LAGASSE'S EYES: WHICH SIDE OF HIS HEAD?

October 16 2008

Recently a fellow JREF member started a thread about CIT witness Sgt. Lagasse and his amazing wrong placement of the famous downed light poles. In the video below, at 5:45 he explains how he didn't see the light poles struck, and at 6:00 CIT dares to explain the "official story" pole locations and sets up a never-repeated feat of mental gymnastics. Lagasse can't abandon his NoC testimony now without saying something really dumb. So he does, and insists "nothing happened over here," where light poles were knocked across the road and into at least one car. He's in his own little universe here, clearly indicating pole and cab troubles further north where nothing happened. If he saw anything, as they came down, as they lay after the attack, or later in photos, he had to know they were at the overpass on 27 at the cloverleaf, not along a flat stretch north of there.

CIT chose not to use Lagasse's testimony as proof that Lloyd's cab and the downed poles were actually somewhere other than "official photos" show them. It would be the consistent thing to do, since he said it, but then acknowledging that the plane impacted the building where it meets the ground would be consistent as well. Running with this misinfo would be too obviously self-debunking even for the Comedy Improv Team, so they have explained how Lagasse is "in denial," warping his memories to fit the true trajectory. He can't grasp the horror of the light poles in the wrong spot, so he's shifted it all to where it 'should be.' Only stuff on the ground can shift like that of course, never the plane. He has to be right on that.

6:07 "No chance. There's no chance. If... and as a matter of fact, I know for A fact that this light pole [...] there was a light pole here that was knocked down, and there was a light pole here that was knocked down, not any over here." [indicating the real location] [...] None of these light poles over here were knocked down. They were here. NONE of these were knocked down."

He also denies any "official story" that has the plane south of the Citgo. He may be technically correct, but every element of the "official story" in fact mandates that it DID pass that way. The only "official story," he says, is the Arlington County After-Action Report, which does not mention the light poles or trajectory at all, but does softly indicate a path back to the poles in their graphics. So he didn't deduce their placement from that. Hmmm....

Interestingly, his story has changed over the years. This is what Lagasse said in a 2003 e-mail exchange with pre-CIT north-path flyover proponent Dick Eastman:

Eastman:
2. You did not say whether you saw the poles being struck down. Am I right
in assuming that you did? Did you see how high on any of the poles contact was made?

3. Can you recall seeing what part of the plane struck any of the poles?

Lagasse:
Question #2.... near the top....yes I saw the plane hit them..granted at the
speed it was traveling I cant be 100% sure of exactly where on the
poles...but I did remember a black and orange cab that was struck by one of
them

Question #3 Wings....there was composite material from the wings in the
area around the poles that had been struck..the fuse could have struck one
of the poles as well.

Y'all can do the math on this yourselves. I just wanted to post that graphic.

MARIA'S MEMORIES

CIT EYEWITNESS VERIFICATION, PART VI
MARIA'S MEMORIES
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
October 9 2008
2am - minor edits

Maria De La Cerda is one of Citizen Investigation Team’s thirteen touted north-of-the Citgo witnesses, proving the flyover they all "simultaneously hallucinated" the opposite of. A member of an Army band who was at Arlington National Cemetery, (about where the eye is in the graphic below), she had been interviewed by the Army’s Center for Military History in February 2002 as NEIT 567. She first became known to the public by this name after John Farmer secured the release of many of these hundreds of CMH interviews in 2007.

CIT had initially found her “one of the most compelling accounts," and had her supporting both a north path (she described the plane as “directly up” and “over my head”) and set to be their second “flyover witness,” on the strength of her statement that the plane “seemed like it struck on the other side” from the one where she later observed the damage. Early in their analysis Aldo of CIT had gushed that NEIT 567 “thought that it flew over the Pentagon and crashed on the other side!!!" which, of course, "sounds like a flyover account to me.” Except that what was missing was always the "flew over and" part.

Later on, they managed to find her name and phone number, and in mid-2008, seven years after the event, verified Maria De La Cerda's account in their usual style, and featured the audio in their ambitiously self-destructive new video, at about 24:00 into part 2. Thankfully, they seem to have scratched the flyover witness plan and only decided to brand one (that Joker Roosevelt) with that distinction. But they did continue to hint at pull-up or flyover clues. They also dropped the “over” aspect, as this would place the plane too far north to support their other NoC witnesses. But they did find another reason to take her as a north path witness in their new video and companion article.

"Admittedly Maria is one of the weaker witnesses in support of the north side evidence because she could not see the gas station at the time of the attack and because of her hazy memory in regards to the plane in general."

Indeed, she had “tree cover” and thick - the Citgo station was invisible, as was most of the Pentagon, and all she saw of impact itself was the fireball rising high over the trees. When talking to CIT, she gives the impression this is the first thing she saw, and her memory being of high fire meant she thought it hit “on top” of the building, a memory that seems to have replaced “other side” (which she no longer recalls saying - see video, 31:10). That is, a high hit memory has nothing to do with the altitude of the plane; as CIT fairly summed up the point:

"[S]he initially thought that it "seemed like it hit the other side"! [...] She confirmed this to us in our interview but at this point her memory turned it into the fact that she initially thought the impact was "on top". She ended up reconciling this in her mind by the fact that this is "where the fireball was" so this is what likely caught her eye."

On that "hazy memory of the plane," at several points in her CIT verification she seems confused about whether or not she saw the plane at all before the crash, but Craig asked where it was in relation to the Citgo anyway. She said, with a bit of prodding, that it seemed to be “over Arlington Cemetery,” [32:00] but this can only be some sort of deduction, and of roughly no value. It’s this useless guess that is their reason to claim her as one of 13 NoC witnesses, aside from their bogus contention that “she likely would not have seen it at all from her location if it was on the official flight path.”

So this verification doesn’t do much to support the north side, nor to help us understand what her “other side” claim meant, since she can’t even recall making it. Now if she had seen the plane, this may have meant something - a deduction based on witnesses trajectory. If anything significant had faded by 2008, it may have still been fresh in 2002 when she actually recalled the “other side” impression as well as:

"I saw something really fast going to the Pentagon with the swoosh and I'll never forget it, it was so fast, and then a huge fire ball, explosion and smoke.”

Well, she forgot it, but Maria apparently saw the plane in flight, at least a glimpse, so she’d have some clue of its trajectory. Having seen this, she’d had to actually deduce a hit, behind the trees, to some side other than the one that was impacted. Apologies for the confusing graphic, presuming different path origins, including ones directly over her.

There are only four choices for the other side, and the only one that makes much sense caused me to place her on my own short list of SOUTH OF THE CITGO witnesses. Not the strongest, since she couldn’t actually see the station… but at least it fits her fresher memories, rather than the useless thing where the plane was maybe nearer the ANC than the Annex, at some point when she maybe saw it. But the fact that she recalls it “hitting on top” rather than “flying over the top,” as she must have actually seen, makes her memories “a prime example,” CIT announced, of “the power of illusion/deception in contrast to the vulnerability of the human mind.”

Try the power of the plane hitting the Pentagon, not flying over, and her view being blocked, and most of a decade having passed. This is the kind of crap they say when they know they don't have any real evidence to present. "Well she doesn't help much, but that's because she was maybe fooled, which shows how everyone else must've been fooled, which makes her a whatever... north, y'know... deception... witness... thing."

NORAD'S NOC CARTOON EXPLAINED [VIDEO]

October 8 2008 2am


Watch Another NoC Cartoon? in Activism Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.comFor some reason, the video doesn't seem to play all the way through here, but seems to work fine at the Veoh page, linked beneath it.

Analysis of the recently-released NORAD-made animation of Flight 77's final approach, which, like the earlier NTSB cartoon, shows the plane flying North of the Citgo, which is wrong. This time, they also have it banking hard right over the navy Annex like Citizen investigation Team argue... and it was made in 2002, from radar records it seems. Again, I've located the likely technical reason for this error, if not the original intent.

For an intro to this recreation, please see my previous post on the subject, which incorrectly attributed it to the FAA.
Additional Notes: Forthcoming.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT THEN - THE WITNESSES

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT THEN - THE WITNESSES
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
July 22 2008
edits 7/23 2am

The Paper / The Witness Roster
Although it does not deny a 757 impact at the Pentagon, John Farmer’s recent paper You All Just Haven’t Talked About it, and its second Plane north path flyover theory proposition deserves special attention and a solid panning. At the outset he warned me:

“You are referring to my little essay as if it were some conclusive theory or something. It is not and was never asserted to be. My only assertion is that there is an evidence set for something more going on in the sky over the Pentagon and DC area at the time of the attack than the public record accounts for.”

But however seriously he meant it, the paper is far more specific than that. It spends its first seven pages on the evidence in the Citgo video supporting a north path aircraft – one solid but inconclusive clue – and the last six pages call on five eyewitness accounts that ultimately offer little if any assistance to the case: William Lagasse, Chadwick Brooks, Roosevelt Roberts, Center for Military History witness “NEIT428,” and “mole,” an anonymous source from a chat forum. One of these, Roberts, was immediately removed. Originally the paper said:

“Add to this another DPS Officer, Roosevelt Roberts who in a 2001 audio interview claims he ran out from the loading dock near the Pentagon southern lot and saw another plane flying low over the south lot, and there is no doubt that AAL77 was not alone.”

As it happened, the paper’s release roughly coincided with Citizen Investigation Team’s on-air announcement of having talked with that witness as a “second plane”/ flyover witness. Within days, after absorbing this new testimony, Farmer announced a change of heart: “I have had to remove DPS Officer Roberts as a second plane witness. If his CIT follow-up interview is accurate, he most likely saw AAL77 as it came down from the Citgo area and across Route 27.” Oddly enough from his account, it seems clear that Flight 77 was alone.

So right up front that leaves us four to deal with and two I’m already pretty sure are liars – the original Defense Protective Service Citgo witnesses cited by CIT in The PentaCon. He did not include CIT’s other Citgo witness Turcios, for obvious reasons, but this curiously impossible account did not alter his enthusiasm for the others that also make no sense to the same end. He decided based on an interesting interpretations that “when SGT Brooks and SGT Lagasse’s accounts are taken objectively, they both seem to be describing two different plane approaches simultaneously. One is consistent with the southern path (Lagasse’s yaw and Brook’s vibration) and the other with a northern approach.” Interestingly, like Turcios and Roberts, both only cite one plane bearing these traits.

