CL-TURBOFAN DISCUSSION

First Posting
9/24/08, 2am
updated 9/28, 11 pm

Alright, so at the JREF, this "Turbofan" character has been making a lot of noise in Anti-Sophist's FDR thread, criticizing the "pros" there and acting as if he knows everything about Flight data recorders, and along the way hinting at the old Balsamo sticking-point, the refusal of sane people to debate him on the phone. Well, I'm only half-sane, and offered to accept his challenge on condition he send me two dozen homemade cranberry muffins. He unexpectedly took me up, and after a series of PMs where we started out actually haggling over the muffins, we decided on last night. I was at work, but took a break when he called, about 5:45pm, put the speakerphone on, and recorded my fairly down-key conversation with Tino, as he gives his true name. For those familiar with his on-screen persona, so remarkable arrogant and Balsamo-esque, his real-time discussion manner is so much more - Canadian. It's almost like two different people, and the Tino I talked with in fact knew little about FDRs, having only garnered his knowledge from talking with PfffT, and couldn't even cite the values that were so discrepant in the final frame of data. The audio turned out pretty decent, and as soon as I decide a good way to share it, and for good measure confirm his consent to do so, well, then I'll do so, and add some notes and stuff.
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Here's the audio
Boomp3.com
Additional Notes: [apologies for being so slow. I'm fairly busy elsewhere these days]. Regarding the audio, the line noise came out worse than I though - unshielded cables, please try to ignore. I figure there's no point in arguing for a win with a sock puppet or irrational person who's simply set in their course; as Swift says, via Pomeroo, "you can't reason someone out of something he was never reasoned into." So I may come across soft, but hardness hardly seemed necessary against this underwhelming opponent, and I was speaking to the (hypothetical) reasonable person inside who's ready to stop being led astray. Other notes later.

PILOTS FOR 2+2=5

September 21 2008
possible updates

For what it's worth, Pilots For 9/11 Truth recently released a new video based on math and stupid, that tries to say some stuff about the Pentagon attack. They're hoping to sell it, and so maybe have a breakthrough to push it with, like finally deciding on a theory of what did happen rather than just raising leading questions pointing towards no plane hit, held back out of "professional caution" and responsibility. LMAO. Please do not buy it, unless you support their long-running practical joke on gullible suckers. I don't even plan to watch it, but their talking points about the video focus on the presence of some serious math to correct their earlier egregious errors, months in the process of correcting. I'm fully capable of understanding the formulas I either failed to learn or forgot after High School, but only with the kind of time and attention I won't devote to facts whose only purpose is to debunk stupid shit I already know is wrong. Therefore, for those inclined to follow the math, especially those who lean towards believing the video, here is a link to John farmer's posts breaking down the "errors."

PFT Fantasy Flight Path and further analysis.

Myself, I don't feel like wasting any time on this. But if I change my mind, I'll plunk more stuff into this link. This is quite sparse, so I'm sure I'll have to add something.
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Their G-Force on final descent analysis was relesed for viewing in a promo short video. Essentially, it’s a response to their epic 11.2 G error (admitted even!), first proposed in the Arlington Topography piece earlier this year. The correction was several months in the making, and only slightly different - 10.14G in the best case scenario. Now 11.2 Gs was waaaay off from what everyone more reasonable found, and it would appear the reason for the still-large gap is that peoples’ presumptions differed. His descent path is shown here in yellow, my notes added.
They presume, as I knew, a descent from just above the antenna tower to low enough to strike the first light pole by the time it got there. Two problems – it did indeed have to end where they show, but not start. The antenna tower is maybe 5 feet wide, and there’s no evidence if it was directly over, to the left, or to the right of it. All we know is close, and judging by eyewitness accounts, it was considerably lower than the top, so either left or right (and I’m banking on left, or north).

Terry Morin: “I estimate that the aircraft was no more than 100 feet above me (30 to 50 feet above the FOB) in a slight nose down attitude.”
Edward Paik: "It almost hit my roof [...] If [the plane was a] little bit lower… it would have hit the [Navy Annex] building almost it seemed like. [The wing] knocked down the antenna… the plane was in the middle of the road… that’s why it hit the Antenna."

There is some evidence the antenna may well have been damaged, but it's not conclusive. If true, this would leave PffT's initial altitude presumption nearly correct, and contradicts the lowness described by both Morin and Paik. What correlates is a plane tens of feet above the Annex roof, I'd say closer to 30-50 feet above rather than 90-110 above as PfffT decide is the "lowest possible." It would be laterally quite near the tower, near enough to seem to have impacted it near the top. This would put it over Columbia Pike, and and running near-parallel the building's edge. Numerous witnesses (including Paik via gestures and Morin via seeing stripes on one side) confirm the plane was in a mild left bank, with right wing high. If the plane passed north of the tower, the right wingtip would be nearest the tower and its antenna at the top.

So, the descent from altitude, at the very least, cannot resonably be presumed as directly above the tower, greatly effecting the steepness of the resultant dive to the light poles. Second, and more important, the nature of the dive change is at issue – he has a sudden pivot, two straight lines bumping into each other, rather than like an actual plane's single uninterrupted parabolic curving movements. Ooops! My first comment was that this descent “has been sponsored by the letter L,” ala Sesame Street, and Reheat and other JREFers aptly took to calling it the ‘hockey stick’ descent. [Horatius did a funny comic strip on it] Apply sharp corners to “alleged” flight paths and you’ll force all change to one point and get unrealistic G-force calculations. Thanks PfffT for illustrating bad reasoning at work. Now just up the volume on the certainty language and demands for phone debates, and you can perhaps at least provoke people into wasting time, as a consolation prize for not being accurate.

Discussion on the G-Force video:
Pilots For 911 Truth
JREF
Above Top Secret
CIT forum

FAA? WTF?

FAA'S NoC ANIMATION
first posting Sept 13 2008, 12 am
Last update 10/8 2am

So, John Farmer is, I guess, back from Arlington and has received reams of new data, this time from the FAA. He alerted Arabesque and I via e-mail.

The FAA has sent me via certified mail all of the records I requested in my Court action. It is going to take the entire weekend to go through it all, but it looks like the ATC audio and radar records for 1332 – 1344 for Washington ARTCC, Dulles, Reagan, Andrews and Baltimore.

If this turns out to be everything I think it is, then CIT is going to be squirming a little more.

I get a lot of these from him and don't even usually keep up. But the second e-mail here, about the included animation, made me sit up and take notice.

I attempted to send you guys the whole video, but it was too big for some mailboxes. You are the first to see this (I hope) and you just know CIT and Rob are gonna love it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQsyt_7c1H8

It shows, more or less, CIT's concocted path over the Navy Annex, with a hard hard right bank/turn and a passage north of the citgo, followed by low level impact (higher only to allow the right wing). I have just been in the middle of laying out the overabundance of North-path clues (there should be roughly nil), including the NTSB's earlier animation to similar effect, so this was doubly ironic as it hit me. This is so insane, the easiest explanation I can think of is... Farmer's pulling my leg?

Two stills, with real and CIT paths (quite app) in the usual colors overlaid. These are from the Youtube version, but Farmer made a higher resolution version available for download and viewing.



---first thoughts, unedited
Any thoughts, people? All I can think of is what - the - fuck?

Or, wait... mmmaybe FAA based it on radar and/or FDR up to the end of that data (the loop and all looks fine on first glance) and then stupidly tried to fuse in the NTSB's apparent final moments, hoping they had some reason for putting it on that path for the seconds they were missing (I'd guess 6-10?) ... Just mysteries. This is going to turn out interestingly.
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Further Developments
Discussion on this took off all over with the expected rapidity, but a more dynamic embrace than some expected.
CIT Forum discussion Craig and Aldo, who seethe with venom against Farmer, and aren't 'taking the bait' as it were. They speak of "chess moves" and such... Very sophisticated over there, their apprehension and ruminations! On the other hand, many like Rob Balsamo at the PfffT forum were giggling with excitement, while CIT strongly advised caution, leading to a curious argument about which dishonest track to take. CIT messenger Domenick DiMaggio (aka Terrocell, TC329) also started a JREF discussion thread about it, stating at one point:

they faked it and now they're releasing fake evidence to corroborate cit's evidence and yet still try to prove an impact. and as soon as you guys put the cats down and erase lloyd from the history books they can get away with their evil plans.

