Pentagon Truth

9/11 activists debunk Rumsfeld's "missile" hoax

US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the first person to imply that a "missile" hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

Some "truth" activists were fooled by this claim (it was a very sophisticated hoax) but eventually retracted their support for this false claim, while others never believed it at all. Some sincere people still believe it, although every argument for all of the various "no plane" claims have been debunked by a wide variety of sources. It can be hard to admit having made a mistake, especially if one has staked their credibility on something that is not true.

This page ("Pentagon Truth") lists a few of the best writers, investigators and activists in the 9/11 truth movement who show how this was just a hoax to distract and discredit the skeptics. Not all of them agree with each other, but these public statements show that they understand the claim that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon is not real.

The links in the box at the top of this page exhaustively debunk the various claims for "no Boeing hit the Pentagon" and explain how and why this false claim was created.

The "fake debate" page lists good debunkings of "no plane" from people who believe the official story (more or less)

 

Michael Ruppert, From the Wilderness

On June 4, 2005, at a speech in Ashland, Oregon, Michael Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon (perhaps the most important book about 9/11), was asked about the "Pentagon Missile" theory by an audience member. His reply was to state that oilempire.us was the best website for deconstructing this false claim.

On December 27, 2005, Ruppert's publication From the Wilderness published a detailed article about the politics and psychology of the "Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon" hoax:

 

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/122705_identifiying_misinformation.shtml

Identifying Misinformation:
State Department’s Rosetta Stone for understanding 9/11 disinformation,
promotes 9/11 conspiracy hoaxes, ignores “Crossing the Rubicon” and other quality investigations
by Mark Robinowitz

an expanded version of this article is at www.oilempire.us/state.html

 

Jamey Hecht, Assistant Editor, From the Wilderness

"Oil Empire is among the best current political websites.9/11 has been examined by hundreds of writers, some of them quite excellent and others more limited -- but there are still other 9/11 sites whose illogic and rhetorical chicanery suggests disinformation.
Oil Empire is by far the best resource for discriminating among the various 9/11 sites, seeking the genuine and avoiding the bogus
. The mechanics of 9/11 are important. But the crime remains an isolated incident unless it's framed in a larger narrative of world affairs. This is the great strength of Mark Robinowitz's website.

 

Michael Ruppert, "Crossing the Rubicon," p. 184

"A honey pot, in intelligence jargon, is a tempting source of information or 'dangle' that is set out to lure intended victims into a trap. Ultimately the honey pot is violently and maliciously discredited so as to destroy the credibility of anything stuck to it by association."

 

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/033006_charlie_sheen.shtml

HEY CHARLIE SHEEN, WAKE UP!
There Are Good Reasons Why 9/11 is Having Its 15 Minutes of Fame Now – Look at Who’s In the Spotlight
by Michael C. Ruppert

 

www.wirenh.com/Features/Cover_Stories/system_breakdown_200603291183.html

System Breakdown
by Larry Clow
The Wire
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

.... Ruppert said he's trying to distance himself from the 9/11 movement. The one subject he doesn’t tackle is physical evidence--the why and how of the Towers’ collapse, the strangeness surrounding the destruction at the Pentagon and the debris left behind by Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. This is the one area where the 9/11 movement is focusing most of its energies now, he says, and physical evidence arguments are "absolute minefields when you get into the legal arena," with discussions devolving into a competition between whichever side can provide the most experts.
The greater danger, according to Ruppert, is that the 9/11 movement has been "heavily, heavily infiltrated … by government disinformation operatives" who have put proverbial "poison pills" into its debates.
Sounds paranoid, right? Not really. In the 1960s and 1970s, federal programs like COINTELPRO used undercover operatives to infiltrate the anti-war movement and discredit it, and the practice apparently continues today. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union released data confirming that the government has been spying on anti-war groups since the conflict in Iraq began in 2003.
[David Ray] Griffin, on the other hand, is skeptical of talk about disinformation and infiltrators.
"I really haven’t had any strong suspicions about anybody," he said. "Even if there is some truth to it, I don’t think it’s a very important concern."
Some of the more outlandish theories--like French writer Thierry Meyssan’s claim that a cruise missile, not an airplane, hit the Pentagon--are only diluting the waters, Ruppert said. There are other theories, too: that there were no planes at all, only holographic projections of planes (used in conjunction with explosives planted by some shadowy group); or that one of the planes that hit the WTC had some sort of anomalous "pod" attached to it that caused extra damage. But this is all "bullshit," Ruppert said, and is either intentional disinformation or sheer stupidity.
The research conducted by the movement itself is getting lazy, as well, according to Ruppert. Most of the Web sites reference previous research done by Ruppert and others, or they simply reference themselves, which hardly makes for a compelling case.
"My job is to keep my case pure, so if I've fallen out of the mainstream with 9/11, so be it. But if 9/11 ever gets opened in a meaningful way, my book is where (people) will have to come to," Ruppert said.

 

Michael Ruppert, February 14, 2005, interview on KZYX, “The Party’s Over”

"I have a legal case that will convict Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, General Myers, right now in court based upon evidence that is not scientific in nature, I don’t need to go there, that is a red herring when we focus on the crime that has been committed against this country. We’ve already proven who did it, the how doesn’t have to be fully fleshed out. ...
"These discussions of what possibly induced that [collapse of the towers] is a major psychological operations campaign designed to keep the American people from looking at the evidence of guilt."

 

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/080305_world_stories.shtml

[There sure is a lot of noise lately. Anything to keep people from thinking about Peak - which is looking more and more certain to arrive this fall and winter. There is also desperation in the bogus stories we're seeing because even the slightest attempt at verification leads to instant discredit (e.g., Bush-Cheney secretly indicted; Iran's nuclear program must be stopped now, while at the same time DoD intelligence discloses that Iran is 10 (not five) years away from the bomb; more fog out of London than the analytical eye can penetrate... et cetera).
Keep your eye on the ball.
The fact that Norwegian production is plummeting is extremely important. Norway has been the third largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia for many years. Global decline is not just apparent, it's starting to scream. The fact that the US government is doing nothing to prepare its people for these shocks is despicable. The author here says it best, "I'd like to be able to tell you that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to prepare for the coming energy emergency...but I can't. In fact, when I think about how little prepared this country is for the changes that are about to hit us, my hands automatically clench into fists."
Mine too. - Michael C Ruppert]

 

Jamey Hecht, From The Wilderness

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051906_timing_film.shtml
IT’S THE TIMING, NOT THE FILM:
New Frames from Pentagon Crash Video Show Langley Embarrassing the 9/11 Truth Movement
by
Jamey Hecht, Ph.D.
Senior Staff Writer
© Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

May 19, 2006 1000 PST – (FTW) – LOS ANGELES - Today the Pentagon released a few more frames of video from a surveillance camera that recorded the explosion at the Pentagon on 9/11. The alleged rationale for their timing has to do with the Moussaoui trial; showing the video any earlier supposedly would have compromised the proceedings (somehow), but now that he’s been through the system, the frames can be shown. The shorter edit we’ve all been watching for five years does not include these new frames at the beginning, which show the Boeing 757.
Or they show an indistinct length of white that instantly disappears into the blooming fireball.
Or they show the contrail of a rocket-propelled missile.
Or they show an artificially interpolated streak of white pixels.
Or they show Superman running at lightning speed.
What matters is the propaganda value of releasing this particular document at this particular time. At FTW we feel vindicated. Like John Judge and Mark Robinowitz, we realized very early that the question of Flight 77 would cost everyone more than it was worth. As for what hit the Pentagon, I reckon it was AA77 (I used to think otherwise), but I don’t want to add a line to the impassioned terabytes that have been written on this issue. What’s crucial, from our perspective, is what happens to the legal case for means, motive, and opportunity that Mike Ruppert was the first to construct in Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. That is the moral heart of the mass murders of 9/11: specific individuals had the means, motive, and opportunity to achieve the horrors in question, and there is more than enough non-physical evidence to convict them in an impartial court. The physical evidence is a snake-pit, no matter what the truth is. Who controls the physical evidence? The scrap metal from the WTC, the black boxes, the debris? Who controls the release or retention of surveillance videotapes? The war machine and its fractious minions at Langley.
Arguing about the physical evidence not only divides and exhausts the truth movement, it also links the very question of 9/11 truth to the most vulnerable hypotheses suggested in answer. Why? Because in our War McNews culture, the public’s attention is caught by the more shocking, more absurd, more simplistic stories—no plane hit the Pentagon, no planes hit the towers, holograms, pods, King Kong—whereas only a few literate men and women will take the time to read a lengthy investigation of exactly who did what and when. Now that five years have elapsed, and the very idea of government complicity is popularly associated with the “no-plane” hypothesis, PRESTO! Here are the missing frames of film to confirm that there was no government complicity. It doesn’t matter what the frames actually show. What matters is the talk at the water cooler: “Lee Harvey Oswald Acts Alone, Pilots Boeing 747 Into Pentagon, Caught on Film.”
For the logic of physical evidence as a disinformation tool, see Mike Ruppert, “The Kennedys, Physical Evidence, and 9/11,” FTW, November 26, 2003.
For a deconstruction of the State Department’s masterful use of this same tool, see Mark Robinowitz, “‘Identifying Misinformation’: The State Department’s Rosetta Stone for understanding 9/11 disinformation promotes 9/11 conspiracy hoaxes while ignoring Crossing the Rubicon and other authentic investigations,” FTW, December 27, 2005.
The most complete, rigorous, and elegant history of the “no plane” story is found at Robinowitz’ own website, here: www.oilempire.us/bogus.html

 

Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/05/no-way-and-yeah-so-what.html

I think there's a grave problem of "sexing up" the truth with spectacular yet specious arguments. For instance, some of the splashiest and attractive 9/11 material is devoted to supporting the "Pentagon Missile." Sure, it gets people's attention - in fact, it dominates the public perception of alternative theories of the attacks - but is it right? Well, no; as I've said, I don't think so. And truth will suffer again and again when those who fell for the missile "hook" come to the same conclusion and chuck the whole thing, and those who were turned off the "missile" refuse to look any further. [emphasis added]

 

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/05/cynical-sophisticated-and-subtle.html

... consider the Pentagon crash, and the confiscation of the video from the service station security camera. That the video has never been released is regarded by many as damning evidence that authorities are trying to hide the true nature of the crash: that the video must reveal that it wasn't Flight 77 but a missile, or a fighter jet. But think: perhaps the video remains hidden because some people are quite happy to mindfuck the conspiracists and perpetuate an erroneous line of inquiry. Would they want to lay to rest a mistaken hypothesis, when it misdirects the efforts of so many? It may be that the question is not What have they got to hide? but rather, Why do they want us to think that they're hiding something?

