LOSING FLIGHT 77

July 21
The official accounts of radar/transponder tracking and communications problems with following Flight 77 tried to explain how the weaponized airliner was allowed to get within a few minutes of its target undetected. In total this has been taken by many (including myself) as an impossible or at least suspicious string of errors, allowing a third successful attack one hour into the new war. The Pentagon WAS protected by a mobile air-to-air missile defnse system, or was supposed to be, and the system failed as fighters were first alerted of the danger by a columnar smoke signal saying mission failed.

A useful new entry at 911 Myths regarding this - Losing Flight 77 - is up now to shed some light on it. I haven't really read it yet, this is just a tip-off. Calling on arguments by the relatively respectable and non-loony 9/11 Scholar Nafeez Ahmed, the 9/11 Commission Report and hearings, original interview with Colin Scoggins, and more, Mike W concludes:

Not a single one of Ahmed's arguments entirely withstands scrutiny, then. His most substantial point comes in the differing NORAD timeline, but the problems here are well-known, and Ahmed fails to provide independent confirmation to show that their version of events was correct. What's more, the NORAD tapes (released in full after Ahmed completed his book) contradict their timeline, for example clearly showing that they knew nothing of Flight 77 until after 9:30 on 9/11. And so while Ahmed claims victory, the reality is very different: the balance of evidence continues to support the 9/11 Commission timeline for Flight 77.

Additional discussion at JREF with technical input from Gumboot.

CHOKE ON THIS, DICK EASTMAN!

FLIGHT 77's SHADOW
July 6 2008
Update July 11

Mr. Eastman, if you're reading this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RADAR = VISUAL = SOUTHWEST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHACONAS: AN INTOLERABLE INTERPRETATION

CHACONAS: AN INTOLERABLE INTERPRETATION
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 4 2008
update 6/9 12pm

At the Loose Change Forum recently CIT witness Steve Chaconas, as presented in The Pentagon Flyover, came up again. [interview runs 17:34-35:00 in the video] Chaconas was a charter boat captain out fishing with others on 9/11, near a sewage treatment plant on the Potomac a few miles south of the capitol. CIT feel “Steve’s account alone is enough to prove a military deception” by having a plane fly across the river east-to-west, bank right and apparently fly into the Pentagon off in the distance. Critical forum member Bret08 pointed out that “Chiconas [sic] is a human being giving his judgement and perceptions. He is not infallible,” and asked his fellow members “Are we even sure that the plane he saw was AA77/decoy?” He’s exactly right to wonder about this, if not terribly articulate about it. He was of course hit with slings and arrows for his criticism. CIT ally Bitterman snapped back:

“Hey Bret! WTF! What is wrong with you? Wait, wait......don't tell me.....I already know what you do. It pisses me off. […] in APRIL, you asked this SAME QUESTION. Remember when we trounced you because you still didn't get it, and we informed you that Steve CAN tell the difference between a turbo prop and a jet airliner?!?!?!

4 engine turbo prop vs. a 2 engine jet. AGAIN, DO NOT ASK THIS QUESTION AGAIN. Your motives are obvious to me, but I have to play by the rules. So, for the last time....here is the answer to your STUPID question. [provides the quote I’ll post below] So? WTF man. WHY are you here? Who are you? Why are you important? How old are you? You're credible how? […] If this is ALL you bring to the table, then STFU.”

At this point the moderators stepped in. “JFK” is no Jack Kennedy – he’s also a moderator at plane-pod-promoting letsrollforum and seems to think he can make any tripe look noble with his pensive presidential avatar and management of ideological differences in the name of "9/11 Truth." In response to Bitterman’s barely-provoked tirade, JFK said “Brett is tolerated here simply in case if we overlook something.... Other than that I ignore him for the most part.” Further denunciations came unmoderated from Avenger not Aldo, and Domenick DiMaggio not CIT.

I’d guess that Brett08 is tolerated there because he is timid and not studied on the details, and because they need some on-site opposition. I know I wouldn’t be tolerated for a minute in the current climate (I’m “Deleted User” there, voluntarily, but it’s devolved since then). I know to point out that all we have for proof of the decoy white airliner thing crossing the river is this ONE witness who saw the final bank and dive preceded by a crossing of the river by what he feels is one and the same plane.

The pivotal part is where he saw it crossing close to him, considering the C-130 flown by Lt Col Steve O’Brien that followed after 77 to investigate the crash site crossed the river roughly when and exactly where Chaconas’ plane crossed. It has been reasonably proposed by Brett and myself and others that he actually saw the C-130 and just thought it was an airliner.

I’m not bothering now with a full deconstruction, but my opinion on Chaconas is that he’s neither correct nor 100% honest in his account, and neither is he outright lying, and almost certainly not any kind of “disinfo agent.” Consider this graphic: A perfectly honest and unbiased observer might connect these two maneuvers with a deduced bank, considering the proximity of the two path in time and space. Add in his apparent desire to boost the mystery and ‘unanswered questions’ surrounding 9/11 [27:00 in the video], a sentiment similar to that of Bob Pugh [video here, 30:30 on] and such deduction seems entirely too likely to be ignored.

Consider also his curious vagueness on characteristics of ‘the plane’ as it passed nearest to him:
Ranke: “Can you describe the jet for us? Did you notice how many engines it had?”
Chaconas: "I don’t recall anything specific about the airplane, and again, it was far enough away to where we, you know to me, it looked like a commercial airliner…”
Ranke: “How about the color though?”
Chaconas: “Nothing specific about it at all.” [25:05]
This raises a question for CIT. Guys, of all the witnesses you’ve interviewed, how many have flat refused to specify the color when asked? And why is it this one?

In closing, I’ll remind the reader that no other witnesses in the area have yet been found to corroborate this ONE apparent river-crossing by the decoy. And this pivotal and lonely account is based on a few words, like the hard point Bitterman slapped Bret08 with to certify it was one plane, and that an airliner. Carefully re-read this important passage: “and again, it was far enough away to where we, you know to me, it looked like a commercial airliner…” That’s a lot of qualifiers. It was far enough away that to me it LOOKED LIKE an airliner. So it was an airliner! The logical extension of this is that if it were closer, it might look to him or to anyone less like one and, perhaps, more like a C-130. The qualifiers indicate that somewhere in that brain Chaconas knows this.

ETA: And the fact that CIT passed up the chance to show him their ever-present E4B and C130 photos [nowhere in the video] for comparison indicates that they knew it too.

ETA: There will be no Chaconas update posts, and after this ETA no more additions to the post body, since Ranke said "that's it?" in the comments. I don't want to change the context on him. I will include additional marks against their literal interpretation in the growing comments section below.

A VISUAL ENCOUNTER?

A VISUAL ENCOUNTER?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 4 2008 2am

Colin Scoggins was the manager of FAA’s Boston Center as the attacks of 9/11 unfolded around him nearly seven years ago. He played an unexpectedly crucial role relaying information between the FAA, NEADS and others, as one can hear listening to the NORAD tapes released in 2004. Perhaps most famously he was the one who passed on the much-speculated on and unfortunate report at 9:21 am that Flight 11 was still airborne. I’ve been sent a copy of an off-line, detailed account Scoggins wrote, and was even able to make e-mail contact recently with Scoggins himself.

