LIGHT POLE ANALYSIS: POLES ONE AND TWO Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud November 29 2007 working copy update 11.30 1 am
The first two light poles of the five downed in the Pentagon attack were along the west side of Route 27, about 1000 feet from impact. Note here (graphic quite approximate, will be replaced soon) three green dots along the width of the flight path: pole 2 furthest north, pole 1, then a VDOT traffic camera pole that was left standing but suffered a superficial 'smudge,' presumably from the right wing tip. Effective wingspan across this line is approximately 210 feet. My intent here is to determine what I can about pole 1 and 2 damage to help me determine effective roll (wing bank) at that point, or what the fakery was trying to show, take your pick. Pole 2 First, let's look at pole 2, the least clearly seen of the five downed. Russell Pickering's analysis at Pentagon Research.com compiled the few shots with it visible, peeking out from behind the bushes on the left side of the bridge mound. As this montage I made of the avaiable shots shows, this almost looks slender enough to be the smaller truss arm that holds the lamp head, or more likely the pole itself – its narrow upper end. The left wing would have hit it, and much too low to have directly caused that bend – presumably a secondary effect. There are no photos I'm aware of showing the main damage anything like what the other poles show. Update: A previously unseen photo I ran across later may hold a clue to this pole, and vice-versa.
Pole 1 The first pole downed, numbered 076, is the famous pole that is said to have speared Lloyd England's taxi windshield, covered in some detail at Pentagon Research.com. There is much, much written about this case - the inconsistencies in Lloyd's story, the damage inside the car and to his windshield, the lack of corroboration for his take that this long pole segment was completley sticking out of his car and was then removed by himself and a silent stranger. Most people who look into the case decide the story does not add up, but there are different theories as to what actually happened and to the significance of this mystery.
There are also smaller parts visible (top shot, left: truss arm and lamphead, as well as another small straight piece further to the left, but for now I'm interested in the length of this prime piece of history; the '40 foot pole' that could not have fit in the cab – how long is it really? Unfortunately I can only get a range on original pole dimensions; Pickering says 28 feet, other say 30, and some say 40. After measuring photos back and forth with different numbers, ratios, I’ve decided on these proportions as a best fit, though still approximate: Pole height: 32 feet Base height: 16 inches Full height to cap: 33.333 feet Pole diameter at base: 8 inches I also found the proportions of 1990s model Lincoln Town Car, which this seems to be: 77x219.” With al this, rough ratios were set, roughly averaged, estimated, and the apparent length of fragment on the roadway is 20-23 feet - perhaps a bit longer - about 14-16 feet of that straight.
It's probably not even new, but I've decided the part of pole 1 seen by Lloyd's cab is about 20-23 feet long, missing perhaps ten feet off the top, including the parts where the truss bolts down. Where that top part wound up is something I haven't looked into, but they could be simply the pieces on the road nearby, depending if the straight piece measure out right. It's also possible that a sizable chunk disappeared into the jet's engine (see below), causing the gray smoke visible trailing behind Flight 77 at impact.
This graphic, based on another light pole in the area, shows two impact scenarios that geometrically could explain the damage seen, including that unique bend, and the separation of the two parts. I'm not sure kinetically and forensically if either makes sense, just throwing it out there.
Attack Profile: How The Poles Fit In Putting pole 1's damage into a larger framework that's half-done. While pole 2 is inconclusive, pole 1 damage - a curve and a shear - fits other clues as to the plane's altiude and right-high bank at that point. effective wingspan cutting across Route 27 – 205-215 feet – poles about 140 feet apart – I placed the light poles approximately into a graphic I was working with – between the camera mast scuff and tree damage alone I had a pretty good image of the plane. As it turns out a scaled 757 profile does fit. And the poles don't really mess it up. Perhaps I placed pole 1 a bit wrong, or underestimated the perspective a tad, because the bend of the pole also corresponds roughly with the engine's lower edge. All these points line up to have pole 2 clipped by the outer left wingtip 14-16 feet above ground, and give the plane about the same bank recorded in the damaged facade one second later as well as the generator, fence, retaining wall, and possibly foundation damage between.
FIREBALL FAKERY: CHALLENGE TO CIT Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud November 20 2007 pretty much final Nov 21 3 pm
In the interest of critical thought regarding fakery of the Pentagon plane impact, I’d like to address the massive fireball unleashed when the plane *supposedly* struck the building. This was reportedly unleashed from the exploding fuel tanks of the 757 that impacted at a 39 degree angle traveling 530 mph or more. By the laws of physics, the motion of the expanding fireball would be determined by some combination of its general expansion (in all directions,) the forward momentum it retained from its flight there, and the angle of deflection and as such should spread across much of the building face, especially to the left (north) of impact, pressing against limestone and glass alike on its way. It would also have some tendency to rise and roll forward over the facade, igniting the roofing materials. If there was a staged overflight with on-the-ground explosives and pyrotechnics used to create the fireball, it would either somehow have to mimic this pattern, or reveal the deception with inconsistencies. Ignoring for the moment the likelihood of this fakery, let’s look at some of the evidence of this event and its aftermath; whether it was stage-managed or simply crashed into, what does the building and the scene reveal about what actually happened?
The Crappy Video Evidence First, let’s look at the famous and much-questioned CCTV security gate video of the attack. These choppy sequences of images (video at one frame per second) were captured by two cameras near each other at a security post just north of the supposed crash site. They show the plane (in black or white, depending on how one sees it) for one frame, about 600 feet from the cameras and closing at an oblique angle, less than a second before a bright flash at impact in the next frame, followed by a surging orange fireball that engulfs the building (below). That seems to make sense. The silhouetted structure is the heliport tower. Note this for later.
Note the deflagration's apparently triangular or conical shape, peaking just to the left of the building edge. I’ve seen this taken as a static, Christmas tree-shaped mass of fire, rising straight up from an epicenter in the building – as if the upper floors weren’t there, proof of obviously bad photo-editing. Another explanation is that the incandescent mass is rolling forward with plane’s momentum – from right to left of course and also somewhat towards the camera, if the ‘official’ trajectory is any clue. And a third possibility is that it was Photoshopped right to look like it should, which would look the same as the second option.
If the blast originated within, as a flyover would indicate - and the video were honest – I feel it would look something more like this (at left): an apparent fuel explosion (I'm not sure) inside the building five minutes after impact radiating out from the first and second floor impact wound. What we see here is indeed consistent with a fireball rolling forward with plane’s momentum – from right to left of course and also somewhat towards the camera (see below). The glowing mass spreads along the façade to the area behind the heliport – it’s certainly difficult to imagine any inside-the building incendiary package actually doing this.Debris movement as seen in the video is another clue; some fragments hurtling out and ahead of the fireball seem to move backwards, but the larger pieces go forward, and presumably towards the camera, another clue of its overall momentum. As so many have said before, of course, this controlled video footage would have been easy to doctor, and so we're left with the old question - is it live or Memorex?
Post-Attack Photos For whatever reason, photographs of the scene are not as often accused of fakery, but in fact they are easier to doctor. But ignoring the pit of paranoia that opens, here is a photo of façade burns after the impact and collapse, taken from an angle similar to the gate cameras. In fact, the cameras are in and in front of the small foreground buildings. The taller structure between them is the heliport/fire station. Compare the burn area to the left of the collapse zone to the narrower area to its right (not so clear in this shot). Also note for reference the security camera in about the middle of the wide left area. This face-on early shot taken by Steve Riskus shows the area before the collapse, just minutes after the impact. Already we see that even after the fireball has passed, there are rectangular patches of fire that has somehow gotten inside of widows, and much further to the left than to the right (heliport cropped off the left side). This is yet more evidence of a fluid combusting with forward momentum consistent with a path from the southwest combined with expected deflection angle.
Upper Floor Fires And in this picture, again after the collapse, note the same asymmetry and also the fires flaring out from inside on upper left, some of those that raged and smoldered inside for over a day. I’m not certain of the official take but would guess these are believed to be caused by the impact fireball breaking out windows in the un-renovated wedge two, and entering the upper floors though these breaches.
ASCE, Pentagon Building Performance Report, 2002: “Clearly, some of the fuel on the aircraft at impact did not enter the building, either because it was in those portions of the wings that were severed by the impact with the facade or with objects just outside of the building, or because it was deflected away from the building upon impact with the facade; that fuel burned outside the building in the initial fireball.” [p 41] "Windows that had not been upgraded generally were broken for several hundred feet to the north of the impact point." [p 28] "A large fireball engulfed the exterior of the building in the impact area.Interior fires began immediately." [p 20]
These observations of the ASCE would support the theory that these upper floor fires far from impact were injected by this possible engineered inferno. The following passage however is confusing: "Most of the original windows in a vast area of Wedge 2 were broken after the fire was extinguished. It is probable that some of these windows were broken by the fire or by firefighting efforts rather than by the effects of the impact." [p 44] This gives little clue of just how the fires got started behind these intact windows. With the fire unable to spread laterally through walls from the actual wing impact points, let alone up through floor slabs, it seems likely the fire came in from outside.
