Doubletree Video Released, Does Not Show Plane
Can't find the video yet on YouTube, so I'm linking to a post at 9-11 Blogger that has the video. From what I can see, there is no surprise that it does not show the plane; it appears that there is an elevated highway between the hotel and the Pentagon, so that you cannot even see the Pentagon itself.
posted by Pat @ 8:39 AM
113 comments
113 Comments:
Like hey man, like the plane flew UNDER the Pentagon.
Solid. Bulletproof.
Man, anybody want to buy a set of coasters that say Loose Change on them?
right up there with me apologizing for the jack blood bernard brown and boxcutters episode.
For some more entertaining video, go here: 9/11 Truth: The Moles, the Patsies, & State-Sponsored Terror
by Webster Tarpley
Dog Town,
I don't know what group of people there exists that said a video show was going to show a missile.
I think that video's release would be blocked as a state secret, if it exists.
I'm not let down or surprised in the least of what I see except to say that after five years I would have thought that could a have created a fake video to show the plane by now.
bogglehead,
As a general skeptic, I don't grant that status (of being authentic) to any video that I've ever seen of 9/11.
Nor do I jump to any conclusion that any of them are fake.
I would want a profession forensic opinion to be rendered before going to one side or the other.
I realize this would not settle the issue (of real / fake), but I think it's a prudent start.
- PS
BG, try for once to stay on topic!
This video is such a yawn I didn't realise that it would warrant much discussion.
chf,
If the FBI would release the crash scene investigation evidence, or let the NTSB release it, there's a good chance we could find out for sure what that object (strut?) was in the picture.
chf,
I gave a complete answer to that question.
Separately, you only disappear from my radar when you refuse to behave in a civilized manner, mainly hurling unrelated abuse my way.
chf,
My take is NOT I just want the videos.
My take is I want the whole crash scene investigation.
chf,
questions are never abuse.
insults are.
cfh,
I gave you my only and final answer in the previous comments.
If you are unhappy with that, if you say I'm being non-responsive, fine.
At this point, you free to continue to bring it up as often as you want, but it seems like a formula to piss me off and bore everyone else, unless people are here to enjoy seeing you piss me (or others) off.
chf said...
My take is I want the whole crash scene investigation.
I'm talking about the investigation that the FBI led, that the NTSB participated in, that has not been released.
Since we are talking about the Pentagon here, I was referring to the Pentagon. I would ask for the FBI Crash scene investigations at the other sites as well.
cfh,
Answering your question by repeating myself in context here
Boiled down, my answer is: I simply want the FBI to function according to it's charge, and Congress to function according to it's oversight responsibilities.
CHF said...
I'm talking about the investigation that the FBI led, that the NTSB participated in, that has not been released.
OK. Let's say the investigation is released.
It says "Flight 77 hit the Pentagon."
Would you accept it?
Yes.
CHF said...
I'm talking about the investigation that the FBI led, that the NTSB participated in, that has not been released.
OK. Let's say the investigation is released.
It says "Flight 77 hit the Pentagon."
Would you accept it?
Yes.
cfg,
Perhaps you are aware of something that I'm not. Has any comprehensive documentation been released on the Pentagon crash that says they identified any part with a id (serial/ maintenence) number the ties the wreckage to the plane.
My understanding is they said things mostly "vaporized"
I agree that there are pictures (like the strut) that you pointed out. However, has any official body ever given the most basic accounting of what major parts were found and identified?
chf,
sorry didn't mean to type cfg.
Murdervillage said...
bg, why in the world would the FBI "release the crash scene evidence" to the public?
Unless there are state secrets or security considerations, my understanding is a report is usually released to the public, whether the crash is accidental or a crime.
My interesting is in receving a comprehendsive report (from the FBI or the NTSB), that is at least as specific as the one that was release for EgyptAir Flight 990
Boeing 767-366ER, SU-GAP
60 Miles South of Nantucket, Massachusetts
October 31, 1999
Don't tell me this was different, because it wasn't an accident. The conclusion was that it was not an accident.
BG said...
"I would want a profession forensic opinion to be rendered before going to one side or the other."
Riiiight. So now you trust professional authority? How come you don't trust the hundreds of professionals who have done work on the tragedy of that day?
CHF said...
So now he babbles about EgyptAir 990.
You said you'd trust the FBI. The FBI says Flight 77 was hijacked and hit the Pentagon.
That's ball game, BG.
The question that was asked of me was if I'd trust the FBI after they released a true accident investigation, and I will.
BG they concluded it wasnt an accident while they were studying it. They knew right from the start that the plane that hit the pentagon wasnt an accident, so the FBI was in control from the start.
Jay said...
BG they concluded it wasnt an accident while they were studying it. They knew right from the start that the plane that hit the pentagon wasnt an accident, so the FBI was in control from the start.
I don't care who is in control. I just watch a reasonable accounting released.
Why would the FBI give out classiefied information, just because some loonies dont believe the official story.
Jay,
What needs to be classified and why?
Ask the FBI.
CHF said...
BG, exactly what is your standard of proof?
It would be nice to believe the govt story. If I could see the barest minimum of official evidence that the strut found, which you tell me is the strut that matches the airliner that crashed, that would be a nice start.
To my knowledge absolutely no detail, which takes a picture and matches it to a planes part (not just some skin in front of the Pentagon) has been released that allows for any match to be made like that.
I guess the flight data recorder is not enough evidence for good old BG. Or the plane debris, or the eye witnesses. No he wants a nice picture from the plane passing by at 450 MPH just before it hit the Pentagon.
CHF said...
As if the FBI should release every last detail just because some paranoid internet loonies didn't get enough attention as children...
As I've made clear before, my expectation is that Congress would exercise oversight and demand it.
And short of Congress acting, I do recognize that the crime won't be solved.
That does stop me from being outraged and expecting that other decent American should be outraged as well.
Jay,
About the Flight Recorder:
Pandora's Black Box - Analysis of American 77 Flight Data Recorder
Maybe Congress is part of the conspiracy to...
Jay said...
Maybe Congress is part of the conspiracy to...
You know, Jay, if you were sent anthrax , don't your think you might consider your steps carefully?
If you saw you colleague Wellstone murdered in a plane crash, might you have some interesting resources to provide for self-preservation?
Thx for that link BG, but i think someone already debunked that over here, someone that actually works with FDR's
i was looking some more on the site and i found a link.
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20020123X00105&key=1
The Safety Board did not determine the probable cause and does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and any material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI.
So like i said, ask the FBI for information about flight 77.
Lol, why would i recieve a Anthrax letter. Its not like i am really famous or important.
I dont understand that second question.
jay,
I haven't been disputing that the FBI was in control and the agency that would be able to decide what to release.
Does it make sense to you that the FBI should have a lesser burden to release crash investigation detail than the NTSB in the case of an accident?
It probably does.
Wellstone:
You favorite guy Fetzer at Youtube
the NTSB does give a registration number of the airplane that hit the Pentagon as u can see on that page i linked.
Aircraft: Boeing 757-200, registration: N644AA
So theres your answer. It really was a boeing 757-200 that hit the pentagon.
Jay said...
the NTSB does give a registration number of the airplane that hit the Pentagon as u can see on that page i linked.
Aircraft: Boeing 757-200, registration: N644AA
So theres your answer. It really was a boeing 757-200 that hit the pentagon
Did they say they were able to piece that number together from the wreckage of the plane?
I'm guessing they did. But i bet you are not satisfied with this are you?
It probably does.
"Probably" is a weak argument.
If u are not satisfied, u are actually saying the NTSB is also involved.
Here is more information on that registration number.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20010911-3
To anyone with reason, it's clear that you are getting absolutely routed here, bg. I would suggest that it's time to throw in the towel and move on for you.
Or here
http://aviation-safety.net/photos/displayphoto.php?id=20010911-3&vnr=1&kind=PC
Or here.
http://www.ntsb.gov/info/autopilot_AA77_UA93_study.pdf
Or here.
http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b757-24602.htm
Or here.
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09112001%AE=N644AA&airline=American+Airlines+
But by all means, keep saying it wasnt flight 77 that hit the Pentagon. Just proves you really don't give a shit about what erally happened.
Jay,
I'm looking.
Are saying that any of the links that you are offering provides the physical evidence trail, and the evidence from the wreckage at the Pentagon to the id of the Airliner?
Jeez. leave cyberspace for a few hours and you come back to 70 new posts...no time to read them all.
My take on the video.
1. Seems authentic.
2. Not a whole lot of new knowledge, except I see no "flyover" plane before or after the explosion.
3. There is a fast moving object, not the truck on the highway, that does travel right up to where the explosion occurs, and does not move beyond that point once the explosion occurs. Could be the tail of the plane...but just speculation as the quality of the version I saw is not good.
TAM
Just read the NTSB report then u moron.
But i guess they are in on it to.
http://www.ntsb.gov/info/autopilot_AA77_UA93_study.pdf
They got this from the FDR they found at the pentagon.
I'll keep trying, but none of the links are working. You are wasting my time if you don't show me a picture of a reconstructed part that ids the part as part of that aircraft.
Jay,
I'm not saying it wasn't Flight 77. I simply want a modicum of proof.
As a general skeptic, I don't grant that status (of being authentic) to any video that I've ever seen of 9/11.
Boggle, that isn't skepticism. That's pseudoskepticism.
As far as I can tell, there is no picture or other evidence that ties any of the wreckage to Flight 77.
If u want proof, write a nice letter to the FBI, maybe u get lucky.
Jeez, i never met anyone so stubborn in my entire life.
Awww, poor shawn is on the list now to for some reason.
List of IDs to ignore at SLC Blog:
stevew
chf
jay
crungy
shawn
THE FDR IS TIED TO THE ACCIDENT U PIECE OF DUNK!
Heres one final document that states the NTSB found the FDR on the site.
Right on Page 1
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc02.pdf
If only u took the time to actually look some stuff up, instead of wasting our time over here, u might have actually found this yourself.
Jay chk these, I am on ignore so
bg will not see these
Bg still wants an investigation but still fails to sat who he thinks would do it.