While I’m still trying to get his take on my own Flight 11 theory, he’s given me a puzzling insight into a lesser erred report he had to relay, which I had already covered in six miles southeast, as it related to CIT’s East-of-the-Potomac case. The call Scoggins made, at 9:35:41 am, was essentially this: “Latest report, aircraft [inaudible] six miles southeast of the White House,’ a report soon changed to “six southwest, six southwest of the White House and deviating away.” It was clear that he was passing on information from someone else, but how those people had become aware was not totally clear. I had presumed he was passing on a seen radar track, and that the change from SE to SW was a correction, providing a "brilliant indication" that the path released by the NTSB was “the one seen by radar controllers on 9/11” - a plane deviating away six miles southwest of the White House. When I asked Mr. Scoggins about it, however, it turned out more complex than I thought it would.

I asked, again presuming a radar track, “was the plane your people were watching ever on the east side of the Potomac? Was SE->SW an error->correction or correct placement->update situation?” He wasn’t sure at all on the reason for the change, which stands to reason given the general overload of the morning:

“I immediately called NEADS, and was advising them what I was hearing. They changed the direction so I repeated what I heard. […] So the real question is did AAL77 cross the Potomac, I don't know. I'm 99.9% it did slam into the pentagon, on what route of flight I have no idea, other than what has been published.”

He told me off the bat that “I never saw the plane, our radar doesn't go down that far,” meaning south, as he later clarified “our radar only goes down part way through New Jersey.” The information was being handed to him on a Telcon, a telephone (?) conference, with others at FAA, and passing it on to NEADS, where it linked to military response/lack thereof. He’s not certain who he was talking to or where they were calling from, but seems pretty sure who and where through some personal research (though he isn’t telling me yet). On Scoggins’ advice, as he said in an interview with JREF member Ref, NEADS made a call to Washington Center, where he thought there’d be better intelligence.

“NEADS did turn around and immediately called Washington Center, and advised them that “Boston Center reported and aircraft six miles from the White House”, the response from the Washington Center person who received this call was unbelievable, “How would Boston Center know if an aircraft is six miles from the White House” “CLICK” they hung up.”

I was under the impression Washington center was tracking, or aware of Reagan National's tracking of 77 at this time (about two minutes before impact, near the end of the loop), and would have been the source of this intel. But apparently they rejected it when it was handed to them from the outside. Perhaps they were just too busy tracking the plane to take accurate but minutes-old hearsay about it? But it’s a good question, and the one I was asking; “How would Boston Center know if an aircraft is six miles from the White House?” Scoggins told me:

“I was on aTELCON and there were people who were actually looking at their window and saw the plane, they were speaking it verbatim on the phone to the TELCON. So it was a visual encounter, I assume they were in FAA HQ on Independence AVE. I know one persons name who was there and according to a USA article on around 9/20/01 I have an idea who said it on the phone, and he is the same person that I received the Phantom 11 call on.”

Was he just confusing a human voice saying it for a human eye having seen it? I asked for clarification “are you pretty sure it was not radar that was giving this info?” I would guess FAA headquarters had a link to radar controllers, if not their own screens. He clarified “when they say six miles they probably would have meant statue miles, not nautical,” which would equal a slightly lesser distance. He also pointed out that “they were estimating on a visual of an aircraft moving pretty quick,” and that

“I don't know what office window they were looking from, I've always felt it was FAA HQ […] I am 99 % sure that the statement was made by visual, the same person who stated that this aircraft was 6 NM southwest, is the same person who told me that AAL11 was still in the air.”

I still have to doubt that this is so, Colin being 99% sure or not, because when you turn this into an eyewitness account it falls apart. The main reason is distance: I took a crop of the picture CIT took from witness Timmerman’s apartment, which shows the Pentagon in the mid-distance and the Washington monument clearly visible across the river at 2.4 miles. But its height of 555 feet is 400 feet greater than the length of a Boeing 757. Here is how Flight 77 would have looked if it were flying near the monument, nearly 2 1/2 miles distant:
And here is an experiment in reverse, a view west from atop the Monument. The location the other photo was taken from is marked with a red eye on this 400-foot-wide building. Again, a 757 is slapped in to scale just above the building, 2.4 miles away.

Now here’s the building Scoggins thinks the call came in from – FAA Headquarters on Independence Avenue in DC. At about a mile south of the White Hose and fairly near the Washington monument, they were calling in a report of a plane about five miles away from their ten-story building. Considering the experiments above, what would a witness at FAA HQ see five miles distant? Enough to report as a plane doing this and that? It's as likely to be reported as a gnat on the window, IF the witness was staring an inch from the pane. they certainly would be able to visually pick it out if they were first tipped off by, say, a radar report of a plane five miles southeast, er, southwest. But to notice it with no prompting makes little sense to me.

So I guess it doesn't really matter, but Scoggins could just have a false impression or imprecise memory, and then again he could be right. It is possible that some hawkeye saw it happening not terribly far away. It's possible but unlikely, and radar still seems right for this accurate but briefly inverted report of Flight 77's location.

THE FLIGHT DATA RECORDER {masterlist}

A BLACK BOX SURROUNDED BY A MOAT OF MYSTERY
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / The Frustrating Fraud
last update 8/24/07
Last updated 3/4/08

Much Ado About... Nothing?

Much has been made recently of the reconstruction of data from Flight 77’s Flight Data Recorder, the so-called black box found at the crash scene inside the Pentagon. The "9/11 Truth" analysis of the data is largely based on the fragmentation of the supposedly coherent data in the flight data recorder (FDR) of the attack plane – different versions have appeared, between which different parameters are found to be "altered," leaving each piece neither totally false and dismissable nor totally true and acceptable. Thus they hover in a middle space to be analyzed by experts – primarily Pilots for 9/11 Truth and their expert allies. Predictably, the data as read and shared offers different answers to different questions at different times, depending it seems on the circumstance. The answers consistently challenge the official account, but fail to prvide a rational alternative, and often conflict with each other…

Various aspects of the NTSB animation based partly on the FDR are covered in my three-part video series "That Darn NTSB cartoon," compiled with notes here.

--- About the Sources ---
- The Evidence Trail - NTSB, FBI, 9/11 Commission, and the National Security Archive keeping the data under wraps, and its final revalation to the public in mid-2006.

- The FDR Specialist's Study: A closer look at the verifiably NTSB-provided FDR data.

- The CSV file

- "Three CD's: Where's Snowygrouch's DVD?" The Pilots' Transatlantic animation connection examined. Snowygrouch and the animation's first appearance. NTSB status at the time: unclear IMO, and yet...

--- Analysis ---
- Pilot X and the 440-foot gap: Altitude Questions raised by the NTSB animation

- Created in Translation: the altitude re-set NOT in the animation - where is it then? at FL018... forthcoming

- A somewhat dated but interesting analysis thread by myself and others @ Above Top Secret: Great insights, explanations, obfuscation, and fumbling with appearances by John Lear, John Doe X, and others.

- Ten Degrees From true: THE "NTSB Animation" is Flat Wrong Demonstrating that the north of the Citgo flight path shown is in fact at least 20 degrees off from the Black Box data it's supposed to be based on.

- Final Altitude: Eight Readings: At least four altitudes attributed the the FDR, compared to flyover "witnesses," and the "official story." I did forget radar accounts which place altitude by accounts of it dropping beneath their coverage just before impact. This is said to confirm the official story and probably does.

- 20 Minutes and 20 Miles from True: CSV longitudinal offset

- NTSB animation internal geography {masterlist} My most tedious chapter yet - five posts with one or two more to come.
- A Turn For The Worse: The culmination of the animation studies above: visual proof that the animation's final overlay map is rotated to about the same tune the plane appears north-of-the-Citgo.

- Csv/animation altitude discrepancy. Kind of a mess, mostly intended as a self-correction.

- CSV final plots: Using timeline seconds to determine geographic seconds.

