Did F77 hit the Pentagon? Eyewitness accounts examined
by Gerard Holmgren

911dossier notes:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051101025900/http://www.911dossier.co.uk/pen07.html#1

According to the Official Story there were many eyewitnesses to the Pentagon attack. But Gerard Holmgren has made an in depth investigation of the apparent eyewitness accounts, with some surprising results. Here is his posting to the IndyMedia website, followed by twelve other posts related to it.

Item One: "Did F77 hit the Pentagon? Eyewitness accounts examined" by Gerard Holmgren
Item Two - "A military official said plane was shot down" by Linda
Item Three - "TARGET TV TRANSMITTERS" by fed up
Item Four - "Think Again" by Ron Harvey
Item Five - "AA Flight 77 and the Pentagon" by Henry Ayre
Item Six - "100 m/s 100 tons?" by berserk
Item Seven - "Don't be Stupid" by Joshua
Item Eight - "Good Article Gerard Holmgren" by Peter Wilson
Item Nine - "Lets try that again" by Peter Wilson [911dossier notes: This post seems to be identical to the above "Good Article Gerard Holmgren", with some html corrections, and a different last link.]
Item Ten - "Great Links. THANKS" by Josh
Item Eleven - "Unanswered questions for Gerard Holmgren" by Sky King
Item Twelve - "inaccessible video" by gtr
Item Thirteen - "Where are the witnesses" by Tim Brown


Item One
Did F77 hit the Pentagon? Eyewitness accounts examined.

[ Original page source for all 13 postings: http://hamilton.indymedia.org:8081/front.php3?article_id=1786&group=webcast ]

by Gerard Holmgren
2:00am Mon Jun 17 '02 (Modified on 2:19am Mon May 5 '03)

Examines the apparent contradiction between photographic evidence and eyewitness evidence.

DID FLIGHT 77 HIT THE PENTAGON ?

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS EXAMINED

by Gerard Holmgren

copywrite Gerard Holmgren June 4 2002

This article may be freely copied and distributed without permission providing it is not for commercial purposes. Please include the authors name, the URL and the copywrite notice.

There is controversy over the question of whether AA F77 actually did hit the Pentagon on Sept 11. It centres around a large amount of photographic evidence that the damage to the Pentagon is neither big enough, nor of the right shape to have been caused by a 757 jet, that there is insufficient sign of wreckage or bodies, and that power poles which apparently should have been in the path of the jet are still standing. The damage appears to be more consistent with having been caused by a bomb and/or a missile or small jet. See the following sites for some of this evidence.

http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flight77.htm
http://www.humanunderground.com/11september/pent.html

The strength of the counter argument seems to be with a body of eyewitness evidence that a large passenger jet, some even specifying an AA 757, did hit the Pentagon. So I set out to find every eyewitness account, if possible, and subject them to close scrutiny, to see if this apparent contradiction could be resolved.

That a large explosion took place at the Pentagon, that the Pentagon wall was substantially damaged, and that F77 is missing, are not in dispute. If the damage to the Pentagon was caused by impact from a flying object, this does not necessarily prove that it was F77. Possible flying objects which could be considered are large passenger jets, (such as a 757) small passenger jets, a military craft, light aircraft, a helicopter or a cruise missile. Therefore, for the purpose of this research, eyewitness accounts which report seeing a flying object strike the wall of the Pentagon, but are unable to be clear about what that object was, do not necessarily support the theory that it was F77. It is not necessary that the witness should be specific that it was an AA 757. Uncertainty about such detail is completely understandable in such a situation. In fact in many cases, it makes the report more credible. Eyewitnesses who are vague on fine details are generally more likely to be telling the truth than those who claim to have meticulously taken in everything. But there should be some indication that the object was a large passenger jet, and could not have been a much smaller jet, a military craft, a light plane, a helicopter or a cruise missile.

Also of little use are reports which claim to have seen a large jet flying too low about the same time that the Pentagon was hit, but do not explicitly claim to have seen the collision. While such reports obviously provide grounds for suspicion that the jet may have been the object which struck the Pentagon, I am only interested in reports which clearly claim to have seen a large passenger jet flying in the air, and then to have actually witnessed it hitting the wall of the Pentagon.

Reports should preferably have been published no later than Sept 14, although this is flexible depending upon the other merits of the account. The earlier the report, the greater it's weight.The account should be internally consistent. The more comprehensive the statement, the greater it's weight. A one line quote gives little that can be critically examined, whereas an extensive interview gives an opportunity to test the credibility of the account. This does not mean that one line quotes are inadmissable, but their value is small. The account should be verifiable, which can be satisfied in a number of ways.1) The witness was identifiable and available for future questioning. 2) The account was captured on video at what can be clearly identified as close to the time and place of the incident. 3) That the reporter who sourced the quote is able to identify themselves as the one having interviewed the witness, and is able to give details of where, when and how the quote was sourced. 4) If a person claiming retrospectively to have been at the scene can provide evidence such as photos, phone calls, documented travel plans, credit card use, etc which gives good reason to believe that they were there.

A certain amount of common sense must be used in interpreting these guidelines. The point is that I am not interested in accounts which could be second, third or fourth hand and give no opportunity for critical analysis. If a newspaper gives a one line quote from an anonymous witness and gives no details of when, where or how the quote was gathered, does not specify who wrote the story and gives no other details, then this is not an eyewitness account. Is it hearsay.

Having set out the parameters, I began searching for eyewitness accounts. My first source was the following site:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77.htm

It strongly criticises the theory that F77 did not hit the Pentagon and as part of its rebuttal, lists 19 referenced, weblinked eyewitness accounts to the event. At first reading it seemed to be an impressive library, but on closer examination, I found that 10 of the 19 accounts did not meet a basic condition. This is because the witnesses did not actually claim to see the Pentagon hit by the plane. What they claimed was to have seen a plane flying way too low, and then immediately afterwards to have seen smoke or an explosion coming from the direction of the Pentagon which was out of sight at the time of the collision.(or some variation on this) Here's an example of two which I ruled out.

"On a Metro train to National Airport, Allen Cleveland looked out the window to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. 'I thought, "There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,"' he said. Before he could process that thought, he saw 'a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics.'"

- "Our Plane Is Being Hijacked"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp%2Ddyn/A14365%2D2001Sep11%3Flanguage=printer
Washington Post, 12 Sep 2001

Even the full report, complete with paraphrasing by the writer does not have this witness seeing the alleged collision. It becomes even thinner when stripped down to what the witness is actually quoted as saying.

I thought, "There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks," ' The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics.'"

Here's the second example.

"As I approached the Pentagon, which was still not quite in view, listening on the radio to the first reports about the World Trade Center disaster in New York, a jetliner, apparently at full throttle and not more than a couple of hundred yards above the ground, screamed overhead. ... Seconds before the Pentagon came into view a huge black cloud of smoke rose above the road ahead. I came around the bend and there was the Pentagon billowing smoke, flames and debris, blackened on one side and with a gaping hole where the airplane had hit it."

- "Eyewitness at the Pentagon"
http://www.humanevents.org/articles/09%2D17%2D01/regnery.html
Human Events, 17 Sep 2001

If you read this account carefully, it is not a direct eyewitness account to a collision. It claims to have seen a plane too low, and then to have seen the smoke from the Pentagon which was not in sight at the time.The obvious deduction is that the plane must have been responsible for the collision, but because of the puzzling contradiction between photographic evidence and eyewitness evidence, such deductions are not sufficient in this case. We need witnesses who actually saw it hit.

This left 9 accounts which claimed to directly witness a collision. On second reading, one of these didn't qualify, because the report paraphrased the alleged sighting of the collision, rather than directly quoting the witness.

"Aydan Kizildrgli, an English language student who is a native of Turkey, saw the jetliner bank slightly then strike a western wall of the huge five-sided building that is the headquarters of the nation's military. 'There was a big boom,' he said. 'Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled "Did you see that?" Nobody could believe it.'"

- "Bush Vows Retaliation for 'Evil Acts'"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/attack%2Dusat.htm
USA Today, 11 Sep 2001

This is the quote, unembellished by inserted commentary.

'There was a big boom.. Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled "Did you see that?" Nobody could believe it.'"

The witness does not even describe a plane. Nothing except a big boom. We already know that an explosion of some kind took place at the Pentagon, so this quote tells us absolutely nothing about what caused it. When I checked the original source of this report, no particular interviewer or reporter actually claimed responsibility for interviewing Kizildrgli. In fact there was no source or context given at all. The quote, along with the added paraphrasing was simply inserted into a story, without verification. Any reference to a plane or a collision was completely the creation of the writer. How did they know his name, unless somebody interviewed him? And if he was interviewed, why was it not described when and where, and why did they not directly quote any statement he might have made about a plane and a collision? Why was it necessary to paraphrase everything he described, except the noise? We have no evidence that this person said anything about seeing a plane hit the Pentagon. An extensive media search found no reference to him other than this quote. This is not an eyewitness account of the alleged collision. A few others in this list come into the same category as the Kizildrgri quote, but I will examine them too, because they raise some interesting questions.

"I was supposed to have been going to the Pentagon Tuesday morning at about 11:00am (EDT) and was getting ready, and thank goodness I wasn't going to be going until later. It was so shocking, I was listening to the news on what had happened in New York, and just happened to look out the window because I heard a low flying plane and then I saw it hit the Pentagon. It happened so fast... it was in the air one moment and in the building the next..."

- "U.S. Under Attack: Your Eyewitness Accounts"
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking%5Fpoint/newsid%5F1537000/1537530.stm
BBC News, 14 Sep 2001

This is better because the witness is actually describing the collision in their own words. However, upon checking the BBC source, there was a serious problem with the verification. It's not an interview. We don't know who sourced this quote or how. It's simply posted on the website as a "comment". How was it sourced? An unsolicited email? A phone call? Hearsay? Was the witness interviewed? Who knows? And the identification of the witness? " K.M. Pentagon City, USA " Unidentifiable and therefore not available for questioning. No details of the method of communication. No evidence of face to face contact with a journalist. No transcript of any conversation.And the date of posting? Sept 14. An unsourced, anonymous account, delivered 3 days later, by an unknown means, and not available for questioning is not an eyewitness account. It is hearsay. There is no way to verify how this quote originated.

But let's assume for a moment that the quote is a genuine eyewitness account. Note that the witness does not give any indication as to what type of plane. It is simply described as "a low flying plane." Furthermore, the witness confirms that (s)he did not get a good enough look at it to make any assessment.

"It happened so fast... it was in the air one moment and in the building the next..."

So it could have been any kind of plane, or even a cruise missile which can easily be mistaken for a jet in such circumstances. A helicopter is probably out of the question.There's some photos of cruise missiles at
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm
if you want to check the similarity with that of a small jet aircraft. Regardless of whether we accept this quote as admissible, it provides us with nothing except evidence that a flying object, probably a plane, hit the Pentagon. This provides no evidence that it was F77.

"USA Today.com Editor Joel Sucherman saw it all: An American Airlines jetliner fly left to right across his field of vision as he commuted to work Tuesday morning. It was highly unusual. The large plane was 20 feet off the ground and a mere 50 to 75 yards from his windshield. Two seconds later and before he could see if the landing gear was down or any of the horror-struck faces inside, the plane slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon 100 yards away. 'My first thought was he's not going to make it across the river to [Reagan] National Airport. But whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction,' Sucherman said. 'It was coming in at a high rate of speed, but not at a steep angle-almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked onto its target and staying dead on course.'"

- "Journalist Witnesses Pentagon Crash"
http://www.eweek.com/article/0%2C3658%2Cs%25253D704%252526a%25253D15161%2C00.asp
eWeek.com, 13 Sep 2001

Here we have an identifiable witness.But I have a problem with the assertion that he "saw it all". Again, the writer described the collision, and the plane. Here is the quote,unembellished.

'My first thought was he's not going to make it across the river to [Reagan] National Airport. But whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction,' Sucherman said. 'It was coming in at a high rate of speed, but not at a steep angle-almost like a heat- seeking missile was locked onto its target and staying dead on course.'"

He doesn't say anything about seeing an American Airlines jetliner.He says "the plane", which, as in the previous quote, could mean any of the possibilities listed earlier, with the exception of a helicopter. And according to this description, he would not possibly have had time to identify it. If the object was travelling at 400 mph, and Sucherman had a clear view for about 100 yards either side of his car, he would have seen it for about 1 second. The writer's description of the plane travelling 100 yards in 2 seconds, gives it a speed of 102 mph. Sucherman doesn't say anything about seeing the alleged collision.

But because of Sucherman's media connections, I decided to pursue this further. Perhaps he may have made a more complete statement, reported elsewhere. One would expect so, if he did see the collision. He's an editor of "USA today", so one would expect him to have good access to major media outlets. So I searched every significant media outlet which could conceivably have printed, broadcast, televised or web published any reference to Joel Sucherman seeing anything hit the Pentagon. There were no matches. An editor of "USA today" has his own scoop- his very own sighting of the Pentagon crash and yet his story is not published in any media outlet, apart from that referenced on the "Urban legends" site? So I checked the reference. It was posted on eweek.com on Sept 13, in an article written by John Dodge. Later in the article Dodge writes

"Off to the west, Sucherman saw another plane climb steeply and make a sharp turn. "I thought, 'Is this thing coming around to make a second attack? If there is another explosion, we're toast.'" At that point, he sped away to the office."

