Do you remember the attack on the Pentagon? The events were so serious and so sudden that it was not immediately possible to notice the contradictions in the official version.
Shortly before 10:00 am Washington time on 11 September 2001, the DOD released a brief statement:
IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 11, 2001
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EMERGENCY RESPONSE AT THE PENTAGON
The Department of Defense is continuing to respond to the attack that occurred this morning at 9:38 a.m. EDT. There are no casualty figures currently available. Injured personnel were taken to several area hospitals. Secretary of Defense Donald S. Rumsfeld has expressed his concern for the families of those killed and injured during this shameless attack and is directing operations from his command center in the Pentagon.
All personnel were evacuated from the building as emergency response personnel from the Department of Defense and surrounding communities responded to fire and medical emergencies. Initial estimates of the damage are significant; however, the Pentagon is expected to be reopened tomorrow morning. Alternate worksites for those affected parts of the building are currently being identified.
[[Cut & pasted from http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/dod_brief03.htm]]
First on the scene, the Reuters news agency announces that the Pentagon has been hit by a helicopter explosion. This news is confirmed by telephone to the AP by Democratic consultant Paul Begala. Several minutes later, the DOD corrects the information: it was an airplane. New accounts contradict the first ones and support the authorities' version: Fred Hey, legislative assistant to Sen. Bob Ney, saw a Boeing fall out of the sky while he was driving by on the highway adjoining the Pentagon. Sen. Mark Kirk was in the process of exiting the Pentagon parking lot, after having had breakfast with with the Secretary of Defense, when a big airplane crashed. The Secretary himself, Donald Rumsfeld, leaves his office and throws himself on the scene in order to go to the aid of victims.
The Arlington County firefighters arrive on-scene. They are joined by four teams from FEMA, the federal emergency-response agency, and by special firefighters from Reagan National Airport. At around 10:10 am, the section of the Pentagon that was hit collapses.
The press is kept apart from the drama scene so as not to interfere with the rescuers, and has to content itself with filming the first body bags, which are being silently lined up in an improvised field hospital. But the AP manages to get their hands on photographs of the arriving firefighters, taken by a private citizen from a nearby roadside building.
In the confusion, it takes several hours before the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, indicates that the "suicide plane" was a Boeing 757-200, American Airlines Flight 77, bound from Dulles to LAX, which air-traffic controllers had lost track of at around 8:55 am. Still working in haste, the press agencies add to the pressure, speaking of close to 800 casualties. An unorthodox figure which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld kept himself from refuting until his press conference the next day, although the exact toll, fortunately four times less heavy, is precisely known.
For the entire world, after the attacks on the WTC, it's a further shock: the world's most powerful army was not capable of protecting its own headquarters and was subjected to heavy losses. The USA, which one had believed to be invincible, is vulnerable even on its own soil.
At first glance, the facts are undebatable. However, when you start looking at the details, the official explanations become embarrassing and contradictory.
The air-traffic controllers of the FAA explained to reporters of the Christian Science Monitor that, at around 8:55 am, the Boeing had descended to 29,000 feet and had not responded to radio calls. Its transponder had then gone silent, so that they had originally believed that an electrical failure had occurred. Then the pilot, who still was not responding, had intermittently keyed his radio transmitter, broadcasting a voice with a strong Arab accent who was threatening him. The airplane had then made an about-face in the direction of Washington, then the air-traffic controllers lost track of it.
In conformity with current operating procedures, the local air-traffic controllers had reported the hijacking to FAA headquarters. Most of the national officials were not there, having gone to Canada for a professional conference. In the panic of that morning, the officials on duty at FAA headquarters thought they were receiving yet another notification about the second airplane hijacked to New York. It wasn't until another half-hour had passed that they finally figured out that the report was about a third hijacking and informed military authorities. This mistake had caused the loss of 29 precious minutes.
Questioned on 13 September by the Senate Armed Forces Committee, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, was incapable of reporting the measures which had been taken to intercept the Boeing. From this animated exchange with the highest military authority, the congressmen concluded that no action at all had been taken to intercept the airplane (do, by all means, read the interview, in the Appendix below). But can one believe that the US Army had passively stood by during the attacks?
To thwart the disastrous effect of this interview, NORAD published a communique on 14 September. Filling in the holes in Gen. Myers' memory, NORAD indicated that it had not been informed of the hijacking until 9:24 am. It had immediately, they assured, ordered two F-16 fighters from Langley AFB (Virginia) to intercept the Boeing. But the Air Force, not knowing where the Boeing was, had thought that the Boeing was going to commit a new attack on New York, and the fighters were sent away to the north. A military transport aircraft, taking off from the presidential Andrews AFB, had come across the Boeing by chance and had identified it. Too late.
It's not certain that NORAD's version is any more honorable than that of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Can one believe that the US military radar system is incapable of locating a Boeing in a zone of less than a hundred kilometers in radius [[une zone de quelques dizaines de kilomètres en rayon]]? And that a big passenger aircraft could shake off the powerful F-16s sent to pursue it?