Lagasse's Yaw
The core of Farmer’s analysis of DPS Sergeant Lagasse is his well-known north-path testimony considered with his final moment “yaw” (nose oriented a bit sideways from the plane’s forward direction) which meant that “it approached the Pentagon at another angle consistent with the actual flight path of AAL77." Now that sounds interesting, considering he already describes the south-path action of crashing low into the building. "In other words," Farmer explains "when he first saw it, he was looking at the right side" of a plane north and set to not hit "and then at the end he is looking at the left side of it," as he'd see of the real impact plane, and "as he would have a plane passing the south side of the station."

This observation spurred to me to reason out a few of Lagasse's early observations to Dick Eastman from June 2003 that had confused me before. When Eastman asked the agitated but open officer “how much of the plane was visible to you as it went in?” Lagasse responded that he “could see the fuse, tail, port wing and starboard wing root” at its final moment, but not the right outer wing. This perhaps fits better with a south approach (seeing left side), but both angles are similar at such a distance. He cites the rise of Route 27 as his view limiter at right, but I used the tree here).

More interestingly, he describes to Eastman the impact of this plane that had passed north of him:

“[It] was approx 100-150ft agl when it passed over theannex and continued on a shallow-fast decent and literally hit the building were it met the ground. There was no steep bank, but a shallow bank with a heavy uncoordinated left rudder turn causing a severe yaw into the building with the starboard side of the cockpit actually hitting at about the same time the wing was involved with the trailer…” [source]Indeed, a left rudder turn would lead to a left yaw matching the right side hitting first as the right wing entered the construction area. Since Construction storage trailers were either to the left of impact or too far right to be struck, and the right wing/engine is known to have torn through the generator trailer at about the time the nose struck, right side first, it seems most likely Lagasse meant this trailer and deduced from the evidence the actual impact angle. From this Farmer’s leap almost makes sense except for the glaring problem that he did not see his own north path plane he’d been tracking remaining high up and flying at least 60 feet – four fuselage-widths – above the crashing one.

So he does give clues consistent with both the north and south path, but gives them all to only one plane, which “literally hit the building were it met the ground.” While this fits with the trailer evidence he saw, it does not explain either the deflection angle of debris he noted (to the left/north) or the downed light poles, which he also saw and “remembers” in the wrong location - along his path, where he also places the damaged taxi. For this interpretation to work, he'd have to be constructing in his own mind a yaw AND a steady descent in order to fuse the two. In short, his testimony never made sense, and it’s only gotten more surreal with more verification. Lagasse is, at best, an unreliable witness. Period. His “yaw” changes this not one bit, and leaves me yawning as evidence for two planes.

Brooks' Vibration
Brooks’ value to Farmer’s thesis hinges on his 2001 LoC interview. Thanks to CIT’s 2006 verification, we know Brooks’ (stated) location, and I’ll reserve judgment on Farmer’s reading of his parked orientation and PoV. Although these are key to understanding this account, it’s something CIT did not sort out, and I at least am just guessing there. By describing a plane off to his left (and ahead?) while hearing a loud sound/vibration behind him, all well before impact, Brooks allowed Farmer to state “if SGT Brooks 2001 account is taken literally, then he was hearing a plane pass behind him while watching another plane to his left.”

We could try not taking it literally then, but there is some room for speculation here and Farmer takes it. I would guess the sound from behind was bouncing off the Pentagon, or perhaps the Citgo. But it’s possible it was a different plane, one left/ahead, one behind, which means about at the Pentagon, or just passing north or south of him and perhaps two seconds from impact, depending on how he was facing. He reported no impact or explosion at this time – not until the one he was watching approach from the west and impacted about two seconds after passing him, clipping light poles along the way, he thinks.

This means the flyover plane was well ahead of the impact one judging by Brooks’ narrative, to the tune of seconds at least (nowhere near the number he ticks off...). This certainly complicates Lagasse’s yaw interpretation! He saw the north path flyover plane pass and believe IT impacted, which necessitates the planes fly in simultaneously – at least one of these two reading has to be wrong. And no other witness describes another jet flying over the Pentagon several seconds before the impact.

NEIT428's Low Plane
The 428th witness interviewed by the Army’s Center for Military History is an Arlington National Cemetery worker and among those available now in Farmer’s FOIA collection. The key part of his account is this:

“Well, when we came out of the warehouse we heard this boom, you know, this big explosion. And we, all we could see was the smoke and the heat [...] after that happened, we looked up in the sky and there was another plane. So, you know, so we panicked. So we started running, you know. So I just dropped on the ground. The plane was so low we were thinking it was going to do the same thing, but the plane made a turn and went in the opposite direction.”

His name is still unknown to me, but I believe this is one of the ANC Ommpah-Loompahs verified in uniform and on-site again in CIT’s upcoming video smash hit whatever the hell it’s called (see the trailer around anywhere). If so my take should be considered in light of this, but whatever he may have said later, this is about his testimony as known to Farmer when he wrote this:

“My first impression was that this must surely be the C-130 known to arrive in the area a minute or so later. However, the altitude of that plane was relatively high and it seems unusual that they would duck for cover in response to it. The interviewer fortunately asks a follow-up question regarding the altitude.

“It was low enough that it could touch the building, the warehouse. It was close.””

Farmer wondered about the “documented […] plane that approached the White House from the Washington Monument area [and was] over the White House at 09:41” and if this was “the plane witnessed by the Citgo and ANC witnesses.” [emph mine] I would guess C-130 with confused altitude clues. He could see the cockpit and perhaps the people in it because it was at a distance to the west, as the C-130 was, and he was seeing its nosecone higher than he remembers and perhaps lower than we’ve all been thinking. Also he was likely nervous and exaggerating any possible threat.

NEIT428 mentions a turn to “the opposite direction,” a U-turn, which none of the witnesses describe for the “decoy” plane but only for the C-130, as Farmer well knows. If “the opposite direction” as he states is "to the left towards the Washington, D.C. area” as Farmer decides, then it must have been coming fromthe DC area when he first saw it, which does not well fit with, for example, Lagasse’s west-east flight past the Citgo. A 30-40 degree turn to the left does not equal the “opposite direction,” which requires about 180 – like the C-130 did. Of Farmer andNEIT428, one has to be wrong about the turn described by NEIT428.

Furthermore, if this witness’ second plane is NOT the C-130, then his failing to notice the C-130 in addition to it is at least slightly odd. And finally, he had second plane pass but not impact after the crash there. This clearly complicates Brooks’ impact after flyover interpretation and Lagasse’s simultaneous passage – of the paper’s proposed readings of Lagasse, Brooks and NEIT 428, at least two have to be wrong about the order of events.

Mole's 757 "over the mall"
And the fourth remaining witness in this sorry parade finally gives us something a bit more promising, but it’s an anonymous online source. Back in March 2002, Screen-name “mole” posted at the techguy forum the following:

“My Team Leader came in to say as he was coming in to the building, he saw a 757 flying in a peculiar location roughly over the Mall. (We now know that was the 757 that hit the Pentagon as it did circle downtown DC, supposedly looking for a target, possibly the Whitehouse which is not as easy to pick out from the air as the Capitol or the Pentagon, before heading west again, then turning east for its final run at the Pentagon.)”

This account is not scientifically precise, and in fact dead wrong on 77 being over the capitol (it was a common urban legend at the time) but it is probably legit as evidence and worth a look. Timeline is key, and the original post does make clear that before hearing this report, mole’s wife “called to tell me there was smoke showing from further down the Mall in the direction of the Whitehouse,” almost certainly the smoke from the Pentagon, further in that direction and the only smoking thing in the area at the time.

The timeline after is less clear, but I might guess he saw the E4-B pass at 9:46, eight minutes after the Pentagon strike. This craft is based on a 747 mode, not 757, which is interesting since mole explained how after this “I saw the outline of a 747-400 flying slowly south to north nearly directly over head at a low altitude. Planes never flew there as it is restricted airspace, almost over the Capitol.” Radar later showed this craft passed the capitol mall a second time at 9:49, but north-south near the mall’s west side, and he says it flew south-north, as it did on the first pass at 9:45:30 before turning left and passing E-W just a few blocks north of the White House.

Therefore, it seems likely after all to speculate that the “757” seen before this was NOT the E4-B, and quite possibly a post-77 second plane. Or it could be 77 itself, with “mole” or his team leader misreading the location clues to put it over the capitol rather than across the river. That might seem like a stretch, but considering how little over-the-mall evidence there really is, it can’t be dismissed. Despite these ambiguities, Farmer has no problem stating of mole’s account:

“With witness statements like this, it is clear that the 911 Commission failed in its job to fully explain to the American public exactly what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.”

No, sorry. It’s clear that we need some clarification on this. The author “knew” Flight 77 was looping over the capitol, but since then we’ve learned it did not, at least officially. Did this “knowledge” compel him to remember hearing it was over the Capitol, when really no location was stated? What we have here is an anonymous unverifiable account passing on a second hand report of a “757 […] roughly over the mall” at some unspecified moment around the attack time, before or after. And it was taken by mole as supporting the crash of that plane. For any other purpose, it's anecdotal evidence, weak and not able to be strengthened ever.

Conclusion: Gravel
So that’s my panning of half the paper, the other half being the video clues I’m not done with yet. Farmer’s optics and video analysis skills are no help on this side, his law-enforcement “extensive experience working with witnesses” has been of little help either, and his statistical insights failed to tip him off to the low odds that this would all pan out. The process of panning is to separate valuable ore from ordinary rock, and at risk of carrying the metaphor too far,, after watching all this gravel sift out the bottom, I’m left with a keen sense of how empty my pan is. A couple faint sparkles of fool's gold, I'd guess. Does it get any better than this?
ETA: Re-considered then in light of this paper never meaning to have argued anything concrete, and the fact that it clearly does argue something pretty cogent, it seems this notion was being floated, or offered as a possibility with some potential value. Or what, John? A thought exercise, a little mad-libs imagination moment just couched in serious terms for effect, a prank to amuse yourself? In the peer review sense, I have to offer my best assessment of your intelligence and intentions, and hope the last is the case.
ETA 7/27: In fact, perhaps this was just a strawman CIT parody disposable construct for that idiot Caustic to joust to the ground triumphantly, which I guess would be amusing. If so, it was fun on my end too, and thanks.

CHOKE ON THIS, DICK EASTMAN!