As we will see, a number of other witnesses claim that there was a serious traffic jam around the area at the time, so depending upon details of the surrounding roads, somebody may not telling the truth about this, but at this stage we don't know who.

So Sucherman sped back to his office but apparently didn't file any report with the media organisation that he works for. His only publicity about having witnessed such a startling and newsworthy event was to allow himself to be interviewed by John Dodge of eweek, posted 2 days later. Under these circumstances, I have to be sceptical about whether he actually saw anything newsworthy. So I did a search to find out what eweek.com is all about.Here's the Yahoo match.

eWeek
http://srd.yahoo.com/srst/339336/eweek.com/1/1/T=1021283154/F=8943e731f29347477845cb91c16d04e1/*http://www.eweek.com/
- news, product reviews, and features that cover the developments in the computer industry. Formerly PC Week.
http://www.eweek.com/
More sites about:
Computer and Internet Magazines
http://srd.yahoo.com/srctg/70338/eweek.com/1/1/*http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/News_and_Media/Magazines/

A computer industry magazine? A scoop any media figure can only dream of falls right into the lap of an editor of a major media organization and it's relegated to a two bit article in a PC magazine? He (allegedly) directly witnessed the crash and doesn't give any interview apart from this? So I did a wider search, simply for Joel Sucherman and found a few references to him in his role as a multimedia editor for USA today.com. Most of the stories related to sport or computers. There was nothing even remotely connected to sept 11. It would therefore appear that Dodge's article was more of the "human interest type" than anything seriously connected with what happened at the Pentagon. Sucherman obviously has a connection with the world of computer publications. So this is written in the context of "one of our guys was there," in much the same way that a local football club might publish in it's newsletters that one of the members was a witness at a robbery last week. I found a link to a video of Sucherman relating his experience at http://www.geocites.com/hooch43us/extra.html but was unable to get the video to work, so I was unable to assess it. I am therefore satisfied on the basis of my research (although one can never be 100% sure) that except for the inaccessible video, Sucherman's account has not been published anywhere except John Dodge's eweek article, and that Sucherman has not given any other interviews or made any other statements on his experience. Sucherman doesn't give any indication what kind of plane it was, and doesn't say that he saw the collision. Subject to uncertainty about the video, he is not an eyewitness to large passenger jet hitting the Pentagon wall.

"'I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings, went right there and slammed into the Pentagon,' eyewitness Mike Walter said of the plane that hit the military complex. 'Huge explosion, great ball of fire, smoke started billowing out, and then it was just chaos on the highway as people either tried to move around the traffic and go down either forward or backwards,' he said."

- "Witnesses and Leaders on Terrorist Attacks"
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/attack.in.their.words/
CNN, 11 Sep 2001

A check of the original transcript ( 4.58 pm) shows that Walter does refer to seeing an American Airlines jet. His only quote with regard to the collision was the section quoted above. He doesn't actually say that he saw it slam into the Pentagon, but that might be what he meant. We can't tell from this quote, but we should be able to find plenty of media references to his testimony, because by an extraordinary coincidence, Mike Walter also happens to work for "USA today."

Bloomberg news reported on Sept 11 at 3.26 pm and again at 4.23 pm (so this interview is the earliest record of a Mike Walter statement, preceding the CNN quote by about 80 minutes)

Mike Walter, of USA Today, watched the plane descend as he was stuck in traffic. "I said 'that plane is really flying low,"' he said in an interview. "It disappeared and I heard the explosion and saw a ball of fire. It was an American Airlines plane. You saw a big silver plane and those double A's."

So in his first interview he clearly states that he did not see the collision.

The press association reported

Eyewitness Mike Walter, a journalist, said he had seen the flight crash as he drove to work.

"It was like a Cruise missile with wings," he said.

"I saw parts of the plane. The debris was on the overpass. I saw these military units run out with stretchers and set up a triage."

As we have already established, Walter has not actually made any statement to the effect that he saw the plane hit the Pentagon. This report has nothing to change that, but paraphrases in such a way that this misleading impression is conveyed.

On sept 12, the Baltimore Sun referred to Walter and but only quoted "I saw a big ball of fire". The same day the Boston Globe reported

Mike Walter, a reporter with USA Today, was stuck in traffic during his commute to work, listening to the radio reports of the World Trade Center catastrophe when he saw the American Airlines jetliner fly over too low and too fast. Still it took him several moments to realize what was about to happen. "At first it didn't register," he said. "I see planes coming into National [airport] all the time. But it was so low."

He watched the plane pass over a hill separating him from the Pentagon and disappear. Then the boom and the flames climbing into the air.

Again, an explicit statement that he did not see the collision, although this time stated by commentary, not Walter himself.

Also on Sept 12, The Milwaulkee Sentinel Journal quoted "It was typical morning rush hour, and no one was moving. I said to myself, that plane is really low. Then it disappeared and I heard the explosion and saw the fireball."

The Washington Times of Sept 12 picked up the CNN quote, almost word for word (without sourcing it) but added that Walter was on his way to work at "USA today's television operation". So where is USA today's TV report, featuring Mike Walter?

So all the interviews which Walter gave on Sept 11 clearly indicated that he did not see the collision. What did he say on Sept 12?

On Sept 12 6.00am ET, Bryant Gumbel from CBS interviewed Walter. Mr. MIKE WALTER (Witness): Good morning, Bryant. GUMBEL: I know we spoke earlier, but obviously, some folks are just joining us. Take us through what you saw yesterday morning.

Mr. WALTER: Well, as--as we pointed out earlier, Bryant, I was on an elevated area of Highway 27 and I had a very good view. I was stuck in traffic. We weren't moving and--and I could see over in the distance the American Airlines jet as it kind of banked around, pivoted and then took a steep dive right into the Pentagon. There was no doubt in my mind watching this that whoever was at the controls knew exactly what he was doing. It was full impact, a huge fireball, thick column of smoke and, you know, pandemonium after that. I mean, bedlam. Everyone was trying to escape the area; people very, very frightened.

GUMBEL: Did you see it hit the Pentagon? Was the plane coming in horizontally or did it, in fact, go on its wing as--as it impacted the building?

Mr. WALTER: You know, the--the--the--there were trees there that kind of obstructed it, so I kind of--I saw it go in. I'm not sure if it turned at an angle. I've heard some people say that's what it did. All I know is it--it created a huge explosion and massive fireball and--and you knew instantaneously that--that everybody on that plane was dead. It was completely eviscerated.

And from the same show

GUMBEL: Tell me, if you could, about the manner in which the--the plane struck the building. I ask that because, in the pictures we have seen, it appears to be a gash in the side of the Pentagon as if the plane went in vertically as opposed to horizontally. Can you tell me anything about that?

Mr. WALTER: Well, as I said, you know, there were trees obstructing my view, so I saw it as it went--and then the--then the trees, and then I saw the--the fireball and the smoke. Some people have said that the plane actually sent on its side and in that way. But I can't tell you, Bryant. I just know that what I saw was this massive fireball, a huge explosion and--and a--the thick column of smoke and then an absolute bedlam on those roads as people were trying to get away. I mean, some people were going on the emergency lanes, and they were going forward while others were trying to back up. But one woman in front of me was in a panic and waving everyone back, saying, 'Back up. Back up. They've just hit the Pentagon.' It was--it was total chaos.

Walter spoke to NBC at 7.00 ET the same day Mr. MIKE WALTER (Eyewitness): It kind of disappeared over this embankment here for a moment and then a huge explosion, flames flying into the air, and--and just chaos on the road.

So, on Tuesday afternoon, Walter was explicitly stating that he did not see the collision. It seems that he had a think about it overnight, and at 6.00 on wednesday morning, confidently told Bryant Gumbel that he had, but was so flustered by the simple question of whether he actually saw it hit the Pentagon, and what angle the plane was on, that he immediately backed off preferring to concentrate on the fireball and the panic, and by the time he spoke to NBC an hour later, had retreated to his earlier story that he didn't see the collision.

This is why eyewitnesses must be identifiable and available for questioning. It also demonstrates why extensive interviews carry more weight than short quotes which can't be subject to critical scrutiny. Who would have guessed the tangled mess of Walter's statements, if they had only seen this quoted ?

I had a very good view. I was stuck in traffic. We weren't moving and--and I could see over in the distance the American Airlines jet as it kind of banked around, pivoted and then took a steep dive right into the Pentagon. There was no doubt in my mind watching this that whoever was at the controls knew exactly what he was doing. It was full impact...

And let's take a closer look at this statement, made to Gumbel.

"I was on an elevated area of Highway 27 and I had a very good view. I was stuck in traffic."

An hour later he contradicted this with "It kind of disappeared over this embankment here for a moment "

But if the 6.00 statement was true, then lots of other people, stuck in the same traffic, should also have had a very good view. So presumably there should be plenty of other eyewitnesses who saw it " as it kind of banked around, pivoted and then took a steep dive right into the Pentagon." Keep this in mind as the search continues.

I searched about 100 more media reports of Mike Walter,and couldn't find anything different. Incredibly, I couldn't find a single interview with him or reference to him on USA today. This account is too confused and contradictory to have any credibility, and he explicitly stated several times, including his earliest statement, that he did not see the collision. On the one occasion when he changed this, he backed off under questioning. Mike Walter does not qualify as an eyewitness to a large passenger jet hitting the Pentagon.

"'I saw the tail of a large airliner. ... It plowed right into the Pentagon, " said an Associated Press Radio reporter who witnessed the crash. 'There is billowing black smoke.'"

- "America's Morning of Terror"
http://www.channelonenews.com/articles/terrorism/wrapup/
ChannelOne.com, 2001

Yet another media worker who (allegedly) witnessed it. Extraordinary! The original source gives no details. Simply a statement that that's what an AP radio reporter said. But in a Yahoo search, I found the same comment attributed to AP radio reporter Dave Winslow.

http://netscape.com/ex/shak/news/stories/0901/20010911collapse.html

So surely Winslow must have given some interviews. Must have done a radio report for AP. Apparently not. I couldn't find any electronic AP reports that had anything to do with Winslow. All I could find from AP was two written reports.The first was a press release

http://www.apbroadcast.com/AP+Broadcast/About+Us/Press+Releases/AP+Broadcast+Details+Coverage+of+Tragic+Terrorist+Attacks.htm

This raised even more questions. It refers to Winslow witnessing the crash, without actually quoting him.

AP Radio Reporter Dave Winslow witnessed the explosion at the Pentagon and confirmed that it was a plane that caused the destruction. As a result, AP members were first to know that it was an American Airlines jet that had gone down.

So where is the Winslow's broadcast? And how did they know that it was a AA jet? Winslow doesn't mention that in the quote, and there doesn't appear to be any other media record of him.What did he say that confirmed it was a AA jet? Did he mention it off the record to colleagues in the office? Why not let Winslow speak for himself? Given the experience with Mike Walter's account, I would like to be asking Winslow some questions. Such as "What do mean you saw the tail of a large plane? Where was the rest of it? Did you see any other part of it? Do you mean that the tail plowed into the Pentagon? Or are you assuming that some other part of the jet that you didn't see hit the Pentagon? Did you see the tail before or after the collision?"
"Did you actually see the collision?" etc.

The other AP print report is by Ron Fournier at http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/specialnews/Terror/2000h.htm and again trots out the identical quote of the elusive Dave Winslow. So, did Winslow make the quote directly to Fournier? Exactly how, when and who is the original source of this quote? Doesn't Winslow have anything other to say than these 19 words?

There are a few slight variations on Fournier's article scattered around the net at different pages, but all of them repeat the Winslow quote identically, with no elaboration or sourcing. BBC News also reported the quote, but added an intriguing twist to it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1537000/1537500.stm

It said that Democrat Consultant Paul Begala saw an explosion at the Pentagon.

Associated Press reporter Dave Winslow told Mr Begala he saw "the tail of a large airliner... It ploughed right into the Pentagon".

So the quote is second hand, or possibly third hand. BBC reports this without specifying where it got Begala's story from, and without any identified journalist taking responsibility for the story. So this is a case of "Somebody told the BBC that Begala told them that Dave Winslow told him." I haven't found any record of any BBC reporters at the scene to interview eyewitnesses. But then, I haven't found any record of any press at the scene to conduct interviews. We have names of witnesses, 18 of them, on the urban legends site, but no information about how any of these names were sourced (discounting those press members who were actually witnesses themselves). So where did the BBC get the information that Begala had been spoken to by Winslow? Is this the original source of the quote? Second or third hand hearsay? Did Begala also directly contact Fournier and tell him of Winslow's quote, (which would make it second hand to Fournier) and Fournier fail to mention this? Or did Winslow dish up the identical words to both of them independently, complete with the ... between" airliner" and "it"?

The fact that both the BBC report and the Fournier article put the dots in the identical place, means that one has lifted it from the other's web posted or faxed report. Both reports are dated Sept 11. The BBC report is 18.54 GMT which is approximately 3.00 pm on the East Coast of the USA. The AP report does not give a time so we can't be sure who published it first. But we can run through some possibilities. If the BBC posted it first, then Fournier has used a 3rd hand quote, and presented it as first hand, without acknowledging the source which presented it 2nd hand. If Fournier's quote was first, then the BBC has invented the part about Begala. But why would they fictitiously represent a direct quote as being second hand? It's more likely to be the other way around. Unless they contacted Fournier and asked him about the source of the quote, and he told them off the record that it was second hand from Begala - something which was omitted from his article.

