CIT/PENTACON {Masterlist}

CIT/PENTACON {Masterlist}
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Last Updated 3/4/08

Released: late Feb 2007 by Citizen Invetigation Team (CIT)
Aldo Marquis: Researcher/co-prod/co-writer/co-Dir/narrator
Craig Ranke: Co-dir/co-writer/on-site interviews
Jeremy Harris: Editor
One hour, 20 minutes
View The PentaCon, Smoking Gun version here:

Google Video page
The PentaCon.com - their site

Update: 7/6/07 In an attempt to help Ranke (Jack Tripper) calm down and deal with the issues, I'm removing my full review from circulation. He feels it is deceptive. I never felt it was written or approached quite right, but left it as-is to preserve what had become a large piece of my little history here. So of course I kept a copy myself.
I will also direct readers to Arabesque's far-superior critical review:
http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/05/critical-review-of-pentacon-smoking-gun.html
Update 12/6: I just re-posted my original review here with comments and updates. I will add points to this from time to time and treat it as a running critique.
Update 3/4/08: Since this is where I linked to mt PentaCon review, I'll also link to may partial review of their second feature-lentgh mockumentary The Pentagon Flyover: How They Pulled It Off. Not surprisingly, it doesn't explain shit about the optical illusion they pulled off to make a flyover appear to so many as a low-level impact, but rather use misread adjectives to establish the flight path further back from the flyover point.

Note the lively comments section below, and with each post. Very little censorship occurs here.

For the intrepid investigators / ruthless researchers of Citizen's Investigation-ish Thing, aka Comedy Improv Team, aka CIT, I have a growing body of works, most of them fairly recent, leading to allegations of hyper-stimulated obsession. I giuess that's about right, which is a problem - for CIT, anyway. Here are the self-hosted FF posts that deal directly with them and their 'evidence.' They're entitled to their own opinions regarding the North-of-Citgo (NoC) flightpath, but not their own facts. Therefore...

post rating for hardness of the hit against CIT's arguments:
* = marginally related or little direct effect
** = moderately strong refutation(s) of CIT assertions included
*** = damn that's gotta hurt, few reasonable people could walk away from this believing them at all

Rebuttals of their physical evidence claims:
** - Column 14AA: The Smoking Gun that Fell Away
** - Foundation Damage
*** - Fireball Fakery: Challenge to CIT
** - Right Wing Damage Continuity
*** - Cookie Identification Team: So CIT says much of the damage doesn't line up right with a 757 impact, but what about the spots where it does match? Eh, it lines up too well.
*** - Those are points in response to specific CIT claims. See also my physical evidence masterlist for more of the mutually-corroborating evidence of a full-on 757 impact.

Eyewitnesses:
** - CIT Eyewitness Verification Part 1: The Previously Suspicious Father McGraw
*** - CIT Eyewitness Verification Part II: The Ladies of 13th and Poe
- “Convoluted manipulative disinfo” version
- “despicable scumbag” summary version
** - Chad Brooks, 2001: Left Behind? [Don't take the title literally - IMO he first saw it left and ahead]
*** - Sgt. Brooks Draws a Line
* - William Lagasse, 2001 [No apparent conflict but little support for NoC path]
* - Lagasse And Eastman Part 1: Eastman and the Decoy Theory
** - Lagasse And Eastman Part 2: The Fortuitous Debunker
*** - Lagasse And Eastman Part 3: Another Lagasse/the Second Generation
** - On the Account of Steve O'Brien: CIT's C-130 Findings re: Flight 77
* - A Fork in the Road
*** - The Trouble With Turcios
* - 18th st. witness location
** - Roughshod over the suspicious ones - the witnesses CIT does not trust. One of them is...
*** - Joel Sucherman, NoC witness?
* - Query to CIT: Timmerman view, left side?
** - Chaconas: An Intolerable Interpretation
*** - Clout Flyover Witness: Roosevelt Roberts series - several posts compiled here - understanding CIT's first publicized "flyover witness."
*** - Morin: The Conventional Wisdom
"It's a perspective issue": On Bobloblaw's score - CIT poor research/dishonesty (your pick) + beligerence and eventual surrender = great entertainment. Re: witness Sucherman and sad attempts to alter his view.
** - Flyover Link Doesn't Link
The South Path Impact, Documented: Thirteen NoC witnesses and zero for the south path? Then why did I have to stop at 13 just to conserve time?
- See also PentaCon review