Even if we suppose, then, that the Boeing had overcome this first obstacle, it should have been shot down on its way to the Pentagon. The security system which protects the DOD is quite clearly a military secret. Like that of the neighboring White House. At the most, we know that it was entirely redesigned after a series of events in 1994, notably the crash-landing of a small aircraft, a Cessna 150L, on the White House lawn. We also know that this anti-aircraft system is controlled at the presidential Andrews AFB. Two combat squadrons are permanently stationed there: the USAF 113rd Fighter Wing and the USN 321st Fighter Attack Squadron. Respectively equipped with F-16 and F/A-18 aircraft, they never should have let the Boeing approach.
But, as LCOL Vic Warzinski, Pentagon spokesman, put it: "We weren't aware that that airplane was heading for us, and I doubt whether before Tuesday [11 September], anyone would have been able to foresee such a thing."
So, having led its pursuers astray and harmlessly shaken off the most sophisticated air-defense system, the Boeing ended its flight at the Pentagon.
A Boeing 757-200 is a cargo plane, capable of transporting 239 passengers. It measures 47.32 m [[155 feet]] long and has a wingspan of 38.05 m [[125 feet]]. Fully loaded, this mastodon weighs 150 tons and can still attain a cruising speed of 900 Kph [[560 mph]].
As for the Pentagon, it is the largest office building in the world. 23,000 people work there every day. It gets its name from its original structure: five concentric rings, each with five sides. It was constructed not far from the White House, but on the other side of the Potomac. So it's located not in Washington itself, but in Arlington, in the neighboring state of Virginia.
To do the most important damage, the Boeing would have had to crash on the Pentagon's roof. And for all that, that would be the easiest thing to do: the building's surface area is 29 acres. To the contrary, the terrorists decided to crash into a façade, even though it was only 24 meters [[78 feet]] high.
The airplane suddenly approached the ground, as though to land. While remaining horizontal in attitude, it descended almost vertically, without damaging the streetlamps on the highway which borders the Pentagon parking lot, nor hitting them, not even by the blast caused by its air displacement.
When losing altitude, the landing gear deploys automatically. Although it measures 30 meters high, or the equivalent of three stories, the Boeing pierced the façade of the building only at the height of the ground floor and the second floor. The landing gear, then, must have been torn off before the airplane crashed into the base of the Pentagon. All this (see the cover photo) without damaging the magnificent lawn in the foreground, nor the wall, nor the parking lot, nor the heliport. Indeed, there is a landing pad for small helicopters in this area.
Despite its weight (100 tons) and its speed (between 400 and 700 kph[[250 to 430 mph]]), the airplane only destroyed the first ring of the building. This is what one observes distinctly in this photograph.
[photo: http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Sep2001/010914-F-8006R-002.html]
The shock was felt throughout the Pentagon. The airplane's fuel, which is stocked in the wings, caught fire and the fire spread in the building. 125 people died from it, to which must be added the 64 persons on board the Boeing.
As fate (?) [[sic]] would have it, the airplane struck a portion of the Pentagon that was under construction. They were just putting the finishing touches on the brand-new Navy Command Center. Several offices were unoccupied, some were only occupied by civilian personnel in charge of the installation. Which explains how the majority of the victims were civilian personnel and how you won't find a single general among the military victims.
Half an hour later, the upper floors collapsed.
[photo: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/n09112001_200109114.html]
These first elements are not exactly verisimilar, but the rest of the official version is straight-out impossible.
If one superimposes the shape of the airplane onto the satellite photo, one notes that only the nose of the Boeing entered into the building. The fuselage and the wings remained on the outside.
[photo: http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Sep2001/010914-F-8006R-006.html]
The airplane stopped cleanly, with its wings not touching the façade. No trace of impact is visible outside of that of the Boeing's nose.
We should therefore see the wings and the fuselage on the outside, in fact on the lawn. If the nose of the airplane is made of a composite alloy susceptible to melting quickly and if the wings—which contain the fuel—can burn, the fuselage of the Boeing is made of a matter comparable to the body of a car or a truck. Upon the outbreak of a fire, it would necessarily leave a wreckage burnt to ashes. If you take a look at the AP photograph (on the cover), you'll remark manifestly that there's no airplane. The snapshot was nevertheless taken in the first minutes: fire trucks have arrived, but the firefighters haven't deployed yet, and the upper floors have not yet collapsed.
At the 12 September press conference, the Arlington County fire chief, Ed Plaugher, stated that his men were used to combat the spread of the fire within the Pentagon, but that they had been kept away from the exact site of the crash. Only the special (Urban Search & Rescue) FEMA teams had contact with the airplane.
Then a surrealistic dialogue was established:
Journalist: "What did the aircraft consist of?"
Chief Plaugher: "In the first place, the question about the airplane, there are some fragments of the airplane that one could see in the interior during the firefighting operations which I was talking about, but it wasn't a matter of lots of debris. In other words, there aren't pieces of fuselage or anything like that."
