Don't worry, I'm still alive. I haven't updated in a long time because of school, but I'll be a graduate very soon, and I'll be back in the business of debunking! In the meantime, however, I decided to use this time to put things in perspective.

In this journal especially, I talk about a lot of the details of 9/11 while not really taking the magnitude of the entire topic into consideration. I think a lot of people involved in the research of the 9/11 conspiracy do the same thing every once in a while.

The film I made is a tribute to the World Trade Center and what took place there on 9/11. I made the film in hopes that those of us who have forgotten what happened can be reminded of the tragedy and heartbreak of that day. Not that I'm trying to ruin your day or anything. I just want to do my part to make sure we all have some respect for the people that died that day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY0qqKNFXeg

In my debate with Killtown, I discussed the possibility of setting up the entire Flight 93 crash scene on the day of 9/11. I realize that most people, even a number of conspiracy theorists, find the "no plane at Shanksville" theory preposterous. Nevertheless, the documentary Loose Change parrots this theory, pointing out a lack of plane debris at Shanksville and presenting a little evidence that it may have landed in Cleveland.

Now, if no plane did crash in Shanksville, you have to consider the fact that Barry Hoover lives in a house just 500 yards from the crash scene, and he can clearly see the scene from his home. So if people had started setting up the crash scene before 9/11, Barry Hoover would have known about it. The only way they could possibly set up a scene like this would be if they set it all up after Barry Hoover went to work and before the first group of people arrived at the scene. With this in mind, here is what I wrote at this debate:

First of all, it was reported that 95% of the plane debris was recovered. (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/24/inv.pennsylvania.site/index.html) Now, a Boeing 757-200 operating empty with engines attached is a little over 127,000 lbs. (http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=101). That means that if 95% of this plane was recovered, these folks managed to plant at least 120,000 lbs, or 60 tons, of evidence in that morning.

Think of how much debris that is. 60 tons! That's a lot!

Of course, it wasn't all just found in one spot. Workers had to dig 45 feet into the ground just to dig up all of the debris. (http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/emergency/pictures/091201f.htm) Picture the height of a 3 or 4-story building, and you'll get an idea of how deep that is.

60 tons of debris, some of which was buried through about 45 feet of dirt.

And, of course, the debris was very widespread. Again, look at your video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KulZQfEheyQ&NR

Take a look at the small pieces of debris that were EVERYWHERE, not just close to the crash scene. The debris was very widespread, and there were a number of reports of that, too. Remember Lyle Szupinka, one of the guys who saw an engine "a considerable distance from the crash site"?

Szupinka said most of the remaining debris, scattered over a perimeter that
stretches for several miles, are in pieces no bigger than a "briefcase."
Source: http://www.flight93crash.com/whole_engine.txt

Authorities also said another debris site had been cordoned off six to eight miles away from the original crash debris site. But [FBI spokesman Bill] Crowley said the debris was "very light material such as paper and thin nylon -- things that in the air with the wind would easily blow."
Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/inve...rism/index.html

Also, from that source:

Crowley said archaeologists have been brought in to search the impact crater, which has been covered by a layer of dust.

Wow, so they did such a good job of embedding tons and tons of debris into the crater that they even had to bring in archaeologists to help dig the stuff up? That's one hell of a job in just one day. It wasn't even a whole day anyway, was it?

I don't want to speculate on the amount of time you give them to set this up, but you said that the homeowner had already left for work, meaning they would have to wait until he left at the very least. Now two civilians said they ran to the scene immediately following the crash:

Bob Blair was completing a routine drive to Shade Creek just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, when he saw a huge silver plane fly past him just above the treetops and crash into the woods along Lambertsville Road.
Blair, of Stoystown, a driver with Jim Barron Trucking of Somerset, was traveling in a coal truck along with Doug Miller of Somerset, when they saw the plane spiraling to the ground and then explode on the outskirts of Lambertsville.
“I saw the plane flying upside down overhead and crash into the nearby trees. My buddy, Doug, and I grabbed our fire extinguishers and ran to the scene,” said Blair.
Source: http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_eyewitness.html

So if the guy left for work at, say, 7:00, and this plane crashed at 10:03 or so, I'd say that the crew had about 3 1/2 hours to plant 60 tons of debris more than 45 feet into a crater in the ground (that still had to be dug up, by the way) and over a perimeter of several miles.

Holy shit.

Well, not directly. Basically, a writer at the Minnesota Daily, which is the school newspaper for the University and happens to be the University I attend, has started this weekly series discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories and how he has been "baptized into the 9/11 truth movement". His latest article can be read here:

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/01/25/70455

What you'll find, along with a blatant misspelling of the word "September" up on the top of the page, is a bunch of rambling commentary about how he first got started with the truth movement. The only important fact he throws out there is this one:

In September 2000 - one year before the attacks - PNAC [Project for the New American Century] released a 90-page report called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century."

In Chapter V of this document, titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force," PNAC calls for the Department of Defense to "move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts."

But it states "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

All this talk and that's all he comes up with! Anyway, I wrote an article of my own. And it's not just a letter to the editor; it's an editorial that appears as a column under the letters to the editor. It can be read here:

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/01/25/70454

Thankfully they managed to spell "September" right this time. I encourage you to read it, as it is a quick, dirty run-down of why these conspiracy theories are ludicrous. I'm so glad they chose to highlight my "laden with nonsense" phrase up on top, too. I can think of no better wording to describe the 9/11 truth movement.

By the way, about that whole "new pearl harbor" thing...you might be interested in reading that quote in its full context.


Excerpt:
To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies, in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence. The United States enjoys every prospect of leading this transformation. Indeed, it was the improvements in capabilities acquired during the American defense buildup of the 1980s that hinted at and then confirmed, during Operation Desert Storm, that a revolution in military affairs was at hand. At the same time, the process of military transformation will present opportunities for America's adversaries to develop new capabilities that in turn will create new challenges for U.S. military preeminence.

Moreover, the Pentagon, constrained by limited budgets and pressing current missions, has seen funding for experimentation and transformation crowded out in recent years. Spending on military research and development has been reduced dramatically over the past decade. Indeed, during the mid-1980's, when the Defense Department was in the midst of the Reagan buildup which was primarily an effort to expand existing forces and field traditional weapons systems, research spending represented 20 percent of total Pentagon budgets. By contrast, today's research and development accounts total only 8 percent of defense spending. And even this reduced total is primarily for upgrades of current weapons. Without increased spending on basic research and development the United States will be unable to exploit the RMA and preserve its technological edge on future battlefields.

Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets. The United States cannot simply declare a "strategic pause" while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today - the F-22 fighter, for example - will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. The expense associated with some programs can make them roadblocks to the larger process of transformation - the Joint Strike Fighter program, at a total of approximately $200 billion, seems an unwise investment. Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change - transition and transformation - over the coming decades.
Source: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

So ask yourself - were they really planning an attack on America when they said "new pearl harbor"?

This wraps up my main points about Flight 93. Again, we can see that some of it appears pretty fishy on the surface, but once you actually get down to the facts and actually analyze the situation, you'll see that there really is no better explanation for what happened than the official story. Why would Flight 93 be shot down and then covered up by the government, knowing full well that the government would have had a completely legitimate reason for shooting it down, seeing as how both towers of the WTC and the Pentagon had been attacked while it was in the air? Why would a plane crash be faked in Shanksville when actual plane crashes took place at the WTC? Why didn't they do what they did with the WTC planes to Flight 93?

These are serious questions, questions that, in my opinion, cannot and should not be brushed aside with a simple "yeah, that's kind of weird." These questions need to be answered if we are even supposed to begin to believe that some sort of conspiracy was involved with the demise of Flight 93. And, of course, it would help if the information I presented over the last month and a half could be adequately addressed, too.

Anyway, there is additional information out there, too. For one thing, I encourage you to keep an eye on my debate with Killtown. We will most likely address every single facet of the Flight 93 crash, and although it may turn out to be long and nitpicky, I hope that we can hash this issue out to the last detail.

http://z9.invisionfree.com/Sector_G/index.php?showtopic=10

Also, check these out:

http://killtown.911review.org/flight93/gallery.html
-A comprehensive gallery of pictures taken of the Shanksville crash scene

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A56110-2002May8¬Found=true
-Probably the best article discussing the Flight 93 tragedy and the county coroner's role

Also, many many thanks to Mark Roberts for his invaluable contribution to these posts. He pointed me to several useful sources at the start of putting all of this together. Thanks also to the guys at 911myths.com who, as always, have tons of great information about Flight 93.

The following photograph is the only one taken of Flight 93 moments after it collided with the ground just outside of Shanksville:


I'm hoping that since I'm arguing on behalf of Val here, she won't sue me.

So what's the deal with this, you may ask? This fellow Killtown that I am debating over at this other forum has written a lengthy article analyzing the photo, which you will find here:

http://flight93photo.blogspot.com/2006/07/plume-analysis.html

He has concluded that the photo is fake on the basis that the smoke plume is too large, the plume drifted too much, and it appears to rise up vertically, meaning there was no push from the wind.