The Running Eyewitness Evidence The rolling deflagration was reported by eyewitnesses, including Fort Myer firefighters Alan Wallace, Mark Skipper, and Dennis Young, close enough to have to run for their lives as it billowed towards them. On duty at the Pentagon’s heliport (which has a mini-fire station beneath it and an on-site engine, ‘foam tender 161’), Wallace and Skipper were outside the station, inspecting 161 they had just parked against the Pentagon’s outer wall. As Newsweek reported:
“The two looked up and saw an airplane. It was about 25 feet off the ground and just 200 yards away -- the length of two football fields. They had heard about the WTC disaster and had little doubt what was coming next. "Let's go," Wallace yelled. Both men ran. Wallace hadn't gotten far when the plane hit. "I hadn't even reached the back of the van when I felt the fireball. I felt the blast," he says. He hit the blacktop near the left rear tire of the van and quickly shimmied underneath. "I remember feeling pressure, a lot of heat," he says. He crawled toward the front of the van, then emerged to see Skipper out in the field, still standing. "Everything is on fire. The grass is on fire. The building is on fire. The firehouse is on fire," Wallace recalls. "There was fire everywhere. Areas of the blacktop were on fire." [source: "Washington's Heroes - On the ground at the Pentagon on Sept. 11," Newsweek, 9/28/01. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/F77penta04.html]
Wallace’s account is interesting in that his image of its trajectory and altitude indicated imminent impact; and being so close to its said impact location, he’d have the perfect vantage point to see it work its flyover magic, (80 feet off the ground minimum to pass over). But being so close to its anticipated impact point from 25 feet up and 600 feet away, he was running with his eyes pointing away from it at the time. At any rate, it’s a good thing they ran instead of standing and fighting the fire like men. It would have won. This is Foam 161 afterwards, at the spot they were standing when the plane first came into view. Jon Culberson photo, Smithsonian
By the flyover hypothesis championed by some, however, this palpable pressurized explosion was not the effect of impact, but something engineered beneath the steeply pitching plane.
The Challenge The usual proposal for non-plane damage is a truck bomb out front, or bombs inside the building. Any number of explosive materials could be used – including a jet fuel element to simulate a 757 strike – and different mechanisms employed to create the angle of the engineered fireball. Who knows, huh?
Well, for people who claim something to that effect actually happened, it would be useful to have some guesses at hand. So I challenge Craig and Aldo of the Citizen’s Investigation-ish Thing to offer a plausible method for how this was all faked. An unseen incendiary catapult hidden behind the generator to hurl a fireball against the wall as the explosives blew outward? I seriously challenge them – describe the least Rube-Goldberg-esque contirivance, the least exotic weaponry they feel may have been actually used. Diagrams, specifications, numbers, guesses as specific as they’re willing to get. Brainstorm on it. People are watching.
Simply branding it as another point that could be done any number of ways will not suffice. Sure, they’re investigating people with theoretically unlimited power and they’ve said before they don’t need to explain how, since their witnesses prove this was all staged somehow. While that presumption remains contested, if this fireball fakery was another of the many points of deception, it had to happen in some way, by some mechanism, or it wouldn’t happen. Columns can be bombed. Poles can be clipped or torched down and hidden. Fences can be torn down. Generators can be pushed, etc. But what on earth could hurl a fireball like that against the façade of the Pentagon? I’d love to see any guess as to what, other than a crashing jetliner, it could have been? Or failing that another tap dance routine will suffice.
I'm not trying to push this as some smoking gun debunking either, just a good point to offer a firm challenge on. And Aldo, you aren’t banned here. Feel free to comment.
LC_FC ON THE PENTAGON: PREVIEW Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud Last Update Nov 13 12:23 am Working post - will be updated
Well, it's been seeming a while that thanks to the dilligent efforts of Russ Pickering (who was given a lot of influence at the Loose Change forum) and others, and the self-dicrediting antics of Citizen's Investigative Team, and whatever other factors, the guys behind Loose Change had come around from their missile-at-the-Pentagon days and had at least become 'agnostic' on what happened at 9:38. Recently their Final Cut of Loose Change was wrapped up, over two years since their first re-working (which dropped the pods but kep the missile). The much-awaited new edition is backed by a reported million-dollar budget, over two hours long, and done with researcher Jason Bermas bosltered fact-checker David Ray Griffin. What would be their new take on the Pentagon? Did a 757 even possibly hit the building? I haven't really kept up, but here I will track what I run across until I can actually see it and offer a proper review.
See the trailer/promo made for the six-year anniversary below: Some incredible graphics and over-the-top theatrics are in store it seems.
On the 11th it's to be released for sale, and has already been shown publicly and is being reported on. This was posted Nov. 5 by Mick Meaney at RINF Alternative News:"Saturday, 3rd November, 2007, saw the British preview screening of the much anticipated 9/11 truth blockbuster, ‘Loose Change Final Cut’. Before the screening began, Tim Sparke, executive producer of Loose Change 3, gave us a brief thank you and intro, he welcomed us by saying: “By the end of this, you’re going to be knackered!”" Meaney reports the new edition is re-worked from the ground up, and 'comprehensive," covering a broader range of issues including intelligence failures more in-depth, 9/11 truth protests, health effects at WTC, etc. I've never heard of Sparke. Shows how much I've kept up.
Regarding the Pentagon, Meaney reports "obviously the Pentagon attack is called into question, the lack of video evidence and eyewitness statements are touched upon." Lack of witnesses? To what, the impact? How many witnesses are there to anything else? "How Flight 77 was unusually only 30% full and most of the passengers were government employees" is another point reportedly made. This is obviously a hint at remote controlled drone work, which is worth considering, but I doubt that's how they treat it. "We also see some of the flight recorder data which proves without a doubt, there has been a cover up," Meany concludes, with that sentence linking to a page selling Calum Douglas' new DVD. ... Update 11/13: I heard the video in its entirety at Google video, but the link was dead by the time I checked it. I'm guessing they're having unauthorized postings removed, which is fair. Here is a good meaty preview with other material, an hour long, and posted by Dylan himself - but posted over a year ago. First notes: Interview w/Leuren Moret at 13:38 discussing elevated radiation levels - 90x normal - downwind from the Pentagon. A Depleted Uranium expert and anti-DU activist, Morethas previously stated "what happened at the Pentagon is highly suspicious, leading me to believe a missile with a depleted uranium warhead may have been used..." At 30:30 DC-area freelance videographer Bob Pugh, who only arrived at the scene five minutes after the attack, talks for a long time about confusion surrounding Flight 77's crash location, lack or discernable debris, water instead of foam being used to the fight the fire (which I believe is wrong), and an inexplicable spiel on the 'sixteen foot hole," unmarked lawn, etc., and possibility of a truck bomb, the light poles, all of it (good part where he sounds like a no-planer drone at 51:17). Video acompaniment at key times. Interesting and nuts. ---
PENTAGON ATTACK TIMELINE QUESTIONS PART 2: ANOTHER SIX BACK? THE 9:32 CASE Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud Nov 13 2007, 3pm Last Updated Nov 17 1am
Now that we’ve established that accepted times associated with the Pentagon attack have previously proven false, let’s turn our attention to the current attempt by some researchers at another shift in the impact/explosion time back again to about 9:32. Most well-known and visually convincing among the evidence backing a 9:32 event at the Pentagon is a pair of stopped wall clocks recovered at there: the one on the left was found in the heliport outside the building but near impact point, stopped at 9:31:30. At right is a clock from an office inside or near the damaged section, stopped at 9:30:40. It would be rather a coincidence for a 9:38 event to find two clocks roughly synched 6-7 minutes behind at the military’s lockstep headquarters. It stretches the imagination, and seems almost certainly significant and worthy of examination. I’m not sure when the first 9/11 researcher discovered or commented on these clocks, but I would guess they were noticed one at a time almost immediately upon publishing. The earliest mention I’ve seen of both (exactly as pictured above) is by Pentagon no-planer Ralph Olmholt, who had noted back in late 2004 that “two stopped Pentagon clocks point to approximately 9:31, as do a variety of other reports and quotes. The dog didn’t bark on cue.” [1] After apparently simmering a while in obscurity, the 9:31-9:32 meme has amplified since then, trying to write itself a page in history in 2006.
Honegger’s Historic Moment This timeline revision has been fueled most specifically by its prime champion, Barbara Honegger, a top journalist at the Navy Postgraduate School and oft-cited 9/11 researcher. Her recent works include The Pentagon Attack Papers, written September 2006 and published as an appendix in Jim Marrs’ The Terror Conspiracy. [PDF link - html link] In this, she argued against a big plane, using the “legion evidence that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon" provided by clowns like Karl Schwarz, and for a traditional bombing that, she's certain, happened at 9:32.
