Questioning the Pentagon strike

[Superbelt]

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pentagon.html

I have heard of this before, but really it got lost in my shuffle of all the other important things that were going down.
The video seems very well done. And it raises some very good questions. I am open to anything on this. So, if anyone has resources or wants to try to refute what is on that video, I welcome it.

I am not comfortable thinking that the plane was shot down before it got to Washington. That we either purposefully or accidentally shot up our own Pentagon afterwards as a coverup, but right now that seems to be leading in my mind.

[tecoyah]

Far too much information, contrary to official reports, to be dismissed. Yet another straw on the camels back.

[Ustwo]

I really can't see anything not to flame here involving the use of tinfoil hats, so I'll quote you in a response to me.

So stuff it.

[Delvid]

But if the plane was shot down someone would have found it. Pretty good video though.

[ShaniFaye]

you'll find plenty of discussion on it here

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=67396

[Superbelt]

Well, Ustwo, if you think it's so stupid, please provide me with the easily available evidence that it's not.

I REALLY don't want to believe this. I want something that can convince me otherwise. If you can't take it seriously and just take a jab, stay out, do not respond again I want a serious discussion to help me get around this.

[Ustwo]

I don't want to promote a website which someone advertised here, but it seems to say everything I didn't feel taking the time to say...

http://www.readybb.com/currentevents/viewtopic.php?t=34

[Superbelt]

From the other thread in Paranoia someone mentions crashdomes on the front of the plane that wouldn't ever allow the plane to make a perfect 2.5 diameter hole at the end of the crash. I would like an explanation to that.

That other site... It shows a bunch of airline crashes, but they are all closeups. It doesn't show the long scars in the land that the plane made before coming to it's final resting place.
There were no scars on the earth at the Pentagon. Why? The guy was less than a rookie pilot flying a gigantic bus. The pictures of whatever it was that hit the Pentagon show it was only a couple feet off the ground coming in at an almost parallel to the ground. That seems quite impossible to me. Where were the wings? They should have sheared off and remained. The hole in the Pentagon doesn't appear to be large enough to fit them. Where were they laying?

Why are the video's that were taken of the plane as it approached suppressed? If they aren't surpressed, where are they for me to see them?

[matthew330]

All the evidence you'll ever need....

a shot of 395 at 8:38 am on any given Tuesday. How crafty an entity like the government of the United States is may be open for debate, but clever enough to fool every eye in rush hour traffic with a clear shot of the pentagon on that stretch of 395: "Ain't hap'nin bossman"

[Redlemon]

Originally Posted by matthew330

All the evidence you'll ever need....

a shot of 395 at 8:38 am on any given Tuesday. How crafty an entity like the government of the United States is may be open for debate, but clever enough to fool every eye in rush hour traffic with a clear shot of the pentagon on that stretch of 395: "Ain't hap'nin bossman"

A good friend of mine was on that road at the time, and saw the plane and the impact. She was very freaked out (as you would expect), to the point that she was seeing a doctor to make sure that it wouldn't affect her pregnancy. I have no reason to believe that she lied about this; we talked to her the same day.

I don't have the time to watch the video posted above.

[boatin]

Firstly: Someone sure knows how to use Flash. I wish I had 1/10th that skill.

Secondly: Sure interesting to think about. Anyone that can't entertain the notion (any notion), and explore the pros and cons of the idea is someone I just feel sorry for.

Pros:
- Damn that lawn is pretty. My wife asked at the time how come there wasn't any marks on the way in. The precision of that 'driving' (cause it was at ground level ) is astonishing.

- The circular hole 2 or 3 rings into the Pentagon. An airplane crashes into a building, not to mention 2 separate, consective buildings, and it still has a pointy nose when it reaches the 3rd? That stretches credibility something fierce.

- It only takes one video to disprove this whole crazy theory. Show the video from the Hotel of the 757 hitting. Game over. How about the traffic one? ANY video makes this whole thing go away.

- The size of the fire doesn't seem big enough. I'm no forensic genius (like I need to point that out), but we sure saw what jet fuel does elsewhere that day. Didn't seem even close at the Pentagon.

- How did an airplane 'drop off the radar' miles from the Pentagon. Aside from National being a mile away, I'm guessing the Pentagon itself knows a thing or two about radar.

- What are the chances the plane hit the least occupied part of the Pentagon? I'm not familiar with the route of the plane, but that seems to be the best luck of the day.

Neutral
- Airplanes do disintigrate. Most of the pictures I've seen of other crash sites are amazing in what has vanished. But every picture I've seen has more rubble than we see at the P-gon. No tail left? No wings? Seems an on the fence issue to me.

-'Eyewitness' accounts. People can distort anything in their memory. This kind of testimony is the weakest there is: not only is memory faulty, but our ability to remember what we want to remember is astonishing.


Cons:
- This strains Occam's Razor beyond reason. The planning and launching of a...missle? The disappearance of a plane? The scope of the coverup? Damn hard to believe. I've largely always believed that 3 people can't keep a secret. How about 200 (or whatever).

- Frankly, that's it for me. The single 'con' (funny word in this situation) is frankly enough to make me discount the whole thing. Almost.

But I'm with Super: please show me more. Or just say it's crazy, and don't treat it seriously. I'm sure that will help.

[Lebell]

People telling each other to "stuff it" is a good way to get warned.

Given some of the history some of you have in "Politics", it could be a good way to get banned.


As to the charges that a plane didn't crash into the Pentagon, that ranks right up there with the charges that there wasn't *really* a holocaust and deserves the same consideration.

Too many people saw it happen...No more discussion necessary.

[Kurant]

Originally Posted by Superbelt

Why are the video's that were taken of the plane as it approached suppressed? If they aren't surpressed, where are they for me to see them?