The ... between the words "airliner" and "It" might seem to imply that Winslow actually said more than this, and that the quote has been edited. But curiously, the same words are repeated verbatim in every media reference to Winslow that I could find. A few had dispensed with the ... giving it the appearance of an unedited quote. One had replaced it with - also creating this impression.

Obviously, once this enigmatic quote was out there, other media just picked it up and repeated it, without question. It multiplied itself throughout the media like a computer virus, without anybody actually tracking down Winslow and asking him to verify, or elaborate. If Winslow actually saw the collision, surely there must be more to his account than this.

A search for "Dave Winslow" found 13 newspaper reports, all for Sept 11 or 12 and all with the identical quote, similarly unverified and unquestioned, with no elaboration, although some omitted "there is billowing black smoke." No-one claims to have interviewed Winslow and I couldn't find any transcript of a broadcast by him. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I did a search with unrestricted dates for every possible type of media, for anything to do with Dave Winslow at any time. I found 36 matches, 16 of them repeating identically the aforementioned quote. None of these made any reference whatsoever to Winslow apart from the quote. The rest were nothing to do with Dave Winslow, the AP reporter. They concerned Dave Winslow the musician, Dave Winslow the police officer, Dave Winslow the airforce pilot, Dave Winslow the insurance spokesman etc. Not a single match for AP reporter Dave Winslow in any context except his alleged quote. In any kind of media at any time. I searched over 100 Yahoo matches with the Keywords "Dave Winslow AP " with the same result. Has Dave Winslow ever filed a radio report? Has he ever interviewed anyone? Does he exist? I have found no evidence that he does. If anyone (including Mr Winslow himself) can come forward with evidence other than that quote, that an AP radio reporter named Dave Winslow exists, I will willingly retract the statement, but up until then, I am treating this account as a fabrication. At very best, it is almost certainly second hand, and in it's present form is too enigmatic to have much meaning. It definitely does not qualify as a verifiable eyewitness account of a large jet hitting the Pentagon.

A pilot who saw the impact, Tim Timmerman, said it had been an American Airways 757.

"'It added power on its way in,' he said. 'The nose hit, and the wings came forward and it went up in a fireball.'"

- "Pentagon Eyewitness Accounts"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html
The Guardian, 12 Sep 2001

This is quoted accurately from the Guardian,but the Guardian quote is lifted from an interview Timmerman did with CNN, in which he stated quite explicitly that the plane did not appear to crash into the Pentagon. Such a selective quote is a misrepresentation of the Timmerman interview. He said that it crashed on a helipad, near the Pentagon, and that he didn't think it hit the building. And if you compare the transcript, with the Guardian quote, you'll see that although the quote is similar in essence, The Guardian actually changed the wording slightly. If quotation marks are to be used then the quote should be repeated verbatim, not tampered with. During this research, I found this to be a common practice.

Here's the full transcript of Timmerman's interview. CNN Breaking news Sept 11 13.46

We do also have somebody to talk with us who was an eyewitness to the actual crash. He was watch from Arlington, Virginia, which is a suburb. His name is Tim Timmerman.

Mr. Timmerman, are you with us right now?

TIM TIMMERMAN, EYEWITNESS: I sure am.

FRANKEN: You are a pilot. Tell us what you saw.

TIMMERMAN: I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama. And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia Pike, and as is went by the Sheraton Hotel, the pilot added power to the engines. I heard it pull up a little bit more, and then I lost it behind a building.

And then it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible.

FRANKEN: What can you tell us about the plane itself?

TIMMERMAN: It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no question.

FRANKEN: You say that it was a Boeing, and you say it was a 757 or 767?

TIMMERMAN: 7-5-7.

FRANKEN: 757, which, of course...

TIMMERMAN: American Airlines.

FRANKEN: American Airlines, one of the new generation of jets.

TIMMERMAN: Right. It was so close to me it was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there.

FRANKEN: We were told that it was flying so low that it clipped off a couple of light poles as it was coming in.

TIMMERMAN: That might have happened behind the apartments that occluded my view.

And when it reappeared, it was right before impact, and like I said, it was right before impact, and I saw the airplane just disintegrate and blow up into a huge ball of flames.

FRANKEN: So there was a fireball that you saw?

TIMMERMAN: Absolutely. And the building shook, and it was quite a tremendous explosion.

FRANKEN: What did you see after that?

TIMMERMAN: Nothing but the flames. I sat here, and I took a few pictures out of my window, and I noticed the fire trucks and the responses was just wonderful. Fire trucks were there quickly. I saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially, but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk in it.

But I think the blessing here might have been that the airplane hit before it hit the building, it hit the ground, and a lot of energy might have gone that way. That's what it appeared like.

FRANKEN: There is, of course -- we heard some discussion about the fact that it could have been worse had it actually gone a little bit higher and gone into what is the called the ring, the center ring...

(CROSSTALK)

FRANKEN: This is a five-sided building.

TIMMERMAN: As you know, the rings are A, B, C, D, E. It is just across the E ring on the outside, and that's why I felt it didn't look as damaged as it could be. It looked like on the helipad, which is on that side.

FRANKEN: Did you see any people being removed, any injured being removed, that type of thing?

TIMMERMAN: No, sir. I am up about a quarter a mile -- it may be a little bit closer -- and at that point, I saw nothing like that.

FRANKEN: Tim Timmerman, thank you very much -- an eyewitness, Judy, to the crash.

I have some difficulty with the idea that a plane going right past your window at about 400 mph, could be in any way reminiscent of a helicopter, but I'll let that pass, because there are more important issues to explore with this account. If a statement is not truthful, a clue will usually be revealed by inconsistencies in fine details. In this case the fine details relate to placement - where the witness was, the flight path, where he saw it, and where he lost it behind the building, and how he describes his view. And a close analysis of these factors makes this account impossible to believe. You'll need a map of Arlington and the surrounding areas to follow this. If you don't have a hard copy map, I found a number of online maps, which in combination are adequate.

This one
http://www.realestatemapsmdva.com/virginia/arlington/index.html
I will refer to as map 1.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/graphics/pentagonmap_091301.htm
(map 2) and

http://www.holidayinnwashingtondc.com/downtown.html
(map 3)

http://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/dc.html
(map 4 ).

http://www.sheratonnationalhotel.com/hotellocation.cfm
(map 5 )

Note: These maps do not state their orientation. I have assumed it to be due east- west, from right to left. If it is not, this will create inaccuracies in my description of directions. However, this will make no difference to the analysis, because the importance of any direction stated is purely in the context of it's relativity to other directions.

First lets work out where Timmerman's apartment is.

Look at map 1 to get a basic overview of the area. Timmerman's apartment is somewhere around the edge of the residential area which borders the south western corner of the yellow area which is the Arlington Cemetary/Pentagon complex. In a moment you'll see how I worked this out. Maps 3 and 4 are also basic overview maps. On map 4, Timmerman is somewhere around the junction of 244 with the circular road around the Arlington cemetary complex. Take a note of where Washington National Airport is, south and slightly east of the Pentagon.

Now let's zoom in a bit. Go to map 5 and see where 244 (Columbia Pike) runs behind the southern perimeter of the Navy Annex and then bends to run the eastern perimeter. Note where 244 meets Southgate Rd. Since this map has a scale on it, you can work out that this junction is about 600 yards from the Pentagon west wall if you take a line due east from the junction. Now refer back to map 1, find this junction by looking for the bend in 244, and this gives you an overview of how much open space there is in the semi circle around the Pentagon. Close to a 1000 yards in general. Go to map 2 which is a closer view of the Pentagon. It doesn't go out to the junction of 244 and Southgate, but it also has a scale which puts the western edge of Washington Boulevard about 250 yards from the Pentagon. If you go back to map 5, you'll find that the two maps disagree a bit in scale. On map 5, I made this distance about 400 yards. We can't expect pinpoint accuracy with this method, nor do we need it for this exercise. I suspect from what else I've read in the eyewitness reports that the distances on map 5 are a little exaggerated, but the discrepancies will not affect this analysis.If we take the scale of map 2 as being more accurate, the junction of 244 and Southgate is more like 450 yards and the clear circle around the Pentagon about 650- 700 in most areas. According to other eyewitness reports, the eastern edge of Washington Boulevard is about 100 yards from the west wall.

Timmerman says his apartment is about 1/4 mile from the Pentagon, maybe a little closer.About 400 - 450 yards. That doesn't seem possible from these maps, because it would place him well inside the cemetary. Looking at maps 1 and 5, it's difficult to place him closer than about 600 yards.

We can forgive him an error of judgement and also take into account probable inaccuracy of the maps and the inaccuracy of measuring the distance on a computer screen. What it tells us however, is that his apartment must be one of the very closest to the Pentagon. It must be right at the edge of that circle of open ground around the Pentagon, the circle which includes the cemetary. This is supported by this statement.

I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama.

So regardless of the exact distance that the circle of open ground represents, we know that Timmerman is very close to the edge of it. Now that we've worked out his probable distance from the Pentagon, lets work out his direction. We were given two clues.

And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia Pike, and as is went by the Sheraton Hotel...

and

It was so close to me it was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there.

So we know he's close to the airport and close to 395 and close to Columbia Pike and the Sheraton Hotel. Go back to map 5 to narrow down the possibilities. We saw from map 4 that he can't be too close to the airport, because then he wouldn't have an angle from which it is possible to see the damaged wall. That's the west wall which faces the cemetary. So his most likely location is either hard up against the junction of 395 and Army drive, around Nash or Lynne St, which is still placing him on quite a tight angle of vision to the west wall, or on the other side of 395, close to the junction of 27. He says it went "by" the Sheraton Hotel rather than behind it or over it, suggesting that he's probably to the right of the Sheraton. This is slightly ambiguous however, and doesn't completely rule out the possibility that he's to the left of it, which would be more consistent with the impression that he has an excellent view of the west wall. If this is the case his only possible location is in an area roughly bounded by 2nd St, Southgate Rd and Washington Boulevard. This is because McPherson St and Patton Drive form the boundary of the Arlington Cemetary. We can work that out from this map.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/interactive_map/interactivemap_big.html

This map is a little confusing at first because it's left to right orientation is not the same as the others. You have to turn the top part of the map (McPherson Drive) to the left to get the orientation to match with map 5.

What's the flight path? To come right up 395 and over Columbia Pike, it must have gone right of the Sheraton and passed over the Navy Annex. (See map 5 ) So it either passed right over the top of the Navy Annex and then turned sharply right to fly almost due east towards the helipad, or else it started to veer right as it passed the Sheraton, bringing it over the south-eastern corner of the Annex and from there took a fairly straight line north-east to the helipad. If it took the first of these options, then it flew to the collision point across the southern boundary of the cemetary. If it took the second option, it flew fractionally to the south of the cemetary boundary. Go back to map 1 to get an overview of what it's flying across here. Open country. No residential development.

What did Timmerman see? When he first became aware of the plane he looked back to the south west, down 395 and had a clear enough view of it to identify it as a AA 757 "no question." Obviously he does have quite a panorama, because at this point he is looking back to an area with a substantial amount of high rise development. Even though he is a pilot, and would therefore recognise the plane quicker than most, he would still need a view of it for at least a few seconds to make such a positive identification. So he saw it for at least 2 seconds, probably longer, before it got to Columbia Pike. This means he had an unbroken view of it for at least 400 yards as it flew through a heavily built up area. He could still see it as it flew past the Sheraton and over Columbia Pike, which means over the Navy Annex. Then he lost it behind a building until just before impact. What building ? It had just emerged out of the built up area and it's next 400-500 yards of flight is across clear ground. All the maps confirm this. And if you want to see photos of what this stretch of the flight path looks like go to http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/images/above_scenes/index.htm where you'll find a gallery of 55 ariel photos of Arlington cemetary. In photo 31, you can see the Pentagon in the background.This one demonstrates that the clear area extends right to the Pentagon's perimeter. Photos 46, 50 and 51 also provide good perspectives. Photo 55 shows the south-east corner of the cemetary with an unimpeded view across to the Pentagon. According to Timmerman's account, the view in this photo would be almost the exact path of the plane after it flew over Columbia Pike. So there could not have been any building eastwards of the Navy Annex which could have obstructed Timmerman's view across the last 400 -500 yards of the alleged flight path. He only lost it once, and we know could still see it as it was going over the Annex. And we know that he's talking about an apartment block, because in response to the suggestion that it may have knocked over poles on it's way in, he replies

"That might have happened behind the apartments that occluded my view. "

What apartments? These poles are at the foot of the western wall of the Pentagon, a place which we were led to believe that Timmerman could clearly see from his apartment. He doesn't say exactly where he lost it, but it was obviously for a substantial time, 2 seconds at least, otherwise he would not have given it such significance in his description. 2 seconds is about 400 yards of flight. So he lost it for almost the entire flight after Columbia Pike when there was nothing in the area to obstruct his view. This is very difficult to believe, but if it is any way possible, the offending apartments could only have been within the residential area. Since we know that he must be very close to the edge of the residential area, any apartment in front of him which blocked his view would have to be very close to him. In order to have enough elevation to block his view of the flight path and of the poles at the foot of the Pentagon it would therefore have to be at least about the same hight as Timmerman's apartment - about 15 stories. Any building this tall would have to be 60 - 100 ft wide to have structural integrity.

So Timmerman has a 60 - 100ft wide building very close to him, blocking his view of the west wall of the Pentagon. Not such a panorama after all. And yet he's told us that he can see the helipad and the damaged section of the wall, which is just to the north of the helipad, and in another part of the interview, gave detailed descriptions of what he could see in that area, in terms of response crews.He's also told us that he can see the Sheraton and an area of Columbia Pike, which we have deduced as being around the Navy Annex area. He didn't lose it behind the Navy Annex, because he saw it fly over that area, and anyway he said that it was a block of apartments which obscured his view.