Anything happening at the official time of 9:37 was some sort of cover – possibly the impact of “an airborne object significantly smaller than […] a Boeing 757,” most likely an A3 Skywarrior as identified by Schwarz. [2] That as I see it serves no purpose but to get the wrong plane parts inside and trick the witnesses with the wrong plane hitting at the wrong time. Too bad the debris and witnesses really agree on a 757 much better than a tiny A3, and that no one has reported any plane flying into an already bombed and smoldering building. Whatever the overall logic of Honegger’s case, the 9:32 evidence stands on its own to some extent and forms the core of her piece, which opens hyperbolically:
“The San Francisco Chronicle commemorated the 100th anniversary of The Great Earthquake of 1906 with a series of front-page articles headed by a single icon—a charred clock frozen at 5:12 am, the exact moment “The Big One” hit. A century after that devastating event, the stopped clock serves as both the ultimate evidence and the symbol that “captures it all.”
Again, almost 100 years later, clocks frozen in time at the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001 both “capture it all” and are the ultimate evidence that shatters the “Official Lie” of what happened that terrible morning. The Pentagon was first attacked at 9:32 am, much earlier than the 9/11 Commission and official cover story claim.”
The reason Honegger offers for the official timeline lie is shaky; she found that NORAD commander Gen. Larry Arnold sent one of his fighters on a low-level recon mission after the attack (the pilot “reported back that there was no evidence that a plane had hit the building.”) She concludes “this fighter jet—not Flight 77— is almost certainly the plane seen on the Dulles airport Air Traffic Controller’s screen making a steep, high-speed 270-degree descent before disappearing from the radar.” The loop would also match the near-circular loop shown in the Flight Data Recorder attributed to Flight 77, in Honegger land probably the fighter’s track set into the context of black box data, as it was copied over elsewhere.
So 9:32 is verboten because lacking a radar track for a 9:32 plane, officials decided at one point “to pretend the blip represented by Arnold’s surveillance jet approaching just before 9:37 was “Flight 77.”” Now however they’re caught in a loop from this and “the Pentagon cannot acknowledge the earlier 9:32 time without revealing an attack on the building prior to the alleged impact.” [3] This doesn’t make much sense, but the clocks do not stand alone; She cited “converging Lines of Proof of a 9:32 Violent Event at the Pentagon,” a mixed bag of evidence that does indeed have a compelling correlation of time if not of total logic. She provided four points to directly support the clocks, which I’ll address in the next post.
Gaffney: 35,000 at 9:32? One more credible mind that bought Honegger’s case and helped elaborate on it is Mark Gaffney, introduced in the previous post. Having previously explained the documented presence of a top-secret E4B doomsday plane over DC, in his follow-up part II, Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline? Gaffney nods to Honegger and verifies some of her points, though refreshingly, he disagrees with her on the evidence of a 757 strike, citing “the recovery of Boeing 757 parts from within the Pentagon” and that “the flight recorder data shows […] there were no interruptions in its flight path.” Gaffney cited Honegger’s clocks as Compelling physical evidence; “it appears that the powerful shock wave that occurred at the moment of impact knocked the clocks off the wall," stopping their hands "within a minute of the same time. Were they both running 5-6 minutes late? I think not.”
Gaffney's mental gymnastics in supporting a 9:32 event are not clumsy, but not enough to pass the hurdle of proof. He cited the 9/11 Commission, reporting that "the first notice to the military that Flight 77 was missing [...] had come by chance" when NEADS made a call TO the FAA's Washington Center at 9:34. The Commission had concluded ‘radar’ contact was lost at 8:56 am when the transponder was switched off – meaning a 38-minute FAA delay getting this information to the military, and even then only when they called for news. But looking at the transcript of this 9:34 call, Gaffney decided that it seemed to indicate contact was just lost, and notes the "Washington staffer [...] mentions, almost in passing, that Flight 77 was at 35,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. Seeing this, the average reader will probably conclude that Flight 77 was still at cruising altitude when Washington Center lost radar contact at 9:34 AM.” [4]
The doomed flight apparently was still airborne, but not this high. If this were true, it would then have to dive from 35,000 feet to basically sea level and impact altitude in less than four minutes, a feat that I hope ‘the average reader’ would discern as implausible. But this hypothetical false impression that no one I know of has ever had, Gaffney notes, would be a ‘misreading’ - therefore the staffer “was merely restating the plane's last known altitude, data that was current some 38 minutes before, […] Yet, the above transcript is ambiguous enough to reinforce the false impression that the plane was still aloft and cruising at 9:34 AM.” [5]
As covered in the previous post, he offers that the original time of 9:43 was set to provide cover for the E4B apparently circling DC at that time, so it could be said to be Flight 77 just before impact, though the un-acknowledgeable craft actually seems to have passed three minutes later than the time they set. Presumably fearing they’d stepped too far from the real time of 9:32 for which evidence might surface, or concerned that 9:43 indicated too slow a response, did they slide on over to the safer time 11 minutes earlier? No, they settled in the middle with 9:38, apparently afraid of straying too far from covering the E4B, though now eight minutes prior to its appearance, and apparently ignorant that conflating 77 and the E4B would lose all meaning once radar and FDR data became known to show 77 never did fly over DC anyway, despite the official over-DC flight path disinformation that some, like Gaffney, believe occurred for this same reason.
Among the Chat Monkeys For a while there the 9:32 meme was all the rage at the Loose Change Forum; while I’ve been active in recent months, members JackD, SPreston, and others have jointly rallied around the clocks and other clues as evidence of a massive timeline cover-up. Example thread: Best Evidence Of The Time Of Pentagon Explosion. This revision has been championed there most forcefully by multi-forum ‘thesis monkey’ “Terral.” Using flawed reports, ‘expert’ testimony, ‘well-known’ but un-illustrated ‘facts,’ biblical scripture and deep theology sandwiched between blunt insults, silly rants, over-labeled under-comprehended graphic analyses, and the ‘proven’ time of impact of 9:31:39, he seeks to prove an impact by a cruise missile that crimped off the light poles with its ‘bowed shockwave’ of air, trailed by a decoy flyover, which he seems to believe is exactly what happened at9:31:39, the time proving the event and vice-versa. The graphic below shows the ‘before and after’ from his initial event and a ‘9:36’ follow-up A3 attack ala Honegger, just to get some jet fuel outside and engine parts inside to create the ‘three punch-out holes.’ Terral hammers away at a nine-point list of evidence for his 9:31:39 missile impact, based on Honegger’s five-point list of a pre-plane bombing, and dismisses any Pentagon theory that doesn’t carefully cite this time as the “official Bushie/Rove / DoD 9:38 AM 'First Explosion' Cover Story,” pushed by what he calls “the DoD and their Cover Story Operatives.” Terral also says “LC members running from thread to thread doing DoD dirty work," including myself perhaps foremost, "have the same innocent blood on their hands” as the perpetrators, and are afraid to confront the overwhelming 9:32 evidence, which is exactly what I will wrap my bloody hands around in the next post and we'll see how well it holds up (hint - the clocks are as good as it gets).
Sources: [1] Olmholt, Ralph. "The Dog Should Have Barked." Pentagon Research.com. Undated (html creation date: Dec 22 2004). http://www.pentagonresearch.com/098.html [2] Honegger, Barabara. “The Pentagon Attack Papers: Seven Hours in September: The Clock that Broke the Lie” Appendix to The Terror Conspiracy by Jim Marrs. Publication date, Sept. 6, 2006. html version: http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id206.html PDF link: http://blog.lege.net/content/Seven_Hours_in_September.pdf [3] See [2]. [4] Gaffney, Mark H. The 9/11 Mystery Plane (Part II): Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline? Rense.com. July 5, 2007. http://www.rense.com/general76/wdb.htm [5] See [4]. [6] Terral. Posted Oct 15 2007, 04:02 PM. Loose Change Forum->9/11 Research->The Pentagon ->Best Evidence Of The Time Of Pentagon Explosion. Page 1.
AN ANALYSIS OF... FLIGHT 77'S SHADOW? Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud First posted October 30 2007 Last update 6/26/08, 1 am
PLEASE NOTE: The solar angles I had used for my original detailed analysis were not accurate. My presumption of steady change during the day seems to be at fault. Steady change would create a triangle waveform of change - /\ - which is not how the sun moves. In reality the pattern is curved, and so degree change minute to minute changes in a steady non-linear pattern that I don't know how to calculate, so I've used a solar calculator as recommended by helpful comments from a knowledgeable reader (please see comments section below). I've found, as the commentator did, an altitude of 32°, not 25, and an azimuth of 113°, not 126. I have update ALL my math, graphics, and text to reflect this. Distance/speed has not changed at all, but my original altitude of 72 feet above the shadow has been increased to 115 feet, and pitch issues have been raised. See below for details. All other findings stand as is.
