LAGASSE'S EYES: WHICH SIDE OF HIS HEAD?

October 16 2008

Recently a fellow JREF member started a thread about CIT witness Sgt. Lagasse and his amazing wrong placement of the famous downed light poles. In the video below, at 5:45 he explains how he didn't see the light poles struck, and at 6:00 CIT dares to explain the "official story" pole locations and sets up a never-repeated feat of mental gymnastics. Lagasse can't abandon his NoC testimony now without saying something really dumb. So he does, and insists "nothing happened over here," where light poles were knocked across the road and into at least one car. He's in his own little universe here, clearly indicating pole and cab troubles further north where nothing happened. If he saw anything, as they came down, as they lay after the attack, or later in photos, he had to know they were at the overpass on 27 at the cloverleaf, not along a flat stretch north of there.

CIT chose not to use Lagasse's testimony as proof that Lloyd's cab and the downed poles were actually somewhere other than "official photos" show them. It would be the consistent thing to do, since he said it, but then acknowledging that the plane impacted the building where it meets the ground would be consistent as well. Running with this misinfo would be too obviously self-debunking even for the Comedy Improv Team, so they have explained how Lagasse is "in denial," warping his memories to fit the true trajectory. He can't grasp the horror of the light poles in the wrong spot, so he's shifted it all to where it 'should be.' Only stuff on the ground can shift like that of course, never the plane. He has to be right on that.

6:07 "No chance. There's no chance. If... and as a matter of fact, I know for A fact that this light pole [...] there was a light pole here that was knocked down, and there was a light pole here that was knocked down, not any over here." [indicating the real location] [...] None of these light poles over here were knocked down. They were here. NONE of these were knocked down."

He also denies any "official story" that has the plane south of the Citgo. He may be technically correct, but every element of the "official story" in fact mandates that it DID pass that way. The only "official story," he says, is the Arlington County After-Action Report, which does not mention the light poles or trajectory at all, but does softly indicate a path back to the poles in their graphics. So he didn't deduce their placement from that. Hmmm....

Interestingly, his story has changed over the years. This is what Lagasse said in a 2003 e-mail exchange with pre-CIT north-path flyover proponent Dick Eastman:

Eastman:
2. You did not say whether you saw the poles being struck down. Am I right
in assuming that you did? Did you see how high on any of the poles contact was made?

3. Can you recall seeing what part of the plane struck any of the poles?

Lagasse:
Question #2.... near the top....yes I saw the plane hit them..granted at the
speed it was traveling I cant be 100% sure of exactly where on the
poles...but I did remember a black and orange cab that was struck by one of
them

Question #3 Wings....there was composite material from the wings in the
area around the poles that had been struck..the fuse could have struck one
of the poles as well.

Y'all can do the math on this yourselves. I just wanted to post that graphic.

WALTER, PICKERING, LAGASSE ON CIT

August 15 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT THEN - THE WITNESSES

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT THEN - THE WITNESSES
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
July 22 2008
edits 7/23 2am

The Paper / The Witness Roster
Although it does not deny a 757 impact at the Pentagon, John Farmer’s recent paper You All Just Haven’t Talked About it, and its second Plane north path flyover theory proposition deserves special attention and a solid panning. At the outset he warned me:

“You are referring to my little essay as if it were some conclusive theory or something. It is not and was never asserted to be. My only assertion is that there is an evidence set for something more going on in the sky over the Pentagon and DC area at the time of the attack than the public record accounts for.”

But however seriously he meant it, the paper is far more specific than that. It spends its first seven pages on the evidence in the Citgo video supporting a north path aircraft – one solid but inconclusive clue – and the last six pages call on five eyewitness accounts that ultimately offer little if any assistance to the case: William Lagasse, Chadwick Brooks, Roosevelt Roberts, Center for Military History witness “NEIT428,” and “mole,” an anonymous source from a chat forum. One of these, Roberts, was immediately removed. Originally the paper said:

“Add to this another DPS Officer, Roosevelt Roberts who in a 2001 audio interview claims he ran out from the loading dock near the Pentagon southern lot and saw another plane flying low over the south lot, and there is no doubt that AAL77 was not alone.”

As it happened, the paper’s release roughly coincided with Citizen Investigation Team’s on-air announcement of having talked with that witness as a “second plane”/ flyover witness. Within days, after absorbing this new testimony, Farmer announced a change of heart: “I have had to remove DPS Officer Roberts as a second plane witness. If his CIT follow-up interview is accurate, he most likely saw AAL77 as it came down from the Citgo area and across Route 27.” Oddly enough from his account, it seems clear that Flight 77 was alone.

So right up front that leaves us four to deal with and two I’m already pretty sure are liars – the original Defense Protective Service Citgo witnesses cited by CIT in The PentaCon. He did not include CIT’s other Citgo witness Turcios, for obvious reasons, but this curiously impossible account did not alter his enthusiasm for the others that also make no sense to the same end. He decided based on an interesting interpretations that “when SGT Brooks and SGT Lagasse’s accounts are taken objectively, they both seem to be describing two different plane approaches simultaneously. One is consistent with the southern path (Lagasse’s yaw and Brook’s vibration) and the other with a northern approach.” Interestingly, like Turcios and Roberts, both only cite one plane bearing these traits.

Lagasse's Yaw
The core of Farmer’s analysis of DPS Sergeant Lagasse is his well-known north-path testimony considered with his final moment “yaw” (nose oriented a bit sideways from the plane’s forward direction) which meant that “it approached the Pentagon at another angle consistent with the actual flight path of AAL77." Now that sounds interesting, considering he already describes the south-path action of crashing low into the building. "In other words," Farmer explains "when he first saw it, he was looking at the right side" of a plane north and set to not hit "and then at the end he is looking at the left side of it," as he'd see of the real impact plane, and "as he would have a plane passing the south side of the station."

This observation spurred to me to reason out a few of Lagasse's early observations to Dick Eastman from June 2003 that had confused me before. When Eastman asked the agitated but open officer “how much of the plane was visible to you as it went in?” Lagasse responded that he “could see the fuse, tail, port wing and starboard wing root” at its final moment, but not the right outer wing. This perhaps fits better with a south approach (seeing left side), but both angles are similar at such a distance. He cites the rise of Route 27 as his view limiter at right, but I used the tree here).

More interestingly, he describes to Eastman the impact of this plane that had passed north of him:

“[It] was approx 100-150ft agl when it passed over theannex and continued on a shallow-fast decent and literally hit the building were it met the ground. There was no steep bank, but a shallow bank with a heavy uncoordinated left rudder turn causing a severe yaw into the building with the starboard side of the cockpit actually hitting at about the same time the wing was involved with the trailer…” [source]Indeed, a left rudder turn would lead to a left yaw matching the right side hitting first as the right wing entered the construction area. Since Construction storage trailers were either to the left of impact or too far right to be struck, and the right wing/engine is known to have torn through the generator trailer at about the time the nose struck, right side first, it seems most likely Lagasse meant this trailer and deduced from the evidence the actual impact angle. From this Farmer’s leap almost makes sense except for the glaring problem that he did not see his own north path plane he’d been tracking remaining high up and flying at least 60 feet – four fuselage-widths – above the crashing one.

So he does give clues consistent with both the north and south path, but gives them all to only one plane, which “literally hit the building were it met the ground.” While this fits with the trailer evidence he saw, it does not explain either the deflection angle of debris he noted (to the left/north) or the downed light poles, which he also saw and “remembers” in the wrong location - along his path, where he also places the damaged taxi. For this interpretation to work, he'd have to be constructing in his own mind a yaw AND a steady descent in order to fuse the two. In short, his testimony never made sense, and it’s only gotten more surreal with more verification. Lagasse is, at best, an unreliable witness. Period. His “yaw” changes this not one bit, and leaves me yawning as evidence for two planes.

Brooks' Vibration
Brooks’ value to Farmer’s thesis hinges on his 2001 LoC interview. Thanks to CIT’s 2006 verification, we know Brooks’ (stated) location, and I’ll reserve judgment on Farmer’s reading of his parked orientation and PoV. Although these are key to understanding this account, it’s something CIT did not sort out, and I at least am just guessing there. By describing a plane off to his left (and ahead?) while hearing a loud sound/vibration behind him, all well before impact, Brooks allowed Farmer to state “if SGT Brooks 2001 account is taken literally, then he was hearing a plane pass behind him while watching another plane to his left.”

We could try not taking it literally then, but there is some room for speculation here and Farmer takes it. I would guess the sound from behind was bouncing off the Pentagon, or perhaps the Citgo. But it’s possible it was a different plane, one left/ahead, one behind, which means about at the Pentagon, or just passing north or south of him and perhaps two seconds from impact, depending on how he was facing. He reported no impact or explosion at this time – not until the one he was watching approach from the west and impacted about two seconds after passing him, clipping light poles along the way, he thinks.