 

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/09/flying-wedge.html
The Flying Wedge

I find it deeply unfortunate and potentially disastrous that the Pentagon "missile" is becoming something of a wedge issue for 9/11 skeptics.

Funny things did happen at the Pentagon that morning, but in my estimation the missile theory doesn't rise above the folkloric. There is simply too much to counter the fantastic claim for the 9/11 truth movement to be squandering its integrity on such speculation. Here, and from what the general public would call "conspiracy" sites, is a compilation of evidence for Flight 77 striking the Pentagon, here are photos of the plane's wreckage, and here's a refutation of the missile theory by respected Washington-based researcher John Judge.

Something to consider: when an anomalous event occurs, like a jet striking the Pentagon, we ought to make allowance for anomalous evidence. Yes, the hole looks too small, but with what do we have to compare the event? The walls of the structure - particularly the virtually empty side the plane went 270 degrees out of its way to hit, which had been hardened against attack - are much stronger than those of the WTC. So what's it supposed to look like?

For me, here's what knocks down the missile theory: did the conspirators need a missile to produce the desired result? No, they didn't. And that's not to say Hani Hanjour was at the helm. He couldn't fly a Cessna the month before. Hanjour didn't perform those high speed aerobatic maneuvers that had a flight controller believe she was tracking a fighter jet, and hit the ground floor without scraping the Pentagon's lawn. He was such a poor pilot, a flight school manager who'd tried to instruct him in January 2001 said "I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had," and reported him to the FAA to have his license revoked. (How he got the license in the first place, the FBI isn't telling.) In August 2001, just three weeks before the attack, the flight school instructor who refused the hapless Hanjour rental of a Cessna tried to talk him out of ever becoming a pilot. Yet regarding Flight 77, "aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm."

Unconvinced that Flight 77 was beyond Hani Hanjour? Some visual aids, then.

Here's the cockpit of a Cessna, with which Hanjour couldn't cope in August.

And here's the cockpit of a 757, which Hani Hanjour first entered on September 11, and we're told mastered on the fly to control the huge jet's 500 mph, 270-degree spiralling descent to a level entry of the ground floor of the one side of the Pentagon which had been hardened against attack, and was virtually empty owing to construction.

So no, it wasn't Hanjour flying that thing. So what was?

There was no guided missile, but I believe control of the aircraft was taken from Hanjour in flight so Flight 77 would behave as a guided missile. We're not talking science fiction. The technology exists, and at the heart of the Pentagon. For instance, a month before the attacks, weapons' giant Raytheon had remote-flown a FedEx 727 to a safe landing on a New Mexico air force base in August 2001, without a pilot. (It may be worth noting that Raytheon employees were on at least three of the four flights, and on Flight 77 was Stanley Hall, director of program management for Raytheon's Electronics Warfare Division. A colleague called him "our dean of electronic warfare.") The incredible story that none of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable, when any one of which failures would have been a first for the system - black boxes are mounted in the tail sections - deserves more attention. As does Dov Zakheim: then-Pentagon Comptroller and PNACer, whose System Planning Corporation "designs, manufactures and distributes highly sophisticated technology that enables an operator to fly by remote control as many as eight different airborne vehicles at the same time from one position either on the ground or airborne."

Substituting the flight with a missile, disposing of the plane and its people, risking detection in broad daylight before witnesses who could have been taking pictures - none of that needed to be chanced.

As John Judge writes in "Not All Conspiracies Are Created Equal":

Until we know, we cannot act. And if we act on rumor and impulse then we are no less a slave than those who live in the denial that the propaganda machines promote. So, be cynical and question things, but be analytical and scientific so you can approach the truth when you speak. Three truths don't make a fourth just by mentioning them. All lies, in fact, depend on having elements of the truth in them for verismilitude as its called. Read, don't repeat what you last heard. And if you are going to be more than a theorist, then give conspiracy the respect it deserves, and prove it.

There's much more deserving of our time, reputations and resources than perpetuating the urban myth of the missile theory. Just because the "official story" - which is itself a conspiracy theory - is intellectually lazy, is no excuse why our competing narratives ought to be.

 

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/04/money-doesnt-talk.html
TUESDAY, APRIL 04, 2006
Money doesn't talk

You want some 9/11 truth? You won't find it in the accretions of increasingly absurd conjecture and the tail-chasing diversions of no evidentiary value. The hard-ass, 9/11 truth has the colour of money and the sweet stink of opium, and plenty of both. ...

The money's swearing, and it's swearing at us. Over the fractious din of arguments for missile strikes, demolition and holograms, can you hear it?

 

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/04/conspiracature_12.html
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Conspiracature

... suddenly, the loudest voices for "9/11 Truth" are those of former Bush aides and lifelong Republicans, beating the drum for - dig it - no passenger aircraft having struck the World Trade Center. ....

Who profits by the You're with us or you're against us essentialism of the advocates for the most contentious and spurious speculations on 9/11, and how far does it carry us from the scene of the crime and its high criminals? The pods, the holograms, the missiles, the demolitions: how did we arrive at this familiar position of irrelevance, and who do you think means to keep us here? Popular Mechanics, CNN and the great Anglo-American dailies don't shy from drawing strawman caricatures of conspiracy and then delight in setting them ablaze with all of us supposedly inside like some springtime wickerman sacrifice, yet the meat of the case for criminal intent rots on the offering plate. Why do you think that is, and who do you think might like it like that? The conspirators, who create both a false opposition and a false conspiracy, remain invisible and free to deal more death.

 

Kris Millegan, Trine Day Press

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/04/money-doesnt-talk.html

in a response to "Money doesn't talk"

Kris Millegan said...

ThePistol44 said...
A quick note about the value of "sexy photos" and videos from the Pentagon and WTC collapses: it is much, much easier to introduce someone to the 9/11 Truth movement with visible evidence as opposed to discussions about insider trading and the nefarious history of the Bush/Cheney team. For better or worse, people believe their eyes.

Yes and the octopus through several of their arms have spent so much money on uncovering how we "tick" and "what buttons to push." They know and it is accepted science that people believe what they see. That is precisely why the false meme of no-Boeing at the Pentagon has the "legs" that it does. That is the why In Plane Site and other flash propaganda pieces are being used to sell that false meme. TPTB (The Powers that Be) knew that there would be Internet head scratching about 9-11, there has even been "trial-run ops" to get the lay of the land (TWA 800). The tactics learned and developed there were then planned for and used in response to 9-11 deconstruction.

Three basic false memes were developed to hang the "hats of contention" upon;

1. No Plane at Pentagon (Effect: To divide researchers and to make 9-11 conspiracy research look "nuts" to folks within the highly charged and very "influential" DC Beltway crowd.)

2. No Planes in NY (Effect: To upset folks in NY on 911 conspiracy research{that is where a big crime occurred-jurisdiction for justice} and thoroughly disgust any survivors' family members from adding their gravitas to uncovering truths)

3. The "Jews" did it. (Effect: A blanket tainting that repells many without any perusal of the issue and allows the "official" story to label its critics as anti-semetic bigots with and agenda not facts and reasoned argument, etc.)

Then these memes help to cover up obvious conspiratorial facts leading to countles hours of blather, emotion, etc. Personally, I am sure that that there was demolition, remote controll technology and patsies involved in the op. And as with any large op, those with their noses in the right place or someone that directs them there, uses the op for their own personal purpose some maybe contrary to the ops planner. For with any action there is always possiblity. No chessmaster wins everytime. There are many editions of SunTzu, etc. And yes has Jeff said if you follow the money follow the drugs there are smoking guns aplenty. And if you read history you even find that some of the guns have been discovered before, covered-up and then erupt again, go away again, etc.

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

Peace,
Kris Millegan

 

9/11 Visibility Campaign

Emanuel Sferios, SeptemberEleventh.org

It took me a while, but it's now easy to see/understand. There *are* 757 plane parts in the photos, and the fire/impact area of the photos *is* the size of a 757. The reason there aren't any large, obvious pieces of 757 in the photos: planes flying that fast into large buildings get pretty shredded. (Nonetheless, there are clearly visible 757 parts in the photos.)

Remember the videos of the south tower hit? Recall the fact that the plane hit at an angle, and the big fireball appeared on the outside of the building (unlike the north tower, where it hit straight on center). The significant thing to note here is that you didn't see the plane come through the building, or any big, obvious pieces of the plane come through. That's because planes hitting buildings at that speed get pretty darn shredded in the massive explosion. The same thing happened at the Pentagon. Go look at the photos, though. The damage to the building is in the shape of a full-sized 757.

Also, you know that hole in the back wall of the Pentagon. Who was it that supposedly claimed that was from the "nose cone" of the plane? Did the government make that claim? I don't think so. Clearly that claim is false, and easily debunked. However, the counter-claim that it must therefore be from a missile is not the only other explanation. It very likely was a hole knocked out by the rescue workers, from the outside inward! The whole debate between "nose-cone versus missile" seems a big red-herring, part of the hoax to convince us (people inside the movement that is) that it was a missile.

Also, remember the five Pentagon security photos (the ones dated September 12), which when played in sequence looks clearly like a missile struck the Pentagon. Who released these photos? That's right. The Pentagon released them. Should make us think.

John Judge was right all along. I've finally come around, and I'm not that embarrassed about it having taken me this long, because, well, it was a damn good hoax--a professional job well done.

.... if you think that the "no plane at the Pentagon" claim, even if it is wrong, is harmless... or if you think perhaps even it is beneficial because it converts a lot of people into 9/11 skeptics (and it certainly does), please think again. John Judge and Mark Robinowitz and others are correct that its intention was to alienate people inside the beltway, and make us look foolish among D.C. professionals. It succeeded. [emphasis added]

 

Scott Bingham, Flight 77 info

flight77.info

UPDATE 5/24/6
not all 9/11 skeptics are conspiracy theorists. you don't need to think a missile hit the pentagon to believe that 9/11 was an inside job. hard-core conspiracy theorists (CTs) set up shop within the 9/11 truth movement very early. CTs get their joy from promoting and inventing theory (not in seeking accuracy) where accuracy gaps exist. since 9/11 is so full of accuracy gaps, CTs have flourished heavily. it is frequently difficult to know if you're communicating with a CT, or someone who is sincerely interested in filling in the 9/11 accuracy gaps with information gained from actual investigation.
most, if not all CTs hang out on the planet called, 'anything other than a 757 hit the pentagon'. it is on this planet that CTs have built their cities. they ARE a movement - it's the '9/11 conspiracy theory movement'. this movement should not be confused with the '9/11 truth movement' - they are very different movements.
one of the more popular cities on planet 9/11 CT is called, 'scholars for 9/11 truth' [the only wikipedia definition i've ever seen being considered for deletion]. this is a relatively new organization, and support the highly dubious judicial watch. while having many well-meaning members, there is no denying that 'scholars for 9/11 truth' neither acts in scholarly ways, nor do they promote accuracy (also known as 'truth'). instead S911T hump to no end the notion that something other than a 757 hit the pentagon.