Who says the videos exsist at all? That video isn't biased or anything.

The people that actully think a plane didn't hit the Pentagon, are the same people who think Neil Armstrong didn't really walk on the moon. People will believe anything these days. Too many people saw it happen, and what would be involved in covering up somthing like this is beyond anything you, or I can imagine. Thousands of people would have to be involved. Including, the FAA, Pentagon officials, rescue workers, and the list goes on, and on.

Get the image out of your head, a plane hit that building. That's the bottom line.

[kiwiman]

Snopes handles the situation

[Willravel]

Superbelt, twas I that mentioned the nosecone. I still haven't been able to explain it with any logical argument. And I've really tried. There are simply too many improbablilties here to completly discount on the same level as the holocuast (not sure why you used that example, Lebell, when the moon landing might have offended less people). To Kurant, the rescue workers all said that there was almost no debreis when they got the the crash site, roughly 10-15 minutes after the impact. Pentagon officials have been at odds with several pentagon and former pentagon workers over what they saw. The official stance of the Pentagon has been disputed by several eye whitnesses in the Pentagon. People on the highway have also had conflicting reports. The FAA didn't know the plane was hijacked until practically the plane had already supposedly hit. These don't seem like the eyewhitness accounts you referr to in your post. The list seemingly stops there. Now I have a pretty active and able imagination, as you probably all can guess, but it's not much of a stretch to see that the eye whitness acounts really don't prove or disprove anything. They are mut in the case for the official story. What isn't mut is the facts. The bottom line is that there are too many odd ends and improbablilties to simply dismiss the possibility that there is a larger story to be told. Ther is no harm at all in investigating what happened to find the truth. I would consider leaving the incodent so open and unsolved to be careless. If the plane crashed into the building, let's prove it. If not, let's prove it.
People also believe that Avril Lavigne writes her own music. People will believe anything they are told by the media these days.

P.S. If anyone took this to be a personal attack, please let me know. I do not intend this post to be anything but informative and the goal of my post is to help open some people up to a possibility. Thanks for reading.

[crthiel]

In regards to the numerous eyewitness accounts, this was all taken from this website:
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/boeing.htm

Its a long but yet interesting article, whether it be true or not but the author certainly makes a compelling argument. Here is what the article had to say about eyewitness accounts:

The reader may be easily able to see that the conditions surrounding the events of 9-11 were perfect for both sensitization and habituation as well as creating specific impressions and memories - manipulation of the minds of the masses by events and media spin.

Again, since we have them on film, we must accept the evidence that actual jet airliners flew into the towers of the World Trade Center. The government has given us their evidence, which we are temporarily holding suspect for the duration of these speculations. We now turn to the strike against the Pentagon. This one is a bit more problematical. I am of the opinion, at the present time, that the object that hit the Pentagon WAS different and I will try to outline why I think so.

I once spoke at length with an individual who served in the Persian Gulf conflict. His job was to "program" missiles - VERY smart ones. Even though it was his job, he was completely astonished at their capabilities. He said: "They can be programmed to go down the street just above the ground, turn right or left at a cross street, and hit the designated building at the exact floor, even the exact window, that you tell them to hit!" He then said that this was only a slight exaggeration and he was describing it this way just to emphasize for me the capability of modern guidance systems.

Now, that's amazing.

But I don't think that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon. The point of mentioning the above is to bring up the subject of the guidance system. The question that I asked myself was: Could such a guidance system be used in a plane? Even commercial jetliners?

Why did I ask this question?

Well, it's pretty clear, from assembling the information, that it WAS some sort of plane that was used to strike the Pentagon, and here we come to most interesting facts.

The very first descriptions - before the mind control machine had time to go into action as described above - repeated that something "like a missile" or a craft much smaller than a 757 was witnessed. This certainly creates some confusion. What can we make of it? Can the early witnesses be trusted more than the ones who came forward later, after having watched the shocking impact of commercial jetliners on the World Trade Center, over and over and over again on television. It is altogether possible that such exposure by the media could create certain synaptic maps of the event that were then overlaid on the Pentagon event. One of our researchers looked into this problem and wrote:

Some witnesses said they saw a commuter plane, and others like Army Captain Lincoln Liebner, (who may have had an agenda) said he saw a large American Airlines passenger jet. Now such confusion at any accident scene is understandable. What is more, with the craft going 460 mph, added to the shock of it all, it was probably hard to tell what they really saw.

One of the things that didn't make sense to me were the many reports that the object hit the ground, when we know from the photos, it didn't. Something that was supposed to be as big as a 757 was flying low enough to clip light poles and didn't scrape the ground? Something is wrong with that picture.

Some even claimed they saw people on the plane - faces in windows.

The many confused descriptions - confused even while declaring it to be a commercial jet - leads me to believe that whatever this craft was, it was able to allow people to see what they wanted to... to give impressions. As long as they could see it with their eyes, it registered as being a passenger plane of some sort. And, even though the propaganda machine tells us that it was supposed to be a huge plane, it was obvious from the descriptive terms used by the witnesses that this was not the case - even if the "impression" was. What I did notice was those who did NOT SEE the plane, had a most peculiar "impression" related to the sound.

"At that moment I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball."

"I was right underneath the plane," said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor for Atlantis Co., who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon.

"I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying."

Here he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. And because he saw it he also said "I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying."

What he said next, however, not in keeping with a 757: "I guess it was hitting light poles," said Milburn. "It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion."

Notice that the witness says: "I guess it was hitting the light poles." One suspects that he couldn't see it if he was guessing. What is most interesting is that he said: "It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion."

Two witnesses have described a sound of a "whoosh!" The second one, when he couldn't see it, said it was like a "WHOOSH whoosh, just like the other man who couldn't see it. But then he has also told us that he saw a plane and heard a plane. But what he described was most definitely NOT a 757 flying low over his head.

