By Craig McKee
Richard Gage had a lot to say in February about what did and didn’t happen at the Pentagon on 9/11. But in recent weeks he’s been sticking to more familiar territory – the twin towers.
The founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has declined to respond to a letter signed by 27 members of the 9/11 Truth movement criticizing his stance on the Pentagon and Citizen Investigation Team (which contends that no commercial airliner hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001). In his statement he withdrew his support of CIT and its film National Security Alert.
The film features a number of interviews with people who were working near the Pentagon that day – including two Pentagon cops. The interviewees recounted that a large commercial plane approached the Pentagon to the north of the Citgo gas station, which is located across the street. If accurate, their accounts would mean that the downed light pole evidence must have been planted.
There continues to be a relentless and seemingly co-ordinated attack by some 9/11 Truthers (or people who purport to be Truthers) against CIT and its supporters. CIT’s position is ridiculed, and its research methods are viciously and repeatedly maligned.
Many of these critics are contributors to the largest 9/11 web site, 911Blogger, which first published Gage’s statement. “Blogger” was condemned recently by the 9/11 Truth Teleconference group for its practises of banning those who agree with CIT while permitting its opponents to have free reign in launching their unopposed attacks.
Gage’s withdrawal of support for CIT (which closely followed a similar statement from David Chandler and Jonathan Cole, also on 911Blogger) put him in the same camp as those who believe that the official story of what happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 is essentially true.
The list of signatories to the letter, which was sent to Gage in April, features a number of familiar names from the 9/11 Truth movement, including Barrie Zwicker, Rob Balsamo, Adam Syed, Sheila Casey, Kevin Barrett, Dwain Deets, and Sheldon Lankford. It also includes my not-so-familiar name.
Here is the letter, reproduced in its entirety. It was sent to Gage’s home and had to be signed for, so it’s certain that it was received. I’ll follow up with more details in another post.
Dear Richard,
We were dismayed and concerned to see the February 8 blog post in your name at 911blogger announcing your withdrawal of support for Citizen Investigation Team (CIT). As one of the leading figures of the 9/11 truth movement, your opinions matter and will tend to be assumed to be well thought out, and not arrived at hastily, by those who look to you for inspiration and leadership.
Many of us have contributed time and/or money to support Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, and several of us are listed as supporters on the A&E website. Richard, we admire the work you’ve done with A&E. However we simply cannot stay silent about the stance that you and other members of A&E have taken about CIT and the Pentagon, as we believe it is hurting the movement and could potentially cripple it.
Although controlled demolition of the World Trade Center could be spun to minimize government complicity, evidence for bombs at the Pentagon is un-spinnable. The idea was recently floated on Fox News that perhaps the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition, but our government might not have done it, or even known about it. This could never be said about the Pentagon.
You conclude your blog post by stating that our focus should be on the fact that nothing should have hit the Pentagon. But this is not our strongest evidence. While dozens of excuses could easily be fabricated for why the defenses at the Pentagon failed that day, no excuse could ever conceivably be found for all the many preparations that were necessary – prior to that fateful Tuesday – to fake a plane crash at the Pentagon.
Hence we believe that it would be a grave mistake for us in the 9/11 truth movement to abandon our most incriminating evidence – a faked plane crash at US military headquarters – without very good reasons to do so.
It is completely predictable that our most damning evidence, pointing directly at the highest levels of the US government, would be a target of counter intelligence operations, and we believe that this is what we are witnessing. We know that those who have issued statements of support for CIT have been harassed and cajoled endlessly to retract their statements, and we wonder if you might have been subjected to a similar campaign?
We also wonder whether this retraction was actually written by you, as it uses obviously faulty logic, while giving praise to some very dubious characters. Given your high level of intelligence and integrity, these tactics do not seem worthy of you. Nonetheless, until we hear otherwise from you Richard, we will assume that you wrote it freely and willingly.
In recent months there appears to be a concerted effort from A&E to discredit CIT and its defenders, including the Rock Creek Free Press. Four prominent members of A&E (Kevin Ryan, Gregg Roberts, David Chandler and Jon Cole) have recently published articles (their names link to those articles) bashing either CIT, the Rock Creek Free Press, or both, while strongly promoting the view that a plane did hit the Pentagon. Now that you have not only withdrawn your support from CIT, but leveled accusations of dishonest behavior at CIT, we can only conclude that there is an orchestrated campaign at A&E to push the official story at the Pentagon and smear anyone who has evidence proving otherwise. This concerns us greatly.
For us, your retraction raises more questions than it answers. For starters, the sources you say “should be among those studied by anyone seeking the full truth about these matters,” give us pause.
Are you aware that Jeff Hill, a source you cite, is on the record as stating that Architects & Engineers is “crap” and that you, David Ray Griffin and Steven Jones are “corrupt?” In his January 2011 podcast, Hill accused David Ray Griffin of being a “lying scum-bag.”
A drunk Jeff Hill can also be heard here repeatedly calling a WTC attack witness on the phone at 1 am to push the idea that no planes actually hit the WTC towers. Are you sure you want to send people to Jeff Hill to learn more about anything related to 9/11?
You also evidently think highly of A&E member Gregg Roberts who wrote a 13-page article attacking the November 2010 Rock Creek Free Press article that pointed out the censorship and wholesale banning of CIT supporters at 911blogger. Note that Roberts does not attempt to actually refute any of the evidence in the RCFP article about blogger censorship, but attempts to discredit it with dishonest means.