Dylan’s Loop Starting to lean towards a 757 impact at the Pentagon, or at least to a more 'agnostic' position than the missile theorizing of Loose Change version 2, Director/narrator Dylan Avery started a thread at his Loose Change forum in August 2007 asking “why does the Citgo video contradict the North Side claim?” The significance of this of course is that the ‘official’ south-of-the-Citgo flight path allows the downed light poles, impact and internal damage (as well as plane debris and the flight data recorder) to be caused by the plane, while the north-of the-Citgo flight path attested by Citizen’s Investigative Team (CIT) and their ‘PentaCon’ witnesses rules this out, implying a flyover and all damage staged in real time.
The answer Dylan provided to his question was to be seen in a short segment of the station’s security video (9:40:37-9:40:39 by video timestamp) which shows a flash of light at the northwest end of the station, and a subtle darkening of one interior camera’s field of view, as well as a less-noted soft double-pulse of light reflected off a wall on the station’s southeast end. These are usually taken as a glint from a plane on the south side of the Citgo and the shadow of same falling over the station. Though Avery failed to elaborate on what exactly the video shows, an endlessly-looping 3-second animated gif was left up to drive the vague point home. [1] A frame of video showing the canopy flash (upper right large screen, camera 3, 'dual pump') and south end light pulse (top center small, camera 2, 'east entrance'). The interior 'shadow' was captured by camera 7, 'register 2,' lower right.
The thread is a fascinating and frustrating read, with the video’s authenticity immediately questioned by CIT cohorts Aldo Marquis and Craig Ranke and their forum compatriots, primarily via the “proven” manipulation of the video to remove key frames (a point we’ll return to at the end), and the timing of its release last year to “discredit” their then-new north path witness Robert Turcios by editing him out. At any rate, even looking at the content, a lot of doubts were aired in that thread that seriously question Avery's original 'findings.'
Rob Balsamo popped in to ask “the dim of the lower right cam for one frame is what is being argued here? Really?" It was. His piloty opinion, echoed by others, was that "that dimming effect in the lower right cam is not a "shadow" of AA77 or any other aircraft.” [2] Craig concluded “the content of the data isn't anywhere close to definitive in regards to whether or not a plane flew on the north or south side. No "fakery" at all was necessary because of this,” he announced, but was willing to entertain “low level fakery of a slight dimming in ONE view or what might appear to be a reflection or two.” [3] Researcher John Farmer (spcengineer), alongside his flaying CIT for their dishonesty, abuse of his work, and ‘delusions of grandeur,’ agreed “I do see evidence for the north side claim. I also see evidence of the south side claim […] there is not enough evidence to be dogmatic about either.” [4] Discussion of light angles was inconclusive, but enough to question the path they evidenced. After the original post, there was no defense or explanation from Dylan, despite some pleas for clarification. The poor quality video, endlessly hammered charges of alteration and irrelevance won the days, with CIT supporters slapping down grinning emoticons like silver dollars at happy hour.
I agree with these general findings that the effects captured in this loop in fact do NOT contradict the north side claim. The interior ‘shadow’ captured in camera 7 (Register Two, lower right) happens synchronous with the two lighting effects – uniform in nature and effecting one camera only, my best guess is it’s a brightness adjustment triggered by the flashes, and not a shadow cast by an airborne object. Immediate reaction of customers/employees inside and the black police car just after it sends the flash onto the canopy indicate these light bursts are at the moment of impact, not of the earlier pass over the station. This would put any plane reflection at or very near impact – so despite what I’ve published before, it may tell us tells nothing about north or south path, as both converge at that point. These light effects will require additional analysis and are beyond the scope of this piece, but the main reason I’ve identified them with impact will be fairly clear by article’s end.
The Real Shadow Ironically, the best clue mitigating against the north-side claim in the Citgo video is one little feature Avery’s loop missed - seen onscreen just before the loop starts, at 9:40:35. Here is a video I made to help illustrate (please note this has editing effects and is less-than-clear: Do NOT use this video for in-depth research):
Here is the highest resolution still of that one frame I could find, provided by Farmer, who also helped me first locate the dots. This is still not very good by any measure, but briefly a large shadow – or set of shadows – appears on and then flickers away from the ground south of the station. This is the view captured by camera 4, labeled “Single Pump side,” multiplexed into the video screen above as a very small view. It was set beneath the canopy at the east edge of the southwest end of the station, looking southwest. Interestingly, this is the same camera view Robert Turcios is said to have been edited out from. Just beneath the canopy edge across the right half of the view are two large patches of darkness stretched across on the white background that seems to be the surface of South Joyce Street.
The only early mention of this in Dylan's thread was made my Aldo: “A ways back, I noticed a couple of dots that pop up in the street in the south side camera. John Farmer points this out as well. It is inconclusive and could actually just be a flaw in the video.” [5] He'd better hope so, because the object(s) casting such a shadow would be further southeast of that in the sunlight at that time and location – in fact, roughly in the space Flight 77 is said to have passed through at about that time in the official story. The first thing to establish is the size and location of this area of shadows. The fisheye effect of the lens clearly a factor, but not one I feel impacts the general findings, so I’ve essentially ignored it. In this montage of two site photographs kindly provided by John Farmer – taken on his research trip there earlier this year – exact feature correlation is hard to pin down. The security camera was set higher than this and looking more down, but at about this lateral angle. Using the 100 ft scale from Google maps, I measured the south parking lot at about 75 feet long and therefore the area occupied by shadow seems at least 45-50 feet across.
Subdividing the camera's view in 4 for reference, and approximating its field of view on a satelite map oriented north, I have placed the shadow here, on South Joyce Street: Timeline Clues Each camera captured in the multiplexed video has an “action” setting that seems to increase frame rate when it detects a certain level of motion. This mode is off for camera 4 as the shadow passes, so it is only visible for one frame. My non-expert analysis with iMovie shows this image holds for 10 frames of standard video (at 30 fps), so the original video would have been 3 frames per second. A plane traveling at a reported 530 mph would cross 777 feet per second, or about 260 feet per video frame – therefore we should expect just one frame to capture any meaningful part of it passing over this patch of ground.
Vehicles passing down the street seen at other points in the video come from a great distance and take something like 60 frames or about 2 seconds to pass off-screen. The shadow, however, takes one frame to be gone, indicating that it was either crossing the road - not running down it - or moving at tremendous speed, or both.
Even more interesting is what happens after the shadow blinks off-screen again. The flashes of light and the interior ‘shadow’ featured in Avery’s loop, by my analysis (using iMovie), start happening 65 frames after the shadow first appears – 2.167 seconds, yielding a speed of around 530 mph, or just what the flight data recorded found inside the Pentagon says. I will explain this more fully below, but so far it seems this is lining up quite well with the ‘official story,’ whatever exactly that means.
Two Smudges Ain’t a 757 Shadow The first obvious problem for this line of reasoning is ‘the shadow’ appearing as two separate dots and entirely too small to represent the outline of a 125-foot-wide 757, and far too short as well. As LCF member Avenger argued when I brought up my first awareness of the issue in Avery’s thread (link at top, page 13) “two little spots can not be the shadow of a 757,” he said. “For one thing, they are too small, and for another, there are TWO OF THEM!!!” [6]
Would it be a cop out to suggest optical effects? Factors at work to counter a clear view of the shadow include edge fuzzing due to altitude and refraction, road reflectivity, angle of view and surface topography, camera resolution, transfer resolution, and of course the shape of the object casting the shadow, in this case supposedly a twin-engine airliner. Farmer seems comfortable referring to them a single shadow and told me regarding its appearance:
”A lot of it has to do with image quality and poor quality CCD... That is the big problem, people try to see more than the system is capable of revealing. Alone the dark "smudges" mean nothing. Together with angle of sun, predicted location and altitude of plane, and other factors combine to identify it as a shadow (exactly where models predict it should be). Alone, it is just a smudge...” [7]
I've found two photos that help us understand what would be seen in this video if a 757 passed over South Joyce Street in front of the camera. I'm not allowed to repost them, or apparently to even link directly. But if you right-click this link and search for ["Mark Wilson" shadow air] you can view them. They both show a different angle relative to the camera and probably different model craft. Note the angles of the wings and engines, and the effects of minor topography; in the second picture, the slight rise of the roadway seems to have snubbed off the nose of the plane.
And here is a perspective model I made with a 757 shadow to scale. Note also how in the foremost section the fuselage shadow and engine shadows, if divided from the rest, would appear as three separate shadows, one of which disappears once distorted along the lines of the video view, the parts at the top hidden by perspective, the lens, and the canopy (bottom).
