"OLD" 270° LOOP EXPLAINED [FINAL]

THE 270° LOOP AROUND RUMSFELD
WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Posted July 25 2007
last updated 12/9/07

Note: This article deals with Steve Koeppel's loop map only. Arabesque has also posted an excellent post partly on this article, related with the three planes-confusion (FL77, a C-130, and an E-4B "doomsday plane," all verified in the area at the time), later expanded to cover other areas.
Note 12/9: Steve Koeppel himself (I presume) has popped in here to help explain some things (see comments below). "I did state that I had been an Air Force and Reserve navigator (I am NOT pilot in the military! Would somebody clear that up?!?)" Yes. Koeppel was not an Air Force Pilot as cited by The Power Hour. He was an Air Force navigator. "AT THAT TIME (early 2002) my intent was get suggestions on why there weren't any tourist photos (of Flight 77) [...] I made no claim to creating the unimpeachable analysis," he clarifies, "nor was that my intent; that's why I put so many qualifiers in my post." Good. Among the scant evidence he called on to create his path, one escaped my detectors and still does: "after disappearing from the radar scope the aircraft had had reappeared approaching D.C. from the north and was thought to have been aiming at the White House..." See below for full comment.
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For years after 9/11, as controversy swirled over the details of the Pentagon attack, a working draft of the highly suspicious reported 3/4-circle loop in the flight path became widely used to cast doubt on the official story. This grand loop over Washington became one of the unifying points of agreement between Hunt The Boeing Pentagon no-planers and remote control-757 advocating “plane-huggers.” The general gist was eloquently summed up by Nila Sagadevan in early 2006:

“[T]his fanatic Muslim kamikaze pilot […] found that his “missile” was heading towards one of the most densely populated wings of the Pentagon—and one occupied by top military brass, including the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld. Presumably in order to save these men’s lives, he then executes a sweeping 270-degree turn and approaches the building from the opposite direction and aligns himself with the only wing of the Pentagon that was virtually uninhabited due to extensive renovations that were underway” [1]

While this sounds compelling, the flight path he’s talking about never existed. It was bolstered and seeded in the movement, above all, by this map:Those who cite this precise angle of turn, point out the lack of White House defensive fire as the plane passed within a mile or two of it, or of the plane going out of its way to avoid Rumsfeld’s office, for which it was headed, are probably referring to this map, if to anything specific. Russell Pickering’s Pentagon Research.com used it to illustrate; “you can see where the White House was passed.” He also carefully cited the map’s originator, which makes it easy enough to look up and double-check. Author: Former Air Force Pilot Steve Koeppel, Palm Springs, CA [2]

This led me to Koeppel’s undated piece, from way back, some time in 2002 it seems (it was mentioned by Hufschmid in Painful Questions, released 2002). The map and explanation of it were hosted originally by The Power Hour, producers of 911 In Plane Site, which is among the worst 9/11 videos ever, often dismissed as a too-long joke on the Truth Movement. Whatever the merits of his hosts, Koeppel's piece there explained how he reasoned out the map; none too promising is how he starts out with (apparent) inexplicable ignorance over the general contours of the flight:

“It was fairly simple to find the WTC routes, but I have yet to see a map showing the route flown by the aircraft that was said to have hit the Pentagon. So I read some of the reports and put together the attached maps. […] I'm surprised that I haven't seen this map — or ANY map — of the Pentagon airplane's approach. Given all the information that we were deluged with in the weeks after the attacks, it surprises me that this graphic was omitted.” [3]

The flight path of Flight 77 was not omitted by any measure, and it was not hard to find – even I knew the general outline of the flight, as : first published in Time, Newsweek, etc in the days after the attacks. Yes, the return path was a dotted line back then, estimated obviously, and too vague yet to show 77’s final loop, which was apparently his main question. But all these paths have proven broadly accurate in that the 757 headed west, turned south over the WV-KY-OH border area, lost transponder, and returned, heading east straight to the Pentagon. “Guardian” was one of the few that noted of Koeppel’s path “that this is a very strange flight path for an aircraft coming from the east and planning to crash into the Pentagon.” [4] It’s at least as odd for Flight 77, which was coming in from the southwest and finally impacted from the southwest, to wind up swooping down on the Pentagon from the northeast as in Koeppel’s map.

As an ill-fated aside before explaining his sources, Koeppel pointed out “what's surprising is how many news sources got the information wrong. For example, look at this graphic from Reuters, which has the attack on the wrong side of the Pentagon:”
Above is the graphic he used [right-click, new wiindow to enlarge], labeled “The Pentagon Attack” and featuring a six-point timeline of events, along with a grossly incorrect impact point shown. What’s at least as surprising, in my opinion, is where Koeppel explains “I based my map of the attack path on a description of the attack (see Pentagon Attack) which said the plane was initially picked up on radar east-southeast of Dulles heading at high speed toward Washington.” [5] Red flag! He introduces the erred Reuters graphic, and then tells us his whole analysis is based on a single account, and it’s this same graphic.