- Missing Seconds: My Last FDR post

- Bank Notes: Draws on FDR bank/roll readings as part of a larger argument

--- My own NTSB FOIA Search ---
- News Coming A half-ass rundown of why I was finally contacting the NTSB.

- NTSB FOIA Response recieved - no discs enclosed

- NTSB's "Goebbels" and Me When I talked to the director - not important but a tad interesting

- Video: That Darn NTSB cartoon part 2 - the Authenticity Sidetrack Snowygrouch et al. and my discless response explained by me in a video.

PENTAGON ATTACK TIMELINE QUESTIONS {masterlist}

Pentagon clock stopped at 9:57:40, almost precisely 20 minutes after the official story’s 9:37:46 impact of a pirated Boeing 757. The cause of this stoppage is NOT good evidence of the moment of the ‘first event;’ it seems to have frozen by melting, after one gear too many fused together in the jagged inferno that took nearly 200 lives.
http://hamptonroads.com/pilotonline/special/911/pentagon.html
---
This post is primarily to organize sub-posts of the Pentagon Attack Timeline Questions series, a project inspired by the 9:32 revisionism campaign spearheaded by Barbara Honegger.
Part 1 - The Elastic Timeline. Collapse time revision, intro to 9:38 evidence, 9:43 event evidence.
Part 2 - Another Six Back? The 9:32 Case. Honeegger, Gaffney, Terral - three different cases tap into the 9:32 frozen clocks.
Part 3 - 9:32 Event Evidence Addressed Does it hold water? Only in powdered form.
Part 4: 9:38 Event Evidence Addressed
Part 5: Fun with Timelines (forthcoming)
---
Timeline Indicated by Preponderance of Evidence:
8:20 am: American Airlines Flight 77 departs Dulles International Airport (about 20 miles from the Pentagon and the Capitol) headed for Los Angeles, ten minutes behind schedule.

8:54 - Flight 77 is hijacked, leaves its charted course, turns to the south, loses transponder signal and stops communicating with controllers.

8:55-9:25 - The hijacked flight turns east and travels back towards it point of origin near Washington. Controllers do not have access to primary radar, so with transponder off the plane becomes invisible for a half-hour until it appears on Washington-area screens at 9:25.

9:34-9:37 – The plane enters its final loop before impact, turning 330 degrees southwest of the Pentagon in three minutes, dropping the whole time. It then straightens out on a magnetic heading of 70 degrees and closes in straight and fast.

9:37:46 (give or take a few seconds) – impact with ground floor of the Pentagon’s west face at 530 mph.

Time given to evacuate the building: none.

A SLOW ZOOM ON THE FINAL LOOP

A SLOW ZOOM ON THE FINAL LOOP
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
July 16 2007
last updated July 19

Connecting the Dots
The initial flight path of hijacked Flight 77, as published in the days after the attacks, was largely a connect-the-dots approach. With no transponder after the terrorist takeover, and, we were told, “limited primary radar coverage” along the attack route, the return flight was not seen for a half-hour until it entered Washington airspace with its own radar. [1] The dotted line estimations published at this point sowed among the first seeds of suspicion over the attack. Was there a swap out there in the blind spot? As more evidence comes to light, all these paths have proven broadly accurate in that the 757 headed west, turned south over the WV-KY-OH border area, lost transponder, and returned, heading East straight to the Pentagon. Of the three maps above, Newsweek’s is the most accurate. USA Today’s path has a pronounced hump giving it a submarine profile, and Time’s map has the plane swooping north on its way back, crossing its outbound flight path, twisting the loop into an infinity symbol.

The final line of the journey as it passed east of its origin at Dulles, seems from here uneventful. But in these same early days reports surfaced of a tight, controlled, implausible loop over eastern Virginia, thought by many beyond the reported skills of the alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour. Facing the west wall, Flight 77 was said to have turned 270°-360° to hit - the west wall – oddly enough, the side just renovated to withstand bombs and impacts, largely empty, and across the building from the Defense Secretary’s Office. [more on the radar blind spot and the impact location in "From the blind spot to the empty side."]

Few if any eyewitness accounts seem to address the grand loop, since it was simply too big to have been seen by any one person – the first part of it was perhaps too high to attract much attention, but as it approached the Navy Annex and continued to lose altitude, it attracted more witnesses in its last several seconds, by which time it was going straight towards the Pentagon’s west wall. With such published accounts as the early cornerstone of our awareness of the attack, this magical loop remained largely invisible, possibly another government lie.

The overall uncertainty over 77’s approach lead many to accept this flight path as plausible to explain the final loop. It has Flight 77 flying south through DC’s restricted airspace with no White House defensive fire, headed towards Rumsfeld’s office before turning to hit the opposite side of the Pentagon, giving us the 270° turn so often cited. This map is quite wrong, understating the actual degree of turn by 60° and grossly misreading the original heading. [How this old map was arrived at and what’s wrong with it is explained separately in "the "old" 270° loop explained."]

The Radar Record
Among the too-vague early report was this from the ever-unbelievable Vice President Cheney, five days after the attack: "it entered the danger zone and looked like it was headed for the White House [...] Didn't circle it, but was headed on a track into it. [...] It turned away and, we think, flew a circle and came back in and then hit the Pentagon. And that's what the radar track looks like." [2] Five days later CBS News reported “radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle,” after which “the jetliner disappeared from radar at 9:37 and less than a minute later it clipped the tops of street lights and plowed into the Pentagon at 460 mph.” [3]

It was another month before radar specialist Danielle O’Brien, on duty at the Dulles ATC tower on 9/11, told ABC News’ 20/20 “it was an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed [...] I had literally a blip and nothing more.” As it headed towards the Pentagon, “it was just a countdown. Ten miles west. Nine miles west […] And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief.” But the turn continued until it was much lower and facing the same direction, after which O’Brien tersely summed up "we lost radar contact with that aircraft [...] and then the Washington National controllers came over our speakers [saying] The Pentagon's been hit.” [4]

O’Brien’s interview, aired in late October 2001, was accompanied by a radar screen graphic with a south loop of near 360 degrees off the east-bound flight as seen on radar screens. Seen briefly by millions, perhaps many thought this arc of dots just a guess or irrelevant, but in fact this same path would prove accurate and come back to bite them in the butt five years later. [Other than the red lettering, this picture is a direct screenshot from the program, viewable here.]

Official Reports: Zooming the Lump
We were only allowed a slow zoom in on what that loop actually looked like in the chain of official reports. Initial NTSB studies were kept behind closed doors, being in the FBI’s jusrisdiction and exempt from FOIA requirements. But the correct loop is there in a map from the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, released mid-2004. Note its general agreement with early reports, and also the little lump of ink on the south side of the terminal tip – that’s the final loop, unreadable in this bold line on an unnecessarily zoomed back map. This line is apparently taken from the NTSB’s Flight Path Study, made from FDR and radar data in February 2002, classified at the time but available to the commission and cited in the endnotes. The report explained how at "5 miles west-southwest of the Pentagon," Flight 77 "began a 330 degree turn." [5]

That document was finally released via numerous FOIA requests in August 2006 and posted online from numerous angles. Finally we see a zoom in on the mysterious grand loop [see below]. First we see their overall flight path, printed big enough to show a silly little loop at the end [blue box], and also a detail of the loop all on its own page, faded yellow on a pale orange topo map [red box]. This is labeled in the report as “DC area flight path,” so possibly from ATC radar track, while the overall flight path above it is said to be from the matching FDR/radar data. [6]

The Black Box
Additional Flight Data Recorder information further verifies this loop. The Specilaist’s Factual Report of Investigation (SFRI), is an NTSB documented drawing exclusively on the full Black Box readings, also released in the 2006 rush. It has all functioning parameters graphed out for the duration of the flight, spread out over 17 pages; The basics -altitude, airspeed, and magnetic heading - are reproduced on each page. Here is the clearest extraction I've taken of this, edited to show a zoomed-in final minutes reading. All lines and values are accurate according to the bars at right and left. [7]
The story it tells is that at 9:34 Flight 77 began a remarkable thhree-minute turn just short of the Pentagon. The change in magnetic heading is graphed - as it approached DC with a general heading of about 95-100° magnetic –after a slight adjustment to the north and back at 9:31-32, the plane begins its loop at 9:34 – for about three minutes it turns south and then near-full circle to the west, north, and finally settling, at about 9:37, on a northeast heading of 70° magnetic, after completing the 330° turn and descending about 4,000 feet in the process, the last 45 seconds were a straight shot at that heading and a steady descent to roughly zero altitude at 9:37:45.