UPDATE 3/24/6
i hate sort of beating-up on certain segments of the collective of people who are skeptical about the official version of happened on 9/11... but here i go again: scholars for 9/11 truth: another just provocative web site. how can you tell? among other things, on their home page, they promote the 9/11 music video called 'loose change' that offers up every crack pot pod missile theory in the book. 'loose change' is out there just to provoke people emotionally. its substance is in its appeal to teens and twentysomethings. so why are the 'scholars for 9/11 truth' aligning themselves with a tin hat munching 9/11 music video? why are the 'scholars for 9/11 truth' also promoting the no 757 theory? answer: the web site is just provocative. it's using the blanket (AKA 'big tent'; throwing enough shit at the wall) approach to attract more people to the concept that 9/11 was an inside job. then by magic, one of these new people will uncover the proof we need to hang the true conspirators.
what's wrong with this 'scholarly' approach? anyone? anyone ? bueler? bueler?
once bush & co reach the end of their reign - that's the finish line, they win. once those powers-that-be are out of power, people lose interest. we need to get 'em for 9//11 while they're in office if we're going to end this endless war on terrorism.
so the problem with the scholars for 9/11 truth's throw-enough-shit-at-the-wall approach is that they're spinning a new generation of 9/11 skeptics into 9/11 goofballs who are going to spend the next 2 1/2 years looking at the same old pictures of the pentagon going, 'gee, that IS a small hole...' and who will spend endless hours replaying the WTC video trying to see the missile pods.
what does it gain the 9/11 truth movement if everyone is a member - but we're all full of shit reciting misinformation?
the purpose of the 9/11 truth movement isn't to have more members - it's to end the war on terrorism while it's still possible. and time is really running out.

UPDATE 1/29/6
people are already calling the govt's CD ROM of the impact fake. no one has seen it, but so many are sure it's fake. the song is going to be that they had 4 years to create the images so of course the images are going to look real. blah!
there are people involved in the 9/11 truth movement because they feel betrayed by a treasonous government. then there are the people involved in the 9/11 truth movement because they LOVE conspiracy theories.
these two types mix a lot, but they're typically separated by the 757/no-757 debate. the lovers of conspiracies typically believe ANYTHING other than a 757 hit the pentagon and they'll accept no evidence to the contrary. in fact, they count any suggestion that a 757 actually hit the pentagon as disinformation, and if you call their bullshit, they will quickly suspect that you are some type of agent intentionally spreading lies to benefit the official cover up (perhaps even having your bandwidth paid for by govt officials? hmmmm, yes...).
no bullshit. this is how strange things have become. and guess what happens when the CD ROM is released - all the lovers of conspiracies are going to be left behind as they try to cover their reputations by making desperate arguments that the clear video of flight 77 is fake. then, when people stop listening, they'll move on to other outlandish 9/11 suggestion (pods, etc) in hopes something will stick and make them seem cool again.


UPDATE 3/25/5
i think 9/11 has become its own religion - and the flight 77 story is like some crazy church wherein followers argue for & against the existence of god at the same time.
within the 9/11 religion, people talk about serious, sober issues concerning the physics of 9/11 and moral issues, etc., and everyone feels good about their perspectives and placement within their communities. THEN all that sanity is shattered by the flight 77 circus. the flight 77 clown car rolls up playing freaky clown music and all the crazy theories spill out - and the leading crazy theory, the one blowing the horn with the biggest red nose, is called the official government version of what happened.
the good religious people are like, 'oh man... go away'

 

Sander Hicks, author of "The Big Wedding"

(note: Hicks has shifted from pointing out that some of the 9/11 claims are false toward a position of promoting some of the worst nonsense claims. It's hard to find a rational and sincere explanation for publishing a book admitting the "no plane" stuff is false and then going on to promote events with its adherents.)

Sander Hicks refering to this website

"Your sixth sense for 9/11 disinfo is intuitive and deadly accurate. It's as necessary as original research."

 

Sander Hicks, author of "The Big Wedding"

"The 9/11 Truth Movement gives one insight why the term 'conspiracy theorist' came to be shorthand for "discredited whacko" in the invisible guidebook of mainstream media. "Suddenly, it's not hard to understand why the obvious anomalies in the JFK assassination never received proper attention in accepted media channels."
"If you have just as many nutty theories about the driver of the limo turning around and shooting JFK as you have honest scientific inquiries about the real probability of multiple shooters, the wheat drowns in the chaff."

 

Monday, December 06, 2004
'Reality Is a Construction...':
Sander Hicks and the 9/11 Truth Movement

www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz12062004/

When you have a sensitive topic here, when so much political power is involved, there's going to be a series of false reports, disinformation put forth to obscure the real story, red herrings to throw off the dogs. It happened in the JFK assassination, and it's happening now.
My quick analysis on how this is happening right now would be to point out two red herrings: The Pentagon Theory and the accusations of anti-Semitism. Paul Thompson of the 9/11 Timeline was on the Morning Sedition show and host Mark Marin dismissed the entire 9/11 Truth website by saying, "Oh, it’s one of those sites that say no plane hit the Pentagon." We're being judged by our weakest link. And it is pretty weak.
You had rush hour traffic on I-395 that saw the plane hit, you have 100 eyewitnesses compiled in the pamphlet published by Penny Schoner. Where the hell did this theory come from? Thierry Meyssan’s book "The Horrible Fraud" was the original source. Meyssan wrote his book from Paris, he didn't travel over here. The book is highly imaginative, and in the middle of a trauma, people are searching for answers. A lot of people in the 9/11 truth movement glommed onto this one and I think it’s hurt our credibility over all. You have to wonder if that was by design.For instance, all the right-wing magazines (e.g. National Review) have had a field day.
I've also seen media voices dismiss the entire topic of 9/11 questioning by sweeping it all into some kind of anti-Semitic whacko camp.
-- Sander Hicks [emphasis added]

[note: War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a comment that a "missile" hit the Pentagon the same week that Monsieur Meyssan first published a webpage claiming a plane did not hit the Pentagon. The most reasonable explanation is that this was a coordinated propaganda effort to create a false lead to distract the skeptics.]

 

Lisa Pease, Real History Archives, co-editor "The Assassinations"

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2005/09/day-before-september-11.html

Sunday, September 11, 2005
The Day Before September 11

We've seen, in graphic relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, how the concerns of ordinary people are not even on the radar to the President, the Vice President, or any of his high-level cabinet members. The president played golf and guitar while people drowned. Condi bought $1000+ shoes. VP Cheney was preserving the last days of his vacation. Is it so hard to believe that people with this kind of concern for America might have done more than even allowing 9/11 to happen, but might have, in some way, encouraged it? ....

I will hasten to add that I am not one of those who thinks a missile hit the Pentagon. I met people in DC who told me of their experiences of seeing a plane hit the building.

Just because I have serious questions as to what happened on 9/11 does not mean I agree with the theories of others who share my questions. And a reading of the 9/11 Commission Report, which I commenced recently, brought up far more questions than answers. The report is strange, bearing paragraphs that seem to be answering accusations not made directly in their pages, begging the question of what they are trying to hide. It's bizarre, and disturbing. So I want to know. And wanting to know does not put me in the same bucket with some of the truly whacko conspiracy theorists on this issue, whose theories I strongly disagree with. It puts me in the bucket with many reasonable people who care about the future of our country, at a time when that future seems increasingly bleak.

 

Joël van der Reijden

http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/JoeR/pentahole_dimensions_est.htm
Why the no-757 crowd is making an ass out of itself"

the 911 Truth movement has been subject to so much mis- and disinformation that we are further than ever from getting an idea of what actually happened. Most researchers bring nothing new to table and when they do, it almost always turns out to be something highly questionable. For me, in case of 911, it has been much more rewarding to find out how the truth seekers have been completely misled about some of the key aspects of 911. Therefore I dumped my site and will only share one or two articles that prove that the one thing you can trust even less than the government's official line, is the stuff promoted by the average conspiracy researcher.

 

Why it is most likely that an American Airlines 757-223 hit it the Pentagon
by Joel v.d Reijden

In my complete review of 911, I have taken up many dozens of witness accounts. When put together you get the following story: A large American Airlines jetliner came screaming over the highways with it's gears up, after having circled the Pentagon area. It balanced a little to the left an right, clipped some light poles and other stuff, barely pulled itself straight again and fired up it's engines to full throttle in the last few seconds. Some say it struck the helipad with it's left wing right before it hit the Pentagon and a few others claim it hit the ground with it's nose, only inches before the wall. Just like the two airplanes that hit the WTC; "it disappeared.". A few claim they could see the tail sticking out of the building for about one or two seconds before a very heavy explosion engulfed everything in flames. (Like the WTC) People who were close by, were blown off their feet and some even went flying. Small pieces of airplane, concrete and other rubble was blown out of the building and landed up to hundreds of yards away. The blast was so powerful it blew a few big chunks of the engines hundreds of yards through the air. An intense heat has been described, which melted the back of at least one firetruck which was standing in front of the building. ....

The witness testimonies

Keep in mind that the Pentagon has 25.000 people working there. A lot of these witnesses have high ranks in the army, navy and air force. Some of the witnesses were commercial airline pilots and many people in the neighborhood are familiar with military and commercial airplanes, since there are multiple military and commercial airfields close by. So, if all those witness testimonies form a coherent story, why then do so many people support the "theory" that an F16, missile or global hawk hit the Pentagon? The funniest thing is, that nobody even reported seeing any of those planes (or a missile). ....

I have proven the following things, which seem to make a couple of dents into the works of most of the well-known 9/11 gurus:

Claims that the Pentagon hole is (much) too small for a 757-223, are false.
Claims that witnesses have said they saw a missile, are false.
Claims that witnesses have said they saw a small plane and implying a significant amount did the same, are misleading.
Claims that witnesses have said the plane was quiet were an extreme minority and are brought to the public in a misleading way. As usual, the context has never been addressed. (In the car, windows shut, radio on. One person said it was the shock)
Claims that a Global Hawk or a F-16 hit the Pentagon aren't backed up by any witnesses. So why have these theories been put forward in the first place?

Quotes from the aftermath of the crash site are no proof something else than a 757 hit the building. As you can read in the quotes I gathered, even a few people who saw a large airliner dive into the building wondered about the relatively small amount of visible damage it did.

