"Dick Eastman" <silver@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:cfgdni$g1l$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Dennis Behreandt, in The New American, the JBS publication, argues
> against "not-the-Boeing" findings. (I reply) --
>
> Pentagon 9/11: Getting the Facts Straight -- A Review of
> Behreandt's article on the Pentagon Attack
> by Dick Eastman
>
>
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> --- ----
>
>
> Dennis Behreandt has written a long article (reproduced below) with
> selective quotations from five witnesses, an appeal to the ASCE re****t
> and a critique of what he asserts are the three logical fallacies used
> by Thierry Meyssan. Behreandt says there is not evidence of a missile,
> but does not even mention the security camera video showing the definite
> smoke trail of a missile following the too-small aircraft. See
> http://www.bedoper.com/eastman
Behreandt says the damage on the first
> floor betrays the appropriate imprint for a Boeing 757, yet (see the
> same page referenced above) we see that there is no penetration hole to
> the right of the point of nose impact, proving that there was no
> starboard engine. Behreandt, then, in just these two points, has omitted
> such powerful evidence even from consideration that his entire paper
> must be dismissed as a hatchet job. Who looking at the photgraph of the
> first-floor damage (above URL) can take Behreandt seriously when he
> outright states: "Other photos were taken of the façade before the
> collapse that show much greater damage that does fit the profile of an
> aircraft." But how many of his readers are going to have the benefit of
> the actual photo when reading his false claim.
>
> Nevertheless, let us look at what he does present.
>
> He starts with the symbol of credibility itself -- a witness I do not
> discount -- the Catholic priest, Father McGraw. Now I consider Father
> McGraw's statements strong sup****t for the small-plane thesis. Here is
> why. He says he heard the plane overhead then looked out to see what
> looked like "a plane coming in for a landing ... in the sense that it
> was controlled and sort of straight." What the Father is saying is that
> plane he was observing was not making any turns in the seconds prior to
> the explosion. But if this plane was over the Naval Annex on its way to
> the flyover point (crash site), as most witnesses placed it and if it
> was not making any sharp erratic turns THEN IT COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE
> BEEN THE PLANE THAT KNOCKED DOWN THE POLE THAT HIT THE TAXI. [The taxi
> driver himself has stated that the Boeing could have flown over the
> building given its location at the last moment he saw it after his
> wind****eld was hit.] Furthermore, Sgt. William Lagasse was pumping gas
> at the gas station between the Annex and the Pentagon when the Boeing
> flew by him headed east, and it passed north of him, so that he could
> see the row of windows on the starboard side -- which also means that
> this plane could not have been the plane that hit the pole the broke the
> taxi wind****eld, the southwestmost pole that was hit. And Frank Probst
> is another witness interviewed by ASCE who specifically states that the
> Boeing was "over the Annex."
>
> The fact is that five poles were downed, and Behreandt quotes a
> witness,
> Don Mason, whose account is given in the ASCE re****t, Mason saying that
> he saw the Boeing knock down only three poles -- leaving the southwest
> pole and another pole for the actual killer jet.
>
> Another witness sited is Dan Creed, who watched the Boeing from his car
> south of the Annex. Creed says the plane "dived," then "leveled off"
> and "struck the Pentagon. However, photos from the parking area south
> of the Annex show that ****tion of the Pentagon wall that was hit is not
> visible because of the rise in Wa****ngton Blvd. Creed may have seen a
> dive and a leveling off, but he could not have seen the crash -- he
> merely saw the Boeing headed for a point where suddenly an explosion
> occured and he inferred a cause and effect relation. But that is not
> all Creed tells us. He also says "It was no more than 30 feet off the
> Ground." But when was it 30 feet off the ground. If it was 30 feet off
> the ground as it gained the Pentagon then certainly it was not the plane
> that damaged only the first two floors (ground level and the level
> above) and did not scratch the third level, not even above column 14
> where the nose hit -- even though, if the plane was just four feet
> above the ground the tall tail fin would have had to have done damage
> half way up the fourth level -- however on the third and fourth floors
> there is not damage to the stone sheathing, nor even a window broken.
> (Indicating, no Boeing, but a smaller plane, a fighter jet, that entered
> the first floor and its tail fin took out the wall (pillar 14) between
> the two windows that Father McGraw saw all the fire coming from. (In
> another interview, the Father says all the fire seemed to be coming from
> just two windows when he arrived on the lawn, looking for Catholics to
> administer the last rites to -- there were none, btw, which surprised
> him.) But back to Creed's "It was no more than 30 feet off the Ground:"
> The fact is that the Annex is a five-story building and it is situated
> on the same hill as Arlington Cemetery. Other witnesses had the Boeing
> passing over the Annex at 80 feet. Which presents a problem, because
> the killer jet entered the first floor level and its engine (only one
> engine is re****ted being found, only one hole was made by an engine
> exiting the "c" ring) it travelling horizontally. Even the video
> camera recording of the attack shows, by the location of the plane and
> the smoke trail visible in the first three pictures -- the real killer
> jet was in horizontal flight. The Boeing -- as all the evidence points
> -- never got that low, rather it overflew the building, and, covered by
> the smoke and confusion, landed at Reagan National Air****t, just one
> mile beyond. At whatever point along the slope down to the flood plain
> of the Potomac where the Pentagon sits, wherever Creed saw the Boeing at
> 30 feet above the ground -- it could not have entered the first floor
> flying horizontally as did the killer, it had to have overflown the
> Pentagon -- the other witnesses re****t of 80 feet above the ground
> being about right to clear the 71 foot building.
