GRAVY’S PENTACAR PHOTO

GRAVY’S PENTACAR PHOTO
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
January 24 2008 4pm


Recently I stumbled across this photo, which was posted at WTC7 Lies Pentagon evidence pages [page two in the middle]. I've never heard of any such damaged car. People mention Lloy'd cab with its windshield smashed by a light pole fragment, and a clipped truck antenna, that's it from what I had seen. In this case the passnger side window taken out; someone could've been killed, so it’s rather surprising this wasn’t in the news. Lloyd's car with not a scratch on the hood gets all that attention and this gets nothing until WTC7 Lies puts it up apparently out of nowhere. It's labeled Pentacar.jpeg. It has no caption, sources, anything. The site links to main 9/11 links page which in turn is part of "links for 9/11 Research Compiled by Mark Roberts,” also known as the JREF forum’s eminent debunker “Gravy.”

So I contacted him for more information, but he didn’t have anything ready. It was from a large collection and vaguely sourced to begin with, he said. With digging up the info it came with on his ‘to-do list,’ I’ve dug around for clues linking to it on the internet but nothing has surfaced yet. In the meantime, he did offer as precedent an account from Tony Terronez, who was headed north on Route 27, in front of the Pentagon and headed away from the impact point when the plane screeched in and impacted behind him. He saw the explosion in his rear-view mirror and ducked when he saw debris falling his way.

“[…] and I heard the pitter-patter of pebbles and concrete bouncing off my car. And the next thing you know, I heard this big crash come from somewhere. It sounded like glass being shattered and I thought maybe, at first, it was one of my windows so I popped up to look but everything was fine. But when I looked to the car next to me I realized that something went through (the driver's) rear windshield and shattered it. There was a hole where you could see that something went through it.”

Here we hear about additional car damage not widely-mentioned elsewhere and not seen in photos. This case was apparently from building or plane debris from the explosion (which by deflection angle would scatter thicker over the north end of the crime scene). This is clearly not the “Pentacar,” which is another story. I immediately noticed that the major dent in the door there along with the roofline damage is consistent with at least one light pole at the scene, the little-seen pole #2 with its curiously bent end. By my mapping, this pole would have been hit low by the left wing, but this bend appears near its narrow top (light truss arm missing), which I had taken as a sign of an undiscovered secondary event after it started falling. Here is my graphic, using a Bob Pugh photo of pole 2 with bystander for scale.
Now this could well be a simple geometric predisposition – I like things that fit. As others have noted, it appears the car would have been still when the pole impacted. However the scuff mark nearer the back of the car could be from the detaching lamp head, passing that spot either from the pole’s own momentum or due to the car’s. I’d wonder if the driver had time to screech to a slanted halt on seeing something headed for him, just in time to put the empty passenger’s side in its path. This could also be some kind of building debris perhaps or something else altogether. And as I stated in an earlier Loose Change Forum thread I started, as far as I could tell “this could be a simple hoax, an unrelated photo someone decided COULD fit at the Pentagon and dropped to see who bought it.”

However on the chance it is authentic, it’s worth some more analysis to determine where it was taken. Some clues offered by the scenery include: trees on both sides of the street, 2 or 3 lanes of traffic each way plus a narrow shoulder, no high concrete divider as seen elsewhere on Route 27, an angled guardrail and narrowing sidewalk on the near side, a sign and a light pole near each other on the other, set on a wooded down-slope. Shadows indicate that if this is the morning of 9/11, this car must be facing north, on the side closer to the Pentagon – in itself a problem, as that’s the wrong lane to be in to have a pole knocked into the passenger’s side by a plane approaching from the west.

The only useful help in that LCF thread came from member “Fedzcametogetme,” and it followed some paranoid accusations against me. ‘Fedz’ as I call him then dug in, and actually drove through the area several times as well as looking at satellite photos and highlighted one area on Route 27that matched the characteristics of the Pentacar photo. While I’m not even sure the photo is ON route 27 on 9/11, if it is I accept this as the most likely – the only – spot it could be (highlighted below in purple). [r-click, new window for full-size]

Consistent points: lack of any tall divider, sign-pole placement, tree shadows on the east side and trees and downward slope on the west. The only problem with this locale is that the off-ramp curving away is not evident in the photo. An overpass bridge would be the next thing visible to the right if this photo weren’t cropped,

Looking closer and using current satellite imagery, peripheral clues also match to a high degree. The sidewalk (grass strip?) seems to narrow in both photos. Sign-pole placement, the down-slope, the same problem with off-ramp unseen, The guardrail is present in satellite photos, beginning just before this spot just as the median ends before the bridge, which itself has given me useful insights on traffic planning works.

Here I will outline scenario by which this could be an authentic case of a car damaged by pole 2:

The driver was headed from home (north) to work (south), in the relatively empty southbound lane of 27 when the 757 blew noisily up Columbia Pike. Sensing its descent and predicting trouble, instinct kicks in and the driver skids to a slanted helt with the passenger’s side (empty) facing the plane’s path somewhat as its left wing severs pole 2 and sends it against that side of the stopped car, with its base on the pavement. After impact, the driver gets out, thankful to be alive, and tilts to pole up and over the embankment to where it’s seen later. The driver then reconsiders original plans. Near-death experience, etc… good enough reason to head back home. Traffic rules be damned, he/she turns around and drives against the stopped traffic, weaving around the scant cars, looking for a place to get in the northbound lane. “How am I gonna get in tho? It’s bumper-to-bumper,” he/she thinks, driving along the double then single divider. At its end, the car turns right and half-crosses the low median, waiting for the crawling traffic to give him space. Gestures are exchanged, a space made, and the driver pulls clear across to the pull-over lane and parks to think some more and take this picture. Then to home to share the tale and to catch the news of what the hell is going on. Say in 2005 or 2007 the driver finally releases this private photo to counter the growing ‘conspiracy theories,’ but the chain of custody was left unclear by some sloppiness on whoever’s part.

This of course raise a host of issues with regards to Lloyd England, who would have been right in front of this driver, and about the lack of interaction between them, and other such issues regarding traffic flow and timelines any critic might toss out. I only offer this as a basic description that could make all this evidence line up. Otherwise, it could be a motionless car stuck in northbound traffic north of impact, getting hit with some peculiar building debris like Terronez describes.

Alternately, it could be an unrelated photo from another time and place, put out by whoever for whatever reason. As Fedz at LCF finally said, in agreement with the stance I took almost right off “i wont speculate any further until the source of this pic can at least make some claims or offer some background info about this pic. since all we have is a pic but no source or even a caption, then its futile for me to dissect this matter any further.”

I offer a friendly challenge to Gravy to come up with a little info, or a confirmation of how little there is, or something. I’ve been flippant at the Loose Change Forum calling this a probable hoax, but of all people I’m truly open to whatever it might prove to be.