Account: “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.”
Notes: Pentagon on left at 10:00 means just north of or at the north end of the building and facing south. “From behind” means from further north. He didn’t see anything it sounds like, but our ears are good at direction-finding. If he’s right, there’s another northern flight account. He also noted it sounded like a missile and not a plane, but this is usually taken as metaphor. This path is far from consistent with any others, from too far north even for the PentaCon's story. His earwitness story is also based noton the sound pattern of their overflight theory (jet noise-explosion-jet noise fading off) but rather jet noise-explosion-silence.

- Don Scott
Creds: Prince William County school bus driver living in Woodbridge
Locaion: driving eastward past the Pentagon on his way to Washington, had just passed the Pentagon and was near the Macy's store in Crystal City (Pentagon City)
Account: “I noticed a plane making a sharp turn from north of the Pentagon. I had to look back at the road and then back to the plane as it sort of leveled off. I looked back at the road, and when I turned to look again, I felt and heard a terrible explosion. I looked back and saw flames shooting up and smoke starting to climb into the sky”
Notes: I'm not sure how to map this - from North and then a sharp turn?

- Levi Stephens:
Location: "driving away from the Pentagon in the South Pentagon lot."
Account: "I hear this huge rumble, the ground started shaking … I saw this [plane] come flying over the Navy Annex. It flew over the van and I looked back and I saw this huge explosion, black smoke everywhere."
Notes: drawing this line literally – from the Navy annex to directly over him in the S. parking lot – clearly makes no sense, so I adjusted it to make more sense; the end point of the line should be the impact point, and for lack of more specifics put the other end down the middle of the building.

- Philip Thompson:
Location:sitting in heavy traffic in the I-395 HOV (car pool) lanes, directly across from the Navy Annex.
Account: “I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument. I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver's side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground”

- Robert Turcios:
Location: The Citgo station, on-duty.
Account: Covered in-depth in The PentaCon review post.
Notes: He saw the plane fly right over the station and straight into the building after pulling up to miss a road sign that would have been in its way. A path this far north is unusual, but comports roughly with Lagasse and Brooks. His report of a pull-up is no noted anywhere else at all, so far as I can see, but is taken by the CIT folks as proof it flew over the bldg, even though Turcios himself disagrees.

- Alan Wallace:
Creds: 55-year-old firefighter, usually worked out of the Fort Myer fire station, but on Sept. 11 he was one of three firefighters assigned to the Pentagon's heliport. Along with crew members Mark Skipper and Dennis Young, Wallace arrived around 7:30 in the morning.
Location: Between the heliport and impact site on the Pentagon's west lawn, moving out the fire truck housed beneath the helo tower in advance of President Bush's anticipated touchdown later that day.
Account: Firetruck parked perpendicular to the west wall. "Wallace and Skipper were walking along the right side of the truck (Young was in the station) when the two looked up and saw an airplane. It was about 25 feet off the ground and just 200 yards away-the length of two football fields. They had heard about the WTC disaster and had little doubt what was coming next. "Let's go," Wallace yelled. Both men ran."
Notes: pretty vague for direction.

NINE FEET OF STEEL REINFORCED IDIOCY

PLANE PENETRATES 155', FRAUD LOGIC PENETRATES NOTHING
Adam Larson/The Frustrating Fraud
December 2006
Last updated 7/22/07

In another post I eplained the suspected depth of penetration of the attack craft as explained by Holmgren, Hufschmid, and Raphael Meyssan. Initially they and others had believed only the outer "E" ring was damaged, leaving not nearly enough space to fit a 757. But this was soon shown as false evidence. The Pentagon is indeed comprised of five concentric rings, from the innermost “A” ring to the outermost “E” ring, the outer wall of which is of course where the plane - or whatever - first hit. Each ring is about fifty feet wide in the cross-section below, and comprised of five floors. There is an open, ground-level roadway between the B and C Rings called the “A-E drive.”

But... while the upper floors of each ring are separated by spaces for light and air, floors one and two are completely roofed over and the ring distiction is meaningless. The attack plane is alleged to have penetrated three rings (E,D,C), all at the first-floor level, a single, enormous, open area with support provided by spaced columns, and variously divided by weaker internal walls. The plane and all its damage would be within the gray area in the cross-section below, concealed beneath the building’s roof and at least one more ceiling beneath that - clearly invisible from above.