Dumb questions are or questions that have been answered are.
Any fake vids were put forth by the whaks
There is a whole data base of pent piks many were used at the Zacarus M trial, dought full they could have been faked
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1
http://debris.0catch.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDdjLQkUV8&mode=related&search=
You guys are wasting your time (unless you have access to material that the FBI has not released).
The fact is that the FBI, nor the NTSB, nor the 9/11 Commission released any record that says:
We found this part, identifiable as a part of Flight 77, and this is how we can make that claim confidently.
An incredibly thorough examination of the Pentagon canards and the silliness regarding "Operation Northwoods." The rationalist team has a new star.
The good guys are winning; the liars are in full retreat.
http://911debunker.livejournal.com/
THE FDR IS TIED TO THE ACCIDENT U PIECE OF DUNK!
Like hey man, FDR, like wasn't he involved in the cover up of Pearl Harbor?
Man, it's bigger than I thought!
Jay,
THE FDR IS TIED TO THE ACCIDENT U PIECE OF DUNK!
Is there any report of where the FDR was found, exactly. When?
Ok,
I found the report of the black boxes being recovered here
BG u really are a moronic idiot.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc02.pdf
The NTSB says they recovered the FDR from the crime scene.
How many times are u going to ignore this. Unless u are saying the NTSB is part of the conspiracy.
So, do u believe now that the plane that struck the pentagon was flight 77?
After u read that article u linked to.
I'm reading here, and still skeptical.
SteveW asked me to paste these links BG, where u can see lots of pictures from the crash site.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread79655/pg1
http://debris.0catch.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDdjLQkUV8&mode=related&search=
But i guess they wont satisfy you, since they dont show that it was actually from flight 77.
Jay,
Do you know why the 9/11 Commission and Performance Study Reported a speed of over 500 mph at impact, yet the Flight Data recorder data released says the speed was less that 400 mph?
Dude you really lost it.
I am looking at that site you linked.
A CNN Reporter at the scene states that there is no evidence that a 757 hit the Pentagon. Watch this video clip:
CNN: 'No evidence of a plane crashing anywhere near the Pentagon'
Well it didn't crash anywwhere near, thats true, BECAUSE IT CRASHED INTO THE PENTAGON!
Look at this from the skeptics perspective.
If flight 77 didn't crash at the Pentagon, the flight recorder found was either
a) was planted
b) was from the aircraft that did crash there
You guys are wasting your time (unless you have access to material that the FBI has not released).
BG, I'd say anyone who can't prescribe strong psychoactive drugs is wasting their time trying to deal with you.
Jay said...
Dude you really lost it.
I am looking at that site you linked.
A CNN Reporter at the scene states that there is no evidence that a 757 hit the Pentagon. Watch this video clip:
CNN: 'No evidence of a plane crashing anywhere near the Pentagon'
Well it didn't crash anywwhere near, thats true, BECAUSE IT CRASHED INTO THE PENTAGON!
I don't trust CNN anyway, so I'll exclude that evidence. How's that.
Wow bg is such a baby.
I guess I should apologize for being rational and using logic.
Skeptics view??
Dude even skeptics know when they are wrong.
U just have a very big plate in front of your nose to actually see you are wrong. But i guess its kinda hard to aknowladge that you are wrong.
I don't trust CNN anyway, so I'll exclude that evidence. How's that.
Not how it works. You can't just dismiss evidence based on its source. If it's the only source with said "evidence" it's open to question, but CNN isn't the only one "claiming" 77 hit the Pentagon.
I know you can't read this since you're a big baby, but I'll throw it out there anyway.
Jay
Pictures are available online. It was evidence in the Moussaoui trial (along with a few hundred other photos and documents which stand to refute the CTists of the world)
Passenger and Crew Remains Recovered at Pentagon Crash Site
In addition to the numerous eyewitness accounts, the remains of the passengers and crew onboard American Airlines flight 77 were recovered from the Pentagon crash site. A team of more than 100 forensic specialists and others identified 184 of the 189 people who died in the Pentagon attack (125 from the Pentagon and 64 onboard American Airlines flight 77).
All but one of the passengers onboard American Airlines flight 77 was positively identified
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61202-2001Nov20?language=printer
as a match with DNA samples provided by the families of the crash victims. These positive forensic identifications provide irrefutable proof that American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. In addition, rescue and recovery personnel at the Pentagon reported seeing the bodies of airline passengers. The September 14, 2001 edition of USA Today reported, "When [Army Sergeant Mark] Williams discovered the scorched bodies of several airline passengers, they were still strapped in their seats."
Lol i never seen such bulllshit on one site as the one u linked to BG. But its time for me to put you on my "ignore list" since its obvious u don't listen to reason. You just keep holding on to that stupid believe that no plane hit the Pentagon.
So keep denying the facts u moron and keep up the funny stuff on here so others can have a good laugh. Because you are nothing but a fucking joke.
http://www.rcfp.org/moussaoui/
lots of ividence there btw.
Thx SteveW, but you are wasting you time with BG, just like i wasted my time. He must be from some mental asylum or something, because theres no reasoning with this guy.
shawn said...
I don't trust CNN anyway, so I'll exclude that evidence. How's that.
Not how it works. You can't just dismiss evidence based on its source. If it's the only source with said "evidence" it's open to question, but CNN isn't the only one "claiming" 77 hit the Pentagon.
I know you can't read this since you're a big baby, but I'll throw it out there anyway.
1:50 PM
I was joking. What J. Mcintyre said doesn't mean anything one way or the other.
In the larger context he (McIntyre) has said that he did not mean to imply that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon. I'm granting that point.
jay, stevew, whoever
The huge number of unanswered questions and dubious answers we've been given point toward lies and cover up.
The huge number of unanswered questions and dubious answers we've been given point toward lies and cover up.
No, they point towards mental illness.
Get help.
I'm serious.
To bad BG's parent forgot about birth control...
Jay as usual BG's brain washing will not let him see the truth
Why does he just ask stupid questions and ignore the truth.
Review the facts
Size of 757 matches the initial size of hole in the building - somewhere between 13 and 16 feet (757 is 13 feet wide/high)
Rims found in building match those of a 757
Small turbine engine outside is an APU
Same engine has been clearly stated to not match a Global Hawk engine
Blue seats from 757 laying on ground in photos
Part of "American" fuselage logo visible in more than 1 photo
Engine parts photographed inside match a Rolls-Royce RB211
Structural components photographed in wreckage match Boeing paint primer schemes
Large deisel generator in front of building hit by a large heavy object
Large deisel engine outside is spun towards the building - could not be result of bomb blast or missile explosion
Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner
Multiple eye witnesses say they saw an airliner hit the Pentagon
60+ bodies, matching the passenger list and flight crew roster identified and returned to families from Pentagon wreckage
BTW did you like the animation?
To bad u can't really put someone on an ignore list with Blogger, or is there a way?
Yeh he can't explain what happened to the passengers that were never seen again or heard from.
Well that makes sence Dylan, so BG might be right after all...
I wonder if BG saw Frank Greenings reply to that report he gave.
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=27396589&postID=116507625213847198
Yeh he can't explain what happened to the passengers that were never seen again or heard from.
...and whose DNA and remains were found at the scene.
I hate to appear unsophisticated, but where exactly are the errors in NIST's FAQ guide?
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
(NIST NCSTAR throughout this document refers to one of the 43 volumes that comprise NIST’s final report on the WTC Towers issued in October 2005. All sections of the report listed in this document are available at http://wtc.nist.gov.)
1. If the World Trade Center (WTC) towers were designed to withstand multiple impacts by Boeing 707 aircraft, why did the impact of individual 767s cause so much damage?
As stated in Section 5.3.2 of NIST NCSTAR 1, a document from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) indicated that the impact of a [single, not multiple] Boeing 707 aircraft was analyzed during the design stage of the WTC towers. However, NIST investigators were unable to locate any documentation of the criteria and method used in the impact analysis and, therefore, were unable to verify the assertion that “… such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building.…”
The capability to conduct rigorous simulations of the aircraft impact, the growth and spread of the ensuing fires, and the effects of fires on the structure is a recent development. Since the approach to structural modeling was developed for the NIST WTC investigation, the technical capability available to the PANYNJ and its consultants and contactors to perform such analyses in the 1960s would have been quite limited in comparison to the capabilities brought to bear in the NIST investigation.
The damage from the impact of a Boeing 767 aircraft (which is about 20 percent bigger than a Boeing 707) into each tower is well documented in NCSTAR 1-2. The massive damage was caused by the large mass of the aircraft, their high speed and momentum, which severed the relatively light steel of the exterior columns on the impact floors. The results of the NIST impact analyses matched well with observations (from photos and videos and analysis of recovered WTC steel) of exterior damage and of the amount and location of debris exiting from the buildings. This agreement supports the premise that the structural damage to the towers was due to the aircraft impact and not to any alternative forces.
2. Why did NIST not consider a “controlled demolition” hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation as it did for the “pancake theory” hypothesis? A key critique of NIST’s work lies in the complete lack of analysis supporting a “progressive collapse” after the point of collapse initiation and the lack of consideration given to a controlled demolition hypothesis.
NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, http://wtc.nist.gov. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers.
Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.
Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence—as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse—support this sequence for each tower.
NIST’s findings do not support the “pancake theory” of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system—that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns—consisted of a grid of steel “trusses” integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon.
Diagram of Composite WTC Floor System
NIST’s findings also do not support the “controlled demolition” theory since there is conclusive evidence that:
the collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else, and;
the time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by (1) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and (2) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors.
Video evidence also showed unambiguously that the collapse progressed from the top to the bottom, and there was no evidence (collected by NIST, or by the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors as the top building sections (including and above the 98th floor in WTC 1 and the 82nd floor in WTC 2) began their downward movement upon collapse initiation.
In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view.
3. How could the WTC towers have collapsed without a controlled demolition since no steel-frame, high-rise buildings have ever before or since been brought down due to fires? Temperatures due to fire don't get hot enough for buildings to collapse.