Other:
** - Open Letter from the "Light Side": Craig offers truce/partnership. Ain't happening.
*** - How the Citgo Video Contradicts the North-Side Claim: An Analysis of... Flight 77's Shadow? Some excellent clues say yes, and it's south of the station.
* - CIT-CL Phone Discussions: Embedded audio/video of CIT's postings with some notes. (two discussions, about an hour each).
** - Arabesque on the Absurdity of CIT Antics
* - The SantaCon/2007 Adios
*** - Bank Notes: CIT has found exactly ONE direct clue to support all the turns and tilts required for their flight path, ignores clues from their own witnesses and others that contradict their theory, confuse the issue with improper terminology and vagueness, and all to propose a flight path that appears next to impossible.
* - ...ahem.And then the Jreffers prove the path impossible and so on...
* - Obstacle? Impossible. CIT's stint at providing the 'government story' graphics doesn't help PFT overcome their math deficiencies.
*** - Proof that CIT was manipulated?: The Citgo manager, Robert, and the proven manipulated video.
* - Bobby Balsamo Caption Contest: CIT "op-research" on me.
*** - Six Miles Southeast: Did Scoggins MEAN southeast, and was this from radar?
* - A Visual Encounter?Scoggins doesn't know if it wa east or west but it was by eye, not radar. That doesn't sound right. CIT loves it.
*** - Radar = Visual = Southwest: Oops for CIT - it's both visual and radar and both say southwest.
** - Reheat, Reasoning, Radii: Regarding Reheat's Debunking the NoC paper. I toss CIT a bone? Sorta...
** - A Mirage of Plausibility Ally Mirage of deceit was trying to help here, but helped illustrate again what Reheat was trying to show. oops.
* - Filet of Flounder
* - Walter, Pickering, Lagasse on CIT

Most of my anti-CIT activities have been in chat forums, where I've taken an activist stance in the past. These are some of the relevant threads at Above Top Secret.com, Loose Change Forum, and elsewhere where others and I have intensely clashed with Craig and to a lesser extent Aldo, and their supporters. Just a partial list - I've stopped keeping track.
Review of Caustic Logic's Review of the PentaCon
">Challenge to Caustic Logic (eyewitnesses)
The PentaCon a hoax? Erred assumption but good debate
Retraction: PentacCon is NOT a hoax
Lack of Foundation Damage puts an end to 757 debate (hardly)
- First Things First: What hit the light poles?
- Open Letter to Adam Larson
- Are the Citgo witnesses government plants?: Craig responds to my wacky conspiracy theory
- LCF thread I hijacked to explain the south of Citgo shadow
- ATS thread I started about the south of Citgo shadow
- Craig's thread about our phone chat.
- Fireball fakery: My thread at LCF
- ATS thread Craig started in response to my fireball fakery piece
- Raven's LCF thread "Flyover Theory RIP"
- TerrorCell's LCF thread "2 More North Side of Citgo Witnesses"
- Interesting thread about CIT, SantaCon, trolls, sock puppets...
- Actual C-130 Interaction With The Decoy Jet; & the ACTUAL flight path of "Flight 77" Page 8 is where I get banned and thereafter quit the new LCF
- ATS thread on Sucherman's 2:00 north-path placement - here's where I quit ATS as well.

- Having lost his Conspiracy Master, forum-weilding status at Above Top Secret.com, Craig started his own dedicated invisionfree discussion forum for CIT. I'll include a link here in case any discussion happens there.
CIT Forum debate call to me
I feed my addiction (rebuttal - please see Sucherman piece).

