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.

PROOF THAT CIT WAS MANIPULATED?

PROOF THAT CIT WAS MANIPULATED?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
April 21 2008
[rough ]

Criminal manipulation of the Citgo security video became a necessary charge for CIT as soon as the video was released on September 15 2006. It was quickly noticed that their 'star witness' Robert Turcios, first announced just five days earlier, was not visible in the video reacting as he said he did. While he had claimed to run out of view to a raised mound to see the plane on a north path and perform a pull-up before apparently impacting, Russell Pickering felt the only person that could be the witness is seen under the canopy at impact and running inside the store after. This is indeed what the video shows. Video contradicts this witness account = video is wrong, wrong, wrong.

CIT of course has zero evidence, aside from this conflict, that Robert was edited out, that another person who runs inside was edited in, or that the shadow of Flight 77 on the road behind that person was painted in south of the station. They also have no absolute proof the video is manipulated at all, but they do have the findings of others that seem to indicate this. They’ve cited John Farmer, who protests, and who has found no signs of tampering. They’ve cited a guy called “Interpol” at the Loose Change Forum. And most importantly, the manipulation that proves the evidence disproving Turcios was proven by Russell Pickering himself, who denied that this is what he proved, and his suspicious behavior vis-à-vis the video and Turcios eventually led Aldo at least to suspect that Pickering himself was involved in the alteration - that he had just proven. As Ranke summed up more soberly:

“Strangely; Russell has been virtually silent about some of the most important, and in my opinion, best work that he has ever done. Ultimately his research proves evidence tampering which is a Federal crime within itself. [… Russell found that the FBI] removed this critical camera a couple of hours after the event: Because THEY MANIPULATED THE DATA TO REMOVE THE VIEW OF THE CAMERAS THAT HAD A VIEW OF THE PENTAGON THAT RUSSELL HAD JUST PROVEN WERE REMOVED AFTER THE ATTACK!”

All he really did to that end was write this, and a few other posts like it, regarding I believe his first visit to the Citgo station during their joint-venture, on August 22 2006:

"According to the manager of the Citgo [...] They were evacuated for about two hours from the Citgo and minutes after they reopened the camera was taken. She never viewed the video herself. [...] The Citgo manager physically took me out under the canopy and showed me the location of the removed camera. It was pointed at pump 2. [...] The manager described this one as having had a clear view of the Pentagon wall and quite a bit north as well." [source]

Three things about this camera were found out by Pickering, all via the manager, whose name has been given only as Barbara. The first two key to making the alteration case, the third helpful for making the first two work:
1) The location of the camera and confirmation that it had a view of the Pentagon, as seen in the passage above.
2) The camera was on-line and recording on 9/11, so it's not being in the final video proves alteration. I don’t have Russell’s explanation handy but Ranke said “They [...] manipulated these views from the data […] We know this because the manager of the citgo TOLD US that the views were online.”
3) The camera was physically taken – for no reason I can fathom – and never replaced, which is why it was not there when she pointed to it. “I’m not making it up! The FBI took it!”

THERE IS NO OTHER EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER THAT THE VIDEO WAS MANIPULATED in any meaningful way.

True, there is no such view in the video, and there is a remarkable asymmetry in the known video camera set-up. IF a camera were at that spot on 9/11 and pointed the right direction, it’s arguably possible it could have captured valuable clues of a possible north flight path (although unlikely IMO comparing to other views that are included).

Also, one must wonder how many managers they needed, when all the old stories cite Jose Velasquez, a Costa Rican native, as in charge at the time. He’s the one who said in 2001 that "I've never seen what the pictures looked like. The FBI was here within minutes and took the film," but it may have shown the impact. I’m sure someone has talked about this situation somewhere, but I couldn’t find it easily enough. Barbara’s account of evacuation and video seizure minutes after returning fits with Velasquez fine and makes perfect sense. her knowledge of these details indicate she was in the know and on the premesis on that day of the attack, or at least had been informed enough to seem that way. Anyway, let’s presume she was there, but that does not prove that she was being truthful about what happened when she talked to Pickering and later to Marquis and Ranke. 