Here is how to read the headings on a map - apologies for the fruit-flavored style if that offends anyone’s sensibilities. The angle and color tells headingat a given mement, tehe direction the nose is pointing. Magnetic heading, which the FDR works with, are just about 10° higher compared to headings based on geographic north, since the magnetic north pole at that time was about ten degrees west of the true north. Read zero also as 360, due north, green. Here the plane starts out deep blue – due east, roughly 90° from north, 100 mag on the FDR - and its final heading is about 60°. Add ten to get magnetic, and this is what the FDR says – 70°.

The erred NTSB working copy animation, used by Pilots for 9/11 Truth, matches as well the official loop; their “final maneuver” video starts out at 9:34:03, turn just starting, and straightening out from 9:36:45-9:37:15 The onscreen mag heading dial roughly matches the other FDR data, settling on 70 after the loop – but of course the on-screen animation somehow ends up twenty degrees off from that, which is what places it “too far to the left” to have impacted the Pentagon, as the Pilots discovered…

Sources and editing: Coming
[1] Phillips, Don. “Pentagon Crash Highlights a Radar Gap.” Washington Post. November 3, 2001. Page A06. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A32597-2001Nov2¬Found=true
[2] "The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert." Camp David, Maryland. September 16 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
[3] "Primary Target - THE PENTAGON." CBS News. September 21 2001. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/national/main310721.shtml
[4] "`Get These Planes on the Ground' - Air Traffic Controllers Recall Sept. 11," ABC News, October 24 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/20011024150915/http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_011024_atc_feature.html
[5] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. map: p. 33. Citation of Flight Path Study: Page 459, source 59 for chapter 1. Explanation of the loop on page 9.
[6] FPS
[7] Specialist’s Factual Report of Investigation: Digital Flight Data Recorder . NTSB document number: DCA01MA064 National Transportation Safety Board, Vehicle Records Division. January 31 2002. PDF download link: http://www.ntsb.gov/info/AAL77_fdr.pdf

FDR 1: THE EVIDENCE TRAIL

FDR 1: THE EVIDENCE TRAIL
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Updated 5/23/07

Researchers curious about the Flight data recorder from the Pentagon attack plane, from 9/11 to mid-2006 anyway, were frustrated by an uncooperative government. The National Transporatation Safety Board (NTSB) Web site announced “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and any material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI. The Safety Board does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket." The FBI of course released nothing as its PENTTBOM investigation ground on, and so the data the NTSB had gleaned remained behind closed doors for years.

The data did form a partial basis of the 9/11 Commission’s work. The path for Flight 77 the Commission published in mid-2004 was based on this, not that they ever explicitly said so, and reflected the official story. Oddly, the Commission never mentioned anything about Flight Data Recorder from any flight but 93, neither confirming nor denying the existence of the other three in its Final Report, even in the footnotes.

FOIA lawsuits for the entire NTSB record of 9/11 planes were finally successful in the wake of the Moussaoui trial’s conclusion in mid-2006. The National Security Archive at George Washington University announced on august 11 “the documents were released in their entirety to the National Security Archive and were received directly from the NTSB.” The “entire” catalog of info posted online at the Archive’ site that day included three types of reports:

1) Air Traffic Control recording logs: presented for all four flights
2) Flight path and altitude studies for flights 11, 175, and 77, the first two with complete paths and altitudes based on radar returns, 77’s path partially drawn-in due to a radar gap, but showing the final grand loop over Washington, as seen on Dulles radar, over a topographic map in close detail.
3) A detailed report on the Flight Data Recorder of Flight 93.

Regarding the third category of one, the archive’s announcement read in part: “in addition to the Flight Path Studies and Air Traffic Control Recording transcripts, the NTSB released a February 2002 “specialist’s factual report of investigation” on United Airlines Flight 93 based on the flight's recovered digital data recorder.” Since its cockpit Voice Recorder, the only one recovered and readable, is still under wraps, this clearly means the FDR. “According to the report, the flight recorder functioned normally,” and provided investigator with “graphic analysis of the data recovered from Flight 93.” But oddly, this release made a claim I’ve never heard explicitly elsewhere: Flight 93’s was “the only surviving recorder from the hijacked planes on 9/11.”

Wow! I knew the Black Boxes and CVRs in New York, while three of four were allegedly found but were buried and never admitted to having survived. But I had always heard that the Black Boxes were found at both Shanksville and at the Pentagon and had yielded data in both cases. But after seeing this and seeing no mention of such a study in the 9/11 commission’s report, it almost seems reasonable to ask if the FDR even survived at all.

But of course that’s not where it stands, and this is clearly just a mistake, perhaps by an intern asked to write up apiece beyond her understanding, taking Flight 77’s FDR study not being included as a sign it didn’t have one. That still doesn’t explain [i]why[/i] it wasn’t included, of course, and it is still telling.

The evidence of the recorder surviving is thick enough. Just after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI took over the crime scene, and brought in the NTSB to help locate plane parts and especially the black boxes. By about 4:00 am on September 14, the cockpit voice recorder and the FDR were found, according to CNN and other sources. According to the ASCE's Pentagon building performance Report, the FDR at least was found near the end of the plane's trajectory in ring C (see above). The recorders were turned over to the NTSB laboratory in Washington that same day, where technicians set to summoning the data within. The CVR was found to be useless, and so we had no audio directly from inside the plane, but on the 15th FBI Diretor Mueller said useful information was gleaned from the data recorder.

The 9/11 Commission had referenced this data indirectly, via the NTSB flight path study. As with the same for Flights 11 and 175, it included an altitude mapping, but while those were based on radar returns (with no FDRs “found”), flight 77’s altitude chart is listed as a readin from the FDR. Finally, I just found, the NTSB does have a site for downloading the once-elusive Specialist's Study for Flight 77 in PDF format: "Frequently Requested Items." That's one part of the story made less mysterious. [direct PDF download link]

Back to FDR Masterlist

PILOT X AND THE 440 FOOT GAP

FLIGHT 77 ALTITUDE QUESTIONS
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / The Frustrating Fraud
April 9 2007
last edited 4/15 @ 9:32 pm

In mid-2006, new doubts about the five-year-old Pentagon attack were found, built right into a government-produced animated flight path of AA Flight 77. The group Pilots For 9/11 Truth (P49T) have been able to capitalize on the inherent contradictions in this CG cartoon - most notably in their January 2007 video Pandora’s Black Box Chapter Two - to somewhat convincingly suggest an entirely new flight path that in different (and often contradictory) ways, disproved the official flight path and, if correct, make the plane’s impact a steep improbability. [I'm working on more detailed posts about both sources and discrepancies]. The latitudinal aspect of the new 757 denial trajectory, the apparent flight well to the north of the official path, is one anomaly in this animation, but will be covered elsewhere. Here we’ll focus on the altitude questions, which are, no pun intended, a little over my head and the heads of others, a fact that at least one side in the debate seems to be using to its advantage.

