Pentagon Strike:
slick propaganda for "no plane" hoax
- Context: released just before 2004 Presidential "election"
- Misrepresents eyewitness testimony
(claims people who said they saw the plane supposedly saw a missile)
- Misrepresents Physical evidence
(falsely claims "small hole" which is not true)
- Used as Straw Man by Media
to Debunk 9/11 Truth
Pentagon Strike is a film released in late
summer 2004 that promotes the "no plane at Pentagon" hoax --
the sequel to "In Plane Site?"
A video clip that was posted to numerous sites in late summer 2004 supposedly
documents the "no plane" at the Pentagon claims. It was released
shortly after "In Plane Site" -- but only focuses on the "no
plane at Pentagon" hoax. It is probable that "Pentagon Strike"
was the sequel to "Plane Site," since "Plane Site"
had so many crackpot claims in it that it encountered considerable opposition
in its effort to redefine 9/11. Pentagon Strike is focused solely on the
"no plane at Pentagon" hoax, which
unfortunately has been treated more seriously.
This film is slick propaganda that avoids most of the real evidence,
flashes quickly from point to point, distracts the viewer with rock music
(perhaps a type of "bait" to snare youthful web surfers?), and
would not qualify as forensic evidence in any courtroom. It is a form
of "disinfotainment."
Pentagon Strike is only a couple minutes long, and a couple megabytes
in size - easily downloadable, even without high speed internet. It has
been hosted on countless websites. Pentagon Strike has been much
more effective at spreading disinformation than In Plane Site. The
Washington Post's review of this film
was very effective at discrediting 9/11 truth issues in the national capital
area a month before the pseudo-election
of 2004.
| misrepresents
eyewitness testimonies |
Pentagon Strike superimposed quotes from eyewitnesses
(some of them out of context) in a black stripe over a photo of the impact
zone - the stripe obscures the view that shows the full extent of the
damage caused by the plane.
"Pentagon Strike"
implies that the eyewitnesses did not
see American Airlines Flight 77. These eyewitness reports (from various
media sources) were used selectively in this "film" to imply
that they saw a missile - when the full quote clearly states they saw
the plane.
Many people who had a good view of the plane were surprised that the
aftermath did not leave large pieces of the plane (although many, many
small pieces were scattered widely).
The RED TEXT shows the
section that was used by Pentagon Strike.
“I was going up Interstate 395, up Washington Boulevard, listening
to the radio, to the news, to WTOP, and from my left side, I don’t
know whether I saw or heard it first -- this silver plane; I immediately
recognized it as an American Airlines jet,” said the 25-year-old
O’Keefe, managing editor of Influence, an American Lawyer Media
publication about lobbying. “It came swooping in over the highway,
over my left shoulder, straight across where my car was heading. I’d
just heard them saying on the radio that National Airport was closing,
and I thought, ‘That’s not going to make it to National
Airport.’ And then I realized where I was, and that it was going
to hit the Pentagon. There was a burst of orange flame that shot out
that I could see through the highway overpass. Then it was just black.
Just black thick smoke. The eeriest thing about it, was that it was
like you were watching a movie. There was no huge explosion, no huge
rumbling on ground, it just went ‘pfff.’
It wasn’t what I would have expected for a plane that was not
much more than a football field away from me. The first
thing I did was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the
car I saw another plane flying over my head, and it scared ...me, because
I knew there had been two planes that hit the World Trade Center. And
I started jogging up the ramp to get as far away as possible. Then the
plane -- it looked like a C-130 cargo plane -- started turning away
from the Pentagon, it did a complete turnaround.
- John O'Keefe
"I was right underneath the plane." "I heard
a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying. I guess it was hitting
light poles," said Milburn. "It
was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard
a second explosion."