Eventually the "punch-out hole" on the inside of ring C became the focus, indicating a deep burial of the plane through three rings (or at least fakery indicating such). Eventually the one-ring-damaged construct and its 757-couldn't-do-it implication faded and were replaced with the line put forth in 911 In Plane Site, where host Dave Von Kleist looked at the damage to three rings, where such a plane could fit, and again decided a 757 couldn't do it. "Keep in mind that each ring of the Pentagon has an outer and inner wall," he said. "Each wall is approximately 18 inches thick of steel reinforced concrete. That means that each ring consisted of 36 inches or 3 feet of steel reinforced concrete [...] Question – Could a 757 have pierced 9 feet of steel reinforced concrete, and left a 14 to 16 foot hole, and no wreckage?" Likewise, Loose Change cites "another sixteen-foot hole on the inside of the "C" Ring" (the punch-out hole, which is actually more like eight feet by ten). Narrator Dylan Avery concludes "for that hole to have been caused by Flight 77, the Boeing would have had to smash through nine feet of steel reinforced concrete." While disregarding the exact math, no-planer Killtown also doubted that "the fragile nose of Flight 77" could "penetrate all the way through 3 reinforced concrete/steel hardened rings and punched out a hole through the inside wall of Ring C.”

First, the exterior walls of the Pentagon are not 18" of steel reinforced concrete, as these sources imply. The exact construction the plane was up against is not entirely clear, but I'm nearing completion on a post to explain this.

Second, as I explained earlier, the lower floors were undivided, and so the remainder of the six such ring-defining walls pierced simply do not exist, except the last one. Below, see rooflines of the E, D, and C rings superimposed over the inerior layout of the impacted area, as released by the Pentagon. The red zone is the damaged area, and numbers 1-6 represent the six thick ring walls Von Kleist and Avery are looking for (though in reverse order).

They do not seem to play into the layout of the ground floor, which is where the attack happened. With the exception of walls 1 and 6, these heavy walls essentially do not exist at that level, and the plane would only have had support collumns and weak internal walls to deal with. It could bounce and tear between the pillars, like a deadly game of shrapnel ping-pong. The landing gear making the neat hole inside the C-ring is still a little suspicious, but it's a fairly minor point in the big picture, and a failry minor hole compared to the impact. So only the outer wall was pierced by the majority of the attack plane, leaving us with a not-so mysterious situation: Question? How does much of a 757 crash through the outer wall of the Pentagon?

Answer: with a running start.

But the no-757 theorists have laid down their own rings of fatuity, each with their inner and outer walls adding up to nine feet of steel reinforced idiocy that our bullshit detectors must pierce. Many peoples' aren't even switched on of course, and so this blatant misunderstanding has richocheted around within the Truth movement's head and will probably continue to do so for as long as it stumbles along. By the way, many of the little bubbles clustered in and around the red zone represent dead bodies that were recovered near the end of the trajectory and along its edges. Question - how could a cruise missile or Global Hawk plow a pile of corpses like that?

RUMSFELD'S MISSILE "ADMISSION"

CREATED IN TRANSLATION
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud

As in the predecessor video "911 In Plane Site," Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe chose to open their improved Loose Change, 2nd Edition with coverage of the missile attack at the Pentagon. They saw this as the strong point, and placed it up front - that is, after twelve minutes of introductory info-montage, credits, and spooky music. The opening segment opens with the following text hovering on a black screen for thirty seconds (ironically, over the sounds from inside a jet plane).

“Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.”
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, October 12 2001.

That's a good clue to hit the stop button and here's why:

On October 12 2001 Rumsfeld indeed sat down in the Pentagon with interviewer Lyric Wallwork Winik of Parade magazine to go on the record for the one-month anniversary. Once printed, the interview indeed bore this "slip." To the skeptical and sloppy mind, his mention of an "American Airlines jet" AND a "missile" seems to delineate two separate objects: one presumably American 11 that hit the North Tower in Manhattan, and the other, obviously, the missile that hit the Pentagon. He was apparently a tad senile and simply let on more than he meant to. It wouldn't be the last time.

But... Problems with the audio transcription are evident or else there wouldn't be a "similar (inaudible)" involved. So I zoomed in on the second “and” that created the impression of two separate objects and tried replacing it with the similar sounding “as” and got “using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens AS the missile to damage this building.” This makes the whole statement make more sense, and is exactly what the government has always said.