This means the flyover plane was well ahead of the impact one judging by Brooks’ narrative, to the tune of seconds at least (nowhere near the number he ticks off...). This certainly complicates Lagasse’s yaw interpretation! He saw the north path flyover plane pass and believe IT impacted, which necessitates the planes fly in simultaneously – at least one of these two reading has to be wrong. And no other witness describes another jet flying over the Pentagon several seconds before the impact.

NEIT428's Low Plane
The 428th witness interviewed by the Army’s Center for Military History is an Arlington National Cemetery worker and among those available now in Farmer’s FOIA collection. The key part of his account is this:

“Well, when we came out of the warehouse we heard this boom, you know, this big explosion. And we, all we could see was the smoke and the heat [...] after that happened, we looked up in the sky and there was another plane. So, you know, so we panicked. So we started running, you know. So I just dropped on the ground. The plane was so low we were thinking it was going to do the same thing, but the plane made a turn and went in the opposite direction.”

His name is still unknown to me, but I believe this is one of the ANC Ommpah-Loompahs verified in uniform and on-site again in CIT’s upcoming video smash hit whatever the hell it’s called (see the trailer around anywhere). If so my take should be considered in light of this, but whatever he may have said later, this is about his testimony as known to Farmer when he wrote this:

“My first impression was that this must surely be the C-130 known to arrive in the area a minute or so later. However, the altitude of that plane was relatively high and it seems unusual that they would duck for cover in response to it. The interviewer fortunately asks a follow-up question regarding the altitude.

“It was low enough that it could touch the building, the warehouse. It was close.””

Farmer wondered about the “documented […] plane that approached the White House from the Washington Monument area [and was] over the White House at 09:41” and if this was “the plane witnessed by the Citgo and ANC witnesses.” [emph mine] I would guess C-130 with confused altitude clues. He could see the cockpit and perhaps the people in it because it was at a distance to the west, as the C-130 was, and he was seeing its nosecone higher than he remembers and perhaps lower than we’ve all been thinking. Also he was likely nervous and exaggerating any possible threat.

NEIT428 mentions a turn to “the opposite direction,” a U-turn, which none of the witnesses describe for the “decoy” plane but only for the C-130, as Farmer well knows. If “the opposite direction” as he states is "to the left towards the Washington, D.C. area” as Farmer decides, then it must have been coming fromthe DC area when he first saw it, which does not well fit with, for example, Lagasse’s west-east flight past the Citgo. A 30-40 degree turn to the left does not equal the “opposite direction,” which requires about 180 – like the C-130 did. Of Farmer andNEIT428, one has to be wrong about the turn described by NEIT428.

Furthermore, if this witness’ second plane is NOT the C-130, then his failing to notice the C-130 in addition to it is at least slightly odd. And finally, he had second plane pass but not impact after the crash there. This clearly complicates Brooks’ impact after flyover interpretation and Lagasse’s simultaneous passage – of the paper’s proposed readings of Lagasse, Brooks and NEIT 428, at least two have to be wrong about the order of events.

Mole's 757 "over the mall"
And the fourth remaining witness in this sorry parade finally gives us something a bit more promising, but it’s an anonymous online source. Back in March 2002, Screen-name “mole” posted at the techguy forum the following:

“My Team Leader came in to say as he was coming in to the building, he saw a 757 flying in a peculiar location roughly over the Mall. (We now know that was the 757 that hit the Pentagon as it did circle downtown DC, supposedly looking for a target, possibly the Whitehouse which is not as easy to pick out from the air as the Capitol or the Pentagon, before heading west again, then turning east for its final run at the Pentagon.)”

This account is not scientifically precise, and in fact dead wrong on 77 being over the capitol (it was a common urban legend at the time) but it is probably legit as evidence and worth a look. Timeline is key, and the original post does make clear that before hearing this report, mole’s wife “called to tell me there was smoke showing from further down the Mall in the direction of the Whitehouse,” almost certainly the smoke from the Pentagon, further in that direction and the only smoking thing in the area at the time.

The timeline after is less clear, but I might guess he saw the E4-B pass at 9:46, eight minutes after the Pentagon strike. This craft is based on a 747 mode, not 757, which is interesting since mole explained how after this “I saw the outline of a 747-400 flying slowly south to north nearly directly over head at a low altitude. Planes never flew there as it is restricted airspace, almost over the Capitol.” Radar later showed this craft passed the capitol mall a second time at 9:49, but north-south near the mall’s west side, and he says it flew south-north, as it did on the first pass at 9:45:30 before turning left and passing E-W just a few blocks north of the White House.

Therefore, it seems likely after all to speculate that the “757” seen before this was NOT the E4-B, and quite possibly a post-77 second plane. Or it could be 77 itself, with “mole” or his team leader misreading the location clues to put it over the capitol rather than across the river. That might seem like a stretch, but considering how little over-the-mall evidence there really is, it can’t be dismissed. Despite these ambiguities, Farmer has no problem stating of mole’s account:

“With witness statements like this, it is clear that the 911 Commission failed in its job to fully explain to the American public exactly what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.”

No, sorry. It’s clear that we need some clarification on this. The author “knew” Flight 77 was looping over the capitol, but since then we’ve learned it did not, at least officially. Did this “knowledge” compel him to remember hearing it was over the Capitol, when really no location was stated? What we have here is an anonymous unverifiable account passing on a second hand report of a “757 […] roughly over the mall” at some unspecified moment around the attack time, before or after. And it was taken by mole as supporting the crash of that plane. For any other purpose, it's anecdotal evidence, weak and not able to be strengthened ever.

Conclusion: Gravel
So that’s my panning of half the paper, the other half being the video clues I’m not done with yet. Farmer’s optics and video analysis skills are no help on this side, his law-enforcement “extensive experience working with witnesses” has been of little help either, and his statistical insights failed to tip him off to the low odds that this would all pan out. The process of panning is to separate valuable ore from ordinary rock, and at risk of carrying the metaphor too far,, after watching all this gravel sift out the bottom, I’m left with a keen sense of how empty my pan is. A couple faint sparkles of fool's gold, I'd guess. Does it get any better than this?
ETA: Re-considered then in light of this paper never meaning to have argued anything concrete, and the fact that it clearly does argue something pretty cogent, it seems this notion was being floated, or offered as a possibility with some potential value. Or what, John? A thought exercise, a little mad-libs imagination moment just couched in serious terms for effect, a prank to amuse yourself? In the peer review sense, I have to offer my best assessment of your intelligence and intentions, and hope the last is the case.
ETA 7/27: In fact, perhaps this was just a strawman CIT parody disposable construct for that idiot Caustic to joust to the ground triumphantly, which I guess would be amusing. If so, it was fun on my end too, and thanks.

FOLKLORE/BRENNAN /MISSING TAPES

FOLKLORE/BRENNAN /MISSING TAPES
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 10 2008

Previously on this site I’ve cited “2001 LoC interviews” with Pentagon attack witnesses William Lagasse, Chadwick Brooks, and Roosevelt Roberts, all Defense Protective Service officers. These are part of a larger series of oral interviews gathered by the “American Folklife Center” at the Library of Congress, and more specifically from a sub-set of interviews collected by Utah State University student Jennifer Brennan. A USU website lists the impressive collection of 56 oral interviews recorded on tape and catalogued in their library after a folklore professor there “instigated this documentary project in her fall 2001 semester class(es). Some of her students participated in what was a larger (nation-wide) folklore collecting project," the site explains.

Remember when reading or listening to these accounts, they are not part of a scientific investigation of witnesses; the oral accounts are gathered as folklore, passed-down stories, only based in authentic experience. But around Arlington, they tell their kids that “folklore” consists of “fictional stories of a country or region passed down through generations to help explain natural phenomenon, often using animals and bigger than life characters. Paul Bunyan is an example of folklore.” How’s about the north-of-Citgo flight path, Pentagon flyover and all-faked destruction? A tall tale that will re-surface for generations when the subject of September 11 comes up? “What about those officers and that animation… didn’t some people actually see the plane fly over the Pentagon?” Never mind that it makes no actual sense, aside fro the vigorous lobbying of certain ‘investigators,’ it has a certain mythic resonance with a number of people, and these three accounts - and later accounts by the same men - are among the few real things that give it that.

