The Pentagon and 9/11

Government and Pentagon spokesmen repeatedly said that no one every considered the possibility that terrorists would crash planes into buildings. Air Force General Richard Myers said, "You hate to admit it, but we hadn't thought about this." On October 24-26, 2000 the Pentagon carried out a full scale exercise built around the idea that a plane was crashed into the building.

The Pentagon is only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base and is one of the best defended buildings in the world. There were antimissile batteries that were supposed to take out any plane entering restricted air space. We think we know the path the plane must have taken to hit the Pentagon, but if the views of 13 eye-witnesses are accepted the official view was wrong and would not account for some things that were knocked down.

American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 59 people ( not counting the hijackers), disappeared from the radar screen somewhere over Ohio and Kentucky and did not reappear until it was very near the Pentagon.

Though the US has the best radar system in the world, the plane flew 40 minutes without detection. It was being flown by terrorist Hani Hanjour, whom the 911 commission said “was perhaps the most experienced and highly trained pilot among the 9/11 hijackers.” Oddly, there was no reference to a damning report written by a Jet Tech flight instructor who tought this very short man was an inept pilot. Oddly, the FBI report on him seemed an effort to inflate what training the man did have and even mischaracterizes an evaluation exercise as flight training. It is possible that he may have mastered the controls of a 737, but that would not equip him to fly a 757. There is no evidence he ever had training on one, and it seems impossible anyone could have executed the maneuvers he allegedly carried out that day without practice. This led one pilot/writer to speculate that maybe some rich Saudi arranged for secret training in Nevada or Arizona. But just weeks before 9/11, he could not pass a flight training evaluation test, so the secret training theory seems unsustainable.

People who knew him said he was a terrible pilot. If the official account is correct, he was to pull off extraordinary maneuvers in order to hit the recently reinforced West wing. The people who ran the flight school he attended lodged five reports with the FAA claiming the man was incapable of flying a plane safely. Three and a half weeks before the strike, a certified flight instructor refused to rent him a Cessna 172 because he had poor flight skills

Somehow this fellow was able to navigate from the Ohio/Kentucky border to the District of Columbia, pass over the White House, go to the front of the Pentagon, where the main officials’ offices were, and then go around to the building's most fortified wall. He even managed, as was necessary, to fly execute a 270 degree turn while sharply descending to perhaps 10 feet before dropping to a matter of inches before hitting the building. Some theorize that a human pilot could not have done this and speculate that the plane was flown by remote control, which is certainly technically possible.
Many have said that the remote pilot theory is ridiculous. The truth is that the Air Force has flown several 737s across the Atlantic by using Global Hawk remote control technology. This is feasible but would require elaborate preparations. The advantage of this theory is that it does not require proving that the hijackers were bent on suicide or religious fanatics.

Experienced pilots wonder why none of the pilots flipped on the transponder to the hikacker code. It would have only taken a second and should have been done as soon as they suspected something was wrong.

To confuse things a bit Barbara Honegger has carried out an investigation that she thinks shows that there was an explosion in the Pentagon 6 minutes before a plane hit. She was a Reagan aide who has written credibly about past black ops and now is now a senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Affairs Postgraduate School in California.


This inexperienced pilot makes this remarkable turn, descends and hits a lamp pole 1000 feet out; then there are other lamp poles bouncing off the wings. They were about 30 feet high. The toppling of the poles probably disproves the theory that it was not a plane that hit the building. He hit a generator trailer and bumped two big wire spools and went through a tree at 345 mph.

The 757 and 767 have sophisticated computers that are designed to limit pilot error. They are set to prevent maneuvers that exceed 1.5 g. There is supposed to be no way a pilot can override the mechanism. Some military experts figure the maneuvers of Flight 77 exceeded 1.5 gs by more than a multiple of three Some have said that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, but there is no evidence for that view. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that control of the plane was somehow taken away from Ham.jour at the last moment and that the plane behaved lile a missile. Technology does exist that makes this possible.
The media raised no tough questions about this or other odd aspects of the events of that tragic day. According the vice president of CNN International, “Anyone who claims the U.S. media didn’t censor itself is kidding you”

A plane of some sort did hit the Pentagon. There were people who had to duck and hit the ground when it came in. Moreover, there were parts of some bodies which have been adequately identified.