Is it possible to construct a scenario where Timmerman's line of sight from his apartment allows him to see the Navy Annex, the helipad, and the damaged area of the wall, but almost nothing in between, because of obstruction from a nearby apartment? Lets run through the possible locations. If he's tucked into the area of Nash and Lynne st, near the Junction of 395 and Army Drive, then if he's looking directly at the helipad, the area where he lost sight of the plane is at about 11 o'clock.For a 60 - 100 ft wide building to block 30 degrees of his vision, it would have to be between 35 and 60 yards in front of him. This places his apartment further back from the edge of the residential area.Remember that he said he was 400- 450 yards away, so we already stretching this severely, even without setting him back further into the residential area. Worse still, from this position, he is already at a very tight angle to be able to see much of the western wall, and what little he can see would now be squeezed into a very narrow space along the edge of his sight line. And given that the helipad (which photos show suffered miraculously little damage) juts out from the wall, he wouldn't be able to see past it to see the damaged section. And yet he gives us a detailed description of the damage. This isn't possible. If we decide to reduce the width of the obstruction in an attempt to give him more angle past the helipad to see the area where the damage occurred, we solve one problem but create another. In response to the suggestion that poles might have been knocked down, he says that may have happened behind the apartments. Since these poles would be situated on about the same line of sight as the damaged area of wall, they have to either both be visible or both obstructed. It does not appear possible to construct any scenario where Timmerman could have seen what he describes from this area. And if we move him to the other side of 395 it gets worse. His angle of vision between the helipad and the Navy Annex becomes even tighter, making it totally impossible to squeeze in an apartment block which could have obstructed the flight path, without also obstructing both the Navy Annex and the collision area. He's almost directly behind the line of the flight path, which means that if he couldn't see the plane in flight, then he also couldn't see the crash site.This problem remains wherever we place him on the west side of 395.

Lets suppose that we somehow solve this problem. We place him east of 395 and somehow manage to squeeze in an apartment block which allows him to see the collision area past the helipad, but still blocks out the poles, and allows him to see the Navy Annex but blocks everything inbetween.He would certainly not have anything like a panorama, He would have a clear view of the south wall of the Pentagon, but his view of the west wall, where all the action was, would be on a severe angle, and his view dominated by the apartment block.

And yet, when he describes losing the plane he simply describes it as "behind a building". He doesn't say anything to this effect " behind these apartments right in front of me that block out so much of my view. I have a sharply angled view of the west wall past the edge of them." And he would see very little, if anything of the action afterwards - the fire trucks, the rescue crews. Most, if not all of this would be hidden behind the apartments. So how can he explain this exchange?

FRANKEN: Did you see any people being removed, any injured being removed, that type of thing?

TIMMERMAN: No, sir. I am up about a quarter a mile -- it may be a little bit closer -- and at that point, I saw nothing like that.

He somehow forgot to mention that the reason he couldn't see anything like that was because the area in front of the crash site was hidden by an apartment block? If he couldn't see anything like that happening in the narrow wedge of vision he has along the western wall, he would really have no idea what might have been happening just out from the wall behind the apartments that presumably are still occluding his view.

If power poles that might have been knocked down as it came in were obstructed from his view by apartments, then presumably those apartments were still there after the crash. But referring to the damage he confidently says

"I saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially, but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk in it."

"It is just across the E ring on the outside, and that's why I felt it didn't look as damaged as it could be. It looked like on the helipad, which is on that side."

Nothing to the effect that his view of the damaged area is so restricted that it's "difficult to tell from this angle."

For the entire interview, Timmerman gives the impression that he has a magnificent view of everything that's happening. If the offending apartment block really is there (permanently), it's impossible to believe that the impression of a clear view was given accidentally, just by forgetting to qualify things. Timmerman is a pilot - a person with sharp, quick powers of observation and meticulous attention to detail.

He accurately describes the flight path, distances, the type of aircraft, how it crashed, what he can see of the damage, the response of rescue and fire crews.He describes which freeway the plane flew along and which buildings and landmarks he saw it go over or past, but is curiously vague about which building he lost it behind, when that building must significantly dominate his view. And through the entire interview he somehow forgets to mention what a poor view he has of the western wall, and gives completely the opposite impression.

"I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite a panorama."

"I sat here, and I took a few pictures out of my window, and I noticed the fire trucks and the responses was just wonderful. Fire trucks were there quickly. I saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially, but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk in it."

"It is just across the E ring on the outside, and that's why I felt it didn't look as damaged as it could be. It looked like on the helipad, which is on that side."

" No, sir. I am up about a quarter a mile -- it may be a little bit closer -- and at that point, I saw nothing like that."

I've never been to Washington DC. This analysis was deduced from maps. Lets suppose that my unfamiliarity with the area has caused me to miss a detail which could not be deduced from the maps. Even if this has happened, there is still a terrible inconsistency in this account which seems impossible to resolve. Timmerman says that when the plane reappeared, it was right before impact. If it hit the ground 30 yards in front of the wall, and he had 70 yards of flight before that, after it reappeared, that gives him less than 0.4 second to pick it up before the crash and about 0.15 second between the crash and the impact with the wall. His powers of observation would seem extraordinary in this situation, particularly as he could not have known exactly where he should be looking to see it as it re-emerged.

"I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in flames."

And yet, even this near impossible scenario still gives him 100 yards of vision between the Pentagon and the obstructing apartments, probably enough to see the light poles along the eastern edge of Washington Boulevard. And given the momentum of the plane, as these were broken off, they would have been pushed forward towards the wall. And there is another set of poles closer to the wall, which he could not possibly have had obscured from his view, otherwise he could not have seen the crash. Regarding the poles along the edge of Washington Boulevard, he is caught between impossibilities. If we shift the obstruction further away, to make it more credible that he could have seen the crash in such meticulous detail, there is no way that these poles can have been obscured.

If we shift it closer, his detailed description in such a short time becomes impossible. Of course, he may not have noticed the poles being clipped off in the moment, but it's difficult to believe that he hadn't noticed anything 3 hours later, especially as he was specifically asked about them. And he doesn't say anything to the effect that "All the poles I can see are still standing" He denies any knowledge, strongly implying that all relevant poles are hidden from his view. If they are, then he can't have seen the crash.

This is the statement which seals the fate of this account.

"That may have happened behind the apartments that occluded my view"

Note the use of the past tense. They occluded my view but they don't anymore. The complex analysis has been done. Now lets look at it very simply and succinctly. From his apartment, Timmerman looks north east, possibly close to due east to the helipad. According to most of the interview, he has a clear view of the west wall. The plane allegedly flew north east or possibly almost due east towards the helipad from an area very close to Timmerman's apartment. So what was in the background of Timmerman's sight as the plane flew from the Navy Annex to the helipad? The west wall of the pentagon of course. Apparently not. A block of apartments which isn't normally there miraculously sprang up and occluded his view, but had disappeared again by the time of the interview.

This account is impossible to believe.

On Sept 12, the Press went into a frenzy with Timmerman's juicy quote about the explosion.

But while they were quite happy to use his description of the crash, they brushed aside his modest assessment of the damage, for more exciting descriptions, cleverly juxtaposing these with his quote to make it look like Timmerman had described cataclysmic damage to the building. For example, the St Petersburg Times on Sept 12.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/091201/Worldandnation/Workers_flee_in_panic.shtml

WASHINGTON -- Tim Timmerman was looking out a window of his 16th-floor apartment in Virginia when he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon.

"I saw the nose break up. I saw the wings fly forward," Timmerman said. "And then the conflagration just engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible."

The jetliner burst through the Pentagon's stone exterior and exploded, ripping a gaping hole that extended at least 200 feet wide into the squat, five-sided building, authorities said.

The plane hit the southwest wall that faces Arlington National Cemetery. Nearby is the building's helicopter landing area.

And also on sept 12 The Rutland Herald

http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/News/Story/33484.html

An eyewitness said the plane's pilot appeared to add power to the engines as it prepared to plow into the west side of the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. EDT.

"I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly forward," said Tim Timmerman, who watched the crash from his 16th-floor apartment building in suburban Virginia that overlooks the Pentagon. "And then the conflagration just engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible."

But there is more to this than just the uncritical sensationalising of Timmerman's impossible account. Later in the same article it was reported.

The jetliner burst through the Pentagon's stone exterior and exploded, ripping a gaping hole that extended at least 200 feet wide into the squat, five-sided building, authorities said.

Word for word the same as the St Petersburg Times, complete with the telltale "authorities said" What this tells us, is that in some cases the press was not writing it's own accounts. U.S. authorities were writing the news for them, and the press were printing it verbatim. Were authorities also producing the witnesses?

The same pre-manufactured spin was repeated in combination with the Timmerman quote at Starnet.com
http://www.azstarnet.com/attack/3-1.html
at the same time as showing a photo of the hole which isn't anywhere near 200 ft wide. Have a look at the photo. If the black van just in front of the hole is 20ft long, then the hole is 50 - 80 ft wide.

It is interesting to note that all three of these reports chose the same Timmerman quote in partnership with what appears to be a pre-set script from authorities. And a similar pairing was also made by the SF Gate on Sept 12
http://www.sfgate.com/today/0912_chron_main.shtml
although this chose to paraphrase Timmerman, rather quote him directly. Timmerman was only interviewed once and his dramatic description of the crash was quickly co-opted into the official mythology.

Like the Mike Walter report, this demonstrates the absolute importance of being able to interview a witness extensively, before giving too much weight to their account.

"Father Stephen McGraw was driving to a graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery the morning of Sept. 11, when he mistakenly took the Pentagon exit onto Washington Boulevard, putting him in a position to witness American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon. 'I was in the left hand lane with my windows closed. I did not hear anything at all until the plane was just right above our cars.' McGraw estimates that the plane passed about 20 feet over his car, as he waited in the left hand lane of the road, on the side closest to the Pentagon. 'The plane clipped the top of a light pole just before it got to us, injuring a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away from my car. I saw it crash into the building,' he said. 'My only memories really were that it looked like a plane coming in for a landing. I mean in the sense that it was controlled and sort of straight. That was my impression,' he said. 'There was an explosion and a loud noise and I felt the impact. I remember seeing a fireball come out of two windows (of the Pentagon). I saw an explosion of fire billowing through those two windows.'"

- "Pentagon Crash Eyewitness Comforted Victims"
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Pentagon%5Fcrash%5Feyewitness%5Fcomforted%5Fvictims.html
MDW News Service, 28 Sep 2001

There's a big problem with this account. McGraw says that the plane passed directly over his car at power pole hight but that he didn't hear anything until it was directly above.Totally impossible if it was a 757. He says he had the window closed, which is like wearing a t-shirt to protect against a machine gun. If a 757 was passing 20 ft over your car, you would be deafened by it before you saw it. This account must be subject to serious questioning to have any chance of being considered, because in this form, it is totally impossible to believe that McGraw saw a 757. So either the whole account is fiction, or embellished beyond credibility, or what Mcgraw saw was actually a small plane or a cruise missile, which might make it credible in terms of the noise factor. Note that the reference to American airlines F77 was inserted by commentary, not directly attributed to Mcgraw. So I checked the reference to see if there were any clues as to what kind of plane McGraw thinks he saw.

The reference turned out to be US Army - The Military district of Washington site.The article containing McGraw's quote was written by Paul Haring (Staff photographer for the Fort Myer Military Community's Pentagram newspaper) for the MDW News Service (That's Military District of Washington) and not posted till Sept 28.

In this article McGraw is also quoted as saying (and in Haring's article this quote directly follows the end of the section quoted above, so he's just been talking about the explosion,and impact)

"I remember hearing a collective gasp or scream from one of the other cars near me. Almost a collective gasp it seemed."

Let me think now... He was in a car with the windows closed, which explains why he was totally oblivious to the noise of a 757 approaching his car at a hight of about 20 ft, but as it slammed into the wall, precipitating an explosion and fireball, he was able to hear a collective gasp from a nearby car. Hmm...or did they all wait until the noise had died down, and then gasp in unison at a volume louder than a 757?

Media searches for Father John Mcgraw returned no matches. The only matches on Yahoo were for references to Haring's article, which is posted on behalf of the US army - an organization not noted for critically questioning official stories.

It is beyond question that McGraw cannot possibly be giving a truthful, accurate account of F77 hitting the Pentagon. So either the report is fiction, or else Mcgraw witnessed proof that whatever hit the wall was not F77. The unlikely story about hearing the collective gasp tells me that this account should be discarded, especially as it does not contain any redeeming qualities to offset it's retrospective nature.

"'I glanced up just at the point where the plane was going into the building,' said Carla Thompson, who works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash. 'I saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up-red, everything red, ' she said. 'Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was petrified.'"

- "Terrorists Attack New York, Pentagon"
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la%2D091201main.story
Los Angeles Times, 12 Sep 2001

If she glanced up just at the point of collision, then she can't have seen the object clearly enough to identify it. She say's "the plane", which is fair enough, because you wouldn't expect anyone in this situation to think that it was anything else. She can't possibly have actually seen a plane, but understandably, in the light of everything else that was being said, included this assumption in her quote. But was it a light plane, a passenger jet, a military jet, a helicopter or a cruise missile?