Extreme contrast reveals all the clues this crappy video has to offer as latent mid-tones pop out more sharp. It seems part of the shadow may also appear on the far right, on the other side of the support pole – If this is so, then we have big dot – small dot – big dot – line. Note that the left spot extends further towards the station’s sunken parking lot, and seems warped in shape, possibly from its interaction with the raised sidewalk, obscuring its true length on the roadway behind that.
The blue arrow in this graphic shows not only the direction but also the rough location of the “official” flight path. I re-did the shadows here, elongating the southern one to flesh out what I wanted to see and to reflect the likely sidewalk effect noted above. In this scheme, big dot – small dot – big dot – line – becomes fuselage – wing root - engine - wing edge of a plane on a heading of about 60 degrees. I’m entirely open to suggestions that I’ve read this wrong, but as far as I can see this is a good overall fit. --- Update 11/13: Here is yet another rendering closer to what the camera would see, (it's tricky making perspective models with 2D image editing software). I do realize by my fusealge-engine-60 degrees interpretation, part of the nosecone shadow would extend past the sidewalk and onto either the south edge of the parking lot or, more likely, onto the grass beyonfd that. This is a problem for this interpretation, as no such extension of the shadow is visible in the video. Keep in mind then reading the rest that shadow shape, as revealed in the video, is the weak point for this construct. It's the shadow itself, its location and timing and general size, not its apparent shape, that is most telling. --- Having possibly explained the ‘two dots’ as two of a 757’s three leading prongs, the absence of everything else also needs to be explained. This is more tricky, but my best guess is that only the shadow falling on the darker roadway came through, while everything on or behind the narrower, lighter-colored median (see above) is effectively invisible. Supporting this possibility is how the visible shadows line up fairly well with a cut-off line at the median curve, and that the median appears nearer the top edge of the video frame; its foreshortening and fisheye distortion are worse. It seeems feasable that some combination of optical effects has left everything from there back invisible on the video even though it was there in real life.
Solar Geometry: Location and Altitude Regardless of how exactly it came out looking, the best evidence for this being from Flight 77 is what the sun can tell us about its location. Here are the sun angles for 9/11/01 at the Capital, verified with this this solar calculator. Azimuth is the direction to the sun measured in degrees from north. Azimuth change from sunrise (84° or just from the north of due east) to solar noon is 96° in 379 minutes, an average change of about .25 degrees/min. Presuming steady change between these, a mid-point of 132° would be reached at 9:57 am, and it would be at 126° at 9:38. However, the change is not steady and linear but follows a curve, and in this case reaches an azimuth of 113° by the official impact time of 9:38.
The plane placement here is based on the mechanical damage path, and verified by the black box magnetic heading (60.0°) and ground track true (61.2°) averaged and traced back from impact. I drew the sun angle from the shadow location to points intersecting that flight path and there is where I placed the plane at the moment that shadow was recorded. The dots actually appear slightly offset on the road, matching the wing axis at this heading. The shadow seems to be about 190-195 feet from corollary spots directly beneath the plane (all approximate). From this and sun altitude angle we can deduce the plane’s altitude.
Solar altitude (also called elevation) is the angle of solar rays relative to the horizon (0 at sunrise and sunset, highest at solar noon, 55.5° at 1:05 pm at the Pentagon). On its curving path, at 9:38 the sun would have reached past its mid-point from sunrise to high solar noon, beaming down at about 32°. The distance from shadow mid-point to a corollary spot directly beneath the plane being about 195 feet, a vertical line beneath the plane the right height to cast a shadow that far away happens to be something like 115 feet higher than the shadow, perhaps 105 feet above ground level, which seems to be several feet higher under the plane than under the shadow. The area has a general altitude of 50-65 feet above sea level compared to about 30 at the Pentagon.
Speed and Pitch: More Math and a Slight Problem The distance from shadow-casting position to impact point, measured again, looks like almost exactly 1560 feet. With something like 130 feet descended as well, I’ve used a total distance of 1,690 feet. Speed – 530 mi/hr = 777.3 ft/sec 1690ft / 777.3 ft/sec = 2.174 seconds Compare this to the 2.167 seconds between the shadow’s appearance in the video and the first light effects on the building. Working the other way back, we get 1690 / x = 2.167 -- x = 779.88 ft/sec = 531.7 mi/hr Compare this to the ‘official speed’ of 530 mph.
So that's a perfect fit, and next we’ll look in greater detail at pitch, or ascent/descent angle; a level plane has a pitch of 0 degrees, while nose down pitches are recorded in degrees minus. From its altitude of 115ft AGL just south of the station, a required average pitch of about -6° would be required to reach impact altitude. A steady descent at that pitch would not allow the plane to hit all the light poles as happened, so changes of angle would be required. If it was descending at roughly –8.5° as the shadow was cast, leveling to –7° and to about –6 one second later, and over the next second passing through -5° and finally settling on –3° as it crossed the lawn and knocked down the last pole, this yields a 2.5° change and one of 3 degrees in the two seconds before impact. As seen below, it doesn’t look insane or anything, but we must remember the plane would have been moving quite fast and this distance and all this change covered in a hair over two seconds. (r-click, open in new window for larger view)
How plausible is this steep-then-shallow pitch playing out this fast? When I’d mentioned a shallower change rate than this, Rob Balsamo told me it would rip the plane’s wings off. 8.5° is a steeper than usual pitch angle, and this overall curve is in fact extreme by my cursory look at pitch readings recorded in the FDR.
So I looked closer at the period of final descent seen in the CSV file, about 9:20 till last numbers. For the first ten minutes of this, pitches between –4 and +4 predominate, mostly at fairly mild angles of between 1 and 2 degrees from level. Pitch changes during most of that period are also subtle, fractions of a degree, with 0.0-0.2 deg/sec prevailing. This steadiness and moderation of angles begins to break up noticeably around 9:33 as the plane nears the ground, with second-to-second changes of 0.5, 0.7, 0.9° and higher creeping in. The pitch activity is fairly steady then during the grand right hand loop from 9:34-36 after which larger shifts of 1.2, 1.4, and higher become more common along with more extreme pitches like 6, 7, even 9° degrees from level recorded. The single largest one-second change I located was at 9:37:19-9:37:20, where a 2.1° decrease follows immediately after a 0.9° increase in pitch (-2.5 –1.6 –3.7 –4.9).
So by previous trends the required actual pitch changes required for that shadow to be real and properly located in my analysis - 2-3 degrees per second - seems extreme and unprecedented – just more so than the frames before, and just less so than the impact that followed. And what might seem a troublesome pitch forecast for my overall case, considering the slight fudge factor inherent in placing both the shadow and the flight path above, and that previous readings prove at least 2.1 degrees is possible, this curve doesn’t seem at all to be off in the realm of “Bush lie” sc-fi. The fudge factor of this ballpark approach could shift the numbers closer to or further from the ‘official story,’ depending, but not by a very large factor. We’re looking at an extreme but quite possible curve here.
It’s true no such changes are not reflected in the final recorded seconds of FDR data, 9:37:40-9:37:44, which shows angles between 4.9 and 6.7 degrees minus, and changes of 0.9 or less. Of course it also shows the wrong altitude and wrong bank angle for the wings to fit the above profile. But some clues, like location recorded in the L3 file 'readout 2', and John Farmer’s comparative analysis of FDR and radar records [PDF link] place it nearly a mile short of the building as those pitch numbers were recorded, so this could in fact have happened after that unexplained truncation. (This is its own whole fascinating and troubling issue far beyond the scope of this piece). Judging by much evidence, there’s a good chance it did just that, and was pitching at an average of -6° between this shadow and the final video captured at the Pentagon showing it low and fairly level from about the location of the last light pole. Conclusion: Valid Evidence? Charges or hints of image manipulation started from the CIT end as soon as the Citgo video was first released last September. They have no problem asserting Turcios was edited out from this same frame to weaken his testimony, but Craig has been strangely reticent to address this shadow which had to be inserted into this same camera view by his theory. Instead he’s taken to writing off the video entirely and forfeiting the chance to analyze this twice-over fakery more closely.
Their case for this dismissal rests largely on others having ‘proven’ the video altered via key cameras views not included in the final video when they were apparently on the original tape, and the cameras themselves being phyisically removed. This take is attested by the station’s manager, the same one who offered up Turcios, and taken, as Craig explained in his ATS ‘thread,’ as “Proof The Citgo Security Video Was Manipulated.” The findings of Russell Pickering, John Farmer, and CIT ally ‘Interpol’ are said to support this finding, though Farmer and Pickering have both lodged complaints with CIT, both during the course of Dylan’s thread, for using their findings to imply this.