THE LADIES OF 13th AND POE

CIT WITNESS VERIFICATION PART II: THE LADIES OF 13th AND POE
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
February 3 2008
update 2/11 2am

Note: Thanks to LCF member bileduct for starting me seeing these patterns. This here is the “Convoluted manipulative disinfo” version of the article, which explains all my points adequately. For those with less patience, see also my “despicable scumbag” summary version.

Northern Redezvous / Southern Anchor
Craig Ranke, the argumentative co-founder of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) announced back on December 10 2007 the release of their new video "Flight 77" The White Plane: “CIT further exposes the mainstream media cover-up with this extremely important new 37 minute short revealing what the people of Arlington REALLY saw on 9/11.” [source] Their early 2007 video The PentaCon had already set the damning flight path from the Pentagon, north of the Citgo, and back to the Navy Annex (see graphic below). This follow up is centered on four witnesses further back along the flight path, and their main finding, as the title implies, is that “the plane people saw tree top level over Arlington timed perfectly with the explosion at the Pentagon was white.” They speak of a “media cover-up of this white jet” to be confused with and erased by the E4B that circled the capitol shortly afterwards. [source] The PentaCon witnesses had disagreed on the color but that didn’t matter; it was all about the flight path then. Now that four people used the word 'white,' this is reported as the most significant aspect and the flight path clues are ignored. For this reason I will first, in this piece, ignore the color issue and focus on what CIT has downplayed – what the plane was remembere to have actually done with its whiteness, according to these witnesses.

This new eyewitness data, in addition to the old, gave CIT as an inescapable reality this yellow swerve (red labels and arrows mine), what Craig has elsewhere described as “the flight path that has been getting established for us by the people of Arlington.” While the curves are extreme for an aircraft that size, I’d guess this path is entirely possible for a 757. However I cannot visualize it happening without two very sharp turns with accompanying steep wing banks - one turn left, with right wing pointed up towards the sun, a rapid leveling and straightening on a more northerly heading, then an even sharper turn to the right, during which its right wing would need to be dipped quite low over the Navy Annex. Keep this in mind when looking at this as it has been re-created in the graphics below, yellow each time. The southern portion of this path, from the Navy Annex down, is what The White Plane and its witnesses are said to illustrate.

Here is the video itself for reference: If you want to watch the whole thing, I recommend reading this full piece first.

The White Plane begins with Jamal El Kournayti, a caddy or something at the Army Navy Country Club on 9/11; as narrator A. Marquis puts it, “Jamal’s account gives us a strong starting point for our flight path.” This it does, by placing the plane well south of the previous accounts, which might seem ironic, since their original path was north of the official one. But this is also the only account of the four that, on its own considered merits, even seems to contradict the official path. El Kournayti's is the most specifically illustrated stretch, referenced to specific trees at either end of the range, which he says the plane flew directly over. The path and location they draw for their video is accurate to what El Kournayti describes and is the better part of a half-mile off the ‘official path,’ but with about the same heading.
So if we’re starting out well south of the North-of-Citgo path, the attack plane had to connect to PentaCon witness Edward Paik, at the west end of the Navy Annex NNE of the end of the driving range. Both men would be near the hinge points where heading changed and should have reported a turn or at least the accompanying bank. However Paik was never asked about any turn, and gave clues only indicating a straight path. Likewise El Kournayti is never asked about and never mentions any bank of the wings or turn in the flight path. His gestures indicate a straight sweep across the sky on a bearing I map out at approximately 65°. So somewhere between Jamal and Edward the plane would need to shift to the north and do all its remarkable turning, banking, and leveling; it’s clear at this point that a lot was riding on the witnesses of south Arlington who occupied that span.