But as well as embryonic folk legend, the tapes are evidence of some kind, and much of this is good stuff. The freshness of the accounts is core to their value, all recorded within a few months of the events. The register of all USU tapes, compiled in May 2004, lists the collection as including assorted paperwork “contained in the first of four boxes in the collection, each informant having an individual folder within the box. The audio tapes are held in the remaining three boxes.” Regarding the list itself, each informant's name was “followed by the call numbers (for both the interview paperwork and the corresponding audio tape), the date and place each interview occurred, as well as any other pertinent information." [emph. mine]

Including our three DPS officers, Brennan contributed 24 of the total 56 interviews (10 of which were also published at the LoC site - search "Jennifer Brennan" if needed), all conducted in late November/early December 2001. These are listed chronologically, starting with one Donald Brennan (Pentagon employee), whom she refers to as “Dad.” His account was in Box 1, Folder 7, and the audio tape in box 2, No. 4. The interview date is listed as Nov. 18, in Washington D.C. via telephone from Logan, UT. It includes “Tape log; fieldwork data sheets; 2 transcribed oral narratives included; collector release form only.” Himself a DPS officer of unclear rank, Brennan Sr’s account is detailed and coherent (and included in the LoC collection, in 2 parts). He didn’t see the plane but he mentions hearing two transmissions: of a plane approaching and a plane impacting – possible candidates for these calls include officers Brooks, Lagasse, or Roberts, all of which Brennan apparently helped his daughter get ahold of, along with at least some of the others I would guess, giving her by far the biggest take in the USU’s effort and I would hope high marks in the class.

Our eventual CIT witnesses are listed at the USU site thus:

William C. Lagasse (Pentagon employee):
Box 1, Folder 20 [AUDIO TAPE: Box 2, No. 17]
06 Dec. 2001
Fredericksburg, VA (via telephone from Logan, UT)
(Tape log; fieldwork data sheets; Collector release form only.)

Chadwick Brooks (Pentagon employee):
Box 1, Folder 24 [AUDIO TAPE: Box 3, No. 3]
09 Dec. 2001
Stephens City, VA (via telephone from Logan, UT)
(Tape log; fieldwork data sheets; Collector and informant release forms.)

Roosevelt Roberts, Jr. (Pentagon employee ?):
Box 1, Folder 27 [AUDIO TAPE: Box 3, No. 6 - MISSING]
10 April 2002
Waldorf, MD (via telephone from Logan, UT)
(Tape log; fieldwork data sheets; Tape missing; collector and informant release forms.)

So Roberts’ original tape is missing from the USU collection. This could have many different reasons, and is not unique to his interview. Four other tapes are also listed as missing, all from Brennan’s 24, and all listed as (Pentagon employee ?). two of these five, Roberts and Maiorca, were first logged with the LoC and still available, for a net loss of 3 audio accounts from all known circulation (Cooke, Ochoa, Wayman). How this happened and what significance it may have I can’t yet say.

There is also an odd pattern here by which the “date and place each interview occurred” as given on the USU site is generally later than the given dates for the ten featured on the LoC site, though generally within a few days or weeks of each other. Her fathers and Wagstaff’s are the only ones with dates that match, Nov 18 and 29th respectively, listed the same at both sites. Lagasse is listed as recorded on December 4 by LoC, and Dec 6 by USU, Brooks as Nov 25 and Dec 9. Rosati, Gamble, Stout, and Nesbitt follow this pattern. It seems reasonable to guess that one set of dates refer to the actual interview and the other to a later cataloguing or something The USU site’s wording must be wrong, since the LoC couldn’t be cataloguing them before they occurred.

The general proximity of all but two of the USU dates makes sense, but Roberts is listed as recorded Nov 30 by LoC and on April 10 2002 by the USU site, over four months apart. This is not unique, and apparently related to its missing status. The five missing tapes are all given dates of April 10, 11, or 16 2002. This is presumably the date they were found to be gone, the original dates somehow lost as well (written on the tapes?)

ANOTHER LAGASSE/THE SECOND GENERATION

LAGASSE AND EASTMAN PART III
ANOTHER LAGASSE/THE SECOND GENERATION
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
April 23 2008
edits - 4/24 4am

Pentagon Paradigm Shifts
Following the delirious euphoria of no-757-impact certainty in much of the 9/11 Truth movement, there was a strong backlash in 2005 and after as Hoffman, Pickering, Desmoulins, Rivero, Sferios, Salter, etc. tackled the evidence at the Pentagon and found the prevailing meme sorely lacking. Debunkers from outside the movement made gains as well on all fronts, especially regarding the Pentagon issues, made as they were almost exclusively of straw. In general people started noticing the size and consistency of the eyewitness record and of the impact hole. It was looking bad for the anything-but-a-757 meme passed of from Meyssan to Pentagon Strike and 911 In Plane Site and all over the Internet.

Dick Eastman and his Zionist-engineered south-path-killer-jet-with-weaponized-air- vortices insanity, and its north-path-decoy-flyover, as covered in part 1, was among those looking staler every day. as seen in part 2, his star witness Sgt. Willaim Lagasse was at the time the only witness who clearly described the airliner as passing north of him at the Citgo station, ruling out all the impact damage, which happened on a different path (taken by the F-16 killer jet). So Lagasse had rescued Eastman’s theory with his testimony in mid-2003 (accidentally it would seem), but as Eastman faded into obscurity, Lagasse too saw his moment in the spotlight pass. By early 2006, no one much cared what side of the Citgo the 'decoy' plane flew on, but the idea was out there, floating around among those who wondered what really happened at the Pentagon.

The Louder Than Words guys (Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, and Jason Bermas) were among those who seem to have missed the no-757-is-bs memo. In their massively successful 2005 Loose Change second edition, they showed how the light poles ‘just popped out of the ground’ undamaged, spoke of a single JT8D engine found inside a single 16-foot hole, and speculated that a cruise missile had hit the Pentagon. They also started their own Loose Change discussion forum in February 2006, to which several aspiring researchers signed on in its early months, impressed by the sudden high profile of the video and hoping to add to future editions.

Among those who signed up were Aldo Marquis (as Merc) in April, and Craig Ranke (as Lyte Trip) in June, two cats from Southern California who would later of course form Citizen Investigation Team. Russell Pickering of PentagonReasearch.com, a Seattle native, also joined in May under his own name, and shared his knowledge of the evidence, which had been leading him to posit the impact of a remote-controlled 757. As Pickering proceeded with reconciling his ‘mechanical damage path’ and witness analysis, Lyte and Merc held out against this trend with their own research showing again no such crash was possible. All three impressed the LTW guys into the summer, with Pickering being made a moderator and Merc proposing a brilliant plan.

A Gem From Arlington
According to Merc, it was he who first suggested, some time in the summer, a research trip to the Pentagon to gather clues about this increasingly contentious aspect. Avery and his partners agreed it was a good idea, and all three decided to go along, and decided to bring Pickering in as well to form a six-man “elite Pentagon research team.” The team sprang into action and, aside from Merc and Lyte, assembled in Arlington on Monday, August 21. On Tuesday morning, Pickering was at the Citgo making first contact there as Marquis and Ranke arrived. Ranke later summarized “This turned out to be very good because he established contacts making it easier for us to return and talk with people there later.”
L-R: Bermas, Rowe, Avery, Pickering, Marquis. Photo by Craig Ranke (app), Arlington VA August 22 2006 word balloons by Marquis, a mood clearly communicated by his pose for the camera here.

The team's few days there were filled with witness interviews, area photography, meetings with various bureaucrats, and a wee bit of partying at night. On Thursday afternoon Merc and Lyte caught their plane back to California, but not before first visiting the pivotal Citgo station with the full team. They filmed the area until they were briefly detained and had most of their photos/video deleted. As I understand it was this same day that, as Merc later summarized:

“We talk to the manager of the Citgo station in person in 2006 and she tells us about her employee Robert Turcios who saw the plane. SHE told us that Robert saw the plane on the north side and that this has always been his story. We instantly thought about Lagasse's email to Dick Eastman and red flags went off like crazy.” [source]

These were the good kind of red flags, of course, the kind you charge at. And he had Eastman and Lagasse to thank for the insight to know the value of this gem freely offered by that manager of a military facility. As he explained to me on the phone, “the only thing that ever gave me a clue to the north side approach was Lagasse’s account through Dick Eastman. When we went there […] it wasn’t like we were looking for any – or being led to any specific witnesses,” [3:30] but admits “Lagasse and the north side were in the back of my mind during that entire first trip,” and especially right after they were led to a specific witness that reminded him of that. [source – 3:30 and 4:50]

