Aerial illusion: facts support 757 flying over and not into the Pentagon on 9/11

By Craig McKee (truthandshadows.wordpress.com)

You have to admire the creativity. And you have to admire the sheer scale of the deception.

One of the largest examples of misdirection ever attempted has, for the most part, worked. But that’s only because people haven’t looked closely at the evidence.

It seems clear that a large airliner did fly towards the Pentagon just after 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001 (I’ll get to how we know this momentarily). It is also clear that there was a large explosion that rocked the outer ring of the building as the plane arrived at its supposed target. But there’s one more thing that is clear: the plane didn’t hit the building and didn’t cause the explosion.

American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, was supposedly flown into the Pentagon at 530 miles per hour by an incompetent pilot who was denied permission to rent a Cessna the month before because of his poor flying skills. After negotiating an incredible 330-degree spiral descent, alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour is supposed to have flown just a few feet above the ground, hitting five light poles before crashing into the ground floor of a newly renovated section of the Pentagon.

There are two main reasons why the evidence supports the conclusion that the plane the witnesses saw never hit the building – and that it flew over. One is that the Flight Data Recorder supposedly found in the Pentagon wreckage showed that the plane was too high to have hit the building, and that its flight path was inconsistent with knocking over the light poles. This was shown in an animation created by the National Transportation Safety Board that was based on the FDR.

In the animation, data from the last second of the flight is inexplicably and conveniently missing. I have explored the issues of the Flight Data Recorder and the fallen light poles in past articles (Sept, 29, 2010 and Nov. 15, 2010 on Truth and Shadows).

But another reason is the witness accounts of people on or near the property of the former Citgo gas station, across the street from the Pentagon. These accounts are chronicled in the documentary National Security Alert by Citizen Investigation Team. Witnesses interviewed on site clearly and consistently recount seeing the plane flying to the north of the gas station. I strong recommend that anyone reading this watch this film. You can judge the credibility of the eyewitness accounts for yourselves. It can be found at (citizeninvestigationteam.com/nsa.html).

Why is it important that the plane flew to the north of the gas station? It’s important because if it did, it could not have hit the light poles. And if it didn’t hit the poles, then that evidence was planted, and the whole government version falls apart.

The film shows very detailed interviews, shot at the site of the former Citgo station, that clearly indicate that the plane approached the Pentagon to the north of that gas station.

Robert Turcios, who was an employee of the station, said in the film that the plane passed over to the north of the gas station. He also said that the plane actually pulled up to avoid hitting an overpass sign.

The north side path account was backed up strongly by several other witnesses, including two Pentagon cops, Sgt. Chadwick Brooks and Sgt. William Lagasse. Both said without hesitation that the plane passed to the north of the station.

What’s particularly fascinating about these two interviews is that both cops drew virtually the exact same flight path on an aerial photo supplied by the filmmakers. And after being interviewed individually, the filmmakers brought the two together (they had never talked about this before) to compare notes. Both said there was a zero chance that the plane actually saw the plane fly to the south of the station. And both appeared to be unaware how their version was undermining the official story.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the “flyover theory” seems to get a lot of people angry – even self-described 9/11 truthers. When I suggested sympathy for the flyover theory a few weeks back, I was attacked by people on the web site 9/11 Blogger as being “divisive” along with a few other choice words. The tone seemed very similar to what the defenders of the official story employ. I have since been blocked from contributing to this site.

But if witnesses agree that they saw a large airliner flying towards the Pentagon, then that plane either hit the building or it didn’t. Frankly, I can’t see how a truther could believe a 757 hit the Pentagon. It’s one of the easiest elements of the official story to destroy. There was virtually no wreckage outside the building and not nearly enough damage to be accounted for by a 757. There was no damage to the lawn. And there was no damage to the building where the wings, engines, or tail section would have hit.

So, if it didn’t hit the building, where did it go?

Most of the people who oppose the conclusions in National Security Alert say that CIT has not proven the flyover theory. Maybe there is doubt about this, but does this prove it’s wrong? Based on what I’ve seen and read, it is more likely than the plan hitting poles at 530 mph without leaving any chunks of wing behind.

If the plane flew over the building just as the explosion took place then it would have been convincing to a lot of people. The Pentagon is also just a mile from Reagan National Airport, so landing the plane quickly could have been done.

There was also a C-130 flying in the area, and some have used this to suggest that any plane that flew away from the Pentagon must have been this plane. But the officers in the film say this is not what they saw. They, and all the witnesses in the film, say there was just one plane. Some have criticized the film because witnesses supporting the south side path were not included. Maybe not, but these witnesses were extremely credible and perfectly placed to assess where the plane was.

What about the witnesses who were sitting in traffic? Some saw a commuter jet, some saw the plane as so low that it was hitting car antennae, some say the plane was in a sharp descent even though that would also have made it physically impossible to level out and hit the light poles without hitting the ground. There are a lot of issues with the eyewitness accounts, including whether some were outright fabrications. I’ve already pointed to the story told by USA Today’s Mike Walter as a likely example of this.

So, here’s your assignment: watch the film and then let me know how all of this could have happened without the airliner flying over the Pentagon on that day. I’ll keep an open mind if you will.