So it appears that Aldo and Craig are in a fairly lonely spot in believing this, and rather than using the evidence for anything, they’ve declared the data irrelevant. As Craig explained to me when I brought this shadow work up at Above Top Secret, “no legitimate investigator would accept data controlled and provided for solely by the suspect as valid evidence in support of the suspect's innocence.” [8]
The finer points of this argument are too much to address in detail, and I’ve not had the time to dig into the issues, so I’ll remain agnostic for now on how much of a case there is to be made for manipulation. Likewise I leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not these possibilities render the data totally invalid or make it something that should be looked at as it is, in its proper, somewhat ambiguous context. Whether real or inserted, it seems to show Flight 77, or whatever plane we’ve been calling that, the one that pierced deep into the Pentagon two seconds later.
And however likely this shadow being inserted truly is, it appears that Aldo and Craig must continue to argue it’s either unreal or irrelevant, because if it’s authentic, this single camera’s view clearly and fatally contradicts their witnesses’ north-of-the-Citgo testimony. If true, that would leave the only question as HOW these erred recollections managed to line up so on something consistently contradicted at every other turn.
So considering we don’t know if this shadow was actually recorded or airbrushed in later, Avery's original question of why the video counters the PentaCon must be left open. The real question should have been how exactly it does so, but this was not explained until I popped into the thread on page 13 nearly two months after Dylan’s first and last post. I hope this analysis sheds some light on how the video actually does contradict the claim, just one more point in an already imposing roster of clues that should leave any rational person, at the lest, doubting CIT’s claims that their overall case is ‘proven’ in any way. --- Above Top Secret Thread - more discussion 9/11 Blogger post with interesting comments --- Updates 6/25/08 The case for video dismissal is weaker than I thought. Video on the way, using slightly different numbers - altitude above shadow now appears about 105 feet, under 100 AGL. It's all approximate. --- Sources: [1] “Why does the Citgo video contradict the North Side claim?” Loose Change Forum -> 9/11 Research -> The Pentagon. Posted by Dylan Avery August 9 2007, 02:21 PM. http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=0 [2] See [1].Posted by Pilots For 9/11 Truth. Aug 10 2007, 01:32 PM. http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=20 [3] See [1]. Page 5. Craig Ranke CIT. Posted Aug 11 2007, 01:39 AM. [4] See [2]. Page 10. Spcengineer. Posted Aug 14 2007, 02:51 PM [5] See [1]. Page 2. Aldo Marquis CIT. Posted August 10 2007, 01:23 PM [6] See [1]. Page 15. Posted by Avenger October 5 2007, 06:35 PM http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=280 [7] E-mail from Farmer to me: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:52:01 [8] Above Top Secret.com -> 9/11 Conspiracies -> Flight 77’s Shadow?.-> Page 5. Post by Craig Ranke CIT. Posted October 29 2007 @ 11:04 PM. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread311324/pg5
PENTAGON ATTACK TIMELINE QUESTIONS PART 1: THE ELASTIC TIMELINE Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud Nov 9 2007, 11pm hopefully final update 11/13 1pm
An 18-Minute Error Recently I had the minor pleasure of witnessing a notable timeline alteration regarding the collapse of the damaged Pentagon section. Still reported in some spots as occurring at 10:50 am EDT, it has generally been placed (9/11 Commission, ASCE, etc.) almost an hour earlier, at 9:57. But it turns out numerous better sources converge on a collapse time of 10:15 am – an 18 minute difference only sorted out by 9/11 researchers six years later. Notable mention in updating this must be give to Russell Pickering and LCF member Honway, whose work with time-stamped video provided evidence that unlocked the timeline mystery and soon more buried evidence was found. I’m now comfortable stating the collapse happened at 10:15, with earlier reports referring in confusion to an order issued to firefighters to evacuate the area in anticipation of collapse.
A 5-Minute Error Not that such minutiae was or is very important to most, but a similar shift had happened with the more important impact time attributed to Flight 77, but that story changed five minutes backward and did so early in the game. Despite CNN having first broadcast about an explosion at the Pentagon at 9:39, in the days after the attack, the essential official story was an impact at 9:43 and generally taken as fact. Some examples: 9:40 graphic - 9:45 graphic - 9:43 CNN - 9:43 Patriotic site - 9:43 Christian Science Monitor - 9:43 CBS - 9:43 still repeated in 2007 - Etc…
It was only on September 18, a week after the attack, that NORAD announced a revised crash time of 0937(estimated) [1]. It’s not clear what this was based on, but NORAD were suspected by some of fudging it back to minimize the delay of defense indicative of a stand-down. However Col. Alan Scott, a NORAD officer active on 9/11, told the 9/11 Commission in May 2003 the time was shifted first due to an “entry camera for the parking lot, which happened to be oriented towards the Pentagon at the time of impact, and the recorded time is 9:37. And that's why the timeline went from 9:43 to 9:37, because it is the best documented evidence for the impact time that we have.” [2]. He also noted “it took about two weeks” to find this footage, so NORAD’s source as of 9/18 might have been something else. The 9/11 Commission accepting this time is often cited as evidence it was a lie, but one also supported by the Flight Data Recorder, the last frame of data at 9:37:45 (alternately rounded to 9:37 or 9:38). The radar record (see below) also supports this time, as do the NORAD tapes, and other points to be addressed in part 4.
9:43 Event Evidence Addressed I spent a long time digging for all reports I could find for reasons 9:43 was first offered as Flight 77's crash time, and found almost no evidence at all directly indicating it. One possible exception is longtime CT researcher,founder of 9/11 Citizen's Watch, and DC resident John Judge, who later offered Paul Thompson ’the Flight 77 timeline’: “a 9:41 crash time into the Pentagon. I still say it was later, but certainly not at the 9:37 NORAD claims (and shouldn't they know?). I put it at 9:43 earliest, 9:48 latest, but maybe my clock is off. I did hear it hit and looked at the time.” [4] Earlier he'd explained that from his home in DC, 1/2 mile away, he heard a blast loud enough to shake his windows. [3]
A secondary explosion, like the ones widely reported by ear-witnesses, is one likely explanation for Judge's timeline. A few examples: “Two explosions, a few minutes apart, prompted me to start walking.” “Those fleeing the building heard a loud secondary explosion about 10 min. after the initial impact.” “secondary and third-order explosions started going off. One of them was a fire department car exploding.” On-site news reporters and others compiled by Arabesque back this up. At least one powerful blast with erupting fireball was photographed by Daryl Donley within a few minutes of the attack (above - note this fireball is erupting as the area is already damaged and smoldering. Ralph Olmholt found a source somewhere indicating "jetting flame from an underground utility bunker, presumably a broken gas main" was said to be responsible for Donnely's "dramatic picture," a theory he doesn't seem to buy. [4]
This harrowing account by survivor Kevin Shaeffer, originally published in Shipmate magazine, and re-posted 9/11/02 at Citizen Smash/Indepundit, seems to support the original time:
“In a flash, at exactly 9:43 a.m., the entire Command Center exploded in a gigantic orange fireball and I felt myself being slammed to the deck by a massive and thunderous shock wave. It felt to me as if the blast started with the outer wall facing my backside, blowing me forward toward Commander Dunn’s desk. I never lost consciousness, and though the entire space was pitch black, I immediately sensed that I was on fire.” [5]
I'm not enough of an explosives expert to say if an orange fireball moving inward in the building and igniting him is indicative of any type of explosives package, but it does fit the profile of jet fuel hurtling inward. So this would seem more likely to be the initial impact than the 9:43 blast of what seems to be burning fuel moving outward. Whether he was watching the actual time and had seen it turn to 9:43 just before the event, or filled it in later based on the flawed initial reports is not clear.
It could be the loudest explosion was the one at 9:43, louder than the crash itself – loud enough it shook Judge’s windows a half-mile away – while for whatever reason he didn’t hear the earlier crash. Other DC residents may have heard the same thing, triggering a rash of calls taken as the most likely point just due to this noise factor - it was likely flawed intelligence echo chambered in the initial confusion that got the first timeline off by five minutes. It was probably not a sinister cover-up.
Or was it a cover-up? If the secondary explosion were, for example, engineered for some reason, as some have speculated, there would be reason for them to say that was the hijacked jet crashing. Hmmm.... Discussion at the Loose Change Forum was inconclusive on the cause of the explosions, although member Honway provided this highly relevant screen cature: Gaffney’s 9:43 Cover-Up Evidence Another possible reason for a cover-up has been offered by Mark Gaffney, a noted environmental and peace activist and published expert and author on ‘Gnostic Secrets.’ He wrote a seminal piece posted at Rense.com called The 9/11 Mystery Plane, regarding the E4B ‘doomsday plane’ seen and filmed over the Capitol. There at about the time of the attack across the Potomac, this airborne command center is thought by some to have been running the remote control for the Pentagon attack plane. As worthy as this analytical piece is, Gaffney followed it with The 9/11 Mystery Plane Part II: Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline?