Another wrong point in it he (understandably) failed to catch was its understatement of the loop by 60° – it was indeed to the right (south) but was actually 330°, nearly full circle, a descriptor widely used outside of the source he chose. As for how he came up with the southward swoop, Koeppel explained it as starting from “the 270 degree right turn” leaving him “puzzled.” A “near-circular” turn to the right, off an approach from the west, to hit the Pentagon at the final angle he gave no clue of being aware of, Koeppel might’ve guessed something like the official and logical connecting loop (here in yellow). Instead, he decided to bring it in from the north; “I realized that [the 3/4 loop] would provide a simple set of landmarks for the pilot. Just intercept the Potomac River north of town, follow it south until you see the Washington Monument or Capitol,” and then, as the Reuters guy said, make a 270 degree right turn and hit the far north edge of the west wall at the fourth-floor level. So thinking like a novice pilot, he found an arbitrary 270° line of landmarks in that area that might guide one to the target, and then presumed that to be the most logical flight path that he felt “meets all the conditions in the description.” Below is a map that helps clarify that his entire red arc is indeed east-southeast of Dulles, barely, and this seems to be a plausible path – if we disregard the official and logical flight path up till then (blue).

If the final loop Koeppel arrived at (red) was to be connected with the official story path (blue), that would necessitate the purple arc, or something similar, to connect the two. Since he was generally aware of the plane's position before turning (blue asterisk in the center of my map, actually pretty close to the official flight path, and nowhere near "the Potomac river north of town"), he in fact was implying the purple arc. However, he fails to explain or illustrate this turn to the left/north around and over DC, which is nowhere in his Reuter’s graphic or any other account. He made no mention of the full implied loop of roughly 400° from there needed for his loop to work.

In short, despite his ignorance of “ANY map of the Pentagon airplane's approach,” Koeppel was able to place the plane properly before its turn, but then invented the wild purple and red maneuver and only explained and illustrated the second half of it. He called this analysis and map “my contribution to the effort to try to make sense of an insane event. I don't know if it adds clarity or static, but it seems a part of the puzzle that has been missing.” [6] Looking at the method that gave us that half-map, it was clearly static he added. What’s surprising is that no one apparently caught on and this map became almost gospel. It was so widely used and believed to explain the oddity of the Pentagon attack (which is still odd enough) that it was interpreted by “Guardian” as possibly official; “the claimed flight path of flight 77 over Washington. […] In reality, flight 77 never existed.” [7]

The real loop, 330° to the south off an easterly approach, was new to some of the top 9/11 Pentagon researchers in mid-August 2006. At the Loose Change forum, Killtown showed the NTSB yellow-line loop map, seen in the just-released Flight Path Study. He labeled this as “new,” compared to Koeppel’s map, labeled “old.” Pickering, who had promoted the “old” map by featuring it on his site and working it into his other material, responded “the new flight path data does not change everything,” but it did help indicate to him that “I have a lot of re-writing to do these days!” Another member noted Pickering’s reliance on Koeppel’s map, and wondered of Koeppel “what he based his information on?” The question was not answered there, but I hope this analysis helps shed some light on the subject. [8]
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More people who had fallen for it at some point (besides me, not that I even looked close until now): Jim Hoffman at one point used Koeppel's map to illustrate how a "Spiral Attack Maneuver Avoids Top Brass."
The bastards at Judicialinc captioned the map "NORAD's story that Hani Hanjour flew a 757 doing 600 MPH at 7000' and went into a 270 degree decending turn and hit the Pentagon, is absurd."
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Sources:
[1] Segadevan, Nila.“The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training.” Looking Glass News. Feb 20, 2006
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php? storyid=5115
[2] Pickering, Russell. “Analysis of Flight 77 Flight Path” Pentagon Research.com. http://www.pentagonresearch.com/017.html
[3], [5], [6] [Koeppel, Steve. Analysis of Flight 77: Flight Path by a Former Air Force Pilot.” The Power Hour. Undated. http://www.thepowerhour.com/911_analysis/steves-analysis.htm
[4], [7] Guardian. “Flight 77 and the Pentagon. What Really Happened?” Undated. http://guardian.150m.com/pentagon/small/911-flights.htm
[8] Pickering, Russell, Terry Zarzoff, and Killtown. Comments posted August 12 2006. Loose Change Forum -> The Pentagon -> "New Flight 77 Path Different (of Course)." http://s15.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/ar/t10366.htm

ARABESQUE ON THE ABSURDITY OF CIT ANTICS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOW THE CITGO VIDEO CONTRADICTS THE NORTH SIDE CLAIM

AN ANALYSIS OF... FLIGHT 77'S SHADOW?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
First posted October 30 2007
Last update 6/26/08, 1 am

PLEASE NOTE: The solar angles I had used for my original detailed analysis were not accurate. My presumption of steady change during the day seems to be at fault. Steady change would create a triangle waveform of change - /\ - which is not how the sun moves. In reality the pattern is curved, and so degree change minute to minute changes in a steady non-linear pattern that I don't know how to calculate, so I've used a solar calculator as recommended by helpful comments from a knowledgeable reader (please see comments section below). I've found, as the commentator did, an altitude of 32°, not 25, and an azimuth of 113°, not 126. I have update ALL my math, graphics, and text to reflect this. Distance/speed has not changed at all, but my original altitude of 72 feet above the shadow has been increased to 115 feet, and pitch issues have been raised. See below for details. All other findings stand as is.

Dylan’s Loop
Starting to lean towards a 757 impact at the Pentagon, or at least to a more 'agnostic' position than the missile theorizing of Loose Change version 2, Director/narrator Dylan Avery started a thread at his Loose Change forum in August 2007 asking “why does the Citgo video contradict the North Side claim?” The significance of this of course is that the ‘official’ south-of-the-Citgo flight path allows the downed light poles, impact and internal damage (as well as plane debris and the flight data recorder) to be caused by the plane, while the north-of the-Citgo flight path attested by Citizen’s Investigative Team (CIT) and their ‘PentaCon’ witnesses rules this out, implying a flyover and all damage staged in real time.