It obviously wouldn't cross the mind of someone in that situation. So what Thompson claims to have seen was an indentation and an explosion. It's not in dispute that they occurred, but Thompson's quote is irrelevant to the question of what caused the explosion. She does not say words to the effect that she saw a large passenger jet fly towards the Pentagon and collide with the wall.

I did an extensive search to see if Thompson made any other reports, but the LA times quote was the only reference to her anywhere.

The final witness of the 19 on the Urban legends site.

"I witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11. From my office on the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have a view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport and the Potomac River. ... Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye. it didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke."

- Steve Anderson
http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy%5Fresponse/read%5Fmessages.html
Director of Communications, USA Today

Yet another "USA today" worker. I checked the reference on this one and immediately discounted It. it's not even a media report. It's an account from Anderson which is posted on a pro-government style website, simply entitled "Sept 11." It's not a site dedicated to research or analysis, and questioning of the official story would definitely not be welcome there. The posting date was Oct 2. Another "USA today" witness not considered worthy of interview by his own network (or any other). Anderson's story is not published anywhere else. There are not even any second hand references to him as being a witness. We have only this account, posted on a less than critical medium, 3 weeks after the event. Even if this account is truthful in it's intention, there is no doubt that if Anderson wasn't certain what the object was at the time of sighting, he would have convinced himself by Oct 2 that it must have been F77. This is why accounts should really be published as soon as possible after the event, to have any credibility, before people start to consciously or unconsciously change their story in line with what it is that they're supposed to have seen, and before the media begins to develop preconceptions about what people could or could not have seen. Anderson's account doesn't come anywhere near meeting verifiable standards. Nevertheless, I can't resist pointing out the obvious impossibility in this account even if it was admissible.I don't know exactly where the "USA today" office is, but lets say it's 1000 yards from the Pentagon, like Carla Thompson's office.

An aircraft flying at 400 mph, will cover that distance in about 5 seconds. Anderson said that he heard it pass over the building and initially thought nothing of it.

So in the next 5 seconds he had time to: Think that the noise of the unseen aircraft was a plane coming in for a landing : weigh this up against his thought that the airport was closed : look down at his desk for a few moments: have the plane catch his eye: look up and catch full sight of it: have a dumbstruck moment where nothing registered: and still l have enough time left to meticulously observe that "the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon." Try acting this out and see if you have enough time left at the end to make such a detailed observation. And if the wing dragged along the ground for 30 yards, he would have seen that for about 0.15 of a second before the explosion.

What appeared at first reading to be 19 eyewitness accounts actually turned to out to be none.Thompson's glimpse of what happened was so fleeting that it would fit with almost any scenario.Timmerman asked us to believe in apartment blocks that come and go.The Winslow report is almost certainly a fabrication, is too enigmatic anyway, and at very best is almost certainly 2nd hand. Sucherman didn't claim to see a collision, or describe the plane.The Walter reports are too contradictory, and in any case, mostly say that he didn't see the collision. The anonymous testimony of "KM" mentions only a "plane" which could refer to any type of plane, or a cruise missile So that testimony wouldn't contribute anything, even if it was admissible.

McGraw has all kinds of problems, both with credibility and verification, Anderson's is retrospective and impossible to take seriously anyway, and Kizildrgri described nothing except a big boom. The other 10 didn't even make it to a detailed analysis, because they didn't even give the superficial impression of having witnessed the collision.

What has emerged so far is a disturbing pattern of manipulative reporting and fabrication.

What has also emerged is that a suspiciously high number of these dubious witnesses just happen to be media figures.

I now searched for other reports which had a chance of meeting the required standards of verification and credibility. Perhaps the "urban legends" site simply chose an unfortunate selection of quotes, and that there is more conclusive evidence to be found elsewhere.

This is what I could find.

The Boston Globe Sept 12

Rodney Washington, a systems engineer for a Pentagon contractor, was stuck in stand-still traffic a few hundred yards from the Pentagon when the American Airlines jet roared overhead from the southwest.

"It was extremely loud, as you can imagine, a plane that size, it was deafening," Washington said.

The plane was flying low and rapidly descended, Washington said, knocking over light poles before hitting the ground on a helicopter pad just in front of the Pentagon and essentially bouncing into it.

It "landed there and the momentum took it into the Pentagon," Washington said. "There was a very, very brief delay and then it exploded."

There are some obvious signs for a report which is fabricated or embellished beyond credibility, and this one has painted some of them in very big letters. First, the plane. It hits the ground, but miraculously does not break up, explode, flip over or cartwheel, but simply continues, into the wall, intact enough to smash it's way through the wall, and then, apparently still intact enough to see, waits a respectful moment before spontaneously exploding. How long does it wait? 1 second? So, if it was travelling at the conservative speed of 300mph, after it hit the ground and it landed 30 yards from the wall, then it took approximately 0.2 of a second to reach the wall. So it endured 2 collisions in 0.2 seconds, but waited another full second to suddenly explode after staying intact from two devastating impacts. Perhaps it exploded in a more realistic time frame, for example 10 milliseconds after smashing through the wall? That's more like it, except I'd like to know how the witness was able to pick a 10 millisecond delay from "instantaneous". The entire experience, from the time the plane hit the ground would have lasted 0.21 of a second.

Could the witness have even distinguished this from an impression that it simply flew into the wall? Therein lies the insoluble problem of this account. If it waited long enough before exploding, for the human eye to be able to pick up the delay, it postulates an impossible end to an impossible crash scenario.

And if it exploded in a believable time frame - say a few milliseconds added on to a total time of about 0.2 of a second - then how could the witness have distinguished this from being instantaneous? The whole event would have appeared instantaneous but is described in detailed sequence. "Oh what a tangled web we weave..."

Now, to the question of the conditions under which the witness would have been making this razor sharp observation. If it hit the ground, it would of course have thrown up a huge cloud of dirt.(Unless it landed on very hard ground, in which case we ask why it didn't beak up on impact) 0.2 of a second later, the scene would have been further complicated by the collapsing rubble as it smashed it's way through the wall. So even if this witness does have the miraculous observational powers to be able to pick a sequence of events broken down into milliseconds, all he would have seen was a cloud of flying dirt and collapsing rubble with the briefest of a blurred glimpse of the plane, before the explosion. But Eagle-Eye-Washington was still able to pick out where it landed, how the momentum carried it into the building and best of all, amongst the falling rubble and flying dirt, that after it smashed through the wall, there was "a very,very brief delay " before it exploded.

Newsday (New York NY) Sept 11

One eyewitness, State Department employee Ken Ford, said he watched from the 15th floor of the State Department Annex, just across the Potomac River from the Pentagon."We were watching the airport, through the [binoculars]," Ford said, referring to Reagan National Airport, a short distance away. "The plane was a two-engine turbo prop that flew up the river from National. Then it turned back toward the Pentagon. We thought it had been waved off and then it hit the building."

It's not clear why the word "binoculars" is in brackets. I couldn't find anything else from Ford. He's vague about the manner in which it collided with the building, which probably increases the credibility of his account. In real life, most people who witness shocking, unexpected events which happen very quickly, don't take in a lot of fine detail. It's when people report meticulously detailed observations in these situations that suspicions of fabrication or embellishment are aroused. If he was watching from across the river (east) then he couldn't have directly seen an impact on the western wall, although it's feasible that he could have seen it's approach until milliseconds before impact, and then seen some of the explosion rising above the building. This one (just) meets accepted standards, but directly contradicts the official story anyway. We need more information about how and when it was sourced.

Agence France Presse Sept 11

"I saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low." said Army captain Lincoln Liebner. "My first thought was, I've never seen one flying at that hight",he said. "Before it hit,I realized what was happening".

At first glance, this seems like a fairly straightforward eyewitness quote that Captain Liebner really is claiming first hand to have clearly seen an American Airlines jet "hit". (Presumably the Pentagon)

Unfortunately, more detailed research exposed it as a fabrication. Here's how. A search turned up 14 such matches for Agence France in combination with Leibner, many of them on Sept 11, and some on Sept 12. They are all, almost exactly the same story, but there are minor variations, as the report was modified slightly over the 14 different airings given to the story over the two days. Unfortunately, exact times are not given for the reports, but we know which of the 14 matches was the earliest, because the search always lists the results by the most recent document first. All of the Sept 12 versions of this report gave Liebner's quote, as above. So did the later reports of Sept 11. But the story in the first three reports was quite different, as far as Leibner is concerned. Here's the first report.

At a media briefing, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clark told the story of Capt. Lincoln Liebner, who was outside the Pentagon when the blast took place. He rushed into the building to help. His hands were burned, and after he was taken away to a hospital for treatment, he returned later in the day to do more.

No quote from Leibner, and not even a second hand reference to any kind of plane, let alone an "American airlines passenger jet." In fact the incident is described as a "blast".

Here's the second report.

Army Captain Lincoln Liebner, who witnessed the blast, entered the damaged building and pulled colleagues from the fire, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke. His hands badly burnt by the flames, Liebner refused to leave the scene and seek treatment.

"They forced him to go to the hospital," Clarke said. "He came back and he's in the building and he is working."

The third report

Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clark related the example of Army Capt. Lincoln Liebner who saw the aircraft hit and rushed into the burning building to help. He later was taken to a nearby hospital to have his hands treated for burns, but then returned to the Pentagon, Clark said.

Still no direct quote from Leibener but what he's alleged to have witnessed has suddenly changed from a "blast" to "saw the aircraft hit."

And in the fourth report, it becomes the direct quote from Leibner, and remains so for the other 10 reports.The reference to Clarke disappears. Did the media get an opportunity to interview Leibner, between the third and fourth reports? There's no evidence for this.

"He came back and he's in the building and he is working." Does this sound like an invitation to interview him?

So I found the original transcript of Clarke's media briefing.

Federal news Service Sept 11 2001.

And I'd just like to say one more thing. The response from the military has been phenomenal. The response from the search and rescue people has been incredible, and the people in the community. And I'll just give you one example. There is a young man, Captain Lincoln Liebner --

Q Spell it.

MS. CLARKE: -- L-i-e-b-n-e-r -- who was on the west side of the building when it was hit. He saw what happened. He immediately went in to try to help some of the injured, and helped pull them out. His hands were burned. He went to the hospital to be taken care of. They forced him to go to the hospital. He came back and he's in the building and he is working. And that's just one --

Q Army?

MS. CLARKE: Army.

Q That is just one example of the kind of response we've seen to this tragedy. And with that, I'd like to turn it over --

Q Torie, just -- excuse me.

There was no further reference to Leibner in the media briefing. So the overwhelming evidence is that no such direct account ever came from Leibner. He may or may not have said such a thing to someone in the department, he may or may not exist. And notice that Clarke made no mention of either a "blast" or an aircraft, using the ambiguous word "hit". And she simply describes Leibner as having seen "what happened." The first two media reports wrote in a reference to a "blast" with no indication where this came from.

This strongly indicates that at the time of the first two reports, the general word that was going around was that it had been a bomb. Suddenly, this was corrected to be a plane, and just to re-inforce the point, a quote and a witness was invented. So the second hand story of the man who had witnessed the "blast", something which implies contradiction of the official story, became mythologised as the man who's eyewitness account corroborates the official story.

Not only were the Leibner references twisted, but so were Clarke's. Notice that in the media briefing, Clarke was ambiguous about what the incident actually was. Her only two references were "hit", which could mean almost anything and "what happened." As if Clarke herself was not yet aware of what the official story was concerning the incident. Agence France twice paraphrased her as referring to a "blast", a word she never used. In the third report this was sharply corrected, in that Clarke was said to claimed that Leibner "saw the aircraft hit ", also a clear misrepresentation of what went on at the briefing, but a very decisive shift in direction. The fact that in the fourth report, the almost certainly fabricated Leibner account then completely replaced any reference to the original briefing strongly indicates that Agence France went into damage control mode to make sure that the first two reports were completely buried by the strongest possible confirmation that could be manufactured that it had been an American Airlines jet.

The Daily Record Sept 12

Record reporter Anna Adams was in Washington yesterday when the plane hit the Pentagon.

She said: "Nothing prepared me for what I saw this morning.

"As I took a walk through American history, in the seat of government of the most powerful nation on earth, the vulnerability of the nation was laid before my astonished eyes.

"I was just five blocks away as Armageddon came to America.

"A passenger jet screamed into the Pentagon and was followed by a ball of fire which erupted skywards. A thick pall of smoke quickly covered the area.

"The ear-splitting explosions ripped through the area, the smell of burning filled the air, panic spread throughout the streets.

"People ran in all directions - they didn't know where or why.

"I was among them - out of breath and out of my mind - I walked in circles.

"At first, no one knew or could believe what they had actually seen, what had happened.

"We thought we did but it was impossible to take in.

"Although I was only a few hundred yards away, I had to return to my nearby hotel and turn on the TV in my room to find out the enormity of the calamity.

"Then I went back on the streets. The mayhem was growing by the minute.

She was five blocks away. She could not have seen the impact directly, unless she was in a significantly elevated area. Perhaps she was, but she doesn't say this. Did she actually see a passenger jet hit the Pentagon? On close reading she doesn't say anything about seeing anything except general mayhem and panic.The description of the plane hitting the Pentagon is certainly not an eyewitness account, but a rather poetically written summary of the event which Adams assumes to have taken place.

And she admits that she didn't even go to the scene, to check anything directly.

"Although I was only a few hundred yards away, I had to return to my nearby hotel and turn on the TV in my room to find out the enormity of the calamity."