For example, although the writer(s) of the RCFP article are anonymous, Roberts states that they “drew warnings” about their bad behavior at 911blogger prior to being banned. He professes not to know who wrote the article, yet knows they were warned at 911blogger and knows they were banned?
Roberts quotes the RCFP as inaccurately stating that “there was no wreckage at the Pentagon.” But Roberts is clearly taking this out of context, drastically changing its meaning. The entire thought, as written in the sixth paragraph of the RCFP article, is:
“For starters, plane crashes leave wreckage, and there was no wreckage at the Pentagon. No wings or tail, no fuselage, no luggage or bodies, no skid or burn marks on the pristine green Pentagon lawn.”
The second sentence in that thought is not even a sentence, as it contains no verb. It’s a sentence fragment, an extension of the first sentence. The writer(s) could be faulted for ungrammatical prose, but no honest reader would disregard that fragment when attempting to convey the writer(s) meaning.
Roberts misleads his readers into thinking that “no wreckage at the Pentagon” is the entire thought, and then disproves it with images of small pieces that could be hauled away (or brought in) in a wheelbarrow. Of course he has no images to show of wings, tail, fuselage or luggage, the indisputable evidence of a crash that the RCFP writers are referring to here.
You also refer readers to a blatantly misleading and deceptive blog post by Jim Hoffman. Hoffman uses Google Earth to try to convince readers that the Pentagon can easily be seen from all the highways surrounding it.
But Google Earth images are taken from satellites, so are accurate only as an aerial view. Although it is possible to simulate a view of looking across a landscape rather then down on it, all objects are then rendered flat, with the exception of important buildings such as the Pentagon. So trees, overpasses, and other buildings appear to be no more substantial than a coat of paint on the ground, while the Pentagon stands straight and tall, the only three dimensional object in the entire neighborhood. This suits Hoffman’s agenda well, as it makes it appear as if the Pentagon is visible from miles around with nothing obstructing the view from any direction, which is assuredly not the case. CIT addressed this in detail here.
Once again, you seem to have used very poor judgement in recommending sources for information on the Pentagon.
While you seem to be all too willing to dismiss errors and insult – even directed at yourself – from Jeff Hill, Gregg Roberts and Jim Hoffman, your blogpost levels accusations at CIT which frankly hold no water. You state accusingly that CIT characterizes your statement on their “praise page” as an endorsement of their flyover conclusion, but we see nothing of the kind. If you have a link showing where they have stated or even implied that you endorse the flyover theory, please forward it to us. CIT describes their attempt to discuss this with you here.
It is also quite alarming to see you claiming that you are now “surprised to learn” that all of CIT’s witnesses believe that the plane hit the Pentagon, because in National Security Alert Craig Ranke makes it very clear that all the witnesses believe that the plane hit.
We are sure that if we had been at the Pentagon that day, we too would have concluded that the plane hit. As reporter Craig McKee states in his article “Richard Gage joins perplexing gang-up on Citizen Investigation Team,”
“9/11 WAS MEANT TO BE AN ILLUSION. It was supposed to look like the U.S. government was taken by surprise by a group of Muslim fundamentalists. And the destruction of the World Trade Center wasn’t supposed to look like a controlled demolition. So eyewitness accounts of the plane hitting the Pentagon have to be considered in this light.”
Sheila Casey wrote in her April, 2009 Rock Creek Free Press article about CIT:
“Less than an hour earlier, America had seen the south tower of the World Trade Center being hit by a plane and exploding into a huge fireball. Most people were aware that an attack was underway. If they saw a jet heading directly towards the Pentagon, and next saw a massive fireball, it is doubtful that one person in a thousand would question whether the plane had crashed and caused the fireball. To conclude that the fireball was caused by explosives pre-planted in one of the most heavily guarded buildings on the planet, in an intentional false flag attack to justify war, would require observers to have a degree of perspicacity that was extremely rare in the pre-9/11 world, and only slightly less rare now.”
We do not find it worrisome that witnesses at the Pentagon believe the plane hit, any more than we find it worrisome that witnesses at the WTC believe in a gravitational collapse. (Even the firefighters who reported explosions believe in gravitational collapse.) Witness interpretations about what they saw are not the last word on what happened that day.
Why, Richard, would you pretend that CIT deceived you about what the Pentagon witnesses believe? If you watched National Security Alert prior to issuing your statement of support for it in summer 2009, you already knew what the witnesses believe, and thus could not have recently been “surprised to learn” it.
For all these reasons, we are alarmed and perplexed as to why you would put your name to such a statement. We are concerned about the public image of our movement, but most of all, we are concerned about the truth. We implore you to get in touch with Craig Ranke (we know you have his cell phone #) and sort out any motivations you may have had for issuing this baffling retraction. Please also reply to us, and help us understand why you have taken the actions you have.
Richard, those of us who believe, based on overwhelming evidence, that no passenger 757 hit the Pentagon, constitute the vast majority of the 9/11 truth movement. Without some clarifying communication from you, many members of that majority are likely to question your judgment.
