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Introduction
Of all the terrorist incidents that took place on
September 11, the one that underlines most starkly the poverty of the official
account is undoubtedly the attack on the Pentagon. While the strikes on the
Twin Towers in New York require a little investigative digging before their
true and disturbing nature is uncovered, in the case of the Pentagon it isn't
necessary to look at a single scrap of evidence from the scene of the crime.
Even the most cursory review of the events leading up to the attack soon makes
it abundantly clear that an unanticipated attack of this kind could not, in
reality, happen at all.
The Pentagon, in common with the nearby White House,
is one of the best-protected public buildings in the USA. It is equipped with
its own battery of surface-to-air missiles and the airspace above it is the
subject of a permanent overfly ban in respect of commercial aircraft. Its
security personnel are trained and equipped to respond swiftly to attempted
acts of aggression, including attacks by aircraft. Indeed the Pentagon was
particularly aware of the dangers posed by an attack of this kind; only a
few years earlier a disgruntled citizen ruffled a few feathers by flying his
light plane into a Pentagon wall, an incident that led to a thorough review
of the building's emergency procedures. On September 11 however, not a single
anti-aircraft missile was fired in the Pentagon's defence. So
was the attack so sudden and unexpected that Pentagon staff simply didn't
have enough time to take necessary action? Well no. Let's look at that timeline.
American Airlines Flight 77, the plane we have
been led to believe hit the Pentagon (though the recent findings of Gerard
Holmgren suggest it may never have left the ground), supposedly departed from
Washington's Dulles airport at 8.20 am. With the exception of a yet to be
explained looped deviation at around 8.46, it flew normally towards its intended
destination of Los Angeles until around 9.00 when it did a 180° turn near
the Ohio state border and began heading back towards Washington. A minute
or two later its transponder signal ceased. At around 9.05 West Virginia flight
control noticed an eastbound plane entering its radar space with no radio
contact and no transponder identification. By now of course two apparently
hijacked planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
This third plane had changed course and switched off its transponder just
like the first two. And it was heading straight for Washington, the US capital
and home of the White House and the President! Over twenty minutes later therefore
three fighter jets were scrambled to investigate the mystery plane. Unfortunately
they were scrambled from Langley AFB in Virginia rather than the nearby Andrews
AFB in Washington so were still over a hundred miles short of their target
when 'Flight 77' eventually hit the Pentagon.
It's pretty unbelievable stuff but your disbelief
has to be suspended for a while longer yet. Having made its way back to Washington
unchallenged for over half an hour, the plane was picked up by Washington
ATC for the first time at 9.33. By this time it was flying well in excess
of 400 mph and on a trajectory that put it directly on course for the White
House. Before getting there however the plane suddenly executed a left-hand
descending turn, turning almost a complete circle and dropping 7000 ft in
two and a half minutes. This complex manoeuvre levelled out perfectly in line
for a direct hit on the Pentagon and it flew the last few hundred yards just
a few feet above the ground, clipping trees and lamp poles before ploughing
into the Pentagon at an estimated speed of 480 mph.
The official commentary on what happened at the
Pentagon does not encourage us to ponder why fanatical terrorists would allow
Flight 77 to fly for forty minutes or so away from their target before getting
round to taking control of the plane, nor how they were then able to fly the
plane over two hundred miles, at a time of such high alert, without being
intercepted. It offers little by way of coherent explanation as to why, when
a response was finally authorized, F-16s were scrambled from an airbase 130
miles away when fighters were ready and waiting at a base less than ten miles
from the capital, nor why not a single missile was fired in the Pentagon's
defence. There is a deafening silence as to how the plane was able to achieve
its final dazzling manoeuvre, even though that high-speed descending turn
was well beyond the capabilities of both its alleged pilot (who could scarcely
control a Cessna) and indeed of a commercial Boeing 757. Yet this mixture
of B-movie hokum and blundering incompetence that would make the Keystone
Cops blush is still accepted by many as a sober and accurate exposition of
events at the Pentagon. To my mind however one of the most telling indications
that the attack on the Pentagon was a carefully contrived internal military
operation is that it happened at all.
It is not really surprising that events at the
Pentagon have generated considerably more debate and analysis than all the
other incidents on September 11 put together. It is also the case however
that, easy as it is to point out the gaping holes and inconsistencies in the
official account of what happened, arriving at a satisfactory alternative
hypothesis — one that takes into account and explains all the known facts
of the case — has proved a particularly elusive task. Over two years since
the debate and analysis began there are few issues on which the sceptics have
achieved anything approaching a consensus.