The answer Dylan provided to his question was to be seen in a short segment of the station’s security video (9:40:37-9:40:39 by video timestamp) which shows a flash of light at the northwest end of the station, and a subtle darkening of one interior camera’s field of view, as well as a less-noted soft double-pulse of light reflected off a wall on the station’s southeast end. These are usually taken as a glint from a plane on the south side of the Citgo and the shadow of same falling over the station. Though Avery failed to elaborate on what exactly the video shows, an endlessly-looping 3-second animated gif was left up to drive the vague point home. [1]
A frame of video showing the canopy flash (upper right large screen, camera 3, 'dual pump') and south end light pulse (top center small, camera 2, 'east entrance'). The interior 'shadow' was captured by camera 7, 'register 2,' lower right.

The thread is a fascinating and frustrating read, with the video’s authenticity immediately questioned by CIT cohorts Aldo Marquis and Craig Ranke and their forum compatriots, primarily via the “proven” manipulation of the video to remove key frames (a point we’ll return to at the end), and the timing of its release last year to “discredit” their then-new north path witness Robert Turcios by editing him out. At any rate, even looking at the content, a lot of doubts were aired in that thread that seriously question Avery's original 'findings.'

Rob Balsamo popped in to ask “the dim of the lower right cam for one frame is what is being argued here? Really?" It was. His piloty opinion, echoed by others, was that "that dimming effect in the lower right cam is not a "shadow" of AA77 or any other aircraft.” [2] Craig concluded “the content of the data isn't anywhere close to definitive in regards to whether or not a plane flew on the north or south side. No "fakery" at all was necessary because of this,” he announced, but was willing to entertain “low level fakery of a slight dimming in ONE view or what might appear to be a reflection or two.” [3] Researcher John Farmer (spcengineer), alongside his flaying CIT for their dishonesty, abuse of his work, and ‘delusions of grandeur,’ agreed “I do see evidence for the north side claim. I also see evidence of the south side claim […] there is not enough evidence to be dogmatic about either.” [4] Discussion of light angles was inconclusive, but enough to question the path they evidenced. After the original post, there was no defense or explanation from Dylan, despite some pleas for clarification. The poor quality video, endlessly hammered charges of alteration and irrelevance won the days, with CIT supporters slapping down grinning emoticons like silver dollars at happy hour.

I agree with these general findings that the effects captured in this loop in fact do NOT contradict the north side claim. The interior ‘shadow’ captured in camera 7 (Register Two, lower right) happens synchronous with the two lighting effects – uniform in nature and effecting one camera only, my best guess is it’s a brightness adjustment triggered by the flashes, and not a shadow cast by an airborne object. Immediate reaction of customers/employees inside and the black police car just after it sends the flash onto the canopy indicate these light bursts are at the moment of impact, not of the earlier pass over the station. This would put any plane reflection at or very near impact – so despite what I’ve published before, it may tell us tells nothing about north or south path, as both converge at that point. These light effects will require additional analysis and are beyond the scope of this piece, but the main reason I’ve identified them with impact will be fairly clear by article’s end.

The Real Shadow
Ironically, the best clue mitigating against the north-side claim in the Citgo video is one little feature Avery’s loop missed - seen onscreen just before the loop starts, at 9:40:35. Here is a video I made to help illustrate (please note this has editing effects and is less-than-clear: Do NOT use this video for in-depth research):

Here is the highest resolution still of that one frame I could find, provided by Farmer, who also helped me first locate the dots. This is still not very good by any measure, but briefly a large shadow – or set of shadows – appears on and then flickers away from the ground south of the station. This is the view captured by camera 4, labeled “Single Pump side,” multiplexed into the video screen above as a very small view. It was set beneath the canopy at the east edge of the southwest end of the station, looking southwest. Interestingly, this is the same camera view Robert Turcios is said to have been edited out from. Just beneath the canopy edge across the right half of the view are two large patches of darkness stretched across on the white background that seems to be the surface of South Joyce Street.

The only early mention of this in Dylan's thread was made my Aldo: “A ways back, I noticed a couple of dots that pop up in the street in the south side camera. John Farmer points this out as well. It is inconclusive and could actually just be a flaw in the video.” [5] He'd better hope so, because the object(s) casting such a shadow would be further southeast of that in the sunlight at that time and location – in fact, roughly in the space Flight 77 is said to have passed through at about that time in the official story.
The first thing to establish is the size and location of this area of shadows. The fisheye effect of the lens clearly a factor, but not one I feel impacts the general findings, so I’ve essentially ignored it. In this montage of two site photographs kindly provided by John Farmer – taken on his research trip there earlier this year – exact feature correlation is hard to pin down. The security camera was set higher than this and looking more down, but at about this lateral angle. Using the 100 ft scale from Google maps, I measured the south parking lot at about 75 feet long and therefore the area occupied by shadow seems at least 45-50 feet across.

Subdividing the camera's view in 4 for reference, and approximating its field of view on a satelite map oriented north, I have placed the shadow here, on South Joyce Street:
Timeline Clues
Each camera captured in the multiplexed video has an “action” setting that seems to increase frame rate when it detects a certain level of motion. This mode is off for camera 4 as the shadow passes, so it is only visible for one frame. My non-expert analysis with iMovie shows this image holds for 10 frames of standard video (at 30 fps), so the original video would have been 3 frames per second. A plane traveling at a reported 530 mph would cross 777 feet per second, or about 260 feet per video frame – therefore we should expect just one frame to capture any meaningful part of it passing over this patch of ground.