In truth,
Rob Balsamo, Kevin Barrett, Greg Boyd, Mill Butler, Sheila Casey, Candice Clough, Dwain Deets, Dominick DiMaggio, Shelton Lankford, Jeffrey Long, Jill Mann, Craig McKee, Shirley Miller, Nelisse Muga, Ted Muga, Erin S. Myers, Jeffrey Nowicki, Nancy Purks, Adam Ruff, Edward Rynearson, Stefan (chooses not to disclose last name), Adam Syed, C. Scott Taylor, Julia TenEyck, Darrel Vincent Willis, Louis Wolf, Barrie Zwicker
This decent, thoughtful and respectful letter deserves a reply.
Dennis Morrisseau
P.O. Box 177
West Pawlet, VT 05775
802 645 9727
dmorso1@netzero.net
This issue is crucial to the 9/11 Truth movement. Kudos for putting this information out to the public. And, kudos again to the conference call group/signatories for taking the principled stand on this issue.
How anyone with a reasoning mind – and I’m not referring to any one person here, because there are MANY who seem to think this way – can conclude that the WTC was a false flag attack and yet simultaneously conclude that Al-Qaeda crashed a plane into the Pentagon baffles me.
I personally like Mr. Gage, have heard him speak, and am a big fan of his work and AE911Truth. However, he distances himself from supporters like me when he distances himself from logical reasoning by suggesting that “A and A compliment equals 1” (where are the math students out there?). That an event and its opposite can both be true at the same time.
I have posted on my blog of the danger of Pentagon Truth being suppressed at the upcoming “Toronto 9/11 Hearings.” I think the release of the text of the signatories’ letter is the right time to make the suggestion once more that people A) consider, seriously, the damage that could be done by ALLOWING such a so-called “Toronto 9/11 Hearing” to take place with NO representation from Pilots, CIT, or any other researcher of Pentagon Truth in attendance; and, B) join together now to DEMAND that Pentagon Truth be heard at the event.
For these purposes, I have started a Cause page on Facebook. With Craig’s kind permission, I would like to share the link once again to the blog post, which explains the reasons and gives the link to the Cause page:
Link: http://blog.911newscentral.com/?p=1903
Thank you!
Does it actually baffle you that anyone could believe that planes crashed into the WTC towers and that a plane also crashed into the Pentagon? Where is the contradiction in that? Do you think it is more logical that planes were crashed into the WTC towers, but people drew up an incredibly complicated, risky plan to pretend a plane crashed into the Pentagon in order to make people think a plane crashed into the Pentagon.
That’s very strange logic. I don’t believe a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon because the evidence clearly points that way. What I find a contradiction is that people can argue that the downing of the twin towers was meant to fool us, but the Pentagon event was just as we’ve been told. That makes no sense.
The towers were brought down in a controlled demolition that was done to make us think it was due to plane crashes. In other words, it was a deception, an illusion. How can people believe that, and yet think that what we’ve been told happened at the Pentagon was real? The Pentagon official story is even more impossible than the one at the WTC.
How can you think al-Qaeda wasn’t really behind the tower attack but they were behind the Pentagon one? And as for the plan being incredibly complicated, that’s true of every aspect of the plan, not just the Pentagon. This was being planned for years, and it was intended to deceive us. How complicated would it have been if a plane NOT full of passengers had actually crashed into the Pentagon? Then you’d be dealing with actual bodies and airplane parts with serial numbers on them. The illusion actually makes sense, and for the most part it has worked.
Mr. Wright wrote:
Planes crashing into the WTC towers is in doubt by those who have truly studied the no-planes hypothesis with an open-mind. The evidence (or lack thereof) actually weighs more heavily into the realm that no actual planes flew into the towers, the Pentagon, or Shanksville. NO PLANES.
Where is the evidence that real planes hit the towers? It lies almost exclusively in television footage, and we know from every minute of our own personal telly viewing how media images can be manipulated. In the days before 9/11, Hurricane Erin was on course to hit NYC and was being tracked; on 9/11 it was at its closest point and could/should have hit NYC. Was this information ever conveyed on 9/11 by the weathermen? This is a nugget of truth (mined from Dr. Judy Wood) that proves how corporate media was complicit in 9/11, otherwise why wasn’t Hurricane Erin the top story all morning long before anything happened at the towers?
Back to the topic of planes. Where are the serial numbered plane parts from the wreckage in the towers? Where was the wreckage in the towers? Where were the bodies? How come the flight data recorders had issues? How come evidence suggests that two planes never left the ground? How come two planes were listed as still in service years after 9/11? How come telephone calls from flights have been exposed as being fake? How come real pilots complain that the supposed planes flew at sea level at speeds exceeding their maximum rated speed at high altitude with such skill and precision beyond the patsy hijackers’ abilities? How come the planes did not exhibit crash physics in the videos and instead acted like cartoons in the outlines they created? How come a branch of 9/11 Truth is having a hay-day proving lots of VicSims in the death toll?
It will always be easier to say “I did something” than it will ever be to actually “do that something.”
And so it is with 9/11. They said it was “planes”, but the logistics of actually using planes and achieving their goals (e.g., complete and thorough destruction of the WTC and records housed there) introduced significant and unmanageable risk all along the way that could poke holes in their neat story-line of 19 Muslim-extremist Arab hijackers with box-cutters.
