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The Five Sided Fantasy Island -- an analysis of the Pentagon explosion

Rebutting "Pentagon 9/11 Getting the Facts Straight"

Eyewitnesses and the Plane-Bomb Theory

· The Pentagon crash took place at the site of the 'renovation' effort which was ostensibly 5 days from re-occupancy. Of course, we have no idea what the renovators were really up to there, for all we know they could have been building a "Hollywood fake front".  (Note the shoddy workmanship of the so-called "limestone" facade above, and the peculiar sheet-metal siding underneath this "limestone" veneer.  Or could this be fire or impact damage??  Also note the many small black specks, which appear to be some sort of explosive residue -- as is more clearly visible in the original high-resolution version of the photograph.) Many more of these rectangular sheet metal pieces are visible in other photographs, although it's not clear whether they are in fact siding from underneath the limestone, or whether they come from the roof of the building, or whether some pieces might have been in use as temporary walkways around the renovation. 

The devil's advocate might argue that the "explosive residue" is some sort of botanical or fungal infestation.

High-quality  limestone work a few yards further away. (Source: http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/index.jsp photo 4418.)

A further indication of explosive residue is that there were reports of the smell of cordite; for example, this from Don Perkal:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2001/09/19perkal.html

The airliner crashed between two and three hundred feet from my office in the Pentagon, just around a corner from where I work. I'm the deputy General Counsel, Washington Headquarters Services, Office of the Secretary of Defense. A slightly different calibration and I have no doubt I wouldn't be sending this to you. My colleagues felt the impact, which reminded them of an earthquake. People shouted in the corridor outside that a bomb had gone off upstairs on the main concourse in the building. No alarms sounded. I walked to my office, shut down my computer, and headed out. Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere.

Gilah Goldsmith also smelled cordite:

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010921/usp14a.shtml

When she got to her office sometime around 9, she phoned her daughter and heard "an incredible whomp noise."

It didn't seem so unusual since her office is situated near a narrow area where trucks sometimes come by and hit the wall.

Moments later, her husband called. He'd received a phone call from a friend in Cleveland, saying there had been an explosion at the Pentagon.

Goldsmith was told to evacuate.

"We saw a huge black cloud of smoke," she said, saying it smelled like cordite, or gun smoke.

As pointed out by Brian Salter, the chordite smells could be accounted for by explosives planted in the building which were detonated at about the same time as the 757 crash.  

The Knight of the Smoking Chimp 

The British firm "Asset Management and Engineering Consultancy" (AMEC) "had just completed a project to strengthen and renovate a section of the Pentagon, Wedge 1, when the building was attacked" and "was paid some $752 million for its 2-year renovation and clean-up at the Pentagon", according to Christopher Bollyn of the American Free Press:

http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_16_02/Foreign_Firms_Charged_/foreign_firms_charged_.html

AMEC claims to have completed Wedge One work the Friday before 9/11. They had only been contracted to perform the renovation work for Wedge One, the remainder being bid out to an American firm using a more efficient contract process. After 9/11, AMEC was retained to perform the cleanup as well as being one of three foreign owned firms out of four to perform WTC cleanup. AMEC also ran the barge operation to move debris to Fresh Kills. These WTC contracts were awarded by Rudolph Giuliani "before the dust had settled on Sept. 11" according to Bollyn.

AMEC's CEO is Sir Peter Mason, and they run offshore oil platforms for Shell and BP. BP is now the owner of ARCO of which George HW Bush (Sr.) was a major shareholder. AMEC's British partner in the WTC cleanup was Bovis Lend Lease, run by Sir Frank Lampl, a Czechoslovakian immigrant to Britain, who somehow managed to become a British knight according to Bollyn's report.  

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was also knighted by Qeen Elizabeth II on Feb. 13, 2002, perhaps in recognition of all his services during the World Trade Center attacks and their aftermath.

We've named the participants in the drama, but have failed to conclusively prove any wrongdoing...

Red Fire Truck Riders of the Quantum Stage? 

· The permanently assigned red helipad fire truck which was claimed to be severely burnt during the initial impact fireball was seen to be moved around into various locations with respect to the column 1 wedge abutment doorway to the left of the impact zone.  It was not mistaken for a different red fire truck as no other damaged fire truck can be seen between the 'moving' fire truck and the helipad garage further to the left.

Minutes later, Wallace and his buddy Mark Skipper had just finished checking the truck's gauges and valves when Wallace looked up and saw the gleam of a silver jetliner. But it was flying too low. Maybe less than 25 feet off the ground. And it was heading right at them. "I yelled to Mark, 'Let's go!" He bolted to the right and a second later felt the searing heat of the blast behind him. He hit the ground and rolled under a parked van as a fireball engulfed his fire truck, then blew through the nearby firehouse. 