So… in essence, “some of the most important, and in my opinion, best work” that Pickering ever did was… to pass on the words of the Citgo manager. That’s it. Barbara provided the 'proof,' all on her own free will for whatever reason, weeks before the video was even released. Is this suspicious in itself? Not really, but what it it were part of a larger pattern? All throughout the discussion is a presumption by CIT that there’s no way the word of the CITGO MANAGER who actually TOLD them something could ever be suspect. As manager of a military facility she might well be part of a military deception to support the official story, but any clues that counter it must by default be honest slips from someone not up-to-date enough on the details.

And did she ever slip and keep slipping; this helpful manager is of course the same person who two days later freely offered the account of Robert Turcios, an employee of hers she was “90% sure” could verify a north path (perhaps she hadn’t asked him yet if he would?). Is it possible she knew what the video showed, and so in proving the video manipulated offered this evidentiary escape clause, for anyone who chose to use it, as cover for the witness? She was careful to echo Velasquez in claiming not to have seen the video, so this would seem unlikely. But of course things are not always as they seem.

I’m guessing she was also the one who approved the on-site interviews with Turcios, Lagasse, and Brooks two months later as the north path just congealed all around her head, apparently humming away oblivious to the implications. I’m not concerned at the moment with exactly why Barbara proved so helpful to the emergence of this meme, but is it not curious how much all of this hinges on that one woman? A need to protect the witness she and she alone provided, using evidence that she provided. And for failing to embrace this loop as CIT has enthusiastically done, there’s something wrong with the movement at large. As craig ranke put it:

“You see this is EXACTLY why Aldo and I get frustrated with the "movement".

Russell Pickering should have freaked out when this video was released and used all of his connections to get people to realize how incredibly important it is that the government released data that we KNOW was manipulated and can prove it with simple testimony from the Citgo manager. [emph mine]

This is HUGE! But instead it's ignored and used by Russell, John Farmer, Caustic Logic, and even Dylan Avery to support the government story! This is how bad some people out there want CIT to be wrong and the official story to be right.

CIT will continue to scream loud about this and all evidence that proves a 9/11 military deception and cover-up but it does no good falling on deaf ears.”
[source - is craig really unaware aware that excessive screaming is a prime cause of deafness?]

Anyway, so there’s your best proof from CIT that the video is manipulated somehow, and whether or not actual view information was altered, which was always the point, all such questions are rendered moot and the evidence is to be ignored altogether, except in the fact that it further implicates the perps via the absolutely proven manipulation. Now I would never claim to have proven anything here, but looking at all this, it's clearly worth noting how entirely well this manager managed the situation; even before Craig and Aldo put the CIT in Citgo, Barbara had already added the Go.

ARABESQUE ON THE ABSURDITY OF CIT ANTICS

ARABESQUE ON THE ABSURDITY OF CIT ANTICS
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
November 26 2007 1:45pm
last update 12/7 2pm

Fellow blog-format 9/11 researcher Arabesque has been up to some good works on the Pentagon lately; besides his Pentagon Flyover Theory RIP (actually more a short catalog of the visual clues that there was no flyover), now he’s posted CIT, Craig Ranke, Aldo Marquis, and the PentaCon Flyover Theory: Origin, Debate, and the ‘Smoking-Gun’ Anti-Controversy, an exhaustive and worthy critique of Ctizen Investigative Team. Primarily using the words of CIT and their detractors, Arabesque examines and exposes the two-man core team (they also have a third member I hear, though I don’t know who) that produced The PentaCon and the reborn ‘proven’ fly-over theory, based on eyewitness reports (first-hand confirmed, multiple-corroborated, recorded, and still wrong IMO) and their own initial (and incorrect IMO) hunches. He addresses some background, their theory’s origins, the logic of and evidence for a flyover, and their methods of debate and evasion. If there is one source you’d like to read on CIT’s approach, this one is perhaps the best and most exhaustive.

