From William Jasper (this is from 9/11 Conspiracy Fact & Fiction from the New American)

Although each of the four terrorist incidents involving aircraft on September 11 is being subject to vociferous challenges, the official version of the Pentagon attack has been the main target of critics.

Vraiment?

The catalyst for most of the Pentagon attack sleuths can be traced back to the incendiary propaganda of French author and radical socialist Thierry Meyssan, president of the virulently anti-American and pro-Communist French think tank Reseau Voltaire. In his best selling book, L’Effroyable Imposture (the Frightening Deception), Meyssan launched the claim that American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon. It has been translated into English and is sold in the US as 9/11: The Big Lie. Meyssan has followed up with a second book, Pentagate.

Many of the organizations and websites “investigating” the 9/11 attacks promote and/or sell the Meyssan books, Dave von Kleist, narrator and producer of the video 9/11 In Plane Site, on of the most popular “exposes” of the September 11 events, explains in his video that it was Meyssan’s 9/11 website: “Hunt the Boeing” that got him started investigating the matter.

Mr. vonKleist strangely refers repeatedly to Meyssan’s books and website as information “released by the French”, as though it were released by the French people collectively. In reality, Meyssan represents only a small fringe on the far left of French politics and his 9/11 materials have been denounced as disinformation and hucksterism by political and media representatives spanning the spectrum of French political thought, including many of those who strongly oppose US policies in response to the 9/11 terror attack.

According to vonKleist, when he first saw “Hunt The Boeing”, he had only “one goal in mind: to prove the French wrong.” However, as he looked into Meyssan’s evidence, he says, he became convinced that “the French” were right after all.

Although critics of the official version of the attack on the Pentagon disagree with the government’s version on numerous points, perhaps the main ones, which we will examine here, concern allegations that:

• the hole in the Pentagon is too small to have been made by a Boeing 757
• there is too little aircraft debris for a 757 crash:
• and flying a 757 into the Pentagon is virtually an impossible feat, especially for an inexperienced pilot like one of the hijackers.

“The impact holes are too small,” vonKleist parrots Meyssan’s false claim that the plane’s entry “hole” in the exterior wall of the Pentagon was only 16 feet in diameter. His “In Plane Site” web page disingenuously presents a smoke-obscured photo which supposedly verifies this point, claiming,

“Upon examining these photographs, one can clearly see a hole, which is only 16 feet in diameter. This begs the question: “How can a Boeing 757 which is over 44 in height and 124 feet in width simply disappears without a trace into a hole that is only 16 feet in diameter? Also, why is there no external damage to the Pentagon where the wings and the tail section would have impacted with the outer wall?”

Like Meyssan, the vonKleist video 911 in Plane Site advances the theory that a missile is the most probable cause of the Pentagon damage.

But what are the facts? The Pentagon is a five-story, five-sided building complex comprised of five concentric rings, running from an interior Ring A to an exterior Ring E. The photo and video evidence support the conclusions of the 2003 Pentagon Building Performance Report produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers that American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon’s exterior facade at the ground floor, creating a hole in Ring E approximately 90 feet wide. That’s 90 feet-not 16 feet.

A multitude of eyewitnesses saw the 757 swooping down toward the Pentagon and many actually saw it hit. Dennis Behreandt, in his August 23, 2004 article for the New American quoted some of these witnesses.

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 Washington 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 report) “began walking to the Modular Office Compound … located beyond the extreme north end of the Pentagon” for a 10 o’clock meeting. Approaching the heliport, 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 portable 750 kW generator” that provided backup power to a portion 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 portable 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.

An important expert witness whom we will mention is Allyn Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers, who arrived on the scene shortly after the blast. “I saw the markes of the plane wing in the face of the building,” he says, “I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them.”

Some have discounted Kilsheimer’s testimony because as a contractor for the Defense Department he is considered a “tainted” witness. However, it’s difficult to discount on similar grounds Brig. Gen. Benton K. Partin USAF (retired), an expert witness who has proven his independence and willingness to challenge coverups in the past. One of the world’s leading missile and military explosives experts, Gen. Partin was director of the US Air Force Armaments Technology Laboratory, where he designed and tested many types of missiles, warheads, and ordnance against various building structures and armor.

Partin did not personally witness the crash, but he lives near the Pentagon, is very familiar with the building’s structure, and began studying the evidence immediately after the event. Does he see any problems with the official flight 77 crash scenario? “No, not at all, “he told the New American. “I’ve seen the videos claiming that it was a missile, not a 757, that hit the Pentagon,” he says, angrily dismissing the claim in scatological terms.

“When you slam an aluminum aircraft at high velocity into a concrete structure, it’s going to do exactly what we saw happen at the Pentagon on 9/11.” Partin said, “If you look at a frontal mass cross-section of the plane, you see a cylinder of aluminum skin with stringers. When it impacts with the exterior (Pentagon) wall at 700-800 feet per second, much of the kinetic energy of the plane converts to thermal energy, and much of the aluminum converts to vapor, burning to aluminum oxide. That’s why on the still photos from Pentagon surveillance camera, you first see the frame with that brilliant white luminescent flash just before the frame of the orange fireball, the jet fuel burning. The aluminum cylinder - the plane fuselage - is acting like a shaped charge penetrating a steel plate. It keeps penetrating until it is consumed. The Boeing 757 is over 150 feet long, so it’s going to penetrate quite a ways before it’s spent. The wings have a much lower mass cross-section and are loaded with fuel besides, so here is still little left of them except small bits and pieces.”