Journalist: "Chief, there are small bits of the aircraft spread out all over, even on the highway—miniscule fragments. Would you say that the aircraft exploded, literally exploded, at the moment of impact because of the fuel, or …"
Plaugher: "You know, I'd prefer not to express myself on that subject. We have numerous eyewitnesses who are able to inform you better as far as what happened to the airplane during its approach. So, we just don't know. Me, I don't know."
Journalist: "Where is the airplane's fuel?"
Plaugher: "We have what we believe to be a puddle just at the spot where we believe the nose of the airplane to be."
[[This is my translation of Meyssan's translation; for a transcript, see http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/t09122001_t0912asd.html]]
Thus, although military and congressional officials claim to have seen the machine crash, no one saw the least bit of airplane wreckage, not even the landing gear: some non-identifiable fragments of metal is all there is. As for the video-surveillance cameras in the Pentagon parking lot, they didn't see the Boeing either, at any moment and from any angle.
Let's recapitulate the official version: a hijacked Boeing had shaken off F-16s sent to pursue it, and had slipped through Washington's air-defense system. It had landed vertically on the Pentagon parking lot, although remaining horizontal. It had crashed into the front of the building on the ground floor. Only its nose penetrated the building and it had stopped just before its wings went in. The fuselage was immediately disintegrated. The fuel, contained in the wings, burned just long enough to start a fire in the building, then transformed itself into a puddle which was shifted to the supposed site of the airplane's nose.
Notwithstanding the respect one owes to the high quality of the "eyewitnesses" (officers and congressmen), it's impossible to swallow such twaddle. Far from lending credence to their depositions, the calibre of these witnesses only manages to underline the importance of the means the US Army went to to make a travesty out of the truth.
For all that, this zany fable has been built progressively, one lie leading to another. If you go back and check out the initial communique from the Pentagon, cited at the beginning of this chapter, you'll find that there was no question of a Boeing. The "kamikaze airplane" theory didn't appear until half an hour later. The same way there was no question of fighter planes trying to intercept the phantom airplane before the interview with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It isn't until two days later that NORAD invented the wandering F-16s.
The official version is nothing but propaganda. What remains is that 125 people died at the Pentagon and that an airplane carrying 64 passengers has disappeared. What caused the explosion that hit the Pentagon? What has become of American Airlines Flight 77? Are its passengers dead? If so, who killed them, and why? If not, where are they? So many questions here which the the American administration must respond to…
Above all, let's ask ourselves what it is that the official version tends to overshadow. Questioned on CNN the day after the attack, Gen. Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO forces during the Kosovo war, declared: "We had been informed some time ago that certain groups were planning [an attack on the Pentagon], evidently we didn't know enough about it [to react]." This enigmatic affirmation makes no reference to any foreign aggressor, but to threats made by far-right militias against the Pentagon. It lets us catch a glimpse of the secret clashes which are tearing apart the USA's ruling class.
CNN interviewed Hosni Mubarak on 15 September. At that time, the Egyptian president didn't have the same information at his disposal that we had. He was unaware of what a detailed analysis of the attack teaches us. On the other hand, he was in possession of secret intelligence about the preparation of the attack which he had sent several weeks beforehand to the US government.
Mubarak: Precautions we take on the ground, people may hijack planes, do this.. do that, but we couldn't think not any intelligence in the world could have the capability in the world to say they are going to use commerical planes with passengers on board to crash the towers to crash the pentagon, those who did that should have flown in the area a long time, for example. The Pentagon is not very high, a pilot could come straight to the Pentagon like this to hit, he should have flown a lot in this area to know the obstacles which could meet him when he is flying very low with a big commerical plane to hit the Pentagon in a special place.
Somebody has studied this very well, someone has flown in this area very much.
Q: Are you suggesting it was an inside operation, I may ask, who do you think is behind this?
Mubarak: Frankly speaking I don't want to jump to conclusions, you in the United States when you catch somebody, some rumors about somebody, you say "Oh no, it is not Egyptian, it is Saudi, it is Emirates...all this is inside any house of an Arab, the people say the Arabs are participating...you cannot fortell, it is better to wait."
You remember Oklahoma..there came rumors immediatly that the Arabs did it, and it was not Arabs, who knows..let us wait and see what is the result of the investiagaions, because something like this done in the United States is not an easy thing for some pilots who had been training in Florida, so many pilots go and train just to fly and have a license, that means you are capable to do such terroristic action. I am speaking as a former piolt, I know that very well, I flew very heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions from now.
[[Cut & pasted from Egyptian government website http://www.presidency.gov.eg/html/14-Sept2001_press_2.html -- all errors sic]]
If the Bush administration falsified the attack on the Pentagon to cover up some internal problems, didn't it also hide certain elements of the attacks which took place at the WTC?
[[END OF CHAPTER ONE]]