Popular Mechanics: Hearst Corporation

Popular Mechanics ignored:

• well documented, numerous warnings from US allies that 9/11 was about to happen and warnings provided to a few not to fly or get out of the way
• the "plane into building" wargame in Virginia on 9/11 and the NORAD "live fly" exercises conducted on 9/11
• the fighter planes sent the wrong way from Norfolk (over the Atlantic, instead of toward DC). 9/11 was a cloudless day, and this scramble happened after the towers were hit (but before the Pentagon) - what's their excuse?
• stock trades a few days before 9/11 betting the value of American and United Airlines would drop
• the fact that Flight 77 hit the nearly empty, recently reconstructed and strengthened sector of the Pentagon -- something a terrorist would not have chosen (or been able) to do
• the anthrax attacks on the Democratic leadership in the Senate and on the media, which came from an Army lab, not Islamic terrorists

The "Complete 9/11 Timeline" and "Crossing the Rubicon" have the most authoritative accounts of what happened. Popular Mechanics does not dare mention the documentation in these and other quality reports about 9/11 complicity.

Popular Mechanics March 2005 "9/11 Lies" articles attacked this website (oilempire.us) for supposedly misrepresenting the issues of the air defenses, but it avoided the issues of the military and intelligence war games or the warnings from US allies and FBI agents that 9/11 was about to happen. It is likely that the editors of Popular Mechanics did not appreciate this website's highlighting of the fact that their debunking used the 9/11 "truth" website questionsquestions.net to debunk one of the sillier claims - the false idea that there were observed anomalies on Flight 175, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center. Popular Mechanics used photographic analysis from questionsquestions.net to point out that this assertion is wrong yet did not credit their use of photos and highlighting from that "truth" website. Popular Mechanics 2006 book "Debunking 9/11 Myths" did not mention oilempire.us at all, but it did find some new obscure, sloppy websites to attack - which suggests that they did not want to acknowledge that any of their critics pointed out they knew they deliberately highlighted hoaxes to avoid the real evidence.

Popular Mechanics avoided discussion of how foreign governments warned the Bush administration that the attacks were imminent and that numerous war games were underway that morning, including a "plane into building" exercise at the National Reconnaissance Office near Dulles Airport, Virginia. Even if every criticism in the Popular Mechanics article and book is proven valid, that does not mean that there was not foreknowledge that allowed the attacks to happen to get the excuse to seize Middle Eastern oil fields as we pass the point of Peak Oil.

"Popular Mechanics Attacks -- Its 9/11 LIES Straw Man" by Jim Hoffman http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pm/index.html

"Popular Mechanics' Deceptive Hit Piece Against 9/11 Truth" by Jim Hoffman http://911review.com/pm/markup/index.html

from Hoffman's article:

Popular Mechanics quotes the following excerpt from OilEmpire.us:

It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers. When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes.

It then dismisses this 'claim' with the following sweeping 'fact':

In the decade before 9/11 NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999.

This bold assertion flies in the face of a published report [from Associated Press] of scramble frequencies that quotes the same Maj. Douglas Martin that is one of PM's cited experts!

From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled jets or diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said.

It is safe to assume that a significant fraction of scrambles lead to intercepts, so the fact that there were 67 scrambles in a 9-month period before 9/11/01 suggests that there are dozens of intercepts per year. To its assertion that there was only one intercept in a decade, the article adds that "rules in effect ... prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts," and the suggestion that there were no hotlines between ATCs and NORAD.

What an amazing coincidence that Popular Mechanics used the exact same photos (and graphic highlights) that questionsquestions used a half year before the Popular Mechanics article to debunk the "pod" nonsense. (Popular Mechanics forgot to point out that most of the 9/11 truth movement does not accept this claim, or that they borrowed a photo to ridicule the theory from a 9/11 truth website that proved this claim is disinformation.)

www.questionsquestions.net/WTC/pod.html

Analysis of Flight 175 "Pod" and related claims
by Eric Salter
with contributions by Brian Salter
questionsquestions.net, 9 September 2004

www.popularmechanics.com/science/
defense/1227842.html?page=3&c=y

from Popular Mechanics, March 2005

Flight 175's Windows
CLAIM: On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that "Bernback" saw the plane "crash into the South Tower." "It definitely did not look like a commercial plane," Birnbach said on air. "I didn't see any windows on the sides."Coupled with photographs and videos of Flight 175 that lack the resolution to show windows, Birnbach's statement has fueled one of the most widely referenced 9/11 conspiracy theories--specifically, that the South Tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker.
FACT: Birnbach, who was a freelance videographer with FOX News at the time, tells PM that he was more than 2 miles southeast of the WTC, in Brooklyn, when he briefly saw a plane fly over. He says that, in fact, he did not see the plane strike the South Tower; he says he only heard the explosion. While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. "It's ... from the United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2," Corley states flatly. In reviewing crash footage taken by an ABC news crew, Corley was able to track the trajectory of the fragments he studied--including a section of the landing gear and part of an engine--as they tore through the South Tower, exited from the building's north side and fell from the sky.

in reality, only In Plane Site, their co-conspirators and a few dupes have "widely referenced" the cargo plane theory -- and virtually no one has pushed this "no windows" nonsense, as Popular Mechanics knew by using photos used by questionsquestions.net This was a deliberate effort by PM to use 9/11 truth websites to debunk the extreme disinformation claims as a subtle, mean spirited effort to smear the whole 9/11 truth movement with the fake claims that have been injected into it.

photo on the "questions questions" page debunking the "pod" hoax
used by Popular Mechanics to mix good and bogus claims of 9/11 complicity

from questionsquestions.net in 2004:

"Seeming to back up the claim of no windows, In Plane Site features an apparent interview (audio only) with a Fox News reporter who claims that the airliner looked like a windowless cargo 767. He also claimes that it had markings clearly different than United Airlines, including an unfamiliar round symbol on the nose. This immediately presents a problem, because it is clear enough in the left photo above that the airliner is indeed painted in the UA color scheme -- even the narrow red stripe down the side of the fuselage can faintly be discerned. No errant large logos are visible, certainly not in either of the above two photos, nor in any other photos or footage I have seen. On top of this, this witness also happens to mention that he was in Brooklyn! This would put him at more than a mile away, or more, from the WTC. This leaves something to be desired concerning the reliability of this one-of-a-kind report, to put it mildly. ....
... it is virtually impossible that this scrap on building 5 came from the plane that hit the North Tower because it would require the scrap make more than a 90 degree turn at 400 mph, so this confirms that the plane that hit the South Tower had windows."
- www.questionsquestions.net/WTC/pod.html