“Where’s the wreckage?” One of the arguments that appears on the surface to have some merit, is the argument of crash debris. On his “Hunt the boeing” web page, Meyssan shows a photo of the lawn in the foreground evincing very little wreckage. The accompanying caption asks, “Can you find debris of a Boeing 757-200 in this photogoraph?” Meyssan’s imitators have used a number of variations on this theme, presenting photos and video segments and demanding to know where the 757 wreckage is. Some websites feature a news clip of CNN correspondent James McIntyre standing outside the burning, smoking Pentagon on 9/11 shortly after the crash, telling viewerws: “There’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon.”

VonKleist says that photographs “raise the question as to WHAT hit the Pentagon and what really happened that morning. He goes on to say:

Many of those who reject this line of inquiry respond with the question: “If the 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon, then where did it go?” Answer: “I don’t know!” The question should be: “If a 757 hit the Pentagon, then where is it?” As Gen. Partin points out, most of the plane penetrated into the Pentagon, burning and shredding as it went. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ study, the plane cut a diagonal swath 230 feet into the first floor, penetrating Rings E,D, and C. “Under these circumstances, you’re just not going to end up with much airplane debris–inside or oustide (the building),” says Partin.

Also, while the 9/11 skeptics cite the relatively small amount of wreckage as proof that Flight 77 couldn’t have hit the Pentagon, many of them ignore what was found at the crash cite: Flight 77’s black boxes and passenger remains. Others claim that the black boxes and remains have been faked. VonKleist acknowlewdges in his video 911 in Plane Site that “there are those who..ask the question, “Well, if the plane didn’t hit the Pentagon, where did it go?” But he says, “I don’t know where it went. For all I know, it could be sitting in 200 feet of water in the Atlantic Ocean.”

The attack required impossible piloting.” Some prominent 9/11 skeptics claim that the flight path of the jet that hit the Pentagon would have been humanly impossible in a 757, while others admit it might be possible for an expert pilot, but not for hijacker Hani Hanjour, the inexperienced pilot believed to have comandeered Flight 77.

In Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11 Attack, Eric Hufscmid says: “I would say it is absurd to believe an inexperienced pilot could fly such a plane a few milimeters above the ground. The flight path of this plane is enough to convince me that no human was in control of it. I think only a computer is capable of flying an airplane in such a tricky manner. If terrorists flew the plane, they would qualify as the World’s Greatest Pilots since they did tricks with a commercial aircraft that I doubt the bets Air Force pilots could do.”

Ralph Omholt’s “skydrifter” website claims: “No pilot will claim to be able to hit such a spot as the Pentagon base –under any conditions–in a 757 doing 300 knots. As to the clearly alleged amateur pilots: IMPOSSIBLE!”

“Impossible”? “No pilot will claim…”? Well, we did not have any difficulty in finding pilots who disagreed. Ronald D. Bull, a retired United Airlines pilot, in Jupiter, Flroida, told the New American, “It’s not that difficult, and certainly not impossible,” noting that it’s much easier to crash intentionally into a target than to make a controlled landing. “If you’re doing a suicide run, like these guys were doing, you’d just keep the nose down and push like the devil,” says Capt. Bull, who flew 727s, 747s, and 767s for many years, internationally and domestically, including into Washington D.C. airports.

George Williams of Waxhaw, North Carolina, piloted 707s, 727s, DC-10s, and 747s for Northwest Airlines for 38 years. “I don’t see any merit to those arguments whatsoever.” Capt. Williams told us. “The Pentagon is a pretty big target and I’d say hitting it was a fairly easy thing to do.”

According to 9/11 “investigator” Dick Eastman, whose wild theories are posted on the American Patriot Friends Netowrk and many other Internet sites, Flight 77 was part of an elaborat4e deception in which a remote-controlled F-16 “killer jet” actually hit the Pentagon, while the 757 swooped over the Pentagon and landed at Reagan National Airport! “With its engines off,” says Eastman, Flight 77 silently “coasted” into the airport and blended in with other air traffic. “There would be few people to see Flight 77 come through, and those who did would doubtless assume that iw as yet another routine flight over Reagan national,” he claims.

“That’s so far-fetched it’s beyond ludricous,” says Capt. Williams. “I’ve flown into Reagan (National Airport) hundreds of times and you can’t just sneak in and “blend in” without air traffic controllers knowing about it and without other pilots and witnesses noticing.”

Besides, as Capt. Ron Bull points out, the Eastman scenario would require piloting skills far beyond what it would take to hit the Pentagon. “I’ve flown into Reagan National many times and my first trip in a 757 was no picnic,” he says. “I had to really work at it, and that was after 25 years of experience flying big jets. Any scenario that has the 757 (Flight 77) taking a flight path over the Pentagon and landing at National unobserved is proposing something that is far more difficult–and far more difficult to believe–than flying the plane into the Pentagon. It’s just not credible!”

General Partin, an Air Force Command Pilot, sums up the case for Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon: “The alternative explanations just get crazier and crazier. In addition to the physical evidence and the photographic evidence supporting the official story, there are literally hundreds of eyewitnesses–including many people I know personally–who saw the 757. Besides that, there are the light poles that were knocked down–which I saw personally and which are in the photographic record–that can’t be accounted for by a missile or small jet wingspan. Then you have the Flight 77 victim remains and the black boxes. If you reject all of that, then you have to come up with an alternative explanation for what happened to Flight 77. I’ve seen the alternative expalanations and they’re absurd!”

But despite all the evidence to the contrary, let’s suppose for a moment that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon and then crash it into the Atlantic Ocean, or fly it into Reagan National Airport, or do whatever else was done with it to make it “disappear”? Why hijack the plane to make it appear that it was used against a target and then not use it against the target? Why plant the black boxes and human remains at the Pentagon site? Wouldn’t it make more sense, and be much simpler, to actually use the plane against the Pentagon?

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