>
> I believe Steve Riskus who said the plane crossed Wa****ngton Blvd. and
> appeared to "go straight in" (90 degrees) and who also estimated that
> the Boeing passed 100 feet from him, while he was still north of the
> crash point! whereas the first pole that was downed -- the pole that
> hit the taxi -- was far south -- Riskus only seeing it down as he drove
> away after taking the pictures that establish his exact location when he
> stopped his southbound car and began taking digital photos.
>
> How many readers of Behreandt's article notice that the only thing
> Behreandt says about witness Aydan Kizildrgli is that he said "Did you
> see that?"
>
> Did you notice that many of the quotes giving statements in line with
> the official account is not a witness at all, but the author of a book
> giving his own interpretation and not a quotation of one of his sources.
>
> A crash is over in two seconds. When a man hits the dirt, as Frank
> Probst did, fearing for his life, he may miss some things -- seeing a
> Boeing bearing down on him, and jumping to the ground, he might miss the
> jet fighter that much more quickly came in from the southwest, plowed
> through the cyclone fence -- Probst on his belly thinking it was the
> starboard engine of the Boeing he was looking at the second he dived
> down. Perhaps an air-to ground missile -- which we see being fired in
> the first frame of the security camera video -- and which we see
> blossoming into a a high column of very bright white explosion
> characteristic of a missile warhead and not of an aluminum jetliner and
> kerosene hitting a stone and brick office building. (Someone in the
> Pentagon heard what sounded like a missile. Another smelled chordite,
> which is put in military high-explosive ordinance.) -- as I was saying,
> perhaps the air-to-ground missile with a pentrating warhead is what
> grazed top of the generator.
>
> Also, the ASCE engineers entered the scene after the bodies of the
> Pentagon dead had been removed. The following statement is totally
> misleading: "The Pentagon Building Performance Re****t, show the
> relative positions of passenger remains found within the damaged
> structure of the Pentagon." What the ASCE engineers are doing is taking
> the Pentagon's word for where bodies we're found. The ASCE engineers
> arrived three days after the crash and body removal -- they had clip
> boards and they merely examined each pillar, checking the extent of the
> damage done to it -- and the next day the evidence began to be
> demolished by the "clean-up crew." The ASCE engineers then spent over a
> year massaging their data gained on those clipboards in one day! They
> were NOT attempting to discover what hit the Pentagon, rather they were
> constrained to look only at structural damage. And the stuctural damage
> does not come down for the Boeing explanation at all, over the
> small-plane explanation. What's more the photos taken by various
> witnesses right after the crash give much more information than the ASCE
> engineers obtained with their checklist (remember, the part of the
> building that collapsed they were not able to ascertain what the damage
> to the pillars were). And it is these witness photos that disprove the
> Boeing explanation. (You will have to see my detailed expositon of this
> -- I'm not going in to it tonight 1:20 a.m.)
>
> So let me close, with more photo evidence, backing all I have written
> above, disproving by direct inspection of photographic evidence and
> witness accounts the distorted picture of the total evidence given by
> Dennis Behreandt.
>
> Correcting the distortion that 911 witnesses accounts of the Pentagon
> attack sup****t the official version of what happened.
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pentagonconspiracy/message/71
>
> Behreandt did not even address the major lines of evidence that sup****t
> the small plane thesis. BUT THE FACT IS THAT I PERSONALLY HAVE
> SENT MY DATA TO THE NEW AMERICAN MANY TIMES
> AND I HAVE DEBATED WITH WELL ESTABLISHED
> JOHN BIRCHERS AND TOLD THEM TO PRESENT THIS,
> THE REAL DATA, TO THEIR ORGANIZATION. AND SO
> THE BIRCHERS KNEW THE EVIDENCE I PRESENT
> HERE, BUT THEY CHOSE TO IGNORE ITS EXISTENCE,
> TO CONCENTRATE ON THIERRY MEYSAN (WHO
> ALSO DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THIS EVIDENCE,
> NEVER IN TWO YEARS RESPONDING TO ONE OF MY
> LETTERS.) BEHREANDT HAS NOT WRITTEN AN
> HONEST ACCOUNT -- HE HAS SELECTED WITNESS
> STATEMENTS AND IGNORED A MOUNTAIN OF EVIDENCE
> DISPROVING THE BOEING CRASH.