The animated video file was based on the flight data recorder (FDR) of the doomed 757, rendered by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and released in mid-August 2006 via a FOIA request by a P49T-affiliated researcher. By August 20, P49T co-founder Rob Balsamo (aka John Doe X) had come into possession of the damning flight simulation and wrote about it at the group’s site. The final frame was key: it shows the animation stopping abruptly, as the original data supposedly did, with the plane on-screen still hundreds of feet away from the Pentagon and still far above it. Time at this location: 9:37:44, the second before the plane is supposed to have hit the building. While at that very second the CCTV camera north of the attack path was snapping a plane cruising in about five feet off the ground, the onscreen altimeter reads 180 feet. The plane in this animation could not have hit the Pentagon, at least not at the official time. It would have been several seconds late by the speed and descent rate up to that point. But it cuts there, at about the right time but quite the wrong place, and we were thus prevented a glimpse of the fly-over, the secret landing, and the safe removal of the FDR to be planted back at the Pentagon. (??) These are the gaps we must fill in to reach the "Truth."


Screenshot of the final frame: The time is ajusted to GMT, not EDT, so 13:37:44 should read as 9:37:44. The resolution here is easier to read than in the low-res video of the final maneuver available for free viewing online here

Balsamo explains: “You will notice in the right margin the altitude of the aircraft on the middle instrument. It shows 180 feet. This altitude has been determined to reflect Pressure altitude as set by 29.92 inHg on the Altimeter. The actual local pressure for DCA at impact time was 30.22 inHg. The error for this discrepancy is 300 feet. Meaning, the actual aircraft altitude was 300 feet higher than indicated at that moment in time. Which means aircraft altitude was 480 feet above sea level.” [1] This is also 440 feet above the ground. Thus “the 5 frames of video captured by the parking gate cam is in direct conflict with the Aircraft Flight Data Recorder information released by the NTSB.” [2]

As John Doe X, Balsamo has put together several long – and lonely - posts explaining this true altitude conclusion at the Pilots’ site, and apparently has been pretty aggressive in promoting and defending it elsewhere. [3] I haven’t been able to independently verify his 300-foot correction, but initially guessed it was quite possibly correct. Either way, there is a re-set protocol; from what I gather of the reason behind this, FAA regulations mandate pilots use local atmospheric pressure settings when in the lower, more crowded airspace – below 18,000 feet (FL180). Above that point they re-set to a baseline pressure setting of 29.92. On its ascent, we're told, both the animation and the other data show Flight 77’s altimeter re-set from local pressure (30.21) to 29.92 at about 8:28 am). Pandora’s Black Box shows an altitude drop at that point from 18273 to 18058, a difference of 215 feet; so a rise of perhaps 300 feet when switching back to a nearly-same presure setting on the descent seems plausible, but the corresponding, FAA-mandated re-set is not shown in the animation, and hence the cover-up.

This may not seem surprising – why would Balsamo suspect there should be such a re-set despite the change of control from FAA-certified pilot to suicide hijacker? The reason he has a problem here, and really its own problem, is the other P49T data, also obtained separately by FOIA request, indeed did show the re-set from 29.92 to 30.23. Balsamo summed up the non-animated data “show[s] the altimeter being set in the baro cor column on the descent through [18,000 feet].” [4] I’ve checked and it does. Taking that as truth, the Pilot(s) asked the government why “the animation altimeter does not show it being set?” The question was rhetorical; the answer they had already decided on was that the omission was to make a strike look somewhat less impossible; “this is a blatant cover-up to confuse the average layman in hopes no one would adjust for local pressure to get True Altitude. Too bad for them we caught it.” [5]

A member at JREF named “Anti-Sophist” who describes himself as an Air Force trained flight data expert and electrical engineer, summed up of "JDX"s 300-foot correction “if his true altitude number is correct, he is actually on to something, […but…] No one seems to agree with his "true altitude" calculation except for him.” [6] To see what effect the "cover-up" had, and to help clear up which impossible altitude seemed more likely, I looked into the Pilots’ comparative data, a CSV file for Excel, called AAL77_Tabular, where the pressure re-sets at 18,000 feet are recorded each way. This document forms the basis of my FL018 research (thread coming), but I have yet not been able to independently verify its authenticity. Oddly enough, the recorded altitude does not change at all with the adjustment and there is no meaningful discrepancy!

Ascent:
time - Hg - alt
8:27:58 30.21 17938
------------------------------ FL180
8:28:00 - 29.91 - 18015
8:28:02 - 30.21 - 18093
8:28:04 - 29.91 - 18170
8:28:06 - 29.94 - 18247
8:28:08 - 29.91 - 18324
8:28:10 - 29.92 - 18402
8:28:12 - 29.91 - 18483

Descent:
time - Hg - alt
9:24:12 - 29.91 - 18205
9:24:14 - 29.92 - 18126
9:24:16 - 30.23 - 18049
------------------------------ FL180
9:24:18 - 30.01 - 17972
9:24:20 - 30.23 - 17895

The pressure was reset at 8:28, with no 300-foot drop in altitude, and re-set on descent, again with no effect. Yet it shows essentially what the "altered" animation shows at termination: 173 feet compared to its 180. [7] So the data here shows two pressure re-sets, 302 feet at takeoff, 173 at the end. The animation shows 300 at takeoff, ONE reset, and 180 at the end. The pilots insist the data and animation match except for "the blatant cover-up" of neglecting the second re-set, turning the data's real alt of 480-ish to 180. But in reality, the animation and this CSV file match from A to Z despite the alleged cover-up and that extra 300 feet is looking like a red herring.

But even without Pilot X’s "correction," a Pentagon attack could not have occurred by a plane that far from the building, and that high, by either the CSV file or the animation. Considering this animation also shows the northern flight path that rules out this plane reaching either the Pentagon or the light poles before it, a whole slew of glitches, or perhaps some other explanation, would be required to debunk this damning NTSB-supplied animation.

One interesting tack is to compare all available sources, check their degrees of authenticity/verifiability, and then compare which comport with which and, as Sesame Street used to urge us, find “which one of these things just doesn’t belong.” There is an investigation of this underway, going very slow so far but it should be up soon.


Sources:
[1], [2] Flight Data Recorder Analysis - Last Second of Data - 09:37:44 08/20/06 http://pilotsfor911truth.org/pentagon.html
[3] John Doe X. Fdr Vertical Speed, Altimeter lag issues addressed as well. Pilots for 9/11 Truth forum: Flight Number: American 77. Posted October 15 2006, 08:41 AM http://z9.invisionfree.com/Pilots_For_Truth/index.php?showtopic=106&st=0&
[4], [5] Questions for the US Govt regarding AA77 Flight Data Recorder. Posting date unlisted
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/pentagon.html
[6] “AA77 FDR Data, Explained.” Posted by: Anti-Sophist. October 13 2006at 9:10 pm. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=66047
[7] AAL77_Tab - Excel document - downloaded from: http://z9.invisionfree.com/Pilots_For_Truth/index.php?showtopic=64&st=0&

THE FOIA WARS

FARRELL VS DOD VS BINGHAM VS DOJ
IN SEARCH OF THE HIDDEN VIDEOS
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
December 17 2006

Enter Judicial Watch (JW), a conservative/libertarian grouping of lawyers who target government/judicial/legal corruption. They’ve been harsh on the Clintons and their various scandals, and were instrumental in House of Representatives impeachment efforts in the 1990s. But they have also proven willing to tackle the Bush administration to some extent – after all they’re supposed to be watchdogs. Representing FBI special agent Robert Wright, Judicial Watch charges pre 9/11 incompetence at the FBI’s counter-terrorism division (over both the Clinton and Bush years, from Freeh to Mueller). Most pointedly, they summed up that Wright “accuses the FBI of obstructing investigative efforts that might have prevented some of the September 11 attacks.” [1] Although it apparently wasn’t intended to such ends, the lawsuit has been used by many as evidence of a LIHOP theory of the attacks based in the dubious line that “softness” on “the Saudis” was to blame.