Whatwhatwhat? Nonetheless, this is where things took off with both confusion and learning. First, beyond disseminating it, the FAA seem to have no role in this short video. JREF member Gumboot first questioned their authenticity and/or their relevance, but over the first couple pages identified the logos onscreen (www.stk.com and HQ NORAD/USSPACE/AN), and found STK was the Satellite Tool Kit Radar module, marketed by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI), a company that makes software for "national security and space professionals for integrated analysis of land, sea, air, and space assets." He noted "the big golf ball things" seemed to be FAA Long Range Radar sites, and decided this may well be "a radar-based map for NORAD purposes," possibly "to determine which radar sites AA77 passed through, so that 84th RADES knew which data to collect for their analysis." Definitely getting somewhere.

Radar based... north path... I would have figure it out eventually, but Celestrin beat me to it. No wonder CIT were apprehensive - they knew about the false return placed for whatever reason, just north of the Citgo, and I had to point out that it wasn't their north path plane, at least 1,000 feet to low for radar to see. Celestrin made the connect:

RADES data has been available for months and it shows the exact same North of Cthulhu poperties as this animation. [...] Why is it such a wonder that an animation, which most likely uses the same data, would also show the plane further north?

I looked at it a bit the other night and did some graphic comparisons just to see what patterns popped out. I took the peach map from the NTSB's Flight Path Study and set the final map of the animation over it [below]. Note the apparent offset in rotation and location of the loop cross point. I'm not actually sure if the whole path is rotated, or this is just a local distortion from roughness. It is rough and unrealistic in its movements.Farmer instantly pointed out "Look at the loop you idiots, it is a square with rounded corners!" I noticed this too, as did Celestrin. The "squarish" appearance of the turn manuever also suggests that the data, which was used in the animation, wasn't continous." Given 12-second intervals between returns is "too fine for the animation," he wondered "what if one takes the RADES data 1 minute apart," or every fifth radar return, and got this.

When I marked the spots where straight lines start curving, and overlaid it with the 84 RADES returns for the loop, it looks more like this was based on taking every other 84 RADES return (pink dots) as anchor points, and replaced the intervening ones with straight lines or full curves, depending.



This in turn may be a clue to the north path’s appearance. Consider this pattern in light of these final three points of RADES data (the points stupidly connected above]. There may be a different dynamic at play here, but it seems similar in pattern – draw a straight line to, or near, the north point, and then a sharp curve to try and meet, or orbit, the next aberrant return just south of impact. Considering there may be a rotation of the path relative to the map, or vice-versa, and perhaps a slight spatial offset, the actual mapped curve may not be where it looks to be onscreen. Interestingly, when I rotate the line to fit the real path, the turn is about seven degrees, or the amount the NTSB's final map was rotated from its own lat-long grid. [Propos to Farmer for the background image establishing the real path beyond a reasonable doubt]. This is not my final answer, but I'm pretty sure it's close to correct, or on the right track at least.

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More on the source
Pilots for 911 Truth forum member "Paranoia" looked at AGI's STK.com website and found some interesting information verifying Gumboot's ID. [link]. Of interest is a winter 2002 presentation by AGI President and CEO Paul Graziani, regarding their 9/11 animations. The accompanying powerpoint presentation confirms he's discussing this very simulation - it's pictured on page 5. In his delivered remarks [PDF link ], Graziani explained to assembled conventioneers how "actual FAA radar data was used to accurately recreate the events and model the flight paths of hijacked airlines as well as the responding military aircraft." Actual data, it would seem so. Accurate, only sorta... Of interest is the line "complex problems that once took weeks or months to complete, now take only seconds or minutes when employing software capabilities." Maybe they should have at least spent hours on this one.

Additional update: Just to clarify, this is a NORAD product, not FAA. This powerpoint presentation, from a June 2002 STK users conference, explains the project a little. It covered all four flights, plus responding fighters, all from FAA-supplied radar data.
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The Video: I refined slightly the final returns angle, and put it together in video form, viewable with notes here.

I KNEW IT WOULDN’T BE THE LAST WORD…

September 12 2008, 2am

I meant I heard the last word I needed to from officer Roberts and that I meant it to be my own last word regarding him. But of course it’s not that easy, and it’s worth a few more given two critiques from CIT critics, rather than CIT. John Farmer rightly took issue with me, finding the title “strangely arrogant” and it was. I was feeling a bit cocky after hearing the full interview and feeling it all fall into place. So sue me. Since he’s in Arlington at the moment for the Pentagon memorial’s opening and doing some fruitful research, I have to give John some props and yield that of course this is all my opinion. And I don’t care if MY word is the last or not – so long as it’s in there.

A couple critiques however: Farmer says “First, I think it is very clear that Officer Roberts believes he made his observation AFTER the impact event.” Whatever he believes, as Farmer himself earlier noted, “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.” The full interview is better. The first half is all 77 stuff. We both know what 77 did. IF he vaguely *experienced* a plane hitting some building and THEN saw 77 approach… what other explanation?

Regarding “His directional descriptions are quite ambiguous, such as describing the plane leaving the area southwest.” I’m not seeing the ambiguity, sorry. A U-turn – definition? Same way in, same way out. All directions are southwest. Where is the evidence he’s confused about what southwest means?

And at Above Top Secret where they have no tolerance for sock puppets or anonymous people if they’re on my computer, the still tolerated “Biscuit Cough” has offered his thoughts as well, bringing it into the “discussion” there. He finds my “twist on it” to be “very interesting” but probably “incorrect.”

Some critiques here: First, I am not “Frustrating Fraud” [or “Frustrated Fraud”]. The adj – noun construct implies I AM a Fraud, as opposed to the BS my blog of that title is about. Not to nit-pick, and I’m sure it was unintentional. Okay, so you cited Roosevelt: “ten seconds […] seven steps” and so on and asked:

“It would seem that if he were watching it on the television, there must have been a television in the booth with him?”
One would only come to this conclusion if we didn't read the apparent cut into the 2001 interview.”

What? Did you miss the part where the TV, and his awareness of the attacks coming from it, is about all he talks about? In his original interview, and in my video, he specifies the TV he was watching in the booth, up until he runs outside. And the cut isn’t “read in,” it’s there and he did say something we can only guess at. Previous narrative defined by the TV screen, then “as I hung up the phone [cut] the plane hit the building. It all came at the same time, watching the TV.” Fill in the gap then if you have a better idea. “I looked back at the TV and saw”, or something to that effect, is my guess.

“It appears FF is saying he watched the second plane hit in NYC and jumped up and ran outside to the south loading dock. Odd response, IMO.”

Remember, this was preceded by awareness of the shit in NY already, the issuing of Threatcon Delta, and his awareness of his responsibility. ‘We could be hit next,’ y’know? So he goes out to assess the situation, watch for one of them crazy ass planes… It’s what I might do.

“So in summary, I think FF has a few things he needs to deal with: Roosevelt's testimony that there were two planes [and] that the plane was flying over the lane one area, southwest away from the Pentagon, back across 27.”

Agreed – these are the two irresolvable problems. I’ll spare us the full breakdown, but most points he relays fit with my interpretation just fine. The implication that the plane sighting is at 9:11-ish can’t be correct in CIT’s version either. Anything 77-related he saw was at 9:38 or so, and he MUST be wrong on this point. Right? Implied immediacy of “the explosion” and the low-flying plane. Did it simply follow “9:12 or 9:11” into the error wormhole?

Points that cannot fit:
Agreement to “two aircraft in the area” – one impacting unseen and the other seen after - “it was two aircraft, that’s for sure.” [5:50] the one he saw came from “where the first plane had flown into the Pentagon” [6:15] -first plane again implies the second.
The left turn to the Mall Entrance side, loop around back over 27 and departure to the southwest, mentioned all through the second half of the interview. This can’t figure into CIT’s story either, which is why they’ve decided he’s just confused.