Among many quotes backed by dozens of links, this Russell Pickering gem from the old Loose Change Forum caught my attention. As someone who has worked very closely with CIT, his insights are extra valuable, so we must take note when he tells Craig, as he did shortly before The PentaCon's release:

“When I watched you guys bending reality in person conjuring up black operations for everything that didn’t agree with you - I saw where this was going. When your partner tipped over and the forums melted down - it was clear what the motives were. But I do have to admit your dissociation from reality has exceeded what I thought possible… Ego is a blinding force - but spreading this as gospel and irrefutable instead of adding it to the body of evidence truthfully and honestly is .........”

With all the emphasis CIT places on the validity of witness testimony as strong enough to counter the wider confluence of evidence, their take regarding the account of Lloyd England, the cab driver whose windshield was pierced by a light pole fragment after the plane sent it flying, is one ironic sore point for critics. Perhaps since his case contradicts their theory (though officially because it’s internally inconsistent) they feel Lloyd is a government plant and the ‘first known accomplice’ of the planted light-pole cover story. Arabesque found this about their villain:

“Dylan Avery observed of the CIT investigators, “anyone who's watched [CIT’s] behavior on our [Loose Change] forum knows exactly where [they] stand. ‘The generator damage? It was faked! The light poles? They were faked! These eyewitnesses? They're lying or agents! Bla bla bla...’ Aldo's tirade in the TNR pretty much seals the deal. You think Lloyd England is a government operative, ‘THE DEVIL’ as Aldo put it.” Ranke attempted to justify calling Lloyd the taxi cab driver a “devil” by saying, “if ‘demon’ isn’t a fitting description for someone willingly involved what is?”
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Note: There has been some confusion over who said and meant what in this case. Aldo's original quote, in a radio interview, apparently talking about Lloyd, was: "I can say I've spoken directly to operatives from the Pentagon attack. I have looked the devil in the eye." I had a phone conversation with Aldo yesterday where he clarified that he meant it in a more figurative sense; the overall plot - the attack, the cover-up, the whole sinister operation - was 'the devil.' Lloyd just the eye into which he peered and saw the darkness pulsing beneath. They maintain that he could be simply duped into playing along, and manipulated against his will into lying about what happened, and thus be simply an unwitting surrogate of the devil's works. But clearly he is a window onto the abyss, and that he happens to be the one witness whose south path testimony they've verified, they must place him in special quarantine, apparently rimmed with [metaphorical] theological barbwire.
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Although I helped 'the hooded one' on this with some e-mails, most of what's in there he found himself and neither that help nor this post constitutes a full endorsement of every word in Arabesque’s piece. But it seems pretty much spot-on, and I agree with his closing line: “Aside from the weakly supported flyover hypothesis, whether intentional or not, the ridiculous antics and outrageous behavior of the CIT researchers are damaging and destructive to the credibility of the 9/11 truth movement.” Does that sound unfair? Read the piece, especially the harsh words/attempted intimidation against other researchers (Arabesque for one had taken more than his share) and also note this quick list of charges they’ve leveled against me in different forums (admittedly all after I first attacked them with strong language of my own):

Aldo and Craig have collectively accused me of using COINTELPRO disruption tactics, if not part of an organized program then a flunky wannabe or a brainwashed member of the CIT attack teams. They’ve accused me of ‘covering for the perps’ and trying to support the DoD’s innocence (which is irrelevant to my evidence-driven case). I’ve been accused of being on ‘the dark side’ (and invited to the ‘light side’), being a bad writer (often true), lying (a lie), using ‘deceptive’ graphics (not on purpose ever), using ‘irrelevant’ evidence, stretching the limits of credibility, being inconsistent with my own logic, making no sense/being ridiculous, and seriously arguing a conspiracy theory that isn’t even worth thinking about. They’ve distorted the points I've 'admitted' or 'conceded,' accused me of using a pseudonym to hide my efforts to smear them at the Loose Change forum just because they aren’t there to defends themselves (I happened to finally sign up just after they had been banned), manufacturing a LIHOP site at the last minute, apparently as cover for my anti-truth actions, and censoring comments on my blog (not true to any meaningful degree).