A 757, under NO circumstances makes a sound of "whoosh!" And if the "whoosh" sound was being made by the hitting of light poles, it is a certainty that if a 757 was doing it, you would not hear the "whoosh" of hitting light poles over the roar of the jet engines. If there's a 757 right overhead that's hitting light poles, and it's going 460 mph, I doubt it would be "whooshing"!

If a 757 was low enough to hit light poles, it should have blown the witnesses' eardrums out along with everything else in the engine's way. The exhaust of those huge engines is like a supersonic cannon! The vortex and power of the exhaust would have produced an experience that is unmistakable - impressive beyond words - and hard to forget.

You might want to take a look at the engine of this plane...there's 2 of them and they hang lower than the plane itself. Go HERE to learn about the jet engine specs, exhaust velocity contours, and so forth.

Nevertheless, the most they can say is that it went "whoosh." Other witnesses described a "whistling" that it "whined" like a missile.

According to the news reports, the action of the plane that hit the Pentagon was quite in keeping with the above described "smart missile guidance system."

"Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed."

Well, if that doesn't sent up red flags, I don't know what will.

Now have a look at he "Universal Pilot Replacement Program" and take note of just what this can do! It even shows diagrams of maneuvers of exactly the kind we are talking about!

"The jetliner disappeared from radar at 9:37 and less than a minute later it clipped the tops of street lights and plowed into the Pentagon at 460 mph."

"Some eyewitnesses believe the plane actually hit the ground at the base of the Pentagon first, and then skidded into the building. Investigators say that's a possibility, which if true, crash experts say may well have saved some lives."

Again, it's interesting to see what different "impressions" people had. Now, here's some pictures taken inside the Pentagon and of the workers. Can anyone explain why some of these men have on protective cover and breathing masks? I don't remember the firemen at the WTC wearing them...and if they did, there was a lot of dust, ash and asbestos. I don't see the same thing at the Pentagon.

The authorities explained that the aircraft was pulverized when it impacted a highly reinforced building. We were next told that the aircraft melted (with the exception of one landing light - how convenient - and its black boxes). In short, we are being told that 100 tons of metal melted because a fire exceeded 2500 °C, leading to the literal evaporation of the aircraft.

Well, if that's the official story, then why is it that metal reinforcing inside the Pentagon didn't melt? You can see from the pictures of the inside, there's all kinds of metal hanging from the ceiling and on the floor. And why are they claiming the obvious limited damage to the Pentagon was a result of the plane hitting the ground and being slowed down? It just doesn't add up. [LAM]

All of this is interesting, but it only adds to the confusion. We can't make too much of the various witness accounts. But let's look at still another report:

Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City. The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395.

He said it was flying so fast that he couldn't read any writing on the side. The plane, which appeared to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a nonexistent runway, Patterson said. "At first I thought 'Oh my God, there's a plane truly misrouted from National,'" Patterson said. "Then this thing just became part of the Pentagon ... I was watching the World Trade Center go and then this. It was like Oh my God, what's next?"

He said the plane, which approached the Pentagon below treetop level, seemed to be flying normally for a plane coming in for a landing other than going very fast for being so low. Then, he said, he saw the Pentagon "envelope" the plane and bright orange flames shoot out the back of the building. "It looked like a normal landing, as if someone knew exactly what they were doing," said Patterson, a graphics artist who works at home. "This looked intentional."

In the above report, we not only have a witness who says the plane looked like a "silver commuter jet," he also said that the plane SOUNDED like the "high-pitched squeal" of a fighter jet.

A series of photographs taken by an official federal photographer at the Pentagon crash site show what appears to be an easily identifiable piece of a small-diameter turbofan engine. If the government wants to prove that a Boeing 757-200 crashed into the Pentagon, why is no one willing or able to identify which part from which engine this is? The photographs show a part of a turbofan jet engine and were taken by Jocelyn Augustino, a photographer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), at the Pentagon crash site on September 13, 2001. The round piece appears to be less than 3 feet in diameter and is propped up against what appears to be part of the engine housing and thick pieces of insulating material.

A Boeing 757 has two large engines, which are about 9 feet in diameter and 12 feet in length. A Pratt & Whitney PW2043 engine, used on some 757 aircraft, has a fan tip diameter of 78.5 inches. Nothing this large is to be seen in the FEMA photographs. The photo ID numbers are 4414 and 4415 and can be seen on-line.

For those who say a smaller plane or unmanned drone, such as a Global Hawk, was involved in the Pentagon attack, identifying the piece in the photo could prove what kind of aircraft hit the building. The Global Hawk is a singe-engine drone that uses a Rolls Royce Allison engine hand-built in Indianapolis, Indiana. The AE3007H engine has a diameter of 43.5 inches. The unmanned Global Hawk, using a satellite guidance system, is capable of landing within 12 inches of its programmed destination. Because the Global Hawk is a surveillance drone, the engine is contained in a heavily insulated housing to be extremely quiet. This corresponds with eyewitness reports. American Free Press asked eyewitness Steve Riskus, who said he was within 100 feet of the aircraft, what he heard. He said he “did not recall hearing anything.” If a 757 or jet fighter flew at high speed 100 feet from an eyewitness the sound would be deafening.

The important thing is, if you have ever seen a 757 up close, the main words you will use - even if it passes you at 460 mph - are HUMONGOUS, or HUGE, or GIGANTIC - words along that line. You will also - even at a distance - be overwhelmed by the noise of the jet engines. But over and over again, even those who later NAMED the object that hit the pentagon as a "commercial airliner," used descriptive terms that are quite different from those that would have been used if a real 757 had been the impacting object. This could easily be a consequence of the "memory making" process I have described above. The fact is, until the spin machine had done its work, except for a few government officials, most of the witness' descriptive terms are more in keeping with descriptions of a much smaller plane.