Note that all of his statements that cannot fit come after 3:48. BC, what did you mean by “His testimony that it was flying "back across 27" was not given when he was asked to speculate.”? He was never asked to speculate, but if you mean after the “second plane” flying “away from the Pentagon” was mentioned, wrong. That’s what happened at 3:48, the only question he asks to be repeated, and the only one he had to think about for several seconds before answering. Anything unusual after that is highly suspect as evidence. All the second-plane stuff is after that. Hand-waving about “confusion” and “it’s all AFTER the event…” is the only alternative to even drag this one through the gate.

Simplest resolution and my guess and final word from me unless someone has smething remarkable to offer:

He saw 175 on TV at 9:10 and noted the time, ran outside and saw nothing.
He came back in and watched for a few minutes, made some calls or something. Remember, it’s threatcon. He’s in crisis mode here. Not the best for memories.
He went back out at 9:30-ish and after a bit saw Flight 77 appear over the lane one area, approach quickly over 27 at light pole level, and disappear around the corner at impact.
Two months later his memory was confused, so nearly all the wait time between the TV crash and the real plane was forgotten and compressed to about 2 minutes. He also left the actual impact un-described and implied – one second there’s a plane, the next, dust from the ceiling and people screaming. He either can’t recall it clearly, or feels no need to say it.
All the weird stuff everyone’s debating about and/or dancing around was made up under special and observable conditions.

Crazy, huh? The alternative is… a second/flyover something plane re-creating Flight 77’s approach right after a vaguely described impact/fakery event, and then defying physics with a maneuver that would have been invisible to Roberts anyway, and that haven't been seen by anyone else. Or he’s just confused and talking gibberish, probably ‘cause they “got to him.” Maybe I did…

So in essence, of all the hundreds of recorded witnesses, his ambiguity on the first plane-into-building event, plus his silence on the real impact make him uniquely confusing, and ripe for the plucking by flyover/second-plane enthusiasts. He’s at least as confusing when further probed, and not surprisingly does little to either prove or disprove the earlier issues. Those who can’t get enough mystery, carry on. There's still a lot of space between the words to play in.

CAUSTIC LOGIC VIDEOS

Coming back online
first posted June 9 1pm

I've chosen to go with a Veoh account. The upload time is quite a bit better than Youtube's and the picture quality is, eh, about the same. They're downloadable it seems, but seems to be a time lag, with video trailing a bit behind audio. Anyway, I'll post all the links here, and update as I go.

C-130 Flight Path: An analysis of the various sources regarding the flight path of C-130 Golfer06, the famous second plane at the Pentagon after Flight 77''s crash. Pilot account, 84 RADES radar track, Eyewitness accounts, and even on-site video. Emphasis here is on the outbound flight, where others have found a clear discrepancy between the pilot's account and the radar data. Hogwash. Nothing in this video necessarily contradicts anything else.
-F.F. Companion Post


The Trouble With Turcios: This 9-min. video looks at the Nov. 2006 account of Robert Turcios - The PentaCon's (and the world's) only pull-up-before Pentagon-impact witness. Building on the analysis in "Citgo Video: Who is Person #1?" the centerpiece is his 9/11/01 video-recorded actions. Some say the video is legit, other say it's altered. Either way, it don't support Turcios' story in the least.
-F.F. Companion Post



That Darn NTSB Cartoon, pt. 1: The "FDR" North Path: Intro to the north-of-the-Citgo (NoC) aspect of the NTSB Flight 77 black box animation. It has been touted by some as real evidence of FDR "north plot data," but oddly it does NOT match the FDR itself, even as it matches the simultaneous NoC witnesses. Parts 2 and 3 chronicle my research into WHY the animation differes from the other data.
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Pentagon 911 No 757 - The Boeng Doesn't Fit:
The 911 Truth - the hole is too small!!! Brilliant insights by Mayssan, Von Kleist, Williams, Avery+Rowe, and Pugh, just a few of those who've seen and alerted the world to the single too-small 16 ft hole in the Pentagon! Vs. blatant gov. loyalist lies about some "90-foot hole"! Is this video for real? You decide.
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That Darn NTSB Cartoon, pt. 2: The Authenticity Sidetrack: Again, talking about the NTSB's flawed recreation of AA77's flight to the Pentagon, this time narrated by me (sorry - it's necessary). Basically this part outlines why I probably shouldn't have publicly questioned the animation's origins. (6:37)
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Flight 77's Shadow: For all those screaming for video footage of the Pentagon attack, we need to understand no news cameras were rolling there, and security cameras are not geared to film planes in the air. The CCTV gate cams caught the plane at ground level and its impact, and the Citgo station security video (released Sept. 2006) caught this - the plane's shadow on the ground. Right size, right shape, right place, right time for Flight 77.
-F.F. Explanatory Companion Post (predates the video)
-F.F. video release companion Post (6:55)
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That Darn NTSB Cartoon Part 3: The North Path Explained: The North Path Explained. There have been different reasons given for the animation's path passing north of the Navy Annex and Citgo, but it can't be ignored that, as I've found and show here, the ground grid wrong orientation and final map orientation total 17 degrees of wrongness, which is exactly how far off the animation is from the actual FDR data. I doubt it was a pure mistake, but it has nothing to do with where the plane actually was. (6:47)
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The Last Word on the "Flyover Witness": CIT's long-awaited and much touted Pentagon "flyover witness" turns out to be... not that. (11:26)

THE LAST WORD ON THE "FLYOVER WITNESS"

THE LAST WORD ON THE "FLYOVER WITNESS"
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
First posted August 28 2008
Video added September 4


Online Videos by Veoh.com

So a while back I posted about a packet I had sent to CIT's alleged Pentagon “flyover witness” Roosevelt Roberts. It was returned to me unclaimed, either declined or sent to the wrong address. I had a second place to try him, and at least half-meant to. My general MO however is to not to bother the witnesses over idiotic miscontructions of the Comedy Improv Team or others, and even though I wanted clarification, I had been dawdling on trying again to contact him. Recent developments have shown me there is really no need to break my pattern. Everything was already explained well enough for my liking.

CIT had first aired an edited collage of his interview on Air America back in May, touted as the much-awaited lone witness to the flyover decoy plane immediately after the “impact” explosion. Finally SOMEONE immune to the unexplained optic trickery that fooled everyone else! There were some questions raised, and the team had been holding back their full interview, which is why I set out to contact Roberts. However, CIT recently released it at their discussion forum, apparently full and uncut, and I can see why they were sitting on it. I was first alerted to this by CIT critic “Biscuit Cough,” who transcribed it and offered some analysis at their forum and at Above Top Secret on the 18th. [Excellent work, mate!]

The audio file was posted as a subset of a separate issue: “C130 Arrived On Scene Nearly 3 Minutes After Event, Definitely not the plane Roosevelt saw.” Aldo Marquis preceded the link with a preamble to set the tone, which I’ve copied below with my corrections bracketed in red.

Pentagon officer Roosevelt Roberts Jr was at the loading docks and experienced the explosion [on TV, of Flight 175 at the WTC] (which he [Aldo] thought was [supposed to be] the impact [of 77 at the Pentagon]) inside. He details lights flickering and pieces of ceiling falling [lights unclear, ceiling problems only AFTER he saw the plane, below]. He then takes about "7 steps" out to the edge of the east end of the loading dock in South Parking lot and sees a "silver commercial aircraft liner w/jet engines (not propellors)" [over the lane one area, so west of him] traveling from the 27 side or from [actually TO] "where the 'first plane' hit" traveling east towards DC [and then departing the opposite direction, “southwest coming out”]. He said it was very low, he estimated 50 ft to less than 100 ft over the South Parking lot [lane one] area, he said it was banking and coming around to the mall entrance side [after being led to start making shit up]. Most importantly he described it like a 'pilot who missed the landing zone target and was coming back around' [and flying away to the southwest, which no one else reports]. Roosevelt saw the flyover plane [no, he saw Flight 77 on the approach and just didn’t describe the impact].