Before we get into the details, I want to point out a few things. First of all, if a plane did crash there, it's reasonable to assume that people other than Val McClatchey witnessed it, right?

As it turns out, that's exactly the case.

"It came in low over the trees and started wobbling," said Tim Thornsberg, a resident of Somerset County, who was working near an old strip mine when he saw the plane.

"Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds ... and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees. It was just unreal to see something like that."
Source: http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_eyewitness.html

Eric Peterson, 28, was working in his shop in the Somerset County village of Lambertsville yesterday morning when he heard a plane, looked up and saw one fly over unusually low.

The plane continued on beyond a nearby hill, then dropped out of sight behind a tree line. As it did so, Peterson said it seemed to be turning end-over-end.

Then Peterson said he saw a fireball, heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud of smoke rise into the sky.
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2p2.asp

“I saw the plane flying upside down overhead and crash into the nearby trees. My buddy, Doug, and I grabbed our fire extinguishers and ran to the scene,” said Blair.
Source: http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_eyewitness.html

"We didn't hear that plane coming until it was right on top of us," she said. "Then there was a roar." She said the plane appeared to be gliding into the ground. "All at once it just stopped. There was no engine noise, nothing. Someone hollered, Oh my God!' and then there was a real loud thud."
Source: http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/100028703529429109.xml

A witness told WTAE-TV's Paul Van Osdol that she saw the plane overhead. It made a high-pitched, screeching sound. The plane then made a sharp, 90-degree downward turn and crashed.
Source: http://newsandviews.tripod.com/news/091101tv2.html

Note: only one of these five quotes has an original link that still works, but all quotes came from http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_eyewitness.html, which is a conspiracy website.

These eyewitness accounts contradict the possibility of no plane crashing in Shanksville, as well as the possibility that Val's photo was a fake.

It is also important to note that Val is not profiting from this photo. She has stated that she is now keeping some of the proceeds to deal with legal fees relating to a lawsuit with this picture, but if you go to her website to order a copy of her picture, you'll find this:

To order an 8.5 X 11 print of this photo, send a $20.00 check made payable to the Todd Beamer Foundation to the following address:

Last time I checked, her name was Val McClatchey, not "Todd Beamer Foundation". So she can't very well deposit these checks into her own account. I bring this up because Killtown claims that she is profiting from this and that she was helped out of a bad financial situation because of it. She has the decency to forward the funds from her "fake" photo to charity, but she doesn't have the decency to admit that her photo was faked? Now that makes no sense.

Anyway, on to the plume itself. First of all, it helps to look at when this photograph was actually taken. I consult the following article excerpt to define the picture time:

On Sept. 11, 2001, McClatchey said she was watching the "Today" show when reports broke of planes hitting into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As she was trying to call her husband from an area with spotty cellphone coverage, she said she heard the sudden surge of a jet plane and saw a silver flash outside.
"All of a sudden, boom!" McClatchey said. "The house shook, my electricity went out. I was sitting on the edge of the sofa at the time, and it knocked me off balance. You could tell something happened outside."
McClatchey said she ran a short distance to the door, saw smoke and instinctively grabbed her month-old digital camera from nearby.
She said she managed to snap just one photo.
Source: http://www.cnhins.com/disasters/cnhisnsdisasters_story_251131209.html

I don't know why, but Killtown claims that the photo was taken five seconds after the plane hit the ground. For one thing, Val lives about 1.6 miles from the crash site, which I verified with Google Earth. You can verify it yourself if you feel it's necessary. She didn't get up from her couch until she HEARD the crash. Remembering that the speed of sound is about 1116 ft / s and considering the fact that her house is about 8450 ft (about 1.6 miles) from the crash site, the sound didn't even reach her house until about 7.5 seconds after the plane hit the ground! At this point, she was knocked off balance, ran a short distance to her door, looked outside and saw smoke, grabbed her camera, and snapped a picture. I would estimate that this would take about 15 seconds at least, and I'd say the time of the photo was somewhere between 20 - 25 seconds after the crash, at the very earliest. Potentially, it could be 30 or 35 seconds. But five seconds? No way.

Now, let's take a look at a similar situation, one with which you are very familiar. Flight 175, which I have not yet covered, was the second plane to hit the World Trade Center. Here is a video that shows the collision and the development of the smoke plume:

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8737962996036061371&q=plane+hit

Now, I would peg the collision of the aircraft with the building at 8 seconds. At 18 seconds, 10 seconds after the collision, the smoke plume looks like this:



Let me explain what I'm doing here. The World Trade Center towers were 207 feet wide (http://www.european911citizensjury.com/10a.htm). So, using their width as a reference, we can determine the width of the smoke plume. Now, I'm not a genius with photoshop or paintshop, so instead of counting pixels I measured the lengths to the nearest half a millimeter. They may differ on your computer screen if you have a different resolution, but you can double-check my proportions if you doubt them. The lengths I measured are as indicated in the picture.

As you can see, the smoke plume has a width of 81.5 mm, and the WTC has a width of 20.0 mm, making the smoke plume 81.5 / 20.0 = 4.075 times larger than the width of the WTC. Since its width is 207 ft, this means the plume is 4.075 x 207 ft = 843.5 ft wide.

At 20 seconds:



108.5 mm / 20.5 mm = 5.293 x 207 ft = 1095.65 ft

At 30 seconds:



122.0 mm / 20.5 mm = 5.951 x 207 ft = 1231.9 ft

Now, to save you some suspense, I'll just tell you that I've done a lot of my own analysis of the size of the smoke plume and found that, at the smallest, it is probably about 1800 feet wide. This is accounting for the possibility that the smoke plume could have drifted towards Val McClatchey (and considering the direction of the wind that day, it most likely did exactly that). Killtown estimates about 2200 feet. Both of these are bigger than this smoke plume from the crash of Flight 175 into the south tower.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that I have 100% proof that this photo is real. However, I fully recognize the fact that I really have no ground in saying how large a smoke plume should be from a crash. It seems odd that a 1200 foot smoke plume could come from a plane with a wingspan of just 150 feet, yet that's exactly what happened. You have to consider the nature of the explosion, the windspeed at the site (that increases as elevation increases), the general temperature of the area, amongst a number of other factors.

You also have to consider that Val was not the only one to see this smoke plume. One of the quotes from before...

Then Peterson said he saw a fireball, heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud of smoke rise into the sky.

Also, from the Flight 93 eyewitness accounts page:

There was a great explosion and you could see the flames. It was a massive, massive explosion. Flames and then smoke and then a massive, massive mushroom cloud.

Now, Killtown entertains the idea that this could be an ordinance blast that originated much closer to Val, thus accounting for its larger size. Now ask yourself this: if the government wanted to set off an ordinance blast to make it appear that a plane crashed somewhere, why would they light it off a considerable distance from their supposed crash site? Why not light it off at the actual crash site? Didn't they think someone would see the smoke coming from an erroneous location, go to it, and then find nothing there at all? That would be pretty suspicious, right?

And since there were so many eyewitnesses who saw the plane actually crash, it's simply dishonest to deny that any plane crashed here at all.

A fellow by the name of Killtown has decided to take me on in a debate about Flight 93. You can view the debate here:

http://z9.invisionfree.com/Sector_G/index.php?showtopic=10

I was hesitant to debate him, as Killtown seems to actually have those "mountains" of evidence that conspiracy theorists keep on harping about. But so far it appears to be smooth sailing.

I also need to give a shout out to the folks over at the Screw Loose Change blog, who have been dedicating more posts to my work than I realized. Thanks for the recognition! I imagine that most of the readers of my journal are probably already familiar with the blog, but if you are not, you'll find it on the right at the top of my list of links. Check it out; it's a wonderful blog.

Happy 2007 everyone! I'm bringing in the new year with a post about the phone calls made from Flight 93. There appears to be a lack of clear information about all the calls as I have seen a number of erroneous claims made about these calls. So without further ado, allow me to present some of the general facts about these calls.

First and foremost, a lot of valuable information can be obtained here:

http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/flights/P200055.html

This is a flash presentation that gives a lot of information about each of the four doomed flights, including phone call information. Ultimately, 13 passengers and two flight attendants made phone calls. The flash presentation contains this:



As you can see, it wasn't just one call from each individual. Only Jeremy Glick and Edward Felt made 1 phone call. Here are some general statistics about each of the passengers that made phone calls, based on the evidence I was able to dig up. It's more easily shown in table form. Note: a "successful call" is one that lasts for more than 10 seconds:



Sources used in identifying airfone vs. cell phone:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067652/

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp

http://www.touchandchange.com/artman/publish/article_1222.shtml

http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/chart.html

Ultimately, 37 phone calls were made. 17 of them were successful, meaning that about 46% of the calls placed from the plane were actually successful. I wasn't able to find whether Joseph DeLuca used a cell phone or an airfone, but he was Linda Gronlund's boyfriend and was seated right next to her. Since she used an airfone, it is very likely that DeLuca did as well. Sandra Bradshaw's first call was from an unknown person, and it is unknown whether that call came from an airfone or a cell phone. What is known is that her successful cell phone call was placed at 9:50. Ceecee Lyles attempted to use a cell phone and did not successfully place a call. She did have success with the airfone that she used.