Vehicles passing down the street seen at other points in the video come from a great distance and take something like 60 frames or about 2 seconds to pass off-screen. The shadow, however, takes one frame to be gone, indicating that it was either crossing the road - not running down it - or moving at tremendous speed, or both.

Even more interesting is what happens after the shadow blinks off-screen again. The flashes of light and the interior ‘shadow’ featured in Avery’s loop, by my analysis (using iMovie), start happening 65 frames after the shadow first appears – 2.167 seconds, yielding a speed of around 530 mph, or just what the flight data recorded found inside the Pentagon says. I will explain this more fully below, but so far it seems this is lining up quite well with the ‘official story,’ whatever exactly that means.

Two Smudges Ain’t a 757 Shadow
The first obvious problem for this line of reasoning is ‘the shadow’ appearing as two separate dots and entirely too small to represent the outline of a 125-foot-wide 757, and far too short as well. As LCF member Avenger argued when I brought up my first awareness of the issue in Avery’s thread (link at top, page 13) “two little spots can not be the shadow of a 757,” he said. “For one thing, they are too small, and for another, there are TWO OF THEM!!!” [6]

Would it be a cop out to suggest optical effects? Factors at work to counter a clear view of the shadow include edge fuzzing due to altitude and refraction, road reflectivity, angle of view and surface topography, camera resolution, transfer resolution, and of course the shape of the object casting the shadow, in this case supposedly a twin-engine airliner. Farmer seems comfortable referring to them a single shadow and told me regarding its appearance:

”A lot of it has to do with image quality and poor quality CCD... That is the big problem, people try to see more than the system is capable of revealing. Alone the dark "smudges" mean nothing. Together with angle of sun, predicted location and altitude of plane, and other factors combine to identify it as a shadow (exactly where models predict it should be). Alone, it is just a smudge...” [7]

I've found two photos that help us understand what would be seen in this video if a 757 passed over South Joyce Street in front of the camera. I'm not allowed to repost them, or apparently to even link directly. But if you right-click this link and search for ["Mark Wilson" shadow air] you can view them. They both show a different angle relative to the camera and probably different model craft. Note the angles of the wings and engines, and the effects of minor topography; in the second picture, the slight rise of the roadway seems to have snubbed off the nose of the plane.

And here is a perspective model I made with a 757 shadow to scale. Note also how in the foremost section the fuselage shadow and engine shadows, if divided from the rest, would appear as three separate shadows, one of which disappears once distorted along the lines of the video view, the parts at the top hidden by perspective, the lens, and the canopy (bottom).

Extreme contrast reveals all the clues this crappy video has to offer as latent mid-tones pop out more sharp. It seems part of the shadow may also appear on the far right, on the other side of the support pole – If this is so, then we have big dot – small dot – big dot – line. Note that the left spot extends further towards the station’s sunken parking lot, and seems warped in shape, possibly from its interaction with the raised sidewalk, obscuring its true length on the roadway behind that.

The blue arrow in this graphic shows not only the direction but also the rough location of the “official” flight path. I re-did the shadows here, elongating the southern one to flesh out what I wanted to see and to reflect the likely sidewalk effect noted above. In this scheme, big dot – small dot – big dot – line – becomes fuselage – wing root - engine - wing edge of a plane on a heading of about 60 degrees. I’m entirely open to suggestions that I’ve read this wrong, but as far as I can see this is a good overall fit.
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Update 11/13:
Here is yet another rendering closer to what the camera would see, (it's tricky making perspective models with 2D image editing software).

I do realize by my fusealge-engine-60 degrees interpretation, part of the nosecone shadow would extend past the sidewalk and onto either the south edge of the parking lot or, more likely, onto the grass beyonfd that. This is a problem for this interpretation, as no such extension of the shadow is visible in the video. Keep in mind then reading the rest that shadow shape, as revealed in the video, is the weak point for this construct. It's the shadow itself, its location and timing and general size, not its apparent shape, that is most telling.
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Having possibly explained the ‘two dots’ as two of a 757’s three leading prongs, the absence of everything else also needs to be explained. This is more tricky, but my best guess is that only the shadow falling on the darker roadway came through, while everything on or behind the narrower, lighter-colored median (see above) is effectively invisible. Supporting this possibility is how the visible shadows line up fairly well with a cut-off line at the median curve, and that the median appears nearer the top edge of the video frame; its foreshortening and fisheye distortion are worse. It seeems feasable that some combination of optical effects has left everything from there back invisible on the video even though it was there in real life.

Solar Geometry: Location and Altitude
Regardless of how exactly it came out looking, the best evidence for this being from Flight 77 is what the sun can tell us about its location. Here are the sun angles for 9/11/01 at the Capital, verified with this this solar calculator.
Azimuth is the direction to the sun measured in degrees from north. Azimuth change from sunrise (84° or just from the north of due east) to solar noon is 96° in 379 minutes, an average change of about .25 degrees/min. Presuming steady change between these, a mid-point of 132° would be reached at 9:57 am, and it would be at 126° at 9:38. However, the change is not steady and linear but follows a curve, and in this case reaches an azimuth of 113° by the official impact time of 9:38.