- Kirk Milburn
Michael DiPaula 41, project coordinator Pentagon Renovation Team -
He left a meeting in the Pentagon just minutes before the crash, looking
for an electrician who didn't show, in a construction trailer less than
75 feet away. "Suddenly, an airplane roared into view,
nearly shearing the roof off the trailer before slamming into the E
ring. 'It sounded like a missile,'
DiPaula recalls . . . Buried in debris and covered with airplane fuel,
he was briefly listed by authorities as missing, but eventually crawled
from the flaming debris and the shroud of black smoke unscathed.
http://www.sunspot.net/search/bal-archive-1990.htmlstory
As I came up along the Pentagon I saw helicopters. That's not strange.
It's the Pentagon. Then I saw the plane. There were
only a few cars on the road, we all stopped. I know I wanted to believe
that plane was making a low descent into National Airport, but it was
nearly on the road. And it was headed straight for the building. It
made no sense. The pilot didn't seem to be planning to pull up anytime
soon. It was there. A huge jet. Then it was gone. A massive hole in
the side of the Pentagon gushed smoke. The noise was beyond description.
... I called my boss. I had no memory of how to work my cellphone. I
hit redial and his number came up. "Something hit the Pentagon.
It must have been a helicopter." I knew that wasn't true, but I
heard myself say it. I heard myself believe it, if only for a minute.
"Buildings don't eat planes. That plane, it just vanished. There
should have been parts on the ground. It should have
rained parts on my car. The airplane didn't crash. Where
are the parts?" That's the conversation I had with
myself on the way to work. It made sense this morning. I swear that
it did. ... There seems to be no footage of the crash, only the site.
The gash in the building looks so small on TV. The massiveness of the
structure lost in the tight shots of the fire. There was a plane. It
didn't go over the building. It went into the building. I want them
to find it whole, wedged between floors or something. I know that isn't
going to happen, but right now I pretend. I want to see footage of the
crash. I want to make it make sense. I want to know why there's this
gap in my memory, this gap that makes it seem as though the plane simply
became invisible and banked up at the very last minute, but I don't
think that's going to happen.
- "skarlet"
I was at a complete stop on the road in front of the helipad at the
Pentagon; what I had thought would be a shortcut was as slow as the
other routes I had taken that morning. I looked idly out my window to
the left -- and saw a plane flying so low I said, “holy
cow, that plane is going to hit my car” (not my actual words).
The car shook as the plane flew over. It was so close that I could read
the numbers under the wing. And then the plane crashed. My
mind could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go?
For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon
wall in pieces. But there was no plane
visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of
fire.
-- Christine Peterson
| misrepresents
the physical evidence |
lots of photos and background information at
www.oilempire.us/pentagon-hole.html
and
www.oilempire.us/pentagon-photos.html
www.questionsquestions.net/blog/041116walter.html
Jimmy Walter (reopen911.org): A sugar daddy with
poison pills
... the ground-level entry area (where the walls were missing
and support columns were missing or severely damaged and severed) was
about 90 feet wide. Only the second floor area of the hole was small.
Both In Plane Site and the Pentagon Strike web movie disingenuously
use selective photos in which the 90-foot ground level hole is hidden
behind smoke & water being sprayed by a firetruck, and it isn't
even mentioned. But note that not all Pentagon no-757 advocates hide
the real proportions of the hole in this way, which makes this misprepresentation
even more egregious.
there IS wreckage, not on the lawn (another example of deceptive, selective
choice of photographs) but all over the South parking lot and part of
the Heliport (easily visible in the photos taken by Steve Riskus), which
were in fact closer to the impact point than the area of lawn that is
shown (severe telephoto foreshortening illusion makes the lawn area
look close to the building). Sure, one might attempt to debate whether
the existing debris field is consistent with an airliner impact, but
not acknowledging its existence at all (or the existence
of the ground-level 90 foot entry hole) as is the case with In Plane
Site and Pentagon Strike, only serves to make 911 skeptics look
like conniving liars.