Problem solved, and all it takes is imagining that someone with the esteemed name Lyric Wallwork Winik would hear "as" and type "and," apparently unaware of the confusion this would cause and how wide it would spread. In fact, Parade admitted in September 2004 that "a transcription error led to the confusion, but conspiracy theorists latched onto Rumsfeld's supposed admission and spread it over the Internet." Those pesky conspiracy theorists. I google searched the prhrase to see who was responsible for this diffusion and found that the #1 source most people have visited to pick up and pass on this flawed evidence is the DoD website, where the complete uncorrected interview is still prominently posted as of late 2006. In this case at least, the Pentagon itself is primarily responsible for perpetuating this retarded delusion.

PRE-9/11 PENTAGON PREPAREDNESS

OF FORESIGHT AND ANCHOR CHAINS
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / The Frustrating Fraud
January 23 2007
Updated 5/3/07

Although most Pentagon workers in the area hit on 9/11 were still sitting at their desks doing their usual work as Flight 77 came crashing through their office doors, there were well-established and practiced procedures for “exactly” such an event. The Washington Post reported shortly after 9/11 the account of a Pentagon medic who was sitting and reading the just-printed emergency response manual for what to do in case the building was struck by a civilian airliner at the precise moment that happened. [1] But unfortunately these procedures don’t seem to have helped much, given no radar track of the incoming plane, no warning, and thus no time given to implement any such measures.

Dennis Ryan's photo of a mock-up used for MASCAL (slightly filtered for artsy effect)

Among the emergency drills they’d held was one in October 2000, less than a year prior as part of what the Military District of Washington News Service called at the time "several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room." Author Dennis Ryan provided photographs as well for one of the scenarios, the "Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise" (MASCAL) the mock passenger plane crashed into the mock Pentagon courtyard appears to be a big one but probably not a 757 as Loose Change claims. One participant explained as far-fetched as the MASCAL scenario may have seemed, “you have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here.” [2] Navy Capt. Charles Burlingame was allegedly part of this drill, though the charge is unsubstantiated. If you don't know the significance of that already, check this post.

Whether the MASCAL crash was supposed to be an accident or an attack didn't seem to matter - it was all about the aftermath. But in the next noteworthy drill conducted eight months later, the preparations were getting more specifically 9/11-related. As US Medicine magazine, "the voice of Federal medicine," reported in October 2001:

"Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May. In fact, the tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic here in the Pentagon trained jointly in May to fine-tune their emergency preparedness, afterward making simple equipment changes that would make a difference Sept. 11 when the hypothetical became reality." [3]

This is amazing; according to this article, they were looking at a hijacked 757 strike four months before that happened on 9/11, preparations that "made a difference." Of course the best difference would have been to simply evacuate the building well before the plane arrived (35 minutes after it became clear the nation was under attack), or to have worked out air defense plans, perhaps with NORAD, to stop any such weaponized aircraft short of the building.

A possible third drill may have been planned to that end in conjunction with a proposed mid-2001 NORAD exercise simulating suicide hijacking attacks. USA Today famously reported on April 18, 2004 that "in the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, [NORAD] conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties." They had the 9/11 targets in mind; earlier drills had focused on such an attack against the WTC, but when the planning turned to the Pentagon, the story reported, "that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic.” [4]

The original source for this was an e-mail from a former NORAD official obtained by the Project On Government Oversight, which explained that NORAD "wanted to develop a response in the event that a terrorist group would use an airliner as a missile to attack the Pentagon, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the scenario as "too unrealistic." [5] This was in April 2001 POGO reports, a month before they prepared for defense against an unobstructed hijacked plane/missile hitting their building, and five months before 9/11, when they had no capabilities in place "to protect the Pentagon," but at least they had the aftermath covered well enough.

Buth even with just the two drills plus whatever else went in to the process, the Pentagon's bureaucracy had just enough time to get the emergency procedures ironed out and printed before the precise "unrealistic" scenario envisioned four months earlier came crushingly true. But there was apparently not enough time to fully integrate the plan with things like useful warning procedures - a tragically stalled process that would help illustrate Rumsfeld's charges that pre-9/11, the Pentagon was "tangled in its own anchor chain." How conveniently illustrative of his and his colleagues' known desire for a 21st Century "process of transformation" there.