Now Judicial Watch is making moves towards pulling a leading leg from beneath the MIHOP no-plane-at-the-Pentagon crowd. In February 2006 they filed a lawsuit against Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department to release some video of the attack captured by Pentagon cameras. They have also announced plans to sue the FBI to release the 84 videos from surrounding cameras seized and kept under wraps. “Our experience has been that whenever the government takes extraordinary measures to keep the lid on documents,” their announcement of intent read, “it is worth investigating.” [2] JW clarified they were seeking video release “in part to help put to rest conspiracy theories that a government drone or missile hit the Pentagon,” clearly something the government should be eager to cooperate with. [3] Earlier JW suits to this end had been denied, with the government saying they needed to keep the tapes secret on account of the pending trial of Zaccarias Moussaoui.

Whatever logic there may have been in that refusal, it fell flat after the trial’s conclusion in early May 2006. On May 16, Judicial Watch posted the first two videos handed over to them by the Justice Department - one of them is simply the video from the Pentagon's security cameras from which the five stills were extracted in 2002, and the video is no better than the stills. The other was from a camera just a few inches away at the same checkpoint, and equally worthless as evidence for either side. These were not much, but were hoped to be the first in a series of releases. [4] This was big news on May 16; JW President Tom Fitton was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly in his “Impact Segment:” Fitton explained “we wanted to help put to rest conspiracy theories out there that were suggesting that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon, that the government murdered the passengers on Flight 77, and other outrageous stuff. Just having the videos released is one more leg of the conspiracy theory that has been knocked out. This also reminds Americans of the evil we are facing.” [5] Fox News in general also ran the story [6] along with several wire services. Fitton was quoted in a May 16 CNN story as saying “we fought hard to obtain this video because we felt that it was very important to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11.” [7]

Despite the watchdog group’s public relations coup, there is in fact some contention over who is responsible for these releases. Scott Bingham, administrator of the site Flight77.info, claims it was he, not Judicial Watch, that “forced the release of the recent flight 77 video.” He pointed to his FOIA lawsuit, Scott Bingham vs. DoJ et al., with Bingham posting letters sent to the DoJ and responses sent to his attorney Scott Hode. The reason for the request was summed up by the department: “tired of what plaintiff’s complaint calls “outlandish conspiracy theories” about the crash […] plaintiff seeks to correct what he describes as a veritable culture of misinformation.” Their opinion, issued August 1 2005, was that “this information should not be released until the risk to the Moussaoui prosecution has passed. Defendant therefore seeks summary judgment in favor of its assertion of Exepmtion 7(A) and dismissal of plaintiff’s lawsuit with prejudice.” [8] Perhaps it’s no coincidence, but unlike JW, Bingham is a 9/11 Truther, just one fed up with the Fraudsters. He seems to believe neither Loose Change nor the government.

The judge agreed to the exemption and and blocked the release, but as the Moussaoui case was decided, on May 5, Judge Friedman set a deadline date of May 26th, giving the government three weeks to either let the videos go or “show cause” to hold them longer. Bingham explains it was this date, not JW’s actions, that got them released in May. [9] According to a timeline of all this litigation, Bingham was indeed well ahead of JW. (thanks to Jim Hoffman at 9-11 Research for compiling this). It was back on October 14, 2004 that Scott Hodes, on behalf of Bingham, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to David Hardy of the FBI for any videos “that may have captured the impact of Flight 77 into the Pentagon.” On November 3: The FBI replies that their search “revealed no record responsive to your FOIA request,” and on the 17th Hodes appealed, citing evidence that the videotapes indeed did exist. [10]

Finally on December 15 Judicial Watch’s Director of Investigations & Research Chris Farrrell first asks for the same videos. Farrell’s request bypassed the DoJ and instead was put on a fast track via the Defense Department, though the request covered files from the FBI and Homeland Security as well. Both Hodes and Farrell received early-2005 responses that the evidence needed to be kept secret to protect ongoing legal cases. On September 9, 2005, a FBI Counterterrorism special agent filed a declaration admitting to 85 videotapes in the FBI's possession that were “potentially responsive” to Hodes’ and Bingham’s request; the agent further declared that she watched 29 of them before she found one that actually showed the impact. On September 26, Hodes filed a request seeking all 85 videos. [11]

On February 22, 2006 Judicial Watch filed a further lawsuit against the DoD for its refusal to release the videos, and on May 16 they finally obtained them, although the actual handover was by the Justice Department. They immediately posted the clips on the Judicial Watch website. Hoffman noted “the site is down for about half of the day due to demand” for the brand new footage. The high-profile lawyers thus were able to break the story first despite entering the race late and thus eclipsed Bingham and his site which, unlike JW, seeks to prove a MIHOP scenario with remote controlled airliners. It seems possible Rumsfeld and his lawyers helped JW steal Bingham’s thunder by approving the video first to Farrell - indicating that their days of letting secrecy feed the wing nuts were perhaps nearing an end.

Disc sent by Hardy at FBI to Hodes and Bingham, 3/16/06

Yet back on March 16, exactly two months earlier, David M. Hardy, section Chief of Records/Information dissemination at the FBI sent Hodes a disc with the same two time lapse videos later received by JW, labeled with a fancy cursive font “Flight 77 CD-ROM”. Bingham seems not to have posted them at this time – or if he did it seemed to generate no buzz. The first news my internet searches are showing was on and after May 16. On the 17th, Alex Jones’ Infowars site did a piece on the videos that mentioned the Bingham case, but this seems to be the biggest story on Bingham’s pivotal role, which remains absent from the mainstream news.

sources:
[1] Klayman, Larry, Chairman, Judicial Watch Schippers, David, Counsel, Schippers and Bailey, Judicial Watch. Wright, Robert, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Judicial Watch News Conference: FBI Whistle-Blower.” May 30 2002. National Press Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.infowars.com/jw_transcript.htm
[2] Judicial Watch Files Lawsuit Against Defense Department for Withholding Video of 9/11 Attack on PentagonDOD has "no legal basis" to refuse release of videotapeMarch 1 2006http://www.judicialwatch.org/5724.shtml
[3] See [2].
[4] “First video of Pentagon 9/11 attack released: Watchdog group says video will end 'conspiracy theories.'” CNN. May 16, 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/16/pentagon.video/index.html
[5] The O’Reilly Factor Flash. Tuesday, May 16 2006. http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=807
[6] "Pentagon releases video of plane Hitting Building on 9/11" Fox News. May 16 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195702,00.html (Conspiracy theorists may or may not be disappointed Tuesday when they see footage released from the Pentagon showing two angles of American Flight 77 hitting the western wall of the building on Sept. 11, 2001...)
[7] See [4].
[8] Case 1:05-cv-00475-PLF Document 13 page 5 of 23. Filed 08/01/05. Accessed November 8 2006 at: http://www.flight77.info/documents.htm
[9] Accessed November 8 2006 at: www.flight77.info
[10] Hoffman, Jim. “Pentagon Attack Footage: The Suppression of Video Footage of the Pentagon Attack.” http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/footage.html
[11] See [10].
[12] See [10].
[13] Accessed November 8 2006 at: www.flight77.info
[14] Watson, Steve. “FBI Withholding 84 More Tapes of Pentagon on 9/11: Magically Only 1 shows impact so why not release the rest?” Infowars. May 17 2006. http://infowars.net/articles/may2006/170506Pentagon_videos.htm