Successful cell phone calls were placed at 9:50 by Sandra Bradshaw, 9:49 by Marion Britton, 9:58 by Edward Felt, and 9:30, 9:37 and 9:44 by Tom Burnett. Why is this important, you may ask? The fact of the matter is that there is some question as to whether cell phone calls can be successfully made at high altitudes.

Well first of all, let's address the non-cell phone calls, the ones made with airfones. These phones are, of course, designed to be used in flight, so there should be nothing suspicious about the airfone calls. Verizon has a FAQ about their airfones, and one of the questions is as follows:

Where does the Airfone Service for Verizon Wireless work?
Airfone Service has areas where coverage is not available. This is because the service uses base stations on the ground and if the plane is not in the range of the base station, service will not be available. In addition, flights that travel more than 200 miles beyond the U.S. borders will not be able to use Airfone Service for Verizon Wireless. If you are on a call using the Airfone Service for Verizon Wireless, and the plane travels more than 200 miles away from the U.S. border the call will drop. At that point, you may make a call using a service called Comsat satellite service. When calls are placed using the Comsat satellite service, you will pay a higher rate and the call will not be billed to your Verizon Wireless phone bill. Please refer to the in-flight materials for more information on Comsat satellite calling including instructions for calling, coverage and rates.
Source: http://support.vzw.com/faqs/Features%20and%20Optional%20Services/faq_airfone_service_for_verizon_wireless.html#item5

It stops working when you travel outside of U.S. borders, not when you reach a certain elevation. You'll find other questions regarding in-flight phone calls, and it appears that elevation is never an issue with airfones.

So what about the cell phone calls? Ultimately, there were six cell phone calls, three of which were made by Tom Burnett starting at 9:30, presumably when the flight was first hijacked and traveling at its cruising altitude of 30,000+ feet (it's actually about 34,000 feet if you look at the actual data and account for the height above sea level). That brings me to Project Achilles, something often cited by Conspiracy Theorists to prove that such a call could not have been placed. You can read about it here:

http://www.physics911.net/projectachilles.htm

Here's the deal. Professor A.K. Dewdney ran four "laps" around London, Ontario airspace and only climbed to an elevation of 8,000 feet. He extrapolated his results beyond 8,000 feet up to 32,000 feet, not to mention he extrapolated his location to Pennsylvania! How do we know that the service area is the same in London, Ontario as it is in Pennsylvania?

There are a few comments about whether cell phone calls should be able to work above 30,000 feet:

According to industry experts, it is possible to use cell phones with varying success during the ascent and descent of commercial airline flights, although the difficulty of maintaining a signal appears to increase as planes gain altitude. Some older phones, which have stronger transmitters and operate on analog networks, can be used at a maximum altitude of 10 miles, while phones on newer digital systems can work at altitudes of 5 to 6 miles. A typical airline cruising altitude would be 35,000 feet, or about 6.6 miles.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/1008297/

You can read up on a whole lot more evidence showing that it is most certainly possible to make calls at high altitudes at this page from the excellent 9/11 Myths site:

http://911myths.com/html/mobiles_at_altitude.html

And don't forget that 37 calls were placed and only 17 of them were actually successful. Many were short in duration, suggesting that the call may have been dropped. To say that these calls were executed to perfection is just plain wrong, and saying that the calls are impossible is even more wrong.

I've been doing a lot of talking about what DIDN'T happen with Flight 93. It's time that we take a look at what DID happen.

First of all, the plane debris. There was a lot of it! You'll find the pictures behind this cut:

( Pictures galore! )

Most of my pictures were obtained from Killtown's picture gallery, which you can access here:

http://killtown.911review.org/flight93/gallery.html

There you will find even more photos of the debris field. As you can see, there were tons and tons of little pieces everywhere, and not a lot of substantial pieces. It is estimated that Flight 93 hit the ground at approximately 580 mph (Source: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-09102005-539399.html), which is the equivalent of approximately 850 feet / second. That's faster than some bullets, like all of those listed here:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_9_47/ai_77824224

The debris was wedged so far into the ground that excavation crews had to dig almost 30 feet into the ground to dig it up:

At one point, searchers stopped using hand tools and brought in a backhoe to assist with the search. Thursday night, as the backhoe was moving mounds of dirt in a crater that was about 30 feet deep, the flight data recorder fell to the ground. The cockpit voice recorder was found later.
http://www.faa.gov/sept11portraits/portraits4.cfm?portrait=Horak

Indeed, the flight data recorder AND cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the scene:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1543564.stm

Flight data: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc04.pdf
Cockpit voice transcript: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0412061hijack1.html

I know I've posted those things before. Just wanted to make sure we've established that both items were found, and they were found in Shanksville. How much of the plane was recovered, you ask? 95%, that's how much!

The FBI announced Monday that its investigation of the site where a hijacked jet slammed into a field here is complete and that 95 percent of the plane was recovered.
Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/24/inv.pennsylvania.site/index.html

You've seen the pictures above. There wasn't a whole lot of debris outside of the crater, but plenty was found in the crater. You can see from the photo of the dumpster that most of the debris was very small, not to mention brown and dirty, making it a little less obvious that there WAS any debris from pictures like this one that is often cited by conspiracy theorists to prove that there was no plane:



Also, from that CNN article:

[FBI agent Bill] Crowley said the biggest piece of the plane that was recovered was a 6-by-7-foot piece of the fuselage skin, including about four windows. The heaviest piece, Crowley said, was part of an engine fan, weighing about 1,000 pounds.

You can see both the fuselage skin piece and the part of the engine fan in the photos listed above. And again, make sure you look at the picture of the debris in the small bucket to give you an idea of the size of the debris that was recovered. Pretty small, eh?

Second, the human remains found at the site. There weren't a lot, but there certainly were some:

As coroner, responsible for returning human remains, [Wally] Miller has been forced to share with the families information that is unimaginable. As he clinically recounts to them, holding back very few details, the 33 passengers, seven crew and four hijackers together weighed roughly 7,000 pounds. They were essentially cremated together upon impact. Hundreds of searchers who climbed the hemlocks and combed the woods for weeks were able to find about 1,500 mostly scorched samples of human tissue totaling less than 600 pounds, or about 8 percent of the total.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/4hpaq

While we're on the subject of this article, I'd like to point out another quote from this article, one that was taken out of context in my "Why it didn't land in Cleveland" post:

Once he was able to absorb the scene, Miller says, "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. It became like a giant funeral service." As a funeral director, Miller says, he is honored and humbled to preside over what has become essentially an immense cemetery stretching far into the scenic wooded mountain ridge. He considers it the final resting place of 40 national heroes.

In bold is the part quoted out of context in that post, and it is also often quoted out of context by conspiracy theorists, most notably in the film Loose Change.

Another excerpt from another article:

Investigators have positively identified the remains of another 14 persons aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said the investigation could conclude more quickly than expected.

At the same time, the high winds that buffeted the area over the last few days have dislodged additional airplane parts -- seat cushions, wiring, carpet fragments and pieces of metal -- from trees near the crash site.

"It's all aircraft parts, no human remains," Miller said. "We've collected them in 10 recycling bin-sized containers and eventually we'll turn them all over to United."....

...."We're progressing at a very steady pace in identifying the victims," Miller said. "Originally we thought it might take four to six months, but things are moving faster than we thought."
Source: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/evidence/postgazette1027_flight93.html

So not only are they still uncovering body parts on October 27th, they're also still turning up more airplane debris! What a strange thing to find in a place where no airplane crashed!

Third, a number of eyewitnesses around Shanksville actually saw this plane.

Eric Peterson, 28, was working in his shop in the Somerset County village of Lambertsville yesterday morning when he heard a plane, looked up and saw one fly over unusually low.

The plane continued on beyond a nearby hill, then dropped out of sight behind a tree line. As it did so, Peterson said it seemed to be turning end-over-end.

Then Peterson said he saw a fireball, heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud of smoke rise into the sky.
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2p2.asp

Shortly after 10 a.m., workers on farms and scrap yards in Somerset County looked up to see an airliner flying low and erratic at an estimated 450 mph.

Bob Blair of Stoystown was driving a coal truck on state Route 30 when he saw the jet plummet "straight down." Barn windowpanes for half a mile around shattered as the jet dived into a reclaimed strip mine and exploded at 10:10 a. m.
Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/17/MN40630.DTL

(the time is odd; I'll give you that. But it doesn't say 10:03 or 10:06!)

A few miles north of Lambertsville, yard man Terry Butler, 40, was toiling away at Stoystown Auto Wreckers.

He thought it was odd that a plane was in the area. He'd heard that all air traffic nationwide had been halted after the World Trade Center disaster about an hour earlier.

"It dropped out of the clouds," too low for a commercial flight, Butler said. The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then "it just went flip to the right and then straight down."
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912somerscenenat4p3.asp

Fourth, a lot of people were involved in the clean-up operation. The Salvation Army alone served 20,000 meals to the volunteers and spent a total of 13,000 volunteer hours to clean up the scene (Source: http://www.usc.salvationarmy.org/usc%5Cwww_usc.nsf/vw-news/BDD91C61CFABE556862571E20058035E?opendocument). Imagine how much work would have to be done to set up a crash scene that takes so much effort to clean up!