This interview for me represents the final word on Roberts, and it’s his own. Here's my attempt at drawing a light path. How did CIT have a hard time interpreting these words into a path? The loop here is perhaps tighter than he meant. Will have to be checked against other evidence to gauge its likely scale. I don't want to be accused of tightening it to make this breakthrough account seems less likely than it really is. This confirms their flyover findings perfectly, right?


ETA: Some words after the last word.

WALTER, PICKERING, LAGASSE ON CIT

August 15 2008

Oh man, I can't just ignore this new little article from the OC Weekly - journalist Nick Schou wants Orange County residents to know "If you believe a passenger jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11, then these local ‘citizen investigators’ say you’ve been . . .
PentaConned!"

I note that he misspells Lagasse (unless I have been) and gets CIT's name wrong (Citizens Investigative Team, rather than Citizen's Investigation-ish Thing, or Comedy Improv Team). Otherwise, a great piece. Among the new things is someone else's take on the idiocy I've been dwelling on for too long, and interviews with three people who've dealt with the CIT - Mike Walter, Russell Pickering, and DPS/PFPS Sgt (now Lt I hear!) William Lagasse.

Those interviews made Walter probably the most well-known eyewitness to what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, which is why, a little more than five years later, in November 2006, he found himself hosting a barbecue for a group of eager young men who were making Loose Change, a documentary about the terrorist attacks. After getting a telephone call from a self-described 9/11 researcher named Russell Pickering, Walter invited Pickering and Dylan Avery, the film’s director, to his house in Fairfax, Virginia.

They showed up with a couple of other people Walter had never spoken with: Craig Ranke, a fast talker with wild eyes, and Aldo Marquis, a heavyset guy who didn’t talk much. The two said they were helping Avery and Pickering with research for their film. Walter chatted casually with the pair, and at one point, he realized that Ranke was surreptitiously tape-recording the conversation.

That was weird, he thought. And increasingly, so was the conversation itself. Although Pickering and Avery seemed relatively normal, Ranke and Marquis appeared to be on a mission to prove that the Pentagon plane crash never happened. They wouldn’t listen to anything that contradicted this notion.

“I understand why people have certain feelings about this government,” Walter says. “There are things this administration did that I’m not pleased with, but facts are facts. I was on the road that day and saw what I saw. The plane was in my line of sight. You could see the ‘AA’ on the tail. You knew it was American Airlines.”

Marquis and Ranke simply refused to believe Walter saw what he saw. “They were saying things like, ‘Are you sure the plane didn’t land [at Reagan airport] and they set off a bomb?’ They kept coming up with all these scenarios.

“Some of those guys [at the party] were young and nice and disaffected [about] their government,” Walter concludes. “And some of them were crazy.”

After noticing Ranke’s not-so-subtle effort to secretly tape-record their conversation—and realizing that Ranke and Marquis weren’t interested in hearing anything that contradicted their notion that a plane didn’t actually hit the building—he refused to submit to an interview.

“They thought they were really going to uncover this thing, and I tried to set them straight,” Walter says. “The next day, I told them I wasn’t going to talk to them, and later, I found out they were really hammering on me on the Internet.”

Walter’s friend Troy Hanford, who was also at the barbecue, says that Pickering and Avery seemed like “opportunists” who were just trying to make it in Hollywood. “They wanted to be the next Michael Moore team,” he said. “The other guys”—Marquis and Ranke—“their objective was to unseat the U.S. government.”

[Russell] Pickering, who now runs an antiques store in Washington, recently told the Weekly he’s aware Ranke and Marquis consider him to be a government operative. “They firmly believe that about me,” he says, adding that his experience with Marquis and Ranke motivated him to drop out of the conspiracy movement. He still believes that 9/11 was an inside job, but Pickering strongly disagrees with Ranke and Marquis’ fly-over theory, which isn’t supported by a single eyewitness. “Nobody looked up and saw a plane fly over the Pentagon and fly away. Nobody reported a fly-over.”

When reached at the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA)—the official name of the Pentagon police agency, where he’s now a lieutenant—Legasse groaned when he heard the names Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis and said he couldn’t comment without permission from a press officer.

Oops! Damage control! Oddly enough, Chad Brooks' corroboration was not even mentioned in the piece, but Pentagon Force Protection Service tells Schou:

Chris Layman, a PFPA spokesman, said the agency now prohibits officers from speaking directly to the media, but he sent the Weekly a brief, written statement saying the Pentagon “was hit by American Airlines Flight 77 at 9:37 a.m., killing all 64 passengers and crew and 15 Pentagon employees,” that the event was “witnessed by hundreds of people,” and while some “have their own theories,” the “facts have been verified and are clear.”

That's not the whole article, so go ahead and read it.

THE SOUTH PATH IMPACT: DOCUMENTED

THE SOUTH PATH IMPACT: DOCUMENTED
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
first posted August 12 2008
last update 10/11

NOTE: The full post isn’t done – I’ll be adding some details and graphics for a couple days. I've opted to simplify the process by not citing and linking to all my sources. Dig around if you have any doubts. Props to Mangoose at JREF for a couple of these leads.

“We Tried…”
Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) brags of their growing list of explicit eyewitnesses to a North-of-Citgo (NoC) flight path that rules out their decoy plane hitting the Pentagon or anything on the ground, no matter what any of the same witnesses themselves say to the contrary. I believe they’re claiming 13 such witnesses at the moment, as featured in their latest full-length mockumentary, and sure to grow judging to their rhetoric. Corroborated 13 times! That’s fatal to the “official story”, which has the plane passing south of the Citgo station along the path of physical destruction before and into the Pentagon and ending there. CIT frequently boast how “all the witnesses” place the plane north of the Citgo, as clearly as they saw it crash into the building anyway, and NONE of them saw the plane on the south path.

The claim was repeated, for example, in our first phone ‘debate’ in November 2007 [40:00–42:00 or so], in their new video [link above, 3:20 in] and recently at the Loose Change Forum, when Aidan Monaghan was probing CIT’s Aldo Marquis. "Are there any south-of-Citgo witnesses?" he asked. Marquis responded simply “That is a negative,” and re-posted the one-liner ten minutes later for emphasis. And it’s not that they haven’t looked; they tried hard to debunk their own findings, but as their main site explains:

“We tried to find someone who might have seen it on the south side but it just wasn't happening.
[…]
We sure haven't been able to find ANYONE who is willing to directly contradict the north side claim AND we have not found a single previously published account that directly contradicts it either.”

How odd. I didn’t really have to even try to find previously published south path accounts, although a startling number have been pre-dismissed by CIT as among the suspect. I will offer my services free of charge. I found 13 worth making graphics for, though I’m sure there are some others. In fact, it could be said that all witnesses who saw the plane at all, whatever they may say later, saw it on the south path.

The Scene and the Spectators
The “official path” (violet in the graphics below) runs roughly along I-395 at its bend, but nearer parallel with Columbia Pike and the edge of the Navy Annex it flanks (the big harmonica building). The path had to be nearly straight but with a slight left curve and accompanying mild wing bank - left low, right high. After the Annex (entirely south), it passed south of the Citgo station (the smallish structure after), descending as it crossed Route 27, striking lamp poles, skimming the lawn, and entering the building low. The north path is also shown below for comparison, in yellow. This is CIT’s most-widely promoted possibility, never meant to be THE path, and shown to be aeronautically improbable (as have their others, to differing degrees). This angles across the Annex s-n, banking hard right along the way (left high), passing to the north of the Citgo almost at Arlington National Cemetery, descending a bit, then pulling up to fly over, yet somehow appearing to still impact low into the building.
The reason their case has some traction is the same reason that even 13 accounts can’t override the overwhelming case for the real event - eyewitnesses are the weakest type of evidence. Memory is notoriously prone to various errors and psychic distortions. Their memories are usually vague on trivial details like which side of a gas station the plane passed by, easy to be confused, misread, and maybe deliberately dishonest, especially when pushed on points like the above. There are however exceptions that freely and clearly delineate the “official path.” Now just as the whole point of NoC is that it means no impact, the unanimous impact reports could be taken as evidence the plane was on the path consistent with the damage caused. I could also use altitude clues to rule out a pull-up above the light poles, ruling out all but the “official path.” Either would make my job entirely too easy, so here I will only cite specific South of the Citgo (SoC) clues as they sporadically pop up. This is a short list and there are plenty of others that offer decent clues pointing directly at a south path, but these here are13 of the strongest that each confirm it in multiple ways.

