VIDEO REVIEW: PENTAGON STRIKE

First released for free viewing online in mid-2004, the Flash animation short Pentagon Strike (subtitled “what hit the Pentagon on 9/11?”) immediately made waves with its slickly-produced, strong-seeming argument that something other than a Boeing 757 was responsible for the attack on the Pentagon. It was created by Darren Williams, a 31 year-old British systems analyst and member Laura Knight-Jadczyk’s Cassiopaea.org. Williams e-mailed a copy of the video to Knight-Jadczyk, who posted a link on the group's Web site August 23. “Within 36 hours,” the Washington Post later reported, “Williams's site collapsed under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others to fill the void […] Across thousands of sites, demand for the video was so great that some webmasters solicited donations to pay for the extra bandwidth.”

My younger brother first told me about this little mind bomb in late 2004. Until that point the whole no plane argument never did sound right to me, but he swore this video would change my mind. I finally watched it and was actually impressed, if still skeptical, and started my journey to sort the glittery from the gold regarding this part of the attack I’d previously ignored.

Eventually associated as well with the Quantum Future Group and the website Sings of the Times, Pentagon Strike is still available for viewing at the same site: http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm if you haven’t seen it yet. It wouldn’t be entirely fair to call the video deliberate disinfo – Conspiatainment is a better word. It does give fair warning, opening with a screen reading in part “Critical Discernment suggested – knowledge and awareness recommended.” Of course they had a certain kind of “awareness” in mind, and knew few people at the time had much “knowledge” of the attack and would be well set-up to glean it from the video that’s done loading now…

It starts with brooding trip-hop music and a voiceover from Adolph Hitler, I believe, and text alerting us that despite the official story of the Pentagon attack, “in reality a Boeing 757 was never found.” What follows is a five-plus minute montage of still images and animated text in which circumstantial evidence like the seized videos of the attack is well-explained enough. The five stills from 2002 are analyzed incredulously, and a slew of eyewitness reports – or select snippets anyway – verifying all the tiring charges: small jet, missile, no plane parts, etc. Quoting the video’s backer Laura Knight-Jadczyk, the on-screen text reads “the very first descriptions - before the mind control machine had time to go into action” had described something “like a missile.” This was a clever way of indirectly misquoting Mike Walters (who said it was an AA jet that was flying like a missile and two other witnesses who thought it sounded like a missile).

As for the video’s physical evidence analysis – what I didn’t know then but can finally comment on – the punch-out hole analysis is better than average; they have it correctly placed and no talk of six walls. But otherwise it’s an unprecedented display of the Frustrating Fraud, all the machinations used before and repeated later. Williams again rehashes the Meyssan trick of showing a spray of fire foam while claiming to show the single small hole in the façade. Deceptive long shots of the lawn showing no debris are brandished, and only the smallest bits are shown up close – a supposedly exhaustive run-down that passed up, as usual, the telltale landing gear found inside the building. The unmarked Pentalawn and a brief golf animation are cleverly used to imply a specific 757 witness (Tim Timmerman) was lying about his whole story – just look at that lawn! The blue tarp smugglers were vaguely shown in the section on plane wreckage with a large question mark. The unburnt stool on the third floor is featured, as it was in IPS at about this same time, in questioning where the supposed 757-full of jet fuel went (answer: across the two floors beneath that – it never touched the third floor).

But such misleading “facts” are emotionally bolstered by a varied musical underpinning with well-timed highs and lows and long moments of suspense punctuated with dark techno/trip hop and screaming groove metal borrowed from the Dust Brothers (via Fight Club) and Marilyn Manson. This work clearly puts emotion above logic even as a computerized voice tells the viewer “you are now looking at the objective reality – please stay focused.” The video seems designed to snap the viewer dizzily from one point to the next, a torrent of images, “facts” and “quotes” that has worn down the skepticism defenses millions of average 9/11 Truthers and likely created thousands of new skeptics itself. After an open-minded six minute viewing experience, it would seem almost undeniable to many that anything but a Boeing 757 struck the temple.

These people know all about “mind control machines” going into action.

THE GLOBAL HAWK THEORY

RQ4? RQ SERIOUS?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
May 6 2007

Northop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk (R= reconnaissance, Q = unmanned). Specifications:
Wingspan: 116 feet
Fuselage length: 44 feet
Tailfin height: 15 feet
Top speed: 454 mph.
Engine: one, Rolls Royce AE3007H turbofan
Empty weight: 8,490 pounds
Maximum loaded weight: 22,900 pounds

Still under development at the time of 9/11, the Global Hawk entered reconnaissance use in the Afghanistan War, and has been used widely over Iraq. Clearly its timing of production just in time for the War on Terror is rather interesting to skeptics; it had just made the news in April 2001 by being the first drone to fly unaided across the Pacific, from Edwards AFB in California to a base in Australia and back in just under a day. [1] In 2003, as Pentagon questions were taking off after Meyssan’s lead, the RQ4 made news again, being the first UAV given FAA certification to fly unannounced in civilian air corridors. [2] Understandably, when people didn’t see the airliner fly into the building as they did in New York, imaginations run wild, and once a 757 had been discredited in some minds, the RQ4 had a certain appeal as a replacement.