Shift Change - August 25 2006
Across the country in Washington State, that distant guru was apparently unaware that his findings were setting off alarms as they met, in Merc’s mind, with the elusive corroboration Eastman himself never received. In fact, it was a different mood entirely in Yakima, and it would seem old Dick had reached the end of his decoy flyover rope. At 3pm on August 25 he wrote on the subject of [frameup] “I am wrong about Flight 77 Pentagon. Outstanding video simulation of attack on the Pentagon using Boeing 757,” he noted, too weary to even type complete sentences. [source]

He was referring to Mike Wilson and Integrated Consultants’ computer generated 3-D animation showing how the impact likely happened. This accurate but imprecise recreation, posted in video form at Youtube back in late June, “shows poles, smoke trail” in a convincing enough manner that Eastman was forced to surrender; “I now believe that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon - that this explanation best fits the data. Please pass this around - I don't want to hold up the search for truth any more than I already have.” [source]

I thank JP Desmoulins for alerting me to this truly odd memorandum, which seems to roughly mark the end point of his tracking of Eastman and Lagasse. Reading of his unexpected surrender, I suspected sarcasm at first; nothing from the laws of physics, of logic, of any evidence, had altered his course before. But his language is quite clear – he asks the movement to continue without him. Note also how he says “I am wrong,” not ‘was wrong.' He was still there, just stripped down by the persistence of the debunkers, but until whenever, Eastman had announced his resignation from the case, at 3pm on August 25, news he had asked his readers to spread. Two interlocked theories, the F-16 impact one and the north-path airliner flyover one, lost a champion that evening. But it would seem it gets darkest before dawn, and just then, a whole lot happened at once to revive one of those, if not the other.

At the very moment Eastman hit the submit button on his resignation, the next generation of north-path flyover champions were typing up their proposal to replace him. There is no evidence Eastman followed these developments, or that he didn’t, but having returned to the west coast the previous evening, Merc was typing up his notes. Just two hours after Eastman’s pessimistic plea, he posted the first report on their findings at the LCF, entitled “There Was A Plane!” “Hey guys, I'm back and have some interesting news for you all. THERE WAS A LARGE PLANE SEEN DIVING TOWARDS THE PENTAGON! We have interviewed several eyewitnesses who saw it.” Does this mean he too had seen the light and was now promoting a 757 impact? Hardly. He offered a brief synopsis of their general witness findings, to be elaborated later, and closed with this more mysterious revelation regarding the pivotal Citgo gas station the official path passed south/east of (read 'west' here as 'north'):

“The Citgo manager said her employee places the plane on the OTHER SIDE of the Citgo, the left side or west side (blue line), she is "90% sure", there is a follow-up due on this... So spread the word. There was a plane at least as far back as the Sheraton, Navy Annex, and Citgo gas (WRONG SIDE!!) Flyover anyone? [emoticon – waving a white flag] There is more to come! Stay tuned.”
Above is the graphic that had its first airing as describing the yet-unnamed witness' account. And THIS in turn tied in with the NTSB’s own animation, just posted at Youtube on the 24th by Pilots For 9/11 Truth, which of course also showed the plane flying almost where Eastman, Lagasse, and now this employee had placed it, as well as too high to hit anything relevant. A major shitstorm was set to blow in within a remarkably short time, and more than any other moment, the evening of August 25th marks both the terminus of the old north-path insanity and the birth of the new, with curiously precise timing suggesting a shift change at a gas station.

Chess Moves Around CIT’s Lagasse
Indeed there was more to come, with two different words on the same subject being spread through the night and following weeks. As Eastman receded, reports came in from Pickering and Lyte Trip on the removed cameras, their tour of the Virginia Dept. of Transportation, more interview details (Walter, England, Zackem, McGraw, Paik, Pugh, etc.), and lively discussion of the implications. All parties agreed there was a large silver or white airliner in the evidence and no missile or killer F-16. But from there they disagreed; Lyte posted a pivotal thread on September 9 titled “We've Narrowed It Down To 2 Possible Scenarios... Impact or Fly-over?”

The next day the bomb was dropped by his partner declaring which one made more sense; Merc titled the thread “Citgo Witness I Spoke W/ Breaks The Case Wide Open, Flyover?” The announcement was big news at the LCF, perhaps a cause, and definitely a beneficiary, of the mass of users online the next day, (1,225 at 3:27 pm, a forum record), to mark the five year anniversary of the attacks.

In the published details of phone discussions with this still-unnamed employee, conducted on the 5th and after, we can see glimpses of a highly curious account; aside from the north path testimony, he also described the plane as gray and very unlike an American Airlines style, and he was the first to report any kind of pull-up of the plane, which for once directly indicated a possible fly-over. This added to his obvious value to the scenario in the ‘back’ of Merc’s mind, but not apparently enough at once to trip his overkill sensors.

They would not get to keep this witness without a fight. Just five days later, on September 15, Judicial Watch released to the public the Citgo station security video, obtained through lawsuits, and with no forewarning. Avery chimed in “I'd hate to say we caused any part of this, but our team sure caused a stir at the gas station....” Merc added immediately “I'd hate to say it had anything to do with our star witness, but what timing.” Pickering took a look at the multiplexed video and decided the only person that could be Turcios can be seen running into the store after the impact, contrary to his story given to Merc (this was quite a while before John Farmer or myself decided the same). Naturally, a massive fight ensued. On October 5 Merc said “the Citgo video was released SPECIFICALLY because of the Citgo witness and his account. I no longer believe this as a possibility, but as an unfortunate reality. A counter chess move if you will.”

The video must be altered, CIT has argued in defense of their witness, and Pickering’s work was said to have proven this, even though he denied it. Eventually this debate expanded to the point where Pickering asked Merc to clarify some hints: “do you believe I am a government agent and was involved in the alteration and release of the Citgo video to sabotage your work? Yes or no?" Merc responded quite reasonably “your behavior and actions indicate to me this is a possibility. But I do not know for sure one way or the other," hoping to cast some blanket doubt over his fellow researcher whose ability to communicate the truth threatened their endeavor.

Things had clearly devolved among the elite research team, and opinions differed strongly whether it was Russel’s stubborn and “deceptive” adherence to “the official story” that was to blame, or the absurd beliefs, belligerent antics and tactical accusations coming from the other side. As the LTW core guys worked out their anticipated Loose Change Final Cut on into 2007, they seemed to favor Pickering’s even hand while repeatedly banning and re-admitting Merc and Lyte. Much bitterness prevailed and harsh words were exchanged. Pickering later professed his pleasure with the final cut of Loose Change, once it was released in late 2007, while CIT had to comfort themselves with bit parts and being listed in the credits as in the “Arlington Crew.”

Not ones to keep all their eggs in one basket, by that time the duo had pursued their own avenue, which transformed them into the hard truth warriors known as Citizen Investigation Team. Their calling took them back to Arlingon, back to the Citgo, to their Lagasse and of course to Eastman’s original, and even further. They would “irrefutably” establish the flight path of the plane people saw with no reference at all to any mechanical damage or any other clue that the plane actually hit anything but air. As for the physical evidence, this would still be 'the crime,' but all faked by… some… means. Doesn’t matter. A “military deception” would soon be ‘100% proven’ by CIT and Sgt. Lagasse would, again, help unquestioningly establish it [no, that wasn't a typo].

THE FORTUITOUS DEBUNKER

LAGASSE AND EASTMAN PART 2: THE FORTUITOUS DEBUNKER
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
February 28 2008 3pm
slight edits 2/28 11pm

Note: I've improved grammar and spelling to compensate for limited English proficiency of Lagasse, Eastmann, Desmoulins, and myself, correcting all text as if it was my own. No meanings changed.

Left Hanging
Part one of this series broke down in painful detail Richard “Dick” Eastman’s “Killer Jet” Theory of the Pentagon attack, published in early 2003 by American Patriot Friends Network (APFN). The piece is obviously fraudulent, a fabric of selective manipulation supporting a ridiculous premise, and additionally undermined by irrelevant but inexplicable blunders like his north-south mix up of the crime scene (while still reading E-W right), which he eventually caught. In June 2004 he lashed out at fellow no-planer John Kaminski who, in criticizing Eastman, “gives the first rough formulation that is two years old - which was hastily sent to Ken Vardan at A.P.F.N. (it even has “north” and “south” wrong (switched) in the diagram and some of the discussions of the wall!!!)” He also mentions that he had been “unable to get Vardan to remove that old piece or to at least add a note” regarding updates like this [1]. He of course offers no apologies for the abuse of eyewitness evidence, for the idiocy of arguing air vortices could crimp five light poles to the breaking point, or for inventing both a second and implausible aircraft and a second imaginary flight path north of the ‘official’ one, at the wrong angle for the building damage and light poles and proving a fly over of the decoy 757.