Sources:
[1] Oil Empire. http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html
[2] Ryan, Dennis. "Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies." Military District of Washington News Service. November 3 2000. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlan.html
[3] Mientka, Matt. Pentagon Medics Trained For Strike. US Medicine. October 2001. http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=272&issueID=31
[4] as passed on by US Rep. Jan Schakowski: http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/press2004a/pr4_20_2004mis.html
Also at 9-11 Research: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/post911/commission/usatoday_noradx.htm
and the original still up at USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
[5] Project on Government Oversight. "Joint Chiefs of Staff Rejected "Airplanes as Missiles" Scenario Five Months prior to 9/11." April 13 2004. http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ha-040401-homelandsecurity.html

JIM HANSON'S DE-VINE REVELATION

Yage-tripping former Republicans for 9/11 Truth?
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Last Edited: 4/30/07

[note: I've been getting away from the fun old game of ridiculing fraudsters lately, focusing on solidifying my own case and doing more serious research, but just found this little gem from the Idaho Observer, February 2005, which I had missed before.]

Before he discovered the truth of 9/11, Jim Hanson of Columbus Ohio was a five-decade Republican and "former district campaign manager for Richard Nixon," as conspiratainment radio host Greg Szymanski explained in a February 2005 piece for the Idaho Observer. Szymanski was talking to the retired attorney because of an excellent 1/2 page ad he had taken out in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper "denouncing the Bush administration specifically concerning one photo of the Pentagon crash, which he claims will prove government complicity in 9/11."

The photo refered to by Hanson is the famous shot taken by Mark Faram shown above (cropped on the debris), which Szymanski incorrectly described as “the only piece of wreckage of Flight 77 ever made public.” This also seems to be Hanson’s understanding as well, since he summed up "if it can be proved that this piece didn’t come from Flight 77,” then there would be NO wreckage released of the plane, and this “ would open the door, exposing the rest of the government conspiracy."

This is a serious question then, so Hanson set out two main supports for his conclusion that this did not come from the doomed Flight. Hanson laid out his first charge: While the scrap clearly matches the American Airlines paint scheme, “after blowing up the photo and matching rivets to those of the 757 that supposedly crashed into the Pentagon, I found there wasn’t a match. This piece of wreckage was from a different plane.” I’ve seen this claim made around by others, but still haven’t looked into it closely. A reasonable match to an AA 757 has been demonstrated well enough in this early piece by Jim Hoffman, but for the moment I’ll ignore the possibility that Hanson is flat wrong that the Faram scrap is not from a 757 as alleged, suspend judgment, and turn to his second corroborating proof.

On close examination of the photo, Hanson found "a curious piece of wood or what I have determined to be a liana vine, imbedded into the aluminum piece of wreckage.” A liana vine! What a revolutionary observation! Did the plane swing into the building on a vine in Tarzan style? A little research shows that lianas are a general type of burly climbing vine, one species of which is used in the Ayahuasca or Yage, a ritual Incan hallucinogen now popular in certain non-traditional circles (though usually not elderly Republicans). Is there more to Hanson’s visionary approach to 9/11 Truth than meets the eye? Is he seeing at the heart of the official lie the very vine he’s tripping on?

Whatever the validity of his observation, it all fell together from there: “I then found out that another 757 went down in the South American jungle in 1995, where liana vines (similar to wicker) grow abundantly.” As Szymanski explained, Hanson phoned the NTSB and was told the mangled remains of that 757 were stored at an undisclosed "military disposal site for investigation.” He then had a serious enough hunch to charge that “I think the military substituted this piece of wreckage in an attempt to deceive the public, in an attempt to make them believe Flight 77 hit the Pentagon when it didn’t."

How it is the scrap doesn't match the official 757 plane model but could be from a different 757 he's never seen photos of is unclear to me. I would've guessed all 757s are riveted the same. Furthermore, unless this original flight was AA, it would have had to be re-painted, and it seems odd the special effects guys would miss the woody vines twisted into the metal as they sraped off the paint and stencilled on part of a lower-case "n" to proper scale. Hanson too was aware of the depth of their faux pas: "I think this one mistake regarding the military photo, could bring down the house of cards and expose the entire conspiracy." Hanson himself was putting his Republicanism on hold over the affair; "I am no longer affiliating myself with the Republican Party considering the outrageous acts that have been perpetrated on the American people. This is beyond politics,” he told Szymaski and his readers. “This is outright fascism."

And for the record, here’s the proof of the 21st Century Reichstag Fire that brought Fascism to our own shores: the only non-metal substance I can see with the scrap, the yellow stuff at the bottom, and a couple of ideas as to what it could be:

Don’t scoff! If Hanson is correct, the fate of the free world could be at stake here.

Source: Szymanski, Greg. "Life-long Republican believes only piece of Flight 77 wreckage was planted at Pentagon on 9/11." Idaho Observer. February 2005. http://proliberty.com/observer/20050208.htm