 

Margie Burns

www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/10/2218596.html

Foolish no-planers getting all the attention; could that be the idea?
by margieburns on Thu 10 Aug 2006

the rude, careless and untruthful people trying to light into me seem to be playing a double game. They're not going to bully me successfully; I have an obligation to approach the topic of 9/11 with the same rigor as any other topic. But they are having some success in distracting the attention of big media outlets to themselves. And they're even trying that old Stalag 17 tactic of accusing me, other researchers and "liberal web sites" of "working for Bush." Interesting ploy. Some of these individuals are probably sincere, but it is not a given that all of them are. I would be not in the least surprised if some of the most vocal turn out to be stringers for the Intelligence Community -- or at least Spook wannabees strung along by the IC.

 

Cheryl Seal, Unknown News

Cheryl's Daily Diatribe: Monday, June 10, 2002 -- SMOKING GUN feedback:
Where Was G.W. Bush on the Morning of Sept. 11?
www.unknownnews.net/cdd061002.html

I did not get my information from mainstream media sources. I, for one, trust "everyday people" a whole lot more than I trust the mainstream media or U.S. government. Most of the Pentagon info. was obtained from the type of sites that escape mainstream scrutiny, such as newsletters (one put out for the ordinary folks working at the Pentagon, for example). The plane was clearly seen by many people working at the Pentagon that day, including the construction foreman still trying to complete work on Wedge One. He was standing in the parking lot. Other credible witnesses: several people on the metro coming toward the Pentagon (it has its own stop), at least one witness on the beltway. I am familiar with D.C. and know the layout (I live in Maryland) so I am sure that these people truly did have the view they said they did. And in any case, why make a story up about a fancy 180-degree maneuver? After all, the wedge struck faces west and the plane was coming from a westerly direction. Doesn't it make more sense to make a bee line for the Pentagon? The U-turn strongly suggests remote controlled piloting — why on Earth would conspirators trying to hide their part in the event put out a story like that?

[note: Metrorail is above ground where it crosses the Potomac River (next to the 14th Street bridge). There is one claim on the internet of someone who supposedly saw a missile hit the Pentagon while waiting in the UNDERGROUND Pentagon Metro station -- which is not believable to anyone familiar with the Washington Metro system.]

 

Jan Hoyer, Digital Style Designs, 911 Research

http://digitalstyledesigns.com/pages/Thoughts.htm

"The prevailing philosophy among some within this generic third wave 9/11 truth movement seems to be that quickly getting (any) information to citizens is a most critical method to expand the movement. While activists seem to flock to this, there are others who have officially distanced themselves, believing this dramatically increases the risk of destroying fragile credibilty. IMO, this prediction is happening before our very eyes with the credibilty destroying Loose Change and no plane hit the Pentagon debacles. It is not a coincidence that most of the significant 9/11 truth media coverage of late has focused on the weakest links."

 

Jim Hoffman, 911 Research.com

http://911research.com/essays/pentagon/video.html

Video of the Pentagon Attack:
What is the Government Hiding?
by
Jim Hoffman
Version 0.9, May 16, 2006

... saying there is not proof that a plane hit the Pentagon ... necessarily implies the following:

  1. That the scores of accounts of a large plane are either faked or coerced.
  2. That the damage to the Pentagon, including an approximately 100-foot-wide expanse of punctured facade walls on the first floor, were somehow produced by a means other than a plane.
  3. That fires that smelled like burning jet fuel, running about 200 feet across the facade of the Pentagon, were produced by some other means, or the photographs were faked.
  4. That the swath of downed lamp-poles the width of a 757's wing span were sliced and knocked over by some other means, and that smashed objects lying in the paths of the engines were damaged by some other means.
  5. That the identification of human remains of the crew and passengers of Flight 77 was fraudulent.
  6. That the Flight 77 with its crew and passengers were disposed of elsewhere, and their fate remains unknown.

To believe that the Pentagon was not hit by Flight 77 requires one to accept points 5 and 6. To believe that no plane hit the Pentagon, one has to accept all six points. Such a belief isn't consistent with a rational analysis of the evidence.

 

 

Jim Hoffman (wtc7.net, 911review.com, 911research.com) observes that the nonsense injected into the 9/11 truth movement attracts people without critical thinking skills, who then alienates logically thinking people from being associated with it. It's a brilliant strategy of disruption.

"What could be more effective [for the perpetrators] than to recruit people into the 9/11 truth movement who are self-motivated to proselytize with nonsense?
- Jim Hoffman

I think if not for the success of the Pentagon no-plane and South Tower pod-plane memes in marginalizing 9/11 truth in 2004, we could be in an entirely different position now.
- Jim Hoffman

 

There are several other examples of actions by authorities that I think are calculated to function in the same way as bait for the skeptics:

  • The first frame of the 5 leaked (and forged) Pentagon CCTV frames that shows the small plane hidden behind the post; baiting people to think "Look! they're trying to hide that it was a small plane".
  • Rumsfeld's reference to "the missile" that damaged the Pentagon; leading people to think it was an inadvertant admission by him of knowledge that the attack involved a missile.
  • The refusal of authorities to provide proof of the identities of the planes that crashed at the three sites, such as identifying part numbers from aircraft debris; exploiting peoples' tendency to confuse lack of proof with evidence to the contrary.

The destruction and suppression of evidence -- a pattern seen throughout the response to the attack -- serves the coverup in two ways:

  • preventing investigators from definitively disproving false elements of the official story.
  • luring investigators into thinking that true elements of the official story are false.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagon/index.html

The Pentagon Attack:
What the Physical Evidence Shows by
Jim Hoffman
Version 0.9, March 28, 2006

Introduction
The theory that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 (the kind of plane that Flight 77 was) is promoted by the most widely distributed books, videos, and other media challenging the official account of the 9/11 attack. The no-Boeing theory forms the central thesis of Thierry Meyssan's books L'effroyable Imposture (The Frightening Fraud), and Le Pentagate; is featured by the videos Painful Deceptions, 9/11 In Plane Site, and Loose Change; and is the subject of the Flash animation 9/11 Pentagon Strike. These pieces have been distributed worldwide in quantities reaching into the millions, thanks to a combination of excellent production values, entertaining and captivating styles of presentation, and expert and well-financed marketing. The work of 9/11 researchers who do not embrace the no-Boeing theory has been eclipsed in every medium except the web.

In late 2004 I wrote The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory: Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics. In it, I examined the no-Boeing theory from a several perspectives including analysis of its:

psychology
history
evidentiary support
propaganda
misinformation

That essay presents a cumulative argument against the no-Boeing theory using each of these perspectives. Critics of this essay failed to acknowledge this and instead zeroed in on one or another point to highlight it as if the entire case against the no-Boeing theory hinged on that point. For example, several critics have mis-stated my position as relying exclusively on the accounts of eyewitnesses, ignoring my detailed examination of the 'physical evidence case' for the no-Boeing theory.
In this essay I look exclusively at the physical evidence of the Pentagon attack -- post-crash photographs and verifiable information about the building, the Boeing 757-200 aircraft, and the physics of aircraft crashes based on case studies. In some cases I mention elements of eyewitness accounts, but only to frame my analysis of the what photographs show about the crash. I show that the physical evidence is consistent with the crash of a 757, noting flaws in popular arguments to the contrary.
The many eyewitness accounts of the Pentagon attack constitute a rich body of evidence that strongly supports the conclusion that the attack plane was either a Boeing 757 or a very similar aircraft. The physical and eyewitness evidence are thus mutually corroborating, a fact that is obscured by common errors in evaluating the physical evidence. Many researchers have dismissed the body of eyewitness evidence out of hand, primarily for two reasons:

Allegations that the body of witness evidence as a whole is plagued by bias, contamination, and unreliability (addressed here) have been widely promoted and have not been effectively countered, apparently because the ponderous volume of the witness reports discourages analysis.
Assertions that physical evidence trumps witness evidence in any crime investigation have fostered a reflexive disdain for witness evidence while lending a false sense of infallibility to arguments based on photographs.

Factors such as these have contributed to the creation of a false dialectic, which has eyewitness evidence supporting the Boeing theory and physical evidence supporting the no-Boeing theory. By focusing on the physical evidence here, I hope to sidestep that dialectic and clarify what conclusions the physical evidence actually supports.

Contents
Debris is Consistent with a Jetliner Crash
Pentagon Facade Damage Fits a 757
Interior Damage is Consistent with a 757 Crash
Damage to Surroundings Fits a 757
Specific Debris Matches a 757
Suppressing Evidence of the Crash Serves the Cover-up


http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html
The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory:
Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics
by Jim Hoffman October 7, 2004

The idea that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon is easily the most controversial and divisive issue among researchers of the 9/11/01 attacks. Effectively promoted since early 2002, this idea has enjoyed an increasing acceptance in the 9/11 Truth Movement, despite its blatant incompatibility with the extensive body of eyewitness evidence that a 757-like twin-engine jetliner flew into the Pentagon and exploded.
Many researchers have ignored or dismissed this eyewitness evidence in favor of a seemingly overwhelming physical evidence case that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon, based on photographs of the crash site. As I show below, however, each of the pieces evidence adduced in favor of the no-757-crash theory can be reconciled with the crash of a 757.
The controversy over this issue has eclipsed the many documented facts linking the 9/11/01 attacks to insiders. Defenders of the official story have seized on this issue as representative of the gullibility and incompetence of 9/11 "conspiracy theorists". [emphasis added]


http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/witnesses/bart.html eyewitness accounts

www.911review.com/errors/pentagon/index.html detailed analyses of how the "no plane" claims are fake
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/aerobatics.html 757 maneuvers
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/witnesses.html eyewitnesses
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/nodebris.html no debris?
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/crashdebris.html crash debris
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/smallhole.html small impact hole
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/missingwings.html missing wings
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/turbofans.html turbofans 101
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/columns.html standing columns
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/punchout.html punchout
http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/obstacles.html obstacles

 

Michael Green (9/11 Research)

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/company.html

The Company We Keep
by Michael B. Green, Ph.D.
Version 1.2, February 15, 2006

"the entire discussion of what hit the Pentagon is a tar baby designed to trap the 911 truth community in useless speculation."

 

Vince Sauve

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 23:30:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: What hit the Pentagon? WHERE the Pentagon was hit (nearly empty sector) is key point
From: sf911truthalliance at riseup.net

Vince Sauve posts:

It is quite frustrating that so many non experts (on crashes or explosives) and non scholars argue stridently for some wild theory completely at odds with the principle of Occam's Razor. For those who haven't heard of Occam's Razor and what it means please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

Excerpt:

Occam's Razor has become a basic perspective for those who follow the scientific method. It is important to note that it is a heuristic argument that does not necessarily give correct answers; it is a loose guide to choosing the scientific hypothesis which (currently) contains the least number of unproved assumptions and is the most likely to be fruitful. Often, several hypotheses are equally "simple" and Occam's Razor does not express any preference in such cases.