>
> Why didn't Behreandt get in touch with professor Dewdney, engineer
> Longspaugh, 757 pilot Ralph Omholt, researchers Jerry Russell and
> Richard Stanley, Brad M. or Gerard Holmgren -- he only quotes Meyssan,
> and even then, despite the heavy distortion in selectivity, Meyssan
> comes out very well against Behreandt.
>
> But that will not stop the Behreandt hatchet job from going the rounds
> -- people will read it -- the ASCE see-no-evil re****t, the phony
> forensics, and all the rest -- and they will buy it. And I have not
> mentioned all the rest of it -- the standdown, the proven planted false
> evidence, the security camera, the damage and debris, all consistent
> with the small-plane finding and all inconsistent with the big lie.
>
> See for yourself:
>
> Pentagon crash evidence proves frame-up,
> Implicates Pentagon leader****p in black-op
>
> http://www.bedoper.com/eastman
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/911crimefile/message/8
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/911crimefile/message/3
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pentagon911/message/507
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pentagonconspiracy/message/71
>
>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/9-11-demonstrative-evidence-of-frameup/mess
> ages/1
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pentagonconspiracy/message/78
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solidaritystreet/message/2
>
> INDEX OF PROOF
>
> 1. Pentagon security camera shows
> a. Too short a plane
> b. Smoke trail of a missile being fired
> c. White-hot flash explosion consistent with a missile warhead
>
> 2. Photos show wrong crash imprint in the wall
>
> 3. Photos show and wrong flash-powder burn darkening the wall
>
> 4. Downed lampposts and witness consensus each identify
> a different approach path to the Pentagon, the Boeing's
> and the killer jet's and they are mutually incompatible --
> (path of sighted Boeing also inconsistent with civil
> engineers re****ted "50 degree- angle of entry" -- witnesses
> re****ting the Boeing coming over the Sheraton Hotel, the
> Naval Annex, the Citgo gas station, and the southernmost
> extremity of Arlington National Cemetery -- an angle much
> closer to perpendicular to the wall)
>
> 5. Wrong kind of debris
>
> 6. Single piece of right kind of debris shown to have been
> found on the opposite side of the approach path from
> the side of the plane where that particular piece had
> to have come from (found on the north side -- the piece
> comes from the starboard side which would have
> faced south had it come from the actual killer jet
> -- also with unripped rivet holes this
> either was never on a plane or was taken off a
> 757 by removing the rivets individually.
>
> 7. Witnesses also
>
> a. heard a missile
>
> b. heard a sonic boom prior to blast
>
> c. smelled burning chordite after the blast
>
> d. saw a radar blip behaving like a jet-fighter blip
>
> 8. No photos of wreckage from inside consistent with the crash
>
> 9. Evidence of only one engine and one seat , a pilots seat.
>
> 10. A distraction plane, a four- engine plane making dives
> over D.C. both photographed, videotaped and shown
> on BBC, and re****ted (erroneously) by many wintesses
> as the actual plane "diving at an irrecoverable angle)
>
> 11. The attack was made almost horizontally into the first-floor
> level -- consistent with a countour-hugging jet-fighter attack
>
> 12. Normal rescuers were prevented from entering the building
> while only certain people, including Rumsfeld himself, conducted
> (screened) victims from the building
>
> 13. Rumsfeld had recently been given exclusive power to
> OK air interceptions -- and yet he was in his office the whole
> time the twin towers were hit, and when the Pentagon was
> hit he went to oversee "rescue" instead of going to the situation
> room where his interception authority could be given -- he
> arrived at the situation room at about the time the Pennsylvania
> plane (backup for the Pentagon) was finally shot down.
>
> 14. The various drills and practices for an air attack on the Pentagon
> including some kind of simulation on 9-11-01 itself, coupled with
> denials that such an attack had been considered possible.
>
> 15. Impossible stories by, for example, John Judge (regarding
> his amazing stewardess friend who claims to have seen the
> Boeing inside the hole, recognized the plane as the one she
> always flew, recongized her stewardess friend as a victim by
> a photo of her severed arm with the matching "friend****p
> bracelett" they both wore; that she was passing out
> doughnuts and coffee to the rescue workers with the salvation
> army when the salvation army was nowhere in evidence at the
> scene -- John Judge who is a professional JFK conspiracy
> theory debunker and discloses that this same stewardess
> friend is also a JFK theory investigator, the same
> John Judge who launched the phony "People's Investigation
> of 9-11 with a press conference by stating that the Pentagon
> attack is not something responsible investigators should bother
> investigating etc. since we "know" the Boeing hit the Pentagon
> and don't want to be a laughing stock etc. -- the People's
> investigation that never once reviewed any of the evidence
> packages I posted to them -- the same John Judge who to this
> day refuses to debate Dick Eastman on any internet forum and
> whom all -- dare I use the term -- "responsible" 9-11
> investigators think is a John Judge who is working for the
> coverup, for obstruction of justice, and because he does it so badly
> is himself become one of the proofs of the frameup along with the
> known- only-to himself flight attendant who works one of the
> flights that most definitely had to have been regularly monitored by
> US intelligence operatives, probably flight attendents, and
> this one just happened not to take Flight 77 that day by
> happenstance etc. -- so how about it, Mr. Judge?