Here’s an essay on the subject that still holds water. Holmgren and Reynolds on No Planes on 911 – Exposing the Illusion
The issue of planes in the towers is separate from issue of any other plane. The deception was set up such that seeing telly pictures (faked but repeated endlessly) of one event would have us never question any of the other planes. Yet, this deceptive association unravels when the Shanksville hole is revealed as not a plane. Only because the (lack of convincing) evidence at the Pentagon and/or towers are we able to logically conclude that “implanting the belief of commercial aircraft into the publics’ minds was more important to the goals and operation than having than the logistic nightmare of four actual commercial planes.”
Everything We’re Doing Now Was Planned BEFORE 9/11
I couldn’t let this post sit here without responding to it. Please refer to evidence and evidence alone to make your point, we really aren’t interested in what you think is logical or illogical.
Nothing is more illogical than thinking that a large plane can crash at the Pentagon without it being blindingly obvious that a large plane crashed at the Pentagon. When so called truthers have to dig up Government supplied contradictory photos of small pieces of wreckage to “prove” a plane crash and when so called scientists write bizarre papers about how we can’t prove that a plane didn’t crash at the Pentagon – then you know that something very fishy is going on.
Good to see people standing up against the illogical crowd with their “nothing to see here” attitude to the Pentagon. Most clear-thinking individuals worked out a long time ago that the Pentagon is the weak link in the chain holding the 9/11 myth together. They also worked out that the witness evidence uncovered by CIT is the tool to cut that weak link.
This is quite a day for me. Today, I heard for the first time about a fire at the Eisenhower Building on 9/11. What a bombshell story! And, now, this powerful article about NPT from Senor El Once.
Señor El Once – What a powerful article, especially as to No Plane Theory (NPT) info. In the article, I agree with NPT answering questions in the Occam’s Razor section. In the ‘Arab Extremists’ section, I understand Fetzer’s comment that even if true, NPT should not be spoken because, “it hurts the movement.” However, I’ve heard this argument used too many times before, and almost always as an excuse for some other motive. I enthusiastically agree instead with Holmgren that “the 9/11-Truth movement should stand for truth above all.” I could not agree more.
I also recently watched September Clues (septemberclues.info), and found the arguments for TV fakery to be quite compelling. (More compelling that I thought I would. I had always been told that only “nuts/crazy people” believe no plane theories.) I just created a No Planes Theory (NPT) group at my website. Link: http://bit.ly/ivGmmc.
The September Toronto Hearings would be a perfect time to present NPT evidence, would it not?
The no-planes-in-NYC theory is as easily debunked as the flyover theory.
They are both destroyed by the fact of amateur video. After flight 11 hit WTC1, dozens of amateurs trained video cameras on the towers. If WTC2 suddenly blew up without an airplane flying into it, amateur video would have captured that fact. The notion that there was no plane is absurd.
Same thing with the flyover. There were dozens or even hundreds of windows overlooking the Pentagon. The 9/11 plotters had no control over who might respond to news reports of attacks on the WTC by setting up a camera running on a tripod, just in case something interesting happened at the Pentagon. That disposes of the notion that a flyover op could have been planned. It’s absurd.
To be thorough we should examine a second flyover theory: the unplanned flyover. In this theory the light poles were taken down to remove a threat of unknown magnitude to the stability of a high-speed aircraft at low altitude and something went wrong (sabotage?) and the plane flew in at the wrong angle and altitude and flew over. This is the only plausible flyover theory, though it shares one fatal flaw with the flyover op theory: the impossibility of planting the lightpoles before 9:37 so that nobody notices them in the cloverleaf during two rush hours.
Dear Brian Good,
Could I ask you for a minute of your time to read this page of my website thoroughly? It (and all the other contents of th September Clues website) is the result of about 4 years of steady video analyses which I hope you will dedicate some of your time to assess in proper fashion. Thanks!
http://www.septemberclues.info/faq_2.htm
Regards
Simon Shack
Dear Mr. Shack,
I’ve been a big fan of your research, although a relative late comer (2008) to it. It has elements, like simVictims, that has been difficult even for me to swallow, but I have eventually been persuaded on most of it.
Due to my own (negative) experience on Let’s Roll Forums that reeked of gatekeeping and shutting down open-minded discussions of controversial research (e.g., Dr. Judy Wood’s new textbook) because it would ultimately prove “hollow towers” somewhat hollow, I suppose your treatment there is of no surprise. So sophomoric of Mr. Jayhan… In fact, it was just a matter of time before they attacked you for trivial reasons.
I’m looking for nuggets of truth. September Clues has provided many. If I am a duped useful idiot on this front, I can say with confidence that those who argue against video fakery have not done so convincingly, which is why I always circle back to many of September Clues revelations. In fact, video fakery is the key that ties much of the 9/11 operation together as well as providing motivation for the perpetrators.
I encourage Mr. McKee’s readers to research September Clues on their own.
Mr. Shack, thank you for your efforts and the courage to be “the target”.
Dear Brian Good,
Could I ask you for a minute of your time to read this page of my website thoroughly? It (and all the other contents of the September Clues website) is the result of about 4 years of steady video analyses which I hope you will dedicate some of your time to assess in proper fashion. Thanks!
http://www.septemberclues.info/faq_2.htm
Regards
Simon Shack
Obviously Brian Good’s comparison of the WTC 2nd hit with the Pentagon attack makes no sense at all since nobody captured the Pentagon attack with “amateur video”. Don’t forget that this was before the age of camera phones so the chance that a random person would catch a surprise attack on video was much less and obviously the planners knew this at the time.