Washington
Post - October 2004
used "Pentagon Strike" to discredit 9/11 truth |
note how this article "sandwiches" mention of David
Ray Griffin's book in-between discussions of alien abduction and communication
with beings in other dimensions - a great way to discredit "New Pearl
Harbor" a month before the Kerry/Bush "election" - note
also that the Post implied that the "no plane" claim was the
only issue mentioned in New Pearl Harbor - when it was only a small part
of the book (the rest of the book is excellent and highly recommended)
A website that critiques the "casseopeia" group is
www.cassiopaeacult.com/who-are-the-cassiopaeans/
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13059-2004Oct6.htmlD
Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet
By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page B01
Working from his home office in a small town in England, Darren Williams
spent four weeks this summer making a short but startling video that
raises novel questions about the 2001 attack on the Pentagon.
The video, "9/11: Pentagon Strike," suggests that it was not
American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon, but a missile
or a small plane.
With rock music as a backdrop, the video offers flashes of photographs
taken shortly after impact, interspersed with witness accounts. The
pictures seem incompatible with damage caused by a jumbo jet, and no
one mentions seeing one. Red arrows point to unbroken windows in the
burning building.
Firefighters stand outside a perfectly round hole
in a Pentagon wall where the Boeing 757 punched through; it is less
than 20 feet in diameter.
Propelled by word of mouth, Internet search engines and e-mail, the
video has been downloaded by millions of people around the world.
American history is rife with conspiracy theories. Extremists have fed
rumors of secret plots by Masons, bankers, Catholics and Communists.
But now urban legends have become cyberlegends, and suspicions speed
their way globally not over months and weeks but within days and hours
on the Web.
"The dissemination is almost immediate," said Doug Thomas,
a University of Southern California communications professor who teaches
classes on technology and subgroups. "It's not just one Web site
saying, 'Hey, look at this.' It's 10,000 people sending e-mails to 10
friends, and then they send it on."
The Pentagon video could be a case study. Williams created a Web site
for the video, www.pentagonstrike.co.uk. Then he e-mailed a copy to
Laura Knight-Jadczyk, an American author living in France whose books
include one on alien abduction. Williams,
31, a systems analyst, belongs to an online group hosted by Knight-Jadczyk
that blends discussions of science, politics and the paranormal.
On Aug. 23, Knight-Jadczyk posted a link to the video on the group's
Web site, www.Cassiopaea.org. Within 36 hours, Williams's site collapsed
under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others
to fill the void.
In Texas, a former casino worker who downloaded the video began drawing
almost 700,000 visitors a day to his libertarian site. In Louisiana,
a young Navy specialist put the video on his personal Web page, usually
visited by a few friends and relatives; suddenly, the site was inundated
by more than 20,000 hits. In Alberta, traffic to a cabdriver's site
shot up more than sixfold after he supplied a link to the video.
Across thousands of sites, demand for the video was so great that some
webmasters solicited donations to pay for the extra bandwidth.
"Pentagon Strike" is just the latest and flashiest example
of a growing number of Web sites, books and videos contending that something
other than a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon. Most make their case
through the selective use of photographs and eyewitness accounts reported
during the confusion of the first hours after the attack. They say they
don't know what really happened to American Airlines Flight 77 and don't
offer other explanations. The doubters say they are just asking questions
that have not been answered satisfactorily.
The ready and growing audience for conspiracy theories about the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks has been particularly galling to those who worked
on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
the bipartisan panel known as the 9/11 commission.
"We discussed the theories," said Philip D. Zelikow, the commission's
executive director. "When we wrote the report, we were also careful
not to answer all the theories. It's like playing Whack-A-Mole. You're
never going to whack them all. They satisfy a deep need in the people
who create them. What we tried to do instead was to affirmatively tell
what was true and tell it adding a lot of critical details that we knew
would help dispel concerns."
Conspiracy theories are common after traumatic events. Michael Barkun,
a political scientist at Syracuse University who has written books on
the culture of conspiracies, said contradictory and inconclusive eyewitness
accounts often leave room for different interpretations of events.