The reason for this is straightforward enough.
It's because the sum total of genuine hard evidence in the public domain is
rather small, much smaller than is the case for the attacks on the Twin Towers.
There is considerably less evidence than one might reasonably expect of an
incident that occurred in broad daylight in the centre of the capital of the
USA. In particular there is no photographic or video record of the plane itself
or of its impact with the Pentagon. The true character of these crucial details
remains a matter of speculation. Although the Pentagon attack was witnessed
by hundreds of people — from their cars, from the sidewalks, from the windows
of surrounding office blocks and apartment buildings — it seems none of them
pointed a camera at the incident in the moments leading up to impact. There
were no documentary crews in the area fortuitously to catch the event on tape
and nor was the world's media in attendance. Images and footage of both the
plane and the impact do however exist. As befits a building as well protected
as the Pentagon it is monitored by a large number of security cameras, several
of which undoubtedly captured both plane and impact. Curiously, with the exception
only of five rather dubious and inconclusive CCTV frames (which I shall consider
in some detail later), none of this footage has been released into the public
domain.
So what evidence is available? It falls into four
main categories. Firstly there is the interesting (and rarely considered)
seismic evidence as provided by Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory. There are the numerous eyewitness reports supplied by those individuals
present at the scene. There is the evidence, photographic and otherwise, recording
the damage and debris caused by the plane, the explosions and the subsequent
fire. Finally there are those five frames of security camera footage, the
closest we have to a record of the impact itself.
Much of this evidence is inconclusive and some
of it is apparently contradictory. Because it is also incomplete it throws
up a very intriguing paradox. Before attempting a review of the main evidence
as it currently stands, I'd like to underline this basic paradox because it
lies at the heart of all the enquiries into the Pentagon attack.
It is encapsulated clearly and succinctly by the
following photograph. It shows the facade of the Pentagon after the attack
but before a section of it collapsed. It was taken at time when the fire truck
on the left had stopped spraying foam at the damage, thus giving us a reasonably
clear view of the building's facade at the point of impact, which is indicated
by the arrow. Reels of electrical cable
(this section of the Pentagon was being renovated at the time) lie undamaged
and largely undisturbed immediately in front of the impact point.
Clearly a Boeing passenger jet travelling at over
450 mph has not penetrated the building at this point. There is no scar or
entry hole that could possibly support this scenario. Neither is there
any wreckage to be seen in front of the building. Precious little wreckage
was found inside the building either. The plane — or whatever it was that
hit the Pentagon — seems to have vaporized prior to impact and vanished into
thin air. Planes are not generally believed able to do this.
A moment before the impact, a suitably placed observer
at the scene should have seen something like this, a to-scale simulation of
a Boeing 757 about to strike the Pentagon:
How could a plane of this size travelling at 480
mph cause so little damage and vanish so completely? It's probably time to
take a look at the evidence.
The Seismic Evidence
In the case of the other three incidents, the seismic
studies produced by Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
have proved to be a reliable and often quoted source of some hard 9-11 facts,
not least of which has been the precise time of each event. Its findings in
respect of the Pentagon attack are cited less frequently. The findings are
available at: http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/publications/download/911pentagon.pdf.
Of the Pentagon attack the scientists conclude:
"There appears to be strong seismic signals around 09:38:52 at station MVL (Millersville, Pa; Δ = 139 km), but the signals are too high frequency (5-10 Hz) and too high amplitude (328 nm/s at 139 km). Hence, it appears to be noise perhaps due to electrical disturbances. Otherwise, there are no clear and consistent seismic wave arrivals in this time window".
Despite a major signal at 9.38 in the Washington
area, this is not believed to be a genuine seismic reading. We might conclude
therefore that the events at the Pentagon generated no seismic activity whatsoever.
Yet a major impact or a big explosion would certainly be expected to register.
Taken at face value, the seismic study informs us that there was no substantial
impact and no big explosion. I am ill-qualified to question the author's judgement
regarding the possible 'electrical disturbances', but cannot help wondering
what may have given rise to these disturbances, if that is what they were.
The seismic data is potentially very valuable,
but on this occasion I believe the Earth Observatory has let us down in one
crucial respect. The problem concerns the time window alluded to in the final
sentence of the above quote. For some reason the Earth Observatory decided
to analyse only data that related to the period 09.36.30 to 09.39.30, a rather
narrow window of three minutes. Although most authorities now agree that the
Pentagon attack occurred within these times, this has not always been the
case. In the first few months after the incident it was not uncommon to see
the time given as 09.42 and some reports even quoted as late as 09.45. It
is unfortunate and frustrating that the Observatory chose not extend its study
to cover a wider time window that incorporated these times. A twenty minute
window between 9.30 and 9.50 would have been satisfactory. That it did not
do so means that we must take these findings with caution.