The killer jet theory was always given far more credit than it deserved, but still was not universally well-received in the 9/11 Truth community. For example, Jim Hoffman of WTC7.net fame gave Eastman’s “Two Plane Theory” at least as fair a hearing as it deserved, focusing on the decoy aspect at least as much as the unsupported killer jet. “It is conceivable,” Hoffman admitted, “that some witnesses could have been fooled into thinking that a jetliner had crashed into the Pentagon by a pyrotechnic display concealing the plane's overflight, “ and even did some math to support the possibility of a landing at Reagan National (if the plane were computer-controlled anyway). But all things considered, he concluded “it is difficult to imagine that such a trick could have fooled all of the witnesses.” [2]

Hoffman aptly noted of the theory’s place in the larger no-plane-in-the-building mega-meme – Eastman’s ambitious attempt to reconcile eyewitness evidence with his misreading of the physical. “If the overflight element of the two-plane theory seems bizarre, it illustrates the difficulty in reconciling the eyewitness evidence with the conclusion that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon.” Hoffman dismissed the theory as “vocally promoted only by Eastman,” as striking most others as “absurd,” and as “relatively sidelined.” [2]

But Eastman was either oblivious or whatever, and barreled ahead with his new info-weapon. After the Killer Jet piece’s release and shortly before reinforcement arrived, on May 25 2003, he posted another message on the APFN website, a missive titled Jews, specifically Zionists did 9-11. [3] In this, he summarized his previous conclusions as “the Pentagon was attacked by a remote-controlled jet fighter flying low and fast that fired a missile into the Pentagon target immediately ahead of its own crash there while at the same moment a Boeing 757 with American Airlines markings approached the same target at slower speed and from a different angle and overflew the target at the exact moment of the crash explosion.”

More to the point, he noted “if it can be shown” that this is true, then “Rumsfeld (Sec. of Defense., Jew, Zionist), Wolfowitz (Deputy Sec. Of Defense., Jew, Zionist), Gen. Meyer (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Jew, Zionist), the CIA (working black operations jointly with Mossad and MI6 related to terrorism prior to and leading up to 9-11)” were “guilty for 9/11.” ”Decide now,” Eastman encouraged his readers, “whether men like me are your mortal enemy or men like Ariel Sharon, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsefeld, Bush, Rice, Gen. Meyer and Paul Wolfowitz. The future depends on the decision you make. I'll know by your responses to this message how you have chosen.” [3]

Dear Sir Rest Assured / The Unknown
About a month after this ultimatum, but presumably unrelated to it, Sgt. William Lagsse chose to let Eastman have a piece of his mind. As a civilian employee of the Pentagon (Defense Protective Services officer) who witnessed the 757 attack and explosion, he was miffed at the crazy missile-fighter-flyover scenario. He was there. He saw what happened. There was no killer jet, no fly-over. He sent a stern e-mail to Vardan at APFN, who passed it on to Eastman [7], certainly not the first he ever got. It read in part:

“Dear Sir rest assured it was a Boeing 757 that flew into the building that day. I was on duty as a pentagon police sgt.. I was refueling my vehicle at the barracks k gas station that day [b]adjacent to the aircraft’s flight path.[/b] It was close enough that I could see the windows had the shades pulled down, it struck several light poles next to rt 27 and struck a trailer used to store construction equipment for the renovation of the pentagon that was to the right of the fuselage impact point. The fact that you are insinuating that this was staged and a fraud is unbelievable. You ask were the debris is...well it was in the building. I saw it everywhere. I swear to god you people piss me off to no end. […] I know that this will make no difference to you because to even have a website like this you are obviously a different sort of thinker.”
[emphasis mine] [4]

Thus Eastman, diligent truth-seeker he proclaimed himself, was offered a chance to learn more about what actually happened. While we can’t know what was in his mind, Eastman was quite possibly aware that his theory was utter bullshit. Did he fear what this debunker might say if probed publicly? Was he concerned Lagasse would weaken his tenuous construct? Perhaps. He may have wondered if he should just do the simple thing and ignore the message as if it never happened. No one would have known but Lagasse, who’d just say ‘ah well, I said my piece…’ and Eastman, and whoever’s watching the Internet behind the scenes I suppose. A little nothing. An unseen blip.

Again, we can’t know what he was thinking, or what exactly he knew and when. But just with what was previously published of Lagasse’s account some troublingly vague clues were available. Most accessible was an ABC News Nightline interview, aired on the one-year anniversary, which Eastman was apparently only hipped to later:

"I read American Airlines on it. […] I didn't hear anything, but I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground, 400 miles an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot and I looked at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear. Didn't see any flaps down. I realized it wasn't going to land. I realized what it was doing." [5]

The apparent silence of the plane both fits Eastman’s take on the gliding decoy, but also mitigates against the noisy killer jet which would also pass quite near Lagasse. In fact he eventually clarified this was only a momentary silence caused by the Doppler effect – he heard it fine but with a delay.

“Before I could really think, I had my door open, and the [air?] off the wing pushed me kinda into my car," he also told Nightline. This statement which would come back to haunt him [see part III] and was also described in an even earlier audio interview for the Library of Congress, recorded in December 2001. [6] In this other clue available to Eastman, he also places himself at Barracks K, AKA the Nexcomm/Citgo gas station, for Pentagon personnel only, now in defiance of Venezuela’s regime, simply the Navy Exchange. From there he saw the plane “approximately 100 feet above the ground level, maybe 60 feet in front of me.” [emph mine]
Collectively, Lagasse’s description of the plane clearly fits the characteristics of the AA-style decoy airliner, which would almost have to have flown north of the Citgo to deny the physical evidence path. Considering the station is aligned roughly north-south and has pumps at both ends, Lagasse could have been facing either north or south when the plane passed in front of him. There is nothing in his early accounts to specify which. Therefore, this graphic compares Riskus’ ‘100-foot’ north path with the damage path and a literal reading of Lagasse’s 2001 account, with both a NoC and SoC variant. Both these yellow paths are closer to ‘official’ damage path than to the existing north path - dangerous territory to be finding the decoy in. The officer seemed a remarkable witness who was observant and detailed, and ‘adjacent to the flight path.’ That last part was for good or ill; he was on the fault line. North or south? Left or right? Eastman, it would seem, was faced with the abyss of the unknown.

Faith Repaid With Fortune
For whatever reason, Eastman decided to fearlessly embrace the opportunity. The first thing he did was post The Statement of William Lagasse at the APFN message boards. Of all the angry e-mails with ambiguous repercussions, this one seems worth sharing with all and was so on June 24, 2003, at 1:11 pm. [6] Thus a critical e-mail became the opening line with which Lagasse was introduced to the 9/11 Truth community, and it would be too late for Eastman to turn back without people noticing.

One clue to Eastman’s thinking is revealed in an e-mail to Gerard Holmgren the same day about this debunker. “I am not so much hoping to discredit this man, as to use everything he says to support the small-plane thesis -- as Riskus, when carefully questioned, ended up supporting it.” He offered clues to his fellow 757-denier Holmgren; “He has not said he saw the collision or saw the Boeing mowing down poles - his statements are worded more like deductions. In the end he may, all by himself, end up supporting the thesis that the trick was done in such a way that witnesses would be fooled into deducing just what he is deducing.” [7] [emph mine]

Curiously confident that he would find such treasure, Eastman responded To Lagasse immediately. For those familiar with the more recent works of Citizen Investigative Team, Eastman’s questions from mid-2003 will ring familiar.

“Ken Varden considers your letter important enough to forward to several people interested in what REALLY happened. Your statement indicates that you are a very good witnesses who knows planes and knows who what to look for. Before passing on your letter to others who can't make up their minds what to believe, could you describe further all that you witnessed […]I'd like to locate you on the map.”
[…] “Where did the plane come in, in relation to the Naval Annex and the Columbia Pike?
[…] Were you able to see what part of the Boeing hit the lamp posts and at what height the posts were "clipped"? (Or did you notice the downed poles afterwards?)
[…] were you looking at the port (left) or starboard side?
[…] Did you see the trailer being struck or is this based on your later observation of the damage?
[…] How did the plane descend as it approached the Pentagon at the bottom of the hill?” [7]

Now we know that Lagasse had read at least the main APFN article, and whatever other supporting pieces he may have, and knew ANC, Riskus, etc. meant north path and no impact, compared to the mapped-out ‘killer jet’ path up to and into the building. He had seen all this, was well familiar with the area, and in apparent blissful ignorance of the implications offered these clues:

"It was not over Arlington National Cemetery but closer to Columbia pike itself […] I identified it as American Airlines almost as soon as I saw it and radioed that it had struck the building. I was on the Starboard side of the aircraft. There was very little wake turbulence that I can recall, which was surprising to me. The aircraft DID NOT have its landing gear or flaps extended." [8]

These clues allowed our anti-hero to summarize the next day, with clear implications, “Sgt. Lagasse from the gas station saw the "starboard" of the plane as it passed him.” He saw its right side, so it was north of him. “This would place the Boeing over the Annex, in fact over the northern end of the Annex.” He cited it 'splitting the distance,' or halfway between, the ANC and the Annex, north of Columbia Pike and north of Lagasse at the Citgo – and thus the now-familiar north of-the-Citgo path was born in mid-2003.