Still eschewing overt silliness in favor of a relatively even keel, it elaborates on reports of the mysterious white jet over or near DC’s restricted airspace around 9:40-9:45, and alleges official flight path misinformation (vague at best) to allow us to believe this was Flight 77 before impact. Supporting this is live CNN footage from 9/11, where White House correspondent John King reported around 09:52 "about 10 minutes ago, there was a white jet circling overhead.” Gaffney summarizes “I believe that the US military announced the original 9:43 AM Pentagon crash time to conceal the presence of the E-4B over Washington.” [7]
However, recently released 84 RADES data, viewable here in stunning video form with Air Defense audio, shows nothing over DC at 9:43. An aircraft labeled “M3_0310” crosses just north of DC, flying west, at about 9:46-9:46:40, heads north then loops back south passing east of DC around 9:49. The E4B is also said to have passed the capitol twice, so it seems blip M3_0310 that skirts that airspace is this same craft.
This data must be approached with the proper caution due all evidence, but so far I see no particular reason to doubt it aside from its conflicts with 'CIT-compliant' eyewitnesses. But regarding this separate craft, if this is accurate and represents the white plane, it would seem King was rounding up when he said it passed the mall ‘ten minutes ago.’ Interestingly, its takeoff time – from Andrews Air Force Base - as seen in the video is 9:43:43, so if true it would have been on the ground at the official impact time as well as the 9:43 window. If this jet truly did not pass until 9:46, placing the impact time three minutes prior would have been a silly and risky gambit. This radar data has never been seen until now, but the cover-up might at any point have been exposed by any class of data: 911 calls, other call records, time-stamped video, etc. Or alternately, if other evidence supports Gaffney's claims, then the RADES data might be shown altered to conceal the true time of its flight.
Back Six More? The RADES video linked to above also shows Flight 77 disappear from radar just short of the Pentagon at 9:37:12; this is consistent with its final dive to official impact 33 seconds later, and one more point of evidence that the shift from 9:43 to 9:38 was justified. But a sporadic attempt at another shift back of six minutes in the impact/explosion time - to about 9:32 – has been afoot for a while now and seems to have a lot of evidence backing it. Is it time for me to shift the timeframe back another six minutes, or is it not? This is my main reason for delving into timeline questions and the case for a ‘9:32 event,’ supported in part by Gaffney, will be introduced in the next post and its points of evidence directly addressed in the following one.
Sources: [1] North American Aerospace Defense Command. “NORAD’s Response Times.” News release. September 18 2001. Accessed via: http://www.standdown.net/noradseptember182001pressrelease.htm [2] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Second Public Hearing, panel 1. May 23, 2003.Hart Senate Office Building, Room 216, Washington, DC. Witness: Col. Alan Scott (Ret.). http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm [3] Judge, John. The Pentagon Attack and American Airlines Flight 77. February 21 2004. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/PAandAAF77.html [4] Olmholt, Ralph. "The Dog Should Have Barked." Pentagon Reasearch.com. December 22 2004? ('date created' in html info) http://www.pentagonresearch.com/098.html [5] Account of Kevin Shaeffer. Shipmate magazine. Original URL (non-funtioning): http://www.usna.com/News_Pubs/Publications/Shipmate/2002/09/Ring.htm. Accessed via: http://www.indepundit.com/archives/2002_09.html [6] [7] Gaffney, Mark H. The 9/11 Mystery Plane (Part II): Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline? Rense.com. July 5, 2007. http://www.rense.com/general76/wdb.htm
FARMER C2C INTERVIEW / RADES DATA ALERT Adam Larson / Caustic Logic The Frustrating Fraud Nov 8 2007 last update 11/12/1pm
Deserving of special mention at this blog at this time is statistician, video analyst, and Pentagon attack researcher John Farmer. I first encountered his works as cited by Pilot for 9/11 Truth as supporting their silliness – my initial and flippant suspicions about this GOP-oriented conservative Truther ‘expert’ was soon confused at best as I saw him make some really good points and brought some new data and thoughts to the table. In addition to a lot of exceptional, top-shelf analysis, he’s made some bad arguments, some I just don’t get, and others I haven’t read yet, has been embroiled with Citizen’s Investigative Team over their abuse of his evidence, and it seems has let his bridges to the Pilots be burnt down. He was indispensable in helping me to see and analyze the shadow south of the Citgo, although I must note all my findings are my own; that we happen to agree this does not a cabal make.
At any rate, I was excited to hear he’d be interviewed on Coast to Coast AM by host Ian Punnett on Saturday November 3. I didn’t catch it live, but a free audio version is available for a listen here: Select Sunday Nov. 4, 12:00 am; interview starts at 39:15. Requires Windows Media Player.
Punnett seems perhaps suspicious of Farmer as a former cop and oil company “numbers guy” [see site bio] and had earlier played Inner Circle’s Bad Boys in honor of the appearance. Farmer explained how he was initially a non-believer in the theories on 9/11 until hearing about Operation Northwoods a year ago got him thinking. He decided if there were an inside job element, “the Pentagon attack would have to be the one that was controlled […] because [they]’re basically attacking themselves.” Similar control over sources of data was discussed as well as the possibility of official disinformation over the attack to, as Farmer put it, “get certain groups in the Truth Movement fighting each other like cats and dogs over competing theories of what happened.” He should know, of course, after dealing with Rob and Merc and their like.
His discussion on the FDR focused on suspicious statistical trends in lateral acceleration and the issue of the missing end, its last second of data at 9:37:44 pinned down at near the Sheraton Hotel, well over a mile from the Pentagon. From what I can see this seems perfectly correct. He passed on that what seems to be as much as six seconds missing is apparently outside the range of innocent technical error and so the ending would seem deliberately altered. He offered no theory to the exact implications beyond “for some reason there’s some of the data missing.”
84 RADES Alert Farmer was more excited however to discuss the 84 RADES radar data, compiled by the Air Force’s 84th radar evaluation squadron for the FBI just days after the attacks, that he had just received a copy of on October 5. Trying to draw attention to this new source of information, he plugged for a newly posted video by collaborator Marco Bollettino with animated radar data and NEADS audio overlaid. He lamented that the media doesn’t want to talk about it; he passed the information on it to media outlets that new 9/11 data was available, but only Coast to Coast AM responded.
He also noted that other researchers hadn’t widely looked at it yet. For my part, this new radar info is something I have not dug into yet. To see it first-hand takes special software and to even grasp what others have found takes time. I tend not to post on something unless I feel like a genius on the subject, but since that feeling is usually illusory anyway, here I’d just like to pass along that this info is being looked at and seems fascinating from what I’ve seen. Over the last moth Farmer and others have analyzed the data in detail, locating blips, tracing paths, and identifying aircraft – Langley fighters, the C-130, the E4B, Flight 77, perhaps even its fireball, all seem to appear on radar. Here is a graphic by Bollettino showing last data plot consistent with the flight path at 9:37:12 – when it dropped below radar coverage – and two later returns off the path: one north at 9:37:36, one south at 9:37:48. I’m not sure what’s up with that. Intriguing, no? --- Update 11/12: Craig Ranke of CIT notes there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the officially-supplied data. Notably, its track of the C-130 cargo plane sent to inspect conflicts with the personal account of C-130 pilot Steve O’Brien. And for that matter, its paths for "Flight 77" and the suspected E4B 'white jet" conflict with existing witness accounts supporting the 'north of the Citgo' path and the down-the-river white jet, if not directly the flyover theory since that all would happen too low to see on radar. --- Additional Info 84 RADES discussion forum http://bluecollarrepublican.com/rades/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=9b90526526e9d2f132706195d6d392d9 All 911files.info blog posts on radar data FDR/RADES comparitive study: PDF link
We’re told Flight 77 took off with about 11,500 gallons of jet fuel for its transcontinental journey, and that this fuel was contained in its wings, which span 124 feet. So if it flew into the side of the Pentagon, we should expect to see a line of jet-fuel fire at least 124 feet wide across the façade, and yet more burning fuel exploding forward through broken windows into the building with the plane’s momentum and burning everything in its path to cinders. From the outside, it'd probably look like this:
911 In Plane Site, for one, is certain that an airliner was not responsible and it was not even well-faked. In his narration, IPS writer/poducer/host Dave Von Kleist cited as evidence a relative lack of fire damage near the attack point on the ground floor. While some of the pictures he showed clearly indicated massive fires, he zoomed in on a post-collapse photo of the upper floors and calmly pointed out “On the 3rd floor it's plain to see a file cabinet with a computer monitor. Neither of them are damaged. On the second floor you can see a wooden desk, it hasn’t burned. And on the first floor, a very curious sight indeed, a wooden stool with a book that is laying open. The pages aren’t even singed.”
Dave knows that the Pentagon has five floors - the 5th has no exterior windows and the 1st is not visible in the shot above, which is precisely the picture he chose to use. Look just to the left of the building's peak and count down - 5, 4, 3… there's that miraculous stool, one floor slab above the impact site and a floor above any fire. The file cabinet Von Kleist cites on the third floor is actually on the 5th, and the wooden desk from the 2nd floor is actually on the 4th. His careful analysis of the public evidence completely subtracted two floors, one of which – the second floor - is clearly visible in this shot and looks rather seriously burnt.