>
> 16. The deaths of only the CIA's indepdendent intelligence
> revivals , the Offices of Naval Intelligence personel, and
> auditors of defense spending contracts etc. alone moved
> into the "newly renovated" section that was hit -- on the side
> where most of the witnesses would be the Arlington Cemetery
> dead or people involved with driving their cars. Naval Intelligence
> would have independently investigated 9-11 had they lived --
> the investigator that no official has yet conducted -- Wolfowitz
> sure bin Laden had done it and ready with the solution of invading
> Afganistan on the very first day -- even as they were allegedly
> taken by complete suprise only a few hours before that
> determination.
>
>
> See the evidence photos and witness testimony confirming all of the
> above and further analysis in sup****t of these conclusions by
> internationally respected American men of science here:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TRUTHBAZOOKA/message/5
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: norgesen
> To: september_eleven_vreeland@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: cia-drugs@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
; apfn-1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 8:06 PM
> Subject: [apfn-1] Pentagon 9/11: Getting the Facts Straight
>
>
> Pentagon 9/11: Getting the Facts Straight
>
> by Dennis Behreandt
>
> The New American | August 23 2004 Issue
>
> A growing number of people have been led to believe that an airliner did
> not hit the Pentagon on 9/11. However, in this case the "official
> version" of events is irrefutable.
>
> Father Stephen McGraw had taken a wrong turn on his way to Arlington
> National Cemetery the morning of September 11, 2001. After taking the
> Pentagon exit onto Wa****ngton Boulevard, Fr. McGraw found himself mired
> in traffic, stewing impatiently over being late for a planned graveside
> service. Suddenly the priest heard a deafening roar as a large aircraft
> passed directly over the roof of his car. "It looked like a plane coming
> in for a landing . I mean, in the sense that it was controlled and sort
> of straight," recalled Fr. McGraw.
>
> The priest "looked out just as the plane clipped an overhead sign and
> then toppled a light pole, injuring a taxi driver a few feet away,"
> recounts investigative author James Bamford in his new book A Pretext
> for War. "A second later, American Flight 77 smashed into the gray
> concrete wall of the Pentagon. The jet hit with such force that it
> penetrated four of the five concentric rings of corridors and offices
> surrounding a gazebo in the center court, long nicknamed Ground Zero."
>
> "I saw it crash into the building," testifies the priest. "There was an
> explosion and a loud noise, and I felt the impact. I remember seeing a
> fireball come out of two windows.... I saw an explosion of fire
> billowing through those two windows. I remember hearing a gasp or scream
> from one of the other cars near me. Almost a collective gasp, it
> seemed."
>
> That "collective gasp" was wrenched from the throats of numerous
> witnesses who - like Father McGraw - saw the crash with their own eyes,
> heard the explosions with their own ears, and felt the percussive
> aftershock with their own bodies.
>
> "Did you see that?" exclaimed Aydan Kizildrgli, a student from Turkey
> who had also been snarled in traffic. Notes Bamford: "Traffic along the
> highway came immediately to a halt as people jumped out of their cars
> and began putting their cell phones to their ears. Stunned and dazed,
> Kizildrgli left his car on the road and began walking aimlessly for half
> an hour."
>
> Also among the eyewitnesses were Dan Creed and two colleagues from
> Oracle Software, who, seated in a car near the Naval Annex, watched in
> horrified wonder as the hijacked plane dived, leveled off and struck the
> Pentagon next door. Telling his story to the Phoenix, Arizona, Ahwatukee
> Foothills News, Creed recalled the dreadful events. "It was no more than
> 30 feet off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It
> was nothing more than a guided missile at that point," said Creed.
>
> Moments later, the plane struck the Pentagon, killing all 64 of its
> passengers and crew. The crash took the lives of another 125 people on
> the ground. "I can still see the plane. I can still see it right now.
> It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going full speed,
> going full throttle, its wheels up," Creed recalled.
>
> Frank Probst, an employee of the Pentagon Renovation Program Office, was
> outside the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. In an
> interview with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Probst
> gave his own eyewitness account. He had been watching live television
> coverage of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center tower in one
> of the construction site trailers.
>
> Around 9:30 a.m., Probst left the trailer and (as paraphrased in an ASCE
> re****t) "began walking to the Modular Office Compound . located beyond
> the extreme north end of the Pentagon" for a 10 o'clock meeting.
> Approaching the heli****t, he looked over and saw "a plane flying low
> over the Annex and heading right for him." Understandably, Probst "hit
> the ground and observed the right wing tip pass through the ****table 750
> kW generator" that provided backup power to a ****tion of the Pentagon.
> He saw the right engine take out "the chain-link fence and posts
> surrounding the generator." The left engine, he said, "struck an
> external steam vault before the fuselage entered the building."