1) Albert Hemphill
At the Navy Annex, “peering out of the window looking at the Pentagon.... the large silver cylinder of an aircraft appeared in my window, coming over my right shoulder as I faced the Westside of the Pentagon directly towards the heliport. The aircraft, looking to be either a 757 or Airbus, seemed to come directly over the annex, as if it had been following Columbia Pike.” He also gives the wing bank (remember, north path means left high) “He was slightly left wing down as he appeared in my line of sight […] As he crossed Route 110 he appeared to level his wings […] as he impacted low on the Westside of the building
2) Terry Morin
Another witness at the Annex (“FOB” in account). From his stated vantage point, Morin could only see the plane for the length and detail he describes if it were on the south path. CIT and Pilots for Truth have cited problems with the line of sight blocking final moment and this is valid – and doubly so for a plane passing entirely north of that line. "Teri" Morin has changed his once-vilified story and this one has gotten very weird, to hear the dispatches from CIT-land. I don’t believe them. This is what we know Terry Morin said right after the event:

“I started to hear an increasingly loud rumbling […] One to two seconds later the airliner came into my field of view. […] The aircraft was essentially right over the top of me and the outer portion of the FOB (flight path parallel the outer edge of the FOB). […] The plane had a silver body with red and blue stripes down the fuselage […] Within seconds the plane cleared the 8th Wing of BMDO and was heading directly towards the Pentagon. […] As the aircraft flew ever lower I started to lose sight of the actual airframe as a row of trees to the Northeast of the FOB blocked my view. I could now only see the tail of the aircraft.”

Trees to the northeast of the building is the only thing that doesn’t fit – he must mean northeast of where the plane had passed the Annex. These run along the Pike as it bends, at the crest of the hill looking down over the Pentagon (at the "n" in "line of sight"). Seeing stripes is consistent with it being a tad south of him and banked left.

3) Madelyn Zakhem
A VDOT employee previously published as a witness, Zakhem was verified by the LTW/CIT/Pickering entourage in August 2006. Aldo Marquis was not impressed and noted soon after participating “her account placed the plane "inches" from the roof of this small building [she was at]. With the left tilted down. Unfortunately, this would place it BELOW treetop level which we all know is impossible.” A figure of speech read too literally and debunked is a straw man tactic of course, and a convenient one, as the building that plane was (some number of) inches directly above, clearly puts it on the south path, and with the official bank to the left. Marquis later expanded at Above Top Secret : "Trees blocking her view. Madlene is a suspect witness. She is clearly lying about the flight path. We know because Edward blew it out of the water and we interviewed her, and now her bizarre behavior is explained.” [For Edward Paik, see below]. They can’t find any south path witnesses who’ll go on record, but the reason for strenuously denouncing this witness specifically IS that she’s a south path liar on record with THEM. So Aldo pulls the old Crypyo-Jew move: “Madlene Zackem, the lady with the jewish last name, Israeli accent while displaying a crucifix around her neck is not telling the truth about what she saw."

4) Edward Paik
The guy who blows "Madlene"'s account "out of the water" is not really a strong case for a south path in that his testimony and flight path drawn for CIT in late 2006 directly contradicts it - three versions running across the Navy Annex and thus pointing either OTC (Over-the-Citgo) or slightly NoC. However, his account is jumbled and has south path clues mixed in. When he first talked to the CIT guys and Russell Pickering earlier, he had said he thought the plane clipped an antenna tower just south of Columbia Pike: the wing "knocked down the antenna… the plane was in the middle of the road… that’s why it hit the Antenna." It didn’t really do this, (or did it?) but for him to think so, it would have to be close to it, which it almost certainly was. Also even as he draws a path entirely north of the Pike, his instinctive gestures belie ambiguity, pointing almost straight down the road, and indicating a left bank, which directly contradicts the massive right bank needed to go ONA and NoC. I believe he’s a south path witness and for whatever reason his account came out sort of supporting the north path (really it’s right between the two). How odd that the guy who proves suspicious crypto-Jew Zakhem a liar matches her account more than it differs!
5) Keith Wheelhouse
Wheelhouse, the famous C-130 ‘shadowing’ witness, was actually ‘verified’ by CIT, and for their cameras DREW the south-of-Citgo path to a T. The graphic below is based on his drawing as shown by CIT, rotated correctly to north, CIT’s path added for reference, and his lines color-coded. Light blue is his 77 path, south of the Citgo, .Lavender is the C-130 divergence he put down, happening at about the same time. They already felt he was part of the “ambiguous blending” of the C-130 and the decoy - timewise - to disguise the flyover jet (oh, it was the other plane that veered away a few seconds later…). So this drawing only affirmed their suspicions that he’s a government operative by showing the decoy plane come in on the south path while the “2nd plane,” which he describes as a C-130, peels away well short of the impact point. Once ‘verified’ at least, this here could only provide cover for… the gray, 4-prop C-130 that flew that path about a minute after The silver/white 2-engine flyover plane that no one saw or reported anywhere near the fireball and flyover point is left naked. Some operative!

6) Alan Wallace
One of three firefighters at the heliport for the President’s scheduled arrival later in the day. “The plane had two big engines, appeared to be in level flight, and was only approximately 25 feet off the ground and only about 200 YARDS from our location.” He was a bit off on the color, but felt it was close enough to match: “The airplane appeared to be a Boeing 757 or an Air Bus 320- white with blue and orange stripes. Mark later recalled the plane was silver and even identified that it was American Airlines.” White/orange/blue – silver/red/blue - close enough. Similarly with heading? “I later said the plane approached the Pentagon at about a 45 degree angle, but later drawing showed it was closer to 60 degrees.” I’m presuming here he means relative to the building’s west wall, where 90 would be a perpendicular track. From this there are two 45 degree-angle paths (in orange below). His account shows no perceived discrepancy between the angle he thought he saw and the final official path he saw later, so we must look for the “45 degrees” closest to this. Which one is a fit for ANY proposed path?

7) Timmerman/Vignola
Witnesses Hugh “Tim” Timmerman and his then-girlfriend Dawn Vignola saw the plane from a upper-floor apartment south of impact. With a panoramic view, they were able to see most of the path from at least the Navy Annex and forward. Timmerman had more plane knowledge and lodged a detailed report, while Dawn first spoke to the news on 9/11 and years later talked with another person going by the name Plan 271 online, who drew this path (in blue) based on her description. The apartment location wrong and the view blocked by another building (long red arrow) is set a bit wide, perhaps to fudge it in the interests of privacy (too late!) So the span where it passed the Citgo is deduced – did it suddenly swerve north there? No, because it had no time to correct from the left turn it was observed in (surely not as shown here, distorted by perspective, but the idea is the same), and a north path would mean the plane pulled-up and over, but to these witnesses it seemingly crashed into the ground just before the building.
8) Father Stephen McGraw
*Alleged witness DoJ lawyer and spooky just-ordained Opus Dei Catholic-priest* Stephen McGraw has described the flight path as from directly over his car, about 20 feet up and descending ahead of him and to his right to the impact point where he clearly saw it impact. He even told this to Aldo and Craig, and so all we need is his location to draw the path to the building, which CIT didn’t think to gather and hasn’t tried since. This line should also include, as McGraw deduced afterwards, the light pole that was clipped “just before it got to us” and the taxi damaged by it (see England, below) that was “just a few feet away from my car.” The plane passed from over the pole/cab area to over him and descended ahead all on a line he feels was “controlled and straight” into the building and CIT dismisses him as a “no-pather” witness and highly suspicious. CIT got no verification of his location, and they doubt he was at the scene at all, more likely fabricating for his Opus Dei NWO masters. He was placed in the correct spot (“a few feet” from England’s taxi and ahead of pole 1) in their graphics, “because we are typically discussing his account in the context of the official story,” which, in CIT land, is now a proven lie.