The plane placement here is based on the mechanical damage path, and verified by the black box magnetic heading (60.0°) and ground track true (61.2°) averaged and traced back from impact. I drew the sun angle from the shadow location to points intersecting that flight path and there is where I placed the plane at the moment that shadow was recorded. The dots actually appear slightly offset on the road, matching the wing axis at this heading. The shadow seems to be about 190-195 feet from corollary spots directly beneath the plane (all approximate). From this and sun altitude angle we can deduce the plane’s altitude.

Solar altitude (also called elevation) is the angle of solar rays relative to the horizon (0 at sunrise and sunset, highest at solar noon, 55.5° at 1:05 pm at the Pentagon). On its curving path, at 9:38 the sun would have reached past its mid-point from sunrise to high solar noon, beaming down at about 32°.
The distance from shadow mid-point to a corollary spot directly beneath the plane being about 195 feet, a vertical line beneath the plane the right height to cast a shadow that far away happens to be something like 115 feet higher than the shadow, perhaps 105 feet above ground level, which seems to be several feet higher under the plane than under the shadow. The area has a general altitude of 50-65 feet above sea level compared to about 30 at the Pentagon.

Speed and Pitch: More Math and a Slight Problem
The distance from shadow-casting position to impact point, measured again, looks like almost exactly 1560 feet. With something like 130 feet descended as well, I’ve used a total distance of 1,690 feet.
Speed – 530 mi/hr = 777.3 ft/sec
1690ft / 777.3 ft/sec = 2.174 seconds
Compare this to the 2.167 seconds between the shadow’s appearance in the video and the first light effects on the building.
Working the other way back, we get
1690 / x = 2.167 -- x = 779.88 ft/sec = 531.7 mi/hr
Compare this to the ‘official speed’ of 530 mph.

So that's a perfect fit, and next we’ll look in greater detail at pitch, or ascent/descent angle; a level plane has a pitch of 0 degrees, while nose down pitches are recorded in degrees minus. From its altitude of 115ft AGL just south of the station, a required average pitch of about -6° would be required to reach impact altitude. A steady descent at that pitch would not allow the plane to hit all the light poles as happened, so changes of angle would be required. If it was descending at roughly –8.5° as the shadow was cast, leveling to –7° and to about –6 one second later, and over the next second passing through -5° and finally settling on –3° as it crossed the lawn and knocked down the last pole, this yields a 2.5° change and one of 3 degrees in the two seconds before impact. As seen below, it doesn’t look insane or anything, but we must remember the plane would have been moving quite fast and this distance and all this change covered in a hair over two seconds.
(r-click, open in new window for larger view)

How plausible is this steep-then-shallow pitch playing out this fast? When I’d mentioned a shallower change rate than this, Rob Balsamo told me it would rip the plane’s wings off. 8.5° is a steeper than usual pitch angle, and this overall curve is in fact extreme by my cursory look at pitch readings recorded in the FDR.

So I looked closer at the period of final descent seen in the CSV file, about 9:20 till last numbers. For the first ten minutes of this, pitches between –4 and +4 predominate, mostly at fairly mild angles of between 1 and 2 degrees from level. Pitch changes during most of that period are also subtle, fractions of a degree, with 0.0-0.2 deg/sec prevailing. This steadiness and moderation of angles begins to break up noticeably around 9:33 as the plane nears the ground, with second-to-second changes of 0.5, 0.7, 0.9° and higher creeping in. The pitch activity is fairly steady then during the grand right hand loop from 9:34-36 after which larger shifts of 1.2, 1.4, and higher become more common along with more extreme pitches like 6, 7, even 9° degrees from level recorded. The single largest one-second change I located was at 9:37:19-9:37:20, where a 2.1° decrease follows immediately after a 0.9° increase in pitch (-2.5 –1.6 –3.7 –4.9).

So by previous trends the required actual pitch changes required for that shadow to be real and properly located in my analysis - 2-3 degrees per second - seems extreme and unprecedented – just more so than the frames before, and just less so than the impact that followed. And what might seem a troublesome pitch forecast for my overall case, considering the slight fudge factor inherent in placing both the shadow and the flight path above, and that previous readings prove at least 2.1 degrees is possible, this curve doesn’t seem at all to be off in the realm of “Bush lie” sc-fi. The fudge factor of this ballpark approach could shift the numbers closer to or further from the ‘official story,’ depending, but not by a very large factor. We’re looking at an extreme but quite possible curve here.

It’s true no such changes are not reflected in the final recorded seconds of FDR data, 9:37:40-9:37:44, which shows angles between 4.9 and 6.7 degrees minus, and changes of 0.9 or less. Of course it also shows the wrong altitude and wrong bank angle for the wings to fit the above profile. But some clues, like location recorded in the L3 file 'readout 2', and John Farmer’s comparative analysis of FDR and radar records [PDF link] place it nearly a mile short of the building as those pitch numbers were recorded, so this could in fact have happened after that unexplained truncation. (This is its own whole fascinating and troubling issue far beyond the scope of this piece). Judging by much evidence, there’s a good chance it did just that, and was pitching at an average of -6° between this shadow and the final video captured at the Pentagon showing it low and fairly level from about the location of the last light pole.
Conclusion: Valid Evidence?
Charges or hints of image manipulation started from the CIT end as soon as the Citgo video was first released last September. They have no problem asserting Turcios was edited out from this same frame to weaken his testimony, but Craig has been strangely reticent to address this shadow which had to be inserted into this same camera view by his theory. Instead he’s taken to writing off the video entirely and forfeiting the chance to analyze this twice-over fakery more closely.