>
> Probst described to the ASCE how, "as the fireball from the crash moved
> toward him," he ran toward the South Parking Lot. He said that he fell
> down twice, and while running, "fine pieces of wing debris floated down
> about him." He only saw "fire and smoke within the building at the point
> of impact."
>
> The ASCE also interviewed Don Mason, another employee of the Pentagon
> Renovation Program Office. At the time of the crash, Mason was "stopped
> in traffic west of the building," according to the ASCE account of his
> story. "The plane approached low," flying "directly" over him, "possibly
> clipping the antenna of the vehicle immediately behind him." It also
> "struck three light poles between him and the building."
>
> Mason, the ASCE recounted, said that he saw his colleague Probst
> "directly in the plane's path, and he witnessed a small explosion as the
> ****table generator was struck by the right wing." He also recalled
> "seeing the tail of the plane" as it entered the building, followed by a
> "fireball that erupted" upon the plane's impact.
>
> Pentagate?
>
> With eyewitness testimony like this, it's hard to see how anyone could
> believe that American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon.
> Shockingly, though, that's just what a growing number of people have
> been led to believe. A number of Web sites claim that the twin-engine
> Boeing 757 did not crash into the Pentagon. Their theories range from
> truck bombs and pre-set on-site explosive charges to remotely controlled
> aircraft and missile attacks.
>
> It is not just the events of 9/11 at the Pentagon, however, that have
> people scratching their heads. Americans are inundated each day with a
> veritable torrent of information, both true and false. There has been a
> marked proliferation of 24-hour news channels, a renaissance in talk
> radio, and a deluge of information on the Internet. Moreover, there has
> been an explosion in consumer goods and an accompanying explosion in
> advertising related to those goods and services. We are bombarded with
> claims and counterclaims. Oftentimes it is exceedingly difficult to
> separate the hype from the truth.
>
> The problem applies to alternative news media as well as mainstream
> media. The former are wont to publish all manner of conjecture and
> theory, often based on only the slimmest, often misconstrued, bits of
> "evidence." For instance, it is true that our nation and our liberties
> are threatened by a cabal of establishment Insiders bent on creating a
> socialist world government (see the article on page 20). Many
> alternative media outlets, however, persist in perpetuating "conspiracy
> theories" that are untrue and misleading. This is particularly true of
> the assertion that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon.
>
> Americans mindful of the dangers threatening the founding ideals of this
> nation need be especially cautious in such matters. The hazards can be
> illustrated by applying Gresham's Law. In economics, this law teaches
> that bad money drives out good. In the information society, bad
> information drives out good information. The proliferation of
> misinformation causes the dilution of good, factual information.
> Valuable information on actual cover-ups, for instance, is discredited
> when other alleged, but non-factual and misleading, conspiracy theories
> are given undue currency. In short, bad conspiracy theories discredit
> all assertions of conspiracy, making for fertile ground in which actual
> conspiracies thrive.
>
> The assertion that American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon
> achieved notoriety following the publication in France of l'Effroyable
> Imposture by French journalist Thierry Meyssan. The book, published in
> the U.S. as 9/11: The Big Lie, was an immediate sensation in France,
> becoming, as Time Europe noted, that nation's number one best-seller.
> The book has since catalyzed an explosion of Web sites and alternative
> publications making similar claims. For his part, Meyssan claims that
> the official explanation of the Pentagon's damage - that the hijacked
> airliner crashed into the building - is "a loony tale constructed in
> bits and pieces, one lie leading to another."
>
> Instead of providing an alternative explanation, however, he simply
> demanded that the U.S. come clean. "The official version is only
> propaganda," he wrote. "But the facts remain that 125 persons died at
> the Pentagon and that an airplane carrying 64 passengers disappeared.
> What became of American Airlines flight 77? Are the passengers dead? If
> so, who killed them and why? If not, where are they? The U.S.
> administration should address all these questions."
>
> Such questions, of course, ignore publicly available evidence, including
> the fact that some passenger remains were found. Diagrams presented by
> the American Society of Civil Engineers, in its re****t entitled The
> Pentagon Building Performance Re****t, show the relative positions of
> passenger remains found within the damaged structure of the Pentagon.
>
> By applying certain principles, it is possible to evaluate the validity
> of a given news re****t, press release, advertisement, conspiracy theory,
> or other claim. In fact, the 9/11 crash at the Pentagon provides a sort
> of laboratory with which to demonstrate these principles of critical
> thinking.
>
> Evaluating Meyssan's Work
>
> In essence, Meyssan states that there is no evidence for the official
> version of events, then assumes on that basis that the official version
> must be false. Historian David Hackett Fischer categorizes such
> reasoning as "the fallacy of the negative proof," wherein a person
> argues that "'there is no evidence that X is the case,' and then
> proceeds to affirm or assume that not-X is the case." In such instances
> all that is proven, Fischer notes, is that there "is no evidence of X."