They have also proven able to see reason, to solidly show me wrong when I'm wrong (these are the cases where I've 'admitted things' - the other times it's their word against mine as to who was right). They have argued solid points, offered solid evidence, and given me and others credit where it was warranted and not threatening to their case. Why exactly they turn this reason switch off the rest of the time is anyone’s guess. I have my own hunches.

HOW THE CITGO VIDEO CONTRADICTS THE NORTH SIDE CLAIM

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.
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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.
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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

NINE FEET OF STEEL REINFORCED IDIOCY

PLANE PENETRATES 155', FRAUD LOGIC PENETRATES NOTHING
Adam Larson/The Frustrating Fraud
December 2006
Last updated 7/22/07

In another post I eplained the suspected depth of penetration of the attack craft as explained by Holmgren, Hufschmid, and Raphael Meyssan. Initially they and others had believed only the outer "E" ring was damaged, leaving not nearly enough space to fit a 757. But this was soon shown as false evidence. The Pentagon is indeed comprised of five concentric rings, from the innermost “A” ring to the outermost “E” ring, the outer wall of which is of course where the plane - or whatever - first hit. Each ring is about fifty feet wide in the cross-section below, and comprised of five floors. There is an open, ground-level roadway between the B and C Rings called the “A-E drive.”

But... while the upper floors of each ring are separated by spaces for light and air, floors one and two are completely roofed over and the ring distiction is meaningless. The attack plane is alleged to have penetrated three rings (E,D,C), all at the first-floor level, a single, enormous, open area with support provided by spaced columns, and variously divided by weaker internal walls. The plane and all its damage would be within the gray area in the cross-section below, concealed beneath the building’s roof and at least one more ceiling beneath that - clearly invisible from above.


Eventually the "punch-out hole" on the inside of ring C became the focus, indicating a deep burial of the plane through three rings (or at least fakery indicating such). Eventually the one-ring-damaged construct and its 757-couldn't-do-it implication faded and were replaced with the line put forth in 911 In Plane Site, where host Dave Von Kleist looked at the damage to three rings, where such a plane could fit, and again decided a 757 couldn't do it. "Keep in mind that each ring of the Pentagon has an outer and inner wall," he said. "Each wall is approximately 18 inches thick of steel reinforced concrete. That means that each ring consisted of 36 inches or 3 feet of steel reinforced concrete [...] Question – Could a 757 have pierced 9 feet of steel reinforced concrete, and left a 14 to 16 foot hole, and no wreckage?" Likewise, Loose Change cites "another sixteen-foot hole on the inside of the "C" Ring" (the punch-out hole, which is actually more like eight feet by ten). Narrator Dylan Avery concludes "for that hole to have been caused by Flight 77, the Boeing would have had to smash through nine feet of steel reinforced concrete." While disregarding the exact math, no-planer Killtown also doubted that "the fragile nose of Flight 77" could "penetrate all the way through 3 reinforced concrete/steel hardened rings and punched out a hole through the inside wall of Ring C.”

First, the exterior walls of the Pentagon are not 18" of steel reinforced concrete, as these sources imply. The exact construction the plane was up against is not entirely clear, but I'm nearing completion on a post to explain this.

Second, as I explained earlier, the lower floors were undivided, and so the remainder of the six such ring-defining walls pierced simply do not exist, except the last one. Below, see rooflines of the E, D, and C rings superimposed over the inerior layout of the impacted area, as released by the Pentagon. The red zone is the damaged area, and numbers 1-6 represent the six thick ring walls Von Kleist and Avery are looking for (though in reverse order).

They do not seem to play into the layout of the ground floor, which is where the attack happened. With the exception of walls 1 and 6, these heavy walls essentially do not exist at that level, and the plane would only have had support collumns and weak internal walls to deal with. It could bounce and tear between the pillars, like a deadly game of shrapnel ping-pong. The landing gear making the neat hole inside the C-ring is still a little suspicious, but it's a fairly minor point in the big picture, and a failry minor hole compared to the impact. So only the outer wall was pierced by the majority of the attack plane, leaving us with a not-so mysterious situation: Question? How does much of a 757 crash through the outer wall of the Pentagon?

Answer: with a running start.