FLIGHT 77's SHADOW
July 6 2008
Update July 11

Mr. Eastman, if you're reading this:

I see you are still active on the internet, having recently contacted Ron Weick to alert him of another compilation of your post-CIT/PentaCon e-mails praising "Greg Ranke" et al... It appears this was first posted and then analyzed by debunkers here (apparently pulled since) and otherwise ignored as fruity.

God bless those San Juan Capistrano kids, eh? I understand Integrated Consultants' animation bowled you over back in August 2006 and briefly convinced you for - how many hours? - that Flight 77 really did actually knock down the poles and impact the building as all the witnesses who were there said. Luckily CIT immediately started "proving" with your star witness and two more that, even though there was no "killer" F-16, the flyover decoy plane really did pass north of the Citgo and NOT impact.

Well here - in addition to the nicely linear damage that IC worked in to explain the south-of-Citgo real flight path and impact, we have the video proof - and have for almost two years now - that places that plane right on the path to do all that. I tell you man, if that little cartoon knocked you flat, what does this do for ya?

Online Videos by Veoh.com
This a re-working of my previous post from last year. The only change is the distance to the plane (before, 195', now 175) and a resultant altitide change from 115 to 105 ft above the shadow (all approximate). It's not a big change and it's all in a general range. It all fits as well as ever - essentially, perfect.

We still have no proof that the Citgo video was manipulated in any maningful way.

ETA: Dick, I know this must be hard to take and I can imagine why you might be bitter, man. Also, thanks to my posting at JREF and Brainster/Pat Curley's re-posting at Screw Loose Change, the video is already at 390 views, pretty good for a few days with no twooferbots fluffing the numbers up. A few debunkerbots I suppose, but somehow those annoy me less. Check the comments section.

Add'l info 7/11: I've never made this clear enough, but this shadow is actually more than two dots. there's an additional small dark patch visible between them, and a faint line of shadow to the right of them. These correspond roughly to the left wing root and forward wing edge as predicted by plane shadow at the right heading. Even without seeing these, the two dots should be evident to anyone who maps out what we would see, but with these additional bits managing to come through, it becomes undeniable. If you spot any inconsistencies here in heading, do remember the aircraft may have been on a slightly different heading at that point, in a slight yaw (flying a bit sideways from its heading) and there's also the angle of view of the roadway, seen more from above in the bottom graphic and more from level in the top.

A MIRAGE OF PLAUSIBILITY

A MIRAGE OF PLAUSIBILITY
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 23 2008

Since I melted down there a while back, I am not allowed to post at the Above Top Secret.com 9/11 forum, even anonymously. This is clearly what I wanted at the time, and generally now as well, but I do feel compelled to comment on an argument posted there by CIT ally Mirage of Deceit (MoD). The point of his post was “regarding the MATH,” which the critics there have been demanding, as per Reheat’s challenge and CIT’s inability to provide a single possible flight path to accommodate all their official-deception-proving claims. While others simply deflected as if aerodynamic realities don’t matter, Mirage had the balls to step up and offer one single arc to fit the witness accounts in question, and showed the math he claims makes it a possible one.

Well the dude has some knowledge of piloting and the dynamics of flight, I’ve always handed him that, and he did put some thought into this. Plenty of others can question or verify his mathematical methodology, but I haven’t the patience. In fact I’m inclined to give MoD the benefit of the doubt on numbers, since they seem to make sense and, like Reheat but better, what MoD has done here is a brilliant job of again illustrating how – well, impossible - the over-Navy-Annex, north-of-Citgo, Pentagon-flyover scenario really is.

Like Reheat but with perhaps less awareness of the witness account details, Mirage took some set of variables into account [including “the guy stood by the Navy Annex (SW corner)”] and came up with a path (reproduced below) quite different from CIT’s original famous impossible estimate. He offered these numbers based on his “beizer curve”:

”Distance from Pentagon: 0.6169687 nm
Approx. required heading change: 30°
Assuming an airspeed of 350 kts:
Time to pentagon: 0.0017 hrs (or 6.3 secs)
Performing a rate one turn, in 6.3 seconds the aircraft could turn: 18.9°
Bank angle required for this turn at this speed: 42°”

First off, speed - the witnesses nearly all describe the plane vaguely as being quite fast, but there’s quite a spread now. Officially by FDR it was at 530 mph, or 460 kts, while Morin’s updated account, according to Ranke, supports a speed between 117-163 mph. (MoD cites “approx. 130-160 kts” as the applicable stall speed, where it falls out of the air). Most witnesses give airspeeds in the range of 250-450 kts [Arabesque compilation]. Lagasse estimated a reasonable “400 miles an hour,” or 347 kts, which is about what MoD used and found, oddly enough “at that speed, the turn STILL isn't possible.”

He was not deterred though, since “according to eye-witnesses though, it was [possible],” and with speed being “the only factor we have to play with,” he tried presuming the barely supportable and “more leisurely 250 kts,” or 288 mph, which yields these better numbers and conclusion:

”Time to pentagon: 0.0024 hrs (or 8.8 secs)
Performing a rate one turn, in 8.8 seconds the aircraft could turn: 26.4°
Bank angle required for this turn at this speed: ~32°
[…] allowing for possible errors in my calculations (specifically on heading change), the second scenario, flying slower at 250 kts, is possible.”

Ooh! A single flight path that’s possible if it were flying less that 288mph, or 72% of what Lagasse thought he saw, and 54% of the speed suggested by the FDR and the Citgo video shadow/impact interval.

Aside from the low speeds needed for his path, the most important shortfall of the proposal is the opposite of what MoD claimed: The flight path he proposes “is also more in line with the eye-witness accounts of what they saw from their various vantage points.” More explicitly:

“After watching the videos from CIT, it is clear the witnesses draw very similar flight paths on the photos. Given that the aircraft needed to fly over the Navy Annex in order for the witness there to see and describe what he saw, we can reasonably conclude the flight path was NOT as described at the start of this thread, but was in fact a VERY plausible, gentle curve.”
This is it. For those familiar with the scene, the ridiculousness of this graphic will be readily visible. It should be noted his graphic was posted as an external link so readers had the option of not seeing it at all, and his line is so thin and faint one can even miss it if they click the link. That’s good for MoD, because it’s the worst effort I’ve seen yet to explain the north path witnesses.

I brightened the line below, and measured the gap between his ‘plausible’ overflight point and impact (fireball) center, which all witnesses traced their paths to (roughly at least). The distance here ≈ 420 feet. Nearly all witnesses had Flight 77 flying low into the bottom part of the impact fireball just before it happened, not 400 feet-plus to the left of the top of it just after it blew up. I also included CIT-cited witnesses to consider, as used by Reheat - Paik, Morin, Turcios, Brooks, and Lagasse – with best direct readings here sketched roughly in blue. So what has been illustrated here, and I tend to agree with it, is that something like CIT’s proposal is aerodynamically impossible if it flew at half the official speed, on a path different from what the witnesses describe, to a spot 420 feet to the left of the flyover-hiding fireball. People rip on Reheat, including myself, for misrepresenting CIT’s findingsto prove them impossible, but this proposal takes the cake for off-baseness for the opposite reason. It’s only remotely similar to something that would really fit, more distorted than Reheat’s, but it’s the best he can came up with for aeronautical plausibility and it can’t possibly the way it happened. If this is the best it gets, or anywhere near it, then Mirage of Deceit has helped us all see that CIT will never be providing a plausible flight path and we can all stop asking. I only hope MoD will own up to the implications of his achievement rather than pretending this helps his “investigator” friends.

He did ask for a challenge, in his closing line: “Debunkers?” Yes, reporting, and I do have an answer, and some questions. I challenge him to come here and defend it. Comments are open (meaning will be allowed), and I’m all ears. My first 11 questions are these:

1) Morin - is this at all parallel to the south edge of the FoB as he describes? Is any of it ahead of him visible on his line-of –sight?
2) Paik – does this match his drawings, any of them, at all? Does it come anywhere near his earlier gestures verifying Morin’s account of it passing south of the FoB and down Columbia Pike?
3) Turcios – Does it come north of the station anything like he describes? Does it correspond with his path from there to the same spot at the Pentagon?
4) Lagasse – It’s northiness is about right, but does this match his flight path from there on or the light poles he felt were downed?
5) Brooks - same as above.
6) Which witnesses describe anything like the severe 32 or 42-degree right bank this would require? Lagasse: “There was no steep bank, but a shallow bank with a heavy uncoordinated left rudder turn...” CIT on Paik: “he specifically said in our first interview how he did not notice a wing tilt.” Others support a slight left bank between the Annex and Pentagon, but effectively level.
7) What happened to CIT’s recently proved over the Annex path? This one, like the original impossible path, is almost entirely north of it.
8) The most common cited time for near-impact witnesses seeing it from around the Citgo to impact for around 2-3 seconds (Lagasse and Turcios among them), the same time testified by the Citgo video shadow/light time span (app 2.2 sec), and about half the time required for this cited speed. How do you explain so many sources halving the time?
9) What happens when we try to include the Driving Range-area witnesses, and the imagined north path no one saw connecting that to this arc at it start? How does that affect its subsequent maneuvers?
10) What if we include witnesses AT Arlington Nat’l Cemetery who report the plane as “over” them, and which CIT has also taken at face value? Including these does what for the flight path?
11) What happens when we factor is the post-flyover maneuvers now attributed to R Roberts and J Sucherman 3—5 seconds after impact? Roberts is said to have it flying away, as he says over the ‘lane one area,’ so off to the southwest, just as Sucherman sees the plane coming back for a second attack FROM the west, before turning away?

Update: From ATS link above:
ThroatYogurt: “Your flightpath shows flight 77 too far away from the impact area to support CIT's claim that it was a military deception. In order for it to be pulled off, the plane would have to be VERY close if not directly above the impact zone.”

MoD: “Please scrutinize the drawing a little more - you're missing the point where I drew the line with a beizer curve that is far from uniform in radius. If it was drawn properly, it would actually pass over the alleged impact point. […]the line isn't as accurately drawn as I'd like. It's most correct around the Citgo area, but straightens out again after that point.”

“If it was drawn properly?” Who screwed it up? Is it possible to draw it again but right, and let us know how those numbers come out?

update 6/25: I've been trying to get messages through at ATS, where I'm still a non-posting member, but it's been telling me for a couple days that the "U2U System Is Temporarily Disabled." Can anyone else still on good terms there verify this?
7/2: System went back up right after that, message in to MoD, no response yet. I don't care if he tries to defend or drop this proposal, just thought I should let him know myself that he'd been challenged.
Update 7/8: Forgot to mention it, but he did respond, in comments below.