>
> Unfortunately for Meyssan, there is plenty of evidence regarding what
> happened at the Pentagon on 9/11. The U.S. government did, in fact,
> answer Meyssan's questions in the form of the "official version" of
> events. By asking such questions in l'Effroyable Imposture, published in
> the U.S. as 9/11: The Big Lie, Meyssan makes a ham-handed, almost
> absurd, attempt to lead readers to conclude that no explanation for that
> day's events had yet been offered.
>
> Having come under fire for 9/11: The Big Lie, Meyssan and his
> organization released a subsequent book, Pentagate, that more fully
> develops his critique of the attack on the Pentagon. The analysis
> provided in Pentagate makes attempts on multiple fronts to convince
> readers that the conventional explanation of the damage at the Pentagon
> is faulty. According to the book:
>
> . Witness testimony indicates that a missile was responsible for the
> damage. "In all cases," the book concludes, "these testimonies
> concerning the sound and the trajectory also correspond perfectly with
> the manner in which a missile flies in the final phase of flight, just
> before it strikes its target."
>
> . There is no debris from the plane, and the wings, which should have
> sheared off, are nowhere to be seen.
>
> . The damage at the Pentagon could have been caused by a missile but not
> by a plane. "The building was not smashed into as if it had suffered
> from a classic plane crash," Meyssan writes in Pentagate, "but was
> perforated as if struck by a missile."
>
> . Civilian sources did not know where Flight 77 was after 9:09 a.m. on
> 9/11. Consequently, civilian flight control, the FAA, "could not have
> known that the plane turned back [toward Wa****ngton, D.C.] since it had
> become, by the agency's own admission, invisible to its eyes...."
>
> . The U.S. military did not destroy the plane, despite having the
> capability to do so.
>
> By attempting to develop these five points in greater detail, Meyssan
> attempts to lead readers to the conclusion that a missile, fired by the
> U.S. armed forces, hit the Pentagon.
>
> Consistent Witness Testimony
>
> A very basic means of judging the validity of any story is the ability
> to identify multiple named witnesses who each attest, in consistent
> fa****on, to the various "facts" at issue. How does Meyssan measure up to
> this requirement? The answer: not very well.
>
> In fact, though he asserts that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and
> not an airplane, he does not cite even a single witness claiming to have
> seen a missile. His only "evidence" for the missile theory are
> descriptive similes used by witnesses who attested to seeing a plane but
> who compared the plane to a missile. For instance, he quotes USA Today
> re****ter Joel Sucherman, who saw the plane as it raced toward its
> target. According to Sucherman, "whoever was flying the plane made no
> attempt to change direction. It was coming in at a high rate of speed,
> but not at a steep angle - almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked
> on its target and staying dead on course."
>
> Meyssan also quotes another USA Today re****ter, Mike Walter, who saw the
> plane crash into the Pentagon. As to the plane's behavior, Walter
> recalled that he saw "a plane, a plane from American Airlines. I
> thought: 'That's not right, it's really low.' And I saw it. I mean, it
> was like a cruise missile with wings." Based on these and other
> witnesses who described the plane's behavior by using missile similes,
> Meyssan concludes, "In all cases, these testimonies concerning the sound
> and the trajectory also correspond perfectly with the manner in which a
> missile flies in the final phase of flight, just before it strikes its
> target."
>
> If the witnesses are not saying that they saw a missile, what are they
> saying? Sucherman, in stating that the plane seemed "like a heat-seeking
> missile" that "was locked on its target" was not saying that it was a
> heat-seeking missile, but was simply describing in an emphatic manner
> the fact that the plane did not deviate from its course. The same
> applies to Mike Walter's statement that he saw "a plane, a plane from
> American Airlines," which "was like a cruise missile with wings." To
> anyone with even a basic grasp of the English language, Sucherman and
> Walter are speaking metaphorically. Either Meyssan does not understand
> the use of metaphor in English, or he is being disingenuous.
>
> The Scene of the Crime
>
> The most intriguing points of the theory proposed by Meyssan and others
> that the Pentagon was not struck by a jetliner are to be found at the
> scene of the crime. According to Meyssan, the damage to the building was
> not extensive enough to have been caused by a giant airliner moving at
> speeds of more than 350 mph (more than 500 mph according to the
> "official version"), and there are no discernable pieces of the aircraft
> remaining, as should have been the case if the Pentagon was hit by a
> plane. Both claims are based on misinterpretations and factual errors.
>
> As to the extent of damage at the Pentagon, in 9/11: The Big Lie,
> Meyssan provides an aerial photo showing the collapsed section of the
> outer ring of the Pentagon with an outline of a jetliner superimposed on
> the image. Referring to this graphic, he writes: "If one superimposes
> the plane's outline onto the satellite photo . it can be seen that only
> the nose of the Boeing entered the building. The fuselage and the wings
> remained outside." He goes on in this vein, stating: "The plane was
> stopped dead, without its wings having struck the façade. There is no
> visible trace of any impact except that from the Boeing's nose. We
> should thus be able to see the wings and the fuselage outside, on the
> lawn in fact."