Witness Steve Riskus had earlier seemed to imply a decoy flight path over the southern part of Arlington National Cemetery with no difference split. This path would have a compass heading of about 140° to intersect a point ‘100 feet in front of’ Riskus to the impact-flyover point, something Eastman had previously taken as his embryonic north path. But 100 feet eventually proved too close for even Eastman’s construct. He later wrote that Riskus’ measurement “can't be taken literally or else the plane would have come from over the cemetery and not over the Annex.” Since numerous other witnesses place the plane over the Navy Annex (more or less, though it actually passed just south of it), these north-pointing clues proved problematic.
This 2004 graphic by Desmoulins shows the approximate “official path” in solid pink, Lagasse’s described path in dashed pink and the severed light poles as the five yellow dots. Riskus north was untenable, but Lagasse’s improvement allowed a track that both involved the Annex, passing just north of it, and contradicted the official story clearly enough to fit the bill of Eastman’s fantasy flyover plane. Interestingly, Lagasse even passed along these tidbits to help discredit Riskus’ account:
"Because of the Doppler effect no one could have heard the plane if they were on route 27 until it was already in the building, so identifying its position and trajectory from that angle would have been difficult if not impossible...it was not over Arlington National Cemetery but closer to Columbia pike itself, and there is a small grove of trees that would have shielded anyone [southbound -ed] on 27 from seeing the aircraft [on the path he describes -ed] until it was literally on top of them ... again not much time to make the assessment.” [8]

The Witness in Use: Proving the Path
Just as he’d hoped, with Lagasse’s pivotal assistance, Eastman was now able to describe with previously undreamed-of precision how the decoy operation worked: “the killer jet came to the wall from behind Lagasse as he was watching the Boeing, hitting the poles to his right (west) and behind him (south) as he watched Flight 77 fly past overhead and slightly north of him.” Extrapolating this line back from “over the Sheraton Hotel, over the Naval Annex, over the gas station (and actually to the north of Sgt. William Lagasse who was pumping gas there!” he clearly traces a path that “is north of the from-the-southwest path of the killer jet as indicated by the physical damage evidence”

Cementing Flight 77’s role as the decoy flyover, Eastman iterated that “Lagasse did not see the Boeing hit the poles and neither did ANY of the other witnesses!” [9] This merging of Lagasse in with the general witness pool finally leads to an extrapolation that all witnesses saw what Lagasse says he saw. “The witnesses saw the Boeing 757 come […] over the gas station (and actually to the north of Sgt. William Lagasse who was pumping gas there!)” More specifically, a confident Eastman stated on Sept. 3 2003, more than three years before we’d all be hearing the same arguments from CIT: “the other path, the path described by nearly every witness who watched the Boeing approach the Pentagon [...] over the gas station (and actually north of Lagasse) […] which establishes that the Boeing could not have been the plane that knocked down those poles and hit the wall at approx. a 55-dregree angle.” [10]

In mid-2004 Eastman reiterated “The first lamppost that was knocked down […] was too far south of any point on the path of the approach of the Boeing which witnesses overwhelmingly agree came in on a line that took it directly over the Sheraton, directly over the Naval Annex and directly over (or North of!!!) the Citgo gas station where Sgt. William Lagasse (whose statements I have been offering for a year now) states that the Boeing passed north of him.” [1] It all worked out remarkably well; now everyone saw the plane north of the station, even though no one else at the time specifically backed Lagasse up on this, and as we’ve seen Eastman hardly missed a chance to remind people of his star witness that made his otherwise implausible ‘killer jet’ start to seem necessary.

Others copied his messages in every forum available and the decoy theory wormed into the collective mind of the 9/11 Truth movement. It wasn’t just Eastman who expressed hopes that this new evidence would bust the case wide open and bring concrete moves to restore whatever was lost on 9/11. Eastman however was the clearest voice affirming the killer jet construct as “the critical evidence, ample to convince any impartial grand jury,” [11] and the evidence “that can convince the broad public and convince any jury or war crimes tribunal or crimes against humanity Nuremburg-type trial.” [12]

A Doubter: Desmoulins
While Jean Pierre Desmoulins (seen here in mid-2004) takes pride in being born in the Dauphiné province of Southern France, he thinks of himself as an “Earth Citizen,” transcending boundaries in contrast to Eastman’s populist nationalism. [13] The former electrical engineer, licenced pilot, and college professor first garnered some attention as a no-757 theorist inspired by fellow Frenchman Thierry Meyssan, and looking at a single-engine fighter jet impact himself at one point. But eventually Desmoulins turned into a serious scholar of the Pentagon attack, which he still believed “a fraud,” if one involving a Boeing impact. He then did some of the best early analysis of the available evidence, as well as tackling disinformation (the 'noise' to the 'signal,'), notably criticizing Meyssan, who "made a huge error when writing that ‘no plane crashed at the Pentagon." [source: presentation - frame 0051]

An incisive Eastman critic, Desmoulins stated in 2004 “Sgt Lagasse's account that he saw the starboard side of the Boeing is the only solid argument for this [Killer Jet] theory.” But contrasting Dick’s assertions, Jean-Pierre noted “of course, it is in complete contradiction with all other witness accounts of the trajectory of this Boeing.” [14] He seemed almost alarmed at the emergence of Lagasse’s explicitly aberrant account, but open-mindedly explored the various possible explanations and the pros and cons of each. Memory problems were one possible reason, for example a "logical reconstruction made by his brain, where some oddity changes the side of the plane that he saw from port to starboard.” Also possible was a simple terminology mix-up to the same effect, or manipulation of the message by Eastman himself to create that mix-up. Barring these, Lagasse was truly stating it was north of him, which Desmoulins knew raised very serious problems – if not for the ‘official story,’ then for Lagasse’s testimony.

“Does anyone buy what he is selling you?” Desmoulins asked pointedly to Eastman’s APFN readership on June 28 2004. Mimicking his opponent's bombastic stylings, he subtitled the missive “Conclusive Proof insane bullshiter Eastman guilty of 911 investigation fraud.” [15] In harsh and not entirely correct terms Desmoulins declared:

“the phrase '"I was on the starboard side of the plane" is faked. Lagasse could only be on the port side of the plane. This fakery proves that Eastman is not a serious and honest researcher, but just an insane person who wants, by all means, "prove" his "killer jet theory."”

The conclusion is sound but the reasoning faulty. Eastman, as “Senhor San,” responded the following day, lashing out at Desmoulins’ “garbage accusations:” “Lagasse wrote and told me on the phone” all the evidence that he then presented as-is. “This is straight-forward and simple. Desmoulins is trying to make it confusing. I spoke to Lagasse. I even provided Desmoulins with Lagasse's address, way back when Desmoulins was pretending to be a friendly fellow-seeker of the truth who merely happened to disagree on certain points etc.”