And although I have been unable to verify this information, I was told from Mark Roberts that the following agencies were involved with the clean-up:

• 8 Police Departments
• 7 EMS Services
• 8 Fire Departments
• 10 Emergency Management Agencies
• NTSB
• ATF
• FBI
• CISM
• Red Cross
• United Airlines

According to Mark, about 1,100 people were involved with the clean-up. Like I said, I have not verified this, but this information comes from Mark Roberts, a man who has done more research regarding 9/11 than anyone I know. If it took that many people to clean up the scene, then imagine how many people would have been involved in planting all of this evidence!

What I have found is this article:

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011003crash1003p3.asp

An excerpt:

Over the weekend, about 300 volunteers combed a half-mile square around the crash site and found enough debris from the Boeing 757 to fill about one-third of a trash container.

Also note that this article was written on the 3rd of October and details the "last big sweep" of the crash scene, meaning that volunteers took 3 weeks to clean up the scene. A lot of time, yes?

So there you have it. Flight 93 landed just outside of Shanksville, and it wasn't shot down.

Before I proceed, I wanted to bring up the fact that many people have attempted to debunk the "Debunking the 9/11 Myths" Popular Mechanics article by pointing out that Benjamin Chertoff is related to Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security. Chris Bollyn wrote this about him:

But who is Benjamin Chertoff, the "senior researcher" at Popular Mechanics who is behind the article? American Free Press has learned that he is none other than a cousin of Michael Chertoff, the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

This means that Hearst paid Benjamin Chertoff to write an article supporting the seriously flawed explanation that is based on a practically non-existent investigation of the terror event that directly led to the creation of the massive national security department his "cousin" now heads.
Source: http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-Chertoff_cousin.html

Whoa, what? Benjamin Chertoff is Michael's cousin, and it logically follows that this means that the corporation (Hearst) that publishes Popular Mechanics paid Benjamin to throw ethics out the window and write a bunch of lies that supposedly help Michael Chertoff? If that's not a huge leap in logic, then I don't know what is.

First of all, they aren't related for heaven's sake. Yes, there is this from Bollyn's article:

Chertoff said he was the "senior researcher" of the piece. When asked if he was related to Michael Chertoff, he said, "I don't know." Clearly uncomfortable about discussing the matter further, he told me that all questions about the article should be put to the publicist – the one who never answers the phone.

Benjamin's mother in Pelham, New York, however, was more willing to talk. Asked if Benjamin was related to the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Judy said, "Yes, of course, he is a cousin."

There is also this, from Benjamin Chertoff himself:

Here's the story, as best as I know: I'm not related to Michael Chertoff, at least in any way I can figure out. We might be distant relatives, 15 times removed, but then again, so might you and I. Bottom line is I've never met him, never communicated with him, and nobody I know in my family has ever met or communicated with him.

As for what my mom said: When Chertoff was nominated to be head of homeland security it was the first I'd heard of him, and the same for my family (and, FYI, we'd already sent the 9/11 issue to the press by then!). My dad and I thought there might be some distant relation. When Chris Bollyn called and asked my mom if there was a relation (introducing himself as only "Chris"), she said "they might be distant cousins." Like much in the conspiracy world, this was taken WAY out of context. (Another case in point: Bollyn called me earlier and asked "Were you the senior researcher on the story?" I said, "I guess so," -- that's not a title I have ever used, nor is it at all common in magazine journalism, but I was the research editor at the time, so it kinda made sense.) Nonetheless, I was one of 9 reporters on the story, not counting editors, photo researchers, photo editors, copy editors, layout designers, production managers, fact-checkers, etc., etc., etc. who worked on this story.
Source: http://www.911myths.com/html/benjamin_chertoff.html

This quote from Benjamin Chertoff was an e-mail written to the wonderful folks who maintain www.911myths.com, one of the best sources out there for debunking various 9/11 conspiracy theories. But what he's saying makes sense, doesn't it? How did this one guy who was supposedly paid off manage to sway the other EIGHT reporters working on the story, along with the rest of the production staff working on it and all the experts and witnesses they talked to when putting together their story? If they had misquoted anyone or misconstrued what any of them said, then one of the sources would most certainly have told Popular Mechanics, or at the very least the public, about being misquoted or misinterpreted. Nobody referenced in this article did such a thing.

Besides, if you really want to debunk an article, you need to address the FACTS in that article rather than making up wild conspiracy theories about the PEOPLE who wrote it!

The discussion about flight 93 being shot down is a good segue into the two airplanes in the vicinity of the crash when the flight went down. If it was shot down, the missiles probably would have been fired by some sort of aircraft, right?

Apparently, about a dozen eyewitnesses reported seeing a small white jet fly over the crash site moments after the crash. This is addressed in the Popular Mechanics Debunking 9/11 article:

There was such a jet in the vicinity--a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., an apparel company that markets Wrangler jeans and other brands. The VF plane was flying into Johnstown-Cambria airport, 20 miles north of Shanksville. According to David Newell, VF's director of aviation and travel, the FAA's Cleveland Center contacted copilot Yates Gladwell when the Falcon was at an altitude "in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 ft."--not 34,000 ft. "They were in a descent already going into Johnstown," Newell adds. "The FAA asked them to investigate and they did. They got down within 1500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on." Reached by PM, Gladwell confirmed this account but, concerned about ongoing harassment by conspiracy theorists, asked not to be quoted directly.
Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=7

It is also addressed in the following USA Today article:

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010916otherjetnat5p5.asp

An excerpt:

Two other airplanes were flying near the hijacked United Airlines jet when it crashed in Somerset County, but neither had anything to do with the airliner's fate, the FBI said yesterday.

In fact, one of the planes, a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, was directed to the crash site to help rescuers. The request for the jet to fly low and obtain the coordinates for the crash explains reports by people in the vicinity who said a white or silver jet flew by moments after the crash.

See how it mentions TWO planes? There was also a C-130 cargo plane in the area, coincidentally the same one that flew by the Pentagon earlier that day. You can bet your bottom dollar that conspiracy theorists like to hypothesize about that, but there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the C-130 at either the Pentagon or in Shanksville. Again, from the USA Today article:

A C-130 military cargo plane was also within 25 miles of the passenger jet when it crashed, FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said yesterday, but was not diverted.

And just for fun, here's another source that verifies it:

The FBI said there was also a C-130 military cargo aircraft about 17 miles away that saw smoke or dust near the crash site, but that plane wasn't armed and had no role in the crash. That plane was flying at 24,000 feet.
Source: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/961654/detail.html

It wasn't even armed! By now, you're hopefully discovering that there are actually reasonable explanations for all these questions that are being raised. All it takes is a few minutes on google.

At 9:58 AM, the final call from Flight 93 was made by a passenger named Edward Felt. The following article excerpt explains the content of the phone call:

"We got the call about 9:58 this morning from a male passenger stating that he was locked in the bathroom of United Flight 93 traveling from Newark to San Francisco, and they were being hijacked," said Glenn Cramer, a 911 supervisor.

"We confirmed that with him several times and we asked him to repeat what he said. He was very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down. He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't know where."
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2p2.asp

Now that's interesting, isn't it? He heard an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane...unfortunately this does not specify whether the smoke was OUTSIDE or INSIDE the plane. The phone call was one minute in duration, meaning that this explosion and presence of smoke occurred before 9:59. Now, go back to the previous post and take a look at the altitude plot again. At 9:59, it was flying at about 6,000 feet, and before it crashed, it increased in altitude back up to more than 10,000 feet, meaning the plane would have climbed more than 4,000 feet after being hit by a missile. That's a pretty strange thing for a plane to do after it has supposedly been mortally wounded by a missile, don't you think?

Consider this, too: the smoke should be an indication of fire, right? If an explosion had hit the airplane and caused a fire in the cabin, it should practically be a given that the fuselage had been damaged, right? If it had been damaged, the cabin would have depressurized, and all smoke would be pulled out of the airplane. If the smoke and damage was all outside of the airplane, you still have the question of why the airplane was able to increase in altitude by 4,000 feet but eventually crashed because it supposedly couldn't be flown.

Of course, there's also the fact that fire doesn't produce WHITE smoke. It produces BLACK smoke! What could the white smoke be, you ask? Well, there were some reports that boiling water was used as a weapon by the passengers:

Ordered by the hijackers to be quiet and remain calm so their lives would be spared, [Former Homeland Security Director Tom] Ridge said the passengers decided not to play by the rules.

"The terrorists were right to fear an uprising. The passengers and crew did whatever they humanly could -- boil water, phone the authorities, and ultimately rush the cockpit to foil the attack," he said.
Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/09/11/ar911.memorial.pennsylvania/index.html

There you have it. It's not "smoke" per se, but when you're on a plane that's been hijacked by terrorists, I wouldn't expect you to be so nitpicky.