For example, after a storm you notice that a tree has fallen. Based on the evidence of "a storm" and "a fallen tree" a reasonable hypothesis would be that "the storm blew down the tree" -- a hypothesis that requires only one assumption -- that it was, in fact, a strong wind that knocked over the tree, rather than a meteor or an elephant. The hypothesis that "the tree was knocked over by marauding 200 meter tall space aliens" requires several additional assumptions (concerning the very existence of aliens, their ability and desire to travel interstellar distances and the alien biology that allows them to be 200 meters tall in terrestrial gravity) and is therefore less preferable.

Folks, the hole in the Pentagon is big enough for all of the bulky parts of a 757 to crash through--about 15 feet on the second floor and possibly 80 feet on the first floor. There is a photo of metal wrapped around a column and other photos of aircraft debris within the building. Why should they fake this? There was debris of shredded aircraft skin on the front lawn. Why should they plant this material? How could they be sure they wouldn't be seen planting it? The first image of the security camera at the guard shack in all likelihood was digitally manipulated to cause dissension and distraction in our 9-11 skeptics/truth community (one clue was that it had the wrong date attached to it). If someone precut the bolts of the light poles and rigged them to fall over, wouldn't that leave a possibility for the automobile drivers to notice that and report some funny business on this matter? Those who say it was stage-managed to look like a 757 crashed there are just making things more complicated for them to pull it off. Why should they stage-manage the Pentagon crash at all? I think it is most logical that the hijackers, if they were truly even on the aircraft, were hijacked themselves by remote control technology. This is what makes the most sense with the available evidence.

People like Eric Hufschmid, who was one of the first to have a big impact on persuading many of us that flight 77 didn't crash into the Pentagon, upon further discovery, have proven to me to be an incompetent researcher. And possibly even worse, he has shown a desire to discredit our work by association. He has shown a real disdain for a democratic republic. He holds himself up as being smarter than most of the public even though all the while he peddles nonsense about the Apollo moon landings as being a hoax. If you don't believe this is the case about Hufschmid just read the junk he has on his web site: www.erichufschmid.net Also, if you haven't seen my web page featuring an exchange with Eric over the Apollo business please do so. Be sure to read what he said in his last letter (this reveals his fascist pro military dictatorship leanings): http://home.pacbell.net/skeptica/apollohoax.html

I don't mean to give offense to those busy people who are new to this Pentagon research or who just haven't gotten around to a study of what evidence is available and through no fault of their own have been swayed by the presentations of people like Hufschmid. I, at one time, counted myself in that same category. Hufschmid has shown that he has a lot of time available and hence has no excuses for presenting his falsities, even after a couple of us have tried to show him his errors, he hasn't budged.

Vince Sauve

 

The New American

www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2004/08-23-2004/facts.htm

In the information society, bad information drives out good information. The proliferation of misinformation causes the dilution of good, factual information. Valuable information on actual cover-ups, for instance, is discredited when other alleged, but non-factual and misleading, conspiracy theories are given undue currency. In short, bad conspiracy theories discredit all assertions of conspiracy, making for fertile ground in which actual conspiracies thrive. [emphasis added]

 

G. Edward Griffin

www.freedom-force.org/freedomcontent.cfm?fuseaction=burningquestions&refpage=issues
BURNING QUESTIONS
What Really Happened at the Pentagon on 9/11?
Analysis © by G. Edward Griffin
First published 2004 Sept 20. Updated 2004 September 28

 

Brian Salter, Questions Questions

www.questionsquestions.net/blog/041116pentagon.html

I am deeply disturbed by the level of hostility and invective towards pro-757 views that seems to have become quite widely accepted in some circles. That in itself has played a major role over time in undermining my previous confidence in the no-757 side. We are in the midst of a global political crisis, where the consequences of missteps are enormous, and something like the no-757-crash has to be absolutely incontestible in order for it to help the cause. That, it isn't -- but egos and agendas seem to be conspiring to prevent acknowledgement of this. My instincts lead me to agree very strongly with Hoffman's warnings about the furor of publicity over this theory ultimately threatening to do more harm than good.

www.questionsquestions.net/WTC/review.html

A Critical Review of WTC 'No Plane' Theories
by Eric Salter
28 September 2005

It should go without saying that an investigation of a conspiracy like 9/11 will always a two-front war against disinformation. On one side are the gatekeepers pursuing a limited hangout. On the other side are crackpots and disinfo agents pushing bogus, discrediting evidence. Weeding out bogus claims is neither gatekeeping nor censorship but an absolutely critical activity. In defending no-planers and pod people, some who don't even support the theories have cited "freedom of speech" in defending those theories' place at the table, evidently feeling that if there is any tendency to suppress any lines of inquiry, then there will not a an atmosphere conducive to uncovering the full truth. This attitude simply ignores one front of the two-front war we're involved with. The treatment of the "pod" issue by PM is a perfect example of how this "freedom of speech" argument can backfire. It's clear the advocates of certain theories have shown themselves to be completely egotistically and ideologically attached to those theories. They'll never change. So if this breaks through and embarrasses us like the pod issue did, the real responsibility will be with those who kept forwarding or tolerating the no-plane material in the interest of "dialogue" or "exploration" or "askin' questions" and who failed to use their powers of discernment.

In between the two fronts of this information war there is a lot of grey area, with quite a bit of room for principled disagreement about both evidence and tactics. Of course, principled disagreement is exactly the opposite of the obnoxious behavior of the no-planers, some of which I've documented in my articles. This behavior creates an acrimonious and divisive atmosphere in a movement that prevents productive work, and is usually the M.O. of deep cover agents. But I'm not suggesting no-plane advocates are agents. In fact I believe that most are deluded "useful idiots," as the terminology goes. As such, their offerings are misinformation, not disinformation. But that doesn't mean that the spooks wouldn't flood lists and forums with vociferous multiple-pseudonym supporters of these theories, in a tactic similar to the astroturfing of mainstream politics. If I were in charge of the cover up I would let the authentic fools emerge and then use mind control to encourage egomaniacal, narcissistic, and aggressive tendencies. But while general comments on what theories constitute disinfo are reasonable, it's useless to let fly specific accusations of disinfo activity regarding individuals. There is never any evidence. Charges going back and forth is what the cover-up crew wants. Divide and conquer. Given the historical record of COINTELPRO, the ones making the accusations are most likely to actually be the agents.

www.questionsquestions.net/blog/041116pentagon.html
excellent debunking of the hoax

www.questionsquestions.net/blog/050225pentagon_cnn.html
25 February 2005: Jamie McIntyre CNN Pentagon footage

www.questionsquestions.net/blog/050228russell.html

I think those who feel that "no 757 hit the Pentagon" is an unsupported claim that has done more harm than good to the cause of 9/11 truth, as I have decided over recent months, should be quite assertive in making this view known, in order to apply a corrective to the public's already skewed view of 9/11 skepticism. ... it is the 9/11 Truth Movement as a whole which is taking the brunt of abuse from the media that has been invited by too many sketchy and unwarranted "theories" which hand easily targeted straw men to the professional debunkers.

www.questionsquestions.net/blog/050224pentagon_eberle.html
24 February 2005: Another Pentagon distraction

Jim Hoffman has shown that the arguments against a 757 crash have been littered with fallacies and gross scientific errors. A number of other skeptics, including myself, have pointed out misrepresentations in the popular "Pentagon Strike" video and "In Plane Site" (I also have to point out that these misrepresentations were accepted and promoted by virtually all of the Pentagon no-plane crowd for some time, and disavowed only by a few among them -- and only AFTER critiques had made support for these works of disinfo conspicuously untenable). So the fallacy of construction here is the backhanded attempt to claim that there is already a conflict between witnesses and physical evidence, when in fact a careful reconsideration of the evidence reconciles both. The insinuation being made in many quarters that a pro-757 position relies overwhelmingly on witness testimony, and that there is an either-or choice between physical evidence and witnesses, is false -- and as I increasingly suspect, deliberately misleading. Or at least self-deceptive. ...
What really disturbs me about this cheapshot undermining of the witnesses as a whole by Karl Rove-style guilt-by-association tactics and suspicion-mongering, is not only that it is being done so gratuitously in lieu of a really slam-dunk, devastating proof, but also that it is, or will be percieved to be, an all-out attack on the victims themselves. Some of these Pentagon witnesses were hurt, and many more were psychologically traumatized. Rushing into ill-supported hatchet jobs for no other purpose than to keep the unnecessary no-plane speculation alive just helps to smear 9/11 Truth activists as hateful maniacs. Maybe that's the idea. ...
Finally, I have to recommend in particular reading the section, "An Opening for Attacker" from Jim Hoffman's "Pentagon Trap", to counter the contention that the mass media are afraid of and trying to suppress Pentagon no-plane theories. On the contrary, with just a few examples (there are many more), Hoffman shows that media debunkers have shown maximum enthusiasm for portraying this as the heart and soul of 9/11 skepticism and making it the centerpiece of practically every hit piece. Now why is that?

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.

www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg115085.html
Dave Von Kleist, lost in foam

for those who haven't seen 'in plane site', there's some other great shams. such as the fact that while von kleist is questioning the size of the entry hole, he's showing one of the pre-collapse photographs where the entire basement level area of missing wall and destroyed or damaged columns is completely hidden by foam being sprayed from the firetruck. the only thing visible is the second level entry hole. he shows this photograph again while suggesting that support columns weren't destroyed.
he never even mentions the existence of the basement level hole wide enough to fit the engines and inner wings of a 757. he only mentions the 14-16 foot second level entry hole.
totally blatant deceptive techniques.