What we find here is that, among the many descriptions of the eyewitnesses, the early ones said "small jet," "like a missile." The later witnesses - AFTER the awareness of the strike against the World Trade Center was broadcast with film of a commercial jet liner striking the building being shown over and over again - said that it was ALSO a commercial airliner exactly like the ones that hit the World Trade Center that hit the Pentagon.

Can we hypothesize that the timing was set up the way it was for a reason: That the film of the strike on the World Trade Center was shown over and over again for a reason? Was it done to convince the public that the exact same "strike" was made against the Pentagon? If so, why?

[Willravel]

Oh my God. I mean I totally agree with you (crthiel), but oh my God. That's a huge post! I agree on all points. I was wondering what you thought about my theory involving the crashdome on the first page of the dissapearing 757. I (basically) said that a crashdome never survives the crash because it is made of carbon and the inside casting and radar equiptment are very fragile. On a head on collision, it wouldn't have stayed intact enough to have made the circular holes in the last two buildings. I suggested that the depleted uranium heads of a missile could have been able to make such puncture holes. It could have also been a much smaller plane.
Just thoughts.

[crthiel]

Yeah I definately agree with you on those points. Its never really touched on in any article because to them it seems like a no brainer. From a scientific standpoint a plan engine (or tires from landing gear) could have easily made those holes and acted as a giant bullet if you will but that still doesn't explain away the obvious questions like "Where are the skid marks?"

And the biggest thing that would just put EVERYTHING to rest is if someone would just release the tape from the hotel, gas station and/or highway. That would pretty much end everything.

And if you think that post is long then you should try reading the whole article its taken from (I included a link in the post).

[boatin]

Originally Posted by Lebell

As to the charges that a plane didn't crash into the Pentagon, that ranks right up there with the charges that there wasn't *really* a holocaust and deserves the same consideration.

Too many people saw it happen...No more discussion necessary.

When a number of TFPers ask serious questions about a serious subject, I find it very rude and patronizing to respond this way. You don't use any perjorative language, but comparing this to the holocaust (and by association, you compare some of us with the racist POSs that deny the holocaust) is pretty inflammatory.

When I first heard of people denying the holocaust, I did what I think anyone should do. I read, I asked, I explored. It didn't take long to conclude there was an infinite amount of evidence to prove the Holocaust deny-ers were idiots.

I *didn't* just spout what I had "heard". It costs nothing to open the mind, and check things out. One could argue that listening to the crazy/impossible is how progress is made.

To be extra-clear: the problem is not that people ask the question (about anything), the problem is when they deny the overwhelming evidence. I don't see the overwhelming evidence here, and I mostly believe a plane hit the Pentagon. Sheesh.



So that same process repeats. I ask, I read and I explore. And I'm told, essentially: "it happened; your question has no merit".

I was strangely hoping for more.


edited for clarity

[pedro padilla]

ok... NORAD is running 5 or 6 seperate military training exercises on 9 11. so their radar shows 22 planes, some way the hell out of where they´re sposed to be. but all regular procedure is being blown off and any irregularities are written off as exercises by the forewarned air traffic monitors. so air traffic controllers are actually asking, " is this real or part of the exercise?" with me so far?
so we got 5 or perhaps 6 military ops drills going on. several are pretty well documented. First one took most of the patrolling east coast jet fighters on a big circular alaska canada route. 2nd was some kinda bio weapons drill in NYC that took giulani outta the picture but left some real suspicious, almost like forewarned, movements by the big apples favorite son. catch his act at the rep convention? a great american hero. 3rd..op vigilant guardian. simulating, surprise, hijacked passenger jets. 8:40 am NORAD gets warning from boston about a jacked jet and writes it off as a part of the drill. and..4th. op northern guardian. simulating jacked jets in the nrth east. number 5 was known as op vigilant warrior. attack and shoot down hijacked planes. reportedly involving 10 or more fully armed fighter jets in an exercise roughly running along the north eastern seaboard. with me so far?
then you got the 177th F16 fighters.two at all times. 24/7 stationed in atlantic city. 8 minutes away.
EXCEPT the morning of 9 11 when they were running unarmed bomb runs over some vitally important atlantic city taliban enclaves. ok, i made up the taliban part.
so then the towers get hit, the F16´s land. strap on the air to airs and catch the smoke after the fireworks. NORAD, let alone local air traffic control, are still completely baffled and totally confused at what the hell is goin down.
so now lets get to the center of the tootsie pop. W is reading the happy goat. actually the kids were. it still hasn´t been proven to my satisfaction that dubya is literate. Dick, (great name) is in the white house emergency ops bunker watching this radar blip head straight for the pentagon. Actually advised by an aide at 50, 30 and 10 miles out. watching silently. sounds like a bad ben affleck film.
so, boom! pentagon smoking. DICK is off to evil lex luthor cave in pennsylvania. But real life hi tech bad guy cave. nuclear war command center guarded by imperial stormstroopers. his buddies wolfie and rummie show up with the keg of coors an hour later and the bbq is on.
dubya is doing loops around the country in air force 1. bin ladens are gassing up their gulf streams. Supposedly one belonged to a certain austrian wannabe politico guy. weird israeli moving company guys are dancing with their camcorders in glee in front of NYC in flames. and DICK? mr. control? he was looking over his iraqi oil field maps. ok, thats what i can more or less sift out of the garbage recently. pretty simple. they not only knew, they had their fat little fingers all over it.