>
> In his subsequent book, Pentagate, he argues that the scale of the
> damage to the façade of the building was too small to have been caused
> by the Boeing airliner. This estimation is based largely on an analysis
> of a photo taken prior to the building's collapse that shows the entry
> hole punched through the building. In the photo the entry hole is
> visible extending to the top of the second floor and ending just shy of
> two of the third floor windows. Only the top of the hole, corresponding
> roughly with the level of the second floor, is visible. The lower
> ****tion of the impact site is entirely obscured in the photo by a heavy
> jet of water being sprayed across the building's façade by a fire truck.
>
> Meyssan alleges from this that the entry hole was too small to have been
> made by a Boeing 757. "The impact itself is nevertheless quite narrow,"
> he writes. "It extends from ground level to the first floor of the
> building (about 25 feet high). [Note that what Americans refer to as the
> second floor, Europeans call the first floor.] Its width corresponds to
> that of two windows above (about 17 to 20 feet wide)." He concludes:
> "The aircraft that passed through this orifice thus measured less than
> 17 to 20 feet in diameter. That could correspond to the passenger cabin
> of a Boeing 757-200 which in fact measures 11.5 feet. But this plane
> also possesses wings that give a total breadth of 125 feet." The
> inference, of course, is that Flight 77 could not have caused the damage
> to the façade of the Pentagon.
>
> In fact, the photo presented as evidence by Meyssan in sup****t of this
> analysis is misleading, because the ground floor of the building is
> obscured. Other photos were taken of the façade before the collapse that
> show much greater damage that does fit the profile of an aircraft.
> Damage below the two windows cited by Meyssan and extending through the
> floor above ground level clearly corresponds to the entry point of the
> fuselage, while to the left and right of this area damage caused by the
> wings is clearly visible.
>
> Though the Pentagon survived the impact remarkably well, the plane cut a
> vast swath of destruction throughout the affected ****tion of the
> structure. The building, it should be noted, is built of steel
> reinforced concrete and masonry throughout, sup****ted by narrowly
> spaced, spirally reinforced concrete columns varying in thickness from
> 14 to 21 inches, with the larger columns, naturally, to be found in the
> first story.
>
> The load-bearing columns sup****t a slab, beam, and girder system of
> flooring. While not a fortress, the construction of the Pentagon is
> substantial and massive. The building is constructed of 680,000 tons of
> sand and gravel that were used to make the steel-reinforced concrete.
> Each of the five sides of the building then contains more than 100,000
> tons of structural building components. The Boeing aircraft, by
> comparison, weighed nearly 100 tons and, like any aircraft, was of much
> lighter aluminum and composite construction, as befitting a vehicle
> meant to fly.
>
> The American Society of Civil Engineers described the impact site and
> the damage in their comprehensive re****t on the crash. According to the
> re****t, "Most of the serious structural damage was within a swath that
> was approximately 75 to 80 ft wide and extended approximately 230 ft
> into the first floor of the building. This swath was oriented at
> approximately 35 to 40 degrees perpendicular to the exterior wall of the
> Pentagon. Within the swath of serious damage was a narrower, tapering
> area that contained most of the very severe structural damage. This
> tapering area approximated a triangle in plan and had a width of
> approximately 90 ft at the aircraft's entry point and a length of
> approximately 230 ft along the trajectory of the aircraft through the
> building."
>
> No Evidence of a Missile
>
> Because Meyssan misleadingly downplays the damage to the building, he is
> able to argue that the damage was caused by a missile. But here again is
> another example of faulty logic. In a section of Pentagate written by
> Pierre-Henri Bunel, the author notes that the damage at the Pentagon
> "resembles the effects of anti-concrete hollow charges...." There is no
> witness testimony presented indicating that anyone saw a cruise missile.
>
> Though many people saw an American Airlines plane fly into the Pentagon,
> no one is quoted as having seen a military plane launch a missile and
> there is no indication that one was fired either from land or sea-based
> launch systems. The assertion that a missile damaged the Pentagon is
> based solely on the fact that the explosion and resulting damage at the
> Pentagon have some similarities with those caused by cruise missile
> warheads.
>
> In a sense, this argument takes the form of what historian David Hackett
> Fischer calls the "fallacy of the possible proof." This fallacy, Fischer
> notes, consists of attempting to demonstrate that a proposition is true
> or false solely "by establi****ng the possibility of its truth or
> falsity." For instance, it is possible for it to snow in North Dakota on
> June 1. It does not follow from this possibility that it did actually
> snow in North Dakota on June 1. Similarly, it is possible that a missile
> hit the Pentagon. Unfortunately, admitting the possibility of such is
> not the same as proving that it actually happened - particularly when
> eyewitnesses, including those cited by Meyssan, unambiguously re****ted
> seeing a plane.