Also, I should mention the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder that has been released:

http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/P200056T.pdf

You can see here that the transcript stops shortly after 10:03. The 9/11 Commission Report also says 10:03 was the crash time:

We also reviewed a report regarding seismic observations on September 11, 2001, whose authors conclude that the impact time of United 93 was "10:06:05±5 (EDT)."Won-Young Kim and G. R. Baum, "Seismic Observations during September 11, 2001,Terrorist Attack," spring 2002 (report to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources). But the seismic data on which they based this estimate are far too weak in signal-to-noise ratio and far too speculative in terms of signal source to be used as a means of contradicting the impact time established by the very accurate combination of FDR, CVR, ATC, radar, and impact site data sets.These data sets constrain United 93's impact time to within 1 second, are airplane- and crash-site specific, and are based on time codes automatically recorded in the ATC audiotapes for the FAA centers and correlated with each data set in a process internationally accepted within the aviation accident investigation community.

Furthermore, one of the study's principal authors now concedes that "seismic data is not definitive for the impact of UA 93." Email from Won-Young Kim to the Commission,"Re: UA Flight 93," July 7, 2004; see also Won-Young Kim,"Seismic Observations for UA Flight 93 Crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania during September 11, 2001," July 5, 2004.
Source: http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf (bottom of page 461 on the report)

911 research asserts that the crash time was 10:06. See the bottom of this link:

http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/flight93/index.html#ref4

The problem here is that they appear to be citing a number of news stories, a few of which were released a day or two after September 11th. These reports contradict the evidence from the cockpit voice recorder, the black box data that shows flight altitude (from my previous post), and the other sources that the 9/11 Commission cites in their report. And as you can see, it appears that the strongest evidence supporting the 10:06 crash time, an analysis of seismic data by Won-Young Kim and G. R. Baum, is no longer supported by one of the analysts!

The implication is that the plane was hit by a missile shortly after 10:03, and the government tried to cover up the last three minutes of flight. This, of course, directly contradicts the phone call from Edward Felt who reported an "explosion" between 9:58 and 9:59, not at 10:03. But as you can see from the transcript, the terrorists had apparently already decided to "put the plane down" and had begun saying "Allah is the greatest". Judging by all of what was said in the last few minutes, it does appear the terrorists were on their way down to the ground. You could argue that the government modified the transcript, but then why would the government modify most of it and cover up the last three minutes? Why not just shift the times up by three minutes and go with the 10:06 crash time? It seems to me that if you wanted to plan the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world, you wouldn't make dumb mistakes like that.

Last but not least, you have to think about WHY Flight 93 would be shot down. It was the last plane of the day to crash! While it was still in the air, two planes had hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, so if the government knew there was another plane out there that had been hijacked and was under control of terrorists, don't you think the government would be justified in shooting that plane down? If the government shot it down for the well-being of American citizens, why would they cover it up?

Suppose they shot the plane down so that they could fabricate the whole story, saying that hijackers took over and the passengers fought back, using it as a rally cry against terrorism and an example of the strength of the human spirit, showing that we can fight terrorism and be successful, thus leading us into the war on terror, etc. etc. etc. But somehow, the government managed to fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon! And suppose you skipped reading everything I wrote about the Pentagon and still think that no plane crashed at the Pentagon...it still doesn't change the indisputable fact that planes DID hit the World Trade Center. How did they do that? Use remote-control planes? Did they actually find someone crazy enough to fly the planes into these buildings? Whatever they did to get these planes to crash at the World Trade Center, why wouldn't they do the same thing with Flight 93? Why wouldn't they fly that with remote control or get another crazy terrorist to fly that one? Why take the risk of blowing it up in the sky where it could be seen by lots of people? It simply makes no sense at all.

The theory that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland is not the most popular theory regarding the flight. Considering that there's a lack of any solid evidence suggesting that Flight 93 landed anywhere other than Shanksville, and considering the amount of debris found at the scene of the crash, it's a bit of a hard sell.

However, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that Flight 93 was shot down, rather than overpowered by the passengers of the plane, causing the plane to plummet to the ground. One of the driving factors behind this theory is the fact that debris was supposedly found up to eight miles away from the original crash site. From a CNN transcript:

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we want to take our viewers live to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our Brian Cabell is standing by. This of course is the site where United Airlines flight 93 crashed on its way from Newark to San Francisco, crashed on Tuesday, and I understand, in this investigation, there's some breaking news.

Brian, what can you tell us?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, in the last hour or so, the FBI and the state police here have confirmed that have they cordoned off a second area about six to eight miles away from the crater here where plane went down. This is apparently another debris site, which raises a number of questions. Why would debris from the plane -- and they identified it specifically as being from this plane -- why would debris be located 6 miles away. Could it have blown that far away. It seems highly unlikely. Almost all the debris found at this site is within 100 yards, 200 yards, so it raises some question. We don't want to overspeculate of course. But there were some cell phone callers, one cell phone caller in particular, who said saw a bomb, or something that looked like a bomb with one of the hijackers. Also, the man who took over the plane apparently announced at one point, he had -- there was a bomb on board the plane.
Source: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/13/bn.01.html

Indeed, other sources have verified the widespread scattering of plane debris:

Crowley confirmed that there were two other aircraft within 25 miles of the United flight that were heading east when it crashed, scattering debris over 8 miles.
Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_12969.html

A picture from the website 9/11 Research shows the locations of debris sites where Flight 93 debris was found:



I have to say, I've never seen such an odd, random scattering of plane debris, especially for a flight that was supposedly shot down.

Consider Pan Am Flight 103. On December 21, 1988, 12 to 16 oz of plastic explosives detonated in the forward cargo hold of the plane, causing the plane to break apart and fall to the ground in several pieces. Eleven people on the ground were killed, and according to this source, debris was scattered over an area spanning 845 square miles:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/lockerbie1.shtml

If I were to be extremely generous, I'd say that with debris eight miles from the crash of Flight 93, we can assume that debris was scattered over an area with an eight-mile radius (forgetting the fact that debris was only found in the areas indicated on the map above). I'll even give the benefit of the doubt and consider this a square-shaped area rather than a circle, so we basically have a 16 mile by 16 mile square, which equates to an area of 256 square miles. Less than a third of the area, even after I made extremely generous assumptions. This still doesn't answer why debris was found in random, specific locations either (although, there are admittedly no good explanations for this)n

As for the engine located a fair distance from the crash site, this was addressed by Popular Mechanics in their 9/11 debunking article.

Experts on the scene tell PM that a fan from one of the engines was recovered in a catchment basin, downhill from the crash site. Jeff Reinbold, the National Park Service representative responsible for the Flight 93 National Memorial, confirms the direction and distance from the crash site to the basin: just over 300 yards south, which means the fan landed in the direction the jet was traveling. "It's not unusual for an engine to move or tumble across the ground," says Michael K. Hynes, an airline accident expert who investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 out of New York City in 1996. "When you have very high velocities, 500 mph or more," Hynes says, "you are talking about 700 to 800 ft. per second. For something to hit the ground with that kind of energy, it would only take a few seconds to bounce up and travel 300 yards." Numerous crash analysts contacted by PM concur.
Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=7

(by the way, if you haven't read the Popular Mechanics article, you should. It offers a great deal of valuable information debunking various 9/11 conspiracy theories.)

Let me do a little work for conspiracy theorists who are always strangely hesitant to formulate theories around the available evidence. You've got debris scattered in an odd manner and not nearly as wide as you would expect for a plane supposedly brought down by an explosive. You've got an engine a few hundred yards away from the crash site. There's only one shoot-down scenario that satisfies these details: a missile hit the plane such that it knocked off one of the engines, leaving the majority of the plane intact, thus the lack of debris. This also explains why the engine was so far away from the original crash site and is, in my opinion, the only realistic explanation.

The only problem is that this explanation actually isn't realistic at all. Let's not forget about the laws of physics! If the engine fell off while the plane was in the midst of its flight, the engine would start plummeting directly to the ground with nothing to slow its downward velocity. A plane, however, would still have its wings, so even if it had no engines propelling it forward, the wings would slow down its downward velocity. The engine would hit the ground first, BEHIND the airplane. However, we can see that it landed in FRONT of the airplane (Flight 93 was moving south when it crashed)...how could that have happened?

Additionally, a man by the name of Robert Sherman, conventional weapons expert for the Federation of American Scientists, had this to say about the engine:

Sherman said that if a missile had hit Flight 93, there would have been more evidence. "If a Sidewinder had hit it, there would have been pieces of the fan or the fuselage in a larger area," he says. "If the engine breaks up, then the fan blades are going to come off like bullets. Pieces of the wing and fuselage would be all over the place."
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20041101190530/http://www.pittsburghpulp.com/content/2002/11_28/news_cover_story.shtml

A few eyewitness accounts describe the plane as making a few maneuvers before crashing, meaning that the plane was intact enough to make such maneuvers:

Eric Peterson, 28, was working in his shop in the Somerset County village of Lambertsville yesterday morning when he heard a plane, looked up and saw one fly over unusually low.

The plane continued on beyond a nearby hill, then dropped out of sight behind a tree line. As it did so, Peterson said it seemed to be turning end-over-end.