 

John Judge, Coalition on Political Assassinations

judgeforyourself.org - John Judge

www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/PAandAAF77.html
The Pentagon Attack and American Airlines Flight 77
by John Judge

"Hundreds of people saw the plane from windows of nearby buildings, from cars along the nearby highways, and some ducked because it flew over so low. Pentagon employees and construction workers at the site saw the events unfold before their eyes. Hundreds more took part in the clean-up operation and saw the wreckage. It is not difficult to find eyewitnesses to the event in DC. ...
"Families of victims and others who work at the airlines, as well as many witnesses I have spoken to, are offended and shocked by these unfounded speculations. Those willing to do a modicum of investigative work here in DC will be quickly disabused of this disinformation.
"There are many legitimate unanswered questions about the events of September 11, 2001, its sponsorship, and the official version of events. We benefit from serious research and the issues raised by victim's families seeking accountability. Not the least of these is the apparent lack of standard FAA/NORAD response to these emergency events. Rather than use our time proving and belaboring the obvious, or focusing on areas of total speculation that can only hurt our public credibility, I encourage serious researchers to focus on the historical context of the event, the alleged conspirators, the funding, and the government response or lack of it."


www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/notAllCequal.html
Not all conspiracies are created equal by John Judge


John Judge 5/19/2002 www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/WrongQuestion.html

They have spent $13 trillion tax dollars since the end of WWII on this military/intelligence complex, and it cannot protect its own headquarters? It can track every electronic communication on earth, crack the codes of the Al Quaeda in advance of 9-11, locate bin Laden's cell phone, but it can't decipher what it all means?
And beyond that question is the more pertinent one hardly anyone is asking.
* Bush clearly and undeniably had advance knowledge of a terrorist attack on US soil using planes as weapons by 9:05 am on September 11.
* NORAD had it by 8:45 in an unprecedented simultaneous hijacking of four planes.
* The Pentagon had it, as did everyone in DC by 9:05 as well.
* The Pentagon began to evacuate the building, as did the White House and Capitol.
* EVERYONE had advance knowledge of Flight 77 coming towards DC for 40 minutes.Yet, there was a complete defensive stand-down. Interceptors from distant Langley AFB took off late and flew at subsonic speeds to arrive 5 minutes too late. Planes from nearby Anacostia Naval Air Station, Andrews Air Force Base, and the 73rd Air Wing at Atlantic City, NJ never took off. Scramblers in the air already at 9:05 from Otis AFB turned to target Flight 77 and were called off, despite a formal shoot-down order from Bush/Cheney "moments after" the 9:05 crash -- which had ended any speculation of accident or coincidence or hijacking motives.
By that moment they undeniably knew in advance what was coming and where it was headed. Local news announced that DC was the destination. Surface-to-air missiles at the White House and Pentagon remained sheathed in their silos. Despite the planes having turned off communications with ground control towers and their identifying transponders (which also shuts off their own near-range radar screens to avoid mid-air collisions), they were clearly visible to all external radars, they were being tracked by NORAD and DC towers, and they were somehow being navigated directly to their target.
How were they allowed to come into the most restricted air space in the world with no challenge or defense? That is the question that answers both when Bush knew in advance and begs any rational response.
The White House and Pentagon officials have been lying since day one about both advance intelligence knowledge that could have foiled the operation, and about their own ability to prevent, at least, the attack on the Pentagon. Let them answer that.


I suggest you ask any pilot that has flown one what it takes to bank into a building at 550 miles an hour, or to dive in a 270 degree turn from 5000 feet to fly so low that streetlamps are clipped off, into a building. There are two options: Military or experienced civilian pilots (many are military anyway) piloted these planes. The planes were flown on remote control.
- John Judge www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/puzzlePieces.html


Much of all four planes were pulverized at the site, but identifying pieces were doubtless found in all the wreckage, including black boxes. None of that forensic evidence was released to the public, but that does not mean it was not found by the FBI and other agencies that worked in the debris of each site. ... My friend identified parts of the Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon not by serial number but just by eyesight and familiarity with parts, shapes, colors and upholstery patterns when she was inside the crash site. She has no reason to lie, she lost her best friend and the rest of her regular crew, she worked for AA as an attendant and took that same route in those same planes several times a week. If we stick on proving a falsity it will discredit all else we try to establish. The question is not what hit the Pentagon, it is how Flight 77 could have.
John Judge


www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/f77FoF.html

Flight of Fantasy: Flight 77 Didn't Hit the Pentagon 23 October 2002

.... That side of the Pentagon was virtually empty and had been for some time because the building had been under reconstruction quite visibly on that side for 5-6 years and part of that was to reinforce the building from external attack. In fact some photos show the difference in damage on either side of that reinforcement work and it is striking. That plane went 270 degrees out of its way at high speed, a very sophisticated maneuver with no possible military advantage, to hit the empty side of the Pentagon. There, as in New York, I would argue that they minimized the number of deaths by timing and method of attack.
....
There is no question that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Remaining agnostic on this point also gives ammunition to the perpetrators of the stand-down and serves to discredit the other good work that continues to be done about the reality of what happened that day. It is my feeling that this thesis was actually part of an intentional disinformation campaign that spreads red herrings to discredit the real findings. "These conspiracy theorists will believe anything" say our detractors. Let's discover and present the hard facts and force the coincidence theorists to come up with plausible explanations instead of spewing out speculations we cannot back up and leaving ourselves on the defensive.

Facts:
1. NORAD and FAA knew of the multiple hijackings in progress by 8:25 am. Bush and Cheney agreed on issuing a shoot-down order against two planes still in attack mode after 9:05 am, when everyone in the country knew what the nature of the threat was. No such orders were conveyed to pilots or carried out if they were.
2. Standard hijack intercept procedures were not followed by NORAD or military ready-alert scrambler planes.
3. Virtually no defense of any kind was made inside the most restricted air space in the US, the P-56 area around DC and the Pentagon despite the presence of combat ready aircraft at local bases. Nor were other defense measures, including surface-to-air missiles at the White House and Pentagon deployed. There was a stand-down on 9/11.
4. Planes scrambled to intercept were sent long after the threat was known, so that they arrived too late to stop the attack. There were at least two cases of this: Otis AFB fighters who turned and targeted Flight 77 after reaching NYC too late, and Pomona NJ AFB combat planes on military exercises heading into NYC after 8:45 am, were called back to base or off the pursuit. There are additional indicators that many combat-ready planes and units were disarmed and called down shortly before 9/11.
5. Chemical and DNA analysis and weaponization traits of the anthrax mailed out to media and Democratic opponents of Bush clearly linked it to both a DIA project to develop "the next generation of anthrax weapon" and to the gates of Fr. Detrich, MD, a center for CBW research since the 1950s run by military intelligence.
Those alone are damning enough to bring them to their knees if thoroughly exposed and investigated. Let's work with what we know and hit the points they are most vulnerable on. In my view, most of the remaining questions are speculations and diversions, or at best leave us with the "intelligence failure" analysis intact for them to spin. [emphases added]

 

www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/PAandAAF77.html
The Pentagon Attack and American Airlines Flight 77
by John Judge
researcher and founder for 9/11 CitizensWatch
21 February 2004

On the morning of September 11, 2001 I was at home in Washington, DC, about half a mile from the Pentagon, in Anacostia. I had been called by a friend to inform me of the first plane hitting the WTC tower in New York City. He sits on a transportation board for the county in Fairfax, Virginia, which includes Dulles Airport. He was immediately alarmed because he knew that no commercial flights come close to those buildings on their normal routes, and he suspected this was a terrorist attack. As we spoke, the second plane hit the second WTC tower at approximately 9:05 am, and at that point people across the United States were forced to agree with his thesis, since neither accident nor coincidence would have explained two such tragedies happening nearly simultaneously.

At that point, other planes that had gone off course and turned off communications with their control towers were still in the air. All four planes involved in the attacks had been identified as emergencies and potential hijackings by the FAA, NORAD, the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, the Secret Service and other agencies linked into a phone bridge that was in place by at least 8:24 am, sharing critical information with the air traffic controllers and eventually with military pilots. By 8:18 am, according to published reports, they were aware of four commercial passenger planes off course and not responding normally, two from United and two from American Airlines.

American Airlines (AA) Flight 77 left Dulles airport that morning on its regular route to LAX airport in Los Angeles. For a few minutes it was lost to radar tracking when it turned off course and headed back to the east. But in a short time radar contact was renewed and its course was visible. It was coming towards Washington, DC. Much of the city is under P-56, one of the most secure airspaces in the world, protected under federal regulations from any over-flight by unauthorized planes, private or commercial, and guarded by fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base (AFB) and Anacostia Naval Air Station, where the Air National Guard is located.

Not only did authorities know it was headed to DC, it was announced publicly on local TV and radio stations, and evacuation was ordered at the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon and other federal buildings. This notice was given well in advance of the plane's arrival in DC airspace. I stood watching television news reports that morning, anticipating its arrival. A large explosion at approximately 9:43 am shook my windows, though it was not visible to me.

When newscasters announced the identity of the plane involved, American Airlines Flight 77 and its Dulles/LAX route, my heart sank. A dear friend and fellow researcher had been working as a flight attendant for American for many years, and that was her regular route, several times a week. I feared she had been trapped on the plane and died in the crash. Attempts to reach her by phone that day got her answering machine, nothing more.

Local reporters continued to cover the event on radio and TV. There was footage of the rescue and fire crews at the Pentagon site, and the smoke plume was visible across the city. Hundreds of witnesses had been stuck in traffic during the attack along major highway routes into the city that border the Pentagon, and had seen and heard the event close-up, as well as office workers in nearby buildings, others along the route who were outside and ducked because the plane was flying so low, and workers at the Pentagon site, both at the heliport and in the construction crews who had been reinforcing the building walls for several years. Many of these people were interviewed by local and national media and the press.

"Continuity of Government" was declared, bypassing Constitutional governing structures in favor of a small number of executive and legislative leaders working together with FEMA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon from a secure bunker in Bluemont, VA to function in the emergency. Metro, AMTRAK trains, and commercial flights were cancelled and government employees were excused from work and told to go home. Local highways became one-way routes out of town. Park Police could be seen on the streets with machine guns at ready.

DC came very close to martial law. And all day long, local witnesses to the event at the Pentagon were interviewed, describing the plane and its collision with the Pentagon and the explosion that resulted. Later, survivors from inside the building were interviewed, along with rescue crew. A massive rescue and clean-up operation began once the fire was contained.

As it turned out, my friend had not been on Flight 77, having taken the day off work to care for her sick father, and to my relief she had survived. She had lost her entire regular crew, both pilots and all the attendants, including her best friend at work. She was immediately invited in to a series of briefings and grief counseling sessions by both the airline and the Pentagon. These briefings continue to this day. She also attended a long series of memorial events at the gravesites of her co-workers and friends following the event. Her own father died shortly after that in November. I attended his funeral service at National Cemetery and got to meet some of her American Airline co-workers.

When questions arose about Flight 77, I contacted her to raise the issues that concerned me and the speculations of others who denied the plane hit the Pentagon. She was adamant in saying it had, and told me she had been to the crash site and had seen parts of the plane. I asked her about the speculation that the plane would have made a larger hole due to the wingspan. She informed me that the fuel was stored in the wings and that they would have exploded and broken off, as the fuselage slammed through the building walls.

I have spoken to dozens of other witnesses to the event, and to others who know the reports. Wayne Madsen, a respected local journalist, spoke to a camera person at WJLA-TV 7 who had been driving to the Pentagon on instructions from his office, expecting a public statement from authorities there in response to the events in New York City. Shortly after the crash he saw a woman standing by the road at the edge of the Pentagon, next to her car, and apparently in shock. He stopped to help her and found she could not speak. But she pointed him to the far side of her car. The passenger side had been sheared off in part and sections of the landing gear from the plane were on the ground nearby. Others I have spoken to, including pilots, either saw the crash happen and identified the plane, or saw parts of the plane in the wreckage days afterwards.