Quinn’s picturing of the RQ4 decked out with missiles and a partial AA paintjob

Among those who run with their imaginings is “quantum futurist” Joe Quinn, who wrote in late 2004 “imagine that a significant number of people are witness to a drone aircraft like the Global Hawk […] Imagine also that this drone is painted with the colors and logo of a well-known airline that are only ever seen on large commercial aircraft. Imagine that there are even “windows” painted on the side to make the illusion all the more convincing. Imagine that, not long after witnessing the incident, all eyewitnesses to the event are told by authorities and the media that what they saw was a large commercial airliner flying into the building. Now ask yourself: in such a case, what are the chances that there would be seriously conflicting reports between eyewitness accounts of the incident? Very good, I would suggest.” [3] Of course, the eyewitness accounts are overwhelmingly either vague on model or cite an “airliner” or specifically a 757 or something of that scale, with no one indicating anything like a Global Hawk.

For five years after the attack, despite its serious shortcomings, many revisionist theories passively mentioned the RQ4 as a possibility, starting with Meyssan’s fingering an unspecified drone, possibly a Global Hawk, and picking up steam in 2003. Col Donn De Grand Pre told a listener on the Alex Jones show in early 2004 that he believed “it was a cruise missile. It could have been a Global Hawk. It was not a commercial aircraft." More often the craft is mentioned as a mere illustration, and far from the most relevant one, that airliners like the 9/11 attack planes could have been flown remotely. But some specifically and consistently pushed the theory that this very bug-brained drone was responsible for the damage at the Pentagon. Besides Quinn is French Researcher “Silent but Deadly” felt that it was the best explanation. Laura Knigh Jadczyk decided “there's no reason why [Osama bin Laden] couldn't also have been accused of getting his hands on a Global Hawk," and then wondered "again, and again, and again: why can't the American People SEE WHAT HIT THE PENTAGON?” [4]

Among those who've most explicitly fingered this new spy drone as the culprit, Israeli-obsessed, borderline anti-Semitic 9/11 Truth clowns Christopher Bollyn and Eric Hufschmid stand out. Hufschmid is especially prolific, from his mixed-quality 2002 book Painful Questions to his much worse 2003 video Painful Deceptions and beyond, his Global Hawk arguments make his theorizing look more like a parody of sorts than an actual attempt at truth. It was to Hufschmid that self-described Pentagon attack witness Sam Danner turned in 2006 with his incredible tale of the Global Hawk strike. Before he admitted he had fabricated the whole incident, Danner’s self-destructing testimony also dragged in Bollyn as well as fellow anti-Zionist conspiratainer Michael Collins Piper.

Luckily the lie wasn’t all they had, as Bollyn hedged slightly in his first Danner piece: “The evidence supporting the theory that a Global Hawk was flown into the Pentagon by remote control has been investigated by this writer in American Free Press.” This is true, as is that “Danner's testimony is unique in its detail and description of the aircraft.” but beyond that Bollyn’s analysis has nothing true to offer; Sam's story “is supported by an abundance of photographic evidence and numerous statements made by other eyewitnesses," and besides, "while Danner's testimony corroborates this hypothesis, which is supported by evidence, there is not a single piece of evidence, physical or photographic in the public domain to support the government version that a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon.” [5]

Looking at the physical evidence, a Global Hawk would have nearly the wingspan to clip all the light poles that were clipped, but not likely the weight necessary. That this tiny object should have continued after that to hit the building is doubtful, as is its ability, even with missiles, to blast the damage hole into the Pentagon’s west wall. The width of its penetrating core (engine/fuselage) is about six feet, compared the 50-foot core of a 757 and to the 100-foot wide swathe of destroyed columns of the ground floor. As for the airplane scraps found on the lawn, a painted RQ4 could possibly explain these, as could the official 757.

Regarding debris found inside the building, Joe Quinn feels the 757-looking landing wheel actually matches a Global Hawk's, and ignoring that even large engines have small parts, he addressed the famous FEMA rotor photo: “No one has come forward to confirm or deny that the disk seen in photos from outside the Pentagon could have come from a Global Hawk. Given the small size of the disk, it is likely that it did not come from a large 757 engine but rather a smaller-engined aircraft. Like a Global Hawk.” [6] Quinn was drawing on Bollyn, who believed the part was from an RQ4’s Rolls Royce AE3007H engine. Bollyn had contacted a company spokesman, who said of the photo “It is not a part from any Rolls Royce engine that I’m familiar with, and certainly not the AE3007H made here in Indy.” Bollyn included this as evidence. (??) [7]

Even after all this lack of correllary evidence and even after the Danner debacle, “Silent But Deadly” still sums up in the eyewitness preamble to his carefully crafted 3-D test of the official story (which the 757 failed), “sam danner said he lied, so statements are removed. Nevertheless, the best version is still the globalhawk one.” [8]

Sources:
[1] Aviation history as Global Hawk completes US-Australia flight Australian Minister of Defence Hon. Dr. Brendan Nelson MP http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Nelsontpl.cfm?CurrentId=628
[2] FAA Clears Global Hawk For Routine Operation In US National Airspace August 18 2003 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-03zl.html
[3], [6] Quinn, Joe. “Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757.” Signs of the Times. http://www.kasjo.net/ats/ats.htm
[4] Knight-Jadczyk, Laura. “Comments on the Pentagon Strike.” Signs of the Times. http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/boeing.htm
[5] Bollyn, Christopher. "Official Pentagon 9/11 Story Debunked." American Free Press. http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=75&contentid=3741&page=1
[7] http://www.propagandamatrix.com/140903enginepart.html
[8] "Silent But Deadly." Pentagon 3-D Test. Page 2. http://0911.site.voila.fr/index11.htm