9) Penny Elgas
Headed north on Route 27 “almost in front of the Pentagon,” Penny Elgas reported “I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there - very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there.” Finally a witness that mentions the Citgo, and a reason others don’t, and a side! It’s tempting to simply declare it was passing along Columbia, which puts it south, but she only placed it over the road. Below I offer NoC and SoC variants for comparison. She recalled it coming “toward my car” and passing low “about 4-5 car lengths in front of me.” Along the way, the plane was descending and “banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport.” Left or right turn? Coming from NoC, it’d have to bank right, which means right wing low. South path could be level and straight or, some evidence shows, banking slightly left wing low. With the right wing closest to her, Elgas said “I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground.”

Straight at her, banking left and passing ahead of, and then impacting, which she is quite clear on. She actually had a piece of the plane
land in her car, confirming her location about under the plane as it started losing parts, which a NoC plane would not do. She is a south path witness, plain as day, and no hunt was necessary. Why does CIT still claim no published SoC witnesses even though this one is quite well-published? Oh she’s all kinds of suspicious, her account is too public, too detailed, the plane part thing is too weird, and she has government connections. Not a real DC witness and not worth talking to. “Penny Elgas has a significant position in government and a very high profile highly publicized account so should be instantly considered suspect," they say.

10) NEIT 567
This witness is among the CMH interviews, designated with a number like the rest, and according to CIT “one of the most compelling accounts.” A member of an Army band who was at the ANC, her location as read by CIT is actually accurate, I believe, and labeled below. Partial account:

“I hear what I think is a fly over, over my head because that's standard. [...] And I looked, I looked directly up for it, and I also had some tree cover so I wasn't able to see, but I was facing the Pentagon [...] And we're facing the site that was struck. And that's what was also weird, is that it seemed like it struck on the other side whereas I found out later, I saw [the impact point?] so that whatever plane that disappeared, it was it happened so quickly.”

Aldo Marquis announced “She describes the plane as being "over my head" and having looked "directly up" for it which can only be the north side flight path,” which is not true. It would be A north path, but nowhere near the one they’ve been promoting. “Tree cover” implies a lateral distance with several trees in the way, rather than straight up through a single tree’s branches. This means it was at some distance, I think we can all agree to the south. Marquis also trumpets how she “thought that it flew over the Pentagon and crashed on the other side!!! […] Sounds like a flyover account to me.” She said no such thing. What did she mean about the other side thing? She knew where it hit, so we have four choices to work with here, below. Only one makes sense to me and it strongly implies a south path with perspective error.

ETA: A more detailed debunking of her inclusion as a CIT NoC witness

11) Steve Riskus
Headed south on Route 27, well north of the crash site when he saw the plane come in low and crash square into the building. When offered a graphic showing two possible flight paths he explained “The plane looked like it was coming in about where you have the "MAX APPROACH" on that picture... I was at about where the "E" in "ANGLE OF CAMERA" is written when the plane hit...”
He erroneously gives his distance from the plane about 100 feet or so when he actually would have been over 1,000 feet up the road from the plane. A 10x factor mis-estimation might seem unlikely, but he himself placed the plane about right on the map and just that far away. Just not a numbers guy apparently, but definitely a south path witness.
Riskus also said “It knocked over a few light poles in its way,” but has affirmed to others and to me in an e-mail that he did not actually notice this event. Like most other pole-impact witnesses, he admits deducing this from the evidence and, one might suspect, from the match between the observed path and damage.

12) Wanda Ramey
However, at least one observer bucks the trend – DPS/PFPS officer Wanda Ramey says she saw the poles clipped by the plane. "I saw the wing of the plane clip the light post, and it made the plane slant. Then the engine revved up and crashed into the west side of the building.” Ramey says, explicitly, that she saw this, unlike most other deducing light pole witnesses. CIT say they have tried to find her and verify that she truly differs from the others, but have had no luck. The original article described her as having “a clear view” from “the mall plaza booth.” My best guess as to the exact location of this is included below, and gives here a wide-angle view from a moderate distance of about 900 feet from the pole impacts. Perhaps the key to noticing the pole pruning is distance, not closeness, as CIT have presumed.
ETA: Ramey was at some point interviewed by CIT, and they have made the audio available. They'd been trying a while to get ahold of here to confirm or deny that she saw the poles actually hit. She could do neither, after years of memory atrophy, etc,, couldn't recall if she actually saw that or not. She does however specify a left bank, the "slant" being the wing nearest her lower than the other, which further supports the south path.
13) Lloyd England
So suspicious is this elderly cab driver that he gets his own short video; ‘The First Known Accomplice?” It’s not surprising that CIT and their allies make a huge deal of his account all over the place and put his damaged taxi cab on their main page. Unluckily for their case, he’s the best light pole witness, who says plane that passed right over his car “was so low it hit the light pole. And when it hit the pole it knocked the light part off and nothing came through the car but the pole itself." He screeched to a halt at an angle there, he says. “Did you actually SEE the plane hit the poles,” the old CIT standard, gets real silly in this case, but oddly enough, even Lloyd, who was closest of all, failed to actually SEE the pole(s) being struck, and offers a possible clue to why others missed it. He told the CIT/LTW/Pickering “elite research team” “this airplane flew over top of my car. It was real close, and uh, I just looked at it. And when I looked at it flying over, something - [glass?] - a loud noise happened and the pole came through the dashboard, right through the car, all the way to the rear.”

This looks bad for their planted light debris theory. Luckily, the specifics of England’s accountare problematic. He has clarified in detail how the big curved pole segment is what stabbed his car and nearly killed him (the one out front in the picture below). That this would enter the windshield and come to rest long heavy end out as he says without leaving a mark on the hood doesn’t make much sense. This proves nothing except that a witness is telling a story that apparently makes no sense; his windshield was likely damaged by a different pieces than he says, and he constructed the memory he’s shared, perhaps honestly or perhaps not. This shows why witness accounts are weaker than objective verifiable evidence, but CIT is determined to make it a strong something. Since “his story is physically impossible and proven false by the evidence,” they’ve decided he was actuallt involved in the planting of the pole and was making the story up to cover for it. They’re unsure if he’s a willing accomplice or simply a “coerced […] victim,” but simply wrong is not an option, nor is it conceivable to them that he’s actually right, even though most people who think it out can’t see how.

As the CIT video asks of this account, “isn’t it interesting how Lloyd’s story supports the official flight path while being irreconcilable with the eyewitness flight path?” That’s right – not a witness. “At this point the debate regarding what happened at the Pentagon boils down to whether you choose to believe the CITGO witnesses or Lloyd.” Well whaddya know, a fasle dichotomy.

Conclusion: 8=0?
CIT’s wild-eyed fast talker Ranke recently reiterated the bogus claim yet again, in response to Mangoose at the JREF forum: “None of the witnesses we spoke with placed the plane on the south side of the gas station.”