The collapse of the WTC towers was not caused either by a conventional building fire or even solely by the concurrent multi-floor fires that day. Instead, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large, jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires weakened the now susceptible structural steel. No building in the United States has ever been subjected to the massive structural damage and concurrent multi-floor fires that the towers experienced on Sept. 11, 2001.
4. Weren't the puffs of smoke that were seen, as the collapse of each WTC tower starts, evidence of controlled demolition explosions?
No. As stated in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, the falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it—much like the action of a piston—forcing smoke and debris out the windows as the stories below failed sequentially.
These puffs were observed at many locations as the towers collapsed. In all cases, they had the appearance of jets of gas being pushed from the building through windows or between columns on the mechanical floors. Such jets are expected since the air inside the building is compressed as the tower falls and must flow somewhere as the pressure builds. It is significant that similar “puffs” were observed numerous times on the fire floors in both towers prior to their collapses, perhaps due to falling walls or portions of a floor. Puffs from WTC 1 were even observed when WTC 2 was struck by the aircraft. These observations confirm that even minor overpressures were transmitted through the towers and forced smoke and debris from the building.
5. Why were two distinct spikes—one for each tower—seen in seismic records before the towers collapsed? Isn't this indicative of an explosion occurring in each tower?
The seismic spikes for the collapse of the WTC Towers are the result of debris from the collapsing towers impacting the ground. The spikes began approximately 10 seconds after the times for the start of each building’s collapse and continued for approximately 15 seconds. There were no seismic signals that occurred prior to the initiation of the collapse of either tower. The seismic record contains no evidence that would indicate explosions occurring prior to the collapse of the towers.
6. How could the WTC towers collapse in only 11 seconds (WTC 1) and 9 seconds (WTC 2)—speeds that approximate that of a ball dropped from similar height in a vacuum (with no air resistance)?
NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. These elapsed times were based on: (1) precise timing of the initiation of collapse from video evidence, and (2) ground motion (seismic) signals recorded at Palisades, N.Y., that also were precisely time-calibrated for wave transmission times from lower Manhattan (see NCSTAR 1-5A).
As documented in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, these collapse times show that:
“… the structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass at and above the impact zone. The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that energy through energy of deformation.
Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos. As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass.”
In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass.
From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely.
7a. How could the steel have melted if the fires in the WTC towers weren’t hot enough to do so?
OR
7b. Since the melting point of steel is about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of jet fuel fires does not exceed 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) certified the steel in the WTC towers to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours, how could fires have impacted the steel enough to bring down the WTC towers?
In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, Figure 6-36).
However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.
UL did not certify any steel as suggested. In fact, in U.S. practice, steel is not certified at all; rather structural assemblies are tested for their fire resistance rating in accordance with a standard procedure such as ASTM E 119 (see NCSTAR 1-6B). That the steel was “certified ... to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours” is simply not true.
8. We know that the sprinkler systems were activated because survivors reported water in the stairwells. If the sprinklers were working, how could there be a 'raging inferno' in the WTC towers?
Both the NIST calculations and interviews with survivors and firefighters indicated that the aircraft impacts severed the water pipes that carried the water to the sprinkler systems. The sprinklers were not operating on the principal fire floors.
However, there were ample sources of the water in the stairwells. The water pipes ran vertically within the stairwells. Moreover, there would have been copious water from the broken restroom supply lines and from the water tanks that supplied the initial water for the sprinklers. Thus, it is not surprising that evacuating occupants encountered a lot of water.
Even if the automatic sprinklers had been operational, the sprinkler systems—which were installed in accordance with the prevailing fire safety code—were designed to suppress a fire that covered as much as 1,500 square feet on a given floor. This amount of coverage is capable of controlling almost all fires that are likely to occur in an office building. On Sept. 11, 2001, the jet-fuel ignited fires quickly spread over most of the 40,000 square feet on several floors in each tower. This created infernos that could not have been suppressed even by an undamaged sprinkler system, much less one that had been appreciably degraded.
9. If thick black smoke is characteristic of an oxygen-starved, lower temperature, less intense fire, why was thick black smoke exiting the WTC towers when the fires inside were supposed to be extremely hot?
Nearly all indoor large fires, including those of the principal combustibles in the WTC towers, produce large quantities of optically thick, dark smoke. This is because, at the locations where the actual burning is taking place, the oxygen is severely depleted and the combustibles are not completely oxidized to colorless carbon dioxide and water.
The visible part of fire smoke consists of small soot particles whose formation is favored by the incomplete combustion associated with oxygen-depleted burning. Once formed, the soot from the tower fires was rapidly pushed away from the fires into less hot regions of the building or directly to broken windows and breaks in the building exterior. At these lower temperatures, the soot could no longer burn away. Thus, people saw the thick dark smoke characteristic of burning under oxygen-depleted conditions.
10. Why were people seen in the gaps left by the plane impacts if the heat from the fires behind them was so excessive?
NIST believes that the persons seen were away from any strong heat source and most likely in an area that at the time was a point where the air for combustion was being drawn into the building to support the fires. Note that people were observed only in the openings in WTC 1.
According to the International Standard ISO/TS 13571, people will be in severe pain within seconds if they are near the radiant heat level generated by a large fire. Thus, it is not surprising that none of the photographs show a person standing in those gaps where there also was a sizable fire.
The fire behavior following the aircraft impacts is described in NIST NCSTAR 1-5A. In general, there was little sustained fire near the area where the aircraft hit the towers. Immediately upon impact of the aircraft, large fireballs from the atomized jet fuel consumed all the local oxygen. (This in itself would have made those locations rapidly unlivable.) The fireballs receded quickly and were followed by fires that grew inside the tower where there was a combination of combustible material, air and an ignition source. Little combustible material remained near the aircraft entry gashes since the aircraft "bulldozed" much of it toward the interior of the building. Also, some of the contents fell through the breaks in the floor to the stories below.
Therefore, the people observed in these openings must have survived the aircraft impact and moved—once the fireballs had dissipated—to the openings where the temperatures were cooler and the air was clearer than in the building interior.
11. Why do some photographs show a yellow stream of molten metal pouring down the side of WTC2 that NIST claims was aluminum from the crashed plane although aluminum burns with a white glow?
NIST reported (NCSTAR 1-5A) that just before 9:52 a.m., a bright spot appeared at the top of a window on the 80th floor of WTC 2, four windows removed from the east edge on the north face, followed by the flow of a glowing liquid. This flow lasted approximately four seconds before subsiding. Many such liquid flows were observed from near this location in the seven minutes leading up to the collapse of this tower. There is no evidence of similar molten liquid pouring out from another location in WTC 2 or from anywhere within WTC 1.
Photographs, and NIST simulations of the aircraft impact, show large piles of debris in the 80th and 81st floors of WTC 2 near the site where the glowing liquid eventually appeared. Much of this debris came from the aircraft itself and from the office furnishings that the aircraft pushed forward as it tunneled to this far end of the building. Large fires developed on these piles shortly after the aircraft impact and continued to burn in the area until the tower collapsed.
NIST concluded that the source of the molten material was aluminum alloys from the aircraft, since these are known to melt between 475 degrees Celsius and 640 degrees Celsius (depending on the particular alloy), well below the expected temperatures (about 1,000 degrees Celsius) in the vicinity of the fires. Aluminum is not expected to ignite at normal fire temperatures and there is no visual indication that the material flowing from the tower was burning.
Pure liquid aluminum would be expected to appear silvery. However, the molten metal was very likely mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fireplace. The apparent color also would have been affected by slag formation on the surface.
12. Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.
The responses to questions number 2, 4, 5 and 11 demonstrate why NIST concluded that there were no explosives or controlled demolition involved in the collapses of the WTC towers.
Furthermore, a very large quantity of thermite (a mixture of powdered or granular aluminum metal and powdered iron oxide that burns at extremely high temperatures when ignited) or another incendiary compound would have had to be placed on at least the number of columns damaged by the aircraft impact and weakened by the subsequent fires to bring down a tower. Thermite burns slowly relative to explosive materials and can require several minutes in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature that would result in substantial weakening. Separate from the WTC towers investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially). Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition.
Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions.
13. Why did the NIST investigation not consider reports of molten steel in the wreckage
from the WTC towers?
NIST investigators and experts from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEONY)—who inspected the WTC steel at the WTC site and the salvage yards—found no evidence that would support the melting of steel in a jet-fuel ignited fire in the towers prior to collapse. The condition of the steel in the wreckage of the WTC towers (i.e., whether it was in a molten state or not) was irrelevant to the investigation of the collapse since it does not provide any conclusive information on the condition of the steel when the WTC towers were standing.
NIST considered the damage to the steel structure and its fireproofing caused by the aircraft impact and the subsequent fires when the buildings were still standing since that damage was responsible for initiating the collapse of the WTC towers.
Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.
14. Why is the NIST investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 (the 47-story office building that collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, hours after the towers) taking so long to complete? Is a controlled demolition hypothesis being considered to explain the collapse?
When NIST initiated the WTC investigation, it made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation. After the June 2004 progress report on the WTC investigation was issued, the NIST investigation team stopped working on WTC 7 and was assigned full-time through the fall of 2005 to complete the investigation of the WTC towers. With the release and dissemination of the report on the WTC towers in October 2005, the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed. Considerable progress has been made since that time, including the review of nearly 80 boxes of new documents related to WTC 7, the development of detailed technical approaches for modeling and analyzing various collapse hypotheses, and the selection of a contractor to assist NIST staff in carrying out the analyses. It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007.
The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows:
An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet;
Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and
Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation. NIST also is considering whether hypothetical blast events could have played a role in initiating the collapse. While NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, NIST would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements.
For additional information, go to: WTC Contacts | Building and Fire Research Laboratory | NIST
Privacy Policy/Security Notice | Disclaimer | FOIA
NIST is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration.