The Eyewitness Reports
Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable.
On the one hand they can be intentionally misleading. Without wishing to cast
aspersions on the honesty of any single witness that day, it is a point of
fact that a large proportion of the witnesses to the Pentagon attack were,
not surprisingly, military officials and other Pentagon personnel. More surprising
perhaps is that so many employees of mainstream media organisations were also
in the area that day. Eyewitness reports can also be unintentionally misleading.
This is particularly the case when the event witnessed is sudden, short-lived
and singular in nature, which is certainly the case with the Pentagon attack.
In these circumstances many people have difficulty accurately processing in
their own minds what they have seen and may unconsciously rearrange or embellish
events to make their subsequent account sound more rational and plausible.
True to form, the eyewitnesses of the Pentagon
crash offer an almost comical mishmash of contradictory accounts. Some for
instance claim that the plane hit the ground and turned cartwheels before
hitting the building, others that it made a clean strike. Some believe they
could see passengers through the plane's windows while others are convinced
the window blinds were down. Some say the plane impacted with a huge, ear-splitting
explosion, others say they heard very little and could only feel the shockwaves.
The wide discrepancies between the different accounts
mean we should resist the temptation to give preference to any one report
over another. In the absence of other corroboratory evidence it is not possible
to determine which eyewitness reports are the most reliable, even though some
may sound more plausible than others. The
eyewitness reports do nonetheless form a valuable source of evidence because
there are so many of them. Over 150 eyewitness reports are in the public domain
and this is enough for them to submit to basic statistical analysis. The more
unanimously eyewitnesses agree on certain details, the more trust we can usually
place in the reliability of those details.
One matter on which the eyewitness reports provide
important guidance is the basic question
of the size of the plane. Disregarding hearsay reports, I have found 157 eyewitness
statements relating to the Pentagon attack. A near-exhaustive list is collated
at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ericbart/witness.html.
Of these, 111 were made by witnesses who actually saw the aircraft and, of
these, 49 give some indication of the size of the plane they saw. All but
three describe it as being a large or medium sized passenger jet and many
could make out the American Airlines livery. Of the three who said the plane
was small, one, Steve Patterson, has not been heard of since and is not known
at the address he gave, while another witnessed the incident from a tower
block several miles away in Rosslyn, Virginia. A total of 43 people saw both
the plane and the impact. All agree that the plane they saw was the one that
hit the Pentagon. No-one says the plane flew over or past the Pentagon, and
some witnesses, particularly those on the upper floors of high-rise buildings,
had a panoramic view of the whole thing. Against unanimity like this and in
the absence of compelling material evidence to the contrary, it is difficult
to argue that anything other than a medium to large sized passenger jet flew
into the Pentagon that day. I shall look at that material evidence in some
detail later.
A number of smaller details recur with persuasive
regularity in the eyewitness reports. One is that the plane hit lamp poles,
trees and even a traffic sign as it approached the building, an observation
that is confirmed by photographs of the material damage. Interestingly, many
of those who saw these impacts noted also that afterwards the plane returned
with uncanny precision to its original course, the engines gunning up perfectly
to regain speed and the controls employed to correct roll, pitch and deviation.
Five witnesses report seeing the plane emit a brief flash just before it struck
and several more say that they heard two or more distinct explosions on impact.
Ten saw a second plane circling round the scene during and after the attack
and the Pentagon has subsequently stated that a military C-130 was in the
vicinity.
Although I said earlier we should resist the temptation
to favour one witness statement over and above another, there is nonetheless
one witness whose testimony I believe deserves particular mention. Actually
this witness wasn't an eyewitness at all because she did not see the incident
directly. Nevertheless her account is of particular significance because her
exposure to the incident was not as a shocked and surprised observer. It took
place within the context of her everyday professional work. Danielle O'Brien
was on duty that day as an air traffic controller at Dulles Airport and tracked
the approaching Flight 77 on radar as it entered Washington airspace. Of the
incoming plane she reported to ABC News:
"The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane....And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second".
So while the overwhelming majority of eyewitnesses
were convinced they saw a regular Boeing passenger jet, professional air traffic
controllers were convinced they were tracking a military plane. If this puzzling
contradiction is to be resolved we must turn our minds to the other evidence.