REHEAT, REASONING, RADII

REHEAT, REASONING, RADII
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 12 2008
a bit rough

Note: Lest Reheat think I'm being too harsh on purpose, lemme just say, nah! This is important work and he's right in general, I'm sure. I've just spotted a few things, and I'm such a contrarian...
---
JREF member and anonymous retired Air Force pilot “Reheat” has been offering mathematical proof of the impossibility of CIT’s NoC flight path for a while now. His new paper Debunking the North of Citgo Theory, as published at 911myths.com, further develops the theme, and spurs me to finally note his work. This additional nail in the coffin is couched as “an analysis of the aerodynamics required based upon witness testimony,” a novel approach to the north path analysis – check if it’s possible before asserting it happened and proves that other things didn’t. It’s encouraging to me that someone else feels it’s worth the time to engage this silliness earnestly. I often feel hoodwinked for arguing against something so stupid, but I have nothing to blame but my own obsession. And Reheat has taken issue with the same theory and gone and done math about it – imagine how twisted his mind must be!

His assertion, in this paper and previously, that “the calculations are aircraft type independent” has caused some confusion, and the first thing I did was ask him to clarify. To summarize as I understand it, these numbers WILL apply to any fixed-wing aircraft in the presumed turn, but exactly HOW the G-forces apply depends on the craft. F-16 could do better than 757 with the same turn. The details still escape me a bit, and so I’ll just let the paper speak for itself and offer Brainster’s accurate summary that Reheat has “taken the Morin and Paik flight paths, and then shown the turns necessary to be where the Citgo witnesses claim, then done the calculations to show the stress that the planes [sic] would have experienced trying to make those maneuvers, and that they would have stalled out.”

What I can offer now is some focus on the operative concepts and logic behind this effort, where CIT and allies have claimed straw man, faith-based argument, general scumminess, and disinfo. Unless I’m reading wrong, they have some cause to complain. The paper explains the start point, with witnesses “Edward Paik and Terry Morin who place the aircraft flying parallel to Columbia Pike. There is no problem with this portion of the testimony as it was stated, without CIT’s spin.” The problem is that CIT’s spin is part of what they have decided and the reason this proposed flight path exists to debunk in the first place.

Reheat places Morin where he actually describes himself, but has the path going directly over him there, in a straight line directly parallel to the Pike/FoB edge that has no turn at all from Paik’s position (Paik>Morin listed as requiring 0 degrees of turn). This is the red line in graphics below, on a heading of 72 deg, which is close to reality I’m sure, but not fit for this exercise. Paik himself drew several paths crossing the annex at an oblique angle, which must be ignored to use only gestures from an earlier testimony. And according to CIT, Morin was north of the spot Reheat chose, between the wings of the Annex, as they decided with this ridiculous graphic. Marquis: “when he saw the plane for the brief instant it would appeared parallel to the outer edge of the FOB-which, again, is where the flight path was at; the outer edge Also I am sure he meant it figuratively and not literally, since he can't see the entire flight path.” [not their path from this location anyway – source]

In short, the way I see it, if you want to debunk CIT’s flight path, you need to realize it’s a fiction THEY wrote based on certain interpretations and take those into account – like ignoring the low impact aspects of their Noc witnesses. We’re already factoring that out and presuming a flyover and looking here at lateral turns, NEWS. They did not propose a path literally parallel to the FOB, so including one will distort the path. And it puts one in the line of arguably valid straw man accusations.

Next: a bit technical, sort-of. To be sure I understood the concept behind his turn radii, I stripped away the numbers and made it visual, which helps me. I looked first (and only) at the most moderate curve. I connected the Morin point to the NoC 1 pin, then drew in a simu-curve (orange) to average the heading change more realistically.
Next I checked the headings at Morin and att NoC 1 and found app. 72 and 40, for a change of 32°, which is a bit off from the numbers on the chart, but close enough for what I’m doing here. Then I set a circle around the R1 pin and found it traced that same curve. So this is the right center presuming the plane started south of the Annex at Morin’s location. From there we have another center point for the second turn to impact, this time labeled P1. (“The tags P1, P2, and P3 are the center points of the turn radii for the NoC locations to the impact point at the Pentagon.”) Following the same pattern, we get a curve like this: Which gives us a final flight path like this for NoC1: Now I understand maybe that's part of the point here, but CIT never proposed anything like that, and never needed to. As whoever it was stated in response, Reheat “twists it (pun intended) even more with an S-Turn? Now there is no doubt in my mind why he wants to remain anonymous. Too funny. He must really be desperate to put an S-Turn in there.” Indeed, if I’m reading it right, there is a pronounced S-curve to the proposed path while CIT’s proposed NoC path is all one arc (blue above, their most moderate proposal). Yes, this means Morin was really fudging, but who can disprove that? It's not much further from what Paik drew - his exact lines works for neither official nor NoC paths without fudging. Reheat’s initial straight path as far as the FoB has an edge to run along requires a left and then right bank, whereas CIT has argued for a single right bank over the whole span and crossing the building. These are two different flight paths.

And as far as the degree of the second turn, JFK’s criticism – for once anyway - seems valid here. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no reason “the tags P1, P2, and P3” need to be THE “center points of the turn radii for the NoC locations to the impact point at the Pentagon.” It doesn’t need to fly the full arc 180° - it could fly nearly straight after the Citgo starting from a less northerly heading there. Let me help out here with a possibility:
Someone else can crunch the numbers on that.

If nothing else, this episode illustrates the absurdity of trying to concoct a real flight path from witnesses by focusing on discrepancies rather than correlation, and the dangers of selective reading - someone, or some part, always has to get thrown under the bus. And besides, if someone "must really be desperate to put an S-Turn in there,” someone needs to look into the chaps who put out this desperate s-s-s-swerve a while back and started all these tortured calculations.

BIG EYEWITNESS NEWS COMING!!!

BIG EYEWITNESS NEWS COMING!!!
June 11 1am

Aldo Marquis CIT has news for us, again! “UPDATE: We've got another corroborating witness to the DC/EOP/Chaconas flight path.” Good, since the Scoggins confirmation didn’t turn out so well. This was the first post in the Chaconas thread since JFK shut it down a month ago to push out PBnJ. And there’s news on other fronts, hints a-dropping at the LCF in the last few days, and I gotta say I’m scared that my whole reality is about to come crashing down! "They have no idea how wrong they are about to be," Marquis told Bitterman. "Paik's position didn't allow him to see what happened at the end of the Annex," he said in another thread. "We do have a better idea now, so just stay tuned."

Most ominously, Marquis announced "We now have an additional 6 NoC witnesses. 2 on audio recording and 4 on location, on camera. One of those was a surprise published account that we did not expect to get." Lemme guess – ANC folks and such who were north of the real path, and describe the plane as over them? Now CIT’s collection has grown to “12 people who saw it on the north side of the Citgo.” How many mention the Citgo? I'll have to wait and see. How many people south of the real path described the plane as 'over' them? But they don’t count as SoC witnesses since they don’t mention the Citgo, right? Now CIT’s collection has grown to “12 people who saw it on the north side of the Citgo," he told critic Boboblaw, "leading us to believe the plane flew over. Leading us to believe in the second plane cover story. Leading us to Roosevelt Roberts who saw the plane flying away and thought it was a second jet in the area at the exact time of the attack."

Regarding that last, I'm still waiting for that full article and complete audio that was promised a couple weeks ago. One thing at a time fellas, lets see if one pans out before we start distracting people with something else that also won't. Not sure what they’re saying at their own forum, but the word bombshell is probably in there somewhere, as they plan another of their regular bomb-dropping followed by another round by the dud truck, teetering and barely able to drive beneath its towering load anymore. Perhaps they will finally break the truck, which seems their only reachable goal.

'Hey, we're not confused about Roberts' account,' CIT will likely say. 'You're the one with the stupid "questions." Why don't YOU go ask him to explain it again?' Funny they should possibly ask that right after I led the post that direction. In other news, I’ve been “unusually investigative” lately in sending out, last Monday, a ‘clarification packet’ to Officer Roberts with all the contact info he could need. In nine pages (with plenty of space, mind you), I asked about all the little details I’ve been wondering about and made it near-impossible, if he answers anything, to continue the vagueness that’s come across so far. I included a zoomed map for locating himself, lane 1, etc. if all south, and a wider view for the flight path he saw. I could have made better ones I suppose, but I felt rushed.


The way I see it there are three possible outcomes:
1) He doesn’t respond, or does so in a curt and dismissive way. This seems most likely, but considering how he talked with CIT, I would find this a bit suspicious. They didn’t just look up his number and call him, not by any means I’ve found, but likely got him to call them after an initial contact. Am I right, guys?
2) He responds in the affirmative of what I suspect – he saw 175 impact on TV and then saw 77 approach. I’ll publish it happily.
3) He clarifies what CIT’s been saying. I won’t believe it, but I’ll acknowledge it and, with his permission, pass it on. That in itself would be very interesting.

So each of these outcomes is educational in its own way, and it will have been worth the time in any case. He should have had the packet for over a week now, just long enough that the suspense is killing me and I’m wondering if he’s planning to blow me off quietly. So now it’s in the open, I can’t be blown off silently. How loud it gets depends on me. In the chance he’s reading this site, again, all I want is the honest and un-muddled truth, even if it’s just that I fail, and we are waiting on a response. And again, Roosevelt, if you're reading this, all of this back-and-forth should not matter a bit for the outcome. Memories are memories, and if CIT can hear them, why not me?

Sincerely, Caustic Logic

JOEL SUCHERMAN – NOC WITNESS?

CIT EYEWITNESS VERIFICATION PART IV:
JOEL SUCHERMAN – NOC WITNESS?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
April 29 2008
updated 5/3

Apologies all, I'm not trying to keep finding things, but this... I just found a most interesting logical paradox of sorts while looking into the account of USA Today editor Joel Sucherman. I hadn’t examined his account closely before, and am here relying on the interview portions in the CIT video The USA Today Witness Parade with only vague background knowledge. This short video is based around the suspicious density of USA Today/Gannet-connected witnesses to the Pentagon attack, taken as a mobile propaganda outfit of sorts sent out to confirm the government story. While at least six were packed into a .16 mile-stretch of the highway that they took to work each morning, only two of these, “both Mike Walter and Joel Sucherman have confirmed their locations,” the video explains; Walter did so via Russell Pickering, a placement he agreed to that shows trees blocking part of his view from well south of impact. Sucherman was verified by CIT with a video-taped interview and careful POV work captured on camera.
Their confirmation had Joel taking up the rear of the parade, having just emerged from the I395 underpass well south of the official flight path. How they placed him here seems a bit arbitrary really. Surprised? As far as I can tell all the evidence for this is in their interview as in the video, recorded on their November 2006 Arlington foray where they talked to all the PentaCon witnesses. The part they seemed to use is

“I had come out from underneath the underpass and as soon as you come out from under there, you start to rise up to a hill and that’s where you get the view of the Pentagon off to the east, off to your right.”