Wallace got back to his feet, saw Skipper had escaped, then rushed to the scorched fire truck to see if it would run. He imagined being part of a scene from a "Mad Max" movie, riding a half-blasted contraption to the rescue. Fueled by adrenaline, he turned the key. The engine turned, but the truck only belched fire. It wouldn't move. So Wallace switched on the truck's radio. "Foam 61 to Fort Myer," he said. "We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK. The airplane was a 757 Boeing or a 320 Airbus." Although he was still frantic and shaken, Wallace's report turned out to be painfully accurate.

Brad M. argued that, strangely enough, this fire-belching, half-blasted Mad Max contraption seems to have gotten around quite nicely.  While foreshortening of perspective in telephoto views might be responsible for some of the apparent movement of the truck, we do not believe this effect is sufficient to fully explain the movement.  

Which proves...what??

Other Interesting Anomalies 

· Column 19AA on the second floor is deflected to the right.  Why? Perhaps a local explosion...

· The impact also occurred at such a lateral location as to take perfect advantage of the expansion joint between different building sections at column 11 (the double columns - one for each side of the joint). This made the later collapse more plausible as weight was not able to transfer into the columns to the east of the expansion joint. Having the impact zone collapse conveniently limited the area that could be photographed in the coming days.

Or maybe the crash coincidentally occurred near an expansion joint.

· Note the presence of numerous rectangular sheets of metal strewn across the area in font of the impact zone and up onto the rooftops of the D and C rings. These relatively pristine metal sheets appear to be roughly the size of the various facade masonry pieces.

· Firemen stated that the most externally observed fire was coming from the contractor's trailer. 

http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Belvoir_firefighter_among_first_responders.html

"We were one of the very first ones there," Dodge said, "aside from the crew that was already positioned at the Pentagon. So, I was doing a quick size-up of the situation to see all that was taking place."
<snip>
"At that point, I took the line and concentrated on getting out the fires on the outside of the building," Dodge said. "There were two vehicles burning, along with a construction trailer
— we didn't know at the time, but that trailer was the main producer of smoke on the outside of the building —
and the foam truck [Myer's helipad crash unit]."
Dodge he had learned from the fire chief who responded to the the Murrah Federal Building bombing that outside fires there prevented emergency teams from getting to the heart of the building.
"Once I had [the outside fires] pretty much knocked down, then I went into the area of the first floor where all the fire was, and just trying to get on that," he said. "It was something to fight with, until we got the other foam trucks there."
He said the foam units got there and concentrated on the area of the construction trailer, which was producing some severe fires and subsequent mini explosions due to highly flammable chemicals in it, then on the actual point of impact from the hijacked aircraft. "Luckily the chemical containers were caged," he said. "Otherwise the fires would have been worse.

Perhaps combustible paints, fuels or welding materials were stored in the trailers.

· Odd metal frames were sticking up in front of the impact zone before the collapse, some of them appeared to have gas bottles mounted inside of them.  Might be firefighting equipment.

· If a smaller impact plane and missile was used then significant externally observed lateral damage had to be fabricated.  If the missile failed  to strike the building, or if incompatible debris were revealed, there would be significant spin problems for the perpetrators.

· The flight mission as detailed in the 'official story' is also highly risky and prone to failure. 

· Because of the prior two items, 100% demolition and pyrotechnics becomes preferable. Mistakes can be corrected.

· A green SUV located very close to the crash site, was shown with its green paint intact in several photographs taken during the initial fire.  Yet it was inexplicably reduced to a burned-out cinder-colored hulk much later on, after the bulk of the fire had died down.  What happened? Why did this SUV catch on fire?  For that matter, how did the SUV survive the initial onslaught of the airplane crash, in such excellent condition?  Perhaps it was parked in that location after the crash.

· The military had recently completed an  Emergency Response Plan covering the case of an airplane impact with the Pentagon.

·Operation Vigilant Guardian was concurrently underway during 9/11 covering the case of airliners being flown into buildings. This is claimed by some to be a reason that the NORAD intercept command chain in the Pentagon's National Military Command Center was slow in responding, as they were confused by the similarity of the counter-terror exercise with reality. Or perhaps more likely, the training exercise served simply to provide cover. In any case, this and the prior item belie the government claim that no one had thought of planes being crashed into buildings prior to this time.