Alright then, just from this list of people who place (or at least strongly imply) Flight 77 SoC, they spoke with Zakhem (understood her south path testimony, and used it to dismiss itself), Vignola (breaking agreements and burning bridges along the way), and with that liar Wheelhouse (it was THEY who gave him the paper to draw his south path on!) When they talked with Paik, and got him to draw lines that were either NoC or OtC they also video-recorded his south-path-supporting gestures. They of course talked to Morin, Ranke says, and I think they talked with Riskus via e-mail as it seems everyone has. McGraw spoke more with Avery and Pickering, but CIT was present at the taping, and they used the footage in a video dedicated to tearing down and obfuscating his south path testimony. Same with Lloyd England, and they even make it look like they defied ‘the devil by stealing his cab light. Where’s Mr. T when you need him to defend his fellow DC cab drivers? So just out of these thirteen south path witnesses, the CIT have spoken with EIGHT! Of these eight witnesses, at least four have been strenuously dismissed as non-witnesses of the most sinister kind, doubt cast on two, and two distorted and claimed as NoC after all. So by CIT logic, no, they haven’t found any south path witnesses in their journeys and likely never will. That’s just neat how much they’re winning. Good for them.
---
Post-13 witnesses with no graphics guaranteed:
14) Here's another, if weaker, SoC witness, using Aldo's formula for NEIT 567: Levi Stephens, who later is said to have said it was NoC, had earlier said "I was driving away from the Pentagon in the South Pentagon lot when I hear this huge rumble, the ground started shaking … I saw this [plane] come flying over the Navy Annex. It flew over the van and I looked back and I saw this huge explosion, black smoke everywhere." Now no one is saying it was directly over the van, but how far NoC could it be and even seem that way? Hasn't he been placed around the lane one area? Why does he report a plane over there before the explosion rather than "after" like Roberts?
ETA: Also, a real SoC view is strengthened by CIT's own interview with Stephens, where they say he says it was north of the Citgo. As if it helps their case, they point out how he thought it was not an AA jet due to its unusual paint scheme - including a brown or tan underbelly. No one else really reported this (except I think Omar Campos), and most people thought it was a silver in color, as AA would be. Funny enough, the bottom of a silver plane would reflect the colors beneath it. A north-of-Citgo path would mostly show grass green, while a SoC passage would put it over the brown or tan unseeded, just built dirt mound just south of the station.
15) Roosevelt Roberts: Speaking of Roberts, his full interview reveals quite clearly a witness to Flight 77's actual SoC approach. It was a silver airliner with jet engines, he saw it in the space to the west over the south lot ("around the lane one area"). It was coming from the west ("from the 27 side ... heading east towards DC", from the southwest, past where I-395 merges with Route 27, from "almost like where that ne- that first plane had, um. . . flew into the, um, Pentagon right there. It- it- di- it looked like it came from that direction." And it was banking about 50-100 feet above the ground, just above the light poles. All the stuff about a second plane headed away is made up. The "another plane" he saw was clearly NOT after 77's impact, if he saw it coming in on the path 77 took, at its altitude, with its appearance.

16) NEIT 405: Another CMH interviewee, on one of the walkways on either side of the loading dock at the south lot. So nearly the same position as Roberts. "Walking on that elevated area that's right outside the door. It's actually on the second floor level. And I turned and glanced off to my right [...] I saw a plane coming over 395 and very, very low. Essentially coming into eye level as it flew across 395 and come across the end of the south parking off to my right as I went through that door." Across 395 probably means 27, and it appearing over the end (lane one edge) of the lot indicates it was probably SoC.

17) George Aman: CMH witness NEIT 419, Arlington Nat'l Cemetery facilities manager, inside a south-facing office at the time of the attack. He saw the plane descending and impacting out the window, and said so to CIT. His ability to determine just how far away it was or what it was over, would have been very limited. He placed it as passing between the Citgo and the ANC south maintenance parking lot. That's north of the Citgo, about as far north as witness should be expected to warp a plane passing them over a great distance. [Fuller explanation]. So how on earth is he a SoC witness? Light poles. CIT says no one actually saw them get hit. Ramey had said she did but can't remember now when they ask. Brooks said he did, but recanted to CIT. It was deduction, he said. George Aman, from his perspective, had a clear view of the first poles up on the bridge mound a few hundred feet away, and had said back in 2001/02 "When I was looking over here and I seen things fly up in there, not knowing really what the hell they were but come to find out they were street lights. So the plane was clipping the tops of the streetlights off." CIT had every chance to ask him if he deduced this, but just decided instead that he clearly was and it wasn't worth asking. [see comments at link above] They know he's a SoC witness.

OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE FOR 9:38

PENTAGON ATTACK TIMELINE QUESTIONS PART 3: OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE FOR 9:38
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
August 7 2008
Last Updated 8/10/09

For those who see no reason to question the official time of the Pentagon attack, this post will be unnecessary. But for those confused by claims of different times, primarily 9:30-32 am, this may prove quite useful. If you're willing to learn... (sigh). Of all the times cited for the impact/explosion/whatever at the Pentagon on 9/11, one stands above as the most-cited, most-supported, and most-likely true – by this I mean, approximately, 9:38 am. Officially the explosive impact of Flight 77 is given as 9:37:45 or :46 based, it seems, on the Flight Data Recorder. In reality, the impact time is impossible to pin down exactly, but likely a bit after this, probably between 9:37:50 and :55 (see FDR section, first up). Following is a nearly-comprehensive list of the most direct evidence establishing the impact at right around that time.

1) Flight Data Recorder:
Much rhubarb has been made of the information on Flight 77’s Flight Data Recorder and how it doesn’t match the reality necessary to get it inside the Pentagon where it was said to be found. The last frame of data recorded is 9:37:44 or :45, depending on the exact file one’s looking at. While this is officially the moment of impact, the recorded values do not match those evident in the physical damage (most important – too high!) This is taken by some nitwits/liars as proof the plane didn’t hit. Another view takes this as a clue that this last data is actually NOT from the moment of impact, but a mile or more back, as the INS positioning says (it’s prone to error of about 1/2 mile I hear). Most analysts have come to this realization, though opinions differ on how far back, how much data is missing, and why (which is beyond the scope of this piece). Estimates range from 2 to 10 seconds remaining to impact at last frame, with the upper end of 8-10 seeming most likely to me, and placing impact at 9:37:50 or later. This slight variation of the “official” time alternates with it in the list below and illustrate that roughly all evidence points at a roughly 10 second time range best rounded to the minute as 9:38.

2) Radar:
We’ve always heard the radar data supported and defined this impact time, but fact is it can’t tell us exactly when, or even if, the plane impacted. The raw data of the Air Force’s 84th radar evaluation squadron (84RADES) was released in 2006 to researcher John Farmer, showing all returns from the DC area on 9/11. As I understand it, ‘blips’ are sent and returned every 12 seconds; the last three attributed to Flight 77 are at 9:36:48, 9:37:00, and 9:37:12 (see graphic at right, from Marco Bolletino’s reconstruction of the data). Before the next return, the airliner dropped below the coverage level of app.2,000 feet above ground [this altitude is passed by FDR about 9:37:18]. There is an established NEADS clock issue, known to be app. 25 seconds slow relative to other clocks in the FDR and at ATC facilities. Therefore, the last return would actually be at about 9:37:37, with impact presumably some seconds after that. This support is vague but would hint at an impact somewhat later than the official time less than ten seconds hence. On the other hand, the FDR pressure alt for 9:37:37 is 786 ft AGL, which seems too low to be just disappearing from radar. Perhaps I’m confused on the timeline discrepancy. Anyway, it’s all there… it doesn’t prove a 9:38 impact, but it fits it just fine.

1a+2a) FDR/Radar Combo:
In its Final Report, the 9/11 Commission gives the impact time of 9:37:46 [p 96], citing as its source NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," created Feb. 19, 2002 by the National Transportation Safety Board. The full document in question is available in PDF form [here. The report in turn lists its sources as FDR data “as well as” (implying no conflict with) “radar data from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers, approach control at Washington Dulles Airport, and the U.S. Air Force’s 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron.” [This is the data examined above]. From this, the report summarizes that “the airplane accelerated to approximately 460 knots (530 miles per hour) at impact with the Pentagon. The time of impact was 9:37:45 AM.” Ooh! A one-second discrepancy! And both were likely a bit early, with the Commission closer it seems.

3) Arlington County Emergency System:
From Arlington County After-Action Report, and its first-hand access to emergency communications , we can see that key information was called in just before and after the 9:38 mark, and reactions followed in the next minutes, as recorded and logged as at a time generalized as 9:38. [emph mine].