Why? Were reporters barred from getting close enough to see what was really happening? If so, why? If she could only find out "the enormity of the calamity" by watching TV, then it's certain that she did not witness with her own eyes, a passenger jet fly into the wall of the building.

An exhaustive search revealed no other matches for Anna Adams.

The Sydney Morning Herald Sept 12 reported that

A woman eyewitness told CNN of the plane crashing into the Pentagon: "A commercial plane came in. It was coming too fast, too low and then I saw the fire that came up after that.''

So where did the SMH pick this quote up from? Directly from CNN? It doesn't seem so. It's lifted directly from a story by the press association dated Sept 11. How directly? This is the press association report.

A woman eyewitness told CNN of the plane crashing into the Pentagon: "A commercial plane came in. It was coming too fast, too low and then I saw the fire that came up after that.''

This was also picked up word for word on Sept 12 by the Grimsby Evening Telegraph. I wonder if they copied it from SMH ? The appropriately named "Liverpool echo" also published the anonymous quote on Sept 12, but dropped the reference to CNN.

I couldn't find a transcript for it, but I did find the CNN audio at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/day.video.09.html

The quote is accurate in essence, although the wording has been changed. But she didn't say anything about seeing a plane crash into the pentagon. She says saw a saw a commercial plane (Size and type unspecified) coming in too fast and too low - and then the fire.

Check the audio for yourself.

St Louis Post- Dispatch Sept 13. quoted Mike Dobbs as saying

"We were looking out the window, and we saw a plane coming toward us, for about 10 seconds," he said. "It was like watching a train wreck. I was mesmerized. It took me a couple of seconds to understand what we were seeing, and to process it.

"At first I thought it was trying to crash land, but it was coming in so deliberately, so level, that I realized this is probably part of what had happened in New York -- part of a coordinated attack.

"It hit, but by that time we had started running. Everyone said there was a deafening explosion, but with the adrenaline, we didn't hear it."

It's not clear whether the St Louis Post- Dispatch conducted it's own interview with Dobbs, or whether it copied and embellished it from "The Plain Dealer" which quoted Dobbs, thus on Sept 12.

"I saw it come right over the Navy annex at a slow angle," he told Scripps Howard News Service. "It seemed to be almost coming in slow motion. I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it, and then we all started running."

The quotes are different enough that it's possible that it could be the same man relating the same experience in two different interviews. Except that my search showed that Dobbs did not say what the "The "Plain Dealer" attributed to him. To the "Plain Dealers" credit, it has at least told us where it sourced and embellished the quote from. So here is how Mike Dobbs was actually quoted by the Scripps Howard news service, on Sept 11.

"It seemed to be almost coming in in slow motion," he said later. "I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started running. They evacuated everybody around us."

This is certainly not a clear description of seeing a large passenger jet actually hit the Pentagon. But, in the case of the "Plain Dealer" it is a clear description of the media policy of never letting accuracy get in the way of a juicy quote.

The missing piece of information here, is whether the St Louis Post -Dispatch conducted a fresh interview with Dobbs for Sept 13, or whether it further embellished the Plain Dealer embellishment. Either way, by Sept 13 the Dobbs story had grown considerably from it's humble beginnings on Sept 11. It's understandable that if Dobbs did give a fresh interview, that he may have been more coherent on Sept 12 than he was on Sept 11. (presumably he would have had to have given the St Louis interview, if it took place, on Sept 12) The Sept 11 quote tells us almost nothing. The Sept 13 quote is a little more explicit.

It at least mentions a plane, but gives no other clues. If the Sept 13 quote is genuine, a closer examination shows that it only further confuses the question.

What kind of plane was it? Was it actually the plane that Dobbs saw, that caused the explosion, or did it veer away at the last moment and something else cause the explosion? The Sept 13 quote says that he was running away by the time it hit, so he certainly couldn't have seen anything that might answer this question. Perhaps common sense tells us that it must have been. The problem is that he also says that he didn't hear the explosion.This is puzzling because he also mentions nothing about feeling it. If he didn't see it, didn't hear it and didn't feel it, how does he know that it hit ? And in combination with the Sept 11 report he completes the trifecta by specifically stating that he didn't feel it either. In The Sept 11 report, he says he saw it, and then started running, but it's not clear whether this means that he didn't start running until after it hit, or whether he started running after he saw it coming towards the building. This is very confusing, which is not to impugn Dobbs. It's easy to sympathise with the difficulty of being clear about such an experience, but that doesn't change the fact that this is not an eyewitness report of a large jet hitting the pentagon. A crash of an unspecified kind of plane, that the witness didn't feel, didn't hear, and (perhaps) didn't see.

No other matches were found for Mike Dobbs.

The Express Sept 12

Sarah Newsome saw the plane crash into the Pentagon as she was on her way to work.

"I couldn't believe my eyes - this jet appeared to be heading straight for the building.

"As it headed towards it the plane began to accelerate and I was thinking 'This can't really be happening - I can't be seeing this'.

"It plunged into the side in a ball of orange and yellow flame and there was a massive explosion and the sound of crumbling brick and metal.

For this report, we do at least have the names of the writers, but the quote is unsourced, in the sense of who interviewed Newsome and when and where, and is not repeated by any other media. There are no other reports of any kind that refer to Sarah Newsome as a witness. It (just) meets acceptable standards of verification and clarity to warrant further investigation.

Note that while she explicitly says that a jet hit the side of the Pentagon, she does not say whether it was large or small, civilian or military, and does not say how long she had to identify it. I have a question about how somebody can tell that a plane has accelerated. If it's travelling at 400 mph, and you see it travel 1/2 mile, and it accelerates to 500 mph in the last 250 yards, then the witness will see it travel at 400mph for about 3 seconds, increasing to 500mph over the last second. Is this discernable? Probably not, but there is a good explanation as to why a witness might truthfully describe a genuine impression of seeing a plane accelerating. If the witness has seen it approaching for a considerable distance, then the changing perspective might make it appear to be travelling faster as it came closer. A witness who reports an acceleration in this context is likely to be telling the truth. But a witness who sees it come unexpectedly out of nowhere for only a few hundred yards of viewing (less than 2 seconds) and claims that it accelerated in the last 100 yards before impact is likely to be either embellishing or fabricating. Since Newsome doesn't mention how long she saw it for, there is no indication either way.

This certainly qualifies as an eyewitness account, although the strength of the verification leaves much to be desired. It does not provide any evidence for F77 hitting the Pentagon. She could just as easily have been describing a 757, a DC10, an F16 or a cruise missile.

Christopher Munsey wrote this first hand account of what he claims to have personally witnessed. The Navy Times Sept 11.

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-467181.php

A silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away...

The plane, with red and blue markings, hurtled by and within moments exploded in a ground-shaking "whoomp," as it appeared to hit the side of the Pentagon.

Does this have the style of an account being written by an eyewitness? I don't think so. It's too poetic and detached. This posting date of this is acceptably early, although we don't know the time of posting. In this case, that's an important factor, because bearing in mind that it's a military publication, it's relevant to ask how well established the official story was by the time he wrote it. The lesson of the Leibner account is that such questions are legitimate. So did Munsey really see this, or is he simply writing the military spin? We can't know for sure, but the fact that no other matches turned up for Munsey as a witness does not help his cause. What also doesn't help is an article at http://www.multipull.com/twacasefile/may.html.

It concerns the issue of TWA 800, another plane disaster which has aroused some highly controversial suspicions of government and military evil against it's own citizens. Not having researched TWA 800, I won't offer an opinion, but simply observe that there are allegations of govt. wrongdoing in relation to it.

The article, highly technical in nature,and very even and factual in it's tone accuses Munsey of writing misleading spin (not it's actual words) in an article he wrote in July 1996, in relation to the evidence surrounding TWA 800. Unfortunately it does not cite an author's name.

It's from the website of TWA 800 case files, which introduces itself thus at it's homepage http://www.multipull.com/twacasefile/bf.html

TWA 800 Case Files came into existence in January, 1997. Its intention then was and now is to critically examine the quality of information made available to the public concerning TWA Flight 800, and to serve as a collection and access point for media artifacts of the disaster.

TWA 800 Case Files is not the representative of a particular organization. Articles represent the point of view of their authors alone, and are presented in an attempt to increase the resolution of what is and what is not factually known about TWA Flight 800.

And another article by Munsey at http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2001/Feb/15/215localnews16.html puts the navy's case on yet another contentious military issue, the collision between the US submarine and the Japanese Boat, which resulted in the deaths of Japanese civilians.Given that he writes for the Navy times, it's not suspicious in itself that Musey should be writing on these issues, and hardly surprising that he should be putting the official point of view, but it is a little much to swallow that he just happens to be the only person we can find who clearly and unambiguously saw an American Airlines passenger jet in full flight, and then saw it crash into the side of the building, especially considering the romantic, detached style of the account. If other independent witnesses eventuate which strongly corroborate Munsey, then this may need to be reviewed, but for now, caution should be exercised about the credibility of this account. I do also have a big problem with the idea that a 757, just a few hundred yards away would be described as "gliding almost noiselessly" as it" hurtled by".

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/11_APdc.html

I saw a big jet flying close to the building coming at full speed. There was a big noise when it hit the building,'' said Oscar Martinez, who witnessed the attack.

This is from Ron Fournier of the AP, in the same article as the infamous Dave Winslow account. Since I found no other references to Martinez's alleged account, and extensive searches turned up no verification, or any other reference to Martinez, I'm not to prepared to consider a completely uncorroborated account from an article which has already so spectacularly impugned it's own credibility.

http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/6_39/local_news/10797-1.html

Defense Protective Service officers were the first on the scene of the terrorist attack. One, Mark Bright, actually saw the plane hit the building. He had been manning the guard booth at the Mall Entrance to the building.

"I saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," he said. "I knew it was going to strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the height of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The plane would have been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a few hundred yards from the Pentagon.

He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon. "As soon as it struck the building I just called in an attack, because I knew it couldn't be accidental," Bright said. He jumped into his police cruiser and headed to the area.

According to calculations deduced from maps, relating to the Timmerman account, the Navy Annex is about 400 -500 yards from the pentagon. I'm well aware that the method of this calculation was crude but it gives us a general idea. The description here indicates that it may be a closer. This article agrees that the plane was only seconds from impact. If we assume 500 yards, then it was about 2 1/2 seconds away. So would this really have been discernable?

He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon.

We can only assume that he had a maximum of 1 second to pick the difference in the sound, before this was erased by the sound of the explosion, and the visual shock. I concede that as a military officer, who is always working near the sound of planes, that he would have a better chance of noticing these things than the average person. But I still have a big question mark over whether such a precise dissection really would have been possible, in the context of a total experience which lasted 2 1/2 seconds maximum, followed by such a shocking and dramatic aftermath. It doesn't help that the account was posted on Sept 24 or 28, depending on which date you believe on the page.Too late to have credibility unless other redeeming features emerge.It hasn't demonstrated any and it just happens to be from a military publication. The article is entitled "The Pentagon's first heroes in a day of heroes." and opens with this.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 24, 2001) -- What sort of person hears an explosion -- and runs toward it?

Ask the people alive today because some Defense Protective Service officers did exactly that after the hijacked jetliner hit the Pentagon Sept. 11.

This is not to deny that many people acted heroically during this event. But it's clear that the focus of this article is to not present objective, critical analysis of what happened, but to present patriotic spin. Combined with the late posting, it doesn't meet verifiable standards to the degree which justifies uncritical acceptance of the doubtful statement above. Anyway, it gives no indication of what sort of plane it was.

This is the last account I found that offered any hope of a clear witness

"The plane approached from my left and struck the building in front of me to my right. It was a large American Airlines jetliner with turbine engines on the wings."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0203/S00134.htm

This doesn't come from a major mainstream media outlet but from a website named Scoop.The quote is attributed to Steve Riskus who also supplied some photos which he said were taken immediately after the crash. At it's homepage http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/about/ Scoop describes itself thus.

Scoop is a Wellington based Internet news agency accredited to the New Zealand Parliament Press Gallery. (A Yahoo search confirmed this as correct) It specialises in providing news and commentary **raw and fast** and is made up largely of what Scoop likes to call "disintermediated" news - that is news without a spin put on it by a journalist.

What I am interested in here is how the quote was sourced. Scoop is based in New Zealand, so the witness Steve Riskus has obviously submitted his information by email. Or did he? The page which posts his account quote goes on to say.

Asked if he finds the controversy over the crash annoying Steve replied, "sure.... I do find the controversy annoying... especially when people ask me questions when they have no intention of changing there opinion that no plane crashed... but alas... there is no controversy for me."

This takes on the appearance of some kind of interview. But Scoop does not tell us whether this exchange took place by email or voice. It also doesn't ask any important questions. Exactly where did the plane come in, with reference to what's in the photos, and where he was at the time of the impact? This is important because the Riskus account is dated March 19 2002 - way too late to be worth anything at all, if it were not for the fact that he also provided photos. So I went searching for other references to Riskus to see if there was anything else which might better authenticate his account. I found nothing except the same account with minor variations and the photos posted on other web sites. He claims that the photos were taken immediately after the crash On one site he says less than a minute and on another site he says "seconds".

The photos are therefore the key to determining whether this highly retrospective account can provide any evidence that a large passenger jet crashed into the Pentagon. Lets have a look at them.