Last updated: August 30, 2006
As the loons are seeming incapable of following a link, I will present Fetzer's brilliant debate with J.R. Dunn in two separate posts. For a totally ignorant crackpot, Fetzer sure knows his stuff, huh?
911 a Hoax? Scholar for 911 Truth versus American Thinker
By James H. Fetzer and J.R. Dunn
Editor's Note: Following publication last Friday of J.R. Dunn's article 'Conspiracy Theories and Media Ignorance', American Thinker received a response from one of the principal advocates of a theory debunked in that article, James H. Fetzer, Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Duluth. One of the distinguished professor's fields of expertise is listed by that university as 'The assassination of JFK'.
We present Professor Fetzer's letter in its entirety, along with a response from Mr. Dunn. Professor Fetzer was offered an opportunity for a rejoinder, but as of the time of publication Monday morning, we have not received one from him.
Professor Fetzer
"Media Ignorance: The Case of J.R. Dunn"
According to J.R. Dunn, the problem with the media doesn't end with bias. You can also throw in pure ignorance. Ironically, his own column ("Conspiracy Theories and Media Ignorance", American Thinker, 15 September 2006) provides a pefect illustration.
Dunn takes a quote from an article in the Minneapolis Star—Tribune in which I observe, in response to a question from Katherine Kerston [sic] as to what hit the Pentagon if it was not a Boeing 757,
'Hit by a missile from an A—3 Skywarrior, most likely.'
I presume he would not know that what I actually said was,
'Hit by a missile from an A—3 Skywarrior, before it hit the building, most likely.'
More importantly, he ignores the context and evidence I have published that is easy to access on our web site, st911.org.
Evidence the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 747 [sic], as the government claims, for example, is extensive and definitive. Here are three points from the first piece anyone coming to Scholar's web site might be expected to read, which is titled, "Why doubt 9/11?", namely:
* The hit point at the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 100—ton airliner with a 125—foot wingspan and a tail that stands 44 feet above the ground; the kind and quantity of debris was wrong for a Boeing 757: no wings, no fuselage, no seats, no bodies, no luggage, no tail! Which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!
* The Pentagon's own videotape does not show a Boeing 757 hitting the building, as even Bill O'Reilly admitted when it was shown on "The Factor"; but at 155 feet, the plane was more than twice as long as the 71—foot Pentagon is high and should have been present and visible; it was not, which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!
* The aerodynamics of flight would have made the official trajectory——flying at high speed barely above ground level——physically impossible; and if it had come in at an angle instead, it would have created a massive crater; but there is no crater and the government has no way out, which means that the building was not hit by a Boeing 757!
Over and beyond these points, which I had explained to the reporter and which probably appear at least a half—dozen times on st911.org, I would have been glad to have laid out the reasons why an A—3 Sky Warrior probably was used, but she didn't ask the question.
Dunn didn't ask, either. In a study on st911.org, "Thinking about 'Conspiracy
Theories': 9/11 and JFK", I advance the case for an A—3 having been used. Not having bothered to read it, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Here are three relevant paragraphs:
The remnants of the single engine found inside offer clues as to what actually hit the Pentagon. Boeing 757s are powered by two Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines, with front—rotor elements about 42" in diameter and high—pressure rear stages that are less than 21" in diameter. The part found was less than 24" in diameter and, it turns out, actually matches, not the turbofan engine, but the front—hub assembly of the front compressor for the JT8D turbojet engine used in the A—3 Sky Warrior jet fighter.50 Since cruise missiles have a 20" diameter, moreover, they appear to be too small to accommodate this component. It follows that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 or by a cruise missile but, given this evidence, was probably struck by an A—3 Sky Warrior instead. The available relevant evidence is not even consistent with the government's official account, which deserves to be rejected. Its likelihood given the evidence is actually null, while the alternative A—3 hypothesis makes the relevant evidence highly probable and has high likelihood as a clearly preferable explanation.
This conjecture, which the evidence suggests, receives additional support from other sources. Two civilian defense contract employees, for example, have reported that A—3 Sky Warriors were covertly retrofitted with remote control systems and missile—firing systems at the Ft. Collins—Loveland Municipal Airport, a small civilian airport in Colorado, during the months prior to 9/11.
According to information they supplied, "separate military contractors—working independently at different times—retrofitted Douglas A—3 Sky Warriors with updated missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote control systems, new engines and fire control systems, transponders, and radio—radar—navigation systems—a total makeover—seemingly for an operation more important than their use as a simple missile testing platform for defense contractor Hughes—Raytheon."51 These reports substantiate the alternative.
If a small fighter jet rather than a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon, that would tend to explain the small impact point, the lack of massive external debris, and a hole in the inner ring of the building, which the fragile nose of a Boeing 757 could not have created. It would also suggest why parts of a plane were carried off by servicemen, since they might have made the identification of the aircraft by type apparent and falsified the official account.52 A small fighter also accommodates the report from Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller, who said of the aircraft that hit, "Its speed, maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room—all of us experienced air traffic controllers—that it was a military plane".53 Nothing moves or maneuvers more like a military plane, such as a jet fighter, than a military plane or a jet fighter, which could also explain how it was able to penetrate some of the most strongly defended air space in the world—by emitting a friendly transponder signal.
That Dunn depended soley upon a reporter's quote for his column in this journal betrays a massive disrespect for journalistic ethics. He wrote this story on the basis of his impressions without bothering to consult me or to review what I had written on this subject. That is reprehensible.
He appears to be as massively ignorant about JFK as he is about 9/11. Jean Hill, who was standing in close proximity to the limousine, did indeed report that she had seen a "little white dog" between Jack and Jackie. Her credibility was attacked on that score until a photograph revealed that Jackie had been given a small stuffed animal of that description.
Of course, it didn't "jump out and run away when the shooting started", but then Dunn could care less. His objective is not to maintain journalistic standards but to score cheap points to make himself look good. Alas, what he has proven is journalists are frequently too lazy to get things right. And people wonder why the legacy media are sliding into irrelevance?
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
Founder and Co—Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
http://scholarsfor911truth.org
J.R. Dunn responds
You conspiracy hounds are all alike — tossing up a blizzard of unrelated, scattershot 'facts' designed to overwhelm all opposition while possessing no internal coherence whatsoever. And you have the nerve to talk to me about 'context'?
Well, my friend, I'll play your game. I will go over all of your factoids, every last claim you make in that e—mail, and erase them from the board, one after the other. And when I'm finished, and your argument lies in ruins, I will give you a context. I will reveal to you exactly why your conspiracy could not conceivably have occurred the way you say it did, and do it in a manner that you will never be able to refute without calling your entire thesis into question.
First, your 'evidence' that the Pentagon was not hit by a 757:
The 'hit point' — by which I take it you mean 'hole'—— was seventy—five feet wide, plenty large enough to accommodate the 757's fuselage, which was only twelve feet wide.
The wings, tailplane, and rudder are irrelevant, being merely sheet metal that sheered off on impact, as is clearly revealed by photos of the site, which are readily available to anyone who cares to look. This point has been made dozens of times, in the 9—11 Commission Report and elsewhere, and you have no excuse for not knowing it.
As for luggage, bodies, seats... be serious. Do you have any idea what happens when an object strikes six feet of reinforced concrete at 500 mph+? They were crushed, shredded, and then incinerated, within a matter of seconds. How much do you think was left?
This also answers 'fragile nose of a Boeing 757" contention made several paras on. The aircraft had been compressed to an incandescent mass less than six feet long by the time it burst through the Pentagon's inner ring. How 'fragile' do you think that mass was?
(I should also point out that the A—3 also possesses a fuselage, wings, and a tail. So this entire contention is in fact self—contradictory on its face, no?)
* The 757, at 155 ft. long, doesn't appear on the videotape? Well now — the A—3 is 78 ft. long, a little over half that size and a damned big airplane. Still taller than the Pentagon, in your formulation.
So we have another contradiction here, don't we? The A—3 should have showed up too — and not as a scarcely—visible 'outline' owing more to the imagination than anything else, either. If no airplane is visible, then there's some other factor at work. I suggest you consult a video tech — I suspect a film speed problem.
(And it's time to kill the 'small jet fighter' error — which you repeat at least five times —— while we're at it. The A—3 was a twin—engine jet bomber, 78 ft. long, with a 72 ft. span, and an operating weight of 70,000 lbs., the full equivalent of a jetliner, notable as the largest airplane ever deployed from a carrier. This is covered in my piece; how did you miss it? Didn't get that far? Eyesight failing? But don't take my word for it. This information is available on any Internet aircraft site, including here, here and here. If you continue making the 'small fighter' claim, you're simply setting yourself up for another slapdown just like this one.)
I'm convinced that you people have actually confused this airplane with the A—4 Skyhawk, which had a similar name and designation, the same manufacturer, and was rather small for a modern military aircraft. But it's too late now — you've constructed your case around the A—3, and you'll have to live with it.
Other claims:
The 'engine part' — you don't say what part this is, which renders the contention meaningless. The same with the argument from dimensions. Again consider the kind of stresses involved in a collision at 500 mph+. Are you seriously contending that an object's 'dimensions' would remain unaffected after an impact like that? Have you ever seen an automobile after a crash at a mere 60 mph? The damage to an aircraft turbine, which is no more than a tube filled with delicate machinery, can be easily imagined. In fact, there are other methods of identifying such a part, including serial numbers, metallurgical analysis, and so on, none of which you bring up. So I take it that in truth, no such identification was ever made.
And in any case, it's all rendered irrelevant by your own words. Quote
'...separate military contractors... retrofitted Douglas A—3 Sky Warriors (sic) with updated missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote control systems, new engines...'
Those are your words, from the next para. So they weren't JT—8D turbos after all... or were they? Which paragraph is right, champ? Or aren't you aware of what you're writing from line to line?
* 'The aerodynamics of flight' — a nice formulation, using two words to say the same thing. It's like writing, 'the fighting of boxing'. But let's move on — the trajectory ('flight path' is the proper technical term) of Flight 77 was a variation of the flight path of a plane landing at an airport, nothing 'impossible' or even especially difficult about it. The sole difference was speed, which is meaningless in the terms you're appealing to — it doesn't matter to an aircraft whether it's 50 or 50,000 feet above the ground. If it's 'impossible' for Flight 77 to have made that approach, then no airplane has ever successfully landed. And the plane did make a massive crater — — in the side of a building.
