RADAR = VISUAL = SOUTHWEST

RADAR = VISUAL = SOUTHWEST
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 6 2008

I could have posted this sooner, but it deserved some careful prep, and I’ve enjoyed CIT’s maneuvers in the interim. Sorry fellas – I did set it like an ambush, but didn’t expect it would actually work so well and so quick.

Recently I was able to contact FAA’s Colin Scoggins about his 9/11 report of a plane seen (I presumed) on radar southeast and/or southwest of the White House just prior to the attack. I was thrown for a loop when Scoggins told me it was a visual sighting from FAA HQ in the Capitol, and it seemed he was saying it was therefore NOT a radar report.

That wasn’t even my original question, but I poo-pooed this notion, given the great distance to see it. I did do up some scale experiments that indicated “they certainly would be able to visually pick it out" - barely, as a speck - "if they were first tipped off by, say, a radar report of a plane five miles southeast, er, southwest. But to notice it with no prompting makes little sense to me.”

In the comments at the above link, Craig Ranke of CIT showed his enthusiasm for this revelation and his own idea for the prompting in question:

“So Scoggins is 99% sure it was a visual from FAA HQ in downtown DC! Wow. Great work! Clearly that destroys the NTSB and supports EoP.
[…]
It wouldn't take a "hawkeye" on the DC flight path if they saw it pass their building over DC and kept following it and this does not make any sense AT ALL with the NTSB or alleged radar data!
[…]
>>>>You'd guess they were prompted by the over DC path to keep following it then?
If there is any truth at all to the this visual reference then it is the only explanation. Naturally any plane at all in P56 airspace would alert attention.”
[how about the outbound C-130 over the mall’s south edge? Any witnesses outside the plane?]

Ranke even started a thread at their forum, the last before the valuable threads posted later on “Tramsoccalpra” and “Hydrociault” that were REMOVED! (Censor Nazis ;))
DC flight path - East of Potomac evidence, further confirmed by ATC Colin Scoggins, about how “CIT obsessed Adam Larson did a little investigating of his own and ended up CONFIRMING our claims!” He presented a fuller argument that does make sense given the state of the evidence yesterday, used my graphics, and even linked to the original as a valuable piece of research, if riddled with obfuscation and whatnot. Amazing. Cue the sparkly CIT lyte trip-hop music, this goes in the revised how they forgot to scratch Lloyd's hood and other addenda video...

As far as Ranke’s interpretation that a visual encounter supports the DC flight path, this does make some sense, depending on how much evidence there really is for it being over DC before this (hint – it’s a CIT claim). For CIT it’s a no-brainer since they already believe it was over DC and THIS is what prompted them to follow or project it south, southwest, and so on. But here’s a different, more informed insight, from another Scoggins e-mail just as Craig started posting stuff:

"This [is] taken from the USA Article I mentioned. This is the TELCON I beleive I was on. I am 99% sure. The call came from FAA HQ, and they were on the West side of the FAA HQ building, and Dave Canoles must have been on the North side, so Dave's office was a corner office or it was real close to the corner. "

Cue the record-scratch sound. Indeed. I had heard this article mentioned but hadn't read it, and apparently neither had Ranke. The whole article, from just after 9/11, is still available here. These are the relevant excerpts:

At FAA headquarters, less than a half-mile from the White House and Capitol, Dave Canoles paces before a speakerphone. The head of air traffic investigations, Canoles has set up phone connections with air traffic facilities. […] Now, about 9:35 a.m., he and others on the conference call listen as an official watching a radarscope tracks the progress of the jet heading for Washington

So my either-or impression was a false one based in my ignorance of this piece. Canoles is probably the muted voice we can hear behind Scoggins in the NORAD tapes, and he was first tipped off by another person elsewhere watching the radar track. This makes perfect sense, and then the visual part comes in, prompted by radar. Is there a clue in this to what the returns said?

“Canoles sends an investigator who works for him to an adjoining office with a view to the west. "See if you can spot it," he tells him.
"Six miles from the White House," a voice on the phone says.”
Canoles glances outside, through a window facing north. He wonders if he and his co-workers are in danger. At 500 mph, the jet is traveling a mile every seven seconds.
"Five miles from the White House."
No way the FAA is a target, Canoles thinks. It can't be.
"Four miles from the White House."
They'd never choose to hit us. No way.
"The aircraft is circling. It's turning away from the White House."
Where? Where's it going?
Then: "It's gone."
In the adjoining office, the investigator spots smoke to the west of the city. The jet has hit the Pentagon. The time: 9:38 a.m.”

Scoggins feels this account “flat out tells me that it is visual,” but I don’t really see it. There is talk of windows and attempts to see, which is a hint it might have gone there, but the only thing that’s clearly mentioned actually being seen is the smoke afterwards. Now since the investigator is in an adjoining room a phone bridge seems unnecessary, but it is possible he’s the one on the phone giving the updates based on what he’s seeing out the window. And it’s at least as possible, not knowing more, that these are from the same radar operator that got them started.

It’s not clear from this alone if there was ever a visual sighting of the plane, but Scoggins also heard what Canoles actually said, in the telcon we only hear murmurs of, and he is left 99% certain there was such a contact. I’m inclined at the moment to believe him. So treating this as an eyewitness case, let’s first note that the USA Today piece mentions a view to the north, meaning Canoles’ office was on the building’s north side – he had an investigator go into an adjoining, but different office, with a view to the west – a corner office.
It’s not clear if any sighting would be before the plane turned fully southward from its original path or after the loop and up to the final approach. The witness would not be able to see the farthest reaches of the loop (darker green, below) between these points at all without binoculars. He may well have had binoculars though, come to think of it. He could then have seen perhaps the entire loop, or any portion of it, all from that office with a view to the west.
Now, how can this visual sighting “further validate the east side evidence” if it’s taking place from a west-facing office, prompted by a radar report of a plane in that direction? Originally I offered the quite reasonable and well-supported guess that the southeast report was simple error in reporting a radar track. Then it seemed there was a visual contact instead of radar, which complicated things. Then I learned that this observance was spurred by radar and confirmed southwest, and while we still aren’t sure where the momentary inversion of east and west came in, it is looking pretty much out the window as evidence.