There is nothing “absurd” about them planting a few light poles in advance of the event. CIT makes a great case for that in their FAQ section: http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/faq-staged_light_poles.html
I completely agree with this. Poles lying on grass, obstructed by trees or topography would probably not be noticed. And if they were, they wouldn’t be considered to be important at the time (before the event). And if someone saw the poles and then figured out their significance, they would never make it into the media reports. If the media didn’t expose the ludicrous story of Lloyde England, they wouldn’t get to the bottom of this.
IMO Brian asks a very interesting question about amateur video on 9/11, and I agree with TD’s points. However, I think I must apologize. I did not mean to distract this thread from it’s main purpose: the letter to Richard Gage. I agree with Dennis that “this decent, thoughtful and respectful letter deserves a reply.”
Mr. Shack, regardless of your belief that some of the videos may be compromised, the fact remains that the danger was so great that amateur video would capture the sudden no-planes explosion of WTC2 that such an op would be impossibly risky. I’m not interested in conspiracies of thousands.
Mr. Burner, you’re missing the fact that my argument has nothing to do with whether amateur video did or did not capture the flyover event. My argument is that there was no way to control the risk, and so it would have been reckless to do it. The justification that the CIT guys offer for why the perps would fly a plane over, instead of into to, the Pentagon is that they wanted total control. Well if they wanted total control, they could not possibly tolerate their lack of control over who might video it.
The case CIT makes for planting lightpoles is to claim poles 4 and 5 are “concealed on embankments” when they’re not concealed by anything–they’re right there in the short grass next to the offramp! The fact that they’re on Pentagon property is immaterial–it’s a public road.
Mr. McKee, you are inventing trees and topographical obstructions where there are none. The light poles are in the short grass right next to the offramp and the onramp. You are also inventing the stupid witnesses who don’t grasp the significance of broken light poles before the plane flying in, and the timid witnesses who stay silent after the media ignore them. The north path witnesses weren’t timid. Why would the light pole witnesses be?
Mr. Central, the letter is anything but thoughtful. My comments on that can be seen here:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/06/22/18682694.php?show_comments=1#18683363
Dear Mr. Good, you wrote:
Impossibly risky that amateur video would capture the sudden no-planes explosion?
Nonsense. Quite the opposite. It would be impossibly risky to have something real (e.g., missile, military plane, commercial plane but not of the make & model we were told) flown into the towers. This would have all sorts of audio and visual clues to trigger amateurs to turn on their cameras and focus them in a specific direction. It would be very difficult shut down all of these versions, particularly if they deviated from the official story.
Get rid of a real flying object, then what trigger or clue would amateurs have that they should focus their cameras on the towers to catch the explosion at the right time? How would they know which tower, which tower face, etc. would be impacted?
I know from my own video taping experience, most amateurs would get bored inside of the first couple of minutes of training their cameras on the burning tower.
As a side note, professional video from a news helicopter did capture the sudden no-planes explosion of WTC-2. This particular footage has three versions. One shows nothing. One shows an “orb” with background reflecting around it; probably an attempt to fake a plane but was too difficult given the background. The third masked out the background (harbor), replaced it with sky, inserted a plane flying a different path.
Simon Shack had a reasonable request to read the following page thoroughly.
http://www.septemberclues.info/faq_2.htm
A great point is brought up that various sporting events have hundreds of cameras trained on the action, yet few ever capture the “money shot”, like the car crashing. How many amateurs capture the winning touchdown pass, or more importantly, how many capture the antics of players and coaches on the sidelines or on a part of the field where the ball isn’t?
P.S. Do you even monitor your gmail email account? If so, why haven’t you responded to attempts at off-list correspondence? If you don’t monitor it, I have a couple of brief unrelated questions for you. If you’ve lost my email, I can be reached through Mr. McKee.
Mr. Once, you seem to miss the fact that the cue to turn on the video camera was when the first plane hit. There’s this thing called a tripod, running cameras can be placed on them and require no tending. Most of the amateur video of the second plane impact seems to have been recorded in that manner, and seems to have been shot by people who just shot out the window wherever they happened to be. People shooting from Jersey, from Brooklyn, from Staten Island, and from uptown would all have had the opportunity to capture the fact if the south tower simply blew up by itself.
There is no comparison between catching the south tower blowing up and a sporting event “money shot” that requires a narrow field of view. A wide-view shot of all of lower Manhattan would (and did) show the airplane approach just fine.
Mr. Good wrote:
Agreed, the WTC-1 explosion and fire would have been a cue. But five minutes of smoke and fire is about 30 times more than what would be broadcast on the news. On 9/11, we’re talking 15 minutes before the “2nd explosion”, in addition to cameras being trained on WTC-1, not necessarily WTC-2.
Agreed. Except that if you were close, you were at various points running to get a better angle or running for your lives. How many “amateurs” would have the foresight to put a camera on a tripod and leave it running? How many actually did this? If I would have been there with a camera and a tripod, I still would not have used it on the tripod, because I would have found the ground activity many times more interesting.
You overstate your case below.
First of all, I call your bluff. You say “most of the amateur video of the second plane impact seems to have been recorded [with a tripod]”, prove it. Provide the links.