Then the interview cuts to talking about his view of Flight 77 passing left-to-right ahead of him. It’s not made clear whether he saw this at the instant he emerged or at some point shortly after but they seem to have latched onto the ‘had come out’ and set it as ‘had just come out.’ To place him more precisely we could use his description of the flight path he saw the plane on, relative to his view:

“I saw it coming across my windshield but then [certainly?] the passenger side of the vehicle I had had a clear view of the pentagon. I would say The Pentagon is at 2 o’clock from me, in my car. So I’m seeing it come across the windshield and then I’m looking out the passenger side window and that’s where I see the collision with the pentagon. There were no trees at that point in the way at all. I did see it impact.”
CIT used this description and their footage of the drive up Route 27 to pinpoint Sucherman’s location. They show a still shot labeled “Pentagon at “2:00”” taken from the position they indicate in their graphics, with trees between, blocking his view of impact. Problem is the Pentagon is a large building that would occupy the space from about 12:30 to 3:00, depending on where exactly he was, so if he means a specific spot was in that direction, the impact point is the most likely choice. I mapped this out and if we take his 12:00 position as being forward up Route 27, the impact point is at about 12:30 from him as placed by CIT. Even the nearest corner is only at 1:00. Also, the patch of trees blocking his view does not fit his description of there being no trees blocking his view of the impact point. Also the entire view of the flight path would be across his windshield at this location, with nothing but the south parking lot visible out the side window. Nothing about this location matches these positional details other than arguably the underpass aspect.

Did they manage to place him wrong despite their much-lauded field work? Just from this, it would seem so; their citizen method for investigating his location was to sit down and interview him to glean the first-hand details, get video of the area, pick the wrong location that conflicts with the details, decide his testimony contradicts itself, and dismiss him as a liar with the rest of the Parade, sending him to the back of the line.

He is a mainstream media employee, and seems a good official path supporter. He actually makes no mention of altitude I noticed, though he does use the word impact. Elsewhere he’s described a plane fitting the official profile. CIT’s mobile video showed a better position for him seeing the official path, just after passing the trees, but ruled this out as right under the flight path. I’m not sure where Sucherman specified that he wasn’t under it, although he doesn’t specifically mention this. So I tried him in such a position, more or less under the official path, amongst the downed light poles, and in the middle of the USA Today Parade. No trees block his view here, but he wouldn't see the plane till the right half of his windshield, and there's still no real view from side window here either (the angled green line is an app. divide between front and side views). this is also still not 2:00, more like 1:00. This placement is arguably consistent with both his exact words and with the official flight path, but it would require that this be a while after passing from under 395, in slow traffic. Until I see a specific reason to question this, it seems a good trade-off. [ETA: In previous interviews he does mention seeing the side of it (AA stripes), so he couldn't have been directly under it and seems to have been a bit further south, which is even further from 2:00 and of course gives him no view of the Pentagon out his right side. ].

Because of these facts, his account is not possible in relation to the official path, if literally read. But just out of curiosity, I tried to see what was the best fit for his account. Again I presumed that by ‘the Pentagon’ he meant the impact point, read 2:00 as exact, and considered the view out of the windshield and of the ‘impact point’ being visible out the passenger window. Understanding the result would only be approximate, oddly, these considerations place USA Today editor Sucherman entirely north of the official flight path, so that any plane crossing in front of his windshield to a point visible through his passenger side window, and at 2:00 as he stated, would have to be from over ANC or, with a bit of fudging, at least north of the Citgo.
How about that? Did CIT pass up another north path witness in its huff to disprove the mass-media shills? Imagine if they’d been willing to believe him and make his descriptors into a graphic like that above. It would not have been dishonest, it's what I just found, and could have made it into The PentaCon along with Lagasse, Brooks, Turcios, and Paik, who were interviewed at this same time. Was the north path meant to be 5X corroborated to fit the ‘penta’ theme, but the team was too dense to get the fifth Beatle up on stage? Am I going to be forced to include Sucherman in my vast disinfo operation hypothesis when he wasn’t even used? Or am I just reading too much into this odd coincidence of imprecisions and something more like my middle guess is close enough to what he’s describing after all?
---
Above Top Secret.com - I quit the forum after this.
Ranke's surreal response at the CIT forum: What the hell? Although the bolstering ad hominems were fully anticipated behavior, a lashing-out as with any cornered, wounded animal, I never expected his core argument to be this stupid and ironically surreal.

"The most obvious contradiction here in Sucherman's account should be that 2:00 is NOT a view out of the passenger window no matter how you slice it."
Ummm, except the way of slicing it that makes most sense to me and is accurate to his account, that places 2:00 exactly as a view of impact to the right with no trees in the way.
"Clocks are never horizontal and this is not how normal people interpret the analogy of direction from time!"
Umm, except the original clock, the sundial, which uses the same principle normal people use for locating other ground objects relative to themselves. As the creator of The PentaCon, Ranke is not an expert on how normal people think, and his system makes no sense. Maybe that's what his momma taught him, and if so then perhaps that's what he honestly thought he should do. Personally I'm not fooled, but good move on Ranke's part putting forward this silly explication.

A CHERRY PIE FROM ROB’S ORCHARD

A CHERRY PIE FROM ROB’S ORCHARD
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
April 10 2008
last updates 4/16

Picking?
My recent Youtube video That Darn NTSB cartoon, part 1, featured Rob Balsamo/Johndoex vocally promoting north path ‘data’ supposedly from Flight 77’s black box and ‘corroborated by Pentagon police officers…” I was explaining the issue and working up to a video explaining my previous findings that the ‘north plot data’ was just an illusion created by turning the final map the wrong way, which I had always taken him as denying. Balsamo left a comment: ”lol... this has to be the worst case of cherry picking i have ever seen. Bravo CL, you have out done yourself.”

I responded “if I'm picking cherries that implies I'm ignoring things. Regarding my analysis of the FDR north path, using YOUR OWN words, what am I ignoring? The actual 'north plot data?' Or what?” His explanation was interesting, “CL, we have been saying the "map may be rotated" since Aug 2006.” I didn’t recall that ever seeing them say anything like that, but spurred by this comment, I did look around a bit and am left asking “Cherry picking? What else should a cherry-hungering blogger do when he finds himself in a friggin’ cherry orchard? Dig around for a raspberry bush?”

Did he or some other member say once, somewhere, the "map may be rotated"? Probably so since he put it in quotes and gave it a date, and they say a lot of things – the question is how, when, where, how often? Is this the impression that comes through? Where can I read/hear these thoughts? “Clearly you don’t remember when I told you the same thing during our first exchange,” he tipped me off. I did miss this first time around, and going back to the passages he likely means here, from my thread at Above Top Secret.com, I see why. I’ll cover this at the end; first the cherries. This is not a perfect sampling by a long-shot, but I have enough cherries for a whole pie. I have less fresh ones than fermented vintage from his earlier activist phase before he was banned everywhere. I was made more familiar along the way with his well-known tactics of appeal to expertise, to their impressive roster, distractions and insults, pretending his opponents are all stupid and lazy, lengthy irrelevant re-posts and links, links, links… Clearly he enjoys being banned, and values true discussion roughly nil.

The Issue: Headings and Rotations
First, to understand the significance of any of this, one must understand somewhat the heading/map issue. The simplest way to explain this is with this on-screen discrepancy – the heading dial (lower right) reads 70, meaning degrees from the magnetic pole, which corresponds with the FDR-recorded heading. Considering magnetic declination in the area at that time of 10.08° this means a path about 60° from the true north pole, which closely matches the physical damage path before and into the Pentagon. To end at impact, a line on this heading would have to pass south of the Navy Annex and Citgo gas station, where the light poles were severed. The path that we see on the screen however passes well north of the Annex, the Citgo, and the poles, on a heading relative to landmarks that has been multiple-verified by everyone as about 78-80° real, so 88-90° magnetic. So in the picture above, the heading dial and the visual path do not match; one of them must be wrong. [more info here] Either the ground map is rotated wrong while the plane’s movements are accurate to the data, or the ground clues are accurate to the data with the heading dial and all other data altered to cover this up.

Considering the first option matches the rest of the more raw data, nearly matches the physical damage path (for heading) and as I’ve shown is visually verifiable as being the case to anyone who takes the time, the answer is clear.

The alternative - they altered the data to fool us but forgot to alter one rendering of it – the cartoon, the only version most people could see an understand - is of course worth considering but seems a bit silly. That would be like writing a screenplay, filming the movie, deciding you don’t want people seeing it, re-writing the screenplay, then sending the new screenplay out to theaters while slipping in the original movie that was never re-done. Ready to launch a fledgling Truth group to stardom…

The Orchard
I stand accused of distorting Rob’s claims to make him out as unquestioningly supporting the second hypothesis when, in fact, he’s always remained open-minded on the rotation issue. This is what I found, in chronological order except two dates covered at the end. Remember we're mostly discussing the screen here, the visual animated path and the heading dial. Which has he cast more doubt on?