Damage and Debris
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| Debris on the Pentagon lawn |
Photographs of the Pentagon and the activity around
it in the immediate aftermath of the attack paint a curiously tranquil scene.
Three or four fire engines make light work of the initial blaze. Shirt-sleeved
investigators go quietly and methodically about their business. The lawn appears
pristine and verdant, spared for some reason the blazing skeleton of a Boeing
757, the huge trenches gouged out by its engines, or indeed anything else
that might suggest that a hundred tons of passenger jet travelling at over
450 mph and a few feet above the ground had recently passed that way.
Yet although much has been made of the absence
of aircraft wreckage resulting from the Pentagon attack,
it is not true to say
that there was none at all. There was for
instance the much-discussed fragment of fuselage (shown right) that appears
to bear the American Airlines logo. The origin of this piece of wreckage is
unclear but it is difficult to believe that it had recently been ejected from
the midst of a massive explosion and fireball. It has no burn or scorch marks
whatsoever. It is too pristine and looks, frankly, as though it has been cut
out with a can opener. Whether it ever formed part of the fuselage of the
plane that hit the Pentagon is open to question. There
was other wreckage however and some of it is visible in the same photograph.
Several eyewitnesses speak of a shower of white confetti-like debris that
rained down after the explosion and some of this can be clearly seen in background.
The identity of this wreckage is uncertain, but there seems too much of it
for it to have been surreptitiously introduced after the impact.
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| Engine parts found in the Pentagon |
Photographs from within the Pentagon show occasional
nondescript piles of rubble and there is even a picture of aircraft engine
parts supposedly found inside the building (left).
If this item of debris was deliberately planted
then someone made an elementary mistake because the parts shown have little
in common with those of the much larger Pratt and Whitney turbofan used on
Boeing 757s. It probably would have been a good idea also to ensure that two
engines were found and not just the one, but perhaps that's being pedantic.
According to the White House of course, the incident
at the Pentagon offered up far more evidence of the plane than this. It claims
for instance that, unlike in the case of the other three planes, an intact
black box recorder was found in the rubble and that this yielded nothing more
interesting than 'basic flight data'. It claims too that body parts of each
and every person on the passenger list were found and that DNA analysis was
used to identify these body parts. On the other hand, to my knowledge neither
of these highly significant 'finds' has been confirmed by the release of corroboratory
evidence so we are required to take the White House's word for it. Why have
the black box recorders not been released to the civilian authorities? Were
those body parts returned to the next of kin for burial and if so why have
there been no funerals for the alleged people onboard?
The material damage to the fabric of the Pentagon
itself and its environs offers up far more substantial evidence of what really
took place on September 11 in Washington. That damage however was so minimal
that, if the official account of what happened is true, we must pay fulsome
tribute to the architects and engineers responsible for the building's near-miraculous
design and construction. It is remarkable that in New York two Boeing passenger
jets were able to reduce to dust two of the largest and strongest buildings
in the world, yet in Washington a similar plane in a comparable attack could
inflict only a modest fire and minor structural collapse on a considerably
smaller building. This point is tacitly conceded by the American Society of
Civil Engineers whose Pentagon Building Performance Study concludes in its
executive summary:
"The BPS team recommends that the features of the Pentagon's design that contributed to its resiliency in the crash — that is, continuity, redundancy, and energy-absorbing capacity — be incorporated in the future into the designs of buildings and other structures in which resistance to progressive collapse is deemed important".
Which is to say that the ASCE is as surprised as
everyone else that the building sustained so little damage in the incident,
in marked contrast to the catastrophic performance of the World Trade Center.
The ASCE's full report on the damage to the Pentagon can be found at http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf.
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| Undamaged offices immediately adjacent to impact point |
The Pentagon was hit on the side facing north east.
Damage was confined to two sections (or wedges) of the building — Wedge 1,
which took the brunt of the impact, and the adjoining Wedge 5.
As already demonstrated, the photographic record
shows that the initial damage to the Pentagon's facade was minimal. The
plane appears to have entered the building through a ground floor doorway,
yet the glass in windows immediately adjacent remained intact. About half
an hour after the impact and with the fire well under control, a small section
of the building, measuring around 24 metres across, collapsed. Photographs
taken of the collapsed section show that offices on either side sustained
astonishingly little interior damage, given their proximity to the impact
and fireball. In this picture (right) note the pristine walls and the immaculate
wooden stool and open book. How odd that several Pentagon employees who survived
the blast in this section of the building speak of the incredible heat, so
intense that it melted window panes.