Canvassing / Mrs. Hubbard
In between Jamal and Edward there were neighborhoods to screen for “additional previously unknown witnesses,” neighborhoods like the one they call 13th and Poe, which is probably what the locals call it too, since it has such an uncanny – if unlucky - ring to it. Canvassing the few long streets of this mini-borough Nestled between I-395 and Washington Blvd, south of the Navy Annex, and north of Hoffman Boston Elementary School, Ranke found it, “painfully clear that the people on the street report something different than the suspect witness accounts reported by the mainstream media.” The PentaCon’s four North-of-Citgo witnesses had their four flight paths, hand drawn over aerial images of the attack; here again we have four witnesses but oddly not a single drawn flight path among them. Craig explained to me “I didn't have images prepared for people I did not know I would randomly find from canvassing. Only for the pre-arranged interviews.” Granted, aerial long-views of every possible POV cannot be prepared, but a satellite map the witness could read relative to their view might work. Something could have, should have, been improvised to get some graphic confirmation. And wouldn’t you know it… Jamal and then at least three new witnesses found and interviewed around 13th and Poe, all supporting the logical extension of their previous groundbreaking findings we’re told, but not a pen-stroke of that good stuff to show for it.

The first witness presented after Jamal is Mrs. Hubbard, who was interviewed on the porch of her home on the west side of S Poe st just off 13th. Ranke did confirm for me that her window points on Poe street, which would offer a view to the east. Not only is there no flight path drawn by her, but no visual clues shared whatsoever; she declined to be videotaped and talks unseen, mentioning ‘numerous clues indicating some flight path:

“It came right between these two houses […] I saw the tip of it going that way [...] It came this way. It came across here. And it went between the house with the gray roof […] and the big house. It pulled up so that it would miss those trees and then the next thing I saw was the puff of smoke.”

Which houses? Which trees? I’ve scanned satellite photos for what she might mean but don’t feel comfortable settling on a path and with CIT being and helpful as they have with their verification, the best I have to go on is the facts that she saw it, and “I thought it had hit the highway,” meaning the raised curving portion of I-395 northeast of her east-facing den window. But CIT’s yellow composite squiggle passes entirely behind her house and out of view. She’s included as a witness to this path’s middle stretch, but for Mrs. Hubbard to have actually seen this path, it would have to curve at least somewhat to the east of her den window, then almost due north to the corner of the Navy Annex, complicating the required turn to the right to rendezvous with Ed Paik’s line. I think I know why they fudged it back behind her, (see below) but it’s just fudging, CIT would say, and probably not a sign that she’s a plant. She clearly, literally “saw the "tail" of the plane,” Craig explains, “headed towards Edward Paik coming from Jamal.” In reality, she never mentioned either man in her account and it’s not even clear if the three know each other.

Before we can go any further then we must revise the middle portion – to pass in front of her house, which will in turn effect the remaining two witnesses. To connect the accounts of El Kourtayni and Paik while offering Hubbard a view, it would have to fly a bit further east than CIT shows, then turn near north, a heading of about 15-20° from true north, running entirely parallel to I-395. While her directional clues are still vague, I would offer the magenta line as at least better fitted to her thinking it crashed into the freeway somewhere in the distance. This is very different from what CIT decided she saw, even once it’s adjusted to be possible.


The Cousins With A Bathroom View

Veronica (first name only) was interviewed apparently in the August 2006 elite research foray, since Russell Pickering is visible and actually doing most of the questioning. She seems to be standing on 13th street, between S Poe and S Pierce streets, facing north and away from the camera for her entire interview. The segment starts out with her pointing out the plane’s flight path, having been apparently asked about it right before. She also points about the same direction to her location at the time, her cousin’s house on the north side of the street, from a window in the back facing north. “We were at my cousin’s house over here; she’s got a window in the back ‘cause she was in the bathroom,” Veronica explained. This makes it sound as if she herself didn’t see it, but was merely passing along her cousin’s account. But the rest of her account makes it indeed seem that she herself, if unclearly, saw "the white go by." However she learned of it, she seems pretty sure of the plane’s general trajectory, her repeated arm gestures clearly indicating east-northeast, inconsistent with CIT’s yellow composite path and far inconsistent with my corrected yellow-green path from east of Mrs. Hubbard’s window. She also describes no kind of turn or associated wing bank of a plane swooping north and arcing east over the Navy Annex, repeatedly tracing a straight line across the sky, the only conclusive visual clue offered by any of the ladies of 13th and Poe that actually got through to the viewers of The White Plane.
All this is ignored by CIT, and Veronica’s account is used primarily to corroborate the plane as white, and as an introduction to her cousin, Cindy Reyes, “who got a better look at the airplane” and did an even better job with setting the color trend. Reyes showed her face and spoke candidly after letting the interviewers in to stand in her bathroom and see what her view was like, a panoramic one looking almost due north, revealing the Sheraton hotel in the distance and the Navy Annex just out of view to the northeast. Her descriptions and gestures against that window indicate a descent to what seemed treetop level. For its lateral direction, she gestures from left to right, but it’s unclear if she’s trying to indicate three-dimensional movement, or just tracing across the window pane like one might a TV screen. There is some obvious confusion in the interview about left vs. behind (her left then or their behind now?), which leaves her directional and perspective clues vague.