I disagree with that statement. I recall only the “amateur” video from Bob & Bri having a tripod. And even then, they did not capture a flying object. Those crucial (milli-)seconds were edited out, go figure. Bri mentions immediately after the cut “It is a military plane!”, but given the other proven editing, this has to be taken with a grain of salt as if it were an over-dub later and/or part of a script.
I suppose I also recall the “tripod amateur” work that was shot through a chain link fence, except that it debunked itself by having both the fence and towers in focus at the same time, a clear indication of a video fakery, which is the main issue: video fakery happened on 9/11. Also, I think the person recording it also was not an “amateur” but a “professional”.
In fact, point me at the “amateur videos” that used a tripod to fix the camera on the towers, and I’ll bet that September Clues or others have exposed the tell-tale signs of video fakery. (And they also weren’t “amateur”.)
Certainly one can compare WTC-2 exploding to a sporting event. WTC-1 fires are like the high-fiving celebratory aftermath of a team scoring a touchdown. Crowd & camera attention is focused there until is diverted to the reactions of the coaches/players on both sidelines or boistrous fans mugging for the cameras in the stands. Arriving fire departments and citizens leaving the building distract from WTC-1 fires. The WTC-2 explosion is like an unexpected fight between the orange vested yardage marker referees in the opposite end-zone. Who would have thought to focus there for that night’s sports sound-bite?
Again you overstate your case and lack proof. Moreover, those very wide-view shots of all of lower Manhattan and the airplane approach were not “just fine”. This is apparently the salient point from September Clues and other video fakery analysis that you ignore. Among the errors were being inconsistent with one another with regards to flight paths, not modeling crash physics, and not standing up to slow-motion and backward-play analysis. Some represent miracles of zoom and focus, yet played backwards as a zoom-out don’t show a plane in the frame where it should.
If Simon Shack is still monitoring the comments, I am curious to learn his opinion about the (lack of) news coverage of Hurricane Erin that was aimed directly at NYC in the days prior to 9/11, should have hit NYC on 9/11, was just off the coast of NY all day, but was not mentioned at all that morning by most corporate media weather people except for FOX, who said in one broadcast that morning that the hurricane was no longer a concern for NYC.
This non-reporting of a massive hurricane directly on the morning of 9/11 is not only further proof of mass media complicity in 9/11, it represents a clue. Before either tower was affected, why was the reporting the hurricane suppressed?
Here’s my wild-ass speculation. HAARP created that hurricane and steered it right at NYC in the days prior to 9/11. On 9/11, they steered it to stop and then moved it away. It needed to be close: (a) Because it was the energy source for the directed energy weapons that microwaved the towers into dust. (b) Because it was plan B to wipe out all of the evidence if major elements of the ruse failed or were questionable. (c) Both of the above.
>>>Mr. Burner, you’re missing the fact that my argument has nothing to do with whether amateur video did or did not capture the flyover event. My argument is that there was no way to control the risk, and so it would have been reckless to do it.
Obviously it wasn’t much of a risk because nobody caught it on video as they did at the WTC. Camera phones were not on the market yet so clearly they had much less to worry about during what they knew would be a surprise attack where people would not have enough time to understand something was wrong, locate their video camera, turn it on, and start filming. Clearly they were 100% correct. The entire operation was a “risk” but guess what? They pulled it off.
….The case CIT makes for planting lightpoles is to claim poles 4 and 5 are “concealed on embankments” when they’re not concealed by anything–they’re right there in the short grass next to the offramp! The fact that they’re on Pentagon property is immaterial–it’s a public road.
Pole #2 was completely hidden to motorists while 3 and 4 certainly were on embankments and therefore less visible to passing motorists. Regardless, a pole on the side of the road is not a reason for concern at all even if somebody did notice it. CIT also demonstrated that with hard evidence here:
http://z3.invisionfree.com/CIT/index.php?showtopic=464
>>>>You are also inventing the stupid witnesses who don’t grasp the significance of broken light poles before the plane flying in, and the timid witnesses who stay silent after the media ignore them. The north path witnesses weren’t timid. Why would the light pole witnesses be?
You don’t have to be “stupid” to not notice irrelevant debris on the side of the road when you are driving. That is simply human nature and the proper way to drive. The light poles were not a major focus of the news that day and they were omitted from the official reports moving forward. They were barely a footnote in the official propaganda until CIT came along years later and looked at them skeptically. Plus what do you think would have happened if someone saw a pole on the ground, put two and two together after the fact, and called the authorities to report it? Obviously nothing, especially since we know they were staged. Furthermore there is no comparison with potential witnesses to poles on the ground prior to the attack (insignificant) to people who witnessed the actual attack jet scream by them (life-changing). Even still, once again, the north side approach was kept under wraps for years until CIT heavily focused on the specific flight path details. The only reason these witnesses talked about it at all is because of the foresight, determination, and hard work “boots on the ground” diligence of CIT.