*Ft. Collins—Loveland Municipal Airport is a corporate and general—aviation (light—plane) airfield with a single full—service, jet—capable runway. It covers an area of little more than a square mile. It lacks both the space and facilities for the kind of project you claim occurred there. Furthermore, it has Ft. Collins, a city with a population of 128,000, slightly over a mile to the north, Loveland, population 50,000, directly to the southwest, and is dead smack between U.S. Interstate 25 to the east and a large recreational lake (Lake Boyd) abutting the grounds to the west. The field may as well be on Times Square for all the privacy it affords. You couldn't refit, test, and test—fly two aircraft the size of an A—3 (both in shiny new black paint jobs!) without almost everybody between Cheyenne and Denver being aware of it. Have you ever heard of plane—spotters?
The American southwest is full of secret military installations, abandoned WW II training bases, and isolated private fields. Why a group of conspirators wouldn't choose one of them is impossible to surmise — unless you're a member of 9/11 Scholars for Truth.
This is a yarn. Urban legend at its purest. You'd best drop it.
Danielle O'Brien said not one single damn word about the blip's maneuverability. The sole thing she mentioned was airspeed. Her words, exactly quoted from the ABC interview, are,
'I slid over to the controller on my left, Tom Howell, and I asked him, 'Do you see an unidentified plane there southwest of Dulles?' And his response was, 'Yes. Oh, my gosh, yes! Look how fast he is.''
You'll want to make note of that so won't accidently misquote it again in the future.
The blip was traveling at 500+ mph, (just under the 757's cruising speed of Mach .80 or 530 mph) and was over a prohibited area. So she assumed — simply assumed — that it must be a fighter 'scrambled to patrol our Capitol and to protect our president.' The 'maneuverability' claim is a later interpolation by somebody else — in other words, a lie.
As for the 'most heavily defended airspace in the world', this is a nonsense statement. There has been no comprehensive air defense of the U.S. since the Aerospace Defense Command was shut down by Jimmy Carter in 1978. Bush Sr. further curtailed air defenses by shutting down Air National Guard alert squadrons in 1991. There were no SAM batteries or fighter squadrons on alert anywhere in the U.S. on 9/11, including the District of Columbia, which is why it took 2 hours+ for a minimal aerial response to the attacks. If you don't know any of this, you shouldn't be commenting on it.
Did I miss anything? I don't think so — oh, there's the little matter of what kind of lunatic purpose is served by firing a missile at a target and then crashing a plane into it —— but you can't rationally explain that. Nobody could.
So the board has been cleared, your thesis has been shattered, you have received a long—overdue and much—needed lesson in how to present an argument. Ahh — but I did promise to give you a context, didn't I? Something that your storm of factoids lacks. Something that in and of itself would explain why your thesis does not have, and never could have, any validity whatsoever. So here it is:
Human beings do not act for no reason. They subject each possibility to a cost—benefit analysis, conducted virtually on the level of instinct, before making any decision.
Now, if someone were to take an action, or a series of actions, that resulted in the deaths of 3,000 Americans, the destruction of a noted landmark, the trashing of the economy for two years, and no less than two good—sized wars...
Well, the risk involved in this is effectively infinite. The public reaction to such crimes would be no less than Biblical. Not only would the perpetrators themselves be disgraced, dishonored, and executed, but everyone even peripherally involved, everyone so much as related to them, would be ostracized, hounded from the country, and driven into exile... at best. The names of the perpetrators would become terms of loathing for all time to come. Benedict Arnold would simply not be in it. So to balance the risk, the rewards of such actions would have to be infinite as well.
But are they?
Halliburton?
Oil futures?
Do you seriously believe that experienced politicians, men of position, reputation, and wealth, men with the respect of the citizenry and their peers, men with roots in this country going back generations, would commit mass murder for that?
I think you do. I really think so. And you know what? That's a sad thing.
I doubt that you'll wish to take this any farther. But if so, what I require from you is a logical, succinct, and coherent analysis of every statement I have made here, and in my article as well, following the example I have given you. I have no interest in any more factoids, none of this 'I saw it someplace on the Net' stuff. Fully sourced, fully researched material — that is the minimum acceptable response. Are you capable of that? I'm not at all sure. But whatever the case, I will be keeping an eye on you. Rest assured of that.
J.R. Dunn is a frequent contributor to American Thinker, and former editor of the International Military Encyclopedia.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/09/911_a_hoax_scholar_for_911_tru.html at December 03, 2006 - 06:07:50 PM EST
This topic is not interesting.
Well, an hour ago it was interesting enough to you that tried to move the goalposts on it, with your incredibly stupid "we demand access to methodologies" post.
But in light of the extensive reaming your cohort BG is getting, you've decided to use the time-honored Twoofer tactic of "try to change the subject with a cut-and-pasted crapflood of some completely unrelated conspiracy theory, and start Just Asking Questions(TM) about it."
Bogglehead, my comments about BG needing medication apply also to you. Though we may be able to start you off with a weaker dose. But only slightly weaker.
Just when you think you've seen the best Fetzer has to offer, he outdoes himself. Hey, these loons really have their facts straight!
Part II of the Great Debate.
The 911 Pentagon Conspiracy Theory - Final Round
By James H. Fetzer and J.R. Dunn
Editor's Note: Following publication of J.R. Dunn's article 'Conspiracy Theories and Media Ignorance', American Thinker published a response one of the principal conspiracy theorists, Prof. James H. Fetzer, and a rejoinder from Mr. Dunn.
Today,we present a second and concluding round of response and rejoinder from the two authors.
Professor Fetzer
9/11: Bias and Ignorance in AMERICAN THINKER
James H. Fetzer
Thanks to the editors for extending an invitation to respond to the new heap of intellectual rubbish that J.R. Dunn is shoveling ('9/11 a Hoax? J.R. Dunn responds', American Thinker, 18 September 2006). While I appreciated their publishing my reply (and catching two trivial mistakes), I would have appreciated it more if they had noticed that they had divided the second of three paragraphs I was citing from an earlier study of mine and not made the third appear to be new material (compare st911.org). I think it should have been obvious, since the first two included references to notes 50 and 51, while the third included notes 52 and 53. But it may be that I inadvertently left a 'return' that the editors did not realize did not belong there. [editor's note: the paragraph has been indented in our archive copy]
The theme of Dunn's original was that the media has fallen short of its duties by its own ignorance as well as bias. Since a lot of what he has said in that piece and this one reeks of hostility and venom, massive bias permeates what he has written. It might have been a good idea if he had actually read the study I cited, "Thinking about 'Conspiracy Theories'", archived at st911.org, but that apparently would have been too much bother. The editors did no better or they might have had reservations about rushing more drivel into print. Here I divide my comments by negative arguments against a Boeing 757 having hit the Pentagon, positive arguments that it may have been an A—3 Sky Warrior, and concluding reflections.
The Negative Arguments
Dunn maintains, in response to my first bullet, that the impact point was seventy—five feet wide, large enough to accommodate a 757's fuselage, which is only twelve feet wide. A photograph of the initial point of impact, before the upper floors collapsed, is archived here. The opening appears to be about 10 feet high and roughly 16 or 17 feet wide, or not much larger than the double—doors on a mansion. It is rather difficult to see how a Boeing 757 could have fit through that hole.
Another photograph suggests that the width may even have been considerably less than 16 or17 feet, perhaps much closer to 10 feet, but it appears to be of two windows that were blown out of the second floor instead of the actual impact point on the ground floor. Notice several unbroken windows in the impact area and the lack of collateral damage. But this second floor window was not where it hit.
According to A. K. Dewdney and G. W. Longspaugh, the maximum diameter of the fuselage is about 12 feet, 4 inches, with a wingspan of 125 feet. They found,
"The initial (pre—collapse) hole made by the alleged impact on the ground floor of Wedge One of the building is too small to admit an entire Boeing 757" and "Wings that should have been sheered off by the impact are entirely absent."
Dewdney is a mathematician and computer scientist from Canada, while Longspaugh is an aerospace engineer who makes his home in Fort Worth. They also found,
"There is also substantial debris from a much smaller jet—powered aircraft inside the building." They conclude with a "high degree" of certainty that no Boeing 757 struck the Pentagon and with a "substantial degree" of certainty that it was struck by a small jet, like an F—16."
Dunn, apparently oblivious of the research I have cited, says,
"The wings, tailplane (sic), and rudder are irrelevant, being merely sheet metal that sheered off on impact, as is clearly revealed by photos of the site, which are readily available to anyone who cares to look. This point has been made dozens of times, in the 9—11 Commission Report and elsewhere, and you have no excuse for not knowing it."
"As for luggage, bodies, seats...be serious. Do you have any idea what happens when an object strikes six feet of reinforced concrete at 500 mph+? They were crushed, shredded, and then incinerated, within a matter of seconds. How much do you think was left?"
Dunn thus embraces the (very convenient) "vaporization" hypothesis, which alleges that the plane simply disappeared upon impact.
Dewdney and Longspaugh discuss the damage to support columns within the Pentagon and conclude that it is consistent with a smaller aircraft but not a Boeing 757. They comment on another study by a group of Purdue engineers, for example, in passing. In conducting their study, the Purdue group left out consideration of the engines, which is a curious omission. With or without engines, it is difficult to imagine how this kind of damage would have been possible if the plane had vaporized upon impact.
The photos Dunn claims to be "readily available" certainly do not show parts that could be unambiguously identified as having come from a Boeing 757. On the contrary, as Colonel George Nelson, USAF (retired), an air crash expert, has observed in "Impossible to Prove a Falsehood True" on st911.org, these planes have many time—sensitive and uniquely identifiable parts that could readily provide proof of the specific plane that hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville. None of them has ever been produced.