Their case for this dismissal rests largely on others having ‘proven’ the video altered via key cameras views not included in the final video when they were apparently on the original tape, and the cameras themselves being phyisically removed. This take is attested by the station’s manager, the same one who offered up Turcios, and taken, as Craig explained in his ATS ‘thread,’ as “Proof The Citgo Security Video Was Manipulated.” The findings of Russell Pickering, John Farmer, and CIT ally ‘Interpol’ are said to support this finding, though Farmer and Pickering have both lodged complaints with CIT, both during the course of Dylan’s thread, for using their findings to imply this.

So it appears that Aldo and Craig are in a fairly lonely spot in believing this, and rather than using the evidence for anything, they’ve declared the data irrelevant. As Craig explained to me when I brought this shadow work up at Above Top Secret, “no legitimate investigator would accept data controlled and provided for solely by the suspect as valid evidence in support of the suspect's innocence.” [8]

The finer points of this argument are too much to address in detail, and I’ve not had the time to dig into the issues, so I’ll remain agnostic for now on how much of a case there is to be made for manipulation. Likewise I leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not these possibilities render the data totally invalid or make it something that should be looked at as it is, in its proper, somewhat ambiguous context. Whether real or inserted, it seems to show Flight 77, or whatever plane we’ve been calling that, the one that pierced deep into the Pentagon two seconds later.

And however likely this shadow being inserted truly is, it appears that Aldo and Craig must continue to argue it’s either unreal or irrelevant, because if it’s authentic, this single camera’s view clearly and fatally contradicts their witnesses’ north-of-the-Citgo testimony. If true, that would leave the only question as HOW these erred recollections managed to line up so on something consistently contradicted at every other turn.

So considering we don’t know if this shadow was actually recorded or airbrushed in later, Avery's original question of why the video counters the PentaCon must be left open. The real question should have been how exactly it does so, but this was not explained until I popped into the thread on page 13 nearly two months after Dylan’s first and last post. I hope this analysis sheds some light on how the video actually does contradict the claim, just one more point in an already imposing roster of clues that should leave any rational person, at the lest, doubting CIT’s claims that their overall case is ‘proven’ in any way.
---
Above Top Secret Thread - more discussion
9/11 Blogger post with interesting comments
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Updates 6/25/08 The case for video dismissal is weaker than I thought. Video on the way, using slightly different numbers - altitude above shadow now appears about 105 feet, under 100 AGL. It's all approximate.
---
Sources:
[1] “Why does the Citgo video contradict the North Side claim?” Loose Change Forum -> 9/11 Research -> The Pentagon. Posted by Dylan Avery August 9 2007, 02:21 PM.
http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=0
[2] See [1].Posted by Pilots For 9/11 Truth. Aug 10 2007, 01:32 PM. http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=20
[3] See [1]. Page 5. Craig Ranke CIT. Posted Aug 11 2007, 01:39 AM.
[4] See [2]. Page 10. Spcengineer. Posted Aug 14 2007, 02:51 PM
[5] See [1]. Page 2. Aldo Marquis CIT. Posted August 10 2007, 01:23 PM
[6] See [1]. Page 15. Posted by Avenger October 5 2007, 06:35 PM http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13548&st=280
[7] E-mail from Farmer to me: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:52:01
[8] Above Top Secret.com -> 9/11 Conspiracies -> Flight 77’s Shadow?.-> Page 5. Post by Craig Ranke CIT. Posted October 29 2007 @ 11:04 PM. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread311324/pg5

THE ELASTIC TIMELINE

PENTAGON ATTACK TIMELINE QUESTIONS PART 1: THE ELASTIC TIMELINE
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Nov 9 2007, 11pm
hopefully final update 11/13 1pm

An 18-Minute Error
Recently I had the minor pleasure of witnessing a notable timeline alteration regarding the collapse of the damaged Pentagon section. Still reported in some spots as occurring at 10:50 am EDT, it has generally been placed (9/11 Commission, ASCE, etc.) almost an hour earlier, at 9:57. But it turns out numerous better sources converge on a collapse time of 10:15 am – an 18 minute difference only sorted out by 9/11 researchers six years later. Notable mention in updating this must be give to Russell Pickering and LCF member Honway, whose work with time-stamped video provided evidence that unlocked the timeline mystery and soon more buried evidence was found. I’m now comfortable stating the collapse happened at 10:15, with earlier reports referring in confusion to an order issued to firefighters to evacuate the area in anticipation of collapse.

A 5-Minute Error
Not that such minutiae was or is very important to most, but a similar shift had happened with the more important impact time attributed to Flight 77, but that story changed five minutes backward and did so early in the game. Despite CNN having first broadcast about an explosion at the Pentagon at 9:39, in the days after the attack, the essential official story was an impact at 9:43 and generally taken as fact. Some examples: 9:40 graphic - 9:45 graphic - 9:43 CNN - 9:43 Patriotic site - 9:43 Christian Science Monitor - 9:43 CBS - 9:43 still repeated in 2007 - Etc…

It was only on September 18, a week after the attack, that NORAD announced a revised crash time of 0937(estimated) [1]. It’s not clear what this was based on, but NORAD were suspected by some of fudging it back to minimize the delay of defense indicative of a stand-down. However Col. Alan Scott, a NORAD officer active on 9/11, told the 9/11 Commission in May 2003 the time was shifted first due to an “entry camera for the parking lot, which happened to be oriented towards the Pentagon at the time of impact, and the recorded time is 9:37. And that's why the timeline went from 9:43 to 9:37, because it is the best documented evidence for the impact time that we have.” [2]. He also noted “it took about two weeks” to find this footage, so NORAD’s source as of 9/18 might have been something else. The 9/11 Commission accepting this time is often cited as evidence it was a lie, but one also supported by the Flight Data Recorder, the last frame of data at 9:37:45 (alternately rounded to 9:37 or 9:38). The radar record (see below) also supports this time, as do the NORAD tapes, and other points to be addressed in part 4.