[host]

<b>
In fact, one of the most bizarre ironies of all this is that five of the hijackers lived in a motel right outside the gates of the NSA.<br>
Early on the morning of 11 September, when Hani Hanjour and his four accomplices left the Valencia Motel on US route 1 on their way to Washington's Dulles airport, they joined the stream of NSA employees heading to work.<br>
Three hours later, they had turned flight 77 around and slammed it into the Pentagon.</b><br>
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2033791.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2033791.stm</a>
<p>
<p><a href="http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/foxnews091401.html"><b>Interview With Ted Olson</b></a><br>
by Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity, and Brit Hume<br>
Fox News - Hannity and Colmes<br>

September 14, 2001 <br>
[transcript] <b>excerpts</b>

BRIT HUME, FOX ANCHOR: Ted, your wife's name was the first victim's name that
we heard from the crash at the Pentagon site. And I know that she spoke to you. <br>
<br>I'd like to convey, on behalf of all of us here, our condolences to you and
our best wishes to you, sir.
<br>TED OLSON, SOLICITOR GENERAL: Thank you.
One of the gals in my office came in and said, &quot;Barbara's on the phone.&quot;
And I picked up the phone. We spoke for a couple of -- maybe a minute or two
before we were cut off.<br>
HUME: Did you have a clear...<br>
OLSON: It was clear.<br>
It was cut off. And then a few moments later, we had another telephone conversation
that lasted for three or four minutes. I was at first relieved to hear Barbara
on the telephone, because panic strikes immediately. My wife had taken off on
a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course,
like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.<br>
And I made a calculation that it couldn't possibly -- that airplane couldn't
possibly have gotten to New York, although it could have been close. But then
to hear her voice was reassuring and calming. But then her next words out of
her mouth were that, &quot;Ted, my plane's been hijacked.&quot;
<br>HUME: Now, was she calm?
<br>OLSON: She was very calm. She was completely in control.
<br>HUME: Was she sort of whispering? Or was she speaking in a normal voice.
<br>OLSON: No, she was speaking loud enough that I could hear her. I didn't feel
that she was whispering. I said -- I asked her a couple of questions. And I'm
not sure now the sequence in which I asked those questions.
<br>But I learned from her that she had been in first class. She had been -- she
and the other passengers had been herded to the back of the airplane. I asked
her whether they, the hijackers, knew that she was calling. And she said, &quot;No,
they don't know.&quot;
<br>She indicated that they had used knifes and box-cutters to take over the plane.
At some point, we got cut off. I immediately called the command center of the
Department of Justice to let them know that my wife was on a plane that had
been hijacked. I mainly wanted them know there was another hijacked plane out
there. I didn't know whether anyone in...
<br>HUME: What did they say when you called them?
<br>OLSON: They just absorbed the information. And they promised to send someone
down right away. I didn't know that I was going to get another call. And I expected
them to pass the information on to the appropriate people. I assumed that they
did.<br>
A few minutes later, another call came in from Barbara. I found out later that
she was having, for some reason, to call collect and was having trouble getting
through. You know how it is to get through to a government institution when
you're calling collect.
<br>HUME: With a collect call, right.
<br>OLSON: Well, she managed to -- Barbara was capable of doing practically anything
if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed
to get collect calls through.
<br>HUME: You don't know whether it was on a regular cell phone or one of those
air phones?
<br>OLSON: No, I don't. I first of all assumed that it must have been on the airplane
phone, and that she somehow didn't have access to her credit cards. Otherwise,
she would have used her cell phone and called me.
<br>HUME: Of course.
<br>OLSON: So I think that was probably what it was. But Barbara got through a
second time. And we exchanged the feelings that a husband and wife who are extraordinarily
close, as we are, those kind of sentiments. And she assured me everything was
going to be OK. I told her in the first conversation that the two hijacked planes
had hit the World Trade Center.
<br>And my impulse was that I had to tell her that. That was the kind of person
she was. That's the kind of relationship that we had. I will always wonder whether
I should have. But she -- her instinct was: &quot;What do we do? What do we
tell -- what shall I tell the pilot? What can I do?&quot;
<br>And I asked her where she was. And she tried to tell me where she was and what
direction the aircraft appeared to be going.
<br>HUME: It was probably hard to tell.
<br>OLSON: I think it's impossible to tell. We've all looked out the window and
we don't know exactly where we are. She said there were residences she could
see. And she speculated that the aircraft was headed northeast. But I don't
know whether that was correct or whether she really knew that or whether someone
had told her that.
<br>HUME: Did she describe the hijackers or say what they had said or anything
of that kind?
<br>OLSON: No. She -- the only thing she said with respect to that is the pilot
had announced that the plane had been hijacked. She said it had been hijacked
shortly after takeoff. By this time, the plane had been in the air -- again,
I'm presuming that it took off on time -- for over an hour.
<br>She implied that they had been circling around for a while. Not long after
after
the second phone call, the connection was broken, by what I don't know. I was
watching television in my office both before, after, and during these telephone
calls. I began to hear reports of the explosion at the Pentagon. And I knew
in my heart that was that aircraft.<br>
<a href="http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/9/kaminer-w.html">
"There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information," <br>Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the U.S. Supreme Court in March, 2002.</a><br>
"the story seems to have matured a lot since the first decoy news release by CNN early on September 12, 2001. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/">http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/</a>
Here we have considerably more detail, some of which is frankly impossible. In the alleged words of US Solicitor General Theodore Olson:
“She [Barbara] had trouble getting through, because she wasn’t using her cell phone – she was using the phone in the passengers’ seats,” said Mr Olson. “I guess she didn’t have her purse, because she was calling collect, and she was trying to get through to the Department of Justice, which is never very easy.” … “She wanted to know ‘What can I tell the pilot? What can I do? How can I stop this?’ ”
"What Can I tell the pilot?" Yes indeed! The forged Barbara Olson telephone call claims that the flight deck crew were with her at the back of the aircraft, presumably politely ushered down there by the box cutter-wielding Muslim maniacs, who for some bizarre reason decided not to cut their throats on the flight deck. Have you ever heard anything quite so ridiculous?
But it is at this juncture that we finally have the terminal error. Though the American Airlines Boeing 757 is fitted with individual telephones at each seat position, they are not of the variety where you can simply pick up the handset and ask for an operator. On many aircraft you can talk from one seat to another in the aircraft free of charge, but if you wish to access the outside world you must first swipe your credit card through the telephone. By Ted Olson’s own admission, Barbara did not have a credit card with her.
It gets worse. On American Airlines there is a telephone "setup" charge of US$2.50 which can only be paid by credit card, then a US$2.50 (sometimes US$5.00) charge per minute of speech thereafter. The setup charge is the crucial element. Without paying it in advance by swiping your credit card you cannot access the external telephone network. Under these circumstances the passengers’ seat phone on a Boeing 757 is a much use as a plastic toy.
Perhaps Ted Olson made a mistake and Barbara managed to borrow a credit card from a fellow passenger? Not a chance. If Barbara had done so, once swiped through the phone, the credit card would have enabled her to call whoever she wanted to for as long as she liked, negating any requirement to call collect.
Sadly perhaps, the Olson telephone call claim is proved untrue. Any American official wishing to challenge this has only to subpoena the telephone company and Justice Department records. There will be no charge originating from American Airlines 77 to the US Solicitor General.
Even without this hard proof, the chances of meaningfully using a seat-telephone on Flight 77 were nil."<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/subliminalsuggestion/olson.html">THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES ABOUT 9/11 - Barbara Olson's Phone Call From Flight 77</a><br>
<b>(Here's a the relevant footnote from the 9/11 Commission
report.....seems to me that they confirm that calls were made from seatback
phones, but they don't bother to disclose whether they checked if the calls
were billed to a credit card(s)....or if there were collect calls billed to the<br> Justice Dept. This reveals that the Commission was not interested in obtaining real confirmation that Barbara Olson made any calls from Flt. 77.)<br>
"57.The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004."</b>
<br>
<a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.htm">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.htm</a>