But the no-757 theorists have laid down their own rings of fatuity, each with their inner and outer walls adding up to nine feet of steel reinforced idiocy that our bullshit detectors must pierce. Many peoples' aren't even switched on of course, and so this blatant misunderstanding has richocheted around within the Truth movement's head and will probably continue to do so for as long as it stumbles along. By the way, many of the little bubbles clustered in and around the red zone represent dead bodies that were recovered near the end of the trajectory and along its edges. Question - how could a cruise missile or Global Hawk plow a pile of corpses like that?

LOOSE CHANGE, “A FINE PIECE OF DISINFO”

A SLICKER PRODUCT HITS THE MARKET
updated 2/5/07

Loose Change started as a hazy idea in 2002 in Oneonta New York with Dylan Avery, a hopeful filmmaker and recent 9/11 skeptic, who had just graduated from High School. His suspicions of conspiracy, while not serious, were clear enough by then to suggest the first version of Loose Change. He visualized “a fictional story about myself and my friends, basically, doing what we've done now; doing our research and discovering that 9/11 was done by our own government, and then, you know, taking the steps to release this information, you know, get chased by the FBI, you know. Just a fun film.” Then in a bizarre and unexpected twist the script came to life and the movie about breaking the truth became them actually breaking the truth as Avery and his friends saw more and more evidence coming to light.

Avery’s childhood friend Korey Rowe was by this time an “Army specialist” [not in disinformation, we presume] who had served in uniform in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Avery described his friend’s disillusionment and evolving thought process on the “war on Terror” and the attacks that underpinned it:

“He goes to Iraq, and that's when things really started to click in his head, where he was like, ‘Wait a minute, I just invaded one country, and now they're telling me I have to go and invade another country, and neither of these countries have the person that we were originally supposed to be going after.’ And I think that's when things really started to click with Korey's head, when he realized he was not an army of one getting the terrorists, but a pawn on one of the biggest chessboards that we've ever seen.” [1]

The Loose Change crew: L-R, Rowe, Bermas, Avery

Rowe then went “rogue” as the producer of Loose Change, and the team was completed with their friend from college Nick Bermas, joining them as the movie’s "fact" researcher. On the title they chose, one may think it a reference to the reported budget of $6,000, but Avery clarified “it actually means the change is loose, you can't stop it - you know, again, it's just one of those titles that, to me, it just seemed perfect. I didn't think that there could have been a better title.” [2]

As for the effectiveness of their project, that depends on just what their real motive and message is. If they meant to convince people of an inside job as is generally presumed, they seems to have done so, and quite well, but largely for the wrong reasons. If they meant to research and present all the disinfo and expose it, they did a fairly good job, but the sarcasm was not clear enough and no one's caught on. If they employed disinformation in a coordinated plan to create false belief in the 9/11 "conspiracy theory" that can be easily discredited, as many suspect to be the case, then they're right on the mark. It's spread wide, it's convinced many, and it's currently being discredited point by point in the minds of anyone willing to face the obvious.

Dave Von Kleist, the mastermind of In Plane Site, called Loose Change “the best damn 9-11 documentary out there,” and the others on his tangent, like the pod people at LetsRoll 911, saw it as an improved and repackaged version of Von Kleist's masterpiece of misinformation. Indeed it is much better, notably in the graphic and musical presentation. They also ignored some of the worst evidence like the pods on the WTC attack planes and their yellow flashes (at least by the newest edition; I recall the first edition paused the video to point them out). They also included at least some of the compelling circumstantial evidence ignored by IPS that can trigger real and rewarding insight to those who follow the leads; the 1962 Operation Northwoods, a long and informative timeline of the development of remote control flight, the PNAC’s September 2000 call for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and a dead-on de-bunking of “Osama’s” 2001 confession video, among others.