8/24/06, on first posting of the animation’s final maneuver, “About This Video This is the final maneuver performed by the aircraft which hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. This animation was provided by the NTSB and is accurate in terms of the flight data recorder on board this aircraft.” No mention or notice yet of the north path aspect which, other than location of the final map, is all that really conflicts. The altitude is about right, which was his point. [source]
11/28/06, Democratic Underground: “When we first received the animation, i had thought perhaps the NTSB messed up on the graphical presentation as well (we went over this briefly on today's Jack Blood broadcast). However, if you look at the initial phases of flight (particularly the take off), it is lined up perfectly with the taxiways and runway as the aircraft taxi's out for take off. Also, we have further evidence which confirms the flight path.. including witnesses, which will be put together in a report. […] The facts conflict with the official fairy tale. […] the professionals at the NTSB dont make mistakes in terms of magnetic variation (as shown in the initial phases of flight).” [source]
3/27/07 at the Loose Change Forum: “Heading indicator altered to match southern approach... however plot confirms North of Citgo testimony given by Pentagon Police Officers. (Please try not to delete this if you want truth)” [source]
5/9/07 – Micheal Herzog interview, RBN “the NTSB data, the plot, the animation that they plot out, has it on the north side of that Citgo gas station […] The north path that we’ve been trying to get answers for, from the NTSB and FBI, is also corroborated by Pentagon police officers, filmed on location, betting their life on it that it was on that side of the gas station. […] [The PentaCon] corroborates the flight data recorder as far as the flight path being north… I mean, right there, it’s dead to rights, right there that the investigation needs to be opened.”
6/4/07 – first comments at ATS, special treatment below: “The heading (in the little instrument) was altered, to confuse the average layman and to grab suckers to buy the official story and the fact the professionals at the NTSB 'screwed up' in their plot.”
6/7/07: “Fact - The NTSB plotted the aircraft north of the govt story flight path” [source]
6/8/07 more at ATS.com, as with 6/4, see below: he mentions that at one point, “i had thought the NTSB may have screwed up a bit and rotated the map a bit.”
7/31/07 e-mail: “Im not trying to sound derrogotory here, but do you happen to have a learning disorder? […] as a side note, the map isnt rotated, and the heading in the csv file does not line up with the physical damage.”
8/3/07 e-mail: Q: You're sure the final map isn't rotated relative to the background lines? A: “Put Google Earth into the same perspective as NTSB animation map with grid lines (you satisfied yet that the animation is from the NTSB? lol), lat/long on ground. You will see very little difference in angles.” [wrong - the difference is exactly that seen between the animation path and heading dial - about 17 degrees]
[ahem...]
9/19/07, e-mail: “The map isnt rotated. We are not sure exactly how the NTSB made their plot as they are refusing to answer any questions. […] The only thing that doesnt correspond is the heading in the heading indicator at end of flight in which John Farmer did a great job locating the alterations.” [note: Farmer no longer holds this view (it was a 'first guess') and thinks johndoex is a kook - my words, not his].
9/24/07, Above Top Secret: "I'll let you in on a little secret. It doesnt matter if the map is rotated or not. We are not arguing that fact in the latest 3D animation. [...] The map rotation just isnt that important, especially since we place the aircraft on 61.2 degrees and it still doesnt account for physical damage." [source]
4/?/08: “CL, we have been saying the "map may be rotated" since Aug 2006.”

initial doubts
As the two bolded examples show, johndoex had indeed, at one time, been wiling to entertain the obvious and proven conclusion. As the rest of the text above shows, he quickly stopped believing in it for some reason. As I started my thread at Above Top Secret.com alerting people, clumsily I confess, to the discrepancy that challenged the north path 'data' in late May 2007, Rob weighed in on June 4. I hadn't yet decided the map was rotated, but that was seeming the most likely.

“Havent read this thread... but heres a reply from P4T Co-Founder.” He linked to where he had just explained elsewhere “the headings in the csv file and animation were altered... The NTSB plotted the animation from take off on runway 30 at Dulles to end of recording based on lat/long (see the grid on the ground? See the yellow poles extending from the aircraft to the ground? Yeah.. thats a plot). The heading (in the little instrument) was altered, to confuse the average layman and to grab suckers to buy the official story and the fact the professionals at the NTSB 'screwed up' in their plot.” In other words, the final animation map is the ONLY real clue to heading, not nan error, and so all other data from the dial to the FDR decodes that show the same, were altered. He also summarized “the animation heading (instrument reading) was altered to show a southern approach. If the heading wasnt altered it would show 090 Mag or 080 True. Just as the plot shows to the north of Citgo.”

A few days later on the 8th, he posted for us all a rundown of his thinking on the flight path discrepancy, “in a nut shell, the timeline, files, how they were obtained. the making of small video clips on youtube.. the introduction and reasons why to start questioning the flight path instead of thinking it was an error.. and the making of our film.” They started by deciding the animations truly was NTSB, despite no paper trail, because it matched the other data they put out. After this, they quickly noticed that it didn’t match, which is what made this proven NTSB product so interesting of course.

“We noticed the flight path right away that it was off in the animation. We didnt pursue it initially because i had thought the NTSB may have screwed up a bit and rotated the map a bit. So we proceeded with altitude and the like... remember.. its late august 2006. Then i made a video regarding the final maneuver and lack of intercept... you probably seen it.. many have. .Dated Aug 24, 2006. (note, we arent even worried about the flight path at this point because we think the map is rotated) […] meanwhile.. Craig and Aldo were working on their research. .went to DC.. etc. They came back and said "We have a witness who places the plane North of the Citgo!".. And i said.. well great.. now the flight path goes into the rest of the conflicts with official story.. and a new video was born...”

So that's it. It looked like an error, but some external ‘witnesses’ and all they have to do with data translation issues shifted the analysis of the FDR. Gov't-supplied witnesses that match something that’s likely an error in gov’t-supplied data should raise red flags. Rob sees a red flag and charges. Now the video screen is real and all reality rotated around it. Rob, I’m sure you’ll see this sooner or later; feel free to show me your more reasonable side in action. I'm not listening to any more interviews or registering for your forum just to fish for quotes. But this sampling here don’t look too good. You tacitly and indirectly admit now that the map is probably just rotated, and point out that you suspected that at first. So what went wrong in between? Hm?
---
updates:
4/12: I forgot to include this line from his comments on my video page:
"Yes, later i had made the statement that the "map is not rotated" via email which you promptly posted on your blog, despite the numerous interviews i have done to the contrary. Think about that.. :-)"
Yeah, I started thinking about that and that's how this post came to be. Mr. Hyde, please quit telling me you're also some reasonable Dr. Jekyl, somewhere, in the interview I can't find, when you've been running around saying shit like that posted above.

4/16: New quote, e-mail Rob sent out a while back to someone else and saw fit to share with me:
"Map rotation is pretty much what we been saying since day 1 and have said on almost every radio and TV interview. We thought the map was rotated when we first got the animation, that is why we worked on [other issues...] The flight path is secondary and [...] the other issues are primary. [...] We did briefly look into the rotation [...] which it appeared the map was not rotated, and eventually were going to look into it more thoroughly. But since CIT has found new witnesses to a DRA (Down The River) approach, i dont think we are going to bother much more with the flight path and leave that up to the people who were there and actually saw it.

[...] we later included the flight path in our "Questions to the US Govt" on our pentagon page because there are many independent north side witnesses (we wouldnt have even bothered with the flight path had there not been any NOC witnesses).

The professionals at the NTSB just dont "rotate" maps by mistake. They do these types of animations on a regular basis. Since there are so many NOC witnesses, perhaps someone (a whistleblower?) at the NTSB rotated the map intentionally to get people looking into a north of citgo approach? Who knows...." [emph mine - I tend to agree, which is part of why I'm looking into this][source]
The witness-proven east of the river bs thing is not proven at all but what Balsamo is saying here is ALL the FDR data is out the window now - an obvious fake since it doesn't match the witnesses. (who essentially don't exist - one odd, vague guy and some misread other evidence, etc...).

So it was rotated, and probably not on accident. Rob and I seem to be agreeing on this. A backwards mag rotation might make sense, but man what sloppy work. But seven degrees? The JREFfer types will have to think of their own explanations. Step two... hmmm.

THE FORTUITOUS DEBUNKER

LAGASSE AND EASTMAN PART 2: THE FORTUITOUS DEBUNKER
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
February 28 2008 3pm
slight edits 2/28 11pm

Note: I've improved grammar and spelling to compensate for limited English proficiency of Lagasse, Eastmann, Desmoulins, and myself, correcting all text as if it was my own. No meanings changed.

Left Hanging
Part one of this series broke down in painful detail Richard “Dick” Eastman’s “Killer Jet” Theory of the Pentagon attack, published in early 2003 by American Patriot Friends Network (APFN). The piece is obviously fraudulent, a fabric of selective manipulation supporting a ridiculous premise, and additionally undermined by irrelevant but inexplicable blunders like his north-south mix up of the crime scene (while still reading E-W right), which he eventually caught. In June 2004 he lashed out at fellow no-planer John Kaminski who, in criticizing Eastman, “gives the first rough formulation that is two years old - which was hastily sent to Ken Vardan at A.P.F.N. (it even has “north” and “south” wrong (switched) in the diagram and some of the discussions of the wall!!!)” He also mentions that he had been “unable to get Vardan to remove that old piece or to at least add a note” regarding updates like this [1]. He of course offers no apologies for the abuse of eyewitness evidence, for the idiocy of arguing air vortices could crimp five light poles to the breaking point, or for inventing both a second and implausible aircraft and a second imaginary flight path north of the ‘official’ one, at the wrong angle for the building damage and light poles and proving a fly over of the decoy 757.

The killer jet theory was always given far more credit than it deserved, but still was not universally well-received in the 9/11 Truth community. For example, Jim Hoffman of WTC7.net fame gave Eastman’s “Two Plane Theory” at least as fair a hearing as it deserved, focusing on the decoy aspect at least as much as the unsupported killer jet. “It is conceivable,” Hoffman admitted, “that some witnesses could have been fooled into thinking that a jetliner had crashed into the Pentagon by a pyrotechnic display concealing the plane's overflight, “ and even did some math to support the possibility of a landing at Reagan National (if the plane were computer-controlled anyway). But all things considered, he concluded “it is difficult to imagine that such a trick could have fooled all of the witnesses.” [2]

Hoffman aptly noted of the theory’s place in the larger no-plane-in-the-building mega-meme – Eastman’s ambitious attempt to reconcile eyewitness evidence with his misreading of the physical. “If the overflight element of the two-plane theory seems bizarre, it illustrates the difficulty in reconciling the eyewitness evidence with the conclusion that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon.” Hoffman dismissed the theory as “vocally promoted only by Eastman,” as striking most others as “absurd,” and as “relatively sidelined.” [2]

But Eastman was either oblivious or whatever, and barreled ahead with his new info-weapon. After the Killer Jet piece’s release and shortly before reinforcement arrived, on May 25 2003, he posted another message on the APFN website, a missive titled Jews, specifically Zionists did 9-11. [3] In this, he summarized his previous conclusions as “the Pentagon was attacked by a remote-controlled jet fighter flying low and fast that fired a missile into the Pentagon target immediately ahead of its own crash there while at the same moment a Boeing 757 with American Airlines markings approached the same target at slower speed and from a different angle and overflew the target at the exact moment of the crash explosion.”