911 IN PLANE SITE - PARTIAL REVIEW

IN PLANE SIGHT OR JUST PLAIN SHITE?
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/The Frustrating Fraud
December 13 2006


When Versailles, Missouri-based Dave Von Kleist saw the Meyssan-produced “Hunt the Boeing” website out of Paris, he decided it “drew some very serious questions as to what had really happened at the Pentagon.” Von Kleist aired his concerns via the Power Hour, his daily radio show with his wife Joyce Riley, and later wrote, produced, and hosted a documentary video clumsily titled 911 In Plane Site (911 IPS) – “The FIRST 911 Video to Present VIDEO EVIDENCE – Not Theories.” Directed by William Lewis of "Police State 21" and first released in mid-2004, IPS promised “September 11 changed the world. This video will change September 11.” Others agreed and promoted it; famous writer, comedian, and brilliant civil rights activist Dick Gregory plugged for it (“everyone in America should see this video”) and millionaire 9/11 truth financier Jimmy Walter funded its wide distribution and helped it get local showings and press write-ups nationwide; it proved remarkably successful and largely dominated the field - at first.

Lurid, cluttered, and unbalanced: who says you can't tell a DVD by its cover?

This video was not a wise investment for Walter’s stated cause of bringing the truth to the people, which is clear from the opening montage of 9/11 crash and collapse replays underpinned with über-serious synthesized orchestral music that drags on way too long. It hasn’t improved much before the several agonizing minutes spent examining the “attachment” beneath the windowless “military cargo plane” known as Flight 175, and of the odd-looking video of yellow flashes on the WTC’s façade before – not after but just before - the planes hit. Jeremy Baker at OilEmpire put my own thoughts well, doubting the planners would be so stupid “as to attach a large, highly visible incendiary device to the bottom of a plane that they knew would be showing its belly proudly on every TV set on the planet.”

Dave Von Kleist on the set of 911 IPS

I’m not scientist enough to totally dismiss Von Kleist’s allegations (traceable back to LetsRoll 911 at least) that the planes were firing yellow-flashing missiles from these pods, but the official explanation seems to make more sense: the pods were simply wing faring, an ordinary thing on these two aluminum planes (if distorted by glare high in the brilliant sky). The planes then gave off yellow flashes, as aluminum would do, upon impact, not before (it’s not as easy to precisely read shadows from half a mile away as he thinks). Yet at the video’s conclusion Von Kleist specifically cited his worst evidence – the pods and yellow flashes - as hard and final proof of the otherwise compelling case that “terrorists with box-cutters” were not to blame for this event. He ended by asking his viewers after seeing his great epic “where’s your line in the sand?”

While the video finds irrefutable proof of remote control airliners at the widely documented battle of the World Trade Center, when presented with a lack of evidence of the attack vehicle at the Pentagon, the video’s logic runs wild and latches onto Meyssan’s case, opening its exploration with what Von Kleist thinks is his strongest point, that the Pentagon was not hit with one of the windowless, pod-equipped, missile-firing military drones used in New York, but with a simple missile. All in all, the case is poorly made, focusing mostly on the hole in the outer wall, the plane’s alleged entry wound, giving two drastically different sizes for this hole, both of which he feels were too small to allow a 757 to pass.

One particularly embarrassing mistake in the video is Mike Walters’ partial quote describing Flight 77, “it was like a cruise missile with wings,” which was cited as evidence of a missile. But in the full interview he said clearly it was an American Airlines jet that was like a cruise missile, I guess in the sense that it was flying through the air and was being used as a weapon to pierce a bunker. Any idiot could verify this with a quick Google search, as I did, yet Von Kleist and his entourage were so proud of this evidence they sent everyone who bought IPS a free copy of CNN’s “America Remembers,” so we could see how that video also only played that part of the interview.

As with the attacks he claimed to be unmasking, I doubted so many mistakes could be made on sheer accident, and began to suspect intentional sabotage. Jeremy Baker at Oilempire, a 9/11 Truth site, agreed and wrote of widespread concern that “the producers of this film may be operatives attempting to sabotage and derail the 9/11 visibility movement from within.” Baker bemoaned the effect of this video, amplified by its wide viewing, on the larger movement:

“You don't often see so many glaring blunders in serious documentary film-making, and if you think our detractors won't hop on each and every one of them you‚re wrong. These screw-ups, like it or not, reflect on the entire community of 9/11 activists (especially the ones who so strongly support this video) and could go a long way to alienating the fence sitters we can and should be trying hard to woo.”

With nary a true claim in it, 911 In Plane Site was eventually too widely ridiculed to serve as the vehicle for “changing September 11;” I actually found Fintan Dunne’s dismissal of it as “the In Plane Shite movielet” to be mildly clever. Someof hismoreegregious 'mistakes"in the WTCanalysis arewell-covered in this anonymouly-produced video "Not In Plain Sight." Perhaps even worse, Von Kleist was too old, conservative,and Missourian to effectively reach the teeming masses of the young, urban, and gullible. Both of these problems would be addressed as the Frustrating Fraud and the other flawed seams wound their way into another video try at setting loose the change Von Kleist was unable to.

Sources:
> 911 In Plane Site, the Director’s Cut. 2006. Power Hour video. Directed by William Lewis. Writtem produced and hosted by Dave Von Kleist.
> Baker, Jeremy. “911 – In Plane Site: A Critical Review” Undated, copyright 2004. article copied from: www.oilempire.us/bogus.html#planesite http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/baker1.html

WE'VE LOST RUPPERT...

MIKE RUPPERT'S POORLY-AIMED PARTING SHOT

From Meyssan to 911 In Plane Site to Loose Change, and in myriad other forums on many levels, the no-plane-at-the-Pentagon theory had grown into a central plank of the 9/11 Truth Movement, its unquestioning acceptance appallingly wide. I was especially disappointed with former LAPD narc turned investigator of elite crime Mike Ruppert. Before and after 9/11 he has taken on multiple issues through his newsletter From the Wilderness, from government drug dealing to international banking scandals and the CIA-Wall Street connection. From the 9/11 attacks until at least 2003 he consistently tried to, as an Oil Empire timeline summed up, “warn the 9/11 Truth Movement not to over-invest its energies and its credibility in questions of physical evidence” since such lines of reasoning “invite sabotage by U.S. counterintelligence programs.” [1] In his video The Truth and Lies of 9/11 Ruppert pointed to the ineffectiveness of the Zapruder film in changing the public mind on the JFK assassination. I considered him the model of 9/11 research in my earlyinvestigative phase; like me he skirted the divisive issues like the Pentagon attack because of their relative un-provability.