It simply makes no sense to dismiss something we have an extreme amount of evidence for (north side approach) because of a lack of evidence for people who witnessed the poles on the ground prior to the attack. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I’m glad FFBurner is here to add knowedegable CIT arguments to this discussion. Now, in response to what I think Brian Good is saying, that the Pentagon operation would have been too risky because of Pentagon employees holding their personal video cameras out their office windows – did I understand that correctly, Mr. Good? Well, look, I don’t know this for a fact – and perhaps we can in actuality get Ms. April Gallop on this thread to tell us; or, perhaps Jesse Ventura, who recently visited the Pentagon to film an episode of his tv show – but, look, the Pentagon is a top secret facility. I don’t think employees at the Pentagon could have brought video cameras in to work with them. And, FFBurner points out that camera phones didn’t exist yet. So, to me, that “risk” doesn’t seem real.
Also, about the lightpoles on the side of the road, I’m also w/ FFBurner on that one. Look, when I’m driving to work, especially in heavy DC traffic, my eyes are on the road. I’m not looking for fallen light poles on the side of the road. I’m just trying to get to work on time and not spill my coffee. And, if the “event” hadn’t happened yet, even if you did see a pole down, you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Not a thought. Just my 2 cents.
And, if I may, I would just like to add one more thing. Usually, at this point, if this conversation were happening a year ago over at that “other 9/11 website,” at this point the moderators would come in strongly on the side of the anti-CIT commenters and begin A) restriciting commenting privileges of CIT commenters, B) making ad hominem attacks (i.e. name calling, etc.), C) immediately, they and/or their shills acting on their behalf would post long-winded rebuttals to CIT arguments; and, D) banning CIT commenters outright.
At this “other 9/11 website,” ad-hominem attacks against CIT commenters are always allowed by admins; however, even the slightest hint of the same in the reverse direction is always met with immediate punitive admin actions of the harshest kind, and always without explanation given.
And so, since this discussion is NOT happening right now at that “other 9/11 website,” I find this fascinating. I predict that, without the completely unfair help they are accustomed to receiving from admin, they will – and this comment is not directed at Mr. Good, who has debated with us here, but to others – tuck tail and run. Because the CIT arguments are as sound as the ground I’m standing on. The CIT arguments CANNOT be refuted. And, at a neutral location such as this one, where are the callous, name-calling CIT-haters now? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Hiding in their cave, to be sure.
Come out, CIT-debunkers. And, this does relate to the opening post, doesn’t it? So, bring it on, I say!
Mr. Burner, you’re missing the point. Flyover was too risky because of the potential for being videotaped–not by someone who reacted quickly with an non-existent cell-phone camera, but by someone in an office or hotel room or apartment overlooking the Pentagon who would just set up a camera running in case something interesting happened. The likelihood that planespotters at Gravely Point would have cameras was also an issue. A flyover op was reckless–and there’s no reason to take the risk when a plane could simply be flown in on a radio beacon.
Lightpoles 3 and 4, being on embankments, were MORE visible to drivers leaving the Pentagon lot going west on Columbia Pike or turning north on 27 at the end of the night shift. CIT’s paper about lightpoles on the side of the road has nothing to do with light poles in the cloverleaf. There’s all kinds of stuff along the side of the road, and people don’t notice it. The broken poles in the cloverleaf would be very conspicuous, not obscure in the shadow of some guard rail.
What is human nature in driving is to be aware of one’s surroundings. Your “stupid witness” theory claims that people will not notice the obvious, will not recognize its significance if they did and, if they did recognize the significance would simply shrug and drop the issue if the media ignored them is extremely self-serving. One of the most unattractive features of the CIT crowd is their desperate need to feel smarter than everyone else.
Mr. Central, the pool of potential photographers and videotapers include people in hotel rooms, offices, and apartments that overlook the Pentagon, drivers on the highways that ring the building, planespotters at Gravely Point, people in the park, tourists in airport limos or on public transportation, boaters at the marina, and golfers.
When I drive I am always on the lookout for any hazard–an animal running out in the road, a rock rolling off a cliff, a car taking a curve too fast and crossing the line. I would notice broken lightpoles and I would wonder what broke them. I might even stop to examine them.
Part of the reason the discussion elsewhere gets rancorous is because Mr. Ranke and Mr. Marquis and Mr. Balsamo have a long history of extremely ugly behavior in debate.
Mr. Once 7/5 2:49
From simply watching the youtube videos I get the impression that about 2/3 of the available videos of the burning towers are long shots, many of them done by amateurs whose cohabitants can be heard in the background reacting to the events. Most of the closer-in shots appear to be done by professional news crews. Why wouldn’t an amateur have the foresight to sacrifice a five -dollar video tape to simply monitoring the towers? The youtube videos seem to indicate that’s what they did. I’m not going to provide links to 40 different videos. You can search on “WTC fires” in youtube as well as I can.
People shooting video from Jersey City or Staten Island or Brooklyn or from uptown could not see any firemen or crowds. They were stuck with shooting a long shot of the towers out the window, and that’s what they did.
Why would you find non-reporting of a hurricane that never came off anomalous? There are lots of hurricane warnings in NYC, many of them never pan out; so what?
Dear Mr. Good,
Your impression that 2/3 of the available videos being long-shots is just that: an impression and not fact until the data is correlated. Of these long-shots, how many used a tripod? I seem to recall there being only a total of forty something videos of the 2nd plane hitting… not all of them unique.
That “cohabitants” can be heard in the background reacting to the events does not necessarily indicate amateur status. One of the areas of fakery research shows surprising overlap of voice patterns and words between certain videos, like the hysterical woman screaming in the background “Oh my God!” Could it have been the same team of (professional) actors and video manipulators?