It's difficult to say whether there is a traffic jam here. It looks to me to be consistent with a scenario of light traffic,with the small amount of congestion near the Pentagon being caused by people having stopped and got out to look. But we don't see a large police presence there to try to sort out the potential chaos. This supports the claim by Riskus that the photos are taken fairly soon after the incident. But his descriptions of one minute and "seconds" may be exaggerations, because we can see that a police car has already had time to find a way around the barriers and park off the road and the officer is out and appears to be walking towards the fire. So it look's as if it is soon after the incident and perhaps the first photo may have been taken within a minute, but it doesn't look like they were taken in rapid succession.

I wasn't able to make a confident assessment of whether there's a jam, or whether it's just that people have stopped to get out and have a look. That would appear to be irrelevant now since all of the accounts allegedly involving a traffic jam have now been discredited. Nevertheless, you never know what else might turn up, so it's always worth noting these details. Most of the photos give the definite impression of light traffic, but there was one which made me not so sure.

We have a witness who can demonstrate that he was there at least reasonably soon after it happened, and clearly claims to have seen an AA jetliner fly into the Pentagon.The problem is in it's very late lodgement, (more than 6 months! ) the lack of any critical questioning, the scant details in the account apart from the identification of the plane, and the possible exaggeration that it was taken within a few moments of the crash. The photos are the only redeeming factor which makes this account worthy of further inquiry.

The crucial problem is whether Riskus's claim that it was an AA jetliner has been made retrospectively, in the light of more than 6 months of the official story, or whether he has claimed this from the beginning.We don't know. Riskus also posted the photos at http://criticalthrash.com/terror/crashthumbnails.html with the following message

I took these photos less than 1 minutes after I watched the american airlines 757 airplane crash into the pentagon on Sept 11 2001. I left shortly after the picture were taken in fear of further attacks.

The message is not dated. But he is even more specific about the plane. An AA 757. Since we don't know the date, it brings us no closer to being able to determine whether Riskus is making this identification retrospectively. But it does reveal that the communication between Scoop and Riskus was done by email, not voice, because the distinctive spelling/language in both postings indicates that both the Scoop comment and the critical thrash comment were typed by the same person.

At http://www.artbell.com/letters21.html one of the Riskus photos is posted with this caption

Steve Riskus sends us: I saw the plane crash into the pentagon about 100 ft in front of me. Debris landed on my car.

It's undated. And with that message the Riskus account unravels. How long could Riskus have seen the object for? As in the case of Sucherman, at that range from inside a car, probably a maximum of 1 second. It's questionable whether even an aviation expert would be able to so accurately identify a craft down to the exact model of jet and the type of engines in that amount of time, especially under such shocking, difficult and unexpected circumstances, amongst the deafening and frightening noise. (which he doesn't mention) - and just for good measure, while was trying to drive a car. And if Riskus has any specialised knowledge of planes, he hasn't mentioned it, which would seem curious given the nature of the debate.

But the deciding factor is the claim that debris landed on his car. If he was driving at the time, and he took the photos within less than 1 minute of the crash, then he must have taken them from virtually the same spot that he stopped his car, which allegedly had been hit by debris. So have a good look at the Riskus photos, and in particular at the other cars which are close to where the photo was taken, and therefore close to his car. Do you see any sign that debris has hit any of the other cars? Do you see any debris on the road? Do you see any debris on the lawn between the Pentagon and the road? In all of the photos, in combination, do you see any debris which has been flung out anything like that kind of distance? So we're asked to believe that completely contrary to the rest of the of the debris pattern, Riskus's car was hit, when there is no sign of even a scrap of any other debris within at least 50 yards. He also didn't take any photos of the damage to his car, or of the debris which must have been sitting either on his car or on the road, right next to him. One would think this had to be a photo well worth taking. So he had the presence of mind in a stressful situation, to note exactly what model of plane it was, with probably 1 second to see it, and the presence of mind to immediately start taking photos, but not the presence of mind to photograph the miraculously unique piece(s) of the plane, the only debris to have been flung that far out, which just happened to hit his car and nobody elses, and presumably must have damaged it. This account is so retrospective and poorly verified that the only reason for considering it at all was the photos, and the photos do not support the account.

In many hours of painstaking analysis of every search parameter I could think of that offered any hope of finding eyewitness accounts of the collision, this was all I could find. The tools used were LexisNexis and Yahoo. Of course, I can't guarantee that nothing slipped through the net, but the search was exhaustive and meticulous. It's unlikely that anything significant was missed.

My conclusion is that there is no eyewitness evidence to support the theory that F77 hit the Pentagon, unless my search has missed something very significant.

Given the strength of the photographic evidence that whatever hit the Pentagon could not possibly have been F77, I can see no reason for not stating this conclusion with a lot of confidence, unless and until contrary evidence emerges.

So how and why was such a strong superficial impression generated that the media was brimming with eyewitness reports? Basically, smoke and mirrors. When you look at the total number of potential witnesses turned up by this search, if you count only those which appeared superficially to provide a clear eyewitness to the collision, there were only 18 and one of these contradicted the official story.

Earlier, after dealing with the 8 witnesses which made it to the final cut, on the Urban legends site, I noted that a suspiciously high number of them were media workers.

After analysis of all 18 reports, we find military personnel even more heavily represented. It's not surprising that there should be some, since the incident took place an area with a high population of military personnel, but 8 of 18 is a very high proportion, especially when you add to it 5 from the media. Of the 5 remaining, there is no guarantee that some of them might not also have been military. Timmerman was the only one who gave an occupation, and being a pilot does not preclude the possibility that he was military. It's clear that the govt and the military have performed a brilliant feat of illusion here. But what of the media? Were they in on it as well?

It's not necessary to allege that the media were part of a malicious conspiracy to fabricate the story. Some of the bogus reports can be easily explained by the media's normal practice of bending the truth a little in order to be able to present a good story, quickly enough to keep up with their competitors. Combined with the desire not to upset authorities at a time of patriotic shock and grieving, with talk of retaliatory war already in the air, this would have made a strong incentive for the media to publish any eyewitness they thought they could conjure, regardless of accuracy or journalistic integrity.

All that would have been needed was for the administration to plant a little well placed hearsay, and let the media do the rest in the inevitable scramble to have the best and quickest story. The rationale of the media, while not excusable, is easy to understand. In the frenzied period just after the attacks, the word comes in to the office that the explosion at the Pentagon was caused by a suicide plunge from a large passenger jet. This would seem to make sense, given what had just happened in New York. And the general frenzy and shock of the morning would not have facilitated clear thinking, and there was the added confusion of the bogus bomb report at the State Department.

Any story like this needs to have an eyewitness quote to fit the standard media formula for an attractive report. So the desperate scramble would have been on to find any eyewitness they could, as quickly as possible.Third hand hearsay would probably have been good enough for most editors or journalists in this situation. And they could easily rationalise the placement of bogus quotation marks with the reasoning that "well I know that's basically what she said, because so and so told me, and I haven't got time to track her down before the deadline". Some would not have been above completely fabricating a witness, with the rationalisation "well, I know that's what happened, and I know plenty of people saw it, and I've got a deadline to meet".

To provide an eyewitness account of my own, in my former capacity as a media spokesperson for the Campaign to Save Native Forests, in Western Australia, I was once falsely quoted in a similar context in Perth's "Daily News". I was directly quoted as saying things which I had never even implied informally, off the record. The journalist wanted a juicy story, had a deadline to meet, and fabricated the entire interview. The first I knew of it was when I read it in the paper. And I have no way to prove that that's what happened.

So it's easy to explain how what appeared superficially to be dozens, perhaps hundreds of eyewitness accounts has turned out after close analysis to be nothing.

The fact such dishonest methods were needed in order to provide eyewitness accounts for something which if it took place, could conceivably have been clearly witnessed by dozens, maybe hundreds of people, is itself evidence that the event simply didn't take place.

At this stage it's relevant to examine the alleged witnesses collectively. Having established a fairly clear layout of the geography surrounding the event we are now in a position to intelligently speculate on the following question. If the event actually did take place, what would witnesses be likely to have seen from the various vantage points around the Pentagon? The locations come into four main categories. The arterial roads running around the Pentagon's western perimeter, the cemetary, The Sheraton Hotel, and the high rise area of Arlington.

From the nearby roads, motorists would have most likely have had a clear view of the collision, but not enough time to make any accurate identification of the plane, although it's possible that some might have been able to suggest that it was probably a big plane. Cyclists or pedestrians would have had a better chance of seeing the plane for longer, and therefore an increased chance of being able to identify it, although this probability would still be best described as marginal. People in the southern part of the cemetary would have experienced a plane fly over, frighteningly low.

They may have had a better chance of identifying it as a large plane, but those on the west side would have had a marginal chance of seeing the collision.

People in tall buildings- the Sheraton or other high rise in Arlington would have had the best chance of seeing both the collision and seeing the plane for long enough to identify it, at least as a big plane. An examination of this shows us that the collective pattern of evidence which we might expect is completely absent. Timmerman said it flew right past the Sheraton, but there are no witnesses from there. Was it empty at the time? My extensive searches did not turn up a single reference to anyone from the Sheraton Hotel. A qualification here. I was specifically searching for people who witnessed a direct collision. This search of course accidentally turned up other eyewitnesses who " almost saw it", but I did not make an in depth examination of these. So although my search did not turn up any reference to Sheraton witnesses, I can not at this stage categorically rule out the possibility that some "near miss witnesses" could turn up with search parameters specifically tailored to look for this kind of witness. But I can say that my extensive searches on the subject did not reveal a single witness in either category from the Sheraton Hotel. The same goes for people in the cemetary. Was there no-one in the southern section at the time? McGraw says he was driving to a graveside service at the time. Given that he was almost there, and had taken a wrong turn, it's reasonable to assume that it was close to starting time and therefore a considerable number of people were already gathered in one place in the cemetary. But there is no report of any such group having collectively witnessed such an event. If this service was in the north-western corner, then their experience would have been less dramatic. Nevertheless they still would have heard the plane and seen it, and heard the explosion, and perhaps seen the fire.So would have anybody who was in the cemetary, but I didn't find a single witness from this area. This doesn't prove that nothing happened. And it doesn't prove that nobody saw or heard anything from the cemetary or the Sheraton. What it proves it that the media were negligent in their duty to think about the incident and creatively seek out important and reliable witnesses. It shows it that the reports are highly selective.

People in the Sheraton and in the cemetary would have seen something, but nobody has asked them. Which brings me to another point. Many of these witnesses were in a collective situation according to their reports, but were curiously reported in a manner strongly reminiscent of a solo experience. There were a number who said they were stuck in traffic, but we don't have any collective sightings from people who all saw it together while stuck in traffic.Others saw it from offices in Arlington with no reference to any co-workers. There are no reports of collective sightings of workers. (To be exact, I do remember one in this style, which I discarded because nobody saw the collision.)

What about the taxi-driver who was injured by a pole which was knocked down, according the McGraw account? The media love this kind of interview. What about a group of motorists who were all sitting in the traffic jam next to each other, all relating what they saw in excited tones? The media love that sort of thing of too. What about people who were narrowly missed by falling poles?

The media love that kind of interview. All of these tell tale signs of a normal reporting pattern are missing. The whole thing is very manufactured. Compare it with the live interviews and accounts of the WTC disaster. The press was right on the spot. There were lots of live accounts, and as always happens in such a situation, most of them were not very factual. Hysterical, crying, shocked people were blurting out their experience in a highly emotional way. We saw none of that with the Pentagon event. The reports are in general detached and factual like a retrospective witness statement to a police inquiry. 4 of the 18 are too late to have credibility. The collective impression of the eyewitness reports at the Pentagon is one of a scripted event.

When I began this research, I was genuinely open minded. I wanted to solve the problem of the contradiction between the witness evidence and the photographic evidence. I was determined that if the eyewitness evidence was there, to find it and authenticate it. If it was fraudulent, to discover it and expose it. My search led me convincingly to the latter path. I am now convinced that F77 did not hit the Pentagon wall. If it was hit by a flying object, which seems to be the case, it was hit by a missile or a small plane, perhaps a drone military jet.

I anticipate the next question. "So what happened to the large passenger jet that everyone was seeing in the area at the time? Did it just vanish? " The question is pre-empting further research which needs to be done. Was there a large passenger jet seen in the area at the time ? A superficial reading of media reports would seem to suggest so. But then again, a superficial reading of media reports seemed to suggest that there were eyewitnesses to F77 hitting the Pentagon. Under close examination, these evaporated.

I won't pre-empt the result of future research into the question of whether there were significant eyewitness reports of a large passenger jet in the area at the time. If it turns out that there is such evidence, that will create a new mystery to be unravelled. But it needs to be acknowledged that claims of mass sightings of a large passenger jet close to the event, have as far as I am aware, not yet been subject to meticulous scrutiny of the type presented here, and until such time as they are, any statements about them should be tentative.

The other question which now needs to be addressed is "what happened to F77" ? At this stage, I have no idea. But I am now convinced that it didn't hit the Pentagon.

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Item Two
A military official said plane was shot down

by Linda
12:12pm Mon Jun 17'02
comment#1787
sunshinetimes@hotmail.com

I was at work in Florida when all the 9-11 things started going on and news reports began to come in by phone and somebody turned on a TV and others turned on radios. It was still sometime in the morning. I wish I could be more specific about times and details but I can't because at the time, it didn't occur to me this would be so very important. However, a news broadcast that I distinctly heard come across the radio, with a live interview of a US military official said that one of the planes (I don't know if it was the one that supposedly hit the Pentagon or the one that went down in Philadelphia) had been SHOT DOWN by US Military because it wouldn't answer the radio.