By 2004 he was wrapping up his 9/11 arguments, dropping the issue as dead, "Rubicon" I guess being the obituary. He was moving on to a broader program to prepare the world for the post-Oil Peak crash. In his master 9/11 opus and parting shot Crossing the Rubicon, Ruppert took the isue head-on. He stated “I have never believed Flight 77 hit the Pentagon,” and further described the attack craft, much like IPS and Loose Change might, as:

“the miracle plane. The one that nobody actually saw hit the Pentagon; the one that left no recognizable debris matching an airliner; the one [Thierry Meyssan] did a pretty convincing job of proving never hit the Pentagon because the hole was way too small and the damage pattern […] was totally inconsistent with a mid-sized passenger jet like a 757; the one where the engines melted, disappeared or evaporated, or were transported into space by the Starship Enterprise and never found; the one that flew like a fighter plane or a cruise missile.” [2]

He showed a certain change of heart, describing the analysis of physical evidence like Meyssan’s as “a key forensic technique used by police officers.” Of course Meyssan was “crucified in the American press,” and it was this Frenchman flogging, not the fear of being wrong (as Meyssan seems to be), that gave Ruppert his lesson “about what happens in America when one tries to make a conspiracy case in the public arena, based solely on physical evidence.” [3]

So despite his earlier caution, even Ruppert isn’t really with me on this case. Even as he has tired of “what happens in America” and fled to Caracas and the protective embrace of Hugo Chavez, on his way out the door he let us know the frustrating fraud has its tentacles everywhere, even superceding his finely honed “cop instincts.” How did it get to this point, and where does it go next?

Sources:
[1] Robinowitz, Mark. The Complete "No Planes on 9/11" Timeline. Accessed October 20 2006 at: http://www.oilempire.us/no-plane-timeline.html
[2] Ruppert, Michael C. Crossing the Rubicon. 2004. page 351.
[3] See [2].

FACES OF DEATH: MOUSSAOUI EDITION

THE FLIGHT 77 PASSENGERS: WE SEE THE BODIES?

"Okay, well, then if it wasn't a plane that hit the Pentagon, then what happened to the plane and the people on it?" This is at root a good retort but also of course the most over-used and one I'm not going to bother with. In fact, it's beginning to seem that we have the answer anyway. There are many ways to disappear planes and passengers, but the simplest explanation for the missing status of Flight 77 and its passengers, that for which Occam’s razor would lobby, is that they were simply on board the plane when it crashed as reported, killing two birds with one stone as it were and keeping the evidence consistent. The WTC is one thing, but if no bodies turned up in the wreckage at the Pentagon’s relatively deserted Navy wing, that would look mighty suspicious. In fact, we’ve been told all the bodies were recovered and identified as Barb Olson, Captain Burlingame and the others, and Fintan Dunne's guess that this was their most convincing crime scene seems well-founded. But verification remains elusive, and the critics maintain since the bodies could not have been fit inside a cruise missile, the officials are lying.

At least this had been the situation until the Moussaoui case closed in May 2006. In an effort to clinch the death penalty, the government’s team had showed the jury new photos that seem to have answered the question Von Kleist couldn’t, a hint of the coming “bam!” The Washington Post reported on April 12 “just before the lunch break, they also showed the jury pictures of death - the scorched partial remains of Pentagon victims and a blackened body atop a blue body bag.” [1] A lunch spent unsettled and queasy from the viewing had to help the hungry jurors move closer to that guilty verdict over the afternoon as they listened to the cockpit voice recorder from Flight 93, another first, and the voices of other victims just before they too were burnt.

All this seems unrealted to Moussaoui's guilt and it seems the Moroccan's involvement was secondary, an opportunity to make an entirely different case to a much larger jury. Indeed, after the trial was finished with a guilty verdict on May 3 and Moussaoui’s sentencing to six life terms the following day, the government made an unusual move. All pieces of evidence admitted during the trial were released to the public, the US District Court, East Virginia District announced, “with the exception of seven that are classified or otherwise remain under seal.” Including both prosecution and defense exhibits, these 1,202 pieces were posted online on July 31. The court’s statement noted that “this is the first criminal case for which a federal court has provided access to all exhibits online,” or at least all but seven. [2]

Like the evidence itself, the full reasoning behind this unprecedented decision to release it to everyone remains unclear. The mass release included mug shots of terrorists both at large and in custody, copies of fax transmissions and photos of thick binders. There were new views of the devastation at the Pentagon – the entry hole, the “punch-out hole” on the A-E drive, interior shots, and a new shot of what appears to be the turbine from a jet engine.

To avoid a grisly and distasteful speactacle, here is a "chalk outline" I made of the most probable airline passenger from the government's photos

Most striking, of course, were the four grisly photographs showing charred human corpses, most in the seated position. Skeptics have wondered if the corpses were of workers from the Pentagon, but if I were an office worker hearing explosions, I’d stand instantly, alert to act as soon as I figured out what was happening where. I’d only die resigned and sitting if I was on a plane and already knew I was toast and had no choice. Therefore my guess is we have a few of our passengers from Flight 77 – one appears small enough in fact to be little Bernard Brown. Rest all their souls, and it seems near time to finally put to rest the no plane theory.

So far discussion on these new photos seems curiously muted inside the movement. Screw Loose Change posted the day after the release, August 1, regarding “the new evidence released from the Moussaoui trial.” Of the evidence Site admin James had seen, “one struck me the most, in a quite horrific way.” This was not one of the photos of bodies, but an animation “listing all the locations in the Pentagon that the bodies, or rather the body parts of all the victims were found. If you click on each marker on the map, it brings up the name and picture of the victim. I challenge any 9/11 denier to click through all these markers, and then get back to me on how all of this is fake.” [3]

Yet over at the 911 Blogger site, the endless elaborations on theories old and new was momentarily interrupted in early October by an uproar over indirect references to these photos, astutely caught and translated from the video of a Japanese 9/11 Truth conference. One poster fumed about a “right-wing” Japanese politician who showed up and countered the no plane theory by claiming he had “photos of bodies strapped into flight seats, and other bodies, at the pentagon!!” Three successive members commented:

“[A]s far as i know no such footage exists which means that he is lying out his ass!” … “First, those pics don't exist. Second, if they did exist, what business does he have with them in his computer? It's very fishy” … “What a MASSIVE lie! […] it is shocking that they would try to get away with something like this. this could be big to trace this guy down and find out where his orders to lie came from and for what reason.”

All these were posted on October 6, well over a month after the government released the photos for anyone to see. Prosecution Phase Two Exhibits P200042, P200045, P200047, P200048, not that there are many links from the “Truth” sites. Someone else at 911Blogger quickly posted several links to the photos, and soon they had confirmation – and the same photos – from the “Mr. Aoyama” in question. Some apologies for jumping the gun followed suit, then the subject shifted. [4] It was a telling episode, displaying a certain out-of-touchness indicative of a movement that’s beginning to realize it’s on crooked tracks but perhaps too late to avoid the crash.

Fintan Dunne noted on August 10 the Pentagon’s apparent victory in this set-up evidence war: “They got the lot. They got plane bits and they got all the bodies. They got photos. They got forensics. They have it sewn up. What? But weren't they all substitute planes, remotely controlled? Plane Bits! AND bodies! Yep. Just a regular plane crash. They flew the plane in by wire. It had passengers. It hit the Pentagon. It blew up.” [5]

Sources:
[1] Markon, Jerry and Timothy Dwyer. “Pentagon Attack Recalled at Trial: Moussaoui Prosecutors Shift to Spotlight Local Terror on 9/11.” Washington Post. April 12, 2006; Page A05
[2] United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia. “United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Criminal No. 01-455-A.” Trial Exhibits.
[3] James B. “The Pentagon Victims.” Screw Loose Change. Tuesday, August 01, 2006.
[4] “Video: Japanese 9/11 TV coverage.” 911Blogger.com. Presented by: Reprehensor. October 5 2006.
[5] Dunne, Fintan. Post subject: Pentagon Honey Trap. Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:25 pm. “The Next Level: The Intelligent Alternative. Pentagon – Overview.