Don't think I'm just nit-picking here. As critics point out, you don't level charges this serious without good evidence, and it's major blunders like this stool sample - and there are perhaps hundreds in IPS alone, that can derail people without adequate bullshit detectors. The video that has bragged “September 11 changed the world. This video will change September 11,” on closer analysis, looks more like a parody of 9/11 skeptics than an authentic effort at what it claims.
More on the book in question reveals the 'stool' as a likely bible lectern: ""Yet, as he (Mark Williams) looked up into the black chasm torn into the symbol of the mightiest military on earth, Williams saw a sign of hope. On a second floor, right next to where the jet sheared off a section of the building, was an undisturbed stool. And on it was a thick, open book. Fellow searchers who had gotten a close look said it was a Bible. It was not burned. Nor was anything around it or on the two floors above it. "I'm not as religious as some, but that would have me thinking," the soldier said. "I just can't explain it."
It sure does look odd, but the reason nothing there burned was by being on the third floor. This site thinks it's some other kind of book. Must've been important to get its own lectern in the corner. If it was a bible, I'd like to know what page it was left open to. If there's a message of 'hope' here, I doubt it's from God.
Consider this letter a plea for logic and a friendly reaching out to get you to come over to the light side. I'm quite certain that you see how defending a 757 impact at the Pentagon is getting more and more difficult with all the new information and blatant contradictions that are being revealed. The information we are discussing is too important to let it get muddied in ego driven debates. I do not take you head on in a personal desire to prove you wrong. My first introduction to your existence was your article labeling us and our work "Pentagon sponsored disinformation" which you ultimately took down when confronted so I at least respect you for that. But your stance on the issue hasn't budged and your aggressive behavior in other forums as of late has given me reason to once again address you head on. Between the Citgo witnesses, the anomalous FDR, and the questionable physical damage including the undamaged foundation it's clear the 757 impact hypothesis has serious issues.
I think it would be very effective if you were able to concede that you no longer believe in a 757 impact and even join forces with us if you will.
I believe we could actually work together in a way and help bring light to this extremely important information showing how the Pentagon attack proves a military deception.
Just a thought.
Peace, Craig --- My response was as folows:
I guess I fell behind here. I'm not even going to dignify this with a response. Oops, too late.
Light side? You and your trippy flashlyte? When I got the friggin' sun over here and always have? Are you daft, man? Do you see me even bothering to try the same back with you? See, I understand you're on a set mission, so there's no point EVER trying to change your mind with logic and evidence. I have proven more flexible - ie I admit I can't PROVE the plane's impact through the prism of the foundation photos available. That's about it. Do not mistake flexible for malleable.
Bottom line, you want to find some kind of proof 9/11 was an inside job, don't look at the Pentagon. All you'll see there is a 757 crash of unknowable origin (human or computer pilot?) and a hell of a lot of twisted disinfo based on 'counter-intuitive' evidence, confused reports, etc., and heavy prior bias The fraud is a multi-year effort of what I guess might be MILITARY DECEPTION. It has sponsors, They recruit. Theories subside and resurface. If you want to be a part of that, go interview controlled Defense Protective Services officers at the controlled scene and read all you want into it.
I do thank you for the factual informaton you have presented. It's very useful to my research. I simply have a different interpretation of the importance of your witnesses' accounts and their rough coreelation with each other. --- Here's a quick insight into how the "lyte side" works, via Craig quotes: “This is why eyewitness testimony is so important. It's the only possible way we can get to virgin data that has not been vetted and controlled. Although there are many plants and liars so it makes it quite difficult." "If indeed the unanimous north side of the citgo station claim is correct.....this proves that the plane did not hit the building which means this was an operation of deception. Therefore it would stand to reason that some witness accounts would have been fabricated/planted." Witnesses are the only uncontrolled source of information, except the controlled ones, and since all witnesses agrree on the north path, then the ones who don't are the plants. And it is the north-trending testimony that emerges from loop that's said to prove that however unikely (ie VERY), their previous beliefs: all the physical evidence was faked in an amazing pre-fabricated psyop campaign of mangled and stashed poles, generator-bashing, fence-ripping, vent-scraping, windshield smashing, tree-pruning, debris scattering, engine part and landing gear deposition, linear bomb arrangements that - oops - blew the columns out instead of in and left 15-17 intact to disprove an engine, left thefoundation somehow undamage by either bomb or plane, etc. ON TOP OF the impossible flyover maneuver, faked FDR data, manipulated videos, and ALL witnesses being uniformly fooled in both visual and audio clues into believing in an impact.
If anybody would like to take the spot on the "light side" offered to me, feel free. --- The foundation Issue sputters along here with neither side able to claim clear victory: Above Top Secret forum thread Loose Change Forum thread All the other evidnce that must've been somehow faked is detailed here.
The Frustration Ends Here... Or Starts, Depending...
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." - Thomas Pynchon, Jr.
"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments." - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 191
---
The "9/11 Truth" scene has made major inroads on the mainstream American psyche in the last two years. A record number of people now believe the government, at best, allowed the attacks to occur. Personally, I'm convinced the kernel of this is the same deep-seated suspicion I and many others have felt since that fateful morning. But the reason it's coming out in such a flood now has numerous explanations, one of which is the cumulative effect of various alternate theories, most notably the strain spread via the video Loose Change. --- It is my opinion that these arguments have swelled the movement for all the wrong reasons. The “hard proof” crowd have claimed to find literally hundreds of “smoking gun” clues left laying out in the open. While some have real validity, many, on closer inspection, are fraudulent. Yet somehow the worst arguments get more air play and capture more attention and so the “Truth” movement has become dominated by the desire not to provide the most rational explanation but the one most opposite to the official story. Beyond providing endless distraction and requiring endless de-bunking (and they keep coming back!), this approach alienates intelligent skeptics, whom we need on our side. --- It's not for me to say who has intentionally misled and who is simply wrong, but herein I hope to help break the spell of one of their key arguments – no big Boeing jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11 - in hopes of getting some people off that train before it crashes for good. Luckily others have gone before me, and this once crowded carriage is steadily emptying. Through careful research, I have found as have others that almost all evidence points clearly to a 757 as the attack vehicle, piloted by whatever means, and in the process have exposed a long thread of apparent disinformation running from 9/11 to the present and continuing despite all evidence to the current day.
--- Truth is a road, not a destination, and it's much safer to walk. --- Please feel free to leave comments. I hope I've convinced, provoked, or otherwise effected people with my words here and would love to see any feedback, positive or negative. You can post anonmymously. --- Words about The Frustrating Fraud and its author:
"This site [...] does what few do -- take on the Pentagon no-plane/no-jetliner theory head-on and expose the errors of those promoting it."
"I have been reading your blog. Your style is witty and refreshing." - Russell Pickering, Legendary once-proprietor of Pentagonresearch.com
"Blog Devoted to Debunking No Plane at the Pentagon: Unfortunately, like Russ Pickering (whose work gets cited), it's still essentially devoted to 9-11 Denial." - Screw Loose Change
"[A]s Caustic Logic has demonstrated, it’s only evidence when it’s legitimate evidence. False and misleading claims do not constitute evidence—they constitute disinformation." - Arabesque
"Adam Larson / Caustic Logic -- Critically examined the Pentagon attack and the charged issue of its disinformation surrounding it, extensively referencing earlier work."- Victoria Ashley
"[Y]ou’ve done a nice job on continuing to gather facts and reality based information about the Pentagon attack. Some of the comments gave me a laugh or two as well. You’ve accomplished far more in the past couple years in trying to separate facts from fiction than I ever did with that giant 1.5 million+ reads thread! - "Cat Herder" via e-mail
"Caustic Logic made a sad attempt to neutralize our info by casting doubt on us personally. It's pathetic and obvious. And he's a bad writer too. It's like he is a cointelpro flunkie but he keeps trying!"- Craig Ranke
"People like you and Jim Hoffman are dangerous to the truth. You will calmly suggest irrational suggestions in order that you mold the mind of the reader."- Aldo Marquis
"CL, we know you will never amount to anything more than a trash collecting janitor [...] is there some sort of sanitation website where we can check your credentials as a trash throwin janitor?"- Rob Balsamo/John Doe X
"Caustic, one of my favorite LIEHOPers!"- Killtown
>>Video links: Good and bad - watch your step. --------- The old video sidebar section has been moved to a dedicated post - click the image for the link.
--------- >>Pentagon research links: --------- The old sidebar links section has been moved to a dedicated post - click the image for the link. Needs to be updated! ---------
SEMI-CHRONOLOGICAL POST INDEX - NEW STUFF THROUGHOUT