When challenged, CIT has refused to draw the path they think she saw on a map anywhere, so I decided to try my own from clues she freely offered. There was a predominantly left-right (west-to-east) motion, but it was not purely seen from the side but “at an angle.” I’d like to emphasize an angle, as in singular. Nowhere does she mention or is she asked about seeing any change of angle, any turn of the airplane. Whether they knew it at the time or not, this is the spot where it would have to turn sharply to a more easterly heading. And of course such a sharp turn, coming in from Mrs. Hubbard’s FoV, would require a pronounced wing bank, which she also does not mention and is not asked about.

In attempting a guess of her flight path, remember that she and Veronica supposedly saw the same thing from about the same location, and that Veronica’s gestures seemed to indicate ENE. Both paths in the graphic above agree on general distance from the window, but angle and turn are in question. This double-corroborated testimony of Cindy and Veronica seems to more strongly support the purple line, which is in fact the precise “official path” of Flight 77, or something quite similar.

Constructing the Flight Path
Among the 13th and Poe witnesses there are clearly no direct clues for the middle stretch of the yellow CIT squiggle, and in fact some serious points against it. The Citizen Investigators tacitly admit this in discussions by downplaying flight path evidence altogether. After the revolutionary flight path up north, it's all about the color and the location of - something. The issue of plane direction is clearly back-burner now:

“We KNOW that none of their accounts are perfect. […] They only need to be approximately correct. […] there is no need to determine the exact placement of the plane or a flight path at all. […] It is unreasonable to suggest that it is even possible to determine the exact placement of the plane from witness statements.” [source]

Craig in fact started a whole new thread at the new LCF in response to this piece, titled "No witness can accurately depict a flight path (The plane moved too fast)." This is a bad sign; they never admit something if there isn’t a way to twist it into appearing to support the thesis. Instead they fall back on presenting false dichotomies, like this one, that are getting falser the deeper I look:

“If you believe the official story you have to accept that virtually all of them are completely lying. […] So do you trust real people or do you trust the government? Is it more likely that they have a reasonable margin of error in their accounts or is it more likely that they are all completely lying and that the drastically different official story is true? That is pretty much your choice here.” [source - emph mine]

Clearly CIT doesn’t trust ‘their own’ people, taking the approach to flight path construction of “Draw a line from where Jamal saw the plane to where the citgo witnesses saw the plane. […] That's what we did. That is scientific, logical, and the most accurate way to interpret this data.” So long as both placements are truly accurate and there’s supporting data in between, or at least no contradictory facts, this is certainly true. Unfortunately that is not the case here.

The explanation was also a challenge; “draw a line from where Jamal saw the plane to where the citgo witnesses saw the plane. […] Think of all of their placements as being approximate and create the best estimation you can using ALL of their accounts. Go ahead, do it and show me what you come up with.” Okay so here are some versions: CIT’s scientifical yellow swerve and the ‘official’ path, more or less, in purple for reference in each: and my readings of the White Plane witnesses read with three different sets of assumptions explained on each:



”Flight 77” The White Plane”, an “extremely important “ video “revealing what the people of Arlington REALLY saw on 9/11.” Hardly. As Asshole Marquis recently asked a fellow LCF member, and as I now deflect back to them:

“Are you so sick and demented that [the Ladies of 13th and Poe] are just values in a logic equation? Do they represent actual witnesses and human beings who are scared about what they saw or are they just names and statements that you can play circle games with because you think you understand "logic"?”