As for their take on the Frustrating Fraud of the planeless Pentagon attack, Loose Change corrects IPS on the Mike Walters quote, playing a different part of the interview and citing him specifically as witnessing an “American Airlines jet.” But now he’s a witness they don’t believe and they still chose to put the most weight behind a Cruise missile theory, opening their coverage of the Pentagon with Rumsfeld’s 2001 missile “admission." Point five in their analysis was a virtual copy from IPS: “the damage to the Pentagon [is] completely inconsistent with a Boeing 757.” A rather silly point is where Avery says “the only damage to the outer wall is a single hole no more than sixteen feet in diameter” while the shot on screen has the spray from a fire hose completely covering both this hole and the 65-foot-plus damage area around it that even IPS showed. That's because they were looking at the wrong floor, as explained in the "Entry Wounds" post.

Many errors, like their initial inclusion of the pods and yellow flashes, were “caught” and changed in the second edition, but others were not excised; producer Korey Rowe claimed in an interview “we know there are errors in the documentary, and we’ve actually left them in there so that people discredit us and do the research for themselves.” [3] So far they’ve given their viewers no hints which eggs are rotten, and some folks have swallowed the whole basket. Perhaps it’s meant as a cover for any further "mistakes" that are spotted; “oh yeah, we meant to include that. Good job, you found one!”

And there were mistakes, many of them. Even in the second edition. Mark Robinowitz at Oil Empire titled one review of the video “Loose (with truth in an effort to prevent social) Change.” Between “errors of fact,” “Post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacies,” and other categories, he counted a total of 426 “flubs” in less than an hour and a half – that’s over five per minute on average, or one every 12 seconds. Oilempire also noted its links to IPS, calling it a “reworking” of that train wreck, and noting three major differences: “more true claims in Loose Change than in IPS, which makes the fake parts more believable,” “new hoaxes (and more of them),” and its targeting “toward a younger audience” with its “hip and slick” marketing. He summed it up in the same terms assigned to IPS: “Loose Change is a hoax - a real conclusion using fake evidence.” [4]

Whatever their motives or the quality of their arguments, the video closed, as IPS had, with a call to arms: “Are you angry yet? You should be. […] Why are they hiding from us? What are they hiding from us? And what’s it gonna take until people in this country give damn and do something about it? America’s been hijacked – not by al Qaeda, not by Osama bin Laden, but by a group of tyrants ready and willing to do whatever it takes to keep their stranglehold on this country. So what are we gonna do about it? Anything.” Indeed, an “anything” sort of desperate flailing is the primary acitivity spurred by this video – Avery told his viewers it would be up to them to “get the word out,” of course meaning their word. We would have to “ask questions,” preferably the hard ones they had just presented, and to “demand answers,” preferably the ones Avery and crew had just laid out.

Among the video’s critics, 9/11 Truth warrior Mike Ruppert was perhaps the most explicit, calling it “a very fine piece of CIA disinformation.” [5] Avery called such charges “ridiculous.” “The idea that three kids from a hick town in upstate New York are part of a CIA disinformation campaign would just show how desperate our government is.” [6] Or the video’s success could show just how desperate certain 9/11 Truthers are for final “proof” of their suspicions.


Sources:
[1] "9/11: Truth, Lies, and Conspiracy." Interview with Dylan Avery. Canadian Broadcast Corporation. August 22, 2006
http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911avery.html
[2] See [1].
[3] Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_%28video%29
[4] Robinowitz, Mark. Loose Change: Loose (with truth in an effort to prevent social) Change. Oil Empire. Posting Date Unlisted. http://www.oilempire.us/loose-change.html
[5] Green, Michael B. "Loose Change, an Analysis. 911 Research. August 3 2005. http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_change.html
[6] Sales, Nancy Jo. “Click Here for Conspiracy.” Vanity Fair. August 2006. http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/060717roco02

THE BERNARD BROWNS SEAM

ONE UNWISE MOVE AVOIDED BY THE LOOSE CHANGE CREW

Loose Change director Dylan Avery’s sometimes flippant attitude is one lightning rod for controversy, and emblematic of a deeper problem (or perceived problem) in the Truth movement’s approach. There is an over-simplified perception that the "tinfoil hat" revisionists are young, naive, brash and disrespectful. They have their facts wrong and are causing real pain by bringing these arguments up, facts they fail to recognize due to their youth, naiveté, and the brainwashing administered by the leaders of the 9/11 moonbat cult.