Then Peterson said he saw a fireball, heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud of smoke rise into the sky.
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010912crashnat2p2.asp

A witness told WTAE-TV's Paul Van Osdol that she saw the plane overhead. It made a high-pitched, screeching sound. The plane then made a sharp, 90-degree downward turn and crashed.
Source: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/956356/detail.html

Also, it may be interesting to look at some of the data from the black box. Apparently 911review.org has found the data of the flight's altitude during its final moments:


Source: http://911review.org/evidence/93/Flight-93_shot_down.html

(Edit: the original data can be found here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc04.pdf)

Notice how the flight made a number of erratic motions during its final minutes before plummeting to the ground during its final minute? Did the pilots decide to have a little fun with the airplane before suddenly being hit by a missile, causing it to plummet to the ground?

Let's use physics again. If the plane was hit by a missile and plummeted to the ground after being hit, then it appears to have fallen, say, 10,000 feet in about 90 seconds (judging from the graph, and I am being generous). Using the classic physics equation d = (1/2)gt^2 and knowing that g = 32.2 ft / s^2, we have d = (1/2)(32.2 ft / s^2)(90 s)^2 = 130,410 feet. Now obviously, this is completely neglecting terminal velocity as the plane would not continually increase in velocity as it falls for 90 seconds (which is a generous amount of time based on the graph, anyway). But this should give you an idea of how something just isn't right with the idea that the flight could be shot down.

This post will continue in the next post.

Due to the "lack of debris" at the crash site, many people have been led to believe that no plane actually crashed at the supposed crash site. Take a look at a few of the pictures often cited by conspiracy theorists:







Additionally, a few random witness accounts taken out of context are usually cited too:

Once he was able to absorb the scene, Miller says, "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.
-From an article interviewing Wally Miller, a funeral director in Somerset, PA
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A56110-2002May8¬Found=true

[question] They had been sent here because of a crash but there was no plane?
Ernie Stull: No. Nothing . Only this hole.
-Interview with Ernie Stull, mayor of Shanksville
Source: http://killtown.911review.org/flight93/german-doc.html

Reporter: Any large pieces of debris at all?
Photographer Chris Konicki: Na, there was nothing, nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there.
-An interview from Youtube
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQWjtDK-Pw

Hopefully it should make you nervous to see these quotes given without any context at all. Anyway, if the plane didn't crash in Shanksville, then where did it go? According to the documentary Loose Change and a number of other conspiracy theorists, the plane landed in Cleveland. There is just one source to back up this claim, and that is the following brief article:


Plane Lands In Cleveland; Bomb Feared Aboard

Reported by: 9News Staff
Web produced by: Liz Foreman
9/11/01 11:43:57 AM

A Boeing 767 out of Boston made an emergency landing Tuesday at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to concerns that it may have a bomb aboard, said Mayor Michael R. White.

White said the plane had been moved to a secure area of the airport, and was evacuated.

United identified the plane as Flight 93. The airline did say how many people were aboard the flight.

United said it was also "deeply concerned" about another flight, Flight 175, a Boeing 767, which was bound from Boston to Los Angeles.

On behalf of the airline CEO James Goodwin said: "The thoughts of everyone at United are with the passengers and crew of these flights. Our prayers are also with everyone on the ground who may have been involved.

"United is working with all the relevant authorities, including the FBI, to obtain further information on these flights," he said.
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20021109040132/http:/wcpo.com/specials/2001/americaattacked/news_local/story14.html


Interesting, huh? Well hold your horses...Liz Foreman, the person responsible for posting this story on the 9News website, has cleared this debacle up:

I thought it was time to set the record straight on a website error that's gotten out of hand.

I've been getting calls and e-mails for several years, all from folks who have seen my byline on a story (Plane Lands In Cleveland; Bomb Feared Aboard) about Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.

The story in question, an Associated Press bulletin, was posted on WCPO.com during the morning of September 11, 2001. The story stated that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland. This was not true.

Once the AP issued a retraction a few minutes later, we removed the link.

There were two problems:

1)I only removed the link TO the story. We did not remove the story itself. This was my error probably due to the busy nature of the day - I was the only person updating the website until about noon that day, and things were crazier than they’d ever been.

2) The byline was incorrect. In my haste, I pasted the “Reported by: 9News Staff” byline from a previous story, but this was actually an Associated Press story.

Sometime in 2003 I received an e-mail inquiring about the story. I quickly removed the story, and wrote back to the person, thanking them for the heads up about the incorrect story.

Things didn't stop there.

Messages and phone calls started coming in about "Why did the government make me remove the story?" As is the nature of the net, folks had gotten a hold of the old story and posted it on their own blogs, fueling even more interest in the situation.

Liz goes on to answer a number of commonly-asked questions regarding the story. You can read up on it here:

http://blogs.scripps.com/wcpo/staff/2006/02/wcpocoms_flight_93_story.html

The article has since been replaced by this, a statement saying that the story was factually incorrect:

http://www.wcpo.com/specials/2001/americaattacked/news_local/story14.html

So what plane, or planes, did land in Cleveland? One of them was Delta Airlines Flight 1989. The FAA received word that a hijacked plane was headed towards Cleveland, and Flight 1989 was asked to land since it was flying the exact same route as flights 11 and 175, which ended up hitting the World Trade Center. According to this source, it landed at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 10:45 AM:

http://thepost.baker.ohiou.edu/archives3/sep01/091101/brief16.html

It appears that this was the flight that made the emergency landing in Cleveland, erroneously identified as Flight 93 by the Associated Press, who learned of their mistake minutes after posting the story above. The corrected Associated Press article appears to be the following article, which does not specify the flight number but does also say that the plane landed at 10:45 AM:

http://911review.org/brad.com/Woodybox/cleveland-plane-emergency-land.html

But here's the problem. According to the Cleveland Airport arrival manifest, Flight 1989 actually landed at 10:11 AM:

http://www.devvy.com/pdf/2006_November/CLE_0911_Arrivals.pdf

You will find Flight 1989 on the last page of the document. So why the time discrepancy? From what I have read, it appears that the news stories citing the 10:45 time come from a press conference earlier in the day on September 11th with Cleveland Mayor Michael White, and he has since admitted that he did not have his facts straight at the time. Nevertheless, since news agencies reported a plane landing at 10:45, and since Flight 1989 landed at 10:11 according to the manifest above, conspiracy theorists say that a mystery plane, or "Flight X" as they call it, landed at 10:45. For one thing, note that eight flights landed at the Cleveland airport between 10:11 and 10:45, and I don't see any eyebrows being raised about them. Ask yourself how the news agencies could have learned about the 10:45 landing time. As the news articles say, they learned of the landing times and other facts about Flight 1989 from airport officials who were reporting this information on the morning of September 11th, a time when it would be more than just forgivable to make a mistake in naming the correct landing time for the flight.

And like I said earlier, eight flights landed between 10:11 and 10:45, so why does it make any logical sense to assume that the plane that DID land at 10:45 (if there was one...it's certainly possible that they simply screwed up the time) was actually Flight 93 and not one of these other flights? Why suspect Flight 93 when there appears to be no solid evidence whatsoever that Flight 93 did land in Cleveland, other than an erroneous news story?

Perhaps we should refer to this source, an article from the Cleveland Free Times, which re-investigated the matter of Flight 93 landing in Cleveland:

http://www.freetimes.com/story/681

The article has this to say about Mayor White:

Former Mayor White hardly ever talks to the media now, so Free Times contacted his former press secretary Della Homenik.

"It has always been my understanding that United flight 93 diverted from its intended flight plan while it was in Cleveland air space," Homenik writes in an e-mail. "I never heard a single report, from any source, either on September 11 or in its aftermath, that flight 93 landed in Cleveland."

As for this "Flight X" that supposedly landed at 10:45, I have to draw your attention to another part of this bizarre theory: witnesses say that they saw a number of passengers, approximately 200 in all, be escorted to the NASA Glenn Research Center, which is directly adjacent to Cleveland Airport. These passengers were then loaded onto military buses and whisked away, never to be seen again, apparently. Passengers from Flight 1989 had been moved to the FAA Headquarters at the Cleveland airport, so they weren't the ones moved to the NASA Glenn building.

Again, it takes an incredible leap to assume that 200 people being whisked away in buses has any connection to Flight 93 landing in Cleveland. Who was moved to the NASA Glenn building, you ask? The Free Times article brings up an interview with Vernon Wessel, director of safety and mission assurance at NASA Glenn, in the following article:

"A KC-135 had to come back to the hangar," says Wessel, as if realizing for the first time that this aircraft may have caused some undue confusion. A team of scientists from the Johnson Space Center in Houston had flown to Cleveland on this KC-135 to conduct micro-gravity experiments. (Also known as "the vomit comet," KC-135's are used to simulate weightlessness. The plane soars to high altitudes, then falls back toward the ground, giving passengers a few seconds of zero-G experience. Scenes for the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 were filmed in one.)

The visiting scientists could not return to Houston as scheduled on 9/11 once the FAA ordered all planes to land. "After the facility closed, we had to take those scientists to a hotel." The scientists, dressed as civilians, were boarded onto shuttle buses.