"Conspiracy theories are one way to make sense of what happened
and regain a sense of control," Barkun said. "Of course, they're
usually wrong, but they're psychologically reassuring. Because what
they say is that everything is connected, nothing happens by accident,
and that there is some kind of order in the world, even if it's produced
by evil forces. I think psychologically, it's in a way consoling to
a lot of people."
The belief that the government is lying about the Sept. 11 attacks is
coming from both the right and the left. Experts say more than suspicion
of the Bush administration is at work.
"It seems that since the end of the Cold War, the enemy is the
United States government, the enemy is within," said Rick Ross,
whose Ross Institute of New Jersey monitors cults and other controversial
groups, many of which see manipulative forces working behind the scenes.
"Instead of projecting conspiracy theories out, it's become internalized."
Zelikow, for example, lacks credibility with many who question the work
of the 9/11 commission because he wrote a book with national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice. He believes that it is futile to discuss evidence
with people convinced of a conspiracy.
"The hardcore conspiracy theorists are totally committed,"
Zelikow said. "They'd have to repudiate much of their life identity
in order not to accept some of that stuff. That's not our worry. Our
worry is when things become infectious, as happened with the [John F.
Kennedy] assassination. Then this stuff can be deeply corrosive to public
understanding. You can get where the bacteria can sicken the larger
body."
David Ray Griffin considers himself an unlikely recruit to
what is called the "9/11 Truth Movement." The retired theologian,
who taught religion for three decades at Claremont School of Theology,
initially dismissed the notion that it was not an airliner that hit
the Pentagon. But after visiting several Internet sites raising questions
about the attack, he ended up writing a book. "The New Pearl Harbor,"
published in the spring, argues that a Boeing 757 would have caused
far more damage and left more wreckage strewn around the Pentagon.
"There are reasons why people doubt the official story," he
said. "There are photographs taken, and there is no Boeing in sight."
Suspicions formed as the Pentagon still smoldered.
For 2 1/2 years, the attack on the Pentagon has been discussed and researched
by members of Knight-Jadczyk's online group, the Quantum Future School.
The group's talks formed the basis for articles in which Knight-Jadczyk
argues that after the attack on the World Trade Center, eyewitnesses
at the Pentagon were predisposed to see a large airliner. She believes
that the Pentagon was attacked by a smaller plane and that members of
the Bush administration were somehow complicit because it was beneficial
for war-profiteers and Israel.
Interviewed by telephone from what she said is a 17-bedroom castle outside
Toulouse, where she lives with her Polish physicist husband and five
children, Knight-Jadczyk acknowledged that her group is considered "fringe."Knight-Jadczyk,
52, a Florida native, has been a psychic and a channeler.
She is now involved in experiments in what she calls "superluminal
communication," which she described as involving "time loops"
that would enable people to communicate with their former selves.
Knight-Jadczyk said she never imagined anyone outside her group would
ever view "Pentagon Strike."
"The fact everybody's been sending it to his brother and his cousin,
almost frenetically, reflects the fact that there is a deep unease,"
she said.
"They don't come out and say it. They don't want to be accused
of being with terrorists, anti-American or anti-patriotic. But they
still feel something's wrong."
Bret Dean of Fort Worth said he considers it "baloney" to
question whether a plane hit the Pentagon. But he also believes that
the government ignored warning of the attacks.
After posting a link to the video on his libertarian site, www.freedomunderground.org,
Dean recorded more than 8 million hits. At least one came from inside
the Defense Department, he said.
"I don't think the video is an instigator," said Dean, 45,
a former casino worker. "It's a symptom. A lot of people don't
trust the government's explanation because the government's classified
all the information."
Asked if there were unreleased photographs of the attack that would
convince the doubters, Zelikow, of the 9/11 commission, said, "No."
"The question of whether American 77 hit the Pentagon is indisputable,"
Zelikow said. "One reason you tend to doubt conspiracy theories
when you've worked in government is because you know government is not
nearly competent enough to carry off elaborate theories. It's a banal
explanation, but imagine how efficient it would need to be."
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