[phyzix525]

well suppose what you say is true and it was not the AA plane that hit the pentagon, please explain to me why we would want to hit our own pentagon, and where did the plane actually go? I mean there was a hijacked plane, if it did not hit the pentagon where did it go?

time to get out our tinfoil hats!

[Superbelt]

Maybe I didn't make myself clear in my opening post, but I don't want to believe this, and I see holes in both sides of this issue.

Things don't fit together in the official version with the wings, final hole, lack of skidding in a low trajectory flight and the apparent suppression of all tapes.

At the same time I don't know of a good answer to where the plane would have actually landed, or why we would have fired on our own Pentagon to cover it up.
That doesn't make sense and my mind doesn't want to believe it. But because of fishiness on this I have to leave myself open.

Hell Botin does a very good job of discussing my personal problems either way with this in post #11.

[Rekna]

I was thinking about this myself why would we attack our own pentagon. At first I was thinking maybe it was a coverup for shooting down our own plane. But people wouldn't care if we shot down our own plane. And it would be easier to say the passengers struggled with the hijackers and crashed the plane in the struggle. That is an easier coverup then making a crashed plane disappear then hitting our own pentagon.

So let's blow that theory out of the water.

Now there is one more thing running through my head that *could* be a reason *if* it was not the plane that hit the pentegon. What if the government wanted the pentagon to be hit (in a spot that would cause very little death) in order to send a message to congress and get certain laws passed (ala patriot act). It seems a bit far fetched but it is a possiblity.

It is hard to figure out why they would do something like this but it isn't unprecidented. The government could resolve this whole thing by just releasing the footage from the various cameras. Why the secrecy? What are they hiding? They are hiding something and as long as they hide something people will assume the worst.

So I'm going to assume Bush is the antichrist and he decieved evil minons to garner support for his satanistic motives in a plan to divide the world and start world war 3 thus bringing about revalations. Now he is going to fix the election (just like the first one) and the end will come!

[Lebell]

Originally Posted by boatin

When a number of TFPers ask serious questions about a serious subject, I find it very rude and patronizing to respond this way. You don't use any perjorative language, but comparing this to the holocaust (and by association, you compare some of us with the racist POSs that deny the holocaust) is pretty inflammatory.

When I first heard of people denying the holocaust, I did what I think anyone should do. I read, I asked, I explored. It didn't take long to conclude there was an infinite amount of evidence to prove the Holocaust deny-ers were idiots.

I *didn't* just spout what I had "heard". It costs nothing to open the mind, and check things out. One could argue that listening to the crazy/impossible is how progress is made.

To be extra-clear: the problem is not that people ask the question (about anything), the problem is when they deny the overwhelming evidence. I don't see the overwhelming evidence here, and I mostly believe a plane hit the Pentagon. Sheesh.



So that same process repeats. I ask, I read and I explore. And I'm told, essentially: "it happened; your question has no merit".

I was strangely hoping for more.


edited for clarity

Interesting that you do to me what you accuse me of doing to you, i.e. accepting what I was *told* without questioning.

There are times when we should question and times when questions are blatently foolish. There are also times when such questions are patently offensive.

Considering that I consider it extremely offensive to suggest that our own government intensionally blew up the pentagon and shot down the plane in the face of overwhelming evidence, I stand by my original post.


Edit to add:

Names aside (since I can't remember them off the top of my head), I consider that French journalist to be driven by the same forces as that Nazi lover that is the source of all the *facts* refuting the Holocaust, i.e. hatred of a people and culture.