The Pentagon was struck at 9:32AM. We know that because so many clocks stopped then. Many thought it had been bombed, and they later smelled cordite, which was very different from burning gasoline. Bomb sniffing dogs and their handlers were seen at the Pentagon subway station from 7:30 AM on. Someone must have anticipated bombs.

Sometime around 9:25, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta heard a conversation in which an astonished younger man asked Cheney if his previous orders still stood. They had been tracking a blip heading toward the Pentagon. Cheney said they did. The orders must have been not to shoot, because no effort was made to shoot it down.

Something struck the building not long after that, and the round hope looks like it was too small for the fuselage of the Boeing 757. The Washington Post said the hole was 5 stories high and 200 feet wide, but a photograph taken by a Marine showed the entrance hole to be about 18 feet in diameter. It seems the Marine’s picture was taken after the strike, and that the almost the full facade did collapse thirty minutes later. If the Post were correct, the nose would have gone into the building and the rest would have been on the lawn. AP photographs show no parts on the lawn. Nor are there any skid marks.

The 16 X 20 initial hole was too small for a Boeing 757. There was a smaller hole in the inner ring of the Pentagon, but a Boeing 757 with a soft aluminum body would not have gotten that far anyhow. Donald Rumsfeld mistakenly talked about “the missile that struck this building.”

The first responders had to undergo decontamination before they were permitted to enter the building. But there are no nuclear parts on a Boeing 757. Perhaps the nose of the plane was made of dense or heavy metal.

Witnesses said they saw something looking like a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. But there is very little physical evidence that this happened . There was a piece of fuselage with American Airlines markings. There was some airplane debris outside, some of which could be associated with a 757. There was probably too much for it to have been planted. There were no pieces of seats or luggage. Many bodies were removed by emergency personnel. For some reason, they did not incinerate as was the case at the World Trade Center.

Inside, there was much of an engine rotor. The trouble was it was not part of the Pratt and Whitney turbofan engine used on the 757. It was three feet in diameter, whereas the rotor for a 757 is nine feet in diameter, and there should have been two of them.

When the plane hit the Pentagon, it was flying at about an inch or two above the ground, and as it approached it obviously came low enough to damage some lines. A 757 is essentially a hollow tube, yet this one pierced six reinforced Pentagon walls. How?

A close examination of the photographs show three cable spools standing on end. They are at the place where the plane must have entered. Yet they are standing on end and were not knocked over. Their presence damages the assumption that the plane must have been a few inches off the ground when it hit the Pentagon wall. Right above the entry hole are unbroken glass windows. A 100 ton 757 hit the building and the glass did not break.

There was no damage to the lawn where Flight 77 allegedly struck the ground and then skidded into the building. According to the Pentagon, the plane struck the building at 9:37. It is assumed the plane must have hit the ground as no one could have followed the trajectory that has been reconstructed by physicists.

It is argued that the plane was flying at 400 miles per hour at 7000 feet. It then did a left hand turn, making almost a complete circle, descending to ground level in 2 and a half seconds. One experienced pilot claims that such a sharp maneuver executed that high could bring about aq fuel stall. Pilots claim the maneuver was almost impossible for a human to execute, yet it was done by a man with very little training. The man could barely operate a Cessna. Some claim that somehow the plane was under remote control. MITRE Corporation has developed UAVs ( unmanned aereal vehicles) but there is no way to know how far along this technology is.

Some have claimed that a small military plane, loaded with explosives, hit the Pentagon. Somehow, it released a small plasma jet that went into the building. That would explain the small hole and the official claim that missiles were not fired. Others, anyway, say the building was hit by a missile .If was a missile, it would have sought out the heat from an earlier explosion. In an interview published in Parade on October 12 with Wallwork Winick, Rumsfeld mistakenly referred to “the missile” that damaged the Pentagon. The trouble with both explanations is that the bodies of some people on Flight 77 were taken away from the Pentagon. Witnesses described a massive concussion followed by very bright light. Those outside described powerful shock waves, which suggest explosives rather than hydrocarbon fireballs. There was some aircraft debris, but no one has been able to prove it was 757 debris. A woman who worked for the airline told John Judge, a critic of the official 9/11 story, that she recognized debris from a 757. Others have disputed this.