· FAA radar data is, like the black box data, 'unavailable' to the public to confirm any version of the flight trajectory, or the presence of other aircraft in the area.

· Victim and hijacker DNA is identified despite claims that much of the 757's aluminum has been consumed in the ensuing fire. Claims of extremely hot fire were probably spurious, so DNA could have survived.

· And early on it was claimed that the 757's nose had been responsible for the large 'punchout' in the back of the C ring (despite the fire consuming the aluminum).  Sarah Roberts showed a photograph of something purporting to be from the nose cone, found at this punchout.  However, this is in total disagreement with Sugano and Purdue. After 300 feet of travel through the floor slab and all the columns, and the facade the material that had traveled that far should be shredded and diffracted considerably over a much wider area such as not to produce a hole this specific size and shape. A nice egress hole has psychological import:  this evidence eliminates the need to show damage to each and every wall of rings E, D, and C.  

The nature of this "punch out" hole may have been completely misreported.  It might have been cut for firefighter's entry, rather than punched by remnants of the aircraft.

Our choice to study the Pentagon was based on the hope that we would find the "smoking gun", the unanswerable argument  that would persuade any open-minded person that the US government was complicit in 9-11.  We don't feel that we succeeded in that goal, and certainly we did not find a conclusive "sound byte" or "elevator pitch" that is as easy to explain and understand as  the insider trading scandal, the Air Force failure to respond, the black ops intelligence connections of the "terrorist" patsies, the forewarnings from governments around the world, or the appearance of controlled demolition at WTC Building Seven.   We do believe that we have put together a web of evidence that, taken all together, represents sufficient "probable cause" to call for a criminal investigation, and sufficient "preponderance of evidence" to call for a conviction in the court of public opinion.

Many other otherwise quite plausible aspects of the events of 9-11, including not only the Pentagon attack but also the possibility of explosive demolition of the WTC towers, or remote control of aircraft, fall into the category of "Stranger than Fiction" for the less contextually discerning, casual, and / or more trusting citizen.  Whether or not these possibilities are worth discussing, depends to some extent on the audience, their openness to radical ideas, and the standard of proof they are likely to apply.  Some cautious individuals would say that when it comes to ideas like the use of explosive charges at WTC 1 & 2 -- or a Hollywood special effects display at the Pentagon -- that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof".  Others will argue, with equal validity,  that in the wider context of the entire 9/11 milieu, the subsequent War on Terror, and the much wider war pretext for profiteering aspect, that a preponderance of combined evidence should be sufficient.  

We do hope that we have given our readers an appreciation of the subtle complexities of this case -- and that the possibility of a pyrotechnic "magic show" at the Pentagon will be increasingly recognized by 911 skeptics.  

http://www.public-action.com/rescue.html discussion of Office of Naval Intelligence -- gives "Washington Post, January 20, 2002, front page of Style section" as the source of the information that people from this office were killed.

http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/5425/index.php  Gerard Holmgren's discovery that a Bureau of Transportation Statistics database didn't include Flight 77.

http://www.rense.com/general32/phot.htm Sarah Roberts discusses claim of a nose-cone

http://www.achsah.com/pent.html List of Pentagon casualties

http://www.defendamerica.mil/remember/remember_a.html biographical info on Pentagon casualties

http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID43/5415.html#1 discussion forum on Barbara Olson call -- especially see Post #23 for many references.
 

UPDATE (rev. 2.1, 10/12/04 -- version 2.0 was originally posted 3/12/04):

Based on information at http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coincidence.html  (an article by Jon Rappoport), we had previously claimed that Capt. Burlingame, the pilot of flight 77, was an author of the Pentagon emergency response plan.  According to Rappoport, this report can be traced back to a Washington Post article of 9/16/2001.  However, apparently the Post did not make any such claim; see

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38407-2001Sep15

The prosaic poetry of what passes for workaday life, all around, even in places and among people accustomed to danger. Sheila Moody had reported for her first day on the job as an accountant at the Pentagon, off the Metro and inside her office -- first floor, E-Ring, Corridor 4, Room 472 -- before sunrise so that she could fill out reams of administrative paperwork. Matt Rosenberg was down on Corridor 8, a medic at the health clinic in the massive military headquarters, grateful for an uninterrupted hour in which he could study a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place. At Dulles Airport, Capt. Charles Burlingame, who had been a Navy F-4 pilot and once worked on anti-terrorism strategies in the Pentagon, was steering his 757, American Airlines Flight 77, down the runway for the long flight to Los Angeles. Plenty of empty seats in his cabin, like several other cross-country trips at that hour.