Behind the outer ring of Wedge 1, the Pentagon
suffered very distinctive damage. As the first of the photographs below shows,
fire spread extensively along the outer ring of the wedge and along the entire
length of the main dividing sections running crossways. The fire was clearly
less extensive in the rings contained within this area. Aerial photographs
showing the inner wall of C Ring however do reveal three interesting exit
holes, as shown in the second of the photographs below and in closer detail
in the two that follow. The exit hole I have labelled number 1 is widely documented
and discussed. Some have suggested that it was caused by the plane's port
engine propelling itself like a missile through the building, though it seems
too large to have been caused by the engine that was found. Others have argued
that it is far more reminiscent of an exit hole caused by a real missile.
The other two exit holes have been less widely considered. They are probably
blasted out doorways rather than exit holes as such but the significant damage
and scorching suggest something hot and explosive happened here, a part of
the building otherwise not greatly affected by fire.
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| Pattern of fire damage | Three distinct exit holes in C Ring |
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| The first exit hole | Two more exit holes |
The first two outer rings of the Pentagon (D and
E) suffered internal structural damage with 57 supporting columns destroyed
or very badly damaged. Despite the presence of the exit holes, the third ring
(C) sustained only minimal column damage. The pattern of column damage is
shown below, along with the position of the exit holes. The diagram also shows
the pattern of damaged lamp poles that were struck by the plane as it approached
the Pentagon.
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| Damage to lamp poles and Pentagon columns reveals trajectory of plane |
Note that three damaged columns lie outside the
expected range of a Boeing 757 travelling at this trajectory, as do two of
the three exit holes in C Ring. Only the first hole seems to be in a location
consistent with the known angle of impact, while hole 3 is particularly isolated.
Very few photographs are available that show the
Pentagon in the first few minutes after the attack and before the arrival
of the emergency services, but those that there are provide some very valuable
evidence. The best are probably those taken
by Steve Riskus — also a prominent eyewitness — who was driving past the Pentagon
when the attack took place. He had a grandstand view of the impact and was
able to take several high quality, high resolution digital photographs that
are well worth downloading from http://www.criticalthrash.com/terror/crashthumbnails.html.
I reproduce a detail from one of them here for particular comment.
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| Detail of impact area prior to arrival of fire service |
The CCTV frames
Since their release on March 7th 2002 (a few days
after the publication of Thierry Meyssan's l'Effroyable Imposture, the first
book seriously to question the official version of events) the five frames
of security camera footage purporting to show the Pentagon attack have aroused
a great deal of controversy. Even the circumstances surrounding their arrival
in the public domain is surrounded by mystery. It appears they were not officially
released by the Pentagon at all but were 'leaked' by person or persons unknown.
Rather than remaining tight-lipped on the subject and conducting an internal
inquiry into this distressing lapse in security, the Pentagon instead cheerfully
and immediately confirmed that the frames in question were genuine and left
it at that. For the more cynical among us, this is already enough to set the
alarm bells ringing. It sounds like a good way of circulating some strategic
misinformation while at the same time side-stepping the issue of why the Pentagon
did not release the video footage in its entirety. The frames are reproduced
below.
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Predictably perhaps there is a lot about these
five frames that casts doubt upon their authenticity. There is for instance
the small matter of the date and time shown in the bottom left hand corner,
which is some 32 hours after the event took place. Perhaps we shouldn't be
detained too long by this discrepancy. The date and time are clearly not part
of the original video tape, any more than are the words 'plane' and 'impact'
on the right hand side. These details have been added afterwards and the date
and time most probably refer to when the frames were processed. Rather more
serious however are the matters concerning light and shadow.
The second frame, labelled 'impact' and showing
a white fireball erupting outside the Pentagon wall, is considerably paler
than the other frames. This could be attributed to the flash of the explosion
were it not for the fact that the effect is applied evenly to the whole picture,
including the sky, the near sides of the objects in the foreground and even
their shadows. This does not make optical sense. Also the objects in the foreground
are not casting secondary shadows as a result of the flash. This too is improbable.
It would appear then that the fireball depicted in the second image has either
been totally fabricated or does not belong in this frame. It is likely that
this frame is paler than the others because someone has increased the brightness
level of the whole image.
So does this rather clear evidence of tampering
mean that the frames are a total fabrication and should therefore be dismissed
out of hand? This may well be the wisest option, but on the other hand the
frames contain some details that are so incriminating that it is difficult
to believe they were introduced to give support to the official account.