This exchange was posted by Eastman with the heading “someone judge this debate.” In my assessment, despite being essentially correct, in this case a seemingly confused Desmoulins lost to a collected Eastman, who was making sense for once, thanks to Lagasse’s clarity. To the charge “all the witnesses, including Lagasse, saw a Boeing, and they saw it flying on a trajectory which places it south of the gas station.” Eastman responded “absolutely false. Lagasse places it north.” He’s right, if we’re taking words for reality. When Desmoulins tried to cite a south-of-Citgo witness account, Eastman snapped back “Penny Elgas did not say the plane passed south of the gas station, she said "to the side of " not "south of." There is nothing in her statement to contradict Lagasse – the "side" she is referring to must be the north side - or else one of them is not telling the truth.”[emph mine] [15]

A Psy-Op?
This is the crux of it, as would become clear later; Lagasse himself - explicitly - placed the Boeing’s passage to his north, clipping light poles, a trailer, and impacting the building, even though it couldn’t possibly fly north and do any of these things. Perhaps Eastman did insert the first ‘starboard’ hints himself but if so Lagasse (as seen in a second e-mail) played into it immediately and by the time of this debate was an autonomous NoC-generator who never in the process or later moved to clear his name or set anything straight, and of course would later meet the second generation of flyover researchers to confirm the north-path aspect [see next installment]. Thus any textual dishonesty by Eastman seems insufficient to explain Lagasse’s north-side claims. Of course Desmoulins was also aware of this and elsewhere noted:

“Sgt Lagasse has a good sense of observation and some knowledge of flight and aircrafts. We are thus probably facing a fraud. Either it is a fraud from Sgt Lagasse, pushed to do it by some authorities, and Dick Eastman is the poster boy in this operation, or it is a fraud by Dick Eastman who massaged the email of Sgt Lagasse.” [14]

In examining alternative explanations to Lagasse’s claim being true, most provocatively I think, Desmoulins offered as a possibility “Sgt Lagasse has been pushed by the pentagon psy-op organizers to give this account, to give credit to the "killer jet" theory and bring confusion among the researchers on the 9/11 case.” In support of this last point, which he admitted “could seem rather odd and paranoid,” he explained “I must say that I'm amazed by the tremendous efforts, on a world wide basis, to promote the "No Boeing in the Pentagon" theses. As a consequence, the statement on command of Sgt Lagasse, as a part of this "disinformation,” sounds acceptable to me.” [14]

This reflects my own gut feeling upon seeing the “fine officer” confirm the point on video years later and with only a dim awareness of this earlier chapter. But then, I’m a little paranoid, which is how I first got into all this. Considering this possibility, some other things start to make more sense; Eastman’s early embrace of Lagasse may have been more than blind faith repaid with blind luck, for one. His intuition may have been supplemented, either with a previous e-mail we’ve never seen, or in some other way. Nothing is provable in this murky realm, but little also is disprovable so all options must remain open.

Whatever was going on behind the scenes, Lagasse via Eastman only went so far. By late 2004 and early 2005 many people were hip to the no-757 psyop: Hofmman, Pickering, Bingham, Salter, Rivero, Bart, Desmoulins, et al, built on earlier works by Judge, Roberts, Harvey, etc. and a slightly larger body of evidence, to conclude that by whatever means, and despite the noise to the contrary, it seemed an airliner was crashed into there. Dennis Behreandt, for example, wrote an expose on the disturbingly prevalent no-757 BS campaign that was printed in the JBS-published The New American in August 2004. The embrace of such unsubstantiated nonsense, Behreandt concluded, “exposes patriotic Americans to the possibility of being misled and marginalized, an outcome to be avoided if the tide toward collectivism is to be reversed.” [16]

Eastman responded to this article in June 2005 with the same story, two years old now; “Sgt. William Lagasse was pumping gas at the gas station between the Annex and the Pentagon when the Boeing flew by him headed east, and it passed north of him, so that he could see the row of windows on the starboard side - which also means that this plane could not have been the plane that hit the pole the broke the taxi windshield, the southwestern-most pole that was hit.” [17] For some reason Eastman had largely fizzled from the scene by then, if still posting on-again-off-again up to the present time, and eventually the debunkers would get to him in his darkest hour and actually leave him momentarily doubting his absolute convictions.

Lagasse faded back with him, not forgotten but dormant. In fact it’s curious how quiet it got, even after the officer’s effort to shut up the killer jet lunacy backfired, his rebuttal having been co-opted as its prime support, there was no retraction, no published disclaimers, no lawsuit, nothing to clear his name. He seemed content with the situation. But imagining him restless as Eastman mentioned him again in mid-2005, I’d like to send him an e-mail back in time: “Dear sir rest assured, you’ll get a chance to come out of retirement as it were, but not for another year and a half. Just hang tight.” [part III].

Sources [full formating later]:
[1] Eastman, Dick. “Russian Fatalism meets Sucker Credulity in John Kaminski by Dick Eastman.” Fri, 9 Jul 2004 10:33:22 –0700 http://talk.mailarchive.ca/politics.mideast/2004-07/2076.html
[2] Hoffman, Jim. The Two-Plane Theory: Surgical Strike by Fighter Combined with Overflight by Flight 77. 911Research.wtc7.net http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/analysis/theories/eastman.html
[3] Eastman, Dick. "Jews, specifically Zionists did 9-11."
[4] Lagasse 1
[5] Lagasse ABC
[6] LoC interview
[7] Eastman, Dick. “re: Pentagon witness Lagasse NEW RESPONSES.” E-mail to Gerard Holmgren. Wed Jun 25 07:59:42
http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/6-27-03/discussion.cgi.58.html
[8] http://www.911-strike.com/lagasse.htm
[9] Undated piece "The Proof that the Rumsfeld Pentagon was involved in the frame-up attack upon the Pentagon, September 11 2001" http://www.bedoper.com/eastman/rumsfeld.htm
[10] “Senhor San” “Re: No, No, No! It FLEW OVER THE PENTAGON was Re: The Pentagon Fraud Explained In Simple Terms.” September 3 2003 http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/sci.military/msg00028.html
[11] http://www.mail-archive.com/political-research@yahoogroups.com/msg02578.html
[12] http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about46250.html
[13] http://www.earth-citizens.net/pages-en/his-whoiam.html
[14] http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/npp-lagas.html
[15] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/terrorinamerica2001/message/37704
Also: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/terrorinamerica2001/message/37705
[16] http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2004/110804factsstraight.htm
[17] http://www.homediscussion.com/showthread.php?t=127877

SGT BROOKS DRAWS A LINE

SGT BROOKS DRAWS A LINE
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
February 10 2008
edits Feb 11 3pm

Brooks carefully surveying the scenery before committing his “memory” to paper

The Path He Describes
It was a chilly November morning in Arlington, not long after sunrise, when Defense Protective Services Sgt. Chadwick Brooks met with Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team at the Navy Exchange/former Citgo station just west of the Pentagon. After some initial discussion next to two bright yellow traffic barriers at the station’s northwest corner interviewer Craig Ranke asks Brooks to move the interview to the location he was actually at when he saw “Flight 77” fly over or near the station just 62 months earlier.

At 34:20 in the video they are at the spot, and Ranke has Brooks confirm “this is exactly where you were standing when you got out of the car.” As Ranke later explained for those who take this too literally, “there is no reason to expect Brooks himself to remember the exact parking space," but I think all are in agreement he picked the right general area. "From that vantage point," Ranke feels, "north or south of the Citgo would be clear as day.” Indeed, it would be as clear as left or right.

Brooks said at 34:50 “we were able to see everything” indicating the plane coming from above, ahead, and to the right. At right here is the area Brooks first saw the plane passing from, over ("the middle") of some trees at the lot’s west edge. I’ve identified the fork-like structure in that space as an Air Force Memorial just finished before the interview was given.

His path description is fragmentary, but it seems that from over these trees, the plane passed via “the front of the station” over the ‘Jersey barriers’ where the interview started. But Brooks is also clear when questioned that it was not actually over the canopy - or the barriers - but more to the left, and entirely north of the station. “It was going on a straight line, a straight line towards the Pentagon,” he says at one point, and emphasizes again “it was a straight line” on which it “flew directly in front of the building” followed by “a great ball of fire [that] just goes straight up in the air.”

So he describes a straight path that came over the trees and the barrier, visual clues he recalls and has now had a chance to see, that takes it just north of the north canopy. Therefore his path described is something quite like this:

Note that a straight line between those points comes nowhere near matching a straight line to the impact point; a severe right turn would be required. In comparison, Lagasse's path originated further north and took a much straighter line to the impact/flyover point. This is shown in the video after Brooks’ description but before Brooks drew his own path. I had to re-construct this one from the video interview, since he wasn’t asked to draw out this path right after he described it. When asked by Loose Change Forum member bileduct, Ranke explained “I simply forgot to get him to draw the flight path” at that time, which is perhaps understandable, with so many aspects to keep track of when doing this kind of work.

Back But with a Sharpie
Luckily, however, Ranke “had both officers [Brooks and Lagasse] booked on the same morning.” So after Brooks finished and left, he interviewed Lagasse, and apparently seeing his flight path reminded him; “after Lagasse's interview I realized that I forgot to ask Brooks to draw the flight path and called him on his cell phone. He agreed to come back and draw it so Lagasse stuck around to see what he would draw out of pure curiosity. That is what led to the segment with both of them.” [source] Some might wonder if this dynamic introduced some distortion to Brooks’ second recollection. “I suppose I should have taken Brooks across the street again,” Craig confessed, “but to be honest it didn't cross my mind as I knew he had already explained in detail how he saw the plane on the north side.” So he stayed on with Lagasse watching nearby.