Now, this was a very plain interview with this guy. He was making the statements himself. I was stunned that US military could or would shoot down an American craft with American citizens on it and that is what he was saying. An argument in the office ensued about this with other people taking the position that "anything that protects the US is necessary," etc. and my arguing the opposite, so I was not the only person who heard this interview. Other people have told me they heard a reporter on other broadcasts in different locations quote the same official at some other time. Again, I'm sorry for the vague details but I assume if somebody tries to run this down they can find it.

I never saw or heard this official again or any reference to him again or any reference to the American plane being shot down again other than that one time. Now why is that?

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Item Three
TARGET TV TRANSMITTERS

by Fed Up
10:41am Tue Jun 18 '02
comment#1791

If it's not on TV, the general public won't believe it. Those who control broadcasting control the country. Get it?

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Item Four
Think Again.

by Ron Harvey
10:51am Wed Jun 19 '02
comment#1797
tw45ph@softhome.net

The plane at the Pentagon felled FOUR lamp posts. Measure the distances between them.

A cruise missile or anything else much smaller than a B757 could not possibly have done the same.

==============================================

Our self appointed detective wrote:

.. "If anyone (including Mr Winslow himself) can come forward with evidence other than that quote, that an AP radio reporter named Dave Winslow exists, I will willingly retract the statement,"

*** Should try harder before wasting our time.
.. AP seem to know who he is.
See: http://www.apbroadcast.com/AP+Broadcast/About+Us/Press+Releases/AP+Radio+Gets+the+Stories+Behind+The+Attacks.htm

[This page doesn't appear to exist - 911dossier]

-------------------------

He also wrote: "If he's tucked into the area of Nash and Lynne st, near the Junction of 395 and Army Drive, then if he's looking directly at the helipad, the area where he lost sight of the plane is at about 11 o'clock.For a 60 - 100 ft wide building to block 30 degrees of his vision, it would have to be between 35 and 60 yards in front of him. This places his apartment further back from the edge of the residential "area.Remember that he said he was 400- 450 yards away, so we already stretching this severely, even without setting him back further into the residential area. Worse still, from this position, he is already at a very tight angle to be able to see much of the western wall, and what little he can see would now be squeezed into a very narrow space along the edge of his sight line. And given that the helipad (which photos show suffered miraculously little damage) juts out from the wall, he wouldn't be able to see past it to see the damaged section. And yet he gives us a detailed description of the damage. This isn't possible."

*** Yes it is. No problem. There are plenty photos taken from James House to be found all over the www.web, e.g. by Tom Horan.

Look also at the aerial view on MapQuest.

==========================

And:

.. " There's a big problem with this account. McGraw says that the plane passed directly over his car at power pole hight but that he didn't hear anything until it was directly above. Totally impossible if it was a 757."

**** Not at all. It depends where you are. Consider the speed of sound. If a plane travels faster than sound it will pass you before the sound does. If a plane travels directly towards you at perhaps two thirds of the speed of sound, you will have next to no time to be warned by hearing it, especially when it approaches from behind trees and buildings.

Have you bothered to confront any of the witnesses directly?

====================

And ---

"What has also emerged is that a suspiciously high number of these dubious witnesses just happen to be media figures."

*** Rubbish. Nothing suspicious about it, in view of the usual nature of business in the vicinity. Who else would you expect to be sending in reports from that side of Washington?

-----------------

And ----

.. "Although I was only a few hundred yards away, I had to return to my nearby hotel and turn on the TV in my room to find out the enormity of the calamity."

Question: " Why? Were reporters barred from getting close enough to see what was really happening? If so, why? "

Answer: Very stupid! Anybody near to the building was thought to be in mortal danger. At one point, because of a false alarm, even the emergency services were withdrawn.

----------------

re. http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/6_39/local_news/10797-1.html

N.B. Mark Bright said he "saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," not that he was watching from that area.

He was actually to the north of the event, nearer to the Mall entrance.

Question: " -- What sort of person hears an explosion -- and runs toward it?"

Answer: Somebody trying to do his doing his job perhaps?

It is a demonstrable matter of fact that he did drive immediately to the scene. He is the individual, with his car, to be seen e.g. to the left of this Riskus photo:
http://www.criticalthrash.com/terror/P1010016.JPG

=========================================

with kind regards,

Ron Harvey

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Item Five
AA Flight 77 and the Pentagon

by Henry Ayre
12:20am Mon Jul 8 '02
comment#1894
henri@alaska.net

A Boeing 757 is a fairly large commercial jet. It is engineered to taxi, take off, fly, and land... nothing more. Thus it is fragile to any physical contact other than those for which it is engineered. When a plane of this size crashes it immediately breaks up into at least several large pieces and a great many smaller ones. Passengers, seats, luggage, galley, wheels, fairing, and engines are dispersed over a large area if the area of the crash is positively identified... as it is - putatively - in the case of the object which crashed into the Pentagon. No one has seen ANY such wreckage from this supposed crash of a commercial 757 loaded with people. Thus, the was no such crash involving a commercial 757 Boeing. Period. It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel. No wreckage, no Boeing 757. This allows us to pursue an entirely new line of inquiry, namely, what DID crash into the Pentagon? And it is exactly this very obvious and necessary line of inquiry which appears to be forbidden by various Federal government agencies and the mass media simply because (1) culpability for the events would probably be shifted from Arab groups which are at present a very convenient bad guys, and (2) culpability for the events would probably be shifted to elements of the U.S. government itself with or without the help of elements of some foreign government. From the standpoint of the present U.S. government, such an inquiry is to be avoided at all costs. As to what did happen to Flight 77, we can only conjecture that it was either (1) ditched out to sea, or (2) landed at some secret, unused, or military airfield. As to the passengers, if this were a "soft" military coup we could hardly expect the passengers to be allowed to live by the putchists. It is significant in the entire 9-11 operation that no one intimately involved in the action lived to tell what really happened, quite unlike most great tragedies.

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Item Six
100 m/s 100 tons?

by berserk
12:28am Wed Jul 24 '02
comment#2054

http://www.ifrance.fr/silentbutdeadly/scan2.jpg

small hole, small plane.
some are saying, the pentagon is like a bunker, that's why...

look at the image... i don't think so.

why no marks on the wall?
http://www.ifrance.fr/silentbutdeadly/compall.jpg

some are saying, it's because it's reinforced with kevlar and some other garbage...

ok... but it's inside, and not outside. outside is stone, and stone react like stone :)

but no marks... perhaps a 1945 hightech stone? bullshit...

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Item Seven
Don't be Stupid.

by Joshua
9:51am Tue Sep 17 '02
comment#2502

I witnessed the plane hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Yes, I did see the plane physically go down and smash directly into the Pentagon, because I was watching it come in over Arlington Cemetery. A few hundred feet higher and it would have been just another plane landing at Reagan National, but that was way too low, so I watched, and I was horrified to see it hit the building. If you all did any kind of research you would know that there are even security camera photos of the actual crash. The plane hit the ground just before hitting the Pentagon and exploded on impact.

Look at Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA. A plane crashed there too, and was there any 'evidence' of a plane? Those things are made of aluminum, and they will virtually disintegrate on impact.

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Item Eight
Good Article Gerard Holmgren

by Peter Wilson
4:40am Tue Oct 1 '02
comment#2579

"I witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11. From my office on the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have a view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport and the Potomac River. ... Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye. it didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke."

- Steve Anderson, Director of Communications, USA Today

http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy_response/read_messages.html

I don't know exactly where the "USA today" office is, but lets say it's 1000 yards from the Pentagon,...

USA Today has its Corporate headquarters at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, Virginia 22108.

http://www.skyscrapers.com/english/file/0.9/143318/dim6/index.html
Here is a picture of the building.

It is about 8 miles north east of the Pentagon.

http://www.criticalthrash.com/terror/identification.html
Another list of eye-witness accounts can be found here.

Interestingly enough, this author manages to place Tim Timmerman at Eppington Drive, to the south of the Pentagon across Interstate 395. As far as I am aware, there is no such address.

Some interesting links.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm
The World Trade Center Demolition.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch1.htm
Chapters One of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment).

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch2.htm
Chapters Two of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment).

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/WhatHitThePentagon
The Pentagon Crash Hoax.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/STF/stranger-than-fiction.htm
Stranger Than Fiction.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7big.rm
Video of the demolition of WTC7.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/7collapse.avi
Another video of the demolition of WTC7.

http://http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/SMALL_wtc-7_1_.gif
Small animated-gif of the demolition of WTC7.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc-7_1_.gif
Large version of the animated-gif.
Large 3.3 MB file.

www.nerdcities.com/guardian

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Item Nine
Lets try that again.

by Peter Wilson
4:47am Tue Oct 1 '02
comment#2580

[911dossier notes: This post seems to be identical to the above "Good Article Gerard Holmgren", with some html corrections, and a different last link.]

"I witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11. From my office on the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have a view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport and the Potomac River. ... Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye. it didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke."

- Steve Anderson, Director of Communications, USA Today

http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy_response/read_messages.html

I don't know exactly where the "USA today" office is, but lets say it's 1000 yards from the Pentagon,...

USA Today has its Corporate headquarters at 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, Virginia 22108.

Here is a picture of the building
http://www.skyscrapers.com/english/file/0.9/143318/dim6/index.html

It is about 8 miles north east of the Pentagon.

Another list of eye-witness accounts can be found here
http://www.criticalthrash.com/terror/identification.html

Interestingly enough, this author manages to place Tim Timmerman at Eppington Drive, to the south of the Pentagon across Interstate 395. As far as I am aware, there is no such address.

Some interesting links.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm
The World Trade Center Demolition.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch1.htm
Chapters One of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment).

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch2.htm
Chapters Two of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment).

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/WhatHitThePentagon
The Pentagon Crash Hoax.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/STF/stranger-than-fiction.htm
Stranger Than Fiction.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7big.rm
Video of the demolition of WTC7.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/7collapse.avi
Another video of the demolition of WTC7.

http://http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/SMALL_wtc-7_1_.gif
Small animated-gif of the demolition of WTC7.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc-7_1_.gif
Large version of the animated-gif. Large 3.3 MB file.

www.whatreallyhappened.com

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Item Ten
Great Links. THANKS.

by Josh
7:52pm Tue Oct 1 '02
comment#2583

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/

says it all.

www.nerdcities.com/guardian

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Item Eleven
Unanswered questions for Gerard Holmgren

by Sky King
7:20am Sun Nov 3 '02
comment#2744/p>

Gerard, would you provide your background in physics, engineering, or air disaster investigations. Do you have credentials in these areas or is this strictly an amateur endeavor?

Also, have you submitted your paper for review by any recognized authority in physics, engineering, or air disasters? If not, do you intend to?

There are several questions pertaining to your conclusion that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon:

1.

I see no testimony from the hundreds of professional rescuers, firefighters, FEMA personnel, Red Cross volunteers, and anyone else who was on the sight, contradicting the common wisdom of a 757 crash. Why does such testimony not exist? Have you interviewed any of them?
2.

I see no argument from you against the established fact of the burial of Charles Burlingame, pilot of AA77, at Arlington cemetary (much less any other identified victim of AA77). Where did his body come from?
3.

I see no references from *anyone*, much less those who are in a position to know and are qualified, challenging the fact that AA77 crashed into the Pentagon, other than a handful of amateur conspiracy buffs such as yourself. Do you not find that fact strange?
4.

Why have you not addressed this news conference of Sept 15, 2001?
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:E-ARBi6hti0C:http://www.parrhesia.com/cryptome/dod091501.htm+%22pentagon+damage%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Is it not relevant? Do you challenge it? Why or why not?
5.

Why have you not dealt with the destroyed lamp poles? Is this not relevant to the size of the aircraft? See:
http://www.dragonslair.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/77/poles_.htm and respond.
6.

Play with this model and report your conclusions: http://www.dragonslair.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/77/poles_interactive.htm

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Item Twelve
inaccessible video

by gtr
9:19pm Tue Feb 11 '03
comment#3408

I tried to access the video, and had problems, as you did. So I fiddled with the link, changing it from:

javascript:OpenVideoNoad('http://play.rbn.com/?url=usat/usat/g2demand/010911_joel.rm&proto=rtsp')

to:

http://play.rbn.com/usat/usat/g2demand/010911_joel.rm

ie I went straight to the document, instead of calling a javascript with the doc as a parameter. And that worked; I was able to watch the video. Go see for yourself.

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Item Thirteen
Where are the witnesses

by Tim Brown
2:19am Mon May 5 '03
comment#3936

The reason there are no credible witnesses to flight 77 is because it never existed. A plane flying that low in the city would have had thousands of witnesses not to mention the ones on the freeway. Where are they all? There was never a flight 77 and that is the reason for the hundreds of absent witnesses. Believe me, a Boeing 757 flying off course and that close to the ground would have turned up hundreds of civilian witnesses. The only witnesses so far are reporters and government workers. I see something wrong with that.

In the court room, the prosecuting attorney asks the witness testifying under oath if he saw the same white Ford Bronco that every one else saw at the crime scene (the lawyer is making up every one else). The witness said no- I never saw a white bronco. Now the witness thinks there was a white bronco at the crime scene because the lawyer said every one else saw it. No one else saw a white Bronco. The prosecuting attorney was trying to fool the witness. Flight 77 never existed.

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Labels: 911, Gerard Holmgren, Pentagon witnessess