The most relevant such controversy for our study of the Pentagon evidence is the odd case of the Bernard Browns, which I only just now learned of. Brown the younger, age 11, of Washington DC,, was headed on a field trip to California, hosted by the National Geographic Society and the kids wound up on AA Flight 77. His dad, Bernard sr. happens to work not just at the Pentagon, but in the Navy wing that was then hit by the very plane carrying his son - specifically, some reports claim, in the Naval Command Center, the very target the plane seems to have been aiming for as it plowed through the building.

This is odd enough to start with – and tragic of course – but odder yet, Brown sr. reportedly told his son on Monday night "don't be afraid to die because we all are going to die someday." [1] This discussion was taken by many as evidence of the father's foreknowledge, but is at least as likely just spurred by his son's general fear of flight. But then oddest of all, Brown sr. may well have died himself when the plane hit but for the fact that he took that day off to play golf, reportedly an anomaly for this hardworking and attentive man.

In November 2004, just as the original cut of Loose Change was being finished, Avery was asked about this bizarre confluence of events in an interview with WING TV. He explained the case, clearly hinting that Brown sr. had foreknowledge of the attack and sent his son into it. He thought about contacting Brown;

“Me and Phil [Jayhan I presume] were actually considering tracking him down and getting him on the phone just to get him to talk about 9/11 and see if anything slips, but I think he was either deeply involved with it and talking to him on the phone about it might not be such a hot idea, or I think talking to him about sending his son to die might be a bad idea.” [2]

Mary Katharine Ham, managing editor of Townhall.com doubted Avery’s accusation that Brown “put his 11-year-old son on Flight 77 that morning knowing that it was destined to take him to his death while he took the day off to go golfing as the carnage unfolded.” [3] From the point of view of an inside job of such a scale, this is really not too far-fetched, but Ham’s and others’ emotional gut reaction to this accusation is telling. “Capitalistic Pig” posted on the Ace of Spades forum “Bernard Brown Sr. and others should drag these sons of bitches into court by the scruff of their fucking necks.” [4] Their video was bad enough, but now their patience is wearing thin and I can hear old ropes being broken out for the lynching party. Pursuing the Bernard Browns seam, just to add yet one more to the list of hundreds still unresolved, was not a wise as far as winning converts. Maybe that’s why they apparently abandoned it before they even made their movie (one of the few wise moves they made) and this had to be dug up in an old interview instead of seen on-screen.

Still, this seam seems well beyond the realm of coincidence, and if I have to risk a lawsuit or a lynching to maintain that, so be it. But I can’t say what precisely to make of it. Did Brown sr. buy his way into the ranks of the post-coup elite by placing a special beacon on his desk as he left work on Monday, then slapping a homing device in his son’s luggage to guide the remote control system and then went golfing in the morning so he wouldn’t die? Avery seems to have been making such a claim, but it must be remembered that he thinks there was no Flight 77. Perhaps a planner or enabler of the attacks, aware that Brown jr. would die in the morning, orchestrated an enticing invite for his dad to a game of golf, to transform a brewing son’s-plane-kills-dad tragedy into a dad-in-on-9/11 conspiracy that would appear undeniably odd and intriguing to 9/11 Truthers. But if this was a seam left lying out, the backlash was built right in, and it may not be alone in that regard.

Sources:
[1] MSNBC, Sept. 25 2001. Found via "Killtown's 9/11 Coincidences and Oddities Page!" http://killtown.911review.org/oddities/911.html
[2] 2004-11-01 Dylan Avery Interview: M3U, RAM, MP3 http://911underground.com/wingtv/
[3] Ham, Mary Kataharine. "Beware the Truthers. Don't Ignore Them." Townhall.com September 11, 2006 http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=beware_the_truthers_dont_ignore_them&ns=MaryKatharineHam&dt=09/11/2006&page=1
[4] Posted by: Capitalistic Pig on September 13, 2006 01:43 AM comment on: “Speaking of Flaming Pieces of Shit...” Ace of Spades HQ. September 13, 2006. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/196495.php