[Willravel]

I have to admit I'm surprised that the Mods haven't combined this post with it's twin in paranoia, but I'm glad that people who don't normally visit the paranoia thread are getting a chance to read about this. As someone who's been atached to this issue since a few months ago, I am glad to see that so many people are getting involved in the discussion. I think, overall, that people have made some good points. I appreciate everyone who was willing to put what they believed aside and kept an open mind.
The facts are contradictory, and I'm sure a lot of you are as confused as I am about what is really going on. I have done the cliche and wrote my congressman. I am waiting for a response, which I will quickly post on both threads promptly after reading it.

[phyzix525]

Originally Posted by boatin

Firstly:
Pros:
- Damn that lawn is pretty. My wife asked at the time how come there wasn't any marks on the way in. The precision of that 'driving' (cause it was at ground level ) is astonishing.

It hits the building first, not hittin gthe grass, some say it hits the building between the first and second layers.

- The circular hole 2 or 3 rings into the Pentagon. An airplane crashes into a building, not to mention 2 separate, consective buildings, and it still has a pointy nose when it reaches the 3rd? That stretches credibility something fierce.

Its not the pointly nose but an engine that flew through those walls.

- It only takes one video to disprove this whole crazy theory. Show the video from the Hotel of the 757 hitting. Game over. How about the traffic one? ANY video makes this whole thing go away.

Those videos may have nothing on them.

- The size of the fire doesn't seem big enough. I'm no forensic genius (like I need to point that out), but we sure saw what jet fuel does elsewhere that day. Didn't seem even close at the Pentagon.

Did we ever get a good video of it actually hitting? How long will the feul last? a few minutes untill the fire dies down from the original ball of flames? Also the designs of these two buildings are dramatically different. The area that was hit in the pentagon had recently been renforced.

- How did an airplane 'drop off the radar' miles from the Pentagon. Aside from National being a mile away, I'm guessing the Pentagon itself knows a thing or two about radar.

They can turn off the transponders, which is what happend to the other planes that were hijacked.

- What are the chances the plane hit the least occupied part of the Pentagon? I'm not familiar with the route of the plane, but that seems to be the best luck of the day.

Yeah it was great luck and the 9/11 commision said that the plane was originally looking to hit the white house but it is small and hard to see and they were not able to find it and circled around to hit something they could see very well.

Neutral
- Airplanes do disintigrate. Most of the pictures I've seen of other crash sites are amazing in what has vanished. But every picture I've seen has more rubble than we see at the P-gon. No tail left? No wings? Seems an on the fence issue to me.

sort of, there was some debris, but if you look at crash sites similar to this you see the same pattern, most debris would be caught in the building and then disinigrated from the heat. proof of that is in the fact that the water sprinklers in that area of the building also disintigrated.


I don't think there is enough proof to say that something else hit the pentagon. Where did the plane go? it was really hijacked people did die, so where is it? If it were shot down there would be a half mile streach of debris somewhere. I think the most important would be why?

[Willravel]

Ah, yes, but Lebell you did the typical response to this idea: you simply dismissed what was said without question. You can't preach about this being blatently foolish if you have nothing to support it. You seem to be intelligent, does it make sense to you that someone is arguing that an idea is foolish, despite not doing much if any research of his or her own? Of course not. What Boatin and I are saying to you is that you are your own worst enemy if you want people to pay attention to your post. Your quick dismissal leads people to believe that you have just read a few posts and ayou think you know better. Well, I don't think that you know so much more than some of these people. I, myself, have been investigating this problem for weeks. I have contacted several people who are qualified to answer some of the questions this thread and the other bring up. Aeronautical engineers, reporters, firefighters who have been involved with multiple plane crashes. I included all of this information in a letter to my congressman. All it seems that you have done, based on your response, is formed a quick opinnion. What if you're wrong? Let's just try to imagine that this improbable story is actuially the truth. Would you be willing to admit that ther is even a possibility? I hope so, otherwise you are being led blindly.

[Ustwo]

Please move this to the parinoia forum. Its silly at best.

[crthiel]

I'll post the link again...so maybe someone will read it this time.

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/boeing.htm

It'll help answer questions (in multiple ways and with multiple answers) such as: "Why would our own government do this?" I strongly urge everyone to read the whole article. Then I think we will all be suited to make intelligent discussion.

Edit: Not to say I think the gov't would do this, I just think that alot of the questions that fly around to try and at least debunk the pentagon crash are very well answered in this article.

[Kurant]

Such a credible, official, non-biased website as well.

Why do people question the hole, or the size of the hole in the Pentagon. There is only one, yes, ONE way to find out what a 757 going 500+ mph would do to a building, or rather, what a building would do a 757. People need to step aside, take some rational thought, and understand - a cover up of somthing of this kind of worldwide attention, the amount of people involved in it is somthing you can't imagine.

I just can't beleive people actully entertain the thoughts that our goverment smashed into it's own building. Someone shot a missle at the pentagon, and a hijacked airplane just came up missing, and no one saw it go down, no one knows where it went, it's just, gone. You know, there isn't always an evil plot or coverup, maybe it's just what happened, and people need to accept it.

Those questions in that article, are answered by a figure in the RUSSIAN goverment. Come on.

[Lebell]

Originally Posted by willravel

Ah, yes, but Lebell you did the typical response to this idea: you simply dismissed what was said without question. You can't preach about this being blatently foolish if you have nothing to support it. You seem to be intelligent, does it make sense to you that someone is arguing that an idea is foolish, despite not doing much if any research of his or her own? Of course not. What Boatin and I are saying to you is that you are your own worst enemy if you want people to pay attention to your post. Your quick dismissal leads people to believe that you have just read a few posts and ayou think you know better. Well, I don't think that you know so much more than some of these people. I, myself, have been investigating this problem for weeks. I have contacted several people who are qualified to answer some of the questions this thread and the other bring up. Aeronautical engineers, reporters, firefighters who have been involved with multiple plane crashes. I included all of this information in a letter to my congressman. All it seems that you have done, based on your response, is formed a quick opinnion. What if you're wrong? Let's just try to imagine that this improbable story is actuially the truth. Would you be willing to admit that ther is even a possibility? I hope so, otherwise you are being led blindly.