So, to sum up, the evidence that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland is supported by an erroneous news story that was retracted minutes after it was posted, supported by a report that a plane landed in Cleveland at 10:45, even though the reports were based on a press conference with incorrect facts, not to mention that a number of other planes landed at Cleveland around that time too, and it is supported by the suspicious loading of 200 passengers on to buses that apparently took these people away to be executed, even though Flight 93 consisted of only 44 passengers, not to mention that there appears to be a logical explanation for what was happening to the passengers.

Doesn't sound like a very solid theory to me!

I'm trying out a new theme here. Rumor has it that reading white text on a black background isn't all that easy to read, and honestly, I have to agree. Is brown text on a tan background easier to read? We'll see.

Anyway, it is time to move on to a new phase of 9/11: Flight 93, the only hijacked aircraft that did not hit its intended target on September 11th. Supposedly the plane was destined for the U.S. Capitol, but it was brought down before this could happen.

First of all, the official story. Flight 93 took off from Newark, New Jersey, at 8:42. Around 9:26, the terrorists took action, invading the cockpit and supposedly attacking the pilots. The cockpit voice recorder, which I actually get to show you, recorded the pilots yelling "mayday! mayday!" and "get out of here!" amidst a scuffle. After taking over the plane, the terrorists redirected the plane back towards Washington D.C. A number of alarmed passengers began making phone calls, alerting authorities to what was going on and trying to contact loved ones, fearing what could potentially happen. Through these phone calls, the passengers found out about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon, attacks made by planes hijacked by terrorists. Most of the passengers must have known that there really was no hope for them, yet they stood up against the terrorists and fought back, doing what they could to make sure they didn't end up in another U.S. landmark. Despite what is commonly believed and what is shown in the film United 93, the passengers never made it into the cockpit. The pilots of the plane knew that they were in trouble, and before the passengers could make it into the cockpit, they nosed the plane down to the ground.

When Flight 93 slammed into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a reclaimed coal mine, it hit with such tremendous force that parts of the airplane were dug up more than 30 feet underground. All that was left was this crater:



You can see from this picture that there appears to be no debris whatsoever, and you can bet your bottom dollar that there's plenty of conspiracy-ness involved with that. Of course, it's not at all true that there is no debris, and in fact, 95% of the plane was recovered. More on that later.

There are three theories as to what happened to Flight 93:

• Flight 93 was hijacked by terrorists and crashed because of the actions of the passengers

• Flight 93 was shot down

• Flight 93 never crashed, it actually landed in Cleveland

I'm guessing that people who are unfamiliar with the theories about Flight 93 are pretty baffled over the notion that Flight 93 could have landed in Cleveland. Heck, I'm pretty baffled by it myself.

So are any of these theories credible? I'll begin to analyze them in my next few posts.

It appears that the release of this video was not much of a big deal. I've only seen mention of it on a few 9/11 forums, but I haven't seen anything from any of the big media outlets. However, thanks to youtube, we can view the video to our heart's content. Check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H285_DWX_bQ

Here's the deal, though. You can't even see the Pentagon in this footage! I thought that maybe this white blob could be the tail of the plane...



However, that is most likely a car moving along an elevated interstate. Here's the Doubletree hotel in relation to Flight 77's point of impact (courtesy of Google Earth):



So first of all, the video isn't aimed at the face of the building where the plane did hit. Second of all, you can see from the map that Interstate 395 is in the way. This is an elevated interstate, and like I said, that white blob is probably just a car moving on it. So I'm afraid this video won't help us.

Also, I can't remember if I ever posted the footage from the Citgo nearby, but it also shows nothing. Maybe one of you out there has some clever deduction skills and can figure something out, though, and if you want to give it a shot, you can view the Citgo footage here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJvFjsl6zk

The Doubletree footage does have some good use, though. Some researchers calling themselves the "Citizen Investigation Team" created a film called "The Pentacon", where they claim that Flight 77 actually flew OVER The Pentagon.

http://thepentacon.com/

Watch the Doubletree footage and see with your own eyes that these folks are totally wrong.

A lot of what I have to say here is probably very, very familiar information. However, knowing that anybody could be reading this journal, even those with very limited knowledge of 9/11, I want to make sure we're all on the same page here. Although it pains me to do so, I want to point out to you the various sources out there that offer up evidence that the events of 9/11 were planned by the government and that a grandiose conspiracy was involved.

First and foremost, there is a documentary known as Loose Change. This film was made by the likes of Dylan Avery, Korey Rowe, and Jason Bermas, three people very actively involved in the "9/11 Truth Movement", the name conspiracy theorists use for their cause. The film is on its third version, with a fourth version set to be released quite soon. You can view the most recent one here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&q=loose+change&hl=en

Why so many versions, you may ask? Well, in the original version of Loose Change, the filmmakers proposed the idea that a bulge, or "pod", on the bottom of Flight 175 that hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center was some sort of missile, bomb, or piece of some sort of cargo plane. Although I never saw the original version of Loose Change that discusses this, I guess the filmmakers went into great detail with it.

As it turns out, this bulge is merely a fairing on the airplane which houses the landing gear of the plane. It was removed as soon as the next version of Loose Change came out, and conspiracy theorists no longer talk about it. Probably a wise decision! Unfortunately, this is not the only ridiculous claim made in this thrice-revised documentary. A fellow by the name of Mark Roberts wrote a guide to go along with the documentary, which you can access here:

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

Roberts counted a total of 426 flubs in the documentary. If you do watch Loose Change, do read this guide. It is an excellent source.

The film is accompanied by a forum, primarily filled with individuals that quite strongly support the conspiracy theory. If you ever feel bold enough, join the forum and let the members know what you think of their conspiracy beliefs:

http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php

I used to frequent this site until I was banned from it, probably from asking too many questions, I imagine! Perhaps you will have more success there than I did.

One of the most active bloggers amidst the 9/11 Truthers is a guy who goes by "Killtown". His site is found here:

http://www.geocities.com/killtown/

To his credit, he has done substantial research into the issue of 9/11 and seems to know every single discrepancy of that day. However, I find a common theme with his journal is that he doesn't offer a lot of solid theories and often asks questions rather than providing answers. Skepticism is, of course, a healthy thing, but offering answers of your own is necessary too. If you visit his site, I encourage you to do so with an open mind.

In addition to these sources, the following is a running list of conspiracy sources that I am compiling:

http://www.universalseed.org/main.asp
-Many, many hours worth of 9/11 conspiracy documentaries

http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html
-Primarily a pro-conspiracy site, although some evidence is actually helpful to the anti-conspiracy crowd

http://www.911review.com/
-Companion site to 911research

Note: this entry will likely be continually updated with new conspiracy sources that I find. It may be useful to have all these sources in one place.

Before I begin to analyze Flight 93 and the various theories revolving around its crash in Shanksville, I have a few miscellaneous topics I wanted to bring up. The first one involves a government operation from the 60s that never actually materialized; it was called Operation Northwoods.

If you ever encounter some hard-core conspiracy theorists out there who claim that the government planned this attack, you're very likely to hear about Operation Northwoods. Take John Conner, for instance, an outspoken advocate for the conspiracy theory. One of his favorite things to do is visit various campuses around the country, interrupt lectures, and hand out copies of Loose Change, the most famous of all conspiracy documentaries (and it has been thoroughly debunked...see the Loose Change Guide on the right). The one fact he always seems to bring up to everyone is Operation Northwoods and the government's role in planning attacks on its own citizens. You can see him in action here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50DyHQZ2llk

So what is Operation Northwoods, you ask? Well back in 1962, the government was trying to come up with a plan that would give them a valid reason to invade Cuba and take Fidel Castro out of power. One of the proposed methods was to stage a variety of events and attacks that would frame Cubans for attacking American citizens, thus giving us a valid reason to fight Cuba and take Castro out of power. This is what is referred to as a "false flag" operation, where our government carries out attacks under the guise that they were actually perpetrated by someone else (in this case, the Cubans).

You can see why people like to bring it up so much. It's an example of the government staging attacks on its own country to give a valid reason for invading other countries. Well, at least that's what it appears to be on the surface!

A more critical look at Operation Northwoods shows that it should never be brought up when talking about 9/11 for a number of reasons. First of all, this document was actually declassified by the government back in 1997. Seems like a silly thing for the government to do if they didn't want anyone to know that they would plan stuff like this, right?

Let's actually take a look at the plan.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf

This is the official memorandum to the Secretary of Defense that details the various aspects of the operation. The memo states (starting on page 10 of the pdf):

A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.

Ah yes, we seem to have reached the very core of what we're talking about. Let's take a look at what kind of incidents the government had in mind:

(1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence" to stage attack on base.
(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.
(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans)
(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
(9) Capture militia group which storms the base.
(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; -- large fires (napthalene).
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock victims (may be lieu of (10)).

Looking at this list of incidents, one has to wonder how a parallel could be drawn between 9/11 and Operation Northwoods. What we see here is a list of incidents that involve doing damage to weapons and installations, as well as the capture of a few supposed bad guys. The most important one here is (11), which specifies funerals for MOCK victims.