9:43 Event Evidence Addressed
I spent a long time digging for all reports I could find for reasons 9:43 was first offered as Flight 77's crash time, and found almost no evidence at all directly indicating it. One possible exception is longtime CT researcher,founder of 9/11 Citizen's Watch, and DC resident John Judge, who later offered Paul Thompson ’the Flight 77 timeline’: “a 9:41 crash time into the Pentagon. I still say it was later, but certainly not at the 9:37 NORAD claims (and shouldn't they know?). I put it at 9:43 earliest, 9:48 latest, but maybe my clock is off. I did hear it hit and looked at the time.” [4] Earlier he'd explained that from his home in DC, 1/2 mile away, he heard a blast loud enough to shake his windows. [3]

A secondary explosion, like the ones widely reported by ear-witnesses, is one likely explanation for Judge's timeline. A few examples: “Two explosions, a few minutes apart, prompted me to start walking.” “Those fleeing the building heard a loud secondary explosion about 10 min. after the initial impact.” “secondary and third-order explosions started going off. One of them was a fire department car exploding.” On-site news reporters and others compiled by Arabesque back this up. At least one powerful blast with erupting fireball was photographed by Daryl Donley within a few minutes of the attack (above - note this fireball is erupting as the area is already damaged and smoldering. Ralph Olmholt found a source somewhere indicating "jetting flame from an underground utility bunker, presumably a broken gas main" was said to be responsible for Donnely's "dramatic picture," a theory he doesn't seem to buy. [4]

This harrowing account by survivor Kevin Shaeffer, originally published in Shipmate magazine, and re-posted 9/11/02 at Citizen Smash/Indepundit, seems to support the original time:

“In a flash, at exactly 9:43 a.m., the entire Command Center exploded in a gigantic orange fireball and I felt myself being slammed to the deck by a massive and thunderous shock wave. It felt to me as if the blast started with the outer wall facing my backside, blowing me forward toward Commander Dunn’s desk. I never lost consciousness, and though the entire space was pitch black, I immediately sensed that I was on fire.” [5]

I'm not enough of an explosives expert to say if an orange fireball moving inward in the building and igniting him is indicative of any type of explosives package, but it does fit the profile of jet fuel hurtling inward. So this would seem more likely to be the initial impact than the 9:43 blast of what seems to be burning fuel moving outward. Whether he was watching the actual time and had seen it turn to 9:43 just before the event, or filled it in later based on the flawed initial reports is not clear.

It could be the loudest explosion was the one at 9:43, louder than the crash itself – loud enough it shook Judge’s windows a half-mile away – while for whatever reason he didn’t hear the earlier crash. Other DC residents may have heard the same thing, triggering a rash of calls taken as the most likely point just due to this noise factor - it was likely flawed intelligence echo chambered in the initial confusion that got the first timeline off by five minutes. It was probably not a sinister cover-up.

Or was it a cover-up? If the secondary explosion were, for example, engineered for some reason, as some have speculated, there would be reason for them to say that was the hijacked jet crashing. Hmmm.... Discussion at the Loose Change Forum was inconclusive on the cause of the explosions, although member Honway provided this highly relevant screen cature:
Gaffney’s 9:43 Cover-Up Evidence
Another possible reason for a cover-up has been offered by Mark Gaffney, a noted environmental and peace activist and published expert and author on ‘Gnostic Secrets.’ He wrote a seminal piece posted at Rense.com called The 9/11 Mystery Plane, regarding the E4B ‘doomsday plane’ seen and filmed over the Capitol. There at about the time of the attack across the Potomac, this airborne command center is thought by some to have been running the remote control for the Pentagon attack plane. As worthy as this analytical piece is, Gaffney followed it with The 9/11 Mystery Plane Part II: Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline?

Still eschewing overt silliness in favor of a relatively even keel, it elaborates on reports of the mysterious white jet over or near DC’s restricted airspace around 9:40-9:45, and alleges official flight path misinformation (vague at best) to allow us to believe this was Flight 77 before impact. Supporting this is live CNN footage from 9/11, where White House correspondent John King reported around 09:52 "about 10 minutes ago, there was a white jet circling overhead.” Gaffney summarizes “I believe that the US military announced the original 9:43 AM Pentagon crash time to conceal the presence of the E-4B over Washington.” [7]

However, recently released 84 RADES data, viewable here in stunning video form with Air Defense audio, shows nothing over DC at 9:43. An aircraft labeled “M3_0310” crosses just north of DC, flying west, at about 9:46-9:46:40, heads north then loops back south passing east of DC around 9:49. The E4B is also said to have passed the capitol twice, so it seems blip M3_0310 that skirts that airspace is this same craft.

This data must be approached with the proper caution due all evidence, but so far I see no particular reason to doubt it aside from its conflicts with 'CIT-compliant' eyewitnesses. But regarding this separate craft, if this is accurate and represents the white plane, it would seem King was rounding up when he said it passed the mall ‘ten minutes ago.’ Interestingly, its takeoff time – from Andrews Air Force Base - as seen in the video is 9:43:43, so if true it would have been on the ground at the official impact time as well as the 9:43 window. If this jet truly did not pass until 9:46, placing the impact time three minutes prior would have been a silly and risky gambit. This radar data has never been seen until now, but the cover-up might at any point have been exposed by any class of data: 911 calls, other call records, time-stamped video, etc. Or alternately, if other evidence supports Gaffney's claims, then the RADES data might be shown altered to conceal the true time of its flight.