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| The 'plane' |
What are we to make for instance of that tantalizing
glimpse of a plane (or at least the tail-fin of a plane, the rest of it conveniently
obscured by the ticket dispenser in the foreground) in the first frame and
its white exhaust plume? The plane is manifestly
too small to be a Boeing 757 and not a single eyewitness reports that the
incoming plane had a trailing white exhaust plume. If any piece of the available
evidence lends credence to the theory that the plane that hit the Pentagon
was small then this is it. The only suggestion in these frames that a 757
may have been involved comes in the final two frames, where we see large pieces
of wreckage, possibly the airframe of a large plane, rearing up out of the
fireball. Yet these objects are clearly too large to be part of the plane
seen in frame one.
When the five frames are linked together into an
animation we get the distinct impression of a small plane whooshing into the
Pentagon and leaving in its wake a long exhaust plume (left).
Because the true time gaps between each of the frames are not known I have
estimated the speed of the sequence. If the plane and its exhaust are genuine
features and not faked then the animation helps us identify some potentially
illuminating counter-evidence concerning a matter already seemingly well-established:
the plane's trajectory.
When the five frames are linked together into an
animation we get the distinct impression of a small plane whooshing into the
Pentagon and leaving in its wake a long exhaust plume (left).
Because the true time gaps between each of the frames are not known I have
estimated the speed of the sequence. If the plane and its exhaust are genuine
features and not faked then the animation helps us identify some potentially
illuminating counter-evidence concerning a matter already seemingly well-established:
the plane's trajectory.
The pattern of damage to lamp poles has demonstrated,
rather convincingly, that the plane hit the Pentagon at an angle of 45-50°.
This means that, in relation to the position of the security camera, the plane
was angled somewhat towards the camera as it approached. The lingering
exhaust plume seen in the later frames provides a useful measure of the trajectory
of the craft in frame one. Using this as a guide it becomes clear that the
plane is not approaching at anything like the angle suggested by the lamp
pole evidence. Far from being angled toward the camera , the plane is angled
slightly away from it and striking the Pentagon almost head on. This
can be demonstrated by comparing the angle of the exhaust plume with that
of the footpath that crosses the Pentagon lawn. The path is visible in the
centre of the frames, beyond the car park and before the impact area. In the
first of the images below I have annotated frame two to point out both the
path and the exhaust plume. Note that the footpath and exhaust plume are almost
exactly parallel. This means that the plane was approaching at an angle very
similar to that of the path. The second photograph is an aerial shot of the
Pentagon in which the path seen in the CCTV frames is visible. It is marked
by the arrow. As can be seen, the footpath runs almost at right angles to the
building; if anything it angles slightly away from the impact area.
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| Footpath and exhaust plume at same angle | Aerial photograph showing footpath (arrowed) |
This is of course speculation predicated upon certain
elements of the CCTV frames being an authentic record of what took place.
It would be unwise to assume that this is the case. Nonetheless, faked or
not, it is fascinating that the Pentagon should put into the public domain
something that closer analysis can conclusively demonstrate is very much at
odds with the official account. If the Pentagon were able to mess with fireballs
and shadows I am led to wonder why it did not at least give us a plane that
roughly matched that account.
I know it's too late now but I've done it for them.
The image on the right is a rough version of what I would have come up with
had the Pentagon sought my assistance. I've doctored the CCTV frames to introduce
a to-scale Boeing 757 coming in at the correct angle. It took me about ten
minutes in Macromedia Fireworks so I'm sure the Pentagon could have come up
with something much better. If there's any truth in the official version of
events then those frames should really look something like this. Of course,
if there's any truth in the official version of events then the Pentagon would
not have released a paltry five frames. It would have released the entire
footage immediately so people the world over could be shocked and awed by
it, just as we were by footage of the attack on the second tower in New York.
More than that, the Pentagon would most probably have released for public
consumption all the several pieces of video footage that it possesses of this
incident. That it has not can mean only that there are details in the footage
that we are most definitely not required to see.
Piecing It All Together
This trawl through the available evidence on the
Pentagon incident has by necessity been selective in the evidence it has presented
for particular attention. I have attempted to make my selection however on
the basis of what seems the strongest and most compelling evidence, not what
lends support to any particular theory or other. I began this investigation
because, although the Pentagon attack has been exhaustively discussed, I have
yet to come across an analysis that does not choose to disregard at least
one important piece of evidence that is inconvenient to the conclusions drawn.