More to the point, he noted “if it can be shown” that this is true, then “Rumsfeld (Sec. of Defense., Jew, Zionist), Wolfowitz (Deputy Sec. Of Defense., Jew, Zionist), Gen. Meyer (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jew, Zionist), the CIA (working black operations jointly with Mossad and MI6 related to terrorism prior to and leading up to 9-11)” were “guilty for 9/11.” ”Decide now,” Eastman encouraged his readers, “whether men like me are your mortal enemy or men like Ariel Sharon, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsefeld, Bush, Rice, Gen. Meyer and Paul Wolfowitz. The future depends on the decision you make. I'll know by your responses to this message how you have chosen.” [3]

Dear Sir Rest Assured / The Unknown
About a month after this ultimatum, but presumably unrelated to it, Sgt. William Lagsse chose to let Eastman have a piece of his mind. As a civilian employee of the Pentagon (Defense Protective Services officer) who witnessed the 757 attack and explosion, he was miffed at the crazy missile-fighter-flyover scenario. He was there. He saw what happened. There was no killer jet, no fly-over. He sent a stern e-mail to Vardan at APFN, who passed it on to Eastman [7], certainly not the first he ever got. It read in part:

“Dear Sir rest assured it was a Boeing 757 that flew into the building that day. I was on duty as a pentagon police sgt.. I was refueling my vehicle at the barracks k gas station that day [b]adjacent to the aircraft’s flight path.[/b] It was close enough that I could see the windows had the shades pulled down, it struck several light poles next to rt 27 and struck a trailer used to store construction equipment for the renovation of the pentagon that was to the right of the fuselage impact point. The fact that you are insinuating that this was staged and a fraud is unbelievable. You ask were the debris is...well it was in the building. I saw it everywhere. I swear to god you people piss me off to no end. […] I know that this will make no difference to you because to even have a website like this you are obviously a different sort of thinker.”
[emphasis mine] [4]

Thus Eastman, diligent truth-seeker he proclaimed himself, was offered a chance to learn more about what actually happened. While we can’t know what was in his mind, Eastman was quite possibly aware that his theory was utter bullshit. Did he fear what this debunker might say if probed publicly? Was he concerned Lagasse would weaken his tenuous construct? Perhaps. He may have wondered if he should just do the simple thing and ignore the message as if it never happened. No one would have known but Lagasse, who’d just say ‘ah well, I said my piece…’ and Eastman, and whoever’s watching the Internet behind the scenes I suppose. A little nothing. An unseen blip.

Again, we can’t know what he was thinking, or what exactly he knew and when. But just with what was previously published of Lagasse’s account some troublingly vague clues were available. Most accessible was an ABC News Nightline interview, aired on the one-year anniversary, which Eastman was apparently only hipped to later:

"I read American Airlines on it. […] I didn't hear anything, but I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground, 400 miles an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot and I looked at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear. Didn't see any flaps down. I realized it wasn't going to land. I realized what it was doing." [5]

The apparent silence of the plane both fits Eastman’s take on the gliding decoy, but also mitigates against the noisy killer jet which would also pass quite near Lagasse. In fact he eventually clarified this was only a momentary silence caused by the Doppler effect – he heard it fine but with a delay.

“Before I could really think, I had my door open, and the [air?] off the wing pushed me kinda into my car," he also told Nightline. This statement which would come back to haunt him [see part III] and was also described in an even earlier audio interview for the Library of Congress, recorded in December 2001. [6] In this other clue available to Eastman, he also places himself at Barracks K, AKA the Nexcomm/Citgo gas station, for Pentagon personnel only, now in defiance of Venezuela’s regime, simply the Navy Exchange. From there he saw the plane “approximately 100 feet above the ground level, maybe 60 feet in front of me.” [emph mine]
Collectively, Lagasse’s description of the plane clearly fits the characteristics of the AA-style decoy airliner, which would almost have to have flown north of the Citgo to deny the physical evidence path. Considering the station is aligned roughly north-south and has pumps at both ends, Lagasse could have been facing either north or south when the plane passed in front of him. There is nothing in his early accounts to specify which. Therefore, this graphic compares Riskus’ ‘100-foot’ north path with the damage path and a literal reading of Lagasse’s 2001 account, with both a NoC and SoC variant. Both these yellow paths are closer to ‘official’ damage path than to the existing north path - dangerous territory to be finding the decoy in. The officer seemed a remarkable witness who was observant and detailed, and ‘adjacent to the flight path.’ That last part was for good or ill; he was on the fault line. North or south? Left or right? Eastman, it would seem, was faced with the abyss of the unknown.

Faith Repaid With Fortune
For whatever reason, Eastman decided to fearlessly embrace the opportunity. The first thing he did was post The Statement of William Lagasse at the APFN message boards. Of all the angry e-mails with ambiguous repercussions, this one seems worth sharing with all and was so on June 24, 2003, at 1:11 pm. [6] Thus a critical e-mail became the opening line with which Lagasse was introduced to the 9/11 Truth community, and it would be too late for Eastman to turn back without people noticing.

One clue to Eastman’s thinking is revealed in an e-mail to Gerard Holmgren the same day about this debunker. “I am not so much hoping to discredit this man, as to use everything he says to support the small-plane thesis -- as Riskus, when carefully questioned, ended up supporting it.” He offered clues to his fellow 757-denier Holmgren; “He has not said he saw the collision or saw the Boeing mowing down poles - his statements are worded more like deductions. In the end he may, all by himself, end up supporting the thesis that the trick was done in such a way that witnesses would be fooled into deducing just what he is deducing.” [7] [emph mine]

Curiously confident that he would find such treasure, Eastman responded To Lagasse immediately. For those familiar with the more recent works of Citizen Investigative Team, Eastman’s questions from mid-2003 will ring familiar.

“Ken Varden considers your letter important enough to forward to several people interested in what REALLY happened. Your statement indicates that you are a very good witnesses who knows planes and knows who what to look for. Before passing on your letter to others who can't make up their minds what to believe, could you describe further all that you witnessed […]I'd like to locate you on the map.”
[…] “Where did the plane come in, in relation to the Naval Annex and the Columbia Pike?
[…] Were you able to see what part of the Boeing hit the lamp posts and at what height the posts were "clipped"? (Or did you notice the downed poles afterwards?)
[…] were you looking at the port (left) or starboard side?
[…] Did you see the trailer being struck or is this based on your later observation of the damage?
[…] How did the plane descend as it approached the Pentagon at the bottom of the hill?” [7]

Now we know that Lagasse had read at least the main APFN article, and whatever other supporting pieces he may have, and knew ANC, Riskus, etc. meant north path and no impact, compared to the mapped-out ‘killer jet’ path up to and into the building. He had seen all this, was well familiar with the area, and in apparent blissful ignorance of the implications offered these clues:

"It was not over Arlington National Cemetery but closer to Columbia pike itself […] I identified it as American Airlines almost as soon as I saw it and radioed that it had struck the building. I was on the Starboard side of the aircraft. There was very little wake turbulence that I can recall, which was surprising to me. The aircraft DID NOT have its landing gear or flaps extended." [8]

These clues allowed our anti-hero to summarize the next day, with clear implications, “Sgt. Lagasse from the gas station saw the "starboard" of the plane as it passed him.” He saw its right side, so it was north of him. “This would place the Boeing over the Annex, in fact over the northern end of the Annex.” He cited it 'splitting the distance,' or halfway between, the ANC and the Annex, north of Columbia Pike and north of Lagasse at the Citgo – and thus the now-familiar north of-the-Citgo path was born in mid-2003.

Witness Steve Riskus had earlier seemed to imply a decoy flight path over the southern part of Arlington National Cemetery with no difference split. This path would have a compass heading of about 140° to intersect a point ‘100 feet in front of’ Riskus to the impact-flyover point, something Eastman had previously taken as his embryonic north path. But 100 feet eventually proved too close for even Eastman’s construct. He later wrote that Riskus’ measurement “can't be taken literally or else the plane would have come from over the cemetery and not over the Annex.” Since numerous other witnesses place the plane over the Navy Annex (more or less, though it actually passed just south of it), these north-pointing clues proved problematic.
This 2004 graphic by Desmoulins shows the approximate “official path” in solid pink, Lagasse’s described path in dashed pink and the severed light poles as the five yellow dots. Riskus north was untenable, but Lagasse’s improvement allowed a track that both involved the Annex, passing just north of it, and contradicted the official story clearly enough to fit the bill of Eastman’s fantasy flyover plane. Interestingly, Lagasse even passed along these tidbits to help discredit Riskus’ account:
"Because of the Doppler effect no one could have heard the plane if they were on route 27 until it was already in the building, so identifying its position and trajectory from that angle would have been difficult if not impossible...it was not over Arlington National Cemetery but closer to Columbia pike itself, and there is a small grove of trees that would have shielded anyone [southbound -ed] on 27 from seeing the aircraft [on the path he describes -ed] until it was literally on top of them ... again not much time to make the assessment.” [8]

The Witness in Use: Proving the Path
Just as he’d hoped, with Lagasse’s pivotal assistance, Eastman was now able to describe with previously undreamed-of precision how the decoy operation worked: “the killer jet came to the wall from behind Lagasse as he was watching the Boeing, hitting the poles to his right (west) and behind him (south) as he watched Flight 77 fly past overhead and slightly north of him.” Extrapolating this line back from “over the Sheraton Hotel, over the Naval Annex, over the gas station (and actually to the north of Sgt. William Lagasse who was pumping gas there!” he clearly traces a path that “is north of the from-the-southwest path of the killer jet as indicated by the physical damage evidence”

Cementing Flight 77’s role as the decoy flyover, Eastman iterated that “Lagasse did not see the Boeing hit the poles and neither did ANY of the other witnesses!” [9] This merging of Lagasse in with the general witness pool finally leads to an extrapolation that all witnesses saw what Lagasse says he saw. “The witnesses saw the Boeing 757 come […] over the gas station (and actually to the north of Sgt. William Lagasse who was pumping gas there!)” More specifically, a confident Eastman stated on Sept. 3 2003, more than three years before we’d all be hearing the same arguments from CIT: “the other path, the path described by nearly every witness who watched the Boeing approach the Pentagon [...] over the gas station (and actually north of Lagasse) […] which establishes that the Boeing could not have been the plane that knocked down those poles and hit the wall at approx. a 55-dregree angle.” [10]

In mid-2004 Eastman reiterated “The first lamppost that was knocked down […] was too far south of any point on the path of the approach of the Boeing which witnesses overwhelmingly agree came in on a line that took it directly over the Sheraton, directly over the Naval Annex and directly over (or North of!!!) the Citgo gas station where Sgt. William Lagasse (whose statements I have been offering for a year now) states that the Boeing passed north of him.” [1] It all worked out remarkably well; now everyone saw the plane north of the station, even though no one else at the time specifically backed Lagasse up on this, and as we’ve seen Eastman hardly missed a chance to remind people of his star witness that made his otherwise implausible ‘killer jet’ start to seem necessary.