>
> To take it to the next step and prove that such an event actually
> occurred, it would be necessary to cite evidence sup****ting the
> assertion. It has already been noted that witnesses unambiguously
> re****ted seeing a plane hit the Pentagon and not a missile. Likewise,
> there is no physical evidence that would both sup****t the missile theory
> and undermine the official explanation that Flight 77 was responsible
> for the damage.
>
> Meyssan attempts to skirt this issue, but faulty logic again thwarts his
> analysis. He cites the statements of firefighters who stated, "The only
> way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that we saw pieces of
> the nose gear." He then quotes Arlington County fire chief Ed Plaugher,
> who in a statement to the press on September 12, 2001 said, "We have
> what we believe is a puddle right there that the - what we believe to be
> the nose of the aircraft...."
>
> A few lines later, Meyssan makes the critical leap in logic. "In
> contrast to the fragile nose of a plane, the heads of certain missiles
> are extremely resistant. This debris that firemen said they saw and that
> they had trouble identifying as the nose of the plane could well have
> been the warhead of a missile." What is the fatal flaw in this
> statement? The warhead happens to be the ****tion of the weapon that
> contains the explosive charge. Had a missile detonated inside the
> Pentagon, there would not be a warhead remaining to be found by
> firefighters. Meyssan can't have his cake and eat it too.
>
> Moreover, though Meyssan argues that there is no debris from the plane
> located near or inside the Pentagon, witnesses have attested to the
> existence of such debris, and some of that debris even appears in the
> photographic record. In addition to landing gear, engine components, and
> the plane's "black boxes," chunks of aluminum and other plane debris
> were found inside the damaged section of the building.
>
> Occam's Razor
>
> There are still other problems with Meyssan's analysis. He notes
> correctly, for instance, that Flight 77 was lost to FAA controllers
> after the hijackers turned off the plane's transponder. He insists,
> however, that because the controllers lost the flight, no evidence
> exists that the plane was turned toward Wa****ngton. This, too, is not
> true. In fact, the 9/11 Commission Re****t points out that, "According to
> the radar reconstruction, American 77 reemerged as a primary target on
> Indianapolis Center radar scopes at 9:05, east of its last known
> position. The target remained in Indianapolis Center' s airspace for
> another six minutes, then crossed into the western ****tion of Wa****ngton
> Center's airspace at 9:10."
>
> In yet another example of the "fallacy of the possible proof," Meyssan
> alleges that because the U.S. military did not prevent Flight 77 from
> reaching the Pentagon, despite the fact that it is the most powerful and
> sophisticated military organization in the world, the U.S. armed forces
> must, therefore, have purposefully facilitated the attack. Strictly
> speaking, this absurd suggestion fits the basic description of a
> "possibility." Once again, however, the necessity of an event does not
> follow from its possibility.
>
> Overall, however, the Meyssan theory fails its most im****tant test. A
> 14th century philosopher, William of Occam, formulated the principle
> ("Occam's razor") that the best explanation of observed phenomena is the
> simplest. Of the two competing explanations for the events at the
> Pentagon and on Flight 77, one posits that the plane struck the building
> at a high rate of speed causing both the disintegration of the plane and
> the destruction on the ground. The other, Meyssan's theory, argues that
> the plane did not hit the Pentagon but disappeared. Not only does the
> extant evidence run counter to this theory, but it does not account for
> some of the observed phenomena, does not explain what happened to the
> plane and its passengers, and is manifestly more complex.
>
> It is safe to say that the thesis advocated by Thierry Meyssan, that
> Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is a tour de force of obfuscation
> and misinterpretation. Meyssan has nevertheless attracted a bevy of
> adherents who have based their own interpretations and theories on his.
> Just how prevalent this theory has become can be confirmed quickly with
> a Web search. Such a search turns up very little useful information but
> returns a veritable mountain of misinformation.
>
> This, in fact, underscores the problem. Modern society is awash in a
> rapidly expanding sea of information, and it has become increasingly
> more difficult to identify information that is reliable, factual and
> useful. Nevertheless, it is essential to identify reliable information
> sources and carefully evaluate their material. What is the background of
> the source? Does the source have a track record of reliability? Is the
> story verifiable? Are witnesses named, or are they anonymous? Does the
> story match known or observed phenomena, or does it run counter to
> these? Are there elements of the story that you know to be true - or
> know not to be true? Has the source consistently employed fallacious
> reasoning?
>
> Failure to carefully weigh the reliability of information sources by
> asking these and other questions exposes patriotic Americans to the
> possibility of being misled and marginalized, an outcome to be avoided
> if the tide toward collectivism is to be reversed.
>
> http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2004/08-23-2004/facts.htm
It's amazing that these half-assed "debunkings" start to come out after
your new site is up, eh?
As least the above author tried, instead of the meaningless personal
attacks the amateurs on Usenet attempt.
No 757 Hit The Pentagon
http://www.bedoper.com/eastman
ASCE Re****t Proves No 757 Hit The Pentagon
http://www.bedoper.com/pentagon/asce
--
http://BeDoper.com
- BeOS and a hell of a lot more
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