This is not due to the analytical failings of those who think and write about
this topic, but because the evidence is so sketchy, puzzling and contradictory.
Evidence like this would tax the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes and I
am regrettably not going to be signing off with any major new insights. The
available evidence does however allow us to draw one or two tentative conclusions.
Firstly we can conclude that a regular Boeing 757
passenger jet did not strike the Pentagon. It may have looked like a regular
757 but it wasn't one. We know this because it performed in every way like
a military plane, from the high speed descending turn to the remarkable low
altitude navigation. We also know this because a regular passenger jet would
leave wreckage at the crash scene and this one did not. It disappeared instead.
It's improbable too that a passenger jet could fly so fast and low and yet
collide with lamp poles, trees and traffic signs without crashing.
It may not have been a regular passenger plane,
but I think we can safely conclude it wasn't a small plane either, military
or otherwise. There are three good reasons for letting this particular theory
go. One is that the eyewitness reports almost unanimously agree that the plane
looked like a medium- to large-sized passenger jet and those eyewitnesses are
probably not all wrong. Another is that the damage to the lamp poles shows
that the plane must have had a wingspan far in excess of anything that might
be described as a small plane. The third reason is one of the same reasons
for which we can discount the notion that it was a regular passenger jet:
the plane left no wreckage to speak of. A small plane is no more able to disappear
than a large one. If an F-16 (for instance) had struck the Pentagon then there
would have been an F-16's wreckage on the lawn or in the building, but there
wasn't. Nor could an F-16 fly through that doorway without disturbing the
cable reels.
Having said that, the small plane theory is not
without merit, not least because the CCTV frames, if they are to be accepted
as evidence, clearly show a small plane, or at least the tail fin of a small
plane. These frames also show however that the plane is not approaching the
building at the trajectory we would expect. The CCTV frames may be giving
us a fleeting glimpse not of a plane but of a missile. Other evidence suggests
that one or more missiles hit the building in addition to something much larger.
Those three interesting exit holes lined up along C Ring for instance are
wholly consistent with missile strikes and indeed are otherwise very difficult
to account for. The pattern of damage to the Pentagon, whereby structural
damage occurred inside the building but the facade remained largely untouched,
is also strongly suggestive of a missile attack. An aeroplane of any description
cannot fly cleanly through a doorway but a missile can and, in some combat
situations, often does. A missile attack, particularly an incendiary missile
attack, might also explain why no seismic activity was recorded. But three
exit holes suggests three missiles and and the following image uses the position
of the exit holes and the other known damage to the building to superimpose
over the Pentagon the putative trajectories of three separate missile attacks.
 |
| Possible flight paths of three missiles hitting the Pentagon |
The problem with all this of course is that it
is simply not supported by the eyewitness reports. None speaks of two objects
striking the Pentagon, let alone three. Many of the best-placed witnesses
to the event were sitting in their cars on the road directly in front of the
building. Missiles would have had to cross this road only feet above the ground
if they were to strike the known entry hole. Even if most of the witnesses
were distracted by a much larger plane at the time it is difficult to believe
that no-one noticed a low-flying cruise missile zipping past their windscreen.
An explanation for this might be that the missiles were fired from the main
plane, but unless this happened at the very last moment this too would have
been seen by witnesses. Admittedly a number of eyewitnesses report seeing
the plane emit a brief flash prior to impact but nonetheless the suggested
trajectories and the CCTV frames do not seem consistent with this explanation,
with the exception of missile number 1 in the picture above. It is conceivable
then that one missile was fired by the main plane, causing that spectacular
round exit hole.
The evidence concerning the main plane, the plane
the eyewitnesses saw with the American Airlines livery and a wingspan wide
enough to bring down all those lamp poles, is equally perplexing. Up until
the moment it reached the building, the evidence strongly supports the plane's
existence. From that point onwards the material evidence appears equally strongly
to deny it. The plane seems to have literally disappeared at the moment of
impact. Of course, the problem of disappearing aeroplanes is nothing new to
the seasoned 9-11 investigator. Every plane involved in the attacks that day
all but totally disappeared. Little in the way of wreckage was retrieved from
any of the crash sites, including that of 'Flight 93' in Pennsylvania. But
with 'Flight 77' there were no extenuating circumstances. It did not fly into
a tower that collapsed catastrophically soon after, nor did it explode in
mid-air before smashing into a remote hillside. It seemed to disappear right
in front of people's eyes. One second it was there, the next it was gone.