The Positive Arguments
Dunn appears to acknowledge that a Boeing 757, at 155 feet long, which makes it twice as long as the building is tall, is not apparent on the videotape and offers the counterargument that, since an A—3 is 78 feet long, a little over half that size, it should have appeared on the video, too. He claims this is a contradiction:
"The A—3 should have showed up too — and not as a scarcely—visible 'outline' owing more to the imagination than anything else, either."
This might be forceful against the A—3 alternative, if it were true, but it does nothing to diminish the video's impact on the official account.
The first of the five frames that the Pentagon originally released, which has the time stamp 17:32:19, shows what appears to be the silhouette of an aircraft just above the gate mechanism as well as a plume of white smoke that seems to be coming from a missile it is in the process of launching. Dunn seems to know he is on thin ice here, since he says it should have been more distinct. But what is striking is that even the Pentagon identified it as a plane. Indeed, the word "plane" occurs on the frame itself! It is quite evident that this 'plane' does not approximate the dimensions of a Boeing 757.
Dunn suggests that the A—3 is not a small fighter jet but a twin—engine bomber, a criticism for which there is support. (See this, for example, .) But the key point is that it is much smaller than any Boeing 757. I am hardly the first person to observe that the absence of debris from a 757 provides proof that a 757 never hit the building. Check out "Hunt the Boeing", for example, or the books by Thierry Meyssan, Pentagate and 9/11: The Big Lie, which Dunn probably hasn't read.
Dunn is convinced that I have confused the A—3 Sky Warrior with the A—4 Skyhawk, which had a similar name and designation, the same manufacturer, and was rather small for a modern military aircraft.
"But it's too late now — you've constructed your case around the A—3, and you'll have to live with it.'
What he doesn't understand is that, if what hit the Pentagon was either an A—3 Sky Warrior or an A—4 Sky Hawk, it wasn't a Boeing 757! Our negative critique of what the government has claimed stands even if our positive account of what may have hit instead requires revision. If it was an A—4, that's fine with me. Anyone who is rational in their beliefs accepts, rejects, and suspends beliefs on the basis of the available relevant evidence. As new evidence becomes available, revisions may be appropriate.
A lot of his objections derive from his failure to read the study on which my position is based. If he had, he would have found the answers to his questions about the engine part and the argument from dimensions, which derives from the study by Dewdney and Longspaugh cited above. He disputes what I report about A—3s being retrofitted with updated missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote control systems, and new engines, which could have been of the same type as the originals. His thinking here, as elsewhere, is sloppy and affected by emotion.
Personally, if I had seen numbers that corresponded to footnotes, when I was drafting an assault of this kind, I would have made an effort to track them down. Then he would have at least understood that I was not making this up out of whole cloth but reporting what had been previously published elsewhere. Note 51, for example, explained the following point, 'The workers' reports about these activities may be read at "Secret Global Hawk Refit for Sky Warrior!".
The point I make about aerodynamic impossibility must have been too much for him to handle. Certainly, attacking the phrase, 'the aerodynamics of flight', on the ground that it is redundant is silly in the extreme. Has he never heard of 'the experience of flight', 'the aesthetics of flight', or 'the joy of flight'? For a former editor of the International Military Encyclopedia, he appears not only to have a severely limited grasp of language but to be seriously uninformed.
The point I was making, which he did not understand, is that when a plane is in flight, it builds up a body of compressed gas beneath its wings and fuselage. The dimensions of this compressed gas, a pocket of air, depends upon the speed of the aircraft. Even a small plane, such as a Cessna, at full throttle would be unable to come as close to skimming the ground as the Boeing is said to have traveled. Indeed, it is so close that the engines might be expected to have plowed massive furrows in the lawn, which remained unblemished.
A pilot and aeronautical engineer has explained to me that, at full throttle, a Cessna could not fly lower than 15 feet to the ground and that a Boeing 757, at around 500 miles per hour, would be unable to get closer than about 60 feet from the ground. This means that it would have been aerodynamically impossible for the alleged plane to have taken the alleged flight trajectory. And there is no evidence of the kind of crater that would have been created by any trajectory that was not parallel to the ground. There is nothing to support it. The government has no sustainable alternatives.
Dunn tries to shrug this point off, as though the discovery that the official account violates laws of aerodynamics is unimportant. He says that, if this argument were valid (he means 'sound), then 'no airplane has ever successfully landed.' But of course the size of the air pocket diminishes as the speed of the aircraft drops, which is an important reason why aircraft must slow down as they descend for it to be possible for them to land. Dunn's ignorance is showing.
Concluding Reflections
If the Pentagon is not one of the, if not the, most heavily defended buildings in the world, I'll eat my hat. This guy even appears to be oblivious of the sworn testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, to the 9/11 Commission about observing a young aide approach the Vice President, in command at an underground bunker beneath the White House.
'Sir, it's fifty miles out.'
'Sir, its thirty miles out.'
'Sir, its ten miles out. Do the orders still stand?'
Cheney, he testified, nearly bit off his head.
'Of course the orders still stand', he said. 'Have you heard anything different?'
But the order had to have been to not shoot down the approaching aircraft. Shooting it down would be the obvious thing to do. You would lose all the passengers and the plane, but you would not also lose the personnel and property at the target. And if the order had been to shoot it down, it would have been shot down. But it was not. His testimony was so explosive that the 9/11 Commission buried it.
(It was taped and can be readily downloaded from st911.org.)
Dunn wants to know
'what kind of lunatic purpose is served by firing a missile at a target and then crashing a plane into it',
an interesting question I am glad to address. The day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld had reported to Congress that the Pentagon had lost track of $2.3 trillion. It was a Monday, which was odd, since experienced politicians learn to release bad news on Fridays in the expectation they will be lost over the weekend. But that did not happen in this case. Indeed, most of us still don't know about it.
The West Wing was a peculiar choice for a terrorist attack, since it was in the final stages of reconstruction and was largely bereft of personnel and records. But one team that occupied that space was a group of accountants, auditors, and budget experts who were, I would surmise, attempting to track that missing $2.3 trillion. The impact of the plane could not be guaranteed to kill them. Sending a missile would take them by surprise and could be more carefully targeted. So maybe there is a rational explanation, after all.
Colonel Nelson has observed that, under federal law, the NTSB has an obligation to investigate crashes involving commercial airliners. Four allegedly occurred on 9/11, yet the NTSB has investigated none. Photos abound of commercial airplane crashes around the globe, which can be found via google. Both the Pentagon site and the Shanksville site appear to be distinctive by the almost complete absence of debris of appropriate kinds and quantities. Neither of the massive engines was recovered at the Pentagon. Perhaps Dunn will reassure us that they, too, were simply vaporized!
During the L.A. 'American Scholars Symposium' held on 24—25 June 2006, Dylan Avery showed me the FAA raw data on the planes from all four locations. There was a series of blank spaces where that data should have been recorded. Perhaps Dunn finds this absence of evidence further "proof" that the official account is correct. More could be said by way of response, but perhaps I have said enough. It should be apparent that bias and ignorance are indeed thematic in what he has written, but perhaps not quite the way he intended.
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
Founder and Co—Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
J.R. Dunn
At the end of my first response I set certain conditions. Any commentary was to be a logical, succinct, and coherent analysis of every statement I have made here, and in my article as well, following the example I have given you. I have no interest in any more factoids, none of this 'I saw it someplace on the Net' stuff. Fully sourced, fully researched material — that is the minimum acceptable response.
That's not what we have here, needless to say. I admit I wasn't really expecting it either.
Because that's not the way James H. Fetzer, Ph.D, McKnight University Professor Emeritus, Founder and Co—chair of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, does things. What he does, and what we have been presented with, is repetition. A repetition of his first response, with the pedal jammed to the floor. A response in which the factoid storm, already thick enough in the first place, has increased to blizzard strength.
But it's not a complete repetition. There are several obvious omissions:
* Flight controller Danielle O'Brien — The Professor argued that O'Brien had identified Flight 77 as a military aircraft. Her own testimony (linked in my previous entry) reveals she did no such thing. Out in toto.
* Ft. Collins—Loveland Municipal airport — the airport, characterized as an isolated field suitable as the setting for a conspiracy, turned out to be smack dab in the middle of a metropolitan area with a population of 250,000+. Unmentioned.
*Flight 77's engine dimensions — The dimensions of the wrecked engines found in the Pentagon were claimed to be too small for a 757's turbofans, ignoring the fact that they'd just been rammed though a six—foot thick reinforced concrete wall at 500 mph+. Out. (Dave Runyan settles this question to my satisfaction is his superb 'Some Basics About Jet Engines and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories")
As they say in the legal profession, silence implies acquiescence. If the Endowed Chair can't answer those points, he has to accept them. Even if in accepting them, he's effectively blowing holes in the rest of his argument.
But that, needless to say, is why we're here. So let's strap on the plow, put the four—wheel in gear, and roll on into the blizzard.
*The Professor Emeritus once again kicks things off by questioning the size of the hole in the Pentagon, which has been transformed this time into an 'impact point'. The 9/11 Commission Report puts the hole's size at seventy—five feet. Not so, insists the Chair. He saw a photo somewhere or other that suggested it was only sixteen feet wide.
The 757 fuselage is twelve feet wide, which I believe would fit into a sixteen—foot hole without too much of a stretch. So what point he's trying to make here, I am not at all sure. I know he's not agreeing, but beyond that, I cannot say.
He goes on to discuss another hole somewhere else in the building, along with a paragraph concerning internal building supports, all of which is pure blizzardry, having precisely nothing at to do with the original question. His source for much of this material is a study by A.K. Dewdney and G.W. Longspaugh. Now, A.K. Dewdney is a distinctive name. He himself says as much on his personal web site, pointing out that the 'K' stands for 'Keewatin', Ojibway for 'North Wind'. (My middle initial stands for 'Richard', which is ancient Celtic for 'Chastiser of Academic Poseurs'.)