At the funeral service on September 20th in Annapolis for Charles Burlingame, the pilot of AA Flight 77, my friend was approached by another flight attendant to assist in support work for the rescue crews at the site. This work was being organized by the Salvation Army. The Pentagon was seeking people with security clearances that they could trust to be near the site and all the airline attendants qualified for that level of clearance. The shifts ran from 10 am to 10 pm, and then for the next twelve hours. She and her mother signed up for an overnight shift on Friday, September 21st.

She and her mother spent the entire night continuously providing drinks to rescuers from North Carolina. Burger King, McDonald's, Pepsi and Outback Steak House were the selected food and drink providers. She and her mother were given a special T-shirt to wear for the night, with red lettering for "Operation Noble Eagle". They did not wear the traditional Salvation Army outfits. No break came until early morning, the crews were large and worked continuously. The work was tedious and slow. She was in the second of five groups that were sent in that week. Rescue and clean-up work continued for months.

At the end of her shift on Saturday morning, September 22nd, she was approached along with other attendants to visit the crash site. One declined, but she and two others took a van driven by the Salvation Army to the area. They were forced to wait almost 45 minutes at a safety fence around the area before being admitted into the area of destruction. As they waited, members of a psychological support group talked to them about their feelings. She will never forget what she saw there.

The area was covered with rescue equipment, fire trucks, small carts, and ambulances. They were still hoping to find survivors. Small jeeps with wagons attached were being used to transport workers and others at the site. One flight attendant was driving one of these around the site. Once inside the fence, she was unable to clearly discern where the original wall had been. There was just a gaping hole. She got off the van and walked inside the crash site. The other attendants broke down crying once they were inside. But my friend went in further than the others and kept her emotions in check as she has been trained to do and usually does in emergency situations.

She saw parts of the fuselage of an American Airlines plane, a Boeing 757 plane. She identified the charred wreckage in several ways. She recognized the polished aluminum outer shell, an unpainted silver color that is unique to American Airline planes, and the red and blue trim that is used to decorate the fuselage. She saw parts of the inside of the plane, which she easily identified since she flew and worked in them for years. Upholstery, drapes and carpeting she could identify by both color and design. The soft carpeting and padding of the inner walls had a cloud design and color she recognized from American Airline planes, though it has since been replaced. The blue coloring of drapes and carpet were also specific to the 757 or 767 larger planes, and were not used on the smaller planes. Seating upholstery also matched the AA 757 planes, including the blue color, tan squares and hints of white.

She saw other parts of the plane and engine parts at a distance but they were familiar to her. She did not see any galley supplies, which she would have recognized as well, nor any jump seats. All the parts were charred but colors were still visible. She also saw charred human bones but not any flesh or full body parts.

One area of fuselage had remaining window sections and the shape of the windows, curved squares not ovals, was also distinct to the 757's she had flown. She also saw parts with the A/A logo, including parts of the tail of the plane. Smaller A/A logos and "American" logos are also on the planes and she saw parts of those. One website shows pictures of wreckage inside the building, including sections of the fuselage with bright lime and yellow coloring, which is distinctive to Boeing parts. My friend confirmed this, having visited a Boeing plant where she saw the bright colors on the production line marking the inside of fuselage parts. She did not notice this coloring at the site, but the photos show it in some pieces of the plane.

She spent approximately 15 minutes in the crash area looking at parts of the wreckage, all of which she recognized as coming from a Boeing 757 American Airline plane, the same planes she flew regularly. She did not see any rubber, only metal pieces of fuselage, engine parts and sections of the inside of the plane.

She went to briefings by Pentagon people at the Sheraton for 3 months afterwards, and the clean-up lasted for a long period. She is a union representative for attendants as well, and briefings continue. Families and attendants were at the briefings, along with Pentagon and airline people. Hundreds of people saw the plane from windows of nearby buildings, from cars along the nearby highways, and some ducked because it flew over so low. Pentagon employees and construction workers at the site saw the events unfold before their eyes. Hundreds more took part in the clean-up operation and saw the wreckage. It is not difficult to find eyewitnesses to the event in DC.

The crew of Flight 77 who died in the crash included her personal friend Renee May. She had spoken to Renee's mother after the crash, and Renee had used a cell phone to call her mother during the hijacking. Her mother noted specific phone numbers to call American Airlines operations to report a hijacking. "There are six of them," Renee had told her, one more than in the official version. Her mother also heard the voices of other attendants calling out contact numbers for American Airlines during the call. At the time attendants had been trained to cooperate during a hijacking event, and it seems a group of them were at the back of the plane together as it approached DC. She was told at a briefing that pilot Charles Burlingame's throat was slit, but had no way to confirm it. She believes the co-pilot may have been forced to the rear with the attendants. She does not know exactly what happened to her friend Renee.

Cell phone calls made from the planes that day have become an area of contention as well. However, my friend told me that attendants regularly hear cell phones ringing during flights, despite the prohibition. In fact, the airlines are now ending the restriction while on the ground, having discovered that these devices do not actually interfere with communications or functions aboard the plane before take off. Some cell phones do not work as well as others at high altitudes and speeds, but major carriers have multiple towers and the calls do not even roam in connection. Other people I know have tested Verizon and other cell phones crossing the country and found them to work normally. In addition, many of the calls made that day were to family members who clearly recognized their relatives' voices.

Other American ground crew workers saw some of the suspects board American Airline Flight 77 and recognized them from the published photos. While questions remain about the identities of the hijackers, it is not the case that none of them were on the planes. The airlines have yet to release full passenger manifests, and those they have released are short of the total count, and do not contain the suspects' names. Rather than speculate that none were aboard, the more interesting question is why the names have not been released if they indeed match the official story.

My friend is therefore a credible and very knowledgeable eyewitness to the fact that American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. She has been vilified by those who refuse to believe the obvious, as have the many witnesses to the event. We lack clear footage of the event, some of which was confiscated by the FBI, or pictures showing all the wreckage and plane parts. Working from a few un-timed photographs, others have speculated that not only did AA77 not hit the Pentagon, but that a cruise missile or smaller plane did.

My friend is herself a researcher for many years into government misdeeds and cover-ups. If she did not see the parts, she would say so. She has no reason to lie about it. Nor is she confused about what she saw. She is a professional and is used to looking at evidence. Families of victims and others who work at the airlines, as well as many witnesses I have spoken to, are offended and shocked by these unfounded speculations. Those willing to do a modicum of investigative work here in DC will be quickly disabused of this disinformation. For a more thorough presentation of the range of witness testimonies, and linking sites, see the work on Flight 77 and the Pentagon attack by Penny Schoner at www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/F77pentaToC.html

My attendant friend knows and has put me in touch with other American Airline employees and pilots who were at the site and took photographs. We are busy locating these, as well as another attendant who was at the site with her that day. 9/11 CitizensWatch has also been pushing for public release of all photographic evidence relating to the Pentagon attack from federal agencies and other sources and plans to file a Freedom of Information request to get records from all federal agencies that might hold them.

There are many legitimate unanswered questions about the events of September 11, 2001, its sponsorship, and the official version of events. We benefit from serious research and the issues raised by victim's families seeking accountability. Not the least of these is the apparent lack of standard FAA/NORAD response to these emergency events. Rather than use our time proving and belaboring the obvious, or focusing on areas of total speculation that can only hurt our public credibility, I encourage serious researchers to focus on the historical context of the event, the alleged conspirators, the funding, and the government response or lack of it.

American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, killing passengers and crew, along with construction workers and a small number of Pentagon employees. It made an amazing spiraling descent, curving 270-degrees around the open area, and then flew dangerously close to the ground, skidding into the ground floor of the Pentagon. A huge fireball could be seen outside the building as it hit. Employees inside the building were also burned by jet fuel, which covered the lawn and front of the building. One employee saw the nose of the plane crash through her office wall. Pilots have disagreed about the piloting skills necessary to carry out this maneuver in a large commercial plane. Questions about the actual events remain but I hope that credible witnesses and the existing evidence will at least put to rest the wild speculation that have replaced Flight 77 with flights of fancy.

[emphases added]


Response to John Judge from Nicholas Levis:

From John Judge's otherwise compelling report on AA77:

"At that point, other planes that had gone off course and turned off communications with their control towers were still in the air. All four planes involved in the attacks had been identified as emergencies and potential hijackings by the FAA, NORAD, the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, the Secret Service and other agencies linked into a phone bridge that was in place by at least 8:24 am, sharing critical information with the air traffic controllers and eventually with military pilots. By 8:18 am, according to published reports, they were aware of four commercial passenger planes off course and not responding normally, two from United and two from American Airlines."

Impossible: UA175 took off at 8:14, AA77 at 8:20, and UA93 at 8:42. I also doubt the time of the phone bridge, this seems to have been established shortly after 8:46 (first crash). As of the first crash, only one other hijacking could have been known, at least according to any of the timelines forwarded so far: UA175. The AA77 hijacking and diversion began at 8:51-8:55, the UA93 after 9 a.m.

John's report on the Pentagon crash is compelling but I am not entirely convinced. By refusing to release evidence, the government has in effect itself promoted the idea that the Pentagon event was caused by something other than AA77. I think until they do release the evidence, it is legitimate to tell the story as follows (from an older mail):

 

The speculation about what happened at the Pentagon has arisen mainly because of the size of the hole made by the attack in the outside wall, as seen in immediate post-attack photos (i.e., photos taken in the 30 minutes before the roof and floors above the point of attack collapsed). The hole seems to be too small for an airliner. There is an apparent lack of damage from the wings and engines.

In the government's defense: in an earlier experiment, a decommissioned fighter jet flown into a solid stone wall (comparable to the Pentagon structure) also effectively disintegrated, leaving only tiny fragments of debris.

A bit of metal debris claimed to be from the airliner fuselage is visible in photos taken by passers-by from the outside, and in photos released by the government. People consider this item suspicious, because the debris is mangled, hard to identify, and there is precious little there. Some have claimed photos of a turbine in the wreckage are not actually parts of a Boeing 757.

Videos of the Pentagon attack were taken by security cameras at the Sheraton Hotel and a gas station, both of which had a clear sight line to the side of the Pentagon that was hit. These tapes were confiscated by the FBI within minutes of the attack. According to one news report, Sheraton employees watched the hotel video repeatedly before the FBI arrived and took it. Why doesn't the government release these videos?