Others copied his messages in every forum available and the decoy theory wormed into the collective mind of the 9/11 Truth movement. It wasn’t just Eastman who expressed hopes that this new evidence would bust the case wide open and bring concrete moves to restore whatever was lost on 9/11. Eastman however was the clearest voice affirming the killer jet construct as “the critical evidence, ample to convince any impartial grand jury,” [11] and the evidence “that can convince the broad public and convince any jury or war crimes tribunal or crimes against humanity Nuremburg-type trial.” [12]

A Doubter: Desmoulins
While Jean Pierre Desmoulins (seen here in mid-2004) takes pride in being born in the Dauphiné province of Southern France, he thinks of himself as an “Earth Citizen,” transcending boundaries in contrast to Eastman’s populist nationalism. [13] The former electrical engineer, licenced pilot, and college professor first garnered some attention as a no-757 theorist inspired by fellow Frenchman Thierry Meyssan, and looking at a single-engine fighter jet impact himself at one point. But eventually Desmoulins turned into a serious scholar of the Pentagon attack, which he still believed “a fraud,” if one involving a Boeing impact. He then did some of the best early analysis of the available evidence, as well as tackling disinformation (the 'noise' to the 'signal,'), notably criticizing Meyssan, who "made a huge error when writing that ‘no plane crashed at the Pentagon." [source: presentation - frame 0051]

An incisive Eastman critic, Desmoulins stated in 2004 “Sgt Lagasse's account that he saw the starboard side of the Boeing is the only solid argument for this [Killer Jet] theory.” But contrasting Dick’s assertions, Jean-Pierre noted “of course, it is in complete contradiction with all other witness accounts of the trajectory of this Boeing.” [14] He seemed almost alarmed at the emergence of Lagasse’s explicitly aberrant account, but open-mindedly explored the various possible explanations and the pros and cons of each. Memory problems were one possible reason, for example a "logical reconstruction made by his brain, where some oddity changes the side of the plane that he saw from port to starboard.” Also possible was a simple terminology mix-up to the same effect, or manipulation of the message by Eastman himself to create that mix-up. Barring these, Lagasse was truly stating it was north of him, which Desmoulins knew raised very serious problems – if not for the ‘official story,’ then for Lagasse’s testimony.

“Does anyone buy what he is selling you?” Desmoulins asked pointedly to Eastman’s APFN readership on June 28 2004. Mimicking his opponent's bombastic stylings, he subtitled the missive “Conclusive Proof insane bullshiter Eastman guilty of 911 investigation fraud.” [15] In harsh and not entirely correct terms Desmoulins declared:

“the phrase '"I was on the starboard side of the plane" is faked. Lagasse could only be on the port side of the plane. This fakery proves that Eastman is not a serious and honest researcher, but just an insane person who wants, by all means, "prove" his "killer jet theory."”

The conclusion is sound but the reasoning faulty. Eastman, as “Senhor San,” responded the following day, lashing out at Desmoulins’ “garbage accusations:” “Lagasse wrote and told me on the phone” all the evidence that he then presented as-is. “This is straight-forward and simple. Desmoulins is trying to make it confusing. I spoke to Lagasse. I even provided Desmoulins with Lagasse's address, way back when Desmoulins was pretending to be a friendly fellow-seeker of the truth who merely happened to disagree on certain points etc.”

This exchange was posted by Eastman with the heading “someone judge this debate.” In my assessment, despite being essentially correct, in this case a seemingly confused Desmoulins lost to a collected Eastman, who was making sense for once, thanks to Lagasse’s clarity. To the charge “all the witnesses, including Lagasse, saw a Boeing, and they saw it flying on a trajectory which places it south of the gas station.” Eastman responded “absolutely false. Lagasse places it north.” He’s right, if we’re taking words for reality. When Desmoulins tried to cite a south-of-Citgo witness account, Eastman snapped back “Penny Elgas did not say the plane passed south of the gas station, she said "to the side of " not "south of." There is nothing in her statement to contradict Lagasse – the "side" she is referring to must be the north side - or else one of them is not telling the truth.”[emph mine] [15]

A Psy-Op?
This is the crux of it, as would become clear later; Lagasse himself - explicitly - placed the Boeing’s passage to his north, clipping light poles, a trailer, and impacting the building, even though it couldn’t possibly fly north and do any of these things. Perhaps Eastman did insert the first ‘starboard’ hints himself but if so Lagasse (as seen in a second e-mail) played into it immediately and by the time of this debate was an autonomous NoC-generator who never in the process or later moved to clear his name or set anything straight, and of course would later meet the second generation of flyover researchers to confirm the north-path aspect [see next installment]. Thus any textual dishonesty by Eastman seems insufficient to explain Lagasse’s north-side claims. Of course Desmoulins was also aware of this and elsewhere noted:

“Sgt Lagasse has a good sense of observation and some knowledge of flight and aircrafts. We are thus probably facing a fraud. Either it is a fraud from Sgt Lagasse, pushed to do it by some authorities, and Dick Eastman is the poster boy in this operation, or it is a fraud by Dick Eastman who massaged the email of Sgt Lagasse.” [14]

In examining alternative explanations to Lagasse’s claim being true, most provocatively I think, Desmoulins offered as a possibility “Sgt Lagasse has been pushed by the pentagon psy-op organizers to give this account, to give credit to the "killer jet" theory and bring confusion among the researchers on the 9/11 case.” In support of this last point, which he admitted “could seem rather odd and paranoid,” he explained “I must say that I'm amazed by the tremendous efforts, on a world wide basis, to promote the "No Boeing in the Pentagon" theses. As a consequence, the statement on command of Sgt Lagasse, as a part of this "disinformation,” sounds acceptable to me.” [14]

This reflects my own gut feeling upon seeing the “fine officer” confirm the point on video years later and with only a dim awareness of this earlier chapter. But then, I’m a little paranoid, which is how I first got into all this. Considering this possibility, some other things start to make more sense; Eastman’s early embrace of Lagasse may have been more than blind faith repaid with blind luck, for one. His intuition may have been supplemented, either with a previous e-mail we’ve never seen, or in some other way. Nothing is provable in this murky realm, but little also is disprovable so all options must remain open.

Whatever was going on behind the scenes, Lagasse via Eastman only went so far. By late 2004 and early 2005 many people were hip to the no-757 psyop: Hofmman, Pickering, Bingham, Salter, Rivero, Bart, Desmoulins, et al, built on earlier works by Judge, Roberts, Harvey, etc. and a slightly larger body of evidence, to conclude that by whatever means, and despite the noise to the contrary, it seemed an airliner was crashed into there. Dennis Behreandt, for example, wrote an expose on the disturbingly prevalent no-757 BS campaign that was printed in the JBS-published The New American in August 2004. The embrace of such unsubstantiated nonsense, Behreandt concluded, “exposes patriotic Americans to the possibility of being misled and marginalized, an outcome to be avoided if the tide toward collectivism is to be reversed.” [16]

Eastman responded to this article in June 2005 with the same story, two years old now; “Sgt. William Lagasse was pumping gas at the gas station between the Annex and the Pentagon when the Boeing flew by him headed east, and it passed north of him, so that he could see the row of windows on the starboard side - which also means that this plane could not have been the plane that hit the pole the broke the taxi windshield, the southwestern-most pole that was hit.” [17] For some reason Eastman had largely fizzled from the scene by then, if still posting on-again-off-again up to the present time, and eventually the debunkers would get to him in his darkest hour and actually leave him momentarily doubting his absolute convictions.

Lagasse faded back with him, not forgotten but dormant. In fact it’s curious how quiet it got, even after the officer’s effort to shut up the killer jet lunacy backfired, his rebuttal having been co-opted as its prime support, there was no retraction, no published disclaimers, no lawsuit, nothing to clear his name. He seemed content with the situation. But imagining him restless as Eastman mentioned him again in mid-2005, I’d like to send him an e-mail back in time: “Dear sir rest assured, you’ll get a chance to come out of retirement as it were, but not for another year and a half. Just hang tight.” [part III].

Sources [full formating later]:
[1] Eastman, Dick. “Russian Fatalism meets Sucker Credulity in John Kaminski by Dick Eastman.” Fri, 9 Jul 2004 10:33:22 –0700 http://talk.mailarchive.ca/politics.mideast/2004-07/2076.html
[2] Hoffman, Jim. The Two-Plane Theory: Surgical Strike by Fighter Combined with Overflight by Flight 77. 911Research.wtc7.net http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/analysis/theories/eastman.html
[3] Eastman, Dick. "Jews, specifically Zionists did 9-11."
[4] Lagasse 1
[5] Lagasse ABC
[6] LoC interview
[7] Eastman, Dick. “re: Pentagon witness Lagasse NEW RESPONSES.” E-mail to Gerard Holmgren. Wed Jun 25 07:59:42
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/6-27-03/discussion.cgi.58.html
[8] http://www.911-strike.com/lagasse.htm
[9] Undated piece "The Proof that the Rumsfeld Pentagon was involved in the frame-up attack upon the Pentagon, September 11 2001" http://www.bedoper.com/eastman/rumsfeld.htm
[10] “Senhor San” “Re: No, No, No! It FLEW OVER THE PENTAGON was Re: The Pentagon Fraud Explained In Simple Terms.” September 3 2003 http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/sci.military/msg00028.html
[11] http://www.mail-archive.com/political-research@yahoogroups.com/msg02578.html
[12] http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about46250.html
[13] http://www.earth-citizens.net/pages-en/his-whoiam.html
[14] http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/npp-lagas.html
[15] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/terrorinamerica2001/message/37704
Also: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/terrorinamerica2001/message/37705
[16] http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2004/110804factsstraight.htm
[17] http://www.homediscussion.com/showthread.php?t=127877