So this must be the same A.K. Dewdney who was ripped up, down, and sideways by Mark Steyn in his Macleans review, 'Call me Crazy. I Blame the Terrorists' to a point where Dewdney began bleating about 'consulting with legal authorities'. I'm not going to try to surpass the master here; read it and see how the pompous are dealt with in the Great White North.
I don't know anything about Longspaugh, but if he's hooked up with Dewdney, maybe he needs a lawyer too.
* Next we return to the bodies, luggage, seats, etc., which the Founder and Co—Chair insists would have been scattered here and there around the crash site. Not after a 500+ impact with reinforced concrete, said I, to which he now answers, 'Dunn thus embraces the (very convenient) "vaporization" hypothesis, which alleges that the plane simply disappeared upon impact.'
Well, very conveniently enough, here's a incredible video of a test in which an F—4 Phantom is rammed, at exactly 500 mph, into a reinforced concrete wall representing the containment shell of a nuclear reactor. The Phantom utterly disintegrates — there's nothing but small pieces left. While that may not quite be vaporization, it will do.
And that, my friends, is what happened to Flight 77. I await the esteemed Chair's comment.
* The wings, tailplane, rudder and so forth would have peeled off on impact. But no pieces were found, the Co—Chair contends. Not in Washington, not in Skanksville, PA, not in Manhattan. (Sounds like he's saying no planes crashed anywhere on 9/11, doesn't it?)
All this despite being confronted with a photograph of a recognizable piece of sheet metal in American Airlines colors within a stone's throw of the Pentagon, one of hundreds available on the Net. No, we're instead supposed to rely on the word of Colonel George Nelson, USAF (retired), an air crash expert who insists no parts were found even though he wasn't on the spot and never visited the site. If he had, he might have come across fellow investigator Allyn Kilsheimer who was on site, and who said,
"I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box... I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"
Over to you, Colonel.
* Now here's the claim that kicked things off in the first place: the ineffable nature of the A—3 Skywarrior: tiny fighter plane, or thirty—five ton twin—engine strategic bomber? It's hard to tell sometimes. I mean, have you ever been confused between a eighteen—wheel semi and a Volvo? Sure you have. They can fool you.
This, according to the Chair, is 'a criticism for which there is support', which is a weaselly academic method of saying 'I was wrong.' 'A—3, fighter or bomber' is a true or false, yes or no, 1 or 0 question. There is no ambiguity involved. We are not living in a quantum universe where a thing can be a 78—foot bomber and small fighter at the same time, a la Schrodinger's Cat. The McKnight Professor was wrong, and he doesn't want to admit it.
He doesn't want to admit it because if the A—3 goes, so does most of his argument. With the A—3 gone, then there was no tiny silhouette of an airplane on the video, no missile was ever fired, there are no anomalous engine parts, no radar contradictions, no sinister doings at Western airports. In fact we have nothing at all, since with the A—3 vanished, the rest of the nonsense blows away like so much tinsel. There was never any purpose for any of it except as a frame in which the place the central element.
Without the A—3, the conspiracy falls apart, which is why the Professor Emeritus lapses into a paragraph of doubletalk about the A—4, which was brought up in the first place only to underline how confused the 9/11 Scholars actually are. They're still confused.
* Thierry Meyssan, brought up to lend weight to the Chair's contentions, is the French left—wing activist (media claims that he's a philosophy professor are false) responsible for triggering 9/11 conspiracy fever in the first place. Within days of the attack, he had accused the U.S. government of complicity. His book, L'effroyable—imposture (The Frightening Fraud, published in the U.S. as 9/11: The Big Lie) is a pioneering 9/11 conspiracy text which has of course been superseded by the thoroughgoing and professional work of the 9/11 Scholars.
But before that, he had a web site setting forth his thesis. It was an interesting site, with each page featuring a bold—faced question about the attack beneath a usually unrelated photograph (Thierry Meyssan's version of the Socratic Method, I assume). I never did get through the whole thing, after encountering a page where the question read: WHY WAS THERE NO SIGN OF JET FUEL AT THE CRASH SITE?
Fair question, I thought, until I went on two or three pages and came across this: WHY DID TRUCKS DUMP LARGE LOADS OF SAND AT THE SITE WITHIN HOURS OF THE CRASH?
So much for the French contribution. I'm certain the Chair would admit this 'has some support'. So we'll move on.
* Throughout this response, the Founder and Co—Chair calls my attention to numerous studies and sources, which if read would cause the scales to fall from my eyes. With 'Note 51", he gives us an example of what he means. 'Note 51"sources one of his arguments. And what does it refer us to? The American Journal of Metallurgy? Jane's World Weapon Systems? Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? No — it sends us to http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/318250.shtml
Now, when you access Portland Indymedia, you find the typical Internet nut site devoted in large part to conspiracy theories just like this one. When I wrote, '...none of this 'I saw it someplace on the Net' stuff,' in my original response, this is exactly what I was talking about.
Academic sourcing has been a mature system for well over a century. You are required to refer the reader to an acknowledged authority, someone with unquestioned stature in a particular field. Not Arthur Bell, Michael Savage, or Paris Hilton. (Leopold von Ranke, the father of modern historiography, is even stricter — in his system, sources are limited to documents, and not individuals with possible agendas or faulty memories. It's a mercy von Ranke died in 1886. If he'd ever encountered the Net, he'd have thrown himself off a bridge.)
Note 51, if it's at all typical, is an indictment of the McKnight Professor's method, procedures, and results. I don't read the Tattler. I don't read the Enquirer, and I'm not going to read any of those studies either.
* The Chair contends that aerodynamic forces (or as he so poetically put it, the 'aerodynamics of flight') render it impossible to fly at high speed at low levels. How does he explain this? He gives us a bubble of gas. This 'gas bubble' (by which I'm sure he means the wave front of compressed air preceding an aircraft in its flight path) prevents an airplane from settling close to the ground — 15 feet or so for a Cessna, 60 feet for an sizable airliner.
Anybody who has ever seen a cropduster zipping around 5 or 6 feet above the ground will view this explanation with skepticism. Compression at low altitudes may have some effect on performance, but does not render flight impossible. The notorious F—111, no small aircraft, was in fact designed to operate at high speed at low levels, through use of a terrain—following radar which kept it at a steady twenty—odd feet above the ground. Though it had its drawbacks, the F—111 had no problems with gas that I'm aware of.
Eyewitness testimony states that the plane attacking the Pentagon nearly clipped the roof of a nearby Sheraton coming in. This puts its altitude at a good hundred—twenty feet+ in the last moments of approach. The 757 was at extreme low altitude only during the final fleeting seconds of flight, moving far too quickly for aerodynamic forces to take effect. So much for the Professor's gas attack.
In fact, what the Chair's aerodynamicist has proven is that no aircraft of any kind, 757 or A—3, could have crashed into the Pentagon. The aerodynamic forces on either jet would be the same, and so would the result. If the 757 couldn't quite make it to the Pentagon without being brought down by gas, neither could the A—3. This is yet another serious contradiction to add to the two in his previous effort — the implication that the A—3 wouldn't shed its wings the same as the 757, and the puzzle as to how the A—3 was rendered nearly invisible to the Pentagon parking lot camera. Neither of these contradictions has ever been answered, or even so much as addressed. I don't anticipate this one will be either.
* 'If the Pentagon is not one of the, if not the, most heavily defended buildings in the world, I'll eat my hat.' Well, you all heard him.
In my previous response, I gave a reasonably detailed short history as to why the U.S. has lacked comprehensive air defenses for 28 years. Instead of repeating that, I'll go into the reasons why it happened.
In the late 1950s, the U.S. had complete radar coverage of northern and coastal approaches. All major metro areas were ringed by Nike Ajax and Nike Hercules missile batteries. The country's northen tier was dotted with Air Defense Command bases equipped with thousands of fast interceptors. All this was coordinated by a nationwide data exchange system, one of the first military computer networks, an early ancestor of the Internet.
Today this structure has vanished, and has never been replaced, due in large part to reliance on a theory of nuclear strategy called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which contended that the way to maintain a stable nuclear balance was to eschew defenses and accept the fact that a nuclear strike would result in complete annihilation of both sides. Fear of destruction would then militate against a strike by either side (In truth, the USSR never accepted MAD, and even today, Russia's air defenses remain formidable.)
Readers who find this strategy utterly insane will not be surprised to learn that it was overseen by Robert S. McNamara, who also gave us the Edsel and Vietnam. It was instituted all the same, and the expensive defense systems were allowed to deteriorate until today little is left other than part—time Air National Guard units.
How do we know that it went into effect at the Pentagon? Easy — that was where McNamara worked.
The Chair ignores all this history in favor of giving us a conversation between Richard Cheney and an aide overheard by Norman Mineta, author of our current anti—profiling policy. The exchange took place at the White House, not the Pentagon, does not mention aircraft, or defenses, or anything related, and, knowing the Founder's way with a quote, may well have been somewhat different that what's presented here.
In any case, it's irrelevant to the issue, and would amount to simply another worthless factoid, except for one curious little slip.
'Shooting it [the airliner] down,' writes the McKnight Professor, 'would be the obvious thing to do. You would lose all the passengers and the plane, but you would not also lose the personnel and property at the target.'
An odd statement coming from a man whose case all along is that no passengers were ever involved. That's what a police detective would call a 'tell'. The Professor's lucky I'm not a detective, don't you agree?
* The resurrected accountant marks another example of the Founder going off on a tangent, but that's fine, because it gives him one more opportunity to shoot himself in the foot. What I asked about was the irrationality of firing a missile at a target and then crashing a plane into it, as opposed to firing two missiles or crashing one plane. The answer turns out to be the Chair's explanation for the entire conspiracy.
It seems that the day before, Monday September 10th, Donald Rumsfeld announced that the DoD had lost track of $2.6 trillion in appropriations, and that he intended to find out where it had gone. But then, the next day....
So obviously, as the Chair 'surmises', the entire conspiracy was carried out to kill the accounting team trying to track down that money. They were the targets, the sole reason the Pentagon was attacked. He's almost certain it happened that way.