Remember, people like John Conner above claim that the government would willingly kill thousands of American citizens, and they are using this operation as proof, this operation that appears to be calling for the avoidance of loss of life.

There's more. Further down the document, it says:

We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in Cuban waters.

Again, the vessel is specified as unmanned, meaning that the government is taking special care to make sure innocent lives are not lost.

The part of the document that likely gets conspiracy theorists worked up the most is the following quote:

We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.

Yikes! Sounds like these guys are up to no good! But in the absence of context, you may actually believe that this quote is referring to terrorist events on the same scale as 9/11, where jetliners are flown into buildings and thousands of people are recklessly killed. However, since I am not one to take quotes out of context, I will provide you with the rest of the paragraph:

The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.

Notice how I put "wounding" in bold? Take a look at that sentence. It appears that the government does not plan on going much farther than wounding people. The only specific mention of loss of life is the bit about sinking a boatload of Cubans, real or simulated, and even then, the document is not calling for the direct murder of anybody. Yes, there is the bit about plastic bombs in "carefully chosen spots", but if it was as serious as what happened on 9/11, why would this statement be followed by such low-scale things as arresting Cuban agents and releasing damaging documents? So, the government plans on killing thousands of people, and on top of that, they'll even arrest a few people and release some damaging info! Such an interpretation literally makes no sense.

Near the end of the document, you will find a more in-depth operation that calls for a passenger jet to be shot down by a Cuban MIG airplane....the only catch is that the government arranged for the plane to be a drone and devoid of passengers! The passengers of the flight would be landed at a secure location, i.e. allowed to live. Another drone, unempty airplane would be shot down instead. Again, an instance of the government going out of its way to preserve lives.

If anything, it appears that Operation Northwoods is actually an argument AGAINST the government plotting 9/11! Why would they have gone to great lengths to stage attacks, create mock victims, and preserve life as much as possible, then plan an attack like 9/11 where they recklessly murder thousands of people, making no effort whatsoever to preserve human life?

And to be totally fair, Operation Northwoods shouldn't be used on either side of the argument for two reasons:

1) The plan was drawn up by completely different people almost 40 years prior to 9/11...we might as well be talking about the Ming Dynasty
2) The government never even carried this plan out

So there you have it. If only John Conner would read this post and save all these college kids from his dreadfully off-base accusations...

I've reached the end of what I have to say about the attack at the Pentagon. I did not analyze every single claim made by conspiracy theorists because, quite frankly, there's no way I could ever hope to finish this journal if I pursued all of them. I mainly focused on the most important points and did not bother with other facts that seem pointless, given all of the evidence I have presented. For example, conspiracy theorists often talk about Jamie McIntyre, the CNN reporter at the Pentagon on 9/11 who said that there was no evidence of a plane crashing at the Pentagon. Of course, he was reporting this ON 9/11, seeing the same things that you have seen here. No, there is no massive plane body sitting out anywhere, but the evidence that points towards plane crash is overwhelming.

You can go here to find a thorough debunking of this whole claim:

http://www.911myths.com/html/jamie_mcintyre_and_the_pentago.html

There are other claims too, such as the fact that the lawn of the Pentagon was covered with sand and gravel immediately after the attack, supposedly to cover up the evidence on the ground...now seriously, think about this. If there was evidence on the ground of a plane crash, wouldn't the government want to NOT cover this stuff up to convince skeptics that there was actually a plane crash there, especially if they did actually fake it? The fact of the matter is that the dirt was needed for trucks hauling dumpsters full of debris out of the Pentagon site because the ground was too soft.

There's more, as always. However, once you have read over the following sources, you should have no doubts about the fact that terrorists DID hijack Flight 77 and slam it into the Pentagon. The only wrongdoing in the matter was that of these terrorists who were, fortunately, brought to swift judgment as soon as they executed their horrendous attacks.

http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf
-American Society of Civil Engineers report on the Pentagon attack

http://www.911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagon/index.html
-Thorough article by Jim Hoffman that makes a strong case for a 757 hitting the Pentagon

http://perso.orange.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/english.html
-Article by Jean-Pierre Desmoulins, which analyzes many different aspects of the Pentagon attack

http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/noplane/index.html
-A useful slide show addressing the Pentagon no-plane theory

Other sources (that are equally valuable) can be found throughout this Pentagon section of the journal.

It's important that we look at why the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11. Obviously the attacks on the World Trade Center were devastating, and hitting the Pentagon with a plane won't nearly destroy the building or kill as many people as were killed in the WTC. You could ask why the government would bother with an attack on the Pentagon when the attack on the WTC is clearly a much bigger deal (not to downplay the Pentagon incident, of course) and would have likely accomplished their objective of showing America that we ARE vulnerable, that we need to depend on the government, etc. You could also ask why terrorists would bother doing it, for many of the same reasons. It's a red herring either way, but in either case, an attack is an attack. An attack on our Defense Headquarters is especially devastating.

So if the government did this, why would they? One of the most common motives parroted by conspiracy theorists has to do with the following quote by Donald Rumsfeld:

"According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."

This is an excerpt from a speech he gave on September 10, 2001, just one day before 9/11. Apparently, he intended to make this claim the day before so that people would forget about the fact that he supposedly lost $2.3 trillion after witnessing the horrific events of 9/11, allowing Rumsfeld to get away with this "loss" of money that he possibly "stole". There's also the fact that a lot of accountants, bookkeepers, and budget analysts were housed in the area of the Pentagon that was hit, which has been brought up by Killtown, one of the leaders of the conspiracy theory:

http://killtown.911review.org/flight77/fatalities.html

Of course, there is this whole issue of context. Take a look at the context of the quote:

"The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible."

Better yet, you can read the whole speech:

http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010910-secdef.html

If you read the speech, you'll find that Rumsfeld's speech is about the poor bureaucracy at the Pentagon. One of the major flaws in the bureaucracy appears to be their money-tracking capabilities, and by using decades-old financial systems, they have lost track of $2.3 trillion. This isn't even close to suggesting that Rumsfeld STOLE this money, which some people suggest. Looking at the context of this quote, it's clear that he's saying that over the years, the Pentagon has spent $2.3 trillion and has not kept track of where it went.

You also need to consider the fact that it's impossible to steal $2.3 trillion from the Pentagon's budget, considering that their budget for the 2001 year was only $289 billion. Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/289/5485/1662

So what do you think? Do you think Rumsfeld was simply commenting on poor financial systems that have failed to keep track of $2.3 trillion over the years? Or was Rumsfeld actually dumb enough to admit to the public that he essentially stole $2.3 trillion from a budget that is almost 10 times smaller than that amount and then blew up the people who would have found out about this, even though Rumsfeld spilled the beans only a day earlier, rendering such an attack totally pointless? If Rumsfeld's intention was to cover up his "theft" of $2.3 trillion, he sure wouldn't have brought that up in a speech that is, apparently, open to the public.

One of the funniest theories I have found in the conspiracy theory was proposed by Killtown. You can find his list of possible motives on the bottom of this page:

http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/flight77/theories.html

One of this theories for why the Pentagon was hit is as follows:

Test out their new renovated section of the Pentagon (especially if they shot a missile into it) that they where making more "blast resistant".

Indeed, the side of the Pentagon that was hit was coincidentally the section of the building that had recently been renovated and strengthened for an attack. From a USA Today article:

Luck — if it can be called that — had it that the terrorists aimed the Boeing 757 at the only part of the Pentagon that already had been renovated in an 11-year, $1.3 billion project meant to bolster it against attack. That significantly limited the damage and loss of life by slowing the plane as it tore through the building and reducing the explosion's reach.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002/01/01/pentagon.htm

Killtown is proposing that the reason for this attack was to conduct a test on the newly renovated wall to see how well it can prevent the loss of life. The only reason they would conduct such a test would be if they were genuinely interested in designing a wall that helps save lives, so when they actually carry out an attack and kill a bunch of people, they are basically nullifying the purpose of the wall. Seriously, without me even offering up an explanation, I think any rational person who reads the proposed theory would probably just burst out laughing. I know I did.

Coincidentally, this wall was the newly renovated wall, and this section of the Pentagon did hold the accountants and bookkeepers that were supposedly taken out to cover up the missing money. Also, Rumsfeld's office is basically on the opposite end of where the attack took place. Is it a coincidence? Or is it something more....*cue brooding hip-hop music*

Actually, no. Here's a quick reality check. Take a look at the path taken by Flight 77 (this picture taken from page 33 of the 9/11 Commission Report, which can be accessed at http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf):



When the hijackers took control of the plane, it was flown back to Washington on an easterly course. The final leg of the flight was as follows:



The plane hit the western wall of the Pentagon, which it was facing as soon as Hanjour took over the controls and turned the plane around. If Flight 77 had hit any wall other than the one it was first facing, I would be suspicious. But considering that he hit the first wall he found, I don't see anything beyond a mere coincidence. Even if he hadn't done that final 270-degree loop there at the end, he still would have been facing the same wall he was facing hundreds of miles away, and he still would have hit it in the same spot.