At 58:43 in the video Brooks is back, pad in hand, under the north canopy again. Craig announces “okay, Sgt. Brooks is gonna draw for me on the image where he saw the plane fly.” As the subject faces north and scans left right perhaps over-much, Ranke explains “now he’s trying to assess the area again, recollect where he saw it, and then draw right there on that piece of paper for me.” At 59:07 Brooks decides he’s not in the right spot to draw it and walks north, with Craig commenting “he’s going over here to the north side from where he remembers it flying.” The camera follows with a calming “no pressure, no pressure.” and films the drawing action. Funky music fades in oddly repeating the word “time,” as Ranke urges the Sgt. To “make that nice and thick for me.”
At about 1:01:30, Sgt. Lagasse walks over and peeks at it, and exclaims

Lagasse: “That's damn near perfect from what I saw. And we've never -- for the record we never talked to each other about this.”
Brooks: “Yeah, for the record, we never -- we've never discussed it at all.”
Ranke: “So you guys, neither of you guys have really talked about this with each other? Never in all these five years, and you both independently drew the flight path line pretty much exact.”
Lagasse: “I know, I was -- the way this has been going -- who knew what he was going to put down there because he was in a different location. But it's right there, which makes me feel good about the way I remembered it.”
Ranke: “So you're both pretty much 100% certain that that's what you remember the flight path being?”
Brooks: “But from different locations, yes.”
About a minute later they both chuckle strangely when asked if there was any chance it was south of the station. Of course not; however it happened, they both drew the same flight path, so it’s pretty well 100% proven. “Again,” Brooks affirms, “we never discussed this, that’s what I seen with my own eyes [...] "I know what I've seen with my own eyes. I know I was here, and I don't have to go around saying I was here.”

LCF member Bileduct (who was banned right after me) asked Ranke, after confirming the original described path and comparing it to the later drawn one, “is it fair to say that there is an inconsistency with what Sgt Brooks said he saw, and what he drew?” “No,” Ranke responded, “unless you expect humans to be computers. They only need to be correct about the approximate placement of the plane and this is all we should expect them to be correct about.” As Craig pointed out “You can't forget how these guys are all at the Navy Exchange/former citgo EVERY DAY […] They know the area.” So he happened to draw Lagasse’s flight path despite his own recalled memory and a visual review of an area he’s very familiar with, and CIT somehow feels this makes the discrepancy less suspicious.

An Ace or a Joker?
The chuckles might be telling; Brooks’ account Is studded with clues the he might just be having fun with these guys. While discussing the altitude, he directs Ranke’s view to the left; “you see where that telephone pole is?” pointing. The camera follows and zooms in expectantly just before he yoinks the point, saying “it was up higher – it was up way higher than that. It was just – it was just unbelievable.” Sounding confused and with muted disappointment, Ranke responds “oh, okay.” At another time, he points to “the Pentagon, which is currently located over there.” Not so much ha-ha funny is where, while facing west, he indicates a flight path to his right, or north, whereas his previous account from 2001 had the plane coming up on his left. This means either a south of the Citgo path, or a 2006 interview done with him standing backwards in the scene, switching his directions to compensate. This is silly witness behavior; he may as well have been wearing his uniform backwards to flesh out the discrepancy.

But perhaps the biggest prank of them all, one with once fatal-seeming implications, has been brilliantly capitalized on by CIT. He described a “United Airlines” 737, with blue lettering on a white (actually ‘champagne’) paint job. United didn’t even use a blue-on-white standard until 2004, at the time using white letters on gray and dark blue. It almost seems Brooks did a quick Google image search just before the 2006 interview in order to yank his interviewers around, or to sabotage his account. Brooks at first seemed the odd man out compared to Lagasse’s clear description of a silver AA 757 with red letters, matching the most the widely reported clues, Turcios’ gray then silver plane with unsure markings, and Paik’s ‘black wings’ seen from below. Obviously he didn’t really see a UA plane, but CIT later turned the tables, making Brooks’ account a pivotal point of the ‘white plane’ construct, which they feel is pretty well proven. He saw a white drone airliner with a single blue stripe, and simply morphed it in his memory to something familiar. Now this leaves Lagasse’s, Turcios’, and Paik’s descriptions - and much of the rest of the body of evidence - the odd men out.

Likewise, it can’t be ruled out that Brooks was simply amusing himself when he later told the Citizen researchers that their documentary based on his testimony was an “eye-opener.” I’ve still not seen the direct quote from Brooks to this effect, but am relying on CIT’s insistence, first aired when Aldo Marquis asked Arabesque at the LCF on August 9 2007 “did you know that Sgt. Brooks already said our film was an "eye-opener" and "anything is possible" when it came to him being fooled? […] He said it was possible he was fooled, are you saying that you know for a fact that he wasn't?” [source] He repeated the same paragraph word-for-word in the same forum two days later, and Craig pasted it another two days later at JREF, again repeating Aldo’s awkward sentences; “is it possible he missed the impact because he too went to radio it in. Did Sgt. Brooks detail the impact? Or did he say "and what seemed to be a quick second the plane went in front of the building and a big boom, fireball explosion went off.". He said it was possible he was fooled, are you saying that you know for a fact that he wasn't?”

Sure, anything is possible, including that he was fooled by the fakery. It's also at least as possible that he saw what actually happened and rather than being fooled, was just fooling around when he talked to the camera in 2006.

WILLIAM LAGASSE, 2001

WILLIAM LAGASSE, 2001
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
February 8 2008 11pm

My recent analysis of Chad Brooks’ 2001 Library of Congress interview, in the spirit of fairness, deserves a counterpart analysis for Sgt. William Lagasse. Both officers who would later agree on a north-of-the-Citgo flight path were also audio-taped for the LoC about their experiences in late 2001; Lagasse’s eight-minute-long account was recorded on December 4, about two weeks after Brooks’. [MP3 Listen/Download Link] Like Brooks, he gave the same basic location he did for his videotaped 2006 interview: “I was refueling my police cruiser at the Barracks K gas station,” also known as the Citgo and the Navy Exchange, “approximately 1/8 of a mile from the heliport side of the Pentagon.” But unlike Brooks, whose 2001/06 accounts seem to conflict, Lagasse seems probably consistent on the core point of the plane’s placement relative to the station.

At 4:42 he describes his sense of security as largely unchanged by the attack: “We all kind of knew that something like that was going to happen eventually. […] we knew there was a potential for an aircraft to hit the building,” he said, and added “I’ve never felt entirely safe at the building because it is such a target.” A skeptic might wonder if this previous talk about inevitable plane impacts helped condition him to see an impact instead of the flyover that would have to happen if it were north of the Citgo. But he is and always has been a clear impact witness: “The image of the airplane flying into the building has not ever left me.”

He describes briefly helping people out of construction area before he pulled back due to the smoke, and with his supervisor began a “methodical search and recovery of evidence from the aircraft.” He apparently didn’t think the debris seemed planted in any way. Oddly, at 7:18 he said “I remember being on the scene and seeing a chunk of the plane that just said “Ameri” on it.” This doesn’t sound familiar from the photos I’ve seen from as early as one minute after the crash. He also said “I remember seeing the light poles that the plane hit. That knocked it down. It’s absolutely surreal.” Indeed, especially considering he saw them on location, and in 2006 had shifted the location he remembers seeing them – and Lloyd’s taxi – to a point further north to match the flight path he was giving then.

And what flight path did he imply in 2001? It was a beautiful, clear day. He was standing outside his car with a great view, filling the tank. At first he didn't hear anything, but watched as "an American Airlines 757 flew approximately 100 feet above the ground level maybe 60 feet in front of me.” That’s as specific as it gets. The interview alone is inconclusive and vague and on its own it can’t tell us much. With pumps on both ends of the station, if we didn’t know which way he was facing, we’d have this scenario [orange swathes just over 60 feet north or south represent a 757 wingspan set along the basic NoC path and along the official/damage path]:
But of all people Sgt. Lagasse has been verified and verified as at the north end of the station and facing north. In 2003 he explained to Dick Eastman how he saw the right side of the plane, then described its flight path as north of the station. In September 2006 the Citgo station's security video was released showing perhaps Lagasse under the north canopy (and apparently no one under the south). In November CIT interviewed Lagasse and was able to record him remembering details to match the video, and got a further very detailed description of the trajectory and placement with visual cues.

Lagasse + North Path = uber-corroborated, perhaps over-corroborated. Score one for CIT. While the interview itself is inconclusive, their arguably star witness has no apparent discrepancies between 2001 and 2006.

Side-note of unknown relevance: I’m not sure who he’s referring to when Lagasse says at 6:25 “We have one officer who’s been recognized perhaps too much, and then we’ve got several officers who haven’t been recognized at all. And that’s – it’s disheartening.”