Except that when I checked the story, to see if I could find anything at all that wasn't sourced from Portland Indymedia, the first item in the queue was this: a CBS interview with Jack Minnerty, the accountant who blew the whistle on the DoD losses. An interview made in February 2002, nearly six months after 9/11.
Now how can this be? How can this man, the supposed prime target of the greatest conspiracy ever carried out this country, be out walking around, much less giving interviews to an alphabet network? How could they have missed him? Was he out getting coffee?
It's at points like this that you realize that the conspiracy impulse, the force that drives these people, cannot be countered by rational means. A conspiracy in which the whistleblower is killed is one thing. A conspiracy in which hundreds of others are killed, and the intended victim continues blithely on as if it had nothing at all to do with him.... There's no rational explanation for that. And there's no point in asking the Professor, the Colonel, or the staff of Portland Indymedia about it. They'll just start telling you about a screw that was found on the sidewalk in front of the Pentagon, that was used only in a single model of the Stearman 43 Biplane, made in one particular plant in 1938, and that proves....
(So why bother? Why put in the time and effort to refute all this? As a form of prophylaxis, in the hope that at least some of the gullible, naive, or ill—informed may encounter this critique before they're infected.)
The rest is anticlimax. 'Neither of the massive engines was recovered at the Pentagon,' the Chair tells us. This photo says otherwise. A correspondent has pointed out that the Flight 77 aircraft was not powered by either a Pratt & Whitney PW2037 or the PW2040, but by Rolls Royce RB211—535E4Bs, the turbine disk of which is a close match, as exhaustive research confirms, for the part in the photograph, the same possibility suggested by Dave Runyan. (This is also an opportunity to thank another reader, who pointed out that the A—3 was actually powered by Pratt & Whitney J—57 P.10s, and not JT—8Ds, as the Professor asserts.)
Colonel Nelson is once more trotted onstage to deliver the valediction in the form of an ominous contention that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) obligated 'under federal law' to investigate all commercial air crashes, has failed to do so with the 9/11 disasters. The NTSB website carries a table of all major recent investigations. Halfway down we find four marked '9/11'. When we click on those, we see this statement:
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and any material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI.
In other words, the NTSB was in fact involved in the investigation of these events. Not quite a lie perhaps, but very much the reason words like 'prevarication' were coined.
But that's the case with all of Prof. James H. Fetzer, Ph.D's claims. Once you follow them back to a reputable source, you discover they're not what you were told. The words are different, the content unrelated. The flight controller said no such thing. The missing parts were in plain sight. The secret airport is a thriving metropolitan hub. The murder victim is up and walking around and talking to CBS. After awhile you get used to it. You stop thinking, 'Uh—oh — this doesn't look good,' and start looking forward with glee, eager to learn what little twist has been added this time. And it's a good thing you can view it that way, because otherwise you'd get sick to your stomach.
One of the first messages I received after my response was posted was from a serving naval officer who was present at the Pentagon on 9/11. He was in the lobby of an adjacent building and he clearly saw the attack take place. Saw the plane approach, saw it brush the antennas atop a nearby Sheraton, and continue on to plunge into the Pentagon.
What he was saw was an American Airlines 757. Just like hundreds of other witnesses across the District — air crewmen, reporters, secretaries, commuters. It's the testimony of these people, living, breathing eyewitnesses, that the conspiracy hounds seek to obscure with their showers of irrelevant, distorted, and bogus information.
And beyond them, there is yet another group. The officer told me of an acquaintance of his, a woman who married an old military friend, a friend who died in the attack. She has never quite gotten over it, and nobody has the right to add any form of doubt to her burden of loss.
And beyond them are the highest group of all: the dead, to whom we owe all honor and respect. That's what they received from the unparalleled forensic investigation by more than a hundred specialists that identified all but one passenger from the scraps that remained. That investigation should close the book on James Fetzer's claims. It won't, of course. Such an investigation is carried out for one purpose above all: to demonstrate that the eternal chain binding the living and the dead cannot be severed even by an event such as 9/11.
But the 9/11scholars have no interest in such bonds, only in piling ever more malicious trivia on the memory of the dead. That's how far we've fallen. The first step back up lies in recognizing — and accepting — that a fact is a fact, whether we like it or not.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/09/the_911_pentagon_conspiracy_th.html at December 03, 2006 - 06:11:03 PM EST
Please take the trouble to read these debates. They constitute the Mother of all ass-whuppings and show precisely what the liars have.
Well, this is Babe Ruth. Mark is going to try to be Roger Maris (note that I deliberately ignore the better-living-through-chemistry boys).
Hey, I just started a 9/11 blog
Loosechangeisbullshit.blogspot.com
I also run two other sites...
http://jarredhasaids.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/betterthenmaddox
I also want to start an anti-Hillary site.
Now we have crystal clear video and photo evidence showing the connection to RFK.
No, no you don't. But since your ludicrous assassination theories have absolutely zero to do with 9/11, I won't waste my time, or any space on the blog, to discuss it with you. Suffice it to say that medication may be a good idea at this point.
As for BG, it's beyond obvious that he's trying to play you guys. He says he'd believe an FBI investigation, yet doesn't think it's unusual that the FBI, after conduscting their own investigation, hasn't published anything refuting the 9/11 commission report. He says he'd be satisfied if a piece with a serial number was found, but won't accept as evidence the fact that the FDR, aircraft parts painted in AA colours, and bodies of passengers were all located at the scene. He's a waste of time. At this point he can't even claim ignorance as an excuse, since it's clear that he's intentionally cherry-picking information to suit his purpose.
Hey, liars, how did you like the job your boy Fetzer did? Wasn't he terrific?
What democrat means, is that all that info he says he found about the OKC bombings and the 93 bombing he found out about on dubious sites. And i should know because there are some Dutch troofers that come up with the same bullshit as BG, and Democrat is one of em.
So best is just to ignore him, because he is totally clueless.
Jay That is an interesting comment about dubious sites. I have the actual local live news report footage from the OKC building event. Now tell me how numerous reporters and authorities are dubious when describing additional bombs in the building and the REMOVAL of those bombs. Care to address that?
I didn't think so.
CHF I don't see a missile or an A3.
So what does that mean, twoofers?
Dont' get me wrong I don't buy the missile either. Now wether there was one launched from the item that hit th e Pentagon is a different story. (see the white smoke trail in the original security camera footage)
Now my question is CHF, the burden of proof is upon the official story. So what does that mean, CHF, when all the videos to date do not show a huge passenger airliner slamming into the Pentagon?
I think we can all agree something hit it, and that something probably wasn't a missile.
More info for democrat and the OKC bombing murdervillage, time for you to bone up on some facts
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
Section A; Page 1; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk
October 28, 1993, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
Selected info from article: feel free to look it up yourself to get boned up on the facts:
L aw-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.
"Do you deny," Mr. Salem says he told the other agent, "your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?" Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it. "We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down."
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City's tallest towers.
and more:
apes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
Section A; Page 1; Column 4; Metropolitan Desk
October 27, 1993, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
So Murdervillage and others, get a bit educated about the situation before you start attacking people who discuss facts about conspiracy and the OKC bombing.
Murdervilalge Actually I've studied the event off an on for a number of years and talked personally with people who experienced the event thanks to relatives who live there. These same relatives also have on VHS those press reports as do I on DVD. I've visited the memorial on a number of occasions as well. I would encourage you to contact the New York Times and/or the FBI for the transcript of those tapes. There is a reason someone spray painted a message in black paint on a adjacent building something to the effect of 'We deserve to know the truth' which for some reason is still there. I would have to check my notes for the exact statement, but you get the jist.
Have I taken 30 seconds to look into it? No not really, quite a bit longer than that actually, but I know a hell of alot more about the event than you do. And there are other researchers and authors who know a hell of alot more than I do, and I think you will find they arrive at the same conclusion.
Have I taken 30 seconds to look into it? No not really, quite a bit longer than that actually, but I know a hell of alot more about the event than you do.
Now if only you were taking your meds regularly, people might even take you seriously....
As it is, you and Democrat over there come off as complete lunatics. Why don't you explain to us how the moon landing was faked? That one's a lot more fun than stories about OKC and the '93 bombing. If you're going to expose yourself to be a laughing-stock, you may as well tell us some amusing stories.
Murder
What were the devices found in the Murrah building?
Additional explosives according to the authorities.
I've addressed the tape statement.
Alex Is that all you do is spout additional crazy theories when you are confronted with state sponsored terrorism?
Thats right, deny, ignore, make fun of. You trooper Alex, are truly a disappointment to YOUR country and right thinking Canadians. If you are the poster child of Canada's educational system, then they truly did Leave One Child Behind.
Oh wait, your one of those regulars that ignores such evidence and harkens back to 6th grade calling kids names when you don't want them in your club or you don't like what they say or do. Nanny nanny pooh pooh wasn't it?
A real patriot would have rushed out the door getting all the info he could get to sort this story out for himself.
So the fact that he can't find any evidence to back up your lies is now HIS fault?
If you're really a lawyer, I feel VERY sorry for your clients.
"Well, you see your honour, my client is innocent of the murder because it says in the legal code that if your name is Bob you're allowed to commit murder. ofcourse, the fact that the prosecution, and you yourself, have been unable to find the passage that states this, just means you're lazy. I rest my case."
Is there any possible way for you to deny that Operation 40 member David Morales, JM/WAVE Psych Warfare Director Joanniddes or JM/WAVE Director of Operations were at RFK's assassination?
Boggle, when I accused you of "changing the subject with a cut-and-pasted crapflood of some completely unrelated conspiracy theory," which word did you fail to understand?
Murdervillage Ok, Murder, I'll bite. Where are they and what are they?
And yes I know where they are.
But really more important, Murdervillage, why do you ask? What exactly are you working towards here?
I live in northern VA and was in the US Capitol during the attack.
FYI: if you picture the penagon from above, and call where the plane hit noon, the doubletree is somewhere between 7 and 8. From where the camera was located, thered be no way to see a plane on that film.
Gee, another twoofer missing the point entirely. There's a shocker.
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