How do you make a plane that looks like a passenger
jet, flies like a fighter jet and disappears on demand? One way might be to
house the engine and navigational systems of a fighter jet in a large airframe
made from a material that is highly combustible. Such a material would have
to be strong enough to bear the stresses and strains of high speed flying
and manoeuvring and at the same time be very lightweight. Such materials are
not unheard of and wood comes readily to mind. There may be synthetic materials
that are stronger, lighter and more combustible still. An aeroplane built
in this way with explosives fitted to set the thing off might just be capable
of emulating the extraordinary event witnessed at the Pentagon. This is the
only explanation I can offer for this particular conjuring trick that is even
half-plausible.
Looking at the evidence as a whole I get the sense
that, whatever happened at the Pentagon that day, things did not go entirely
to plan. For a start, the attack was most probably late. I think it unlikely
that Flight 77's apparent long trek west (complete with looped deviation)
was wholly intended, nor the rather embarrassing half hour wait for its return.
I believe the attack was probably meant to take place earlier than it did,
so the Pentagon might at least have some excuse for its failure to defend
itself, but that some last-minute technical hitch necessitated a delay. Perhaps
this is why the plane that left Dulles made that strange deviation as it flew
west; to expend some time without flying too far beyond its real target. I
suspect also that the Pentagon was supposed to incur a lot more damage than
turned out to be the case. An intact facade is most unlikely to be what was
strictly intended, since it spoils what would have otherwise been a pretty
convincing illusion. The section that collapsed half an hour later was probably
intended to collapse at the time of impact. The internal damage was probably
meant to be far more extensive. Perhaps one or more of the missiles, if there
were any, turned out to be a dud and didn't wreak the devastation that was
expected; perhaps supplementary explosives planted inside the building, if
there were any, didn't go off.
Beyond these observations, tentative and unsatisfactory
as they are, there is little more of any substance that I feel can be extracted
from the evidence available. There is much that remains obscure and difficult
to fathom. It is hard to explain how rooms a few feet from the impact point
were untouched by the blast while rooms below them and the roof above were
ravaged by fire. I cannot identify the type of weapons or devices used to
cause the damage that occurred nor whether they were fired at the building
or already in place inside it. From an operational point of view, I cannot
grasp the advantage gained from having the plane perform like a fighter jet
just prior to the attack or why it was thought best to strike the building
at an oblique angle and not head on. We don't even know the precise time at
which the attack took place.
The cause of the confusion and uncertainty is of
course the quality of the evidence available to us. Too much of it lacks solidity.
The eyewitness reports, the CCTV frames, the debris; all of them have a dubious,
tainted feel. Even the normally reliable seismic evidence cannot be wholly
trusted on this occasion. Yet without this evidence there is very little to
go on at all. We have to start somewhere. But it is not beyond the bounds
of possibility that what took place at the Pentagon was something quite different
from anything that has been said or written about it thus far.
One thing that can be said with cast iron certainty
is that the attack on the Pentagon, like the attacks on the World Trade Center,
was a hugely sophisticated and lavishly resourced event. From the technology
and the planning through to the subsequent propaganda onslaught, 9-11 was
a class act. The attention to detail was first rate. Let's look at those planes.
It appears that in each attack some tasty military hardware was dressed up
like a passenger jet to create the impression of a hijacked civilian plane
hitting a building, but leaving no trace of itself. Each attack however used
very different technology. The first plane seems to have fired missiles at
WTC1 then disappeared into the scar it created. The second plane carried an
anomalous flame-throwing device on its underside that somehow helped create
the huge spectacular fireball that followed. The Pentagon plane, though its
true nature remains unknown, was clearly something else again. Three unique,
purpose-built planes for three attacks. Each plane must have taken several
years and many millions of dollars to design, prototype and test. I suspect
we must look way back into the Clinton era for the origins of September 11
and maybe even earlier.
In trying to determine who is truly responsible
for 9-11 it is probably a mistake to point the finger too vigorously in the
direction of George W. Bush and his cohorts. Bush himself, even with each
and every one of his ninety one IQ points firing in unison, is of course incapable
of having played any meaningful role in 9-11's conception. Both he and those
in his administration are mere puppets, acting out a script written and conceived
by some higher power. But who is pulling the strings? Who has the power and
the influence to control presidents, the media and the military, to procure
black technology and use it to slaughter thousands of the tax payers who paid
for it? I do not know, but the attack on the Pentagon, the headquarters of
the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen, was perhaps the
symbolic confirmation of a secret coup d'etat that in reality took place some
time ago.
— Leonard Spencer
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