“In the moments immediately before impact at the Pentagon, the Arlington County ECC began receiving 9-1-1 calls reporting a low flying airliner that seemed off the normal flight path. When the crash actually occurred at 9:38 a.m., all area communications seemed simultaneously overwhelmed. Firefighters calling the ECC couldn’t get through. Relatives of Pentagon workers found cellular and land lines jammed. Emergency traffic flooded radio channels.” [page A-34]

“Captain Steve McCoy and the crew of Engine 101 were […] traveling north on Interstate 395 [when they saw] a commercial airliner in steep descent, banking sharply to its right before disappearing beyond the horizon. At 9:38 a.m., shortly after American Airlines Flight #77 disappeared from sight, a tremendous explosion preceded a massive plume of smoke and fire. Unable to pinpoint the precise location, Captain McCoy immediately radioed the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center (ECC), reporting an airplane crash in the vicinity of the 14th Street Bridge or in Crystal City.” [page A-34]

At 9:38 a.m., a large smoke plume appeared beyond the Rosslyn skyline. Arlington County Police Corporal Barry Foust radioed the ECC that he saw an American Airlines jet crash into the Pentagon. The ECC swung into action [page A-35] […] [B]etween 9:41 a.m. and 9:43 a.m. on September 11, the ECC Administrator, Steve Souder, acting on his own initiative, contacted the Fairfax, Alexandria, and District of Columbia fire departments. He gave them identical instructions: deploy four engines, two trucks, one rescue unit, four EMS units, and a command officer to a staging area short of the Pentagon and hold them there until called forward.” [page a25]

4) C130 pilot report via FAA:
The 9/11 Commission briefly discussed the “second plane” at the Pentagon, a C-130H cargo plane dubbed “Golfer 06.” The Commission noted on page 26 of their final report:

“At approximately 9:38 A.M., the C130H aircraft reported to Reagan Airport controllers that the aircraft it was attempting to follow crashed into the Pentagon.” The source is given as “FAA audio file, Washington Tower, Tyson/Fluky Position, 9:38:52 .-M.; FAA letterhead memorandum, 'Partial Transcript; Aircraft Accident; AAL 77; Washington, DC; September 11, 2001,’ 7.

Although the two planes had crossed path just a minute before, both radar and the pilot’s own words agree that Golfer 06 was too far away to see Flight 77 itself at impact, but was close enough to see the smoke and to know where it was coming from. Certainly the impression was there from the beginning, and was only confirmed as it approached at 9:38, passing nearest to impact point at 9:39:15, after which it veered off to the north and west and continued on to witness the crash site of Flight 93 as well before reaching base in Minnesota.

5) 9:39 News Report - NBC:
Among the most solid clues to at least the general time of the attack of the Pentagon attack is in NBC News coverage of the 9/11 events. [video link - when watching the video, note that it starts at 9:12 am, so the video time is to be added to this for the real time] At perhaps 10 seconds after the 9:39 mark [26:24 video time], the newsroom interrupted its coverage to let Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski bring them their first news of something awry there. He told the nation:

"I don’t want to alarm anybody right now, but apparently - it felt, just a few moments ago, like there was an explosion of some kind, here at the Pentagon.” He explains he was on the east side of the mammoth building, opposite from the impact, so it was a big explosion. He saw no smoke from his side, inside the E ring, and didn’t know what was going on. “I just stepped out in the hallway, security guards were herding people out," he explained, meaning some time at least had elapsed. So far impact is looking to be one minute, 15 seconds before this broadcast. Sounds like “moments” to me.

6) Security video time stamps – Pentagon, Doubletree, Citgo:
Though neither the Citgo or Doubletree videos, released in 2006, shows the official time in their on-screen clocks, both timers roughly bracket it: Doubletree – 9:34:10 impact (app 3:35 behind) Citgo 9:40:36 (app 2:51 ahead)
It’s a very small sample to be conclusive, but this is what’s called a normal distribution, that sets a center point of app. 9:37:00. That’s pretty close for a sampling of two clocks, one of which also bears the default date of Jan 1 1993 [for a clue to the professionalism and precision of their deployment].
Regarding the time stamp of the Pentagon’s own CCTV gate cameras that famously captured the plane and impact, Col. Alan Scott told the 9/11 Commission in May 2003:

“The timeline on the impact of the Pentagon was changed to 9:37 -- 9:43 is the time that was reported that day, it was the time we used. And it took about two weeks to discover in the parking lot of the Pentagon this 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.” [source]

It should be noted that the time stamp is not reproduced on-screen. The initial five released framed show a time of the following evening Sept 12 – much to the delight of mystery-mongers, it’s more likely the time the frames were processed and labeled “plane,” “impact,” etc… but they seem to have been recorded in the 9:37 slot on the correct day, and were in fact instrumental in setting the time initially. We find later it’s actually near the end of that minute, but still technically not 9:38.

7) Eyewitnesses:

Considering the known unreliability of eyewitness recollection, and that most people do not directly time-stamp their memories, it should not be surprising that this sector of the evidence is the least clear on the actual impact moment. Just a few of the published accounts provide useful clues, while many specifically disagree or are hopelessly vague. The oft-cited “9:30” is too common a rounding point to be taken too seriously, and it appears several times. A small sampling that are said to specifically cite something more like 9:32 were outlined in a previous post. But the sampling of five below does establish a normal distribution around the minute all other evidence is pointing at.

“It was about 9:35 […] it came from the south. […] I watched it come in very low over the trees and it just dipped down came down right over 395 into the Pentagon.” – Don Wright
“At 9:40 a.m. I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards… in front of me.” - Donald R. Bouchoux
“At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic at a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking for the cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me.” - Vin Narayanan
“At 9:35, as we were watching this on TV, we heard over the loudspeaker “All medical personnel report to the front desk of Medical.” We did not know at that time that the Pentagon had been hit.” - Captain William B. Durm
“About 9:30 or so — I don't know the exact time, maybe quarter to 10 — we were still in the conference room, and we heard and felt the loud explosion of the plane hitting the Pentagon, and it reminded me of an earthquake.” – Lt. Col. Frank Bryceland [note: the mid-point of the range from 9:30-45 is 9:37:30.]

Update:As the brilliant JREF member Mangoose pointed out to me a while back:

I would also draw your attention to the witness account of William Paisley who posts as Pinch at JREF and who has a blog http://www.instapinch.com/.

You might want to contact him directly but he has elsewhere related that he was at Crystal Park 3, 10th floor on 9/11, and was watching NBC coverage of the terrorist attacks; when he saw Jim Miklaszewki's report at 9:39:10 he took a few steps to his office window and immediately saw a billowing, building mushroom cloud of black smoke rising up above the roofs of the buildings between his building and the Pentagon. This is pretty good confirmation that the explosion was not too much sooner than 9:39.

8) Wall clocks at the Pentagon:
In the Book Pentagon 9/11 [Goldberg, 2007] is pictured a wall clock from an office above the impact area, stopped at 9:36:27 – one minute, 25 sec behind the time in discussion. This is reasonably close and solid evidence of the general time at least.
Ironically enough, the famous 9:30-ish stopped clocks, which stand as the best (basically only) evidence for a blast at that early time, may also support the 9:38 time-frame. Non-nutty 9/11 Truther Russell Pickering decided that the low time is a case broken mechanisms as the clocks hit bottom-first after falling from their mounts, with simple gravity responsible for pulling the hands down to near bottom. He issued a challenge for anyone to take, which no 9:32 event supporters did, For one, CIT ally Mirage of Deceit (nutty) later confirmed the results (link unavailable). The pictures indicate the minute hands were somewhere past the 6, not before, but little else can be said for sure. But since everything else says it all went down at 9:38, is it not reasonable to call these a double-confirmation of that time with gravity rounding it down towards 9:30? [note: although it seems to have fallen differently and onto carpet, a similar effect could be behind the above clock’s being behind – or perhaps someone at the Pentagon actually was synched over a minute behind.]
Case Closed
So now that the 9:38 case looks strong enough to actually absorb even the best early-attack evidence, I’d like to turn to some assorted other evidence that doesn’t fit, and for shits and giggles use it to craft smtig even stupider than the 9:32 Pentagon attack meme (which CIT doesn’t even buy). Who knows, some bold Truther might just run with the 9:30-or-before scenario (oops, they already have) or the 9:25 WTC attack (no takers yet).