You seem to be making all sorts of plausible yet benign excuses founded on your gut instincts, yet you haven’t stepped up to Simon Shack’s challenge to review his page and debunk it, nor will you list the videos that prove your case.
It doesn’t take many instances to prove video fakery and a complicit corporate media in the hoax. September Clues and its branch of research go above and beyond in overwhelmingly proving some of the extent of video fakery. Above and beyond because clearly proof of as little as two instances of video manipulation puts the 9/11 television imagery into doubt. “Of course we saw what the telly showed us, but did the telly really show us the real event?”
You asked:
First of all, the hurricane did come off. They were tracking it, monitoring it, and reporting on it all week leading up to 9/11. I’m led to believe that hurricanes hit the East Coast from the South and the East, just like this one would have. Hurricanes are known to change direction.
The anomalous nature of Hurricane Erin isn’t just that it went to the East, isn’t just that it stopped. This hurricane could have easily have switched back to its former path and gone West to cream NYC. So what is anomalous is that when the storm is very close (within 500 miles) with the ability not only two change direction but to also effect NYC with a storm surge, this event became non-News, not worthy of reporting, mentioning only in passing.
Combine proven instances of video fakery and the deliberate suppression of a massive hurricane lingering off of the coast, and you’ve got a reason to suspect the motives and fairness of all corporate media reporting after 9/11. It wasn’t as we were told, and they did all they could to re-enforce the “kooky” label to any who questioned it. Of course, the run-up to Iraq already proved corporate media’s role in being the lackey propaganda meister for the administration.
P.S. Mr. Good, I have a couple of unrelated questions. Could you please monitor your hotmail account, and bid me the courtesy of a reply?
Mr. Once, I am not interested in debunking Mr. Shacks’s claims that a couple of dozen videographers were all 9/11 conspirators. Waste of time.
The hurricane didn’t come off. It never hit New York.
Dear Mr. Good, you wrote:
I think you’ve twisted this a little. The most important aspect of Mr. Shack’s claims are that 44 videos, give or take, were doctored. Who doctored them or when remains to be seen.
You call them “conspirators.” They probably call themselves “contractors” charged with a small role in getting footage into the public realm. Whether they even took the footage themselves, whether they did the doctoring themselves, or whether doctoring was done after they submitted it through media channels are each separate aspects, thus the extent of their involvement in the conspiracy has to be viewed on an individual case-by-case basis.
Compartmentalization probably severely limited the extent of their knowledge of any other parts of the operation. Significant contracting fees and/or their “15 minutes of fame” (10 years of fame) would contribute to their motivation for playing their role.
The penalty for revealing their involvement, though, would have been clear, particularly after the Anthrax attacks and other blatant squashing of whistleblowers.
This is just simple wrong, and you brush it aside to casually.
The hurricane existed. The hurricane was there. It did come up the Atlantic coast, whether or not it hit New York.
By your logic, the hurricane didn’t hit New York on September 7, 8, 9, or 10, so it shouldn’t have been tracked, monitored, and reported… But was. On those days, any city along the Atlantic coast could have been the target. By 9/11, whether or not New York could still be considered in the hurricane’s path doesn’t make it un-newsworthy, particularly when cities North of New York could have been hit.
The hurricane was important news for anyone traveling on or over the ocean. Where the airports not shutdown nationwide, the hurricane could have had major ramifications in terms of delays and detours in international flights.
A weather anchors for corporate mass media might have been justified at 5 p.m. on September 11, 2001 in saying “the hurricane didn’t hit New York, so maybe we got lucky and it didn’t come off.”
The issue starts with the fact this hurricane’s missing of New York (or other New England coasts) was not a foregone conclusion on the morning of 9/11. It should have been active news that was widely reported and whose progress was monitored and updated regularly by both local and network media outlets, as they had been doing on all of the days leading up to 9/11.
The issue widens when considering the extent of the media conspiracy on 9/11 to suppress hurricane news: both local and network news (except for one small weather update by one local FOX News affiliate) worked in tandem to bury this story.
Dear Señor El Once,
Sorry it took me so long to look up this discussion about hurricane Erin – and your above request:
“If Simon Shack is still monitoring the comments, I am curious to learn his opinion about the (lack of) news coverage of Hurricane Erin (…)”
We have, in fact, been discussing hurricane Erin over at Cluesforum.info. Here’s a link to my own musings (or ‘wild speculations’, if you will) about this issue:
“THE WEATHER ON 9/11” http://www.cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2355573#p2355573
Please know that NBC’s weatherman, Al Roker, actually DID mention the looming, “90mph moving North” hurricane Erin at around 7:11AM on September 11, 2001 – albeit in a most incredibly casual and succint manner. You will find the related info (and NBC broadcast) in the same Cluesforum thread linked above.
Richard Gage is a smart guy. To withdraw support from the CIT film is outrageous.
Dear Craig
I believe CIT seem like reasonable guys and their theories should be respected.
The link you provided in the following quote below has since gone dead.
Which story were you referring to it? I am really curious.
Although controlled demolition of the World Trade Center could be spun to minimize government complicity, evidence for bombs at the Pentagon is un-spinnable. The idea was recently floated on Fox News that perhaps the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition, but our government might not have done it, or even known about it. This could never be said about the Pentagon.