Soon after the initial "Hunt the Boeing" speculations of late 2001, CNN obtained five video stills showing the attack, allegedly from a Pentagon parking-lot camera. These have a Sept. 12 timestamp and it is extremely difficult to make out the shape or size of the object supposedly moving in the background and causing the explosion. It looks smaller than a 757, but the frames themselves merit little trust.

Comprehensive photos of the post-attack scene have never been released, nor have any photos of bodies. On a Freedom of Information request filed by Sierra Times, the government provided a list of persons from the flight on whom autopsies were conducted, which did not include the alleged hijackers. The government has said it is holding in storage the bodies or parts of bodies of five "John Does" claimed to be the hijackers of AA77 (as well as of four other "John Does," the alleged hijackers of UA93).

Witness claims vary. Most say they saw the airliner actually hit the building, while a few spoke of a smaller plane [note: they were MUCH farther from the Pentagon than most of the rest of the eyewitnesses]. At least one source (John Judge) says a stewardess friend who would have usually been on the flight identified body parts of a person who was supposed on the flight. By contrast, a Pentagon officer caught in the attack area (April Gallop) has said she saw no evidence of an airliner.

The official story of the flight itself, said to have disappeared over Ohio and only tracked again as it entered Washington airspace, is very suspicious. Why wasn't it intercepted, more than hour after the attacks began, and 45 minutes after it was supposedly hijacked, on entering the world's best-protected airspace? Why weren't interceptors scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles away? We know fighters with an Air National Guard wing were stationed there and charged with defending DC airspace, as an ANG site claimed on its site until Sept. 12. These fighters did take off from the base, but only after the attack.

How did AA77 hit a target known to be defended by anti-aircraft missile batteries? The flight ended with a maneuver experts have characterized as extremely difficult, by a pilot (Hani Hanjour) who flunked out of flight school. The side of the Pentagon hit had just been renovated to reinforce it against terrorist attack. The offices there were mostly empty.

Was this indeed Flight AA77, hijacked by terrorists? Then the government by suppressing the evidence has itself ended up making people suspect that it was in fact something else: a small plane, a missile or a bomb. The government could move to end the speculation by releasing the evidence, though at this late stage many people will no longer believe anything it produces. As long as the government suppresses the evidence, people will speculate about what really happened to the flight and its passengers [note: that is exactly WHY the government is suppressing it]. Was it shot down over an empty stretch of country in Ohio/Kentucky? Was it landed elsewhere and replaced with a different object? Did it never take off in the first place?! All of these theories have been forwarded, but I do not consider any of the evidence presented in support to be definitive. Where did the people supposedly on the flight end up? The passenger list features a very high number of military officials and scientists, including some with avionics experience, causing some people to suspect some kind of remote control flight scenario. It is known wargames were being held on Sept. 11th to rehearse defense against passenger flight hijackings. Was AA77 (or any of the other 9/11 flights) meant to be part of such a scenario or test?

Nicholas

 

www.whatreallyhappened.com/ppfinal.html

The Final Word on the Plane That Crashed Into the Pentagon

It seems that those parties still wishing to keep the distraction away from the Israeli Spy/Phone Tap Scandal are still trying to flog the dead horse of whether a passenger jet really crashed into the Pentagon or not. Word has reached me that those not supporting the "Boeing Hunt" story are being accused of fraud or cover-up. This is a device to force those who are trying to keep the story of the Israeli Spy/Phone Tap Scandal before the public to take time away from that task to respond to the allegations of covering up for the fact that a passenger plane did not hit the Pentagon. It's the disinformationalists' way of trying to force attention away from the spy scandal to something harmless, or as is the case here, to an issue which will later be revealed to be a fraud in order to discredit legitimate questions regarding the official story of 9-11. This will be the last time I expend effort on this question of whether a passenger jet did or did not hit the Pentagon, and do so only to point out how silly (or desperate) those individuals are who seek to prevent the public from looking at certain issues. After all, if the passenger jet didn't hit the Pentagon, then where did it go?
The government spooks have responded to this question by suggesting that all the passengers for all four planes were actually just one the one plane that crashed or was shot down in Pennsylvania. Their desperation to continue this charade is revealed by the simple observation that in order to accomplish this, passengers for four aircraft at three airports would have to somehow be persuaded and then transported to a single gate at a single airport, then walk onto a plane past a gate with a sign showing a destination which would be wrong for most of the passengers. How could this be accomplished without a noticeable fuss in a crowded airport? The answer is, it cannot. This complex and obfuscated suggestion is just another ploy by the government's propagandists to try to keep the confusion going as long as possible.

During the Jim Garrison trial of Clay Shaw in the JFK assassination, a witness showed up who linked Lee Oswald and Shaw. Despite warnings from his staff, Garrison used this witness. But once he was on the stand, the witness claimed that he fingerprinted his own daughter every night to prevent substitutions by "them". During the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the committee made a point of calling a witness who claimed that the open umbrella by the motorcade route in Dallas was actually a poison dart gun that had fired a dart at JFK to paralyze him, in order to make him an easier target. The actual umbrella was then displayed amidst jokes and laughter and great rolling of eyes, and shown to be merely an umbrella. More recently, Congressional hearings into abuses by the BATF featured one witness, dressed in camo and identifying himself as a member of a free militia, who claimed that the US Government had built and was testing a machine that made tornados.
In all three cases the witnesses were plants by the government whose job it was to taint any real questions of what the government was up to with silliness that the media could use to make fun of the whole issue and those who dared question the official story. The media focused on the "fingerprint man" to ridicule Jim Garrison. (Years later Richard Helms admitted under oath that Clay Saw had been a CIA contract agent after all.) The story about the umbrella at Dealey Plaza was focused on by the media to show how silly the entire issue of questioning the Warren Report was (but fell flat on its face when the HSCA concluded that there had been more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza that day. ) and, of course, "Tornado man", camo and all, was the featured video clip on the news reports of the hearings into BATF, to the exclusion of the family members of dozens of people mistakenly shot by the BATF when the BATF raided the wrong homes. BATF, it should also be remembered, was the agency which, in an attempt to stage a news-worthy raid on "gun nuts", initiated the Waco disaster.
The game is an old one, to plant bogus and easily disproved claims in any inquiry into what the government is doing, in order to ridicule those asking questions. In the old days it worked, because the media was under government control and could be counted on to withhold exposure of the fraud until it could most damage those who asked questions. These days, in the age of the internet, such planted hoaxes do not survive because the questions the media should ask but refuse to do so ARE asked and answered.
For example, the claim is that the 9-11 masterminds used a missile on the Pentagon to simulate the impact of the aircraft then spirited away the actual plane and killed the crew and passengers. Why would anyone bother? If the end result is the death of the occupants, why not go ahead and carry the crash out?
Those who argue that there was no plane at the Pentagon are either spooks, or those whose knowledge of physics is based on cartoons where characters leave clear outline shapes in walls they penetrate. Airplanes are built to fly through the air, not burrow through solid objects. Built for economy, not combat, passenger jets are, compared to a building, as light and as fragile as a glass Christmas tree ornament.
The "No plane at the Pentagon" story has failed to catch on to the degree where it can be used to discredit those who wonder just who was really behind the 9-11 staged terrorist attacks. Those spooks who promoted the story realize that they are at risk of exposure so their only remaining tactic is to try to claim that anyone who does not agree with them must be the government plant.
If I directly responded, their goal would be not to conduct a debate, but simply to tie up as much of my limited time as they could in an endless unwinnable argument while they stand there with their hair on fire claiming they cannot smell any smoke.
The internet has become the high ground in the war for the minds of America. The claim that there was no plane at the Pentagon is a diversionary attack by an enemy that survives only by secrecy and deception.

 

http://rdolan.hostcentric.com/ufosecrecydeathamerepub.html
UFO Secrecy and the Death of the American Republic
Richard M. Dolan
In Two Parts
February 27, 2005

I should mention that after the first part of this article was published, most people who wrote to me commended me for discussing 9/11. But some questioned the wisdom of doing this. Indeed, one 9/11 researcher questioned some of my own assumptions regarding the Pentagon attack, but supported other assumptions, and led me to an argument with greater sophistication that arrived at the same conclusion, namely that some measure of complicity was involved in the attack. See, for instance, http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html. The fact is that 9/11 is the defining event of our era, and remains extremely divisive. To me, the events of that day appear a certain way, and I have stated what I think. I have not yet decided for myself what level of complicity occurred (e.g. various levels are possible, ranging from "someone in the government knew something beforehand," to "The President and his Cabal did it.") I do maintain that the events look suspicious, and that public inquiry has been blocked at every turn. Had this event happened in another country say China I believe that Americans and the American media would be looking at this very differently. An excellent general link on the matter is http://911research.wtc7.net/]

 

www.kolumbus.fi/totuus/doc/aa77.html

Thoughts on the Pentagon strike theories

This is the succession of people who promoted no-757-at-the-Pentagon:

It would be most surprising if nobody on that list was a disinfo agent.

 

www.truthmove.org/content/disinformation/
The "no plane at the Pentagon" theory has been called a hoax or disinfo by many within the movement. At TruthMove, we believe that most of the strongest points behind this argument have been effectively countered by honest skeptics within the movement.

 

 

http://frustratingfraud.blogspot.com

THE HIJACKING OF THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT BY THE NO-757-AT-THE-PENTAGON THEORY
by Adam Larson

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
- Thomas Pynchon, Jr.
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The "9/11 Truth" scene has made major inroads on the mainstream American psyche in the last two years. A record number of people now believe the government, at best, allowed the attacks to occur. Personally, I'm convinced the kernel of this is the same deep-seated suspicion I and many others have felt since that fateful morning. But the reason it's coming out in such a flood now has numerous explanations, one of which is the cumulative effect of various alternate theories, most notably the strain spread via the video Loose Change.
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It is my opinion that these arguments have swelled the movement for all the wrong reasons. The “hard proof” crowd have claimed to find literally hundreds of “smoking gun” clues left laying out in the open. While some have real validity, many, on closer inspection, are fraudulent. Yet somehow the worst arguments get more air play and capture more attention and so the “Truth” movement has become dominated by the desire not to provide the most rational explanation but the one most opposite to the official story. Beyond providing endless distraction and requiring endless de-bunking (and they keep coming back!), this approach alienates intelligent skeptics, whom we need on our side.
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It's not for me to say who has intentionally misled and who is simply wrong, but herein I hope to help break the spell of one of their key arguments – no big Boeing jet hit the Pentagon on 9/11 - in hopes of getting some people off that train before it crashes for good. Luckily others have gone before me, and this once crowded carriage is steadily emptying.
Through careful research, I have found almost all evidence points clearly to a 757 as the attack vehicle, piloted by whatever means, and in the process have exposed a long thread of apparent disinformation running from 9/11 to the present and continuing despite all evidence to the current day.