If the 757 struck the Pentagon, there was no evidence that the tail, which stood 40 feet above the ground, scraped or marked the building. Some argue that the tail was not strong enough to mark the building, but there was enough of it that some pieces should have been found.

There were no marks where the wings should have hit. The façade was made of soft limestone and should have shown some marks. There were no big pieces of aircraft inside the Pentagon other than one engine, even though they had to be there as they were not on the lawn. There should have been traces of fire on the building’s roof adjacent to the portion that collapsed but there were none. Some engine parts and plane pieces were found . It is theorized that the explosion generated such intense heat that the rest, except the two engines, just vaporized. There is no record of any other plane just vaporizing. FEMA claimed the plane just plowed all large debris into the building, but the grass looks undamaged. One engine was found and a part that did not go with anything on a 757. An unsigned, scratched piece of the fuselage was also found.

The plane had a 120 foot wingspan. Some of the wings should have been in the yard. The tail was 40 feet high. Some of it should also have been in the yard.

The Pentagon’s report says almost all the interior damage was restricted to the first floor. The report said, The aircraft seems for the most part to have slipped between the first-floor slab on grade and the second floor."

The slipping under the slab separating the first and second floors seems an impossibility given the size of the plane and speed at which it traveled.

The point of entry was a refortified wall. The exterior columns were 21 inches square of reinforced steel covered with 6 inches of limestone façade. The same size columns were inside the E Ring of the building. The panels with windows had eight inches of brick; the panels without were 8 inches of brick and ten of concrete. The windows were an inch and a half thick and with mountings weighed 1600 pounds.

No one reported seeing any luggage, but it must have buried up. A 757 is not that much smaller than the 767s that hit the World Trade Center. The gasoline must have burned the same way at the Twin Towers, but the Pentagon did not collapse. The Pentagon crash tapes that have now been released did clearly not show a plane slamming into the Pentagon and two or three frames seemed to be missing.
It appears that the explosion occurred on an angle, going through E,D, and C Rings, with an exit hole in the C Ring. The hole is 310 feet from the entry point and abnsolutely round. Is one to suppose that the nose of the plane somehow punched out here? There was 40 feet between the C and B Rings. The B ring was not marked in any way. Purdue engineers suggest that it was a ball liquefied energy traveling through Rings E,D, And C. By then the engines did not exist; they simply vaporized, but the fuel had not vaporized in the explosion. There is no historical precedent for this theory. There is no explanation for the size and shape of the exit hold or the fact that no explosive energy jumped to Ring B.

Some eyewitnesses claimed that the plane exploded just before hitting the Pentagon, which would resolve all the riddles about the sequence and kinds of flame and smoke seen and when. On the other hand, the facts also fit the theory that an anti-aircraft missile hit the plane just before it struck. But no one saw the missile. Some thought they saw an American Airlines plane.

The witness testimony is consistent—a big plane hit the Pentagon. There was also a bright silvery flash, not seen at the Twin Towers. The flash and smell of cordite explains why some say there were explosive aboard the plane. Two people saw a C-130, an electronic warfare plane, over the Navy Annex.

After the attack, Rumsfeld gave an interview to Parade that would encourage the missile theory advocates: "Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center." He added, "There were lots of warnings," he says.

Reviewing all the evidence, it is possible to see how some jump to the “no Boeing” theory, even though t he bulk of the evidence is that the Pentagon was struck bay an airplane that most probably was a Boeing 757. Why the Pentagon has sat on so much evidence is anyone’s guess. It has fuelled the “No Boeing argument, “ which is clearly the weakest part of the case made by those who doubt the official story.

There were many videocameras in the vicinity of the Pentagon, and investigators have sought access to 85 different tapes. Within five minutes of the strike, the authorities were confiscating tapes. The Defense Department said its security cameras did not record the crash. At one point ehe government claimed it had no confiscated tape. So far, very little has been released.
As noted, human bodies were found but no one reported finding any luggage. Just another mystery--