There have been many times in my life where I was wrong and there will undoubtably be many more, but honestly, I cannot see any reason to doubt the fact that a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11, unless you are operating under preconceptions born from a dislike of the Bush Administration/American government.

I say that not as an inflamatory statement, but as an historical observation.

Consider conspiracy theories in general.

The Knights Templar, the Holocaust, the Moon Landing, Roswell, Kennedy's Assassination....most all are put forth and perpetuated by people with a beef with the organizations involved. In this case, there is a French conspiracy author that makes outlandish charges that are finding their way into the mainstream by the usual method...they are quoted enough until the origin of the quotes are clouded and unquestioned. Now, instead of us questioning the author and requiring him to prove his charges, we are requiring the US govt. to *prove* that the Pentagon crash happened inspite of:

- 3 other coordinated plane attacks (two successful)
- hijackers of known origin
- muliple eyewitness accounts

Further, this theory requires us to believe that the government either a) made up this fantastic "plan" on the cuff and carried it out immediately after the WTC was hit or worse, they had advanced knowledge of the WTC attack and then made their evil plan and managed to keep it secret inspite of the couple of hundred people that it would require to pull off.

Is it any wonder that this reminds me of that Nazi nut who, since his test didn't reveal the levels of cyanide in the walls of what was left of the showers of Auswitch, claimed that there were no gas chambers? Or those that say because some people heard a double report that there must have been a second shooter on the grassy knoll? Etc...

As to the "experts", there are also "expert scientists" that doubt evolution and push intelligent design as well as "experts" that support all the other nutty conspiracy theories. So no, these "experts" don't impress me either, not when I can produce a hundred that agree with the standard explanation.

So while I can "imagine" that this story might be true, I have yet to be shown any real reason to believe it, while I have been shown many reasons to heap the scorn on it that I have shown.

(edited for grammar/spelling)

[boatin]

Originally Posted by Lebell

Interesting that you do to me what you accuse me of doing to you, i.e. accepting what I was *told* without questioning.

There are times when we should question and times when questions are blatently foolish. There are also times when such questions are patently offensive.

Considering that I consider it extremely offensive to suggest that our own government intensionally blew up the pentagon and shot down the plane in the face of overwhelming evidence, I stand by my original post.

Sometimes writing on the internet makes me insane. I apologize for the impression that I was 'doing' anything to you. I wasn't questioning YOUR knowledge of this, or any, issue. I'm sorry if I implied that. I tried to illustrate the process I try to have when I hear crazy things.

All of my posts have been about MY lack of knowledge. The problem I found with your post, is you didn't move the conversation anywhere except to imply that the people asking these questions are stupid and out of line.

You are clearly on solid ground standing by your post, and your opinion of this issue. I wasn't attempting to alter those. I stand my post about being rude. If you have nothing to add/offer a thread, why make disparaging comments? Just move along.

(edit: fixed quote)
(edit: what did i do to your quote? i hope to heavens i didn't do anything!)

[boatin]

Thank you phyzix, that is the post I was hoping for. Sometimes on this board we treat things so damn seriously, it gets in the way of the helpful back and forth.

Certainly no one HAD to take the time to write what Phyzix did, but the fact that he did is appreciated by me. I still see no harm in going down the road (of an idea) a little ways, and seeing what I can see. I'm confident in my ability to hold onto reality - exploring the crazy doesn't diminish that.



We were posting at the same time, Lebell, and I appreciate (and agree with)your thoughts about conspiracies in general. My belief is that those go away with the preponderence of evidence.

Not just by telling the holders of those beliefs that they are wrong.

[Willravel]

Ditto to what boiatin said. Both to phyzix, and to Lebell. Thanks again to phyzix.

[ShaniFaye]

to me...the question isnt whether or not a plane hit the pentagon...I honestly dont see any question about that....to me the issue presented is if it was a boeing 757

this is a link that is in that video

http://home.earthlink.net/~flight77/.../building.html

and some of the pictures there give an interesting perspective especially the 4th one down and the 6th one which shows where the tail "should" have hit and the fact that there is no damage to that section of the pentagon

[Willravel]

Good link!!!! That graphic picture of the 757 vs. the damage was very compeling.

[phyzix525]

"And then the plane crashed. My mind could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go? For some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon wall in pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of smoke and torrents of fire," Christine Peterson. -NAU Alumni Association (10/18/01

I just don't think there is enough scientific data to prove the damage that we could see from those photos were not from the plane. We just don't go flying planes into well reenforced buildings just for research. its not like we know what this SHOULD look like.

Also for this to be some cover-up the pres. and co. would have to be the smartest people on earth to get this past everyone. yet everyone (liberals) would have us believe that bush is an idiot. you can't have it both ways people.

[student]

If you watch the video of the trade towers, you can actually see the nose of one of the planes come out the other side of the tower intact. I have seen video on the discovery channel of military testings of a wall that can withstand the impact of a jet. They flew a fighter jet looking aircraft at a 90 degree angle into the wall and the plane disintegrated and the wall remained intact. If the pentagon was refurbished, it is possible these types of wall could have been in place. But then, why not release the video if there is nothing to hide? I am more concerned, puzzled as to why not crash the planes later in the day, when the towers would have been full of people?

[crthiel]

Thats because the WTC was glass and steal beams(and drywall to seperate offices). Assuming the nose of the plane didn't hit any beams straight on then its completely possible it came out the other side.

Second...the pentagon is many thick layers of brick and concrete.

--Charlie