Back Six More?
The RADES video linked to above also shows Flight 77 disappear from radar just short of the Pentagon at 9:37:12; this is consistent with its final dive to official impact 33 seconds later, and one more point of evidence that the shift from 9:43 to 9:38 was justified. But a sporadic attempt at another shift back of six minutes in the impact/explosion time - to about 9:32 – has been afoot for a while now and seems to have a lot of evidence backing it. Is it time for me to shift the timeframe back another six minutes, or is it not? This is my main reason for delving into timeline questions and the case for a ‘9:32 event,’ supported in part by Gaffney, will be introduced in the next post and its points of evidence directly addressed in the following one.

Sources:
[1] North American Aerospace Defense Command. “NORAD’s Response Times.” News release. September 18 2001. Accessed via: http://www.standdown.net/noradseptember182001pressrelease.htm
[2] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Second Public Hearing, panel 1. May 23, 2003.Hart Senate Office Building, Room 216, Washington, DC. Witness: Col. Alan Scott (Ret.). http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[3] Judge, John. The Pentagon Attack and American Airlines Flight 77. February 21 2004. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/PAandAAF77.html
[4] Olmholt, Ralph. "The Dog Should Have Barked." Pentagon Reasearch.com. December 22 2004? ('date created' in html info) http://www.pentagonresearch.com/098.html
[5] Account of Kevin Shaeffer. Shipmate magazine. Original URL (non-funtioning): http://www.usna.com/News_Pubs/Publications/Shipmate/2002/09/Ring.htm. Accessed via: http://www.indepundit.com/archives/2002_09.html
[6]
[7] Gaffney, Mark H. The 9/11 Mystery Plane (Part II): Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline? Rense.com. July 5, 2007. http://www.rense.com/general76/wdb.htm

100 TON JETLINER FOUND AT PENTAGON!

100 TON JETLINER FOUND AT PENTAGON!
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
September 26 2007

I finally joined the Loose Change forum, hoping to take part in some of the brilliant discussions I'd read there in the past. I tried signing up as Caustic Logic, but that account wouldn't work, so I re-signed up as member “Pentagon Reality Check,” an arrogant name I instantly regretted. But ah well. It's weird times there in the Pentagon forum, with onetime moderator Craig Ranke and his cohort Aldo Marquis just banned, but their followers remain and do battle with no-planers and missile theorists apparently unmoderated but constantly badgered from the sides by those who seem to have it figured out enough to not even bother. It feels transitional.

Ayway, one ridiculous fellow member “Terral” - who is currently pushing a missile strike AND small drone strike possibly coupled with a 757 flyover - badgered me into providing some photo evidence for a 757 impact. Like a sucker faced with an aggressive panhandler, I dug into my pockets for some change and posted a few photos with a line of text for each. That's like a buck fifty right there. Time is money. The clown dismissed and ripped them apart with comically overdone no-planer brutality. In these greasy hands, anything plane-looking was planted, the photos indicated things they really did not indicate, etc. But edited to its essence, Terral said:
“Oh, the bad guys could not fit the 100-ton Jetliner in the back of their pickup truck. :0) [...] How many readers see a crashed 100-ton Jetliner in PentagonRC’s “Foundation” picture? Anybody? :0) This is nonsense . . .[...] Where did the 100-ton Jetliner go? [...] “100-Ton Jetliner” Disinformation [...] Where is your 100-ton PLANE? [...] his 100-ton Jetliner supposedly vaporized into thin air. :0) [...] little tikes do not leave 100-tons of debris [...] which proves beyond all doubt that no 100-Ton Jetliner crashed here [...] a real 100-Ton Boeing 757-200 Jetliner is [...] his 100-ton PIG [...] They are not a 100-ton Jetliner either. [...] Show us a picture of your crashed 100-ton Jetliner. :0)
Thread link

Alright no more change for this one at any rate. I did drop a final slug though with the following “photo” and caption:
“It looks like we're both right in a way... I'm not sure where this photo is from or if its legit, but it looks like an attempted flyover, from a path well north of the Citgo, but unrelated to either the 9:32 missile attack or the small craft attack at 9:37, which caused the damage below, as you have brillinatly demonstrated. It looks here like the 757-200 jetliner is being lifted off the building with a crane, which luckily has a scale attached. I zoomed in and it says 200,000, pounds I presume. That's 100 tons on the nose. Please be at peace now Terral. Mystery solved.”

However, as my new pal had started out, “anyone in possession of these pictures, as if they prove anything, is definitely pushing the Official “Loyal Bushie” Government Cover Story.” So now I am exposed by Terral and its giant-font wielding sidekick SPreston as a 100-ton PIG hugging Bushie loyal operative with Bush goggles and accomplice to coverup and thus to mass murder. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for these meddling no planers, who also seem to take a bizarre pleasure in "exposing" my photo fakery and real identity! (see link above) Whatever GOP-funded computer place these guys are working at, they're brewing the coffee a wee too strong. If I were the people behind the scenes at the LC forum, I'd be checking some IPs about now. but hey, what's new?

Otherwise there is absolutely no point in this little episode. I just wanted to see a new post, and it just made me chuckle, which is kind of sad in itself.